freedompass
Warlock
- Jan 27, 2021
- 768
I get sick of seeing struggling and suffering people being asked 'have you tried therapy' along with the other generic 'mental health advice' that will be trotted out almost as if there is a bot doing this all over the internet. But they often act as if this advice is in some way new, revolutionary and groundbreaking and not so tired as to have lost all meaning.
Please note that many if not most advice givers have never 'tried' therapy themselves. They usually come to the table with zero 'lived experience' of any of the real issues the suffering person has described. Their sole qualification seems to be that unlike this poor unfortunate they function 'normally' and are therefore de facto qualified to lecture those who aren't.
I'm not pro or anti therapy I have no horses in any race except 'what has worked for me'. Some therapy (wrong person wrong time) is a complete waste of time and money. Going there under pressure from say, a family member or because someone else thought you should try it is sub optimal.
I won't insult your intelligence! You have the internet and can work out for yourself whether it makes sense to you or not to hire a qualified experienced professional to listen to you in a safe space with appropriate boundaries in return for a fee.
Because when it comes to mental health care there is no such thing as one size fits all.
However good their intentions may be, if they give generic one size fits all advice they are not good counsellors and should probably switch careers.
The effectiveness of a therapeutic or counselling relationship is contingent on a genuine connection and rapport being established with that individual.
And to some extent that is a 2 way street. However the therapist should be the one guiding and setting the pace. Otherwise, frankly, they should be paying you.
In my previous post https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/online-counselling-therapy.105618/ I strongly recommend that you find a way to pay for ongoing therapy with someone you like and trust.
'Free' therapy on the NHS or from the charity sector is very likely to be an exercise in discouragement, gaslighting, disappointment, betrayal and entrenching you even deeper in the mire of self loathing and hopelessness that caused you to seek help in the first place!
Let's look into why that is and why I so strongly recommend finding a way to pay and going online.
For the sake of argument let's take grief/bereavement counselling. In the UK you may be able to access this by self referring to some kind of charity, however this will be on a fixed timeline because…sadly…people die everyday so grieving people will be queuing around the block so to speak.
A brief acquaintance with True Crime will confirm that grief affects everyone differently.
If the grief counselling is free though, they have no choice but to offload you after a certain number of sessions.
Sometimes a counsellor will be disingenuous and say they think it's about time you moved to the 5th stage of grief 'acceptance'. I need hardly point out how utterly absurd that is. But the charity has to apply for funding in order to survive! In order to get funding they need to be able to point to 'visible' 'verifiable' outcomes. This equates to a customer feedback questionnaire such as you might be presented with after ordering pizza or kumquats on Amazon. Yes, I told you it was absurd.
So if you don't shut the f*** up, stick a smile on your face and get right back out there to your call centre hellgrind…you are the counsellor's enemy coz you are gonna get the charity canned and they'll be out of a job! Conflict of interest, anyone?
How in good conscience does the poor counsellor juggle all those different plates at once while struggling with his or her own cognitive dissonance and need to pay their bills?
No wonder you will often get the impression that the counsellor needs more help than you do!
If the counsellor drops the plates and gives up fully engaging with the clients who are his/her bread and butter…guess who gets shortchanged? Like, you didn't reach the grief milestones in the requisite time…guess what. You da failure. You da bad guy. And that's not at all a slap in the face or invalidating, is it? How is it not supportive, how?
No cynicism here this is the reality of modern mental health 'care'.
Please note that many if not most advice givers have never 'tried' therapy themselves. They usually come to the table with zero 'lived experience' of any of the real issues the suffering person has described. Their sole qualification seems to be that unlike this poor unfortunate they function 'normally' and are therefore de facto qualified to lecture those who aren't.
I'm not pro or anti therapy I have no horses in any race except 'what has worked for me'. Some therapy (wrong person wrong time) is a complete waste of time and money. Going there under pressure from say, a family member or because someone else thought you should try it is sub optimal.
I won't insult your intelligence! You have the internet and can work out for yourself whether it makes sense to you or not to hire a qualified experienced professional to listen to you in a safe space with appropriate boundaries in return for a fee.
Because when it comes to mental health care there is no such thing as one size fits all.
However good their intentions may be, if they give generic one size fits all advice they are not good counsellors and should probably switch careers.
The effectiveness of a therapeutic or counselling relationship is contingent on a genuine connection and rapport being established with that individual.
And to some extent that is a 2 way street. However the therapist should be the one guiding and setting the pace. Otherwise, frankly, they should be paying you.
In my previous post https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/online-counselling-therapy.105618/ I strongly recommend that you find a way to pay for ongoing therapy with someone you like and trust.
'Free' therapy on the NHS or from the charity sector is very likely to be an exercise in discouragement, gaslighting, disappointment, betrayal and entrenching you even deeper in the mire of self loathing and hopelessness that caused you to seek help in the first place!
Let's look into why that is and why I so strongly recommend finding a way to pay and going online.
For the sake of argument let's take grief/bereavement counselling. In the UK you may be able to access this by self referring to some kind of charity, however this will be on a fixed timeline because…sadly…people die everyday so grieving people will be queuing around the block so to speak.
A brief acquaintance with True Crime will confirm that grief affects everyone differently.
If the grief counselling is free though, they have no choice but to offload you after a certain number of sessions.
Sometimes a counsellor will be disingenuous and say they think it's about time you moved to the 5th stage of grief 'acceptance'. I need hardly point out how utterly absurd that is. But the charity has to apply for funding in order to survive! In order to get funding they need to be able to point to 'visible' 'verifiable' outcomes. This equates to a customer feedback questionnaire such as you might be presented with after ordering pizza or kumquats on Amazon. Yes, I told you it was absurd.
So if you don't shut the f*** up, stick a smile on your face and get right back out there to your call centre hellgrind…you are the counsellor's enemy coz you are gonna get the charity canned and they'll be out of a job! Conflict of interest, anyone?
How in good conscience does the poor counsellor juggle all those different plates at once while struggling with his or her own cognitive dissonance and need to pay their bills?
No wonder you will often get the impression that the counsellor needs more help than you do!
If the counsellor drops the plates and gives up fully engaging with the clients who are his/her bread and butter…guess who gets shortchanged? Like, you didn't reach the grief milestones in the requisite time…guess what. You da failure. You da bad guy. And that's not at all a slap in the face or invalidating, is it? How is it not supportive, how?
No cynicism here this is the reality of modern mental health 'care'.
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