To think therapy is for the benefit of others

If you were already calm and dealing with things appropriately what outcome would you have liked? What was your reason for going

Primarily, I was hoping for help to process a series of traumas from my childhood and teen years, and move forward from them. My experiences were causing me depression and social anxiety, and a hell of a lot of emotional pain.

I now know that autism and ADHD probably exacerbated some of my issues but they were never picked up on. I'm not sure what modalities my earlier two therapists used; I saw them during my teenage years/young adult years, and either wasn't told or don't remember, although they were clinical psychologists. But the latter three seemed to be mostly talk therapy/CBT, as that was what was available to me on public health.

Don’t you think this is the sort of thing that would be explored during the therapy process? The way the OP has expressed it is seeing therapy as just a place to get your worries off your chest and that you should really be doing that with friends or family. That is a hugely reductive way are looking at therapy.

Regarding bereavement, the English are awful at dealing with death and bereavement compared to other cultures. But a good bereavement counselling service won’t see someone in the acute stages of grief as those feelings of depression, despair are a normal reaction.

Did you want therapy at that point or were you told to have it?

Therapy is a dialogue and if it’s a dialogue you don’t want to have then it probably doesn’t do much. Therapy is also hard work you have to be prepared to challenge your learned world view and deal with uncomfortable feelings. If that isn’t something you are ready to do or simply don’t want to do then therapy won’t bring about a change by osmosis.

Therapy is not necessarily the same for all, many people themselves experience change in their behavior. It asks for time and fair commitment and the results possibly would be non-disappointing.

Personally I think you've got a valid point, OP.

Maybe, but it's worth exploring the idea?

Not meaning to be antagonistic as this is a genuine question but what were you expecting from therapy?
Did you want to change your own thought processes, change how you view events/ people?

You're very unnecessarily combative and insulting, aren't you? Not a great advertisement for therapy.

(Incidentally, I acknowledged it works for some people, but the fact is that it didn't help me to get past my trauma, or the issues that stemmed from it. That's just my experience and it's not an attack on you, so there's really no need for you to be so aggressive.)

It's an odd way to look at it OP as I doubt many people pay for therapy for just one life event. Therapy usually involves deep dives into repeating behaviours or choices, for example, to find out drivers and finding better ways to cope or manage situations that are individually triggering. Of course this benefits people around the person getting therapy, as well as future partners, which is why people do it!

I think many of us are familiar with the type of person who insists the therapists dont know what they are doing and it is all a waste of time.

Have a look at the character "Barb" from the "Shawna The Mom" world.

Therapy is with a psychotherapist not a physio!

I am a trained counsellor and a trained psychodynamic psychotherapist and when I practiced I was registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and was bound by their code of ethics. However this membership was entirely voluntary. It isn't a legal requirement.

In the UK there are no legal standards or controls for counsellors or other therapists. Just as anyone in the UK can call themself a counsellor any one in the UK can call themself a psychotherapist and start charging for services. There is no set standard of training, there is no license required and no need pass any exam or test.

Psychiatrists are different again - they are medical practitioners and as such closely regulated. They are often the most appropriate people to work anyone who is seriously mentally unwell but the NHS mental health services are so severely overstretched it can be nigh on impossible to see one. The local A&E psychiatrists used to refer teenagers who had attempted suicide to our counselling service because CAMHS was too busy to see them.

YABU 100%.

Counselling helps you to work through awful situations and to learn how to live with them and how to move on, how to deal with your feelings, how to realise that you can't change other people, only yourself.

I said two were highly accredited; much good that did. Perhaps venting was a poor choice of words; I spent a lot of time talking about myself – my past my feelings, and my issues and felt as though the therapists generally provided surprisingly little feedback.
I found myself being praised for how self-aware I was, which was incredibly frustrating given that supposed self-awareness didn't help me deal with my issues at all!
(If it matters, I was recently diagnosed AUDHD, and have been told that can affect which therapy works best.)

Regardless, in my experience I found therapy no more helpful than talking to a friend.

