[moodyblue83]

I’ve been talking to these people for years. And that’s all it is , talk.
It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a good friend right now that I can
sit down and talk to. Because that’s all I need. It’s the same thing.
Psychology , as a profession , has not evolved ! They come up with a lot of fancy words but in the end it’s all bull jive . COMMON SENSE is usually what it all comes down to , OR , pharmacology. Here’s a pill for this and a pill for that.
Mankind has advanced in many ways , except the most important advancement.
The understanding of the human being.

[Favorite Jeans]

If it’s clearly not useful to you and seems like so much quackery maybe continuing therapy is making you feel worse? Maybe stop going and consider other ways to work on the things you were hoping therapy would help with? It’s just one way.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by moodyblue83

I’ve been talking to these people for years. And that’s all it is , talk.
It’s unfortunate that I don’t have a good friend right now that I can
sit down and talk to. Because that’s all I need. It’s the same thing.
Psychology , as a profession , has not evolved ! They come up with a lot of fancy words but in the end it’s all bull jive . COMMON SENSE is usually what it all comes down to , OR , pharmacology. Here’s a pill for this and a pill for that.
Mankind has advanced in many ways , except the most important advancement.
The understanding of the human being.

Yeah just when you get told something's wrong with you then it's hard to get rid of that gaslight and you feel pressured to try therapy for years Yes that's half irony and half very much the truth too in many cases

For me how it played out was, when I asked fairweather friend to go out and do things like see a movie for fun (a distraction from the real bad issue coming up in my life) she thought I should instead go to a therapist hahahaha

So I relate a lot to you !

I would say though, be more patient with psychology as a science or as an evidence based approach. Psychology as a science started out only in 1879. So it's still a young discipline and it's just going to take a while to catch up with other sciences if you want to be optimistic about it

But yeah human beings are extremely complex too so it's a difficult subject to study and understand and work with.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by Favorite Jeans

If it’s clearly not useful to you and seems like so much quackery maybe continuing therapy is making you feel worse? Maybe stop going and consider other ways to work on the things you were hoping therapy would help with? It’s just one way.

Yeah it's just like there is so much pressure to go to therapy and stay with it

Because

1) Therapists do not get adequate supervision so they can end up gaslighting clients, whether intentional or not
2) Therapists do not receive objective feedback so they believe their methods always work and don't notice that they aren't actually helping the client
3) Therapy approaches in applied psychology are not evidence based enough and also support gaslighting and making the client go to therapy for years and actually having them end up in a worse place than before

The gaslight happens for example with things like, if the client has a problem it's called a "rupture" that needs to be fixed because the client is required to just "learn to trust" the therapist, if the client wants to stop therapy, it's called premature termination, if the client doesn't agree with some insight of the therapist, it's called defenses and walls and not being vulnerable enough. And there is this overall idea that the client in therapy needs to become so very open and vulnerable and defenseless and emotionally dependent. This forum too is full of threads of clients struggling with emotional dependence when therapy should never be about that, but that also gets called some bull**** like it's maternal or paternal transference and working through childhood trauma. I could go on and on about all the UNPROVEN explanations and theories. Worst is when it comes to active exploitation of clients, sexually or otherwise.

And then when you'd like to leave because you feel worse, you also get told that oh, it's ok for you to feel worse, it's just because this work naturally is going to hurt. Nah!! It's like performing unnecessary and brutal surgery without even ether used as anesthetic, or any refined tools for the surgery, or any in-depth precise knowledge of anatomy back then. Much like in the 1800s or even earlier than the 1800s. It was outright Middle Ages until the 1960s or so, both in psychiatry and psychology.

When it's quackery like that, it's all about the therapists wanting something for their own self-interest and not being willing to recognise that. I've seen that firsthand.

I mean I'm appalled at how much of this seriously dangerous mess is ongoing and I can just hope that this will stop one day and there will be adequate supervision and removal of approaches that are not evidence based and not proven to work.

[NP_Complete]

I, for one, am immensely grateful that I still have access to sit and have a non-evidence-based talk with my therapist. It's been so helpful to just talk about a lifetime's worth of events and experiences and to have my feelings validated. And, yeah, it did hurt to talk about that stuff, but I don't see how it couldn't have. There have been ruptures, but he didn't expect me to just learn to trust him; we worked through whatever the hurt feeling was. We, not just me. He's apologized many times and admitted when he was wrong or didn't understand where I was coming from. I'm always glad that I didn't just walk away. If I wanted to do something more evidence-based, I could have. There are plenty of therapists who do CBT. But my experiences with CBT and a very brief exposure to DBT left me feeling hollow.

