Does therapy even work?

[dundyfundy]

I agree with you. There is a minority of people for whom it might help thankfully, but unfortunately for the most severe cases I don't think it will.

My opinion is a little less weighted than others in here as I haven't actually tried it. But I have been suicidal since early teens, and I am mid twenties now. I have good family, no shocking experiences, etc. But every day wish to die. I am a very logical person, read a lot, and tried self-help things. It helped to learn a lot about the why I am the way I am and accept it - but that's not wanting to live. I learnt I don't necessarily want to die, just that I have no option.

I need to be financially independent - to achieve the freedom I want. Absolute freedom of doing nothing, or whatever I want. I have "great job" as careers go, earn well, wfh before covid as I want, flexible, etc. But that's nothing. Not nearly enough freedom for me. I want to be able to not wake up tomorrow, travel abroad next day. Travel the world for years. Binge on a book for weeks with little sleep. All spontaneously at moment's notice. With no ramifications. Of course I could save up and do it for few years now, but knowing that will set you back in life just makes it not worth it.

I don't want some kind of obscene money, just enough to live off for the rest of my life, help family or relatives if needed. It's just about the things money allows. I don't want to be forced to do anything - whatever it would be, in life, for 40-50 years. I love being spontaneous and our society simply does not allows that, if you truly act freely (without evil or causing anyone harm ofc) - there are repercussions, setbacks in life.

I tried building business but that didn't work. And tried loads of things, living in the moment, etc, it just doesn't help - as I don't want to, I think it's a human nature to be free, and it crushes me as I am not allowed to. I tried to enable myself but it's too hard, fighting for so many years, logically it's just easier to end it.


So honestly I don't think there's anything a therapist could do to help me. I talked to a few friends, as last resort opening up, we would talk for 4-5 hours at a time on multiple occasions, but all it did make me more frustrated because I was hoping for a slight relief, and I did not get it. Because all the reasoning and scenarios anyone can think of I already thought of 5-10 years ago, and tried it out and it doesn't work for me, or is not realistic.

 

[Una]

But that's nothing. Not nearly enough freedom for me. I want to be able to not wake up tomorrow, travel abroad next day. Travel the world for years. Binge on a book for weeks with little sleep. All spontaneously at moment's notice. With no ramifications. Of course I could save up and do it for few years now, but knowing that will set you back in life just makes it not worth it.

I don't want some kind of obscene money, just enough to live off for the rest of my life, help family or relatives if needed. It's just about the things money allows. I don't want to be forced to do anything - whatever it would be, in life, for 40-50 years. I love being spontaneous and our society simply does not allows that, if you truly act freely (without evil or causing anyone harm ofc) - there are repercussions, setbacks in life.

THIS. Exactly.
It is the first time I have seen someone put in words what, in English as my second language, I have named - an absolute autonomy of self. Freedom to be v Requirement to do is the line between being free v 'working' to be free. Freedom as s state of being is the essential prerequisite for any truly authentic, creative thought or deed be it in science, art or philosophy. Ancient Greeks knew it. It is not by chance they laid the foundations to humanity. As it is not by chance that, ever since, freedom and spontaneity that naturally flows from it and is essential to creativity, has been slowly but progressively curtailed to the point of the contemporary spectacle of imitations created and performed by modern days slaves who, paradoxically, believe themselves free!

 

[Abaigh]

There is no correct answer to this question. People tend to react to therapy differently. Although therapy hasn't helped me I enjoy having someone to talk to.

 

[Outsider]

No. It doesnt cure mental illness. Doesn't address root causes of mental illnesses. Genes, environment, social circle, job, current world rapid changes, brain disorders, past experiences, incurable physical diseases, money issues etc. How can talking to a stranger fix any of this? It is crazy. It might be helpful for some people in some specific circumstances, that's it. Sucks that it is the treatment we have now, along with medications which are also ineffective, close to placebo effect.

