[ps-med]

Does anyone else feel like all but about 5 minutes of your therapy session is just advise that you could find in any womens magazine??

I was at my weekly therapy session last week and was complaining about a new symptom (waking in the middle of the night and having just lousy sleep). There were a few deep thoughts and moments of insight, but there was also the "stop drinking coffee", "try to relax", etc. Maybe I am being too critical, maybe I am projecting, but it seems that the obvious is not getting to the core of my depression/anxiety issues.

Do most of you that are talking to a Psychologist feel like you get your money's worth out of each session?

Mark

[MadRiverTurtle]

I had someone like that and wasted so much time and money with her. She was awful, just awful. Our sessions were full of crap like that. And that is bad, harmful therapy.

A therapist isn't there for tidbits of advice or to help problem solve like that. IMHO, the mark of a good therapist is someone that can take in what you're saying and be able to reiterate it back to you in a way that provides you with insight into yourself. They're there to help you explore and resolve enduring and deeply rooted sources of conflict. Sounds like seeing your therapist is like having coffee with a close girlfriend- someone that doesn't claim to be a professional. I hope you can find someone useful :).

[Au_Hunter]

Well, I suppose it really depends...

I was a manipulator and could out manuver any "therapist" so if you are anything like me and are able to avoid issues, it may be an attempt to bore you into opening up.

I found a psychiatrist who was able to keep me focused, but that was after I became dissatisfied due to a lack of progress.

He pointed out that was my decision.

Once I accepted responsibility for my improvement I was successful.

I know finding a very good and capable therapist isn't easy, and it may be time to look again.

Hope I'm way off base, but since you asked and we are dealing with the mind...

Much luv and wishes for wellness and comfort to you ps-med

[ps-med]

Originally Posted by MadRiverTurtle

They're there to help you explore and resolve enduring and deeply rooted sources of conflict. Sounds like seeing your therapist is like having coffee with a close girlfriend- someone that doesn't claim to be a professional. I hope you can find someone useful :).

I'm willing to stick it out another couple of weeks and see if we get past this. Personally I find talking to my wife to be more beneficial than the therapist sometimes. Mainly I was just curious if other people had this issue with their therapists.

I remember reading somewhere, maybe on WT, that a therapist should start out with a contract of sorts stating what will be worked on and the expected time frame. I've never had this happen.

[silvercloud]

Peeps ,beware of therapists ,alias 'therapists' > 'therapy' can be analageous to 'astrology' as an informative vehicle ,but the 'messenger' should carry as much weight as message itself > that is all

[HappaGuy]

Originally Posted by ps-med

Does anyone else feel like all but about 5 minutes of your therapy session is just advise that you could find in any womens magazine??

I was at my weekly therapy session last week and was complaining about a new symptom (waking in the middle of the night and having just lousy sleep). ...

Maybe I am being too critical, maybe I am projecting, but it seems that the obvious is not getting to the core of my depression/anxiety issues.

Do most of you that are talking to a Psychologist feel like you get your money's worth out of each session?

Mark

Please consider the possibility of epilepsy, that is, that your depression/anxiety may be symptomatic of insomnia which in turn may be symptomatic of epilepsy.

That proved to be the case with me. I have a type of epilepsy called complex partial seizures. They never cause people to flop around but space me out and cause migraine and in particular cause me to wake up around four am and be unable to sleep again.

I was diagnosed by many doctors over fifteen years with depression and then bipolar disorder until my PCP doc paid attention to my report of a weird symptom - smelling things that aren't there. She sent me off for an EEG and voila, the neurologist found epilepsy. The smells are called "auras".

Fifteen years of doctoring it took to figure that out. Doctors are not omniscient. Medicine is kind of hit and miss. Psychiatry, psychology, these are the witch doctors of our age. They know a great deal more than witch doctors of old, but as for effectiveness it is well observed that "God cures, and the doctor takes the fee."

The anti-seizure meds helped a lot but not enough, and I believe I've been having daily breakthrough seizures, and sleep has been still iffy.

Recently though I rediscovered Benedryl-D antihistamine (over-the-counter) for sleep, and I'm feeling wonderful for what may be the first time in my adult life. You might want to discuss that with your doctor.

