What is the obsession with therapy/counselling?

[iamfedupwiththis]

Ok please tell me what is the bloody obsession on this site with therapy or counselling??

Nearly every thread I read there are people suggesting therapy for the most simple of things

Can no one make any decisions alone any more?

Can no make changes to improve their life with it?

Can no one pick up a hobby or do something for themselves without?

I don't get it?

I don't get what talking about it for years on end changes the situation.

A lot of people don’t ‘need’ counselling. Until they do…

In my case, as well as helping me understand and deal with a truly awful situation I found myself in, therapy uncovered a fair bit of ‘issues’ associated with my upbringing which I had buried/ignored for decades. So it turned out to be life-changing. I just wish I had done it a lot sooner.

Saved my life. I had trauma-based EMDR therapy and no the trauma wasn’t after a fight with a partner, or being pissed off with my boss, or just feeling a bit fed up.
We are all different and all deal with things in our own way.
If you have resilient mental health, good for you. I applaud you. I’m not saying ‘lucky you’ because being resilient takes work.
There are lots of different types of therapy and no, you can’t just say you are a therapist.
Yes, there are some awful ones out there.
Yes, there are people who go and use it as a listening service, never really making that much progress.
A good therapist will challenge you and work with you. They don’t want you to be their client for too long. They want you to build resilience so that when the sessions are done, they are no longer needed.
I agree there is too much ‘therapy’ speak around, it is irritating.
Posters often suggest it on here because very few of us are professionals and we run out of road in terms of our own advice.
I can remember being up in the middle of the night thinking well do I end my life or do I give myself a proper chance?
Only I could make that decision. I did, I got some help, it changed my life.
Never judge what someone else is going through or question how they stay well.

The fact that you think alcohol etc would help just highlights the fact that you've never been in a position to need therapy

I don't mean time to relax and watch telly or play tennis etc.
I mean time to talk about your issues.
But it doesn't appear that you have the need for this. What you do have a need for is to see that there are times in life, for some people, that they need to do this. You need to see the world from another point of view

Therapy is known to help people develop resilience.

I think maybe you've misunderstood what resilience is.

I think this explains your original post. If you had deep seated or serious problems then you'd have plenty to talk about. Think childhood trauma, abuse, coming to terms with physical or mental disability, divorce, parental or sibling estrangement, emotional dysregulation, being in or leaving an abusive relationship... The list goes on.
Honestly OP you're very lucky if you've never suffered any of these things, or if you're so resilient that you've come through unscathed. But some of us just aren't that robust. Especially those of us who didn't get the foundation that comes with a stable childhood.

Also though - some people have therapy because they want to tackle a problem head on and make progress or change.

Going to therapy doesn't mean people 'aren't that robust' - that suggests those who don't seek therapy are more robust - this is not true.

Many people who would clearly benefit from therapy resist going, preventing themselves progressing.

Because without it - and my cats I had back then who were probably the only ones who could put up with me - I wouldn't be here today. Simple.

Don't blame me for having mental health problems and struggling to even do simple things like make a cuppa or put a cardi on sometimes- I didn't ask for these problems and I tried. For context I was also dragging myself to work each day and most ppl didn't know how much I was struggling. On the surface I was ok. Therapist knew otherwise and helped me stay safe.

What a mean thread

Therapy has been hugely important to me. Both traditional talking therapy and CBT.

I think it’s the people who resist therapy or denigrate it who aren’t that robust tbh - they’re scared of what they’ll find out about themselves!

We’ve adopted the American belief that you’re supposed to be happy and that if you’re not you need ‘fixing’. In reality, life is unbelievably painful and hard. We’re not ‘meant to be happy’ at all. Evolution programmed us to be pregnant at 15 and dead by 30 or 40.

Most of us would be happier if stopped pursuing it and stopped expecting so much of life. Bertrand Russell once said that the secret to happiness is to accept that life is “horrible, horrible, horrible.” Personally, I find reading the classics helps me far more than self-help books or therapy. Dickens, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh etc overflow with wisdom. Reading P. G. Wodehouse out loud is the best therapy I know.

