Ettina wrote:
TheRealGK wrote:
I have failed to ever hear a convincing reason as for why a person should seek therapy instead of talking to a friend.
Here's several:
* They don't have any friends.
* Their friends are burnt out from hearing about their mental health issues.
* Their friends don't understand what kind of response would be helpful so they say/do the wrong thing.
* Their friends have mental health problems of their own and they're exacerbating each other with negative interactions.
* Their friends aren't good at keeping secrets and repeat what they say to other people, resulting in negative consequences.
Psychotherapists have solutions for all of those issues. They're paid to listen, so you don't have to put in the work of making a friend to have someone willing to listen to you. They have specified hours, refer patients to crisis help lines, etc to make sure they're not going to get burnt out. They're trained in what are the right things to say and do to help someone with certain mental issues. They're mentally stable enough to meet the professional requirements for their job, or else they'll lose their job pretty quickly. And they're required by law to keep patient confidentiality except for very specific exceptions which they are required to explain to you.
Sure, if you have the right friends, therapy may be unnecessary. But not everyone is so lucky.
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"They're mentally stable enough". You can't measure stability. One clinical psychologist told me that he wanted to physically injure the then president, in a creative method. He acted like he wanted me to say, "yeah, I wanna physically injure the president too,"... and 5150. Like he was baiting me. Besides, the client does not get a chance to observe the psychotherapist outside the office. The client has no clue how mentally (un)stable a psychotherapist really is. The psychotherapist's office is not (necessarily) a representative sample of the psychotherapist's behavior or coping mechanisms.
"Actions speak louder than words".
sometimes some psychotherapists help some clients. please do not lump all psychotherapists together. a counselor told me "counseling can help". (correct). but saying "counseling can help" is not specific enough. you have to say: which counselor, "helped" which client, accomplish what goal. otherwise, it's like saying "you need to eat or you will drop dead" (correct) while advertising mcdonalds. however, sooner or later, everyone will drop dead, regardless of what they eat. not all food equally nutritious or worth the retail value.
Psychotherapists have to adhere to the HIPAA client confidentiality.(fine). however, the psychotherapist is (usually) outside of the client's inner circle, and the psychotherapist would have nobody to gossip to, that would be interested in knowing confidential personal information about the client.
psychotherapists do not always know the right things to say and do, even if they do have experience and training in that field.
psychotherapy expensive. in 2016, a counselor told me that the insurance paid her 75 bucks per session. i went to her 61 sessions over two years. she did not tell me one original statement. all things equal, her "help" was better than nothing. however, I find it hard to imagine that her "help" had a retail value above minimum wage. plenty of clients cannot afford such fees out of pocket.
if the counseling is court mandated, or the client has a specific goal (ie. quit smoking), and the counselor specializes in that issue, then that is one thing. but just sitting on a couch, week after week, hearing weird statements like "it was an unfortunate thing that happened" does not justify wasting time, cash, and energy on psychotherapy. anyone could *correctly* claim anything is "unfortunate". you can't measure "fortune". and then "you are ok the way you are. people should not hurt your feelings" way too ambiguous. anything could hurt anyone's feelings. the solar system contains eight billion people. if nobody ever did anything, just because it would hurt someone's feelings, then nothing would ever get accomplished.
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to the OP, for a therapist to admit that they are not skilled enough to deal with your current issue, is much better than for a therapist to just act like they know what they are doing, just for the sake of getting cash.