Have many of you have success with psychotherapy or feel that it’s simply a waste of time and money?
I’ve seen quite a few therapist since being diagnosed bipolar type II but have not found them to be very helpful with my bipolar symptoms. The one exception is talking with one therapist about my childhood helped me get over issues from my childhood and my relationship with my parents have greatly improved.
The other therapists that I’ve seen just seemed to be a waste though.
Do any of you have suggestions on how to find a good therapist or have suggested type of therapies? I’ve heard a lot of good things about CBT.
I kept flunking counseling and getting kicked out/ referred until meeting my current counselor who is great, super helpful, and experienced with people who have diagnoses like mine
I also had one super nice counselor in the very beginning, but she moved away
So that’s two good ones out of about six over the decades
I’m just curious, how exactly do you “flunk counselling”? By skipping appointments or not showing up on time?
Also, what traits makes your current counselor good compared to the other ones that you did not find to be as helpful? I’m just curious what traits I should look for in a counselor.
I have had four therapist before inside 7 years where I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The first therapy didnt helped me much because I wasn’t motivated to help myself.The second therapy was different,I was motivated to help myself and she is experience too but i didn’t benefit a lot in the end because I wasn’t on any medication and end up badly.The third therapist I visited happened last year in 2015,she helped me a lot,I was motivated,on right dose of medication and we worked on improving my socializing and life,I improved a lot after I met her.I stopped seeing her for various reason,we only had 8 appointments.
Now I am seeing a new psychologist and I believe you need to have motivation to help yourself,listen to your therapist and your mental health will improve.I am not going to change my psychologist and stick to him this time round.
Therapy is essential to my life. I go through cycles, where I go to therapy regularly, and I start feeling better, so they cut my visits back, and I think I’m doing so great I don’t really need therapy anymore. Then, once I stop going, I crash and burn, and need to increase my visits again. I’ve learned the hard way that I need it.
I see two therapists. One focuses on my PTSD, and one focuses on my psychosis. I need two different people to cover all the problems I have. My doctor referred me to each of them because of their area of expertise.
I guess there are good professional therapists out there but I had two who were more into making out I was a bad person than actually bothering to help. Both could be classified as abusers.
Many therapists are knuckle heads. Maybe they help OTHER people.
It’s really important to get the right fit. They should make you feel like they get you right from the start. If you don’t like them, get rid of them because it will be a waste of time.
But if you find the right one it can made a world of difference and teach you to be an adult and handle the problems of life that everyone gets really.
In my case the damage of poor treatment has been done. The best I can hope for is to maintain this level.
If therapy had been available early on ,with a focus on more than just textbook psychiatric symptoms, it might have made a big difference.
I’m too arrogant to sit and listen to someone giving me advice who hasn’t walked in my shoes. I’d rather listen to all of you because most of you have walked a mile in my shoes.
Oh no, I was always on time. I just had such a hard time communicating and the counselors weren’t experienced with my dx, would wind up letting me know that they could not help me. When I am dissociated, I just kind of space out and can’t follow along. Sometimes I cry alot. I have had traumatic abreaction once during counseling. Two referred me onward. One just said she couldn’t help. (One I left because she was visibly antsy and I don’t know if it was because of me or her own thing, but I didn’t want to ask.)
Like I said, the two good therapists (almost twenty years apart) are very important to me and I am grateful to them.
Also, I have weird belief that doing what I am supposed to do that people tell me to do will keep others comfortable with me. When I dissociate or cry in public or scream or whatever and someone asks me, are you in counseling, I say yes, and then that person is like, oh, well then, okay.
For a long time I didn’t understand what was happening in counseling or how I might benefit from it. That first lady was just so kind and non-judgemental that being around her helped. And sometimes I was just sitting in her office listening to hallucinated sounds and couldn’t even hear her talk.
I love going to therapy, it’s always fun and serious at the same time, I go once a month now, started every 2 weeks but I’m better now, so I don’t need as much. I do CBT. I have homework (that I miss sometimes I confess) of writting down the best three moments of the day and the best and worst moment of the day or what was hardest to do etc, that’s the cognitive part, I’m starting the behavior part soon.
I was talking to a psychologist who works with the VA around here… she said it’s been proven that every form of therapy helps. To what degree in which it’s effective varies between condition and who is afflicted… All the same, they are all proven to help.
I think psychotherapy, from what I understand of it, is the most powerful form of therapy. It takes you back through the roller-coaster of life and explains why you have different emotional disposition based on the occurrences from the past. From there is desensitization and acceptance and learning lessons that you might not have seen on your first pass through life.
I think it depends substantially on your personality. I didn’t have much luck with it, probably because I wasn’t ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever have access to psychotherapy again, or if it would even help me if I did. I’m a very closed person face to face - unemotional and uncommunicative. The prognosis for psychotherapy for a guy like me isn’t good.
My community is hiding a lot of sex abuse, mental care at time was telling the victims they were crazy and discredit them. Some were sent back to the abuser and told the abuse was not possible, they got raped in another state and locked up in another mental care system where abuser could harm them worse due to his $$$$ in bad community.
If you have PTSD, whatever topic the memories involve needs to be avoided – if the memories about one person, avoid him and those close to him. Some mental care will actually call it ‘false memories’ and send you back to the abusers saying none of the memories are not real. YOU WILL BE HARMED, DISCREDITED AND UNABLE TO PRESS CHARGES.
WHEN IS IT BAD TO GET THERAPY, THEN A POLICE OFFICER NEAR A SO CALLED ‘FALSE MEMORIES’ PROBLEM WITH PTSD ABOUT WEALTHY FAMILY CALLS NEW VICTIMS TO TELL THEM TO STAY AWAY AS THEY DON’T WANT MORE FEMALES ATTACKED.
OTHER PROBLEM, this kind of mental care provider may force you into doing ‘therapy’ when you are new to a new meds manager situation…You talk to the care about private stuff and you get SO MANY new thought broadcasters (psychotic stalkers who harass other schizos) this kind of public attack targets your jobs, school or housing complex and could be bad enough to get you fired/evicted.
My own in-laws refused to coach me through schizo after nervous breakdown, these folks knew a ton about local problems and how it affects victims who came across ‘wrong people’. You may be VERY disappointed if you are looking for help dealing with social problems after mental care or honestly talking about anything that caused your nervous breakdown…If you have a relationship dispute that is not physically abusive, if you were abused as a child (but not by the town’s wealthy people) or you need help changing some of your behaviors, maybe therapy will help you. But my city’s therapy providers are abusers offering no assistance with the city’s frequent sex abuse problems and even worked on me so bad over PTSD situation, it caused nervous breakdown.
Yes for those that haven’t figured it out, if you don’t feel they are helping you, dump them.
Now if your parent took the time to find them, you may be reluctant.
But some can do more harm than good because they have no clue about sz.
If you can, talk to them first before you start treatment to assess their experience.
Or tell your parents, its important they have sz experience, many many don’t.
Some are experienced in causing pain to get people to change.
This is the exact opposite of what you need if you have sz at first, strong support while your previous reality crashes.
