Venting Who else doesn't go to therapy?

[TimeToBiteTheDust]

I don't go to therapy because I know my life is over. Nothing will work. I'm fucked up and I don't want to waste my money too. I went four years ago but didn't have suicidal thoughts.

 

[Tearygirl]

I don't. Same as you, I know my life will end soon. Also, they always threat me to send to the hospital when I say about suicidal thoughts...

 

[TAW122]

I don't either, especially after knowing how useless it is towards my situation. I only recovered this year due to myself finding my own personal solutions to my quandaries. Life really sucks in general and also yes @Tearygirl I had therapists and counselors (as well as mental health professionals) ask me the classic trap question "Do you have thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or wish to hurt others?" and afawk (as far as we know), answering truthfully COULD result in unwanted consequences such as being sent to the hospital/psych hold without your consent. While I have never been sent there, I had been asked that incriminating, trap question a few times, sometimes even talking about violence/revenge from a philosophical standpoint. It's maddening and disgusting that one cannot have a rational discussion with them, without them treating you like a threat or a suspect. Sadly, there just isn't many people outside of our forum to have an honest, uncensored discussion about certain topics, including suicide, harm, and right to die.

The only reasons I may even consider therapy or really anything in mental health is if/when I am ordered to, or must go in order to avoid other consequences, or to get documentation (if I need it for something), but that's about it. Therapy and counseling is utterly useless for me as well as many of us on here (barring a few situations).

 

[Nnana]

I used to go many years ago. Now not anymore. Back in the time, I was severely bullied and left school, everything my therapist did was telling me to ignore the people who bullied me, and that happiness is always a choice despite me having no friends, bullying, and other hell lot of problems. I eventually stopped going to therapy because I think therapy doesn't really work if you are truly screwed in life, and I won't pay someone to convince me to be happy regardless of a shitty life.

 

[TAW122]

Well said @Nnana and I'm sorry that you have a bad life, my childhood was similar to yours, coupled with a shitty homelife. I think that too many people (especially the general public) fail to notice that sometimes some people are just screwed in life and have a shitty life, and that trying to delude oneself into accepting said shitty life is just not a solution. They often parade around mental help just to make themselves feel like good people, but mostly I don't believe that they truly care about us suffering, they just want an ego-boost and for us to be out of their lives.

While most of the therapists I saw in the past were paid for as part of my tuition as a student at uni/grad school, I would never wish to waste hundreds or even thousands (over time) on help that is ineffective, frustrating, and even potentially dangerous towards my freedom and rights. This world and society are the ones that are sick.

 

[OneBigBlur]

I used to go many years ago. Now not anymore. Back in the time, I was severely bullied and left school, everything my therapist did was telling me to ignore the people who bullied me, and that happiness is always a choice despite me having no friends, bullying, and other hell lot of problems. I eventually stopped going to therapy because I think therapy doesn't really work if you are truly screwed in life, and I won't pay someone to convince me to be happy regardless of a shitty life.

Sounds like you got a ignorant lemon who has lived a privileged life. If happiness was a choice millions of people wouldn't attempt suicide every year. Some people would rather believe in a lie than look at reality for what it is I guess, god forbid it bursts their bubble.

I'd like to see how 'happy" these people are if they lived through a inescapable and traumatic situation, I bet they'd shut up really quick. Therapy is mostly for people who have lived normal lives and lack even the most basic insight into their problems while still being fully capable of helping themselves.

 

[Tearygirl]

I don't either, especially after knowing how useless it is towards my situation. I only recovered this year due to myself finding my own personal solutions to my quandaries. Life really sucks in general and also yes @Tearygirl I had therapists and counselors (as well as mental health professionals) ask me the classic trap question "Do you have thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or wish to hurt others?" and afawk (as far as we know), answering truthfully COULD result in unwanted consequences such as being sent to the hospital/psych hold without your consent. While I have never been sent there, I had been asked that incriminating, trap question a few times, sometimes even talking about violence/revenge from a philosophical standpoint. It's maddening and disgusting that one cannot have a rational discussion with them, without them treating you like a threat or a suspect. Sadly, there just isn't many people outside of our forum to have an honest, uncensored discussion about certain topics, including suicide, harm, and right to die.

The only reasons I may even consider therapy or really anything in mental health is if/when I am ordered to, or must go in order to avoid other consequences, or to get documentation (if I need it for something), but that's about it. Therapy and counseling is utterly useless for me as well as many of us on here (barring a few situations).

I was never asked for thought of harming others, and I think it is a valid reason for hospitalisation, but not in case of harming myself. Everyone has their right to die, and it shouldn't be interrupted by others if they are not intend to harm others. Also, they use the term "permanent solution to a temporary problem", but there are some problems which is not temporary. Also, I have no idea why permanent solution is bad. I can end every present and future problems at one time... It seems very attractive to me.

