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No. 1149842
I do trust therapists but I've had very bad ones in the past. One of them told me that if I wanted to kill myself I should just do it and stop pussyfooting. Guess who attempted suicide one day after kek
>>1149841I think it fits!
No. 1149858
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Not really a horrible experience but in high school I went to this random therapist and she literally listened to me talk about my problems then went "This is an ancient native story… Inside you there are two wolves." I couldn't believe it, I never went back. It was so funny.
No. 1149862
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>>1149843Where do I even begin with this? Kek.
I was in the market for a new therapist and this one woman stood out to me as a black woman. I liked the practice message on her psychologytoday profile but after a little digging I ran for the hills. So many bad reviews, and she responds to each one personally, either gaslighting the reviewer or leaving Bible verses. She uploads selfies to her Google business profile and got a fucking fiber optic statue of herself made, as you can see in picrel. There were so many red flags that scream narc to me. She served in the military and brings it up constantly and signs all her posts with her rank. I feel bad for the people who had to put up with her shitty practice but looking into her has been one wild ride and I'm happy I get to finally share it here
No. 1149880
>>1149863they can be helpful in the capacity as possibly a wise friend (if they are good, which they usually are not, at all), pointing out potential behaviors of others that are detrimental to you, or for mediation purposes or highlighting certain events that may unknowingly have lead to trauma, but for 98% of them their advice is usually horrible and to act like it's such serious science is a load of BS. i think it can be helpful for mediation purposes primarily or mending relationships, mostly to help with healthy communication, boundaries, and expectations, or for people who have no common sense and need their shit spelled out for them, or for those who just want to vent, but that's mostly it. but for most of them, they train women to have no boundaries. a lot of them reinforce really bad female socialization and offer a lot of scrote apologia.
No. 1149888
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>>1149868>>1149872I also suspect she is the only one running her own Facebook page and compliments her own posts about herself
No. 1149940
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Not completely about therapy per say, but when I was in high school I had to deal with a therapist who was toxic positivity incarnate. I was dealing with the fact that I was essentially an outcast and possibly autistic. Her solution was for me to ignore the fact that everyone hated me and behave in a cartoonish gleeful manner. She also made me do a session about domestic violence that I had no business being a part of. I did not want a bf at the time and at a my current age still do not desire a relationship. It was incredibly awkward and I couldn't understand why she thought I needed to be there since I will be at risk of domestic violence for the fact that I do not date and I have a habit of cutting people off over small thing. There was also this one time where she had me do a drawing and I randomly decided to do a crappy anime drawing and she was very aggressive in trying to get me to explain my thought process behind it and insisted there was a meaning behind it.
No. 1149967
>>1149880This is exactly how I feel about it, anon. Like, exactly. Just read a cbt work book honestly.
>to act like it's such serious science is a load of BSSeriously!
No. 1150083
I haven't been to a therapist in years even though I need it because last time I tried to go to a new therapist, the lady ignored all of what I told her about my mental health experiences and was convinced I was having hallucinations because I said I don't always feel like myself (when my depressive episodes are bad).
>>1150027He sounds like a crackpot but I guess as long as you're not getting medical advice from him and it feels like it helps you by talking to him it's fine….? Personally I would have dropped him a long time ago, but yeah its a struggle to find someone new.
No. 1150088
I never went to a therapist, becaue I can not trust them. Due to some stuff from friends.
this is going to be super long so brace yourselfs.
I know some people with mental health problems. BPS, shizo, depression, some are asperger and some have problems but refuse to get a diagnosis.
One Boderline "friend" who was a chronological liar, abused her "boyfriend" and talked shit of everyone behind their back.
She told us that she only got together with her boyfriend because she was bored and that she did not love him. That she liked to act upsed and angry with him so he feels bad and then go to bed, becaus he can't sleep when they had an unsolved argument.
She dropped him as soon as she found a different guy, but instead of being cruel she was obsessed over him. It was so weird. We kicked her out of our group pretty quickly.
I know many of her action was due to her borderline, but she told us she learned how to handle it and she does not need help anymore.
From another friend who worked with her told me, that her boss ordert her to see a therapist, who had to decide if she could still work there. Apparently there were lots of weird incident. The therapist told her she was fine and all was good.
Guess what it wasn't.
Another BPS one had multiple suicide attempts after her therapist let her go, because she was healed…
She is very unstable, hypersexual and a drug addict. She stopped going to a therapist because "It does not help anyway." I lost contact with her after that.
I am aware that BPS is one of the most difficult illnes to handle as an therapist. But for crying out loud. There should be at least somewhere were these people can go.
The friend with schizophrenia, had a really long way and many medication, that destroyed her. Many therapist told her she does not try enough. One sayed that: "She can go kill herself right now, if she does not want try."
Years later she went to a neurologist and they found out what she has at some degree. No therapist did that. Later she told me: "I tried my whole life to get better, to be free of this. Now I know that I can not be completely healed. I have to live with that. It was not me who did not try enough. It was the therapists."
She is now under the right medication and very happy with a family.
One friend with asperger told me that she went to 13 therapists until she found one that was good. It took half her lifetime until she found one. She still goes to them. So that is kind of a good ending?
these are the most extreme cases that I know. I do not want to make this more longer that it needs to be.
Just these and some more are the reasons for my decision to not see one.
No. 1150094
>>1149837I've tried therapy twice in my life, once I basically made a deal with my high school where they'd ignore all my missed classes if I started working with a therapist after I've been skipping them for over a month. My parents found me a creepy bald man with a snakesoilsalesman demeanor and the fakest smile I've seen, and he was extremely condescending after my parents left, obviously unhappy he was dealing with a school girl instead of the epic military training he'd done in the past and talked about for like half an hour.
The second time I took advantage of the hours universal healthcare provides, but the dude was obviously fucking zoning out and was only interested in my past relationships even though I went there to talk about my anxiety about uni and my future. Then he convinved me to go to one of his drama-acting therapies, which obviously cost a pretty penny and all the people there were working on serious abuse and trauma, so I felt out of place and left him. He kept sending me texts for another two weeks to come back.
No. 1150273
I'm biased against it, not because of bad experiences but because of the replication crisis. The data doesn't seem that strong to favor it outside of specific therapies (like exposure therapy). Lots of people are depressed due to external factors the therapist can't help with. Therapy is a way of papering over social injustices and a way of avoiding people giving people the help they really need. Like telling beleaguered workers to meditate instead of giving them better hours or pay. This is an interesting article:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/feb/05/mental-health-aid-western-talking-cure-harm-good-humanitarian-anthropologist>>1150221I'm so sorry anon.
No. 1150336
I've been in therapy half my life at this point, 15 years. I've had a few good therapists that I felt were capable and good at their jobs, but I've also met a lot of nightmare therapists. A lot of them take things personally and have obvious bias that influence how they work. I feel like therapy doesn't work. 15 years and if anything my mental health has just gotten worse. Maybe it works if your problems are less complex or if it's something that can be easily medicated, but at this point I feel like I'm just going to therapy so someone checks I haven't offed myself yet.
>>1149913I had something similar happened to me a couple of years back. I was into dying my hair pastel colors at the time and the therapist I was seeing told me I probably didn't like myself because I was dying my hair. Fair enough I guess if I was there for self esteem issues or something, but I was there to learn to manage my PTSD better. I like experimenting with hair and makeup as a way to be creative, and I don't feel like my "true self" is tied to what hair color I have. Not to mention I could clearly see the roots in her own bleach blonde hair, I should have thrown it back at her lol.
No. 1150363
I've had about 20 therapists over the past 10 years or so and they were all mostly shit (i'm a sperg, hence the need for therapy)
- My first therapist who was male kept pressing teenage me to talk about sex and romance even though that wasn't relevant at all and I was clearly uncomfortable
- Several have broken the law to talk about me to other people outside of the session without my consent, one time with the excuse that it was just to my mom (who went behind my back to ask them, and I was in my 20s and legally an adult)
- one male therapist also broke the law, he was constantly complimenting me and one day suggested I contact him in private "not as a therapist".
- One kept calling me a "kid" and saying "when you grow up" despite me being in my mid 20s
- One agreed that I should kill myself, when I was a suicidal teen
- One (male) visibly held back laughter and looked very amused when I talked about how much I hated my body to the point of self harming and wanting to die
- One kept me from treating my social anxiety because I "failed" their test of "proving I wanted to get better" by forcing me to do something I literally couldn't do because of the anxiety, before I had received any kind of treatment for it.
- Been told I'm wrong "because you're autistic", when I didn't want to take sus medicines with bad side effects
- I asked for written proof that I was receiving therapy (needed it to be absent from school, for the therapy sessions) and the therapist straight up told me she thinks I wanted it just to be lazy and not got to school
- One (male) put my sessions in the middle of the "male only"-hours meant to encourage young boys to seek therapy, but since I was a girl I literally had to hide, and they made me leave through the back door so I wouldn't intimidate the boys. Made me feel like an unwanted freak, thanks.
No. 1150389
>>1150383That's terrible and a therapist also diagnosed my friend with bipolar randomly too, without even giving her information.
My own experience wasn't much better. She tried to set me up with her male patients and then tried to get me to download tinder. I'm sure there'd be a lot of men willing to use already unstable women on dating apps so I have no idea why she thought that was somehow smart.
No. 1150407
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>>1149858God damn, I would have laughed out loud.
No. 1150416
>>1150383I've been dealing with agoraphobia for a long time and I was so put off getting help. Any time I finally dragged myself out to go to an appt (feels like a big ordeal) They speak over you, insert talk of random disorders that don't match your symptoms or they act like it's so weird that an agorphobic is nervous at an appt?
When I was at my worst there was just no option to have cam appts and there was a 'home team' in my area that did home visits but they wouldn't add me to that service. I later befriended a woman with bpd who had regular home visits when she wasn't housebound in any way so why was I denied them at a time when I was very much housebound and in need of that specific type of appt? I fell between the cracks for years with no services offering anything I could engage with at my worst.
>Hi, I haven't left my house in over a year, I've probably left it a handful of times in the last 5 years, I need help >ok just come to this clinic in a few months time and we'll sit you in a busy waiting room for a couple hours to steam first, if you ask to wait outside in a quiet spot we'll just pretend we didn't get your request, you need to suffer first or no appointment basically lolSomeone in the height of agoraphobia cannot do that. That's the whole problem in the first place. It made no sense to me that a mental health service had no clue how to approach it. Like you I've mostly just helped myself when I can but some of muh 'best years' I just wasted away between four walls.
No. 1150457
What is it about these therapists? Why are they so bad?
Therapy is a job that requires you to talk to people. People-oriented persons would logically be the most interested in this field. However, in my experience, these are the types of people that are extremely annoying to deal with. They range from normal gal who likes to meet new people to thot
>>1150389.
As a therapist, you get to hear people's stories and their deepest secrets. If you had to listen to difficult things all day, wouldn't you be drained? It seems as if the therapists in this thread aren't put together.
>>1150094 greasy ex military guy,
>>1150097 narcissist afraid of dogs, I could go on. Do you think these people who misdiagnose at every turn have a safe way of processing their emotions? These are not healthy people.
If you have sensitive information, narcissists want to know it. Self righteousness is on a spectrum, from religious zealout to genderspecial. The internet age has worsened this problem because people can easily get into social media bubbles, and if you're a narcissist, you're Always Right.
Cities have a problem; because they are more crowded, you get a higher population of crazy people.
My question is how much money do therapists make? And if they try and diagnose you with a disorder and get you to do testing, does that get them more money?
No. 1150767
>>1150554> 2. people with control issues who want to feel important and “better” than other peopleAccurate. The anons mentioning
toxic people in their personal lives becoming mental health professionals, I'm right there with you.
I have anxiety, PTSD, bit of an autist. I had a friend who had no patience for me. She'd mock me pretty badly, especially since I was further behind her in life and had trouble coping. I always got narcissist vibes from her. She cheated on her boyfriend with no regret, social media brags in the same way a lot of cows do, blame shifts when called out. She'd flip and ghost me for extended periods over nothing. Did a lot of volunteer work but it seemed more like for clout than for helping people. She's admitted as such a few times to me. She now works with autistic kids, actually using that one therapy that most of the ASD community hates so much, guess it's fitting kek.
I know people in personal lives are different than clients who you just see for work, but I feel like you need to be a patient, non-judgmental person for this job. I guess if you have your own issues it takes one to know one, but there are types of people who just should not be in this field imo.
My sister's ex was also a true cluster B mess and yet he was a social worker and worked with homeless shelters, and I heard stories of him cutting support off of people for no reason. Another particularly scummy ASPD I knew would use his psych degree to reassure people that he understood them to get closer to them and use their issues against them. And I'm still not even mentioning the awful psychiatrists I've dealt with. It's not uncommon that these types want to be in positions of power over vulnerable people so they can feel like they're in control of someone's fate. Guess you never know who is really in it for the right or wrong reasons. Stay safe, anons.
No. 1150782
>>1150767My friends' mom is a therapist, and every time that fact is brought up, my friend and I laugh and laugh.
I'm not exaggerating when I say she's one of the most judgmental, hypocritical, bitchy people I've ever met.
She's like an actual living cliche of the boomer/"Karen" memes, a total busybody who constantly gossips, gets into everyone's business, and then immediately talks crap or makes fun of people's appearances, clothes or hair once they leave the room. Actual mean girl shit coming from a middle-aged woman.
She'll say absolutely vile things to her family and then turns around and posts on social media about being an 'empath' and how rewarding it is to help people, haha. I couldn't imagine ever being her patient/client.
No. 1150792
>>1150782AYRT sorry for editing so much kek.
That's just awful. I try to be understanding of others but I'm a gossip too, I'm on lolcow for fucks sake. And that's a big reason why I had no interest in pursuing therapy when I was going to get a psych degree. I felt like I wouldn't be unbiased going into it. It really does sound like she's just in it to fuel her nosiness and need for personal info and that's super fucked up. Wonder if you can leave a review tipping other people off
No. 1151057
>>1150360If this is a new issue for you, then yeah it's not childhood trauma. But if it is an older issue, do you think reading about complex PTSD could help you? My home life had issues and I found Pete Walker's Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving a good read, like how he describes 4F responses.
>>1150088>One friend with asperger told me that she went to 13 therapists until she found one that was good. This is why as an autist with a complicated history I have mostly given up on therapy and stuck to reading psychology and self-help books. Most therapists won't get me and I will struggle to explain myself.
No. 1151088
>>1151039I'm
>>1150097All of the clinical psychologists/therapists were contracted by the state mental health care service and covered by insurance. Both psychiatrists I've seen had a doctorate, one was an idiot misogynistic scrote who prescribed meds willy nilly, the other was a based woman who was really into trials and really up-to-date on research, she genuinely geeked out at things.
No. 1151102
>>1150894Same for me. I had been in therapy for so long and on dozens of drugs. Nothing really helped and out of all those I had like one good therapist. Meds made me worse, but doctors didn't believe me. Finally quitting it all made me feel so much better. Learning hard life lessons and finding healthier coping mechanisms, and healthier relationships, was enough for me.
Bad news is I'm working on applying for disability benefits for something else. It's not by choice or laziness, I'm actually disabled. But getting proof for my particular disease is difficult so I have to use the mental health card, which means I have to go back into therapy and get back on meds just so I can have some documentation that I'm receiving 'treatment'. I'm not looking forward to it and I can guarantee that I will come out of it more angry, and probably with more issues from med side effects, but it's what I need to do to appease the system. I don't really know how I'm gonna handle it this time around. My trust in these shmucks is damaged.
