Psychotherapy helps some people, and doesn’t do much for others. Just like most psychiatric medications. But you won’t know unless you try, and your experience and success (or lack thereof) in psychotherapy will vary widely according to the therapist you see. You may see two that you don’t seem to click with before you find one that actually seems to help. You may see that perfect therapist the first therapist you find. You just don’t know.
But like a car crash I can’t stop watching, I couldn’t help but read an entire recent blog entry from Violent Acres (NSFW), which is a blog that is often entertaining, although it is definitely not family-friendly with a lot of f— and s—- words and similar profanity lacing every entry. The entry in question was entitled, “When to See a Therapist” and the long rant ended with:
The thing I’ve learned about shrinks is they rarely actually help you with anything. Instead, they press your buttons in an attempt to make you cry. I guess someone taught them in shrink school that crying = progress. But crying is not progress. Crying gets you nowhere.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If you want a quiet place to cry, see a shrink.
On the other hand, if you want to actually make changes in your life, start holding s— up in front of your face until you can finally learn to live with it.
This person obviously comes from the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” school of hard knocks and nihilistic learning. If it really were so easy, that all that was required was simple insight and “looking at your own s—,” then we’d all be Freudians and blaming our mothers.
But that doesn’t work, and it requires more than just staring at your own issues in the mirror until you just “learn to live with it.” Good psychotherapy is hard work, takes time and patience (on both the part of the client and the therapist), and actually requires a desire to change. If you see nothing wrong with your life and have no desire to actually work on changing it, then therapy will do little for you.
Of course, if you think everyone is a manipulator and the whole world is just in it for themselves, then this “psychotherapy = good to get you to cry” viewpoint is right in line with it. But I think psychotherapy has a lot more to offer than simply making you cry, and I suspect anyone who’s ever been in good therapy feels the same.
Perhaps psychotherapy just isn’t for everyone, no?
Link to blog entry: When to See a Therapist (Warning: Strong language, NSFW)
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3 Comments to
“Complaining About Your Psychotherapy”
Given that what you say about psychotherapy is right and also that
client reports aren’t, shall we say, 100% accurate, violentacres does provide food for thought. A brief quote:
“She stares at me silently. For some strange reason, she always expects that I will be the first to talk. For an even stranger reason, I continually refuse her quiet request to take the lead.”
The key here is that the client does not know why the therapist is silent (”for some strange reason”). Sometimes therapists, etc. forget that not every patient is up with the play; they forget that what happens in the therapy room is weird and that the non-knowledgeable client is right to be mystified, frustrated, even frightened by an inscrutable one-who-is-presumed-to-know.
The client needs to be taught what therapy is like - otherwise the client’s reistance is likely to be too huge to overcome (unless the client is very compliant in which case his or her fitting in well is precisely the problem),
It’s not enough to say ‘It’s all grist for the mill’ if the grist never finds its way into the mill.
You become slyly defensive and pull out the arsenal when confronted with criticism of psychotherapy.
You missed the point and distorted the story. Violent Acres’ account was of a therapist pushed her into talking about a traumatic episode before she felt ready. She describes a cold, slightly hostile relationship she didn’t trust. VA was more insightful than her therapist to leave treatment and understand this was not good for her.
Think about your tactics here. You’re so offended that psychotherapy is criticized that you’re compelled to strike back.
First you trot out your condescending labels: car crash, nihilistic learning. Aren’t you superior?
Then you launch a merry game of of blame-the-patient. “…Psychotherapy… actually requires a desire to change. If you see nothing wrong with your life and have no desire to actually work on changing it, then therapy will do little for you.”
I assume you imply that therapy failed for this woman because she secretly doesn’t want to change or is unwilling to work at it. Is that what you assert? Therapy was hurtful to her; it must be the patient’s fault.
It’s interesting that you picked this one woman to somewhat obsess about. The internet is full of young, swaggering bloggers. She even advertises, “Like you, but without the impulse control.” Keep in mind that blogging itself is a performance.
Isn’t it an ethical violation for a psychologist to:
. Analyze someone with whom he’s never had face-to-face contact?
. Violate her privacy by doing this in public?
I challenge you, John, to take a look at your own arrogance. You’re the one who appears lacking in ability to grow.
It’s interesting that you chose to trot out the old “good psychotherapy is hard work” line. Based on my own experiences in psychotherapy, I have to say I agree with Violent Acres: It’s not hard at all. There is nothing hard about bawling your eyes out talking about all your life’s hurts to a stranger. The only thing that’s hard is trying to reconcile the completely pointless experience of it with the societal dogma that says that people with mental health issues should be in therapy and than if people fail to improve it’s somehow their fault.
I “worked” my ass off in therapy on more than one occasion only to wind up far more severely depressed than previously.
Violent Acres is right. Crying solves nothing, especially when you’re just reopening a bunch of well-examined wounds so you can fill your therapist in on your life story, in hopes they may have some useful guidance for you - only to have them say “well that was a great session wasn’t it?”
Um…not really.
No amount of crying, changes the fact that if you want to get over mental health issues and achieve live goals, you just have to endure your symptoms and insecurities and do the thing.
If therapy gets some people to that place, great. But enough already with shrinks failing to take responsibility for therapy’s failings.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 1 Dec 2007
