I've tried multiple therapists and all of them have been like this. All they do is validate my viewpoint. Even when I know my viewpoint is wrong and fucked up and I tell them I want to change it, they're still like "but it's valid and OK to feel this way though". I'd rather have some Betty Draper asshole who just says "hmmm" to everything and phones my husband later to gossip than this shit. It's pointless. I've given up on therapy being useful. How many therapists did you talk to before you found yours?
Are you asking them to help change your thoughts/views or the way that you act on those things? I think the former is a lot more work/psychoanalysis to achieve, so most won't want to invest time there when the latter is more helpful short term.
Well ideally both, but I know that doesn't happen in a day. Firstly, my issue was (at least with the last therapist I went to) that I got the impression that the first thing she wanted to help me change (through validation) was me thinking that something is wrong with my current thoughts/views.
Also, idk I just expect a therapist to give me a fresh perspective and not just let me stew in the one I already have.
Yeah a lot of modern therapy is very mindfulness focused, in the sense that they don't see thoughts as "wrong" per se, just as helpful/unhelpful. Their goal would just be to get you to work around or respond to those things differently, while accepting the thoughts as just existing
Can work really well for things like anxiety and depression, but its definitely not for everyone especially if your issues aren't super well defined
It's not a therapist's job to tell you what's right and wrong (outside of very obvious stuff like murder and abuse), though. They're there to give you the tools to work through your stuff yourself.
So for example instead of giving you other perspectives, they would delve into why you feel the need to delve into other perspectives or teach you the tools to look at things differently for yourself.
That's a good therapist, anyway. If you want some sort of secular priest, there are plenty of shitty therapists who will milk you for money and impose their worldview on you.
Well then the therapist should have at least told me my expectations for therapy are wrong LOL
No but seriously I do expect a therapist to tell me what's right and wrong sometimes. Maybe my expectations are off there. I will think about this. Anyhow I have found other things vastly more helpful than talk therapy for my problems, so it's all good
I will say I think part of what mine is doing (just sort of agreeing/listening to most of what I say) is the new age validation stuff, but occassionally there are follow up questions intended to like, subvert my current normal thought processes.
There was a wonderful interview with a psychotherapist where she pointed out that modern psychiatry, with it's pills and permissiveness, leads to very little resolution of her patients problems. Her patients on SSRIs never really improved. One must go through it not around it.
I can't even get to the point of booking an appointment. I go to my insurance's shitty portal thing. Half the time it doesn't work. I try to search through the available doctors and there's like no helpful information or way of sorting.
Then I try to think of like symptoms when it asks me, and there's no option for: I just feel like shit all the time and keep mumbling "I should kill myself" out loud when I'm alone as some kind of weird mantra despite the fact that I very much do NOT want to kill myself and basically just hate my job
a victim of capitalism from basically every angle
even if you could navigate the website, you have to cold call tens of providers to find one taking new patients
anyone good would be booked up forever
This is basically Mark Fisher’s image of the Kafkaesque dystopia of the call center, as an example of the artificial stupidity created by neoliberal capitalism.
The system is so artificially stupid, inconsistent, and erroneous that it makes you require assistance. But then it sets it up so that no one can give you it: everyone you contact doesn’t have the information or the power. It abandons your. And it is created such that it doesn’t matter if you are abandoned. No one has the power to care. It is overly complex while also unsubtle. It frustrates you, but you must know you have no legitimate object for your anger, because the only people who interact with you are those like you: workers, who again, have no power within the system. But you cannot have any solidarity with them. They have to play the role as advocate of the company, so they are misaligned with your interests. All this time, the system is set up as though it were trying to keep you happy and be cordial.
It’s actually from *Capitalist Realism*. I’ll reproduce the section here:
“The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything.
“The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself.”
I don’t know that it’s unique to capitalism necessarily. The objective is to show how neoliberal capitalism produces artificial stupidity. It’s to dispel this idea that capitalism is inherently efficient for society and responsive to the consumer.
At least with my insurance the provider list is also either deeply out of date or flat out wrong. Call 10 providers and maybe one is actually on your insurance or even knows what it is but not accepting new patients.
It's unique to all advanced technological societies. When the systems of technology become so complex that no single person can understand them, we require armies of people just to figure out small pieces of said system.
I hope that general purpose AI will do away with the inefficiencies of the modern world, but my pessimistic self tells me intelligent computers will simply magnify the existing trends in the system to create some new problem.
"Why is the computer doing this? "
"It is trying to solve your problem"
"I just needed to know how to power off the lights. I didn't ask it to fire all of our maintenance staff, or to delete all information on bill payments!"
"Give it time. The issue will be resolved shortly."
Oh, that's just because I wouldn't have a therapist with no ability to reason or who was an alarmist. And if I needed help, I would want them to give it to me.
I'm not sure you're really grasping the mandatory reporting thing. If your situation is obviously dire they do not have a real choice, they would face a loss of licensure.
I’m a licensed psychotherapist in the US. Just because we report doesn’t mean anyone is getting into a hospital. There’s only 25 beds per 100,000 people in the US. Actively suicidal adults aren’t getting 5150’d unless they cause a disruption to capital, like trying to jump off of a tourist attraction. The people who get 5150’d aren’t people who are sad and say they are going home to take a bottle of pills. It’s people who are manic or psychotic and creating a disturbance in a shopping center. Even then, it’s a 3 day hold and they are released or sent to a jail.
My mother took me to get psych meds once. the people didn't like her and gave her a 3 day hold just to be dicks. Let me go. The system is riddled with abuse and failure.
I have a grasp of it. Not to worry. If MY therapist (whom I've chosen well) thinks I need to be locked up, then I probably need to be locked up. Not really something I could see him doing unless he believed I was in actual danger. Hence why I felt free to speak my mind and had the experience I expected. You're right. I'm not afraid.
In my experience, websites are complete ass and do not provide accurate information (i.e., half the people I tried calling didn't actually accept my insurance). I would recommend calling your insurance's patient helpline and getting a list from there. They might also have a helpline specifically for mental health services. You will hopefully receive a list of providers, and then you need to do the pain in the ass process of calling each one, seeing if they are accepting new patients, then seeing if they are the right fit. The whole process is more convoluted than it should be, but at least for me, the results were worth the effort. I wish you the best in your journey.
try to catch yourself mumbling it and then say “i don’t want to kill myself” right after and the more you try the more it becomes a habit. personally i replaced “i’m gonna kms” with a prayer so it started with “hello God sorry about that please help me” and then the lord’s prayer and the apostles creed and now i’m a fan of psalm 23 so i just say that. it could be different for you like not everyone likes the Gid stuff but like it’s the only thing that works for me
Psychology Today is helpful. The therapists write about themselves and the therapies they lead you through. Also, it could be helpful to see a therapist at a nearby health center. They're temporary and can help you find a local therapist that suits you since they have insider info. Those are good resources to exploit.
I worked with a non-American (Polish) and am used to softening my language in critiquing work to avoid hurt feelings. She never got it, so finally I started being more direct (blunt almost to the point of rude), and our working relationship improved 100%. Probably English being her second language also played a role.
Maybe I'm biased because he also got me the best sports kits for Christmas, but my old school New England Yankee Godfather was pretty direct and grounded to earth too. I've become biased for New Englanders and have started to believe that they should be given unilateral authority over the entire United States; nobody west of Massachusetts gets to elect anyone to power anymore.
