What have you learned from leaving therapy?

For those of you who have left therapy, what have you learned that you don't think you could have realised while IN therapy?

I have realised that I need to rely on myself and myself only. So much of my disappointment comes from expecting people to be there, or do their jobs, or not be pricks. I am, with few exceptions, let down. I am trying to expect nothing from the people I meet.

I have realised that I need to keep my private life more private. I've shared things with people and the lack of sensitivity is outstanding. I now journal or go for a walk. I feel safer.

I have realised that volunteering improves my mental health.

I have realised that I should leave situations that aren't working for me sooner. I'm 35 -- I'm tired of people who can't be bothered.

I have realised I should pour my love into my family and my home. Those are the things most likely to last.

I have learned that when someone denies you a space, you build your own. Don't keep trying to push against a locked door.

I learned that I have many people I can rely on for support outside of therapy. One of the goals my therapist had for me was to rejoin my past activities and add others so that I could develop those relationships with others and that association with supportive groups of individuals. Once I finally did that, I found I really had much more support than I had realized because I had isolated myself a great deal while I was in therapy and struggling.

I've realized I can handle what life throws at me. Since I left therapy, life hasn't been a bed of roses: Mom passed away; husband has had probably 12 surgeries, etc. etc. etc. I don't fall apart anymore. I don't spiral into depression. I have the internal skills to cope with stress and crises (and the support system needed to help me get through). I have pretty normal responses to crises, and I work through those events in healthy ways now.

I've realized I can be my own best advocate. I can set healthy, flexible boundaries that protect me from harm yet allow for relationship. I don't have to wear my armour anymore.

I've realized I'm stronger than I gave myself credit for.

I've realized I am really pretty content with my life. That's a nice place to be.

What do you think prevented you from learning those things while in therapy, OP?

I learned I was right about therapy and therapists.

I learned that my therapist is human and not a god. But I think I learned that towards the end of therapy technically and then I left.

My lessons are related to giving up on failing therapy:

I learned to value my self respect and independence more than external validation and care that requires unquestioned compliance and submission

I learned the signs of emotional addiction to an individual, learned why it’s unhealthy, and indentified my ‘blind spots’ to avoid future emotional addiction.

I learned to remove myself from situations that make me feel bad about myself.

I learned I should never have to convince (or pay) someone to love me.

I learned I am responsible for my own emotions. I cannot change anyone but myself. Trying to get someone else to be different keeps me hooked in a destructive waiting pattern.

I learned I am not broken and don’t need to be fixed. I am good enough AS IS.

I learned I am an adult and don’t need babying, coddling or enabling no matter how good it feels in the moment. I learned that I should never tolerate regressive dynamics.

I learned that therapy is not the only path to heal, understand myself better or self-improve.

I learned that I do much better without therapy. I don't regret experimenting at all and there have been some interesting lessons, but at least traditional long-term psychotherapy is not for me really.

Would you explain more about this? Regression scares me, but T's seem to go after it?

Of course!

My therapist was of the “good enough mother” orientation, and her technique involved talking in a very soothing voice, long loving glances, flowery touchy-feely language etc. Way over the top by comparisson to other therapists I’ve seen.

It didn’t take long for this to trigger unmet childhood needs, and I started to long for more... like fantasizing about being physically held, longing to have her take me home and tuck me in to sleep, feeling the need to be in contact 24/7, or sobbing like a baby missing her when she went away on vacation or I was sick. These were intense and intrusive thoughts that occupied my brain nearly constantly. At my age it was humiliating and degrading to experience (especially talking about it TO her), regardless of how open other therapy clients might be to this or how normal it allegedly is.

She was never going to do any of these things, which felt passively rejecting and left me in a really bad state. Circling back to the topic of this post, being treated in a way that could trigger regression is not something I’ll tolerate anymore.

I feel like I’ve hijacked this thread enough but PM me if you want more details or have specific questions.

This:

"People want to believe there’s someone out there that knows, and so they’re willing to accept subjugation. What if nobody knows any better than you? Until you realize that, you’re not an adult. That’s really, technically, the point of realization of adulthood, that no one actually knows what you should do more than you do." -- Jordan Peterson

I spent five years in therapy in my late 20's-early 30's and "graduated" when I felt I was done. What I learned from therapy helped me very much in changing my life to what I wanted it to be, improving my relationships with other people and setting me on a related, but different, career path. Shortly after I left therapy, I met someone who I then married, moved across the country, and took a job that was much better suited to me. For 15 years, life was good but when I ran into a difficulty that I needed to address, I went back into therapy. So I suppose the other thing I learned in therapy was that it's okay to go back when you have new issues that you want to address. Being done is not always being done forever, and knowing when it would be useful for me to seek help turned out to be a good thing.

And what if going to therapy, for many of us, in not about believing somebody else "knows any better than you," but rather, we use therapy as a space where we have another willing person who will listen, help us perhaps find a way toward our own "realization" of "adulthood"? Most people don't go to therapy to "accept subjugation;" we've already been the victims of subjugation throughout our childhoods (generally), and therapy is a pathway beyond that experience of childhood subjugation into our own personal insight and adult autonomy.

I don't think Budfox's post implied it is true for everyone. Just like not everyone experienced subjugation/abuse/serious trauma in childhood. I never believed that a therapist would know better what is best for me, I was mostly curious whether therapy could add anything to the self-exploration I already do habitually by default. Or if it could help to change some destructive adult habits. Very minimal benefit overall and it just became another distracting habit, so I quit and experienced the benefit of eliminating useless energy and effort. There are many reasons people go to therapy for and also many reasons for quitting. I personally never perceived a therapist as an authority of any kind. One of them did try to dominate me, that is true... but it was much more his issue than anything else, so some Ts do play sick power games. Never had the same with my other T who was much healthier mentally in many ways.

I think that's an excellent quote and very much true. For some people good therapy can help to achieve that state of adulthood.

Similarly, I find it highly probably that leaving therapy will help to achieve that state for some people. Paradox here is that without starting the therapy in the first place it would have been impossible to reach that moment of leaving.

exactly true in my experience

I had different therapists---two co-therapist scornful bullies and others who were more benign.

Escaping the bullies was the most difficult: either stay for more punishment or defy "authority."

Still the more benign therapists had me believe they'd bolstered me. Leaving demonstrated I handled tough situations all along without them.

Only after distance I realized I'd been mesmerized into seeing my therapists as mystical and magical. They clearly encouraged this through dominance signalling, arrogation and artifice. I felt like a dupe who handed them the weapons of my vulnerability.

I no longer believe in gurus or that anyone is omniscient and omnipotent. And I stopped chasing some cola commercial life, thinking everyone else was at the party except me.

What is dominance signaling?

In animals it's nonverbal and "acoustical" gestures of establishing hierarchy
Dominance signal - Wikipedia

This wikipedia article lists vocal quality, facial and physical signaling in humans, but I think it's much more. It's everything from interrupting, posturing, mean girl comments and gestures, etc., all the things do to impart that one person is superior or dominant to another. My therapists faked knowing many things they couldn't possibly have known, and I was awed at the time.

I interviewed one who had their chair higher than the client's chair.

It's those people who leave us awed, angered or intimidated and we often don't understand why. Chances are high they're doing something, verbal or non-verbal to make us feeler inferior in the pecking order. It can be funny in movies: the snotty in-crowd girls tormenting the hapless out-crowd girl, until the mean girls get their comeuppance.