I No Longer Believe in This Process

Thanks, Bud, it IS interesting, especially these paragraphs in your last post on the thread:

I felt the same way about my last therapist quitting on me.

I was still somewhat of a believer at that point, but starting to see major cracks, like OP. Now I take a much harder line, and frankly find the whole thing insane and would never refer to it as "treatment".

You’re right about that. I know that my T had been in therapy. I really do think she hasn’t finished the process but when I spoke to her about attachment she seemed cold. Her response was rather cold but truthful really. She feels nothing that I feel nor is it her issue. It seemed like she didn’t even want to touch upon the subject.

I think the effectiveness of therapy is hugely overrated, by professionals and the public alike. I spent thousands on it. I'ld be slow to spend another dime, or even spend any time on it, if my insurance paid for it.

Some people claim they've been helped by therapy, and maybe they have. Whether or not the whole enterprise is a fraud is kind of beside the point. What matters to you is whether it's helping you. I think it's totally valid to reach a conclusion that it isn't. I reached that conclusion. That was despite my having therapists who I considered sincere and dependable. I respected and trusted them. I just didn't find seeing them was doing me any good.

When I voiced that to a T, with whom I thought I had a good relationship, I was told that I wasn't doing therapy right and had never really made an effort. That was telling that the T became that defensive. It's always the client's fault. I had been earnestly trying to grapple with what was wrong with my life. I just think "therapy" doesn't always amount to more than a bunch of talk going no where. Therapists don't have genius insights. The process tends to reinforce whatever the client already believes, or, conversely, to present the client with something that client is unable to receive, for whatever reason.

In my opinion, I think a lot of it is a sham. There is no accountability.

The situation is such a set up. They pretend "as if" they care more than they do. I am there too.

That is the most frustrating thing. In their view, they sit in the pronouncement chair, and it is ALWAYS the client's fault. I agree with you /

My experience has been the opposite, with multiple therapists. No one ever made pronouncements about my effort one way or the other or commented about the correctness of my therapy work. When I said I needed things done differently, they did them. When I criticized them, they listened openly and were straight with me about how they saw things. When there were big screw ups, and there have been a few with each of them, some that I still can recall, they acknowledged what they could have done differently. No one ever pointed a finger at me or said something was my fault. Fault didn't ever enter into it. I'm much more interested in understanding and resolution rather than being proclaimed without fault. But I would leave therapy if I felt blamed or that I couldn't say what I needed because of repeated defensiveness (sometimes people are defensive at first, especially if they feel attacked, so the process is often not perfect), but I couldn't tolerate being stuck in this way. Bad therapy is bad therapy, but therapy isn't always bad.

I was never looking to therapists to tell me nothing was my fault. If I'm chronically despondent, I figure it's because I have an approach to life that is not working for me. I prefer to see that I'm the cause of my own unhappiness because that means I can change things.

Usually, when my life feels intolerable, it means I need to change something. I never found therapists helpful in identifying what concrete decision I needed to make. For seven years I lived with a partner with a serious drinking habit. Through attending Al-Anon and reading their literature I learned way more than I ever learned in therapy. It helped me to eventually leave that living situation.

I think it's great that some people have found therapy to be a positive experience. For people with chronic mood disorders, I think it's over-rated. The only remedy for depression, in my own experience, is me making myself do what I don't feel like doing. Sitting in an office relating my past and analyzing it got me absolutely nowhere. I usually left the office feeling agitated.

When I voiced that the process of going to a therapist did not seem to be leading to any improvement in my life, I did not mean that as a way of accusing the therapist of incompetence. I did not attack anyone, but I sure got attacked. It happened repeatedly to me, if I dared to say the process was not working for me, with multiple therapists. Their response bordered on vicious. They were wedded to the belief that what they do is productive and that any failure couldn't possibly be due to the process being ineffective.

Absolutely. I can fall in a hole or have a bad experience and the chances of her responding is minimal. I got tired and just kept things to myself because what’s the sense of speaking at times. Then you think what’s the point of going to therapy. It’s the I care now but you don’t exist later. Clients need a constant.

I feel for you and I can understand you as I partly feel the same. It would be interesting to gather all clients who feel or have felt that they don´t gain anything from therapy.

If you aim rather low therapy can be helpful I think, perhaps something like "I want someone to listen to my problems" or "I want to have the courage to tell a person about a situation that happened to me. But as soon it´s about wanting to reach more complicated goals that really affects one´s life I don´t believe a therapist can help in any way.

I can't count the therapists I've been to on one hand. The most sessions I've ever made it to with a therapist is 7. I could never make a connection or feel like I was getting anywhere or any real insight. I always had to repeat myself. One didn't seem to get what a panic attack was. Never felt understood and I hated the stone faces.

