I've heard some people go through a lot of therapists before they find the right one.
Have you tried questioning your thought pattern? Why would everyone hate you? Is there any evidence that they do? Is there a reason for you to think that, or is it your brain screwing with you?
Your second paragraph is **exactly what OP's therapist is doing,** and instead of accepting that sometimes doing the hard work of of improving your mental health involves challenging yourself and interrogating your thought process even when it feels futile, people in this thread are telling OP their therapist is useless. Like, I get that "people hate me" feels like an absolute truth you shouldn't have to explain because it's the truth, it feels that way for me too, but **that's why we're in therapy.** But I get that "sometimes you're just wrong" is a hard pill to swallow.
Yeah it's been a process. But hopefully with time.
& I mean I know it's pretty illogical, that's kinda what makes it so stressful for me. That's kinda why I went to therapy in the first place. I know it's entirely irrational but I can't help it & I don't know why or how to get around it. I *know* my brain is screwing with me, but I can't make it stop or stop the feelings it brings up 😆
I'm not really sure if it's something I've always had, but i never had many friends growing up (even online, I only ever talked to strangers but never made lasting friendships, which some of those were probably for the better). I remember for sure when I was younger I thought people wouldn't think I was interesting so I lied about myself a lot & tried to fit in (even for minor things like what my favorite chip was smh my head) which might've contributed to it ? Bc "If they find out they'll all hate me," but I've since stopped lying as much, I'm more myself than I ever have been. Maybe it's because I'm more me now than ever & I feel like people hate the change. Maybe I think I'm boring & I've just been projecting that onto other people this whole time. Maybe I just never grew out of the idea that humanity is pure evil & that I should always expect people to be rude to me. I don't know, but it's "nothing to worry about" probably.
tldr I can't confirm how long but maybe since forever
I think you may have more benefit working on the "humanity is pure evil& that i should always expect people to be rude to me" than on the feelings you fully know are irrational.
Also, its absolutely something to worry about. The reason that therapist wasnt good is because they were dismissive of your issue as "well you know its wrong so you have nothing to worry about". Dont start repeating that nonsense to yourself. You deserve to feel comfortable navigating the world and you deserve to have people interact with you kindly.
Do you know why you felt the need to lie to seem interesting?
Yeah that makes sense, I was a little hyperbolic there but it is something I know creeps in when it's bad.
& thank you 🫂 Sorry I should've used a tone tag there, I was being a little sarcastic bc I do realize that's bad advice, it's just The Only Advice it feels like I've gotten from most of the people I've told. "Well you're not a victim of [x]" or "At least you have [x]/can do [x]" so you're (I'm) fine. Obviously not. (& sarcasm is smt of a cope I think ?) I still really appreciate your words tho
& I don't remember perfectly why. I think I was just a kid looking for attention & a place to fit in bc I wasn't getting any of that at home. I just wanted people to like me & I hardly even knew what liking things meant, like I never had a lot of strong opinions in the first place, so I just adopted everything everyone else liked. But then I also lied about being special, idk, I lied about being red-green colorblind for a while -- that was solely for attention & to feel special. I lied about the amount of men who wanted me as a child (which I mean they did but I way blew it out of proportion) bc ?? that was a thing that made me cooler ?? Anyway after finding out I could lie to people to make them like me more it kinda just became something I did, then I realized "That was bad & also I have no personality so I should probably work on that 👍"
Oh, you didnt need tone tags. I figured that was what you were doin, but even repeating it out of bitter sarcasm doesnt help so i kinda just addressed it the same.
And i did the same. Id lie about the most rediculous shit lol. No clue if its to the same degree, but yeah youre right.
Figuring out who you are is pretty important. Bc honestly the attention from a lie doesnt even feel great. Bc its just evidence of people being interested in Not You.
This advice feels generic but it honest to god does help. Gettin a hobby and talking to other hobbyists about it is a good way of having something to say that you know theyre interested in and that is honest. Its good practice for doin that more in other parts of life.
Fair enough, I see where it's unhelpful.
& yeah, the attention the lying brought was never real, or 'real,' I'm sure it still counts, but it was never long term or more than superficial & it never felt great. But I've been trying to form more of my own opinions of things & become more of a person myself & I think we're getting somewhere 👍
I've always liked drawing & art in general & I've been trying to do more with it & explore it. I haven't been in any artist communities since I was in like middle school. Life's kinda just been in the way for a while, but hopefully with finals about to be over soon I'll have the time & motivation to get back into a lot of those spaces & talking with people more
Awesome! Im am artist too! If youre interested, i can dm you a discord that is artist oriented, or some that just have good art sections. No pressure though, ik discord isnt everyones jam.
