I have tried therapy on and off for a while now. People would always get frustrated with me and tell me to "get therapy," but I never knew what I was actually supposed to be there for. And I tried a service like BetterHelp before (can't remember what this one was called), but it just sucked ass and I'm not sure if the people on there were even licensed professionals.
I finally started going consistently with this one therapist, but I frequently get frustrated with her for not giving me actual coping skills or techniques. One of her favorite things to ask me is "how can you deal with X?" And I get frustrated and say "I don't know." Because if I fucking knew I wouldn't be in therapy. She seems to do a more meandering talk therapy style thing with vague ideas of DBT and CBT thrown in there. She's not giving me enough skills to not get fired at work. She helped me go through a difficult time, but now that that's over, I'm back to square one.
So I found a therapist who specifically states she does DBT. Over time I have learned that my core issue is emotional dysregulation which is treated by DBT. She told me she follows this one workbook. I got the book. It's great! It gives you a zillion and one coping skills. But after having several sessions with her, I notice that she spends the entire time just going "in chapter 4, this happens. Then in chapter 8, this happens" while my eyes just glaze over. Today the session ended 35 minutes early because she only vaguely contributed to me talking about a problem I had today.
I have been seeing both therapists concurrently until my deductible resets in January.
I just am so endlessly frustrated with the entire mental health industry. I've seen so many different therapists. I've really tried to do any exercises that they have given me. I've tried multiple different psych meds (trying a new one now actually!).
Nothing works. Nothing has changed about me. I'm the same person with the same problems. And nothing I seem to try makes a lick of difference. I try so hard. I try a zillion different things...exercise, getting good sleep, eating right, therapy, meds...nothing changes me. Nothing helps me.
What in the everliving fuck am I missing? Do I have to go through 30 different therapists before I can find one that can help me? Am I just doing therapy "wrong"??? What am I supposed to be doing here?
Through all this, I've found that telling someone to "go to therapy" is almost offensive...it just absolves others from caring about you and makes it sound like you're not willing to do the base effort in bettering yourself.
Sorry for the long post and thanks for taking the time to read.
therapy doesn't change you.
you change you.
i've known people in therapy their entire lives. they don't want to change. they just use therapy as a means to further justify their shitty personalities.
think of it as if you wanted to run a marathon, but every time you ran three miles you gave up. but you kept telling yourself one day you will get there, but it's so hard and at mile three you give up. Then you decide marathon running is stupid and pointless and there is no way it you will ever be able to do it. This is what you are doing.
you can't run 26 miles if you can't run 5. it takes a long time to get there.
I was going to say this. The reality is you can do well with a mediocre therapist, because it is actually 80% about you. You do the work, you answer the questions, you decide, you change.
To me, it sounds like the first therapist was trying to do the right thing. Help YOU think about what is going to ACTUALLY work.
But instead you kept hoping they would say a magic word and fix you. It doesn't work like that. Nobody will know you better than yourself. You talk to them for an hour, and might be bullshiting them, you are with yourself 24/7.
The way to do therapy is to think. If you don't know the answer to the question "How do I stop gooning?" Then the work is to figure it out. Like a puzzle. You might need to ask more questions: Why don't you know? What can you do to find the answers? What would it look like if you did have the answers? And so on. But those are quesitons for YOU not for the therapist.
The therapist is there to help you think and give you options.
I mean like for example one thing she essentially asked me was "how can you deal with the fact that people will sometimes hurt you and be mean to you? Your only two options are to not communicate with/communicate with them superficially or to find a way to compartmentalize it."
Which like ok that one was a really good and fair point. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how in the world to do the latter. I have had hours long conversations with ChatGPT to try to come up with ideas. I can't. I'm stupid or defective or both.
If you can't figure it, that's not the answer. That was my point. Try something else. Take a step back. For example, "why does it matter that people are imperfect and hurt you?" "why are these the only two options?" "Can someone else see a different path?"
See if maybe those are problems you can solve more easily.
That is my point. Someone can give you things to try, but you have to try and evaluate yourself. No human or machine can do that for you.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Try to solve the puzzle a different way. That's what therapy or counseling, or even coaching is supposed to help you do. But not do it for you.
I'm confused. Obviously that's not the answer. I can't figure out the answer. I have went through this one concept for hours and hours with ChatGPT in a zillion different ways for many different days. I am never able to come up with a solution. I just need like a little bit of a push in the right direction as opposed to just telling me to figure it out and leaving me to it. If I wasn't an incompetent dumbass crazy person then a therapist could probably be a lot more vague with me.
They aren't being vague with you. You are missing the point. Asking and answering questions IS the work. Like reps at the gym.
They won't give you a little push in the right direction because thats up to you. They can only point directions and tell you to try, like working out, different techniques, talk therapy, etc.
If you genuinely believe you can not use these as exploratory tools, you might want to talk to a psychiatrist instead. Not in a mean way, but maybe the rigid thinking and looping can be helped with medication. Then therapy might be more effective.
