“Nobody would listen” yet people (not just men) don’t go to therapy where someone’s not only PAID to listen, but to help you challenge those cognitive distortions and apply the skills gained to heal with people that do want to listen without the payment. There’s 8 billion people in the world. It’s simply not true “nobody would listen or care.”
if you are about to kill yourself or others, your therapist HAS to get outside help - he can’t just let it happen. Please note that there is a difference (and it’s not even subtle) between discussing thoughts of suicide and murder vs. you are about to do the same. Calmly talking with your therapist about those thoughts will not be an issue; being severely agitated and shouting about who has it coming surely is. The specific wording is that there must be imminent or inevitable risk and that a specific victim can be identified - to be fair, if i were to be in such a state, i’d prefer a mental hospital stay over hurting someone anyway.
They also have a duty to report if you tell them you are about to commit a crime (please note that this does not include stuff in the past), and they have a duty to report in the case of a minor telling them that they are in an abusive home situation. That’s the gist of it. There are some state laws like in California where, should you be in the situation where the prosecution wants to give you a death sentence, they can call your therapist as a witness; or when you admit to viewing CSAM. You can read up details here.
I’ve discussed suicidal thoughts, murderous thoughts, psychiatric episodes, past abuse i’ve experienced (passive AND active - people who get abused tend to do the same to others, especially as a child, which still haunted me nearly 30 years later), situations where i hurt others in my past (real and imagined), illegal substance abuse and addiction, theft, and a lot of other shit that happened in my life with my therapist.
Always frame your suicidal thoughts as ideation. I don’t even have to say I feel suicidal anymore, I just tell my therapist I have had ideation a lot lately, and she knows what I mean.
I’ve had the same therapist for four years (I must be ongoing for my situation). She was my 5th therapist attempt in two years. I hired her for my son initially, he didn’t take to her, but we just clicked, and now been with her a very long time.
Everything remains confidential unless you tell them you are going to hurt yourself or someone else, they will ask if you have a plan if you say you intend to hurt yourself or others.
Finding someone you trust is key, someone who gets you. I like that my therapist has shared with me, she herself, has ADHD and understands a lot of the struggles I go through.
If you want more information, look into what being a “mandated reporter” involves. They are mandated reporters.
Noting here, for the first time in my life, if we take away the stress of current events, my depression is technically in remission for the first time in my life. No meds, just good ole coping and love within my circle :)
As long as you don’t show disclose intent to harm yourself or others then you’re fine. Note that ideation is not intent but where exactly that line lies will depend on the therapist.
Generally speaking, saying that you have thoughts of suicide is fine, but saying that you went out and bought a tank of inert gas, some hoses, and a big plastic bag, will get you put on a psych hold.
I know this at least doesn’t include if you’re discussing child abuse and don’t intend on harming anyone yourself. But I’m more worried about the stuff I don’t know about. And to be perfectly honest, the situation in my country is so bad that I don’t think every desire to harm others is necessarily unwell.
And to be perfectly honest, the situation in my country is so bad that I don’t think every desire to harm others is necessarily unwell.
It’s definitely not. But once again the line is between stating desire and stating intent. You won’t get put on a hold for saying you want someone dead. You will get put on a hold for saying you are going to kill someone and have a plan to do so. Somewhere between those two points is the threshhold where some mental health professionals will report you and some won’t.
Hmm. Honestly? I’m unsure if promoting that sort of withholding would be moral, despite it seeming wise to be aware of. Generally, anything said pro is required to report on, but that’s merely a technicality and in no way implies a suggestion to hide truth from the law. Ahem.
Therapy is not about talking to people, it’s about helping you be best version of yourself. About helping you help yourself. Instead of continue doing whatever you think you’re doing, with isolation and self harm and constant loathing.
I dont understand how a therapist could help me be a better version of myself? They dont know me and they likely arent any better of a person themselves. I can only imagine its generic self help advice parroted to for hundreds of dollars as hour.
Therapy is only useful for people that need help working through a disorder.
Therapy is (at best) nothing more than having a person sitting in front of you who repeats what you’re saying. This can be helpful for certain patients with mild problems. Patients who have trouble with connecting with themselves. That’s about it. At worst, therapy can make problems a lot more serious or even add new ones.
I don’t know what’s up with the therapists in the US, but i can report that my therapy sessions consist of a lot more than just mirroring people, and shit like violating confidentiality doesn’t fly because it would mean for the therapist to lose his license. My experience were multiple phases - the first is to build up trust, because without it there is no reason to continue. It also contains analytical approaches: what are the stressors in your life, what were the defining experiences of your life and how did you cope with it.
Later on you slowly start modifying the path your train of thought takes. That’s slow, hard work, and often it can be that you realize that you were at this exact point in the discussion before, but you took another way there - that’s sometimes frustrating, but on one hand it shows how interconnected some seemingly different issues are, and OTOH you come to realize that it took your whole life to build those (sometimes faulty) pathways of thinking; of course it will take quite some time to form new pathways in your mind.
And during the whole time you try to find practical and healthy ways to cope with current or recurring issues.