I'm a believer that it works for some, especially if they've never opened up about feelings before, but it's not for everyone and it totally can make people worse. It sucks that it's accepted as the only solution and outsiders just parrot the same thing about getting help when they've never been through the system themselves.
No. 1151383
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>>1149884>I never pulled another hair againI don't know
nonny, seems like it was decisive therapeutical success on her part
No. 1152753
>>1151151Holy fuck, I feel seriously infuriated with all the shit you went through. I'm sorry
nonny.
No. 1152872
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i have a friend who's a (literal) autist with a questionable grasp on reality and a general victim complex. she went to see a therapist and came back with a bunch of "repressed memories" about various terrible events that i'm 99% sure didn't happen
No. 1153061
I was misdiagnosed as having anorexia nervosa and after giving in and going through the rehab process (because they threatened to put me in the psychiatric ward if I didn't comply, which in my country is hard to get out of and stains your life forever) I was assigned a therapist for 5 months. Other than the fact that she kept asking me questions about a disorder I didn't have, she would act very arrogant at times and like she was looking at a piece of shit. She would laugh at the fact that I had no friends, she would focus on useless details instead of the problem I was trying to tell, I had to repeat so many things because she would forget and not write them down, laugh at my hobbies, laugh at what I wanted to do or try. At some point I told her my father and brother had violent outbursts (yelling, breaking things) and that it was taking a toll on me, and she told me to "just ignore it" and that my family's problems were not my problems. Then during one session she had me close my eyes and imagine a landscape, which honestly felt embarassing because it had no purpose (she never brought it up again) and it felt like a joke. I was supposed to draw it too but I never did, fuck that.
One day she told me something like "Oh you know, you don't actually have an ED, so it's not my job anymore" and just… told me to go somewhere else… when she and her collegues were the ones diagnosing me in the first place.
No. 1153062
>>1150363>One agreed that I should kill myself, when I was a suicidal teenA psychiatrist basically told me the same thing when I was 22. He said it as part of pitching Buddhism to me though. As in, "Might as well kill yourself if you don't believe in a higher power."
>One (male) visibly held back laughter and looked very amused when I talked about how much I hated my body to the point of self harming and wanting to dieHe probably found you sexually attractive and was laughing at the irony, the piece of shit.
So many of your stories are awful. Are you still in therapy, or did you decide it isn't worth it?
No. 1153065
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i had a moid therapist recommend acupuncture to help deal with csa after having really shitty boundaries for the entire session and whining to me about his teenaged stepdaughter who'd tried to kill herself over a boy. that was fucking awkward. gave up on psychiatry altogether after that and now i just pretend it never happened and i was raised with amazing parents that i have backstories for kek and i've been really happy. i treat myself a lot better, my imagination parents raised me right. reading man's search for meaning helped, too but that's not as schizo
No. 1153070
>>1150457>And if they try and diagnose you with a disorder and get you to do testing, does that get them more money?Kind of. In the USA at least, billing insurance often requires a diagnosis code for the billing to go through. I'm not sure how/if the system can be gamed, but there is 100% a motivation for them to diagnose you with
something. For example, a therapist treating a fairly normal person with anxiety caused by life stress might bill for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but if they were ethical, they wouldn't tell the patient the diagnosis, since it isn't a true diagnosis.
Testing done at another clinic shouldn't earn the psychiatrist any money. Pretty sure that's illegal. In-house testing might pose a conflict of interest though.
>>1151383She must've gone to a reverse psychologist.
No. 1153370
>>1153334psychology is good when identifying male behavorial patterns, abusers, rapists, murderers, cult leaders etc
not so much with helping a female teenager in need (because gasp, we never were important to them in the first place)
No. 1154968
>>1154960I can get a little weird sometimes. The last instance was I hit my face with my shoe repeatedly and bled, but that was due to
valid reasons and pms. There are other things but well under control, trust me. I just dislike the get therapy/seek help """"""advice"""""""". It also feels dismissive imo.
No. 1154995
>>1154968Kek anon, there’s no
valid reason to beat yourself with a shoe.
No. 1155092
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I have a couple really bad experiences with therapy that kind of fuck me up still to this day.
I started seeing an older (65+) woman many years ago. She would haphazardly send me home with "homework," which was usually something like, "Journal how you feel and email it to me," or "Do 3 versions of the processes (something like picrel) we talked about in therapy today and email it to me." The "assignments" were informal, she would kind of throw it in as and afterthought the end of the sessions.
I struggled multiple times with the processes (I literally couldn't think of a way to "Comfort my younger part" because I had no idea how to! That's why I was there in the first place…). I told her so in the next session(s), ask for clarification and guidance, only to be told "What homework? I don't remember anything" or "Don't worry about doing that this week." She would tell me to just randomly journal and email it to her instead, which I diligently did. I received no replies, and ultimately she never saw them or remembered she told me to send them. Eventually she stops assigning homework after I had asked her a few times for help and she pushed the issue off. Okay, fine. She knows best, right?
One day I come in and she's asking me why I haven't been doing the homework. I tried explaining to her that I had sent her emails of journaling and I attempted the process-work (?) and reminded her that she told me "Don't worry about doing the homework" and reminded her that she told me to forget "homework" altogether. She literally wouldn't believe me as I was trying to explain to her everything I just explained above, and I started to involuntarily hyperventilate into a panic attack (Getting "in trouble" and not being listened to/heard while the person gets angrier because they think you're manipulating them, building to a fucking frenzy of wanting to be heard and approved of, to feel so inferior and desperate… is shockingly similar to the way my father treated me as a girl and the reason I was in therapy.) I said, "I think I am having a panic attack," and she just goes, "Yep I think you are too." in the most cold and unfeeling, almost triumphant, way.
I can't remember if it was the same session, it might have been right after all this, I remember her saying "I know you want me to be this nice, sweet, older woman who will be kind to you. I can tell by the way you are; I can tell by the way you have your head tilted to the side right now (I didn't realize I did this and to this day I am self-conscious about it), you want me to be sweet, soft, Kathy." (name changed ofc). It was just so mean nonnas. I'm sobbing now as I remember this. When she said, with such disgust, that my head was tilted to the side to show deference and eagerness to listen, I felt like even the people that I come to for help think I am pathetic and are angry with me for things I am not aware of. I 100% understand what her point was and I understand that therapy isn't a place for coddling. I was not asking to be coddled, I just needed help with completing a therapeutic process that I had never done before (perhaps we could have gone through some examples together) and she forgot all the times she herself put off the homework and then blamed it all on me.
I came across the emails that I sent her a while ago (there were 5 total assignments that I attempted to complete or journal entries that I wrote that went without replies or acknowledgement, even after I tried telling her that I had in fact sent them and done the work she asked me to) and it ignited the memory again and I was able to feel angry for myself instead of sad and scared that an "adult" (I am a fucking adult too) "yelled at me."
Looking at my emails right now, she also sent a weird fucking email to both of my parents (I WAS FUCKING 25 YEARS OLD) about the nature of my care that at the time I didn't realize was completely inappropriate (it's kind of funny in the context of lolcow and all us crazy bitches though, I'll post a redacted version for keks [even though it's kinda sad too but w/e]). ALSO looking back right now, I put effort into the hw assignments, even though I was lost and confused by them. SMGDHHHHHHH
Why did this lady want to beat me down so much??? I eventually stopped seeing her, I forget why, it may very well have been because she realized we were incompatible (aka she probably thought I was fucking pathetic) and she sent me to see a different therapist, blah blah blah.
I hope everyone is doing well today, I am miles from where I was back then and so thankful. I'm still a huge loser by almost any standards but I'm not quite in the same hell now that I was back then. This post might seem retarded or maybe it sounds like no big deal but it was to me and it made me feel like shit.
No. 1155102
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>>1155092samefag, I guess she sent this because my parents were paying for my therapy but I still think it's inappropriate. None of this info was news to them, btw.
No. 1155171
>>1154985 >When I said I'd also like to get referred to some sort of therapy for my anxiety, he laughed and asked "You have a boyfriend, how anxious can you be?"I've had some pretty life affecting anxiety since a young age, it ramped up in my teens and my life was at a standstill from agoraphia, social phobia etc.. The biggest mistake I've made in my years since my semi-recovery is that whenever I'm dating someone I tend to take a few step backwards in my recovery without realizing it. I don't keep challanging myself enough, I don't go to therapy enough, I assume life is good because 'well I have someone' and that way of thinking is so dangerous. It can set you up for abuse sometimes. And it's bad because romantic partners can also just walk out of your life again… and then what? You've gone into a slow decline and then you get dumped one day and you realize you've isolated yourself and getting help will be that much harder.You can really set yourself back that way.
Having a partner isn't everything. They shouldn't be your social crutch or life crutch and you still have to maintain your own sense of wellbeing whether you have a relationship or not. That's so fucked.
No. 1158005
>>1153062I kept going for about 10 years and just gave up on therapy last year. People always told me to keep going and that I was just unlucky, that I "can't just give up" and yada yada. But I figured if I haven't found the "right" therapist after 10 years then I doubt I'll ever find one that's good enough. It honestly felt like I was in an
abusive relationship and whenever I wanted to leave everyone around me went "aw no you gotta stay with him, he'll get better!".
Last year I decided to instead slowly try to get better on my own, and for the first time ever I feel like I've had some progress. Granted, it's not a lot of progress but I've overcome some small things my anxiety wouldn't allow me to do, so I'm still proud of myself.
No. 1167818
>>1164986That makes sense. I need there needs to be a bigger focus on bedside manner in doctor training in general as so many seem to be so bad at it.
For therapy and psychiatrists I feel like they need to screen out the people who are going into it trying to solve their issues and prioritize people who have already overcome related problems. Someone who can't solve their own problems should absolutely not be put in a place to give advice to others.
I think setting a minimum age would help too as young people are stupid, even if they have a fancy degree, they are still stupid. Older people have a bigger chance of being less stupid because of life experience, though not guaranteed.
No. 1184245
File: 1652752018552.png (654.66 KB, 1314x1116, therapy2.png)
Did you know there are non binary therapist options on psychologytoday? This is what the mental health field looks like now, kek
Also I found multiple fakeboi therapists named Elliot. So typical
No. 1184267
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>>1184253They have weird framed deviantart pictures as decor and also funko pops kek
No. 1184461
File: 1652774816094.jpg (166.01 KB, 862x856, healing.jpg)
>>1184245I just want to find a therapist who won't try to convince me to transition, but also won't do conversion therapy practices. It's interesting how both conservative and progressive therapists always want to blame gender expression for all your issues.
No. 1184733
>>1184439This is
very off. Is this person an actual psychologist or just a "life coach" or whatever?
No. 1185488
File: 1652812963090.jpeg (275.18 KB, 1399x1803, A105DB04-D991-4E78-A5CE-2BD141…)
>>1150027The woo woo your therapist is spouting came from this book titled The Secret. You can thank Oprah for popularizing the pseudoscientific drivel that is Law of Attraction. So yeah I think you need to move on.
No. 1185770
File: 1652821785561.jpg (141.36 KB, 444x942, ms paint lookin ass.jpg)
>start seeing a cbt therapist privately after being fed up with nhs waiting lists/previous experience in therapy on nhs
>after a few weeks of cbt therapy it seems to be working really well and I'm learning how to cope a lot better. therapist does say some weird stuff like telling me hitting myself when I'm upset is actually a good thing and might be helpful, but I'm naïve and I let it slide.
>I go to see her in my next appointment. she starts talking about this "EFT" tapping technique we're going to try in this session.
>tells me to tap these "energy pressure points" on my body when I’m having a panic attack or thinking negatively and repeat a mantra like "I'm not anxious" over and over. I have to rate how I feel on the scale before and after doing it.
>needless to say I did not like the idea of the whole touching thing due to my history of SA, even though I would just be touching myself but still it sounded fucking weird.
>"I know it all sounds nonsense or like pseudo-science but it’s not anon!"
>the whole time I'm thinking this is stupid and I look like a fool.
>I tried it out. only did the tapping sometimes when I'm having flashbacks to ground myself (which only helps for a few seconds then they would just come back anyway) and I try to avoid doing it other than that. therapist wants me to do it on the train to uni when I feel anxious, but only tapping my thumb or collar bone instead of from my forehead down to my chest so that I don’t look weird to the other passengers kek.
>go to next session. do tapping. don't feel any different after doing the tapping so I pick the same number on the scale and say I feel the same.
>"but anon you do seem a lot better than when we started the tapping. you feel more relaxed right? So since you feel better maybe we should change the score to a 5 or 6?" then she smiles at me. I can tell I’m being manipulated.
>change the score just to please her but it made me really uncomfortable and I'm more suspicious than before.
>continue cbt therapy for a few more months then we both part ways
>the tapping stuff keeps playing on my mind, so I do a google search for it
>any scholarly articles supporting it have a small sample size and were written by people who sell books and courses on EFT certification.
that's my story nonnies, at least the cbt worked well for me. And yes, I’m dumb for not researching it beforehand, but I was desperate and all I cared about was the cbt. Some people say it works but I personally believe it’s bogus and any effect it has is a placebo. Gary Craig, the founder of EFT, apparently says tapping can cure anything, even cancer. His website design is also an eyesore. The Guild of Energists website is even worse.
No. 1185803
>>1185770I've been told to do tapping by a nutritionist and I could never get into it, I am not surprised it's pushed forwards by crazies. But it seems the tapping solution website appears to be more popular. I think anybody who has had success with it is primarily because it makes you think about why you feel the way you do and you create thoughts in your head to counter your negative thoughts. You can achieve this without tapping, it's literally just a gimmick.
Funnily enough, I feel like it was far more effective for me than cbt which I saw on the nhs. The therapist I had was not qualified to deal with somebody like me whose issues who routed in situations I cannot ignore and the fact that my issues were so heavily intertwined with my eating and also my failure to be socially successful.
No. 1186321
>>1150554>The psychiatric field must attract at least 2 types of peopleAbsolutely true. An ex friend of mine has warned multiple people about me being 'A psycho on psycho meds' (I have delusional disorder and was on latuda, which she pressured me to tell her after I stepped out of the room to take my meds.) is now studying psychology in University. It drives me crazy because she's a diagnosed BPD hypersexual weirdo and thinks that she deserves to have authority over other's mental health. Ugh.
And, I hate therapy. It has never helped me, in fact I felt worse after going to my sessions. I've had 3 therapists and all of them have insisted on CBT, which i find completely ineffective. Delusions are irrational, so how am I supposed to rationalise my emotions surrounding them?! I also have issues with numbness so how the fuck am I supposed to even be able to name these emotions? All my interactions with the field of psychology has turned me mildly Anti Psychiatry…lol.
No. 1186733
>>1185294Please report him and mention all those things. The escorting thing is especially worrying because it's very easy for women who have had
abusive parents to fall into another
abusive situation, most escorts are in one (even if they don't show it on social media etc).
No. 1186783
File: 1652895337737.png (114.72 KB, 359x319, jesus.png)
>>1184267This is hysterical, can you imagine talking about your deep traumas with the Aziraphale & Crowley alcohol marker art on the wall behind you. I'm laughing so hard right now, what the hell ?
