How does talking to a professional about your problems help you in any way? I’ve been in and out of therapy for years and I simply don’t find any use in it. I just tell the therapist about my emotions and my life, they try to be understanding and offer some very basic advice I already knew about. Why is therapy often recommended more than medication and thought of as a better solution when it’s literally just normal discussion that can’t change brain chemistry?
In: Other
It absolutely can be more effective than medication, but depends on the problem. I myself suffered from severe depression and anxiety from childhood through to my early twenties. I had been medicated for nearly ten years and had been prescribed most anti depressants, almost all of them made me feel worse. There was only one that actually made me feel any better but unfortunately made me have multiple seizures. Talking therapy at the time was almost impossible to access unless you could afford it and waiting lists were years long. Self harm was one of the things that helped me cope until it all got too much and I tried and failed to kill myself twice in 24 hours. After the first time I managed to convince the nurses it was all a big misunderstanding and discharged myself, the second time I was sectioned and placed under 24 hour observation. It was the best thing that ever happened to me as it gave me immediate access to a psychiatrist and psychologist. I started having regular CBT and CAT sessions and was prescribed a medication to help with my anxiety rather than depression. At first I was completely skeptical about it working, especially as some of the ‘homework’ just seemed ridiculous. After a while I started to learn why I felt the way I did and that I had learnt to have certain thought processes because of how my brain had reacted to events in my life. At the time my brain saw these reactions as ways to protect itself and they became reinforced, only over time they had an extremely damaging effect on my sense of self worth. Once I could identify it happening in real time it started to make sense how I could choose to change my reaction to situations. It takes a hell of a lot of work to undo a decade of negative thinking patterns, but once you start it becomes easier to do until it just becomes natural. That was 20 years ago and I’ve not had any relapses since then even when shit has hit the fan. Sorry for the essay, that’s just some of my own experience.
Latest Answers