"Therapy" is no better than a natter with a friend or a placebo.

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I am starting this thread to see what people think of therapy. I am personally convinced it is at least 80% useless - I am not saying completely useless, as I am sure talking about a problem makes you feel better, although you can talk things through with your pet rabbit - I used to as a teen! There is also some value in learning some techniques such as CBT, but that can be learnt from a book, so again, not sure of the value of an actual therapist.

I've come to this conclusion through two main sources, children and holocaust survivors.

I have known thousands of children through teaching, and fostering, and many many of them have seen therapists. My main observation is that huge expectations are placed on therapy as some sort of magic bullet that is going to cure all problems, but the result is inevitably disappointment, as nothing changes. Parents, and children too are left wondering what magic was supposed to have happened, and why it didn't. One fostering social worker once mentioned to me that she thought it was a complete waste of time after the age of 8, and I think she was right. Between the ages of 5 and 8, you can possibly use therapy to teach children a bit about the emotions they are feeling, which can help them understand themselves, but beyond that there seems to be no benefit

My other source is coming from a family of holocaust survivors, who never had therapy, and survived by not talking about hte past - Many went on to have long, happy, successful lives, married and raised families, ( including me!) . They did not discuss the past, and I was told not to ask questions. They were not totally without problems. I was aware of the occasional nightmare, and several of them were binge eaters who became obese in old age. However, they lived with this problems quite happily, and there was no talk or expectation of "therapy" of any kind to address them

So I have started this thread to see what others think. Maybe I am wrong - I am open to being told that I am wrong in this. My experiences have not given me any confidence in arranging for therapy for any child, or suggesting it for any adult, but please tell me if it is really in fact a wonder drug and I have missed the point somehow!

I should say I have been sent for therapy twice myself - once after being in a road accident in which my closest school friend died, ( aged 16)it was awful, made me cry every time, I felt so much better when I was allowed to stop, and once sent by my employer after I was knifed ( quite gently!) by a student at school - I was taught some useful CBT, but in my opinion a book would have been more helpful than a difficult journey to speak to someone who was basically going very slowly through what I could have read for myself in half the time without the train journey.

so:

YABU - therapy is helpful - and please explain how!
YANBU - therapy is a waste of time /a money maker/ sending someone for therapy or providing it is just a way of letting someone feel they are doing something useful, when they are not

Exactly this!

Every therapist I've had have all explained to me that therapy will not fix me, therapy will help me accept and learn to live with what happened to me.

I have had the penny dropping moments - then realised a few years later that the reason they felt good was because they blamed someone else. The - I act like this because my dad abandoned me - felt like a breakthrough at the time but after a few years I've realised blaming my parents didn't help anyone and have restored parental relationships because no one is perfect, they did their best with the tools they had and I now have empathy for them. Therapy didn't help me with this. Therapy had me blaming them and it did feel good at the time to do that.

Also therapy is nothing like talking to a friend. Trained therapists (e.g psychologists, not just any old quack who calls themselves a counsellor which is a totally different thing) are not paid to CARE about you. Of course on a human level therapists have empathy, but they also have to be unbiased and detached. They’re there to help you understand why your mind works as it does and develop strategies to be emotionally healthier. Friends can’t do that!

I was put in a position where either I carpet swept my brother’s sexual abuse of myself and my sister, decades of abuse in my sister’s case or I estranged from my family and learned to live with that. My sister has chosen the carpet sweeping route, I have chosen the therapy and estrangement route. I have absolutely no regrets. I see tonnes and tonnes of ongoing problems with the carpet sweeping route.

As an aside I rarely discussed the past with my therapist. Rarely. It was all about how I make necessary changes and move forwards. I still have to deal with the fallout and I always will have to and it has been very traumatic but I know I would have been absolutely destroyed emotionally with the carpet sweeping option so therapy has helped me an awful lot. My other brother who is a family carpet sweeper spoke extensively to me about the holocaust survivors and how they did so much better with the carpet sweeping. I’ll leave him to it. It all came across as denial and enabling abuse to me but hey ho.

I do think it should be better regulated. There's a counsellor in my family. She is/was a narcissistic and abusive parent - physically and emotionally.

She shouldn't be trusted with anyone's most vulnerable thoughts. She's the sort who'd talk about a client's issues while having people over for dinner. Awful person.

Therapy is incredibly useful for lots of people calling it no better than a natter with a friend is offensive.

I can't believe there are people who would sneer at people in therapy.

Would you sneer at people who are in treatment for any kind of physical health? Thought not.

