On today’s episode of Bullshit That Never Happened…
This belongs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts
This is sadly all too believable but I’m happy for you that all of your experiences with therapy have been so positive that this seems impossible
As someone who’s had a uh… not great experience with mental health care, this story is totally believable to me.
My wife should be in therapy but has entirely sworn it off after her last therapist would gossip to clients about other clients, especially clients who are related or know eachother well, and tried to play matchmaker, giving her contact info and sharing some of her struggles with another client of his who happened to be finishing up a prison sentence at that time. He runs his own practice because he was fired from the last one for HIPPA violations, and instead of being thankful his old boss didn’t entirely ruin him he just is resentful that he got fired for engaging in what should be career-ending activities
That therapist needs to lose their license yesterday.
And probably see some jail time, as well as a class action lawsuit.
they wouldn’t see jail time but they could be sued in a civil suit. they’d certainly never practice again once they get some eyes on them. they seem to have a pattern of fucking up
I think they should see jail time. The current law would probably not support jail time, but I do think that should be on the table for breaching a confidentiality agreement like this.
if you want to, you can DM me for some help with reporting this person to your state or province licensing board. not just for your family but for everyone that bastard is seeing. this is a disgusting abuse of the profession, but it’s VERY easy to take action against
spoiler
TheRapist
What do people find in therapists that friends/talking to yourself on a walk/GPT can’t provide? I’ve seriously never found any value
A good therapist knows how to break down your defense mechanisms, teaching you to introspect and challenge yourself, as well as providing you specific tools to help cope and think differently.
- Family/Friends tend to know too much to be an unbiased sound board. And what if the issue is family/friends? Are you sure they won’t chat about it? Or treat you differently? What if they get defensive and you don’t get a chance to talk about your issue?
- If talking to yourself works, that’s great (genuinely), but the therapist is there to mention, notice, and discuss things you may not have realized. Like, you may think so-and-so hates you, so you’re trying to figure out how to get them to like you because you think it’s very important, the therapist may have you question if it’s worth the effort in the first place.
- ChatGPT is like taking therapy from TikTok. It’s just spitting back whatever it collects on the internet. It’s not really looking into you specifically. You can also “guide” Ai. And you’re the one reporting your symptoms, which could also mess with the results. I’ve had to take a test in therapy and there were a few questions I was like, “nope, I don’t have issues with that,” and she stopped the test and brought up situations I had told her and behavior I didn’t recognize as an issue and I changed my answer. ChatGPT is likely not going to do that.
I’d rather eat concrete than use ChatGPT as a therapist.
Local models won’t train on your demons.
But then where will they have got any data to be useful from? I just struggle to see the value in isolating ourselves and allowing machines to handle humanity for us
You assume everyone has human connections and support as an option.
Yeah, that’s fair actually, I did assume that.
I’m not sure either. Everyone is always saying to try therapy but when I finally caved it just… didn’t do anything for me. I went through seven different therapists over the course of about five years and all of them felt like a complete waste of time and money.
Some were easier to talk to than others but ultimately it didn’t really matter. Nothing changed at all. My conclusion is that therapists are only for people with superficial problems not actual issues that require tangible solutions.
My conclusion is that therapists are only for people with superficial problems not actual issues that require tangible solutions.
My experience as well although I really want to try trauma therapy…
Placebo
Some people exhaust all their friends with their never ending complaining so the therapist saves their relationships by listening to them complain instead
Using AI for therapy sounds incredibly fucking dangerous
A person who has a lot of knowledge in psychology.
AI just makes stuff up and apologies and says the reverse if you tell it it’s wrong.
Friends don’t have the knowledge.edit: “therapy”, i assume a psychiatrist.
That is one shitty therapist
I had the exact same conversation with mine, when I was 20.
It’s hard to believe that you’ll have a better experience elsewhere, especially when you have already spent hundreds of € on that one.
Say no to therapists, say yes to callgirls. They charge less too.
Lots of shit therapists out there.
A friend of mine, his ex-wife’s therapist encouraged her to have an affair. An old highschool fling reached out to her, and she was essentially perpetually stuck in highschool due to some intense trauma around that age. Therapist said to go for it.
