I have had a lot of therapists. Most of them were useless. I don’t know how much they were the problem vs. how much I wasn’t ready for therapy. Maybe it was both.

I started seeing a therapist shortly after a traumatic incident. I saw this idiot for years and he was completely useless. I kept thinking he’d get better somehow. He treated me like I was a friend there for casual conversation. He refused to focus on helping me with my issues. When I told him stories related to my trauma, he kept asking completely irrelevant questions. “My friend’s boyfriend accused me of lying” “where is he from?” What worldly difference does it possibly make where he was from? The therapist kept promising that next time he’d focus and he never did. I went through a period where I was really obsessively depressed about poverty and this idiot pointed out big houses to me, expecting me to be impressed when to me big houses are a waste of space where unhoused people ought to be allowed to live. If I were still seeing this stupid therapist now, and talking about my anxiety over how Trump’s administration is oppressing people, I bet he’d try to talk to me about how cool Trump’s ballroom is going to be. Eventually I took a course about counselling and realized my stupid therapist was making no attempt whatsoever to use any techniques to help me. The ironic and confusing thing about it is he taught my teacher for that course.

I also had a counselor at my university who was useless. I kept having to explain to her over and over again why I believe I was treated unjustly by the university. She kept making the same arguments over and over again to defend them and I kept making the same refutations over and over again.

But now I have a therapist who is actually helping me. I have been seeing her for a few years and it has greatly improved my life and my relationship with my family. I’m not sure I can quire explain how she has helped me. Initially, I wanted to talk through the things that had happened in my past and how it affected me, but she convinced me that first we should focus on learning techniques to better manage my behaviours when I’m overwhelmed. She helped me with that and now I’m much better at dealing with difficult situations and am now better able to discuss my past traumas without getting angry or confused. Now I’m slowly but surely processing my past trauma and healing from it

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I’m not saying there aren’t bad therapists. No matter what the field is, there are people who do it poorly, and it is possible that you just happened to get a bad one every single time, but it’s also possible, and much more likely that you got in your own way.

Our minds are really good at protecting themselves from uncomfortable thoughts. Maybe too good. We block out memories that hurt too much, and we convince ourselves that we are right just because being wrong would create too much inner turmoil.

My brother is schizoaffective. He hears things that don’t exist. On multiple occasions, I have talked to him about things that he thinks occurred, and even though nobody else in the room could hear the angry man outside yelling insults directed at him, he refuses to believe it didn’t happen. He’s just convinced that his hearing is much better than ours.

He would complain that his therapist was so obsessed with “trying to convince him that he’s crazy” and that they never tried to solve what HE thought was the problem. So he would stop going, stop taking his meds, and next thing we know, he’s driven halfway across the country because he was trying to escape the people who are out to get him.

It really seems like nobody should know us better than ourselves, but usually, other people can see all the things that we are afraid to admit to ourselves.

If every psychiatrist/therapist is telling you that X is the problem you should work on, then maybe you should stop looking at what YOU think it is and give the professionals a chance. If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s a REALLY good sign that you might actually be making progress and not just unconsciously dancing around the real issue.

I wish I could tell you. My experiences (also mostly on the NHS) have been just as useless and in most cases far more actively harmful than in any way helpful.

Finding the right therapist for the right problem can be difficult. Have you been very upfront with these thoughts during therapy? Maybe even ask them point blank why approaching therapy the way you want is not viable? If they have no rational response, I question their skills and adaptability.

Heya sorry to hear you have had such a head streak with your therapists. I have gender dysphoria and see a therapist because of that so that I can get onto the hormones. I also have a BSc in Psychology. By no means am I an expert on therapy.

What you describe is not what I experience or know through the studies. I was quite clear what I want out of my therapy, what issues I need addressed and my therapist has been guiding me through these. She is taking the time to listen to my pov and is mainly asking follow up questions. She provides an excellent mirror, tells me when I have an unhealthy response to stimuli or situations and asks me if I want to work on those now, later or never because I don’t see it as an issue.

She makes sure I feel safe and heard and we have made substantial progress. But I am also very open to all approaches she throws at me as well as open to any and all homework’s because I have also a professional interest in what she is applying.

Overall I would say you assess the therapist as much as they do you. You need to feel safe and heard, if they do not make a good match for you swap. It is laborious, tedious and annoying but I think well worth it.

