[fairyfloss21]

Can bad therapy make you worse, please give some examples. I'd like to hear your experiences

[Deejay14]

Absolutely! My ptsd and depression were bad and the psychologist was an older woman but not skilled with ptsd and made things very bad. It's a small miracle i am alive to tell.

[ChickenNoodleSoup]

Yes.
Two different experiences: My first experience with therapy made me worse. The therapist didn't understand my problems or how to help. But instead of saying so, she acted like she understood and gave bad advice. I didn't see her for long enough to be too negatively affected, but already the short time with her made me feel worse, especially since I thought if it doesn't work for me, it's my fault, as if there's something wrong with me.
Then my current therapist and I have been working together for two years. Currently I'm doing better, but initially I felt quite a bit worse than before starting therapy. My T said this happens for some people.

[DP_2017]

Yes. Tons of examples on this forum of that.

[Rive.]

There's been published research re effectiveness of therapy. Yes, it can work but it also doesn't work for everyone: some people see no change, some people get worse.

It's not an exact science after all. There are far too many uncontrolled variables from type of therapy, to the personality and issues of the client, to the skills/style/competence of the T etc etc.

[koru_kiwi]

yup! my ex-T was not competent or trained enough to fully deal with my complex trauama and DID. i started medicating myself regularly with alcohol and self-harming to cope with the dysregulation and fallout from being triggered in my sessions. this eventually lead to increased depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation. if i hadn't found other interventions to help with regulating my emotions and to address the truama, i'm pretty certain i would not be here today to respond to your post.

[downandlonely]

Therapy can be hard because it stirs up bad memories, so it can make you feel worse.

Some therapists have even been known to plant memories of abuse in their clients.

[BudFox]

I found therapy infantilizing, disempowering, degrading, pointless, humiliating.

It made me more reliant on external feedback and validation, led to emotional dependency, obsessive rumination, self-absorption, loss of perspective.

It exposed unmet needs in reckless and traumatic fashion, habituated me to a fantasy-based relationship, and in one case sent me into a spiral when it ended abruptly and stupidly.

Plus it wasted huge chunks of time and money.

This was not from bad therapy, just therapy.

If I had continued, I assume i'd have been hit with the usual stigmatizing labels and pseudo-diagnoses that can plague people for life.

Originally Posted by BudFox

I found therapy infantilizing, disempowering, degrading, pointless, humiliating.

It made me more reliant on external feedback and validation, led to emotional dependency, obsessive rumination, self-absorption, loss of perspective.

It exposed unmet needs in reckless and traumatic fashion, habituated me to a fantasy-based relationship, and in one case sent me into a spiral when it ended abruptly and stupidly.

Plus it wasted huge chunks of time and money.

This was not from bad therapy, just therapy.

If I had continued, I assume i'd have been hit with the usual stigmatizing labels and pseudo-diagnoses that can plague people for life.

Pretty much this. Especially on the labels. The symptoms of which disappeared once I quit therapy and got over the initial bottoming out.

[ArtleyWilkins]

Bad anything can lead to bad outcomes, so it makes sense that bad therapy would definitely lead to negative outcomes. Of course, the opposite also applies: Quality therapy can lead to positive outcomes. That has been my experience fortunately.

The hard part? Recognizing very early on when you've encountered bad therapy and extracting yourself from it as soon as possible before lasting damage is done. Too often, it isn't recognized early on and the results can be very damaging.

I was fortunate enough to recognize early on. It wasn't necessarily that the therapist was actually "bad;" they might have been marvelous for a different client. But I recognized early on they weren't going to work well for me, and I walked away quickly, before there were any real effects on me.

[stopdog]

Yes, it can.

[precaryous]

Oh, yeah-

Therapy can make you worse:

...When the therapist is exploitative and out to fill his/her own needs at the client’s expense.

[missbella]

Unfortunately the authoritarian/supplicant relationships I had with my therapists were infantalizing and enfeebling. They pretended omniscient powers they, of course, didn't possess making them seem like powerful giants to my powerless patient.

The dynamic was poor prototype to cope with my outside life. Therapy "rewarded" me for being a wounded, needy soul, my weakest part. I expected everyone to cater to all my hurts and misfortunes, and of course that didn't work.

Then therapy focused me almost exclusively on the negatives of my life, my shortcomings and the suffering, a sinkhole where I entered and dwelt. It taught me how to be a depressive.

[koru_kiwi]

Originally Posted by ArtleyWilkins

The hard part? Recognizing very early on when you've encountered bad therapy and extracting yourself from it as soon as possible before lasting damage is done. Too often, it isn't recognized early on and the results can be very damaging.

and this is exactly why public forums like this can so beneficial...

when i first started therapy, i was incredibly naive and had no f'n clue what to expect. it was coming here and reading all the good, the bad and the ugly experiences that others were willing to discuss and i learned quite a bit of what good vs poor therapy should be about. it definilty helped to encourage me to learn as much as i could so i could speak up and advocate for myself when my gut was screaming at me that something in the relationship with my therapist or therapy just didn't feel right.

Theres 2 things.
An unskilled professional. That's about the person more than therapy.
2nd thing is whrn the defences people have used to keep all the "bad" in check begin to not work any more. That can feel pretty bad. But to be honest. If my defences were still keeping the bad in check then I wouldn't have been in therapy.
Whrn a alcoholic drinks and it no longer blocks things out. Thst already a pretty bad place to be.
It takes, time to work through the bad. It takes courage.
Leaving because things get a bit tough will leave someone in limbo and yes a sense of therapy having made them worse.
But as I say you can't confuse able therapist with quacks.

