My therapy probably saved my life, and I'm not exaggerating.
While it may take a while to sync with your therapist, it's plausible the chemistry between you two just isn't working, or, that the style of therapy is not helpfull to you. There are tons of different types of therapies. Some try to figure out what makes you tick, and work through that. Others just try to analyze your current state and then simply offer actionable tactics to modify your current mood and thinking. I used the latter. Would have absolutely hated the former. But suitability seems to be really personal.
My therapist was purely interested in objective actionable items, negative thought patterns, underlying trauma, etc, and what strategies we could use to try to help me. These things are deeply personal and subjective, but similar issues come again and again between different people, and an experienced therapist can try many different things.
One aspect of depression feels that there are bunch of negative thought patterns and their strong negative associations, which feed eachother. A part of my healing was not giving energy to these things - letting them pass over me so to speak, and find ways to alleviate occasional bad spots (deep breathing etc). We worked with therapist with many of these things. Lots and lots of small actionable nudges.
"They can't fix any of the stuff that is making me depressed, "
I don't know your situation so I would not imagine trying to offer suggestions. I can tell what my bad stuff was though. My parents died, my wife became sick and unable to work and my son turned out to have really bad adjustment problems at school. More or less at the same time. And, I was fairly displeased with my job. That came on top of childhood trauma of parental alchoholism, depression and suecide attempts.
My therapist really could not fix any of that, nor did they try. What we worked instead was trying to give slight adjustments to my thinking and perception, lifestyle and relationships. Small nudges, here and there, over a long period, in combination with SSRI:s.
None of the issues have been fixed. None of them can be fixed. But at least for myself I can again find joy and happiness in a broken world. I truly hope the same for you.
I was really lucky finding a suitable therapist early on, but I understand finding suitable therapist can take some time. To my understanding ”therapist shopping” is a normal part of the process, and if you feel your therapist relationship is not working out right now, it might be a good idea to raise this topic with them.
While it may take a while to sync with your therapist, it's plausible the chemistry between you two just isn't working, or, that the style of therapy is not helpfull to you. There are tons of different types of therapies. Some try to figure out what makes you tick, and work through that. Others just try to analyze your current state and then simply offer actionable tactics to modify your current mood and thinking. I used the latter. Would have absolutely hated the former. But suitability seems to be really personal.
My therapist was purely interested in objective actionable items, negative thought patterns, underlying trauma, etc, and what strategies we could use to try to help me. These things are deeply personal and subjective, but similar issues come again and again between different people, and an experienced therapist can try many different things.
One aspect of depression feels that there are bunch of negative thought patterns and their strong negative associations, which feed eachother. A part of my healing was not giving energy to these things - letting them pass over me so to speak, and find ways to alleviate occasional bad spots (deep breathing etc). We worked with therapist with many of these things. Lots and lots of small actionable nudges.
"They can't fix any of the stuff that is making me depressed, "
I don't know your situation so I would not imagine trying to offer suggestions. I can tell what my bad stuff was though. My parents died, my wife became sick and unable to work and my son turned out to have really bad adjustment problems at school. More or less at the same time. And, I was fairly displeased with my job. That came on top of childhood trauma of parental alchoholism, depression and suecide attempts.
My therapist really could not fix any of that, nor did they try. What we worked instead was trying to give slight adjustments to my thinking and perception, lifestyle and relationships. Small nudges, here and there, over a long period, in combination with SSRI:s.
None of the issues have been fixed. None of them can be fixed. But at least for myself I can again find joy and happiness in a broken world. I truly hope the same for you.
I was really lucky finding a suitable therapist early on, but I understand finding suitable therapist can take some time. To my understanding ”therapist shopping” is a normal part of the process, and if you feel your therapist relationship is not working out right now, it might be a good idea to raise this topic with them.