I came across an article recently: "Why Psychotherapists Fail To Help People Today"
The opening paragraphs set the tone quite accurately:
"Many people who enter psychotherapy today aren't helped at all. Some end up more troubled than when they began treatment. And ironically, some therapists are examples of the kinds of problems they're trying to treat...Many skilled and competent therapists are out there. Moreover, research shows that psychotherapy can be very effective. Either alone, or sometimes in combination with the judicious use of medication. Yet so often practitioners don't help people very much. Some struggle for years in therapy with one practitioner after another, and never seem to make any progress. Others resolve some conflicts, but then are hit with others that hadn't been addressed."
But what I thought the writer really hit the nail on the head on was the following:
"Overall, today's practitioners tend to share in, rather than critique and examine, the social norms, values and anxieties of today's world. Too often, they uncritically accept good functioning per se, and conventional values like power-seeking, as psychologically healthy. This blinds them from recognizing that "normal" adjustment can mask repressed feelings of self-betrayal, self-criticism, and the desire to be freer, more alive. All of those longings can conflict with or oppose parental expectations or the pressures from social class membership."
There are in fact still therapists who work from obsolete theoretical models, which can do more harm than good to patients and to the profession. In those situations, I believe talk therapy is useless. Therapists who also don’t redirect patients to focus on their issues, painful as that might be, rather than on the person who is not in the room, are actually validating destructive narratives — the exact opposite goal of therapy.
One thing that was not at all mentioned in this article, not even hinted at, was money. Sure the expensive therapists can miss the mark too, but in my experience, these €60 an hour therapist are just paid conversationalists. Someone you pay to have a chat with and make your inane babblings seem relevant for 50 minutes a week. I just started therapy with a psychoanalyst. Absolute f*ck ton of money per session but she's the first therapist I've had who actually challenges me very intelligently and is ready for anything. She's probably what you'd call an 'expert'.
My point being, it's not some statistical anomaly that any of you here pursuing, or who have pursued therapy are disillusioned and frustrated by the whole process. And while I'm not at all saying that therapy is a complete dead end and waste of time, and I'm well aware that a person can just have a bad experience due to a personality mismatch, some useful questions to ask yourself as an informed consumer of therapy might be:
~ Do you feel challenged by your therapist to look at yourself, but within a safe, respectful, non-judgmental environment?
~ Do you feel the therapist is capable of "seeing" you; your hidden truths?
~ Do you think the therapist is engaged and interested in helping you, as opposed to treating a diagnostic category?
The opening paragraphs set the tone quite accurately:
"Many people who enter psychotherapy today aren't helped at all. Some end up more troubled than when they began treatment. And ironically, some therapists are examples of the kinds of problems they're trying to treat...Many skilled and competent therapists are out there. Moreover, research shows that psychotherapy can be very effective. Either alone, or sometimes in combination with the judicious use of medication. Yet so often practitioners don't help people very much. Some struggle for years in therapy with one practitioner after another, and never seem to make any progress. Others resolve some conflicts, but then are hit with others that hadn't been addressed."
But what I thought the writer really hit the nail on the head on was the following:
"Overall, today's practitioners tend to share in, rather than critique and examine, the social norms, values and anxieties of today's world. Too often, they uncritically accept good functioning per se, and conventional values like power-seeking, as psychologically healthy. This blinds them from recognizing that "normal" adjustment can mask repressed feelings of self-betrayal, self-criticism, and the desire to be freer, more alive. All of those longings can conflict with or oppose parental expectations or the pressures from social class membership."
There are in fact still therapists who work from obsolete theoretical models, which can do more harm than good to patients and to the profession. In those situations, I believe talk therapy is useless. Therapists who also don’t redirect patients to focus on their issues, painful as that might be, rather than on the person who is not in the room, are actually validating destructive narratives — the exact opposite goal of therapy.
One thing that was not at all mentioned in this article, not even hinted at, was money. Sure the expensive therapists can miss the mark too, but in my experience, these €60 an hour therapist are just paid conversationalists. Someone you pay to have a chat with and make your inane babblings seem relevant for 50 minutes a week. I just started therapy with a psychoanalyst. Absolute f*ck ton of money per session but she's the first therapist I've had who actually challenges me very intelligently and is ready for anything. She's probably what you'd call an 'expert'.
My point being, it's not some statistical anomaly that any of you here pursuing, or who have pursued therapy are disillusioned and frustrated by the whole process. And while I'm not at all saying that therapy is a complete dead end and waste of time, and I'm well aware that a person can just have a bad experience due to a personality mismatch, some useful questions to ask yourself as an informed consumer of therapy might be:
~ Do you feel challenged by your therapist to look at yourself, but within a safe, respectful, non-judgmental environment?
~ Do you feel the therapist is capable of "seeing" you; your hidden truths?
~ Do you think the therapist is engaged and interested in helping you, as opposed to treating a diagnostic category?