No. 1216206
>>1216194I'd love to but I cancelled the sub in April and I feel like it'd be too late now. Ugh. After reading what was said here I looked at BBB with a ton of people complaining but it was stuff like fraudulent charges.
I only did it because one of my friends told me to and said she had good luck with it. I didn't even know about this until after even though it felt like such a bad deal. Extra scummy too that they probably took advantage of the pandemic to shill it too
No. 1216318
>>1216314your fault for seeing a scrote ask for a woman if you ever decide to go back lel
jokes aside he was 100% pornsick himself and was projecting onto your bf. So unprofessional.
No. 1216351
File: 1654699723673.jpeg (1.34 MB, 1242x1598, 4DD5D621-A27D-4CE0-9FAA-CEAEF8…)
his dude I know is going into psychology and he… isn't great at empathy. like, has obvious narcissistic tendencies. he's really deep into theory and seems to care more about being some sort of Esteemed Professional(tm) scholarly Freud figure than actually helping people… sometimes I have to stop myself from straight up asking if he's sure he should become a therapist. he's even specializing in one of the most abusive and sketchy methods!
worst part is he'll probably succeed no matter how shit a therapist he would turn out to be, since the industry is so in demand and already filled with unsavoury people. it's very high status so it attracts people who want to be big shots - but man, I wish there was more rigorous testing specifically for filtering out those who want power over others. especially after reading your stories, and having some lovely experiences myself.
like someone said above, better support can be found in a random person off the street who's had their own struggles. I think the big thing is humility, honestly. and many people who choose to enter the psychology field seem to greatly lack it. but again, being a deeply compassionate person might be a weakness if you have to face misery every. single. day.
thinking about how many slimy people are drawn to psychology makes me doubt the entire concept tbh
No. 1216483
>>1216314>he goes into a tirade about how its normal and sex work is REAL work! and what about the poor uwu men who are paraplegic and can never have normal sex and its just like bartending andI had a therapist try and push their views about sex onto me too. I don't understand how they can think this is ok. I've never studied therapy and can count the number of sessions I've had one one had, but it's obvious to me that therapy should focus on getting the patient situation they are happy with, whether their viewpoint is "right" or not (provided they are not harming themselves or anyone else). The therapist should never enter their own views or outside views into the discussion unless the patient directly asks for it, and even then, the therapist should redirect the discussion towards the patient.
My therapist actually made me feel much worse about myself and even though I've managed to get over my original issue many years ago, I still have the thing that they scolded me over hanging over me, enough though my views remain the same. It basically created doubt where I had none before. Objectively I know I'm not wrong but having had someone tell me to my face I'm wrong still stings.
No. 1217785
>>1185294JFC this is why I’d never go to a male therapist. Even by moid standards this is just too much, he is there to be a fucking professional. I don’t know if it was “just” an inappropriate joke but it’s something that’s never meant to be said by a mental healthcare professional.
I live in Japan and one of my friends had a terrible with a misogynistic male therapist in Tokyo as well. Males never surprise. He’s sort of notorious in Tokyo and lures the unassuming English speakers all the time, he has kept his business alive for years now. He will threaten people with lawsuits if they dare leave a negative comment on Reddit.
I see a female therapist at a small clinic who has actual qualifications, and so far she’s okay & highly empathetic. She actually gave me good insight and listened to my personal history. I’m glad I listened to my gut instinct and avoided moid therapists.
No. 1217801
>>1216314I'd be so disgusted. I hope you find a real therapist nonna.
>>1216318I bet even if it was a woman she'd say that it was too controlling (especially if she has a scrote who watches porn). Women are just as brainwashed as men unfortunately.
No. 1217836
Back when I worked for a call center straight out of college (lol) I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from the stress and being broke. Additionally, I was gaining a fuckton of weight because I was binging and emotionally eating on cheap junk food. Of course my ex was an unsupportive piece of shit to boot.
Quickly I found myself from overweight back into obesity, which seriously depressed me because I had worked so hard in college to drop all that weight to be average only to have gained it back and then some. Even medications prescribed by my physician that were supposed to address my anxiety and hunger weren't really working.
So I sought a therapist through my insurance, found an office that assured me they could match me with someone based on my problems. Cue me sitting in an office with a 500 pound bitch trying to explain my ~small fat~ problems.
I felt so self-conscious and like I couldn't be honest about my feelings towards my body because this woman was a planet compared to me. And maybe had she been engaging I could have gotten more utility out of the session or built up mutual trust to have been more honest, but this bitch could not have acted more uninterested and disengaged. To this day I have no idea if her having her face down in her laptop was her legitimately taking notes while I gave background about myself, or if she was leaving a Yelp review. I suspect the latter because she did the same thing during our second session and it was as if she retained nothing about me during the first.
For the third appointment she had called and left a voicemail the day prior to cancel. Being that I was mentally fogged, stressed, overworked, and in a constant state of anxiety I missed her call and assumed all was well. My phone did not notify me of the voicemail. So I rolled up to the office and waited inside in a half-daze of sleep (I worked 2nd to 3rd shift at call center so I woke up early to especially drive out for these appointments) for about an hour before any of the staff bothered to acknowledge me. When one finally did, I told her who I was waiting for and she assured me the warthog would be back soon.
Almost an hour later (and bear in mind it was a couple hours prior to my shift so I was almost in tears) she waddles in with A BUCKET OF KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN and acts shocked that I was there. Of course she wouldn't see me and mentioned the voicemail. I was so distraught that I left that office in tears and never went back. When I manually checked my voicemail her reason for canceling was "double-booking" and her other client was the fucking colonel! That's why she had an oh shit look on her face because she's a lying tubba blubba.
I resolved to never go back, but I had forgotten that they had booked me for a 4th session that I forgot about because I never got my 3rd. Of course they billed me a no-show fee but of course when I called to complain there was ~nothing they could do about it~ even though thay bitch no-showed me for fried chicken and wasted my damn time.
Of course thanks to that experience I gave up reaching out for help and suffered for years. Finally I went into different work which vastly improved my situation and then I was able to support myself to get into the right state of mind to address my issues. I just wonder if my life would have went differently had I received a competent professional at the time who would have at least feigned empathy and gave me tools for my disordered eating. But whatever. The majority of therapists are parasitic hacks IMO.
No. 1225021
I was diagnosed with major depression and was able to get free therapy through a public program in my town. My first therapist who I was with for a year was amazing and really helped. Then he moved out of the free therapy circuit (because he was actually good) and got a job with an extremely expensive private service.
My new therapist had such weird energy, it's so hard to describe. She was a really small woman around 5 years older than me and she just sat there and looked terrified through the whole session. She never said anything, just sat looking at me with huge, wide eyes. Blinking slowly and sometimes shifting nervously. When she talked, she spoke in a high, timid voice like she was afraid of upsetting me. I know this might come off as sexist but her behavior seemed really unusual and questionable. I was talking about mundane stuff like feeling sad, and relationship issues, and it felt like she was scared of me. It felt absolutely terrible and triggered all this stuff that I had previously worked through. I went to 3 sessions and came out of each one feeling extremely unbalanced, confused, and "off." I didn't come back after the third one. My depression is a lot more under control, but only thanks to the first guy.
No. 1225077
>>1225021Sorry to hear that anon. A lot of therapists don’t get a lot of training or believe that clients only need someone to talk at and will eventually talk themselves around to solutions for their problems themselves.
Can you ask to see someone else? It’s normal that not everyone clicks with every therapist. You can say you are looking for someone who you can have a dialogue with instead of things being one sided.
No. 1225757
>>1225755Like he blamed me for not having enough sex with him, and that's why he was going after TEENS
So I had to have sex with this pedophile to try to appease him
But no, I'm the abuser
No. 1225769
>>1225735That's terrifying, the worst part is that these fake memories and fake trauma will cause the same mental health issues as real trauma, this isn't a joke, your friend needs to somehow get out of that.
Can you maybe make her watch documentaries about the Satanic Panic era """""uncovering""""" memories scandals? Like something that explains how it works and why it's bullshit and is dangerous?
No. 1225779
>>1225762No idea but I really want to know how much of a cow she is lmao
>>1225769She's very into spirituality so I'm gonna show her the new docuseries about Teal Swan which includes the Satanic Panic so she can see how insane it looks from a third person perspective.
No. 1225843
>>1225825The whole theory (emphasis) of DID is that the multiple personalities are formed when someone goes through repeat instances of trauma growing up. So it's an unnatural coping mechanism through-and-through and it's crazy how some people push that it can be inborn or healthy. I actually read about a form of therapy that claims "multiplicity" is natural and basically forces you to split yourself into roles, which is so messed up, I wonder if that's what that
nonny's friend is doing
No. 1225952
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>>1225843Yeah it’s called the Internal Family Systems model. It’s not the same as like, forcing DID on someone. It’s basically personifying certain parts of your personality, like the inner child or whatever, and identifying how they work as a system.
No. 1226146
>>1225755>My ex's therapist told him I was an abuser.This is a big issue with therapy, in my opinion. The therapist only has one side of the story and I’m sure plenty of patients withhold or twist information to make themselves look like the
victim, even in therapy, to save face or gain sympathy. An abuser can have their imagined version of events reinforced and someone else agree with them that the real
victim is the bad guy. I don’t think most therapist are trained enough to pick up in this either.
No. 1228917
>>1228885that's not what therapy is. or do you tell your friends about your childhood trauma before they give you cbt worksheets?
ot but subscribing/donating to twitch streamers is paying someone to pretend to be your friend, especially if it gets you access to a special discord server. change my mind
No. 1228952
>>1228885Therapists aren't your friends any more than your physician or dentist is. If you go into therapy expecting a compassionate friend who genuinely cares about your problems, you are a retard sure.
And likewise, if you're treating your friends like you would treat a therapist then you must be a fucking exhausting friend.
No. 1229122
>>1228878this is why women should be wary of going to psychologists. it SHOULD be helpful for women and
victims. in actuality, it's not, and having a record of illnesses that people know about (namely men) is extremely harmful, plus, if women disclose any coping mechanisms for trauma -> BPD, no ifs, ands, or buts.
No. 1229701
>>1228917>>1228952>>1228961t. has no real friends
Yes you’re so caring for distrusting your „friends” and being closed to them. You’re right though in your approach. If your only friends are women I wouldn’t trust them with sensitive information either. Especially if you assume they’re as much gossiper as you are.
No. 1229728
>>1229701So you suggest trusting…
moid friends with the information cause the sooper catty wiminz will mean girl me? Only women I dont trust with sensitive info is pickmes like you
nonny but I just dont befriend them kekw.
No. 1229734
>>1229703Yeah shame on anon for looking for help and getting
victim blamed, right? Her fault for looking into a service for its intended use? Fuck off
No. 1229743
>>1229734See
>>1229732 It was spamming retarded cringy memes and incredibly basic "shock" porn all morning and then switched to just trying to covertly bait in every thread.
Of course it isn't her fault.
No. 1230375
>>1230326Oh I know I'm borderline, I was treated for it for several years at a different clinic and I've improved a lot aside from self harming behavior and mood swings.
I'm just annoyed that I was given the diagnosis when I can't even receive treatment for it and I was going to this clinic for ADHD treatment, never mentioned BPD at all. It's like he wanted to add a red flag to my file so other psych workers I interact with there would know.
C-PTSD is not a diagnosis in burgerland, I believe but I was diagnosed with PTSD before. And I was told I don't have symptoms of autism when I was screened for ADHD, even though I'm 80% sure I am autistic. If I press on it more I feel like I'll just be looked at as a lying BPD wanting a different diagnosis.
Both my main therapist and psychiatrist are male and I feel like neither take me seriously, they treat me and talk to me like a little girl.
No. 1231540
>>1231181I had an Indian scrote psychiatrist at one point (they are the worst) who did something very similar to me. He'd ask me the same questions again and again or just forget small details about me that I thought he'd know by now. Or say things that didn't apply to me at all. I have a rushed bipolar diagnosis stained on my record that was given to me at a psych ward even though there is no evidence of me having manic-depressive shifts and he was trying to still insist I had it and milk it for all its worth. He also tried to imply I was schizo at one point because I had a brief period of paranoid delusions as a teenager.
He kept putting me on mood stabilizers and I'd always report back that they made me worse and he'd just say that that made no sense and that I was imagining things, then would increase the dose or put me on another. He would also get on my case for sleep hygiene all the time even though I worked a night shift job and got a full 8 hours after. I told him forcing myself to be a morning person makes me function like shit but he just denied it and went on about muh vitamin D and melatonin production. I wouldn't doubt his notes say I'm non compliant and unwilling to accept help too.
No. 1231546
>>1231181You should have reported both of them. Mixing up patient’s files when he is able to prescribe drugs could end up killing someone, either due to pre-existing conditions or suicide from a bad reaction, same for pushing you to take drugs that reacted badly with you.
Even if it has been years since you saw, please consider reporting them. Ignore that they said about no one else having issues, that doesn’t matter.
No. 1249952
>>1150256I only found out recently that the whole concept of "codependency" is an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous therapy. Women are raised from birth to be servants and offer unconditional love to men. Then, when lazy,
abusive scrotes STILL can't function as adults, women get blamed for enabling them. Women get blamed for not knowing what to do, and repeatedly getting hurt, when their husbands turn into emotional black holes. Of course everything is the fault of individual mistreated women, and not men who demand servants and unwavering mommy love from women who aren't their mommies.
No. 1250316
I tried out that free therapy they offer in university. The first therapist didn't help at all, she was just someone to talk to and she would nod and not say much at all. Eventually she left without notice, so I got another therapist.
The second therapist I talked to was a little better, although we didn't talk long enough to get any diagnosis. She just gave me some advice for my social anxiety and hyper-vigilance, which, not sure if it was the best advice, because it was basically just "ignore everyone else and be by yourself", when I was already very much avoidant. After the third visit, she ghosted me. Ignored my phone calls and emails. The therapist ignored my friend too, even when we tried contacting her about my friend's suicidal thoughts and bad panic attacks.
>>1230567Seriously. I thought about trying therapy again, but it's so expensive. I also live in an area where therapy and psychiatry in general is scarce, so options are limited. There are actually 0 psychologists in my area (the closest is hours away), so I can't even get any medicine prescribed unless I talk to them online. I can only do talk therapy.
No. 1250430
>>1249606I had a PsyD psychologist call me "sexy" and talked about how I had 'dark energy' or someshit when I was twelve (12) years old. Needless to say I'll never seek a male therapist again
>>1249952Codependency and enablement are 100% real. Obviously when a shithead does something wrong then they're responsible for their own decisions, but if someone was helping them along the way then they deserve scrutiny too. The family of that one school shooter in WI or some other great lakes state is a good example.
No. 1250513
>>1249974Ok so while it's pretty common to dedicate a few first sessions for the patient to explain their problems and go deeper into life story without therapist interfering, this
>She also said I was one of the worst most fucked up cases she’s ever hadis messed up. Even if true, it's totally unethical for a therapist to say that to the patient. I'm sorry it happened to you anon, she was totally unprofessional.
>>1250508 is right about that therapists should put more effort in explaining how they are intending to work with you; I had a few not do that and it always kinda fizzled out with me getting no help and then the one I'm seeing right now explained exactly how she works, and then after listening to me, outlined how she sees our work together for the future, I suppose this is a great therapy green flat to look out for.
