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Because therapists don't solve problems. Clients do. Therapists CAN'T solve people's problems for them.
Then what the hell are they getting paid for? That's like me saying at my job: "Boss, I won't fix people's computers; I'll just ask them how the blue screen makes them feel, or gaslight them into believing that it helps their productivity." I'd get fired on the spot for doing that. See how inane these tactics sound when applied to any other job? Then why are they OK for therapists?
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Originally Posted by tijlover
Hmmm....Aquarius is the most emotionally detached sign of the zodiac, so to them it's like a show. Gee! Is this how people behave having emotions? Who are these strange creatures?
Good point. I didn't feel like the therapists were interested in helping me at all, but rather treated me like their weekly entertainment. Maybe I should have just become a therapist, even though I'm not an Aquarius. Would have been easier and better money than what I do now.
The psychologists I have known had some of the most screwed up kids. Their kids ended up with drug addiction problems. Their wives were pretty nutty too so I have always thought that they come home and play mind games and try to manipulate their family members minds resulting in issues.
The people I have known to go to a psychologist or even family counseling for marital issues were more screwed up afterwards than they were prior to seeing a therapist.
I work for a company that specializes in life & disability insurance. Depending on how much benefit a person wants determines whether they get their health records pulled. There is also a national database that insurance companies can pull that will tell them if you take any medications. Like I said in another post there is no privacy anymore. So if you tell the insurer you have no medical issues but they see on this database that you take statins, high blood pressure pills, antidepressants, etc. they know you are not being truthful.
Anyway the point of this is you would be surprised how many psychiatrists/psychologists are on antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs and anti-psychotic drugs, etc. Granted we only see a small percentage of the doctors out there but I thought it was interesting that even psych docs don't have perfect mental health.
Then what the hell are they getting paid for? That's like me saying at my job: "Boss, I won't fix people's computers; I'll just ask them how the blue screen makes them feel, or gaslight them into believing that it helps their productivity." I'd get fired on the spot for doing that. See how inane these tactics sound when applied to any other job? Then why are they OK for therapists?
Therapy has a number of purposes, and clients seek therapy for a number of reasons. Skill building, psychoed, and promoting healthy behavior, usually learning better interpersonal skills and coping skills are among the most common. Clients may or may not be open to and/or able to learn those things, but most are, and that's why they've sought therapy. They come because their status quo isn't working, and they are seeking support in changing what isn't working.
No therapist (no person, really) has the ability to change another person's behavior or thought patterns. That ultimately lies with the individual, but therapists work with them to provide tools, strategies, and feedback so they can make the changes they want to make.
Sometimes, there are clients who don't want to be there and don't see themselves as needing to make any changes. Often, they are mandated to be there, which is not particularly effective, because they're not motivated to address their own behavior, thoughts, or emotions within the context of creating change.
You often enter into these discussions and end up using them as a sounding board with your negative earlier-in-life experiences with being compelled to participate in therapy you didn't want to participate in, but expecting a mental health professional to "change you" or "fix you" isn't realistic or the purpose of therapy. Solving people's problems for them is not the purpose of the role or field. Helping build their skills so they can identify and solve their own issues independently is. If they were already able to do this with ease, they wouldn't be pursuing therapy.
That said, this has been explained many, many times when you choose to make discussion threads about you.
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Good point. I didn't feel like the therapists were interested in helping me at all, but rather treated me like their weekly entertainment.
Again, this sounds like an issue with you, not an issue with process and training relating to therapy.
There is an expression "Physician, heal thyself." I noticed in college that kids who became psych majors were trying to solve their own problems. Many TV and radio shrinks seem to be divorced multiple times. A teacher friend had a student who was the son of a psychiatrist who wrote parenting books and the kid was loony tunes as was the father.
Just a pattern I noticed
I would say that you could substitute clergy (and their kids) for the accused party with no other changes.
Then what the hell are they getting paid for? That's like me saying at my job: "Boss, I won't fix people's computers; I'll just ask them how the blue screen makes them feel, or gaslight them into believing that it helps their productivity." I'd get fired on the spot for doing that. See how inane these tactics sound when applied to any other job? Then why are they OK for therapists?
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Think of therapists as personal trainers for behaviors and thought processes, then. They can guide and coach and recommend, but the real changes are ultimately up to the the client to follow through on.
That said, this has been explained many, many times when you choose to make discussion threads about you.
