We are bombarded by public health notices that tell us “Mental health help is available; you just need to ask for it.” Yet many people don’t. I was one of them. Why? Because I didn’t feel the current understanding of psychiatric problems and treatment would help. In fact, I felt it would be a hindrance to recovery.
Research on mental health looks for abnormalities in the individual to understand why mental health problems develop. But what if there isn’t an abnormality to be found? What if we just need to understand how the mind functions to know why psychological problems develop? My lived experience has led me to believe just that.
In my previous blog, I spoke of a life experience in which I developed a severe psychological problem as well as my path to recovery. My conflict involved abuse by one man among a friend group, after I rejected his romantic advance. I’ll call him Bill. He spread a false narrative through the group and others members began attacking me as well. But no one told me the narrative they were given.
Although I found Bill’s behavior upsetting, confusing, even disturbing at times, I couldn’t easily walk away from him and the friend group. I didn’t understand why. That took me on a path to delve into my past and how it shaped me to hopefully find answers. Maybe my past could lead me to understand the current problem.
The Search
I looked at my childhood for issues I had, during that time, that might make me vulnerable to what was occurring. The only significant emotional conflict I could think of was a break in my relationship with my father. This occurred when I was 13. Prior the break I was very close to him. I saw him as my best friend, and the only person I felt close to.
The break wasn’t related to any abuse. But my family was under stress at that time. My brother ran away from home earlier in the year and my parents were divorcing. My parents were under understandable stress, but as a child I just saw the changes in the way they interacted and I was unfamiliar with how stress would result in such changes. My father seemed to withdraw. The interaction toward me appeared stiff and authoritarian. I ended up feeling like I really didn’t have the relationship I thought I had with him. Our relationship became distant.
When I thought about the break in my relationship with my father, I felt a sudden rush of emotion come to the surface. I was surprised with the amount of emotion. At the time it happened I never felt emotional. I must have immediately and unconsciously boxed the emotion away.
The discovery of the stuck emotion gave me insight into many characteristics that I had without knowing why. I tended to seek out close, comfortable relationships similar to what I initially had with my father. Insecurity that I had at 13 seemed to stick with me. For instance, I felt socially awkward, unfocused, self-conscious, and could become discombobulated easily. I didn’t like these tendencies and tried to overcome them with limited success.
Eventually, I decided to focus on my strengths and work around my weaknesses. Over time I developed more skills and greater confidence, but there were still times that I felt like myself at the age of 13. I now understood why. The emotion I felt at 13 was never resolved and released. I continued to grow, but the stuck emotion always, at some level, held me in that time.
My Takeaways
I came to understand that there didn’t have to be a major trauma to have a substantial amount of emotion stuck. In fact, the event didn’t even need to be fraught with emotion at the time of its occurrence. Also, there could be a complete lack of awareness that emotion was stuck from the event.
The defining qualities of the event resulting in stuck emotion appeared to be that something of importance to me occurred and I didn’t have an understanding of why it happened. The result was that to some extent I remained psychologically stuck in who I was and how I perceived things at the time of the event.
Although an interesting discovery, it didn’t have the desired effect of helping me resolve my issues with, and separate from, Bill or the friend group. I could analyze myself until the end of time but that didn’t tell me why others were behaving as they were. What was preventing closure and holding me in the conflict was confusion around Bill’s and the group’s behavior.
Return to the Present
My situation with Bill suddenly escalated and became very dangerous. I did what I could to calm the situation so I could safely exist. Then I ended the relationships and was left with the task of finding a way to recover psychologically. My psychological problem was severe. I was stuck in an emotional state of extreme stress. There was intense anxiety, anger, hurt, and head-spinning confusion.
My break with my father had resulted in my development of characteristics that I hadn’t known the origin of. This time, I knew the origin of my psychological problem and I knew what I needed for its resolution. I needed some explanation for the behavior that was inexplicable to me. But it was unavailable. Those in the know wouldn’t even acknowledge anything had occurred, let alone explain their actions.
Would Mental Health Services Help?
