Psychodynamic made me worse

18 months of therapy that nearly cost my life over psychodynamic therapy.
It cause a lot of damage and now I have psychologist.

I have a question my anxeity health has worsen since having psychodynamic therapy.

Just wondering why would that be? And if you have experience health anxeity how did you over care it?

In their disclosure forms, therapists frequently will include a statement about the possibility of therapy bringing up painful feelings, or something like that.

What was not usually stated, in my experience with therapists, is how extremely difficult and disruptive to our lives those feelings can be.

Doesn't make you worse. Just makes you feel worse. Because it brings more awareness of what we are truly feeling.
With that comes choice.
Anxiety comes from the conflict of wanting to be so we are but to afraid to be so we are so we constantly bury our true feelings.
I prefer to get past that not to remain stuck in a dx that didn't go anywhere.
Is hard. But living a neurotic existence is harder.

Feelings brought up in therapy did not make me worse but the obsession with it was not healthy for me and could become counterproductive to my goals.

I have a lot of experience with anxiety, different kinds, including health anxiety. The best for the latter, to sum it up: good self care. Not to neglect my health, not to engage in self-destructive habits, keep up with regular health checkups. I still experience anxiety but I know that I don't do things to make it worse and I get external, more objective feedback. When I practice good self care, the best way to handle the anxiety flare-ups for me is to ignore it, knowing it's not much else but the "games" of my brain chemistry. Also, a big ones is try not to procrastinate things (health care and other things), which I am prone to - exactly driven by anxiety - procrastinating always makes it much worse, it's a form of self sabotage really. Therapy did not make my anxiety itself worse but using it as a distraction from important everyday stuff did. It helps much more to focus all that effort on healthy discipline and lifestyle. I think that people who are prone to anxiety already tend to overthink and overanalyze, and psychodynamic therapy often encourages that further. I do find it helpful to be highly aware of what can trigger my anxiety, but I've learned most of it from observing my patterns in everyday life and from consciously resisting destructive urges, including the urges to introspect too much (something I am very prone to).

It may be that it was the therapist, rather than the style of therapy. In order to do the work, we all need to feel a certain level of containment. Psychodynamic therapy can bring about very deep, difficult feelings and sometimes you feel worse before you feel better... and it isn't a linear process, it's like that all the way through. However, you need to feel safe while this is happening and your therapist needs to provide a bit of safety and containment. So it might just be that you and your former T were not a good fit.

I'm glad that you've found something which works for you.

It was worse for me as well. I think it is not uncommon.

My view of psychodynamic therapy is that is brings up the crap but gives you no skills to deal with it. I already know my crap, I just need to learn the skills to deal with it. I know some people like it but personally I would never do psychodynamic therapy.

I'm so sorry you are feeling worse.

It's gives you the abilty to think rather through issues rather than act out.
It gives you choice. That's the greatest Tool.

Yes, that is sometimes a long term outcome but it is also true that psychodynamic therapy can make you worse, and worse and not resolve.
That was my experience. I had been telling myself, "well, the only way out is through, and I just need to stick it out."

That's how I was raised. But in this particular case, I had to cut my losses and move on. Not all therapy is helpful. The match between the therapist and the client and also the KIND of therapy and the client are both critical.

Didn't make you worse. You can feel worse. But things couldn't have been honky dory. o start with.
Yes long term outcome. But anything worth it's weight takes time.

Yes, it did make me worse. Things weren't hunky dory to begin with but I was functional. The "toxicity", so to speak, was compartmentalized. Once the compartment was "pricked", so to speak, the toxicity ran rampant over my whole psyche, and I thought that I was being "authentic". No warning about that, no help -- just shaming. Anxiety and depression, and confusion, became disabling.

So, OK, maybe those weren't such very good therapists -- but how was I to know? What basis did I have to tell about that? None.

Now, finally, nearly twenty years of therapy horror stories after my late husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and almost 2 years now with no therapy, I'm doing some better. My own "immune" system, so to speak, may be coming close to "healing" me. I've been lucky to have PC to vent on, and some IRL support groups, which have provided social support and "nourishment" that I don't think I could "heal" without. But I'm 70 years old -- not a whole lot of time left. Not at all sure that taking 20 years to get "better", with all the worse in between, was a gamble worth taking.

Therapy can make you worse. So can some medications and treatments for physical ailments. Sometimes the side effects of medications and other treatments can kill people. We are usually warned, somewhat, about those possibilities. Psychotherapy clients are not sufficiently warned about the possible bad effects of therapy.

Some of those guys, in their literature, even admit therapy can make a person worse. It is not innocuous.

Psychodynamic therapy made me worse too. Almost got me kicked out of graduate school. When I started therapy I was shy. I needed cognitive therapy and assertiveness training to start with. I asked for it multiple times. Instead the therapist started telling me that I was sexually abused by my father. I was not. He was an alcoholic, but he never sexually abused me. Then she started telling me that it was partly my mom's fault because she didn't protect me. I had a great relationship with my mom before that, and we do again now, but that really strained it for awhile.