You must have had a much better therapist than me then. I’ve tried about 6 different therapists in my life - all of them I stuck with it for a reasonable amount of time, some of them did help me reach conclusions about things and understand & make peace with life events I struggled with. None helped me make any real long-lasting positive changes though. That came from within (and no, the therapist did not help get me to a place where I was able to make those changes) I hadn’t had therapy in years before i decided to make practical changes to my life to improve my MH. I realised I could rely on no one but myself so stopped asking for or expecting help from anyone, cut everyone who brought negativity to my life out, left my partner, moved to a different town, swapped drinking and partying for book groups, team sports, and walks in nature with my kids, started exercising a lot and generally massively simplified my life. The only person who can solve your problems is you (yes I know this is what therapists believe also, and their job is to help facilitate that) but the way therapy is suggested as a fix-all solution to anyone who’s having a tough time/has MH problems/has been through trauma, suggests that most people think it IS the job of the therapist to ‘fix’ you. That can be a dangerous assumption to make, because people then put all their hopes into this one thing and when they realise that’s not how it works it can be devastating

Not sure what you imagine is discussed in therapy - good therapy is not about 'being happy'!

This is so true

you’re a therapist but no longer believe in therapy? Private or public sector?

Evolution doesn’t programme anything. That’s not how evolution works.

Therapy isn’t about being happy.

Bertrand Russell also said that philosophy “removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt”.

Allow yourself some liberating doubt, @Dappy777 . You might be mistaken.

This

Bollocks!

Evolution doesn’t have a thought process, or a moral worth, evolution just is.

And if we’ve evolved to the point where we can start thinking about our happiness and find ways to pursue it, that’s real too. There’s no good evolution and bad evolution, or real and fake evolution.

Plus some people believe in either a deity or some other spiritual force that could well have started a process (either in a sentient way or otherwise) that resulted in humanity’s existence and inevitably led us to start pursuing happiness. Maybe happiness is why the universe exists - we don’t know either way.

Whatever else is true or not, there’s nothing wrong or invalid in humans seeking happiness or something more than simply reproduction. It’s not morally wrong to do so. It’s not morally wrong to act outside of our evolutionary “purpose” either.

Edit - I realise therapy isn’t specifically about happiness but just taking about that as that was what the poster raised.

Obviously, you never had depression or a mental health issue that you can’t solve by saying what’s the alternative.

It’s not always about effort or mindset, and that’s where your argument falls down.
My own child is a perfect example. Confident, happy, competes in front of hundreds, wins medals. Then she got stuck in a lift.....once...for 5 mins.

That’s it. One incident.

To you, that’s something you just move on from. For her, it escalated into something that affected daily life. It didn’t stay as lifts either, it spread.
Situations where she felt trapped or out of control suddenly became overwhelming.
It was like her brain flipped into “keep her safe at all costs” mode. Not a choice, not something she could just snap out of, and not something a hobby fixes or a long walk or a cup of tea.

It was debilitating for her.

So what would your advice be there? Just tell her to get on with it?
That’s the flaw in what you’re saying. You’re assuming everything is within someone’s control if they just try harder. It isn’t.
Therapy isn’t about talking for years for the sake of it.

It’s about giving someone the tools to stop something small turning into something that takes over.

Agree.

I’ve felt so bad at points (suicidal) I would have tried ANYTHING to take that feeling away. Therapy seemed like the most sensible approach.

This is such a smug, able-bodied fantasy of how overwhelm actually works.

You’re listing “alternatives” like everyone still has full control and is just choosing to be dramatic. That’s not reality. When people are actually overwhelmed—mentally or physically—there isn’t a neat list of options. Sometimes it’s simply: you can’t function.

I have MS. On a bad day, the “alternative” isn’t some moral debate about being fair to colleagues—it’s whether pushing through is going to make things worse. Your checklist doesn’t even begin to apply.

And therapy isn’t a luxury indulgence—it’s often what keeps people from falling apart when “just get on with it” stops working.

So no, the alternative isn’t your tidy little list. Sometimes it’s rest, support, and accepting that not everyone is operating from the same baseline—even if you’d prefer to pretend they are.

I studied for 2 years to do a masters in psychotherapy. I'll be honest some of the people on the course had zero self awareness and weren't particularly effective in their communication styles.

Kind of put me off. I've also had 2 unsuccessful attempts at counselling and CBT myself.

However I also worked at a university counselling service and the therapists there were amazing, intelligent and powerful communicators so I do believe there are effective therapists out there.

I need a ton of therapy for past traumas but it never seems to get off the ground, I think I'm not ready to put the work in.

This is complete and total bullshit