12 ms·

It took me a long time after taking that leap of faith into therapy to learn that the most valuable part of psychotherapy is not information or advice but it is

It took me a long time after taking that leap of faith into therapy to learn that the most valuable part of psychotherapy is not information or advice but it is the therapist-client relationship itself. You need to internalize their advice and techniques (as OP managed to do on their own), and therapy is about creating a facilitative environment to alter that conception of self. In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard, which facilitates viewing yourself more clearly without the need to lean on self-defeating coping mechanisms, like self-pity or shifting blame. As social creatures we instinctively perform a lot of mirroring of others' mental state, so simply by being accepted we are able to try on what it is like to accept ourselves. It's leveraging an additional set of tools baked into us at a deep level to build self awareness and a more positive, realistic self model. If you're struggling, I'd like to echo others and strongly recommend you reach out to a psychiatrist and psychologist if they are within reach for you. Take OP as an example that it is possible to change, but please explore all the resources available to you so that you can explore what works for you. That being said, thank you to Vishnu for sharing some of your struggles and how you've managed to find ways to improve. It really helps to be talking publicly about these issues.

alexashka 6y ago
In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard, which facilitates viewing yourself more clearly without the need to lean on self-defeating coping mechanisms, like self-pity or shifting blame. As social creatures we instinctively perform a lot of mirroring of others' mental state, so simply by being accepted we are able to try on what it is like to accept ourselves. This is the most succinct description of a positive human relationship I've ever read. It does lack a feedback mechanism for correcting destructive behaviour however. A danger one can fall into with therapists, is that therapists have a self-interest in you coming back and/or giving a positive referral. If the therapist has that self interest in the back of their mind, they can avoid pushing you out of your comfort zone and/or enabling unhelpful patterns in order to get along. Absence of pushback is something beautiful/rich people often experience - because others see them as a valuable asset, they optimize for maintaining the relationship, even if the person is being self destructive in the process. This is why drugs are such a problem among them - it is costly to tell them they have a problem and so beneficial to benefit from their weakness in your favor until the wheels come off.
- munificent 6y ago
  > A danger one can fall into with therapists, is that therapists have a self-interest in you coming back and/or giving a positive referral. If the therapist has that self interest in the back of their mind, they can avoid pushing you out of your comfort zone and/or enabling unhelpful patterns in order to get along. This is an example of a pattern I see everywhere now that I look for it. I think of it as the junk food metaphor. There are many products/people/experiences/ideas/relationships that make you feel good right now but later leave you feeling even worse than before. Every time I eat McDonald's, halfway through that double quarter-pounder with cheese I find myself thinking "This is so fucking amazing. Why don't I eat this everyday?" Ten minutes later, when my stomach feels like I took a punch to it, I remember the answer. McDonald's is good to me, but not good for me. I think a lot of therapists are like that too. They are unconditionally kind and you get an hour to talk about nothing but yourself. You can walk out feeling amazing. But did you leave with any tools? Did you get any closer to solving the mental problems that hold you back? Often, the answer is no. I'm lucky that the therapist I found strikes a very good balance of being short-term good and long-term good. When I'm really struggling and in a rough spot, he focuses the session on easing my pain right now. But when I come in and things are going OK, he says, "OK, now is a good time to try to work on some of those deeper problems." Then he'll ask a series of probing questions that turn over dark patches of my psyche I've been afraid to look under. I leave those sessions with sweaty hands feeling like I got a root canal and a math test at the same time. Those sessions aren't good to me. But over the next couple of weeks, I start to feel like an abcess has been drained. Those sessions are good for me. These days, a big part of life for me is finding the right balance between short-term and long-term benefits. I've erred too far in both directions and ended up miserable, but there does seem to be a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "therapists have a self-interest in you coming back" Just a single data point counter to this: I had a therapist with whom I had a good relationship and who I'd seen for a long time who suggested that I find another therapist because we weren't making progress. I was reluctant to do so and we continued for a few more months when once again they suggested I find another therapist for the same reason, at which point I did leave and sought out another therapist (who was completely unrelated to this one, so there was no referral or kickback). If the therapist was motivated purely by self-interest they could have easily not have pushed me away, twice, and continued to have me as a loyal client. Instead they asked me to go see another therapist, for my own good. So, yeah, some therapists actually care. You have to find the right one, of course.