I have a BA in psychology. I chose to study psychology not because I had a goal of working in the mental health field but because I always had an interest in how people think and act differently. I majored in social gerontology as well and was thinking of working in that area. But my first good job offer after college was as a caseworker in the Department of Social Service. It was a job in my field of study so I accepted it. During my time there I worked on cases of Child Protection, Adult Protection, and Domestic Violence.
A caseworker doesn’t provide therapy. The job is assessing a client’s needs and linking clients with services that will help them. It could be services in the area of medical care, housing, financial assistance, transportation, mental health, etc. Another aspect of the job is assessing danger. Assessing danger involves recognizing the level of danger a child, or sometimes adult, is in and taking action to protect them. Although I wasn’t a therapist, I worked with therapists. For example, in Child Protection cases, parents are often court ordered to attend therapy and a caseworker would be required to monitor it and report to the court their attendance and progress.
Through my education and work, I had knowledge of the kinds of mental health treatment available and the theories behind them. Unfortunately, based on what I already understood about my psychological problem, I saw limited possible benefits and serious drawbacks with all my options in mental health treatment.
Drawbacks to Mental Health Services
Labels
The first drawback is a diagnosis suggesting that the mental health problem is the result of a defect within the individual that is lifelong.
There are advantages to having people view one’s psychological problem as a biological or genetic abnormality. It can lessen people’s questioning of why you have a problem. Even if they are aware that you had a traumatic event, statements like “Why haven’t you recovered?” “You need better coping skills or a better attitude.” “There’s no excuse for your emotional or behavior problems” are common. Those viewpoints can put someone already under stress under considerably more stress. If the problem is seen as biological or genetic, people should provide more acceptance and support, similar to other health problems.
However, if the goal is to recover, the diagnostic label gets in the way. When someone is labeled as having a mental illness, their voice is diminished. Any perception or viewpoint expressed will carry less weight. People take different viewpoints all the time. Imagine if your viewpoint was never seen as legitimate. If the explanation of the problem you had wasn’t taken seriously. If you had a problem and you were never consulted on the help you needed but told what you will receive. Would that help recovery?
Medication
I knew my psychological problem was a result of an event, not biology. Therefore, medication would, at best, calm symptoms such as the intense emotion I was feeling. It wouldn’t provide resolution and it may numb the mind to the extent that it interferes with healing.
Psychotherapy
There were many reasons why I didn’t pursue psychotherapy. First, let me explain my view on therapy prior to the development of my psychological problem. When I first became a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, I didn’t have strong feelings about therapy, positive or negative. I had never been in therapy. However, after working there for a number of years, I didn’t see my clients benefiting from the therapy they received. I didn’t see greater emotional stability, better relationships, or improved functioning.
I went into my job not expecting to make a big difference in people’s lives, but I hoped I could have a positive impact some of the time. Unfortunately, I felt I left everyone with the same problems I found them with. I didn’t understand their problems or know how to help. I didn’t find my degree or the training I received through my job as helpful in giving me the tools I needed to successfully improve the lives of my clients.
I used to think, I will never become a therapist because if you’re a therapist and you don’t understand your client’s problem and are unable to help, then you’re taking money for nothing.
Therapy Options
Psychoanalysis
I already analyzed myself. But what I discovered didn’t prevent me from becoming psychologically stuck in my current situation or help me release the emotion. I needed to know what was behind others’ behavior. People who had a very different way of thinking and interacting than myself. Understanding myself didn’t explain them.
Talk therapy
I had friends I was talking to as I struggled with the conflict. But they didn’t know the thinking behind Bill´s or the friend group’s behavior nor did they know the narrative that was spread by them. It helps to have someone to speak with, but again, it didn’t prevent me from becoming psychologically stuck in the trauma of the event.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
It’s understandable that therapy focuses on the individual in treatment and changes they can make. It’s seen as the only option. A therapist can’t undo what’s happened. But in doing so they’re looking at symptoms developed from the stuck emotion. They’re seeing the problem as those symptoms. And they’re looking to correct what is wrong with their client. The approach can add to the client’s pain and confusion.
I was controlling the symptoms as much as possible and I couldn’t get rid of them without closure or gradual healing. To be in therapy, where the focus is on those characteristics as the problem, wouldn’t be healing. I would feel criticized for the symptoms brought on by my psychological problem. It would increase my distress, not relieve it.
