So here's an unpopular opinion from a therapist….
I actually don't think that therapy is for everybody. In fact, I think that therapy can actually fail people.
People can't fail therapy, but therapy can fail people.
Now that is not to say that I don't think that therapy cannot be helpful.
In fact, I think therapy is wildly helpful!!
I would not be a mental health therapist if I didn't see positive results for my clients.
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Some Reasons Why Therapy May NOT Be Helping*…
*This is not an exhaustive list…
If you’d like a deeper dive on each of these areas, you can watch the full video on YouTube when you click this link: https://youtu.be/oN97AkVAi4c
→ VIBE CHECK
Is there mutual trust, respect, and connection?
→ SPECIALTY
Does the therapist have the training, skill, and experience/consultation with an expert in the area I need help with?
→ TIMING
Therapy requires a financial, time, and energy commitment. Does your schedule allow time for this and to keep regularly scheduled appointments? If not, you may experience a delay or regression in previous progress made in therapy.
→ READINESS
You can’t force peope to engage in therapy- it just doesn’t work. If you’re not ready for a deeper dive into therapy, it may be a sign you need to change the course, pacing or explore what’s stopping you.
→ EXPECTATIONS
Managing realistic expectations is part of the therapy process. Sometimes we think things should be going differently than they are. Talk with your therapist if what you expected from therapy isn’t what is happening in your life. Therapy is a process, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about it with your therapist.
→ LIFE HAPPENS
Sometimes we start out our therapy work with one goal in mind and then life happens to throw us a curveball which sets our treatment on another path.
→ THERAPIST’S EXPERIENCE VS. CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE
Your therapist can’t know what you don’t tell or show them. If you don’t disclose the problem, even when we ask, we will believe you and assume therapy is going well.
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This is how to tell your therapist that therapy isn’t helping using DBT’s FAST skills:
FAIR
The first area that you want to consider is staying fair to yourself and to your therapist.
You want to make sure you do not assume + try not to pass judgment.
Most therapists are pretty well-intentioned and want good for our clients. I say most 'cause I can't speak for all of us. It kind of lines up that the majority of people would willingly and knowingly go into a helping profession because they actually want to help people.
So going in there with the idea that they don't like you or that they want you to fail is probably not gonna be fair to you or the therapist in that conversation.
In being fair to yourself, you want to make sure that you are coming in well-prepared. I really recommend jotting down some notes. For some reason, we can get a little anxious and forget what we were gonna say when we're around people whose opinions we care about, or if we feel that they have power or authority over something in our life circumstances.
Keeping that in mind, you can jot down some notes on your phone, on a piece of paper, you can even write it in a letter or an email and bring that with you. That's fine too.
I would also recommend coming prepared with some coping strategies. As y'all know, I love to drink water as a favorite coping strategy of mine. I almost always have something that's keeping me hydrated, especially in my therapy sessions with my clients. So you can do that too, or whatever coping strategy is gonna work well for you.
APOLOGIES
We happen to live in a culture that either encourages over-apologizing and claiming responsibility for things that are not within our control or under-apologizing because we feel embarrassed like our intention matters more than the impact of whatever it is that happened.
So I highly encourage you to check in with yourself to ask is there something that I am responsible for or need to be accountable for and perhaps own some responsibility for the hurt that I've inflicted? If so, that is an appropriate time to apologize.
Or, is this more about I feel like I need to take care of the therapist's feelings? Which please, don't worry about us. We are well taken care of. It's our responsibility ethically, legally, professionally to take care of our own feeling experience and not let that enter into the therapy room, so don't worry about our feelings, to an appropriate degree. Just don't come in like wanting to be a jerk to us, but if it happens, it happens. We can talk about it.
But yeah, like don't go out of your way to be a jerk, and if you are, yeah, apologize for that. You don't want to come in and say like sorry, this isn't working, and then not actually mean that you're sorry, or claim responsibility appropriately, or outsource blame to somebody else.
There are usually several factors that go into therapy not helping, so putting the full responsibility on yourself or the therapist probably isn't healthy either. That being said, you definitely want to stay sticking up for your values.
STICK TO YOUR VALUES
Knowing what is important for you, what your goals are, going back to that treatment plan that we've talked about, that's gonna be what guides how therapy is working and what's working and not working with therapy, or if it's time to move on to a different area of help.
When you stick to your values, it helps you stay focused on the intention, the purpose, and why you're even having this discussion.
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At the end of the day, while it is really, really great to have a healthy therapeutic relationship or alliance with your therapist, that is not the end goal of therapy.
Therapy is about helping YOU achieve your life goals.
We know as therapists going into this work that this is a very different kind of relationship. We're not gonna take it personally if you're like “you know what, I'm done with therapy,” or “you know what, I think I need a different sort of help.” That's really, really good. That's growth!! We want to see self-advocacy.
If you find yourself getting off track, check in on why are you having this discussion and what is the outcome that you want from this conversation? That will help bring you back to sticking to your values and not getting sidetracked into something else.
TELL THE TRUTH
Please don't lie to your therapist. It would be very, very hard to have us change our opinion of y'all.
I can't speak for all therapists, but I love all my clients and their families.
I think that they are superhumans. I think the fact that y'all show up each and every week and do your darndest is amazing. It takes a lot of guts and gusto to be vulnerable and be real, even in a therapy situation, so I'm proud of y'all. Your therapist is probably proud of you too.
We are not mindreaders. We can't know what we don't know. Be honest with us and let us know if there is a certain struggle that you have felt embarrassed about talking about, or there is an inner truth that you haven't said yet, or if we have done or said something that's offensive or offending to you.
Oftentimes, what gets in the way of this is clients are worried about showing up angry in therapy. They think that based on other experiences that therapists are gonna be really harsh, or mean.
To tell you the truth, I actually love it when my clients get angry in therapy. In fact, if you want to hear about a time that one of my clients exploded in therapy and how it was awesome, definitely check that out over here: https://youtu.be/iwrXVK1AoVU
IF YOU ARE CONCERNED THAT YOU, OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW, MAY BE CONSIDERING KILLING THEMSELVES, PLEASE CONNECT THEM WITH HELP.
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