What is the obsession with therapy/counselling?

Do you feel the same way about physical therapy too? Like after a stroke or ankle surgery or whatever —just “crack on with it,” no rehab, no support, just vibes and denial?

Because that’s essentially what you’re arguing here —just for your the most important organ in your entire body.

And honestly, the level of irritation in your post is doing a better job selling therapy than any reply could. You’re railing against people getting help while sounding like you’re one minor inconvenience away from a full system crash. The irony is … loud.

No one’s forcing you into years of deep introspection because you had a mildly bad day. People suggest therapy because it’s an option—like physio, like seeing a doctor, like doing literally anything other than pretending nothing’s wrong and hoping it sorts itself out.

If you don’t want it, don’t go. But acting like support is some bizarre modern weakness while clearly spiraling about it is a bit… telling.

I love my counsellor. I first started seeing her when she was near to getting her qualification and I have continued to see now she’s qualified. I find just being in her presence makes me feel so calm.

Sometimes I sit in her room and for the first 5 minutes I just close my eyes, roll my head back on the sofa and just breathe…… I don’t even talk. I just relax and take in the feeling of being safe any away from the rest of the world. It’s the one place in the world where I feel I can escape from life. It’s heaven.

Yes. I have a registered CBT qualification but I don't regard myself as a CBT therapist. If someone refers to me wanting that as a primary modality I tell them that it might be better to look for someone else. It's the honest and ethical thing to do. All my qualifications are listed on my website and I am happy to show them to anyone who wants to see them.

In any case I'm not chasing work. The majority of my caseload these days is supervision and I have to provide copies of qualifications, proof of BACP membership and proof of professional indemnity insurance to training providers. I've had to turn two potential supervisees away because, quite rightly, the latest training provider who's accepted me won't allow a supervisor to work with more than two trainees in any one cohort. I also work with EAPs. I have an enhanced DBS on the update service and I'm insured for more than the average level. I'm prepared to pay for these things that enhance professional credibility.

Most of my work comes through recommendation and word of mouth anyway.

Exactly this my child’s trauma was left and she’s now so unwell, at risk of inpatient and hoovering up so many resources. It’s a false economy. The child that had what was needed and therapy is doing so much better and not needing treatment.

Mental illness doesn’t on away if left untreated, it just gets worse.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, you seem to have no insight into adverse childhood experiences, and the lifelong effect they have.
You can't choose to get over trauma through willpower, any more than you can choose to change the colour of your eyes.
Even if you lead an apparently happy, productive "getting on with it" life that you seem to value-the trauma is there, and without skilled therapy, will never be addressed.

‘Family member’ that should read

True, that was my experience too for a gfilu member. But it’s true it SHOULD be for those most in need I think.

Where we are there isn't really anything for severe mental health problems. You'll be back and forth - over months and months - seeing psychiatrists to adjust your meds, while they dangle the carrot of getting therapy in front of you, only to be told - 18 months later at least - that the 'therapy' will consist of going for a walk once a week with a group of other patients, with a therapist. That's it.

Other than that, you can do an online CBT course, which might help a bit if you're a bit low or anxious and haven't done any reading up on it. I think there might be some way of accessing a person down the line for some sort of CBT-lite if that doesn't work, but I don't think they're actually qualified therapists, just trained to 'deliver' some form of CBT.

Or maybe it just isn’t for them?

I was referred for therapy a few years ago. I am fairly sure there was nothing ‘wrong’ with the counsellor; she was pleasant and professional, but it wasn’t helpful and at £50 a session (and this was over ten years ago; I imagine it’s gone up considerably now) it was a huge amount of money.

It’s fine to say something isn’t conducive for you at this time.

I think there’s also a real difference between NHS provided therapy which in the current climate rightly concentrates on those most in need - trauma, severe mental illness etc. - and private practice where the client needs a minimum (I think) of £80 and as much as £200 for a session. So it’s hard to generalize given these routes

Also, I suppose my answers are going to be positioned from the angle of someone who runs a private practice. So all the clients I see have actively sought me out and presumably want to begin a therapeutic process.

It may be different with NHS services where a client may have been referred by a GP who's not picked up on something nuanced going on and has decided six weeks of CBT after a nine month wait is the right treatment for 'health anxiety', when really the problem is endometriosis or something.

I can see how that might happen.

A good therapist will recognise this and either refer the client on or signpost them to appropriate help.