No. 1250576
>>1250547To be fair, it did work a bit for one person I know but their issue was a recent one and something they could fix themselves. They are also very strong willed so I imagine the therapy sessions just allowed them to sort through their thoughts out loud and then push themselves to do what needed to be done. I wouldn’t say it completely solved their issues though and I think they still could benefit from someone pointing out patterns in their behaviour.
I imagine that the majority of people who go to therapy are not in this type of situation and it doesn’t make sense to have this style of therapy as the default.
Clearly someone who has had an
abusive childhood or has been brainwashed by an
abusive relationship or such like isn’t going to be able to see things objectively without outside help. I don’t see how it’s supposed to work for people who are introverts or autistic and just don’t talk much in general either.
No. 1250618
>>1250547Yes. There are a lot of people out there who have no one to talk to, and not
too big problems. So getting to talk to someone who is actively listening is very helpful to those types of people.
It wasn't helpful to me personally, though.
No. 1269544
>>1269529Meds aren't reliable but make the mentally ill easier to stand.for people around them. They also make the mentally ill manage life easier for a short amount if they're a medicine like antidepressants, helping the person keep a stable mood so they won't lose their job, friends and family for the time being.
An unmeditated mental patient is much worse than one who's too drugged to lash out and suicidebait 24/7.
>>1269397If your "friends" think it's traumadumping, they're acquaintances and you shouldn't talk about personal stuff to them.
I know some autists have issues understanding friendships and get shocked when someone gets more support for being depressed than they do but you actually have to help your friends through shit for them to help you back. You can't say it's trauma dumping when people vent and then turn around to complain when no one cares about your issues or even asks you what's wrong.
Normal people talk about their problems with friends or family on the other hand, some mentally ill autists who frequent this board go to psychologists for their issues and cry themselves to sleep because becky's friends actually ask her what's wrong when she's down whereas anons get ignored.
No. 1723511
I'm glad this topic was bumped. I had a really bad experience with a couples therapist that I've never been able to get out.
I went to couples therapy a few years ago and it was a terrible experience. We tried to find a sex positive psychologist but the guy we found turned out to be a coomer apologist and quack. He was young and seemed to prioritize being a "bro" with my husband while trivializing my concerns. They'd both gaslight me and make it seem like I was unreasonable and crazy, while ignoring everything my husband did and saying it was normal.
According to this guy, my husband needed to be free enough to explore his sexualty and I had to stop being insecure and let him do whatever he wanted or else I was being controlling. Also the problems in our relationship were me taking issue and reacting to my husband's bs instead of doing and saying nothing. Excuse me?
Im bipolar, have anxiety and adhd, while my husband has ocd, adhd(both barely diagnosed at the time) and anxiety, yet this scrote refused to acknowledge that at all. I get the idea that people are not their mental illness and not to use it as an excuse, but to act like they have absolutely no impact on other people, your relationships or your reaction to other people at all is insane to me. At one point the guy also tried using an analogy basically saying its wrong to judge pedos for being pedos and for not wanting them around your kid even though they haven't hurt anyone. Literally what the fuck?? By that logic why not give your kid a cocked and loaded gun since it hasn't hurt anyone yet?
We were on the brink of divorce and this guy absolutely didn't help. I'd probably be turned off from ever trying another psychologist if my personal one wasnt so good.
Thankfully, as bad as things were, my husband agreed that there was something off about the guy and we stopped seeing him. We were able to mend things after trying out some relationship self help books and getting him to understand how defensive and childish he got during arguments and how much that hurt me. I still get angry sometimes remembering that shitty therapist.
No. 1723753
When I was in an abusive relationship 6 years ago, I tried to kill myself, and I was hospitalized. They diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, and put me on 3 medications. I was inpatient for a month. After I left, I was set up with a therapist and a psychiatrist who kept switching around my meds and upping them and adding more. Eventually I was at the highest amounts of each med, and I was on a cocktail of 5 of them to take every morning. I was miserable. I left that relationship shortly after hospitalization, thankfully. However, I've been unmotivated, sad, and extremely low energy until 4 months ago. 4 months ago I went off all my meds cold turkey. I was tired of the side effects and suddenly had started losing my hair. I was terrified it was from medication so I just stopped it all in the hopes it would stop the hair loss. This is what I noticed in those three months since stopping medication. I am happier, I have more energy, my sleep is higher quality, and I am excited to do my hobbies and be social again. I feel like I have actual thoughts again and am not a zombie. It feels like I woke up. And I'm heart broken that in 6 years, all my therapy and psychiatrist appointments, all they wanted to do was just keep giving me more drugs to fix the sad. Therapy somewhat helped, but there wasn't any conclusions I came to that my therapist gave me. No insight or advice. I really grew and matured and came to realize some tough truths all by myself. just want to clarify here: it is extremely dangerous to go off meds. Especially the way I did, I know that. I did it out of fear. I also don't think all medication is bad or anything. Sometimes, people need it, especially in really tough times. I definitely did sometimes. But the reason I'm making this giant blog post is just to highlight how scary it is how extremely drugged up I was for so long. I am now questioning my bipolar diagnosis. I was traumatized and in an extremely turbulent relationship with attachment issues. I'm sure a lot of my behaviors and emotions imitated bipolar disorder, but that does not mean that's what I had. I don't know. I have a lot to think about, and will be of course heavily monitoring my thoughts and emotions for the months and years to come. But… I feel sooo much more at peace, and happy now, off medication. And I'm sad that I was trapped in the system. But relieved that I'm free for the foreseeable future.
No. 1723867
>>1723834I won't blog about all my problems in this thread but my own mental health problems are certainly not helping my marriage and it's getting rough. I kind of already did the whole "write an angry letter and don't send it" thing but they aren't really that angry just my feeling towards people or myself in the moment I'm upset. This helps me cry things out sometimes but I end up so mentally exhausted after and I don't think it helps my overall mental health in any way…
Other people mentioned therapists that seem to talk about themselves too much and this lady also has like 10 kids (even an adopted Chinese one) and is always bragging to me about them. Like I'm literally paying her to discuss my problems and she's wasting my money talking about her kids. She's also always complaining about her crappy phone and it blows my mind that someone who's career is talking to people wont invest in proper means of communication. Idk I have a couples session set up this Friday and it might be my last one. I'll see if me husband thinks she's as weird as I do.
No. 1723946
>>1723907>fry your brain with these drugs and you'll be so much better, pinky promiseI was on meds as a teenager and they ruined me forever. You can't medicate terrible environments and familial abuse. The problem won't go away if you throw drugs at it, if anything it'll make things worse. In many countries medicating patients against everything is exactly the problem.
Sure, some therapists are narcissistic cows but therapy is a necessary part of recovery so go fuck yourself.
No. 1723975
>>1723947One is cheaper and less time-consuming than the other, so pick your poison.
Ever thought why 'therapy' is mainly a thing in the US, but a niche in Europe? Socialised health systems want the cheapest, most effective solution, so that their money pools don't get drained by quackery.
No. 1723984
>>1723975>pick your poisonthe only actual poison is the medication
>cheapest, most effective solutioncheapest? for sure, but not effective at all. just creating new shit to deal with, as in side effects, to keep people hooked on the chemicals, like drug addicts.
No. 1724011
>>1723975>Therapy is a niche in EuropeAs an european, ma che cazzo stai dicendo diocane, se avessi un euro per ogni stronzata detta da un americano che non è mai uscito dall'america sarei ricca.
Therapy is not only a thing, but some countries make it even free due to some mental health programs.
No. 1724082
>>1723733He felt the guy wasn't understanding either of our problems, focused on non-issues, and his advice was extremely questionable. A few times he'd give some advice that sounded like it'd come from a terminally online twitter user and made us side-eye each other. He encouraged my husband to think about trying an open relationship multiple times, even though he wasn't interested in having an open relationship at all. When my husband expressed frustration and said he was almost ready to give up on the relationship and therapy because he was tired of the arguments, the guy took that as my husband being ready to commit DV and kill me/us both, which was absolutely not the case and seemed so overly dramatic. My husband was actually offended because the guy looked at him like he was a risk of killing me then shooting up a mall or something like that, which again, was completely wrong.
During solo sessions my husband would mention some of the hurtful, mean-spirited things he'd said during arguments and the guy waved them off as non-issues. My husband knew that he was completely wrong for some of the nasty things he said, so having the therapist dismiss it entirely made him think less of the guy. He started admitting there was a bias there.
At one point porn use/wandering eyes came up in a solo session. His advice to my husband was that I only had a problem with it because I was overweight and insecure, and my husband should think about how him looking at skinny girls hurts my feelings. While that's a real thing that happens, that was absolutely NOT the case with us and even my husband knew it. At that point he mentioned wanting to stop couples therapy because the guy just didn't understand us and wasn't helping.
On top of that we were paying him out of pocket so my husband got mad we were wasting so much money on couples therapy that was just making things worse.
No. 1724428
>>1724147We looked through a lot of self help books to see if anything seemed helpful. Most of them were bad but one of them helped. It was Hold me tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. We didnt do a hard read but took the concept of figuring out what
triggers us when an argument starts and leads to a negative feedback loop. We use that to figure out what reassurance we are expecting and not getting from that conversation, then vocalizing it to get that reassurance.
In our case, my husband couldn't have hard conversations when he was unhappy with something in the relationship (or in general) so he'd deny there was a problem while building resentment, then become defensive and avoidant. I'd see him become defensive and avoidant and it'd
trigger my fear of abandonment so I'd push for us to talk about it, which would make him get angry and withdraw more, making me feel angry and pushing to talk more and on and on. We both perceived slights that weren't there or weren't intentional.
I needed reassurance that he wasnt ignoring my concerns and wasnt going to abandon me, while he needed reassurance that he could talk to me safely and I wasnt going to get angry or pushy. It turned out that he felt like I was attacking him during those conversations even though I wasn't. He felt like I had a holier than thou attitude and judged him for every shortcoming in comparison, so he got defensive preemptively and needed reassurance there. We had to learn to talk to each other and listen without getting too emotional, without taking things personally, and while giving reassurance. I had to learn to give him space to think and talk on his own time instead of pushing him for immediate answers.
Not related to the book, but we also realized just how out of control our mental illnesses were. We had to come to terms with being retarded and not being able to regulate emotions or handle stress. The stress would affect our moods and we'd lash out at each other without noticing why. We're more aware of it now and remind each other to destress and rest before it gets bad.
Things are a lot better now that we learned to communicate. We definitely got through it. We haven't argued since that period and we talk things out before they become problems, even if its just anxiety or if it feels like a silly concern.
No. 1724470
My mother and grandmother are munchies. Starting when I was around 5, my mom started taking me to psychiatrists. I think it was court ordered, because my family was under investigation from cps around the time. It quickly became my life. We moved states to escape the investigation, and ended up under investigation again because I missed over a year of school and was bouncing off the walls from the side effects of medication and possibly large doses of benadril. Mom doctor shopped me into a bipolar diagnosis at 8 and I was put on Lithium, in addition to adderall and an antidepressant. The meds caused physical side effects, so she doctor shopped those and had them medicated as well. We moved again, this time to an extremely rural area with almost no government services. There I was put on antipsychotics, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and repeatedly institutionalized based on mom's stories. On the way to appointments, she would scream at me the entire way there about whatever she'd found in my room or on my computer. When we got there I would be an emotional wreck, and would still be trying to figure out what what she was accusing me of when I'd have to explain myself to the psych. If I told the doctors anything, I was a compulsive liar whose out to ruin my saintly mother and grandmother. I was a zombie from 12-20. I recently learned I am allergic to caffeine (we only drank coke and mt dew, they think water is gross) and severely anemic, and that's what was causing the "symptoms". That and what's likely childhood ptsd from munchausen's by proxy. I know I need to go on disability, but I'm so terrified of interacting with the system again. My husband convinced me to try last year when my grandmother munchie'd herself to death and the whole family was harassing me for not being there to take care of her; but it made everything so much worse. It felt like no one I interacted with believed me, even when I was showing them proof of the harassment. A social worker told me as much and made me get a job so she wouldn't put me back in their care. I held it for 5 months before I had to quit from anxiety and the physical toll it was taking on me, which tis how the anemia and caffeine allergy got diagnosed. Now I'm seeing a medical doctor who is treating me for the health issues caused by the medication I was on over the years, but she can't officially diagnose ptsd and start the disability process. Sorry if this is incoherent, talking about this can be overwhelming.
No. 1724473
File: 1697147126644.jpg (17.7 KB, 500x294, 1f1.jpg)
>male therapist, supposedly specializing in child psychology
>suicidal at 13
>see this psychologist
>vibe is wrong, feels untrustworthy
>asks what i'm there for, what i want to get out of it
>fuck if i know, i'm 13 and suicidally depressed, i want to not be depressed
>no attempts at teaching coping mechanisms, just asks why i feel how i do as if a 13 year old's going to be able to describe all that without help
>go for a few sessions, he gives up and tells my parents there's nothing he can do because i'm a friendless loner
It could have been a lot worse but it felt like such a waste of time and money. Worse my parents couldn't be bothered to take me even and my grandma had to take me. I've had better therapists since then but that one was so weird. I went to family therapy after my sibling tried to kill herself and that was hilariously bad, the therapists immediately pointed out my parents needed couples' therapy before engaging with family therapy which was soundly ignored.
My boyfriend's sister is a child psychologist too and yet her children are the ultimate tablet children with horrible behaviour sat in front of a screen all the time to get them to stop being annoying. I don't get it.
No. 1724809
File: 1697185668989.jpeg (340.18 KB, 719x1341, utterbullshitp2.jpeg)
I cringe-loled in real life multiple times. It's just so fucking bad, especially if you ever had a ltr with an "I don't owe you anything" millennial scrote.
>Men’s childhood experiences of feeling responsible for caring for their mothers set them up as adults to be hyperfocused on any indication that their partner is dissatisfied with them or just unhappy.
No. 1724835
Due to the fact that this thread has been gaining some attention again and also the fact that not many nonas took it upon themselves to suggest alternatives to bad therapy, I want to share something that helped me personally. Pros: It's free and it won't fuck you up like a bad therapist potentially could.
A lot can be achieved with self-help oriented content, what you need to have is the time for it and not be scared to "diagnose" yourself. If you suspect you have a disorder, there is a very big chance that you do, and even if you don't, content oriented to helping people with that disorder
will be beneficial to you, assuming that there is a reason why you suspected having the disorder to begin with.
There are two Youtube channels that I want to recommend that could end up just as good (or better if the therapist is shit) than therapy. Both of them are critical of therapy (one of them used to be therapist himself and the other one was failed by mental health specialists as their patient) so that should give you an affirmation that your experiences are far from being unique or just unlucky, it's a very wide-cast net of incompetence on the part of these so-called professionals.
First one is Crappy Childhood Fairy (
https://www.youtube.com/@CrappyChildhoodFairy).