Therapists Are Human
I did see a therapist once for one session. I had requested a transfer out of the unit I was working in because there was a worker in the unit harassing me about the problem I had. I went, not really for therapy, but because I hoped I could get a transfer sooner if I had a recommendation from a therapist.
Therapists are human beings with their own unresolved issues and interpersonal conflicts. They become psychologically stuck as well. For the most part, people develop psychological problems during conflicts with other people. Sometimes people don’t identify with your side of the conflict. They identify with the other side.
Instead of supporting me, my therapist would smile if I said something positive in relation to my friends and get mad and attack if I said something negative. It certainly wasn’t a helpful or healing experience.
I saw something similar when I worked on the Domestic Violence unit. I worked with the victims. There were other workers and therapists who felt the victims of the domestic violence were the problem. I heard of one worker telling anothe,r “Someday it will come out that the victims are really the perpetrators and the perpetrators are really the victims.”
Imagine seeking help when you have been physically abused and threatened, are living in fear, feeling confused over why the relationship turned violent, sitting on enough emotion that it’s hard to see anything clearly, and having a therapist, who you went to for help and expertise, say that you’re the problem. That happened to clients I had.
For me, I was aware that I might encounter something like that, so it didn’t cause further psychological damage. However, for some, I’m sure it adds to their confusion and does cause further psychological damage. I believe it plays a role in domestic violence victims returning to abusive relationships. Some victims express a viewpoint that they just need to accept and adjust to the way they’re treated—and maybe it’s because their therapists tell them so.
We need to remember that therapists or anyone in the helping professions are in a position of power. It’s assumed that they have greater knowledge and expertise. They can influence other professionals on the case and will push others to perceive and interact with a client as they do. The therapists or helping professionals don’t think they are acting maliciously. They believe their viewpoint and response are correct.
Therefore, the possibility of being attacked or undermined by a therapist while in a vulnerable psychological state is a legitimate concern.
What Changes Are Needed
First, psychiatry shouldn’t focus on the individual as the problem. It shouldn’t look at symptoms that occur when someone becomes psychologically stuck as the problem. I had a friend say to me: I have all these problematic characteristics that I’ve presented to therapists and none of the therapists can tell me why I have them. They were all characteristics that I had as well when I was left psychologically stuck.
Psychiatry looks at client characteristics, such as intense emotion or numbness, swings in emotion, interpreting circumstances excessively negatively or excessively positively, overestimation of strengths and exaggerated insecurities around weaknesses, lack of self-awareness, impulsivity, viewpoints that are black and white, being unable to feel connected to others, having thoughts of harming themselves or others, etc., and then places clients in a diagnostic box based on these things. Many therapies focus on these things as the problem and try to correct them.
The fact that a severe amount of stuck emotion causes these symptoms can’t be changed. Instead, the focus should be on how best to promote healing. Instead, focus on how to assist in the release of the stuck emotion that’s causing the symptoms. Instead of making the symptoms the problem, reassure clients that they are symptoms that everyone has when there’s a severe amount of unreleased emotion. Helping someone recognize that there isn’t something innate and fundamentally wrong can provide a significant release in emotion by itself.
Second, psychiatry needs to look at stuck emotion not as an abnormality but as an aspect of how the mind functions. There is recognition that those diagnosed as having PTSD are stuck emotionally in their reaction to a traumatic experience. However, I imagine that everyone has become stuck emotionally at some point in their life, but like myself at 13, people don’t always realize it.
In some situations when the emotion is immediately boxed away, people just experience symptoms without knowing why the symptoms are there. Other times people know they are re-experiencing a past traumatic event. How the mind is functioning is the same in both cases. There is just less awareness in the first case.
A Path Forward
Quite a lot of money, time, and effort has been put into looking for the biological abnormality that results in mental illnesses without much success. It’s my hope that some effort can be put into simply understanding how the mind functions and how psychological problems can develop simply from the way it functions.
People with lived experience need to have a voice; not just because everyone deserves a voice, although everyone does; not just because taking away someone’s voice is psychologically damaging, although it is; but because much can be learned about psychological problems from those who have experienced them. For example, I said earlier that there is too much focus on symptoms as the crux of the problem. It may not be obvious to someone who never had considerable change in their mental health how certain characteristics come with a psychological problem and go with healing.