 

[dundyfundy]

THIS. Exactly.
It is the first time I have seen someone put in words what, in English as my second language, I have named - an absolute autonomy of self. Freedom to be v Requirement to do is the line between being free v 'working' to be free. Freedom as s state of being is the essential prerequisite for any truly authentic, creative thought or deed be it in science, art or philosophy. Ancient Greeks knew it. It is not by chance they laid the foundations to humanity. As it is not by chance that, ever since, freedom and spontaneity that naturally flows from it and is essential to creativity, has been slowly but progressively curtailed to the point of the contemporary spectacle of imitations created and performed by modern days slaves who, paradoxically, believe themselves free!

I love the way you have put it. "An absolute autonomy of self. Freedom to be, v requirement to do." - summarises my wall of earlier waffling perfectly. Not sure how much this is the reason behind you being here, but on the hindsight of us ending up this way, here, it's nice to see someone who faces specifically the same issue, or seriously considered it.

I have mentioned this briefly to some people throughout the years, but they never understood me and replied back with something along the lines of "well who doesn't want to be rich and do whatever, everyone does". Sure... as a dream. I wouldn't mind being the best boxer in the world, singer, football player, whatever. But If I am not it's not a problem for me, since I am not that into it if I am honest. That's how they are. They didn't start thinking about this since they were 11-12 years old, everyday, for longer than half of their life, unlike me and some of the others of us here. Or worse, put their lifesavings into building a business to actually try and make it, ending up with nothing like I and some of the others of us here for whom this is a major reason for being here, not having the freedom to be, but rather be required to do as you've put it.

I always thought that in retrospect I was lucky to actually have a reason of wanting to die for more than half of my life, and there being a "fix" for it. But recently realised it's even a worse agony when you have been trying to hack at it for years, have no energy and no longer even want to achieve it. Just want peace. But there's that lingering hope that something you eventually do will succeed, and then you will have the freedom to be. It's horrendous, as you are stuck between the two worlds, not being able to pull the trigger on ending it.

 

[MaybeSoon]

Depends on the person I think. For me it doesn't work because my brain is automatically skepitcal of anything that could benefit me. I could probably take a miracle 'mental illness' drug proven to work and I'd still be mentally ill.

 

[Aliali1992]

No. It doesnt cure mental illness. Doesn't address root causes of mental illnesses. Genes, environment, social circle, job, current world rapid changes, brain disorders, past experiences, incurable physical diseases, money issues etc. How can talking to a stranger fix any of this? It is crazy. It might be helpful for some people in some specific circumstances, that's it. Sucks that it is the treatment we have now, along with medications which are also ineffective, close to placebo effect.

I agree with the above but medications are way superior to placebo in treating depression. It was contraversial in the past but recent research setteled it.
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/big-new-study-confirms-antidepressants-work-better-placebo/

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

I'd generally say that it doesn't work if your problems have anything to do with things like perpetual poverty and homelessness, disability, the way our society works, trauma/abuse etc. Many therapists come from privileged backgrounds and approach problems such as those with trivial and often harmful notions of help that amount to mostly useless coping mechanisms that don't actually address the root of cause your problems. I personally don't even find it superficially helpful because you're talking to someone that doesn't actually care about you and has no issue threatening you with involuntary holds under the guise of care & treatment. There are many problems can't be fixed and the few that can be our society doesn't care about and the therapist can't help you with anyways. I'd say that it's generally not going to work unless you have "normal" problems and at that point you don't need therapy in the first place. You may find some of these quotes more enlightening than what I had to say:

"What, then, are psychotherapists and what do they sell to or impose on their clients? Insofar as they use force, psychotherapists are judges and jailers, inquisitors and torturers; insofar as they eschew it, they are secular priests and pseudomedical rhetoricians. Their services consist of coercions and constraints imposed on individuals on behalf of other persons or social groups, or they consist of contracts and conversations entered into by individuals on their own behalf." ― Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/866342

Will the therapist change the economy to stop poverty wages/unaffordable housing/unsustainably high rent/boring miserable shit jobs/unsustainably long work hours/work and school stress/political and economic and social issues that divide people and cause constant conflict and isolation and loneliness?/etc

Why recommend a therapist or try to fix people if after therapy people will just be thrown back into the same situation that destroys them again?

