Discussion Experiences with Therapy?

[Pᴜrple]

What are some of your experiences with therapy and what effect did it have on your desire to ctb?

 

[alwayssearching202]

My step mother has a doctoral in psychology. She has worked at many elite children's schools as a counselor. She is the one that told me from the age of three I am worthless, she deprived me of food, locked me in harsh environments without warm cloths, she physically abused my brother. The list is very long.

Before anyone says this was an exception, I agree. She is an extreme case and no one profession should be judged by the worst of them.

I've spent years as an adult and a lot of money trying to find some help. My latest therapist spends most of our time griping about her own life because she deems me to be a "competent adult". I would never discourage someone from seeking professional help. I would only caution qualifications are thoroughly checked and intuition used. But in most health systems this is hard to do since you must take what you can get.

 

[Q_Hayley]

This might be an uncommon answer but I really enjoyed therapy, my therapist was a lovely woman and it really felt nice to have someone to just be able to chat with (even if I was paying her £90 an hour)

Weirdly it actually cemented my belief that ctb was the best option for me because by talking through my options and pain it made it clear that whilst my circumstances made my life much worse, it was living at its core I had an issue with I guess?

 

[piryohae3]

I found them largely unhelpful and even condescending at times. I believe available treatments for mental health aren't advanced enough to be effective. Their current solution is to tell you to just deal with it so you can hurry up and be a good obedient cog so the capitalist machine can extract that sweet exploitable labor from you and pay you for less than what you're worth.

 

[Tired_of_myself]

I feel more depressed after therapy, because talking makes things more real and with no real solutions... I failed to ctb last month and now my therapist sends me more texts than my mom lol and also I can't manage my meds alone now...

 

[UKscotty]

They will tell you to document your thoughts, eat healthy and get outdoors for a walk.

There is just not much they can do other than that.

 

[Abyssal]

Oh man, let me go through it all.

When I was 12-13 I had probably my best therapist. I had my first suicide attempt, which was due to trauma resulting in my near inability to hold a conversation. She was tasked with keeping me alive and teaching me social skills. Overall her being someone I felt trust with, and while I never actually improved it was because of my childishness more than her. Then she retired.

My next therapist was shit. I had gotten better at speaking but at a certain point in conversation I'd stop and struggle. She was also there to teach me social skills, but failed. She'd take my sudden silence as evidence that the meeting was over and send me out. She saw 3 (maybe more?) of my attempts and I remember nothing but how much I hated her. Imagine paying the money just for the therapist to send you out the second you go in. Bitch is still doing therapy too.

This last one is hard for me to talk about. A year ago I found Sasu and it was something of a wake up call that I needed serious help. I'd been trying to get a therapist for a year and had been left on some bullshit make believe waitlist, but my sudden capability to actually die given the resources here pushed me to really try this time. Life had been hell, 2023 was horrible for me, I was at my lowest point in my life, even compared to the trauma. So I found her, a therapist who demanded to see me twice as much as I wanted and probably for the money. It was okay though, because I had hope because of her. It took a lot of time to trust her, but a few months later I did! I told her about my suicidal thoughts, my time on sasu, I even admitted that I was scared I'd hurt myself and that I'd do anything to get better. Big mistake. She dropped me the next day, told me I was one of the sweetest people she'd ever met but I don't believe her. Told me to try outpatient, which is too expensive for me, and went on her way. My father convinced her to give me another try but the betrayal made me refuse. God i don't know why I tried.

I'm currently on Zoloft, learned my lesson and lied about my suicidal thoughts to get it. I said that I couldn't pay for the therapy and that it wasn't working for me anyways, to which the doctor told me that in my chart the therapist had stated that I had never made any progress in any meeting. She never had any hope for me.

If you read all that, thanks. It's painful for me to recall.

 

[dhaak]

They can't change reality, but can change the way you view it. I suffered from anxiety attacks, and with exposure therapy I was able to put up a battle against it. I do believe in therapy to some extent, but it's not for everyone.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Just terrible. Too long to recount now but....just terrible.

I think therapy is generally a terrible place to talk about suicidal thoughts. Leaving aside involuntary hospitalization, even if it doesn't get to that point in my experience the topic if CTB freaks most therapists out. Even if you explicitly mention you have no imminent plan, their minds will still simulteanously be focused on calculating the risk to themselves.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

Even if you explicitly mention you have no imminent plan, their minds will still simulteanously be focused on calculating the risk to themselves.

Therapists / psych docs might actually have a risk if one of their patients commits suicide despite their treatment. A risk for therapists should be excluded by law. That would probably help in this case.