As I said, I have known many many many people ( mostly teens) who have undergone all sorts of therapy, all different types, private, NHS, educational, everything, and that is what I have been basing my conclusions on

It saved my life. YABU.

I would disagree.

I don't think it's a magic bullet, but I also think you can say a lot more to a therapist than you can to a friend. They don't know the people, they won't judge you, they won't gossip afterwards. You can really let out what you're thinking, in a way that you can't anywhere else.

I mean, you could to a rabbit I guess, but that rabbit ain't likely to give you any words of encouragement back.

A decent therapist shouldn't give you answers, they should let you be open enough to come to the conclusions yourself. A friend will naturally have an opinion, that's human nature, so you'll be drawn one way or another based on their thoughts. Might be helpful, might not, but it'll influence you none the less. When you're having a rant, you need to do just that. Having someone rant along with you doesn't help.

So, no, therapy doesn't solve every problem in the world. But I reckon it can help you think more clearly about them, and help solve them on your own.

This. Finding out why they do things the way they do, learning to break patterns changing pathways for a better outcome.

As someone who suffered from it, I would say that binge eating is a serious mental illness which requires therapeutic treatment of some kind. As I said up the thread once you have it under control you have to deal with the underlying issues, which can be very difficult. The fact that many of your relatives were binge eaters may indicate that they were living with a lot of unresolved pain. pain. Therapy helps to release that.

people often feel worse during therapy because the feelings they have been repressing and numbing out start to surface and can feel excruciating but soon you start to see them in perspective. The trauma is in the past. You will never forget it but you can live with it for the most part.

I definitely think therapy can help. I’ve had CBT for OCD. And I’m sure counselling helps some people.

However, you know how your brain can sort of go numb after a traumatic event? I assume this is your brain’s way of protecting you. I wonder if counselling at this time might cement upsetting details in your memory and make you feel worse in the long term? I don’t know if this is the case or not, I’m just thinking out loud.

To specifically address the example you have given of therapy in children, the reasons it does not seem to work to you could be:

That the therapy focuses on the child and there is something going on in the family/ the way the parents parent, that continues to make the child unhappy

That there is something in the school environment that continues to make the child unhappy. Therapy for a bullied child is useless unless a school addresses a culture of bullying. Therapy for a neurodiverse child stressed by sensory aspects of school environment is useless if the school does not make adjustments to stop stressing the child at school.

Therapy has been life-changing for me in helping me to make positive changes in my life going forward. But children have little power to make changes.

Out of interest OP, what do you, as a teacher, think could have helped the children you are taking about? Personally, I believe that rising class sizes have a huge impact on the wellbeing and mental health of many children, ND children in particular.

It massively depends on 1)what the therapy is for 2)the type of counselling on offer and 3) the therapist/ counsellor.
For example cognitive behaviour therapy can be very useful for health anxiety.
Solution focused therapy can be very useful for looking at career moves or getting back on your feet following a period of illness.
Grief counselling following a bereavement can help some people come to terms with the death of a loved one.
There are plenty of other types of counselling out there, and both cognitive behaviour therapy and solution focus therapy have great applications than the examples I've given.
Sometimes it's just talking to someone who won't try and 'fix' things like a friend or relative might, because sometimes just having a person to talk to who won't judge, or tell you what they think you want to hear can be useful, not everyone has a good circle of friends or has family to talk too.
But counselling doesn't work for everyone, sometimes the timing is not right, some times the type of therapy isn't right, or the therapist / counsellor is less useful than a chocolate teapot.
Unfortunately it's not a regulated business and anyone can set up as a counsellor.
I'm not a therapist/counsellor but use a lot of those skills in my job, and have done a number of training courses, part of the skill is knowing when it might be useful to suggest therapy (and refer on) or use my skills alongside my core training (hcp).
It's absolutely not a 'magic' cure, but then to be fair nor are any therapies (physio, speech, OT, dietetics, portage, etc etc) all have their limitations and outcomes will depend on the condition and motivation of the client/ patient and support available outside the therapy session.
A good therapist/counsellor should be very honest about the limitations of the service they can provide, and set realistic expectations at first contact.

@Annaissleeping - I think one of the problems with therapy and the reason I am wary about it is because of this. I’m not suggesting for a moment everyone who works as a therapist or counsellor is some sort of ruthless Shylock, but I do think there are some comparisons with almost cult like behaviour which is problematic for me.