A therapist may be helpful for people who literally just want/need to talk about feelings, but it does nothing for people whose lives are being destroyed by situational stressors and a variety of political/economic issues that neither the therapist or the person can control. -Unknown stranger from Reddit

Yes, most therapists must receive post-graduate education and certification. The education they receive is functionally like that of a priest; e.g. they are taught to view things through a very particular scope - whereas the priest is taught the lens of their particular religion, the therapist-to-be is taught the lens of contemporary psychology and its endless pathologies. Therapy in-and-of itself, is like a confessional in a church, the therapist is the priest and the patient the confessor. The patient confesses their worries and problems much like a would-be blasphemer would confess their "sins".

The sad thing is, "just put your head in the sand" is probably a pretty common response to the OPs concerns not only at mental health resources across the world, but from peers and colleagues; the patient lives in a world where being open about such things in the dehumanized, hyperindividualized public sphere typically only invites scrutiny and further alienation (likely from individuals who are just as alienated and scared as them), which increases their reliance on the therapist as much as it increases their sense of cognitive dissonance, as though they are caught between two realities in a depersonalized limbo. Of course, there's only the one reality as far as we know, but to this patient their inner world has become an enigma and its workings thoroughly mystified by an industry that portends one must go through many years of schooling and certification before they can make sense of the human mind; which is as absurd and circular claim to make as "God works in mysterious ways." - as if that explains why your toaster catching on fire this morning and the delay that caused made you miss your train commute derailing, killing everyone on board. Likewise, it is just as circular to tell someone they have a disease called "depression", which can only be treated by "trained professionals" - trained, of course, in "psychology", an invention of the human mind as much as the phrase "mental illness" with all it's implicit meanings. But the backbone of the entire practice is to be a truthclaim, much like any religion - they suppose "mental illness" to be as sacrosanct as religions hold their Gods; that is, as self-evident and infallible as a physicist would consider thermodynamics.

Perhaps it would be too radical to admit "depression" is an entirely normal reaction to a world in which one exists as a dehumanized, chronically hollowed-out wage slave whose life has been reduced to a series of empty, mindless labor and emptier consumption rituals, comforted only by addictive drugs pushed on them at every turn, and vacuous social ties of similarly hollowed out wageslaves who only know how to monologue and compete; who breathes, eats and shits microplastic, pollution and pesticides, and can't remember the last time they felt somebody actually cared if they lived or died. It'd be far too radical to admit we're living through the slow-motion collapse of the living super organism we call 'civilization' and every case of "depression" is like one little support column showing signs of giving out under the weight of a monstrosity that has become too bloated and labyrinthine for its own good. Then we'd be engaging in reality, giving the "illness" the scope it deserves, and psychology cares not for this.

The reality is, contemporary psychology functions much like a religion or a cult does, in that what one receives from it depends very much on what one puts into it - the power wielded by such organizations are directly correlate to belief of their followers. This is the power of placebo, confirmation bias, and magical thinking. If one considers their reaction to, say, climate change to be "abnormal", they merely have to walk into a therapist's office and their belief will be confirmed - their conscious experience will become a list of "symptoms" of "illness", for which they'll receive "medication". The words, the labels, the pills, they're all momentarily comforting, but none actually deal with the original problem any more than popping an Aspirin cures a raging influenza infection. That's because the entire "mental health industry" is palliative at best - worse yet, it serves at the behest of the state, which benefits massively from an industry that teaches individuals to view their life's problems through a scope that is not only decidedly apolitical but atomized as well.

