Seeing a Therapist

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Can a therapist help Aspergers people that have trouble dealing with stuff like depression, anxiety, everyday life that can be way too much for an Aspergers person to handle?

That's their job, albeit there's only so much they can do and people respond differently to these things. They can give you better coping mechanisms, advice with how to deal with the things that ail you, getting you to explore where the anxiety and depression are coming from, provide you with steps that can help day to day living, and so on. They can be someone that you can just unload your feelings to too, as again, that's their job.

For me, I wasn't much of a fan of psychologists overall to be honest (which I guess are the same thing as therapists), but I know of people that have responded well. I much preferred psychiatrists and professors of the same, as it's more clinical over emotional. I never spoke of emotions back in the day much. Psychiatrists are far more expensive (I managed to haggle 200 dollars down to 50 dollars per month with my old one), but they can prescribe medication for mental stuff with more experience than a standard doctor.

To be fair, one psychologist helped me when I was in a bad spot and I needed something akin to emergency help.

Therapists? Absolutely not!

I saw a many therapists during the course of my life. Only one was marginally helpful, and that was due to the outside referrals she provided, rather than her own methodology. The rest were a waste of time and money. The worst one and the longest-term (5 to 6 years) was actually my parents' flying monkey; I was basically an object for her. She did nothing but mock me and berate me, and when I shared the emotional abuse my parents did to me, she pretended I didn't know what I was talking about. I fought back by fabricating "easy" troubles and "good" topics to share with her, and she was none the wiser.

All in all, therapists and counselors are garbage; some as just their occupation, other as both that and as people. Your need a real medical doctor, or at least a nurse practitioner, who can prescribe you pills. Depression, anxiety, etc. are genuine illnesses caused by a chemical imbalance, not "feelings"; only real medicine can help with them. You CAN'T make these illnesses go away by "sharing your feelings", which is exactly what a therapist will make you do for years on end, as your bank account gets emptier, your mood doesn't improve, and they get richer while pitying you.

"can a therapist help"

"Can", "should", and "will" are all three different things

"A therapist" you have to say (which therapist)

Some therapists *can*. Some therapists (can't)

That's like saying "can a person do a backflip?". "A person" can do a backflip, but a lot more people can't backflip

(Semantics and pragmatics)

You can't get the quality of your life.

Not all impacts and immediate obvious physical or visible

Some things appear to help but , in the long term, they hurt

And vice versa

A counselors "helped" me, but that "help" was worth about one buck. She told me that the insurance paid her 75 bucks an hour. So quite frankly, I "helped" her 74 bucks, and she only helped" me one buck.

"Helping people " sounds like she dragged my worthless corpse out of a burning building. But all she did was sit around talking

"Actions speak louder than words "

Sitting around talking is like (*playing a perfect didjeridoo concerto*)

In some situations, it helps

But a large amount of it is just (smoke and mirrors)

Therapy can and does help a lot of people. It’s important to find a therapist that works for you.

My therapy was fully covered by Medicaid when I had it.

I beg to differ. Therapy is about memorizing the "right" things an overpaid medical school dropout wants to hear. Say the "right" things, get [un]conditional positive regard; say the wrong things, get mocked or berated. Also, therapists specifically refuse to give advice or information, to the point where a TV show was more helpful to me than a therapist with a Master's degree. If that's normal, then my name is Kamala Harris.

Well, one of my therapists referred me to outside sources; THAT was helpful. But without outside sources and without advice, how else do they help?

It’s extremely helpful to have an objective person to talk to. It’s helpful to get those feelings out and it helps a person feel less alone. It can feel as though a weight has been lifted off one’s chest, enabling them to move forward.

Therapists often provide helpful suggestions.

They help people identify and change harmful thinking patterns.

They can help people learn important life skills, like how to set and achieve goals.

I’m not saying that therapy is an absolute replacement for medication, although it may be for people who struggle with side effects, but it can certainly be a valuable resource.

“Research shows that most people who receive psychotherapy experience symptom relief and are better able to function in their lives. About 75 percent of people who enter psychotherapy show some benefit from it. Psychotherapy has been shown to improve emotions and behaviors and to be linked with positive changes in the brain and body. The benefits also include fewer sick days, less disability, fewer medical problems, and increased work satisfaction.

