What has been the best therapy modality or style that has helped you with psychological issues

For me, personally….

Exercise has made the absolute most impactful noticeable change in my depression/anxiety. Hands down- no question. More than any behavioral therapy, medication- or anything.

Just exercise.

I appreciate the question.

As someone else pointed out, dbt is quite helpful if someone never learned to cope and receives trauma/stumbles in life. This helped me a lot.

Additionally, it was my own curiosity and drivenness.

Watching and reading for countless hours and actively being aware of similarities to stereotypes helped me get a feel for situation.

Then learning about things I suspected I might be struggling with, then pointing therapists and psychiatrists in the direction until they either confirmed or denied it with evidence backing it up.

This led to a very tailored diagnosis and therapy which now helps me feel more in control than I‘ve ever been in my life (I never thought I lacked control until I found out how little I had).

Being allowed and accepted in my way of existing has changed practically everything. It even showed me that I‘m lucky to be alive since my condition, combined with mx childhood usually spells doom.

It’s still a ton to think about and a burden of sorts but it’s no comparison to the self doubt I had before without realizing.

TL;DR: I think the best therapy is enabled by a thorough diagnosis, fueled by an interested patient.

Disclaimer: Obviously I‘m talking about actual science allthough it can be frustrating. Fringe science and esoterics provide easy and comforting answers but it is not the way imo.

I hope this helps.

I was psychotic with delusions of grandeur for close to five years.

What saved me was a 9-month mindfulness based coaching course that taught me about presence, emotional self regulation, introspection, reflection and proper interpersonal communication. In the end they allowed me to see my delusions for what they were and that i had built my life on lies. These tools are now an integrated part of my personality and have helped me immensely in the years after, both in my personal relationships and in managing my mental illness (bipolar disorder type 1 and C-PTSD).

You should be able to learn the same techniques around emotional and reflective work if you look into certified MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) courses. Preferably in-person and at least 8-12 weeks long. Please note that these are scientific techniques detatched from the glorification and the muck that gets thrown around a lot in "spiritual" circles.

Today I'm studying public mental health work and do some work on the side of advicing researchers in the mental illness field, working to make training in these techniques into an integrated part of mental illness treatment.

I fully believe that if everyone was taught these tools as part of public education we would wipe out most of our political and societal issues withing a generation or two.

Other than that I've adopted a "listen to what the science says" mindset and make decisions based on what's good for me such as getting regular exercise in ways that work and that i find fun and eating healthy within reasonable limits (the mind needs relaxation too, sometimes in the form of treats and indulgence). Getting an active dog has also helped me to secure a minimal level of activity for myself when things get tough.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced "act") not only helped me with generalized anxiety (which I no longer suffer from), but it also opened the door to fascinating research that I have been reading about ever since.

It is transdiagnostic because it exploits the fundamental building blocks and processes of cognition. In other words, it helps everyone who has mental health problems, as long as they are verbal (so nonverbal autistic people may require other therapy).

It is also 'superdiagnostic', because it improves peoples lives regardless of whether they are diagnosed with a mental health disorder.

Anyone who wants to have more flexible cognition and change their behavior, all with an empirically validated approach, could benefit from ACT.

Quitting my full time job has been the best thing I ever did for my mental health.

Regular exercise, especially hiking.

I have an app that asks me how my day was, I have like 7 years of data based on a scale of 1-5. It colors it from a gradient of red to green and gives a relative emoji from happy to sad.

For 3 years, I challenged myself to go on a nearby hike once a day for a whole month. It's not huge. Like 2 miles out and back, about 800ft vertical gain.

I can see so fucking clearly the three best months of the those entire 3 years were the one month of each year that I hiked nearly every day.

Talking like 2.7-3.1 avg vs 4.3-4.7avg. frown literally upside down.

Now I try to go on hikes like once a week.

