How Do You Get *ACTUAL* Help?

@chibam,

It sounds like you've been quite frustrated by your experiences with counselling. In particular, it sounds like you've been left feeling dissatisfied by counsellors adhering to the golden rule about not giving advice! Can you shed a bit more light on what you were hoping to get from the experience, and where you think it fell short? There are quite a few people in the profession who post on this forum (including me). It would be wonderful to hear your insight into this.

Hi @chibam

I hear ya!

I think we all want and need different things on the road to recovery. Sometimes some professionals don't understand that it's not a one size fits all.

A good psychologist will listen to you when you tell them what you need, and adapt.

What I like about a psychologist I use to go to, was she gave me reading and information about what I was experiencing. For example, she talked about how my shallow breathing is not helpful for my anxiety and suggested some practical exercises to help me.

Sure we talked a little about what it was that caused my anxiety, but what I needed was some practical and tangible strategies - and once I told her that, things were so much better!

Have you articulated what you're looking for with your counsellor?

Never settle either - if you feel like you have tried your best to express what you need, then move on and find someone who will provide you with you are looking for. As you said, it's up to $200 ... that's you're money!

Hi...let's see if I can offer something to the discussion. Firstly, you used the phrase "to make your life what you want it to be". Can you detail what that is? For example, do you want to:

1. Feel less anxious when facing new people

2. Feel part of society "like everyone else"

3. Become more physically active.

or.....?

Once you can basically list what you are seeking then you can categorise things into categories. The two examples I gave are about settling emotions and being relaxed. The third is what it says, being 'physical'. What would you like to do, swim? Walk? Skip rope?

If you can start to map out precisely what you want - even if for now it seem unattainable - and then you put things into categories, you commence the road to betterment because you are thinking and planning. If you do no physical exercise now, how about walking thirty paces in one direction and then thirty back. Do this for three or so days and then increase by ten. Make that development a pattern and you will begin to feel the achievement.

You talked about brokering a deal with society too. I related to that. Something I did was to actually move out of my comfort zone and create a community garden. Just in a side street next to a building. (I did get permission by the way). This led to so many people stopping to just say hello and I began to receive praise. I wouldn't consider myself an attractive person as such, but I have found over the years that if you put some yards in, and dedicate yourself to something, most others will credit you for that. Sure, there was a couple of stinging comments thrown in my direction but I used those to consider how much I was willing to allow negatives to take over from multiple positives. I think we do need to accept and even, to a degree, expect negativity from people. It's just the way some folks are.

Often we think we are the only ones with issues and yet the person who finds you ugly, and perhaps says so, may have as many as we do - or more. Adopting compassion towards others can be important to our own well being. Doesn't mean you need to accept abuse, but simply that you are deciding to become a little more resiliant.

Praise others too. Even if it's just "that's lovely material in that top" or "I've noticed you are always courteous in opening a door for others. Thank you". It's part of the bigger picture in maintaining a mutually supportive society i think. One again, don't expect it back, but be glad when it is returned to you.

Anyway, once you start to map out a life direction plan - or whatever you want to call it (a 'wish' bucket list?) then you can make more direct requests to your psychologist or psychiatrist and sometimes, you realise you need some help from others e.g. a dietician or an out-patient physiotherapist. The vaguer we are when asking for help, the vaguer the responses will tend to be. But it can be liberating to realise there are many professionals who can offer help we may need - apart from counsellors.

Hi @JoseJones,

First of all, there's a "golden rule" that you don't get any actual advice out of therapy? That *really* ought to be more loudly advertized by your industry! This is the first I am hearing of it and the press that is out there, that is deliberately geared towards people for who continuing to live just doesn't make any sense, promises them that there is help available to make their lives worth living if they go see people like you.

But to answer your questions: what I was hoping to get from therapy was:

* some direction on how to improve my relationship with people I was involved with at the time.

* some help unblocking my creativity, as blockages in this regard were holding me back both romantically and professionally.

* some strengthening of my 'emotional endurance' to help me perservere through a rough time with the good cheer and enthusiasm I needed to get the job done.

Where did it fall short?

* the therapist utterly slaughtered my most sacred dream of being happily married, by portraying all women (rather convincingly) to be nothing more then prostitutes and/or gold diggers, incapable of actual love and simply using sex as a means to financial and darwinist gain.

* when the relationship that I’d initially sought to repair (see previous list) eventually broke apart (long story), effectively severing my only relevant link to the outside world, the therapist was beyond useless at directing me to an alternative (better) family of friends.

* the therapist chipped away at whatever faith I might’ve had in humanity when I first walked in her door. Maybe it’s distorted memories or something, but I remember having a generally positive outlook towards the world to begin with. Flawed, yes, but ultimately composed of overall good people worth making an effort for. She chipped away at that until all I could see was the ugly emptiness of humanity. How can you be expected to pluck up the gumption to make an effort to be better when the world around you isn’t worth making an effort for?