I feel bad that you guys have had experiences that left you feeling this way about all therapy. We're definitely all different and what works for me might not work for you. It's okay to feel however you feel and to decide therapy isn't for you.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by NP_Complete

I, for one, am immensely grateful that I still have access to sit and have a non-evidence-based talk with my therapist. It's been so helpful to just talk about a lifetime's worth of events and experiences and to have my feelings validated. And, yeah, it did hurt to talk about that stuff, but I don't see how it couldn't have. There have been ruptures, but he didn't expect me to just learn to trust him; we worked through whatever the hurt feeling was. We, not just me. He's apologized many times and admitted when he was wrong or didn't understand where I was coming from. I'm always glad that I didn't just walk away. If I wanted to do something more evidence-based, I could have. There are plenty of therapists who do CBT. But my experiences with CBT and a very brief exposure to DBT left me feeling hollow.

I feel bad that you guys have had experiences that left you feeling this way about all therapy. We're definitely all different and what works for me might not work for you. It's okay to feel however you feel and to decide therapy isn't for you.

Glad you found a therapist that worked for you. I figure this therapist wasn't overly relying on the unproven theories, but more on his sense of people without too much theory based mental experimentation. He just sounds like a normal person doing normal things based on your description and letting you talk alright without trying to over-interpret all of it so much thinking he has the authority for overriding your own understanding of yourself (again using those unproven theories to try and exercise such authority).

[Just42dayK]

Originally Posted by moodyblue83

Psychology , as a profession , has not evolved ! They come up with a lot of fancy words but in the end it’s all bull jive . COMMON SENSE is usually what it all comes down to , OR , pharmacology. Here’s a pill for this and a pill for that.
Mankind has advanced in many ways , except the most important advancement.
The understanding of the human being.

I'm sorry your treatment hasn't been as helpful for you as you would like.

The psychobabble has the potential to help folks break free of their circular patterns of viewing their problems. Even close friends who are often caught up in it themselves can have similar ways of viewing things as you, and don't know other ways to view problems and solutions.

One way I'd love to see psychology evolve is to not blame mothers for so much.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by Just42dayK

I'm sorry your treatment hasn't been as helpful for you as you would like.

The psychobabble has the potential to help folks break free of their circular patterns of viewing their problems. Even close friends who are often caught up in it themselves can have similar ways of viewing things as you, and don't know other ways to view problems and solutions.

One way I'd love to see psychology evolve is to not blame mothers for so much.

I totally agree it doesn't make sense to blame parents for every problem here and now *in the present*.

As far as psychobabble, to me it just ended up being a circular pattern of viewing things. So I've had to break free from THAT. Ironically enough.

[ArtleyWilkins]

I was fortunate enough to not have therapists who were too terribly tied up behind the psychobabble. Honestly, most of the terminology only became apparent to me when I arrived here on the forum. I had therapists who engaged in dialogue with me and were only about helping me find my way through my crap. I never particularly felt like they were "analyzing" me so much as they were helping me analyze myself, and that was actually pretty empowering. In retrospect, I understand some of the therapy approaches, etc. they were utilizing in my therapy, but they weren't hung up on the language or so set in one approach that they were inflexible or dogmatic about it. That would have been a hard "no" for me (I tried and rejected a few therapists that seemed too psychobabbly).

[Rive.]

It's a fallacy to believe all of psychology blames mothers - blame Freud and his misogyny *not* psychology.

There are many approaches in psychology. Not all approaches pathologise or blame mothers or use psycho-babble. If an approach doesn't work, there is always something else to try.

[Just42dayK]

Originally Posted by Rive.

It's a fallacy to believe all of psychology blames mothers - blame Freud and his misogyny *not* psychology.

There are many approaches in psychology. Not all approaches pathologise or blame mothers or use psycho-babble. If an approach doesn't work, there is always something else to try.

I agree that all of psychology does not blame mothers. All of anything is hardly ever true to describe things. Additionally mothers take too much of the blame in psychology imo.