I am blessed with a pretty good therapist, which gave me a lot of stability and healthier ways to deal with my emotions.
every time i see that someone says that “therapy isn’t for everyone” my reaction is “you haven’t found the right therapist yet”. My current therapist is the fifth in my life, and i made progress with every single one of them, but some just didn’t work out with my specific issues.
My current therapist said that i do everything that i am asked to do for therapy, but if it becomes too tough, i am very skilled at changing the direction we’re going, and it took him a while to realize that; but he’s the first that DID realize what’s happening.
Where are those agencies? How do you find them? How can we get motivated to look for them with zero experience in the field, when we can’t even get out of bed in the morning? Take care.
I might gonna get downvoted to oblivion again for saying this, but I used chatgpt to search for them. I saw your other comment about 7cups, and I hear you it’s not ideal. I used it to find a listener just to hang out with while going through the list emailing and calling agencies, though.
Lol I do worry about some aspects of it — the energy usage, risks of feeding delusions and other mental illnesses, stealing content, and who knows what might happen to data we give it, etc. Makes me think of like how the inventor of dynamite had good intentions wanting to speed up the process of clearing paths in mines or whatever, only to have it picked up as technology for weapons
“Nobody would listen” yet people (not just men) don’t go to therapy where someone’s not only PAID to listen, but to help you challenge those cognitive distortions and apply the skills gained to heal with people that do want to listen without the payment. There’s 8 billion people in the world. It’s simply not true “nobody would listen or care.”
Edit: 7cups.com is free.
Sure. I gotta pay just to talk to people. Love this society. I think I will just isolate for a bit like the meme says.
This.
Who can afford to have an expert misunderstand them, hour after expensive hour, and all the while risk being labeled instead of helped?
Nah. Now that Medicaid/care is dead, the US is about to see a whole lotta deaths as a result. (Neglect, escapism, etc.)
Fuck these Nazis (in the face with a brick, preferably)
Is there a handy cheat sheet of topics you can’t bring up with your therapist if you want them to maintain confidentiality?
if you are about to kill yourself or others, your therapist HAS to get outside help - he can’t just let it happen. Please note that there is a difference (and it’s not even subtle) between discussing thoughts of suicide and murder vs. you are about to do the same. Calmly talking with your therapist about those thoughts will not be an issue; being severely agitated and shouting about who has it coming surely is. The specific wording is that there must be imminent or inevitable risk and that a specific victim can be identified - to be fair, if i were to be in such a state, i’d prefer a mental hospital stay over hurting someone anyway.
They also have a duty to report if you tell them you are about to commit a crime (please note that this does not include stuff in the past), and they have a duty to report in the case of a minor telling them that they are in an abusive home situation. That’s the gist of it. There are some state laws like in California where, should you be in the situation where the prosecution wants to give you a death sentence, they can call your therapist as a witness; or when you admit to viewing CSAM. You can read up details here.
I’ve discussed suicidal thoughts, murderous thoughts, psychiatric episodes, past abuse i’ve experienced (passive AND active - people who get abused tend to do the same to others, especially as a child, which still haunted me nearly 30 years later), situations where i hurt others in my past (real and imagined), illegal substance abuse and addiction, theft, and a lot of other shit that happened in my life with my therapist.
Always frame your suicidal thoughts as ideation. I don’t even have to say I feel suicidal anymore, I just tell my therapist I have had ideation a lot lately, and she knows what I mean.
I’ve had the same therapist for four years (I must be ongoing for my situation). She was my 5th therapist attempt in two years. I hired her for my son initially, he didn’t take to her, but we just clicked, and now been with her a very long time.
Everything remains confidential unless you tell them you are going to hurt yourself or someone else, they will ask if you have a plan if you say you intend to hurt yourself or others.
Finding someone you trust is key, someone who gets you. I like that my therapist has shared with me, she herself, has ADHD and understands a lot of the struggles I go through.
If you want more information, look into what being a “mandated reporter” involves. They are mandated reporters.
Noting here, for the first time in my life, if we take away the stress of current events, my depression is technically in remission for the first time in my life. No meds, just good ole coping and love within my circle :)
As long as you don’t show disclose intent to harm yourself or others then you’re fine. Note that ideation is not intent but where exactly that line lies will depend on the therapist.
Generally speaking, saying that you have thoughts of suicide is fine, but saying that you went out and bought a tank of inert gas, some hoses, and a big plastic bag, will get you put on a psych hold.
I know this at least doesn’t include if you’re discussing child abuse and don’t intend on harming anyone yourself. But I’m more worried about the stuff I don’t know about. And to be perfectly honest, the situation in my country is so bad that I don’t think every desire to harm others is necessarily unwell.
It’s definitely not. But once again the line is between stating desire and stating intent. You won’t get put on a hold for saying you want someone dead. You will get put on a hold for saying you are going to kill someone and have a plan to do so. Somewhere between those two points is the threshhold where some mental health professionals will report you and some won’t.
I misspoke. It’s gotten so bad in my country that I wouldn’t even consider a person with intent to be unwell.
