Unfit for therapy

I'm in my 20s and I've struggled with mental health issues for most of my life. I've also been in treatment for these issues for most of my life.
I started psychiatric treatment with medication at 12 and it has been ongoing ever since. Therapy I started a little earlier, just before I turned 12, and since I turned 18 I've stopped it and went back and stopped a few times.
I've always struggled with treatment, I'm very resistant to it, but particularly my issue is therapy.
I've seen 3 psychiatrists (5 if you count the ones from when I was institutionalized, but I don't count those), but the 3rd I've been with since 2020 and I'm mostly satisfied with her. She listens to me and treats me well. Not everything is perfect, but I'm generally satisfied and don't think of switching doctors. With her, I learned to accept the medication I have to take and started taking it regularly after years of just skipping it as much as possible. I still struggle with medication and at times consider stopping it, but at this point I've just resigned to taking it as I'm supposed to regardless of how I feel about it.
Therapy, however, is a more complicated issue. In over a decade, I've seen over 15 therapists and none of them have made me feel right in therapy. It's to the point where I get worse when I go to therapy and thus have been without it for nearly 3 years now.
The issue is: I'm at a particularly low low right now and, because of that, I've been considering going back to therapy. My psychiatrist was at first hesitant to let me because it really can be dangerous for me, but after I continued to get worse, she decided I indeed needed therapy now.
She recommended me a therapist and I saw him on monday. It was so devastatingly bad I feel desperate now. Later today I'll talk to my psychiatrist about this but I know she'll continue to push for me to get therapy, no matter with who, but I'm fully scared now. I'm afraid I'll end up commiting suicide or failing and being institutionalized if I see another therapist and it inevitably turns out badly (as has happened before).
My friends tell me there are good and bad therapists out there and I've just been unlucky. But they've all found their "perfect therapist" on the 2nd or 3rd try. I'm past the dozen and still I've only had awful experiences.
Is there really hope, or are some people simply unfit for therapy?

Hi there

I've been through a lot of therapists too. I think I weeded out a lot of the crappy ones in the area I live in though. I was on my 13th person before I found someone who knew what they were doing. And who realised that shoving more CBT at me was not going to work. CBT always just felt trivialising to me, and it never addressed what was really going on. Which was a boatload of complex trauma items that those people refused to address because they didn't fit in with their ideas of what my trauma should be (go figure ).

I asked for recommendations from people in the field- one was a doctor I knew through my work (totally unrelated field), and later on my GP has recommended people based on other people's experiences with them. I gave up searching through directories. The past three people I've dealt with (one I saw for 9 years, one I dealt with for 5 months while my current therapist was away, and my current therapist) have all had a slightly different approach, but their focus has been on how the trauma affects me more than anything, and that's been really helpful.

I have found people specialising in trauma to be the most helpful to me- not just interested in it, but they've done extra training around dealing with people with trauma histories.

Don't give up on it. I don't think you're unfit for therapy, you've just not found the right person- and I do understand how those thought processes around that goes- I've been there too, and it's exhausting and you feel like you've failed- you haven't. I did give up on the idea of therapy for a while before I tried number 13, because I was just over it, and the whole process, but eventually I crashed again and needed to find someone.

Something I did find helpful when I did try again, was to write out my entire history to hand to the therapist when I first went in. One of the things I found most exhausting about the process of starting again with someone new was having to relive everything again- I was becoming more detached from everything by doing so. I'd hand it to them and say, "I'm happy to answer questions about it, but I don't want to relive everything on that list", and the therapists who I've done that with have been really respectful of it. Sometimes I'll have a "part two" for it with the stuff that I wasn't sure if I wanted to share first session. By the end of the first session I usually had a gut feeling of "yes I feel ok here" or "no I don't want to deal with this person". It was pretty much always spot on- if I pushed on when I didn't feel comfortable, it got harder from there on in. Some were more of a maybe, and I'll reserve judgement till next time. But I learnt to trust the no's.

I think the people who find the right person within one or two attempts to find help just get lucky. Same with trialling meds too. Don't give up.

Sending you hugs if you'd like some.
Lily

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Personally, I don't feel like I've weeded out anything with all the therapists I've seen because I live in such a big city and there are just so many therapists out there, so I know I've barely scratched the surface. Which, I guess, on the one hand, is good because it could mean the ones I've met were a minority of bad ones, but, on the other, it's bad because it feels like there's still so many bad ones I could meet, and they may or may not be the majority.

I've never tried looking for a therapist myself, most of all the ones I've seen have been through recommendations of psychiatrists or of therapists themselves, when I told them I wanted to switch to a new one. I think the only exception was my first therapist, that I don't know how my mom found for me when I was a kid (I think she told me but I just don't remember at this point).

I feel like I can't trust their recommendations anymore though, so I don't know who to seek anymore. I guess what's left for me is to look online for someone but it seems scary as I've never done it before... A friend of mine who's studying to become a psychologist said she could help me look for a therapist but I'm not really sure how.

