When can psychotherapy actually help?

[manics_revol]

Hopefully this is the right place to put this, but apologies if not.

I am thinking about suicide a lot, as it seems to be the only thing that makes sense to me. I have had a couple of attempts (one last year and one this year) but, being the loser I am, I failed both times (obviously) and wound up in hospital. The first time I got put in a psychiatric ward and was there for about a week but they didn't really know what to do with me. I don't hear voices, I wasn't self-harming, I wasn't having any episodes or anything. They didn't prescribe me anything because I've been on ADs before and they've not changed anything.

Second time I got taken to A&E and then they let me out after a day and I almost went through with my plan again. I now have a new, improved plan.

Point is, there doesn't seem to be anything the hospitals or psychotherapists can really do. I'm a sane, rational person. I hold down a decent job, manage on my own and everything, it's just I am convinced everything would be better if I was dead.

They say to contact the Samaritans, or go to A&E if you're feeling suicidal, but you know in advance what they're going to say. They tell you not to do it and that things can change. But what they don't say is that things can also not change, and that you're stuck with this pitiful existence for many years to come. They never admit that that is also a possibility, even though I'm happy to admit their view is indeed possible. But while both are possible, which is the more probable? I know from my own experience which it's likely to be, and the reasoning is pretty sound. Even when you do listen to them, they don't have any arguments beyond "oh, it doesn't have to be like that". Hardly persuasive, let alone conclusive. I don't need a psychotherapist explaining to me why I am the way I am (which I think I've got pretty sussed anyway) because that does nothing to alter how things are, which is the actual problem.

[manics_revol]

Thanks for replying.

I've only briefly tried psychotherapy before, when I was looking for private therapists. Most were too expensive and of the two or three I tried they didn't seem to get what I on about. One kept wanting to look at my earliest memories when it was patently obvious everything was going ok until my teens!

I tried CBT a few years ago but that didn't really do anything.

[tiptoes]

I think often it is finding the right combination of the right therapy, therapist and most importantly the right time.

I've had CBT three times the first two timed did absolutely nothing the third time it changed everything.

I had therapy for when I was a teen and at the time it didn't make much of a difference but it did provide me with a host of skills that I have been able to draw on in the years since it finished.

It might be worth seeing what is available?

[random.swirls]

I have to agree that when in the pit of despair which it sounds like you are it can be hard to impossible to think of things changing but at some point they will.

I still have low moods and times when things are really crap BUT I also think I'm beginning to see a way out and I guess I need to cling onto this for me and I guess what I'm clumsily trying to say is that in time you may well find that route out of where your at now.

[manics_revol]

I would like to believe things could change, very much so.

But I've tried to shake things up before, tried to make things change, and it's never worked. And now I'm 30 and can either resign myself to the fact that this is how things are for me: more endless years of misery and being alone. Or I can just end it all now.

If things were ever going to show any sign of improving just a little bit, it would have happened by now.

I appreciate the replies and I'm glad therapy has helped others, but therapy can't turn a dog into a cat.