>From her bio: "I’m someone who grew up with several alcoholics in the family, and all the dynamics that tend to go with that – poverty, neglect, violence, and an environment of chronic, deep stress. In adulthood, the telltale signs of Childhood PTSD were all there – health problems, depression and anxiety, relationship struggles–but traditional therapies never seemed to help.">She is not a professional but has first-hand experience with CPTSD and many of her videos are centered around that. If you know anything about CPTSD you will know that it is often the pool source of some of the most common disorders (including depression, anxiety, BPD, eating disorders).>Shares her own experiences with how she dealt with dysregulation (this is a big one and the "core" of CPTSD), triggers by otherwise innocuous situations, feelings of inferiority, and toxic shame among others>Has a handy technique she calls "The Daily Practice" where every morning and every evening you take 15 minutes to write down every resentment and fear you feel (some people report having written 2 pages the first time they sat down to do this so, really, pour your heart out) and then dispose of the paper. This keeps your thoughts freer from the baggage of living with trauma.>She often repeats key points throughout her videos and it's easy to pick up on her style of relaying information, so you can start watching her channel with whichever video catches your eye first.And second one is Daniel Mackler (
https://www.youtube.com/@dmackler58)
>A former psychotherapist who is highly critical of therapy due to the negligence of (particularly) USAmerican therapists in regards to their patients. BPD was mentioned in this thread a good number of times, so I want to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8PRAKBEaQ. In the video he talks about how therapists diagnose patients with BPD if the patient is too difficult, so that the therapist can then justify neglecting the patient in various ways. It's not about help for many of them, it's about how profitable you are as a patient (and BPD patients are infamously a drain on their wages).>Outside of videos about working in the therapy field, he also shares a lot about how his seemingly "normal" family had very particular and insidious ways of traumatizing him. This was mostly done through emotional trauma, with the parents playing tug-of-war with each other and similar things, which I know for a fact that many people can relate to >If wanting to feel understood or listening to someone who talks about very common experiences you know to be traumatic that get tucked under the rug as "not THAT bad" is what helps you, I couldn't recommend this guy enough. He goes into detail about his personal life (including about how the family unit is a meatgrinder for kids and how it affected him and the kids of other people he knows).>He's comfy to listen to. I was playing an mmorpg and having him in the background used to prompt me to reflect a lot. Despite him being male and me being highly critical of what moids say with their hundred methods of projection, he exceeded my expectations. I hope this serves someone well. I feel sorry that so many people even need a therapist, this is a sign of an extremely unhealthy society. I got really lucky finding a format that helps me because I probably would've bent years ago if I listened to what the shitty therapists in my hometown or the "mature experienced elders" in my life advised me to do.
No. 1725451
I spent almost a decade, from the end of highschool through 7 years of college and starting work, severely depressed and suicidal and was even practicing wrapping rope around my neck and hanging from the support beams in my garage for long and longer periods of time but I only went to a therapist one time and never got on any meds and honestly I'm so thankful I didn't. My depression stemmed from the social isolation and compete lack of experience and direction in life I had and while I was able to get out of that almost entirely because of luck, I honestly think if I had gone to therapy and got on ssris I would have just become a zombie, spent a lot of time talking about my problems but not actually improving, and been stuck in that same rut I was in forever. I still struggle a lot in life and I still have a lot of permanent damage when it comes to dealing with others, making and keeping friends, making decisions, and getting a fulltime permanent job, and sometimes I toy with the idea of try therapy to work on some of those things, but I'm always scared off because I will never, ever take any type of meds and I know a bad therapist will fuck me over even more than just dealing with things on my own.
No. 1725534
>>1724835those seem interesting I'll check them out
by the way, I thought the "C" in CPTSD stood for "Complex" post-traumatic stress disorder, not "childhood"?
No. 1725536
>>1725534It does stand for complex. People are trying to co-opt CPTSD by saying it’s purely childhood stuff and then everyone and their mom claims to have if because of course they were ofc muh
r/raisedbynarcissists Crappy Childhood Fairy is a fake ass shill btw. A bunch of stuff she talks about has nothing to do with either form of PTSD she doesn’t understand the experience at all
No. 1725938
>>1724473I really hate therapists who just ask “why do YOU think that is?” with zero guidance, especially if the patient is a child or someone who obviously isn’t going to be able to work everything out by themselves.
All 6 psychologists I saw between the ages of 10 and 21 did this. They would repeat “Well why do YOU think you have these problems?” until I shut down because I genuinely didn’t know, and then stared at me for the remaining 30+ minutes in complete silence while I cried. The handful of times I responded that I wasn’t a psychologist and I was hoping they could help me figure it out, they would get snippy and complain that I wasn’t respecting their process. They didn’t give up, either. They all milked the full 12 sessions/year that our insurance would pay for, only admitting around session 11 that we weren’t getting anywhere “but let’s give it one more chance”. I went along with it every time because I thought this was normal and the fact that I didn’t feel better after therapy was because I was doing it wrong.
In my early 20’s I was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which I had never heard of before. So for over a decade all these educated mental health professionals had been sitting there rolling their eyes at a child for not diagnosing herself with a condition she didn’t know existed.
>>1725529>>1725785Crocodile tears. If they actually felt bad about their behaviour then they would try to change their behaviour. They feel bad that their behaviour has consequences, so they blame and guilt trip the people who they see as responsible for the consequences.
No. 1726145
File: 1697287691326.png (16.72 KB, 757x612, image_2023-10-14_153355495.png)
Anon who recommended Crappy Childhood Fairy here.
>>1725534It is "complex" not "childhood"! The reason why there is a big focus on childhood experiences is because for the majority of people that's when they develop CPTSD. If you grow up with a healthy family and a security net, you will be a lot more resilient towards traumas that may occur in adulthood, as well. In picrel I highlight which criteria applies the most (or exclusively) to children. Traumas that are specific to one situation get funneled into PTSD (without the C). The word complex gets added when the cause of the trauma isn't one event. CPTSD is not a separate diagnosis, it just clears things up a bit. Didn't think this would upset so many anons but oh well.
>>1725541>I am very turned off by the aggressive marketingI was, too. She makes a living off of making these videos, so that should explain why. I wouldn't recommend buying her courses or whatever she offers for money, because I haven't tried that, only the advice she gives for free. As with everything else, navigate her content in a way that suits you.
>>1725552Videos where she addresses people who have written letters to her are a hit or miss. Many of the situations weren't very relatable for me, and a danger is that she is one of those women who deem having a family as one of the best life goals one can have. But other than that, she's competent. The harshness is necessary because most people write in talking about limerence and asking for help how to let go of their limerent object, so giving them a good reality check ("tough love" as she calls it) or being categorical is quite literally what they're there for.
No. 1736332
>>1736284You may have to bite the bullet and go see an off-campus and/or faith-based counselor, so sorry
nonny. I know how crappy it feels to have no one to talk to about troon partners/exes
No. 1836331
I'm so angry at my therapist, he's so useless. The main problem? He keeps ghosting me.
I had a big breakdown 2.5 years ago and decided I need professional help. I thought that by now I'd be cured already but instead I'm worse than ever. From fall 2021 to spring 22 he suddenly went mia. I already thought his old anti-vax ass died from covid but instead he suddenly got a different office. In 2022 I then went somewhat regularly but in 2023 I only saw him twice! I know that I should have tried calling him more but he is my doctor and I am ill, he knows that I already struggle with daily life, so being annoying and persistent by calling is just too difficult for me.
Thinking back to our sessions he also made me mad so often. He kept pestering me about never having had sex, when this was a non-issue for me, I have bigger things to worry about. He also talked down on my family (e.g. because they're religious) to a point I felt like I needed to defend them. We kept getting into arguments about e.g. whether children are essential for happiness in life. Bitch I just told you that I need to stop myself from steering into a tree each drive to work and you think me having babies is relevant now?
He also kept belittling my problems, saying he would feel sorry if I was a short dumb little girl but because I'm tall, not bad looking and educated, he doesn't have to worry about me, I'm gonna make it somehow, as if looks determine mental health. (Plus more intelligent people tend to overthink more imo?) But at the same time he always weirdly pointed out that I gained weight.
Those 2 years he just kept pushing me from enduring one thing to another ("finish your exams then we'll see, take on this job offer and then we'll figure what's next"), when I came to him in the first place because I feel so clueless.
Typing that out made me realize that I accepted way too much from him, he really wasted my time.
Now I haven't seen him since july and I haven't taken meds for months either, so I'm really bad now. But searching for a new one seems impossible… back then I called at least 50 and kept getting rejected, I can't do that again
No. 1930365
>>1836365I just ditched my very young and seemingly green therapist myself for this reason. She basically agreed with everything I said and made out everyone in my personal life to be narcissists,
abusive, and so on. Like as someone with BPD traits myself, you can't just secondhand diagnose people in my life like that, when I'm most likely taking shit the wrong way to begin with. Kissing my ass isn't helping. She also just repeated everything back to me to do that whole active listening validation, which I can't stand. I'm honestly wary of younger therapists, it seems this is common with them
No. 1930505
>>1930412God I wish I'd had your old therapist. I tried to tell a therapist about my body image issues and she immediately tried to "affirm" me and asked my pronouns and it was so confusing and horrible. I've had a lot of therapists and they've all just mindlessly yassed at everything I did and thought. I had therapists that were highly rated and recommended, therapists that specialized in different things, but they all had that "therapyspeak" style of talking that I can't stand where they were encouraging me to have my friends "make space" and shit and I felt like they all tried to be too friendly. It didn't feel like a detached doctor/patient relationship, it felt like they were trying to coddle me.
>>1930500I sometimes feel like the people who shill talk therapy the hardest are just people who want someone to vent to, and I suspect that's become a huge clientele base. Which I get, especially because so many women have emotionally retarded husbands and no time to make close friendships, but I feel like they need something totally different than I do. CBT was honestly not helpful for me at all, and EMDR especially wasn't, but DBT was. Therapy feels like a huge YMMV thing, and the more inconvenient/messy your problems are, the harder it will be to find a good therapist.
No. 1931112
File: 1710854637065.jpg (404.19 KB, 1500x1188, tumblr_230455d2e8cdf19d5ccb3df…)
I've been made privy to our city's admittedly small psychologist's community due to my friend who is a therapist now. It's just a hellhole, I cannot imagine any of those idiots ever helpful someone. Sheltered, obtuse, self-important idiots who cannot be bringing anything of substance to the therapy clinic. My friend herself is a prime example as a self-dx'd everything who has an oversharing problem and the worst main character syndrome, she is unable to grasp other people's troubles. I've known her for more than a decade. To her patients, I can only say "good luck charlie". She is also a huge gossip so she shared her clients' stories with me, her fellows therapists' stories with me. It's all such a sham. Not to say things born out of psych are all useless, I've gotten great help from psych books and I think it can be a useful tool, though far, far from perfect or fully reliable. Therapy though, stupid.
No. 1987888
File: 1714648608135.jpeg (179.38 KB, 828x851, 1705044863366.jpeg)
Hypothetically and asking for a friend, what if a person has essentially become traumatized by a type of psychiatric intervention (say, hospitalization) to the point where living and functioning in the world is a difficult task due to recurring bouts of sadness, anger, self-accusations etc. trauma-typical stuff that greatly lessen one's quality of life, and the standardized treatment for such issues (i.e., psychiatric treatment) in any form only seems to trigger the person's trauma, thus aggravating the issue, and the thought of going through counseling of any kind makes [the person's] "skin crawl" (idiomatically) and makes [her] feel like jumping off a tall building, meaning that there's seemingly "no escape" for the person from [her] situation, the irony of which [she] can completely grasp? What could one do to resolve such a situation? Asking hypothetically.
No. 1987918
>>1987888That person should consider a total reset and go somewhere where she can be free. There are underbellies to society where no one asks any questions or gets the law involved. She should consider joining a traveling carnival, or joining an established women's land. Run away and be a field migrant and follow the harvest caravans. The work is hard, but it keeps you occupied all day, and you're paid by how much you collect, so there's no one to yell at you if you don't pick enough because it only affects your paycheck. You could fly to Alaska and be a canner at a fish factory.
There are so many ways to completely restart your life that allows you to be free of the past. Whenever the horror thoughts become overwhelming to me, I go out and chop wood for the coming winter until the thoughts are washed away by the hard work. If I chop too much, I sell the wood by the side of the road on an honor system, or else I give it to the my elderly neighbors so that they don't have to chop as much.
No. 1988598
>>1988544so extremely true nonna. it's basically become synonymous to "unpleasant experience of any kind". just completely subjective and meaningless, and the amount of people claiming ptsd for random shit rn is just silly. people don't understand what ptsd symptoms are, they think zoning out while looking out the window is dissociation and just having a negative emotional reaction from thinking back on a memory is having flashbacks lol. the general perception of other diagnoses too have had a similar development.
the reasons behind all the bogus therapy, frivolous and fake diagnoses, etc, are just the same reasons that have allowed the trans epidemic to spread - privatized, badly regulated and profit-driven psychiatric/medical "care" built on market principles that allows for doctor shopping etc.
No. 1989075
>>1989068Nonna, those people aren't your friends.
>>1989071Yes but serious crazies become more dangerous when they're inside because psych wards are a gauntlet of stress and learned helplessness rife with medical neglect and power-tripping staff. Then the resident retard takes it out on less affected patients and drag them down too. No one's getting better in the ward and a lot of people come out worse than when they went in.
No. 2035675
>>2035605I have never known a man with "BPD", which is telling. Women get diagnosed with BPD instead of PTSD so often, it's synonymous. I kinda envy that
nonnie for having a psychologist that doesn't believe in the DSM, you can practice CBT and other coping skills without identifying yourself with the "BPD" label.
No. 2035723
>>2035605Not to be contrarian but while your point is very correct (i mean, BPD pretty much means 'woman that's too demanding and agressive' now), there's still a noticeable difference between BPD and c-PTSD. BPD is metastasized trauma, a black hole that ruins people's ability to self-regulate even in basic ways and turns them into a mixture of 'helpless infant who needs company 24/7' and a potentially
abusive adult who's full of rage. It's somewhat different from the rage a C-PTSD sufferer experiences internally. Because BPD is thrown around so much, you might only meet women who were described as such by men or doctors but don't really have the disorder. But they definitely exist, and when you come across one, you know it because BPD always make it very clear they struggle with basic things like 'not screaming in rage and punching things because someone was somewhat rude/uncaring'. I wish it wasn't a gendered insult because their male counterparts exist and they're awful since they don't even get groomed into femininity.
Anyhow, i feel it's not really helpful to reduce a woman's struggle to BPD even if she totally meets the diagnosis criteria. Her social environment and whatever happened to her are just as important
No. 2035772
>>1155156i know this is 2 years old, but holy fuck
nonnie are you me? i got stuck with a raging fucking addiction to benzos at 18 because not one fucking person in my life thought that it would be good to mention that these drugs are incredibly addictive (and i come from a family with a long history substance abuse). and this is just the very fucking tip of the iceberg of what i've experienced during my attempts at getting help.
at this point i've just accepted i'll likely either manage my mental illnesses well enough to survive or i'll just become a homeless junkie and off myself. fuck this retard earth.
No. 2044040
>>2035723I also think there is a difference between 'BPD' and cPTSD although they're often mistaken for each other, and I actually have met men diagnosed with BPD as well. I think some of the women diagnosed with BPD are actually narcs or psychopaths who are assumed not to be because they are women, I've met a handful of this type and it's unclear to me why they got a BPD diagnosis when they don't have a significant history of trauma and behave basically identical to sociopaths or people with NPD. Maybe it's just that when women act violent and manipulative it is seen as 'hysterical' rather than threatening?