Always look at a potential spouse’s friends before getting married. Do they cheat, slack off, and just generally kind of suck? Your spouse-to-be will almost certainly follow their example. I say this because most people’s “therapist” are their friends and if their friends are maladjusted assholes you can probably expect more of the same.
No, that therapist is. There are shitty people in every profession.
Find a better therapist. Just because someone goes to school and gets a professional credential doesn’t mean they don’t suck at their job.
Even if they aren’t bad at their job, someone who doesn’t have enough similarity of life experience to have a basic understanding of what you’re going through could be a bad fit anyway.
The whole “similarity of life experience” bit is the hard part if you’re an outsider without much in common with the liberal elites that make up the vast majority of therapists.
It’s really not a surprise that therapy is recommended pretty exclusively by people from the same demographic group as therapists, nor that people who get excluded from the highly exclusionary and non-diverse liberal society tend to strongly dislike the profession.
You should probably remove the spaces in the words therapy and therapists.
Bad habit from middle school when we used “therapist.com” as bait for overzealous admins trying to crack down on internet use.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’re being downvoted. It’s absolutely true. Maybe it’s because people don’t understand what you mean by “liberal elites”? That’s not a synonym for democrat voters. It’s people who have been served by the status quo (neoliberalism) their whole lives and therefore see nothing wrong with it. Conservatives (especially the never trump or ambivalent about trump types) are just right wing liberals… conservatism falls under liberalism.
Liberal ≠ left.
because it ignores the fact that there are people with significant mental illnesses that have been failed by the status quo who are still able to receive help through therapy.
The comment only makes sense if you assume therapy is like the strawman presented in the greentext. Broadly speaking, there is widespread evidence that therapy is effective in helping people with mental illnesses survive and thrive in modern society. It’s not just for liberal elites to chat about their first world problems, even if that group is most likely to be scammed by an unqualified therapist. Unqualified therapists do exist, just like there’s shitty doctors and shitty dentists, because capitalism incentivizes shitty people to go into these fields for profit, but they’re a minority in an underutilized and stigmatized system.
Liberal elites are people like Bill Gates and Oprah. The 1%.
You know what you call a doctor who got all Cs throughout college?
Doctor.
*doctor who works for a health insurance company denying claims in a field of healthcare they have no experience or education in
I’d still trust those more than I would a therapist without even professional credentials.
Why talk to a professional when I can simply talk to my very normal, very mentally healthy anons on the green text site?
She thinks you’re hot anon. Bang your therapist
“Do you think I’m attractive?” Either way, need a new therapist, but there are all sorts of possibilities beyond them maybe being rude and demeaning to OP.
she’s trying to tell him he’s a good looking nice man 😉♂️
Yeah, you blew it again, anon. She was trying to give you a hint.
Plot twist: The therapist is also still a virgin… partially because she is only capable of giving third-rate hints like this one.
Lmao sounds like my ex boyfriend who guilted me for sexual trauma and being asexual because he never got laid. What an asshole he was. Hopefully im just reading it wrong but i really despise and am disgusted by people like that.
Yes, you are reading it wrong
Cool thankfully i dont care
When your therapist is trying to trick you into labelling yourself an incel.
Even knowing a shitty human therapist personally didn’t shake me. It was dating apps. The amount of women I see that I’d run from at full speed, then notice they’re therapists… Jfc (I 100% believe everyone should be in therapy. There are shitty physical health doctors too.)
Why should everybody be in therapy? That’s like saying everybody should see a physiotherapist.
You’re reminding me of a certain quote… “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -J.Krishnamurti
As fucked up as this world is, if you’re well adjusted to it, you’re broken and probably should see someone, and if you’re not, you need therapy to make it through the evolving dystopian hellscape. …so yeah, I think that’s what they’re saying.
I mean… yes? Some days I feel that way, and reading your words makes sense to me. In this case I simply meant we should care for our mental health like physical and normalize it. But seeing dude compare therapy to needing a specialist for an acute problem, then reading your response… Yeah, you’re def right in this case. Broken is normative.
I mean, with how common back problems are in people of all ages, maybe we should all be seeing physiotherapists
I know I should be. I would genuinely benefit more from a good massage therapist than a psychotherapist at this point in life.
It’s more like saying everyone should get a physical on a regular basis. We all need a check up now and then.