tetha 6y ago
Also, they are trained and educated to recognize if this doesn't work. Speaking from experience there. They'll try to gain trust, which is necessary. Actual licensed therapists have two things going in there. You can go and meet them in private. And they are legally forbidden from telling on you to anyone, unless you're violent or suicidal. They will throw years and years of studies away if they give away you secrets. Beyond that, you'll be asked what you're struggling with. This can take a session or three. That's normal because it takes time to gain trust and open up. Though they'll gather data during these sessions, too. After all, you don't end up sitting in a therapists office because you're doing great. And they do know a number of different behaviors that end up being problematic beyond a certain scale. But it can be refreshing to talk to someone just knowning your bug. I knew I was writing too much by paragraph 2. But I'm submitting this anyway.
- rexpop 6y ago
  > I knew I was writing too much by paragraph 2. But I'm submitting this anyway. I don't know why you say this. I found your whole comment informative.
- sneak 6y ago
  > And they are legally forbidden from telling on you to anyone, unless you're violent or suicidal. That last is a reason a lot of people end up wanting to visit them. It's a privacy catch-22. There are also several things (being a pilot among them) that such a "private" session also may result in you being formally and permanently disqualified from. The privacy laws really need to be strengthened.
- notokay 6y ago
  >unless you're violent or suicidal. Yes, and if you are suicidal, police will throw you in a jail. Or worse - in a psychiatric hospital. And you are gonna be fired from work and will be even more miserable than before. There is no help for men with depression. Even if you ask for it, you have to keep lying and downplaying your symptoms, so no one would think you are really depressed.
  - 6y ago
amp108 6y ago
> In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard Oh, how I wish that were true. When I was 12, my brother was heavily into drugs, my sister was violent, and my parents were ending their loveless marriage. I wasn't handling it well. My mother decided to put me in therapy. My therapist bullied me, literally shouting at me that I wasn't normal, suggesting I should skip out on school, and offering to "teach me how to masturbate". I hated going there, and told my mother (who had been granted custody), but she just said I hated it because he told me "hard truths" and "told it like it was". It's been decades, and for all I know he's dead. I heard that he'd been fined for insurance fraud, but never lost his license. I'm sure a competent therapist would have helped me. I did have problems adjusting, and I suspect (only suspect) that I'm "on the spectrum", as the kids say. But I was put in exactly the wrong place to deal with that. Moral of the story: you have to vet therapists thoroughly before you entrust your psychological well-being to them.
- thom 6y ago
  I'm sorry you went through that, both the relationship with the therapist and your family's lack of support. I hope you, your siblings and your parents are doing better now, but either way this seems an important warning to note.
- GuiA 6y ago
  It’s hard to bring up that point without being misunderstood. While therapy can obviously be incredibly positive, like any discipline it suffers from a large proportion of mediocre practitioners, and a smaller but more dangerous proportion of harmful practitioners. My personal experiences with mental health professionals (over several decades, in multiple countries) were unhelpful at best, and at worst they included things like recklessly prescribing medication (within 10 minutes of the first meeting), relying on outdated junk science, pushing for more appointments/making it very hard to end the patient relationship, etc. Considering that many people who are likely to go to a therapist are likely to be in a vulnerable place to begin with (doubly so for children/teenagers), the recent wave of blind faith in therapy and the belief that “go see a mental healthy professional it can only make things better” is reckless.
- mnm1 6y ago
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
> In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard, which facilitates viewing yourself more clearly You have described effectively the opposite of modern society, where there's a thirst to find faults in one another. Whether it some bias, political opinion, attitude, etc. It's a national past time to judge the virtue of another person's character. The less understanding and reflection on self, the more vicious the judgement. Maybe if we begin spending less time virtue signally to one another and more time being alone with our own thoughts...

