Is therapy making me overthink and exaggerate my problems?
March 1, 2018 11:03 PM   Subscribe

I stopped therapy due to coverage reasons a few months ago, and realize that I am so much happier and balanced and far less ruminative without therapy than I was while I was in therapy (on/off for the past several years). Now I have coverage again... but do I restart therapy?

Therapy kind of made me go throughout my week looking for instances to magnify and express discontent over. I had an internalized voice that made me comb through my childhood and family life, collecting instances that were less than ideal to scrutinize-- and I was good at it-- I was good at coming up with some eloquent and very indignant-sounding narrative of why things were so wrong. Therapists seemed to love it-- they thought I was "delightfully introspective" and "made excellent use of the space" and stuff like that.

But actually... I'm very content. I have a loving family life, I'm a healthy young person working through the challenges of young adulthood just fine. Nothing is profoundly devastating the way I felt like my therapists used to make things out to be. I'm not struggling with a suppressed part of myself. I'm not saying that I don't have problems, but I guess what I'm saying is that I feel like therapy cast all the wrong lighting and labels onto my problems, and the wounds festered more than they healed.

One thing I am thinking about is how I act around around authority figures (I consider my therapist an authority figure, as they have always been older than I am): I think I generally project what I think they want to see, so for example, when I had a white, less experienced therapist who I sensed really, deeply wanted to be "respectful of [my] culture", I spent a lot of energy acting white and simultaneously reassuring her and trying to make her feel like I was giving her insights into my culture and whatever. When I had a therapist who liked to think of my bad habits as a result of repressed needs, I felt like I actively sought to label instances in my life where oh my god my needs weren't met. When I had a therapist who was convinced that I had experienced a childhood trauma, I felt like... I enacted the symptoms of PTSD without truly feeling like I actually had PTSD. These were all therapists who I felt I had decent working relationships with. Still, in retrospect, this is ridiculous. A few months out of therapy, and I don't go through my day in this bellicose fashion anymore. I've finally been able to do hobbies that I like in a more earnest way and read books I've been meaning to read, have conversations with family that I've been meaning to have. My bad habits that I had previously struggled to contain have resolved. All without therapy.

Now my coverage has returned, and my therapist reached out. If I don't pick up therapy again, I feel like this could be interpreted as me being "avoidant" - not that I really care if I'm not going to do therapy anymore, but, I also wonder if there is a deeper explanation of the phenomenon that I have described above, or if I am denying something, or something else. Has anybody experienced this? At what point does therapy do harm? Can therapy do harm?
posted by fernweh to Human Relations (15 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Something is missing from your story. If you are feeling happier and well balanced, why would you need therapy? Officially if insurance is covering the therapy, there is supposed to be medical necessity - a mental health problem that is bad enough that it is interfering with your life. There is also room for counseling that aimed as personal growth (you are doing Ok but feel you could do better) but medical insurance doesn't want to pay for that.

So, why did you needed therapy before? Is that still happening or has it gotten better? If everything is fine, then it is Ok to stop. If everything is not fine but within normal (and your friends and family agree) then is OK to stop. It almost doesn't matter if therapy is right for you or wrong or harmful - if you don't need it, you don't need it.

If you do still need help but aren't sure if therapy is the right form, please let us know more about the specific challenges you are still facing and you can get some targeted advice.
posted by metahawk at 11:16 PM on March 1, 2018


Of course therapy can do harm! Any sort of treatment can, if it's the wrong treatment for the person being treated.

It sounds like you don't need therapy right now. Your life is better without it - that's not avoidance, that's good sense.

I am curious why you were in therapy in the first place. Not that healthy, well-adjusted people can't benefit from therapy, but what were the problems you were trying to solve? Maybe you'd benefit from something more proactive and less reflective, like cognitive behavioral therapy.
posted by lunasol at 11:18 PM on March 1, 2018 [8 favorites]


Response by poster: I had and still have a few major life decisions to make and think through (about partners, career, things like that). That was why I went into therapy. These decisions still loom ahead and I am still uncertain about those things, so... actually I didn't end up resolving this in therapy... but therapy itself ended up becoming this deep-dive that I am now shaking my head thinking about.

Also, my coverage from my institution does pay for that type of "self-development" therapy, and anyway, I'm sure that my therapist can just slap on an "adjustment disorder" and call it a day.
posted by fernweh at 11:23 PM on March 1, 2018


If I don't pick up therapy again, I feel like this could be interpreted as me being "avoidant"

This reads to me as yet another instance of you looking at your options through an adult-approval prism.