Ty
It’s sad that it’s true. Therapists are in high demand, and part of the reason we need more therapists is that about 1/5 of current therapists are basket cases in denial who use the idea of therapy to fulfill their own desires to control and manipulate others.
Men: never go to a female therapist, they will NEVER be able to understand you from a man’s perspective. All they see is abundance, with men chasing them and paying attention to them, and will never understand how few choices those men in the bottom-80% are left with.
Uhh Ohh
Probably fake, but a therapist should never say anything like that. I’m in my 30’s and a virigin, and no doctor, therapist, etc., has ever asked me anything close to that. And if they did, I’d be searching for a new therapist. Wouldn’t even finish the session.
I may have once believed this would never happen but after a therapist once told me I was wrong for outting a pedophile I can’t imagine this being that far fetched.
The older ones tend to still think that way.
One of my previous psychiatrists got kicked out being the head of his department because he was using his position to lobby heavily to keep Asexuality in the the DSM.
Mine was 30 maximum, I was 20. It’s not about age, it’s about always getting what you wanted when you wanted it; then you don’t understand how it might not work like that for others.
Even if it’s not fake, in every other instance, if you have a bad dentist who says shit that makes you uncomfortable, you get a new dentist, happens every day, bad dentists get bad reviews and open shitty practices in bad neighborhoods and people expect the care to be substandard. Rarely do you even hear stories about that kind of thing because people have normalized dental care.
The fact that this shit is controversial shows just how far we have to go before people start taking their fucking minds seriously. You know, only the most important part of your physical, living experience.
Uncle in therapy for second nervous breakdown. Therapist tells aunt that hell be a dead weight aroind her neck. Tells him to go fishing - he hates fishing. This was a recommended therapist from a good GP.
Another family member with past addiction and suicide attempts went to a different GP seeking therapy. Was told by the GP humans have been to the moon and can do anything so stop being so depressed. Wtf does that even mean.
Shitty people are in every profession.
Some doctors go to school for 20 years only to say the dumbest shit
Q: What do you call a doctor that cheated and manipulated their way through medical school and their residency?
A: Doctor.
Some doctors chose the profession to get laid and make money. Not the greatest motivators for being a good human in some cases.
“Nelson Mandela stopped racism in South Africa decades ago, so cheer up!”
That’s about the story of how am I about to try a fourth one in so many years. Gosh is it hard to find a good one ; taking the step to recognise you should see someone isn’t the hard part. Picking up your phone and call one isn’t the hard part. Fiding one that works for you is the damnedest hardest part of it, period.
Don’t drop it. Keep trying.
Yup, good therapists exist, but like most professions, finding one that works for you can be difficult.
Having a bad therapy experience doesn’t mean you aren’t fixable, it means the therapist sucks.
Best therapist I ever had, had barely an office, that he split with his wife who did a separate type of counseling. He didnt advertise that I could tell, no preamble, no official stuff, no formal psychological analysis. Felt like I was just talking to a supportive buddy. Sometimes he would just tell me stories about when he was younger and had substance abuse issues and I would barely talk.
Wish I could say there was a trick to finding a good therapist. I picked the closest one to my house, which was a very tiny run down multi office building hidden behind a round-about and giant trees.
So true. Unfortunately both men rarely talk about feelings and were more or less forced by circumstance to seek help for mental health.
They already hated the idea and now hate it more. When they have some sort of future relapse they’ll be be even more closed off to seeking help.
Sucks.
Jesus Christ, that tops the worst thing I’ve ever heard a therapist say.
I heard a tale about a therapist in Iowa who after talking about issues with anxiety recommended eating brains shaped foods like, broccoli and walnuts.
What’s the weather like in 1825?
Sadly it was only 4 years ago. But Iowa does feel like that sometimes.
I mean they have gravel county highways. When I found myself on one unexpectedly last year I said out loud “Why is this county highway unpaved? Why is Iowa a third world country?!”
You still don’t know a therapist has ever said this though.
Don’t know if there’s a distinction in English but when I read “therapist” I know that over here it can be anyone. Psychologist and psychiatrists have a professional order, therapists don’t… You could decide to become a therapist tomorrow morning if you wanted…
I am wondering the sane* tbh
Same* (I keep the typo for posterity)
“the sane”
Hehehe
Fucking ridiculous. Obviously you need to eat food shaped like your skull in order to enhance the beneficial humours.
