Anyone ever try therapy?

[paulo]

see a psychologist they are not qualified to put you on medication.
so they cant.

but its always up to you if you take anything or not.
its even up to you if you listen to them or not.
or if you talk or not and what you talk about.
they cant make you do anything.
they are there to help you help yourself.

what you do with it is up to you.

theyre not almighty know it al beings or something
i disagread with mine quite a lot and you can just tell em so.
thats the point really.
finding out what the problem is, you argue you discuss, its the process thats importand really.
you have to put in a lot yourself, you cant just sit down and have him fix things.
basicly hes just sitting there while you fix yourself
he just knows a little bit more about what kinda questions might be helpfull and usefull to think aboub.
if you get nothing out of it your more to "blame" than he is.
hes just a tool for you to use to help yourself.

 

[Foxo]

It's true that these people are there to help you help yourself, however most will tend to push you in certain directions when they think they've found your problem. In my case, it was in a direction I didn't want to go. I felt utterly disrespected, and was treated as if my opinion (the same opinion that sought help initially) were something completely unimportant.

My issue is that most believe they know more about your condition then you do as the one experiencing it. Makes me feel like a lot of psychiatrists and/or psychologists have a bit of an arrogance complex.

 

[paulo]

It's true that these people are there to help you help yourself, however most will tend to push you in certain directions when they think they've found your problem. In my case, it was in a direction I didn't want to go. I felt utterly disrespected, and was treated as if my opinion (the same opinion that sought help initially) were something completely unimportant.

My issue is that most believe they know more about your condition then you do as the one experiencing it. Makes me feel like a lot of psychiatrists and/or psychologists have a bit of an arrogance complex.

yep you definetly have to stick up for yourself.
guess im just to stubborn to accept anything from anyone unless im really sure thats the way it is, and even than i might just see it differently
you have to stick up for yourself, as you always should actually.
might not be easy considering the way your feeling at the time.
it helps if you find someone you get along with.
but even if you dont you can ask for someone else.
just remember he or she works for you.
if hes doing or saying anything you feel uncomfortable with, tell him.
more to talk about , thats good
just do it politely and stay respectfull.
if hes being an arrogant dick just tell him, if he keeps it up, fire his ass.

 

[Foxo]

Well, I was always under the impression that they were there to help. However decisions were made for me without my consent, and then it was never explained why that decision would be better for me than one I genuinely wanted. I was blantantly disrespected, and this wasn't just one individual but the whole group of therapists. There is no way I can feel comfortable in an environment where they don't regard my opinion in the least, and don't understand my situation at all.

 

[paulo]

depending on the reason why you went in the first place, you chose to go or were made to/ had to go for some reason, or age maybe things might be different.

but they can never do something without your permission.
discussing with the group is pretty standard though.
they are never allowed to discuss you or anything about you with anyone on the outside without your permission.
ofc disrespecting you and not regarding your opinoin is just bad theraputing (is there a verb for what a therapist does ?? ).

but apperently people feeling unheard or mistreated and uncomfortable happens more that it should.
ashame really cause it can be really helpfull.
but i guess there are people doing their job badly in every profession.

 

[Foxo]

Agreed, and I can see how my experience isn't exactly the norm. They never told me about the change in treatment though. I would have been all for a non-drug oriented treatment, as it would have given me an opportunity to get over weed without jeopardizing the treatment. However when I came in for my next appointment it was like they never mentioned the non-drug option. She simply said I had to quit weed for the drugs to work properly, otherwise there was nothing they could do.

Pretty much, I wasn't about to give up a tried and true drug that has helped me through years of my life for another clinical drug which therapists claim helps people in my situation. It's this that they didn't understand. They though that simply giving it up would be easy. That's what showed me they didn't really understand anything at all.

After that, I never showed up to another appointment and ignored their calls.

