Has therapy helped or not helped (incl.harm from therapy)

I'd like to hear people's experiences. I can't decide if I'm been duped or not.

If it has helped, how has it helped you? Would you be able to give tangible examples?

If it hasn't helped or you have experienced some harm, how has it not helped? How did you find it harmful? Furthermore, what alternatives have you then found to be more helpful?

Thank you to anyone who answers.

I have found it helpful. Although I still experience bouts of self-hate, it's no longer a constant, debilitating weight on my shoulders. I am learning to self-soothe. I have found it helpful, if painful, to be able to divulge secrets I'd never thought I would be able to speak of. The only thing that has ever caused me an issue is the attachment. However, for me, the alternative was/is feeling completely and utterly alone. I have also found the attachment becomes less distressing over time - it became less intense and all-consuming with my longtime T to the point that I was ok when she had to take a 6 month leave of absence. I look forward to the time when I can shrug off my current T's vacations.

Overall I have found therapy helpful. I am better at figuring out what I need and how to get it, whether that's dealing with everyday discomforts or looking at my future. I'm much more comfortable making friends and feeling connected to people who are not exactly like me. I still struggle with self-hatred, but the spirals aren't as debilitating and they don't last as long. I'm also MUCH more comfortable setting boundaries with people without feeling guilty, and in the past year or so that has included radically limiting contact with somebody who is emotionally abusive toward me.

The process of doing therapy can be stressful and disruptive to my life at times, but overall I'm getting better at solving my own problems and living the life that I want to have.

I have found therapy helpful in some ways (learning about myself), harmful in other ways.

There is a little bit of pretty good, mostly objective research, in my opinion, out there. Here's one:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/books/interv...5-lambert.aspx

This quote with regard to people getting worse stands out for me:

That was definitely my experience.

How can being rejected (or shamed, too) by a therapist cause harm? It debilitated me in ways that perhaps some of you can imagine, some can't, and about which there aren't any references for or studies about, that I know of.

Both...lol

I find it helpful so far. I do not think about suicide constantly anymore, I harm myself less, I drink less. It helps me speak up for myself, stand by my feelings and wishes. It also helps me in general to know that there's somebody out there who I can call if things are going badly, and who will be there once a week to talk to me about whatever I want.

I have been helped by therapy even though i have been going for a very long time. I used to live in the past and with my friends, family all i would talk about was how bad my childhood was. Now for the past 2 yr's i hardly ever talk about my past outside therapy. I have hobbies now cooking, bike riding, ect and now im more engaged in life then i used to be. I have a great pyschologist that really has helped me live in the present in January i took a CBT group and that helped, going to day program and sociallize with other people helps

It helped in some things that I did not even mean to address originally (discipline and communication - one of my Ts was awful at both and the other very good, I found the examples and their outcomes helpful to improve mine). It did not do anything about the primary issues I went for (substance abuse and anxiety). Therapy and all the thinking, self examination and reporting itself became quite addictive for me and I started using it as a distraction from dealing with more important things in my life, so in that sense it also got in the way of progress and that was the harmful part for me especially because none of the Ts challenged me on it, probably did not even recognize until I told them when I finally quit. In that area, therapy made an already existing pattern worse for me and the best decision was really to quit for good - like any other of my addictive tendencies. One thing that I found helpful was using the therapy/therapist as a sort of dumping ground for impulses that would not do any good to act out elsewhere - only one T tolerated this well though, the other did not see it for what it was and totally misinterpreted it, got into nasty conflicts with me etc. That spiraled into a mutual hate contest that I did not only find useless but also created preoccupations in my mind for a while that never existed in any other of my relationships, could have become quite toxic if I let it.

All-in-all, I don't regret trying therapy because I had been very curious about it for a long time before starting, but for me the cost (financial, time, mental energy) definitely outweighed the benefit.

Here is an older post of mine about others things I've found helpful:
https://forums.psychcentral.com/6051491-post5.html

Helpful. Therapy has helped me gain confidence and learn to asser myself, it has helped me clarify my goals and desires and think about how to pursue them, it has helped me recognize patterns in my behaviors and attitudes that tend to hurt me.

of course, me finding therapy helpful doesn't mean you aren't being "duped".

