To wonder if therapy work?

[Yellowandorangegreen]

DD15 has been having therapy since early this year; there were some issues with self harm last year. I have reflected on this and I think various things have contributed to this:

School pressure as she is not very academic
Hormones: Things are definitely worse around her period/ovulation time.
She was being left alone to deal with everything
She took a course of antibiotics for 6 months for acne which may have contributed as well.

We have made lots of changes. Tutors to support with school, being more present in her life so she has someone to come to when feels low/stress/worry. Vitamins and probiotics to help with physical demands of growing up. Suggesting better sleep, excercise.

She seems happy most of the time; has ambitions, friends, goes out, laugh, look after herself. When she is low though everything is very negative; but as I said it seems to be around her period time. I tell her it is hormones, she said it is not and that she has felt like that for awhile but the rest of the time she seems fine. Period comes and she seems her normal self.

Anyway, it is £80 per week, and on top of tutors this is adding up. Plus I am finding difficult accommodating the appointments this year with tutors and work schedules.

Please tell me your therapy experience? Shall we continue? Or stop it?

What sort of therapy you had?

Had to look up one of review letters to remind myself ACT and CBT.

Only the initial appointments were spent dwelling on feelings and events and everything else was more about practically managing and reducing ongoing anxiety and living with the discomfort and fear which were based on real risk to life. It was incredibly helpful instead of everyone pussy footing around that my child was fine and had survived and much more helpful to basically say 'your child has a condition that has led to multiple life threatening medical emergencies and may continue to have more and could die young and the reality of the situation is you need to live with this the best way possible without being destroyed.

Perhaps hypnotherapy will be more effective

What is act? Thanks a lot

Acceptance and commitment therapye, essentially learning to accept that bad things happen and negative emotions are part of the human condition. Helping your body feel them, experience them and then once you've gone through it continue on with a commitment to co tuning to live well with your own strong values. It's about getting to know yourself and your reactions and behaviours and having compassion for yourself when bad things happen

It’s probably worth giving both parties notice that you’d like to try having a break from it, give them a couple of weeks to work towards this and then see how things are without it. Then after 6 weeks or so see how your DD is.

Would you mind sending the contact details of your therapist privately? Not sure where you are based but perhaps they do online

What worries me with some therapist is that there seems to be something with no end and goes on forever with no results

To be fair DD had a break over the summer as we were away for awhile. She has not mentioned the Therapist once.

It was through our local children's hospital and NHS based. I think you need to talk to your child's therapist about what they are hoping to achieve

I sent her a message with that question.

I had friends who attended therapy for years; not sure if it helped.

And things are the same, she seems happy/ok most of the time; with the accessional low days.

Attending a talking therapy where you discuss the things you are finding stressful etc can be incredibly helpful as an ongoing therapy, many people find it incrwdibky helpful and it may be exactly what a teenager going through a lot of change needs.

If your child has struggled with self harm and this helps why do you want to pull it?

Thank you. I will speak with DD and leave it to her.

Is your DD able to say why she self harms, although it's quite possible she may not know herself?
What was her childhood like, was there anything traumatic?

Children often adopt the patterns of the parents when they are young.
Do you or your husband suffer from anxiety/depression or any other mental health conditions?

Because it can’t go on indefinitely.

It can in a lot of cases, if a teenager is self harming and at the root of it is that they'd are struggling to deal with transitions that occur mentally and emotionally as a teenager and the support of the talking therapy helps with reducing or stopping the self harm behaviour then continuing the therapy is beneficial indefinitely.

The self harm happened when she was struggling with school. I am her emotional support and I wasn’t as present to listen to her struggles/feel with her as I had a burnout at work and my mental health wasn’t great. Things are very different now.

This is a conversation best had with her therapist first. See if they can assist with the cost. I have gone through therapy at various points of my life. Due to abuse I was a ward of the state in the US until I was 18. Then I carried on therapy through my adult life due to it. It's not really something that is a once and done if you have experienced something traumatic. When I was going to taper off my therapy it was always discussed first with the therapist and a plan put together for coping strategies and what to do if I was at risk in the future.

Then why haven't you sat down and discussed with your daughter frankly what has happened? What her views are on the therapy? And on the changes you've made etc?

That's the real answer, the only way to know if therapy remains helpful is to ask her

Ask her if she has learned anything and is she able to use this to support her wellbeing going forward - this can be broached without compromising her privacy/confidentiality

Agree It shouldn’t go indefinitely, The job of a therapist is to give you tools so you can learn to manage those emotions and move on with your life

If be wary of allowing a dependency on therapy to for

I don’t think I can’t go too deep into this; but can ask more information about whether she is finding the therapy helpful and if she has learned anything from it

This is my concern. It can’t go/shoud not go indefinitely

This is a good suggestion. I will do this.

thing is you say it can't be indefinite, sure, but also therapy is very person dependent regardless of what kind it is. It isn't a X sessions and you're 50% better type of treatment. The other part of the problem is that therapy requires energy, effort and desire for it to work and also if there isn't a good rapport it's not going to happen

It feels like you're quite irritated that there isn't some quick and measurable improvement, but as someone who has had various types of mental health treatment and therapy this feels like it's just going to put pressure on your DD to "be better so you can not cost us money"