To find therapy totally overrated?

[HarryViles]

I would love to hear any positive stories.

I am struggling. Kids with additional needs. And a DH who isn't awful but he is like a kid himself and I feel worn down and resentful. I am the breadwinner and find DH like a lodger.

I keep going to therapy and we talk about me doing everything for others, sometimes we even talk about my dad and how angry and unpredictable he was.

But although feels good to talk in the moment - I leave and everything continues. I still can't see the way through and have spent nearly £1000 over the last year.

Can i just not find the right person? Am i expecting too much?

Last session they tried to make me do a pie chart of my "priorities" and I just felt like I was in some bloody team building exercise

Any tips?

It sounds like this is the wrong therapist for you. I remember the first time I saw a good for me fit therapist- I left the appointment feeling like I was floating and finally felt understood and validated. Please do yourself a favour and keep looking for a better fit

Thank you so much all for being so helpful. I will look up all the suggested approaches. I didn't realise there were so many types.

I did go to the GP recently as had my first full blown panic attack which seemed to come from nowhere. I thought I was having a heart attack it was so painful - arms going light and tingly, pain though my chest, sick. He referred me to CBT for anxiety which not sure about and I'm on a waiting list for that.

The last therapy session was with someone new and expensive and made me feel v upset and frustrated. But I do recognise I need something even if that wasn't right.

But I have to be willing to make the change I know. They can't fix my life for me!!

I feel like I have clarity on my relationship in the sense its hugely unequal and I'm taken for granted. I just want to know why I put up with that and always have. Every man in my life has been both seemingly obsessive and cruel and also almost childlike in their incompetence.

I want to find the strength to leave but I also need to stop the pattern somehow. Or just stay away from men forever which is pretty appealing.

Not a therapist but I think going for useless men can be about insecurity and fear of abandonment. Picking someone who can’t cope without you is a way of making sure they stay (he can’t leave- who would wash his socks?) But because you’re also an intelligent and competent person this also doesn’t feel right for you.

Would your life be easier without your husband, do you think? Or do you think he could step up more if you asked him? Sorry about your panic attack- they really are scary. Any chance you can get signed off work for a bit? Sounds as if things are getting too much and it might be wise to take a break before you feel completely overwhelmed.

I’ve been going to a therapist once a month since ending my marriage in November. I’ve found it valuable but not earth shattering if that makes sense - possibly because I’d already made the big change I needed to make. So seeing the therapist helped me feel that yes, leaving was a valid choice/my ex really was abusive/my ex MIL really was vile.

I did get a few insights into why I ended up with my ex but no lightbulb moments. But I found it helped to talk to someone independent and I’m sure my best friend/sister/mum were glad of the break from me obsessing about my ex’s latest arsehole antics.

Have a read on attachment and the different styles, this might help. I'm training to be a therapist and to be perfectly honest a therapist isn't going to tell you why you are like you are, the work is in finding it out for yourself and then (should you wish to change it) finding ways of changing things that suit you and what you want in life

I agree- it is up to the client to come to these realisations.

No point in being "told" by a therapist where our maladaptations come from.
A therapist may know or see, but it is up to the client to find the clarity. We can be steered towards those lightbulb moments, but ultimately the whole point in the therapy is for the client to work that out.
Then it is fully understood and healing can begin.

I laugh when I have thes lightbub moments, because I can see my therapist help me uncover all the pieces- laid bare in front of me , but still sometimes I struggle to fit it all together. When I do- and that happens frequently there is usually some humour because I imagine the therapist must be frustrated and holding herself back somewhat- like watching a 2 year old opening a sweet wrapper. So tempting to rush in and do it for them, but far more important they do it for themselves in order to learn.
My therapy is full of laughter, and often tears of sadness, grief and sorrow.

It’s the experience of the relationship between the client and therapist that’s healing. Not the earth shattering moments of realisation or the intellectual understanding. You can intellectually understand things like attachment theory and attraction, your past experiences and why you fall for similar partners. But the thing that stops you falling for similar partners again is the experience of a different kind of relationship - the one with the therapist - and experiencing things like emotional attunement, listening, validation etc from them.

CBT will help with the intellectual understanding, but even CBT is more effective when you build up a trusting relationship with the therapist. Personally I’ve found a lot of healing in a longer term psychotherapy relationship because I used to intellectualise and rationalise my feelings away as a coping mechanism, and psychotherapy has helped me let go of that and sink down into my body, my feelings.

The bad kinds of relationships you experience early on get encoded in your brain/nervous system and it takes the work of experiencing something different, feeling the feelings that brings up for you (which can be a lot of grief - sort of a bittersweet feeling of experiencing something healthy and the sadness that can bring up about the unhealthiness you’ve experienced before), having the therapist’s help to tolerate those feelings and sort through the grief bit by bit. And in my experience, doing that over and over again until you’ve gradually sorted through the grief til the point that those good experiences don’t spark so much pain and actually feel good and desirable. And the bad kinds of relationships begin to lose their draw because you feel them for what they are - unhealthy - and you’re not drawn to them anymore.

It’s slow work because the nervous system doesn’t like to change quickly and doesn’t cope with overwhelm, so it has to happen in baby steps. The neural pathways built so early in life are hard to break and it’s by repeated small experiences of change that you forge new pathways in your brain. It’s like treading a path through a field until the grass wears away and the path becomes established. Look up the concept of titration in trauma recovery (Dr Peter Levine).

@gardendream thank you for this, your comment was really enlightening and has helped me think of it a bit differently.

Cannot stress this enough. If you feel like it's a waste of time, look for another therapist. It's taken me a long time to find one that fits and she's been such a help.
Before her, I was beginning to think it was a total waste of time/money

I agree that the relationship with our therapist is crucially important. And yes the healing is done in relationship, but a lot of healing is done by the client themselves outside of the therapy room.
I need to apply a certain degree of conscious thought to my healing process- that's the way it works for me.
Becoming aware of how we are thinking and feeling in our day to day is important to me, that observation to notice if I am triggered, rumination, dwelling on negative thought processes, becoming angry or impatient.

For instance healthy boundaries has been /is an issue for me. When confronted with a situation I can recall conversations in therapy and make a counscious decision to set boundaries.
That takes courage and has an outcome- I will bring this to therapy to discuss. Athough important work is done in therapy, it's up to me to put my new realisations, ways of thinking into practice.
I understand why some psychotherapists use the word titration, and have read Levine's work.
I understand where he is coming from, but I am a chemist and not sure he has a real grasp of what titration means ( having carried out thousands of titrations in a laboratory myself). There is no risk of explosion during a titration, if there was another method of analysis would be chosen.

On and off therapy since ever. I sometimes find it useful, sometimes waste of time. In my experience the therapist is the main factor in the usefulness of the process. However therapy tends to be for the long run. I tried life coaching and tbh I feel I achieved much better results in shorter periods