Therapy has done both...hurt and help. My first therapist I believe did more harm than good. She wanted to go into a bunch of childhood trauma that I'm not sure I even had. She wanted to label things as "sex abuse" that I still don't think were. I needed assertiveness training and probably some CBT for self-esteem. She didn't do any of that. She only wanted to talk about "trauma". I went into that relationship shy and with poor self-esteem. I came out of it suicidal with a much worse relationship with my mom.

My current therapists have been much more helpful. They let me set the agenda for the session, so we don't get sidetracked on something I don't think is important. They have helped me become more assertive and ask for what I need more clearly. I'm starting to get a little better at tolerating when people are angry at me. I've had fewer depressive episodes and I haven't been actively suicidal in years.

My current therapists are better than my first one, but I have also changed how I approach therapy. I used to go in with sort of a vague idea of what I might want to talk about, and often I'd get shy and be unable to talk about what was important. Now I go in there with a plan and if I think I'm going to have trouble talking about things I write it up and hand it to them.

I get the not knowing whether you've been duped or not
I thought my therapist was kind gentle intuitive and caring but he's also been very disrespectful of basic social niceties-communicating and responding re scheduling/invoicing/rearranging/his breaks (many)
He apologises and just does it again-2 weeks it just took him to acknowledge a bacs transfer I asked him to confirm he had received
"In my own time /my nickname was random" etc is starting to make me very angry and feel that these behaviours are indicative of his true nature and attitude and the therapy is literally just a job

Helped. It's given me an internal experience I was lacking.

It has both harmed and helped for me.

Helped in that it has allowed me to understand why and how I react to things through a trauma filter. I've received some coping techniques that give me a small amount of control back during those worst moments.

Harmed in that it took me a long time to find a therapist who was a match for my needs. I had to wade through years of poorly matched therapists causing retraumatization or even worsening my symptoms.

Overall I would say that it has been a positive experience for me, but only because I stuck with it even as I frustratingly had to repeatedly start over with someone new.

I always enjoy your responses (I'm a long time lurker). It's interesting that it didn't help with your primary concerns.

You're in mental health research correct? Do you think therapy can actually heal or is it more to help one learn coping mechanisms? I don't want to go into my exact stuff but for instance something like depression or anxiety can they actually be cured or are they lifelong conditions that you learn to better manage? What does healing from trauma actually mean/look like? If one is told they have a personality disorder is there hope? Can personality be changed? Loads more examples to give but hope you get the gist. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks

Different forays were harmful in different ways. The worst were a man-woman team who ran my group therapy and turned vicious as I tried to terminate. It's taken years to unravel their contemptuous, gaslighting assessment of me, to unravel my ascription of their authority, and to see them as two people who abandoned professionalism. I'll never understand why my termination threatened them to such an extreme.

The other therapists I adored at the time, but were harmful in the long run. One was a honeyed, modulated superparent who was never wrong. My time with her was infantalizing, cultivating my sense of victimhood. I thought I was doing magical things with her; I wasn't.

She coached me in "assertiveness." However she overlooked that the client doesn't live in a bubble, and "assertiveness" has many political and social ramifications. They can coach us in standing up for ourselves, but political/social wisdom and weighing risks I think comes from time and experience.

My Horneyan psychoanalyst wasn't patronizing, and her sparse words to me were sometimes wise. However the process of "analyzing" myself three times a week was literally crazy-making and I went into what I can best describe as meditation psychosis or a spiritual emergency. I was so nutty I lost valuable friends.

Instead: I've thrown off a great deal of childhood anxiety through time and experience. I gathered a sorely needed sense of competence through work, artistic work and advocating for my family. I've also exercised, walked done yoga and an array of body work from Rolfing to Alexander Technique.

And conversations stemming from my one-entry blog also has helped me understand why therapy didn't work for me.

Overall therapy has harmed me more than helped me because my first therapist was unethical and did a lot of damage.
I was quite young (13-14) and she was doing court ordered family counseling with me and my father. She enabled his emotional abuse and gaslighting, gave relationship counseling to my dad and his awful ex girlfriend without my knowledge, gossiped about the situation with the girlfriend violating confidentiality, and when I asked for a referral to another therapist told me that no other therapist would put up with me.

Obviously that's a pretty extreme case and did a lot of long lasting damage.

I've been in therapy that was somewhat helpful since then and I've recently started doing more intense therapy with a new therapist, but it would have to do a lot for me to be able to say that therapy has had a net positive effect on my life.