* the therapist was disproportionally fixated on my financial status for some reason – an aspect of my life that I certainly would never have pulled focus on to as my lack of money was always among the least of my problems. Yet despite her overall interest in my money, she seemed to have an overall wishy-washy attitude toward whether it was good or bad. I (thankfully) got out of therapy due to her deciding that I had enough money and therefore my life was great and I didn’t need therapy anymore. But at other times she was claiming that I didn’t have enough money. In this regard, she offered absolutely no useful directions on where/how I was supposed to get the money she wanted, not that it mattered because she offered me no reason to trust that she would endeavor to actually help me even if I did get that money for her.

* the therapist didn’t care about me, my needs, my anguish. She had her own agenda for how she wanted me to end up. I always assumed hiring a therapist was getting someone else on my team. She was not on my team. She was on her own team.

* she killed my dreams, beat down any hope I ever had for having a worthwhile life. And once she had made it abundantly clear that I would never have any happiness; never do anything to significantly make this world a better place (and lord knows, it desparately needs someone to make it a better place), her advice was that I should have “acceptance” of this horrid fate. I was not permitted to end my own misery because this would be offensive to my family.

* she reminded me every day that I was her prisoner, by mandating that I keep in daily email contact with her. On top of everything else I had to deal with, she was yet another burden I had to politely endure, without ever being able to put her out of my mind. Any release I got from her clutches lasted 24 hours, at most.

But knowing now what you’ve told me, I’d have to say that the biggest way she let me down was by not warning that she was never going to give me any direction on how to get what I needed to make my life worthwhile, and not explaining it to me and excusing me from further therapy when it became clear that the services I needed were not ones she was prepared to offer. I’d also have to say that I would also have been let down if she hadn’t directed me to someone who could offer actual help.

My understanding is that there’s a law in Victoria, possibly other parts of the country too, where if a woman shows up at a doctor asking for an abortion, and the doctor is religiously/ethically opposed to abortions, that doctor has every right to refuse to do the procedure. But, they are legally bound to provide the woman with the contact details of a doctor that they know for sure is fine with performing abortions.

There should really be a similar law compelling therapists to direct their patients to people who can and will actually try to help them, if the therapists are really committed to not offering any actual help themselves.

You people promise us all that there is an actual reason to choose survival over death. You promise us that there’s effective help for us no matter how barren our lives are. You get on TV and social media and year after year continue to beat the dead horse with your loud message that your craft is so miraculously effective at reaping goodness, that choosing to end our own lives is utterly nonsensical and absurd. “Don’t Do It! There *IS* Help Available!” that’s what you people keep shouting at the people standing on the edge of the bridge, getting ready to jump. It’s an emphatic, deliberate, unambiguous message laden heavy with a promise of enormous magnitude.

Then once you’ve talked us into actually walking through your door, you tell us that even if there is some value to life, you have utterly no intention of telling us how to get it. But you’ll take our money all the same.

It’s not right.

Sorry, @coffeegirl & @RabbitsMum. Your posts just appeared while I was working on my reply to @JoseJones and I'm too tired to read them right now.

Revisting crap therapy really takes it out of you.

I'll try to read them tomorrow if I'm up for it and even reply if necessary/if I can.

Wow, Chibam,

your experience with your psychologist sounds really, really bad. Can I ask if she was personally reccommended to you by your doctor or by someone else? Does she belong to registered professional body for psychologists? Are you sure she is legitimate?

From what I am hearing form others, dodgy psychologists do exist and they can be very damaging.

I have seen a number of counselors/psychologists over the years and I have found them all quite good. (The reason I have seen more than one is because I kept moving to new towns.)

You know, that's really odd that your psychologist described women as being like prostitutes or gold-diggers, when she, herself, is a woman!! The mind boggles at that one. Her making those comments would have been a big red flag for me, if I were in therapy with her. I don't know what she might have been getting at??? It's just very strange.

Would you be willing to begin therapy with a new psychologist? How long did you see the one you describe?

In my experience, as a client in counselling, a therapist does not exactly offer you 'advice' as such. They allow you to explore all the possibilities and also open your eyes to new possibilities you may not have yet considered. It's still up to you to make your own choices; no-one can live your life for you!

Everyone has their own individual values, personality traits, goals and ethical frameworks. So different people would make different decisions, even when placed in the exact same circumstances. So a therapist can not exactly tell you what to do.

If you would like to meet someone and get married (a perfectly healthy goal, in my opinion!) then a psychologist may help you explore the things that might be preventing you from achieving your goal. It's still up to you to go away and make the concrete changes you decide to make.... like joining a social group for singles, for example.