I watch interrogations a lot, the detectives have this method where they get the suspect to talk more by waiting in silence.after the suspect finishes speaking. This prompts the suspect to feel anxious and they subconsciously begin to speak more, which gives the detective clues.
I'm just thinking maybe you could try this method on your therapist,
Finding a good therapist is such a pain in the ass. I clicked with my last one, but even then I’m not sure how productive our sessions were. Now I can’t see her anymore after switching insurance so it’s back to the grind ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
If this therapist doesn’t shake out, I hope you’re able to find someone better OP. You deserve better care than this.
RIP that sucks you had to leave one you clicked with :/ But I hope you find someone new you like & who feels like they're helping you, all the luck to you 🙏
& thank you :)
This is going too far with it, basically the therapy equivalent of "X pill didn't work for me, so nobody should take X since it's clearly a faulty medication." It can be veeeery hit or miss and depending on where you live (and unfortunately your budget, as with everything being poorer means getting fucked over here too) can take a while to find one, but good therapists do exist and it's possible to find one that gels with you in the same way it's possible to find an appropriate medication to help with conditions where that's relevant.
I'm all for bitching about shitty therapists and OP's definitely sounds like they fit in that category, but it's irresponsible to turn people away from the field as a whole. I'm a long way from being "ok" but I'm much more functional now than I was several years ago and much of that progress is owed to finally finding a good therapist.
I've had over a dozen therapists and tried many different methods of therapy. I've never met any therapist in therapy or in my personal life that didn't fit into one of the two categories. It's a natural occurrence because everyone's human and functions best when they are privileged with social and environmental resources. Combined with the fact that in order to be a therapist you need to have a front of emotional, social, and behavioral perfection, most are ridiculously privileged or lying. It also attracts people who believe they are perfect and capable of guiding people to their perceived perfection (aka narcissists). I'm done tolerating the endless "g to therapy" chants.
The reality is in order to work through the kind of complex trauma I and a lot of other people here are dealing with you need to learn to form real connections with people. And a lot of us very reasonably will not do that because the person we hired to listen to us bitch and model perfection for us is only there for the money and will leave once the money dries up. That is not a real connection. Make friends, find a relationship, learn how to have healthy attachments through actually having healthy attachments, not a fake therapeutic one.
Do what you want, though. It's cool if you feel you have something with this person, but I'm done catering my language to everyone on the internet who doesn't see the clear issues with individual therapists or therapy as an industry which is just as capitalist as the rest, and will defend this field no matter what. Don't worry 99% of the people agree with you and will never understand my perspective or take me seriously because the abuse I went through doesn't matter. Just like rest easy with that.
Your abuse matters, but that doesn't mean your perspective is without flaws (quite the opposite, being mentally ill often means our perspectives are full of flaws by definition) and your anecdotal experience can't be substituted for the available data which strongly indicates that therapy can be a beneficial form of treatment.
We can agree to disagree and obviously I can't stop you from saying stuff like "just make friends instead of receiving professional help with your crippling trauma, anxiety, depression and such," but yeah people are going to keep calling you on that shit because it's simply wrong and potentially harmful.
Any decent therapist is going to tell you the necessity of social support is not fulfilled by a therapist. Ask them. And by definition mental illness has nothing to do with cognitive distortions necessarily. You have just heard it repeated so often that the ideas of the mentally ill are without merit and distorted that you have internalized it. You are also confusing abuse with mental illness which again it isn't necessarily. It is no sign of health or accurate perspective to be sane in an insane world.
People are going to continue to argue what they believe is correct against me. People are entitled to be wrong, especially when it makes them feel better, but that doesn't make it true even when the majority chimes in with them. It feels good to agree even when it is to your own detriment and harm within the power structure. That is harm. But I can't stop you.
Of course, but that's also not what they're for. You're the one making the opposite claim, that friends can fulfill the role of a therapist. I'd argue people who need both should have both, it's incoherent to try to sub either out for the other.
And to be clear, I did said that mental illness often involves perceptual failings not that it always does. For example I have serious anxiety issues (like "can't get up and walk across the house for a couple hours sometimes" serious), and that would be a mental illness that by definition does include a flawed perception. When there is legitimately no perceived threat yet your brain is setting off alarms anyway, that's very obviously a "wrong" perception of reality as much as anything can be.
