For anyone who has gone to a therapist, did it make things better?

>>18254668
Depends on the therapist. When I was a kid I bounced between half a dozen different chicks who just sat and talked with me for an hour, that shit never did anything. Eventually started seeing this dude who'd take me out for runs, have me help work on shit at his office, got me into martial arts. That helped. You just gotta get someone who's willing to pay attention to you and figure out what works for you, not just try to work through their Psychology 101 checklist

>>18254668
It helped me a lot.

Granted - I have an amazing therapist.

>>18254668
If you find one you get along with, they can help. Sometimes it helps just to have someone to talk to, but if you're all talk and no action, they can also help keep you on a path towards your goals. The most important thing is you click with them. My last therapist blamed me for the main reason I came to her for. I only saw her for a few sessions. Finding my next one took time and the help of an organization that helps people in crisis.

>>18254668
You also need to go in with an open mind and a sense of humility. A therapist can't actually work out your issues for you, they can only guide you while you work them out yourself. You need to do the heavy lifting in your own self-care. If you aren't prepared to do that, save your money.

>>18254668
well depends

from my experience talking feels a little bit better if you've kept it in for quite the time

what feels great is the change it can make

>>18254762
Pretty much this.

>>18254668
If you're concerned about the cost, your county should have an office that offers low-cost/no-cost therapy. Otherwise religious charities such as Catholic Charities usually fills the gap. Look around and see what you can find.

>>18254668
No, they fucked me up when I was a child because all of them were shit and each successively made me worse, and I went through like 7. Most were the type of person who treat others as if they truly cannot 180-degree change and followed the trend of diagnosis first, life advice second.

I had to learn actually-good-advice on my own. For free. From friends and relatives. Most people are better off just asking old people to tell stories about their lives and watching mecha anime. If you're literally seeing people or things that aren't there or other batshit crap then yea, get thee to a therapist.

But most people who go to see one are just being retarded and avoid fixing issues in their lives through either distractions or making other problems up to keep their self-confidence afloat, and the therapist is simply another method to claim that they're "working on things" without actually working on anything.

On top of this there's very little quality control in the field. So you may end up with someone who entered the field because they're fucked up in their own head and wanted to understand themselves, or an ideological asshole who only gives advice that's consistent with their own fucked up worldview and likely will have very low expectations for you/

>>18255815
it amazes me that teachers go through lots of vetting but a fucking MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL requires none

Yes, lets just send these vulnerable, mentally unwell people to this dude with a 1 year qualification who we know nothing about except that he has that qualification.

>>18255844
It used to be a bit more restricted, but still no less horrible. Then as the absolute quackery every couple years leaked out in scandals and piled up (lobotimies for "pacifying" those in hospitals, manipulative "repressed memory revealing" therapy, etc.) it seems that the psychiatrists with big degrees learned to insulate themselves from as much liability by delegating the therapy portion to psychgologists, and as of recently there's been some sort of trend with a third daisy chain link added with social workers.

It's not simply the qualification. I meant exactly what I said: the whole psych field is an utter trainwreck and has had constant internal strife and slow splintering for... probably almost 2 decades now. As just the tip of the iceberg: The current DSM (basically the "rulebook" for psychology) was penned by blatant corporate shills with connections to the big pharma companies, and several respected psych organizations were so appalled by this that they willfully dropped out of several certifications in order to not support such garbage.

If you're seeing spooky ghost people then seek help from them. If you have a brain chemisty dysfunction then go to a neuro doc. If you're just a depressed pussy then go talk to old people - preferably the few still around that got shot at by nazis/banzai charged.