nemorathwald (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nemorathwald) wrote2004-08-22 01:10 pm
nemorathwald) wrote2004-08-22 01:10 pm
Entry tags:
How To Choose A Mental Health Care Provider
Several years ago, The Road Less Traveled suggested to me the idea that everyone could benefit from therapy, regardless of whether a crisis situation has developed to force them to consider themselves "sick." From observing the human race, I agree with the author that mental health is always a matter of degree. I'm dubious of the claim that a totally 100% perfect mental state needing no improvement should be considered "normalcy" and there are a few "sick" people outside that category. So I decided to take up therapy the way one takes up pottery.
One can really blow a lot of money that way if one isn't careful. Certain principles should be applied no matter what service is being provided: one should not go into anything without a clear definition of what one will get from it, how it's supposed to deliver that, and how to tell if it doesn't. I got a therapist who never did one single solitary thing except listen like some kind of glorified answering machine. Without his help, I carefully defined my therapeutic goals. (Have you? I recommend that you do.) I was doing a perfectly good job of achieving them without assistance. I'm certainly still attempting to do so. But even if some form of expertise could have accelerated the process of self-understanding, I demand to know the means and the metric for judging success before I plunk down cash for more than one session. He had no plan, refused to give advice or assignments or analysis, and no explanation for how anything he might have done would have acheived what I wanted-- that is, had he done anything.
I won't tell you how long it lasted. I like to style myself a skeptic, but after this experience I determined not to be so hard on people who go to criminal frauds like faith healers and "new age energy" alternative medicine blah blah blah. That's not what this guy was. I went to him because he had a degree and was accredited in psychology. Who knows what he learned from all that education. That's what I went to get, so I wish he had told me. I'm embarrased how long it took to disengage myself without seeming to insult this nice man. I appreciate the fact that he constantly marveled at how well we got along despite his biblical perspective and my committment to non-theism. Yes, he was a pastoral counselor. I actually couldn't find any other kind! How times have changed. But he never lectured me out of any inerrant revelation. Presumably he's helpful to a lot of people and just had nothing to say to me personally, or he would have gone out of business. Or, if his parishioners define no criteria to tell them when to stop throwing good money after bad (because of faith, hint hint), he might just be making their lives worse. I have no way to know which it is.
I already have people who will listen to me explore my inner space and offer feedback. You are doing so, gentle reader. And you aren't charging me a thing.
One can really blow a lot of money that way if one isn't careful. Certain principles should be applied no matter what service is being provided: one should not go into anything without a clear definition of what one will get from it, how it's supposed to deliver that, and how to tell if it doesn't. I got a therapist who never did one single solitary thing except listen like some kind of glorified answering machine. Without his help, I carefully defined my therapeutic goals. (Have you? I recommend that you do.) I was doing a perfectly good job of achieving them without assistance. I'm certainly still attempting to do so. But even if some form of expertise could have accelerated the process of self-understanding, I demand to know the means and the metric for judging success before I plunk down cash for more than one session. He had no plan, refused to give advice or assignments or analysis, and no explanation for how anything he might have done would have acheived what I wanted-- that is, had he done anything.
I won't tell you how long it lasted. I like to style myself a skeptic, but after this experience I determined not to be so hard on people who go to criminal frauds like faith healers and "new age energy" alternative medicine blah blah blah. That's not what this guy was. I went to him because he had a degree and was accredited in psychology. Who knows what he learned from all that education. That's what I went to get, so I wish he had told me. I'm embarrased how long it took to disengage myself without seeming to insult this nice man. I appreciate the fact that he constantly marveled at how well we got along despite his biblical perspective and my committment to non-theism. Yes, he was a pastoral counselor. I actually couldn't find any other kind! How times have changed. But he never lectured me out of any inerrant revelation. Presumably he's helpful to a lot of people and just had nothing to say to me personally, or he would have gone out of business. Or, if his parishioners define no criteria to tell them when to stop throwing good money after bad (because of faith, hint hint), he might just be making their lives worse. I have no way to know which it is.
I already have people who will listen to me explore my inner space and offer feedback. You are doing so, gentle reader. And you aren't charging me a thing.
Re: You've a right to your opinion
Open-mindedness means allowing one's claims to be robustly challenged by the best competing claims. The appearance of closed-mindedness can occur when someone has already done that and the standard claim has had a long undefeated winning streak. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome was once on a bumper-sticker as the definition of insanity. That's not what open-mindedness is.
if someone came along and said, "well look, here's a treatment that you perhaps haven't looked at before," I would look at it. I've learned what questions to ask. For instance, is it only efficacious under highly suspicious circumstances, such as not working unless the patient believes in it? Is it a panacea? Are the ingredients secret? Is its credibility based only on undocumented anecdotes? Are failures explained away with ad-hoc hypotheses? Do the practitioners progress in their understanding, or do they continue to mechanically go through the motions for centuries? Do they think that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event? Would the malady have gone away by itself?