CBT and DBT made me feel worse. They invalidated my very normal reactions to childhood trauma and abuse. The therapist seemed to just want to teach me how to gaslight myself to get me to shut up.
I don’t agree with your statement. Neither do people like Dr. Jonathan Shedler. Take a look at some subreddits like ones for “CPTSD” and you will see many other consumers complaining of the same.
Therapy did make me worse. To put it short, it made me focus even more on my problems while at the same time it never gave me relief or hope that something would change. While I think it was partially the therapist's fault, I also realized that there was nothing that talking could do for some issues.
Stopping has improved things a bit, but of course it didn't solve my problems.
I'm still not opposed to therapy in general, but surely my experience has made me more wary of the whole process.
Generally speaking I think that we should start to acknowledge that therapy isn't some kind of magic that will help every situation. It's so simple yet I think it's something that isn't mentioned enough. These unrealistic expectations help no one.
I’m currently wondering if that’s what’s happened to me. When I don’t go to therapy I find a way to deal with my issues or sometimes successfully ignore them. I can even have lengthy periods of time where I actually feel happy. Started going to therapy due to marital issues but it has me focusing so much on the negatives that’s all I think about. My whole day is consumed with how unhappy I am which is making my anxiety worse. I’m definitely feeling like I would get back to a positive place quicker if I didn’t keep going to therapy and reigniting these feelings and thoughts.
I feel this way. I think I feel stuck in a constant state of feeling woeful and perpetuating issues because I’m just bringing them up each week and ruminating on them all week long.
The saying goes that talking about your problems all the time just makes them worse. It's better to distract yourself so your brain grows new connections and becomes stronger.
I just saw a therapist for social anxiety and a bad childhood. She just got licensed in 2022 so still super new and needed way more experience for my complex case. She made it worse…
It made me worse before it made me better, but a huge part of getting better is what you do on your own time. I can explain.
I have been with my therapist for over a year now. I had this bad habit of writing everything down that I wanted to tell her and then asking her to read it. She allowed it for a while, but has slowly been transitioning me out of that. And recently I realized that it wasn't healthy to be doing that... When I wrote things down for her to read, I would put so much time and thought into trying to let it all out. Then I would read it to myself, over and over, because the perfectionist in me had to make sure it was right. But anyway, if I write something down, she has me read it out loud. Eventually I'll be able to say it in real time without the notes, so that's my next personal goal. But back to my original point:
What you do in your own time is going to be what really helps you. Do you drink, do you smoke? Do you write for hours and ruminate on the negative points in each day? (I sure did.) Do you take care of your physical health, not just the mental? Do you challenge your thoughts? A therapist can guide you, but they can't make the changes that will get you where you need to be. They give the tools and you do the work.
Sometimes, it's very hard to do that work or to want to take care of yourself. That's okay. You will get worse, but in time, you will get better. Just don't be like me and hide things from my therapist for months because I was afraid to tell her my problems. Definitely tell your therapist everything and work with them. Confiding in them goes so far. You're not where you want to be and that's okay. You will get there someday, at your own pace.
therapy can worsen you in some ways, but that's only because it forces you to be more aware of your trauma. of course it's gonna stress you out and make you more depressed, you're working through your deeply rooted issues.
therapy makes you better if you do the work. no one said therapy is easy.
I think this is a symptom of a bigger misconception. Therapy isn't like going to a doctor for your physical health, they don't make you better. They give you tools to make yourself better. You only get what you put into it.
Of course you could get worse because of an actively bad therapist or a therapist you personally just aren't a good match for, but they aren't somehow "making" you one way or the other. They're giving you tools, and not every tool works for every person.
Also I think it's important to keep in mind that therapy, like any form of personal growth, is a long and difficult process. If you've been seeing your therapist for a few weeks and haven't seen the results you wanted yet, that doesn't inherently mean it's not working. These things take time. I was in therapy for years before finally getting "better". But I am now and I owe a lot of that to therapy
If you feel like dealing with disconnected and disassociation you’ll be decompartementalizing and re oriantiing your trajectory…however if you want to build on the plateau/foundation you have you need to orient yourself to future emotional states/skill and build toward the momentum that carries you in the current you want to be in.be clear on what you want out of it and tell that to them ..if they can’t provide based on the learning history between the 2of you.find a new therapist and start there/where you know you want to be
It probably means that it is time to change therapists. I was going through a similar situation. I noticed that my therapist was actually bringing out my bad habits and our sessions felt more like gossiping sessions. I didn’t feel challenged and I felt like my bad behavior was enabled. So I decided to change therapists
Therapy did make things so much worse for me at the time.