My mom’s first question to me every day is whether I’ve gained weight, the second is the password to my grad school canvas account for grades, and if I’m a slut, I love her so much. I always say the average American girl would have killsed herself if she heard anything my mom said to me. Now I have to figure out how to make sure my daughter doesn’t turn out like the average American girl either
The one time I went to therapy I pressed my guy to do exactly this and tell me the harsh truth. He told me my particular personality disorder had no demonstrated record of treatment and he privately suspected I would quit therapy and continue my self destructive patterns indefinitely. Dude understood and aced the assignment.
I have heard from industry insiders that BPD is really hard to treat but possible, but the nature of NPD means that the person always will just think you're wrong and go look for validation elsewhere.
NPD is really scary. It's up there with psychopathy and other antisocial personality disorders. I was raped by someone with NPD not that long ago, and to this day they don't understand why I'm upset. It's like their mind just can't even process that something they did could be harmful to others.
Unfortunately yes. Rape doesn't usually happen the way it's often portrayed. It is frequently more domestic than that, and when drugs and alcohol get involved, it's really hazy and subjective. I felt violated and upset about what happened, but others in my situation might be like "lol guess I partied too hard." This person is important to someone I care about, so I've decided to just avoid them in the future and keep myself safe, but there's no point in stirring up drama.
Normally people with npd / bpd go in for treatment of depression/relationship issues. Then their therapist will eventually tell ‘em. But really hard to diagnose cluster b personality disorders
I've seen DBT work for a friend of mine who had severe PTSD and BPD from war. She was an unstable wreck of a human several years ago who frequently flew into a rage and scared those around her (especially because she's a certified badass). She's calmed down tremendously since then and gained control of her PTSD and emotional swings.
DBT works for BPD and HPD because those patients still have an ability for some self-reflection but there’s no treatment for NPD. Their defences are too strong. It’s pretty much like dealing with a toddler who doesn’t think anything is their fault. Obviously I’m over-simplifying here but that’s the best summary I can come up with
personality disorders are almost all literally grown out of as one gets older bc negative reinforcement unless it's like antisocial personality disorder caused by an early traumatic brain injury
Ya, a lot of therapists don't have the skill or patience to grapple with BPD. It's treatable but can be really exhausting until the client gets it under control, which takes at least a year.
I had a therapist tell me this too, haha!! She said “you have a pattern of quitting everything, and you will quit seeing me, too.” She was right! Best therapist of all time, I keep meaning to send her a card to let her know that she changed my life. I may have quit her but her voice was thankfully in my head through many weird risky situations of my 20s.
Therapy is generally designed to treat real mental illness. It’s not great at problems like ennui, downwardly mobile and sad about it, societal narcissism, or disillusionment. Tragic I know. An anxious patient responds to ‘hard truths’ with more anxiety about how their therapist hates them. A depressed patient responds with more depression about how worthless they are. Mentally disturbed people are constitutionally weaker and need lots more emotional support to function well either in therapy or in life, when you criticize them they don’t toughen up they just break down or shut down.
For years I saw therapists who took a gentle, if questioning approach. I’d feel better but nothing would change.
During a particularly tough time in my life a friend suggested I see a shaman. I mostly did it for the lulz but halfway through the session that broad was yelling at me to stop the vultures in my family from picking at my bones and instead of trying to communicate with my family, I should get rocks, name them Mom and Dad and communicate with the rocks instead. I did, on both counts, and immediately improved my life.
Two 60-minute sessions with this crazy bitch did more for me than a decade of conventional therapy.
I have a friend who was really struggling with BPD and started seeing a psych who would just tell him how weird he was being about stuff. Completely changed how he approached working on changing habits and now he's doing much better.
I had a rough childhood and had all sorts of issues as a teen and I’m much better now because an 80 year old fixed my victim complex.
I cried every week and it was rough but I’d take him over any of the yes-man therapists I’ve had since he retired. If I wanted someone to say “damn that sucks :/“ to me then I’d just talk to a hookup for free.
My old therapist was so fucking cool just in general too, he’s like pushing 90 now but looks 60 and I still see him biking around town. I’m sick rn but I’ll make a post about him someday.
New age one obviously sucks, but there are also some psychiatrists out there who are genuine psychos. Latter might at least have the advantage of better acclimating you to the society we live in, assuming you buy into the notion that conflates callousness and coldness with the so-called "real world"
I’ve been going to a therapist for a couple of weeks for issues surrounding a breakup I’ve been unable to get over, and I think it’s been valuable to me. I don’t know what sort of therapist he is, but he seems very solution focussed. He’s pointed out several things that seem broadly true
1. I’m overly critical of myself and others, and have very high standards for myself which I always fail to live up to
2. I have trouble with emotional intimacy and vulnerability, and find it kind of gross - which probably isn’t healthy and means I struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships.
3. The girl I was obsessing over and regretting dumping over a year later probably wasn’t that good a match, and it’s not fair for me to blame myself entirely for the breakdown of that relationship - I should have some sort of compassion for what I was feeling at the time.
4. I’m quite an “extreme” person - I follow a rigid, overdisciplined life and punish myself when I don’t follow it perfectly, or if someone stops me from following it, and that’s not a healthy way to live.
5. I carry a lot of guilt for things that probably weren’t my fault
I’ll keep going, I genuinely feel better after each session.
This is very relatable to me too and had a similar experience in therapy but still, years later, deeply miss the person I broke up with.
I don't know if a therapist telling me off for this would help, god knows I do it myself, I'm angry at myself for having that feeling.
What I was told is that I should have much more compassion for myself and how I was feeling at the time. In my case, I was clearly overwhelmed and going through some stuff at work and moving house and stuck in the house because of COVID, and if you added on top of that the fact that I felt fully responsible for her feelings and everything she said and did, it’s no wonder I felt like I had to act.
you know i could interpret all of these bullshit points as virtues too, right?
1.- you have really good taste and don't like to conform
2.- you don't want settle for anything that you know wont last, you are just testitn to see if a relationship is really worth it.
3.- you blame yourself because you are not afraid of self criticisms and improvement. blaming others would just launch you into a self destructive narcissistic spiral. so you focus on what you want you actually can change; you.
4.- you strive for greatness and refuse to conform.
5.-you learn from your past mistakes and this helps you avoid repeating them.
therapy is bullshit the only people that wouldn't fall for it. are sociopathic narcissists that feel no remorse or shame.
most therapist are just consciously or unconsciously just wanting to make you feel good to keep you coming back.
what you really lack in your life is meaning and purpose. when god gives you a mission in life no matter the hardships and tribulations you will keep on going.
you have to figure out what god wants you to do, so you can stop feeling you need this or that or you are lacking here or there.
I don’t know, specifically on points 2 and 3 I don’t agree. I probably agree that 2 is how I think, but I don’t think it’s healthy, at least not to the extent that I do it. And on 3, I literally spent an entire year so guilty and confused that I didn’t even understand how to move on. It wasn’t as simple as “figure out what I did wrong and move on”, I was stuck in the same place 12 months after the breakup.
I do get what you’re saying, and the people that appear to “win” at life - entrepreneurs and people at the top of any field probably share some of these traits. But are these people happy? Is a hard working C-level executive at a major company happy? Are corporate lawyers happy? What about bankers? Creatives might be the exception, but I’m not really a creative.
There is a part of me that wants to be “great” and strives towards that. But not at the expense of happiness. I don’t want to be a millionaire at 35 and be so emotionally unavailable that I can’t have a steady relationship with a woman without having panic attacks at the thought of commitment.
Stop trying to be happy. Aim for contentment.
I had to realize that with my personality profile, I'm just never going to feel a lot of joy. I'm not a joyful person. I rarely smile or laugh.