It is important to find both the therapist you can work with well and the treatment that is best for a persons individual needs.

OP I hope you are able to get the help and support you desire.

[Etcetera1]

Yeah picking out the right therapist and the right approach - in theory this sounds great but I would like for therapists to start with checking if the person really even needs therapy or if it's external circumstances being the primary issue.

And if that's the case then that's what has to be changed, not the person. That's what actions need to be taken for. I mean I don't even like this idea of changing a person or fixing them or learning better coping approaches and skills and whatnot. I think accepting yourself as you are, is where you got to start from, and then focus on the problem and not on yourself. Ironically enough, the other important thing here is accepting yourself will also mean that then you can work on whatever you've accepted, NOT until then. And even then, it will not be about changing yourself. It will still have to be a focus on the problem and the desired goal, and not on yourself or your mind.

That's what's worked for me. Also focusing on myself and trying to manage my own mind never really worked for me. That's just navel gazing to be very honest. The only thing that did work was just making sense of what the hell was going on inside and outside of me and then just being MYSELF, not trying to fix or change myself or anything, and then just using my normal common sense and taking action is what worked. Plus very, very gradual learning about new things as far as psychoeducation. That's the other thing that's helped. 99% of the ideas from therapists and in self-help resources never fit me, were like a square peg for a round hole, and so on.... So this is why I've had to do things using my observations and my common sense.

Here's why that was the case. It's much like, there can literally be a million ideas (no understatement!!) for what's going on for someone, and if a few of those one million ideas actually fit the person and his/her situation, both internal and external situation, then already great. But how long will it take to pick out those very few matching ideas out of one million of them....? Any other ideas will just be the proverbial square peg. Consequently, we can safely forget about the psychobabble. So again that's why simply accepting myself as is and doing common sense based observation and general psychoeducation is what worked best for me. The psychoeducation was not directly applied to myself due to limitations explained below, I just learned some general understanding of how some things may work psychologically, plus adding my own observations for myself & common sense.

Maybe one day applied psychology will get far enough to be able to match the approach to the individual in an efficient and effective way.....until then the problem is as above. And academic psychology has the same issues.... They do a few studies about one thing about the mind/psyche and then they decide that's how it always works. And in reality, that's *not* how it always works. They picked up a very small segment of something and they think that the small segment is the whole thing. And nope it's just not that way. Same for applied psychology, they pick up a very small segment and don't realise that it won't cover a lot of situations, all the different contexts and people. Research and applied psychology both have a looooooong way to go before they discover more than the few small segments.

It's of course all very fascinating, there being so many things about the mind and the psyche, so many understandings, but we always need to keep in mind that there is a lot more there than what we've already thought of, those million ideas and insights. Likewise we absolutely have to keep in mind that formal psychology too only has a few of those small segments picked up so far and some very general understanding that lacks much of the specifics, details for many of the individual people.

[Nammu]

I too benefited from therapy. I was fortunate in happening across good people at the right time. I never knew the psychobabble until I joined these forums. At first I thought I must have done it wrong because I never got close to them, enmeshed or insisted on contact outside of my weekly session, never experienced a rupture. I was in a terrible place and had ptsd. I was hospitalized countless times and had a lot of trauma to process They helped me though that with various forms of therapy including some odd ones. I stopped therapy about 7-8 years ago as all I deal with now is bipolar, which is a medication need. It was helpful and hard work but it was never my focal point. I lived because of therapy not for therapy.

What are some examples of psychobabble? Terms like transference, rupture, etc are words which describe (relatively) specific phenomena. You might dispute the validity of the phenomena, but does that mean that any discussion about what might be happening is babble?

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by comrademoomoo

What are some examples of psychobabble? Terms like transference, rupture, etc are words which describe (relatively) specific phenomena. You might dispute the validity of the phenomena, but does that mean that any discussion about what might be happening is babble?

Reliance on any psychoanalytic term is psychobabble. Reliance on any psychological explanation (even when not outright psychoanalytic) whenever common sense or basic understanding of people would explain the situation better is psychobabble. Reliance on any unproven psychological theory is psychobabble.

And yes, often a discussion on what might be happening, without ever connecting to visceral gut feelings on what's actually happening, is psychobabble. If it leads to navel gazing instead of actually being in the present and seeing the actual situation and being able to make decisions and taking action on it.

