How does posting here help you?

Just curious as to how this forum helps you, what parts would you change or improve? Has it changed your perspective in a positive or negative way when it comes to therapy?

I'm still conflicted about how I will move forward with therapy and my attitude towards it. I see some posts that make me feel just the tiniest bit of hope and others make me feel more cautious. I don't really have anyone else to really discuss the things I struggle with when it comes to therapy. Some posts help me see the reality of things, like how my psychiatrist bought up returning to therapy for trauma and possibly trying EDMR. The book she recommended does help but it's from a psychiatrist's point of view. It seems like a rough road ahead and just in the past few weeks feel like the tattered rug beneath my feet has been tugged on with troubles a work and my family as far as supporting my "gay lifestyle" Like I feel that at the very least to become better in therapy you have to have the willpower and want to put in the work. But now it seems even less likely for me, even when I thought I was trying I know my therapist at the time struggle to see that I was making any effort. Coming here helps to get different points of view and I always value that.

Do I know the effort it takes to 'try'... I just got back into therapy after a year break, due to complex PTSD. I have times when I am afraid to go to therapy because of not wanting to let myself be 'seen', yet being seen is what I need, especially for me to see myself. I really didn't want to address the why of complex PTSD; yet when i found myself sobbing for 15 minutes at a time because of the despair, i knew i had to do something. I find other books to be helpful at times- especially Mark Wolynn's It Didn't Start With You which addresses generational trauma. Now what I get to do is look at the emotional history of my family, going back a couple of generations because it DID impact my childhood and life. There are days when the willpower and the wanting to be better are slow to surface, so I keep putting one foot in front of the other, in the hopes that the effort will repay me and it mostly does: I still trip over old ideas and habits and conditioning, yet they don't have the grip on me they used to and for that I am really grateful.

I honestly don’t think this forum will help me in any way mentally without me putting the needed amount of effort into it but it does something good for me and that’s seeing that I’m not alone and being able to put my thoughts into words and share it with others.

The forum helps me in several ways. 1. I have no support system IRL and right now I don’t want to create one (I am changing too fast but still attracting toxic people). Here I have support but everyone is healing and changing. 2. Hearing other people’s experiences in therapy help me see mine more clearly and sometimes give me ideas of things to try. 3. Because of my history I don’t like therapy to feel secretive but on the other hand I don’t want everyone around me to know all my business. This is a safe place, for me, to put out there what happens with T and get feedback. But there are no risks as no one here knows who I am or who T is. 4. Seeing how others struggle with their T’s help me to understand some of T’s reactions better.
The biggest reason I am here though is I am painfully aware of how many useless and harmful T’s there are out there. I wasted 20 year and thousands of dollars on them. Now I have an awesome T for me and we are making progress. I hope by sharing my experiences that others will be able to connect with the right T for them.

The way this board has helped me has changed over the years. When I came here in 2014 things were changing in my therapy. I think that is when the transference and counter transference really hit. This board helped me to better understand. Then when T passed almost 1 1/2 years ago PC was one of my lifelines. It helped to have people who understood why losing a T was so painful. I knew it was triggering die many here but everybody was so supportive.

Now as I continue my therapy journey with a totally different T and I sometimes question why T does this or that, I realize because of this board my current T is likely more the norm than T was

When I first started posting here many moons ago, I was in the middle of some of the worst years and I guess this served as a add odd way to journal about what I was going through and to just see that other people were also struggling -- I wasn't quite as alone as I thought.

I find posting here really helps me to know i am not alone in my struggles. I have had some lousy therapists, now i have a great therapist. I feel like people here do understand. It's helpful to vent my fustrations out here and get different response too. I keep my therapy very private so the only place i can talk about it outside of my sessions is here.

