Why does therapy feel less effective the better you understand the cognitive approaches used by psychiatric professionals to treat patients? Also, how can professionals themselves seek effective treatment if this is the case?
In: Other
It doesn’t. You are describing some personal experience or a hypothesis built on one. Professional therapists usually have minimum number of therapy hours themselves as condition of licensing and keeping the license, and it is still effective decades into their careers.
I wonder if there is some context here that is missing. As a clinical social worker that engages in psychiatric therapy and assessments, I seek to teach my patients as much ad possible about the cognitive approaches and techniques I use. Psychoeducation is the first step. That shouldn’t reduce effectiveness unless the practitioner is executing it poorly.
Psychiatric problems are fundamentally irrational. You can well know that doing nothing won’t improve your life, or that there’s no need to wash your hands compulsively, yet that won’t cure you. A lot of therapeutic approaches also rely on an irrational method to make you feel differently. (This can be very powerful, think of the placebo effect.) Critical thinking can defeat the therapy even if it doesn’t defeat the problem.
Because it is. The practical side of therapy involves some manipulation and trickery to get people to do things they aren’t doing on their own. When you know you are being manipulated you are naturally more resistant to it.
In order to get the help they need, someone with a greater understanding of psychology needs to make a concerted effort to be humble. Providing therapy is about objectivity as much as it is about diagnosis and treatment, the patient has to accept their therapist knows better can do a better job than can on their own, and try to avoid kibitzing as much as possible.
Latest Answers