Comments by Tessa Anderson-Ramos

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  • Hi rebel,

    It is really interesting to hear about your experiences, thank you for sharing! I tend to agree with you regarding medication and, indeed, my dissertation was an examination of how I felt antidepressants actually clashed with psychodynamic theory and impeded the healing process. I have never particularly liked the language ‘mentally ill’ or ‘patient’ because I feel it medicalizes often very understandable reactions to real-life traumas presenting them as being abnormal. Emotions are a very normal part of life, they are not always positive ones.

    -Tessa

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  • Hi Mella,

    I appreciate you taking the time to reply to me and I want to thank you for sharing your story. I think your voice is an important one that does need to be heard. You are correct in saying you are also a part of the chain of change.

    I do not think that therapy is inherently going to work for everyone nor do I believe psychodynamic counselling as a modality is suitable for everyone. Therapy is a deeply personal experience. A positive relationship, built on trust, empathy, etc, between client and therapist, is the most important aspect of therapy.

    Finding a therapist that works well for an individual can, unfortunately, be a very time-consuming and arduous process. This is only worsened by the fact there are a lot of terrible therapists in the world. These therapists can be incredibly damaging.

    Honestly, it makes me deeply disheartened that you were made to feel unaccepted. No one deserves that. Therapy should be a place of trust and safety, it sounds like they failed to provide you with that.

    There are a few things I would like to clarify for you. You cite my education and personal therapy as having worked for me. I would care to disagree.

    As discussed in the post, my education was in many ways harmful because of the deeply misleading information and often stigmatizing remarks made by professors. While I certainly did have some amazing professors along the way, I do feel a lot of my psychological education, especially that of my undergraduate degree was damaging. A lot of my beliefs now are based on my own research, several brilliant individuals I have had the pleasure of working with, and years of self-reflection.

    As for my experiences in therapy myself, I feel this is something you have assumed. The only experience in therapy I cite within the post is the one from my teenage years where I felt the therapist did me more harm than good. Similar to you, I have also been terminated by a therapist for a fairly comparable reason. And to be frank, it hurt. It felt like I was being told that I was not worth the effort or that I was hopeless. I have had other therapists forget our sessions entirely, leaving me waiting and wondering why I was so unimportant. I had a third therapist who I always felt was judging me until I became too uncomfortable to speak and stopped attending. In many ways, I have also felt failed by therapy. It is my frustration with these failures that inspires me to work in mental health. I want to be the therapist I wished I had.

    I would also like to discuss what you say here.

    “Your profession took my money and hope for years, and then – do you really accept that you all could not help me because I “wasn’t ready to be helped” or some such nonsense?”

    My remark was predominantly referencing that I am unable to help individuals who never attend therapy because I never have the opportunity of meeting them. It is not referencing your situation. That being said, there are many reasons therapy may not work for someone who does attend: an incorrect modality for the client’s needs, bad match of personalities between therapist and client, a lack of a working relationship, an unethical therapist, a client who is forced to be there, and so on. I believe you already perfectly explained at the start of your comment why it did not work for you.

    I am aware that as a therapist I may make mistakes. I will be wrong. I am human after all. I have always encouraged my clients to let me know when they feel let down, disappointed, or misunderstood by me. I want it to be something that we can discuss together so that we can change the work to feel more on track for them.

    It is unfortunate that bad therapeutic experiences have the potential to ruin therapy as a whole for someone. Indeed, with your described experiences I think it is pretty understandable why you wouldn’t want to continue with it and I’m not going to tell you otherwise.

    I do hope the best for you. I am glad to hear you have found a place online to understand and connect with others. If you would like to share any posts, articles, or further personal stories that you think are particularly relevant to what we’ve been discussing I would be more than happy to have a look at them. Learning can only help me to improve.

    Please continue to share your story with others.

    -Tessa

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