To add to this: we also tend to think we can correctly assess any problem without external help, but especially when it comes to the "self" this fails. It's kind of inevitable: being able to analyze a problem requires some distance, but taking distance from yourself, especially your problem areas, fundamentally goes against that. The result is blind spots.
If you think you’re insane but also thinking it could be self-mis-diagnosis, no, you are not sane.
There is no such inherent contradiction in an ability for a logical system to detect its own anomaly were you one.
If it had been a false positive, the fact that a false positive is occurring itself is an anomaly, and an issue.
My problems are more related to anxiety and depression, but the same concepts apply. I also think that you get out of therapy what you put in. It sounds like you are in a good frame of mind because you want to improve yourself. That's probably the best attitude you could take going into therapy.
How do you do find someone good that you trust? How do you find someone worth the time? The couple of times I've tried to find someone you end up making a lot of unreturned phone calls.
Maybe I have an unfairly negative impression of therapists - I both think that it's incredibly valuable to introspect and have someone smart and thoughtful to work things out with, but also suspect a lot of therapists are neither of those things?
CBT and growth mindset seems helpful, what's the process to actually find someone successfully? How many people actually are doing therapy vs. just recommending other people do it? It seems a lot more people are recommending it than actually doing it themselves (which would explain the vague advice).
In my experience the best way to find someone is through recommendations. Find someone with a good therapist, and contact the therapist for recommendations. They usually know other people in the field that work with a similar approach.
I feel CBT only works with simple issues. For trauma and deep running issues I would suggest finding someone who looks into the root of issues and doesn't just try to change behaviours. See psychotherapy for example.
Otherwise it depends on where you live as well.
In Australia, and definitely for NSW:
- look for a psychiatrist instead of a psychologist. With a psychologist you get 10 sessions for free by the government, but then you have to pay the full fee yourself. This ends up being around $150-$250 per session from what I have seen. With a psychiatrist the medicare safety net kicks in, and after $2000 of out of pocket expenses you get 85% of the session fees back. In my case I end up paying ~$40 for my $350 therapy sessions which makes a huge difference when therapy can be going for years.
Happy to help out with recommendations in the NSW Australia area.
The difficulty is either I don't know anyone my age that has one or it's still taboo for men to talk about so people don't. I'd guess it's a combination of both. The only people I've known personally who see a therapist are women (and from that small sample they don't want you to see their same person).
I think men tend to rely entirely on their SO which is probably not a great thing for either party.
Which is fair enough. That's why I'm suggesting to not get their therapist's details to see the same person, but to get a recommendation from the therapist. Hopefully that would alleviate their concerns.
AFAIK a good therapist will not see people who are too close to each other anyway as there can be a bias on the therapist's side due to the close relationship. For example doing both couple and individual therapy with the same therapist is not a good idea.
But everyone is happy recommending therapy. Oooh, it's sooo great! Yeah. Only if I could find some.
I'm assuming therapists designed their funnel this way, somehow, there's something about me that puts me in this category of people that can't get over the initial barrier of finding them.
I feel the stupidly stressful process of trying to find a therapist itself has increased my need for therapy.
I am asking because here in France it is either a medical field (reimbursed, an example would be a psychiatrist) or not (a psychologist for instance)
These challenges are deeply personal, so finding the right person is challenging. There are lot of therapists with different qualifications and experience. People seem to study psychology, do whatever qualifications they need, and start as a therapist, but the experience part is a challenge.
I don't think this challenge is much different from finding mentors. In fact, it's probably better because it's a discrete financial transaction and the conversations are protected. Finding mentors during your career, if you don't have them directly in your workplace, can be really problematic. You have few protections, and little ability to build up trust, until you've invested time building up trust.
When it comes to men (probably the majority) on HN there are also a number of specific issues which affect take up of therapy. That's after the cost issues which affect everyone. If someone is in some countries they may have little, or no availability of certain kinds of therapy.
But it's the same with Doctors. Some doctors won't listen to your symptoms, some doctors might have old information, or brush you off.
Would you put off going to a doctor because of those problems?
With doctors there are places everyone goes where you can sign up and get a doctor which is relatively easy to schedule. From there for routine stuff there's less variability, you just do your routine checkup, and you'll be referred to experts if necessary.
There's also a higher minimum standard to get an MD.
It's both way easier to find one and easier to determine they're qualified/actually know what they're talking about (though obviously there's still variance in quality just not as bad).
With therapists there's no clarity around any of this really.
If you see a psychotherapist, they have to be certified as an MD and then they get therapist training.
Shop around? You're inviting someone to perform online brain surgery on you. Fortunately, you can undo the operation if you don't like it (sort of). If you don't like what the therapist is doing, keep looking for a different therapist that works for you.
