Like, I’ve had several therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/counselors throughout my life who either seemed disinterested or flat out unfit to deal with people like me, and I don’t even think I’m the worst case scenario (who knows, maybe I am?).
What’s their main demographic, who do they even help? Yuppies, professionals, people in manager positions who already have had successful professional, social, and dating lives?
They’re already too expensive for most of the population, they seem to be absolutely oblivious to the problems of most men of color or trans folks or most gay folks, they can’t help early career young people, definitely not working class people, like what the fuck are they good for? And can people just shut the fuck about ‘just go to therapy, honey’, ‘men will do anything but go to therapy’ like fuck off. I went to therapy, and holy shit yeap, the world still sucks and society is still extremely hostile to me.
Oh I can change my reaction to things? to live in delusion is almost what they seem to be prescribing and nah, I’d rather just save the 100 dollars per session and spend it on 2 months supply of fucking OxyContin.
And motherfucker, if you’re a psychiatrist, and I’m here for adderall or anxiolitics or fucking laxatives, you had better fucking give it to me. I didn’t fucking pay 150 to prescribe me children’s medication or to be lectured about the importance of therapy.
That was my experience with therapy. The only thing I ever got from it was someone to talk to when I was completely isolated. Everything else felt very unsuited to the seriousness of my problems.
My guess is that they just don't have the tools to really help with serious mental health problems. I have no real knowledge of what therapists are taught, but it seems like therapy is really more geared toward helping with less serious issues.
One thing I noticed is that there is no kind of consistency of treatment. They all seem to be just trying different unproven things and deciding what they think works. I've had therapists that want you to find some kind of spirituality, want you to try some weird device, want you to fill out worksheets, even had one that wanted me to smile in a particular way. It's the wild west out there.
It really does seem like they all just wing it. I’ve wanted someone to give me a structured approach to deal with my emotions but it’s 95% is how’re you feeling today and just them socratic methoding the fuck out of whatever you say.
Genuinely. It’s really all koombaya bullshit disguised as something rigorous. Maybe I haven’t found the right fit but holy shit, if I have to literally scout for someone who isn’t full of shit maybe the entire profession deserves scrutiny?
This is so true and it's infuriating. My experience was exclusively this and "That's rough, maybe you should try harder? Oops, that's our time for today!" every visit.
My impression from my personal experience with therapists/psychiatrists and my own amateur research into mental health issues is that for many issues, we simply don't really know how they work and/or what can be done about them. They try unproven things because there are barely any proven things that work.