Originally Posted by Jessica11

Theres 2 things.
An unskilled professional. That's about the person more than therapy.
2nd thing is whrn the defences people have used to keep all the "bad" in check begin to not work any more. That can feel pretty bad. But to be honest. If my defences were still keeping the bad in check then I wouldn't have been in therapy.
Whrn a alcoholic drinks and it no longer blocks things out. Thst already a pretty bad place to be.
It takes, time to work through the bad. It takes courage.
Leaving because things get a bit tough will leave someone in limbo and yes a sense of therapy having made them worse.
But as I say you can't confuse able therapist with quacks.

I think therapist/client compatability is key. A competent therapist and hard working & committed client could inadvertently trigger eachother’s ‘stuff’, with therapy coming unwound quickly. Some people just can’t work together, and I don’t think leaving in those cases should be seen as ‘leaving because things get a bit tough’.

Also I think certain personality types don’t do well in therapy. Particularly those from abusive homes where power was held over a person. The therapy dynamic itself might not be helpful, particularly if a client has worked hard to gain independence from their family of origin and find themselves in a subordinating painful therapy relationship.

Fact: therapy may not help everyone regardless of how hard the client works or how great the therapist is.

Success is honestly just a coin toss.

Originally Posted by PurpleMirrors

I think therapist/client compatability is key. A competent therapist and hard working & committed client could inadvertently trigger eachother’s ‘stuff’, with therapy coming unwound quickly. Some people just can’t work together, and I don’t think leaving in those cases should be seen as ‘leaving because things get a bit tough’.

Also I think certain personality types don’t do well in therapy. Particularly those from abusive homes where power was held over a person. The therapy dynamic itself might not be helpful, particularly if a client has worked hard to gain independence from their family of origin and find themselves in a subordinating painful therapy relationship.

Fact: therapy may not help everyone regardless of how hard the client works or how great the therapist is.

Success is honestly just a coin toss.

I disagree on the coin toss. I agree the client and T need to be a good fit. But I see that as part of the work.. I am from a abusive past and fought hard to get away from. So. I disagree therapy isn't useful for those clients.

Originally Posted by Jessica11

I disagree on the coin toss. I agree the client and T need to be a good fit. But I see that as part of the work.. I am from a abusive past and fought hard to get away from. So. I disagree therapy isn't useful for those clients.

Agreed... not all, or even a majority of abused clients. However I think if someone is able to function reasonably in life and is more of a ‘worried well’ client, revisiting certain dynamics CAN be harmful. It depends entirely on the person and their baggage, so don’t want to make too many sweeping generalizations.

I also don’t think ‘good fit’ can always be determined till it’s too late. It’s kind of like a mechanic coming to a car with only a certain types of replacement pieces, and not sure what’s broken until they start working. There are cars with common broken parts that the perhaps many mechanics could fix, and some with odd or uncommon broken parts that the mechanic doesn’t have... except now all the car pieces are taken out and the car may not be working or able to get to a new garage. It’s complicated work.

[SlumberKitty]

T3 was a bad fit for me and it made me worse. I only saw her for 4 sessions though so I got out pretty quickly. She was critical and negative. She blamed me for everything. She didn't understand what I had accomplished in my previous therapy. She told me she didn't think I would get better. Pretty much everything she could say to make me feel worse, she said. It was awful. Luckily, I was able to get myself out of it pretty quickly. On to T4! Kit.

[BudFox]

The problems I had were not about the individual therapists, or their methods, or the fit. It was the paradigm itself. True story.

If anyone is interested, there is an article/links to articles about this subject:

Talking therapies can harm too – here's what to look out for

[BudFox]

One primary reason mental health systems make people worse is their prehistoric and skewed assumptions about so called mood "disorders", as evidenced by the below drivel from the above article...

Reflecting my day job, I’m going to focus here on mood disorders. Some of these (melancholic depression, for instance, and bipolar disorder) are essentially “diseases” because their causes are largely genetic, and reflect primary biological brain changes.

When this is your starting point, you are going to churn out a lot of casualties.

Therapy can sometimes work against a person, especially if the therapist is not self-aware enough to prevent his/her own issues from becoming entangled in the therapy process. I think it is known as counter-transference.

About 20 years ago, an online therapist was trying to help me with my struggles at the time. She was running her own free Internet group. She was actually very talented and intuitive in understanding particular types of issues, especially related to childhood traumas. She helped me see a few things about myself, but at some point she began reacting intensely to my issues and said or implied things about me - in the group and in private - that made me feel very bad about myself. Whether or not she was right about those things, I could not handle what she was saying, especially in her confrontational manner, and I became despondent at the time as a result, which was quite obvious, even though she continued talking to me that way.

I finally realized that her approach was doing more harm than good to me, and I confronted her on this. At one point, she actually acknowledged that she was reacting to me this way because of something in her past. She eased off and I continued attending the group for a while longer, but eventually I needed to leave because she was still getting triggered by me at times, even if I was just having a casual, friendly exchange with another member.

I had another therapist years later, an in-person therapist, who always focused on the worst case scenarios of whatever it was I was distressed about. She would ask me to imagine those scenarios and what I could do to prevent them or resolve them if they came true. I knew that she meant well and believed that reality therapy was the best approach, but yet I always left there feeling much more distressed. So, this was a case where the type of therapy may be wrong for a person, rather than the therapist doing something wrong.

It is very important to find a therapist whose personality and choice of therapeutic approach is compatible with one's personality and issues. This is not always an easy thing to find.