I had this concern before that I wasn't sure whether it's ever justified to do therapy trying to go deep, dig inside, all that, in rearranging things inside before you can even do anything in the real world if too much gets in your way of functioning. Like all that navel gazing I mention. And - in more complex cases - to dig as deep as possible, even very vague or speculative methods like free associating or dream analysis in psychoanalysis could be needed, to get your subconscious moving to work with options and possibilities to eventually have an incubation to actual insight that fits reality.

So, I am not convinced - actually am very skeptical - if the above is the existing best way to support your own subconscious to get to actual useful insight.

I've considered that external support, decreasing stress, making the environment positive and supportive - including community support - for natural recovery and healing where you let the mind do the work on its own could be enough. Nutritional supplementing or perhaps medication as well if needed to jump start things if chemical changes in the brain have gone too far. But your lifestyle and your choice of activities can achieve an improvement in those chemical changes too, supplementing or medication might just speed up progress.

I don't know. Both methods obviously do require external support, just very different ones. I know in some countries they've tried the latter even on mental illnesses as severe as schizophrenia.

My personal opinion is that the latter approach could do less harm than the former approach if we try to use too many half-baked theories for the former. Maybe one day psychology gets far enough with understanding to avoid causing so much harm. In medicine, it's a basic principle too, do no harm*.

*: "The “do no harm” principle requires that healthcare providers weigh the risk that a given course of action will hurt a patient against its potential to improve the patient's condition." Of course, to apply this principle effectively, we would have to first expose how much harm therapy and psychology can do and has done already. Which will not happen without enough supervision and objective feedback!! Is there any other profession where objective feedback is not utilised simply because the professionals would potentially feel offended by it?!

[Quietmind 2]

I'm very very very fortunate with my therapy.

I don't think therapy is a panacea though. Have friends who don't find it useful after many attempts over many years and they've found what works for them through trial and error. Some of them instinctively know what they need, some have needed a lot of time and effort.

My therapist isn't into jargon terms and only used them when I asked. I'd ask because sometimes knowing the jargon term aided in my own research / self advocacy, much like medical terms for specific health problems can help a GP visit be more productive. Any psychoeducation she did was backed by neuroscience and she explained it simply and linked it to my struggles.

As I legitimately lacked common sense due to the environments I grew up in, and worked in. Healthy "common sense" was something I needed to learn, as "common sense" in my environments were all about staying silent and tolerating mistreatment in the face of harm and violence. Today I look back and am shocked that I endured threats of rape and actual violence done to me.

My therapy didn't go deep unless necessary, and the depth was all titrated and collaborative, deeper and then back to the surface as needed.

One early goal was decreasing my self-harm, and increasing my coping skills while preserving my functioning levels. I was self-harming at work while enduring a very demanding job and a really violent family of origin.

For me, I did have to go deeper to touch underlying emotional reasoning to some extent because pure cognitive behavioural stuff didn't work on me. I would understand cognitively but had no pause between events and my big emotions and then my immediate reactions. Often my reactions was harming myself.

My self-harm served very important functions, even if it was "maladaptive". Not common sense to force "reduce your self-harming" without help building external community support and other inner resources. I had immense difficulties with rumination and self-hatred, which worsened my depression etc.

And of course lifestyle changes for better physical and mental health.

I wasn't eating enough nutritious food, wasn't resting when I could rest, wasn't sleeping well (nightmares multiple times a night, every night) and didn't know how to advocate for myself with my then-psychiatrist, didn't know I needed regular dental, regular health checks, wasn't treating severe pain adequately, did not know the importance of taking care of my medical needs. Etc.

My therapist has also backed off when I told her it's not common sense (I used harsher words) for us to do trauma processing when I only saw her once a month while I was working really long hours with a very stressful workload, plus plenty of violence in my family of origin.

I did need some very careful trauma processing as it was linked to why I stayed in my abusive situation, and why I struggled to set boundaries in the workplace, and why I never said no to more and more work, nor did I assert myself when harassed at work.

I did end up burning out severely (clinically, not talking 6 months of rest then I'm fine) and am far less functional... though for me it wasn't therapy. It was my stubborn refusal to leave that job even after half my team quit due to the sky high workload and no new hires so everyone left had to fo 3 people's work, no one could take time off, people regularly worked even when given sick leave (pre-pandemic), poor management etc. My current and former therapists kept trying to tell me my life was out of balance but I refused to listen.