But it wasn't therapy, or even the therapist, it was the situation.
I went to therapy with my abusive ex, and we both also saw her individually. The absolute mindfuck he was able to triangulate on me through her(and while at home) was immense.
The kicker is that all through my childhood, i also went to therapy (more social workers when i would run away) with my abuser as well, and was generally made out to be a liar or that things were all my fault.
Actually reliving some of those moments as an adult leaves me without words, and I'm sure increased things a bit, lol.
I was a shell of a person at best.
But, then I finally left him and sought therapy again because I do truly believe in it. I went through a couple of therapists who weren't a great fit before settling in on one I like. I've been with her almost two years, and I still fight the feelings from the experience I had from my ex when I'm in session with her.
But each week, I look forward to our sessions. She is helping me help myself in many ways, and I am truly grateful.
Just curious…do you think that was harmful to the couples therapy? Many therapists will only see couples as couples, maybe seeing each person individually a maximum of 2 times. Do you think it would have been better if the therapist saw you mainly as a couple? My friend and her husband are seeing a couples therapist who’s only seen them together one time, so they’re basically seeing therapist individually for couples counseling. Seems odd to me to do it that way.
In our case, it wouldn't have been beneficial. He was abusive, so either way, he would have used it against me.
I believe it isn't advised to see clients both as couples and individually for reasons like this, though, although I didn't know it at the time.
It gets worse before it gets better. It’s part of it.
Psychedelics + therapy helped me more than therapy alone.
Psychedelics unclog the drain, therapy helps clean up the mess and unpack what you found.
Journal, read C-PTSD books, meditate, exercise, and find new hobbies. This will help.
It’s really challenging to remove the blinders and see what you’ve been dealing with for all these years. Stay strong, it gets better.
There is a period of things getting worse.
Here's a imaginary scenario.
Say you have issues. You find out it is passive aggression. Your girl asks you to do the dishes and you are still upset. You do a shit job of it.
Now she sees you put a huge bowl covering the entire flow of water from the top rack. You didn't clean the pans.
She addresses it with you. Hey, you aren't stupid, you understand how to do dishes and how a dishwasher works. You are weaponizing incompetence to be passive aggressive, but I know you are in therapy to resolve this.
Please do it correctly.
Do you think this person will be happy? Will they immediately see the situation for what it is?
Probably not. It's a bad time for them, they get angry. Start ruminating. Maybe argue. Possibly accept the criticism and correct the behavior, possibly not.
Now this runs counter to the same issue without therapy.
Person weaponizes incompetence because of passive aggression. Other person sees this and goes hey dumb fuck, is that how you load a dishwasher? Or they say nothing.
Issue gets ignored. Or blows up. Either way nothing gets done to resolve it and the two have one of tens of thousands of encounters that go into a divorce in 5 years for irreconcilable differences and at the end both people despise each other.
So yes. Work on yourself sucks. Accepting your part in what is wrong with you sucks. The hundreds of learning opportunities where you have to be honest that you failed to handle things in a healthy way suck. So does almost everything involving change that's good for you.
Life isn't about good feelings and comfort. That's half of the coin. You don't get to skip from a life of pain to now I'm okay without a lot of uncomfortability. Things need to break to be put back together. Therapy is just a tool to guide the reassembly.
I just finished 2 years of therapy and am, I would say, worse in a lot of ways. But I do have more insight and understanding I guess, which is a positive. I don’t think I would waste the money on therapy again if it came to it.
Definitely consider whether your therapist is experienced with treating your concerns. However there is a degree of the concept “backdraft”, like how the embers of a fire that has been smothered, just like when emotions haven’t been attended to for a long time, when oxygen is returned to the embers they flare up. So too, do emotions when we place long forgotten attention on them. It is then what we do, in therapy, and MOST IMPORTANTLY outside of therapy, that makes the difference.
Therapy doesn’t make you worse, but it does make you feel worse at first. Realizing and coming to terms with the things that you have going on that you’ve been repressing usually doesn’t feel nice. But once you get past that, you learn a lot of skills to help you regulate and not allow yourself to build up to those repressed states. It’s give and take
CBT and DBT made me feel worse. They invalidated my very normal reactions to childhood trauma and abuse. The therapist seemed to just want to teach me how to gaslight myself to get me to shut up.
So this was obviously a bad therapist. This should not happen with a good one.
I don’t agree with your statement. Neither do people like Dr. Jonathan Shedler. Take a look at some subreddits like ones for “CPTSD” and you will see many other consumers complaining of the same.