I see it on here so much ‘you need counselling / have you considered counselling’ with the assumption that it will work. No one ever mentions that just like cults, MLMs and pyramid schemes some people at the very top are getting extremely rich.

Counsellors charge but they have to have had counselling themselves, yes? And to pay to qualify? And to keep their registration ? Someone somewhere is making a lot of money from the counsellors, who obviously have to make a profit themselves because they have to live, and so it goes on.

And if it doesn’t work, it’s always down to the client not putting in the effort or being in the wrong place. There’s no acknowledgement that sometimes it just doesn’t work because it isn’t particularly effective.

I firmly believe the aim of therapy/ counselling is to help you see aspects of your life as they are.

Sometimes you can change things and sometimes you can't. Whatever it is, it does define who you are but it doesn't need to run your life.

A good therapist will explore and help with the processing. A crap therapist will just let you wallow in self pity.

@CattyCattle where did I say I blamed my parents for my childhood trauma? My parents were themselves products of their own trauma. As I said, I understand myself ( and others to be honest) more than I ever would have done if I had not had therapy. I would have carried on with my misunderstandings of people, my micro aggressions and my complete bewilderment as to why I couldn't deal in any way shape or form with certain situations in life that other people seem to find an absolute doddle.

A very narrow view.

@DaisyDaisyDaisyDaisyDaisyDaisy I wasn't talking specifically to you. Please don't get aggressive with me for sharing my personal thoughts on therapy and why to the OP. If you feel you have made the right decision for you then good for you but no need to get defensive and pick on me when I wasn't speaking to you directly.

Therapy takes many forms and serves many different purposes. I am going to assume counselling is being lumped in here too.

It could be talking and reflection.
Making sense of emotions/a diagnosis.
Processing trauma.
Learning strategies.
Exposure therapy for phobias.
Piecing together work.

Sometimes therapy doesn't go well, the relationship is not helpful and they need to try something else.

So yes OP absolutely wrong.

I think for mild to moderate anxiety, low mood and depression, good friends, exercise and good food and vitamin levels can help massively.

Trauma is something else. Helping children through trauma is hard and I think those who care for them should be involved too. Those children will probably need therapy for years. It's not a magic wand but it can help from things getting worse if no improvement is obvious.

The example of Holocaust survivors is interesting but that's also a different generation. People were generally more resilient and just got on with it. I know someone who survived a Serbian concentration camp and they get on with life absolutely fine but there are triggers that can massively affect them.
It's a different time now and the West has changed regarding mantas health.
Many countries still expect people to get on with life, and they do because there's no other choice if they want to live.

It's definitely over rated. I know lots of people who have had some some of therapy and it's been useless. The only person it worked for was my sister but this wasn't any deep seated trauma it was from working in a high pressure NHS environment at the height of covid which caused her a lot of stress and anxiety.

I didn't answer because I think it can be beneficial but only occasionally.

Therapy draws you back into your pain and you keep discussing it. you wont ever change what happened. Go out there and live your best life while your alive, sing, dance and do other things you enjoy.

Life is short and in 100 years time none of it will matter, we will all be dead.
My friends husband died she was offered grief councelling. She turned it down and said whats the point, just sitting there talking about it. He has gone and i have to accept it and enjoy life, and she has done just that.

Of course shes still sad and misses him, but she didnt see how any counselling would help.

Your constantly being drawn back into your pain and revisiting what the pain.

Interesting. I would say it depends. I had counselling sessions (does that count as therapy? ) in my uni days for an eating disorder and then again when older following a late pregnancy loss. I didn't find either helpful. The ED counsellor seemed bored and irritated and I got nowhere, I felt more and more self conscious. The pregnancy loss counsellor was lovely but after a couple of sessions where it was nice to feel listened to (my husband had shut down and didn't want to talk about it) it wasn't getting me any further. A self help group for people who'd experienced similar was much more helpful.

Then lastly I was offered six free sessions of therapy by someone doing a PHD. The issues I wanted to explore were bad habits/ self destructive behaviours I couldn't shake off and didn't understand. I thought my issues were mainly stress related in the "present day" (high pressure job, young children etc) but she insisted we go right back into my childhood which I resisted at first but bloody hell a lot of the answers were there. It gave me a lot of peace and self forgiveness such has been amazing. The sessions stopped abruptly because there were only ever going to be six. I felt at a bit of a loss at first but I continued making progress by myself as I was on the right track. Hugely valuable experience and really illuminating.

Shes not being aggressive at all. If someone starts a thread criticising something which has really helped her, shes entitled to her opinions, which she expressed really well.