The endless pressure to "just reach out", "ask for help" and "see your GP" drives me mad. I'm also in the UK and the NHS provision is massively gaslighting. I went through an assessment and then they told me I was too severe for primary care services (ie six weeks of CBT) but secondary services have nothing appropriate to offer me. This is after months of waiting, various confusing and upsetting assessment appointments. Then the way they phrase it and talk to you means you end up feeling there is something particularly wrong and hopeless about you. Except years later I found out that so many people are being told the same.
I have been through this process repeatedly. Never again. I have depression and GAD - they can't even address that.
My GP literally told me they have nothing suitable to refer me to and I should contact MIND (a charity). I had explained that I was feeling suicidal. MIND just had endless waiting lists and copied me in on another client's emails. Trust gone.
Right now, I am lucky enough to be able to pay privately. It took months of first appointments with awful therapists for me to realise that it's not just that I am unreachable, but that there are so many inadequate and deeply shit therapists out there. One woman within two minutes of starting the call, asked me if I felt my parents were happy at the moment of my conception. WTF??? I had never spoken to this woman before and I'd said nothing to trigger such a question.
I do believe that there are good therapists out there, and good forms of therapy, but I haven't found them.
Stephanie Foo's book on healing her cPTSD is interesting, although her approach is totally beyond most people. The audio book includes recordings of sessions with her therapist, Dr Jacob Ham. I found their YouTube interview fascinating. (The first third of her book is very challenging when she is describing her childhood.)
It's been kind of a relief to stop looking for a good therapist, but also pretty desperate to realise there is likely no help out there.
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@Larysa The problem with the UK is we have all these celebrities and influencers going on TV, making BBC, ITV News documentaries or writing glossy magazine or newspaper columns about how therapy helped them and how we all need to go therapy and the importance of reaching out. I would have more respect for these celebrities if they raised awareness of that the general public can not access therapy as the NHS is inaccessible when it comes to mental health treatment. People are literally dying waiting.
Its is like mental health has become a one big business enterprise for individuals to cash in and boost their public profile rather than helping vulnerable people.
We have to be homest as a nation that our mental health care system is broken in this country and many severely mentally ill people are not getting the healthcare they need. If cancer patients in the UK where being treated appallingly by the NHS and unable to get treatment there would be outrage from the public, macmilian and the army of cancer charities demanding reform. The NHS wouldn't be allowed to get away with it. The same attitude needs to apply to mental health.
The British public pay tax into this healthcare system and the public is not getting a good value for money. No this is not fair. I am sorry you went through all that you deserved so much better.
it's a hard and long battle to find an actually good therapist when you finally get in too. i fought so hard to get a therapist just for them to be of absolutely no use to me, be called treatment resistant, and be told "i don't know how to help you"
all that time and money wasted lol. it's so hard just to get in and even harder to be successful
"i don't know how to help you"- Excuse me so what were these therapists doing while they were studying psychology at university and training to be therapist.
If a therapist can not help you then what the hell are doing in their well furnished offices with their shiny degree certificate pinned against the wall.. I am so sorry you went through that.
it's a hard and long battle to find an actually good therapist when you finally get in too. i fought so hard to get a therapist just for them to be of absolutely no use to me, be called treatment resistant, and be told "i don't know how to help you"
all that time and money wasted lol. it's so hard just to get in and even harder to be successful
"i don't know how to help you"- Excuse me so what were these therapists doing while they were studying psychology at university and training to be therapist.
If a therapist can not help you then what the hell are doing in their well furnished offices with their shiny degree certificate pinned against the wall.. I am so sorry you went through that.
In my city the councillors are so so shit, either completely do not understand my situation or are Christian (which is a trigger). The GPs are impossible to get a hold of and if you do get a phone appointment they want it to end as quick as possible and are completely dismissive. If you want to see a psychiatrist/psychologist you have to be in the psych ward - I have been trying to see them outpatient for 3 years - this is a notoriously abusive unit where they are neglectful, still use face-down restraint and rubbed a psychotic man's face into the carpet giving him large friction burns. There is no way for me to be diagnosed let alone receive support - and I am in the UK so have free healthcare idek how much harder it is must be for Americans. It feels so hopeless, so it really frustrates me when people simplify it down to "go to therapy, you just don't want to help yourself". It proves how little they understand about these situations.
@backtoearth The most sad thing is the same people who say "go see a therapist " are the same people who will not cope if they end up having a mental health crisis or breakdown themselves or see a loved one struggle with mental illness close to home.
True. Its so expensive. And aside from the costs, finding a good therapist that you feel safe with is not easy, either, so before you do, you'll already spend a lot of money.
@dead_milky Therapy is an essential tool in helping people cope with their feelings, phobias, insecurities etc but it has now become a luxury for the rich and higher income middle classes in society. It's so immoral how it has been allowed to happen.
