Unfortunately I don’t have the energy to put together some info for the mega this week, hopefully I can pull together something for next week though. As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
Well, I got a couple of messages of support last week about the behaviour of my therapist so I thought I’d give you all an update. I mentioned how I’m going through a benefit appeal, and also having mental health therapy for depression and anxiety, and this therapist is worse than useless but I don’t dare to quit because the DWP (benefit assessors) will use it against me, they’ve done it before, used me not having treatment for a condition as an excuse to stop my benefits. Anyway, I mentioned how I’m struggling to keep going to the therapy appointments because they are so useless and stressful and I have a lot of other medical appointments to keep up with too (oncologist, endocrinologist, stroke clinic, ophthalmologist, physiotherapist, neurologist, etc) so having this weekly useless therapy appointment is just an extra stress and waste of time. I mentioned this to my therapist and she got offended and told me to just quit therapy if I don’t want to go. When I explained that the DWP will use that as an excuse to permanently stop my benefits and I’ll end up homeless and permanently destitute, she didn’t care at all and said “benefits aren’t a good enough reason to have therapy.”
Well anyway the update is that I missed an appointment with her and I’ve been feeling more unwell than usual this past week as a treatment I was given by the neurologist has worn off now, so the therapist agreed that this month we can just have one appointment instead of the usual 4 and see how that goes. I just really want her to let me have one a month until January, when the therapy comes to a natural end. That way I’ve completed the 6 month course of therapy rather than quitting halfway through and the DWP won’t be able to use it against me. I really hope she doesn’t expect me to have the full 8 sessions that are left after that. I hate this therapy so much, it’s absolute crap. She’s such a crappy therapist she can’t even think of things to do in the sessions and tries to make me think of things to do. I once told her I was interested in trying meditation so now 20-25 minutes of each session are her doing a rubbish mediation where she talks complete nonsense while I have my eyes closed. Then she gets out crayons and tells me to draw pictures of whatever I’m feeling. Then she gets out a diagram of a human and tells me to colour in whatever parts of my body hurt that day. The end! How is this meant to help me? My problems are that I’m ill from cancer and the effects of it’s treatment, I’m learning to walk again and adjusting to becoming partially sighted after having a stroke, and I’m living in poverty, always fighting benefit appeals and struggling to get enough to eat and keep a roof over my head. No therapy will fix this but this excuse for therapy is particularly bad. And I can’t quit or it will be a big strike against me in my benefit claim. People are meant to have a free choice about whether to accept medical treatment or not but there is no free choice when you’ll be made destitute, homeless and starving in retaliation for refusing the treatment. And this shitty therapist refuses to understand how badly I need a roof over my head and food. Someone here recommended I talk to her about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to try to get her to understand, I will do that at the next appointment and see what she says. I’ll let you all know how that goes.
God that sounds fucking awful. I’ve had my share of shitty therapists, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone this awful. Where I’m at now is a clinic that focuses on intersectional problems, so that’s why probably why they’re better at helping me with my physical disabilities. My current psychiatrist didn’t even hesitate to write recommendations to Social Security.
Honestly it sounds like your therapist should just get the fuck out or learn to do self-crit (as much as liberals can lmao) because nothing you’ve requested is unreasonable. I’m guessing she hasn’t even brought up Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
I don’t think she does this, and it wasn’t on offer from the NHS. 5 years prior to this I was given DBT on the NHS from a different therapist, who was even worse than this one. The DBT therapist just made me write lists of why I shouldn’t feel depressed or anxious and why I shouldn’t commit suicide, and look at those lists whenever I felt bad, to make me feel better. That was the entire therapy! And she admitted that she wasn’t even qualified yet. I’ve totally given up on therapy actually helping me, it’s all shit. I’m only toughing it out because of my benefit claim.
Yeah as far as I know, the most up-to-date consensus is talk therapy is basically useless. It can help diagnose problems in the same way going over what chemicals you’ve been exposed to throughout your life can diagnose cancer, but that’s about it. Diagnosing the cancer through empirical testing? Hahaaha nope!
I’d say stick with whatever gets you your benefits and seek out CBT on your own, preferably with something like a support group (even if it’s online), with a focus on learning Mindfulness and Radical Acceptance. They won’t solve your problems, but they will make them easier to deal with. They’re more like skills you learn and improve upon. Everyone on the planet should be taught CBT just like we teach everyone hygiene. That won’t happen, though, since psychiatric resources are already too thin. Radical Acceptance is especially useful for Marxism’s dialectical materialism because they have a lot of overlap in how we view the world.
I wish I was more familiar with the UK system, but I’m not. I’d be able to point you to some stuff here in the US otherwise.
I’m glad to hear others say talk therapy is useless. Online (especially reddit), people are always going on about how it’s so great, everyone should get therapy, it solves all your problems, etc. It’s been feeling like gaslighting, like “if therapy doesn’t fix you then YOU aren’t putting enough effort in.” It feels no different than the bible telling people if they have enough faith they can move mountains.
I don’t think I can get therapy elsewhere because it costs money, which I don’t have. I don’t even want therapy anyway, I’ve accepted my situation already. The therapist even said all she can do for me is get me to accept my situation and I’d already done that before I even met her. The one thing she can do is help me get my benefits reinstated but she just seems utterly opposed to that.
Anyway I’ve had several therapists before and none were any good at all. Years ago I was at university and I was walking home from the supermarket one evening when I was grabbed off the street and sexually assaulted by a gang of 4 men - total strangers. The university provided a counsellor/therapist who was also useless. One of the things she did was try to get me to empathise with my attackers, get me to imagine what problems they’d been going through that drove them to act the way they did towards me. I can’t begin to tell you how infuriating it is, even now, to remember that. And the police were even worse. It’s all crap.