I've heard a story where a therapist got upset with their client because the client said, during a therapy session, they were going to find someone else.
Simple point of order: I don't need to tell my therapist if they're fired. I just walk away.
That would be a clear sign of a bad therapist. There very much has to be room to discuss seeing someone else, and whether the therapy relationship is working.
But an additional point is worth making, the kind of thing that a good therapist would help you see.
> I don't need to tell my therapist if they're fired. I just walk away.
I am stating that as clearly as I can there. If my therapist starts acting in a way that makes me uncomfortable, no more talk. No need to talk. I don't need my therapist's permission to walk away.
I just. walk. away.
Though you might want to get in contact with your insurance if they are paying for it, since having it on your record as aborted for no reason could cause issues when convincing them to pay the next one.
Like all relationships, it's predicated on trust, and that means finding the right professional. There are shops that make their retirement letting people talk about themselves for an hour once a week, and there are others genuinely engaged in the art of helping people heal themselves.
I don't think a "brilliant rational mind" is a prerequisite for coming to the conclusion that you're spending money to lock someone in conversation with you - someone that would not associate with you otherwise. To me, the relationship is artificial and the lessons learned can be obtained for free. Therapy seems to be conversational prostitution, more or less.
But you and others affirm that therapy has a positive ROI, and some people recommend therapy with such vigor you'd think it was the only (or the best/most efficient) way to get that return. I just don't see it, and to date I haven't met a sufficiently elucidating explanation.
It's like asking, "what does a junior engineer get out of being mentored by a senior engineer that they couldn't just figure out by coding or reading blogs?" A therapist brings things like context, breadth of knowledge, and honesty. I felt like the therapist wasn't incentivized to sugar coat things to spare my feelings, something close friends and family might do.
I am not sure about seeing one for 5 years, though. The point of a therapist is to make themselves unnecessary, in my opinion - they're supposed to give you the tools needed to do exactly what you're saying people should do - understand their behavior and change it.
I could offer a different data point, but since it's all subjective experience anyway, just make your own call. I've enjoyed long-term therapy because I found more things I wanted to work on. Ironically, it is my therapist who reviews things on a regular schedule and asks, "why are you coming to therapy now?"
(If your therapist isn't doing that, maybe that's a red flag that you are being taken advantage of?)
It may also indicate you really need the therapy. That's the conundrum.
You need sometimes assess (reflect), possibly with your therapist, how they are aiding you effectively. In The Netherlands, there are waiting lists for psychiatrists (and a shortage), as well as waiting lists for specialized psychologists; hence they get paid either way. They'd rather have a client who benefits from their therapy.
It's less about fixing things that are profoundly broken and more about incrementally trying to make the most of the brain you're given.
That's half of the point right there. You only know all the thoughts you will come up with. You go to a therapist because a good one will tell you things you never would have considered at all. Your mind has ruts so deeply worn you don't even know they are there. A therapist will nudge you out of them.
I've had a number of therapy sessions where my therapist said something about myself or my past that I literally had never considered in my entire life.
The other half is that good therapists have a lot of training in how the mind works and the tricks it plays on itself. They know to look for patterns where when you say X the problem is really Y, which is a connection you yourself have never made.
It's like asking "Why should I read this book? I'm not aware of anything in it that I don't already know." The point is that you don't know what you don't know that's in it. You can't accurately simulate a therapist in your head because your simulated one only knows the things you already know. An actual therapist will provide novel insight.
Talking to a therapist does two things: it makes you interact with a human being, not an abstract concept or idea. This uses different areas of your brain, different cognitive and emotional pathways than does reading a book or simply "thinking about it"; and it allows you to receive the benefit of trained expertise in detecting what patterns, triggers, traps, and skills you have or need to have exposure to.
The problem is we all carry around a lot of subterranean shame, fear and guilt, and your mind has a way of blinding you too it because those feelings are too intense to handle on a day-to-day basis. As a result, we all have blind spots and dysfunctional habits that we will defend at all costs. Haven't you met brilliant, highly rational people that keep acting stupid over and over again because they refuse to acknowledge their own problems?
We're all a little broken for emotional reasons, not rational reasons. Everyone knows they shouldn't smoke, and drink too much, and spend too much. But lots of people have problems with that, because it's not about a lack of knowledge.
A therapist, over time, gets you to open up, accepts you, and thus shines light on those dark places. When you accept them instead of reflexively rejecting them, you can actually see yourself with more clarity and thus behave more rationally.
