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So it seems I have finally found a therapist I click with. We had a small chat on the phone about a week ago and she was very insightful. I absolutely felt understood.
I had already attended therapy when I was in college a few years back and it was bad. The (male) therapist said I was flirting with him (which I was not), focused on my so-called 'privileged' background and even told me I was lying about my childhood abuse (at which point, I stopped the sessions since it was pointless to talk to someone who didn't believe me when all of my core issues stem from this pain).
This time around, I'm seeking professional help with a therapist who seems highly qualified and I'm paying the proportionate price. I really want this to work for me.
Have you ever successfully undergone therapy? How long does it take to finally see progress? How is the progress noticed?
A good counselor CAN help you identify problem areas and ways to change, and support you in that process - but you have to do the actual work.
However there are lots and lots of bad counselors out there. Here are just a few of the bad apples I ran across over a period of several decades:
A guy at the college mental health center who told me that the fact that I was "upset" about being raped repeatedly starting at age 5 was a sign of mental instability on my part and that we would need to do serious "work" to counteract my "hysterical frigidity". You can bet I never went back again. Even as young, naive, unsure, and inexperienced as I was back then I wasn't falling for that.
A woman who obviously had more interest in her office decor and displaying herself like some kind of china doll against said as a backdrop than in hearing or helping me. I'm serious, I've never seen anything like it. She would pose herself oh-so-carefully on her comfy cushions, with her skirt spread just so. The bean bags I could kind of get into - but the rest of it was just window dressing for people to admire her and her physical attributes.
A man who tried to tell me that he had talked to my medical doctor and he agreed with this therapist that I was making things up, not willing to take responsibility for myself, and a bunch of other "bad" stuff. I happened to know for a fact that he was lying and told him so. He told me I was being resistant. I offered to dial my doc's home number (because that is how well I knew my doc) and let him talk to the guy on speaker and get him to say these things again. Which of course he couldn't do because he not only had never even spoken to my doctor, he could not possibly have known who he even WAS because it was my first visit and I had not disclosed the guy's name. When I confronted him with his obvious and rather pathetic lies, he told me he "couldn't help me" as long as I insisted on being "resistant". To which I said, "Not with that attitude you can't, and I won't tolerate a liar." And got up and left.
Another guy kept behaving so oddly during our sessions that I finally just flat out asked him what was going on as it was clear he didn't take me seriously and seemed to disbelieve everything I told him. He hemmed and hawed and finally admitted that he thought I was psychotic. Apparently he disbelieved my telling him how stressful living in the county where I lived was, because of a county-wide feud against my neighbors down the hill running a gay campground. There were multiple incidents of drive by shootings and setting fires and other vandalism. Plus, drug addicts kept mistaking MY place for the local meth-house that was actually 2 miles away. He thought this was all delusional - despite the fact that many of these incidents were widely reported in news all over the state. He informed me that he was trying to get me to "take responsibility for (my) delusions". Wow. That really works with actual psychotics, especially when you don't tell them what you are trying to do.
I was IN a program in clinical psychology at the time, so apparently this guy 6 months out of school was just that much more astute than the PhD-having psychiatrists who had known me for YEARS and given me references to get into grad school, without ever realizing I was actually psychotic. Apparently he could tell I was "psychotic" immediately. And never bothered to check at all to see if any of the incidents I was telling him about were documented in local papers - easily done on-line in this day and age. No testing, nothing, just him thinking that "things like that" (harassment of gays in a deeply ignorant rural area and drug addicts getting the location of their supplier wrong) just "don't happen in real life". Idiot.
I told one of my friend-references about this and he burst out laughing so hard he dropped the phone. Apparently he had most recently been dealing with an actual psychotic patient who had been telling him all about the mind-control substances in tooth paste, which is why she brushed her teeth with soap instead.
Every single Cognitive Behavior Therapist I have ever seen or even spoken too - because this sort of therapy is heavily dependent on what is to me some pretty obvious manipulative techniques. I've given up even trying to talk to these guys, they are so often CBT cultists it's ridiculous. Don't get me wrong - CBT can be VERY helpful, but not when its wielded in a heavy-handed way as if its a club with which to beat you into CBT compliance. If a technique is not helpful to your client, you stop trying to use that technique and find something else that DOES work. Therapy is not about training the client to believe as you do. CBT should be a tool, not a creed.
Then there was the woman who insisted I needed to buy a fluffy stuffed animal and hug it and tell it I love it everyday, plus pretend it was telling me that it loved me back. Weird in and of itself. Another thing she wanted me to do was go home and mark a spot on my body about an inch square with a sharpie and then tell that square inch of skin every day that I loved it. I of course did not do that. When I showed up the next week, she asked if I had done that and I said no, because I was afraid the rest of my skin would get jealous. Keep in mind, I see the value of running a bubble bath and chilling out in a hot tub with some cocoa and tunes in the background - but not writing on my skin and talking to myself, thank you very much.
Then when therapy (it was group therapy) was over she insisted on hugging me even though I told her I did not want to be touched, calling me an ol' softy under my "grouchy" exterior. Totally inappropriate.
Some of these guys were only flaky, but some were actively dangerous - such as the guy who wanted to help me get over my "frigidity" and the guy who lied to me first shot out of the barrel, and in a blaming-shaming sort of way too boot.
