How do you cope with the fact that therapy is fake?

How do you ever really know anything? You can't with 100% certainty when it comes to other people. I think one sets one's standards for knowing lower in order not to go insane.

I mean, do I know my spouse isn't cheating on me, with 100% certainty? How could I, unless I'm with him every second of every day? I can't know. But I don't worry about it, either. The probability seems low, for reasons X,Y,Z. If I did worry about it, we'd have a problem.

I don't think one can know if one's T is being genuine - but I think if one finds one's self worrying about it, then that's a problem.

Therapy isn't fake.

Some Ts are more skilled and genuine than others. Same as in any profession. Otherwise, what? All lawyers are lying manipulative mercenaries? All doctors are quacks? Not very realistic to tar everyone with the same brush.

It's not fake. I think my T cares about me, she's expressed that she worries about me, I sense the empathy. I feel like the connection is genuine and I can see it in her face. If there are things she's not telling me, I trust that's for my benefit and it's part of the process. But she seems very honest to me.

Most social interactions have moments of white lies like "that sounds fun." It's a social nicety. Would you rather hear "hmm that's boring and not personally interesting to me"? Your therapist is supposed to support you and praise positive behaviours like spending time with friends, among other things. It doesn't matter what the show is, because the important thing is that you were going to hang out with your friend. She was probably focusing on that, and coming from a genuine belief that it does sound enjoyable, healthy, and positive to socialise. And you never know, your therapist might actually like that boring show. lol

I wouldn't feel comfortable with an online therapist though. I imagine it's hard to make an emotional connection and convey genuine sentiments in written words only. She might also not be a very a good therapist. You can tell her you feel like she's being fake.

The latest research/data show that secure emotional attachments in childhood AND in therapy help people regulate their emotions. So looking for a relationship in therapy has been a wise decision for me and could be for others awith attachment disorders. I think that over six years or so, it would be difficult to be fake, but I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I know that my T is genuine (and human) and my proof is that it feels like a 'known' to me. And I realize that it sounds counterintuitive that I know my T is genuine due to how I feel. But that is exactly what I am saying. My previous T helped me dysregulate my emotions and I suspect that I did the same for him.

Thsts not in any shape or form similar to my therapy.

I can say something which I find funny in T only to be met by T's stoney face. Because she isn't driven by being or feeling something she doesn't.
But what does the T gain do you think from being fake?

Your post reminds me of the voices in my head that tell me something is true because I think it must be true. Then when I've brought it up with T. It bursts in the Day light.
Me on my own doing therapy. I've only got my thoughts. No input.

I’ll speak from my own experience and add that when therapy was going well and I was really connected to and clicking with my therapist, it felt quite real. I believe that I was genuinely supported and cared about in many measurable ways.

When things were not plugging along so nicely, therapy felt quite different. I felt that I was subtly or not so subtly being judged but told otherwise. I felt my therapist’s anger coming out in little passive aggressive ways since she couldn’t ethically ‘do’ anything to me. Over time she started behaving overtly shaming and doing openly punishing things under the cover of caring for me and keeping her ‘boundaries’. In my opinion she was out of control and acting out on hostilities while claiming she was acting in my best interest. Meanwhile I was still vulnerable and dependent and expressing deeply personal feelings to her... and didn’t even feel LIKED let alone cared for. Nothing about what went on felt genuine and it was deeply damaging.

I’m not surprised to see variability in replies to this post. I think even within one therapy process and with one therapist what happens can very wildly.

What concerns me about therapy as a genuine, caring relationship is that the relationship ends when payment ends. Caring might be real, and caring might continue, but the expression of that caring ends when payment ends.

Yes, and caring is also given to ANYONE who shows up with a check.

This article really helped me with the whole concept of payment in therapy:

What You Pay For – What a Shrink Thinks

It often seems that way,... how to put up, with.. get by with.. all that bs grrrrrrrr

But that is the nature of most close professional collaborations, no? They are relationships based on expected mutual benefit and when there is no measurable benefit anymore, people will not have the same interest and effort. I think the desire for benefit can also be a genuine motivator, as well as not investing so much effort when that ends.

I think the main reason why so many people struggle with the T relationship is because they refuse to accept it as a primarily professional connection. I understand how that comes from someone's history, as well as the effects of how therapy is administered, but still - it is a professional relationship. A more personally focused and involved one than most other professional connections, but still in that ball park. This is why I really despise when Ts actively and directly encourage that clients see them as caregivers, parent figures etc. As far as I can see, that perception/relation can be helpful to some but they are probably the minority compared with all the people who struggle with placing and handling the relationship. I think that the analysis of transference and stuff like that can be very enlightening but only when the client remains aware that it is for the sake of understanding and comfort, not something for real and something to put those kinds of expectations on. Again, I know there are exceptions in this, just like my own therapy experience seems to be more an exception rather than the norm as far as I can see (at least on this forum). But there is such a large number of clients here who struggle with the relationship and its intrinsic limitations, it's hard not to see that pattern as the majority.