Hmm. Honestly? I’m unsure if promoting that sort of withholding would be moral, despite it seeming wise to be aware of. Generally, anything said pro is required to report on, but that’s merely a technicality and in no way implies a suggestion to hide truth from the law. Ahem.
Therapy is not about talking to people, it’s about helping you be best version of yourself. About helping you help yourself. Instead of continue doing whatever you think you’re doing, with isolation and self harm and constant loathing.
I dont understand how a therapist could help me be a better version of myself? They dont know me and they likely arent any better of a person themselves. I can only imagine its generic self help advice parroted to for hundreds of dollars as hour.
Therapy is only useful for people that need help working through a disorder.
Therapy is (at best) nothing more than having a person sitting in front of you who repeats what you’re saying. This can be helpful for certain patients with mild problems. Patients who have trouble with connecting with themselves. That’s about it. At worst, therapy can make problems a lot more serious or even add new ones.
I don’t know what’s up with the therapists in the US, but i can report that my therapy sessions consist of a lot more than just mirroring people, and shit like violating confidentiality doesn’t fly because it would mean for the therapist to lose his license. My experience were multiple phases - the first is to build up trust, because without it there is no reason to continue. It also contains analytical approaches: what are the stressors in your life, what were the defining experiences of your life and how did you cope with it.
Later on you slowly start modifying the path your train of thought takes. That’s slow, hard work, and often it can be that you realize that you were at this exact point in the discussion before, but you took another way there - that’s sometimes frustrating, but on one hand it shows how interconnected some seemingly different issues are, and OTOH you come to realize that it took your whole life to build those (sometimes faulty) pathways of thinking; of course it will take quite some time to form new pathways in your mind.
And during the whole time you try to find practical and healthy ways to cope with current or recurring issues.
I am blessed with a pretty good therapist, which gave me a lot of stability and healthier ways to deal with my emotions.
Thank you for writing this amongst the vast number of negative responses here.
Your steps listed are pretty on par with my experience with therapy too.
every time i see that someone says that “therapy isn’t for everyone” my reaction is “you haven’t found the right therapist yet”. My current therapist is the fifth in my life, and i made progress with every single one of them, but some just didn’t work out with my specific issues.
My current therapist said that i do everything that i am asked to do for therapy, but if it becomes too tough, i am very skilled at changing the direction we’re going, and it took him a while to realize that; but he’s the first that DID realize what’s happening.
You can get “Lol, grow some!” much cheaper and faster on 4chan. No need for therapy.
You can also punch yourself in the nuts completely for free, but why would you do any of that, it’s the opposite of helping
That’s the point. Therapists don’t help. At best they do nothing, at worst they insult you.
You’ve never been to one, you’ve never even saw one at work, you only saw some weird representation at a bad tv show.
Go on, keep spitting in my face. I’m used to my problems not existing for other people including therapists. I know the drill by now.
My man, your excessive self-loathing and all the connected problems is exactly, precisely what good therapy is for.
But people with your attitude is exactly what I’m talking about.
There are sliding scale agencies, some taking on clients for free. Take care.
Where are those agencies? How do you find them? How can we get motivated to look for them with zero experience in the field, when we can’t even get out of bed in the morning? Take care.
I might gonna get downvoted to oblivion again for saying this, but I used chatgpt to search for them. I saw your other comment about 7cups, and I hear you it’s not ideal. I used it to find a listener just to hang out with while going through the list emailing and calling agencies, though.
People who shit on ChatGPT are too stupid to use it.
“I was looking for my high school yearbook photo and Google Image didn’t have it! Google Image search doesn’t work and no one should use it!”
“I was trying to find a voicemail message from my late father on Spotify and I couldn’t find it! Spotify is useless!”
“I went to the dollar store to shop for low cost health care coverage and they didn’t have any! The dollar store is bad and no one should use it!”
Lol I do worry about some aspects of it — the energy usage, risks of feeding delusions and other mental illnesses, stealing content, and who knows what might happen to data we give it, etc. Makes me think of like how the inventor of dynamite had good intentions wanting to speed up the process of clearing paths in mines or whatever, only to have it picked up as technology for weapons
I tried 7cups and it was like Paid Premium Ad Vendor Popup Email Signup Money Time Listen Service Exclusive bullshit scheme.
Nobody of the 3 who would listen for free would care
Aaand of course you are not a man.
Can you simply accept that you may not know what other people go through?
Not all men are the same. All humans vary in life.
I am a man
You don’t have to be a man to understand the male experience. We’re very vocal about it.
Right?? It’s like a Canadian having an opinion on the USA. Sometimes people can see things in yourself that you cannot.
Besides, the vast, impassible gulf that exists between all sentient minds dwarfs whatever trivial difference gender introduces.
Volunteering armchair psychologist in
.world?Who really wants to know of something someone went through without it being beneficial for the victim? Are you going to commit to a gofundme?
Don’t publish in a vacuum, praxis mental care, for those that really consent.
Brii Ash, wasn’t doing so in insta.
I’m sorry, what?
Therapy is a two way street. The respondent already proved they prefer to hand the hurt & sick to extortionists.
In english, please?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3RlalRV4S8