It's so annoying seeing celebrities and influencers promoting therapy while failing to acknowledge the fact is not everyone can afford it.
A big elephant in the room I think, is that institutions don't want to admit that therapy is very much an art and not a science. Therefore, the current public policies delegating how and when access to therapy is doled out are woefully misinformed. It's all 6 month waiting lists for cookie cutter CBT programmes, if anything. When this is not what the vast majority of people want or need.
Therapists themselves will admit their own profession is highly subjective and any sort of positive effect tends to stem with the connection/relationship they have with the client more than anything else- demonstrating how utterly nebulous the whole racket is. Yet, there is a growing push to try and deny this and to develop these one size fits all approaches like CBT which attempt to give the profession some scientific validity, as this modality claims to be evidence based and "effective for the majority of clients" despite so many individuals reporting that CBT made them feel worse or achieved no effect at all.
I think few people understand the limited scope of problems that most therapists know how to deal with, but because the powers that be who call the shots don't know how to fix certain mental health issues or don't want to admit that we're in the stone ages when it comes to brain related research, they push therapy as the solution for everybody without any regard for how expensive it is or the dubious assessments of it's efficacy that often remain clandestine.
As a child, I spent many years in therapy and came out worse on the other side, because when I was in therapy suddenly I had these mature authority figures constantly blaming me for things completely outside of my control as an adolescent. I especially felt shame for being autistic and unable to mask it, as one of my therapists would constantly berate me for being unable to make eye contact and criticize my body language. When I went to therapy, it was basically a weekly venting session wherein I would get told to cope with the abusive turmoil around me by doing colouring books, gratitude journals, or breathing exercises. I think therapy broke me in a lot of ways. Lots of them lied to keep getting a check every week, rather than admitting they didn't know how to help.
Then I got told I needed a higher standard of care, a trauma specialist. These people charged a small fortune and wouldn't disclose how effective their methods actually were nor any kind of success rate for their clients. If I had went to those therapists they would have bled me dry because of the absurd amounts of money they charged for their fees. They were unwilling to compromise on their prices either, even when my therapist at the time explained that I had no parents or anyone to support me.
When I started living in the UK I was even more appalled by how nonexistent NHS offerings were, as well as how insanely expensive and bad the private therapists were too. Yet so many times I'm told I should go gamble 120£ a session on these so called trauma experts who probably took a one day Coursera course to get that trauma informed moniker slapped on their psychology today page, because if I don't do this I'm apparently not trying to fix my PTSD. What a joke.
I'm very sorry to hear what happened in your workplace as well as the aftermath on social media. Those power mods are so uncaring and treat anyone having difficulties in life as a buzzkill, trying to immediately shut anyone down and telling them to go see a therapist. I was in a group like this before, where the people who had deep issues were continually shut out the more they opened up. A mod would always tell these people, myself included, that we need professional help and to go see a therapist instead of talking about it online to "untrained individuals." People really think that showing understanding and support is outside of their paygrade nowadays and needs to be delegated to therapists.
You're better off without a group like that. If you can't even share what's going on in your life, like the loss of a draining job and the effects that toxic environment had on you, then these people are not true friends I think. The handwave and suggestion to see a therapist just shows that person wasn't willing to listen to you as a friend and simply wanted you out of their hair, which is incredibly frustrating behavior.
I wish that there were real, socioeconomic solutions to people's woes. Maybe if others (especially celebrities and the media) were not simping for therapists all the time and took a moment to reflect on what is causing a lot of today's mental health issues they'd realize that in a lot of cases therapy is simply masking/holding back the despair from overflowing in people who are dealing with unwinnable situations rather than actually enabling them to have happy or fulfilling lives.
@KuriGohan&Kamehameha The thing is NOT everyone needs therapy to help them with their problems and feelings. What helped me deal with my insecurities over my last job was meeting in real life another woman who experienced the same problem as me. Sometimes connecting with your fellow human being can make a huge difference.
In the summer I went on a course helping unemployed people find work . In one group work activity I met a woman in her 30s and an Immigrant from Romaina. During the 10 minutes we had together it was so shocking how we are so similar.
She then opened up to me about the bullying and humiliation she received at work. Her boss was an English woman who constantly humiliated her in front of colleagues and the male colleagues also joined in the bullying. The woman and I we both lost our jobs around the same time each other. This year January she quit her job as she got tired of the daily bullying and weeks later after she quit I got fired from my job in mid February.
I was visibly horrified as she gave the details and I deeply sympathised with her. Then I told her my story. We both wished each other well. It was so comforting knowing in another workplace there was a woman like me who struggled at work just I did. She just like me fought and endured til she couldn't no more.
We would be a much better society if we actually connected with each other over our struggles and helped people find a way to deal with their problems. Looking back now I just needed comfort and meeting people who through similar situations.