Because I went from light-hearted and happy to having a sudden severe psychological problem, then gradual healing over years, it’s quite obvious to me that many characteristics used in mental health diagnosis are symptoms brought on by stuck emotion. In the beginning of my severe psychological injury, I battled paranoia all the time; as I worked through emotion it lessened to excessive worry; after I worked through the emotion completely, both stopped. It’s clear to me that the paranoia wasn’t caused by a gene, an abnormality in my biology, or a manner of thinking; it was caused by the impact of an excessive amount of stuck emotion. I couldn’t decide not to have paranoid thoughts or not to worry excessively, I had to release the emotion that was causing it.
One day, I had a client (diagnosed with schizophrenia) who came into the office to pick up a check. Every time he came in, he would speak incessantly in a monotone voice of his history, giving a year then stating an event that happened that year. It was constant, forced speech, not a response to any questions. He spoke of foster care. He spoke of rape. As he talked, I thought about how awful it is that this man experienced what he did, has a profound psychological problem because of it, is alone in the world, without family or friends, and is treated with drugs, not understanding, seen as abnormal, mocked and feared. I said, “I’m sorry.” I was sorry for what happened to him and for what he was dealing with now. He stopped talking and just stared at me as if in shock.
A few days later his mental health case manager said “I don’t know what going on, he’s emotional.” I spoke with him a week later, he asked reasonable questions about his finances but there wasn’t any forced speech about his history as before. I empathized with his problem, truly understanding what it was. I think he could feel and hear my sincerity. I think he could feel that I actually understood. I think that’s why he looked so shocked. When you give understanding and support, people release emotion. It’s not that those with serious psychological problems can’t benefit from empathy, it’s that they don’t receive it.
I don’t want to suggest that severe psychological problems will go away with just a little empathy. Nor do I want to suggest that stuck emotion just dissipates over time. It took an extreme effort over many years for me to rid myself of the stuck emotion.
I know many people who take medication and feel it helps them. I don’t think that’s wrong. What I think is wrong is presenting a theory to the public as a known truth.
It was said to me that I must have felt very alone while struggling through my psychological problem. Yes, one hundred percent. But I wasn’t going to hand myself over to a mental health system that I knew would likely cause further harm. A system where I knew treatment was based on incorrect theory. I didn’t look to the mental health system for help; I felt I needed to protect myself from it. And I’m glad I did.
Thing is, for any therapy to be worth its salt the therapy has to last at least two years.
A therapist told me that.
She also told me not to trust any therapist who was not also having therapy at the same time with their own therapist.
I am going to use the word “you” but it is not referring to the author of this fine article. It is a generic use of the word.
The “myth of the fixed people” reigns perpetual, even in mainstream counselling. Its best to see a broken therapist. The more broken the better. In other words “a human being”. The broken always have made the kindest healers.
Another tip is to know that it is best to realise that you do not go a therapist so that the therapist can hear “your voice”. You go to the therapist so that you can finally, finally stop avoiding listening to your own voice yourself.
Being “heard” by a therapist is utterly pointless. It is pointless because the therapist is not in charge of your life. The therapist is not your parent. The therapist may “hear” your voice for all of fifty minutes a week and then what….then what?
What is the therapist supposed to do? Go home and think about you all day? is the therapist to frown about something profound you said while she or he is peeling potatoes, then clipping the budgie’s toenails, then oiling the hinge on a new wardrobe, then meeting friends, socially, then sobbing at being shouted at by her or his partner, then getting up in the middle of the night to throw up the potatoes? Is this poor specimen of broken humanity really supposed to mull over your voice from dawn to dusk?
A therapist does not have the time of day to mull over ten or twenty clients voices.
The main point of therapy is not for the therapist to face you with devoted, undivided, parental attention. The main point is not for the therapist to “hear” your voice. The session is for “you” to hear “you”.
