5mo ago

I feel like there should be a discussion here about "therapy" vs. talk therapy vs. psychology etc.

When people talk about "therapy" here, they most likely are thinking of bog-standard talk therapy, where you just go in and kinda, well, talk to someone about your life, problems, etc.

For some people, it's enough to just get things off their chest, talk about things out loud with someone and helps them deal with their issues. I personally see such a therapist monthly and find it beneficial to my mental health.

For others, especially those with more intense troubles and traumas, it may not be, and would probably be served better by someone more specialized with said traumas.

Like any medical profession, the quality of individual therapists and mental health experts can vary widely, from chuds to libs to comrades and everything in-between. there's a solid chance you may not get the perfect fit on try 1, I didn't.

I just feel like some people are dipping their toes into Scientology-ish "all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff, which I think is disastrous advice.

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I just feel like some people are dipping their toes into Scientology-ish "all therapy is bad, never seek professional help for your problems" stuff
Maybe, but I’m also tired of “get therapy” or “go see a therapist” as this pithy response people online have.
It’s this weird mix of like…contempt and condescension where they basically just cast you aside while feigning concern for your emotional well-being.
Therapy is just confession for secular pmc liberals who can afford it.
It makes them feel self-righteous for going to some shrink and talking about how sometimes they feel sad and they look down on other people who can’t afford it or who have actual mental problems it doesn’t help.
- Therapy is just confession
  Really interesting perspective.
  
  I have a higher opinion of confession tbh

Ideally people would know the difference between various services and gain a little insight into what they need either on their own or through some introductory talk therapy. Do you need DBT? Do you need EMDR? Do you need somatic therapy? Is basic CBT enough? Do you need someone who specializes in a certain disorder? Wading through all that can be hard and is rarely done properly.
- EMDR is basically just being told to go play video games. Its fucking stupid.
  
  Wut.
  My EMDR stuff has been to focus on the trauma while following a movement from left to right with my eyes. What have you been getting? O.o

If I go too deep into this sesh I'm going to get angry fast but I'm strongly of the opinion that therapy is pretty much useless and should be entirely replaced with support groups. Its far more useful to have connections and comradery than to pay some asshole with a jesus complex a fuckton of money. Even if it were free its a rip off, people you make friends with at support can look out for you and pick you up when you're down, a therapist will never do that.
Almost everything trauma related requires significant community and medical intervention, just one person vibing with you for fat stacks isn't going to do it
- Sorry but I disagree. When I had group therapy all I did was compare myself to others and thought my problems "weren't as serious" (they definitely were) as others; I didn't get the kind of attention I needed. Also, other random people aren't usually equipped with the tools necessary to be able to help people process their trauma. Under capitalism there are some things that therapists simply won't be able to solve, but that doesn't mean it's useless.

everyone loves to assert there are bad therapists, but no one likes to admit that there are bad patients
- Could you please describe a "bad patient"? Like, how can there be such a thing by definition? A psychologist, as any other medical practitioner, should be able to form a diagnosis based on the observation and listening to the patient, and then decide which treatment, if any, is adequate. How is any of this the responsibility, or even worse, fault, of the patient???
  
  Lying about yourself, missing appointments, not sticking to treatments, general contempt for the process while trying to go through it.
  Lots of ways someone can poison their own well.
- What a fucked up thing to say

I've been seeing a therapist the past 6 months. Got a lot of stuff in my past I'm trying to work through.
I think that as long as you recognize therapy is there to help you cope with the hellworld we live in I think it's valuable. It's also good for just understanding yourself and your own relationships better (I've been working through some shit with my family).
It isn't a cure all though. I think recognizing what it's for and why you're in it is important.
However, I am probably going to cut back to once a month pretty soon. Was starting with two a month because a lot of crazy shit happened right after I started therapy so like, shit was busy.

I suffered a lot of trauma as a child, physical mental and emotional abuse from both of my families and at school.
I saw dozens of psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and psychologists. Got absolutely nothing out of it.
Eventually i found my way to a Trauma Treatment Center where they specialize in fucked up little nuggets like me.
And then my life changed because I got the help I needed and was able to unwind a lot of my problems and develop coping tools for what I couldn't repair.
I'm very happy that i kept at it, my life feels very good now and I have friends and community and love.
It's never too late, never give up on yourself.
- I saw dozens of psychiatrists, counselors, therapists and psychologists. Got absolutely nothing out of it.
  Eventually i found my way to a Trauma Treatment Center where they specialize in fucked up little nuggets like me.
  And then my life changed because I got the help I needed and was able to unwind a lot of my problems and develop coping tools for what I couldn't repair.
  I wish I could do that
  The problem is that if you don't have the money/insurance/referrals/whatever to get into one of those Trauma Treatment Centers, or otherwise stumble into the actually useful people who know what to do with trauma somehow, then you're doomed to dealing with all of those other useless sorts who just tell you to meditate it off.
  how did you find or get into the Trauma Treatment Center, by the way?
  
