I feel fine now and have for years. But I had depression for about 30 years. I tried therapy very occasionally. I couldn't really afford it. It's such a lottery and you often feel you are handing over cash you can barely afford to a rather cold, detached stranger, in exchange for feeling awful about revisiting things that you find unbearable and can't express to friends, let alone some scrawny bespectacled man who stares inscrutably at you from across the room.
NHS therapy is risible and pointless. The worst I have had included a very young woman whose English was so bad I had to constantly rephrase my issues in very basic language. I spent more time thinking about what vocabulary I could use to help her understand than about my own problems. And she clearly had zero life experience. I was dealing with a very sick child, an SEN child being bullied at a school that claimed it had no bullying issues, very sick parents one of whom was a horrific bully, childhood neglect, autistic terminally unemployed spouse. I just felt there was nothing in the world she could offer me. I was the one accommodating her and I was so chewed up at that point by constantly accommodating every other person in my life, when I needed just one person to be focused on me and how I felt for a change. It felt like a real blow that I was the one helping my therapist, not vice versa.
Another NHS treatment was a sweet and clueless young woman online, who clearly had issues herself and was desperate for reassurance from me. She slowly and methodically asked every question she was supposed to ask on the tick box forms, leaving literally 5 mins out of the allotted 30 to ask how I was.
I had one good NHS therapist online. She didn't really listen carefully, she talked a lot, and mainly about herself and her own problems, all of which I know therapists aren't supposed to do. But she gave me one good piece of advice over six sessions which I still apply to this day. That was the best outcome yet.
Not once have I sat down in a therapist's office or faced one online and thought: here is an intelligent, empathetic person I can trust, who is wise and strong and can help me overcome issues so I can cope and live as I want to live.
Self help has been far more beneficial. And journalling. WIn the end, we are the ones doing the work. If I had £60-100pw spare, I'd get more therapeutic benefit from spending it on a ticket to a music or comedy gig, a massage or haircut.