how does talking help?

I don't think talking really helps me to be honest. With my former T, what helped was the relationship that we had, though it hurt like the dickens when she got sick and we had to quit. Just having someone there supporting me, loving me, not judging me, even if she wasn't able to help with all the stuff from my life, even like with the self harm. She helped some but I didn't stop with her. And that was the whole reason for going to therapy in the first place.


I didn't have a relationship with ex T or with Dr K although I do with my pdoc. So I think that's why I am not getting anywhere with ex T or Dr. K. I am trying a new guy via Betterhelp let's just call him J because I already have a Dr. J (my pdoc). He seemed to be more than a little concerned about my level of safety and it frankly irritated me. So we are not starting out well. We'll see how the chat session goes.

I don't understand how a relationship with a therapist does anything. I have read it is what those people say. But it absolutely is like mandarin to me.

"Norcross's second finding makes you stop and think: "When therapists treat patients, they follow the prescriptions of their theoretical orientation. But the amazing thing is that when therapists treat themselves, they become very pragmatic. In other words, when battling their own problems, therapists dispense with the psychobabble and fall back on everyday, commonsense techniques—chats with friends, meditation, hot baths, and so on. In a survey by Guy and James Liaboe, Ph.D., for example, therapists said they were hesitant to enter therapy "because of feelings of embarrassment or humiliation, doubts concerning the efficacy of therapy, previous negative experiences with personal therapy,..."

I answered the woman's question - then what was supposed to happen after that? The therapist refused to answer or lied- how the hell does one know?

"The dismaying truth about psychotherapy is that sometimes it just isn’t very effective despite the therapists best intentions and extensive training. Overall, outcome research gives quite pessimistic results, suggesting that only 60% of clients benefit from therapy, and 15-24% of adolescents leave therapy in a worse state than when they started (Lambert)."

Dismaying as it may seem, a success rate of 60% is actually pretty amazing when it comes to treating any kind of human ailment. If a new drug were successful in treating 60% of patients or if it ameliorated symptoms by an average of 60% it would be hailed as a major breakthrough. With respect to harm, a number needed to harm of 4-6 is not that unusual in any type of treatment.

The other question is whether those 15-24% who are worse post-therapy are being compared to a no-treatment control group. (ie were they harmed by therapy or is the natural progression of the condition that a subgroup of its sufferers worsens? What if the no treatment group is 30-40% worse after the same period elapsed?)

As you no doubt know, I fully believe that therapy has the potential to harm. My experience is that there are many people of very questionable competence practicing therapy. I also question, as was brought up in recent thread, whether therapists have a “first do no harm” ethic. As a profession, I don’t think they truly grasp the tremendous potential of a normal, average therapist to cause harm in discharging their duties (like leaving out therapists who are overtly unethical or abusive).

Still, as a stats/epi nerd, I’d argue that the study you cite actually supports psychotherapy as a reasonable treatment modality.

As for how it helps...

I guess that really comes down to whether you like talking to them. I do. It usually makes me feel lighter and happier to talk to a patient, empathic person who is not otherwise connected to my life or the people in it. Even despite the copious BS involved, I like the feeling of being heard and having dedicated time to figure out the things I find confusing, upsetting or otherwise difficult in my life. I also usually appreciate the therapist’s observations. Even when I think she’s off, it gives me a chance to clarify and I like that. Plus I appreciate her supportive and encouraging presence.

Even when we’re talking about stuff that makes me feel awful, there’s usually a part of me that feels better for having said it.

FWIW I don’t felt the same way when I find a therapist dumb or boring. The person has to be somewhat astute and have a sense of humour.

I think it helps? In many ways I’m a better and stronger person than I was before I started therapy and I credit therapy for at least some of that change. But even if I’m just deluding myself and I’m no better, which is possible, it makes me happy to feel that someone is with me, on my side for that hour as I try to sort it all out.

I can guarantee if those people had been honest and said there was only a 60% chance they would know what they were doing = I would have walked out and saved myself a great deal of frustration. There are studies that put the failure much higher -plus those guys do not study their failure/harm rate nearly enough. The therapists were not on my side - I did not go in with sides. All I ever wanted to know was how did it work and what was supposed to be going on.

Agreed that they don’t study their failure/harm rate nearly enough.

It sucks that they weren’t able to explain what was supposed to be going on. It’s also possible that it didn’t help you because the therapist(s) and you did not have a good connection. There’s all kinds of ideas about how and why therapy works but a lot of the research suggests that whatever kind of therapy you’re doing, the strength of the therapeutic alliance is the main predictor of success.

That seems logical to me. I mean therapy at its core, any kind of therapy, is about learning right? You learn best in an environment where you feel respected and safe enough to try something new.

I learn best where I understand the point of what is going on. I never understood it in therapy and I believe they deliberately hide the ball. I never knew what was supposed to be being learned - I went in, answered questions, and left at first-then I went in and talked about what ever I could guess at talking about. I had no idea what was supposed to be talked about - I asked and the woman was useless "anything you want" - I didn't know what that meant.

I do not believe an alliance does anything - I did not have one with a therapist - but they were never able to explain what they meant by it or what it was supposed to do or how to gauge if it was being done other than nebulous fuzzy things like your life looks better or some such nonsense. My life was generally fine - I went for one thing and they only made that worse. Then they used a phrase - it's a process. Okay - what is the process - Oh we don't know. = total effing bs

That’s interesting that therapists reported that they experienced having therapy as humiliating. I too found it a little humiliating. Near the end I raised it with my T that I felt shame at specific times when she spoke to me a certain way (which involved her taking the stance of expert). I was made to feel like an anomoly.

How does sitting on thus forum talking to strangers help? Not being rude but i mean it's kinda comparable

To me it is not comparable at all. First most people here don't pretend to do anything and I don't hand them buckets of money to do nothing. I like some of the online people here -but they are not doing anything to help the reason I hired a therapist.

Yeah. Some of us wouldnt be able to do what we do here and IRL if not for the use of ts AND this forum. So i see it as all one thing. They say "time is money", right? So you ARE spending money here when you spend time. Its an investment in myself. Because myself was not invested in by the parents, now i have to play catch-up. I will never be as rich as those who started investing at birth due to compounding interest.

Also kind of like what Yogi Bera did NOT say about theory and practice:

"In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is.”

My response to what little of this I understood is I disagree that time is money. This is like talking to friendly acquaintances which therapists say they are not. I believe them -they were not friendly nor acquaintancy. And I did not hire them because of my mother or father or even my doofy sibling.

I don't doubt that some people think therapy helped them. I just want to know how and nothing that I read makes sense in terms of what those people put in their text books and cles. None of it is what I experienced nor does any of it explain how. I don't understand the idea that therapists, other than the cbt people who only do the most obvious of things that anyone who can read could find out on their own on the off chance it wasn't just completely obvious to any sentient being in the first place, teach a client anything. I am boggled at the claim that clients "put the skills they learned to use...." What skill does psychodynamic therapy do? What skill does a client learn by whining about their parents?

Things are obvious to you because you were compounding interest in the womb. You cant un-know things.

In my job, i spent many years figuring out what it was that people before me were unaware of, that was essential to life (or the current computer program). Money made me sympathetic to the search and to acquiring this skill.

Unfortunately - I don't understand any of this or what it has to do with how talking to a stranger that gets handed money for just sitting there does anything.
Maybe that is the way the world is divided up -people who understand exhankster and therapay and those of us who do not.

They do say there are two kinds of people in the world - those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't.

Is this a pun or a typo? If the former, pretty decent.

It was intentional but I did not know it was a pun - just how I think of it