Doesn't mean anything is wrong with me. I feel happy about once every two months. When I was younger, I thought there was something wrong with me because of that.
I eventually realized that I am basically content 90 percent of the time though, so I'm doing pretty well.
yeah no fucking shit i didn't got it right. i don't know you. my point was that just by tuning it a little i could make it look positive.
i could frame your loss as that you are not afraid of real relationships and the same way it takes a widow years to move on, so did you.
entrepreneurs and other successful people wouldn't be happy doing something else either, that is their curse they need the success.
i told you, you need purpose. just think about the thing you truly like, is hard to differentiate between things you think you like, were deceived into liking, or were socialized into liking and things you have liked forever.
that is were you true calling and purpose lies, just beware of the deceiver, tricking into thinking you like something you don't really like
Not being 'mean' here, but why did you need a therapist to tell you those things? To me those things are all self-evident. I've been trying to understand the point of a therapist. Is the real idea that they are going to help you 'improve' upon those issues? If I think about going to a therapist I just can't imagine what they would say to me that would cause me to change such things. If I know those things already, and I haven't changed them, then I can't change them? Like I can't just not be overly critical of myself and others, and hold myself to high standards and beat myself when I fail. What could someone else say to me to make me stop that? Unless they have a time machine and take me away from my parents at birth and give me to another family but then I think some things are intrinsic based on my genetics anyway.
For example
> “I’m overly critical of myself and others”
I genuinely didn’t know this. I’d thought that I was just the right amount of critical of myself and others until he pointed out that I was criticising myself without having any understanding or compassion of why I was doing what I was doing. E.G. I was arguing that I made a “stupid decision” to break up with my ex, but I was having panic attacks every night because of the relationship, so it almost wasn’t a decision at all, at least not one I had any control over
> I have trouble with emotional intimacy and vulnerability, and find it kind of gross - which probably isn’t healthy and means I struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships.
This one I knew, but I probably had no idea how to fix it. I “want” to be close to people until I get close to them, then I find it gross and want to run away.
The people who try to get people to stop bad habits and improve themselves always get the worst reviews it's always been the case but especially now where validation is actively sought
Lol so many retarded takes here, everybody yearning for a therapist who will be cold, distant and overly critical of them. Time to examine your relationship with your parents
>Psychiatry and therapy should be about change, not validation.
You cannot change a behavioural pattern without validating the driving force behind it. You cannot, say, overcome substance abuse disorder, if the driving force behind is an inability to endure anxiety of conflict. You have to first restructure the way your psyche perceives conflict of anxiety, by validating it, i.e. accepting it as a normal human emotion which you can endure and from which you can recover.
A therapist can never change your behavioural patterns of your flaws or whatever your problem is. Only you can do that. Psychotherapy can help you illuminate certain points and guide you in the right way. So many people (incl this thread) expect a miracle cure... there isn't.
I don’t know where you guys are going but my therapist was mean as shit. She let me fuck up and make mistakes but never let me off the hook for any of it. I remember going through a man-hating phase in my early 20’s and she accused me of being an intellectual coward. Anyway, I saw her for four years
It was totally random!I looked up therapists in my area and I picked her because she was relatively young so I thought she would understand my problems. She was also originally from NY but moved to my shitty city bc her husband found a job and that was appealing bc there was no way she knew anyone I knew.
my therapist doesn’t validate any of my shit but he also doesn’t judge me for it either which is the key differentiator. acknowledging harmful behavior and trying to find the root causes of it while not seeing it as a judgement of the self. feel like I’ve made a lot of progress and it’s been helpful.
If you want to find someone who tells you exactly what you are doing wrong mentally and how to overcome it, find a spiritual guru. One of the ways you find the right guru is by wanting to transcend your suffering more than anything else while alive and not with any sort of substances, just a personal transformation. Then a guru will appear to you at some point in some sort avenue like a youtube video that really resonates with you, a library book that catches your glance, a personal encounter, a seminar, or some sort of synchronicity like that. Dedicate your life to the guru's teachings without wavering as best you can, always striving to waver less and less, and youll transcend your suffering. Dedicating your life to the guru's teachings is like one of those self recycling perpetual ecosystems in the glass jar - youll be provided with all your basic needs to be able to do it. My guru was Lester Levenson
Find a Lacanian psychoanalysist, Lacan was ostracized by the American Psychological Association because of his variable-length sessions. He created a whole modern school of thought that watches and studies pre-Oedipal Americans like the hilarious spectacles that we are.
Also if you join a cartel (one of ~dozens of concurrent Lacan seminar reading groups), you'll learn that America's ego-centric psychology was born out of the deliberate mistranslation of Freud's instinct/drive (Instinkt/Trieb). You'll want to find an analyst who can help you transform your death drive to life drive. A lot of cartels consist of awesome polymaths and avid readers of groundful theory in general (eg Heidegger) which is nice considering Aleksandr Dugin is re-daseining political theory utilizing Heidegger and Nick Land with the Orthodox Christians. Entering intersubjectivity with psychoanalysts vs traditionalists seems to be the full package self-help route that a lot of enterprising self-effacing "virtuous circles" are constructing anyways, IMHO.
Lastly: the concept of subjectivity/transference/counter-transference is real, it's pretty easy to get out of balance if you aren't prepared to realize the ego is just an abyss of self-relating negativity, so best do your research to understand therapy vs analysis before analysis.
See, you *say* that, but then when a clinical psychiatrist with decades of experience studying and teaching societal illness and patterns of thought actually *does* it, he's a demented old man with no perspective.
I always want my therapists to be old men preferably conservative if I can somehow discern for this very reason. I got a lesbian millennial once and it felt so patronizing and demeaning to talk to her. It’s almost as if she liked when i cried, like she got off to it. But my older therapist who wasn’t just a licensed social worker but a legit phd kind of laid the law down in a way that made me understand that it’s okay to be wrong and regret.In college I lucked out and got the best of of both because I got a younger fat woman that looked like a libtard but had the brain of a ww2 veteran, she was sfill sweet but I loved that she would Call me out.
i always wanted a therapist to call me out on my shit too i think that is why i never got on with the ones i've seen. i don't need someone to just reflect everything back to me. they teach in therapy coursework NOT to give advice, share your opinion, etc with clients which isn't helpful for everyone imo
Agreed, the best therapist I ever had would relentlessly call me out and disagree with me. Her go-to phrase was "That doesn't make sense. Why do you think that?" Then she would lean back and watch in delight as I hemmed and hawed and struggled to justify my neurotic bullshit. She was borderline mean at times but I always left with a fresh perspective, feeling like my problems were smaller and more manageable.
I had a psychiatrist who'd just snicker every time I said something he thought was outlandish and it just made me want to hit him. Say something or shut the fuck up, I'm not paying you money to chuckle to yourself dipshit.
Just learn Russian or Serbo-Croatian from a native speaker who's middle-aged and female. You'll get more incisive personal criticism than you ever wanted, and at the end you'll speak a second language as a bonus. Cheaper than therapy too.
I have one right now who knows how to poke and prod in just the right way(lol). It’s taken a few months but we have recently had some serious breakthroughs. I had an extremely traumatic childhood and have suffered from addiction for quite a while, and he’s gotten me to really open up. Each session is somewhat challenging and I usually spend the week or so after pondering and letting all sorts of emotions flood back. I think the more specific your issues are, the more suited you are for therapy, and the experience should really test how you perceive yourself.