 

[paulo]

aah yes theyre not big on weed or stuff like that.
maybe cause they dont make any money of it

heard that from a friend before, they wont help till hes off the stuff.
indeed, like its that easy, specially at a time like that.

i made it pretty clear i wasnt gonne take any pills when i came in though.

 

[Equinox]

Why do you say they thought it would be easy? Part of therapy usually means doing stuff that is really, really difficult, however most good therapists will help with these things.

At any rate, ignoring their calls isn't going to make anything better. I suggest you call them, tell them that you're only interested in the therapy, not the meds, and if they can't help you with this, look for someone else who will.

On a sidenote, I would recommend trying their suggestion anyway. Try giving up your drug and give the clinical one a chance. Worst thing that can happen is that it doesn't work for you, at which point you can just switch back. Don't cling on to one old, bad way of dealing with things just because that's what you've become comfortable with. It'll get you nowhere.

And Paulo; the reason they're not big on drugs is because it affects your mind in a way they can't predict or control, which makes their job a helluva lot more difficult with bigger chance of failure. For instance, I can tell how a person with clinical depression will react to certain things I tell them, but not if that person is on drugs. Drugs are an x-factor, people respond differently to them, and that makes treatment a lot harder. There are specialized therapists working within these frames, and they're usually found at rehab clinics.

 

[Foxo]

I definitely get what you're saying. It just made me feel like they really didn't care, and I don't want to trust anything to someone who I feel doesn't care. I also think it's unfair to assume that it is only drugs which make someone unpredictable. If my therapists were assuming that getting me off weed and onto this other drug would make me more predictable and easier for them to understand, I must say I disagree. In fact I find that assumption somewhat insulting. I'm not some equation where if you replace the weed variable with x then everything is solved, and frankly I don't want to deal with someone who thinks that way.

I'm also not going to call them back as they already blew their chance. By ignoring my opinions and requests early on they've shown me that I don't want to deal with them, and even if they agree to try something non-drug oriented I'm not going to be able to forget that they neglected me earlier on.

 

[Equinox]

I never said that it's only drugs that make someone unpredictable and problematic. I'm saying that the drugs ADDs to it, and on a different way. 99% of people with mental problems and clinical diagnoses WILL more or less follow a "pattern" of behaviour. We usually don't see this ourselves, because we can't perceieve ourselves objectively from the outside, but that is where the therapists come in. They're trained to recognize these "patterns", to notice how we react and respond to various things, and to be able to link this all together and say "She's responding like that and behaving like this because of her clinical depression" - using myself as an example. Now, if I were to be on drugs as well during my treatment, this would make it a lot more difficult, because drugs can make people behave in a way they normally wouldn't, and thus "cloaking" the real issues and diagnosis.

I'm not saying that everything is solved once you removed the x factor that is the drug. I'm saying that this only enables the therapists to LOCATE the issues, and thus helping you.

It's too bad that you think of it as "they blew their chance", because it's not THEIR chance to be blown. It sounds like you're trying to "punish" them or something, and honestly, the only one being punished by this is you. They will (or at least should) care about you in a professional way, but they won't treat you like you're their baby and sit up at night and cry because you refuse to let them help you. They told you in which way they want to do this, and you disagreed. That's fair enough. I don't think it's fair, however, that you think they've neglected you just because they didn't agree with you. Quite frequently, in therapy, you WILL be asked to do things or talk about things you're not comfortable with or want to do. I'm only at the beginning of my treatment and my therapist is already making me do stuff I really don't like. That doesn't make me think he's neglecting me, though. On the contrary; I recognize that he's doing his job, and by pushing me like this, he will help me get better. Usually, when something is hard to do, it's because we have a problem with it, and that's why we really should do it.

If you truly can't imagine ever contacting them again and start over, then at least find someone else. Please don't destroy your own chances of getting help. I wish you all the best.

 

[blackhole]

i went to a psychologist for a while.

he said my family was nuts.