If I could redo that, I would have left for a better job instead of working until my health broke down. And I would have left my abusive family sooner.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by Quietmind 2

My therapist isn't into jargon terms and only used them when I asked. I'd ask because sometimes knowing the jargon term aided in my own research / self advocacy, much like medical terms for specific health problems can help a GP visit be more productive. Any psychoeducation she did was backed by neuroscience and she explained it simply and linked it to my struggles.

As I legitimately lacked common sense due to the environments I grew up in, and worked in. Healthy "common sense" was something I needed to learn, as "common sense" in my environments were all about staying silent and

Ok the thing is if you've survived this far, you already have enough common sense for living life. I acctually very much dislike therapy jargon because it wants to replace that common sense....As soon as I recognised that, and went back to my own common sense (which I am very sure you possess too) I felt a load better and was able to listen to my own gut feelings better again.

That jargon is mostly from *unproven* theories and so they don't really work, it's too much quackery frankly. Even the idea of "healthy common sense" sounds like some serious quackery. That kind of thing doesn't exist, I'm sorry.

My therapy didn't go deep unless necessary, and the depth was all titrated and collaborative, deeper and then back to the surface as needed.

And then titrating depth?! What the heck is that even supposed to mean. More jargon and psychobabble that in reality means fu** all and is a waste of time. Your psyche has its own healing capacity that doesn't need to be burdened by ideas like "you didn't have healthy common sense, only a therapist could teach you that", and ideas that a therapist or any unproven psychological theories can actually do something like "titrate" stuff for the psyche. No....it doesn't work like that. We don't know enough about the psyche yet to declare that we can "titrate" anything like that, by far not enough.

One early goal was decreasing my self-harm, and increasing my coping skills while preserving my functioning levels. I was self-harming at work while enduring a very demanding job and a really violent family of origin.

I am very glad that you were able to decrease self-harm. I can see how taking on so much would lead one to feel like trying to cope that way.

My self-harm served very important functions, even if it was "maladaptive". Not common sense to force "reduce your self-harming" without help building external community support and other inner resources. I had immense difficulties with rumination and self-hatred, which worsened my depression etc.

I posted above about not forcing anything, with common sense either, let alone with the use of psychology jargon, or other ways to try and force mental experimentation. Because of the medical principle "do no harm". Don't do the intervention if you are not sure if it will be more beneficial than harmful. We can't say that about a lot of approaches in psychology as it is, if they are applied without supervision and objective feedback. Instead it's exactly about supporting your already existing healing capacity and inner resources, with help from community and other resources yes. And yes lifestyle changes that you mentioned.

My therapist has also backed off when I told her it's not common sense (I used harsher words) for us to do trauma processing when I only saw her once a month while I was working really long hours with a very stressful workload, plus plenty of violence in my family of origin.

That was your common sense, yeah!!! I agree. The therapist didn't have a lot of it there, lol.

I did need some very careful trauma processing as it was linked to why I stayed in my abusive situation, and why I struggled to set boundaries in the workplace, and why I never said no to more and more work, nor did I assert myself when harassed at work.

I mean I did what you did, never saying no at work, to more and more work, even when others were quitting and so on. So that's really familiar to me and I mean, the way I solved it was realising that they were having unreasonable expectations. That I was being already so stressed from problems that I would take in the negative emotions of others too much and that compelled me to try to keep up with all those unreasonable demands. Which then made me more stressed and even less able to do "enough". And so on.

But yeah, therapy didn't help me realise that. What helped was talk to normal people who helped me work through how the deadlines were unreasonable and some of the other workplace expectations too, and then I managed to figure out the rest. What really got like glaring to me in the end was that when they increased the demands EVEN MORE, and my pay was not increased at all, and I was able to accept that it was making me more negative to a point that I was unwilling to put up with, it simply felt like too much of a violation of ME, so I realised it was all absurd and ridiculous and refused to work for them again like that. Especially not for that pay they would want to give me for all that work!!

I did get a burn out too from it, I don't know if I'll recover from it, I'll see sooner or later.

If I recover from it it will be only because I stopped when I decided it was too much of a violation if I was to allow it to go on. And that's also because I got that help from talking it through with those buddies who had great sensible input and so I realised it was just too much. I was also already working on how to decrease stress, I read some good self-help on time management and the like and worked on all this with others with similar goals.