Anyway re: bad therapists this isn't my own story but a friend's that I heard about the whole time it was happening. She lived in a small city that only had one PhD psychologist so she went to that psyc even though the psyc was recommended to her by her abuser who had been visiting her for years beforehand. From the very beginning there were a ton of red flags and I told her to stop seeing her but she said she's the only PhD psychologist in the city so it's her best option. The woman was constantly telling the content of their private conversations to her abuser who would then taunt her with the private details she'd heard from their therapist, she also at some point had her parents come in for a couple of appointments that were supposed to be 'family therapy' but when they saw her therapist alone the therapist also told them a bunch of private details she hadn't agreed to disclose (she was an adult). Therapist started acting more and more unhinged, told my friend her abuser was actually a
victim and 'diagnosed' my friend with NPD even though she had none of the symptoms. She eventually told her that she's writing an academic book on narcissism and expanding the diagnostic criteria for narcissism and wants my friend to be a case study in her book. She encouraged my friend to commit criminal acts repeatedly to 'free herself from her neuroses' even though my friend didn't want to and kept telling her she didn't want to (stuff like theft, not using weed or something). She also gave her illegal drugs directly.
After 2 years of this my friend thinks she's a full blown narc and a danger to herself and others, has retconned her 3 year long
abusive relationship and believes she is the abuser. At that point it came out that the therapist quit because she was being prosecuted by police for falsifying her credentials and didn't even have a degree. She had been working as a fake PhD psyc for almost 2 decades. It also came out during the trial that she repeatedly 'experimented' on patients by trying to set up her
abusive/Cluster B patients with patients who had a history of PTSD/abuse in order to 'see what would happen', invited patients to private parties at her house where she would encourage them to perform sexual acts and was giving illegal drugs to many of her patients. This is the most insane therapy story I've heard but I've also heard others that were not quite as bad but in a similar vein, like psycs intentionally manipulating their patients for kicks or to 'get them out of their comfort zone.' A friend had another therapist that encouraged her to steal books from the library and offered to go do it together.
No. 2044101
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Only went to one therapist and that was for the duration of my high school years. Absolutely hated going to her after awhile because I confided in her about my brother posting tweets about wanting to kill the president and about raping people and killing random civilians and she basically told me to brush it off because he’s a diagnosed autist dealing with his own problems (when most of my family was dealing with their own mental issues and didn’t try to terrorize people with it). I also remember distinctly when he also drew a swastika on the refrigerator whiteboard just to make us scared and uncomfortable of living in our home, me and my sister were even more paranoid and scared at the time because of the mass shootings happening around us and he fit and still does fit the profile of one. I have intense anger issues and every time he accidentally comes across me it makes me want to shriek and scream at him to stay away from me and I have no idea what’s causing it, I don’t want to be like these other people claiming they have “PTSD” because of some small event but I feel like I do. I feel like I don’t deserve to say I have PTSD from such small memories but my hypervigilance and bouts of anger says otherwise. I’ve gone through the whole psych visit, having major panic attacks and feeling alone because of my home situation, psychiatrists and being diagnosed with bullshit disorders they slap on women when they feel endangered by their environments. Thankfully nothing has happened to me yet but what if my intuition wasn’t off? I’ve been made to feel that it was unkind to completely hate and want nothing to do with him and other family members. Sorry for the blogpost but it made me really upset because I felt even more alone, like what if she just ignored me and then weeks later on the news he ended up gunning me and my family down and shot up a school? I rarely even talk about this to anyone except for two close female family members but I feel like my brain is in denial of these repressed memories and emotions and they are slowly coming back up now I’m an adult. I don’t know how to deal and my trust in therapists have gone completely down because of that incident from years ago and it was made even worse by COVID shifting appointments online so I just stopped going.
No. 2044136
>>2044101Even if you don't 'technically' fit the diagnosable requirements of PTSD I don't think it matters much from a practical standpoint because you obviously are traumatized by a menacing home environment and you shouldn't have to pretend the environment is normal. Think about the number of times a school shooter has actually gone and done something and then people blamed their families or asked why they didn't 'spot the signs' or 'do something,' it's insane that you are being gaslit and called crazy for actually spotting the signs and being worried. I think the vast majority of men with these violent impulses don't end up turning into mass shooters but even if your brother doesn't, the likelihood he harms himself or someone else (including you) seems high and it's right for you to be worried. Living in a constantly stressful and dangerous home environment is inherently traumatizing and it's fucked up for your therapist(s) not to recognize this or to tell you to brush it off.
I don't think it's any mystery why you want to shriek and scream at him to stay away from you, your instincts are constantly on high alert in the one environment (your home) that is supposed to feel the safest and most comforting. Think about an animal like a cat and how it reacts when its safe place (a corner, a sheltered area where it can hide, etc) are taken away and it is cornered. Even animals lash out with panic and violence in these situations because it is one of the most basic and natural instincts for mammals including humans to want a place they can safely retreat to. You don't have that so of course you are experiencing symptoms of panic, hypervigilance and fear-driven aggression.
This is one of the things about therapy and psychology that upsets me the most. There is such a strong emphasis on 'diagnoses' for 'disorders' that people can't get proper help and support for symptoms that are an obvious and understandable reaction to their environment. There is a high likelihood you are not even mentally ill, you are just forced to constantly live in a state of fear which is affecting your mental state.
No. 2044161
>>2044040Yeah, a lot of what BPD women can do fits the antisocial/NPD bill but it's not taken seriously.
>She had been working as a fake PhD psyc for almost 2 decades. It also came out during the trial that she repeatedly 'experimented' on patients by trying to set up her abusive/Cluster B patients with patients who had a history of PTSD/abuse in order to 'see what would happen', invited patients to private parties at her house where she would encourage them to perform sexual acts and was giving illegal drugs to many of her patients.Holy fucking shit. The real blackpill here is that therapists with actual credentials can be just as insane. They likely wouldn't do all these things at once because it would cost them their job, but it's textbook 'insane person who studies psychology to 'fix' themselves and reenact perverse dynamics'. Every psychology student i know is like this, most are depressed weak gendies but they still have this knack for harmful advice.
No. 2044170
>>2044136>I don't think it's any mystery why you want to shriek and scream at him to stay away from you, your instincts are constantly on high alert in the one environment (your home) that is supposed to feel the safest and most comfortingThis is probably one of the most helpful things i ever read and you’re not even a therapist
nonny. It gave me such a new perspective because I was always made to feel bad when I lashed out when I’m pretty much tired of coexisting in a space with someone who’s made me and my sister afraid for years and I’m just supposed to ignore it because he’s neurodivergent. Thank you!
No. 2044196
>>2044161Yeah I honestly believe there's 2 types of women (just from my experience) who are mainly diagnosed with BPD, either cPTSD type traumatized women who act out a bit (I have one friend like this who after a decade of friendship admitted to me she was diagnosed with BPD, and when I was like 'huh?' because she doesn't have most of the symptoms other than substance use disorder and hypersexuality, she was like 'you don't know how bad I can really get when I'm distressed you haven't seen it' but I also have known her other long term partners and friends and none of them thought she was that bad either so I think she's exaggerating how bad her own behavior is), or the obvious cluster Bs who in many cases seem just like the female version of a sociopath. One of the women I knew who was diagnosed with BPD was a bisexual serial abuser whose way of 'acting out' was to try to kill people literally, threaten to kill them, pour paint thinner on her partners in the bathtub, bash her head on walls and lie other people had done it to her, bash other people's heads against walls and lie they had done it to themselves to try to get them institutionalized, drunk drive on purpose and threaten the people in the car with her she would drive off a bridge and kill them all, etc. She had a loving family and had not been subjected to any prolonged abuse experiences according to herself but she did call herself a sexual sadist openly. I don't really think these two types of women belong in the same category at all and the only reason I can think of why the second woman was diagnosed with BPD is that her behavior seemed less 'threatening' than males who acted similarly because she was like five feet tall and young looking.
Yeah, therapists with actual credentials can be just as insane but my takeaway from that whole situation is how the credential itself (even when easily faked!) lowers people's defenses. My friend knew something was wrong with her when she first started her for therapy and the only reason she continued with her was because of her academic credentials, in this case they weren't real but if they were it wouldn't have made her a better choice either.
Re: psychology students most psyc undergrads who go into a psyc degree because they have mental issues themselves will never be able to swing it in a PsyD or other clinical Psyc PhD (they are often extremely rigorous and hard to get into) but as someone who has had significant overlapping classes and school events with clinical psyc PhD students who are now all professional therapists, most of them are also the last people I would want 'helping' me or a friend/family member with mental issues. They're usually not the same type as your average messed up psyc undergrad who's just trying to work through their own personal problems, they are worse. They're often high school bully types who are stereotyped to become nurses, but somewhat higher intelligence than your average nurse and therefore are especially smug and elitist. They constantly break confidentiality and gossip about/laugh at patients with each other and random people while talking about how retarded their patients are and how they could never imagine bringing those problems upon themselves. I think low empathy is often one of the requirements for being a therapist because someone who is too prone to empathizing would be destroyed by spending their workdays listening to people's problems and trying to empathize with them, so most successful psychotherapists have some form of narcissistic tendencies.
No. 2044202
>>2044170AYRT and I'm glad it was helpful. Whenever I felt guilty for acting 'unreasonable' about something my mom used to ask me 'would it be okay to treat an animal like this?' or 'would it be weird for an animal to do this?' It's kind of a weird heuristic but I find it really helpful to put things in that perspective whenever I see myself or someone else being blamed for anger, 'erratic' behavior, overreacting, or being afraid. You would probably have a better perspective on this if you were able to move out but many people who supposedly have psychiatric issues become almost completely normal once they move out of the family home, this was true for me too even though I didn't have the level of trauma that you obviously have but I did have a very tense relationship with my family. I spent years thinking I was hyper-reactive, had hair-
trigger anger issues, was 'hysterical' and out of control and had personal space/boundary issues until I literally moved out and realized just moving out and living with other people instantly made those problems go away. Even an animal would react with hysterical behavior and lashing out if it was forced to live with a person or animal that made it feel threatened all the time. You might not even have a mental issue nonna, you might just be having a normal subconscious/psychological reaction because your animal/subconscious brain is telling you that you are in danger.
I know that doesn't solve your problem of what to do about your brother but if it's possible for you I'd recommend switching therapists. If it's not, try not to take your therapist too seriously unless you can get a second or third opinion. You mentioned you talk about it to two close female family members, do they sympathize or feel similarly to you?
No. 2044208
>>2044204>>2044202>many people who supposedly have psychiatric issues become almost completely normal once they move out of the family homeoh fuck yes. I only started getting better years after I finally was able to live alone and thousands of miles away from my family and everyone who abused me. and I was in therapy many times and I was medicated. I only got better after I got the safe space to process my feelings and exist without pressure and shame.
no amount of talk therapy will fix you. you have to feel all the pain and know it is
valid, and make sense out of your experience, and build your self esteem and sense of self worth that is not dependent on the actions and behaviours of other people.
and hell yes the damn system we live in sure does not want healthy independent adults. it is fucking insane what it came to.
No. 2044214
>>2044204Yeah I didn't want to post my own therapy experience in this thread because I never really went to therapy, but I was forced to go to 'family therapy' with a social worker once when I was a kid and it was a horrible traumatizing experience. The 'therapist' basically sat down with me and my parents for like five minutes, asked what the problem was when we were all together (I couldn't say anything my parents wouldn't like or they would punish me for it later so I basically tried to say something middle of the road like that we have issues with being in conflict a lot), then I was sent out of the room for about an hour while my parents talked to the therapist. I came back and the therapist told me that I am 'out of control' and suggested me and my mom take 'time outs' when we have fights, but if it doesn't work I should get ready to go to a group home or foster care since my mom can't deal with my 'violent outbursts' anymore (ftr I was never even slightly violent with my mom, by violent outbursts she meant shouting or crying). She told me to stay on good behavior otherwise I would be kicked out of my home and put in foster care and that she will write a letter of recommendation for me to be taken out of my home if I can't stop fighting with my mom. This was all stupid too because my dad worked outside of the country most of the time so his perspective was not objective, basically whatever my mom told him, but the therapist spent an hour talking to him and didn't even interview me privately.
I have forgiven my mom because I realized that she was abused a lot herself and that's why she was lashing out at me, and things did eventually get better but I continued to think there was something wrong with my ability to emotionally regulate until I moved out to college. As soon as I moved out it became obvious that I'm naturally a fairly easygoing and low-conflict person, and I also realized that some of my issues like very light sleeping/insomnia were a result of long term hypervigilance because my parents would burst into my room in the middle of the night while I was sleeping to start fights with me or accuse me of shit I didn't do. I didn't even realize how abnormal it was to wake up with a racing heart at the tiniest sound or movement until I lived with roommates who were like 'are you okay?' Back when I lived with my parents they would always sneak up on me to try to read what I was doing over my shoulder or try to 'catch' me doing something bad so I also used to get really stressed being in the same room with other people for too long, even when I had a boyfriend or friends over in high school I would ask them to leave the room periodically to let me be alone because I was so stressed being around other people in my private space but after I moved out and realized people weren't constantly spying on me or sneaking up on me I chilled out a lot and was able to live comfortably with other people around. My parents also used to ban me from locking the door when I was showering or taking a bath and bust in randomly just to check that I hadn't brought a book or phone in there (since I couldn't get privacy anywhere else in the house) so it was a new experience to be able to just take a shower or bath with a locked door and relax. I literally stopped having 95% of the mental issues, depression, anxiety, and paranoia I had as a teen within 1-2 months of living on my own with roommates.
No. 2044233
>>2044208Yeah I actually think some 'mental illnesses' like PTSD should probably not be classified as mental illnesses at all because they are just a reaction to something that is natural for the brain, it's not abnormal to experience and then react to trauma. I feel similarly about many other mental diagnoses as well to a lesser degree (like depression and anxiety which often aren't really a disease state imo but are just reactions to oppressive environments but can also be caused by other things) but trauma in particular I think should not be considered a mental 'disorder' since it's actually the natural reaction of the mind to trauma. The disordered thing is the trauma-causing event, not the reaction, and working through the reaction requires healing from and distancing yourself from the
triggering event. No trauma treatment is going to be effective if the thing causing the trauma isn't stopped first.
Both in myself and other people I've noticed that people will think there's something wrong with them for being unable to move on from/heal from trauma that they're still experiencing, therapy and drugs won't work, and the trauma will often start to naturally resolve once the situation causing the trauma is resolved. It's not always even something really dramatic, it can be something as simple as a workplace environment where you are consistently mistreated.
No. 2044235
i was forced to go to this therapist when i was 14-17 in high school. she was a middle aged mexican woman, very matronly, so my parents loved her. she would call me her little china doll (i am half chinese) and talk about her autistic son for what felt like half of the session sometimes. i learned so much about her son, that he had problems in school and with his father etc. i even remember feeling so empathetic about his struggles that i wanted to meet him and be his friend, which looking back is like… why was i even focused on that at all? because she kept bringing it up and making me feel bad for him. she was so unprofessional man.
when my father committed suicide, i went back to her one more time because i just needed help. he used to go to another therapist in the same office as her. during our last session, she told me about how he would have loud breakdowns in the office and how he had a lot of problems and caused the office problems too. i don't know why she thought any of this would be helpful for me. she had previously scared my parents so bad into involuntarily putting me into the psychiatric hospital for a week when i was 15 for "suicidal ideation". even though i never even brought up killing myself or thinking about it in any of our sessions, i was just extremely depressed. so she thought i was suicidal, but also made no actual efforts to help me at all when i went back to see her after my father's suicide. sometimes i think the things she said about him in that last session were so cruel, that she was trying to get me to hurt myself. i can't believe i was gaslit so bad by my parents and her into thinking that any of their recommendations were actually helping me. i was only 14 when i started and those adults did nothing to help me with my struggles. they were so negligent that honestly i could have died from being mistreated by them, because i did actually become suicidal after starting therapy and switching meds all the time. i got better after moving into a clean home with my grandma that wasn't filled with trash, grime and screamfighting parents, and after i started eating real food instead of ramen, hot dogs and cereal every night. an actual, organized, peaceful life. they should have been helping me with that shit, instead of telling me i was diagnosed depressed and anxious and throwing me in the psych hospital every time i expressed not wanting to live that way anymore. god damn the mental health system is so fucked for kids who can't tell what's right and wrong because they're being gaslit by the adults they should be able to trust in their lives. i'm just glad i realized the truth soon enough. like everything they did was so disconnected from human experience, it just made everything worse.
