To think therapy is for the benefit of others

The person in therapy feels the same
Then they need a different therapist.

I put it off for years thinking it wouldn't help. It didn't bring my loved ones back but it enabled me to function, it enabled me to speak about them without the constant tears

Talking therapy is about achieving healthy thought processes using skilled non-judgemental conversation. Its the same as physiotherapy which uses movement to improve your health etc.

Unlike medicine which is based on drug/surgery intervention, and nursing which is caring intervention- the success of all therapy (Physio, SLT, OT, Dietician, Pysch) requires the person to take on board information and change their behaviour.

Because of this your relationship with the therapist is really important. It is also important to know that the first therapist you will see usually has to manage a person that has little self-knowledge. The next therapist is dealing with someone who has a litlle more self-knowledge- so it might just be that you are starting in second gear as well.

As someone who has has extensive talking therapy, the inner work is incredibly hard but absolutely worth it.

Well that means the therapy is working because your friends and family get to be your mutual companions instead of your therapist. You get to have a better relationship with them as they aren't as fatigued.

I disagree. Speaking as somebody who has had therapy and hugely benefitted.

It's more that without therapy, friends and family do end up being untrained therapists, and as time goes on are increasingly resentful of that role and start to distance themselves.

This is just not true in all cases.

If you are speaking from experience maybe don't put all your woes onto your friends and family? Or if somebody is doing that to you, ask them not to.

My mother who is a medical professional says this. She likes it when I go to therapy as then I’m not over sharing those things with her or DH on a daily basis.

That's only true when the person having therapy believes they are not the problem but they generally listen to what the therapist advises them.

That's because the listening bit lessens the harm they cause even though they are only doing it performatively.

It may feel like the benefit to everyone else is much greater than that you as you sre taking therapy if these changes mean you can no longer rely on manipulation tactics in your relationships.

But again, therapy isn't about 'venting' in the slightest. If you thought it was, you were doing it wrong. Therapy done well with the right therapist is brutally hard work, involving having all of your beliefs about yourself, all of the childhood scripts you may have inherited, all of your relationships challenged.

I mostly agree. I think that there can be a definite benefit in a person having someone to vent to without friends and family being burdened...but it's an expensive benefit.
I've also never found therapy helpful in the slightest, but some people seem to, so there's that too.

@Soggybogdog Have you ever had therapy yourself? If so, I suspect you had the wrong therapist. They vary wildly in their approach and effectiveness.
I've had a lot of therapy and it helped me enormously. An additional benefit may have been that my friends didn't hear me droning on so much, but that's a 'side effect', as it were, rather than the main cure.

Your family and friends may love you and care for you hugely, but they cannot absorb or handle everything, and it's not fair to expect them to do so.

Agreed, plus they may not be able to help you! Just talking about something is not enough if someone is suffering with trauma. In fact, it may do them more harm that good, if the listener thinks it's their place to give advice. There is a lot of ignorance in what the OP posted.

It's very important to find the right therapist and the right kind of therapy. My sibling has benefited hugely from therapy (a specific kind), and no amount of talking to friends and family could have provided the same support. Certain types of therapy can rewire the brain and stop harmful spirals and repetitive thought patterns. Therapy isn't just talking, in many cases. Sure, if the person is just sitting there and pouring out all their problems to someone, then that may give the person an outlet and spare their friends and family, but that is counselling, it's not therapy.

I think you're being unfair. Most people will support their friends an listen to their problems without question. It's when the friendship only exists for one person's benefit that people get understandably annoyed.

Hard disagree. As a child and teenager, my mum leaned on me heavily for emotional support in her relationship with my step father. It felt weird at the time and now I can see how utterly wrong it was. I wish she had seen a therapist instead, and even now aged 55 I hate being her emotional sounding board. Also I'm hardly objective.

I think that 'other people' often want people to be in therapy, because they see it as a magic wand that will bring their old person back to them when they themselves lack the ability to help. Expectations are often highly unrealistic, with a view that all pain, trauma, phobia, addiction and its inconvenient behaviour can be cured if the person 'gets help'.
So, I do see where you're coming from a little.
However, therapy can be extremely helpful to the person themselves, helping them process, understand the impact on them, and learn tools to manage emotions and behaviours so despite the cause of the problem, such as a bereavement, not being removed, they can live with and around it.

I’n sorry, but with many therapists it really could. And these are experienced qualified therapists. I can’t count the amount of people who have told me that therapy didn’t help as the therapist never really said anything. Lots and lots of therapists appear to believe they are there to listen and somehow magically the client will have a breakthrough.

Therapists who teach skills and techniques are great but rare.

It's not either/ or.

People can have therapy AND talk to their friends and family.

If therapy isn't working for someone individually then they are either not ready or may need to find a different therapist or a different therapy approach.

Well there’s lots of types of therapy so no not really. But yes an aspect of person centred therapy is having a non judgmental outlet which potentially has an added advantage that the person doesn’t need to off load to friends/family as much. But through talking to the therapist there should also be a shift in the impact that your issues are having less impact or you are beginning to accept them. If that’s not happening then you are stuck in your grief/anxiety and probably need to either change therapist or type of therapy.

Given the frequency of threads on here where a poster has a friend who keeps talking about their personal struggles and they are told by the majority of posters that they should ditch the ‘energy witch’ friend ( insert insult of choice) you are probably right.

i don’t treat my friends like that, but it seems I am in the minority. It seems other people only like their friends talking to them about their problems if it only happens once or twice, and after that they shut up about their problems as friends are for fun times mainly.

There is only so much people can cope with in a non company setting, how draining it must be to have someone contsantly speak at you in a one way situation where only person get anything out of the relationship

isnt being around people who are not your therapist meant to be a mutual thing?

In my totally non expert view the main problem with counselling is people expect that just turning up and being willing to talk is alll you need. A therapy isn’t going to be successful if that’s your mindset. You have up know what you want to get out of therapy (just talking about problems isn’t an outcome) and you need to do the work to improve your mindset, resilience and coping methods, and change unhelpful behaviour. The therapist just facilitates you to do this.

That’s not my experience of it at all. I wasn’t talking other people about it. The therapist was very helpful and insightful and made a big difference to my life. Sorry you’ve not had that experience but it doesn’t devalue the entirety of therapy. You may need a better therapist to help you get past the cynicism and negativity.

I dislike therapy, but I disagree with your particular criticism of it. I just find it ineffecyajd often a way for a therapist to exercise control/push their worldview on the patient.

I sort of get what you mean because I have suggested therapy to someone close to me. This is because they have vented to me for years and years about the same issue and there’s only so much I can say as a layperson. So yes it would probably help me because I won’t have to deal with it as much but mainly I think it would also help the person actually deal with the issue and process it and get to a different place with it and be in a better space mentally. I don’t think going over and over the same thing is healthy.

Have you ever tried therapy yourself, OP? Therapy (with a qualified experienced therapist) couldn’t ever be described as “a void”. Many things, not even all necessarily good, but not that.

My mum had psychotherapy in the 1980s she was 100% a better mother afterwards.