Right now I only work part time now and with a much better team. It's just a decent environment, decent atmosphere, decent deadlines, reasonableness, flexibility, all that.

My current and former therapists kept trying to tell me my life was out of balance but I refused to listen.

Yeah, after I quit that crap, people close to me told me how it was obvious to them that it was really really unreasonable hours and pressure.

If I could redo that, I would have left for a better job instead of working until my health broke down. And I would have left my abusive family sooner.

Mmm well that's where psychoeducation helped me a bit, none of the therapists nah, just me using my healing capacity and a little psychoeducation on my own plus some input from a decent support group, in figuring out who expects too much of me, and I dropped all those vampires like I figure your family was too. It did take a while to figure it out but that's just the nature of the thing.

So yeah. You can get to know yourself and sort out your internals without having to be told that you can't naturally do that, like you lack and need to learn some kind of "healthy common sense". That makes me really pissed off, that idea that anyone would need to be told such a thing. It does not help ANYONE to build themselves up, it just tears you (general you) down.

Psychology as an academic science or applied psychology or any of that simply does NOT give anyone or even a book (!) the authority to declare anything like that.

[downandlonely]

I never got much from individual therapy.

I far prefer peer support groups and 12 step groups. Most of these are free or very low cost as well.

I do peer support groups through the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). And I joined Overeaters Anonymous to deal with my overeating. It also helped me take action and change my negative thought and behavior patterns. My external situation hasn't changed at all, but I feel much better now.

[Quietmind 2]

Originally Posted by Etcetera1

Ok the thing is if you've survived this far, you already have enough common sense for living life. I acctually very much dislike therapy jargon because it wants to replace that common sense....As soon as I recognised that, and went back to my own common sense (which I am very sure you possess too) I felt a load better and was able to listen to my own gut feelings better again.

That jargon is mostly from *unproven* theories and so they don't really work, it's too much quackery frankly. Even the idea of "healthy common sense" sounds like some serious quackery. That kind of thing doesn't exist, I'm sorry.

And then titrating depth?! What the heck is that even supposed to mean. More jargon and psychobabble that in reality means fu** all and is a waste of time. Your psyche has its own healing capacity that doesn't need to be burdened by ideas like "you didn't have healthy common sense, only a therapist could teach you that", and ideas that a therapist or any unproven psychological theories can actually do something like "titrate" stuff for the psyche. No....it doesn't work like that. We don't know enough about the psyche yet to declare that we can "titrate" anything like that, by far not enough.

I am very glad that you were able to decrease self-harm. I can see how taking on so much would lead one to feel like trying to cope that way.

I posted above about not forcing anything, with common sense either, let alone with the use of psychology jargon, or other ways to try and force mental experimentation. Because of the medical principle "do no harm". Don't do the intervention if you are not sure if it will be more beneficial than harmful. We can't say that about a lot of approaches in psychology as it is, if they are applied without supervision and objective feedback. Instead it's exactly about supporting your already existing healing capacity and inner resources, with help from community and other resources yes. And yes lifestyle changes that you mentioned.

That was your common sense, yeah!!! I agree. The therapist didn't have a lot of it there, lol.

I mean I did what you did, never saying no at work, to more and more work, even when others were quitting and so on. So that's really familiar to me and I mean, the way I solved it was realising that they were having unreasonable expectations. That I was being already so stressed from problems that I would take in the negative emotions of others too much and that compelled me to try to keep up with all those unreasonable demands. Which then made me more stressed and even less able to do "enough". And so on.

But yeah, therapy didn't help me realise that. What helped was talk to normal people who helped me work through how the deadlines were unreasonable and some of the other workplace expectations too, and then I managed to figure out the rest. What really got like glaring to me in the end was that when they increased the demands EVEN MORE, and my pay was not increased at all, and I was able to accept that it was making me more negative to a point that I was unwilling to put up with, it simply felt like too much of a violation of ME, so I realised it was all absurd and ridiculous and refused to work for them again like that. Especially not for that pay they would want to give me for all that work!!

I did get a burn out too from it, I don't know if I'll recover from it, I'll see sooner or later.