Which is why most people do not stick around for more than introductory sessions. They run because they cannot bear to hear their own distress. Oh sure they can act out being distressed with flying cups and screams and fanfare but “volume” is a poor substitute for “listening” in a heartfelt way. Listening to the miserable little self. Listening to its simple needs. They usually are simple. The need for warmth, love, a hug. But its so embarrassing to reveal having such naive simple needs whilst having to perform being a mature adult. The shame at having simple needs feels too great a cross to bear. So any inkling of embarrassment or shame at being a human being gets blamed on some past upset, one that arouses anger. Since anger looks remarkable and powerful. Which is preferrable to looking embarrassed and shameful and needy, needy of a simple hug. No no, it becomes preferrable to hunt for a cause. A cause of normal human need.
And so a new client arrives at a therapy session expecting the therapist to conform to the myth of the fixed people, and be “a good listener”, which maybe means tilting a head to one side and gazing intently. But what is that really ever going to do on an alchemical level deep down in the client’s core. A mummy substitute is only one past of the human quest. The other part is that of being your own mother. A mother within you who “hears your voice”, your needs. Because until “you” hear your “your needs”, usually in their “distress” form, you cannot look after your natural search for whatever it is you require in life. Hugs, love, caring. And if you cannot identify those within you, through hearing “you”, then you are crippled in your ability to find wellbeing. And if this becomes chronic, your dissatisfaction becomes volcanic and very angry at what you may think were external injustices that thwarted your needs. Needs nobody knows are in you, since not even “you” listen to you. All you know is relentless misery and anger.
Im not saying externals do not also have an adverse effect on a person. Of course they do. Of course. And when they do the therapist must be compassionate and supportive and yes, listening. These are powerful healers. But the most powerful healer of all is when you “hear” your own tears. A therapist cannot hear them “for you”. Any more than a mother can digest breast milk for her infant. There comes a point when the infant has to quit wailing and just suck.
One therapy session may not be long enough. Therapy is not something that is “done” to you, or “taught” to you. Therapy is “you doing to you”….by “you hearing you”.
The best therapist I had was rotten. It was intentional. A woman who sat with her feet on a desk completely ingnoring my voice asking her to “fix” me. I grew so miffed by the end of the session that I broke.
And in my breaking I finally heard “me”.
It worked. She had succeeded.
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That was my favorite post that I’ve ever read from you! Very well said!
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I feel uplifted by your reply here, Steve.
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Thank you!
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This was excellent! I am considering re-entering therapy and wasn’t sure what I would be looking at. Your message was very helpful.
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I didn’t write the blog to discuss what the best therapy is or to complain about any wrongs. Actually, I see people saying what they feel worked for them and then believing that’s what everyone should do, as a problem. I think it’s a problem because everyone psychological issues are different. People will be different when it comes to what helps them. In my blog, I trying to offer information that might be helpful, not tell anyone what’s best for them.
If I wanted to see a therapist that would sympathetically listen to what I said, I suspect I could have found one. But I didn’t look. I didn’t look because, I didn’t think that would be helpful either.
When I talked about having a voice, I was referring to having a voice in their treatment. When I talked about listening, I was referring to listening to their view of the problem and taking it seriously.
But my point in writing the blog wasn’t to discuss therapy, it was to discuss how psychological problems develop and my view that our current Mental Health system exacerbates psychological problems by focuses on symptoms with a lack of recognition for why the symptoms are there.
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I did not mean to seem snooty. I was cheerfully using some ideas you raised. It is a gift to write an article that raises different ideas.
You have written things that will resonate with many. So, well done.
I would say though that the notion of there being such a thing as “psychological problems”, as ifits a department in a teaching hospital that is full of knowledge of “your” needs, is to pass the buck to society for them to fathom what your needs are and even judge them as worthy of designating “your” needs as needs.
I would rather people understand that the only “department” they require knowledge from and justifications from and designations from, in relation to what consitutes an acceptable need is their own inner knowing.
All they ever would then have to do is say that they are the expert, not some distant department of boffins and egg heads. They would only have to say their own expertise knows they have a need, lets say its for a hug, and that they require a bit of support with that. In the same way that an expert builder of barns needs other peole to support the rafters while he pins everything in place. He does not need other people telling him the barn blueprint is pathologically screwed up. It is his desire, his need, his blueprint, his free choice, his plan. He does not need nitpicking. He does not need condemnation for having such a core need/barn. He just needs help and support to let it shine resplendant.