You don't understand what I'm saying. I'm spinning my head around and around and trying to come at some of these questions from all angles. I spend hours and hours trying to figure it out...bouncing ideas off of ChatGPT, wracking my own brain, working without ChatGPT to come up with new ideas.
I'm already in my head entirely too much and was already trying to dive into there to figure things out before therapy. It just made things worse and ended up with me spinning in circles in bizarre thought loops and ideas.
I cannot for the life of me come up with my own solution to my problems, no matter how many hours I put into it or how many different angles I try to come at it.
Is it really such crazy of an ask ask for me to want a therapist to vaguely help to slightly point me in the hope of any direction at all whatsoever to even start to begin to figure out any of my problems at all? Like even just giving me the hint of an idea? Or like some sort of coping skill? Or some sort of new way of looking at something that I haven't managed to think my way into yet?
Here's an example of a convo in therapy.
Me: I'm having a lot of trouble with X. I can't figure out how to deal with it.
Therapist: How do you think you should deal with X?
Me: I don't know. I can't for the life of me figure it out.
Therapist: You need to figure out how to deal with X.
Like I just want some sort of direction at all.
Am I just too mentally challenged for therapy then???? I just don't understand what else to do.
I have been trying a lot of different medications, with my provider, yeah. I'm not sure how a medication could make my thinking "less rigid" like you say.
Idk what to tell you if thinking about something when you're asked a question is too hard.
You said you've been given direction. Literal workbooks, but you insist they don't work. I'm not sure what magic word or secret you think therapists have that will fix your life, but it doesn't work like that.
I suggested meds because then the responsibility is with your provider, not with you, which seems to be what you want. You can talk to them about how they might help you.
No, sorry. The second therapist who I only saw 3 times gave me a workbook. The one who I have been seeing for a long time did not. So I've only been doing the workbook relatively recently.
This second therapist doesn't say anything to me during the sessions tho. She lets me talk a bit and then is just like "I love this chapter. Guess what happens in chapter 7? Chapter 4 is my favorite". And I don't know how to keep responding to that.
The workbook doesn't answer big picture questions tho like my old therapist asks. The workbook is very useful, but I've only just started with it. One frustrating thing is I feel like it just puts a bandaid on the issue. It doesn't solve it or help stop any of my pain.
My old (current) therapist gives me only vague things that I have a hard time figuring out what to do with.
Then Idk man. I just do shrooms and talk to a counselor sometimes. Not in a mean way: you need a professional, not a rando on the Internet.
I mean I'm seeing multiple professionals lol so idk what else in supposed to be doing!
Idk why everyone in this thread is telling me I am not trying. :( I am trying so hard. I do all of the exercises they tell me. I practice the skills. I listen to what they tell me and try my very hardest to digest it. I have been attending therapy for many many months now and I have been really truly trying. But I am still the same person.
There's no magic moment when you Become You. It's gradual and takes years and most of the time it's effective it's also apparently unrewarding, and there's no way to tell the difference between "this is useless and i should move on" and "this isn't immediately rewarding and i should be patient" except to experience the results. With experience it does get easier to tell the difference. At this point, I know within 3-4 sessions with a new shrink whether it's a good fit or not, but I've been at this for decades by now.
I can say that the session ending 35 minutes early for any reason other than one you agreed upon ahead of time is extraordinary and almost certainly unprofessional.
It's okay to say "You're not helping me, I need X, Y, and Z from now on" and if they can't provide that then just move on, or if you're sure just say "You're not giving me what I need, I'm moving on."
I also dunno about all this workbook shit. At that point you might as well join a support group or get on an app or shudder talk to AI for a helluva lot cheaper. In fact, I've had several support groups that were leaps and bounds more helpful than the shrink I was seeing; more honest, more direct, more empathetic and experienced. If someone handed me a workbook and told me to do "therapy" out of it I'd drop it on the floor, never return, and refuse to pay for that session. Therapy is done with a therapist, afaic. They're welcome to recommend reading or whatever (and often that helps), but therapy isn't a fucking worksheet, it doesn't follow a formula or a flowchart. I'm willing to bet $20 most of those zillion skills are just so many myriad reframings and permutations of the same two or three principles.
A good therapist doesn't just ask you how you can deal with X (though that is in fact an important part of it), a good therapist works with you to help you figure out how you can deal with X, including making suggestions of their own. A good therapist doesn't just watch you sputter and flounder on the high sea asking, "jeez looks like a tight spot you're in there, how ya gonna get outta that?", they throw the therapist's metaphorical equivalent of a float and bring you aboard and place you (to the extent possible in the circumstances) in calmer, shallower water. Conversely, a good therapist also knows your strengths and will challenge you when they know you're not living up to them, whether through laziness or mental block or you just hadn't thought of it that way or whatever.