I do notice that whenever people say therapy wasn't helpful for them, others tend to immediately jump to the conclusion that they must've been 'doing it wrong', and that the fault lies with them personally.

So you want everyone around you to say things are terrible for you? Wrong therapist probably.

Who judges whether therapy is working by what the people around them think? Sure, from their perspective, they might think it's helping for that reason, but that's not how I've ever judged the success of any of the times I've been in therapy, and it's certainly misleading to say that it's 'for the benefit of others'. Maybe that's a side effect - weighing too heavily on loved ones when you need professional help IS a problem - but the point of therapy is to help the person getting it, including sometimes by giving them a dedicated space to talk through something. Other people being less impacted by that is just an unintended side effect.

Well, it's either your five carefully-chosen, highly-accredited therapists all being dreadful at their jobs, being a poor choice for you and your issues because of their modalities (though if I'm reading you right, you had no choice of therapist or modality?), or you for whatever reason not engaging/being a poor subject for some reason. The fact that you thought it was akin to 'venting' suggests something was way off.

I like how people are assuming I must've done it wrong or not stuck with it, just because it didn't work for me. That feels a little offensive.

As I said, I went to multiple different therapists over the years while I could afford to (therapy on public health has an immensely long waiting list where I am), for extended periods of time (18 months was the longest with one) and never had any benefit whatsoever.

Perhaps if I could afford to try other modalities than what I did, I might eventually find something that is helpful, but unfortunately that's not an option.

There is a grain of truth and what you say. However, ultimately therapy must benefit the person seeking it and there is the potential for it to do harm if it does not.

I think the differences between talking to a therapist vs a family member is that the therapist is neutral, emotionally unaffected by the event/situation that caused the distress and has both experience and training to provide a place to speak without judgement and to provide support with some unhelpful patterns of thinking.

You are correct that it is hard for a person's friends and family to continually absorb the emotional difficulties of others when they do not lessen over time or their thought patterns are not logical. Whilst some people are very ready to become 'fun sponges' others dread this so don't tell anyone how they are feeling and this can be incredibly dangerous and sometimes fatal.

There are only so many times a friend or family member can cover the same ground. We've all been in the position of our patience running out when a friend is still upset about a break up from years ago. Some people are prone to ruminate and dwell. I think therapy can be really very helpful to everyone.

Living with an upset family member who is constantly on the brink of emotional collapse is also very difficult. The saying 'you are only as happy as your unhappiest child' does hold some truth, alas, and our current generation of young people are perhaps a little less resilient to the knocks of everyday life than we remember being ourselves, so I suspect therapy's contribution to the economy will continue to increase.

It's an arduous painful process that you have to stick with.

I've been to five different therapists over the years (not in the last 6 years), two of whom were highly accredited clinical psychologists. It did seem to involve a lot of talking about my past, my feelings, and my perceptions amongst other things, much of which I'd consider akin to 'venting'. I found the experiences very unhelpful, and honestly I was surprised that they didn't do more, if that makes sense – although I don't know what I'd expect them to do.

Perhaps they were all doing something wrong, but I certainly wasn't!

I see where you are coming from but don’t think it’s that black and white.
I had counseling when I was grieving and felt pushed into it by those around me who were making little to zero effort to understand me or be what I needed. They didn’t adapt their approach at all, it was very much ‘this is how we are’ rather then ‘how can we be what you need’.
I didn’t want to talk to a stranger, I wanted someone who knew me. But it was useful.

I had an acute period of poor mental health about five years ago, and my husband helped by giving me time, space and financial security to quit my job and work out my issues. I was out of work for seven months, had a low-key job for 14m, then moved into a higher paying job once fully recovered and retrained. My husband's only functions in my recovery were "being nice" and "providing financially". Both of which were very important. It was the support I got and the time to work on myself that made the difference.

Ironically though, he's been through poor mental health in the past year, and wants me to act as his therapist. I have experience of making the healthy changes, and have given that basic advice, but I can't actually be his therapist. I'd happily give him the same support he gave me, but the emotional and therapeutic support actually isn't something I'm qualified for.