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The original was posted on /r/coolguides by /u/THANKYOU_FI_COMM on 2024-05-03 13:34:01.
I’ve been to a few therapists now for my depression/anxiety issues. I’m still not sure what a therapist is even supposed to do. I’ve only ever left sessions miserable and it’s hard to see how it could even turn out differently. They can’t fix any biological factors and they can’t do anything about the environment that contributes to these problems. What the hell is going to get better from paying someone to talk to you for <1hr a week so they can tell you that the problems you have with the world aren’t real.
When I explain to people why I don’t want to keep trying therapists, they always just say something like “oh you just haven’t found the right one.” What? What would be the right one? Why are there right and wrong ones? Aren’t they supposed to be professionals?
I find that a good therapist can help you get out of mental traps and reframe negative self talk. They can also help give you tools and strategies to avoid self destructive behavior. As for the right one, people are all different and I think it takes the right compatibility for therapy to be productive. Have you ever tried EMDR? Not sure what your specific baggage is but while I found it weird, it’s evidence based and it did help me.
In my opinion, therapists are like friends. You’re not going to be friends with everyone you meet, in fact, you probably won’t want to be friends with most people you meet. It’s hard finding good friends but once you do, they make everything a little brighter. Just like friends, it takes time to find someone you really click with.
You’re right, they can’t fix your problems or your environment. That’s not what therapy is about. It’s more geared towards helping you recognize your own thoughts, behaviors, and patterns that are not serving you and adjusting them to serve you better. For example, a therapist might help someone to recognize the early warning signs and triggers of a depressive spiral so they can take proactive measures to prevent falling into a dark well of depression. No one can eliminate depressive episodes, but you can learn to recognize it and actively work against it taking over your life.
I hope that helps.
God damn if my therapist tried to tell me that my problems weren’t real they’d be fired before the end of the session.
Perhaps more precisely, they’re all about your reaction to problems. A lot of “lots of people deal with these problems, it’s about how you handle it.” But to me, this kind of advice feels wholly detached from the realities of the problems I end up encountering.
The example I go back to (not my only problem, but illustrative of something) is when I was in college, I’d often find myself with unbearable amounts of work. Multiple pieces of homework and projects with different duration and due dates, tests to study for, classes to attend, groups to meet with for projects, etc. With how little time I’d have, it got to the point where I wasn’t sleeping enough, I either missed meals or ate some quick, unhealthy food just to get it over with quickly, what little exercise I got dropped to almost nothing, etc.
This is more work than any reasonable person should be able to handle in a healthy way. And there’s the added pressure that if you don’t keep up with it you’ll fail the class and it’ll make it take that much longer to graduate.
You could say that other people went through the same experiences and turned out fine, but I’d challenge whether or not that’s actually true. Most of the friends and classmates I spoke to in my time there were either just as depressed/stressed/anxious as I was, or were coping with it in ways that were just as unhealthy. Massive amounts of coffee, energy drinks, all nighters, alcohol, and I’m sure a non-zero number of them were on the various focus/productivity drugs people sometimes use for academics/work.
The rate of depression and other psychological problems on campus was really high. Personally in just my friend group, one person I know cried over a particularly bad HW assignment, one was doing self harm, two friends had to go home in the middle of a semester, one of them ended up transferring, and one friend disappeared for a few days during a group project and it turned out he was so stressed he was hiding in a shed on some other part of campus.
And yet the school was woefully understaffed on mental health professionals. All we really got were some platitudes about taking time for ourselves. What time? Did I miss the part where the school made the professors keep a reasonable limit on the work they gave out? Or is there some magical work free time set aside for us? No? Then this is useless “advice” that just shifts the blame onto us.
So what good would it do me to change how I was thinking about all this? Regardless of how I thought about it, I needed to get that work done or suffer the real life economic consequences of failing to do so. If I do get it all done, it comes at the very real cost of the physical strain it puts on my mind and body.
The only real “solution” ended up being me dropping out like halfway through my grad program. I had to completely separate myself from the source of the stress. But of course note how this is a burden that is entirely placed on me and my family. Even if I wasn’t a mental wreck, my job prospects are pretty bad.
How is a therapist supposed to fix any of that?
Well a therapist isn’t going to fix any of that. They only work on you and what you can do yourself.
I imagine if I brought those problems to my therapist, we would probably start by naming the good and bad of each option (stay in school or drop out), try to identify what I’m feeling and thinking about them, talk it over and help me come to a real solid decision (choice) about what path I want to take. If I chose to stay and tough it out we would probably work on strategies to help me accomplish that and cope with the challenges. We might discuss whether I need to allow myself some accommodations, for example withdrawing from some classes and taking more time to finish school. If I decided to leave school then we would probably need to process that decision and do some work around the grief and acceptance that would have to come with that choice.
A good therapist will tell you they don’t fix shit but they can supply tools for you to cope and possibly resolve things you believe are issue.