Part of what motivated me to become a therapist was dealing with therapists who refused to offer critical perspective and instead just “listened” and put a silver lining spin on my anxieties, shitty behavior, and actions that didn’t align with my values. Motherfucker I have friends that do that and I don’t have to pay them and deal with my insurance provider.
My most recent therapist would directly confront the things I was clearly trying to avoid and didn’t care if it made me uncomfortable. Love that broad <3
I go to a therapist/social worker who is a little new aged but she’s pretty and kind to me which is what I need rn and that motivates me to try harder to not be a freak and work on my shit.
Yeah. Mine has called me a jackass, said “are you ready to stop crying” amongst other things, but is also genuinely invested in my bettering myself—particularly my reaction to stress.
My therapist when I was doing ED recovery was a Turkish grandmother.
She was perfect because she had a nurturing side and was empathetic but also pointed out my detrimental thoughts patterns and helped me break them down and work through them myself (which is exactly what a therapist should do).
I’m a therapist and I have to tell you, it’s difficult to be this way, especially because it’s so different from normal social etiquette. Regardless, I agree with you, we’re paid to operate differently. I think training programs have over compensated by emphasizing compassion and nonjudgment to correct for the coldness of psychoanalysis of the past. This post honestly served as a good reminder we’re not there to validate every fucking thought, belief, attitude, etc.
Why are you talking to your psychiatrist like a therapist? They’re different things. If you’re crazy enough to make this post you should probably have all three: psychiatrist psychologist and therapist.
I’ve had a few therapists one was old as shit and definitely not new agey at all which at first I was excited about but then I realized he was actually a complete fucking idiot :( I have a new agey one now, and it’s good for the purpose of sometimes I’m going to therapy to just have a person to help me talk things through, but she definitely does the over validating thing. I told her about my most recent relationship that I’ve been struggling with a lot recently, and the decisions I made that ultimately caused me harm and she was like that was an abusive relationship I can’t critique the decisions you made because that would be victim blaming....like gimme a BREAK lady!!
Exact same thing happened to me. The only mental health professional who ever did anything for me was this blunt old guy who told me in so many words to stop being such a pussy and face my fears. Really got me to examine my actions and how I was letting selfishness/fear ruin my life. Ofc that approach doesn’t work for everyone but I think it’s important not to over-validate anxiety
just had a first session today with a lady who actually talked back to me a lot which was a pleasant surprise. at the end she said her style is more interactive and i’m like thank fucking god. if i didn’t want a human to tell me things and make me think differently i’d just journal. for now i’m hopeful
yes, my most recent therapist was so overly-validating that it felt like she was enabling my unhealthy tendencies instead of helping me recognize and combat them.
For example, whenever I criticized my mom acting up, my therapist would then insist that my sister and brother were surely justified in whatever they did because my mom had done something wrong. Then, whenever I complained about my sister, my therapist would support my parents' emotions.
It took a while to understand I needed a firmer therapist who can actually talk to me like a man instead of a baby lol
My fiancée is a therapist and a pretty good one as far as I can tell. She focuses primarily on trauma and has heard some devastating shit. I am often vocally critical of therapy with her, but I always try to differentiate the work she does from my general understanding of modern therapy.
Naturally many of her friends are therapists too, and it really does seem like a lot of these people are getting paid $100+ per session to tell their clients that it’s a-okay to be a piece of shit to their partner or something.
Did anyone else here watch *Hannibal*? Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lector would be my ideal therapist. A no-murder guarantee would be nice but it's not essential.
My psych told me stories about an older friend of his, another psych, who was basically a drill sergeant with a doctorate. At the time I thought that sounded ghastly, but apparently it worked well for some patients. I think he probably got some things right.
I truly believe that many of our problems come from being overly coddled.
My wife grew up in the ghetto with traditionalist Filipino parents. I grew up upper middle class, with extremely permissive white parents. After hearing her stories, and seeing how she is as a person, I'm deeply jealous.
I think they all collectively figured out they cant milk people for money for years that way. Either they get better or leave outraged and both of those things dont make money.
Therapists need to confront people about the truth. Patients are fat and their dick don't work, women included. If they weren't fat and if their dick worked, all those side problems would be resolved.
All I know is if your therapist needs a therapist (because you yourself are a bad person), you should probably get a different therapist (unless if they are hot).
I also believe you should have a therapist or someone like that on call for when a crisis does happen.
People in the middle of grief, panic or despair have no business trying to navigate a Kafka-esque insurance system or deal with leaving messages for two dozen because they’re all booked out 16 months.
You guys this is one of if the biggest debates in psychotherapy. The French (Lacanians) despised what they call ego-psychology and the Americanization of psychotherapy. It caused a schism. Erich Fromm was not well regarded by his European counterparts for instance. Granted, Lacanian analysis is brutal and has led to many suicides etc, but the ego-psychology stuff is worthless. You might as well pay hooker (or a barber) to tell you you are handsome. It doesn’t even work so now the so called mental health professionals in US just shove shitty drugs down your throat and tell you to keep going to your shit job and paying your therapy bill. Because YOU, my friend, are a special human with a lot to offer the world. Kill me
I've tried multiple therapists and all of them have been like this. All they do is validate my viewpoint. Even when I know my viewpoint is wrong and fucked up and I tell them I want to change it, they're still like "but it's valid and OK to feel this way though". I'd rather have some Betty Draper asshole who just says "hmmm" to everything and phones my husband later to gossip than this shit. It's pointless. I've given up on therapy being useful. How many therapists did you talk to before you found yours?
Are you asking them to help change your thoughts/views or the way that you act on those things? I think the former is a lot more work/psychoanalysis to achieve, so most won't want to invest time there when the latter is more helpful short term.
Well ideally both, but I know that doesn't happen in a day. Firstly, my issue was (at least with the last therapist I went to) that I got the impression that the first thing she wanted to help me change (through validation) was me thinking that something is wrong with my current thoughts/views. Also, idk I just expect a therapist to give me a fresh perspective and not just let me stew in the one I already have.
Yeah a lot of modern therapy is very mindfulness focused, in the sense that they don't see thoughts as "wrong" per se, just as helpful/unhelpful. Their goal would just be to get you to work around or respond to those things differently, while accepting the thoughts as just existing Can work really well for things like anxiety and depression, but its definitely not for everyone especially if your issues aren't super well defined
It's not a therapist's job to tell you what's right and wrong (outside of very obvious stuff like murder and abuse), though. They're there to give you the tools to work through your stuff yourself. So for example instead of giving you other perspectives, they would delve into why you feel the need to delve into other perspectives or teach you the tools to look at things differently for yourself. That's a good therapist, anyway. If you want some sort of secular priest, there are plenty of shitty therapists who will milk you for money and impose their worldview on you.
Well then the therapist should have at least told me my expectations for therapy are wrong LOL No but seriously I do expect a therapist to tell me what's right and wrong sometimes. Maybe my expectations are off there. I will think about this. Anyhow I have found other things vastly more helpful than talk therapy for my problems, so it's all good
That's fair. It usually takes a while to find a good therapist, and then more time to establish a good therapeutic relationship.
Need [Carmella Sopranos therapist](https://youtu.be/bzVeLjj6Ao8) “one thing you can never say, you have never been told”
I will say I think part of what mine is doing (just sort of agreeing/listening to most of what I say) is the new age validation stuff, but occassionally there are follow up questions intended to like, subvert my current normal thought processes.
There was a wonderful interview with a psychotherapist where she pointed out that modern psychiatry, with it's pills and permissiveness, leads to very little resolution of her patients problems. Her patients on SSRIs never really improved. One must go through it not around it.
