Therapy Doesn't Work?

    Sometimes when I bring up therapy, people tell me that it doesn't work. I hear this from people who have never tried therapy at all, sure. However, I also hear this from people who have gone to therapy for a mental health condition who feel like therapy didn't help them, or worst-case scenario, that therapy made their mental illness and/or trauma worse than it was before. 
    I get it. I've been there. Through no fault of her own, my first therapist felt like she made my OCD and panic disorder worse. While I was in therapy with her, I probably would have been a person that was extremely hesitant to recommend therapy to other people because, at the time, I felt like therapy didn't work. Then I met my current therapist, and I finally started to manage my mental health conditions well enough to truly improve and begin a real wellness journey with the things she was teaching me.
    A lot of people think that just starting therapy sessions with any licensed mental health professional is the most important thing about therapy. It isn't actually. The most important part of starting therapy is actually finding the right therapist for you. This means finding a therapist that matches you in certain areas like their area(s) of expertise, the therapeutic techniques they use to treat clients, their treatment plan for you as a client, their ability and willingness to be available when you need them for regular sessions as well as emergencies, and their goals for your treatment. If you don't match with your therapist on these key elements, then, of course, you're not going to get what you need to improve from that therapist, and you're going to have the idea that therapy doesn't work because you're not improving. 
    My first therapist, although I was attached to her because she was the first professional that ever told me there was a name for the thing that made me hate myself and that it was a treatable condition, was not the right therapist for me. I needed more frequent sessions that she was able to offer me. She also didn't have the experience she needed to be able to adequately treat my subtype of OCD. So, of course, if I wasn't getting the treatment I needed from her, my mental health was going to continue to get worse. 
    It also seems like a lot of people expect therapy to work faster than it possibly can, and then they start to think therapy doesn't work because they aren't getting "better" fast enough. Therapy is a slow process. It's literally rewiring your brain and forming new neural pathways to make your brain healthier. You can't go to a month's worth, or even three months' worth, of therapy sessions and expect your mental health condition to magically disappear. If that's your expectation, of course it's going to seem like therapy doesn't work, and you'll be more likely to stop going to therapy before it has the chance to truly work. (Medication can generally help chemically rewire a brain faster than therapy alone for some conditions, but that's an option that people need to discuss with their treatment team.)
    I should also point out that some mental health conditions can be medication-resistant in some people. This naturally means that treating mental health conditions in those clients will be more difficult and will take longer. This doesn't mean that therapy doesn't work for them. It just means that it doesn't work as quickly as it does for clients that have medication as part of their treatment plan. 
    I remember when I first started therapy with my current therapist. I cried every week in my sessions for at least the first two months, and I cried more at home as I was learning to process and manage my anxiety and my other emotions in healthier ways. Even after I stopped crying in my sessions, it took a few more months to notice myself feeling, thinking about, and interacting with my OCD and panic disorder in a healthier way. I had to learn to let go of my expectations about how quickly I would get better and actually give the things I was working on in therapy time to change my brain. That's when I was able to let therapy do its job without judgment and impatience, and that's when I was sure therapy was working for me. But, before I saw that progress, man, did I want to give up a few times. (I'm really glad I didn't.)
    I'll end with this: Some people think that therapy doesn't work. They're not completely wrong, but they're not completely right in thinking that either. Therapy with the wrong therapist, the wrong treatment plan, the wrong treatment goals or expectations, and/or the wrong medication(s) will be therapy that doesn't work. When one of those things isn't right for someone, it can be discouraging, and it can make anyone want to give up on therapy altogether. It can even make us feel like it's our fault that therapy isn't working for us even though we desperately want it to work. However, therapy DOES actually work when you find the right therapist for you, and you actually give the therapy the time it needs to start working on your brain. If therapy hasn't worked for you before, or it currently isn't working, it may not be that therapy doesn't work at all; it could mean that one of the key elements doesn't match for you and something needs to be changed in order for you to get the help you need.