to wonder where the belief that counselling is helpful at best/harmlessly ineffective at worst comes from?

[MightyNice]

not just on MN, you see/hear it everywhere - and some people are genuinely shocked by the idea that talking therapies can be damaging, even though that Emory study found about 10% of patients get worse after starting therapy and even though it is now quite widely accepted that debriefing after traumatic events actually causes PTSD

It made me feel so unhappy - maybe I had it too soon, maybe it exacerbated my tendency to over think things, nut I feel it put my recovery back from depression by a good 12 months.

There is definitely a racket element to it if you register professionally: it costs a few hundred a year, you have to pay for supervision (ie regular discussion of your cases and the issues they may be bringing up in you) with another counsellor, and you often have to have your own regular therapy. The counselling profession could almost keep itself going without any actual clients.

I think it would be hard for a traditional counsellor to get clients without proper qualifications and accreditation though; people often say that 'anyone' can set up as a counsellor, but I think that generally applies only to the informal use of the word (like when, say, WeightWatchers or whatever offer 'weight management counselling'- they just mean advice and support, not therapeutic counselling). Generally, most people find private counsellors via the BACP website, thus ensuring professional registration; or their GP or voluntary organisations, and these are generally staffed at minimum with trainees on recognised courses.

The point about priests is a good one: sometimes people would actually benefit more from talking to a trusted friend or confidante who is a good patient listener. With the pace of life being what it is though, these sort of people are as rare as rocking horse shit.

I didn't find that I was distressed by things I wasn't aware of, more distressed by the therapist's 'take' on my life. For eg she said I must be 'frightened and lonely' without a male partner.

I am neither of those but found I upsetting to think that this is how she perceived me. I thought it would be much better to pose questions than make definitive judgments about a person you only met half an hour ago.

I am very sceptical.

I would only listen to a Counsellor if they'd been through the same trauma and came out the other side.

Agree about conflict of interest with private counsellors who need to pay their mortgage. As I said my DP is a counsellor and about 8 years ago had private counselling. Even with her inside knowledge and recommendations it took her 3 goes before she found someone she was happy with and felt was competent.

I suppose that there are professional ethics around keeping people in counselling past the effective time though, which should be picked up on in supervision etc.

I just wonder how counsellors in private practice make a decent living, to be honest. It is draining work if done properly, and I find it hard to envisage how anybody could cope with six or eight clients a day for any length of time without burning out.

When DD was ill I was referred for counselling. The place that offered it said I couldnt have any because I couldnt commit to coming every week at the same time.

At the time I wasnt able to commit to what I would be doing in an hour's time let alone if I would be available on a weekly basis.

My DD was having treatment for cancer FFS. She was critcally ill.

The point of the counselling was to help me deal with that.

I had to rely on ADs, neurofen plus and redbull instead. What with them not being able to deal with my lack of commitment and all

Mrsdevere, spot on. I was given a slot at 4pm which was very difficult to make because I work full time and I was told that 'money must be very important to you'! In a tone to make me think how shallow I was. Yes, money was very important to me. I didn't particularly want the house my daughter lived in to be repossessed.

I do boggle at what kind of training or supervision some of them get after the stupid and insensitive things I have heard.

I had NHS counselling once and as soon as I mentioned my sexual orientation the young guy started trembling and essentially gibbered terrifiedly through the rest of the session, making no sense whatsoever.

The GP practice got rid of him soon after, but given I'd been referred for help in dealing with homophobic bullying at work (prior to it being illegal), it was 100% useless and if I hadn't had a strong support network would have been very damaging. Luckily I could call on them instead.

I think though that counselling skills are to a large extent something you have or haven't - the best counsellor I've seen was totally unqualified and in fact I was her first client, but she was the only person available at uni. Wonderful woman who would ASK if her hypothesis of how I was thinking made any sense.

I lasted two sessions of CBT....maybe the miracle would have happened during the 3rd, but I doubt it. I felt bad during it, trying not to cry in front of her, this very soft very young woman....I need someone authoritative, probing, firm. Not someone who keeps asking me if this is going how I want it to. Am always hesitant to say "yes! social anxiety, depression, etc etc, that's me"....but do they not realise that we find it hard to deal with even this kind of "low-pressure" situation, face to face in a shut room, trying to phrase things when you struggle to think and link together sentences out loud anyway...
I am grateful, yes really, and guilty too....but I am glad they are now offering me another type of counselling instead. Also have happy pills to take at the weekend and onwards....I will see.

My CBT "counsellor" was, I felt, not well trained....she couldn't answer questions (most of them very basic normal ones, about the nature of the programme, stats), or maybe she felt it wasn't in her job description so didn't have to bother! and anyway was too earnest and eager not to stray outside the lines, although I suppose this was my problem, this approach isn't one size fits all I guess. But I am not so different and my problem is not unusual. It should work.

I'm sorry to hear all the terrible experiences of counselling some of you have had. I know my DP despairs at the "preciousness" of soem counsellors she meets who won't see people if they turn up late or have kids with the, etc. Although it is not ideal, she has on a number of occasions counsdelled with young kids in the room or even with a clients baby on her lap.