alexashka 6y ago

In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard, which facilitates viewing yourself more clearly without the need to lean on self-defeating coping mechanisms, like self-pity or shifting blame. As social creatures we instinctively perform a lot of mirroring of others' mental state, so simply by being accepted we are able to try on what it is like to accept ourselves. This is the most succinct description of a positive human relationship I've ever read. It does lack a feedback mechanism for correcting destructive behaviour however. A danger one can fall into with therapists, is that therapists have a self-interest in you coming back and/or giving a positive referral. If the therapist has that self interest in the back of their mind, they can avoid pushing you out of your comfort zone and/or enabling unhelpful patterns in order to get along. Absence of pushback is something beautiful/rich people often experience - because others see them as a valuable asset, they optimize for maintaining the relationship, even if the person is being self destructive in the process. This is why drugs are such a problem among them - it is costly to tell them they have a problem and so beneficial to benefit from their weakness in your favor until the wheels come off.

munificent 6y ago
> A danger one can fall into with therapists, is that therapists have a self-interest in you coming back and/or giving a positive referral. If the therapist has that self interest in the back of their mind, they can avoid pushing you out of your comfort zone and/or enabling unhelpful patterns in order to get along. This is an example of a pattern I see everywhere now that I look for it. I think of it as the junk food metaphor. There are many products/people/experiences/ideas/relationships that make you feel good right now but later leave you feeling even worse than before. Every time I eat McDonald's, halfway through that double quarter-pounder with cheese I find myself thinking "This is so fucking amazing. Why don't I eat this everyday?" Ten minutes later, when my stomach feels like I took a punch to it, I remember the answer. McDonald's is good to me, but not good for me. I think a lot of therapists are like that too. They are unconditionally kind and you get an hour to talk about nothing but yourself. You can walk out feeling amazing. But did you leave with any tools? Did you get any closer to solving the mental problems that hold you back? Often, the answer is no. I'm lucky that the therapist I found strikes a very good balance of being short-term good and long-term good. When I'm really struggling and in a rough spot, he focuses the session on easing my pain right now. But when I come in and things are going OK, he says, "OK, now is a good time to try to work on some of those deeper problems." Then he'll ask a series of probing questions that turn over dark patches of my psyche I've been afraid to look under. I leave those sessions with sweaty hands feeling like I got a root canal and a math test at the same time. Those sessions aren't good to me. But over the next couple of weeks, I start to feel like an abcess has been drained. Those sessions are good for me. These days, a big part of life for me is finding the right balance between short-term and long-term benefits. I've erred too far in both directions and ended up miserable, but there does seem to be a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"therapists have a self-interest in you coming back" Just a single data point counter to this: I had a therapist with whom I had a good relationship and who I'd seen for a long time who suggested that I find another therapist because we weren't making progress. I was reluctant to do so and we continued for a few more months when once again they suggested I find another therapist for the same reason, at which point I did leave and sought out another therapist (who was completely unrelated to this one, so there was no referral or kickback). If the therapist was motivated purely by self-interest they could have easily not have pushed me away, twice, and continued to have me as a loyal client. Instead they asked me to go see another therapist, for my own good. So, yeah, some therapists actually care. You have to find the right one, of course.

tetha 6y ago

Also, they are trained and educated to recognize if this doesn't work. Speaking from experience there. They'll try to gain trust, which is necessary. Actual licensed therapists have two things going in there. You can go and meet them in private. And they are legally forbidden from telling on you to anyone, unless you're violent or suicidal. They will throw years and years of studies away if they give away you secrets. Beyond that, you'll be asked what you're struggling with. This can take a session or three. That's normal because it takes time to gain trust and open up. Though they'll gather data during these sessions, too. After all, you don't end up sitting in a therapists office because you're doing great. And they do know a number of different behaviors that end up being problematic beyond a certain scale. But it can be refreshing to talk to someone just knowning your bug. I knew I was writing too much by paragraph 2. But I'm submitting this anyway.

rexpop 6y ago
> I knew I was writing too much by paragraph 2. But I'm submitting this anyway. I don't know why you say this. I found your whole comment informative.
sneak 6y ago
> And they are legally forbidden from telling on you to anyone, unless you're violent or suicidal. That last is a reason a lot of people end up wanting to visit them. It's a privacy catch-22. There are also several things (being a pilot among them) that such a "private" session also may result in you being formally and permanently disqualified from. The privacy laws really need to be strengthened.
notokay 6y ago
>unless you're violent or suicidal. Yes, and if you are suicidal, police will throw you in a jail. Or worse - in a psychiatric hospital. And you are gonna be fired from work and will be even more miserable than before. There is no help for men with depression. Even if you ask for it, you have to keep lying and downplaying your symptoms, so no one would think you are really depressed.
- 6y ago

amp108 6y ago

> In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard Oh, how I wish that were true. When I was 12, my brother was heavily into drugs, my sister was violent, and my parents were ending their loveless marriage. I wasn't handling it well. My mother decided to put me in therapy. My therapist bullied me, literally shouting at me that I wasn't normal, suggesting I should skip out on school, and offering to "teach me how to masturbate". I hated going there, and told my mother (who had been granted custody), but she just said I hated it because he told me "hard truths" and "told it like it was". It's been decades, and for all I know he's dead. I heard that he'd been fined for insurance fraud, but never lost his license. I'm sure a competent therapist would have helped me. I did have problems adjusting, and I suspect (only suspect) that I'm "on the spectrum", as the kids say. But I was put in exactly the wrong place to deal with that. Moral of the story: you have to vet therapists thoroughly before you entrust your psychological well-being to them.

thom 6y ago
I'm sorry you went through that, both the relationship with the therapist and your family's lack of support. I hope you, your siblings and your parents are doing better now, but either way this seems an important warning to note.
GuiA 6y ago
It’s hard to bring up that point without being misunderstood. While therapy can obviously be incredibly positive, like any discipline it suffers from a large proportion of mediocre practitioners, and a smaller but more dangerous proportion of harmful practitioners. My personal experiences with mental health professionals (over several decades, in multiple countries) were unhelpful at best, and at worst they included things like recklessly prescribing medication (within 10 minutes of the first meeting), relying on outdated junk science, pushing for more appointments/making it very hard to end the patient relationship, etc. Considering that many people who are likely to go to a therapist are likely to be in a vulnerable place to begin with (doubly so for children/teenagers), the recent wave of blind faith in therapy and the belief that “go see a mental healthy professional it can only make things better” is reckless.
mnm1 6y ago

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago

> In therapy, you are unconditionally accepted with positive regard, which facilitates viewing yourself more clearly You have described effectively the opposite of modern society, where there's a thirst to find faults in one another. Whether it some bias, political opinion, attitude, etc. It's a national past time to judge the virtue of another person's character. The less understanding and reflection on self, the more vicious the judgement. Maybe if we begin spending less time virtue signally to one another and more time being alone with our own thoughts...