@chibam,

Simply put-your therapist has got issues.Consider whether it's wise to give her anymore of your money.

It might seem alarming to think that people who work with sometimes the most vulnerable people can have many issues of their own but the reality is that sometimes the Psychology and Psychiatry fields attract people that are "broken" ( have their own issues ) or simply looking for a lucrative career.

There are also good sincere therapists out there so why not find someone better?

Reading your response here I was reminded of what we say to children about abuse "if you feel uncomfortable with someone please go tell another adult". It's the same with psychologists. There are great ones out there and very poor ones. I had an experience with one that left me cold and indeed I went back to the GP who had referred me to her and explained precisely what had been said and the responses. I suggested that no-one who had experience of sexual abuse/violence should be referred to that particular person. I owned it as my opinion but I felt it right to say something.

Because we are vulnerable - or feeling vulnerable and often anxious going into appointments - it's actually very difficult to reach the point where you just call the 'other' on it. And you fear them acting shocked and like it's all in your imagination. But I do now stick to that basic tenet of comfort level. I had an appraisal at a major clinic one day and when I walked into the appointment the person sitting there just said "abuser" to me. Not his fault. But I had to own my reaction and just say I felt uncomfortable and needed someone else.

We sometimes forget that we are paying for a service. If you pay someone to wash your car and they throw cordial all over it, we would object. We should feel as justified to call a problematic psychologist on their attitudes and feel ok about trying someone else. Just for the balance, I have indeed had a couple of wonderful counsellors across the years and I have been glad I encountered them.

@Sahara:

“Can I ask if she was personally reccommended to you by your doctor or by someone else? Does she belong to registered professional body for psychologists? Are you sure she is legitimate?”

She wasn’t specifically reccommended by anyone per se. The shrink I’d been seeing at the time (who was useless, but nowhere near as dammaging) told me to also go see a psychologist, but there was no-one specifically reccommended. I called up a clinic I’d found in the yellow pages (if memory serves), not knowing who worked there. It was a complicated time, so I probably didn’t do as much research as I should’ve. Had I known she was one of the staff there, I would’ve looked elsewhere.

As far as I know, she’s fully professional and qualified and diplomaed, ect, ect, ect. I believe that she’s reasonably well-regarded within the therapist community. I’ve even seen her giving “expert commentary” in some news segments on some of the major chanels’ news shows.

“From what I am hearing form others, dodgy psychologists do exist and they can be very damaging.”

I, too, have discovered in recent years that this is a disturbingly widespread phenomenon. A few years back, I visited some other mental-health forum - I forget the URL - where they had a dedicated sub-forum for people who wanted to complain about crappy therapists. The sub forum went of for pages and pages and pages. Just tons of people who had been screwed over by a mental health system that didn’t care, and wasn’t very interested in addressing the damage done to a bunch of undesirables, who for the most part were “fruitcakes” to begin with.

“You know, that's really odd that your psychologist described women as being like prostitutes or gold-diggers, when she, herself, is a woman!”

Sorry, I should’ve been more clear about this. She never used the words “prostitute” or “gold-digger”, but she told me numerous times that no woman would be interested in me if I didn’t have enough money. So if women will only engage in an “intimate” relationship with me for money, doesn’t that by definition make them prostitutes/gold-diggers?

“Would you be willing to begin therapy with a new psychologist? How long did you see the one you describe?”

7 years. And after that nightmare, no I wouldn’t be willing to walk into that trap ever again. Especially, as I’ve recently discovered, that there’s no actual willingness from the profession to provide actual help to people who need it.

“It's still up to you to make your own choices; no-one can live your life for you!”

But isn’t this really hippocrytical? I mean the very reason we remain alive is because ending it would be offensive/distressing to our community. We live because we have a moral duty to minimize the anguish we inflict on others. How can we be expected to be good people if the ones around us won’t tell us what they want us to do? And on a somewhat more selfish level, how can we achieve an amicable system of favor-trading with our community if they won’t tell us what we need to do to please them and thereby earn an entitlement of assistance from them?

Conversely, if our lives are our own, then why aren’t we free to leave it whenever we want to? Why do we expect suicidal people care more about averting their family’s agony then putting an end to their own?

If your life is yours then shouldn’t you be morally be free to conclude it at your discretion? If it’s your society’s then shouldn’t there be a clarification about what they want from you?

I can’t see how they can have it both ways.

“So a therapist can not exactly tell you what to do.”

Well, where does that leave people who have no clue what to do? Especially those who find themselves stuck in no-win situations? It’s the mental health industry (among others) that emphatically declares that is absolutely wrong for these people to simply stop playing the game. How come they get to bail out of the discussion without explaining to anyone what’s right?

