Seeking genuine, real-life impacts from counselling/therapy

[seemly]

I'm hoping there might be at least a couple of you that might have either experienced the results of counselling or therapy, either directly (you as the patient), or seen a loved one benefit from it.

I go through bouts of various forms mental health issues, and I'm not the person I want to be, or know I could be.

I've always been hard on myself, and am known to be a bit of a perfectionist. Whilst in some scenarios this can be a good thing, it's mostly exhausting, and it also makes those closest to me feel that they can't meet the expectations I set of myself (but which I totally don't expect from others).

I've also never been able to celebrate achievements and/or accomplishments. Upon completion I never celebrate the moment, I just look ahead to the next challenge, which is totally ungratifying. I can't help but feel that isn't what life is about?

I'm not much of a reader, so self-help books won't get read. I have 10's of books I have bought in the past which have never been opened.

This isn't a sob story, and I'm not looking for attention. I just want to know if it genuinely helps. Success rates. Hear the positive difference it has made to others. I just want to be the best version of me that I can be, for my loved ones more than anything else.

 

[wazzer]

I have gone through similar and councelling does help. Just speaking to someone who is not "judging" you and is genuinely trying to help/understand how you are feeling is a real godsend. Don't get me wrong, it is not a magic "cure", but getting to a root cause can be very beneficial. Sadly, we live in a society where men and simply told to man up etc and to just get on with it. Things are changing for the better and more and more is being done to address this imbalance. It really is good to talk!

 

[KarlM]

I have had CBT for a bit of anxiety i was suffering from, very helpful and funded by the NHS.

 

[baldidiot]

Not something I've done myself, but I have a couple of friends that I know go regularly and they swear by it. So it probably does help some people.

At the end of the day though, if it's something you think you'd like to try and might help, then what's the harm - just give it a go. If you don't like it or don't get anything from it then you can easily abandon it and all you've lost is a bit of time and a few quid.

I think with a lot of these kinds of things the initial "doing" part is often the hardest.

 

[diablo]

I haven't had experience of therapy, but really appreciate you speaking out like this. Men in particular can be guilty of bottling things up rather than share problems, and that's not good for our physical or mental health. So a big thumbs up for having the balls to speak up.

You're a good man, Chris.

 

[seemly]

I want to thank each and every one of you that took the time to reply here, and to those who reached out privately. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

I will look at what next steps I need to take, and see how things pan out.

I think the most important thing I need to remember is that in order for things to change, something needs to change. Starting with me. I'll get there.

 

[Kaleido]

Thank you for posting Chris, it's very courageous of you. And thank you to everyone else for posting too. I've been lurking but you've all encouraged me to break cover and open up.

Your words really resonate with me Chris. I share your struggle with not being the person I want to be. I'm a perfectionist, I'm hard on myself and I'm also unable to accept compliments or celebrate achievements. My perfectionism is the reason why I edit most of my posts on here

My mental health is a minefield and I've struggled with anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and self medicating since early adulthood and I've suffered some devastating breakdowns. It's fucking exhausting.

Therapy has been transformative and has helped me enormously to understand myself and my behaviours and to cope with life. Therapy has also led me to the realisation that I'm neurodiverse and the revelation that my behaviours are caused by the way my brain is wired and not because I'm a useless human being.

I recommend finding a multidisciplinary therapist who can tailor a combination of therapies to your specific needs. I've undergone cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy, hypnotherapy and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy. EMDR blew me away with how effective it is and I made huge emotional breakthroughs.

I wish you the best of luck in making peace with yourself. My door is always open so you don't even have to knock.

BTW I own Counsellors.uk

 

[ben]

I’ve just finished 20 sessions of CBT for health anxiety and depression and I have to say, it has helped a lot with the health anxiety stuff. My therapist was really good and I began to like her, and open up more to her about stuff and in the end she gave me some really useful techniques to help manage a lot of anxiety and stress as well as being able to get a lot of health anxiety stuff in check.

Shame it had to end really.

 

[seemly]

Thank you for posting Chris, it's very courageous of you. And thank you to everyone else for posting too. I've been lurking but you've all encouraged me to break cover and open up.

Your words really resonate with me Chris. I share your struggle with not being the person I want to be. I'm a perfectionist, I'm hard on myself and I'm also unable to accept compliments or celebrate achievements. My perfectionism is the reason why I edit most of my posts on here

My mental health is a minefield and I've struggled with anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and self medicating since early adulthood and I've suffered some devastating breakdowns. It's fucking exhausting.

Therapy has been transformative and has helped me enormously to understand myself and my behaviours and to cope with life. Therapy has also led me to the realisation that I'm neurodiverse and the revelation that my behaviours are caused by the way my brain is wired and not because I'm a useless human being.

