Does counselling hinder moving on?

[NamechangeOC]

I've just deleted a very long cathartic post about my best friend.

She's been in counselling for 6 years following the end of her marriage. As the time has gone on, it's opened up her childhood and is exploring that too.

My childhood and marriage end were far more extreme than hers - not a race to the bottom, just fact. I've made my peace with my past. I live going forward rather than looking back to my past.

Every time I spend more than 30 mins with my friend, she brings up her marriage or her childhood. I tolerate it to a certain extent. Yesterday she found it really hard when I challenged her - tbh I'd had enough of her talking about how horrid things had been for her and how it had been easier for me (it wasn't).

On reflection, I can see that she's unpicking all these things in counselling every fortnight, so of course they'll always be on her mind. How on earth can she move on then?

Is this true of all counselling?

Things like CBT don't look at the past, but more traditional counselling does.

I've had poor mental health recently and a few people have said maybe id benefit from counselling about my childhood as it's probably impacting me now.

However, I feel the same as you, that I don't really want to go over and over it. I want to work on being more present and positive instead.

(Plus it would take a long time and a lot of money talking to someone about it for 45 minutes once a week!).

Personally I agree with you. I'm sure some counsellors may help in some situations but I have a similar friend to yours. Decades of counselling about the same situations have almost trained their brain to focus on going down the same neural pathways constantly. It's like when you have an ulcer in your mouth and you keep prodding it. She keeps searching for some magic words that will cure her. I wish they'd help her heal as she has so much potential but awful mental health exacerbated by some nasty experiences have ruined her life and despite so much help she's still stuck in her teens decades on. It's very sad.

In my experience counselling does help people to accept their past and ‘move on’. At least that’s how it is for me.

I am having Person Centred therapy and it’s been life changing. I don’t regret it at all.

But I’d also never tell anyone how awful my childhood was and how therapy has helped me.
It doesn’t matter ‘who had it worse’.

I would be frustrated by her talking about it all the time too, and gently ask to talk about something else.

Absolutely agree with this.

There’s a balance to be struck between bottling things up and doing a stiff upper lip, and reliving and living in the trauma time and time again under the mistaken belief that it will help ‘process’ it.

There’s a few types of counselling, CBT which is usually a short term therapy and challenges thoughts and behaviour patterns.
Person centred tends to be client lead and focuses on how you are feeling in the moment but there should be shifts within in that.
psychodynamic therapy is focused around childhood and deep rooted trauma.
Theres lots of off shoots of these and some counsellors take an integrated approach.
But 6 years is a long time, it reads like she is stuck in her therapy, the counsellor should be trying to support her to move forward or moving her on to a different approach/therapist if it is not helping .

Ultimately if she wants to be happy she needs to work towards accepting what happened to her and move forward with responsibility for her thoughts/ behaviours /actions. Comparing to others is unhelpful as you dont really know what someone else’s experience is and does it really make you feel better if yours was worse.

It must get draining, either you need to have some boundaries in place or reduce the friendship.

I agree that this counselling, at this time, seems to have her stuck. I had over four years of integrative therapy which didn’t encourage this behaviour at all (as far as I know… possibly my friends would say different?) The whole point for me was that any unpicking was going to go on in sessions, firstly so it could actually be productive with some challenge from the therapist, and secondly so I didn’t have to talk about all of it elsewhere.

There are poor therapists, and therapists who are having poor supervision.

TBH you can push back you know. You can say. ‘Sounds like you’ll have a lot to talk about in your next counselling session.. God I could never do that job! Did you watch the curling?’ Do that a fair few times, and then you are also allowed to be a bit blunter and ask her to change the record.

I seem to know a fair few people (I’m their late 40s) who have been having therapy and I’m not sure it’s helped them. Instead they now speak more about their therapy and the things they are unhappy about, almost like it has been put at the forefront of their mind and been ‘reactivated’. If you pay someone to listen to you, then it makes sense for them to encourage you to talk. Having said that, I know people who swear by therapy.

I've had a few counsellors and therapists. I've just finished a year of psychotherapy. I don't think this is necessarily about therapy in general, but more about your friend. I don't talk about my issues unless someone specifically brings it up or its particularly relevant to a conversation (which isn't often). Perhaps your friend is just really struggling to put it out of her mind? I have been there in the past

I had some counselling years ago that didn't really help me and felt like I was just talking about my disordered thinking on a weekly basis without ever looking at the bigger picture or moving on. I didn’t bore people with it though

When I had counselling, we had to get to the heart of a realisation about my self perception for me to move forward. It was a combination of CBT and talking therapy, it was extremely effective for me but thats because my therapist was very driven about finding the why, some stuff needed more work but some elements resolved once the why was answered. I don’t think years and years of talking therapy is good for anyone tbh. I saw my therapist for something like 6 months.