My current T is new to me. And every time I leave I feel like I learned something new. I kinda feel like she is an anti-t because she just has this anti_bs vibe. It sucks that therapy seems to involve match making.

But I also imagine I'll likely won't last that long with this T either. But who knows.

Mine seemed cold too when I had this recent (this week) melt-down in therapy. It was clear that any objection that I might have about the process of therapy was just that: my objection and not necessarily her problem or anything in need of alteration for my benefit.

Therapy has been a way to cordon off the time on a weekly basis to review "where I am" and hash out the day-to-day issues along with setting goals, which I have largely met (with the exception of one long-term goal the I wanted to tackle that blew up dramatically).

I feel in large measure that I have been "on my own" in a fairly comfortable space, working things out by thinking aloud, which has been valuable. HOWEVER, I sometimes think I could have done that with a good solid journaling effort, talks with close friend, or in the company of a gold fish.

Most of the therapists I spoke to about therapy gone wrong were unable to tolerate it. The one i had the issues with came totally unglued. Another went into attack mode. A couple did a subtle client-blaming song and dance. Others were weirdly silent and non-committal. Collectively, it was a freak show.

Seemed most of them had a tenuous hold on things, and were only comfortable when the proceedings played out according to some scripted model they learned in training, where the client is submissive and stupid, and obediently worships at the altar of therapy, and accepts all responsibility for failure.

I’ll be honest there are times during a crisis or drastic event in my life that I look at my phone and I’m about to text my G and then I’m like forget what’s the point. I can rant and explain what horrific experience I’m having and what there is to come next and she’s MIA. They’ll be no answer or anything. Basically I have to resort to my own methods of coping which is something that I’m trying to battle. I end up giving in to my coping methods which I should be working on. Then two weeks later you walk into a session but a million and one things happened since because remember there was a crisis going on.

Really what I’m using therapy for at times is to just here myself talk and vent about not the last two weeks because you can’t fit that in 40-45 min. Basically it’s take whatever you think up first and blurt it out. Whether something constructive or not comes from who knows. My T won’t change her methods to adjust to my situation. So either I adapt to her way which I have no idea what that is in the 5 years I’ve been seeing her or I figure things out my way with my coping skills. I tried journaling but that never worked for me and my friends have their own issues and don’t want to hear mine. So yes therapy has become an expensive way to vent.

You’re absolutely right. I can relate to what you’re saying. I’ve had the defensive attitude where she says that I’m the one at fault. Every scenario where I’ve had an issue with her she will turn around I’ll be at fault. The one time she admitted that she was fault she then did nothing to rectify it. According to her the fact that she admitted it and apologized was enough.

It’s work when therapists encounter patients that will challenge them. It’s much easier to deal with submissive clients that you can shape and mold. It’s much harder to deal with clients that question the therapist and the therapeutic process. I find it comical when I see my T using that “scripted model”. I’ve brought it to her attention and she said that she’s suppose to use it because she is a therapist. Just a poor answer.

The "scripted" stuff really annoys me. Like: "Use your coping skills." It's like they could program a computer to do therapy.

Not a bad idea, Rose. In fact, they have! Somebody posted recently about "Woebot", the robot therapy app.

SaSw--I attended a lunch hosted by TELL a number of years back, attended by women harmed by therapists. Most had experienced sexual violations. It was an impressive room of thoughtful, highly articulate, pulled together women. (I'm not back-patting myself here.) It was quite a club.

I agree with you that therapy is more likely to be fulfilling if expectations are low. If it was presented as a room where I can talk, or a witness, that would have been truthful. Unfortunately, my therapists promised, implicitly or explicitly, that some catharsis and magical transformation would occur.* They seemed to believe their own publicity. I know a therapist in a non-professional context and she's a know-it-all self-appointed priestess. I can just imagine her full-throttle wizard-of-Oz with her vulnerable clients.

*Over the decades life has left me less anxious, more spontaneous, if still a square peg.

That definitely was my experience. Therapists thought it was there job to provide the narrative for all sorts of situations they never witnessed as well as what they had.

I don't think therapy can be generalized because whether or not it's good is totally dependent on the skill of the provider. IMO it's kind of like saying I no longer believe in doctors and medical treatment.

But I do think the proportion of bad therapists to good therapists is way higher than the proportion of bad doctors to good doctors. I've never encountered an overall good therapist yet.

I don't believe in using Western medicine

I don't believe in therapy or western medicine, and i have a fair bit of experience with both.

I consider therapists and western docs who are not dangerous to be anomalies. Like a politician who is not corrupt.

So basically more or less all of society is bad? Lol

All of society commits reductio ad absurdum fallacies.

I worked in a setting where there were social worker-therapists also working. They were typically as screwed up in their own personal lives as anyone else.