I'm not even sure what type of therapy or what specialization would be best for me. I've tried some different types of therapy but they've all seemed the same. Therapy with me largely becomes about arguing and becoming resentful with the therapist because they don't understand me or because they crossed a line. So all the therapy I've done just seemed to have no technique or strategy to it. It seemed, instead, careless and self serving (to the therapist).

Right now, my psychiatrist wants me to try CBT and wants me to be with someone specialized in psychosis. I'm not sure if that will help but it is something I haven't tried before, so who knows.

The therapist I last met was supposed to fit this criteria but he seemed uninterested in my psychotic symptoms and experiences and was, instead, asking invasive and irrelevant questions, such as about my sex life. And I felt like that fit into the self serving category because I think he was just unprofessionally curious because my psychiatrist had told him I'm queer. (If it were up to me, I wouldn't say it not to risk being mistreated, but my psychiatrist thinks it's an important thing about me that I shouldn't hide).

I feel like I've failed because it just seems statistically unlikely to meet so many bad therapists and have them all be bad in such similar ways. Like it seems like what brought that out of them was me, that I make therapists not act right. But I do feel like I need therapy because I need the help that it might give me, especially because medication never seems to be enough, especially when I'm lowest.

The writing things down to hand to therapists seems like a good idea. It seems incredibly awkward as well, but maybe less uncomfortable than having to tell them everything. The last few times I've tried therapy, including last monday, I just couldn't tell them my history at all. Maybe that made things worse but it truly seemed impossible. I'm not entirely sure why it would be relevant in my case, which is why I just refused to say anything, but it's something they always ask.

And, honestly, you saying you found the right therapist for you after 13 attempts makes me feel less like a freak. It really helps.

Update: I talked to my psychiatrist on the phone yesterday (we were supposed to have talked some days ago but it didn't work out). I told her how bad it was with the therapist and she said she regretted not having talked to the guy more beforehand (she didn't know him, he was recommended for her to recommend to me by a trusted colleague of hers) and not having gone to the session with me (because of my issues with therapists). She said I should have gone with my parents since she didn't go but I hate my parents interfering with my treatment, plus it seems humiliating for someone in his mid 20s to be accompanied by his parents to therapy.

She said she had someone else to recommend to me and that she'd talk to this woman before I go meet her, and that she'd go to therapy with me for the first session. I hope this helps and that this other therapist is better than last week's one. I'm very apprehensive.

Understandable that you'd be apprehensive- I would be too.

I'm glad it helps to know that you're not the only one who has been through a lot of different people. I've discovered there are a lot of people practicing psychology who really shouldn't be.

I wouldn't go with my parents either- they were involved in my therapy when I was still a minor and that plus some questionable excuses for therapists made things far worse. 24 years later I'm still working on undoing the mess they made.

I think you should take her up on the offer of sitting in on the first session with you- I have done that not with a therapist, but with a nurse I knew with an appointment for a new doctor with difficult topics to discuss and it took a lot of pressure off me, and made me feel like I had some backup. I'm pretty sure I would have just shut down otherwise.

smile7 wrote:The last few times I've tried therapy, including last monday, I just couldn't tell them my history at all. Maybe that made things worse but it truly seemed impossible. I'm not entirely sure why it would be relevant in my case, which is why I just refused to say anything, but it's something they always ask.

I ran out of both the physical and emotional energy to keep explaining it all over and over. I had some who I tried to hand the typed info to, and they refused it, wanting me to tell them. So I gave them only a very shortened account of it, because it was just too painful to keep reliving it all in detail. You relive enough of it in your head every day. Saying it out loud again takes a lot.

Also, I would see big city as meaning lots more options and possibilities to find the right people. I live in a rural area- if what's here doesn't work, I've got to travel to find people, or be comfortable with teleconferencing.

There will be someone out there who can help, and who you can feel comfortable with.

That's also why I don't want my parents involved - their involvement messed up my treatment too badly when I was a kid. Not that it would've been great without that, but still.

Nowadays I trust my parents more than I did back then, but we're still not the closest, and especially when it comes to my mental health I don't like them knowing too much, so I feel like they wouldn't even have much valuable to say when it comes to my current issues and needs.

That said, often when I meet my psychiatrist at least one of them comes with me and talks to my psychiatrist at the end of the consultation. This hasn't been really been a problem with this psychiatrist, but I know from experience that I can't always trust professionals to take my word above my parents'.

It feels kind of humiliating and infantilizing regardless, but I guess I'm just used to it. But still I wouldn't want to involve my parents in my therapy, both for it seeming childish and for me not trusting the therapist I’ll meet.

As for explaining my history, I think in my case it's not even that it takes a toll on me to do it, but moreso that it just seems pointless. Like I don't even know what am I supposed to say, and I kind of don't want to say anything. I want to just leave it all behind and not bother with it. It's not emotionally painful, it's just painfully awkward. I'm not even sure why, I guess I just hate myself and all that I've always been too much to recount it all. It seems humiliating and unnecessary.

I do hope I'll find someone who can help me and that it happens soon... I really need it.