Therapy Junky?
Do you go from therapist to
therapist? Have you tried every different therapy on the market hoping to
find a cure for your problem with no success? If so you might have a therapy
dependency. Certainly if you have been to more than three therapists with
the same problem it could be that you might be looking to validate to
yourself that your problem is incurable and that these therapists are just
part of the “hit list” of things that “ don’t work”.
Often clients come to see
me telling me that they’ve been to see other therapists of various
professions sometimes for years and they often remark, “It helped at the
time but then the problem came back” or something like that. I cannot speak
on how other therapists work all I know is what I do for my clients. Once a
client has had therapy the very least they should expect is to be taught the
necessary skills to deal with the problem or hopefully in most cases the
problem should be solved working together. In my experience if a client has
to back to see another therapist about the same issue there are 2 reasons
for that.
1. The therapist has not given the client
adequate help, support or instructions to allow the person to manage or even
overcome their problem. Basically the therapist as not done his / her job to
the full.
2. The client has not understood what was
instructed by the therapist or has not bothered to put the strategy to plan.
In other words the client was expecting to change by magic without doing
anything different from their normal routine.
Some people even though they do not like their problem get something out of
the drama of having it as it gives them some challenge in their lives.
People will often tell me when talking about their previous therapies that
“It worked for a while”. What does this mean? It means the person adopted a
successful strategy but for unknown reasons they stopped using it. Its not
enough to do something for a while and then let it fade in the hope that it
will still be fine.
You don’t go to the gym for a month, lose weight, get fit and then stop and
remain as fit as when you were training do you? Of course not. What would
happen if you stopped brushing your teeth? I still have a self-maintenance
program that I use to keep myself mentally healthy; things don’t stop
because I wrote a book on mental health. I know that I must use the
philosophies every day otherwise I will start to slip into negative
thinking. The same applies with your therapy. You must commit to using the
techniques or philosophies forever or they will quickly start to slide.
Going to see another therapist might help for a month or two but after that
you’ll be back to square one again.
Understand that to be mentally healthy it takes a bit of daily effort.
Accept it and use the strategies that work for you every day. Don’t think of
them as a chore; think of them as just another part of your daily life like
brushing your teeth. I promise you for a little bit of effort it will pay
great dividends in your life. Don’t think that by going to different
therapists all the time that a miracle will occur without any effort from
you.