It can be that there is something so acute going on for the client in their life that nothing of any therapeutic benefit can happen until that issue is addressed. So the work then becomes about finding the best way to solve that issue. I've had it happen before with clients who have acute health issues or are in dreadful custody battles. No point trying to do therapy until those things are sorted because they loom so large.

That’s all fine @WearingMyTherapistHat but it does miss out the rather obvious maybe this is not something which can be helped with therapy out.

Admittedly I only scanned your posts on here @iamfedupwiththis but it appears that you've taken your view of what therapy is from someone seeing a talking therapist for 'years on end' & not making any progress?

Whereas a good therapist doesn't let their client just talk (it's far more than that, & actually allowing a client to just repeat their own 'story' without challenging it can be damaging because it just ingrains it even more for them).
Yes many therapies are unregulated but regulated or not like every other profession you get good ones & bad ones, which is why personal recommendations or online reviews are important to look at when choosing a therapist.
Many therapies (like EMDR & hypnotherapy) can include very little talking, & yet other people find talking & the space to be heard the most important thing - often it's what they needed in order to be able to make the decision to change other things in their lives.
Sometimes people change all the external things in life - house/job/relationship & still remain unhappy & then realise their unhappiness was nothing to do with their external world & everything to do with something like low self-worth, or thinking they don't actually deserve happiness.

Friends & family are usually unable to offer an objective view.
Some people through no fault of their own don't have friends/family around them.
Sometimes the trauma is too much to put on an unqualified individual.

There are so many different reasons why people seek out & really benefit from therapy- its not just talking for years on end & I think in general we are far from obsessed with it.

|n fact if more people considered going to therapy I think the world would be a better place because collectively we would be kinder, more compassionate, more able to understand another point of view even if we don't agree with it, able to live & let live & not have to force our will/views/power on to others to make ourselves feel better & to try & fill our own unhealed emotional void which we carry within us.

Was this person an integrative therapist? They won't have all the training you mention in CBT, but will incorporate it into the way they work more generally. That's not wrong. Equally, the CBT person will have much more in depth training in that, but won't have other training that your person has.

It's horses for courses. I saw someone who was credentialed up the wazoo in terms of CBT this and that, and they were great at giving me spreadsheets to fill out, but they were useless in terms of building a rapport or actually helping me feel better and change. It felt like they were giving me training, rather than therapy. I never felt they really empathised with me, it was like I was a research specimen to them. Like having a scientist do your therapy, when really it's as much of an art.

In contrast, the therapist that really helped me was trained across a number of therapy theories and used hypnotherapy. Probably not as well trained 'on paper' as the first one, but a million times more effective as a therapist, one to one, and I felt like she really cared.

This is what can be tricky about therapy and why it's considered an art and not a science.

You can't have therapy 'done to you'. You find a therapist to help you and guide you to heal yourself. Even with behavioural approaches like CBT - the therapist can to a certain extent tell you what you need to do, but if you then don't do it, that's on you.

Sometimes clients come to see me and they want me to wave a magic wand without them putting in any effort. They'll ask me things like 'how long will this take?', 'when will I start to feel better?'. I can't answer that. It's their process, it's up to them. They might have to look at some painful things that will make them feel uncomfortable. It's okay if they don't feel able to do that. But it does mean they're not ready. Maybe there's too much else going on in their lives to be able to give it the headspace. It's often about timing.

Sometimes I have clients whom I can tell are lying to themselves - and to me - about the extent of their feelings. Maybe it's denial, maybe they're not ready to confront the difficult stuff and are experimenting with therapy either to prove to themselves they don't need it, or just to dip their toe in before committing fully. Either way, there's only so far you can go with that before you get stagnant. I can only work with what clients bring. I can imagine a very resistant client (such as the OP!) may well walk out of a therapy session after denying their feelings to the therapist for an hour and conclude that therapy, and the therapist is a load of crap.

Sometimes the therapist can represent someone else for the client - a negligent parent or terrifying authority figure. The client will 'act out' against the therapist as if they were the parent or the authority figure. In that sort of situation, sometimes the client hating therapy and the therapist is part of the therapy!

Sometimes you just don't click with clients and the therapeutic alliance is not there in the way it should be. Therapy works by being relational, of course it's important to have a good rapport.

It's a complete myth that 'good therapy' means being able to do therapy to absolutely anyone and it be successful every time. It's not as formulaic as that. It's a collaborative process.

Edited to add: All of the above is to say that you do have to be ready and in the right time and place to start therapy, that you do only get out of it what you're willing to put in, that it can often take a few tries before you find a therapist you really gel with. I don't think any of that is 'culty' - it's just true.