  I never really paid for any of it; most of it was on my parents dime when I was a child and they were trying to 'fix' me. There's a 25 year gap where I had great insurance and thought i didn't need help (just alcohol, drugs, women) so didn't see anyone. Then i got incredibly depressed, couldn't get out of bed, lost my job and got on medicaid. Medicaid has been covering my therapy across 3 states for the last 7 years. After getting fired as a patient by a first year counselor his boss suggested i try to get into the trauma center and after an 8 month wait i got the first actual help in my life.
  Almost all the other therapists would get utterly hung up on suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts even when i explained to them that they were managed. they just couldn't hear me and because that was all they would focus on nothing ever progressed. I tried lying but it's hard to build a connection and trust that way.
  My trauma therapist, like, treats it like no deal. Which to me it isn't, the thoughts have been there for decades and i'm not going to act on them. When I mention them she doesn't focus on them at all and subsequently I was able to get better.
  When we first started doing sessions years ago it would literally be me pretty much ugly crying for most of the hour. Couple years before I made it through a session without crying.
  At our last session I was laughing, joking, happy, thriving, and crying but they were joyful tears.
  It took me over 40 years to get the help I needed and many black nights and many empty fifths but i'm still here baby and I'm living my best life now! Don't give up!

Shilling for big therapy

There's a lot to say about therapy, but imo it's more systemic in regards to the whole health system (well all systems really), than any criticism I have about the ideas of therapy in general.
There's a lot of different therapeutic treatments for a lot of mental health conditions. Anyone who makes sweeping statements is being overly jaded imo.
I personally have benefited from talk therapy. I think due to my isolation/neglect growing up, it's been helpful for learning to open up in a safe environment. It also was a big stepping stone as someone raised a man who had created distance from themselves emotionally their entire life up to that point.
That being said, I've also had to come to terms with the fact that no amount of talk therapy was going to rewire the parts of my psyche that are fucked due to abuse I had growing up. I've seen that there's different forms of therapy that try to help past traumas, but money is of course tight, and there's no guarantees.
I still thank my therapists for what they tried to help with, and appreciated when they told me straight up "this is out of my wheel house. I think it would serve you better if you found a specialist".
- I also did a lot of research to find a therapist who was a known comrade/ally in the local community. Very based and started the biggest community groups for trans people in the area.
  I think it's important to be able to talk about the world and it's effects in a real way, which you cannot do with a liberal or conservative person at all in my opinion.

My view is that if you have the ability to self-reflect, talk therapy is 100% useless. They aren't going to tell you anything you couldn't think of on your own.
This gets especially frustrating with ADHD where doctors try to force you to take therapy as a prerequisite for receiving medication. Sorry, but I can think of ways to deal with my problems myself without needing some dipshit listening to me. What I can't do on my own however is fix the chemical imbalance in my brain, without having access to the prescription meds that allow this.
- I disagree, there are therapists who understand professional ways of reframing experiences to help you understand a new way of interpreting them, which can be very insightful
  
  I often think about what a therapist would tell my abuser and how they would help them seek peace and comfort without actually addressing any of the harm they caused,
  Its a defferal mechanism at its worst, heres how you can be ok.
  As a marxist the only thing im actually interested in, that therapy cannot provide is restorative justice; undo the harm that has been caused, financially compensate me ect.
  I feel in a fairer society therapy would come with actual real life actions and changes to laws, politics and society. As it stands it feels more like a railroad of defferal where they can box people in and keep them as active workers paying tax.
  It has utlity, I just hate the neo-liberal conception and structure/outcomes of it.
- Not really.
  I started therapy a bit before I broke up with my abusive ex. I had always thought that I had a very good way of introspecting; when there were problems in the relationship I was able to reflect on my actions and improve myself. Turns out I was just being gaslit into thinking everything was my fault, and I needed a therapist who knew what tells of abuse and abuse victims were so it could be clear to me that I was acting like an abuse victim and my relationship was obviously and clearly abusive.
  Your perspective on yourself and your actions is not infallible, everyone is prone to biases and blindspots.
- I don't think that's very fair. I like to think I'm a thoughtful, self-reflective person, but even I need help with things. Talking with someone else openly about things I may otherwise keep to myself is very helpful to me.

