The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mean, I've gone through half a dozen as an adult, but it took me a while to work out the common link: none of them want to fix you. Putting aside that they have no financial incentive to do so, they just don't see it as their job. From a now-deleted Twitter account:
Think about the median person who makes "men do X rather than go to therapy" jokes: they think that "going to therapy" is a religious ritual, and it gives them feelings of being a special person with Traumas who is being Treated. They have never considered the idea of getting better, so their therapist hasn't cultivated the idea either.
The overwhelming majority of therapists just want to treat people, not cure them, and there's no good way to filter out the tiny handful that actually have better plans. Since the going rate in my city is $400-600/hr, insurance haha you must be joking, I don't see much value in trying here. (This industry may be well intentioned but I think it's mostly evil.)
That is weird. I've had two therapists who I saw for a few months each, and they both were pretty clear about addressing my problem and getting me out of there. I did screen for serious CBTers though.
The screening for serious CBTers is what got you that. Until I hunted down a by-the-book CBT practitioner, the therapists I've seen have been eclectic talk therapists who followed no particular school and had no particular goals for my treatment -- and for whom, therefore, a well-defined timeline made no sense.
Things like "measurable goals," "progress tracking," "time-limited treatment," and "homework," are pretty foreign to a lot of more eclectic practitioners. I generally feel the field is utterly saturated with quackery and non-serious therapy styles that make no difference in people's lives. I get the sense this is what clients actually want -- someone to act as a soundboard without giving particular challenges. But that's exactly the opposite of what people dealing with mental illness truly need. I think the explosion of mentally well people visiting therapists has had something big to do with it.
More options
Context Copy link
Did you have some sort of insurance with limited session coverage?
Nope, I was mostly paying out of pocket.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link