Unfortunately this is one of those things where you need to know a little in order to protect yourself. Many people seeking therapy will understandably assume that in order for someone to be portraying themselves as a therapist/counsellor they've done the training. Even some qualified counsellors purport that they can deliver other modalities when they're not actually accredited or properly trained. For example when I went to what I thought was a CBT therapist, only to find she was a counsellor that had done a two day course in CBT!

(For reference, to actually become a qualified CBT therapist you need to have done a 1yr postgrad diploma at university including 200 supervised clinical hours, assignments, tapes, etc. it's not something you can learn in 10hr and deliver effectively).

These people prey on those that don't know they should check their therapist is on a register.

But it did happen under the NHS albeit a different variant. The NHS supplied a therapist who wasn’t even properly qualified and offered no alternative but a return to the bottom of the wait list.

To me this all just reinforces the case for proper regulation and supervision which as well as protecting titles also makes it possible to complain to a professional body with teeth.

I am a (hated on mn) life coach (an ethical one, qualified, MSc Psychology, member of the BPS, regular supervision, 20 years relevant experience).

Interestingly, it’s not just the title of Therapist that is not regulated, Psychologist also isn’t, the only titles you need specific qualifications for are clinical, educational and forensic psychologists.

So I work in the style of the coaching psychologist but don’t call myself a one as I don’t have a PhD.

I don’t think you understand what therapy is. That’s a really simplistic view you have. It’s not just chatting about your issues - which does help btw, many, many studies have proven this. I do agree that practical changes are the best way to change your situation but it’s SO much more complex than that. You’re clearly in the privileged position of never having suffered any major trauma in your life, because if you had you’d know that you can make as many practical changes in your life as you want, but if you were raped as an 8-year-old child, making those practical changes doesn’t make any difference to the constant shame, rage, guilt and fear you carry around with you daily, that influences absolutely everything you do. You need someone to help you understand and process what happened to you and understand why it wasn’t your fault. Not everyone can do that on their own. For some people that person could be a friend, but for many others, the shame, guilt and fear they carry is the exact reason they feel unable to talk to anyone in their life about it. That’s why the role of a therapist is important. Do you think it’s better to shut it away in a distant “never to be opened” file in your brain? Firstly, that’s just not possible for some people, and secondly, there is a reason the suicide rate for male victims of child sexual abuse is so high - they tend not to seek therapy or talk to anyone about what happened to them. If they don’t take their own lives they tend to have a few too many “large gins”, resulting in alcoholism, which in turn destroys their life, their partner’s and their children’s lives. All cos they’re told that therapy’s a “waste of time”, better to just “have a large gin and a good ‘ol sing in the car”

Unbelievably the private, registered person we used privately was very well qualified. Truly awful, not just our opinion but the NHS staff picking up the pieces after. It simply wouldn’t have happened under the NHS and would have been stopped if it had.

It’s that overselling really isn’t it; the ‘you need therapy, find a good counsellor’ sort of stock responses that miss the point that it is a) prohibitively expensive for many people and b) not always effective or appropriate, irrespective of whether the counsellor is any good or not.

You cannot assume that NHS therapists/counsellors are properly qualified either. One of my extended family children, after waiting over a year for NHS help (via CAMH) had a similar experience and we subsequently discovered that the therapist was not a properly qualified and registered therapist with relevant experience but had done short form CBT delivery training of some sort - I’m not even sure they should have been called a “counsellor” let alone use the word “therapist”. The parents were told “like it or lump it” - ie if that person wasn’t suitable it was back to the waiting list with a suicidal child who was self harming.

A number of NHS groups have treated CBT as the cheap one-size-fits-all solution for an inappropriately wide range of mental health conditions. delivered by staff without the extensive training expected.

We helped fund private therapy from a properly qualified clinical psychologist/psychiatrist team with relevant experience and it was expensive.

The one point of agreement on this thread is that the whole area needs properly regulating with full protection of titles and a requirement of rigorous training before and during practice. That should address much of the “overselling” of therapy as well as ensuring where therapy has a clinical need its is trustworthy.

I give up. I don’t think you are hearing anything. Most MLMs use therapy speak to engage with vulnerable people.
It is nothing to do with therapy.

OP, this only says anything about you. You can't change what has happened obviously, but some people need help to change how they think on it. Getting a hobby has nothing to do with that!

I think this thread is a bit sad really!