Can therapy really fix me?

[What7Words]

Can I really stop the self-loathing and expressing it through disordered eating and become happy with myself and my life, by talking to a professional?

Things aren't bad enough to need medication but I'm sick of living like this and I don't really believe that paying somebody to tell me it is all in my head is really going to change how I feel about myself. Would it at least be able to make me accept that I am not actually a worthy person?

I'm not here looking for platitudes saying you're sure I am lovely really, or to take up yoga or walks in the countryside, I'm just interested in whether you have experience of therapy actually working.

They're not going to say uts all in your head.

Therapy and support groups really helped me by validating my shitty experiences that led to low self esteem. For the first time I felt properly listened to and empathised with. My therapists have also been great at helping me recognise my strengths and over time build up a healthy sense of who I am. Alongside that I learned calming and grounding techniques but it wasn't rushed and I wasn't made to feel stupid or inferior for needing this.

(I would say this but) yes, therapy really can fix you. Look at it this way; you weren't born hating yourself and making bad food choices – those feelings and behaviours developed as a result of your experiences and external influences.

Anything the mind can learn it can unlearn. And without months of expensive navel gazing!

I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose of therapy, OP. You fix yourself. You are the one doing the work. A therapist will ask questions and support and help you unpick the origins of whatever started your disordered thinking and eating — for many of us, it’s started off very young as a survival mechanism. My upbringing by two parents who shouldn’t have had children was such that my first lesson was ‘You wait for food — the men are fed first’ and ‘Your job is to be no bother’. There was no room for me to be sad or angry or scared. So I swallowed my feelings. Food became my mother because it was reliable, soothing and didn’t bother anyone else. CSA meant I never learned to live in my body, or to pay attention to my feelings.

Therapy has been transformative, but it’s taken years of very hard work, and I’m nowhere near ‘done’ or ‘fixed’.

Why is your last sentence so implicitly hostile to therapy? If the OP has disordered eating then she needs to be thinking about herself more, not less.

I am a therapist so if my sentence seemed hostile it absolutely wasn't meant to. My point was that the general perception of therapy is that (to be effective) it has to be long-winded, possibly painful and often expensive. Not necessarily true.

@MesLunettes I do understand it is not like taking a car to the garage where I'd be handing over my brain to a therapist and sitting in the waiting room while they tinker around with it; if only! But, I don't want to commit huge amounts of money to something that ultimately could be as much use as the CBT I had years ago which came across as coping strategies rather than addressing any root causes.

It just seems incomprehensible to me at the moment that it could make a real and lasting difference.

This is the thing, you hear of people who have been in therapy for years and it makes me wonder whether it is effective. I don't know the figures, but it does cost a fair bit.

This. It's long and difficult and you do the heavy lifting yourself. Your therapist is there for you and will help and support you, sometimes by telling you things you don't want to hear. You have to be ready to really try. It's not something that is done to/for you. It's not always easy and it's not always cheap. You can often find therapists that offer lower rates depending on your income. Mine has seen me practically for free during a particularly difficult financial period but I'd already been with him for a while at that point.

I've come an unbelievably long way. It's taken me years of therapy and the first 2 to 3 years were mostly spent testing my therapist and having blazing arguments with him. Basically creating conflict to see if I could push him away.

Eventually, having realised that he really was sticking around, despite my best efforts, I got down to some real work and the next 3 years have seen some radical life changes. But it's been me doing it, his role has been part cheerleader, part coach and a huge dollop of tough love.

Therapy helped me overcome, something, not even really sure what it was that I had to fix. But the result was crushing depression. There was a lot of shit to go through in therapy, but the outcome was that by the end, I'd lifted whatever it was that was crushing me.

That isn't to say that life is sunshine and rainbows now. But I'm no longer suicidal or suffering extreme depression. Which felt like having a boulder lifted.

Edited to say, finding the right therapist is important. I had 3 before I found my final one who it all kind of clicked with.

So don't do CBT again? Choose your modality and therapist carefully. Or accept that you're not currently in the right headspace for it. But you would be the one making the real and lasting difference, not the therapist. Is your eating a soothing mechanism at the moment for example? is it how you regulate yourself?