With the use of brain imaging techniques researchers have been able to see changes in the brain after a person has undergone psychotherapy. Numerous studies have identified brain changes in people with mental illness (including depression, panic disorder, PTSD and other conditions) as a result of undergoing psychotherapy. In most cases the brain changes resulting from psychotherapy were similar to changes resulting from medication.”

https://psychiatry.org/patients-families/psychotherapy

“There is growing recognition of the importance of both functioning and quality of life (QoL) outcomes in the treatment of depressive disorders, but the meta-analytic evidence is scarce. The objective of this meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was to determine the absolute and relative effects of psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy and their combination on functioning and QoL in patients with depression.

When compared directly, initial analysis yielded no evidence that one of them was superior. After adjusting for publication bias, psychotherapy was more efficacious than pharmacotherapy (g = 0.21) for QoL [quality of life]. The combination of psychotherapy and medication performed significantly better for both outcomes compared to each treatment alone yielding small effect sizes (g = 0.32 to g = 0.39). Both interventions improved depression symptom severity more than functioning and QoL.

Conclusion

Despite the small number of comparative trials for some of the analyses, this study reveals that combined treatment is superior, but psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy alone are also efficacious for improving functioning and QoL. The overall relatively modest effects suggest that future tailoring of therapies could be warranted to better meet the needs of individuals with functioning and QoL problems.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... n_sectitle

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 25 Jun 2022, 10:41 am, edited 4 times in total.

I'll give you that... partially.

It's only helpful if the therapist is on your side. For most adult patients, that's generally true, unless the patient expresses a wish to harm. So yeah, an $100/hour chat session can be somewhat helpful, to feel less alone, since the therapist has no hidden loyalty. Of course, they'll still withhold advice from you. Also, you can't forget politics. If you tell a therapist that social distancing makes you feel lonely, they'll call you a "grandma killer". That's why I didn't bother with online therapy in 2020.

Also, this is where family therapy fails the patient. The therapist is loyal to the parents, but the identified patient is the minor. So the therapist has a tricky task: helping the parents exert more power, while looking helpful to the minor. Unfortunately for the therapist, most aspie kids and teens are very intelligent, and can see through the "helpful" façade like through plate glass.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 25 Jun 2022, 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Most of them work only to make money. They don't really care about their clients' well-being. They do care about not getting blamed for bad consequences. They are dodgy people. I don't trust them.

How do you know this is what they’ll say?

My therapist never said that, and I’ve not heard of any who did.

Sure, there are some therapists who say stuff that they shouldn’t but they are the exception not the rule.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 25 Jun 2022, 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sources please.

How do you know that, in general, therapists “don’t really care about their clients’ well-being” and that they are “dodgy people?”

Politics, my fellow WrongPlaneteer.

Most, if not all, therapists are very liberal; they have an agenda to uphold. So it goes without saying that they hate the idea of socializing during the Election Infection (EI). Some of them will even narc on you to the county sheriff if you tell them you want to go to a party. Why? Because they strongly believe you intend to harm people by spreading the EI.

It depends on the sheriff, though. My own county enforced the lockdowns, but a county just 10 miles (16 km) away was very lax, let alone the rural areas 100 miles (160 km) away. So if you live in a conservative county, you'll be fine.

Yes, I'm sure they can help.

My older brother, who is also mildly aspie even if he won't admit it, has been seeing a counsellor and has told me that he's learning a LOT about the way he thinks and how some of his thought processes have been distorted for probably his entire life.. that talking through them and learning how to analyze his thoughts and realize that they're not always reflective of reality and are skewed by various forms of depressive negative thinking has been an amazing experience for him. It's letting him change the way he thinks and feels, reacts to things etc.

You can learn many of these things from books, too. I read "Feeling Good," by Dr. David Burns and learned a bunch of this stuff. But talking to a professional might be more effective for some people. Can't really go wrong with any approach as long as you're trying!

Pure speculation and personal opinion just like I thought.