When I first started posting here, I was having paternal and erotic transference for ex-marriage counselor, and it helped to find other people who'd experienced something similar. Really, that's a big part of posting here, people who "get" what therapy is about and what the therapeutic relationship can be like, why it can be difficult and painful. It's made me feel less alone and more understood. People on here can be quite supportive and validating, and I've appreciated that (and try to pay it forward). It's also helped me understand therapy better, seeing other people's experiences. And sometimes has given me reality checks when I was reacting really strongly to something ex-MC, ex-T, or current T did (though at times, the reality checks felt a bit too personal...). It's been rather fascinating how polarizing my T can be...

In some cases, though, it has made me worry more about what could happen in my therapy, hearing people's stories of abrupt termination or suddenly not allowing outside contact. Ex-MC actually told me to stay off the site because I worried about stuff with him (then what did he eventually do? Limit outside contact...) Current T understands how this site is part of my support network. Once, I was talking about support groups, and how I'd never tried one, and he was like, "Uh...I'd think the forum you're on is like one big support group." And I was like, "Oh, I guess you're right!" I don't post my sessions that much anymore, but the act of typing them up (which I still sometimes do, whether I post them or not) helps me process them sometimes.

I've also met a few good friends on here that I talk with outside of PC.

Oh, also, it can help to look back on past posts to see what I was experiencing at the time compared to now. In the shorter term, if, say, T had been away, it can help to look at what I posted in Dear T or The Couch to consider what to discuss with him.

I nowadays don't have time to post here as often. When I did, it really helped me to just get out everything that I had going on in therapy, I'm usually a person who likes to share a lot of stuff. In the beginning, I also needed feedback sometimes from other people, like 'is it okay to call my T right now', just because I was not used to how therapy works and had bad experiences outside of it.
Now, I mostly just read posts on here, I try to respond to things when I have time though. On the one hand, I just really enjoy the people on this forum and like to hear what's going on in their lives. Sometimes I worry about some one or it's a topic that interest me in general and I'll try to respond.
On the other hand, I find it in general quite helpful to see how other people experience therapy. It gives me an idea of what I'd like my therapy to be like, what I'd find okay for a T to do and what would not be okay. This, for me, is easier to figure out when reading about other people's experiences than if I'm in it myself.

I also find like belonging to a group of some kind (like 'people who like to discuss topics related to therapy') makes me feel a bit less lonely about my experience of life.

The opportunity to vent and process the last therapist's termination 4.5 years ago has been incredibly helpful. It's been long and still ongoing but I had no other place to try to do that, no other people to be like that with, and I wasn't going to try another therapist. Well, I did several times and it was a definite no-go.

Incredibly helpful, as I said. Though I don't know anybody could see any "results". Still, inside, things are somewhat better.

I started here (on a different account several years ago) just around the time I first entered therapy in my life. I found this particular Psychotherapy forum very useful in gaining broader perspectives, learning about the great variety of experiences people can have in therapy and, most importantly, to be mindful about its potential blind spots, false tracks and even harms. I tend to be a rather skeptical person by default but this really helped me go through my experiences with open eyes and a critical mind. I do believe it helped save some frustration and repetitive, long-term disappointment that I could view it considering the diverse reports people make here, it helped not to buy into a lot of BS and false premises. I didn't have to learn the biggest common mistakes and traps from my own experience because I saw it from plenty of others' here. On the flip side, this forum also made it clear that whether someone finds therapy useful or whether it is a good fit depends on many individual factors, especially personality, general world view, and orientation to other people. Because of the latter, I don't view the fact that therapy was not very helpful for me as a personal weakness, failure or cluelessness.

It helps me reality check. Like if I talk about something that is going on in my therapy that I am wondering is good for me, and then people give their opinions about it, it helps me sort it out. Also just talking about the process of therapy, or the particulars of a therapy session helps me sort it in my head. Also even when I am having those days when I don't want to go to therapy or I am feeling down, discouraged, and ready to give up, there are always people around to give hugs and help me feel heard. HUGS Kit

This is the only place that truly understands therapy and it’s particular pitfalls. Even if no one responds to what I write, it helps to know at least others read it and hopefully understand.

Without PC I don't know what I'd do.

There is no one irl that I can safely discuss being in therapy in depth. PC is a good place to get feedback and talk to people who get it.