How Made You Receptive To Getting Therapy?

[WillyKat]

I've always wondered why I was receptive to the idea of getting professional help with my issues. Most people around me, including relatives, friends, acquaintances have an aversion, which I can understand to some degree. Others I know think its something like witchcraft and you'll be turned into a newt, or that you'll be locked up forever, or that everyone will know and it will negatively affect your life.

• Were you always receptive to the idea?
• Did family, friends, or community speak openly of it?
• Did those around you fear the idea and did you feel differently?
• How did you overcome negative thoughts about it and go anyway?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I learned that I was a victim of abuse. I had out of control anger and knew I needed help. So I took the first step. I started therapy in 1985 and it has been a long hard journey, but I am now having more and more good days. It was the best decision I ever made. I have been able to break the cycle of generational abuse in my own family with my children. Good thread.

 

[Justmehere]

I was not always fully receptive to the idea. In the end, I went because the pain I was in from my symptoms was greater than the pain of my embarrassment about going to therapy. I went because I was desperate.

No one around me feared the idea of me going to therapy. Most people didn't know and those who did, highly encouraged it. Not always in the most supportive ways... but they encouraged it none the less. After starting therapy, I did find friends who do speak a little of their own therapy experiences.

My biggest fear in going was if the counselor was going to think I was crazy or weird or messed up. I challenged my negative thoughts. I figured that if I was messed up, therapy was the best place to go then to get better.

 

[laurelheorot]

My relationship with therapy is a long and complicated one...

When my parents divorced all of us kids (four of us, I am the oldest) were thrown into family/child psychologist's office, and made to do things like draw pictures and play with puzzles so the T could analyse our behaviour, rather than simply talking about what was happening. As quite a smart and self-aware ten-year-old, I found this really patronising and frustrating - I just needed to talk to an adult who wasn't my parents! So, I started forming an opinion of Ts that was really negative and unhelpful.

Then, when my stepfather (abuser from ages of 12-18) came onto the scene and all the bad stuff started happening behind closed doors, Mum shipped me off to another therapist, who I didn't like and didn't tell anything new to (i.e. just spoke about my parent's divorce and never disclosed the abuse). My reluctance to talk openly with that T lead to a change in T, and over the next 6 years I was taken to about 20 different Ts - as soon as it looked like one T was getting closer to me disclosing something, my mother/stepfather would move me. So, it looked like I was getting help but I never stayed with a T long enough to form a trusting relationship and therefore make a disclosure. On top of this, three of the Ts broke confidentiality and spoke to my mother about my hatred for my stepfather, which led to further punishments from both adults. Because of allllll of this, I formed a hugely untrusting and hateful association with Ts of all kinds.

When I moved out of home and told a friend about the abuse (after a weird full-body hallucination /flashback thing in the middle of the night as he lay next to me), he enlisted the help of two other friends and together they more or less physically dragged me to my current therapist. I didn't really have a choice in the matter, and at the time I was so dissociated and so relieved that someone knew, I didn't care that the control had been taken out of my hands. I just got soooooo lucky with her; I think if she hadn't been the T I landed with from sheer luck of a good referral, it would have been a very, very long time until I sourced a therapist on my own. Thank the universe for small mercies!

 

[arfie]

I think my initial receptiveness was largely contrarian. My highly dysfunctional family hated the very notion, so I figured there just might be something to it. I certainly didn't want more of their "wisdom."

 

[desiderata310]

Were you always receptive to the idea?
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! I was dead set against it.

Did family, friends, or community speak openly of it?
I had one friend who spoke to me about it quite often.

Did those around you fear the idea and did you feel differently?
No. I was afraid to go and most people I knew didn't talk about it.

How did you overcome negative thoughts about it and go anyway?
It was an agreement I made with the same friend I mentioned above. He was going through a really rough patch this past winter and had me scared. I made the offer: if he would go to therapy, I would.He never hesitated. To get me to therapy, he would have probably agreed to just about anything.

He had once about a year prior suggested that I talk to someone and I became furious: yelled at him even and said if I wanted to talk about my feelings I wouldn't do it with a complete stranger. It was kinda ugly.

I was almost ready to go to a therapist when I made this pact: I had just started a new job and even though everything was going great I felt suicidal and scared all the time with no real reason to feel that way. When he agreed to go it was scary as all get out but I pushed through because of the promise I made. When it got really bad at therapy and I became suicidal, that promise is what I grasped at to make myself go back.