 

[OneBigBlur]

A few posts I've saved from Reddit regarding "therapy":

From my experience everything these people do is offer you a coping mechanism to deal with life.

They don't have the answers, they're not even allowed to give you their opinion (at least over here). All they do is ask you questions:

• What do you want out of life? (Plot twist: not everyone has a choice to do what he wants in this life.)
• How does that make you feel?
• What are things you can do to make it a bit less difficult / more easy.
• "Take it easy and take good care of yourself. You're worth it."
• Etc.

Over here a session of an hour is about € 90. Government help takes a couple of months to even years before you can get free 'support'.

I quit going to these people, as I know that they 'just' help you to deal with life. The street poets from Brooklyn tell you what life really is; a struggle from the womb to the tomb.

Will the therapist (despite the fact that not even a single provider in my area has a slide scale pay program for extremely low income people like me and even a coworker i know who got hurt on the job is still financially broken by medical bills even with health insurance which did not pay enough) ignore the inability of a person to afford their expensive service?

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.

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?!

 

[Nnana]

Sounds like you got a ignorant lemon who has lived a privileged life. If happiness was a choice millions of people wouldn't attempt suicide every year. Some people would rather believe in a lie than look at reality for what it is I guess, god forbid it bursts their bubble.

I'd like to see how 'happy" these people are if they lived through a inescapable and traumatic situation, I bet they'd shut up really quick. Therapy is mostly for people who have lived normal lives and lack even the most basic insight into their problems while still being fully capable of helping themselves.

I think there are many hypocrites, in the end my therapist and a former psychiatrist who were aware of the awful life I was forced to endure used to say shit like
" Why are always so sad? Why do you look so unhappy? Happiness comes from within, something is wrong with you" "I need to adjust your pills so you can overcome this sadness" I was so tired of it and said. 'Well if happiness comes from within, and is not dependent of external conditions, go live by your philosophy. Leave your job, your family, your friends, go homeless and starve everyday, then tell me how happy you are. What's the point of striving for comfort? What's the point of relationships, job, money, love, if happiness is inside of you?" I was tired enough of this shit. I needed someone to comprehend me, not to sell me a bullshit story.

 

[noctiva]

I stopped going when I realised that death or going back home were my only viable option left. Basically a good old 'swim or sink' situation.
I didn't want to waste my therapists time and I couldn't talk to her about suicide, because she needs to report me. So being honest wasn't an option anymore, which makes therapy a useless waste of my time and hers.

Just found out that 'swim' is not on the menu anymore, so now my only option left is 'sink'.

 

[Rushon]

I spent 2 years and a lot of money going to therapy that never helped. I saw two different people just to make sure that the first was not totally unqualified, I think they all are.

 

[Taki]

In my case a complete waste of time and money. Better that someone else inherit the cash, and the sooner the better.

 

[MaybeMaybeKnot]

I'm supposed to be in DBT. This is the third week in a row I've skipped. Between the anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and general lack of interest, it's never going to happen.

 

[1DayItWillBover]

to much pride to tell some stranger that something is wrong with me. There is obviously something wrong with me but I ethier live like this or die let it kill me.

 

[k75]

I'm kind of required to go to therapy, but I have a decent therapist now so it's ok. I've had a lot of horrible ones and if I didn't have to go, would just rather not waste my time with it. But right now I'm trying to fix myself and therapy is something I need as an outlet.

 

[BPD Barbie]

I wish I didn't have to go, even though my psych is probably the best one I've ever had, but if I don't go I will be sectioned and then my plans to ctb will be thrown into disarray.

 

[Squiddy]

Currently, I'm not in therapy, but I might go back since I have a tiny shred of hope that something might change

 

[KiraLittleOwl]

I was referred to a therapist but I am too disfanctional to set up an appointment and to actually visit. It's so hard for me to go out right now.
And I don't think a mediocre therapist wont be able to help me (free therapists that you get through national insurance are usually not very good here) and it is maximum 15 hours of therapy. Not worh it.

 

[Worthless_nobody]

I don't because I can't afford it even if I wanted to go.

 

[Not_Quite_Dead_Yet]

I see a therapist, yes, but not with the expectation of any real help or change. She is a warm, caring person to interact with IRL, a break in my isolation. Wish there were a professional cuddler in my area. That is a thing and I'd be willing to pay for platonic cuddling, simply being held and comforted would be so nice.

 

[TowerUpright]

I go to a doc for medications, but I don't see a therapist, per se. I couldn't be honest, because the moment I say I have a ready means of suicide (SN) and am just waiting for 4-6 hours in a place I won't be found, they'd have me locked up. I'd lose my job, and I doubt I'd be hired in my field again (close knit community in this area).

