Does therapy work?

It depends. I have had severe psychiatric problems, but it was a problem that runs in my family. Therapy wouldn't make much difference as my problem wasn't caused by anything -other than genetics. My psychiatrist said she would refer me to therapy if I wanted, so I went along. I found the whole process ridiculous. OTOH my friend is a therapist and I believe she helps a lot of people.

The right type of therapy with the right therapist makes a life-changing difference.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find the right type of both for each individual.

@AttachmentFTW could you share the source for that?

It certainly helped me, and is currently supporting my child who is benefitting from being able to process how they really feel without having to be concerned about how the words or thoughts affect the person hearing them.

That's really interesting. I think I had a very good relationship with the psychologist who helped me most. When I saw a different one a couple of years later I stopped pretty quickly as we simply didn't click.

When I trained the data suggested about a third of people will find therapy very helpful; a third will find it somewhat helpful; and a third will not find it helpful and some of those will find it actively harmful. The variables that contribute to those differences are many. However, the greatest predictor of good outcomes in therapy is the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client. The different techniques/theories applied by different models of therapy only account for a small part of the outcome.

The talking therapy I had for an eating disorder didn’t really kick in until years later when I was in a place where I felt I was ready to recover.
It all made sense at the time but only later cold I put it into practice, and use it to this day.

If it’s a fad it’s a pretty long-established one!

What do you mean by 'work'?

It isn't a magic fix. It doesn't remove whatever has caused your difficulties. It can help you deal with the difficulties more constructively, put them in context, and reduce the negative impact on your life.

It varies a lot, depending on how good the therapist is I think. I have had a lot of therapy in my past and some professionals really helped me with my issues and others didn’t.

I had therapy for 15 years, once a week with the same therapist to help me recover from childhood abuse and a subsequent abusive relationship. I am now happily married with happy, loved DC. I could only have achieved that through therapy.

It depends on the issues and the therapy.
And with most, you need to put the work in. You can't just show up to the sessions and expect a miracle.
My dad did CBT and said it did not help. He never did any of the homework.

TW post
Depends what for. I’ve learnt CBT techniques and they are helping me manage my depression together with drugs. Also another for intrusive thoughts It works by noting the thought and moving back to what you were thinking about before. it’s exhausting. at the moment so it hasn’t solved things as such.

One therapist just let me talk about my fears when I was having surgery, I actually went about social problems making friends. I felt at the time that she would allow me, or lead me to talk about the surgery as a diversion tactic from addressing my social issues. The therapy did not help me at all with getting more friends or social life.

These years later I think I probably needed to talk about the surgery with someone neutral and the therapist had worked that out.

It depends.

I tried CBT a couple of months ago. I was only offered 5 sessions (through the NHS) because they thought I'd "improved enough" to not need anymore sessions, despite the fact that my catastrophisation had become much worse and I was having panic attacks almost every day.

I think it can be really beneficial for a lot of people, but CBT made me worse because they didn't understand that a lot of my anxiety is caused by my autism, and therefore they only gave me generic tips that I physically and mentally cannot act on when I feel a meltdown coming on.

It absolutely works. There's different kinds of therapy for different kinds of issues. Depends what you want to work on