If I recover from it it will be only because I stopped when I decided it was too much of a violation if I was to allow it to go on. And that's also because I got that help from talking it through with those buddies who had great sensible input and so I realised it was just too much. I was also already working on how to decrease stress, I read some good self-help on time management and the like and worked on all this with others with similar goals.

Right now I only work part time now and with a much better team. It's just a decent environment, decent atmosphere, decent deadlines, reasonableness, flexibility, all that.

Yeah, after I quit that crap, people close to me told me how it was obvious to them that it was really really unreasonable hours and pressure.

Mmm well that's where psychoeducation helped me a bit, none of the therapists nah, just me using my healing capacity and a little psychoeducation on my own plus some input from a decent support group, in figuring out who expects too much of me, and I dropped all those vampires like I figure your family was too. It did take a while to figure it out but that's just the nature of the thing.

So yeah. You can get to know yourself and sort out your internals without having to be told that you can't naturally do that, like you lack and need to learn some kind of "healthy common sense". That makes me really pissed off, that idea that anyone would need to be told such a thing. It does not help ANYONE to build themselves up, it just tears you (general you) down.

Psychology as an academic science or applied psychology or any of that simply does NOT give anyone or even a book (!) the authority to declare anything like that.

You've very good points, thank you.

If I were to rewrite my post, I would do so as...:

She didn't set herself up as an authority, I was the one who did due to my issues. I see from your post how I've done that.

She met me as a human who talked with me as a human about my innate healing capabilities. With compassion, kindness, and consistency... because I didn't have that anywhere in my life.

So she's being the sensible buddy you refer to, rather than a self proclaimed authority on my life.

You're right in guessing my family of origin are basically vampires. The role they chose for me was indentured servant, and being the scapegoat / black sheep.

She didn't say I lacked "healthy common sense", I did.

"Common sense" in my family was all kinds of effed up where everyone could have a good life, but not me.

I've a long pattern of being in exploitative jobs due to not knowing better, and not believing I deserved better, as well as barriers to better jobs like low education.

Work bullies sensed my lack of confidence and basically instilled further shame in me by telling me I lacked "common sense".

What they all said was "common sense" wasn't healthy for me.

Like you, yeah, the workload kept going up with no increase in pay. People were coming to work even when on sick leave. So much work, everyone stayed late and often worked even when back home. 11pm emails, calls at 3am (not answering that call up got me reprimanded), that kind of thing. Toxic management practices.

What I meant by "titrating depth" ，(yup, I see now that's jargon) would be that I wanted to talk about some of my traumatic memories because I trusted her and wanted relief. But my life was too unstable, and there is the risk of harm. So we didn't.

When we did talk about some of my trauma, it would be when I said I was having flashbacks and needed her presence as a caring person to remind me I'm not alone, that my family are lying that I am worthless, that she didn't want me to kill myself. Helping me understand what I need to feel safe, that my abuse is not my fault.

Now that I've left my family, it's about helping me get help for my medical bills, talking with my consent to my other medical providers using her "authority" as a psychologist.

Since medical confidentiality wouldn't allow a friend or buddy to do that. Plus it's ridiculous that there's so much gatekeeping by the healthcare system that I can't see my own medical information or the social worker reports on myself. So she uses her authority when me stating my needs doesn't work.

The therapy fee then is so the focus of each meeting would be on me, and I'm currently seeing her free because I'm in poverty. While she does a lot of stuff for me outside my sessions.

My current goals are all on learninhlg to trust myself.

So maybe it's like being mentored? To slowly learn / reclaim intuition and "I am the authority of my life" and be reminded of what "common sense" really is?

For example:

- Learning to trust my gut feelings / intuition.
- Recognise when I'm tired, thirsty, hungry etc by focusing on my body (I'm usually completely detached from it)
- Learning to advocate for myself better whenever I see doctors for my chronic health issues.
- Learning to identify who is safe and who isn't. I've a pattern of harmful and even abusive friendships. Have 2 great friends though. Love them.
- Not be exploited when I go back to part time work, then eventually full time.

[Quietmind 2]

Originally Posted by Etcetera1

For me how it played out was, when I asked fairweather friend to go out and do things like see a movie for fun (a distraction from the real bad issue coming up in my life) she thought I should instead go to a therapist hahahaha

Wow at that friend. Doing things for fun distraction is a good thing.

We all need breaks from focusing too much (each person has their own limit when it becomes unhelpful) on Bad Stuff.

