how does talking help?

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

It's a literary (or filmorary?) allusion, isn't it? Not a direct quote, but it sounds goldblumish. Or like Charlie Chan. Or some people think Elmer Fudd.