I think that very prism is the main thing that made therapy less useful for you than it could have been otherwise.

Giving up on generalized adult approval is part of the process of putting aside childish things; that is, it's a necessary step on the path of maturing into a responsible, autonomous adult and is something that a healthy young adult working through the challenges of young adulthood can and should work on independently for their own benefit.

Such work is best done without assistance from an authority figure.

So I think you're fine as you are. Don't bother with therapy again until you can conceive of your therapist and/or counsellor as somebody you hire to work for and with you to help you gain insight into whatever difficult conditions are making it too hard to cope on your own. If therapy is going to do you any good, your therapist needs to be your peer and working partner, not your parent.
posted by flabdablet at 11:35 PM on March 1, 2018 [23 favorites]


I had and still have a few major life decisions to make and think through (about partners, career, things like that). That was why I went into therapy. These decisions still loom ahead and I am still uncertain about those things, so... actually I didn't end up resolving this in therapy...

That will be because therapists are not and should not be advisors, personal trainers or life coaches. A good therapist is a mirror in which you can see your own patterns and habits. The realizations you've been having since leaving therapy make it sound to me like your therapists have done their job.
posted by flabdablet at 11:38 PM on March 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


Since you haven't found therapy helpful for figuring out life decisions, maybe you can post about them on Ask Metafilter.
posted by Eevee at 12:43 AM on March 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


I can totally relate to what you are saying. I think both the therapist and the client lend to wanting to please the therapist but a good therapist is well aware of the instance that a client is looking to please the therapist in a variety of ways. I think your current therapist and some of your previous were not good matches for you. I also think a good number of therapists are terrible at their job at worst. Of course you could seek out a new one but from what you say you could definitely go therapy free if you feel pretty stable and safe on your own. I would think a good therapist would encourage you to take a break when you are ready but I wouldn't wait around for them to announce it either.
posted by waving at 2:59 AM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


My view is that the kind of therapy you've experienced (which I've also experienced, a few times) is more or less a theatre of confession. You're supposed to reproduce or articulate key emotional moments that are supposed to provide insight into deeper patterns, under the narrative guidance of this person who's assumed a moral authority over your state of mind and wellbeing... It's weird. Yes, I often felt like it was fakery, not because I wasn't being honest, but because there was never any structure or goal to sessions like that. My random mood that day (which might have been a result of a too-small lunch), or a random comment, might get picked up and combed through for the almost-hour, never mind whether it had any relation to the actual problems of life. Did I advocate for myself in those moments, yeah sometimes, unless the therapist felt it was important (and after all, they're supposed to be the authority). I have yet to meet a therapist who established clear therapeutic goals and facilitated movement towards them, using standardized (evidenced) protocols as written. Everyone's "eclectic" in their methods - what this *exactly* means, I'm not sure. My guess is that it's "whatever strikes them as important in the moment" based on their clinical experience. But since there are no objective metrics for improvement (e.g. a blood test), and since drop-out rates are as high as they are (so, long-term follow-ups are rare), I am forced to consider what kind of material is used to inform their clinical experience; as far as I can tell, it is just gut instinct, and the remnants of whatever training they had (or fad, or preference, as the case may be). And, the longer they're in practice, the further they get from their training, and the more imperative and compelling and subjective that gut instinct must be. No one's supervising them, usually, either, so it's pretty much down to one person's feels about you.

(There are some tools that research has established, but I think it's hard to find people offering them on the ground. Just try to find a therapist who offers exposure therapy for simple phobias. This is the most well-evidenced therapy out there. Pretty simple to apply, in theory (guide gradual, structured exposure to the feared thing). No one actually does this! Never mind looking for tools for more complex problems. No one does actual CBT, DBT is hard for find for people who need it... tl;dr I think there is a LOT of wankery out there. I think some people might benefit from having someone focus on and appear to care them for an hour a week, regardless of what's discussed. But if you don't need that, I don't see a reason to go.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 6:57 AM on March 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


I had a similar experience. After dealing with A Big Problem in my life, I started in therapy, but when I quit, I felt better. Eventually another big thing arose, and I wished I had an active ongoing relationship with a therapist to address it, but it only took about a month to really be up and running. I think quitting (staying quit) makes sense. Now that you're familiar with therapy as a tool, you can go back to it any time you have something specific to use it on.
posted by salvia at 7:31 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Its okay to not need therapy. I specifically discussed this with the therapist I went to while going through my divorce and he noted how common it was for people to get to the point where their time was better/happier just not coming. He even pointed out that to him that looks like success and a 'goodbye' session is hardly needed. Only go if it helps. Get a new therapist if you need help you aren't getting. Enjoy your extra free time if you are managing with your own resources.
posted by meinvt at 7:33 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Maybe look at this as a situation where you were learning to ride a bike with training wheels. Boom, you learned to ride that bike. Now someone is offering to put the training wheels back on. Do you need them, or can you pedal along without them?

