What did a psychologist do for you?

[KKun]

As someone who has access to psychology sessions, and already took up some of those, I couldn't help but feel that I was never really being told anything that I didn't already knew in a way.

The conversations were often about my feelings, and why I thought that I may have felt in those particular ways, but at the end of it I was never really given a solution to that.
How to quiet certain thoughts, certain feelings to ignore them and focus on things I can control and so on.
Perhaps it's something that I need to do for myself, because obviously no one can jump inside my brain, turn a few knobs, and fix things for me.

But is it supposed that psychologists say something that will trigger some kind of response that puts you on the right path?
Over here psychologists can at best suggest generic over the counter stuff, so at most was advised to take some stuff to make sure I could get some proper rest (fight off some insomnia, maybe in part because of subconscious kicking in), that I should follow up on mindfulness methods (which unfortunately I can't but quickly feel it's a waste of time so it looped me back to other thoughts) .

Nevertheless: People still use psychologists, so they have to have some good about them.
How have psychologists worked out for you?

 

[Praestat_Mori]

It really depends what a psychologist can actually do. In most cases, they can do nothing but mostly "teaching" coping mechanisms - it's another question if we want to/can cope with how things are or not.

In my case, a psychologist can't fix the issue that causes me depressive episodes and makes mi suicidal.

 

[pointblank]

In my experience, it's mostly about teaching you emotional intelligence and management.

 

[judestfrancis]

its a but strange, but i feel that its always been nice to have a neutral party to speak to. ive been in and out of therapy since i was young, and (while when i was a teenager i struggled to open up because i was afraid it would get back to my mom) its comforting having someone who has little to no motive to listen to me complain. this person isnt my friend or family and has no reason to lie to me, so when i tell them something and they respond the way people close to me do, i feel like i can trust that their reactions are genuine.
its not really helped with my coping mechanisms, but i dont think ive been with the same therapist for long enough to have them work on my coping skills, but i would assume that will help in the future.

 

[Cavalcade]

While I was in sessions, I think the most valuable aspect was co-regulation in session. A lot of active listening, summarization, reflection back to me: to which I was able to assess whether I was communicating clearly or not. It also helped to pull together cognitive dissonances and to prompt a confrontation with baked in assumptions in my world view- being challenged in conversation, and having someone pick apart the arguments my brain constructed was helpful, when I was seeing a clinician that was a good fit- some of them did not have the stomach to handle the contents of my trauma history and would become insanely emotionally dysregulated themselves, which I found incredibly annoying and unhelpful- as it would trigger the fawning response of wanting to smooth over the issue for the other person and minimizing my own experiences for their own comfort, as well as a seething resentment for once more being 'too much to handle' by someone I was paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to.

A big part of it is also just having a person I can talk to without reservation: this is not my friend, this is not a loved one: I do not have to care about them. I do not have to side step or mince my words, or worry about whether this is too overwhelming, or too distasteful to share among company: this is a professional who signed up for the task, who is being handsomely compensated, and so I can be as brutally honest as I would never allow myself to be around the people who I love and want to protect from the worst of me. I am extremely clear eyed about the fact it is a deeply transactional relationship: to them, I am a hefty paycheque, and to me, they are a warm body that will be receptive to whatever I need to work on and through, and can be ruthlessly selfish with doing so- I don't need to do little check ins or asking for permission to vent, or sequester away my upset: it's all fair game.

It was also helpful to have a strongly partitioned space in my life for my emotional turmoil. They knew me solely in the context of sessions, and I did not inquire deeply into their own personal life. Whatever I carried with me into the session, I could leave it more or less behind in that office. I repress and cram a great deal down into a box before it explodes into a catastrophic meltdown most of the time- and sessions gave me a space where I would sob and cry and rant for nearly all of the session, and then immediately be able to recompose myself and be a better person in my day to day life because I was about to vent off that pressure without subjecting a loved one to watching my absolute breakdown.

I always saw it as a venue where I could be ruthlessly selfish in a relationship without any guilt. After all- I hired them for a job, and they are getting paid out the nose for it- they can very easily cease sessions if they feel it to be too much, and I expect them to be able to maintain their own mental health and boundaries without any input from me: I don't feel responsible, or obliged to soothe and comfort them as I do the people in my life: we both came here for a very clearly demarcated job, and I want nothing to do with them outside of sessions. So it's a relief, to be able to really put the focus on myself, instead of others.