Posted by Hermitian on February 18, 2008, at 18:57:45
In reply to Re: Therapy - Bang for the Buck? » Hermitian, posted by antigua3 on February 18, 2008, at 17:43:55
Well this sure isn't going anywhere. Of course you folks are going to defend your therapists and your treatment strategies. Otherwise you would still not be seeing them. If you were seeing psychics for years on end youd be issuing the same apologias for them too.
Now before you get too stirred up, I am not equating the competence of therapists to psychics. But how about this, how about we agree that I personally do not have a dog in anyones fight here on this forum? Does that make sense? Do I know anybody here personally? I have not criticized any specific individual regarding the choices they have made related to therapy. I merely made observations about the extended therapeutic strategies that some have subjected themselves to that from an innocent bystanders PoV, do not appear to have been all that effective.
Look at it this way. Say theres a sympathetic lurker who visits this forum occasionally for who knows what reason. And say he has personal experience with mental illness. And lets say that perhaps he lost his mother from schizophrenia. So he fully knows whats what. Now suppose too when he reads these posts, many of them appear to be from people who have acquired this terrible sense of learned helplessness. And they also have these inordinate and in some ways disconcerting relationships with their therapists whom they have seen for years. And their reports of their therapeutic dialogs suggest meandering emotionalism with not a whole lot of actionable guidance from the therapist. And this person finds all of that very disheartening. And in some ways disturbing.
So this lurking person is indeed very sympathetic to their plight. But with that sympathy he engages in a why are they so after so long? rumination. So yeah, if someone has been in intense therapy for years, and they do not have an organic brain disorder, why are they still so miserable? And after so many years, why are their therapy sessions sowhats the word?inchoate? ambiguous? ad hoc? I dunno, pick one.
If I were camped out on this forum like many here and was engaged with a therapist myself, Id be asking the same questions that this lurker is ruminating about. Apart from the electronic hugs, I'd be prompting those still miserable people to question the value of the service that they have been paying good American green for so long. By circling the wagons, you are doing a disservice to the poor people who actually are being professionally disserviced by therapists who have not proven themselves to be effective for whatever reason.
And let me make one last point and then Ill retreat back to the sports blogs where I belong. The fact that someone required very extended amounts of time to see positive results from therapy could indeed be a function of the complexity of their condition. But it could also be a function of a pedestrian skill set of the provider. You could hire somebody you really like to shovel the snow off your walk and if he uses a soup spoon but still does an adequate job, you could likewise sing his praises. But that does not mean he objectively did a good job expending resources. If a mechanic had your car in his shop for 3 months, youd start asking questions, wouldnt you? Why should a therapist whos lassoed a patient for years be exempt from the same kind of professional criticism?
I dunno, I surely do not know what goes on in anyones therapy session. You if you want to dump on me for hearing a duck quack and suggesting it is indeed a duck, no big deal. Have at it. And if hand holding for years provides the therapeutic value that you need for whatever reason, well have at that too. I'm just speaking as somebody whos been around the block with mental illness. And I really think that there are some people who visit this site that are tragically captured in a therapeutic road to nowhere. And that indeed is a lousy way to live.
Dinah do you worst. Feel free to suspend me, ban me, shun me, even sentence me to multi-years of ineffectual therapy. I can take it...
Out.
P.S. How come when I cut and paste from Word to here, it screws up the punctuation marks?
poster:Hermitian
thread:813285
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080210/msgs/813492.html