Mine didn't do that, but because mine was to do with social anxiety she wanted me to get used to hearing views etc that went against mine and learning to cope with them. So that could be why!

In my experience of ending therapy, I no longer needed the expression of caring from a therapist. I'm not sure I needed to feel "cared for" during therapy at all, as I was not using therapy to feel cared for by a therapist. I do think my former therapists and my current one do care for me, but that's not what my particular therapy is for.

If a person is in therapy to feel cared for by a therapist, then I would imagine their therapy would continue if that is still what they needed. Perhaps the real issue is feeling cared for by friends/family and therapy could resolve when that happens. Or perhaps the real issue is the person doesn't care for themselves so the therapy might work on that, with the caring of the therapist standing in for what the person wants to feel within themselves, until the person reaches that place.

But I don't see a problem with the expression of caring ending when a person leaves therapy. In my experience with contacting former therapists, I have experienced caring without being currently engaged in therapy. But, again, that's not why I contacted my former therapists and it did not matter to me whether or not they still cared about me.

But if a person still needs caring from a T, it makes sense to me that they continue in therapy until that is resolved somehow. If the person wants to continue therapy just to feel cared for by the therapist, it's their time and money and they can go to therapy for any reason they choose.

I don't get why this is a problem? Shouldn't a therapist care for anyone who's a client? I thought that problem was therapists who don't care, and not that there are some people who don't deserve it. I don't get it.

I agree with what Bill3 said here.

It makes me cringe to hear therapists present themselves as attachment figures. Although I never hired one who did that, years ago I may not have even noticed or given it a second thought.

What some people might not talk about here that much is that people can be completely aware that the relationship is a professional collaboration in a cognitive and intellectual sense yet still feel all the feelings that a young child would-the longings, bellyaches and all. That is exactly what transference is and Ts who work that way can really draw these feelings out to work with whether or not they present as attachment figures. That has been my experience with psychoanalytic Ts. That is also how people can get retraumatized-they are actually reliving the child feelings.

Looking back, I'm not sure I would have gone this route. The problem is, I had no idea I was even headed down that path or what it was or what it meant. My T is not warm and fuzzy or parental at all.

Edited to add in case anyone is interested- I realized when writing this that this is also a way to explain how you can tell something is transference-when you intellectual know something is different than what you feel in context of a relationship-it's 2 perceptions of the same thing or 2 different realities so to speak. That happens with Ts who leave a big 'space' between you and them to analyze. Of course you can analyze this outside of therapy too but it's more difficult for various reasons. One, the big space is not there...

This is a problem when the therapist presents themselves as a ‘good enough mother’ or another kind of attachment figure, and the professional/paying part doesn’t sync up. It creates a world of confusion and pain for clients when the environment stops feeling professional and paid.

The evidence of this kind of confusion is ALL over this forum. It rarely ends well for the client.

Yes. Add me to the re-traumatized list. Having this replay out as an adult was hands down the worst, most humiliating, degrading thing that has ever happened to me. Worse than the original trauma.

If a client runs out of money, caring/attachment figures who are not being paid will remain in her/his life. Therapists, however, won’t.

Add me to the retraumatised “list”

Like anything else in life that needs to be paid for, therapy requires the client to work or otherwise find the funding for it. I think that mental health care should be just like dental and medical care, and single payer in the U.S. Small co-pay for the client. So I don't think, in an ideal system, that a client would run out of money for therapy. But I don't see my participation in therapy as with a "caring/attachment figure", that's not why I go to therapy, so I would no more expect free therapy than I would expect free massages, acupuncture, or other kinds of bodywork that I pay for out of pocket.

Therapist expects payment for services = fake relationship and manipulative

Therapist works with client free of charge = boundary crossing and unprofessional

We can't have it both ways.

I’m not sure the money per se is the issue — while a lot of therapists will stop seeing clients if they can’t pay, there are also some (as seen from stories on this board) who’ll see clients for little or no money for extended periods of time.

While I’d love that as a client, I’m not sure if it isn’t the expectation of unbounded caring that (some) therapists can foster that’s actually the real problem.

It’s admittedly a tricky tight rope to walk but if it wasn’t, I’d hope they’d think twice about charging $$$ per hour (and yes, I know they still do).

I would never expect any service for free.

I will admit under the anonymity of this board that in the throes of transference, I was flat out paying (exorbitant) amounts of money for a mother and for love.

Was I taken advantage of? Was this ethical? Should such a thing be sold? I don't know.

The entire situation was extraordinarily sad and painful for me.

Thank you for expressing what many (including me ) are often unable to, for whatever reason

And how could this be about “insert words” bashing? It is not. I paid huge amounts of money to a senior “clinician” and was retraumatised (by ... ah whatever, I’ve been taught well I “don’t matter”

I agree, therapy is uniquely painful for me too.

I have a very confused arrangement with my therapist's fees and I don't think there is an easy or clear way to understand the role of money in a transferential dynamic because everything hurts.