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Therapy that doesn't work or has stopped working

Discussion in 'General Support and Advice' started by Tightrope, Oct 25, 2021.

  1. Tightrope

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    I was looking for articles about bad therapy. There are articles about bad therapy and bad therapists. Or it can be that they're not bad, but it's not a good fit and you need to find a different one.

    Some of the articles have to do with trauma therapy and how the client can be retraumatized. But it doesn't have to be trauma therapy. Therapy that isn't working can be traumatic and can retraumatize a person.

    This is a good article. I can't relate to all of it but I can relate to some of it.

    Is Your Therapist Re-Traumatizing You? | Psychology Today

    With my experience, I'm going with 1, 2, 5, and 6. Not much changed because I don't think like the therapist does (that's 1 and 2). I read 5 and began to think I was normal. The therapist has never laughed and barely cracked a smile a time or two. People like this make me uncomfortable. On the list, 6 talks about long-term therapy and creating dependency. This can happen to some people. But when you feel that the therapist doesn't have your back and is more interested in how they view things, and think it's the right way to proceed in life, it would be hard to create dependency in their client.

    There are a good number of articles on when to stop therapy or change therapists. The key seems to be whether you're making progress or feel stuck.
     
  2. Chip

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    That's a surprisingly good article. It's very hit-or-miss with Psychology Today, unfortunately, but they make a lot of good points.

    Therapy should always be about making progress, though the progress isn't always one session to the next; sometimes there will be several weeks or even a month or two where it feels like you're just sort of digging into stuff with no real connection to it... and then, all of the sudden, there's a watershed moment where a whole lot comes into focus and there's profound movement forward. Other times, there may be real progress week to week.

    But (competent) therapy isn't
    - Conversation
    - Discussion about anything having to do with politics, therapist's personal life, etc
    - The therapist giving advice or pushing an agenda
    - Rehashing the same stuff week after week.

    If any of the above is happening, there's a real problem. And if it's been going on for a while, likely the issue is that the therapist isnt' competent enough to recognize it and keep things moving forward. (Many therapists can't.)
     
    quebec and Fiender like this.