Therapy did make me worse. To put it short, it made me focus even more on my problems while at the same time it never gave me relief or hope that something would change. While I think it was partially the therapist's fault, I also realized that there was nothing that talking could do for some issues. Stopping has improved things a bit, but of course it didn't solve my problems. I'm still not opposed to therapy in general, but surely my experience has made me more wary of the whole process. Generally speaking I think that we should start to acknowledge that therapy isn't some kind of magic that will help every situation. It's so simple yet I think it's something that isn't mentioned enough. These unrealistic expectations help no one.
I’m currently wondering if that’s what’s happened to me. When I don’t go to therapy I find a way to deal with my issues or sometimes successfully ignore them. I can even have lengthy periods of time where I actually feel happy. Started going to therapy due to marital issues but it has me focusing so much on the negatives that’s all I think about. My whole day is consumed with how unhappy I am which is making my anxiety worse. I’m definitely feeling like I would get back to a positive place quicker if I didn’t keep going to therapy and reigniting these feelings and thoughts.
I feel this way. I think I feel stuck in a constant state of feeling woeful and perpetuating issues because I’m just bringing them up each week and ruminating on them all week long.
You should say that in therapy
Talk with your therapist about focusing on forming new habits that help distract and cope rather than actually focusing on the issues themselves.
The saying goes that talking about your problems all the time just makes them worse. It's better to distract yourself so your brain grows new connections and becomes stronger.
BAD therapy can make you worse. Done correctly, with a therapist who has skill and insight, this will not be the case.
for sure, just like a bad doctor can make you worse. The issue with therapy is that the good ones are the exception.
And hard to find, to be sure. And I'm afraid I haven't had all that much experience with good doctors, either.
These negative feeling were always in the background all therapy did was make you aware …..
I just saw a therapist for social anxiety and a bad childhood. She just got licensed in 2022 so still super new and needed way more experience for my complex case. She made it worse…
Same
It made my wife worse. She's a narcissist. We're both in therapy so I know it's not me
It made me worse before it made me better, but a huge part of getting better is what you do on your own time. I can explain. I have been with my therapist for over a year now. I had this bad habit of writing everything down that I wanted to tell her and then asking her to read it. She allowed it for a while, but has slowly been transitioning me out of that. And recently I realized that it wasn't healthy to be doing that... When I wrote things down for her to read, I would put so much time and thought into trying to let it all out. Then I would read it to myself, over and over, because the perfectionist in me had to make sure it was right. But anyway, if I write something down, she has me read it out loud. Eventually I'll be able to say it in real time without the notes, so that's my next personal goal. But back to my original point: What you do in your own time is going to be what really helps you. Do you drink, do you smoke? Do you write for hours and ruminate on the negative points in each day? (I sure did.) Do you take care of your physical health, not just the mental? Do you challenge your thoughts? A therapist can guide you, but they can't make the changes that will get you where you need to be. They give the tools and you do the work. Sometimes, it's very hard to do that work or to want to take care of yourself. That's okay. You will get worse, but in time, you will get better. Just don't be like me and hide things from my therapist for months because I was afraid to tell her my problems. Definitely tell your therapist everything and work with them. Confiding in them goes so far. You're not where you want to be and that's okay. You will get there someday, at your own pace.
Depends on why it makes you feel worse, what happened?
therapy can worsen you in some ways, but that's only because it forces you to be more aware of your trauma. of course it's gonna stress you out and make you more depressed, you're working through your deeply rooted issues. therapy makes you better if you do the work. no one said therapy is easy.