So yes, you could learn whatever a therapist could teach you from reading books. But the benefit of a therapist is the relationship. You could also go through the same process with a good friend, but most people are bad at listening and being accepting, especially when you're sharing your deepest secrets. And sadly, most people don't seem to have the time. Haven't you ever tried to share something with a friend, but then they say something judgmental and you never show them that again? A therapist is trained not to do that.
You might think that you are very unique, but often that's not the case. Or, at least, your behavior can be decomposed into patterns, and a therapist can often forecast where that behavior leads (and, if they're skilled and/or lucky, where it's coming from).
Psychologists are experts in defusing such resistance and helping us work with that unconscious content, content that most people probably aren't very skilled in helping with.
What a therapist does is to help you to ask and answer questions by yourself. Sometimes just the fact that putting things into words to a stranger is enlightening. A therapist might ask "why do you think you need to reason in terms of money, ROI and investment when talking about relationships?"
How I know this? I'm seeing a therapist too! I see her everyday. I've been married with a psychologist for 15 years now. I've been hearing these kind of questions forever!
Do you grow your own food? If not, you are partaking in prostitutional farming.
Do you make the write the books you read? If not, you are paying for prostitutional authors.
Are you saying if you were more attractive/deserving/whatever, people with therapeutic skills would go around sharing their insight with you for free?
Broken heart
Broken leg
Blindness
Losing a child
Having a low (or too high) IQ
Having severe mental disorder(s)No, of course I don't believe rationality is like that. The implicit point was that many people in tech do have an attitude like this. They overvalue their "objective" rational reasoning, ironically due to irrational needs.
If i pass up $100 to get a burger, am i acting irrationally? It depends if i'm hungry. It depends how much $100 means to me (Am i bill gates?). Its impossible to say from the outside. I'm convinced much behaviour is basically the same except much more complex with multiple conflicting priorities.
Conceptually, think about how many times your friends have an issue that seems trivial for you (on the outside) to fix. Surely the same applies to you. Especially if you're high functioning, by definition anything left to work on is relatively outside your awareness and can't be solved from the "inside".
(Caught my eye quickly scrolling down because they look like java command-line options)
Your comment is terribly unhelpful. Therapy isn't about "fixing" someone, but to help individuals with issues that negatively affect their life find opportunities to manage those issues. CBT is not something you can start doing by yourself without an external catalyst.
I have ADHD, OCD, and bipolar II along with recurring bouts of PTSD from a terribly traumatic childhood. Without therapy, I would have considerable more issues integrating with my peers and navigating the emotional turmoil that is the battlefield of my brain. Therapy has assisted me in shifting my perspective and enabling me to live my best life despite the demons that seem to constantly want to drag me down.
I disagree strongly with this part. The "Feeling Good" book by David D Burns, which is essentially a fantastic primer on CBT, single handedly helped me conquer my depression in college and helped me graduate with high scores, just when I was on the verge of dropping out. It was god send to me because I couldn't afford to go to a therapist. (And depression was just one of the psychological problems that I had, which later therapy helped me identify).
Sure it is. Self-therapy is useful, getting a therapist is useful.
Why is everyone shitting on other people's vibe?
Because people provide horrible advice like this that prevents people from getting the help they need. Stigma is a real thing.
This is a valid opinion, but it would be better presented with some evidence to support it.
When someone says "A therapist really helped me." then their opinion carries its own evidence. They are a living evidential proof of their claim. (At least, to the degree that you accept that the commenter is honest and able to correctly measure their own quality of life.)
But when you say "therapists are a waste of money", your claim shows only absence of evidence, not evidence of absense. It may be that therapists aren't good for you, or that you haven't had a good one, or simply that you have no experience with them at all.
that's only true for individuals which you do not believe to be affected by choice-supportive bias[0], which is , more-or-less, non-existent as far as humanity is concerned.
If someone buys therapy, and they feel as if their quality of life has been improved by the purchase, great, but that's not a quantifiable justification of much without normalizing out inherent bias in the decision making process; a process that isn't as simple as 'an opinion as evidence'.
I've been seeing a therapist for 5 years now, and the positive impact this has had in my life and on my general self-awareness can't be overstated.
As engineers and tech people we have one tool that has proven incredible useful in our careers: our brilliant rational minds. So we tend to think that we can solve any problem in life with this tool. Turns out we can't; thinking that therapy is somehow beneath us is pure hubris.
I also resisted therapy for a long time as a matter of principle. In high school I learned about the id, ego and super-ego, and in my 17 year old wisdom I thought "This is all bullshit! Did the guy open someone's head and see three parts? No! This is all made up!" Being unquestionable older and hopefully wiser now, I've understood that "all models are wrong, but some are useful"[0]. And therapy happens to have some useful models to offer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong