Never been to a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, but I was considering it. Here are some stories from the crypt I’ve found online:
>I've also managed paperwork for some psychologists and its impressive the lack of professionalism with which they manage their patient's records. I remember one psychologist that published patient stories on her FB and another that brought the records to public places to photocopy them so everyone that managed those papers could see who was the patient and their records.
>They are largely useless because they rarely ever tell me anything insightful or new. Whatever any therapist has ever told me is something I've invariably thought about already. Worse, I tend to (for some unknown reason) use their own knowledge against them to subtly misdirect them to the point that they get the completely wrong idea of what's going on. I very quickly deem them "poisoned", incompetent to understand me, and ultimately lose confidence in them and stop going.
Further, one hour every two weeks is hardly enough time for me to open up to them, let alone explain the last two week's of experiences and the associated huge amount of thinking/introspection! There's also the feeling that they consider core aspects of my behavior, identity, temperament, and personality as somehow being a problem and try to get me to act against myself.
All-in-all. I've found splitting my thoughts between a set of close friends or even just dealing with them on my own has been more beneficial.
ETA: As arrogant as this might sound... therapists are not for intelligent or highly reflective people. Writing this rant out felt more helpful than going to any therapist has been lol.
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The more I read about therapy, the more I see it as a crap shoot. It’s almost like gambling money away.