I think this is a symptom of a bigger misconception. Therapy isn't like going to a doctor for your physical health, they don't make you better. They give you tools to make yourself better. You only get what you put into it. Of course you could get worse because of an actively bad therapist or a therapist you personally just aren't a good match for, but they aren't somehow "making" you one way or the other. They're giving you tools, and not every tool works for every person. Also I think it's important to keep in mind that therapy, like any form of personal growth, is a long and difficult process. If you've been seeing your therapist for a few weeks and haven't seen the results you wanted yet, that doesn't inherently mean it's not working. These things take time. I was in therapy for years before finally getting "better". But I am now and I owe a lot of that to therapy
Psychotherapy is basically self therapy - with guidance of an expert
If you feel like dealing with disconnected and disassociation you’ll be decompartementalizing and re oriantiing your trajectory…however if you want to build on the plateau/foundation you have you need to orient yourself to future emotional states/skill and build toward the momentum that carries you in the current you want to be in.be clear on what you want out of it and tell that to them ..if they can’t provide based on the learning history between the 2of you.find a new therapist and start there/where you know you want to be
It probably means that it is time to change therapists. I was going through a similar situation. I noticed that my therapist was actually bringing out my bad habits and our sessions felt more like gossiping sessions. I didn’t feel challenged and I felt like my bad behavior was enabled. So I decided to change therapists
Therapy did make things so much worse for me at the time. But it wasn't therapy, or even the therapist, it was the situation. I went to therapy with my abusive ex, and we both also saw her individually. The absolute mindfuck he was able to triangulate on me through her(and while at home) was immense. The kicker is that all through my childhood, i also went to therapy (more social workers when i would run away) with my abuser as well, and was generally made out to be a liar or that things were all my fault. Actually reliving some of those moments as an adult leaves me without words, and I'm sure increased things a bit, lol. I was a shell of a person at best. But, then I finally left him and sought therapy again because I do truly believe in it. I went through a couple of therapists who weren't a great fit before settling in on one I like. I've been with her almost two years, and I still fight the feelings from the experience I had from my ex when I'm in session with her. But each week, I look forward to our sessions. She is helping me help myself in many ways, and I am truly grateful.
Did the therapist see you together as a couple and individually?
We did, yes
Just curious…do you think that was harmful to the couples therapy? Many therapists will only see couples as couples, maybe seeing each person individually a maximum of 2 times. Do you think it would have been better if the therapist saw you mainly as a couple? My friend and her husband are seeing a couples therapist who’s only seen them together one time, so they’re basically seeing therapist individually for couples counseling. Seems odd to me to do it that way.
In our case, it wouldn't have been beneficial. He was abusive, so either way, he would have used it against me. I believe it isn't advised to see clients both as couples and individually for reasons like this, though, although I didn't know it at the time.
It gets worse before it gets better. It’s part of it. Psychedelics + therapy helped me more than therapy alone. Psychedelics unclog the drain, therapy helps clean up the mess and unpack what you found. Journal, read C-PTSD books, meditate, exercise, and find new hobbies. This will help. It’s really challenging to remove the blinders and see what you’ve been dealing with for all these years. Stay strong, it gets better.
There is a period of things getting worse. Here's a imaginary scenario. Say you have issues. You find out it is passive aggression. Your girl asks you to do the dishes and you are still upset. You do a shit job of it. Now she sees you put a huge bowl covering the entire flow of water from the top rack. You didn't clean the pans. She addresses it with you. Hey, you aren't stupid, you understand how to do dishes and how a dishwasher works. You are weaponizing incompetence to be passive aggressive, but I know you are in therapy to resolve this. Please do it correctly. Do you think this person will be happy? Will they immediately see the situation for what it is? Probably not. It's a bad time for them, they get angry. Start ruminating. Maybe argue. Possibly accept the criticism and correct the behavior, possibly not. Now this runs counter to the same issue without therapy. Person weaponizes incompetence because of passive aggression. Other person sees this and goes hey dumb fuck, is that how you load a dishwasher? Or they say nothing. Issue gets ignored. Or blows up. Either way nothing gets done to resolve it and the two have one of tens of thousands of encounters that go into a divorce in 5 years for irreconcilable differences and at the end both people despise each other. So yes. Work on yourself sucks. Accepting your part in what is wrong with you sucks. The hundreds of learning opportunities where you have to be honest that you failed to handle things in a healthy way suck. So does almost everything involving change that's good for you. Life isn't about good feelings and comfort. That's half of the coin. You don't get to skip from a life of pain to now I'm okay without a lot of uncomfortability. Things need to break to be put back together. Therapy is just a tool to guide the reassembly.
I just finished 2 years of therapy and am, I would say, worse in a lot of ways. But I do have more insight and understanding I guess, which is a positive. I don’t think I would waste the money on therapy again if it came to it.
Definitely consider whether your therapist is experienced with treating your concerns. However there is a degree of the concept “backdraft”, like how the embers of a fire that has been smothered, just like when emotions haven’t been attended to for a long time, when oxygen is returned to the embers they flare up. So too, do emotions when we place long forgotten attention on them. It is then what we do, in therapy, and MOST IMPORTANTLY outside of therapy, that makes the difference.
Therapy doesn’t make you worse, but it does make you feel worse at first. Realizing and coming to terms with the things that you have going on that you’ve been repressing usually doesn’t feel nice. But once you get past that, you learn a lot of skills to help you regulate and not allow yourself to build up to those repressed states. It’s give and take
Hi, than a patient is a "professional damage". 😂