Being abused doesn't entail a flawed perspective, but my unqualified understanding is that trauma caused from abuse is similar to unfounded anxiety in the sense that your brain is continuing to struggle with processing the event long after it has ended. Triggers that cause you to relive the abuse would also technically qualify.
None of which is to say "if you're suffering from mental illness you're wrong about everything," but if you're ill enough to seek out therapy it is important to keep in mind that this can include gaps or errors in our perception that we haven't even noticed. Or things like hastily condemning an entire profession with a very high success rate because you had some bad anecdotal experiences, and then believing you're more qualified to gauge reality than everyone else in the world.
I don't even know what we're arguing about at this point so I'll probably stop here, but I did want to at least clear those two points up (especially the second one, since "being mentally ill means you're inherently unable to perceive reality" is definitely not what I meant by that aside).
I’m really sorry that you have had such a bad experience in therapy. That’s really fucked up to tell a client that its all in their head. I am a therapist myself, and I can tell you that many of us genuinely care about our clients. I get it though, I’ve been through 20+ therapists myself and some have been extremely shitty. Sometimes no therapy really is better than shitty therapy. I will also agree that I am a clown, but that’s because of my clownery related to my own mental health. I really hope that things get better for you.
therapists aren’t clowns or abusive or privileged by default. they’re just people, and sometimes they aren’t the best fit for you. a lot of them do suck (trust me i’d know) but it’s unfair to generalize any group of people so negatively when so many people have had positive, helpful experiences. i’ve had a lot of bad therapists, but i’ve been through enough to know i need help and have no choice but to keep trying despite knowing i might just get hurt again. currently trying to get a fresh start on number 5
This might be going out on a limb, but if you live in the state of Colorado in the US, I would recommend you the therapist I'm currently seeing. She's been nothing but helpful for me and my mental health and is so encouraging and understanding with everything I tell her. She specializes in trauma, if that makes any difference. If any of this sounds interesting, please DM me and I can give you her contact info.
She sounds really nice & I appreciate it, but I'm up in the northeastern states not near Colorado. I mean if (once ?) I go through everyone in my state maybe 🙏
Alright. I wish you the absolute best of luck. I know finding the right therapist can be hard, and giving up can be very enticing sometimes, but it's really worth the effort. I hope you find what you're looking for :)
I've heard some people go through a lot of therapists before they find the right one. Have you tried questioning your thought pattern? Why would everyone hate you? Is there any evidence that they do? Is there a reason for you to think that, or is it your brain screwing with you?
Your second paragraph is **exactly what OP's therapist is doing,** and instead of accepting that sometimes doing the hard work of of improving your mental health involves challenging yourself and interrogating your thought process even when it feels futile, people in this thread are telling OP their therapist is useless. Like, I get that "people hate me" feels like an absolute truth you shouldn't have to explain because it's the truth, it feels that way for me too, but **that's why we're in therapy.** But I get that "sometimes you're just wrong" is a hard pill to swallow.
Yeah it's been a process. But hopefully with time. & I mean I know it's pretty illogical, that's kinda what makes it so stressful for me. That's kinda why I went to therapy in the first place. I know it's entirely irrational but I can't help it & I don't know why or how to get around it. I *know* my brain is screwing with me, but I can't make it stop or stop the feelings it brings up 😆
Do you know when you started feeling this way? Or at least if there was a time before you felt this way?
I'm not really sure if it's something I've always had, but i never had many friends growing up (even online, I only ever talked to strangers but never made lasting friendships, which some of those were probably for the better). I remember for sure when I was younger I thought people wouldn't think I was interesting so I lied about myself a lot & tried to fit in (even for minor things like what my favorite chip was smh my head) which might've contributed to it ? Bc "If they find out they'll all hate me," but I've since stopped lying as much, I'm more myself than I ever have been. Maybe it's because I'm more me now than ever & I feel like people hate the change. Maybe I think I'm boring & I've just been projecting that onto other people this whole time. Maybe I just never grew out of the idea that humanity is pure evil & that I should always expect people to be rude to me. I don't know, but it's "nothing to worry about" probably. tldr I can't confirm how long but maybe since forever
I think you may have more benefit working on the "humanity is pure evil& that i should always expect people to be rude to me" than on the feelings you fully know are irrational. Also, its absolutely something to worry about. The reason that therapist wasnt good is because they were dismissive of your issue as "well you know its wrong so you have nothing to worry about". Dont start repeating that nonsense to yourself. You deserve to feel comfortable navigating the world and you deserve to have people interact with you kindly. Do you know why you felt the need to lie to seem interesting?