 

[LoneKiller]

I can't do anything right. I anger myself to no end because my head is going a mile a minute in the wrong direction. I want to try Ritalin, and my work gives me health benefits for it. But I don't like the idea of having to extract a prescription from some smarmy overpaid snob with a pad and pen that thinks he/she can dissect me with a question. I'm more honest here on this forum than I am anywhere else and I don't know what will happen if a shrink puts me on the spot. But one thing is for sure, I need help. And at this point I'm willing to pay for it.

So has anyone tried it and had any success. In what capacity? Thanks.

Ritalin in higher doses creates a euphoric sensation. Can be very addictive.

 

[Arcane]

i've seen multiple therapists, psychiatrists, and doctor blah blahs. i've been on too many things. talking doesn't help and medicine doesn't help...but everyone reacts to things differently ...which is why you should just try yourself.

 

[Thrasymachus]

Psychological diagnosis itself is hugely damaging to a patient/victim. So many people say I am "x" because some over-esteemed specialist said so, and afterwards they became some debased actor in their life playing out the diagnosed role thereafter.

 

[Equinox]

Actually, getting a psychological diagnosis can be a relief for a lot of people struggling with mental issues. Getting a diagnosis enables them to go from "What's wrong with me??" to "I have this or that condition. It can be treated. Help is on the way". I was extremely relieved to find out that I have clinical depression, instead of just "being crazy", as I used to think.

Mental problems, just like physical ones, can be treated, but not unless we know where the problem lies. You need the knowledge; shutting your eyes and ears certainly won't make anything any better. However, there is a huge difference between saying "I have X" and "I am X" (where X is the illness). One of the first things we learn in healthcare is to not identify patients by their problems. Your illness is not who you are.

 

[Thrasymachus]

One finds behind all jobs that perform so called noble purposes: the police who fight crime, the doctors who heal, and the mental health professionals who give comfort, nothing other than the tentacles of a sinister, distal, but hidden social power exerting its control and taking what was once a personal or communal domain and making it the province of specialized labor. Specifically in this case, it teaches people that they are total hapless bystanders in their physical and emotional state, who can do no better than trusting the improvement to a professional with their the proper credentials from institutions with official reputations and with their allegedly proven methods(but in reality no good studies exist to demonstrate the efficacy of their interventions compared to random chance).

Psychological diagnosis is a human created construct, that allows the mental health industry and Pharmaceutical industry a captive market. The long time dissident of the mental health industry, Peter Breggin (himself a psychiatrist) openly calls its patients as victims. Usually without fail people are directed to the institutionalized care of the mental health field for failure to adjust to society, specifically the institutions of either school or work. A dissident psychotherapist has observed the same:

Power, Responsibility and Freedom [DOC]

What clinical experience teaches in fact is not that psychological distress and emotional suffering are the result of individual faults, flaws or medical disorders, but arise from the social organizations in which all of us are located. Furthermore, damage to people, once done, is not easily cured, but may more easily (and that not easily at all!) be prevented by attending to and caring for the structures of the world in which we live. These are questions neither of medicine nor of 'therapy'. If anything, they may be seen more as questions of morality and, by extension, politics.

You can hardly name an author, an artist, a musician worth a ****, that did not have "mental illness" in modern times. People who by necessity require a certain sensitivity, carry wounds from this society. This is no chance oddity because it evolves in inhuman directions: toward the generation of maximal wealth, toward an apex of institutional control, toward more perfect regulation legal and otherwise, toward more a more machine based technological pace, etc. So what can an individual do? We can pervert ourselves into debased self-centered psychopaths who can cope, or be the sensitive who cannot fully cope and fall prey to the so called noble mental health field, there is little middle ground. Obviously if economic and social processes evolve teleologically in increasing inhumanly directions, more and more will fail to cope and require diagnosis to avert criticism from the real machinations of what is happening. This serves the distal power of the privileged economic elites, by putting the onus on increasing percentages of individuals failing to cope and not the society and its institutions which they cannot adjust themselves to. This leaves the bulk of humanity free to continue in their evolved suffering of what on the surface is a "life made easy", except they're "living the pain"(Metallica). This misery is caused by capitalist maximization, which allows the 1% at the top to enjoy unfathomable windfalls of riches at our expense, by treating us as human resources(all large companies have Human Resources departments...).

