Counselling - did it work for you?
 

As the title says. Did you find counselling helpful, if you had it?

Personally I thought it was crap. I fail to see the point of rambling about life's problems to someone with no solution. I want practical solutions to problems, not rambling. It didn't make me better, in fact I got very ill and was soon diagnosed with psychosis in hospital.

What about your experiences? If you found it helpful, can you explain?

You're preaching to the choir.

^ I don't understand.

Counselling helped me a bit, but I really needed psychotherapy - which is helping me, a lot. But these things take time, especially where troubles go very deep.

Psychotherapy helped me too (CBT). I'm glad it helped you Katie.

I found that no psychology input (therapy or CBT) has helped me much. I think it's because I just withhold so much, I can't tell them.

I found counselling kind of useful, and CBT was useful to a degree but I left with an unresolved resolution on my problem, and we concluded that some people have their ED for life, so I guess to an extent it worked but now I'm having to do deeper psychotherapy in an attempt to sort out my problems. I hope it works this time because I don't know what happens after that?
xx

Psychotherapy has been a little helpful.. In the end I think time, a good psychiatrist, and will power are what helps the most

I didn't find counselling helpful, but, like others, found psychotherapy much more helpful.

However, for me personally, I found that I ended up having so much of it that I relied on it more than was healthy and stopped finding my way by actually living. That was especially the case when I was seeing a psychologist. I saw her for three years or thereabouts and found a lot of difficulties with it.

Group therapy has probably been the most helpful for me. I found that I felt less alone when relating to others/being related to, but also that I 'got away with less' in terms of behaviours.

I have found therapy pretty useful, if not just having someone I can talk to about things I can't talk to anyone else about. Having said that, I've been in therapy for about 11 years and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's useless, and sometimes I hit a plateau in my progress.

I've found CBT and DBT helpful, but I've found straightforward counseling unhelpful because I just find it unsettling to talk to someone about my problems who is unable to offer any help or practical advice. In the end it just made me feel very alone.

Counselling was good for me when I was going through Uni as it gave me a place to vent my feelings so that they were less overwhelming and I could concentrate a bit better on my uni work. However, it didn't help me solve my issues or change my behaviours. It's not designed for that. I'm now on the list for CAT and am being screened for a Reframed DBT trial that will helpfully be what I need to do those things.

I guess counselling is more about having a safe place to talk than change, whereas therapy can be both, depending on which form you have.

I mean that I agree with you.

Ok. I'm not good with idioms.

I completely agree with you.

The only reason I continue with counselling - and really hope they call back and give me a different one - is only because it's the only help I receive. It's useless to me because I already have people and other methods to vent my feelings, so I don't really need to do it with a stranger. In fact, since I have social phobia, it's a lot more pain for me than it's worth. I just hope and pray that eventually they will see how much I'm struggling and refer me to a better-suited therapy...

I don't want her to listen to me, I want her to HELP me.

I think alot of it has to do with a) being open to it and b) knowning that although talking can be a vital tool it's not going to change things overnight or even a few weeks down the line.

When I saw various counsellers when I was younger it did nothing for me, but at the time I didn't want to change or want help really.

I agree with this.

I have generally not found counselling useful because I found that just talking about most of the problems I had didn't help - it didn't make the thoughts go away, it didn't solve the problem, in some ways it just made me think about it more. Generally I find more practical things helpful, whether that is a different way of expressing feelings, a different way of working on the issue, writing things down, finding more practical ways of coping, etc.

Having said that, when my mum was ill and since she died I had counselling at the hospice and it was the most helpful therapy I have ever had. I think that was because there is no solution, nothing makes it better, and all I wanted (and needed) was somewhere to talk about it all, so it gave me what I needed.

Iv only tried counselling once properly, it didnt really help, I felt like the counseller didnt take my problems seriosuely, and tbh i didnt want to get better anyway. Iv seen two counsellers since that the first one after one session told me to buy a pet horse because looking after a pet my help, but she also said my issues were to complicated so she refered me to a cpn. The next counseller, was my uni counseler, I saw i only had one session again, its was ok but it didnt really help me.

I agree, help is tons better. I don't see how ranting to someone about life is supposed to work.

I am being screened for the Reframed DBT trial too.