Take an issue like climate change and this scope fails almost entirely - its sufficiently large-scale enough that the therapist's individualizing lens has no real answer to it. One who is trained in end-of-life therapy may have some more substantial answers that verge into decidedly philosophical territory, but most "by the book" therapists will preach willful ignorance; their role is not to create independent-thinking individuals, community leaders, politically-minded citizens or would-be revolutionaries, because they don't operate in this paradigm; an office vending machine is more communalistic than a therapist's office could ever claim to be. No, their role is to keep people complicit and complacent in the consume/work false dichotomy lifestyle for they are part of the very same paradigm, this being their work as much as preaching is a priests'. The "mental health" industry is obliged to meet the absurdity of the world it exists in and profits off of, and so existential terror becomes "eco-anxiety", another cutesy label which can be "treated" with the right combination of benzodiazepines and willful ignorance, just as a village witch doctor may have once treated "spiritual possession" with a concoction of ayahuasca and a ceremony. Now this ceremony only takes 45 minutes and $200 a week and a monthly trip to the pharmacy. Who ever said capitalism wasn't efficient?! -Unknown stranger from Reddit

I agree with you. There is a minority of people for whom it might help thankfully, but unfortunately for the most severe cases I don't think it will.

My opinion is a little less weighted than others in here as I haven't actually tried it. But I have been suicidal since early teens, and I am mid twenties now. I have good family, no shocking experiences, etc. But every day wish to die. I am a very logical person, read a lot, and tried self-help things. It helped to learn a lot about the why I am the way I am and accept it - but that's not wanting to live. I learnt I don't necessarily want to die, just that I have no option.

I need to be financially independent - to achieve the freedom I want. Absolute freedom of doing nothing, or whatever I want. I have "great job" as careers go, earn well, wfh before covid as I want, flexible, etc. But that's nothing. Not nearly enough freedom for me. I want to be able to not wake up tomorrow, travel abroad next day. Travel the world for years. Binge on a book for weeks with little sleep. All spontaneously at moment's notice. With no ramifications. Of course I could save up and do it for few years now, but knowing that will set you back in life just makes it not worth it.

I don't want some kind of obscene money, just enough to live off for the rest of my life, help family or relatives if needed. It's just about the things money allows. I don't want to be forced to do anything - whatever it would be, in life, for 40-50 years. I love being spontaneous and our society simply does not allows that, if you truly act freely (without evil or causing anyone harm ofc) - there are repercussions, setbacks in life.

I tried building business but that didn't work. And tried loads of things, living in the moment, etc, it just doesn't help - as I don't want to, I think it's a human nature to be free, and it crushes me as I am not allowed to. I tried to enable myself but it's too hard, fighting for so many years, logically it's just easier to end it.

So honestly I don't think there's anything a therapist could do to help me. I talked to a few friends, as last resort opening up, we would talk for 4-5 hours at a time on multiple occasions, but all it did make me more frustrated because I was hoping for a slight relief, and I did not get it. Because all the reasoning and scenarios anyone can think of I already thought of 5-10 years ago, and tried it out and it doesn't work for me, or is not realistic.

You might relate to this quote:

"Living happily" itself is a myth. Nobody on this floating rock is consistently "happy" every single day unless there is something seriously neurologically wrong with them that makes them that way. Life itself is inherently suffering - this isn't some edgy edict, it's the fundamental nature of the human condition; we are animals, and moreso social animals, which, not unlike elephants, zebras, dolphins, cows, or donkeys, are biologically wired and adapted to chasing short-term fulfillment, and avoiding pain and suffering - to the degree we experience and remember negative feelings and experiences far, far deeper and longer than we do positive experiences. This is the telltale sign of our inescapable animal nature - the hardwiring that makes suffering so inherently unavoidable, and pleasure seemingly so elusive.