But the philosophical question that must be asked is why adjust yourself to the inhuman and become to that extent, inhuman yourself?

 

[soul_in_isolation]

Okay wow, in the event that the OP has not been converted to the grandiose philosphical pondering of the last post (which it seems to me he did not ask for), I'm going to offer my perspective. I have been treated for mental health since age 17-18. First off, just on therapists vs psychiatrists, since it's kind of being spoken of interchangeably here, they are different. I don't know if you're looking at both or just one of the two in particular, but in my experience therapists did not prescribe or recommend any medications. I do not believe they are qualified to deal deeply in the medical/biological area since they are not really doctors. Many people do both, but I'm pretty sure therapy can be done without medical stuff being brought into the equation

Now with regards to therapy, it has for me proven valuable to my situation with depression, anxiety and loneliness. Even though my other posts may give me off as quite unhappy and struggling, I know I have come far in many ways that wouldn't have been possible without therapy. Therapy was and is an outlet for me and the only consistent one I've ever had, and I don't know how I survived my earlier adolescence without it (being as I had nothing else). In addition, it opened doors to so many resources that helped me get out of messes I was stuck in, which therapy couldn't do alone. I would have had no one else to help me find those things.

Therapy helped me to grow up where I direly needed to. I have severe social phobia and for a time I wouldn't have actually imagined myself living on my own, as well as shopping alone, dealing with my own phone calls rather than have mom handle it, even looking people in the eye as they speak to me or greeting people with a smile.

Now I'm lucky to have a great therapist right now, who I consider like my sole friend figure, but I couldn't always say this. You will not be guaranteed to connect with just any therapist. Of course you are able easily to switch up and keep doing so until you find someone you have a "chemistry" with. Then a good deal of treatment that depends on your level of commitment. You may hear that you get out of therapy what you put into it, and although it used to irk me, it seems to be true for the most part. You are working with them, not relying on them merely to "fix" you. I personally had to learn that therapy cannot be approached passively, but requires a real effort and willingness to change from you.

Everyone's results are not as positive as mine (then again some stories might be more, since I'm still working on stuff), I suppose, but I do feel it fortunate for humans, particularly more troubled humans to have the option of therapy. It shouldn't hurt you at least to have one meeting to see if it might be for you.

 

[Thrasymachus]

There is relative and absolute truth. To someone whom says my "therapist ... [is] like my sole friend figure", any type of human contact, even paid, bureaucratic contact would be welcome. I used to be like that when in my early twenties my mom forced me to start going to a therapist. At first I did not want to go, but I realized doing nothing previously never worked for me and I did not want to languish in agony forever. Eventually I willingly tried it, hoping thereby to obtain benefits(which I did not find). The only benefit is that compared to my former great isolation, then I had a paid ear to see once every two weeks, which comforted me at the time, but without however producing any therapeutic benefits.

In absolute truth they have no correct metholodogies in the mental health field that can help people. The dissident I mentioned, Peter Breggin, unlike the cocky bastards of orthodox organized health, he uses words more to the effect that the best he can offer is to be a partner in the healing/self-healing of his patients. Organized medicine and mental health on the contrary have the temerity to take us as only spectators of our own health. Because our society is inhumane increasing numbers have some traumatic experience which in their jargon must be pathologized as social phobia or agoraphobia and dealt with in the official channels. Perhaps I could have been diagnosed the same as for years I refused to participate in society isolating myself in my mother's house rarely venturing outside, refusing to go to work or school for most that time. But what helped me is actually getting a job which forced me to be outside, not mental health quackery. You have an idea in your head that other people or the world is hostile, but really they are indifferent and don't care to expend much effort on what you do. Only in the institution of primary and high school are there snarky cliques where such a situation of a critical world concerned with you prevails. They are forced to be somewhere they don't want to be, also they lack adult responsibilities to consume themselves with, so they have time to ridicule everyone who is different, non-conformist. It is continuing reinforced negative experiences in this devious institution, which in my estimation makes many closed off to the world and have what the mental health fields term social anxiety disorder/agoraphobia.