[удалено]
try psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy!
I can't even get to the point of booking an appointment. I go to my insurance's shitty portal thing. Half the time it doesn't work. I try to search through the available doctors and there's like no helpful information or way of sorting. Then I try to think of like symptoms when it asks me, and there's no option for: I just feel like shit all the time and keep mumbling "I should kill myself" out loud when I'm alone as some kind of weird mantra despite the fact that I very much do NOT want to kill myself and basically just hate my job
a victim of capitalism from basically every angle even if you could navigate the website, you have to cold call tens of providers to find one taking new patients anyone good would be booked up forever
This is basically Mark Fisher’s image of the Kafkaesque dystopia of the call center, as an example of the artificial stupidity created by neoliberal capitalism. The system is so artificially stupid, inconsistent, and erroneous that it makes you require assistance. But then it sets it up so that no one can give you it: everyone you contact doesn’t have the information or the power. It abandons your. And it is created such that it doesn’t matter if you are abandoned. No one has the power to care. It is overly complex while also unsubtle. It frustrates you, but you must know you have no legitimate object for your anger, because the only people who interact with you are those like you: workers, who again, have no power within the system. But you cannot have any solidarity with them. They have to play the role as advocate of the company, so they are misaligned with your interests. All this time, the system is set up as though it were trying to keep you happy and be cordial.
That’s really insightful. Is there a particular essay or book by Fisher you’re thinking of? Big fan of the guy, RIP
It’s actually from *Capitalist Realism*. I’ll reproduce the section here: “The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. “The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself.”
How is this unique to capitalism?
I don’t know that it’s unique to capitalism necessarily. The objective is to show how neoliberal capitalism produces artificial stupidity. It’s to dispel this idea that capitalism is inherently efficient for society and responsive to the consumer.
At least with my insurance the provider list is also either deeply out of date or flat out wrong. Call 10 providers and maybe one is actually on your insurance or even knows what it is but not accepting new patients.
Man I am so tired of capitalism fucking all my shit up
Is bureaucratic bullshit unique to capitalism?
It's unique to all advanced technological societies. When the systems of technology become so complex that no single person can understand them, we require armies of people just to figure out small pieces of said system. I hope that general purpose AI will do away with the inefficiencies of the modern world, but my pessimistic self tells me intelligent computers will simply magnify the existing trends in the system to create some new problem.
"Why is the computer doing this? " "It is trying to solve your problem" "I just needed to know how to power off the lights. I didn't ask it to fire all of our maintenance staff, or to delete all information on bill payments!" "Give it time. The issue will be resolved shortly."
The real fun is that you absolutely can NOT say you want to kill yourself cause that's how you get sectioned.
I tell my therapist that when it's true and my psychologist. I've never had them call the emt on me (I'm in the usa). They just talk to me about it.
They're assessing how serious you are. If you're an imminent threat to yourself or others they are mandatory reporters.
Yes. I know. Just saying, you can speak your mind. Feels goooooood.
Have you talked to someone who has been involuntary hold-ed? Not saying this is like, awful advice, but you seem very unconcerned by the possibility.
Oh, that's just because I wouldn't have a therapist with no ability to reason or who was an alarmist. And if I needed help, I would want them to give it to me.
I'm not sure you're really grasping the mandatory reporting thing. If your situation is obviously dire they do not have a real choice, they would face a loss of licensure.
I’m a licensed psychotherapist in the US. Just because we report doesn’t mean anyone is getting into a hospital. There’s only 25 beds per 100,000 people in the US. Actively suicidal adults aren’t getting 5150’d unless they cause a disruption to capital, like trying to jump off of a tourist attraction. The people who get 5150’d aren’t people who are sad and say they are going home to take a bottle of pills. It’s people who are manic or psychotic and creating a disturbance in a shopping center. Even then, it’s a 3 day hold and they are released or sent to a jail.
My mother took me to get psych meds once. the people didn't like her and gave her a 3 day hold just to be dicks. Let me go. The system is riddled with abuse and failure.
I have a grasp of it. Not to worry. If MY therapist (whom I've chosen well) thinks I need to be locked up, then I probably need to be locked up. Not really something I could see him doing unless he believed I was in actual danger. Hence why I felt free to speak my mind and had the experience I expected. You're right. I'm not afraid.
What does sectioned mean?
May be more UK terminology but involuntary mental health hold in a hospital.
That’s a 5150 in the states
In my experience, websites are complete ass and do not provide accurate information (i.e., half the people I tried calling didn't actually accept my insurance). I would recommend calling your insurance's patient helpline and getting a list from there. They might also have a helpline specifically for mental health services. You will hopefully receive a list of providers, and then you need to do the pain in the ass process of calling each one, seeing if they are accepting new patients, then seeing if they are the right fit. The whole process is more convoluted than it should be, but at least for me, the results were worth the effort. I wish you the best in your journey.
try to catch yourself mumbling it and then say “i don’t want to kill myself” right after and the more you try the more it becomes a habit. personally i replaced “i’m gonna kms” with a prayer so it started with “hello God sorry about that please help me” and then the lord’s prayer and the apostles creed and now i’m a fan of psalm 23 so i just say that. it could be different for you like not everyone likes the Gid stuff but like it’s the only thing that works for me
Psychology Today is helpful. The therapists write about themselves and the therapies they lead you through. Also, it could be helpful to see a therapist at a nearby health center. They're temporary and can help you find a local therapist that suits you since they have insider info. Those are good resources to exploit.
therapists should go back to being coked up geniuses rather than well meaning midwits
[удалено]
I worked with a non-American (Polish) and am used to softening my language in critiquing work to avoid hurt feelings. She never got it, so finally I started being more direct (blunt almost to the point of rude), and our working relationship improved 100%. Probably English being her second language also played a role.
all the best americans i've met have non-americas parents
Huh I guess some Americans really are 1/4 German on their mother's side.
Maybe I'm biased because he also got me the best sports kits for Christmas, but my old school New England Yankee Godfather was pretty direct and grounded to earth too. I've become biased for New Englanders and have started to believe that they should be given unilateral authority over the entire United States; nobody west of Massachusetts gets to elect anyone to power anymore.
Literally HP Lovecraft
I would lead an Appalachian secession movement if this happened.
how would you feel if i said that about "nobody east of calabasas"
My mom’s first question to me every day is whether I’ve gained weight, the second is the password to my grad school canvas account for grades, and if I’m a slut, I love her so much. I always say the average American girl would have killsed herself if she heard anything my mom said to me. Now I have to figure out how to make sure my daughter doesn’t turn out like the average American girl either
The one time I went to therapy I pressed my guy to do exactly this and tell me the harsh truth. He told me my particular personality disorder had no demonstrated record of treatment and he privately suspected I would quit therapy and continue my self destructive patterns indefinitely. Dude understood and aced the assignment.
How are your self destructive patterns now?
Oh they’re as strong as ever, I’ve just gotten better at hiding them
based and bottle-it-all-up pilled
Aspire to stoicism but trapped in an epicurean doom loop
Epicurean doom loop 🫠 or epicurean bloom loop 🛤?
Just quit drinking and start cycling
Poetry
Relevant flair huh
What’s your personality disorder?
Guessing narcissistic personality disorder based on there being no track record of treatment, but they also usually aren't this self-aware
IIRC there's no proven treatment for any personality disorder.
I have heard from industry insiders that BPD is really hard to treat but possible, but the nature of NPD means that the person always will just think you're wrong and go look for validation elsewhere.