Boiling the phenomena of NEETdom down to "mental health" is a reductionistic fairy tale that completely ignores the context of modern life in favor of hyperindividualizing the consequences of that context down to the individual and leaving it there. Speaking of context - the factors you mention are not as much of an immunological force as you imagine. Our society is one rife with celebrity suicides, who so many see as the "winners" of our silly game - they have money, prestige, recognition, fulfillment, endless fancy toys and achievements - and yet still cannot escape the call to the void - which, if anything, speaks to the fact we spend our lives chasing things that really do not make our lives all that worthwhile in the end. Sure, it's nice to be clock in to your 9-5 every day and pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you're doing the right thing like everyone else, but this is the life of an obedient somnambulant - one we are conditioned for in this society. You know the script - go to school, work until you're old, save and scrimp the whole way through, retire, and go rot in an old folks home using the money you've hoarded your whole life. This might be a fulfilling life for an inanimate machine part that cannot feel and is not alive, but for a social animal that needs environmental enrichment and belonging and meaning to feel any kind of consistent fulfilment, it is a slow death. This isn't to say NEETdom is some grand alternative - it is the final consequence of this meaningless life program - narcissized depression and almost total alienation, whereby one practically declares themselves dead to the outside world and escapes deeper and deeper inside themselves as a solace, until the crushing emptiness of isolation and loneliness destroys their ability to experience pleasure and often their will to live. This is typically because of the self-isolating shame that attaches itself to the status. As social animals, we need people in our lives to feel any degree of worthwhile. Interpersonal interaction injects our lives with a kind of meaning and fulfilment that all the technology, distractions and drugs cannot. Unemployment and NEETdom would not nearly be as bad if not for the immense social stigma, and if we could all expect to live in communities we felt a part of, or at the very least had friends who cared about us outside of our job title. Unfortunately, this is not the nature of our hyperindividualized, materialistic, and vain society whereby one increasingly derives their (narcissized) sense of self-worth and status from their ability to consume and brag about said consumption. Instead, we live in a time where over half of the population reports always feeling lonely and having few if any friends, 1/6 of us are on psychotropic drugs, and the suicide rate hasn't been this high in 30 years.

All the same - this doesn't make "successful" people failures. But it also doesn't make NEETs "failures", at least in any individual sense. The failure is society itself - in providing an insane sociocultural script that makes people incredibly sick; if I could call NEETdom anything, anything at all, I'd call it the canary in the coal mine for a society that is providing an age old lifescript that is no longer worthwhile, rewarding, or even meaningful in any sense - nor does it even guarantee the barest physical necessities for participation anymore; recall that wages have been stagnant for 40 years and we have wealth inequality levels that mimic those found prior to the Great Depression, what becomes all the more clear is that modern life is the new Great Depression. This is a dreadfully sick post-meaning society where mass shootings, panoptic surveillance, suicide, opiate abuse, loneliness, and alienation have become as commonplace as psychotropic drugs and psych diagnoses; which, if anything, says nothing more than that the very concept of "mental illness" is a desperate attempt by the system to hold on to it's collapsing validity by pointing at dissidents and shouting "they have some inherent biological illness that makes them this way!" As such, the realm of modern day psychology/psychiatry has become no more than another long arm of the corporatocratic, neoliberal police state, which has a part in allowing modern-day quality of life to continue it's decades long slow bleed to the sociopathic class - the wealthy and powerful.

We must think of NEETdom, depression, and a wide scope of psychological maladies as meaningful signals our bodies are sending us about the ways we conduct our lives nowadays, not as noise that is to be ignored and medicated away. -Stranger on the internet

 

[SpottedPanda]

I think for therapy to work the recipient has to be somewhat open to change, somewhat open to putting in some effort.

I'm stubborn in my thinking and set in my ways. I can only imagine therapy being a waste of time, energy, and money. But I'm sure that's not the case for all

 

[Sod123]

I've tried CBT and seen clinical psychologists, neither helped one bit, probably made it worse, they get paid to read off a script, and I'm an individual, like we all are, if you have such severe depression and anxiety as I do, talking to a stranger ( or anyone for that matter ) is just a waste of your time, may aswell talk to a blade of grass for all the help it gives.

 

[Darksektori]

Does it work? Well if it did, it's safe to assume that many of us wouldn't be here would we?

 

[Bct]

Haven't tried it yet, but I'm skeptical with therapy. It should be convincing to improve my condition. Too bad being someone from a small town & limited money means lack of accessibility. Maybe I have to spend tons of money & time to find a therapist that works, but I don't know if the result will worth it.