My therapist left my insurance in December. I could have continued to see her, paying out of pocket, but we both agreed that I was in a good place, so I decided to give life a go without therapy. I've found myself feeling a lot like you describe: Happier, balanced, less ruminative -- and with a brand new toolkit that I can go to when things get challenging. Like you, I think I was having to find problems to talk about with the therapist every two weeks. It wasn't catastrophizing exactly, but I think maybe it was causing me to feel less settled and stable than I actually was. Not having to trawl the depths of my brain for Problems has been a relief, and I've actually been less stressed.

I think that means that therapy worked. Maybe yours did too. It's not that going back would do you harm, or that it did you harm in the past. Maybe it's just that you got from it what you needed from it, when you needed it.

TLDR: Go back to therapy when and if you need it, not just because it's there and available to you because the insurance coverage has returned.
posted by mudpuppie at 9:05 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I had and still have a few major life decisions to make and think through (about partners, career, things like that).

If you're happier without therapy, and the therapy you used had you focusing on your past, but the problems you want to solve (or decisions you want to make) are about your future, then I think you have two really good options. First, you could go back to therapy but select a therapist whose approach is cognitive behavioral therapy. Second, you could focus on just one of your issues -- let's say career -- and work with a life coach who specializes in helping clients make career transition/improvement decisions.

If you tend to delve into your past to find things to discuss with your therapist to position yourself a certain way, then it may help to pick an alternate mode of communication where you feel more in charge. For example, you may feel less inclined to meet your therapist's (AKA: authority figure's) expectations (or, rather, your expectations of their expectations) if you do online therapy, where you're sitting in your living room or wherever rather than on their home turf. (Same with coaching.)

I don't know if you should go back to therapy, per se, but it seems that if you're happy without the kind of therapy you had before, then you have no need to go back to that mode, but you can still seek options for helping you make the decisions you want to make. Appreciate that therapy is covered, if you need it, but don't necessarily choose it as an option if there are other/better alternatives. (And sometimes, when you square away career problems, relationship decisions are easier to make, because you feel more confident in yourself.) My two cents.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 10:18 AM on March 2, 2018


I'm a therapist and I've been in therapy. For me as a client, therapy (with a good therapist) can be a fantastic place to figure out what's getting in the way of living the life I want to live. Once I start making those behavioral changes, then eventually therapy appointments start to feel like they're getting in the way of my real life; that's when it's time for me to stop therapy.
posted by lazuli at 1:56 PM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I had one session with a really great career coach last summer and it set me on a new career path that is working amazingly well. If you have specific things you are trying to work out about your future/path in life, it definitely can be great to work with a professional, but you'll probably get a lot more out of working with a coach-type person.
posted by lunasol at 7:41 PM on March 2, 2018


Well, if you don't want to, then don't. If you've been gone for a while I am guessing your regular appointment slot might be gone by now (if that is an issue for you), but you could just say that you'll come back when you feel the need.

"Therapy kind of made me go throughout my week looking for instances to magnify and express discontent over. "

Yeah, sometimes that happens. I have those weeks. I think in therapy for me it's one of three situations:
(a) I had whopping drama exploding this week and I need help with it
(b) I'm more ruminating and musing about general chronic issues, like how to handle the Christmas season in six weeks or whatever.
(c) I'm really having a fine week, have nothing to really discuss, and end up combing through trying to think of something or other to say for the money/time I'm spending. That's when I feel kind of bad about having a weekly appointment.

I've tried to get my mom into therapy off and on for years (and she is NATURALLY CHATTY LIKE WHOA) and she usually peters out after a few weeks because she claims to run out of things to say and why spend the money? (Our HMO is crap for therapy and we pay out of pocket.)

"Eventually another big thing arose, and I wished I had an active ongoing relationship with a therapist to address it"

So when I'm having a run of (c) I start thinking that maybe I should quit, except inevitably another drama bomb or three will go off and I realize that I'm glad I stayed in for weeks like that.

Anyway...if you're feeling fine, stay out for now, see if you can go back later.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:41 PM on March 3, 2018


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