Current Events > All my friends who regularly go to therapy have only gotten worse

(+) Yeah! (+)

Honestly this is a thing that's been bugging me for a while. Assuming it's for everyday stuff like mild-moderate anxiety or depression and not like undoing some kind of crazy trauma, they've all gotten worse. It's like the act of going to therapy served as some kind of validation for them to not actually improve their issue. And the way they describe their sessions to me is essentially them just venting to their therapist without much feedback other than supportive affirmation. The agoraphobic ones goes out even less, the one who's anxious to make business calls spams me with reassurance-seeking even more whenever she has to make one, the one who's afraid to talk on mic in online games has dove deeper into just disabling all forms of chat entirely, etc. Really weird.

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I'm starting next week can't wait

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My therapy helped me, although it took me more than one try to find the correct therapist. Unfortunately, they're a lot like relationship partners in the sense that some of them just won't click with you, even if they are objectively "good" by any standard metric.

And as you said, it's important that you actually want to receive therapy. If it's just something you dread going to week after week, it's only going to be one more regular pain in the ass in your life rather than anything truly helpful.

Have they tried going for a walk in the woods and exercising?

Are they Irish, know what Freud said about therapy and the Irish

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Huh?

That's strange. All of my friends were completely healed by their therapy.

Just going to therapy is not going to help you through your issues. You still need to make the changes suggested by your therapist.

They need Jesus.

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It's not like there's not always going to be a new influx of mentally ill people to treat, they don't specifically need you. It's like saying a funeral director has a vested interest in you dying. There's always gonna be other dead people.

If anything, having to bash your head against the wall with the same patient for 40 years as they make no change or get worse is probably pretty professionally unfulfilling. Unless they're just putting in hours for the paycheck, in which case, how would you expect to get better anyway?

I had a good psychiatrist as a kid, made progress, had to leave the clinic when I turned 18, and when I started to relapse had a string of bad psychiatrists and have only gotten worse.

YUNASBFGIR posted...

Just going to therapy is not going to help you through your issues. You still need to make the changes suggested by your therapist.

This is true, but a lot of people ignore the fact that a lot of psychiatrists/therapists just aren't very good. There are incompetent people in every line of work.

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"Doctors don't want patients to heal, or else they'll lose out on sick people money." While American healthcare is outrageously expensive, if treatment were truly ineffective people simply wouldn't go. Why spend money on something that is proven to do nothing?

Anyway, my experiences with therapy is that they will always try to work through your problems first, and then consider medicine if that falls through. It can be a bit disconcerting when therapy unironically begins with 'you should exercise more and maybe walk around some trees'', but sometimes people's depression actually is that simple.

Wow imagine how bad they would have gotten without therapy.

A therapist is a human being too, which means you can get some good ones, and some awful ones. Therapy isn't always that helpful. You also do hafta put in work. Like, if you have serious anger issues for example, you hafta learn to calm yourself down before you bite everyone's heads off.

To some it is a chance for them to talk to someone and trust who isnt reacting to their personality their genes gave them.

Therapy was a big hole that I threw a lot more money than I wanted to into.

I had an argument with someone on here a few months back who insisted that doctors never actually heal anyone, cause that would cut into their profits.