But many folks dont want things to be that simple. They dont want their own needs to be that simple. Like I said before, its embarrassing to just want a hug. Embarrassment is a disaster. A crisis. And to furnish the sense of crisis, some people go to lengths to add all sorts of superfluous ingredients. Like the cat dying or a poor math test result many years ago. They then say those accumulations are “to blame” for the embarrasment of wanting a cuddle. This makes it look like it is not “your fault” for having shameful needs. Something drastic and must have happened to you to “cause” your “drastic” ordinary need for a cuddle. A triggering deep psychological “cause” must be found for you being godforsakenly “human”. So off we trot to get our “needs” asigned a “cause”, to spare us the embarrassment that society forces us to feel.
Far better is if we say to hell with the embarrassment. A need is a need is a need is a need is a need is a need is a need equals human.
The best stellar therapists are wise to this and will help you practice shoving back on the awful crushing weight of societal embarrassment at having a need. But it requires revisiting the feeling of embarrassment in order to fling it off. And it require feeling the underlying need. A need can be a terrifying thing to own. You can think you may die of it. Like a toddler in a tantrum thinks it may die of needing a hug. Nobody can bear such a depth of need with ego polishing panache. The loss of ego impressiveness is part of the embarrassment. The ego is not a creature of need. The ego is a shield against society ever seeing that a need therein lies.
The ego often swiftly finds reasons to wriggle away from therapy because the disaster discussed in therapy is not the real disaster. The real disaster is being a soft body in a hard world. The real disaster is being breakable. But that turns out to be the most beautiful part of being human. Without that ability to break, through our sensitive neediness, we are just planks, robots, droids.
But the ego likes the idea of looking like a “fixed” robot. An impervious finished model. Much of the craze for trauma therapy hides a wish to be “fixable” in a way that does not return a person to being beautifully soft and sensitive and needy, but is an attempt to pathologize having any needs. As if the needs are “caused” by something dreadful. As if the needs are exported things inflicted on you and surreptitiously “done to you”. As if wanting a hug is a disease you got given by your cat dying, or a disease you got given through your dad not giving you the ferrari you really had your heart set on.
A need is just a need. It wont kill you. Embarrassment may seem to. This is because embarrassment equates to social ostracisation and abandonment. Abandonment is almost worse than having a need. To a toddler abandonment is death since they cannot fend for themselves. So all your life you learn to shut up about having a need for a hug and you keep your frail humanness a ghastly secret. So that society wont mock you for having a need. Mock and destroy you for being pathetic in being human. Human and breakable. Until you read something that says it is okay to be broken. But only “if” you can prove you were broken by something else, something odious and external that a “psychological department” can see as the “cause” of your just needing a hug. So that your embarrassing need can get recorded or even written down in blood on a decree that the need is not your need, it got foisted on you, probably by a demonically horrid needy person. An ordinary frail elderly human parent with normal “needs” of their own to contented with. The psychology department will call that parent pathological in their need. The parent’s ordinary need will be deemed to have caused their son or daughter’s crisis and disaster of also having a need.
Both will invariably get pathologized and “treated”…until their ordinary simple humanness can get “fixed”.
The wisest therapists are aware of this way in which therapy can become complicit in society’s admonishment and pathologizing of a simple healthy need. What such therapists do is help the client put on boxing gloves to defy the order by society to feel ashamed of having a bad case of being human. But those therapists are rare as hen’s teeth. Most therapists buy into the pathologizing of needs since it gives them the exuse to be “the fixer”. To be the “fixer” you have to look convincingly “fixed”. If you can “pass” as “fixed” in the doting eyes of your embarrassed client then you can begin to believe their worship of your “fixedness” is true. You can then derive comfort from that “myth of the fixed people”. The “fixed people” who have no more needs anymore, since all the embarrasssing needs have been scientifically analysed and even removed. The charlatain therapist is is that ugly textbook monolith, the unbreakable human specimen. They get a buzz from the client’s awe at how well the therapist “does life”. But soon such a therapist may become addicted to seeing the clients affirming awe mirroring their “fixed” perfection. Their scant quota of needs. And when that addiction rises the therapist may unconsciously keep their client “not quite as fixed” as they are. This may mean that the therapist provokes neediness within the client, embarrassing needs.
