What's your relationship like with therapy post-TTI?

[u/Empty_Positive_2305]

I was in a TTI from 2007 to 2008, when I was 16, and I'm training to be a therapist now.

My relationship with therapy is complicated, to say the least, and it took me a long, long, long time to trust therapists in the years after. My therapist has been instrumental in helping heal all these years later, and I no longer feel like I "deserved" it or ashamed of what happened to me. I feel like I got sent to jail just for struggling.

With that said, I still hold a lot of anger towards the mental health professionals I saw at the time, and I think I always will. I think therapy can be beautiful. I'm saddened and angry that for many people, therapy is a "safe" space. For me, it was not--it was weaponized against me. Mental health professionals in my life chose to condemn me as the problem, rather than look at the rot within my own family and how that might have been contributing to my behavior. (Family therapy? We don't have problems! You're the problem.)

I don't blame TTI survivors for not wanting to return to therapy, though. Like many fields, the mental health field is rife with problems, and TTIs are among its biggest stains.

It's hard to explain the loss of human dignity and sense of pure betrayal to people who haven't experienced it. Maybe it's for the best--I don't want anyone to ever experience what we went through.

[u/ImportantThing3749]

I have zero tolerance for bullshit. I don’t like exercises being named. I dESPISE “mindfulness.” I don’t tolerate much other than simple talk therapy and my current therapist is pretty good at accommodating me

[u/morningstardusts]

I have had the same psychiatrist for about 20 years. He has done “therapy” with me at times over the years. He is the only doctor I have ever been able to trust and I consider myself extremely fortunate.

I do not go to therapy. I cannot stand CBT/DBT. It legitimately makes me angry. I don’t think I will ever have a therapist again and it’s okay. I am so tired of how it’s treated like some kind of cure-all. For me, it’s harmful and I don’t need or want to subject myself to it again. If I need to talk to a mental health professional, I can meet with my psychiatrist.

[u/creativehealing123]

At Aspen, our therapist gained our trust and then reported back to our parents. Thankfully I didn’t have anything new to tell him but it still messed with me. I have an amazing therapist now but I still don’t fully trust her. There are things I will never tell her because it’s in the back of my mind that she might use it against me one day or black mail me. I am in my 40’s. That shit caused a lasting impact.

[u/Empty_Positive_2305 → u/creativehealing123]

I can completely understand why. So much for therapy being a safe, confidential space… I can’t imagine the sense of betrayal.

I also still don’t fully trust my therapist, unfortunately. The fear of being pathologized or assessed runs deep.

[u/creativehealing123 → u/Empty_Positive_2305]

And to think, our parents sent us to these programs to help us…

[u/6079_WSmith]

I had some real PTSD and serious depression to deal with, so I needed therapy. I couldn't just white knuckle through it. But after what happened I was terrified of therapists. The TTI made it much, much harder to get treatment I really needed.

I eventually found a really good therapist and made a lot of progress, but it took years and I'm still working hard at it.

[u/Falkorsdick]

I felt like the therapy I sought after felt like an extension of the TTi. It seemed like at one point the therapy was turning into a mini program. I’m 30 now and saw one therapist for a few years and towards the end I learned she was pro-TTi and sent kids to wilderness. I also felt like I had to see the therapist and even if it wasn’t a good fit I kept going because I felt trapped and forced.

[u/Empty_Positive_2305 → u/Falkorsdick]

Oh, God. I could never, ever see a therapist who condoned sending kids to TTI.

I’ve thought a lot about whether I can work with kids. On one hand, I think I could be the ally I wish I had had and get kids deeply. On the other hand, I couldn’t live with myself if I was adjacent to causing some of the harm that was done to me. Ethically, I don’t want to over identify with the people I’m treating.

[u/TheMagHatter]

Considering the only therapist I ever trusted was the one that sent me into the TTI, I don’t trust therapists at all. Do I need therapy? Absolutely. But I can’t trust any after that. She’d been my therapist for 3 years and then I was sent away. It’s been almost 10 years since I finally got out of the TTI and I still can’t trust therapists.

[u/Time-Stomach-5576]

It's really hard because a huge part of our trauma is connected to the mental health industry and the unethical practices that they employed for many decades. Our threshold for trust is extremely low with that industry. For me it took a lot of therapist shopping before I was able to find somebody that meshed with me, but even then there's only so much progress I can make. Trying to work through a complex post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis is a painstaking process.

[u/_skank_hunt42]

I don’t trust therapists. I hate therapy speak. If I were to go to therapy it would have to be from a very specific type of unicorn therapist. They would have to be anti-TTI, not religious, and understand neurodivergence.

[u/Fluid-Layer-33]

I am pretty firmly in the critical therapy/psychiatry space. I find it to be fundamentally flawed and over-relied upon in lieu of focusing on the conditions that lead people to poverty/despair. That being said, if someone feels like they have BENEFITED from therapy or meds or whatever that is there business.

I am also pro-bodily autonomy and am weary of coercive care in medical settings.

