Therapy does not work (at least not on me)

Therapy to me feels akin to religion. I think for atheists therapists came to replace priests and confession. I have never felt, from the over for therapist I have tried for multiple sessions, helped by anything, and most of the time they just sat there listening and would say about three sentences per hour that I was paying.

I understand that some people don’t have anyone to listen to them, but I think that you could pay a lower prize for a for-hire friend. And anyway, I already have several friends that I’m very close with and that I vent to and they’re actually way more helpful than therapist at helping me understand myself and feel better.

I just got really annoyed because sometimes (all my friends have therapists) I’ll be talking to someone I know and whenever I reach a wall – meaning, I’ll come up with an issue that they don’t know how to tackle or that I don’t know how to tackle myself (sometimes even issues I recognise as issues but don’t want to change), they’ll just say: “you should be in therapy” as a catch all term. Well, all the therapists I’ve tried have been much less helpful than you are, I’ll tell my friends. I feel like therapy is just this thing that we shove on people as though, all of a sudden, all of the issues that I have internalised and that I already know about will magically be rewired just because I’m talking to a stranger.

I’m followed by a psychiatrist and I am medicated and, to be honest, that was the first and only thing that has actually ever helped. Thankfully, my psychiatrist isn’t a big fan of psychologists either.

I don’t work well with structure, mostly because I think that having a set of affirmations, little set in stone routines or movements that help you cope is a version of lying to yourself. I believe in understanding and actually processing thoughts and emotions, not “dealing with them” as a resource. I hate authority and that is not a trait that I am trying to change. I don’t like being told what to do - especially if I have no reason to abide by it and disagree.

In the beginning, I compare therapy to religion precisely because that’s one of the issues I take with it. I have a problem with the concept of ”belief”, that is, trusting something without being given proof. For me, that is equivalent to lying. And, to some extent, I feel as though therapy is just a very expensive ploy that teaches us to lie to ourselves.