No. 2044248
>>2044235I'm so sorry about your experience anon and it just confirms what me and other anons were saying above about how often therapy is just used to try to make people (especially children who have no choice) feel like it's their duty to adjust to a dysfunctional environment, rather than blaming the dysfunctional environment. I'm lucky I wasn't forced into therapy or put on psychiatric drugs myself because in my experience most kids put on them just got worse and developed physical addictions/withdrawal symptoms and bad side effects, but even though my parents were kind of fucked in the head they didn't believe in drugging children. Now that I'm older I know most psychiatric drugs are not tested on/approved for children and that they can have many long term negative sequelae. Also, most children who are diagnosed with mental disorders 'naturally' grow out of them by the time they're adults which suggests they don't have a brain problem but are either going through something in their family lives or just having mood disturbances from rapid brain and social development.
> the mental health system is so fucked for kids who can't tell what's right and wrong because they're being gaslit by the adults they should be able to trustThis is the main thing that really concerns me about therapy and psychiatry for children. Children have neither the cognitive maturity nor the perspective to even know what is normal/healthy nor who they can really trust, and therapy often makes this worse because children often can't fully express what is wrong with their lives since they don't know whether their situations are normal or not. I've talked to so many adults who now realize therapy and psychiatry as kids made them worse because they never even realized or told anyone what was wrong with their home lives and they just ended up messing up their brains with drugs instead of someone telling the adults in their lives to give them a safe, stable environment and healthy diet/activities.
No. 2044319
>>2044248thank you so much nona, it feels surreal to find people who have empathy for me about this. everything you said is absolutely spot on. i was put on so many medications i can't even remember them all. birth control was the first medication they put me on at 14 to try and "control my moods". then i remember taking zoloft, prozac, wellbutrin, lexapro, seroquel, abilify. not all at the same time of course, they kept "trying to find one that would work for me". but this was all within the span of 2-3 years when i was 14-17 and idk i just can't believe that that was considered ethical, the correct course of action, or even legal, to give to a still developing human. i can't believe my parents never questioned it, not even once. i would take at least 2 psych medications every night: 1 antipsychotic and 1 antidepressant. the only time i ever tried to commit suicide was when i was 15 and had been on so many meds in such a short span of time.
child psychiatry and therapy really worries me too, especially after i witnessed what other kids were going through when i was in the psych hospitals with them (i was admitted involuntarily 5 times as a teenager for non-suicidal related shit. for example, i was sent once for a week after i had put a cigarette out on my arm because i had been raped and wanted to hurt myself). i'll never forget the things i saw and how the kids were treated there. struggling at the deepest point of their lives, feeling abandoned by their parents, being blamed by the therapists, psychiatrists and even techs there for how they were. one little freak out and you get injected and put to sleep, not to be seen for a few days. i am so glad that i escaped it all and i'm able to at least semi-verbalize the struggles i went through then. you're absolutely right, there's no way for children to tell whether their situations are normal or not and it breaks my heart really bad that adults take advantage of this. the kids end up thinking that everything is their fault but it's just not. i received a ptsd diagnosis in the hospital, but my parents decided to just ignore it and not get me treated for it because it made them look bad. just scoffed it off, like no way i could have ptsd from such an "easy" childhood. in the end it's not even on any of my records because psychs won't dare to place any of the blame on parents either. child therapy/psychiatry is A LOT worse than people know
No. 2044402
>>2044319This breaks my heart because I have a close friend (we're both 30-ish) who just recently started coming to terms with what happened to her in the psyc ward she was placed in multiple times as her
abusive parents were going through a messy divorce, and your experiences sound really similar. I have been trying to help her talk through her trauma and self-blame for years and she's just starting to think rationally about it now after many years. Psyc wards are harmful environments for almost everyone. Apparently she was not even allowed to see her parents when they visited her there, but the doctors/nurses lied to her that no one tried to visit which made her traumatized for a long time and her parents were such bad communicators she never found out they attempted to visit her until her late 20s.
I've done a fair bit of education and research on psychatric drugs and the reality is most of the ones you listed (many common antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedatives etc) hardly work on anyone, and have not been properly clinically tested on children. To my knowledge there is still only one FDA approved antidepressant for children (Prozac iirc) and it's not even the one given most often. But even in adults most of these drugs barely work or don't work at all above placebo and have many concerning and even dangerous side effects. On a developing brain we have no idea what kind of things they can do, and whether or not those brain changes are permanent. Children are also the last people who should be forced to go through drug withdrawal symptoms and then be put on another drug shortly afterwards. Several people I knew as teens had to go to rehab once they were adults and wanted to stop the psychiatric drugs they were on, because they weren't able to taper them off by themselves.
The very first response to any child with psychiatric issues is to find out if there is something wrong in their environment, which may not be explicit CSA or physical abuse, it could be other more subtle stressors as well like insufficient nutrition, a filthy environment, instability, parents or other family members fighting or being violent with each other, etc. and only if everything else has been ruled out and a child's issues are so severe they are at risk of harming themselves or others should any more severe intervention be considered. Something like 90% of all child mental diagnoses resolve without intervention so it's absolutely disgusting that the psyc industry will make money and capitalize off of children's problems by drugging them or throwing them in lockup without their families without very, very good reasons. My own very limited experience makes me think that psycs treating children also don't want to upset the parents because the parents are the ones paying their bills, not the children, which creates incentives to go with the parents' story rather than the child's and do what the parents want even if it isn't a good idea.
No. 2044468
>>2044402i hope your friend is doing okay - she's lucky to know someone understanding and intelligent like you! most people really don't understand the trauma that is inflicted when being placed into wards like that. you don't know what it's like until actually experiencing it.
and yes i was shocked when i learned how these drugs really work… especially SSRIs. i can't believe they are so widely prescribed, we don't even know how they work. learning more about modern therapeutical practices and psychiatric medicine just makes me feel more and more like this field is still in the dark age. any criticality towards it is so discouraged, even by people who genuinely mean well. but i don't know anybody who has notably improved since seeking therapy and medication. yet it's always the first course of action that people suggest for those struggling. it just disgusts me how something that is supposed to help vulnerable people is being used to enable greed, laziness, injustice, abuse. there is so much wrong under the surface that normal people just don't understand
No. 2044498
>>2044214Anon I'm sorry that happened holy shit. I had a very similar experience. Social worker spent maybe 5-10 minutes interviewing me with my mom present so I couldn't speak freely. Then had me fill out anxiety/depression screening questionnaires (with my mom sitting next to me and coaching my answers.). Then talked to my mom privately for like 45 minutes. Called me back in and told me I had ODD and if I didn't stop "acting out" I would be sent to a psych ward. I did not have ODD kek, I was a teacher's pet and extreme people pleaser but she didn't even bother to check my school records or talk to anyone except my mother before slapping that label on me.
My mom was objectively unwell. She had a horrific childhood she never healed from, and she was in the middle of a messy divorce when all this went down so she was really unstable. She would spend days at a time in bed and then when she was out of bed she'd have rage meltdowns and scream and hit me. She calmed down a lot as I got older and the divorce trauma faded but she still has a very obvious anxiety disorder that's so severe it causes her chronic pain and health issues, but refuses to admit she has a problem. I feel like the system failed us both because she needed help but instead everything got blamed on me because it's easier to blame the kid.
No. 2044569
>>2044498Omg nonna I'm sorry, this sounds very similar to my situation. My mom had a really tough childhood, fled her country as a 'refugee' then got severely abused mentally by our hosts/only family/only people we knew when we moved here, and my dad and her were having a bunch of conflicts as well so she was severely unstable at the time, she also had an undiagnosed brain tumor that affected her cognition/physical health but was being gaslit and told she had CFS/fibromyalgia so she couldn't even get medical attention. I was basically the only stable person who was always around in her life since she became too disabled to work shortly beforehand so I think she was taking out her issues on me and the brain tumor caused her to believe that I was a 'literal psychopath' for no apparent reason (like you, I was a very good student, extremely obedient and conscientious child, very people pleasing toward my family). A lot of things got better after my mom's brain tumor was diagnosed and removed but she's still a bit weird and I wouldn't want to live with her, nothing like back then though. To be fair she is intelligent and can be very likeable so I understand how she could convince people that I was a monster I guess but like you said, all they had to do was check with my teachers or something to find out that I wasn't a raging violent psychopath but a straight-A student who was quiet and shy and mild-mannered lmao. No one ever suggested to my mom that she get psychological help they just agreed with her that I was being an unbearable monster when in reality she was just having completely random meltdowns at me at 4am, when I was eating breakfast, in the middle of watching a TV show, whatever. She still to this day brings up how the worst thing I EVER did to her that she has never forgiven me for was not bringing her a piece of cake at my elementary school graduation ceremony and then crying when she got mad. Obviously this isn't literally the worst thing I ever did to her but it really speaks to her mental state around that time and I can't believe a social worker heard this and was like 'yes, sounds right, it is the 12 year old who is the violent abuser.'
No. 2044654
>>2044468Yeah she is doing a lot better now but it took literally years of talking through it for her to even get to a point where she could talk coherently about her experiences and start admitting to herself they weren't her fault. It really sucks that children are treated like they're 'crazy' at an age where they're very likely to believe if even if there's nothing particularly wrong with them. From what she's told me her parents apologized to her for sticking in the psych ward afterwards but she still doesn't fully understand why they did since she wasn't acting out or anything.
I had known for a long time that SSRIs had very little science behind them and low efficacy but I never realized the full extent of the problem until a few years ago when I had to research it in more depth. Specifically the SSRI + antipsychotic combo is extremely common in children who are 'treatment resistant' to SSRIs alone, which is basically everyone since SSRIs almost never work above placebo. And like you said, the field is in the dark ages. We get told that 'chemical imbalances' cause depression, and depression meds 'cure the chemical imbalance,' but they've never identified what this 'chamical imbalance' is and how SSRIs would fix it, if they did, which they don't really seem to. I agree with you that almost everyone I knew who was in therapy long term did not improve from it, the only situations I can think of where my friends improved a lot in therapy was when they went there for something highly specific like a phobia or help transitioning back into normal life after leaving a cult, I know a couple people who benefited from therapists specializing in these specific issues but not most people with the common mental disorders.
Relatedly I can't believe how many kids are on antidepressants and other psyc drugs, I remember reading a play with a group of 8-9 classmates in high school and for some reason we got to talking about antidepressants. Every single person in the group except me was on at least one antidepressant/antipsychotic (up to three I think) and they were actually surprised when I said I wasn't on anything. I think we were all 14-15 at the time. Crazy.
No. 2045001
>>2044233same anon you were replying. I have to disagree. there are studies proving how prolonged trauma changes the brain and people's ability to function. it is not for no reason why so many symptoms of ptsd overlap with autism symptoms. and yea I said I was getting better since I moved away from
abusive environment and all that. but I am still diagnosed with ptsd and developmental trauma and it makes me pretty disabled and sometimes almost impossible to function with other people. the change of environment is crucial in healing, all the self worth stuff I mentioned too, and validation of your pain but there is a chance that after 20 years of living with
abusive family your ability to function for the rest of your life will be permanently challenged. ptsd is a real illness and I'm tired of people on social media (esp tiktok) throwing it and the word trauma at every thing that has nothing to do with real suffering and trauma these terms are supposed to describe. my point was that talk therapy can't help much for ptsd. which is very similar in dealing with many mental disorders and autism. you can talk about it and I did but after like 5+ therapists and a few psychiatrists I dealt with who only told me I am very emotionally reserved and articulate about what happened to me, made big eyes when they heard about the cruelty I experienced and didn't even say anything that would make me feel like I am confiding in the right person. my trauma is not a shock value content for you to study and talk to with other psychologists about - I was genuinely looking for help! I wanted the pain to stop and all they did was stare at are and take my money. not mentioning a bunch of people who both abused me and then shamed me for seeking that help because I am a crazy bitch for even being a human with feelings.
No. 2045269
File: 1718126162245.jpg (48.7 KB, 640x547, trgfs1vs92kb1.jpg)
Not sure if this belongs here but I have such a big aversion to doing my therapy exercises. I actually think it's re traumatizing me. Here's what it encompasses: I write a situation that is going to happen whenever I like it or not in the future that I know I really don't want to deal with. Yes this is actually a real situation not imagined. I have a lot of problems and anxieties about that one situation, so then I have to write down my thoughts and emotions about the matter. Sounds ok so far right? So then I have to analyze them thoroughly and prove myself wrong with positivity. In theory that's pretty nice but ffs. Example:
>I'm going to meet someone important soon
>I write "proof" of why I think I'm going to fuck up: I am pretty clumsy
>Therapist says: are you sure you're clumsy? Maybe you're not clumsy maybe you need to take steps to be less clumsyuwu
>Me: now I have more anxiety and I need to not be clumsy
This is just a silly nothingburger example (I don't want to explain everything that I'm going through in therapy) but it's pissing me off a lot. There's a big situation I'm supposed to dismantle that I'm going to be honest, I don't even want to think about. I thought we were going to be done with this shit last week and whenever I think about doing this shit I start crying super hard. Like I really don't want to be thinking about this at the moment, I'm more of a "I'll tackle things as they come" kind of person and the less I think about my problems the better. I don't know how to be strong enough to do this shit unless I completely detatch and numb myself and pretend I'm actually completely ok and I write the most fake posi shit possible. I'm actually considering it just because I don't want to do the fucking exercise at all. What tf do I do now?
No. 2045276
>>2045269Maybe change therapists and see if a different one and/or a different method of therapy works?
That said I'm personally inclined therapy doesn't add much value to people who're already very self-aware, but I have no proof to back that up.
No. 2045279
>>2044233I think I agree with you in spirit but it's useful to classify PTSD as a mental illness for bureaucratic reasons because then treatment can be covered by insurance. Even if it's natural it can still be an illness. A fever is technically a natural reaction too, but you're still stick if you have a fever.
That book The Body Keeps the Score goes into detail about how many treatment methods for trauma problems are ineffective because they don't address the underlying issues, I thought it was a really interesting book.
No. 2045462
>>2045001AYRT and I agree that trauma changes people's ability to function/brain, but I think classifying it as a 'chemical imbalance' doesn't make sense because it is the brain's reaction to something bad happening in the world (like imagine that someone has cancer and one of the outcomes is pain in the body, it's like classifying 'pain' as the disease rather than cancer). I think the trauma itself is the 'disease etiology' and the brain's reaction to the trauma is a 'symptom.' It depends how exactly you define a disease I guess but this is one of the problems with psychology/psychiatry in general, it's interesting that most trauma therapies for PTSD are quite ineffective and the most effective ones are shit like drug-enhanced reprocessing of the traumatic memory.