Fuck anyone who implies you're not trying hard enough or that a mediocre therapist is good enough. You can tell good and well for your own damn self that it ain't workin; TRUST YOURSELF. Yes, it's important that you do most of the work and yes, some people or some issues can tolerate mediocrity, blah blah blah. Is that working for you? Seriously ask yourself. Keep trying 'til you find the right one. But don't drop the one until you've picked up another, if possible. less-than-ideal therapy is usually better than no therapy at all.
Oh, and medicine. It's very important that you get the right medicine. In my experience, I know within 2-3 weeks whether and how a medicine is working and when a psychiatrist tells me "lets check back in 2-3 months" It's almost always more to do with their scheduling than anything of theraputic import.
Granted, I didn't exactly try to stop her from hitting the end call button. But when me trying to talk about my experiences was just met with "ok well I don't like that part of that chapter" or something, I just didn't know what else to say. We stared at each other for a while before she was like welp see you in a few weeks! Idk...I did try to contribute. It just wasn't met with anything overly meaningful. She also spent like 10 minutes talking about how her dog needed extensive treatment and she had a not great day. Like I get that sucks but I would have rather you cancel the appointment than to just not listen to me and then end the call 30 minutes early.
I agree with you to some extent. I was excited when she showed me the book because it's actually a gold standard book for DBT. BUT I was hoping that it would be a supplement to the therapy, not just her telling me how much she loves the book for the entire session and not really say anything to me when I relate things back to my own life. The way she talks about the book all day, you'd have thought she wrote the thing lol!!!
Thank you so so much for saying this. Everyone in these comments is assuming I am not working hard because I don't even know where to begin to deal with X. All these comments effectively saying "introspect and figure it out" isn't helpful to me when that's all I do and I still can't figure out anything!
I kind of feel like I'm a teen just learning how to drive. And instead of explaining how the car works, your parent is just like "drive to that stop sign there." And I'm like...ok but I don't know how to drive yet can you show me? And they are just like "well figure it out. Go drive to the stop sign."
Everyone in here is chastising me for being unable to figure out how to reach the stop sign on my own. I am trying as hard as I can, but I can't get there without being given at least some idea of how to turn on the car, put it in gear, etc. I get that eventually someone could learn to drive that way, but it's gonna take them 20 times as long.
Thank you very much for your kind words. It has been very disheartening for me to hear on a mental health community of all things that I am just not trying. I honestly didn't expect that kind of response from half of all of the people there. It certainly isn't motivating or helpful to me. It just makes me feel even worse.
This second time around, I was searching specifically for a therapist who does DBT because that helps treat "emotional dysregulation", but now I'm wondering if I need to look for a trauma therapist instead.
I look for competency first, not any specific methodology; A doctorate is a good sign but no guarantee. Published papers are even better, read through some if they have them, thought that might correspond to academic competency instead of clinical. I find that the specific method they employ has a lot less to do with success than the person administering it or their experience. Lots of diverse experience is good. Current shrink did some years working in prisons, some years working with disabled veterans, some years working with the blind, some years working with the elderly before she settled down to private practice. I find it allows her a much more open-minded and empathetic perspective just from having seen so much of humanity. Always send them an email before you propose to book their services, that will tend to give you a decent idea of their communication, especially if you can get a decent email chain going, though of course some people are terrible emailers or texters or phone callers but are great in person so don't take any of these as gospel but as clues. I straight up would not consider seeing a shrink over telephone or televisual unless I'd already established an excellent rapport with them in-person.
One thing I always do now is, If I decide to book with them, intentionally find something to criticize. Was I made to wait 5 minutes past the appointed time? Is the chair in the room uncomfortable? Is there a distracting smell in the room? What you criticize doesn't matter as long as it's true and valid, falsity won't do here, just be honest and kind. It should ideally be something they have control over, but I don't nitpick. So, "I'd prefer the shades drawn" is probably a nitpick (unless you're photosensitive or something) but the chair is something you're gonna be sitting in for an hour. What you're looking for is not the solution to the critique, but the response to the critique. Are they dismissive, apologetic, aware-but-there's-nothing-they-can-do-about-it, do they accommodate you, etc. This will tell you a thousand times more than their website blurb about their style. It's testing whether their ego can handle criticism, and whether/how far they'll go to accommodate your needs. I test potential employers this way, too. You can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to honest, valid, kindly-expressed criticism. You'll never be able to tell whether they will be a good fit for you from this, but you can tell from an bad reaction to criticism that they won't be a good fit.
hope this helps
edit: Oh, and ironically I find that it helps to have someone who is different from you in important ways. With a friend, you want someone who you share a lot of common interests with and by extension probably think pretty similarly to. With a therapist it's practically the opposite: you want someone who has Therapy in common with you, and can see things from a different perspective than you do. There's such a thing as too much of this, but in general a perspective that significantly diverges from your own is a good thing.