Do you think most people could benefit from therapy?

I seem to be an outlier. I think that most people could benefit from good therapy. The key word there is good.

I think allot of people could benefit from good therapy if they are open to it and want to change. I have been in therapy for 18yr's and i still benefit from going.

I agree with the two posters above. I think most people would benefit from therapy if they are lucky enough to find a well qualified, professional therapist who they click with on a personality level AND if they are motivated to move forward. I've had therapy with four different therapists and they have all helped me change my life for the better. I can't imagine how I'd be now if it wasn't for them.

Yes, I believe most people could benefit from therapy if they are open to it and motivated to take initiative and do the work. We all have pretty much the same goals...to increase happiness/inner peace/etc. and decrease suffering. Therapy can absolutely help!

I tried a lot of therapists. They were useless at best. One messed me up.

It's a shady profession. Very little transparency. Most people will have a hard time calculating risk vs benefit. I think the risk is considerable. Not just risk of serious harm, but more mundane stuff... wasting time and money, becoming subtly infantilized, becoming more self absorbed, habituating to asymmetrical relating, reliance on external authority (contrived), etc. Most people will focus on meagre benefits -- I had someone to talk to -- and miss these sorts of insidious detriments, because therapy is seen as credible and obligatory in the eyes of the masses.

I see the therapy relationship as fundamentally dysfunctional and much more suggestive of problems than solutions. I'd advise people to stay away.

I’m comfortable with things that are measurable, and this is not. Yet I have a hunch that there’s something good in my therapy. The conflict with these two different ways of processing my experience can be maddening.

I do believe I have talent for intropection and self-awareness, at least to the extent that it was not feelings and "parts" that were cut off or dissociated.

What I lacked was other-awareness, including other-awareness of the therapists. I didn't see where they were possibly wrong or making mistakes-- I turned it into what was wrong about me. But, ultimately, therapy just tore me down and did not help me rebuild. Plus, the last therapist just quit, after 6 years, saying she did not "have the emotional resources" to continue.

Do you see some way that is about a lack of talent for introspection and self-awareness on my part? If so, please be so kind as to share that with me.

I believe what I lacked going into therapy was an integrated and relatively well-grounded sense of self. After 55 years of therapy on and off, I still don't have a very good one. I kinda know the problem but that is not sufficient to put and hold a self together. I think it is possible to develop ways to help people like me, and I try to help myself. But I'm not at all sure that current methods of therapy help much and, as in my case and others, I think they have been destructive and harmful instead.

Yes, I think most people would benefit from therapy if they gave it a try with a good therapist who's a good fit. It's not the right tool for everyone, and good therapists can be very hard to find. But I definitely think the underlying process of therapy has the potential to be useful to most people.

It can be hard to tell when it's helping, though. In retrospect I think my gut has usually been right. There were times I've tried hard to see some value but suspected it wasn't going anywhere, and ultimately my sense was that it was useless. And there were times I thought therapy might be helping but couldn't quite put my finger on how, and looking back it was helpful in some important ways. But those feelings were always alternated with a lot if uncertainty and second-guessing, so I know how hard it is to tell when you're in the midst of it. My current therapy has been immensely helpful, but even though that's very clear to me most of the time, I still have doubts sometimes.

I think most people on these boards do have the capacity for self reflection. But we are a tiny slice of an enormous population, was my point.

I'm sorry therapy hurt you. The current therapies for people with an underdeveloped sense of self are not very good. DBT, for instance, ignores it entirely and focuses on behaviors.