Therapists aren’t your friends

What role do you play in that scenario?

It astounds me that some receive see a personal attack, threat or argument in others discussing negative therapy experiences. Don’t they understand that others are here for sharing and peer support around the therapy experience, just as they are?

I’m not here to argue and haven’t the slightest interest in convincing any happy therapy patient to feel otherwise. I haven’t the slightest delusion that anything I say will affect therapy practice in the slightest. To assert this is mischaracterization and ascribing motives. I do appreciate however that the triumphant patients refrain from the unfounded imputations around why someone else’s therapy failed. It’s a painful subject, after all.

I’d hope therapists teach that someone’s differing experience is not a looming threat. How about treating others with respect or just leaving them to their own discussion?

Therapists sell the relationship. They claim they won't judge you (impossible), they claim they will only focus on you (impossible again), they pretend to hang onto your every word, that your every though is fascinating and important. Is it any wonder that some clients who crave intimacy and attention, who are deprived of basic human connections start to think this looks like a friendhsip? And then of course therapists turn around and say "but I'm not your friend! I'm your therapist!" It's so disigenuous. The only way imo to approach therapy and not get sucked into this mess (apart, of course, from not going to therapy at all) is to see it as a purely business transaction.

My T said the same thing. She use to say that therapists do not have have perfect lives. They have the same problems as everybody else. Hopefully they know how to handle it or know where to get help if needed

I just don't get why someone whose convinced therapy is a con would hunt down a psychotherapy forum and regiously post on it.
I use to go to AA. Would frequent AA forums until I decided it wasn't for me.
I certainly don't hang around those forums telling everyone I think it's ineffective.
Thsts a bit wierd. And would show that I had a need in me for it but couldn't let myself admit that.
Thsts what I feel about some of the posters, in threads like this.

I enjoy the dissenting voices, even if I don't always agree with them. Thank god for some agitation otherwise this place would be real Dirgeville.

I agree. I was always able to see my t as a flawed human and I was ok with it. I think it's hugely why I see things differently than most. That and I like to challenge people to think differently

Obviously the posts about harmful therapy aren’t comprehended by those who are therapy’s triumphant success stories. Though I would expect those success stories to be more big hearted with those less fortunate.

Thsts your take on my post.

Let be clear. I don't consider therapy to be a triumph or a, failure.
In my case it's a work that works well for me.
There's lots of scenarios.
There is no pass mark.
This is about my internal world.
My therapy and therapist fit me.
The process I experience us just that, an experience.
There us no perfection. Everything about it is messy. Me, her the process. We make sense of the mess.
Money!? *Blimey. She's not got rich on me. And I spent more money on booze and drugs in my past.
I think a lot of therapists aren't up to the job. I feel analysis is the only thing worth doing (so shoot me)
I think there's a, mixture of unfortunate experiences that some have suffered. And narcissistic folk who would never surrender to a process like this. It's those I don't have much time for.

It's a large part of mine too. I am now coming to this forum to help process my "graduation" from therapy. I haven't been in therapy since July and it is a pretty big gap for me.

Now that I am out of therapy, I'm spending more time and energy in my "real life." For me, therapy was a blind alley ....a dark basement in which to hide instead of pushing out into the light of social channels with real people. I know this is the way some gamers live in their Mom's basement or people who hang out endlessly on Second Life or Reddit. I feel that the emotional energy that I spent in therapy was not available for other aspects of my real life.

For years, I couldn't make a major life decision without processing it endlessly with a therapist -- within a therapeutic relationship that was as complex and weighty as the decision itself.

Last weekend, I spent a lot of time socializing -- way more than I would have in the past, when I was in therapy.

I knew full well that my T was not my friend, and yet therapy *itself* had turned into a process that met some of my needs for intimacy without the risk of real life. I found that being in therapy was like walking with a cane long after the bone in my leg had healed. I was reliant on a cane that was not doing me any real service -- because I could walk well enough without it.

Certain emotional muscles had atrophied by virtue of using the cane.

Not only that, I think that some therapists will encourage you to keep walking with (their) cane rather than get your muscles moving on your own. They simply have a conflict of interest, and are professionally and financially invested in your (formerly) broken bone. They are happy enough that you remain crippled. It pays better than having you walking, however crookedly.

There are great, talented therapists out there. I've had a few and I owe them a great debt of gratitude. None of them were my friends. And now I have reached a point where it just might be the case that *therapy itself* is not my friend.

I'm unsure why your need to take a dig at the "narcissistic folk who never surrender." Interestingly, it echoes Freud and descendants' analysis of patients who experienced "negative therapeutic reaction." Freud and crew labeled those patients narcissistic and much worse.

I can't relate to who view human beings in such a polarized, binary way.

I actually "surrendered" to psychoanalysis, and at the time was extremely smug about it. I thought myself queen for doing the heavy duty stuff. But in the process of recovering for a different unethical therapy I also took a critical look at myself during that period. Now I feel it encouraged my narcissism and self-absorption but was counter to my goal of being more socially fluent and competent.