And the whole point of counselling is that counsellors shouldn't be judgemental about stuff like sexuality, sex, lifestyle choices, etc.

I think one of the issues is that GP's have traditionally themselves hired a counsellor for the surgery. Some of them are good at that recruitment process while some haven;t a clue and hire totally unsuitable people.

quirrel - CBT is the counselling being pushed by the NHS now so lots of new people have been trained up for it. But the training to do basic CBT is not very long and because lots of new CBT counsellors there are a lot that aren't that experienced. So she may well have had pretty minimal training and experience. Hope new therapy works for you.

I think it is very interesting that therapists make a big deal about time slots, not over running etc as providing an important boundary for the client, when in reality it is about preserving the therapists own commercial arrangements.

This particular counsellor would only see me at 4pm because that was the slot convenient for her and when I objected I was made to feel that I lacked commitment, wasn't really interested in 'working' with her.

I think there is a massive tension here and therapists are not being honest about it.

I have had some brilliant therapy too.

I enjoyed reading Phillipa Perry's book. But that is the only positive experience I have ever had.

Yes Spero - she should have just been honest and said this is the only time slot I can do sorry - rather tahn trying to make it into your issue. And of course time slots are about commercial concerns or in public sector, making sure counsellor sees as many peopel as possible - so you can't over run, but there is no reason why you can't start late.

Lesley33 - if she had said, I can only see you at this time, but let me have a think about who else I know that could see you in the evenings... That would have been fab. The only reason I can think that she didn't was that she wanted my money.

This is a bit of an eye opener for me! I can understand a bit better why people rant about all social workers being crap. I have had three bad experiences and now I am incredibly wary of the whole profession, which probably isn't fair - but I struggle to see how I could have been that unlucky...

I agree with the sense of something upthread, was that: painful things are hauled up, and this is not necessarily for the better. We are always told how good it is for things to be in the open, but we are never told WHY and it is hard to get out of this pattern of thinking but also hard to think of yes why we must know these things- if they are so deep, do they affect our choices, reactions so much/

Thank you Lesley- nice of you :-)
I am also sorry to hear of other people's bad experiences, or disappointing ones....there's nothing worse than feeling nothing for ages, then feeling a glimmer of hope because suddenly you feel a tiny bit positive about this new option and this means progress, easy progress, and then....dashed. And you feel flat again because it's not even real, deep disappointment, just a very vague thing.

This is a really good thread, thanks for starting it.

I have a friend who swears the counselling she had and is a great fan, and I can believe it works very well (with the caveats mentioned on here).

I think a big problem, though, is that you need to be very informed before you go into it. I ended up in counselling because I felt I needed some help. I didn't know what the hell was going on and why the guy wouldn't talk to me or reply to anything. I'd never heard of counsellors going silent as a technique, I was fairly young and naive. It scared the fuck out of me and whenever I asked him questions he'd just say 'hmm' or stay silent. It still makes me really shudder. The only times he talked were to say some frankly horrible things in response to me occasionally managing to talk about what had originally been upsetting me.

I did complain about him and got told 'but that is how therapy works, you didn't co-operate'.

If he'd only bothered to start by explaining what he was going to do, and how he hoped it would work, it would have been fine.

Counselling doesn't always work and can be the wrong type for you. In that respect it doesn't differ much from medication. Dd's first heavy duty painkillers made her throw up for a week and didn't do much for the pain. She switched painkillers. My first counsellor wasn't very effective: I asked to switch. But in the end we both found something that helped us. Having both realised that we were at a point where doing nothing wasn't really an option.

Dd's counselling hasn't waved a magic wand. But it has helped her to face the fact that her problems are there to stay and that she has to take responsibility for how she deals with them. And has suggested a few useful techniques to do so. She's stopped cutting.

What I needed was a place where I could talk about how dd's problems affected me, it was the only place where I wasn't propping somebody else up and reassuring them. It was worth it for that. But I absolutely had to make sure I didn't stay with the first counsellor who seemed more upset by my problems than I was: I told the reception lady very firmly that if anyone is going to be crying in these sessions it's going to be me! After that she got me a toughie who could cope.

We are currently having family therapy. It seems very much focused on enabling us to suggest ways forward, basically providing a safe place where we can talk together. Might not be right for everybody, but is quite useful for us.

DoomCats....but wouldn't you worry that the "effect" would be spoilt and you'd think too much about how things were supposed to be going if you knew the path it was supposed to take? I would be worried about this.

I can't imagine having family therapy! We seem to purge well enough at the dinner table. But in front of a note-taker, guided? Too squirmy. We would be Mirandas and waste time.

I don't honestly see how the 'effect' could have been any worse. Surely any reasonably intelligent person should cotton on that if you have a teenager in tears time after time begging you to explain why you're not replying to her and what she's done wrong, you should think a little about whether you're past the point of worrying about the 'effect' explaining the therapy might have.

'not co-operating' is one of those double binds they seem to love putting you in I think - if anything goes wrong, it is because the patient is 'not ready' or 'not working hard enough' or some other thing that is the patient's fault and similarly therapy can only be a success when the therapist judges it so