That can be useful because it brings the clients vulnerability to the fore, enough for the client to learn to stop appologizing for having needs and throw aside the shackles of societal shame. But if the therapist gets jealous of the clients emancipation into no longer requiring to look all “fixed” and “perfect”, the therapist may sabotage the client’s new found freedom to just be human. The therapist may pick holes in the clients arrival at a sense of peace. Stoke worries about having needs. Maybe even mock and humiliate the client for needing one more session or mock them for simply and humanly loving the therapist.
A wise therapist can support the client to move on to celebrate having a simple need. A charlatain therapist will do everything to pathologize that simple need.
Largely I think its best to regard therapy as “paid friendship”. A friend can be life savingly “for whatever you want”. Or a friend can constantly ridicule what you want.
That said, some wise therapists play the role of crap therapist, to flush to the surface your need for a hug. This is brave and clever of them. Unfortunately some clients take umbridge, perhaps at not being smoothly “fixed” and they flee.
(This is a long reply. I must get on with some private errands. I am unable to add more at this time. Im not even going to spellcheck)
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Sorry you had to explain more. But you gave me a better better understanding of your viewpoint.
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Actually, what you say makes some sense; but since therapists on the whole are not interested in helping “you hear you.” They are more interested in hearing themselves talk and acting on the behalf of the psychiatrist to push and reinforce the drugging, therapy usually fails and adds to the damage the drugs do cause. There are probably a million better ways to get to that point of “you hearing you.” Unfortunately there is a lack of creativity and imagination on these matters, so nothing happens—but various forms of brain damage.
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I found being heard by my counsellor incredibly useful. She validated my experiences, and then helped me to find peace with them, develop better coping mechanisms, and dig into other stuff I’d buried. Nobody had ever validated me when I talked about those things before. They’d ignored them, dismissed them, discounted them, told me I shouldn’t be upset about them so many years later, banned me (and others in that service) from talking about them, blamed me for them, accused me of making them up, lying, manipulating, exaggerating, etc. They weren’t even terribly horrifying things, but they were abusive, and they happened over and over and over… So the effect on me was big.
She listened. She believed me. She understood how painful each of those little things was, often when I couldn’t. Every so often I’d tell her about something from the past, or something someone had said to me, etc. Usually, I felt no emotion when talking about these things.
She’d say, “OK, that’s actually a thing you might want to delve into. Most people who’ve experienced that kind of thing have some feelings about it. Doesn’t mean you should, but you did that blank emotionless thing while you were talking about it…”
Oh. OK. Good to know. I never noticed that. I thought it was just… fine. She’d ask if I felt ready to talk about it now, or if I wanted her to hold onto it for a while. Often, I’d start to dissociate – a lot at first, far less now – which I learned to recognise with her. So frustrating, b/c I still can’t stop it, but I often write a few words down before it disappears. She holds things for me, and then brings them up gradually when she thinks I might be ready. It helped enormously, still does occasionally, but I don’t think I ever would have trusted her enough to let her in without the validation, the belief, the understanding that some things really hurt, even when people convince you that they don’t.
So much more here, but not going to bore people. 😉
Takeaway: Validation was enormously important to me. Probably still is. It let me open up, trust someone, believe my own experiences, feel my own feelings, and eventually learn how to live with them, but not let them affect my life in a big way. Your experience is different, but we’re not all the same. 🙂
I loved this post, tho. So relateable, so much to think about. Thank you.
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I would imagine that my vignettes, though born from my own rare experiences… are ‘not so’ rare. In other words, when one gathers a handful of distinctly different reasons for avoiding ‘the system’, commonalities are very apparent.
1- I already ‘did my penance’ – 25 years “believing the lies”… of being on medication forever, of diagnoses that had no basis in fact, of a system that only saw “medication management”. After finally saying ENUFF, and daring my brain to work without Wellbutrin, Provigil, Seroquel and whatever else, I had to titration myself off meds because the psychiatrist wouldn’t. And since I have absolutely done better than those 25+ years of drugging… I am BEYOND averse to anyone with a remotely similar Med management mindset. TRY FINDING A PSYCHIATRIST WHO RESPECTS THIS TODAY.