It was totally useless for what I hired them for. I did find a use for the woman when my person was sick, dying and then dead. I am now using the second one to write about my grief with and that is somewhat useful. It has not helped in the way those people advertise. Mostly useful because I don't have to bother real people in my life with it and I don't have to endure real people's reactions.

This is where my symptoms stand at this time after 2 years of Therapy 3 years ago. I am back in therapy with an amazing new trauma therapist that I believe can bring me along further but I know he can not fix my attachment issues. Things that were pre-verbal, I feel, can never be healed.

Lack of trust makes sense when caretakers were not trustworthy(People need to earn my trust. I just do not trust)
Fear of abandonment makes sense when you were abandoned (I do not think I have this fear anymore)
Difficulty with affect tolerance and impulse control make sense when you grew up with people who did not soothe and nurture you (Not a problem for me now)
Confusion about self and identity make sense when you grow up with people who do not see you (struggled with this up until 3 years ago)
Self-abuse make sense when you have internalized an abusive parent, when you needed to blame yourself in order to preserve some semblance of a connection to that parent (This is reduced)
Hopelessness and helplessness make sense when you really did have no way out (This waxes an wains depending on what part is activated)
Isolating and “disappearing” make sense when it was the only way to survive being alone with overwhelming emotions (This to comes in cycles again with parts activated)


•More likely to respond to emotions with fear and shame (yes ok this is still me)
•A greater tendency to avoid emotions (Do that too)
•More problems controlling impulsive behaviors when experiencing distress (I have more control now)
•More likely to feel that they don't have effective ways of managing their emotions (Not sure about this one)

Fluctuation between anger, anxiety, depression (Well that depends on what parts are activated)
Temperamental sensitivity to emotive stimuli (Yes)
Feelings of lack of identity (I struggled with this my entire life)
Sensitivity and strong reactions to perceived criticism (Sends me into a emotional flashback triggered state and still does)
Propensity to have love/hate relationships with others as they tend to often feel unfounded rejection (Still struggle)
Rapid self-image changes from almost narcissistic to having no self worth at all (Parts jumping in and out is what causes this for me)

Deliberate manipulative behavior (I would not call it manipulative. I call it getting my needs met)
Extreme inner pain and turmoil (This calmed down but it is that exile part that causes this)
Defensive reactions (This was me. I was a nasty ***** to people. Real quick bitting reaction. No friends over the past 50 years of my life. No one could stand me and I could not trust anyone)

Identity: Unstable self-image with excessive self-criticism (Im good with this I think)
Self-direction: Instability in goals or career plans (That was me until I started my personal training. This cause me so much grief for years.)
Empathy: Prone to feel slighted or insulted even when not true (Still me)
Intimacy: Relationships marked by mistrust, neediness, and preoccupation with real or imagined abandonment (umm....not sure)
Emotional liability: Unstable emotional experiences and frequent mood changes (those awful mood swings has stabilized)
Anxiousness: Intense feelings of panic, feeling fearful, fears of falling apart or losing control (Not anymore)
Separation Insecurity: Fears of rejection or separation from significant others (Im good I think)
Depressivity: Miserable, hopeless, thoughts of suicide and suicidal behavior (Yes that still comes on)
Impulsivity: Acting on a momentary basis without a plan or consideration of outcomes (no and was never me)
Risk Taking: Engagement in dangerous, risky and self-damaging activities (No was never me)
Hostility: Anger or irritability in response to minor slights and insults (Yes was always me but I think I calmed down now

I can't point to any tangible benefit.

The harm in one case was from getting caught in a bizarre co-dependent train wreck that culminated in humiliating unrequited "love" and a protracted and dysfunctional termination saga, and the resulting stress nearly killed me (was already ill). Following this, i saw several therapists, some of whom were intent on getting me to take blame for the failed therapy. In retrospect, some of these therapy relationships had a slight stink of psychological abuse, and god knows what sort of freak show they'd have become over time. Thank god i got out.

Before therapy I was severly anorexic for well over 20 years. I have DID, and I also had PTSD. I was crippled by it. I felt helpless. I isolated all the time. I was very sick. I was weak. I didnt even feel like a person. I felt tortured by my nightmares and flash backs. I was miserable.

Now after being in therapy I am recovered. I am strong. I still have DID but I function just fine with it. all of us inside get along well. I rarely have flash backs or night mares. I am very successful in my career. I am independent, healthy, and happy.