On the forum you often find reviews from people who complain that psychotherapy doesn't help. Yes, indeed, this can happen. Why? Let's start with our favorite one. 1. You chose an incompetent psychologist. Yes, this happens. In psychology, as in any profession, there are not many professionals who can maintain a high level of skill, especially when it comes to long-term psychotherapy. If your psychologist feels like “I gave you all the tools, you just don’t use them” or “go away, bad client,” then perhaps you should think about changing specialists. The good news is that incompetence is usually visible immediately and they don’t stay in therapy with really bad psychologists for many years. If you have been in therapy with a psychologist whom you now call bad for many months and even years, then the question is primarily for yourself: either you really chose a destructive, meaningless relationship, or the psychologist was not as bad as you think. Next it will be harder, but more interesting. 2. You have a negative therapeutic reaction. Sometimes the psyche works according to the principle “the better I feel, the worse it gets.” S. Freud was the first to notice this and even began to think seriously about the death instinct. Today, psychologists call a negative therapeutic reaction a symptom of masochism. Masochism is a mental state in which the achievement of pleasure, for example from a calm and confident life, is hampered by a strong unconscious feeling of guilt. It seems that the therapist is doing everything right, and the client is trying, but the therapy only makes things worse. You may not realize this feeling of guilt for a long time, but it’s worth keeping in mind. By the way, one of the criteria for the success of psychotherapy is the client’s high intelligence. That is, if you don’t feel something, but you know that it should be there, judging by the signs, it’s worth staying in therapy and looking for it, rather than leaving with a seemingly negative result. 3. You are unconsciously jealous of your psychologist. Yes, it happens. A psychologist is also a person who is usually likable, seems confident, and probably does what he loves. This is already a good field for envy. Envy is characteristic of people who are internally convinced of their own badness. It’s a difficult experience when it seems that someone’s success certainly means one’s own worthlessness and unfulfillment. This is too unbearable for the psyche and therefore it needs to defend itself. And then, in order to maintain self-esteem, clients unwittingly harm the psychologist’s work by sabotaging therapy. “You’ll never help me, don’t think too much about yourself!” - the client unconsciously broadcasts. Paradoxical, but true. For such a person, therapy can be a way to be in the same space with someone as bad as himself, with a useless therapist who cannot cope with his work. It’s easier to experience it together, you know. By the way, sometimes people choose incompetent psychologists for themselves only in order to maintain a sense of their own goodness against their background. A person can bypass all the illiterate psychologists in the city, only to then tell how “bad they all are.” And you can’t argue with that. Of course, such processes are unconscious! A person can be completely confident that he is trying and trying, but to no avail.4. You are used to devaluing. In general, devaluing is also an unconscious mechanism for protecting the psyche. It usually protects against deep-seated shame about who I am. A person comes to therapy and expects help, preferably quickly and without pain, but the closer he gets to the therapist, the more he has to discover what is unpleasant in himself and trust the psychologist with what he has discovered. And this is painful and shameful. People who have not known anything good from intimacy are afraid to open up, they have no experience of acceptance, they are deeply lonely and are always waiting for an attack: either ridicule, or indifference, or reproach, or rejection. And the psychologist looks with a living human gaze, is interested, asks. And you, perhaps, have no idea what warm participation is and cannot even imagine what it is+79043562969