2- Therapy… In ‘group therapy’ (outpatient) I was given ‘worksheets’… one was to (literally!) color (YES) in some ‘gardening group’. Another ‘worksheet’ was to match cognitive distortions to vignettes. Lest I forget, there was the group leader/therapist who INSISTED that each attendee rate (0-10) how homicidal/suicidal they were each morning. I recall one patient (a professor at a nearby university) describe how traumatized she was by a clinical psychologist who diagnosed her with schizophrenia. Much to my surprise, as I share my brief experience with a psychologist who really and truly sucked in my first session with him… that professor looks at me and says, “is his office on…?” YES. The incompetent therapist she had seen was the same one I saw weeks later.
Had these been dental appointments, allegedly free of emotional baggage, one could chalk these up to unfortunate luck. Much like the folks who hire bad contractors and regret it.
Just today, I was to Zoom a new therapist. I haven’t really seen anyone in 6 years. Not that life has been peachy and there was no reason… quite the contrary! So… 10 minutes into the Zoom (no pick-up by therapist) I hang up.
Stuff is triggered. From way back to. A whole collection of stuff.
So… when anyone points out that people don’t reach out to seek help… too many of us have tried, and have been burned in the process.
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Your points are true and well-taken and mirror much of my experience with what I now call “psych world.” “Psych world” has no desire to heal you or make you a better person. Their only desire is to suck that life from you like a vacuum to render you useless to yourself and to society and then to claim it’s all your fault. Getting oneself free from “psych world” truly is a religious experience. Have you noticed how anything intelligent written or said about the mind, the brain, how it learns or what talents it might contribute to society rarely ever come from a psychiatrist or someone trained as a psychologist or related discipline? Just consider… There are many subjects who have been subjected to corruption and criminality. Psychology, psychiatry embodies corruption and criminality to the one millionth degree. Thank you.
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In other words, you PROVE MY POINT:….
“Bad help is WORSE than no help at all!”….
The pseudoscience drug racket of “psychiatry” IS WORSE than no help at all….
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Christine,
Thank you.
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Question: Why not seek treatment through the mental health system?
Answer: Because mental ill health is defined by treatment, i.e. people who consume treatment are presumed ill, people who are “well” don’t consume treatment. Recovery, if recovery there be, is a matter of cessation of treatment.
Some people don’t seek treatment but have unwanted treatment imposed upon them by the so-called mental health system. Evading that system, in such cases, means evading unwanted treatment, or, perhaps, evading what might be more aptly termed mistreatment.
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Yes, why seek treatment? Seeking treatment for something means you are sick. If you go to a ” so-called mental health professional” there is an assumption you are sick even before diagnosis—“guilt before innocence” rather than “innocence before guilt” —So, basically, don’t waste your time and your money—-stay away—because their(so-called mental health professionals) goal is to make you sick—this is why they make you “do drugs and therapy (another non-drug, drug)” —and then you’re sick and probably disabled, too. Someone is making money on this “venture” and it’s not you. So, why seek treatment—unless whatever situation you are encountering your desire is to make it worse. Thank you.
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Perfectly said.
I hope people read and heed.
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This is an excellent piece — thank you, Christine.
So much of what you are saying has been my experience also.
It is high time that someone spells it all out like you did.
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Thank you Christine.
Psychiatry is harmful to persons AND their families. Period.
Many “therapies” are also harmful.
Mental help is something that is advertised like a sugary cereal and nothing could be further
from the truth.
People need to find their tribes and try to find support through these tribes.
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The legends “worded in the ancient tribal hymn”
Lie cradled in the seagull’s call
And all the promises they made
Are ground beneath the sadist’s fall
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Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, a drugs racket, & a mechanism of social control. It’s 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, & continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good. The DSM is nothing more than a catalog of billing codes. Everything in it was either invented or created. Nothing in it was discovered. The difference is vital to clear understanding. Psychiatry is FRAUD.
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