Since you have such contempt for us as human beings, perhaps you can leave us to discuss issues that will never apply to you.

People have different reasons for being here and I presume the rationality that it must be helpful for people to post what they want. I did at some point question whether it was useful for me to read certain repeating themes or repetitive posters, and now I take steps not to spend my time on what is not useful to me.

I likewise do the same thing. I skip a lot of threads. And what might be repetitive to one person might be peeling the onion to another.

Sent do you feel I meant you as a narcissistic type? You are putting yourself as victim here.
Behave.

I very much agree with using this forum selectively - I don't use the "ignore" function, just take what I find interesting/useful and leave the rest, for the most part. Sometimes it is a bit challenging because some posters tend to have attitudes (not substance of what they express but how it is expressed) that are hard not to react to, but it is still the best strategy for me to be selective. I socialize quite selectively IRL as well when I have the choice and I don't have an interest or responsibility in what is being said/done, it is just something that works for me well. I think that online forums like this can be a quite interesting microcosmos, with similar dynamics to what what goes on IRL, just simpler and we rarely have the same level of interest. It can be quite amusing actually. This forum definitely has a tendency to get very polarized, much more than my own 3D reality ever does, so I see diversity and extremes that I otherwise would almost never encounter in my own social environments.

We clearly have opposite ideas about effective social skills.

It's a rigged system, set up to funnel people into a limited number of interventions and systems. Employees use therapy because it's covered and because it's pushed on them by various channels in society and healthcare, not because it works necessarily.

Also, therapy is subsidized by insurance and tax funds, which means we all pay for it indirectly. And since the biz operates with a lot of secrecy and sketchy methods, it's entirely appropriate in my view for consumers in a forum like this to scrutinize the s**t out of it.

Paradoxically I'm grateful for a demonstration of "weaponized" counseling methodology, for it replicates the dominance signaling that can occur in toxic therapy.

"Smug" is one of my top 3 favorite emotions. Unfortunately, I never feel smug after a session with the therapist, although we do not do psychoanalysis. I usually feel quite the opposite, in fact... rather sheepish.

Is not how, you say it. It's, what you say.
Couldn't give a toss about social etiquette.. Nor winning friends.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your take on therapy. However, do you accept mental pathology and mental health as an overall aspect of health care? I've run across too many people who think mental health problems are just some schmuck trying to get out of working.

If you accept that actual, diagnosable mental health pathology exists, then there is a need for mental health care. Perhaps it's less about a greedy, shadowy mind cult than about an aspect of health care that is really in it's infancy in terms of coming to grips with problems that are hard to understand, remain poorly research, and expanding in scope as the epigenetic revolution sweeps over all of life sciences.

For me, I accept that I have had mental health pathology. The last therapist I saw diagnosed, using the categories that currently existed, something which seems close to what had been the problem all along. Nevertheless, she bailed after 6 years, saying that she "did not have the emotional resources" to continue. And -- that's 50 years of therapy, on and off, prior to her, with me following along with what turned out to be ineffective treatment which may also have may made my mental health situation, and my life, worse.

Epigenetics may be part of what led to the pathology -- or just "toxic" interpersonal habits that I learned growing up in a family that had been affected by them for generations.

In my view what needs more study is the development of a sense of self - but that includes subject areas that are still difficult for science, and for which there are not yet adequate concepts and theories, let alone experimental support.

In the meantime, I am 71, have life, still, that is not much worth living -- little purpose, little belonging with, and little ability to participate effectively --- with other people. And that, for me, is a desolation.

Looking back over my experience I do think that there is lots about therapy currently and over the past 55 years that is a "greedy, shadowy mind cult". That's a social reality that I have experienced -- it may not be everybody's. But it's one that I believe current therapy consumers need to be aware of, or risk wasting lots of time, money, mental energy and dedication on a "self-improvement" project that may not serve them well.

Here Today - I don't really have an answer for all of the points that you raise - but I really want to say that I'm glad that you're here. You participate in this forum and contribute a lot.
I know the internet is not the same as real life, but my *hope* and wish for you is that you find a sense of belonging and of purpose in your real life. I don't have any magic wand for this to happen - sadly! But I just couldn't let your post pass without saying this. I hope you don't mind!

Thanks, satsuma. I know you and I have discussed this before -- I think schema therapy might very well be the kind of help that I needed way back when. Or close to it. It wasn't available and the other stuff. . . well. . .

Thanks for saying I contribute something. "Therapy" had kind of been my "life's work" -- a silly life's work, it seems, as things turned out. It was what I guess I felt I needed in order to be and to develop a life's work.

Didn't work out so great for me -- but, for the future -- as Parva said, I agree that mental health is "an aspect of health care that is really in it's infancy in terms of coming to grips with problems that are hard to understand, remain poorly research, and expanding in scope. . ."