I agree but I think its important to understand the experiences people have with therapists instead of dismissing them.
Sure help is good and works... In the right conditions and format with the right specialist.... IF you even know what is the root of your trauma in the first place. I imagine a lot of people here have quite serious traumas that aren't alleviated by talk therapy and realistically need a healthcare system with empathy that can triage and direct to the right treatment.
Maybe instead of just telling people "go to therapy" try to understand their problems and maybe give better directed advice. To speak from my own experience i had multiple talk therapist who all made the problems worse and really all i needed was for someone to tell me I'm autistic cos for 25 solid years i had no idea and only really found out what neurodivergence is via this website. Once i found out i did the rest of the work myself as the pieces kind of fell into place and i could seek the correct approach to handle my issues.
I had been to mental health teams multiple times for various problems and not once was this mentioned. Infact the entire UK mental health system seems to actively think these disorders don't even exist. Only recently did it start offering treatment to adults with ADHD and thought people just "grew out of it".
Medical bigotry is pervasive and i can say with some degree of certainty a lot of users have experienced something like this. On the other hand i don't think its useful to tell people not to at least try because for some it may be exactly what they need. But also don't forget this shit isn't free to people which plays a big part in perception. What's needed is a free robust and empathetic mental healthcare system with a good supply of specialists not whatever the fuck mess we have atm.

I've been in therapy for a few months now and I can say it's actually been extremely helpful. I thought I'd figured a lot of things out myself but it wasn't until I started therapy that I realized there were more deeper issues that I hadn't quite realized.
I'm not going to write a wall of text explaining everything, but at the very least if we understand that capitalism is the root of many of our problems, including our ability to get proper help, there doesn't need to be an outright rejection of the science of how the brain works.

i've posted about this before but here goes. i largely agree and sympathise with people who say talk therapy is bs. imo it's at best akin to writing in a journal with some accountability. at worst it's capitalist realist conditioning. however, there is a HUGE difference between talk therapy with some dude with a bachelor's degree and going to see an actual brain doctor, a psychologist, or cutting-edge structured therapy like DBT. i'm autistic and suffer from chronic MDD and i used to meet the BPD criteria too. i was basically completely disillusioned with "therapy" writ large, until i checked into the psych ward where luckily i was able to have sessions with a real psych and then get enrolled in a DBT program through which those sessions would continue along with group therapy. i consider the DBT program the most successful mental health intervention i have ever undergone. i still suffer greatly, but i am largely a lot more stable and able to exert much more control over the harmful coping mechanisms and self-destructive urges that overwhelmed me in the past. i would recommend it to anyone suffering from any kind of long term mental health issues or disorders, especially those related to emotional regulation.
the tragedy is that "therapy" for most people, insofar as it's what they can afford or have access to, is the former talk-therapy example which can range from useless to harmful for folks like me. i wish stuff like DBT was available to more people. still i think it's important to draw the distinction.

My insurance classifies all psychiatrists and clinical psychologists as "talk therapy" and covers none of it

I have mixed thoughts on therapy, I started it a few months ago (my health care provider offered me free therapy, yippee) and the most helpful things my therapist has done for me is recommend me books that go in depth into a subject.
There are some things I could never tell my therapist bc I know they'd try to "fix" me (namely the fact I'm plural), and dealing with that would probably do a lot of harm. I can't tell them about any self-harming thoughts because I'll be institutionalized. But it has been helpful to work through understanding my abusive relationship, how to deal with anxiety, how to navigate my relationship with my parents in a safe way that won't get me kicked out, etc.
Basically I don't know everything about the world or myself and having someone tell me what they know is useful, but the interactions also inherently feel somewhat adversarial because of the aforementioned reasons, which limits the effectiveness. I sure as fuck wouldn't pay money for it, lol.

Also scientology was in the 70s before the mental health industry really adopted ethical or scientific standards. They were kinda right about them then.

Psychology has nothing to do with 99% of my problems which are external and material. If therapy helps you, that is wonderful. It's only ever been an obstacle for me on my way to inject my legs with juice my body should have made when it was born. It has not given me comfort nor hope for living in peace in a fascist country ignorant of suffering and community.

It's fine but it doesn't scale to the need created by the systemic problems which have a much lower time and financial cost in aggregate than fucking everyone up and them needing individualized therapy.

https://gettherapybirmingham.com/power-of-brainspotting/

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