The last I will say about absolute truth is that people like Bruce Lipton have proven that chronic health problems and mental disorders are not genetic, they are environmental. Also, one of the best proven healers is time. Since mental issues are due to past experiences which build up into trauma, time and new experiences will most often result in a gradual alleviation of the burden, without mental health intervention. You and many others choose to impute this improvement to the official channels of knowledge approved by social power, not the unofficial ones, but that does not make it an absolute truth only a relative one.

 

[Equinox]

The thing about therapy, is that it requires your cooperation to work. If you're forced and dragged to it, without really wanting it, and thus not working WITH your therapist, the results will be thereafter.

As for the rest I've read, about "mental quackery" and the rest of the highly subjective and biased rant against healthcare: I'm sure glad I don't live where you do, because what you say here about therapists and psychology has absolutely nothing to do with how healtcare works where I live. The only person making any money from my therapy sessions, is my therapist, who is paid by our government. I pay next to nothing for my sessions.

Speaking of relative truths, let's have a look at the phrase "mental quackery". That really got my attention. You make it sound as if psychology isn't real, that it's just "made up" by some evil corporation to make money off people who don't actually have mental problems after all. Well, I can assure you that my mental problems are very real, and my diagnosis is not "made up" by anyone. Yes, the name (e.g. "clinical depression") has been invented by someone, just like people have given names to things for thousands of years. It's usually how things go; we discover something, we describe it and give it a name. It's not about not fitting into society as it is today, it's about (in my case) for periods of time losing all will to do anything, seeing no point in my own existence, constantly seeing the glass as half empty, and always feeling somewhat sad, empty and lonely. My therapist is teaching me to control this, to the best of my efforts, and to cope with it, and there is no "quackery" about that.

And Soul_in_isolation, you're right about therapists/psychiatrists. Psychiatrists are doctors who's specialized in psychology, and can prescribe meds in addition to evaluating and treating mental issues. Therapists are not doctors, and can't give you any meds, but they are trained to treat mental illnesses through therapy sessions, using various cognitive methods.

 

[Thrasymachus]

soul_in_isolation who is naively defending therapy, said that she was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. What can a therapist do about this issue? Tell her to just go outside? That takes less than five seconds, session over. There is not much else you can therapeutically say for mental health issues given their incorrect methodologies. Which is why like I said, they pretend to do therapeutic sessions in this field but really in my actual experience they mostly randomly about any given subject with brief and random refrains back to the alleged healing purpose of their profession.

Mental problems are not inherently real, that is not the way the mind works. There is official knowledge which people think is inherent and real, but it is only relative truth, just like mental disorders being chronic states that cannot be reversed. Even with our primitive understanding the edifices of such knowledge have been debunked. Seek out interviews, podcasts or books by Bruce Lipton. In orthodox medicine it is stated that almost all afflictions even mental ones have a genetic basis, but according to the cutting edge biological knowledge and research, the environment is the biggest co-factor, not DNA.

Psychology does have a sinister purpose. In the early 20th Century all products were advertised based on their utilitarian nature, but nowadays almost no product is advertised in that way. Now almost all products are advertised in a way that asserts to consumers they will experience a certain mental state of bliss, they will have a certain positive experience, if they make the purchase, catering to their irrational, non-utilitarian mind. This is the legacy of Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is the inventor of modern public relations and marketing.

You choose to only examine the surface of the world, so you only find official relative truths, because you will not do the work to go deeper, Equinox.