“like joining a social group for singles, for example”

*Now* we’re getting somewhere! Which, to begin with, begs the question “how does one get invited in to a social group for singles?” and equally importantly, how can we refine the process so that we only get invited to join singles’ groups whose values are in-line with our own?

The peril lingering here, which I know all too well, is that if you wind up drawn in to the wrong crowd, the consequences can be devastating; harmful to all concerned.

This is where the role of a therapist as a medical professional really ought to come in to play, because when you have a situation where a patient has a dud lung, the doctors do all their scans and examinations to make sure that the replacement lung their gonna stick in the patient is compatible with the patient. They actually take an interest in making sure they don’t make a patient’s already dodgy health any worse by inserting an incompatible organ in them - which would be tantamount to poisoning them with foreign tissue.

Psychology should be no different. There should be a system where people who need a social circle should be examined, but not judged, to determine what their values and needs are and then be united with a group known to share such values and cater to such needs. And if therapists aren’t interested in providing such a service, they ought to be able to direct their patients to someone who is. And if nobody is interested in offering such a service, then the industry as a whole should stop promising the lost and confused that there is “help” available out there for them. Because the system as is (reverting to my previous dud lung metaphor), is like having a doctor hand his patient a scalpel and saying “Go find a dead body and try putting one of it’s lungs in your chest. Nice to see you. Goodbye.” That’s not help. It’s indifferance.

Boy. A lot to get to here. I might split this into multiple posts. We’ll see. (edit: I wrote this before the previous post, but for some reason, it didn't seem to go through)

@coffeegirl:

I got thinks like the breathing exercises and relaxation techniques, too, and TBH they did no harm, but they also did very little good. To quote Futurama, I found that they could fight my problems “the same way an infant can fight Muhammed Ali”. When your living in hell, the basic stress management exercises don’t make much of a differance.

In terms of articulating what I wanted for my therapist, I don’t know how I could’ve possibly said it any clearer.

In terms of settling... therapy can be ridiculously hard to get out of if you don’t have an escape plan ready. Unfortunately, I was so quick to trust the many emphatic promises I’d heard that therapists actually help people in need that I hadn’t developed a contingency plan. That and the fact that an unexpected family drama cropped up around the time when I was supposed to start with the therapist, kind of knocked me off my game, so to speak.

As bad as being robbed by the therapist was, the worst of it was the demons she installed in my head. (n.b. I’m being metaphorical, I don’t believe there are literally in me ala the Exorcist) That and the sense of imprisonment.

@RabbitsMum:

What I want from my life is:

1. To be united with my soulmate and marry her. (This is priority one. Without this none of the other priorities matter).
2. To be directed to a “clan” (for lack of a better word) whose values and agenda I can genuinely sympathize with, respect and admire, instead of just being ugly characteristics that I politely tolerate and play-act compatibility with. I want a real family of people who I really belong with, who I am really a natural part of. Not a group of foreigners whose nonsensical manner I am supposed to adopt in order to “seem normal.”
3. To, alongside my wife, have a role (job) within our community where we incite happiness in significant degrees for those closest to us, as well as the wider community. The stronger and more wide-reaching our effect is in this regard, the better. We live in a world where everybody is dictated to by convention and the powers-that-be that they ought to keenly seek continued survival, but virtually nobody is providing an actual incentive for people to genuinely desire this fate! The world is in dire need of far more people to make it an enjoyable show to have to watch. I can not, in good conscience, throw my meager capacity to shape the future behind any other endeavor. The need for some genuine worth in life is just too great to shirk.

I try very hard to be as compassionate towards others as I can be. Trouble is that people have such a tendency to abuse that compassion until you reach the end of your tether with them, at which point if you falter even slightly in accommodating them, suddenly *your* the bad guy, not them. It has not been my experience that that compassion is likely to be repaid, either.

But I dunno. Maybe I’ve just been cursed with an unusually consistant run of bag eggs being laid in my path.

I’ll admit that I could probably do better in the false praise department. In most cases I find it exhausting just to politely tolerate the people I end up around, let alone trying to come up with something to praise about them. I’d have concerns about being able to do this in a way that wouldn’t sound weird (i.e. “Why the hell would he compliment me for *that*?”) Clothing, as you suggest, would be tricky for me as I believe that there’s a tendency to think that guys who are interested in clothing are usually gay.

Which brings me to my other concern about false compliments: the potential for backfire. Case in point: one day my cousin came back from a day of shopping with a pair of socks. My mother offered her some gushing compliments about those socks, so the next day my cousin returned from her day of shopping with a matching pair of socks for my mum! Now I know that my mum’s compliments were just a case of being polite because not once has she ever worn the darn things! I know that in this particular example the backfire is minimal skin off my mum’s nose because obnoxious socks are easy enough to chuck in the back of a drawer and forget forever. But some backfires can be much heavier burdens to bear.