Venting Does anyone feel like therapy is useless?

[Tiredofit25]

I'm usually a lurker and dont really post, but i want to get this off my chest. I don't really see the point in therapy, whenever you express your issues to people. They always say to "get therapy" but therapy is all cope to me. I had a session with my therapist the other day where I explained to her how my financial situation is one of my main contributors to my anxiety, bitterness, self loathing and suicidality, I told her how I feel like all my efforts to overcome it go no where and usually lead to dissapointement and therefore amplify my self hatred. She then told me for 20 minutes how money doesnt bring happiness and isn't Important. I would understand this statement if I was wealthy but I don't and she knows, which is why it irked me to basically hear such a privileged take. It's easy for you to say that money isn't important while having an iPhone 14 in your hands worth hundreds and wearing 200€ pairs of Nike shoes. For me however, money IS important and would bring me happiness or at least make life slightly bearable as my personal needs would be met . And she's had many takes like this that I find unbearable and out of touch.

Whenever I tell her about my suicidal thoughts and depression, she tries to change the subject as if expressing these things bothers her because ig she thinks it's too grim or shatters her bluepilled worldview. And addition to that, most of her advice and perspective on such subjects I find generic and superficial and I feel like her insight adds brings nothing to the table, she basically tells me things that I already know. Ive seen better advice on reddit and using AI. I guess it is hard to actually offer profound advice when you've never been through any hardship in life and can't relate. I know she doesnt represent all therapists but I starting to notice a huge trend and I've seen many people bring up the same thing. I feel like most therapists are privileged or grew up so and therefore it is harder for them to relate and actually offer a deeper perspective for people who are not or who did not.

If your life is objectively trash, whether that may be due to trauma, poverty or chronic illness etc. I dont see how therapy would work as it won't change your objective reality. It may be useful if your life is objectively good but you are depressed for some reason. I guess it may help you delude yourself , which is fine if that's what you want. But I dont think most people with issues that are actually negatively affecting their reality want to be deluded or be dismissed but want useful solutions along with good insight on these issues to help them cope and overcome it.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

She then told me for 20 minutes how money doesnt bring happiness and isn't Important.

LMAO - honestly, I wouldn't be suicidal if I had enough money. I totally relate that lack of money (and everything that comes with it) can make people suicidal. Money is the fuel of the world.

I'm pretty sure your therapist (like any other) is happy to have a good income. In my case, if I got paid 150$/h for therapy (just an estimate) I wouldn't be suicidal.

Sure, money can't buy everything especially not health.

Therapy can't fix everything.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

It ain't just a feeling. (Personally speaking, as an obvious disclaimer).

 

[blackbeauty]

I'll be honest my experience with therapy was pretty neutral. She didn't push her agenda or her beliefs on me (unlike yours it seems) but she didn't tell me anything new about myself.

The benefits of therapy do not outweigh the price tag though.

 

[Tiredofit25]

LMAO - honestly, I wouldn't be suicidal if I had enough money. I totally relate that lack of money (and everything that comes with it) can make people suicidal. Money is the fuel of the world.

I'm pretty sure your therapist (like any other) is happy to have a good income. In my case, if I got paid 150$/h for therapy (just an estimate) I wouldn't be suicidal.

Sure, money can't buy everything especially not health.

Therapy can't fix everything.

That's true, I do think that with money. You can atleast be able to afford good treatment and care for your health. I dont know why people always bring up therapy as a go to whenever you express hatred or un satisfaction towards life.

I'll be honest my experience with therapy was pretty neutral. She didn't push her agenda or her beliefs on me (unlike yours it seems) but she didn't tell me anything new about myself.

The benefits of therapy do not outweigh the price tag though.

Yeah, the better ones from my knowledge are way too expensive and tend to work private. The cheaper ones honestly don't have much to provide.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Yeah, I think that therapy is useless to somebody like me because therapists aren't able to understand cases that go far outside the norm like mine. Hell, if even the majority of people on this site are unable to understand me, a therapist has no chance. The thing about me is that I see life itself as shitty and death as peace whilst they have automatically assumed from the get go that death is bad and living is good. Additionally, I have never had any goals or motivations in life and a therapist isn't able to comprehend that as everybody has goals in life according to them.

I think that if therapists were open minded to consider cases like me, it could help me even if the extent of the help is only sitting in a comfortable room and venting about my issues for one hour. I'm not necessarily saying that they also have to admit that death is good, they can still think that death is bad but I'd rather have them be open minded... which they aren't. I just want to be able to talk about how life is not meant for me and how I don't have any desires to struggle and fight pointlessly just for me to die anyway.

I personally believe that therapy is meant for those whose issues aren't that bad to begin with as they tend to be the people who want to live life and are highly motivated to do so but have some sort of a problem that can be fixed via therapy. As for me though, I got no chance under the current medical model

 

[EvisceratedJester]

If your life is objectively trash, whether that may be due to trauma, poverty chronic illness etc. I dont see how therapy would work as it won't change your objective reality.

I have seen people who have had to deal with severe issues who have talked about therapy working for them. As to how true those claims really are, I don't know. I'm not them. At the end of the day, therapy is something that is done to help you find better ways to cope with your situation, not something that is meant to magically make your life amazing again. I personally have never gone to therapy before, so I can only speak on very limited knowledge of it based on all the psych courses I've taken so far.

There isn't much that can be done to change one's objective reality outside of maybe creating actual systematic changes and wide-scale social changes. Outside of that, life is just a game of who can cope best with whatever it is they are going through. For some, changing their perspective on things really does end up helping them out significantly. That's why you tend to find a lot of people who use therapy talk about how they have changed their lives. It's because a change in how you view your situation and the world around you can be powerful for some. In other cases, it doesn't do shit because the person may require way more than just that. You can't really judge who therapy will work for based on things, like their "objective reality". A lot of it comes down to individual differences between people. There are people who are in horrific situations who have found that therapy helped them out significantly and there are people who have had pretty good lives overall but who find that therapy isn't enough to treat their mental health issues.