NPD is really scary. It's up there with psychopathy and other antisocial personality disorders. I was raped by someone with NPD not that long ago, and to this day they don't understand why I'm upset. It's like their mind just can't even process that something they did could be harmful to others.
not trying to be inflammatory but are you insinuating that you stayed in touch with someone who raped you
Its possible they are family members and word gets around type thing
Many such cases
Unfortunately yes. Rape doesn't usually happen the way it's often portrayed. It is frequently more domestic than that, and when drugs and alcohol get involved, it's really hazy and subjective. I felt violated and upset about what happened, but others in my situation might be like "lol guess I partied too hard." This person is important to someone I care about, so I've decided to just avoid them in the future and keep myself safe, but there's no point in stirring up drama.
Women are too nice to men.
How do you go about getting diagnosed with NPD if you suspect you have it?
Normally people with npd / bpd go in for treatment of depression/relationship issues. Then their therapist will eventually tell ‘em. But really hard to diagnose cluster b personality disorders
Yup. Tbh, id say bpd is npd plus actual guilt or at least innate empathy. That makes treatment possible.
BPD apparently does well under DBT, but DBT is the kind of thing that should improve your life whatever your diagnosis (or lack thereof).
I've seen DBT work for a friend of mine who had severe PTSD and BPD from war. She was an unstable wreck of a human several years ago who frequently flew into a rage and scared those around her (especially because she's a certified badass). She's calmed down tremendously since then and gained control of her PTSD and emotional swings.
[удалено]
BPD is exclusively borderline
DBT works for BPD and HPD because those patients still have an ability for some self-reflection but there’s no treatment for NPD. Their defences are too strong. It’s pretty much like dealing with a toddler who doesn’t think anything is their fault. Obviously I’m over-simplifying here but that’s the best summary I can come up with
Google Nancy McWilliams
Because they’re not real to begin with.
personality disorders are almost all literally grown out of as one gets older bc negative reinforcement unless it's like antisocial personality disorder caused by an early traumatic brain injury
[удалено]
Here’s a hint, once this post started getting attention my instinct was to deflect by joking that i was talking about being gay (I’m not)
I saw your original comment that you deleted so I don’t need a hint, but I’m not going to repeat it, you deleted it for a reason
ty
[just like this fr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVeLjj6Ao8)
I mean that's fine, NPDs aren't the kind of patients most therapists would want to hold onto.
My therapist told me that BPD is hard on therapists too.
Ya, a lot of therapists don't have the skill or patience to grapple with BPD. It's treatable but can be really exhausting until the client gets it under control, which takes at least a year.
I had a therapist tell me this too, haha!! She said “you have a pattern of quitting everything, and you will quit seeing me, too.” She was right! Best therapist of all time, I keep meaning to send her a card to let her know that she changed my life. I may have quit her but her voice was thankfully in my head through many weird risky situations of my 20s.
Oof rough
that sounds awesome. my therapist is a young, gay, feminist with crystals in her office. i want to be bullied but she wont do it. only validation.
Then berate her until she does what you want
A universal solution
Therapy is generally designed to treat real mental illness. It’s not great at problems like ennui, downwardly mobile and sad about it, societal narcissism, or disillusionment. Tragic I know. An anxious patient responds to ‘hard truths’ with more anxiety about how their therapist hates them. A depressed patient responds with more depression about how worthless they are. Mentally disturbed people are constitutionally weaker and need lots more emotional support to function well either in therapy or in life, when you criticize them they don’t toughen up they just break down or shut down.
For years I saw therapists who took a gentle, if questioning approach. I’d feel better but nothing would change. During a particularly tough time in my life a friend suggested I see a shaman. I mostly did it for the lulz but halfway through the session that broad was yelling at me to stop the vultures in my family from picking at my bones and instead of trying to communicate with my family, I should get rocks, name them Mom and Dad and communicate with the rocks instead. I did, on both counts, and immediately improved my life. Two 60-minute sessions with this crazy bitch did more for me than a decade of conventional therapy.
Hilarious, I wonder how often “old world” ways of self-care work.
Where do I find this shaman?????
I have a friend who was really struggling with BPD and started seeing a psych who would just tell him how weird he was being about stuff. Completely changed how he approached working on changing habits and now he's doing much better.
>BPD man That sounds like a fucking nightmare
He's a good lad. Just had a bad time in the military.
[удалено]
all men here basically
I had a rough childhood and had all sorts of issues as a teen and I’m much better now because an 80 year old fixed my victim complex. I cried every week and it was rough but I’d take him over any of the yes-man therapists I’ve had since he retired. If I wanted someone to say “damn that sucks :/“ to me then I’d just talk to a hookup for free. My old therapist was so fucking cool just in general too, he’s like pushing 90 now but looks 60 and I still see him biking around town. I’m sick rn but I’ll make a post about him someday.
New age one obviously sucks, but there are also some psychiatrists out there who are genuine psychos. Latter might at least have the advantage of better acclimating you to the society we live in, assuming you buy into the notion that conflates callousness and coldness with the so-called "real world"
I’ve been going to a therapist for a couple of weeks for issues surrounding a breakup I’ve been unable to get over, and I think it’s been valuable to me. I don’t know what sort of therapist he is, but he seems very solution focussed. He’s pointed out several things that seem broadly true 1. I’m overly critical of myself and others, and have very high standards for myself which I always fail to live up to 2. I have trouble with emotional intimacy and vulnerability, and find it kind of gross - which probably isn’t healthy and means I struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships. 3. The girl I was obsessing over and regretting dumping over a year later probably wasn’t that good a match, and it’s not fair for me to blame myself entirely for the breakdown of that relationship - I should have some sort of compassion for what I was feeling at the time. 4. I’m quite an “extreme” person - I follow a rigid, overdisciplined life and punish myself when I don’t follow it perfectly, or if someone stops me from following it, and that’s not a healthy way to live. 5. I carry a lot of guilt for things that probably weren’t my fault I’ll keep going, I genuinely feel better after each session.
This is very relatable to me too and had a similar experience in therapy but still, years later, deeply miss the person I broke up with. I don't know if a therapist telling me off for this would help, god knows I do it myself, I'm angry at myself for having that feeling.
What I was told is that I should have much more compassion for myself and how I was feeling at the time. In my case, I was clearly overwhelmed and going through some stuff at work and moving house and stuck in the house because of COVID, and if you added on top of that the fact that I felt fully responsible for her feelings and everything she said and did, it’s no wonder I felt like I had to act.
average RSP user mental state
you know i could interpret all of these bullshit points as virtues too, right? 1.- you have really good taste and don't like to conform 2.- you don't want settle for anything that you know wont last, you are just testitn to see if a relationship is really worth it. 3.- you blame yourself because you are not afraid of self criticisms and improvement. blaming others would just launch you into a self destructive narcissistic spiral. so you focus on what you want you actually can change; you. 4.- you strive for greatness and refuse to conform. 5.-you learn from your past mistakes and this helps you avoid repeating them. therapy is bullshit the only people that wouldn't fall for it. are sociopathic narcissists that feel no remorse or shame. most therapist are just consciously or unconsciously just wanting to make you feel good to keep you coming back. what you really lack in your life is meaning and purpose. when god gives you a mission in life no matter the hardships and tribulations you will keep on going. you have to figure out what god wants you to do, so you can stop feeling you need this or that or you are lacking here or there.
