If you don't put anything into therapy then of course it isn't going to work.
With a competent therapist, the more resistant the client, the more effective the treatment. Unfortunately, 9999.999% of all therapists are completely incompetent.
One of the rare exceptions was Milton H. Erickson, late in his life. For one demonstration, he brought a powerful young antiauthority dude up to the stage before students at the auditorium where he was giving his presentation. This big strong man really had a chip on his shoulder and figured he'd put the legendary psychiatrist in his place. As they shook hands, he tried to crush Erickson's hand into dust. MS merely asked him, "Would you be willing not to see your left foot?" To the thug's astonishment, his foot was instantly invisible to him! (As a seven year old boy on his family's farm, young Erickson watched silently as a bunch of big strong farmhands tried in vain to drag a resistant large animal into a barn before rains came. The more they yanked, pulled and tugged, the more the animal pulled back in resistance. Then, without saying a word, young Erickson walked up behind the animal, took hold of the tail, gave it a sharp yank, and the beast bolted forward into the barn.)
Milton Erickson died 40 years ago, yet therapy is not 40 years better than when he passed away, but 400 years WORSE!
If I tell you (and this is the classic example in covert suggestion), "Don't think of elephants!," just how much effort do you have to put into thinking of elephants.
Every single therapist who needs a client or patient to put anything into treatment is a COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT THERAPIST!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!
For temporarily relieving my Major Depressive Disorder for several months in 1996 and 1997, all the effort I needed to put into it was the effort of swallowing the Prozac I was prescribed. If a therapist requires more from any client or patient to be effective, then that so called therapist should go into a completely different line of work, like bussing restaurant tables or collecting garbage.
The most effective therapists not only do not require you to put anything into therapy, but the more you resist, the more effective they are.
Actually, the truly great ones aside from Milton Erickson, like Dave Elman, Kreskin and Tony Robbins (who regardless was not able to help me), never even attended college, and that is not a coincidence.
Richard Bandler, the co creator of Neuro Linguistic Programming and developer of Design Human Engineering flunked psychology in college and described NLP as his revenge.
One exception aside from Bandler and Erickson with an advanced college degree is Steven Heller. With his PhD, he is fond of saying that PhD is an abbreviation which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. (I've read "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing As HYPNOSIS?" and Heller's a pretty cool guy.)
Everybody I've ever met with a degree in mental health is a completely incompetent therapist, and that includes EVERYBODY I met in the mental health unit of the hospital where I worked for eight years out of high school. Combined with my experiences getting infected with iatrogenic depression from fuckhead school psychologist, I have since strictly confined myself to the services of psychiatric prescribers who hate therapy as much as I do and confine themselves strictly to the medicine of mental disturbances.