I wish you luck. Insomnia sux.

[ps-med]

UPDATE:
Things are getting better with the Therapist. We talked about when to expect winding down therapy (probably around July). I think that the sessions are still hit or miss, but the therapist has been able to bring up patterns that I have not noticed and some of that has been helpful. I still don't really like going, but I force myself to because I feel like I am trying to avoid therapy and that seems to be a good reason to keep going.

[MJP420]

Originally Posted by Au_Hunter

Well, I suppose it really depends...

I was a manipulator and could out manuver any "therapist" so if you are anything like me and are able to avoid issues, it may be an attempt to bore you into opening up.

I found a psychiatrist who was able to keep me focused, but that was after I became dissatisfied due to a lack of progress.

He pointed out that was my decision.

Once I accepted responsibility for my improvement I was successful.

I know finding a very good and capable therapist isn't easy, and it may be time to look again.

Hope I'm way off base, but since you asked and we are dealing with the mind...

Much luv and wishes for wellness and comfort to you ps-med

This about explains therapist.

[endlesssky]

hey there, i hope this helps a bit, this is just my experiance with therapist's i've had aout , i sought out therapy when i was just 15, due to ptsd and i had to live with the perp's. so i had a ton of rage and very moody feeling's, well that only lasted a year, and i was young, but i talked to her and got some thing's out, soo i started to kinda get it, but then turned to drugs and alchohol then i had my son in 84 and got clean in 89 i went intreatment for 30 day' well while i was there, they put me on trarzadone for depresstion, and then i got out and went home and within a week i left my husband and wanted a divorce and took my son and hit the road with nowhere to go, i friend from treatment let us stay with them till i got a job and got us our apartment, but i had alot of trouble handling the stress and then i started to fly into rages and just pound the refrigerator till my hands bled, and i began to be very inaproperiate t my 3 year old son, and one day i was in a rage and he was just in the way,! and i picked him up over my head and sat him on his bed and gave him a hug and told him i loved him so much!! and i then called CPS for help before i did something bad that i could naver take back, so i had him put in a foster home till i got my shit together, well i was in colardo at the time and i had none at all to help me, so i went to a half way house to live and the DR had me on stealzine and trarzdone and four other;s i forgot and i was seeing mental health therapist at this time, well i was in therapy one day and i was very upset about the loss of my son and i felt bad, so i would cry and then get pissed off and they thought htis was rapid cycling, so the next thing i know i am in a ambulance going to the hospital and when we get their they chained me to my bed , like a animal and i was not going to hurt anyone or myself and i can;t help it if i am intence person, so i was their for a month the frist time around, then after two more stay's they wanted take my son away form me permanatly, cause they thought i would never get better , well i guess not i was on 14 differnet kinds of drugs, and diagnosed with PTSD and BIPOLAR and soem dumb ass thing called borderline personality disorder, which simple put means i had a trumatic childhood big deal most of us did! so doe's that mean we all have it,, well anyway, ast around this time i had a moment of clarity and remeber my sons father's mother, his grand ma, and a phone number that i had not called in 5 years came to me and i called collect to calif from colarado and she took it and they fly my son out to them and saved my bacon, so i got some money from SDI and left the hospital against medical advice, this time i went volentary so i could leave if i wanted to, but they only gave me enough meds for a week, so i would have to to mental health when i got here, well to make a long story shorter, i got better finally kinda anyway, but still had like a suiside attemps after this, and then found out i had hep c and also tey diagnosed my son Bipolar also and he was only 12 by thriteen he lost his mind and had a pyschotic break and had to be hospitalized, and the whole time i am in therapy and not getting any better, to much stress, so my liver starts to fail and i have to come off those meds, and they would not let me my pyh DR keep increasing the dose's not lowering them so i stopped then myself as slow as i could, well i got really sick with this twiching that would not go away even off the med for 3 days, so i went in to menat health and showed them what they had done to me so the D% runs in with a pill to counter act the other , but they gave me a full dose and my liver couldn't filtuer it and got very sick and had to to the ER, so they called mental health and they said i stopped my med's against medical advice, so they ER wouln't help me and sent me home throwing up, and then they falsfied my records to say that i never complained about dise effect's and thats why she kept increasing my meds, well as a direct result of stopping my meds they found a fatal disease that left alone would of killed me if i had not done what i did, the meds were masking the real problem which is Addison disease which is adreanal glands falied so i never had the hormones to deal with stress, and now they had to put me on prinazone to keep my blood sugar up or i will die, so the frist DR who cought this put me a huge dose of pridnazone like 40 mg a day, and i felt like i was flying, and i had these big blk rings around my eyes and man was i depressed, cause the DR tole me if i caught an infection he could't save me because the prinazone lowers the immune system, but it's a life saveing med so i have to take or die and thats that, so my thrapist that i have had now for 10 years at mental health comes; ot to my house to talk to me cause i am too sick to make it in, and she spend's the whole HR on how i should stop this med and let go and let GOD take me and if i relax it will be fine what the hell, so after some time, i was hopitalied with a swollen leg and it got infected, and i thought i was going to lose it or my life and she wouldn;t take the to call me or check to see how i was doing, and then calls me and yells at me while i am IV's anibotic's and in the hosiptal trying to positve and doing well till then, anyway this is the kicker menatl health called me ywo months ago and said i was no longer qulified for mental health service's and that i had misdiagnosed me and that i was not BIPOLAR, i had asked for a tranfer to another therpist cause she was so abusevice, she is dangerous, so you have to be carefull what you say and do, sometime;s you just don't know how they are going take it. and they tape everything evrytime i called they recorded me, so i would never go off over the phone anywa thatis just part of my story, i had to saty in one place that makes one flew over the coo coo nest look like a pininic, they took me in their and man i was scared to death and i looked at the lady and said look i am just a recovering addict i don't belong here at all, it was hell and i was so scared and all alone. but it all came together later, it look awhile but i brought my son back home and did what i call speed thearpy, so i could be a better parent for my son, any way i'll finsh thre story another day, have a great day!!! see ya Endlesssky