Therapist is highly rated and is a supervisor to others. I have 2 other friends that have used him on and off the the past 10 years. So I'm pretty sure he's good at what he does.

Obviously I'm not part of the sessions, but the impression my friend gives me is that her behaviours are so deep rooted from childhood that lots of unpicking and rebuilding is needed over several sessions.

Yanbu my childhood wasnt the worst but wasnt great.

I unpacked mine a bit and now its firmly boxed in the attic.
I dont think of it.
It came up the other day (boring reasons) and the other person was slack jawed like "what? How am I only hearing this now?" just doesnt define me

Some people do that.
Some people leave it in the attic.
Others get it out rake through it spread it about their home and live in it.

FFS..

This is turning into some "people need to just pull themselves together" bullshit. Some people CAN'T do that

I think counselling is useful. But not a permanent fixture in your life. I've had incredibly useful counselling but it definitely helped me move on and out of the need for it.

I do think some people are stuck in their past though. I'm not sure why. I try not to be judgemental about it but in the anonymity of MN, have to admit I am judgemental about it. I see it a bit as wanting to be a permanent victim.

It’s different for different people.

I have worked in MH for over 20 years and the recovery path is so interesting.

one thing I have noticed is different people have different abilities to accept injustice and move on when they have been wronged. Some people get truly stuck and live in the injustice and then can’t move forward. It’s very sad.

I was with a patient the other day and she wants to carry on with therapy. However I felt I needed to confront her that she has been coming to therapy for 2years - paying a fortune and is no better at all. She is still the same as day one. Spends the hour crying and talking about what happened and doesn’t engage in any of the techniques to process and move on for the trauma.

I feel like it’s a case of taking a horse to water…

Yes but sometimes with lots of counselling (I’ve had a bit) you need to sort of know your own mind and not to use counselling as a crutch. At least that’s my take on it. Some counsellors (as with an ex of mine) see their clients for years, there should always be an end time or a goal to reach, otherwise the counsellor may see you as a regular client as in paying the bills.

If they can't do it, then why will a counsellor help?
What is a counsellor going to do?
Change has to be wanted, desired, needed.
If the person camt do that, who can?

How the hell can someone afford counselling for 6 years???

It can do. There's a place for working through painful experiences but the key is not to get stuck in them. Feel the emotions and let them go. A good therapist should be focusing on helping the client move forward but it isn't always easy to discern where a client is at and whether there's a need to unpick more experiences.

Psychotherapy never really worked for me, but we're all different. I was better with DBT and ACT because I needed tools to utilise in the present rather than unpacking what happened when I was a child.

I think this is more to do with your friend rather than the fault of counselling/therapy. Some people get caught up in victimhood, and don't know who they'd be if they stop allowing it to define their sense of self. It scares them.

For a lot of people therapy allows them to accept the past without condoning the actions of those who perpetrated the damage, and they can move on. It doesn't sound like your friend is at that point.

Exploring why some people can process and move on while others can’t is not a bad thing or victim blaming. Especially if the answer can help those who are stuck to move on.

however it is true that if you are stuck then you are wasting time and money going to taking therapy.

if it’s not working try something else!

I must admit I'm very skeptical

The only behaviour you can change here is yours, though — not your friend’s, not her therapist’s. If hearing her continually talk about the past is difficult for you, protest yourself. Ask her explicitly to stop. And stop engaging in competitive past suffering Olympics. That doesn’t help anyone.

I think it’s very very useful for some people but if significant change isn’t happen quite quickly then maybe not so.

i had 3 months of bog standard talking therapy and it changed my life.

I am so grateful to my therapist for helping me see some patterns that I missed. I use co pilot now. Also brilliant and free and has helped me realise some things.

I think therapy is helpful once or twice in life - most people I know need some after having kids (combination of poor childhood of their own that they don't want to repeat or worry about ability as a parent) which I understand. The second lot are those who can afford it in their late 40's - these are usually women who have been dealt crappy hands in divorces/had men be cruel to them in many ways. I think our defences go down as we age and the openness is the acceptance but also the lack of giving a shit we hide ourselves in in our 20's and 30's. Women at this age are hormonally more likely to not give a shit and I suspect those who hid their true selves behind what our patriarchal society expected of them in their youth are the ones shouting loudest.

What I would actually like is for more men to have therapy, as they often cause the damage to the women I know because they see it as a negative thing to communicate openly and don't want women to be swayed from the patriarchal guidelines as it makes us easier to control.

I'm not sure why you're equating can't with don't want to? And if someone has a serious mental illness and struggle to get better, are you saying they should give up?