I don't plan on ever trying therapy unless I'm forced into it by family. I don't have any mental health issues and I want to die just because I don't like being alive that much, so it's of no use to me.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

I'll be honest my experience with therapy was pretty neutral. She didn't push her agenda or her beliefs on me (unlike yours it seems) but she didn't tell me anything new about myself.

The benefits of therapy do not outweigh the price tag though.

I personally believe that therapy is meant for those whose issues aren't that bad to begin with as they tend to be the people who want to live life and are highly motivated to do so but have some sort of a problem that can be fixed via therapy. As for me though, I got no chance under the current medical model

I would say therapy can work and can be beneficial for people if therapy can solve their problems. As long as the actual problems persist then what can therapy do or how can we recover?

It's either we want to cope or we don't want to cope with certain situations.

 

[Tiredofit25]

At the end of the day, therapy is something that is done to help you find better ways to cope with your situation, not something that is meant to magically make your life amazing again

I know therapy isn't really something that is expected to fix all of my problems, but I find many of the therapists, well the cheaper ones I've seen don't offer much perspective or good insight when it comes to certain darker cases, ig. It's basically goes like this " I have nothing to look forward to and I find life unbearable to enjoy" and they will reply with saying " ok, I understand.. " like girl ok .. Thanks for your deep insight into my thoughts along with your profound advice to help me cope. I do watch videos of this male therapist on YouTube and many of his videos have been helpful, maybe because he's one of the few I've seen that has actually been through depression and therefore can offer good insight and an interesting perspective on mental illness.

 

[Hollowman]

It was definitely useless for me.

 

[Willy Wonka]

Therapy traumatised me and all things meaningful as to why my life turned out the way that it was I found out by my own research.
Almost 30 years of therapy and my life and circumstances are unbearable and literally just disgusting.

 

[BlackEyedDog]

... It's because a change in how you view your situation and the world around you can be powerful for some..

This may be a little redundant because I feel EJ's response was well put, that context is king.
For some the situation and the circumstances around them are too powerful to overcome. Which also
emphasizes PM's response in that I would wager that those who don't have financial difficulties are
on average likely to fare better in getting therapy.

I would never tell someone it is not worth trying therapy. Even then you may need to try a few different
therapists until you feel some sort of comfortableness, and for some if they're being honest with themselves
that may include gender. But even this trial and error will be easier for those who can afford the time and money.

Therapy can help to self-reflect, learn about yourself, understand why you are the way you are. Why you
tend to certain ways. That is valuable but even then, understanding is only the beginning. Then you have
to work towards improvement and changes. Work on coping strategies to reduce the suffering. Some
of us the depression is too deep, our circumstances are too much and we learn therapy can't help us.

For some it might require meds and therapy, depression and suicidal thoughts tend to negatively wire our
brains and skew our perception. This is also where careful use of psychedelics might provide a breakthrough
but even that class of drugs is no cure. Not to mention hard to source and expensive for many to procure.

Therapists are also human, and many of them have mentors or their own therapists to help them deal with
all the human suffering they encounter. Certainly some are neophytes, some are overwhelmed, some are
just not good at their jobs. But that is not all.

 

[affirmatice]

I guess for many people with very real things that are going wrong.

The goal of therapy IS essentially to find a way cope with them.

The thing is… I don't want to cope with what's going wrong. The whole reason I'm in therapy is because I have been unable for years to cope with the things that make my life hell.

maybe it's the perfectionist in me speaking. But why should I have to cope. Why should I have to find a way to slowly crawl back and maybe, maybe get some of my life back - though it'll never be the same, it'll never be the life I wanted to live.

 

[ShatteredSerenity]

most of her advice and perspective on such subjects I find generic and superficial and I feel like her insight adds brings nothing to the table, she basically tells me things that I already know. Ive seen better advice on reddit

This sounds just like my experience with therapists. I've tried therapy numerous times, and all I ever got from it was advice that was either a) irrelevant or not applicable to me, or b) something I already knew from my own life experience and research.

A lot of the advice I heard made sense and likely would be helpful for someone else, but it's never been the help I needed. I think I was always just too much of an outlier, with a mixture of issues that are too deep and complex to respond to the standard simplistic boilerplate advice they're used to giving. I tried finding more experienced and specialized therapists, but there's a shortage and I never found one who was worth the time and effort to stick with.

 

[lilyofthevalley404]

I've seen therapy do wanders for people but it can't change your physical situation and on the mental health side they all tend to say the same things and cycle you through CBT and DBT even if it didn't work before and then they try to medicate you which is a complete shot in the dark because they don't know what causes the majority of MH conditions and every one's brain is different so you end up going through hell with side effects while already in a fragile state for the medication to do nothing or make you worse
And even if it works it ends up turning you into a zombie or always in a mild depression while you feel nothing or you have the wrong diagnosis so for example you have bipolar and they give you a ssri and it triggers a manic episode and you end up getting sectioned with long lasting damage to the grey matter of your brain
Perhaps if you get therapy early it could actually help but most conditions are less severe in child hood and get compounded by other stressor or per se you are getting abused and so you can't get therapy and talking for the NHS you end up getting put on a 50000 year waiting list your issues become worse untreated and get put with a therapist who honestly doesn't give a shit

TL;DR therapy can't change your physical situations and maybe in a perfect world it could help with MH if caught and treated early by someone who isn't just following a YouTube tutorial