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Comment by viburnum | Hacker News Reader

Most therapists are well-meaning but have no idea what they’re doing. You’re just paying somebody to be your friend for 50 minutes a week. A competent therapist should help you get results in 6-8 sessions, faster if they really know what they’re doing. If you seeing a therapist and you’re not getting results, you’re wasting your money.

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A very cynical take - it seems you're taken from the place where a therapist to many people is like a doctor's visit. Figure out what the problem is, fix it, and then move on. Maybe that works if you only have one problem. Maybe that works if you have nothing fundamental and deep down to get over.

Our society doesn't offer many places for people to feel safe truly opening up emotionally. It can take people a very long time, and sometimes it takes 5 sessions just to build up enough trust to start to scratch the surface of whats really going wrong. I wish your comment was empathetic towards things like that, but instead it feels dismissive, and I'd worry it makes people second guess going to therapy, or starting.

Most therapists can help anyone. The right one for you can be life changing. Don't give up finding one, even if your first, second or third don't get you as far as you need to go. It probably took decades to get you to where you are, don't quit after a few weeks trying to work on it.

If it takes your therapist four hours for you to feel comfortable opening up, they are a bad therapist.

Some people haven’t opened up to anyone, even themselves in decades.

or you have trust issues

Solution-focused brief therapy is great and highly effective. It's also not the only thing out there. If you're marching into a therapist's office unknowingly presenting a personality disorder and expecting your life to feel wildly different next month, you're just going to be bouncing therapists and blaming them for the next couple years.

It’s the difference between brief therapy, where you’re learning specific coping skills and is much more solution focused, and talk therapy which is much more problem focused.

There’s a kind of talk therapy that’s more of a literary exercise than a treatment. It can be interesting but the risk is you’re just digging yourself into a deeper hole.

This is important. Finding a therapist is like finding a significant other. It needs to be a relationship where you are comfortable with one another. It takes time to find the right person. I’m happy with who I am seeing now, but my eyes are wide open to the idea that it still might not be the correct approach for me.

So... don’t be afraid to fire your therapist if it isn’t working. Trust your gut.

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