Bad therapy

I regularly get referred people who have seen other therapists and have not improved. There can be many reasons for why that is, including the client not being ready to change or there may have been a poor fit between client and therapist.

Or it may just be that the therapist is not very good.

Unfortunately people often stay with these therapists thinking that it’s their fault that they’re not improving rather than due to…well, bad therapy.

A friend recently told me of someone who has been in psychoanalysis for about a decade twice a week working on his fear of intimacy and commitment. But after a decade he is still makig the same mistakes in his intimate relationships. And what’s really amazing is that he’s not thinking: “hey this therapist is not really helping me, maybe I should find someone else.” No, sadly he has concluded that it is he, rather than the therapist, that is lacking.

Ten years twice a week!

(You may be thinking that ten years constitute a form of commitment and you’re not wrong. The problem is, however, that the therapist has failed in transferring the learning gained in therapy into the “real world”.)

Whatever the issue, improvement in therapy should be apparent at some stage (I don’t want to put a time frame on it because it depends of course on the problem it but we’re not talking years!).  Complete healing may take some time but improvement should be evident within a reasonable time frame.

My advice to anyone (including those of you who are in therapy with me) would be: if it feels like it’s not working address it with the therapist. There may be genuine reasons why it feels like that – it may be that it feels uncomfortable because therapy is working (if you have fear of intimacy or commitment, therapy will at times feel uncomfortable); it may be that you’ve not been clear about what you want to work on, and you and your therapist are working on different agendas; it may be that you’re too nice to tell your therapist that you’re not getting better so she thinks that therapy is going well; it may be that your therapist is distracted with something in her personal life, etc.

So address it with the therapist. If he or she gets defensive or try to blame you for the lack of improvement head for the door and don’t go back.

As Wedding and Corsini wrote: “Psychotherapy is a difficult calling. Its practice requires creativity as well as intelligence, ingenuity as well as training, and hard work as well as good intentions. It is easy to do badly but exceedingly difficult to do well. Its ranks include both charlatans and grand masters. Psychotherapy involves skills that are almost never completely mastered, and it provides opportunities for, and indeed demands, lifelong learning.”

Trust your instincts when choosing a therapist. Just because someone has a degree doesn’t necessarily mean they are good at this (as Wedding and Corsini say: it is easy to do badly). Or it may be that the therapist is good but he or she is just not the right therapist for you. It is worth looking around until you find one that is right for you, because when the fit is right, therapy becomes an incredible process of development and self-discovery.