I recommend finding a multidisciplinary therapist who can tailor a combination of therapies to your specific needs. I've undergone cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy. EMDR blew me away with how effective it is and I made huge emotional breakthroughs.

I wish you the best of luck in making peace with yourself. My door is always open so you don't even have to knock.

BTW I own Counsellors.uk

See, this is the sort of thing that I need - as the mental health help landscape seems vast, and the plethora of therapy types is daunting.

I'd never even heard of EMDR before!

I don't know what is "wrong" with me, so I have no idea where to begin. I'm not made of money, and I struggle to see why someone who is being paid to listen and help you has any desire to fix the cash cow.

My personal story is long. I'm pretty sure my past is not particularly traumatic. I was never physically or (knowingly) emotionally abused. I just think multiple life decisions that have either been made by others (most likely my parents when I was younger), or even decisions I've made as an adult haven't been the most ideal, and they've just compounded over time.

Mix this with world and life events that are outside of your control, a few personal losses thrown into the mix to slow down, or halt, your ability to process and compartmentalise certain events, and life starts to feel too much.

I'm usually pretty good at recognising patterns in my behaviour, and I am able to get myself back on the "straight and narrow" in reasonable time. But at the moment, concentration and focus is non-existent. This means anything I would have previously done to help "heal" isn't possible. Even if that was starting a side project to distract myself. I haven't been able to do this since October/November 2023.

Thanks for posting this. It's given me even more to think about - but in a good way!

 

[diablo]

BTW I own Counsellors.uk

Fantastic post! And ever the domainer

 

[philiporchard]

My wife struggles with her mental health and she had a lot of help from Mind. They were very helpful.
The GP recommended them but she had to self refer.

It definitely involved CBT.

 

[KarlM]

Something to think about if anyone is struggling with their mental health.

I self refered through the nhs you do not even need to see the GP.

Someone will call you and decide the best therapy option for you.

What happens next - Find an NHS talking therapies service - NHS

www.nhs.uk

 

[ukbackorder]

I wonder if DMT would help. I'm told by a friend in UK that it helps with all kinds of mental issues - he used to get very depressed. He says he feels a lot better and also gave up smoking because of it. Unfortunately can't get it here and I think it's illegal, or at the very least a grey legal area. I take Stresam for social anxiety but doesn't really help with depression. That's the best I can do without going to see someone and not being able to self-medicate.

 

[GreyWing]

I've always been hard on myself, and am known to be a bit of a perfectionist. Whilst in some scenarios this can be a good thing, it's mostly exhausting, and it also makes those closest to me feel that they can't meet the expectations I set of myself (but which I totally don't expect from others).

I've also never been able to celebrate achievements and/or accomplishments. Upon completion I never celebrate the moment, I just look ahead to the next challenge, which is totally ungratifying. I can't help but feel that isn't what life is about?

I'm not much of a reader, so self-help books won't get read. I have 10's of books I have bought in the past which have never been opened.

You sound like you have "Paralysis of over analysation", it's crippling. Lots of people suffer from it without even realising it. My belief is that ADHD, depressions etc are branches under this term, it's natural and most of us will do it. There are some good steps top take once you have identified it.

Sadly, we live in a society where men and simply told to man up etc and to just get on with it

In my opinion, it doesn't mean toughen up, but I see how it could be. My view on it is that the term "man up" was only ever another term for "Don't over analyse", in my opinion people should be told to man up/don't over analyse more frequently, not less. But in today's world, I'd probably just stick to "don't over analyse" instead of the other term.

Human's have never anayalsed more than they have in the last 30-40 years, humans have never had photos to anyalyse at the tips of their fingers, never had instant communication to analyse business deals or relationships. We've never compared ourselves to as many other men on social media as we do today. This modern day way of living isn't normal for humans.

If you have a look at the stats for soldiers in World War 1 and World War 2, the PTSD instances were far less than they are today. They were no tougher than blokes today. Yes, you had your guys who had genuine cellular damage going on upstairs, and those guys were crushed by it. But the others, they didn't have time to over analyse, they had to go to work to feed their kids, neither did they they had no photos to keep analysing. That lack of time to analyse helped them get through some pretty horrendous stuff.

One of the reasons I would never go for Counselling is because the first thing he will probably try to get me to do is analyse, ffs noooooooooooo lol. No more analysation is needed, it's a circle and you can't get off the analysation circle. Counsellor could be just spinning the thing faster.

Plus I don't want to get rid of my negatives, I need my negatives. These things we describe as our negatives today, will be our positives in a few months and in a different situation. Embrace your negatives, don't let anyone take them away. You wouldn't be you without them.