Feeding into existential dread, studying philosophy and trying magic mushrooms. YMMV

I think it really helps if the therapist understands the subject matter surrounding my problems. Having significant vocabulary known in common is critical to understanding.

A patchwork of things has helped me acquire and maintain a more balanced life. I’d say the largest contributor was adopting ‘radical acceptance’ as a way of life. Basically, I’m constantly, consciously accepting whatever is happening to me. It doesn’t mean I don’t try to change things but it means that I’m not always resisting everything.

Drugs. Not medication, illegal drugs. Ymmv. I am not endorsing anything and this is legal nor medical advice.

I don’t know their style actually. Some therapists have been more effective, and those have basically been the ones I most trusted to open up.

Education and anecdotes. I work a therapist for about 30 mins every two weeks and honestly, I find much of their suggestions kinda neutral. I often ask how they fit to that suggestion. That's where they recommend a book on the topic.

Reading their book recommendations is better for me, because their advice is now given in a format where I can read and review over and over. The books have anecdotes about other use cases. It has studies. It has research paper I can personally dig into.

Honestly, my therapist is less of a "let me explain" and more of a librarian who helps me find resources myself.

Hi, Clinician here, just popping in to say that all theories of therapy basically say the same thing in different ways.

Don't worry too much about treatment modality. Build a relationship with your counselor and put in some effort into bettering yourself.

Positive outcomes are something like 30% external factors, 40% counseling relationship, 10% therapist efforts, and 20% client effort.

I did Radically Open DBT (RO-DBT) which I found to be helpful with dealing with excessive perfectionism and hyper independence and it also helped me open up for other types of therapy. I'm currently doing a mixture of DBT, CBT and ACT and it's painful but useful for traits of BPD and social anxiety.

I will always be thankful for Dialectical Behavior Therapy by Marsha Linehan. I have never been diagnosed as borderline, but the lack of basic coping and interpersonal skills was obvious. It wasn't a cure, but it has given me a foundation on which I was able to move forward with deeper, therapeutic processes. Frankly, I think everyone should go thru all the modules at least once.

MBCT or Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Basically, it's some of the core principles of Buddhism without any of the karma/rebirth woo-woo, practiced by a licensed psychotherapist, either individually or in a group. It was recommended to me for anxiety and depression and it has helped me stay grounded, recognizing and avoiding spiraling into hopelessness and resentment.

CBT for actually getting out of a rut and sitting meditation (zazen) for staying out of it. There are many more things that help, like reducing alcohol and caffeine, regular exercise…. but meditation is what really changed the game for me.

I’d just recommend you start it with a qualified teacher. Or at least read up on it (I recommend https://www.mctb.org/ and “the mind illuminated”).

My motorbike fixes my issues whenever I go on it. And the thought of going for a ride can calm me down sometimes. But it's usually more powerful when I actually get out.

Years ago, someone suggested a book called 'Discover What You're Best At.' by Linda Gail.

I had hated pretty much every job I'd ever had, then found one where I used my talents. Being able to get up on a rainy Monday and not be miserable was a life changer.

Taekwondo. Cooking. Creative projects. I've also done therapy on and off, 1-on-1 conversational therapy as well as Psychodrama in a group therapy setting. Therapy is nice but I wouldn't say it is the thing that helped the most.

Psychoanalysis.

I have not yet attempted any Therapy. But as places are SOOO rare, and real deep psychological therapy takes often over 2 years, I dont believe this can work.

I had extremely intense, deep and healing experiences on Cannabis and LSD though. Cannabis was really bringing me to my feelings, subconsciousness, addictions, stress. LSD made me understand how my brain works a bit better.

Especially psychedelics are said to increade neuroplasticity, and they cause "crazy neuron firing", to regions they normally dont do. This was extensively used in psychotherapeutic studies and also applocation, but then some stupid people where scared of it and banned it along with some other racistically motivated bans.

I firmly believe that psychedelic therapy, together with a retreat, nature, dancing, and so on, is the only real way one can heal.

