Problems…everyone has them, to a certain degree at least. You can't compare, what may be major to you might be minor to the person beside you, and vice versa. Can you quantify sadness? Or pain? Can you measure how much help someone needs? Or whether they need any at all? And once you have problems, they say get help; talk to someone. So you go and pay an hourly rate to talk to someone for 50 minutes-not even the full hour. This stranger, who is supposedly meant to be beneficial for you simply because they have a few degrees that qualify them to, sits in front of you and listens to you go on and on about whatever you feel comfortable explaining.
What I am about to say is entirely my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt; I think therapy is pointless. I have been through a lot, more than enough to qualify me within the “have you tried speaking to someone about this” membership. Yet I can’t help but feel like someone who doesn't know me personally cannot understand me. They simply can’t have a rationale behind the advice they give me because they do not have experience with who I am and how I truly feel. What if I completely faked my entire appointment, and talked about an issue I have never had in a manner I am not familiar with. The therapist across from me would still react in a practiced manner. Probably repeating a bit of their reactions from their previous appointment, and preparing to use a bit of their reactions in their next one. I feel the need to express these thoughts as I could find a million research papers and articles about why therapy is good for someone, and while it is barely addressed, I believe the contrary.
There is no history between you and the therapist you are seeing for the first time. I have heard it's a process, and you have to get to know one another. People have told me you have to give a therapist around 10 weeks to see if you are a good match. What if I cannot justify losing 10 weeks when I need help right now? What if it's not getting to know someone I need, but just a glimmer of hope. What do I do then?
Moreover, your friends see your daily actions and observe you grow up. They witness your habits, dislikes, and mannerisms. Therefore, their reactions are valid, and sometimes they can even point out what you had not noticed. A therapist, on the other hand, only sees you within the boundary of their 4 dull walls, where you are situated on a mildly comfortable seating adjustment. Yet suddenly, they are granted the right to hear your deepest darkest thoughts and fears. And to add on, their reactions? Where do they come from if these therapists never see you in your day-to-day life? Even if what they say is valid, why should you believe it applies to you since they do not even know you at your core. Maybe I sound too judgmental, maybe even with a bit of prejudice. But I cannot help but feel this way as it is derived from my experience.
I went to around 12 appointments with my therapist and each time felt more misunderstood. I had a hard time opening up as I did not genuinely believe she could help me, so it felt like an even bigger waste of my time and energy. I would go and talk about irrelevant things, and she would go on to ask me how I think those events settled in my mind. Little did she know they meant nothing to me and I was simply trying to fill the 50-minute period. Then I felt like I was wasting a lot of money, but I simply did not have the heart to tell her she was not being helpful. Neither did I have the courage to trust her. So I did the only rational thing I could think of: I ghosted her.
I want to link a video which I believe encapsulates everything I feel:
Perhaps I need to destigmatize my mind, but I feel as though my friends understand me so well that their advice is a million times more valid than a stranger who happens to be a trained professional. And whatever I keep to myself and away from my friends, should not directly be labeled as unhealthy, but rather my personal method of dealing with it.
I want to argue with my own argument by discussing a few articles that essentially disagree with everything I have said. Throughout the essay by Rubin Battino, who is a licensed counselor specializing in therapy, it is explained that therapy helps reframe the mind mechanism to alter one's response to their problems. The discussed approach is triggering the client to think differently from what they have been doing in the past and doing this in regards to their circumstances. Battino goes on to explain that people are used to interpreting their lives in a unique way and the method of helping them is to encourage them to view their lives through a different perspective so that they can create the change they need within their subconscious.
My final point is that therapy is the intersection of science and art. The trained professionals have to go through school and training to be able to sit across you in silence. Therefore, it is through the hours of textbook-studying and exam-taking that they earn the credentials of a therapist. And that is why I find the core of therapy to be flawed, as it is rehearsed in a sense. Therapists study the best practices for psychotherapy, and analyze how they should approach their client; but these do no necessarily apply to every client.
This blog entry is very open to discussion, please comment your thoughts!
When discussing therapy I think it's very important to consider the saying "you can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink". When people are forced to talk to a stranger it can be traumatizing and counterproductive and forcing it on them, which is done pretty often, is very wrong.
I thought this was a very honest and open reflection about your experiences with therapy. I have had a similar feeling of not wanting to spill my guts to someone who doesn't know the first thing about me. While I think it's a huge step in the right direction that therapy is becoming more destigmatized in our society, sometimes the fact that so many people advocate for it makes it seem like you are the problem if you are not having success with it. What's great is that therapy as a discipline continues to change over time. I had a friend who hated therapy for years until she found a therapist who did Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which focuses on identifying…