Better to not say anything.

 

[OneBigBlur]

I think there are many hypocrites, in the end my therapist and a former psychiatrist who were aware of the awful life I was forced to endure used to say shit like
" Why are always so sad? Why do you look so unhappy? Happiness comes from within, something is wrong with you" "I need to adjust your pills so you can overcome this sadness" I was so tired of it and said. 'Well if happiness comes from within, and is not dependent of external conditions, go live by your philosophy. Leave your job, your family, your friends, go homeless and starve everyday, then tell me how happy you are. What's the point of striving for comfort? What's the point of relationships, job, money, love, if happiness is inside of you?" I was tired enough of this shit. I needed someone to comprehend me, not to sell me a bullshit story.

Good reply, I hope it crushed that therapists soul.

 

[Egddios]

I can relate so much to what many of you have said in this thread.

I'm currently without a therapist; I'd been considering not seeing my former therapist for a while and finally, officially stopped going. It says something when you experience this big RELIEF to know you no longer have to go those appointments (if you're seeing a therapist you don't connect with, etc.).

I had seen a truly gifted therapist back in 2014/2015, I grew a lot with her compassion and empathy.

Anyhow, my father now keeps asking me when I'm going to see a new therapist? Have I made any appts? etc. and it's annoying. It dawned on me the other day I should just lie and tell him I found one, I'm going, blah blah what he wants to hear. My sister is also concerned but not as annoying.

I'd like to journal again but haven't found the strength.

Even if I could tell a therapist, *without* repercussion, yes - I'm planning to end my life, there isn't much anyone can do for me at this point. If depression were recognized as being possibly terminal, and we had the right to choose a peaceful death, I would request it now*.

*I want to add, for some context, my mother died November 2nd. I'd been struggling for a while prior to her passing and was seriously eying that weekend of the 2nd to end my own life, as it was before her birthday (11/17) and the holidays. We were estranged, and had some serious issues, but I did love her and for all the shit that happened, it kills me, crushes me inside she didn't hear me tell her I loved her before she died. She was alone. And so, I feel truly at the end of the road. I saw a nurse the other day who is part of my "care team"
and she was asking me how my mood's been, asked if I have specific plans to kill myself and I said no, of course. It's funny in a dark way, when you're asked these questions and you look the person asking in the eye and it's like you both know the you're lying.

I rambled and I'm sorry.

 

[Empty Smile]

Not me. Last time I went, she said there was nothing more she could do for me. Haven't been back to one since.

 

[BlueWidow]

I tried therapy many different times. It seem to have gotten me to a certain point and then no more progress was made. I tried many different times with many different therapists, but after a certain point, I just couldn't get anything else out of it.

 

[passenger27]

I still see a psychiatrist to get my meds but I don't go to therapy. I used to, but after 10 years and probably a dozen or so therapists I finally figured out the only person they were worried about helping was themselves to what little money I have.

 

[awfullife]

Me going to therapy would be like an inmate locked up for life going to therapy....lol.

I mean I feel like therapy is for people who have a relatively normal life and who experience a set back. Seek treatment, deal with issues, and get back on the path to recovery.

My situation has very little normalcy and there is zero probability of me being independant. Reality is hard

 

[Backwood_tilt]

I don't anymore, but i'm going to go for one more appt before i CTB. Not looking for closure or someone to convince me otherwise (i'm not even planning to reveal my imminent death to him - just suggest euthanasia in a few months).

I think its nice to be able to talk to someone who is trained in listening and making you feel better about your situation. Even if the words are hollow and won't change your circumstance, the human connection is nice. I guess it will feel a little disingenuous if im thinking of CTB without telling her, but i'm not sure it'll matter much.

 

[OneBigBlur]

Me going to therapy would be like an inmate locked up for life going to therapy....lol.

I mean I feel like therapy is for people who have a relatively normal life and who experience a set back. Seek treatment, deal with issues, and get back on the path to recovery.

My situation has very little normalcy and there is zero probability of me being independant. Reality is hard

I don't think most of them even have the tools to help with trauma. I'd agree that it's mostly for normal people that are already capable of helping themselves and need placebo to get them going. There's very little help involved and talking to a stranger about feelings/thoughts is not helpful when your entire life is a nightmare. I think it's very alienating sometimes speaking to someone who doesn't really understand and can't help in any way that matters. The "by the book" therapists are probably the most useless out there and the way they practice I find to be extremely damaging.. I think very few traumatized people even need therapy in its current form, they just need someone to care and that's not something that can be found in that room despite all their preaching about the "therapeutic relationship".

 

[scorchedearth]

Mine booted me for "not putting in the work". I'm still not sure whether it was my fault or not. It almost seemed to me that my therapy failed due to my own unwillingness to place my therapist into the role of an authority figure.