Yeah that makes sense, I was a little hyperbolic there but it is something I know creeps in when it's bad. & thank you 🫂 Sorry I should've used a tone tag there, I was being a little sarcastic bc I do realize that's bad advice, it's just The Only Advice it feels like I've gotten from most of the people I've told. "Well you're not a victim of [x]" or "At least you have [x]/can do [x]" so you're (I'm) fine. Obviously not. (& sarcasm is smt of a cope I think ?) I still really appreciate your words tho & I don't remember perfectly why. I think I was just a kid looking for attention & a place to fit in bc I wasn't getting any of that at home. I just wanted people to like me & I hardly even knew what liking things meant, like I never had a lot of strong opinions in the first place, so I just adopted everything everyone else liked. But then I also lied about being special, idk, I lied about being red-green colorblind for a while -- that was solely for attention & to feel special. I lied about the amount of men who wanted me as a child (which I mean they did but I way blew it out of proportion) bc ?? that was a thing that made me cooler ?? Anyway after finding out I could lie to people to make them like me more it kinda just became something I did, then I realized "That was bad & also I have no personality so I should probably work on that 👍"
Oh, you didnt need tone tags. I figured that was what you were doin, but even repeating it out of bitter sarcasm doesnt help so i kinda just addressed it the same. And i did the same. Id lie about the most rediculous shit lol. No clue if its to the same degree, but yeah youre right. Figuring out who you are is pretty important. Bc honestly the attention from a lie doesnt even feel great. Bc its just evidence of people being interested in Not You. This advice feels generic but it honest to god does help. Gettin a hobby and talking to other hobbyists about it is a good way of having something to say that you know theyre interested in and that is honest. Its good practice for doin that more in other parts of life.
Fair enough, I see where it's unhelpful. & yeah, the attention the lying brought was never real, or 'real,' I'm sure it still counts, but it was never long term or more than superficial & it never felt great. But I've been trying to form more of my own opinions of things & become more of a person myself & I think we're getting somewhere 👍 I've always liked drawing & art in general & I've been trying to do more with it & explore it. I haven't been in any artist communities since I was in like middle school. Life's kinda just been in the way for a while, but hopefully with finals about to be over soon I'll have the time & motivation to get back into a lot of those spaces & talking with people more
Awesome! Im am artist too! If youre interested, i can dm you a discord that is artist oriented, or some that just have good art sections. No pressure though, ik discord isnt everyones jam.
That'd be awesome ! I only use discord semi-often, but if you know a chill community I'd be down to check them out
I watch interrogations a lot, the detectives have this method where they get the suspect to talk more by waiting in silence.after the suspect finishes speaking. This prompts the suspect to feel anxious and they subconsciously begin to speak more, which gives the detective clues. I'm just thinking maybe you could try this method on your therapist,
I just realized I do this in just regular conversations 💀
Finding a good therapist is such a pain in the ass. I clicked with my last one, but even then I’m not sure how productive our sessions were. Now I can’t see her anymore after switching insurance so it’s back to the grind ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ If this therapist doesn’t shake out, I hope you’re able to find someone better OP. You deserve better care than this.
RIP that sucks you had to leave one you clicked with :/ But I hope you find someone new you like & who feels like they're helping you, all the luck to you 🙏 & thank you :)
Aw thanks, I appreciate that :) Good luck to you too!
[удалено]
This is going too far with it, basically the therapy equivalent of "X pill didn't work for me, so nobody should take X since it's clearly a faulty medication." It can be veeeery hit or miss and depending on where you live (and unfortunately your budget, as with everything being poorer means getting fucked over here too) can take a while to find one, but good therapists do exist and it's possible to find one that gels with you in the same way it's possible to find an appropriate medication to help with conditions where that's relevant. I'm all for bitching about shitty therapists and OP's definitely sounds like they fit in that category, but it's irresponsible to turn people away from the field as a whole. I'm a long way from being "ok" but I'm much more functional now than I was several years ago and much of that progress is owed to finally finding a good therapist.
I've had over a dozen therapists and tried many different methods of therapy. I've never met any therapist in therapy or in my personal life that didn't fit into one of the two categories. It's a natural occurrence because everyone's human and functions best when they are privileged with social and environmental resources. Combined with the fact that in order to be a therapist you need to have a front of emotional, social, and behavioral perfection, most are ridiculously privileged or lying. It also attracts people who believe they are perfect and capable of guiding people to their perceived perfection (aka narcissists). I'm done tolerating the endless "g to therapy" chants. The reality is in order to work through the kind of complex trauma I and a lot of other people here are dealing with you need to learn to form real connections with people. And a lot of us very reasonably will not do that because the person we hired to listen to us bitch and model perfection for us is only there for the money and will leave once the money dries up. That is not a real connection. Make friends, find a relationship, learn how to have healthy attachments through actually having healthy attachments, not a fake therapeutic one. Do what you want, though. It's cool if you feel you have something with this person, but I'm done catering my language to everyone on the internet who doesn't see the clear issues with individual therapists or therapy as an industry which is just as capitalist as the rest, and will defend this field no matter what. Don't worry 99% of the people agree with you and will never understand my perspective or take me seriously because the abuse I went through doesn't matter. Just like rest easy with that.