Each to their own though, I'm not telling anyone to do anything or giving them any guidance on what's best for them. This is just what works for me.

 

[Kaleido]

I wonder if DMT would help.

This. See also ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin (magic mushrooms).

Psychedelic and dissociative psychoactive substances act uniquely on the brain and have been observed to rewire and even destroy malfunctioning neural pathways. There's lots of research going into therapies based on taking controlled amounts of these drugs in controlled environments with very positive outcomes.

This modern day way of living isn't normal for humans.

Bingo. We live in the information age of overstimulation.

In the dim and distant past we would've all lived in small villages of tight-nit communities concerned only with satisfying our basic hierarchy of needs. If we felt under the weather we'd go and see the shaman and scoff some magic mushies and all would be right with the world

Sadly these ancient balms were outlawed in the War On Drugs (drugs won BTW) so we've lost the practise of consuming natural substances to soothe our minds. Our brains are hardwired with receptors to bind to the neurotransmitters activated by consuming drugs, so why not use them medicinally?

PutThatInYourPipeAndSmoke.it.com

 

[GreyWing]

Our brains are hard-wired with receptors to bind to the neurotransmitters activated by consuming drugs so why not take them?

Because we'd all have huge portfolios of .it.com's after a few weeks

 

[Murray]

In my opinion, it doesn't mean toughen up, but I see how it could be. My view on it is that the term "man up" was only ever another term for "Don't over analyse", in my opinion people should be told to man up/don't over analyse more frequently, not less. But in today's world, I'd probably just stick to "don't over analyse" instead of the other term.

For me saying don't over analyse is like saying speak German, can't do it, don't know how to do it

But like another language it's something you can learn over time, needs some brain rewiring

 

[GreyWing]

For me saying don't over analyse is like saying speak German, can't do it, don't know how to do it

But like another language it's something you can learn over time, needs some brain rewiring

Oh I was worse than anyone. It was by chance that one of the Marines on the RM forum wrote a bit about it a few years ago. When I looked into it, I started checking off the symptoms and couldn't stop thinking, oh that's me, that's me, that's me, I do that, and that, and that.

Just simple things like taking the emails off your phone, maybe disconnecting whatsapp. I remember when I use to go away into the field, we couldn't take our phones and after about 4 days we had totally disconnected and it was like heaven.

As for what @seemly mentioned in his projects and

I've always been hard on myself, and am known to be a bit of a perfectionist.

That stops a lot of us from launching some projects. I was bad for this one too, you are right it is exhausting and from exhaustion it is very easily to consider that a form of depression. But if you trace it back up the tree, it comes from that over analysing.

Two really good entrepreneurs gave two tips that always stuck with me, working not perfect, and launch with a minimal viable product and improve 1% a day. It's something that I will have to battle through to get the Avoid project launched, can I do what I preach to others? Guess we'll see.

 

[Murray]

I've always suffered from anxiety, especially late teens/early 20s, panic attacks etc I had agoraphobia at one point and didn't leave the house for 3 months

It took a phone call with my dad to help the agoraphobia, he said "you need professional help, you can't help yourself" his doubt in me pissed me off I was fuelled by wanting to prove him wrong, I guess it was the kick up the bum I needed to help myself

I'm much improved now I haven't had a panic attack in 15 years probably

I never saw any professionals I think I just learned to analyse what I think, why I think it and what would be a better alternative

Almost like creating a road map of my own mind and creating new positive roads instead of going down the same old ones because how can you change if you have nothing to change to?

But as @GreyWing says also removing stress helps a lot too, it feeds into negativity as does bad health of course

 

[seemly]

That stops a lot of us from launching some projects. I was bad for this one too, you are right it is exhausting and from exhaustion it is very easily to consider that a form of depression. But if you trace it back up the tree, it comes from that over analysing.

Two really good entrepreneurs gave two tips that always stuck with me, working not perfect, and launch with a minimal viable product and improve 1% a day. It's something that I will have to battle through to get the Avoid project launched, can I do what I preach to others? Guess we'll see.

The current version of DomainSalesHistory.uk was actually built on this very premise. Agile development. Iterate and launch quickly. Hence why there's lots on the todo list (found on the home page), but it's still a functioning app.

I have 3 other projects which I have built over the last 2 years or so under the same methodology.

I have learned to work around my perfectionism over the years. Fear of failure is also another trap that's easy to fall into. I'm not one of those people. That's how I got to where I am. Failure is the only way we learn and grow.

But the last 7+ months has been different. I can't even face opening the code editor as the obstacles start to feel too big. It's not due to analysis of the project as a whole, it's through a lack of desire or want. Maybe a form of burnout. Whatever it is, something is broken, and I've been unable to find it.