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?
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That’s a really complicated question and I’m not sure I can explain it like you’re 5, but I’ll be as simple as I can.
Therapy is not just normal discussion. All disciplines of therapy have different ideas as to what the therapist actually does, but it’s never the same as a talk with a friend.
Here’s some overarching things that are usually held in common between therapies:
The therapist is non-judgmental. They will not tell you you’re wrong for the way you live.
The therapy is private. You don’t have to worry about what you share with them.
The therapist is trained. They went to school for this.
As for how it helps, well, that’s complex. A humanistic therapist would tell you they provide you with the self-confidence and self-esteem you need to know how to help yourself. A CBT therapist would tell you they teach you to change your behaviours and your thoughts will change too, or vice versa. A psychodynamic therapist would tell you they bring your unconscious problems to the conscious, where you could fix them.
(I am massively oversimplifying all three, of course!)
It sounds like you’ve had (bad) person centred therapy. Maybe you’d benefit from something different?
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