Depending on where you are and how your situation is this is easier or harder but remember you don’t have to be there I person and you might be able to use online services. I once tried to verify the quality of betterhelp and the articles (peer reviewed not newspaper stuff) that I’ve found, deemed it to be overall good to very good. I am sure there are many more equally good or better out there. Maybe someone here has some hands on experience too with the online help and can give some better advise than I can.

You got this, don’t give up on therapy just yet. Wish you all the best!

So I’m going through this right now with my therapist who I’ve been with for 3 years now. And, the last session I had with her, was an attempt to re-align what we’re to work on because the session before that, I was in no mood to discuss whatever it was she wanted to work on with me. And I felt incredibly invalidated and unseen because, I was showing a lot of visual cues that was like “I’m not interested, I’m emotional, I’m angry at everything and everyone right now” and while she did pick up on that, she obliviously carried on.

There had been an awful lot of questionable things she’s told me that didn’t simply sit well. I’m not sure if she’s not articulating her points well or what, I’d like to think she isn’t being deliberate but she delivers her words so conclusively that it really makes me convinced that she’s not helping as much as she thinks.

You’re going into therapy, to unpack, to learn about and to work with mental issues or challenges that you yourself need a little assistance on. You’re trusting a professional (someone with PsyD, PhD .etc) to do that for you and their job is to help navigate, resolve and help you understand. They aren’t there to sugarcoat anything, if they’re going to tell you something that is something you didn’t realize before, it’s going to hurt.

I know for certain that therapists are not meant to leave you feeling worse off, like mine kinda is now. They aren’t supposed to argue with you, raise your emotional levels or escalate anything. They also aren’t yes-men either. It’s about finding the right neutral balance and if a therapist can’t do that for you, then it’s not really a good form of therapy.

I’m sorry you had those experiences. That’s not fair. Those are NOT descriptions of helpful therapy.

Do you have a guess on what has contributed toward your symptoms? Very broadly here, nature (e.g., bipolar type 1) vs nurture (e.g., grew up in dysfunctional family)? If you have traumatic symptoms, have you considered a therapist specializing in trauma?

Am I being paranoid, unlucky or just expecting something that isn’t at all aligned with reality?

This sounds like bad luck. It’s not you!

There is exciting research being done on the metabolic mental health connection. https://www.metabolicmind.org/resources/science/clinical-trials/ it’s early days, but fixing your metabolism and changing a diet are fairly low cost things to do.

Depression, bipolar, schizoaffective disorder appear to be responsive.

It might be a combination of bad therapists and not having the right style of therapy.

I finally went back to therapy after a couple decades last year, and the therapist I found does TEAM-CBT (Testing, Empathy, Agenda-Setting, and Methods). I still get a lot of the CBT style methods, but this way forces me to put down actionable goals or at least quantify the feelings/beliefs/problems I have. I absolutely despise putting a quantitative label on ephemeral topics/ideas/concepts, but I will say, it has done a lot for me and has made enough of a difference that people close to me have commented on my improvement.

Might be worth looking into, since part of the TEAM process is figuring out what you want to work on, and from there they can help you figure out the steps to get you there.

As with a lot of things, it’s contextual and subjective.

In my , personal experience, it depends partly on what of therapy methods will work for the current you and partly on chemistry/connection.

Like aromantic dating, you might hit it off immediately, you might go through x number of potentials before you find one that works.

I currently seem to respond best to conversation partner dynamics, like brain rubber ducking with add-ons.

Previously i’ve not responded well to that at all, and purely analytical detached professionalism was the way in.

so TL;DR;

For me it’s:

• General Vibe
• Perceived competence (actual competence is important, but it’s no help if you don’t believe they are competent)
• Actual Competence
• And further down the line, results.

In that order.

Each one is required to get to the following stage.

As for how it actually feels, i got nothing, that’s partly why the therapy in the first place.

I know a good therapist if you’re interested. Therapy IMO is not meant to guide you. A good therapist will ask you questions to help you guide yourself.

We need more information. What specifically is bothering you and what kind of solution do you hypothesize would help?

Modern therapy is relational, not psychoanalytical. We’ll sit and do the psychoanalysis routine with you because that’s still what a lot of people think therapy is. But it’s not important to do that; nor is it wrong if it helps you build trust in the therapeutic relationship. Ultimately, healing comes not from understanding your brain or the past fully but from forming a working relationship with a therapist and giving it time for new neural pathways to form and get reinforced.