My therapist believes that this promise is really what has saved my life over the last few months.

Whatever works, right?

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Well @WillyCat, your family is extremely fortunate, so fortunate that a good guess is that they take it all for granted.

When you're face down in a ditch and have nowhere to go but up, it's not a matter of deciding between therapy and a resort spa somewhere upstate where they pamper you for your minor ills. (My situation vs that of a friend of mine). You literally find something, anything that will help you because you know the alternate is death. Sometimes I wish death had won.

 

[Hashi]

Interesting thread, @WillyKat.

It never occurred to me to not have therapy. I so obviously needed it. The only questions were what, who and how to afford it.

I only told a few close friends and they don't know why I had therapy but they were supportive because they knew I had terrible depression and anxiety and they were glad I was getting help.

My sister hasn't been able to deal with it and can't change the subject fast enough. But I think that's because it's too threatening for her, when she wants to keep everything locked away.

For various reasons I don't tell people generally, but if I did I don't think they'd be particularly negative or prejudiced about it. My concern would be more around them speculating about what happened to make me need it. I think they'd take the therapy itself seriously.

In the UK it's less usual for people to have therapy than it seems to be in the US. I wonder if that makes it less likely for people's ideas about it to be polarised. Perhaps people's image of therapy might be tied more neutrally to the idea of getting help for issues - things like bereavement counselling, stress management or psychological support for those with cancer.

I don't mean there's no prejudice, funny ideas or feelings of "if you see a therapist you must be crazy/insane". I just don't see this much. Mostly I see people viewing therapists as people you go to for help in a particular area, like chiropractors or physiotherapists.

At any rate, that was my own response. There was a time when I had problems with my back so I went to a chiropractor. Now, my mind was overwhelmed so I looked for a counsellor/psychotherapist. I was too desperate to consider not going.

My greatest fear was involuntary hospitalisation or being highly pressured to have treatment I didn't want. I've had bad experiences of this with psychiatry in the past. So I was very guarded in what I said about suicide until I realised that this therapist wasn't going to go straight to trying to have me sectioned (hospitalised). The past bad experiences did at least help me identify some things I needed to look for in a therapist this time around. They also made me able to walk away from therapists I tried seeing who turned out not to be right for me.

 

[ghotiff]

I always knew I needed therapy and help. I reached out for help a lot in my teens, but didn't get any response.

I tried to get therapy a couple of times when I was old enough to do it without my parents being involved....but on the closest attempt, I froze outside the building and literally could not get myself to walk in. I still have really vivid memories of being frozen, looking at the building.

Since that time, I knew I would need to be in a really good strong place before I could try again. That was last year (2 decades later).

 

[WillyKat]

I should tell my therapy story. I was receptive to the idea during my college years. A good friend of mine was studying to be a psychologist. More importantly, I was receptive to new, modern ideas.

But when it came to me, I had a very hard time actually doing it. And then when I did, things didn't go well at all at first. I took a woodsy, less-traveled route to the campus counseling center and they set me up with a psychiatrist on campus. I've posted about this before, but this was nearly a disaster. He kept asking me the same question over and over: "What do you want?" Even after I told him that I wanted to feel better, I wanted to resolve some problems, I wanted to have a life, he kept going until I finally stormed out. I was absolutely devastated and suicidal. I walked toward a building where there was an eighth floor balcony, thinking I would jump off. Obviously I didn't.

A day or two later I went back to the counseling center and gave them an earful, telling them never to send anyone to that quack again. I'm sure they ignored a lot of what I said, but they at least heard me. They set me up with a psychologist off campus and I saw that guy for about a year. He wasn't terribly good, and said something really ignorant toward the end of the year I saw him: "it's possible that you enjoyed it at some primal level." I wish I had the presence of mind to break his heavy duty cup of tea over his head. I might have enjoyed that, at some primal level. And maybe he would have too.

It would be another 7 years that I found another psychologist and made a great deal of progress.

 

[Suzetig]

Like others, I just knew I needed to sort some things out in my head and therapy was the most obvious choice. Talking therapies work well for me and its a process that suits me although its incredibly hard. My close family know I'm in therapy but not that I'm dealing with past abuse issues - my parents deny their behaviour was abusive ("look how well you turned out, we did such a good job"). I too am in the UK and there doesn't seem to be the same stigma attached to therapy here, possibly because I'm seeing someone privately the thinking seems to be that if I'm paying each week, I must really need the help.