3 Reasons Why Therapy Isn’t Working For You

And what you can do about it

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I am a firm believer that everyone can benefit from therapy. However, not everyone likes therapy. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience with therapy, maybe you had a bad therapist, maybe you’ve never tried it before. But those of us that are in therapy join for a myriad of reasons.

In my instance, I started seeing a therapist because I was having panic attacks and suicidal ideation when I was living in the dorms at my university. She asked me what my goals were with therapy and I told her I wanted to find good coping techniques as well as have an outlet to talk about what was bothering me on a particular day.

I’m the first to admit that I have not always utilized therapy in the best way to improve or at least handle my mental wellbeing. Here’s why therapy hasn’t always worked for me, and why it may not be working for you.

You’re not being completely honest

It’s not just your therapist that you aren’t being honest with; you need to be honest with yourself too. Are you really using those coping mechanisms? Are you trying to use breathing techniques?

I’ll be the first to say I have not always been honest with myself or my therapist. Sometimes I just lie to protect myself. It’s a reflex; if I feel like the information I have bubbling up inside me could lead to harm or damage to my self esteem or image or anything, my reflex is to lie about it. Even if it’s something as small as saying “I just forgot to take my medicine a couple times,” your therapist cannot help you if you aren’t willing to tell the full truth.

Therapy is a tool, not a solution. Once I figured that out, I started seeing major improvements in my mood and feeling more in control of my thoughts.

You aren’t talking about what really matters

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I know several of people that have been in therapy for a very long time and don’t seem to be improving at all. They are staying the same or, in worst cases, getting worse.

This stems from talking about the wrong things. Nothing is off limits in therapy, but some things can be more useful or beneficial to work through than others.

For example, if you are having a hard time coping with loud sounds, why are you spending an hour therapy session talking about your bad dream that you had last night?

What I like to do is make a list of everything I want to talk about with my therapist before my appointment. I then read her the list at the start of our session, and we decide together what is most pressing this week and what can be tackled next week, or what can be talked about briefly towards the end of our session.

This helps me stay organized with my thoughts — I have a tendency to jump around multiple topics at once — and it helps my therapist get an idea of what is going on in my life.

You’re doing the wrong kind of therapy

There are dozens of different kinds of therapy to choose from but the most common is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), or “talk therapy.” But my personal favorite form of therapy is Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT).

DBT came about as a result of continued failures in CBT patients. DBT focuses on acceptance rather than changing behaviors. Two main issues that CBT patients had that lead to the development of DBT were:

1. Focusing on change procedures created an invalidating experience for many patients
2. Teaching and strengthening new skills was really hard, especially for patients struggling with suicidal ideation as motivation is one of the hardest parts of dealing with specifically depression

According to Linda Dimeff and Marsha M. Linehan, some of the functions of DBT are to enhance a patient’s behavioral capabilities, improve motivation to get better, change the therapy environment to stimulate motivation for change, and change the way therapists treat their patients in general.

If you haven’t had any success with traditional talk therapy, finding a provider that specializes in a different kind of therapy could make a big change. While DBT was designed to treat more severe and complex disorders, it’s been proven to be successful with patients of all levels of severity.

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Personal growth is a journey. If you have the resources and time to do therapy, I can’t recommend it enough. Emotional control, mood stability, and decreasing intrusive thoughts can be advantageous for anyone, not just people with formal mental illness diagnoses.