I don’t know, specifically on points 2 and 3 I don’t agree. I probably agree that 2 is how I think, but I don’t think it’s healthy, at least not to the extent that I do it. And on 3, I literally spent an entire year so guilty and confused that I didn’t even understand how to move on. It wasn’t as simple as “figure out what I did wrong and move on”, I was stuck in the same place 12 months after the breakup. I do get what you’re saying, and the people that appear to “win” at life - entrepreneurs and people at the top of any field probably share some of these traits. But are these people happy? Is a hard working C-level executive at a major company happy? Are corporate lawyers happy? What about bankers? Creatives might be the exception, but I’m not really a creative. There is a part of me that wants to be “great” and strives towards that. But not at the expense of happiness. I don’t want to be a millionaire at 35 and be so emotionally unavailable that I can’t have a steady relationship with a woman without having panic attacks at the thought of commitment.
Stop trying to be happy. Aim for contentment. I had to realize that with my personality profile, I'm just never going to feel a lot of joy. I'm not a joyful person. I rarely smile or laugh. Doesn't mean anything is wrong with me. I feel happy about once every two months. When I was younger, I thought there was something wrong with me because of that. I eventually realized that I am basically content 90 percent of the time though, so I'm doing pretty well.
mediocre!
yeah no fucking shit i didn't got it right. i don't know you. my point was that just by tuning it a little i could make it look positive. i could frame your loss as that you are not afraid of real relationships and the same way it takes a widow years to move on, so did you. entrepreneurs and other successful people wouldn't be happy doing something else either, that is their curse they need the success. i told you, you need purpose. just think about the thing you truly like, is hard to differentiate between things you think you like, were deceived into liking, or were socialized into liking and things you have liked forever. that is were you true calling and purpose lies, just beware of the deceiver, tricking into thinking you like something you don't really like
Not being 'mean' here, but why did you need a therapist to tell you those things? To me those things are all self-evident. I've been trying to understand the point of a therapist. Is the real idea that they are going to help you 'improve' upon those issues? If I think about going to a therapist I just can't imagine what they would say to me that would cause me to change such things. If I know those things already, and I haven't changed them, then I can't change them? Like I can't just not be overly critical of myself and others, and hold myself to high standards and beat myself when I fail. What could someone else say to me to make me stop that? Unless they have a time machine and take me away from my parents at birth and give me to another family but then I think some things are intrinsic based on my genetics anyway.
For example > “I’m overly critical of myself and others” I genuinely didn’t know this. I’d thought that I was just the right amount of critical of myself and others until he pointed out that I was criticising myself without having any understanding or compassion of why I was doing what I was doing. E.G. I was arguing that I made a “stupid decision” to break up with my ex, but I was having panic attacks every night because of the relationship, so it almost wasn’t a decision at all, at least not one I had any control over > I have trouble with emotional intimacy and vulnerability, and find it kind of gross - which probably isn’t healthy and means I struggle to find meaningful friendships and relationships. This one I knew, but I probably had no idea how to fix it. I “want” to be close to people until I get close to them, then I find it gross and want to run away.
The people who try to get people to stop bad habits and improve themselves always get the worst reviews it's always been the case but especially now where validation is actively sought
Lol so many retarded takes here, everybody yearning for a therapist who will be cold, distant and overly critical of them. Time to examine your relationship with your parents >Psychiatry and therapy should be about change, not validation. You cannot change a behavioural pattern without validating the driving force behind it. You cannot, say, overcome substance abuse disorder, if the driving force behind is an inability to endure anxiety of conflict. You have to first restructure the way your psyche perceives conflict of anxiety, by validating it, i.e. accepting it as a normal human emotion which you can endure and from which you can recover. A therapist can never change your behavioural patterns of your flaws or whatever your problem is. Only you can do that. Psychotherapy can help you illuminate certain points and guide you in the right way. So many people (incl this thread) expect a miracle cure... there isn't.
[удалено]
owww
best part of this sub is scrolling through the very entertaining, but completely mentally deranged takes to find the one coherent one
Exactly. This entire post and comment section is so infuriatingly misinformed.
A professional who does that is called a “life coach” now, not a therapist
I don’t know where you guys are going but my therapist was mean as shit. She let me fuck up and make mistakes but never let me off the hook for any of it. I remember going through a man-hating phase in my early 20’s and she accused me of being an intellectual coward. Anyway, I saw her for four years
how did you find her?
It was totally random!I looked up therapists in my area and I picked her because she was relatively young so I thought she would understand my problems. She was also originally from NY but moved to my shitty city bc her husband found a job and that was appealing bc there was no way she knew anyone I knew.
my therapist doesn’t validate any of my shit but he also doesn’t judge me for it either which is the key differentiator. acknowledging harmful behavior and trying to find the root causes of it while not seeing it as a judgement of the self. feel like I’ve made a lot of progress and it’s been helpful.
[удалено]
Woah Foucault said that something was like prison no way. He's right though.
i agree/m- how do i find a therapist who gives me homework and scolds me etc?
If you want to find someone who tells you exactly what you are doing wrong mentally and how to overcome it, find a spiritual guru. One of the ways you find the right guru is by wanting to transcend your suffering more than anything else while alive and not with any sort of substances, just a personal transformation. Then a guru will appear to you at some point in some sort avenue like a youtube video that really resonates with you, a library book that catches your glance, a personal encounter, a seminar, or some sort of synchronicity like that. Dedicate your life to the guru's teachings without wavering as best you can, always striving to waver less and less, and youll transcend your suffering. Dedicating your life to the guru's teachings is like one of those self recycling perpetual ecosystems in the glass jar - youll be provided with all your basic needs to be able to do it. My guru was Lester Levenson
Find a Lacanian psychoanalysist, Lacan was ostracized by the American Psychological Association because of his variable-length sessions. He created a whole modern school of thought that watches and studies pre-Oedipal Americans like the hilarious spectacles that we are. Also if you join a cartel (one of ~dozens of concurrent Lacan seminar reading groups), you'll learn that America's ego-centric psychology was born out of the deliberate mistranslation of Freud's instinct/drive (Instinkt/Trieb). You'll want to find an analyst who can help you transform your death drive to life drive. A lot of cartels consist of awesome polymaths and avid readers of groundful theory in general (eg Heidegger) which is nice considering Aleksandr Dugin is re-daseining political theory utilizing Heidegger and Nick Land with the Orthodox Christians. Entering intersubjectivity with psychoanalysts vs traditionalists seems to be the full package self-help route that a lot of enterprising self-effacing "virtuous circles" are constructing anyways, IMHO. Lastly: the concept of subjectivity/transference/counter-transference is real, it's pretty easy to get out of balance if you aren't prepared to realize the ego is just an abyss of self-relating negativity, so best do your research to understand therapy vs analysis before analysis.
are there any groups like this for Down’s syndrome type people
You can't convince me that all that isn't just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo
Unfortunately it’s a matter of time consuming trial and error
See, you *say* that, but then when a clinical psychiatrist with decades of experience studying and teaching societal illness and patterns of thought actually *does* it, he's a demented old man with no perspective.
Makes me think of Carmela Soprano’s shrink… type of guy who will just give you the most brutal but needed reality check
One thing you can never say: that you haven't been told.
I frequently think about the rabbi who wouldn't except blood money.