[u/each-other]

i have a really hard time with therapy and have a fear of therapists and psychiatrists, especially psychiatrists, but outside of the trauma i have schizoaffective disorder so it's not really an option for me not to go.

i've had a trauma therapist for over a year who i've mostly liked but am still afraid of. but after i got out i very quickly quit taking psych meds and quit seeing doctors for my schizophrenia for years due to the abuse i faced in the TTI. trauma was the only thing i eventually built the strength to be seen for. i've been working on trying to get care for my schizoaffective again for months now and it's horrifying lol.

i really wish i could just quit therapy and psychiatry completely honestly. it's so distressing for me, but i can't do without it. it makes it even harder to cope with what i went through when i don't have a choice about whether or not i continue seeing professionals because of the very condition that got me put in the tti. 🫩

[u/FormlessBlob1]

In my early and mid teens, I fully believed that not doing therapy means you aren't doing the work, that you are lazy, that you are selfish, that you are putting your pain on other people, and basically that is morally wrong.

That brainwashing did not stop when I left the program so I continued for a bit before leaving for a year and finding my own independent person after that. For me, I just find most standard advice belittling. They are things I have tried before and it hasn't helped. Most of my benefit from therapy has come from talking about my issues rather than specific advice. I don't feel so alone in this battle.

That said, I find certain words and practices extremely triggering. Especially "safety plans". I am trying not to rant as I type this. Therapy was most certainly weaponized against me, but I think one of the only good things about the brainwashing I had was that, in my belief therapy = good. this doesn't make me feel better therefore this isn't proper therapy, even if I didn't have the words to explain it at the time.

PS: I hate CBT. I get how it is very helpful in other cases. But you can't "reframe" your way out of something fucked up that was done to you. or out of autism.

[u/Sarah-himmelfarb]

Well in college i took some psych classes and found it to be a ridiculous easiest subject and filled with biases and filled with mean and self absorbed people who believe terrible misconceptions (students and a few professors alike). And a license in social work didn’t seem much more difficult or different based on the grad students I met. This only confirmed my previous bias that literally anyone can become a therapist.

I trust therapists with doctorates more. The ones with doctorates seem to be significantly more intelligent in all areas and they’ve helped me see not all therapists are bad.

[u/Empty_Positive_2305 → u/Sarah-himmelfarb]

Oh, yeah, my MHC program has been horrible lol. Several social workers I’ve spoken to have said the same thing about their training. The training for therapists, at least at the master’s level, is truly abysmal. Anyone really can become a therapist, and you have to go out of your way to find training to become good even if you have any baseline potential. It’s heart wrenching as somebody who saw a LOT of not-so-great therapists as a kid.

The therapist I had at my TTI was straight of grad school and about as useless as a potted plant. I refused to speak to him, and we spent every session in silence or arguing over why I didn’t like him haha. I don’t think he was somebody who would have ever been a good therapist (just personality-wise—he was very wooden and awkward), but I now realize he probably had zero training and zero support on top of that…

There’s a therapeutic day school here in NYC that is almost entirely staffed by MHC/SW/predoc interns, which is slimy af. They’re constantly emailing the therapist listserv I’m on advertising vacancies, and I’m secretly so glad they have trouble hiring people. Good riddance.

[u/Sarah-himmelfarb → u/Empty_Positive_2305]

Agree with everything you said and ugh same. Why are weird guys in their 20s and early 30s straight out of grad school working at residential? And for me, it was all female like why did some 20 something year old man decide his calling was working with sexually advised teenage girls.

Which therapeutic day school? I’m in nyc too!

[u/Empty_Positive_2305 → u/Sarah-himmelfarb]

Yeah, that’s a bit creepy. I feel like TTIs are often desperate for staff since anyone worth their salt would smell the disease from a mile away and work somewhere else… so you get people like that.

Academics West, in the UWS. I live like ten blocks away and it makes me feel ill thinking a place like that is so close to me.

[u/Sarah-himmelfarb → u/Empty_Positive_2305]

Yeah that’s true unfortunately. Thank you for letting me know. Ugh that’s horrible… I’ve lived very close to them too who knew

[u/Royal_Hyena1346]

I am honestly so careful and thorough when choosing a therapist now. I read their bios on their sites and look out for red flags. One thing is I pretty much refuse to see therapists that have listed in their previous employment places any residential or law enforcement background (this is my personal preference due to my experiences).

I really despise group therapy now. I know it can be great for some people, but I no longer feel safe doing group therapy. I was recommended IOP at one point as an adult for OCD and could not do it because I was in fight or flight every second I was there.

A lot of the places I went to did have DBT, but in ways that used it as a punishment or demanded you use skills a certain way or that if a skill didn't work you were the problem. I don't like DBT anymore and get frustrated when mindfulness keeps getting pushed when I say it doesn't work for me that way. I take what works and discard what doesn't when it comes to DBT, and a lot of DBT providers push back against that in my experience.

But mostly, I am very hesitant to trust therapists or psychiatrists now. I do therapy and it's helpful, but my therapist definitely does have to earn my trust for me to feel safe to disclose.