My thoughts on therapy and counseling.

Post Reply New Topic

Once I found the right therapist, things went well and I was getting therapy to deal with depression. Now, the psychiatrist was a different issue, as that drug pusher with an MD turned me off to psychiatric medication for good since his appointments only lasted just long enough to fill out a prescription refill. Now, I rely on other ways to keep depression and anxiety in check, such as exercise, and techniques I learned from my therapist.

I think the main problem is that the mental health field is horribly underdeveloped, much like medicine was 500 or more years ago. While there were cases when doctors did wonders, medical care as a whole was crude, haphazard, and based more on religion than science. Think about how treatments were like back then: sanitation of instruments was virtually non-existent, the closest thing to anesthesia was drinking a shot of rum, a headache meant that you had a evil spirit stuck inside your head, the cure for food poisoning was bloodletting, and an internal organ disease meant almost certain death.

Now, fast-forward to 2009, and think about the mental health treatments. While there are laws in place to protect patients from poor-quality care (at least in theory) and patients have the option of researching therapists, the mental health field as a whole is nowhere near as good as the physical health field. Many treatments are based on outdated theories and therapists' personal beliefs. It's also too easy for therapists to skew the sessions and make their patient look bad, simply because the patient's thinking doesn't match the therapist's thinking. (My three threads titled "Uncomfortable Experience with a Psychologist" pretty much speak for themselves.)

Consider, for example, the ever-hated question "how did that make you feel?". Most people in the aspie community will have a hard time answering it, and according to traditional therapy, it means there is something wrong with us. (On a side note, what if a new immigrant, who simply hasn't learned the emotion words in English, was asked that question. What would he/he be diagnosed with?) We can either admit that we can't answer it and risk being poked and prodded with more questions, or spit out a memorized response just to please the shrink and stop the questioning. Again, if a patient has to resort to doing that, it's clear that there's something wrong with the mental health industry.

You probably realized by now that I don't think very highly of mental health workers. I'll still feel the same way, until the mental health improves in quality, at least enough not to make patients feel like they have to lie to "fight back", or make them afraid to mention a certain topic due to the way it makes a therapist react. I'm marginally more supportive of psychiatrists, since they're the only legal way to get prescription medication (I will not buy it online, because it could be just drywall or something far more dangerous). Psychologists, on the other hand, are helpful mostly due to the books they write. But as far as seeing them for treatment, not so much, at least not until the mental health industry improves.

This is probably a radical idea I know, but could the therapy be structured around making use of a "special interest"?

I remember spending many happy minutes discussing the structures of organic compounds with my chemistry teachers.

When I was depressed, perhaps the therapy should've centered around discussing the chemical structures of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI anti-depressant medications) and the biological structures in the Axons and the Dendrons (nerve cells), plus all of the relevant biochemistry.

This would've calmed me down no end, whereas talking about my volatile emotions would just have meant that I ruminated on these emotions and felt weak after revealing my personal emotional secrets to people.

It doesn't have to be as extreme as this example, but perhaps working with someone's interests, view of the world and strengths rather than condemning that person for not being "touchy-feely" enough would be a more sensible way to go.

Perhaps even using stories and metaphors (if the person has that kind of mind) with the interest and curiosity to help recovery.

I remember feeling very angry at having to stop thinking about what I was studying or my hobbies just so I could tell a middle aged woman about what I "felt". I was also told to drop talking about an interesting topic so that I could "join in" more socially. But I was joining in in the only way that I knew how. Many times, when I was little I investigated the structures of and disassembled bean bags. Nobody ever told me that the point was to pass it to another person. All I saw was the bean-bag. I thought that the bean-bag was the object of study in this situation and I was curious as to how it had been made.

I think counselling will do me good. I really want to be able to sit and talk to a professional about how I feel. Sometimes they can help change the way you feel about different things, and even make you feel better about yourself. Even if it costs a bomb - I think I really need to give it a go.
On the other hand - I can't seem to get into counselling. For a whole year now, I've been ringing, and I got through and they asked me questions then got me referred, and I even got one of my old school teachers to write them a letter, telling them I was statemented through school and s**t, and they got back in touch and said I will hear from them in 2 weeks, but I never did. Since then I've been up the doctors at least 3 times to get referred once again, but she wasn't much help. She just said it'd take 6 to 8 weeks, but now that was 16 weeks ago.

I give up.

So now I'm not going to try ringing them any more. I can't be that much of an Aspie if they won't bother sorting things out for me. It's very hard on me because as I have become an adult, I've found I have more symptoms of Dyspraxia than AS. So maybe when they were asking me questions over the phone, I probably discribed too much Dyspraxia symptoms.
But I still need some help, whatever I've got. I got something anyway. Probably Altzheimer's.

I tried to get four psychologists to reply to my voice mail I sent out only one called back so he was the one I went to. When I first met him the guy came right out said he did not believe in a labels. He said why try to get a label when you can treat the symptoms such as my social anxiety, depression, work on anger management, memory problems, and my problems of being touched or touching. I told him I wanted to know if I have Aspergers so I could get help with job interviews or maybe some help with job training. His response was to tell me he will give me the "tools" to be able to handle these issues. He claimed to be so great at anger management he is writing a book about it. I offered him these pages from a little note book I had been putting down memories of weird stuff I did or things that happened to me and how I reacted and felt about it. He did not even look at.

When he was talking with me getting information about my family and myself he asked about my younger brother who I no longer see since 2005 he noticed how emotional I got about it. When I get upset I cannot talk. So whenever I started to talk about something he did not feel was important and he could not get me to talk about what he wanted he would bring up my brother to shut me up so he could steer me back to his questions. On my third visit I had enough so I quit going to him he seemed to get real pouty and said if you go for a diagnosis its going to cost me a lot of money and I may not like what it tells me. I left without shaking his hand out of fear of I might try to crush his hand.

I tried calling a neuropsychologist to set up an apointment the day before going to my last psycholgist visit. The funny thing is he called me back while I was visiting my bad psychologist who said he needed at least 12 visits before he would test me while the neuropsychologist however set an apointment for testing Aug. 6th the very day I called him.

The best therapist I've ever had was free.

I paid for therapists for a while, saw one while I was having a lot of trouble with an eating disorder and it got worse as time went on and she just kept saying it would go away on its own. It never did and I wound up in a treatment center a few months after I fired her.

I started a program for women who had been abused and got to see a therapist for free through that program. She was amazing. She helped me gain confidence and learn to appreciate myself. She actually cared. I e-mailed her recently and she still encourages me to update her on how I'm doing. I got to see her for free for 9 months but then our time ran out and I had to stop.

I'm seeing a therapist through my university now and she's all right but not as good as the woman I saw through the abuse program.

I've tried male therapists and I just can't talk to them. It has to be a woman.

I have taken cognitive theory, which definitely wasn't a waste of time or money, I did learn some valuable ways to help deal with my depression and ocd issues

psychology is the biggest scam ever invented. paying a man 90 bucks an hour to complain. regardless of what everyone says self esteem is bad! self esteem leads people to believe they are somehow better than the person next to them. i am constantly being humbled, whether i like it or not. the sooner you realize that the person next to you is better than you, the sooner you will be cured of your need for self esteem.

i have zero self esteem, i have zero attachment to the affairs of this world and im happier for it, i realize i am better than nobody, i live to serve them and am in no position to expect or even ask for anything better.

Psychology is for people who are full of themselves.