And doing fun things is really important for managing stress.

[AliceKate]

Pharmacology isn't well founded either, as I understand it. That being said, I myself am taking Lexapro, just to see if maybe it helps. So far, it may have, hard to say what is the effect of the drug vs the effect of it being sunny again etc.

Psychobabble seems a bit strong of a word though. I mean, every science and half-science and none-science out there comes up with their own words. There's a well-founded reason for that. It's simply so experts in that field can talk to each other without having to first arrive at the definition of a concept. Experts that came historically before them have already done that, so that the new generation can now use the words with a large confident in the other person using it the same way.

But maybe I'm missing the point. So yeah, therapy is 2 people talking. If it's helpful or not really depends on the 2 people. I think one of them being trained can be helpful, but as with all things, training can only give you tools, the question is how you use them. Right?

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by Quietmind 2

Wow at that friend. Doing things for fun distraction is a good thing.

We all need breaks from focusing too much (each person has their own limit when it becomes unhelpful) on Bad Stuff.

And doing fun things is really important for managing stress.

Thanks. Yes, exactly. And I agree with your other post too. Your thoughts make a lot of sense to me. I wish you luck with all that!!

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by AliceKate

Pharmacology isn't well founded either, as I understand it. That being said, I myself am taking Lexapro, just to see if maybe it helps. So far, it may have, hard to say what is the effect of the drug vs the effect of it being sunny again etc.

Psychobabble seems a bit strong of a word though. I mean, every science and half-science and none-science out there comes up with their own words. There's a well-founded reason for that. It's simply so experts in that field can talk to each other without having to first arrive at the definition of a concept. Experts that came historically before them have already done that, so that the new generation can now use the words with a large confident in the other person using it the same way.

But maybe I'm missing the point. So yeah, therapy is 2 people talking. If it's helpful or not really depends on the 2 people. I think one of them being trained can be helpful, but as with all things, training can only give you tools, the question is how you use them. Right?

I don't know how OP or others meant their posts, but psychobabble usually refers to the terminology "soup" from unproven theories.

As far as psychology being a science or half-science only... Well psychology on the whole is currently made up of very..... different, even disparate approaches. Some of it more scientific understanding or evidence based practices, and some of it being....well, far from evidence based or even working at all, to say the least.

But again it's a new science. So we've got to be patient with understanding how the psyche and human beings work with all that complexity. We still have a long way to go.

And right.....even if the tools are fitting the problem, you've still got to be able to use them right, in an effective and efficient way.

[NP_Complete]

I think evidence-based with regards to psychology is highly overrated. Insurance companies and other entities like the NHS push evidence-based treatment because it's usually time-limited and will cost them less money. I think in theory it's good to pursue evidence that a treatment is effective, but there are limitations to the way these studies are set up and executed. There have also been studies that show that the effectiveness of evidence-based treatment is not always and perhaps quite frequently not long-term.

I think proving something in psychology is an entirely different beast than proving something in other scientific fields and if you're waiting for proof, you may be waiting a long time.

[Etcetera1]

Originally Posted by NP_Complete

I think evidence-based with regards to psychology is highly overrated. Insurance companies and other entities like the NHS push evidence-based treatment because it's usually time-limited and will cost them less money. I think in theory it's good to pursue evidence that a treatment is effective, but there are limitations to the way these studies are set up and executed. There have also been studies that show that the effectiveness of evidence-based treatment is not always and perhaps quite frequently not long-term.

I think proving something in psychology is an entirely different beast than proving something in other scientific fields and if you're waiting for proof, you may be waiting a long time.

It's absolutely not overrated. By evidence I very much mean to include objective feedback on how well the intervention works for the particular client. I don't mean just scientific research. Such feedback mechanism requires a lot of objective data and their analysis, i.e. it's most certainly evidence based. And it has been done before.

Has nothing to do with insurance companies or the NHS and blah blah. It's got to do with, does the treatment work or does it not work? Does it decrease your symptoms? Do you not want that checked that if you go to a regular doctor? Or even just a car mechanic? Why would you not want to do it when it comes to your mental and emotional health?!

Just because maybe the therapist would feel offended if the feedback shows their work needs improvement or that you perhaps need another therapist or some other approach altogether? It's in your own interest and for your own benefit to want evidence for the treatment actually working. Who even told you that it's "highly overrated"?