I saw a therapist for about 3 months earlier this year, when I was going through an episode of really, really serious depression after a breakup. She didn't help me at all. I can't think of a single productive thing that came out of our sessions. If I was already upset when I came in, I would sit there and talk about my problems and cry. If I went in feeling sort of ok, I would sit there and talk about my problems and leave crying. That was pretty much it, for 3 months. Towards the end of it I basically ran out of things to say, and we would make awkward conversation while I watched the clock. when I finally told her I didn't think it was helping and that I wanted to quit, she couldn't say me that I'd made progress or give me any reason why I shouldn't leave.

She also referred me to a psychiatrist early on, who put me on anti-depressants that didn't work and usually spent less than 5 minutes actually talking to me during our "evaluation" sessions. I didn't even bother telling him when I stopped taking the pills he prescribed to me, and he never bothered to follow up when I stopped coming to appointments. The whole thing has left me with a complete lack of faith in these people.

I got back together with the guy in question, so it's not crazy psycho depression like before, but I'm still depressed and pretty much hating my life. Only this time I don't feel like there's anything I can do about it.

I feel the same way you do.

I, too, tried several therapists that did absolutely nothing to help me. No matter how hard I tried to follow their advice, it just made things worse for me. I also found that each session I had to recap what I said before because the therapist didn't take the time to review notes from the previous session so half the hour was wasted with me recapping what I said before. Despite following the advice of my therapists, doing journels, reading suggested books, postive visualization, ect... I was not getting any better and, in fact, I was getting worse. I got to the point that I absolutely hated going to those sessions, so one day, in the middle of a session, I fired my therapist on the spot and walked out. That was the first time I felt good about myself after leaving the therapist's office in 2 years. I will never go back to a therapist because they have little to no accountability to achieve any tangible benchmarks in a client's recovery program. They say do, but they really don't. They'll say anything to you just so as to get your insurance to approve another 20 visits.

It is one of the few professions that is not required to produce tangible results and by doing so can blame the lack of success on the client.