Hello,

Lately I have been overwhelmed with my schedule, finances and social life. I am always trying to improve my mental health. With all of this stress I am considering therapy, mainly for someone to talk, to process all my thoughts, and maybe help me develop ideas or come up with strategies to cope better. I have ADHD, Autism, and some other things if that helps anyone relate.

I have three main questions:

Has therapy helped you enough to be worth the time?

Is it very difficult to find a therapist you mesh with?

How do I find a therapist? From a doctor’s referral? Online service? Through insurance? (I live in the United States.)

Any experience or advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: I just wanted to thank everyone for your help and support! I hope everyone is doing well and has seen positive changes. And I hope all these replies help other people besides myself. I’m feeling more positive and hopeful toward finding the right therapist. Your kindness is appreciated!

  • Zeppo
    31·
    1 year ago

    I have found it to be marginally useful. Somewhat. Basically it’s a chance to express myself and somewhat vent to someone who gives (ideally) useful feedback. If they’re not actually good at their job, sometimes the feedback is useless or even harmful, so talking to them worse than not.

    • flyoverthis@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for your honest perspective. I will definitely make sure to keep evaluating if it is really helping me. I am hopeful that if this ends up being the case I can acknowledge it and possibly find a therapist who is more helpful.

      • Zeppo
        2·
        1 year ago

        To clarify a bit, I always enjoy it, it’s just that I’ve never found it changes anything. I think it’s good for people without friends or family to talk to in particular, or if you’re going through something private or intense, it might be better to talk to a professional vs wearing out your friends. It also depends on your personality, what sort of issues you’re seeing a therapist for, and the therapist themselves.

        Most recently I saw someone about drinking alcohol. I liked taking to him and he gave me some good advice, mainly about my relationship. However it didn’t have any impact on my drinking. I also told him about my drug use as a teen and was not thrilled to see it permanently recorded in my medical record, which suggests to me to not be honest with therapists, something I already have a notion of from around 20 years ago.

        Also my GF and I were seeing a counselor about our relationship, and while we enjoyed taking to her, again, it didn’t really have any impact. We have all the same problems we had before to the same extent.

        One common thing with those cases though is we weren’t trying that hard to change, ourselves. I was fairy lackadaisical about not drinking, and my GF didn’t take counseling very seriously. She mainly seemed to think it was an opportunity to criticize me.