Counseling
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| Sun, 06-19-2005 - 11:58am |
I think it was this board where I posted a while back and everyone automatically suggested counseling as if it was the solution to everytihng. Well, I tried it, again, and I maintain my stance on counseling. It was such a horrid experience, I am still trembling. The whole situation just baffles me. I look around me, and everytime I see someone who goes to counseling, or suffers from depression, it seems like those people are verbally coddled. Told that they can't help what's happening to them. They can't help the way they feel, they shouldn't have to take responsibility for anything that's happened and basically, they can't do no wrong.
Then there's me. I was depressed in my late teens, but don't feel that way anymore. Nowdays, I do a lot better emotionally, and I am a perfectly functioning person. But like everyone in this world, I do have some bad days where I might feel down and not so peppy. Or I might feel like locking myself in a room and crying for a while. It seems, though that the thing to do would be to go to counseling. That's what our society says you are "supposed" to do. Forget just accepting that bad days and crying are part of life. All those doubts I have about counseling being nothing but making money by convincing people of their misery makes me a horrible, horrible person. So I ignore all of my feelings about counseling and just be a good girl and go like I am supposed to.
I don't know what it is about other people that makes them so "not responsible" for both the way they feel, and for any abuse they suffered; but yet when it comes to me, I am responsible for it. I must "stop blaming" my parents for the physical and emotional abuse and "take responsibility" for the way I feel about it. But yet, tell ANYONE else with depression to take responsibility and stop blaming, and you become the most intolerant person ever!!! Is it because my parents were not divorced? Because they had money? Is that why the abuse was okay and why I must get over it? Why are others in the mental health field coddled and pampered with "aw you poor baby, you didn't do it" when I get found guilty? They might as well put the scarlet letter on my chest. God!!!!
I don't think I have ever encountered more abuse than in counseling. Even when I was a child, the physical abuse was not as bad as the emotional abuse in counseling. The scars fade. The abuse is apparent in a situation like that and it's easy to know what you're mad about. But in counseling, it's so tricky. They refuse to let you be your own person. Who you are is all these textbook labels. You can't survive without them, and if you think you can, then you are in "denial". If they want you to have a certain problem, you have it, no matter how well you know yourself. It's like an abusive relationship where they convince you to be so down that you don't even know you can make it without them.
In group therapy, it's even worse, because on top of al the manipulation, you get verbal abuse from the other people, and if you try to defend yourself, you are intolerant against their "disease". They play the disease card to get away with being the most heinous, rude, verbally abusive, subtly murderous people ever.
I will never have anything to do with the mental health field again. It isn't for me. Thank goodness I am not the vile person my counselor thought I was. Thank goodness I have enough mental and emotional strength to rise myself up when they try to beat me down into thinking that I am worthless without them.
Please think twice before insisting someone get counseling or else they are nobody. It isn't for everyone. And if you think it's for everyone, then it appears you have been suckered into their way of thinking. They won with you.
Edited 6/19/2005 3:06 pm ET ET by dragon709

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"Or maybe they see something from the outside looking in that you are too close to to really see (can't see the forest for the trees)."
LOL
It isn't just that Dragon doesn't like therapists, she doesn't like others who tell her what they see, she's made that clear both in her statements and in her reaction. If you read her posts you see that immediately upon receiving responses that suggested seeking help she insisted she was fine, didn't need help, indicating the responses were overreacting. However, apparently the problems were enough of a problem for her that she sought help after all, yet in response here is again defensive and antagonistic. I agree with Pandabu that it's hard to receive help from any source when you're not too busy deflecting and defending to take anything in.
In your response to Pandabu you said you'd read Dragon's previous post and I assume you've read her posts here as well. What do you suggest she do to help herself?
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown

my signature exchange partner:Clashing Libidos/Ask the Expert
Edited 6/21/2005 9:43 pm ET ET by cl-2nd_life
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
Hmmm...I don't get that. If it were, like you suggest, normal problems, just a bad day, pmsing, etc., then why would she have gone back to counseling after posting here? If it were "just a bad day" or "normal pmsing" there would have been no need for counseling, certainly not for someone who already knows she doesn't like it. Seems to me the fact that she went says the problems are more serious than "a normal bad day" and certainly didn't pass after venting. We've all had bad days and have a need to vent from time to time, but we don't see a counselor because of it -- we don't even consider it, we know bad days pass.
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown

my signature exchange partner:Clashing Libidos/Ask the Expert
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
"But I see another possibility, and it's just that, possibility since I don't have the full story, maybe she went to counseling because she thought that is what she was supposed to do. Partly because counseling is seen as such a universal solution."
Exactly.
And I'll never fall for that again.
Curious here, Dragon. There are so many types of therapy out there, and there are so many because one style doesn't work with everyone.
Have you tried other types of therapy or did all six therapists you've seen practice the same type of therapy? Were your therapists licensed in abuse issues or were they simply "run of the mill" individual therapists? I'm not trying to cram therapy down your throat, but I am wondering how it can be that no method of therapy can be a help to you.
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown

my signature exchange partner:Clashing Libidos/Ask the Expert
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
"I went to counseling not because I felt any need whatsoever. I felt it was something I was supposed to do, whether I wanted to or not"
I guess that's why I have such a hard time with all of this "anti-counseling" stuff. I've never felt pressured by society, family, friends, whatever that this is something that you're "supposed" to do. It's kind of like a hospital to me. It's there when you need it, but it's not something you're just "supposed" to go to (unless you need it). Sure you can heal yourself or go to a hospital (same as with a counselor). But the more serious the injury (or the emotional troubles), the harder it is to heal yourself and the more you need the help of a hospital (or counselor). Some people may feel the need to go to a hospital (or counselor) for what I feel are very minor things, while others do not go until things are completely out of hand. Neither is right or wrong - just different.
But again - I've never felt any pressure to go "just because I'm supposed to", not because I need to.
Jeff
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