The thing is that therapy CAN be helpful - but only when the therapist treats you with respect and compassion. If they're into "confrontation" therapy or tell you that you didn't enjoy being raped because you are frigid, make tracks immediately. If they lie to you for any reason whatsoever - drop them like a hot potato. They can't help you if they are using you or lying to you.
There are lots of good therapists out there, but you may need to boot a few toads before you find one.
The above post clinches my belief that our mental healthcare is at the same level our physical healthcare was in late 1700's, when barbers still performed dentistry and minor surgery. Which means that while some specialists do wonders (much like a barber may have saved someone's life by pulling out an abscessed tooth), the system as a whole is quite crude. Namely, it gives too much leeway to individual practitioners, as opposed to laying down same SOP's (standard operating procedures) for everyone. Which leaves patients with a lot of uncertainty about whether or not their next session will be helpful, useless, or damaging. And reviews can only go so far.
Just consider the above post, where the therapist wanted to hug a patient against their will, and possibly used "you're being resistant" as an argument for pushing the hug. An M.D. would probably not be permitted to engage in such familiarity with a patient (although it'd be overlooked if he/she just saved a life), but for a therapist, it's supposedly OK. Heck, I myself would not be cool with hugging my therapist, a person I know strictly in a professional capacity.
Last edited by MillennialUrbanist; 03-09-2017 at 03:13 PM..
I had a therapist that are in the 5% that are helpful. I appreciated someone who is objective to whats going on, and offers clarity and resolutions. I find the support a asset in my life.
I had a good one, too. Saw him for about 7 years, then it got to the point where my appointment consisted of him showing me his vacation home in the mountains and what colors he was painting the rooms. In other words, we were no longer doing therapy, and it was time for me to go.
I am a WTC survivor (I was lucky in that regard in that I already had a shrink in place while everyone else with PTSD was scrambling to find one), and I still hear from him every year on September 11.
Ive never heard of anyone going to one of these "therapists" in fact I think most people might be a little ashamed not to sort out their own head problems and need one of these money grabbers making a fortune out of you the public thinking you need them... mabye some do, hang on to your cash, chill and spend it on a restful holiday as thats what your therapists will be doing.
I had a good one, too. Saw him for about 7 years, then it got to the point where my appointment consisted of him showing me his vacation home in the mountains and what colors he was painting the rooms. In other words, we were no longer doing therapy, and it was time for me to go.
I am a WTC survivor (I was lucky in that regard in that I already had a shrink in place while everyone else with PTSD was scrambling to find one), and I still hear from him every year on September 11.
I always wondered about therapists getting "burnt out".
I always wondered about therapists getting "burnt out".
Best wishes to you.
Thanks. Mine wasn't getting burnt out. I was just no longer in need of his help as I was when I started. It had become a familiar relationship rather than a therapy situation. It was time for me to fly without him.
But listen, when we returned to work after 9/11, I saw burnout, and it happened fast. My employer hired shrinks to talk to us in groups and individually. Three weeks later I was put at lunchtime and I saw the therapist assigned to my department. He looked like hell. I asked if he was OK, and he said he was getting time off and being debriefed by another therapist, because three weeks of listening to endless stories about seeing body parts and burn victims and people shredded by glass and crushed and so forth had taken its toll. I felt bad for him
Ive never heard of anyone going to one of these "therapists" in fact I think most people might be a little ashamed not to sort out their own head problems and need one of these money grabbers making a fortune out of you the public thinking you need them... mabye some do, hang on to your cash, chill and spend it on a restful holiday as thats what your therapists will be doing.
That's because the British are a bit backwards in that sense. (I was born in and grew up in England, but I doubt in Scotland are any more open-minded about it). Massive institutional pedophilia scandals coming to the fore in the last few years there are not really much of a surprise in that sense. Its all held under the surface. Stiff upper lip only allows one to endure not cure.
I have a friend who is a consultant psychiatrist in London (consultant in the NHS sense of the word). He tells me there really is a dearth of therapists for referring his patients to for those that would benefit from therapy, and he hangs on to the tiny few. Plus its just seen as a band aid quick fix thing).
Ive never heard of anyone going to one of these "therapists" in fact I think most people might be a little ashamed not to sort out their own head problems and need one of these money grabbers making a fortune out of you the public thinking you need them... mabye some do, hang on to your cash, chill and spend it on a restful holiday as thats what your therapists will be doing.
That's what you think? Oh. That's nice.
So maybe they should just have a big ol' glass of Scotch instead, eh?
Thanks. Mine wasn't getting burnt out. I was just no longer in need of his help as I was when I started. It had become a familiar relationship rather than a therapy situation. It was time for me to fly without him.
But listen, when we returned to work after 9/11, I saw burnout, and it happened fast. My employer hired shrinks to talk to us in groups and individually. Three weeks later I was put at lunchtime and I saw the therapist assigned to my department. He looked like hell. I asked if he was OK, and he said he was getting time off and being debriefed by another therapist, because three weeks of listening to endless stories about seeing body parts and burn victims and people shredded by glass and crushed and so forth had taken its toll. I felt bad for him
=out
Too late to edit.
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