It hurts more than helps.

i think therapy hurts too much. it brings up issues that maybe dont need to be resolved, but rather DISSOLVED.
and if the therapist does not even have a license, like if they are an intern... that can do more harm than good! they might even try to do a case study on you and keep you in therapy long enough to get their case study done in order to finish their licensing program. thats even more detrimental for a child in thereapy with an intern!
i think there are a few good ones out there. and they have PHD's!!
MFT's and LCSW's can be found at a local clinic, how much can you trust a person with your mind who has not DEVOTED like 8 years of their life to learning and earning that PHD?

Issues dont just get dissolved until they've been dealt with, I know for me until I felt the original pains and hurts they went on working like a festering gern inside of me. therapy is hard and it makes us take a real long honest look at ourselfs. on interns? I guess they've got to learn somewhere but not on me. I ;m with a private practise therapist that has done her own recovery work .

Therapy does hurt. My T explained to me when I started it's like being constipated. You can hold it in and feel the pain or get it out and feel the relief.

You can be harmed by a T that does not know what they are doing. You need to find someone that you feel comfortable with that has experience in the field you are working in and you can build a relationship with.

I wouldn't want an intern. I wouldn't want an intern doing surgery either.

Good luck. Hugs to you.

I love that analogy! I should send it on to my T so she can have a good chuckle since we do spend time speaking of my health issues and well, irritable bowel is one of them. Love it!

Hi mandi, and welcome to PC. I can understand how you feel, and it would be wrong for any therapist to try to keep someone in therapy for any reason other than the client's benefit. Has that happened to you? Interns can be reported for unethical behavior too. Our supervisors are responsible for the work that we do as interns, and are supposed to make sure that we are treating our clients properly and doing no harm.

I'm an intern, btw. And when I finish I'll be a master's level therapist. And I have thought the same way that you do. Experience is important for therapists to have. And I have gone to an intern once for therapy, and to an LCSW, and wasn't helped. I also went to several psychologists who didn't help me. I'm still in therapy, and finally getting somewhere. My master's program has been an eye-opener. Out of my instructors, there are some who are master's level that I would go to, and some with phds that I wouldn't. Some of my classmates I would trust, and some I wouldn't. I think that it depends more on the person and how much they dedicate themselves to learning and caring and doing the best that they can at this work.

I would much rather get a phd than a master's degree, and I have applied to phd programs and probably will try again. But that might never be an option for me, because life has limited my options. I hope that I can still be a good therapist. I have a lot of life experience that brand new psychologists probably don't have. I have struggled with my own mental illness for 30 years or more.

When you really compare, master's level therapists by the time they are done do get as much experience as phd therapists. It's less academic experience and more practical. Psychologists have at least 8 years of college, plus one year of internship. Master's level therapists have at least 6 years of college and three years of internship (for some, the first year of internship overlaps with the academic part of their degree program, but in my case, I have already finished all the academics. We all have continuing education requirements after we graduate too.

So, I understand your point and your feelings because I was there too, but I just wanted to point out that no matter which degree or licensure someone holds, their ability as a therapist to help you depends more on dedication and personal characteristics, and especially on them being a good fit for you.

Mandi, if you have been hurt, I hope you will keep looking for someone who is a better fit for you and can help you. It took me something like 8 tries to find the right therapist for me. For some people it takes more, or less.

rapunzel,

thank you for asking the tough question, if that has happened to me...
it made me look at it without anger and i got sad.
i think all anger is just sadness to big to fit through a tearduct.

thanks for the insight everyone.

I had a therapist who had had a bad experience with a man in her past. She decided my husband was mentally abusing me and I left him for six months. Then, we saw a different therapist and he worked at reuniting us. We have been back together for quite some time and celebrated our 33rd anniversary last Dec. I really think I would have divorced him if I had stayed with the first therapist.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!

Becky

Hi unhappymandi

I'm new here, too. I am a veteran of over 10 years of therapy now and i've had maybe 6 or 7 individual therapists during that time? That may be an exaggeration but only slightly.

J1
J2
P
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there is a huge truth in that they are helping us address issues that we really don't want to or would rather not, it depends on why you're going. I do believe in them, though, because the good ones do help us get better.

Where are we to go with this? I think it depends largely on what your needs are, how well the t recognizes your needs and works with you to resolve stuff, make sense of stuff, form concrete goals, deal with intangibles and otherwise navigate a complex landscape of thought and emotion with an eye toward improvement in the client.

I've had some bad matches, I've had some good matches. I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think of the painful stuff (and good T's) as syrup of ipecac. It makes you puke. But it gets the poison out. Meanwhile, I still feel the need to be nurtured, comforted and supported through the process. I did not always know what my needs were. A good, insightful and well-matched T can help us work through that part, too.

We sit with you as we do not know what your situation is and how it came to be that you feel this way.