[ps-med]

UPDATE:
Here it is July and I am still in therapy. Now my therapist wants to talk to my wife and I--yeah we have progressed to couples therapy--part of me thinks that this is a good thing (since arguing with my wife often is the start of a major depressive episode for me) and part of me thinks that the therapist had to come up with something to justify continuing treatment and continuing getting my insurance to pay him.

I'm willing to give this about 3 months, but then I am done. I'm getting really tired of going to therapy every week, and I am starting to dislike the slow progress. I think I can do better on my own at this point. There has been progress but compared to the hours of therapy it feels like very little progress.

[Bogart McKilo]

Hey ps-med, good thread. As many WT's have alluded to, a "comfortable" viable relationship with a therapist is a difficult thing to acheive. I've had one. Very cool guy (still was practicing in his late 70's) who was great. But unfortunately nothing lasts.
My observation of most therapists have been that they are simply a conduit for pharmaceutical companies. Yes, they can help guide, but in the end result therapy falls short because of the limited time and crushing workload many are under. I use Kaiser facilities, and my impression of that office is a production line.
I have found in retrospect that many of my sessions were more or less seeking a green light on decisions that in my heart I knew I needed to make.

[MadRiverTurtle]

^ Reminds me of that Erica Jong quote "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't".

Best of luck with the couples therapy! Perhaps that will lead to the progress you're looking for. And if not, at least no one can't say you didn't try :)

[ps-med]

Final Update:
I broke things off with my therapist. After nearly 10 months of therapy I have learned a few tools that were helpful, and found other tools on my own to help manage my depression. I felt that the therapy was less than ideal and my wife felt that the therapist was a joke. My wife and I talked and decided that enough was enough. I think I will go back to dealing with my depression issues on my own. I have found that MMJ is helpful for those times that I am too self-reflexsive and start to make myself depressed; MMJ short circuts this process and allows me to think more rationally without fixating on things.

I got something out of the therapy, just not a whole lot.

[Bogart McKilo]

There are times in our lives when we need to follow our heart. Sometimes seeking "elsewhere" is where we are drawn. Best wishes.