I tried therapy once but it failed - that was already clear before it started, that therapy isn't a fix for my problem. Well my depressive episodes are caused by external factors that can neither be fixed with therapy nor meds. The therapist was ok but each time I asked him what he suggests I should do I never got a real answer - I'm not mad at him - he also had no idea how I could fix the circumstances in a suitable and satisfying way for me.

 

[alivefornow]

Doesn't make me want to kill myself any less.

 

[ForgottenAgain]

I have a very positive experience with therapy. I started therapy at 14 and always spoke freely about my suicidal thoughts, self harm, hearing voices, etc. This was a private psychologist back when I lived in Portugal.

He is still my psychologist to this day, 16 years later. I spoke about Sasu and my thoughts on ctb, which method I was considering and that I felt it was a very rational decision like I have never felt before. He told me about being more dangerous when it's rational and we spoke about why I wanted to kill myself and figure out the issue stems from isolation and a lack of long term goals.

My psychologist has been instrumental in my life, even though it is a paid service, he has been there for me and has been the most helpful person in my life. I don't think I would be alive if it wasn't for him.

Having said all that, it is important to choose a psychologist that resonates with you otherwise it won't work. Prior to this psychologist I went to the school psychologist and it was absolute shit. I also had another psychologist through work temporarily and I didn't feel like he was that good so I dropped him.

 

[cold_severance]

no other profession has this amount of psychopaths and none of these shits can "help" with anything more severe than mild anxiety. i have exactly zero positive developments or even just useful insights from therapy. if you have worse knowledge than random people on mh forums and cant even beat neural networks at your own fucking job, then you shouldnt have taken it up in the first place.

 

[MrDarkness]

It's very helpful depending on the therapist, I'll list the 3 type of therapist
1 the pill pusher, they push pills on you
2 the laid back, helpful but kinda distant from the truth
3 dead honest, they tell you how it is, and how to fix it, but says it's not easy

Therapy can work if given the right circumstances, but if you don't feel a bond with your therapist or feel they aren't helping, no shame in switching to another one

 

[vampire2002]

i've been in therapy on and off for years. i know it works for some people, but at the end of the day i just feel like i'm going in circles most of the time. it's mostly good for having a place to vent when you need it, but i haven't actually been getting the help i really need, because it's just not something that's possible. my therapist can't change my circumstances, only i can, and i currently lack the mental ability to do so, despite trying. my therapist tells me to be patient with myself, but everything else in the world feels like it's telling me to hurry up, get better faster, be normal, be productive, do better, etc. not conducive to actual healing or whatever. therapy would be better and helpful if you could actually do what's best for you and not just what you need to do. at least that's what it feel i personally would've needed out of it. i ghosted my therapist again a couple of weeks ago.

 

[hellispink]

Therapy can give you insight and educate you about different coping mechanisms. HOWEVER, it is useless at its max extent. Have been on therapy my whole life. Therapy cannot change your environment your family your past trauma neither it can take away your problems. It cant help the world either. We live in a shit hole society. Doesnt matter how much therapy, one cannot ignore how shitty this world is and how horrible is to live in it. So to keep it short, worth it only if you think you need some self discovery but if you want like a fix or something i doubt it would ever work, and if it does its a change of mindset (lying to one self to survive) which most people actually do and abide to.

 

[divinemistress36]

I love my therapist and it's nice having someone to talk to every week and is empathetic and shares my views. But since my depression is biological and from brain damage it can't help my constant thoughts of wanting to die

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Therapists / psych docs might actually have a risk if one of their patients commits suicide despite their treatment. A risk for therapists should be excluded by law. That would probably help in this case.

There is a risk especially in America, which is well-known for being an exceedingly litigious country. But the implications of that risk detract from the therapeutic potential of the process. They definitely should revise how liability is treated.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I found them largely unhelpful and even condescending at times. I believe available treatments for mental health aren't advanced enough to be effective. Their current solution is to tell you to just deal with it so you can hurry up and be a good obedient cog so the capitalist machine can extract that sweet exploitable labor from you and pay you for less than what you're worth.

Touché to this. I believe the same thing regarding the available treatments for mental health. Though, most of the time, it isn't just mental health, it's also trying to deal with people who see the world for what it really is or those who simply have no long term goals here or other types of people who get grouped with those with mental health issues despite not having a mental health issue. Either way, I also believe treatment for all of these people isn't advanced enough. I know therapy works for some but, for those with significant issues that can't be healed by platitudes, I view therapy in the equivalent way that people view medival methods used to cure the black plague