Have a look at my AMA : https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4559328-im-a-hypnotist-remedial-not-stage-ama?page=14&reply=151844701

Especially the last few pages which include posts from people who worked with me. With my cynical hat on I would question any therapy having to take years; who exactly does that benefit? It is an industry that relies on the belief that expense and time somehow makes you more better...

I used a block of 8 sessions (employment package) and it has had a tangible, long lasting positive effects. It didn't fix everything, but life has became easier.

I wanted to give it a try and did a lot of thinking and observing between the sessions thought.

I'm not a therapist, but I've been engaging seriously with therapy in various forms for around the last five years -- my own experience is that it is very slow, and that it is often painful. But why wouldn't it be, in my case? My issues are pretty deep-seated and stem from an upsetting cause (CSA and an emotionally very neglected childhood with parents from very deprived and dysfunctional backgrounds whom I had to parent and protect from an early age). I never learned to pay any attention to my own feelings or emotions, only to suppress them and eat them. I was so good at it that I only noticed it in my late 40s.

Whether it's expensive will come down to your individual means and how crucial you find it. I've cut back in other areas to be able to afford it, because it's important for my wellbeing.

I'm sorry you were dealt such a poor hand at the start of your life@MesLunettes I've worked with similar issues, sadly CSA and dysfunctional childhoods often cause the subconscious to instigate whatever protection strategies are necessary to keep you alive and as safe as you can be.

There is often a misconception about CBT being a series of paper handouts and a quick fix. This is partly due to the potted version delivered through the NHS, often this is more about behavioural strategies and is with a psychological wellbeing practitioner. It’s increasingly limited to c.8 sessions. The other problem is that lots of people say they are trained as CBT therapists but actually they’ve done a short course to bolt on to the side of another practice and this is not the same as the full training.

CBT does examine core beliefs and a person’s history but it does focus on present functioning. I’ve met many clients who have spent years in expensive therapy sifting through their past to find a solution to their present distress. They may gain valuable insight into why they respond as they do, they may find this very helpful. Insight in itself isn’t always enough to help someone function in the present. Sometimes that does require a challenge to beliefs about the oneself, others and the world in general, as well as thinking and behaviour and repeated patterns that are unhelpful.

I had a client who had been paying for weekly sessions with a therapist for three years. When she said, ‘I’m thinking of stopping therapy’ the therapist said, ‘ah well if you’re thinking of stopping that shows we’re really beginning to uncover important insights so it would be risky to stop therapy now’. For the princely sum of c.£18k she had managed to construct a narrative about her past but she was still depressed, trapped in rumination, isolated and unable to participate in family life. That is an extreme example but to me that is not ethical practice or giving any power to someone to make changes. People should be helped to improve their present day lives despite their past and helped to do that in a sensible time frame in a collaborative and realistic way.

Of course there are lots of other very helpful therapeutic approaches that take a long term approach and I know some amazing psychotherapists who have trained in a very different way from CBT and this post is in no way dismissing those that have found long term therapy helpful. It’s also worth mentioning the CBT is only one cognitive therapy approach (others include REBT, CAT, ACT, CFT).

Thanks, @Eyesopenwideawake -- I have learned to see them with compassion, as what kept me alive, and got me out and away via education, and drag my siblings out after me. But they've certainly outlived their usefulness as protection strategies, and I need to find a different way of living, but it's taking time!

Therapy with the right therapist can definitely help you.
I would look for one that specialises in eating disorders.
I would also look for a support group for disordered eating, it can help to know you’re not alone and you can benefit from others telling you of their journey and their ways of handing things like intrusive thoughts.

Ultimately, you are worth it. You deserve to pursue happiness. Realising you have a problem with your sense of worth and that you self medicate or punish yourself through disordered eating is a huge lightbulb moment and shows you have the self awareness and introspection needed for therapy to be a success with you.

The best advice I can give is don’t be shy about leaving a therapist and seeking out a new one if you don’t click and they aren’t being helpful to you from no later than the 3rd session. If you like the therapist, but the therapy isn’t helpful, tell them and tell them why…a good therapist will know how to switch gears to another approach that will work with you.

Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to respond.

I suppose the only way to know if it will help is to try it.

@LoremIpsumCici - that is good advice about giving it 3 sessions and then assessing whether the therapist is right for me.