Counsellors and therapists

That's not even close to what I said.

erm....

"Your emotions are the result of your thinking and your behaviour. Change your thought processes, and thus your behaviour, and you change how you feel."

Butters, I disagree with you on the basics. I'm not going to argue with you about it. Good luck to you. Honestly, I hope your idealism translates into a successful practice. I used to have hope and faith in the ability of people to take charge of themselves and change, but I lost it. I'm not going to try to talk you out of it though.

thank you for all the replies folks

for those of you who have been to one- why did you decide to go in the end?

(i know i seem to be asking a lot of questions but thank you for answering!)

You know, most people who have seen therapists are probably not going to volunteer WHY on a public message board. It's one thing to ask if you've tried counseling. It's quite another to say, "What made you so f-d up in the first place?"

lmao ! nice one

i meant more on the lines of was it a gp referral sorta thing or was it that you just decided to go one day.

i apologise if it sounded like i wanted the private details. sorry!

When I was like 16/17 I hated my life, I was just really depressed and my folks sent to a few different psychiatrists, who after talking to me for about 2 minutes prescribed me anti-depressants, for my chemical imbalances, without even asking what in my life I wasn't happy about so needless to say it was an absolute disaster. The meds actually sent me to the point of suicide. At that time I was also completely convinced that no amount of talking could change any problem in my life. I then went to see a psychologist about something completely unrelated and seeing how effective his work was I told him about my problems and I was completely wrong about not being able to change anything through talking. And the greatest thing about that was it not only helped me work through the difficulties in my life but realising that you have a huge amount of choice in how you feel all the time, it gives you an enourmous amount of freedom.

Yeah and alot of people have really negative unconcious programming and they just have no idea how to take control of their lives. They are depressed because of what they're doing inside and outside of their head, and they have control over those aspects of their lives, so they're responsible, but it's not their fault that they never learnt how to take control of their mind and it's not their fault they're depresed.

thats so true and what s often needed is someone to teach you how to think in a different way. the key is to start clearing your mind of negative thoughts and changing the process of your thinking. a lot of people dont know how to do that on their own. if you go to your doctor with mild depesssion and all they do is give you prozac and no other form of help, its like putting a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.