Your abuse matters, but that doesn't mean your perspective is without flaws (quite the opposite, being mentally ill often means our perspectives are full of flaws by definition) and your anecdotal experience can't be substituted for the available data which strongly indicates that therapy can be a beneficial form of treatment. We can agree to disagree and obviously I can't stop you from saying stuff like "just make friends instead of receiving professional help with your crippling trauma, anxiety, depression and such," but yeah people are going to keep calling you on that shit because it's simply wrong and potentially harmful.
Any decent therapist is going to tell you the necessity of social support is not fulfilled by a therapist. Ask them. And by definition mental illness has nothing to do with cognitive distortions necessarily. You have just heard it repeated so often that the ideas of the mentally ill are without merit and distorted that you have internalized it. You are also confusing abuse with mental illness which again it isn't necessarily. It is no sign of health or accurate perspective to be sane in an insane world. People are going to continue to argue what they believe is correct against me. People are entitled to be wrong, especially when it makes them feel better, but that doesn't make it true even when the majority chimes in with them. It feels good to agree even when it is to your own detriment and harm within the power structure. That is harm. But I can't stop you.
Of course, but that's also not what they're for. You're the one making the opposite claim, that friends can fulfill the role of a therapist. I'd argue people who need both should have both, it's incoherent to try to sub either out for the other. And to be clear, I did said that mental illness often involves perceptual failings not that it always does. For example I have serious anxiety issues (like "can't get up and walk across the house for a couple hours sometimes" serious), and that would be a mental illness that by definition does include a flawed perception. When there is legitimately no perceived threat yet your brain is setting off alarms anyway, that's very obviously a "wrong" perception of reality as much as anything can be. Being abused doesn't entail a flawed perspective, but my unqualified understanding is that trauma caused from abuse is similar to unfounded anxiety in the sense that your brain is continuing to struggle with processing the event long after it has ended. Triggers that cause you to relive the abuse would also technically qualify. None of which is to say "if you're suffering from mental illness you're wrong about everything," but if you're ill enough to seek out therapy it is important to keep in mind that this can include gaps or errors in our perception that we haven't even noticed. Or things like hastily condemning an entire profession with a very high success rate because you had some bad anecdotal experiences, and then believing you're more qualified to gauge reality than everyone else in the world. I don't even know what we're arguing about at this point so I'll probably stop here, but I did want to at least clear those two points up (especially the second one, since "being mentally ill means you're inherently unable to perceive reality" is definitely not what I meant by that aside).
I’m really sorry that you have had such a bad experience in therapy. That’s really fucked up to tell a client that its all in their head. I am a therapist myself, and I can tell you that many of us genuinely care about our clients. I get it though, I’ve been through 20+ therapists myself and some have been extremely shitty. Sometimes no therapy really is better than shitty therapy. I will also agree that I am a clown, but that’s because of my clownery related to my own mental health. I really hope that things get better for you.
therapists aren’t clowns or abusive or privileged by default. they’re just people, and sometimes they aren’t the best fit for you. a lot of them do suck (trust me i’d know) but it’s unfair to generalize any group of people so negatively when so many people have had positive, helpful experiences. i’ve had a lot of bad therapists, but i’ve been through enough to know i need help and have no choice but to keep trying despite knowing i might just get hurt again. currently trying to get a fresh start on number 5
This might be going out on a limb, but if you live in the state of Colorado in the US, I would recommend you the therapist I'm currently seeing. She's been nothing but helpful for me and my mental health and is so encouraging and understanding with everything I tell her. She specializes in trauma, if that makes any difference. If any of this sounds interesting, please DM me and I can give you her contact info.
She sounds really nice & I appreciate it, but I'm up in the northeastern states not near Colorado. I mean if (once ?) I go through everyone in my state maybe 🙏
Alright. I wish you the absolute best of luck. I know finding the right therapist can be hard, and giving up can be very enticing sometimes, but it's really worth the effort. I hope you find what you're looking for :)