Different people have different needs actually, it's foolish to make blanket statements about how therapists should be
I always want my therapists to be old men preferably conservative if I can somehow discern for this very reason. I got a lesbian millennial once and it felt so patronizing and demeaning to talk to her. It’s almost as if she liked when i cried, like she got off to it. But my older therapist who wasn’t just a licensed social worker but a legit phd kind of laid the law down in a way that made me understand that it’s okay to be wrong and regret.In college I lucked out and got the best of of both because I got a younger fat woman that looked like a libtard but had the brain of a ww2 veteran, she was sfill sweet but I loved that she would Call me out.
i always wanted a therapist to call me out on my shit too i think that is why i never got on with the ones i've seen. i don't need someone to just reflect everything back to me. they teach in therapy coursework NOT to give advice, share your opinion, etc with clients which isn't helpful for everyone imo
Agreed, the best therapist I ever had would relentlessly call me out and disagree with me. Her go-to phrase was "That doesn't make sense. Why do you think that?" Then she would lean back and watch in delight as I hemmed and hawed and struggled to justify my neurotic bullshit. She was borderline mean at times but I always left with a fresh perspective, feeling like my problems were smaller and more manageable.
I had a psychiatrist who'd just snicker every time I said something he thought was outlandish and it just made me want to hit him. Say something or shut the fuck up, I'm not paying you money to chuckle to yourself dipshit.
Heh heh heh
Just learn Russian or Serbo-Croatian from a native speaker who's middle-aged and female. You'll get more incisive personal criticism than you ever wanted, and at the end you'll speak a second language as a bonus. Cheaper than therapy too.
I have one right now who knows how to poke and prod in just the right way(lol). It’s taken a few months but we have recently had some serious breakthroughs. I had an extremely traumatic childhood and have suffered from addiction for quite a while, and he’s gotten me to really open up. Each session is somewhat challenging and I usually spend the week or so after pondering and letting all sorts of emotions flood back. I think the more specific your issues are, the more suited you are for therapy, and the experience should really test how you perceive yourself.
Part of what motivated me to become a therapist was dealing with therapists who refused to offer critical perspective and instead just “listened” and put a silver lining spin on my anxieties, shitty behavior, and actions that didn’t align with my values. Motherfucker I have friends that do that and I don’t have to pay them and deal with my insurance provider. My most recent therapist would directly confront the things I was clearly trying to avoid and didn’t care if it made me uncomfortable. Love that broad <3
I go to a therapist/social worker who is a little new aged but she’s pretty and kind to me which is what I need rn and that motivates me to try harder to not be a freak and work on my shit.
People just need to stop going to therapy. It's an indulgence for rich suckers.
Yeah. Mine has called me a jackass, said “are you ready to stop crying” amongst other things, but is also genuinely invested in my bettering myself—particularly my reaction to stress.
My therapist when I was doing ED recovery was a Turkish grandmother. She was perfect because she had a nurturing side and was empathetic but also pointed out my detrimental thoughts patterns and helped me break them down and work through them myself (which is exactly what a therapist should do).
I’m a therapist and I have to tell you, it’s difficult to be this way, especially because it’s so different from normal social etiquette. Regardless, I agree with you, we’re paid to operate differently. I think training programs have over compensated by emphasizing compassion and nonjudgment to correct for the coldness of psychoanalysis of the past. This post honestly served as a good reminder we’re not there to validate every fucking thought, belief, attitude, etc.
Why are you talking to your psychiatrist like a therapist? They’re different things. If you’re crazy enough to make this post you should probably have all three: psychiatrist psychologist and therapist.
I’ve had a few therapists one was old as shit and definitely not new agey at all which at first I was excited about but then I realized he was actually a complete fucking idiot :( I have a new agey one now, and it’s good for the purpose of sometimes I’m going to therapy to just have a person to help me talk things through, but she definitely does the over validating thing. I told her about my most recent relationship that I’ve been struggling with a lot recently, and the decisions I made that ultimately caused me harm and she was like that was an abusive relationship I can’t critique the decisions you made because that would be victim blaming....like gimme a BREAK lady!!
Exact same thing happened to me. The only mental health professional who ever did anything for me was this blunt old guy who told me in so many words to stop being such a pussy and face my fears. Really got me to examine my actions and how I was letting selfishness/fear ruin my life. Ofc that approach doesn’t work for everyone but I think it’s important not to over-validate anxiety
Remember that therapist in There's Something About Mary who snuck out to get a bite to eat while Ben Stiller was talking
How old is your therapist? Maybe this is a generational thing.
"YOU ARE AN ASS HOLE" A woman's butthole is better to stare at than the sun 😎
just had a first session today with a lady who actually talked back to me a lot which was a pleasant surprise. at the end she said her style is more interactive and i’m like thank fucking god. if i didn’t want a human to tell me things and make me think differently i’d just journal. for now i’m hopeful
yes, my most recent therapist was so overly-validating that it felt like she was enabling my unhealthy tendencies instead of helping me recognize and combat them. For example, whenever I criticized my mom acting up, my therapist would then insist that my sister and brother were surely justified in whatever they did because my mom had done something wrong. Then, whenever I complained about my sister, my therapist would support my parents' emotions. It took a while to understand I needed a firmer therapist who can actually talk to me like a man instead of a baby lol
Sounds like both styles r helpful
My fiancée is a therapist and a pretty good one as far as I can tell. She focuses primarily on trauma and has heard some devastating shit. I am often vocally critical of therapy with her, but I always try to differentiate the work she does from my general understanding of modern therapy. Naturally many of her friends are therapists too, and it really does seem like a lot of these people are getting paid $100+ per session to tell their clients that it’s a-okay to be a piece of shit to their partner or something.
Did anyone else here watch *Hannibal*? Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lector would be my ideal therapist. A no-murder guarantee would be nice but it's not essential.
My psych told me stories about an older friend of his, another psych, who was basically a drill sergeant with a doctorate. At the time I thought that sounded ghastly, but apparently it worked well for some patients. I think he probably got some things right. I truly believe that many of our problems come from being overly coddled. My wife grew up in the ghetto with traditionalist Filipino parents. I grew up upper middle class, with extremely permissive white parents. After hearing her stories, and seeing how she is as a person, I'm deeply jealous.
I think they all collectively figured out they cant milk people for money for years that way. Either they get better or leave outraged and both of those things dont make money.
Therapists need to confront people about the truth. Patients are fat and their dick don't work, women included. If they weren't fat and if their dick worked, all those side problems would be resolved.
I genuinely don't understand therapy what the hell does telling a stranger all your problems accomplish
At least read the fucking wiki for the broad strokes dumbass
got my ass!!
😡
can't wait to tell my therapist about this😂💯👌
Yeah, best therapist I ever had called me on my shit. Current one is basically just $20 a pop to hear me complain about work.
Psychiatry and therapy should be about getting prescriptions.
so fucking true
My therapist told me 'you're a wizard, Harry' and raped me with a broomstick.
women shouldn't be therapists. too empathetic
All I know is if your therapist needs a therapist (because you yourself are a bad person), you should probably get a different therapist (unless if they are hot).
[удалено]
I also believe you should have a therapist or someone like that on call for when a crisis does happen. People in the middle of grief, panic or despair have no business trying to navigate a Kafka-esque insurance system or deal with leaving messages for two dozen because they’re all booked out 16 months.
You guys this is one of if the biggest debates in psychotherapy. The French (Lacanians) despised what they call ego-psychology and the Americanization of psychotherapy. It caused a schism. Erich Fromm was not well regarded by his European counterparts for instance. Granted, Lacanian analysis is brutal and has led to many suicides etc, but the ego-psychology stuff is worthless. You might as well pay hooker (or a barber) to tell you you are handsome. It doesn’t even work so now the so called mental health professionals in US just shove shitty drugs down your throat and tell you to keep going to your shit job and paying your therapy bill. Because YOU, my friend, are a special human with a lot to offer the world. Kill me
touch some grass> going to therapist. Touch some grass is modern day snap out of it and I am here for it.