Then I got depressed. My shyness wasn't improving. My relationship with my mom was bad. I ended up seriously considering suicide. I was planning how I would do it. I might have died, but fortunately I went to see a medical doctor who gave me antidepressants which I responded very well to. I got less depressed and less shy too. Since then I have gotten cognitive therapy and assertiveness training. That has helped too. Psychodynamic isn't for everyone.

I guess I'm not sure how to measure "better" or "worse" with mental health other than feelings and behaviors anyway.

What was your experience?
Some people say there is no actual evidence for psychotherapy. So there isnt chart to see progress.

Regardless of mode, there needs to be a certain amount of flexibility on the therapists part, so that the client's needs come first.

I haven't done any other type of therapy so I can't compare but I have found this sort of therapy (or my therapist) to be a bit inflexible, detached and not containing. I can relate to there being a lack of coping strategies.

I do think it depends on the individual, both therapist and client.

Psychodynamic offers the opportunity to fix things at a deeper, more permanent level but the process can be very painful and we need to be able to cope in the meantime.

Yeah nah it did made me worse.
It started out fine and then I found myself hanging myself. Yeah worth long term outcome. I got worse over 18 months. Yes they say it worse over therapy to get better but I dont imagine over 18 months

Besides not one treatment is helpful for every individual.
As my current therpaist who is psychologist.
Said psychotherapy is going inwards.in in yourself but because I experience ocd and psychotherapy already analyse and ocd people already analyse the crap out of our thoughts. It made it whole lot worse.

Plus the therapist what he said to me was very hurtful. For example he said to me once how my mum shouldn't of have children.
Many other examples but I could have a long list but I wont get into that.

All I can say from my experience it was 18 months of hell. It felt I escaped a war. At the same time I would never recommend anyone see student therapist. I have mt fair share of student therapists and I wouldn't bother with them

How can you make the judgment that it didn't make me worse?

Wouldn't I know?

I experienced the same thing. Honestly, for me, it was because it was WAY too emotionally intensive. It made me feel things that I didn’t have the coping skills to deal with yet and I, too, almost died (by suicide).

Teafruit were you in analysis? I was in psychodynamic therapy a long time ago and what you describe sounds like old school analysis (psychodynamic is related but not as intense as analysis)

Anxiety can be a message from the body that something is legitimately wrong, even in the magical world of therapy.

I did not do psychodynamic, but for me therapy provoked anxiety because it was a violation.

Most in the biz acknowledge that the different methods are a wash. I would look to the basic nature of the interaction as the primary cause of good and bad effects.

My first round of therapy made me worse. I was totally retraumatized. I just dove into a whole treasury of traumatic memories and had absolutely no way of coping with them, and my therapist’s orientation didn’t allow him to offer me any ideas about how to deal with them. He repeatedly pointed out how hard I was working, so not being dedicated enough to the task was clearly not my problem, and he seemed a little freaked out about about the state I was getting into.

I am so grateful I found my current therapist, who has a lot of strong opinions about the necessity for therapy to actually be helpful and also the potential for harm when a therapist doesn’t know what they are doing.

It doesn't make any sense to me that people are arguing therapy can't make things worse. It absolutely can--lots of people have been harmed and retraumatized by therapy of various types. Especially when the therapist handles things poorly or lacks the skill and judgment to keep the client safe and recognize signs of danger.

I am a huge fan of good psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy. But bad psychodynamic therapy can be just as harmful as good psychodynamic therapy can be helpful, which is to say tremendously so.

Bad therapist yes.
But the title of the thread didn't mention bad therapist. Thsts a given.
The therapy in itself, unless someone has a weak ego strengh- won't MAKE you worse. you can FEEL worse in the beginning yes.
We have to be aware some are so afraid, which I get, that they label the therapy as damaging as a defence.

therapy itself can do harm. The client is not the one to blame or shame when therapy is harmful.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/...arm-than-good/
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...revealstherapy
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/v...py-causes-harm
Talking therapies can harm too ? here's what to look out for
https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy...harm-than-good
https://qz.com/643276/therapy-can-ac...r-some-people/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen...b_6509436.html
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full...48670903107559

This is harm caused by therapy and therapist but the two are not separate here. A client unless they have had experience of therapy before and are well read on the subject cannot and shouldn’t be expected to distinguish from a bad therapist or bad therapy.
Suggesting your father sexually abused you is very harmful and so dangerous.
I am very sorry you had this experience and if I were you would be very weary of ever going to therapy again.
Bottom line, it does and it can harm as so many of us here on this board have experienced pain and hurt from therapy, it’s mostly the reason we come here to this forum.