The problem with ever healing from trauma (especially when sustained in early life) is it can be a permanent developmental brain change. It's not some transient 'chemical imbalance' it's basically your brain developing differently as a result of early life experiences. I think talk therapy can be helpful in some cases to cognitively 'process' your trauma but unfortunately most therapies for PTSD don't actually get rid of flashbacks, nightmares, etc. I think it's still illegal in most countries but the most promising line of treatment for PTSD seems to be ketamine or MDMA mediated therapy. EMDR + therapy seems to help to a smaller degree. The reason I say it's not really a 'mental illness' is exactly what you're saying, you're not 'crazy' for being traumatized, it is natural for your brain to change after trauma and your reactions often aren't per se a 'problem' or disease state, they are a sign something bad happened to you and your brain has tried to adjust to it in a way that causes you lasting problems.
No. 2045467
>>2045279Yeah, I agree that for bureaucratic reasons it's good to have it in the DSM and covered by insurance. I think hopefully we can eventually move to a model of understanding of 'mental illnesses' that doesn't stigmatize the person experiencing a trauma response as 'sick' though as though their reaction to trauma is unnatural. The problem with classifying something like trauma response as an 'illness' is that, as mentioned above, usually with an 'illness' model of trauma therapists focus on 'fixing' the person to act less 'crazy' rather than first making sure that the person is given the resources to leave the traumatic situation/environment, and then once they are in a safe environment, focusing on healing the fallout from the trauma. Using the biomedical disease model on something like trauma results in therapists/psychiatrists trying to 'treat' a person who is still in a traumatic situation as if they are wrong and their reactions to the environment are wrong, this all plays into productivity culture and how many mental illness treatments focus on helping people 'cope' with a bad environment so they can work, go to school, etc. without really focusing on the root causes. If you diagnose someone with cancer you try to get rid of the cancer, rather than focusing on how to make them feel less pain while the cancer's still there so they can keep working. There is thankfully a lot of discussion in the psychiatric lit about how the biomedical model doesn't work for some mental illnesses though so I am hoping we are moving toward a better more holistic way of dealing with these types of issues. At root, like you said, the reason stuff like PTSD is treated the same way as something like cancer is largely for insurance reasons, and so it can get research funding under the 'medical' umbrella.
No. 2052839
File: 1718640253967.jpeg (694.1 KB, 4032x1196, whatthefuck.jpeg)
Has anyone else had a weird experience with interpersonal group therapy? I ended up in what they call "interpersonal process group therapy" and it's not like a clinic DBT group therapy which I've heard is very structured. The process group is like a conversation led by the people in the group and the psych interjects once in a while but doesn't lead it entirely. It was a really bad and weird experience because I was the youngest there by like 15 years and it was unbalanced gender wise by having more men, including the psych. It was bullshit because the psych interviewed me before joining and didn't inform me about this glaring detail. During the first week, a gay guy in his 40s had a huge angry outburst that freaked me the fuck out and they basically tried telling me I was overreacting but I was like no, I'm a woman and that shit is terrifying. The psych admitted to sometimes saying things to "stir the pot" and get the group members emotional with one another because that's where the real work happened. There was an older woman that decided one day to go off on a few of us and try to tear us down based on the things we have confided in group and she focused in on me for some reason as if I was a bad person for having friends and a happy relationship at the time. Omfg I left after the psych introduced another older bald moid who immediately told me my red nail color was a warm trigger for him KEK. I left that day and never returned, the psych fucking called me and emailed me a bunch of time to check in on me but I blocked his contact info because ew. They were also trying to insinuate I had BPD because I was outspoken and emotional about the garbage that was happening in that group therapy. I had a panic attack once too because shit got really weird. I ended up calling a woman psychologist who practiced near by for individual therapy and she was great, I had to process all the stupid group therapy shit with her and she was even taken aback with it all. I went into research mode and found out these process group therapists all adhere to this bullshit theory of group psychotherapy by this guy named Irvin Yalom. I read some of his book passages which are mainly clinical stories of patients he treated and a lot of.them are fucking unhinged misogynistic moid shit. pic related
No. 2053956
It wasn't a horrible experience, just something I remembered. I went to a therapist once, he was recommended to me by a psychiatrist. He was a gestalt therapist and they have a rule that they and their clients should address each other using an informal form of "you" (I'm not from English-speaking country) which turned out to be pretty uncomfortable and distracting. It's like forced and fake closeness and I really didn't like it, moreover, I constantly had to correct myself. It's just useless. It doesn't help to be more open or something imo, and I don't see why I have to pretend that some 40+ y.o. guy and I are friends. The guy himself seemed kind of… overly friendly and positive like he tried hard to be likable and he visibly reacted to some things I said (like saying "ooohh" and making a face), trying to appear compassionate I guess, but it just made me feel like I couldn't tell some things or I had to make them more light-hearted and humorous so he wouldn't feel uncomfortable. So naturally I didn't want to come back. It was kind of weird and a waste of money.
>>2052839That's wild, anon, sorry you wasted your time on this shit
>admitted to sometimes saying things to "stir the pot" and get the group members emotional with one another because that's where the real work happenedThat's fucked up on its own but what he actually did with that? Was any work done at all? Or is emotional invalidation considered "work" there?
No. 2054043
>>2053190I'm not even sure how a freudian group therapy would work, the whole point of psychoanalysis is that you're alone with your speech. There are so many bogus therapists who self-define as psychoanalytic when they're really doing wacky talk therapy.
One of my middle school teachers (yes) invited some of her students to a group like the one you're describing, subtly insisting with me (i had issues and im interested in psych theory). I declined because something in me felt it was culty, and as much as i regret never knowing what was up with that, it's probably good i didn't go
>>2052839This is so fucked up i don't know where to start. Making people confront and insult each other is such a perverse way of 'stirring things up' (talking to sort out unconscious issues,
alone). This is such a blinding example of therapists getting off the distress of patients. And the fact that they called you BPD for speaking up kek, really tells you all about how they operate
No. 2054326
>>2053190Nonna you can talk about it on this thread as much as you want, please go ahead
>>2054043I once went to a "group therapy" and it was pretty cultish as well. It really puts one single person in a position of power and we're all mentally ill sims to them. I don't want to say all group therapy is like that though, because the one I went to, the main guy wasn't even trained in psychology. He was a divination reader attempting to direct a group therapy session and he came across as weird to me. He would send me paragraphs and paragraphs of rants on whatsapp telling me his "messages from god" and I got a bit uncomfortable tbh. Plus there was a middle aged lady that worked with him and I felt some weird friction from them like maybe he was actually treating her a bit shitty behind doors. I only went there once.
No. 2054618
>>2053956>>2054326I go into analysis mode when something weird happens to me so I went and read the main theory book they work off of to understand what I experienced there. The whole "theory" of process group therapy is that the 'work' is done through interpersonal interactions. The "work" is based off of projecting your shit onto other group members and using those interactions to learn from? Its super
toxic in practice. The idea is that some of the issues that bring some adults to therapy are interpersonal related and can be addressed in these interpersonal process groups(ie, you can't make friends, you are lonely, etc). As in, the process group provides these adults with a "safe" and clinical setting where individuals can practice new ways of interacting with other people. Me, for example, I was seeking help with dealing my family dynamics. So to these process group therapists, I'm a good candidate because I can learn to stand up for myself more by practicing those actions in the group and then using them in the real world. What happens is you're putting a bunch of troubled strangers in a room and seeing what happens. This leads to a bunch of bullshit. I think it mainly simulates friendships for people who have nobody else.
Most of the group members there were lonely older adults. I ended up enjoying talking to a couple of them and I still wish the best for them. It was just regressive and completely unhelpful for what I was seeking.
> One man had severe dissociation issues from CSA and honestly, he was really kind and nice to talk to without giving creepy moid vibes. It was just weird that he was encouraged to speak about the abuse in the group. No issues with this guy though he was cool.> One was an older widowed doctor with they/them teen children. I also enjoyed speaking to him about his kids and his difficulties connecting with them after his wife, who was also a doctor, passed away with cancer. His story made me so sad. > An older asian woman whose parents died and her brother was abusive during the estate probate process. She was so sweet too and was joining meetup groups and making friends at church so she left the group. I loved that. > Then this older latin american lady, the one that went off on me and got really nasty like "and HER with her picture perfect relationship and blabla" insinuating like I was lying about having healthy non-family relationships meanwhile her son stopped talking to her and husband divorced her so I think she was just projecting. She was nice to me at the beginning and then got all nasty with me for whatever. I left right when she pulled that shit because I was not about to talk about my problems when this bitch was going to save it in her memory bank and use it as ammunition for later. > The mid 40s yr old gay plastic surgery addict with self described "Peter Pan syndrome" and dating younger men. He exploded in rage one day, I can't remember exactly why but it was something that I had after the Chinese lady was trying to explain cultural differences to him because she was having a hard time dealing with her siblings within context of their culture. He was so mad that we would discuss cultural differences. The old jewish therapist mishandled it too. He leaned in super hard into the "all white ppl are racist" thing" and I even told him like dude, white people do not respond well to that rhetoric and you just made it worse kek like what did you think was going to happen and WHY even use that talking point. It wasted so much time with the therapist regurgitating those talking points and all the older dudes whining about woke-ism. > Older 40s dude that wore crocs and would take them off to sit criss cross applesauce in his chair. He liked to bitch a lot about woke-ism after all that happened. > Same gay guy insinuated I had BPD asking me about my "favorite person" in the group, I was like huh? and I googled it one day and a bunch of BPD shit came up. I don't have BPD at all kek. The therapist insinuated something BPD related to that I can't recall. Weirdly enough I think I ended up like playing into those tropes since I developed intense anxiety after the gay guy's outburst and I started acting weird since I wanted to leave but I felt like I needed to "put in the work" according to the therapist. I literally feel like I was being pulled into a cult-like mindset and losing my mind at times. I was fine once I left. Not to mention that the Latin American lady and gay Peter man moid dominated the sessions most of the time rambling and bitching about how lonely their lives are while making no substantial efforts to change. Man, I hate to armchair diagnose people because I think the DSM is complete bullshit but if cluster B types are real at any level, those two should have their own sections in the DSM kek.
No. 2054920
>>2054618>I developed intense anxiety after the gay guy's outburst and I started acting weird since I wanted to leave but I felt like I needed to "put in the work" according to the therapist. I literally feel like I was being pulled into a cult-like mindset and losing my mind at times. I was fine once I left.I hate how therapy always makes people, specially women, feel like this. "You're just not putting in the work" etc. So stupid
>if cluster B types are real at any level, those two should have their own sections in the DSM kek.Lmao
No. 2064677
File: 1719374185212.png (243.79 KB, 828x1136, redflags.png)
Saw this thread and thought of you nonnas
No. 2305066
>>1149837A while back I was seeing a therapist for some really bad depression that was caused by my autistic brain not being able to comprehend being sexually assaulted. One day we went very close to a breakthrough to her telling me that "yeah what happened to you was not consent" and by next session she slapped me with "nvm we don't wanna use the term consent cause it's a feminist term"
Idiot sent me backwards in my process for atleast months
No. 2305096
>>2305066im so fucking sorry that happened to you
nonnie, what a pick-me bitch. how dare she say something so dismissive and cruel, you deserved so much better than that especially from someone who was supposed to support you. sending you so much love & healing ❤︎
No. 2305184
When I sought help for my mental health problems on the NHS ( I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you’re in crisis mode and need to be sectioned, or unless you want the drugs, which I also wouldn’t recommend in most cases ) one tiny thing that really bugged me was whenever I would say I felt “depressed” they would correct me and say “low mood”. It felt so insulting.
The free therapy you get on the NHS is just a person calling you once a week on the phone, surveying you on your mental health symptoms, then sending you an email with some CBT worksheets. Well it is free I suppose lmao. I would do the CBT exercises and some would work for a little while, others didn’t work for me at all. My mental health didn’t approve over the 8 scheduled sessions, so the woman on the phone offered another one, and then another one. I ended up cancelling them. The program worked in this one way, by the end of the sessions I felt more sorry for the woman working at the NHS than I did for myself. It wasn’t the worst experience with therapy, but it make me realize that therapy isn’t this miracle thing it’s made out to be. There’s a weird stigma in certain circles about working through your mental problems without professional help, but I decided this is part of life’s journey. If I had the money for private healthcare, I might try DBT, but that’s all.
Not so long ago, I mentioned a small problem I have and a wealthy man told me I should see a therapist. I found it ridiculous. I work a minimum wage job so I can’t afford to pay someone to listen to my problems. And the NHS therapy isn’t really a thing, they don’t have the resources. I think “Go to therapy” is such a privileged thing to say so of course it is the mantra of everyone who thinks they know better on the internet.
No. 2305274
>>2305106>>2305096thank you nonnies <3 I'm glad I'm not crazy for thinking she was messed up
Gonna add more to the story: this psychologist was part of a clinic that was paired up with the psychiatrist looking after me at the time . psychiatrist would be the type to throw the terms like "black and white thinking" but refused to diagnose me to "um we don't like labeling people here uwu" I was working with both of them for about to years. Midway through that I found out I had been diagnosed with autism as a kid then same psychiatrist proceeded to tell me "hmm you don't look autistic to me"
As if autism has a look kek
(emoji) No. 2305276
>>2305184I've lost count of the times I've been told to "go to therapy"
With what money???
No. 2305373
>>2305365Depending on where you are and the type of the therapy, I have a degree in therapy but the type we use in my country is kind of standardised it's the generic helping affirmations you are supposed to let the individual come to their own conclusions and not judge them in any way.
I had an assignment where we were supposed to do a therapy session on another person and I lost marks because I told her to maybe go to a place she wanted to go with a friend, I got told that was "solutions oriented therapy" or something, and that wasn't the type that we were there to learn because it's not the one we use. Maybe you could try and find something like this and it could be more helpful for you, either way I hope you're doing better now
No. 2316525
>>2316520>she interpreted that as me unconsciously engaging in flirtatious behavior and giving men the wrong idea.What the fuck,
victim blamer/rape apologist behaviour. Kek I wonder how she'd evaluate me, a shut in who covers my face in public with a mask to avoid people talking to me.
No. 2316551
>>2316548That's different. Those narcs/psychos in power and jobs that require their traits do so because of their charm or whatever traits of their disorder, true, but that's different from applying to a job and having them know you're diagnosed. If I was an employer and saw someone who had narcissistic PD written down I'd be concerned whether they'd start mistreating my other employees tbh.
>they will usually want to work efficiently to earn moneyKek, you haven't met real PDs in the workplace. PDs think the whole world should cater to their beliefs, they would probably be working like shit and demanding money, or exaggerating their efforts in typical narc fashion.
No. 2316552
>>2316551>PDs think the whole world should cater to their beliefs, they would probably be working like shit and demanding money, or exaggerating their efforts in typical narc fashion.Well it depends, but it shouldn't be a hiring criteria. It can be a
valid reason to fire them when they under perform or cause issues, but when hiring I doubt anything else matters more than qualifications and experience. I have a few narcs in my family and they all excel at their work while being awful people in their private lives.
A surprise month of Hellmas is now in effect. For the rest of the month of December, VPN posting will be banned.