Making this thread 'about him' has probably been slightly, ahem, therapeutic for him, and if so, who are you to begrudge him that? Surely someone with over 30k posts on the forum is in no real position to lecture someone else about hijacking threads....
Now it's time to make this thread about me, relatively briefly:
I sought psychiatric help in early 2006, after having experienced multiple panic attacks and persistent severe anxiety throughout 2005. The anxiety was crippling, and my overall mental health was continuing to worsen by virtue of circumstances--feeling as if you're trapped in your house doesn't do much for one's mood. So, off to Suburban Psychiatric in Amherst, NY I went. At the initial session, the doctor to whom I was assigned literally laughed at a question from my mother (I was 19 years old at the time--she was present for this and a few other appointments) about whether I could be bipolar. I was depressed and anxious--clear diagnosis, so it was Xanax and Effexor for me. No further thought would be given to the matter, which was fine by me, as I had no inkling that I could be bipolar and was in fact mildly offended that my mother had posed the question.
Fast forward several months towards the end of 2006, and I found myself with my parents at the ER due to a particularly troubling panic attack. The psychiatrist who saw me that day concluded within 5 minutes of speaking to my parents (I remember that I was refusing to speak that day) that I was bipolar, due mostly (entirely?) to my propensity to taking spontaneous drives to the casino. Where that is listed in the DSM as sufficient grounds upon which to make such a diagnosis, I am uncertain, but that is what occurred. And so, for the next 2.5 years, I was on a mood stabilizer, first Depakote and then Lamictal, until finally, on a trip to Vermont in the summer of 2009, I felt good enough where I decided I was going to take myself off Lamictal cold turkey. And with that reckless move, I quit psychiatry (for good, up until now anyway).
Now, both of the psychiatrists with whom I dealt for any period of time, the one who laughed at the possibility of my being bipolar and the one who hastily concluded that I was bipolar, both struck me as sane, and indeed I grew quite fond of the guy who diagnosed me as bipolar--he was legitimately one of the nicer people I've met to this point in my life. So I am not questioning the sanity of either here, and I do realize that that is the subject of the thread. Rather, I'm kind of questioning the sanity of the entire establishment, built as it is on subjective determinations, both by patient and doctor alike. When I had a major depressive episode in 2015, I persevered through months of reverberations (which took the form of prolonged severe depression) without taking any medication because I vowed back in 2009 that I won't do it unless I'm incapacitated and without any real choice in the matter. Because I don't trust any of it, regardless of the mental health of a given doctor. People here who work in the wider mental health care profession can pretend that the aggregate outcomes are better than they are as they defend established practices and demean those who raise questions or voice criticism, but the data says what it says regarding efficacy--and it doesn't say much that's very positive for psychiatrists or psychologists in terms of their ability to outperform 'nothing at all but the elapsing of time' or 'placebo'.
Thank you for pointing this out! It's like they won't even consider anything beyond their personal beliefs or textbook training. For example, if they ask how something made you feel, and you say something they don't expect or even "I don't know", they'll accuse you of lying. If that's good therapy, then I'm Donald Trump.
This is easily, by far, my biggest pet peeve with therapists and IME it happens way more often than it should. I can't stand it when they constantly tell you you are a liar, or "I don't believe you.", when you are telling the truth. It happens so often that it has caused me to forget doing anymore talk therapy. How am I suppose to work with a therapist that constantly tells you you are a liar when you are telling the truth. I really believe a ton of therapists have huge god complexes, they are the almighty, you are the screwed up person, and whatever the therapist thinks is right, is right no matter what. I have never met a therapist who has admitted to me that they where wrong. Never.
I have said it before, but I read a study (it was about the over diagnoses of bipolar) where they found over 50% of people diagnosed as bipolar, weren't. Over half the time these therapists where wrong. If I only bat .500, and was wrong half the time, I in no way would think I actually knew what I was doing or was any expert in the matter.
I saw a few Psychiatrists when younger, but I gained the best therapy from confrontational group therapy, where you can get "pounced" on, from another group member, if they know you're hiding something or lying to the group. I got "pounced" on a few times, and it was painful!
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That's like me saying at my job: "Boss, I won't fix people's computers; I'll just ask them how the blue screen makes them feel, or gaslight them into believing that it helps their productivity." I'd get fired on the spot for doing that. See how inane these tactics sound when applied to any other job? Then why are they OK for therapists?