Edit: this may not answer your question?

Isolate yourself from your demons both mentally and physically. Say take 200 days, workout at least twice a day with no access to your vices and get 10hrs of sleep a day. Remake your foundation physically then remake yourself mentally. Essentially tear yourself down to core primal essence and rebuild how you want to be. Then surround yourself with good people and build the skills you always wanted. It’s extremely tough mentally but when done you won’t recognize yourself afterwards, you’ll be a rock and hardened.

Talk therapy. And, at times, medication, though this is for a diagnosed condition. Therapy is the way to go. Aggressively ditch therapists who don't feel like a good fit and keep trying till you get one that feels right.

I’ve been reading books by Gabor Mate - recently finished When The Body Says No and almost done In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Lots of stories and insights into how others cope with what has happened to them. It helps to look at your own experience and coping through a new lens.

I wonder if anyone has had any experience using psychedelics in therapy? Not sure if this was in one of these books or if I read about this elsewhere.

I have now discovered that it ISN'T POSSIBLE, either through my app, or through the web-interface, to EDIT a comment, WHEN one's revision is too-big.

Therefore, I have to create a completely-new one, in order to revise one.

AAAnd .. apparently it ISN'T POSSIBLE to contribute a comment this-long, so I'm now having to break it into pieces, too...

I'm leaving-up my previous edition, so that you can see all the denigrations of it, as they stand.

Revised: Obviously, a 1000-word spur-of-the-moment reply ended-up too convoluted to be anyhow valid or intelligent or sane, in the community's determination.

Therefore this 2000+ word revision of it.

NONE of the links are "affiliate links" of any kind: they exist so you can directly consider the referent I'm identifying, AND so you can read reviews of that referent, yourself.

ToC:

• Solitude

• getting away from prejudice/abuse/gaslighting, including by doctors & Western Medicine as a whole, as much as I can.

• discovering that the Ayurvedic claim that there are 3 fundamental-metabolisms ( as well as 4 mixed-metabolisms ) is hard, testable fact, and this immensely improved the healingness of my food, once I understood.

• discovering that there are 3 epigenetic conditions underlying most of "psychiatry", which rejects this testable-fact, and that both the Undermethylated-DNA-disorder treatment & the Pyrrol-disorder treatment testably, provably, work.

• Empiricism/Objectivity intersection-with Kaizen: the only TRUE assumption-river/religion is the intersection of Empiricism/Objectivity with Kaizen, Kaizen being relentless rational evolution.

To all the Western Medicine & Scientism gaslighters that hold it to be established that "there never has been, and isn't, ANY evidence of brain-healing in adults", read these books by Dr. Norman Doidge, IF you've the intellectual-integrity to do so:

https://www.amazon.com/Brains-Way-Healing-Discoveries-Neuroplasticity-ebook/dp/B00KWG9L2A/

https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers-ebook/dp/B000QCTNIW/

AND know that this is the guy who nuked "the established Medical Knowledge that That Can't Happen", when he woke-up from a coma, because he had GROWN A REPLACEMENT CORPUS CALLOSUM 'ROUND THE BACK OF HIS BRAIN.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9474-rewired-brain-revives-patient-after-19-years/

I spent several YEARS intermittently-catatonic with brain-injury, and was gaslighted by doctors that there was no brain-injury, and that it was "my mental illness" to believe that I could make my brain heal.

It seems obvious to me, that I did ditch their drugging, and haven't been much-of-the-time-catatonic since last-century.

It seems obvious to me that that fact is, itself, objective, factual evidence.

My 3 layers of brain-injury are:

• Autism ( you can read about the brain-damage in terms of amygdala being 2x the normal size, so the amygdala-to-cortex-ratio is off by factor-of-2, you can read about the wrong-number-of-microcolumns, & the wrong-height-of-microcolumns on the cortex, you can read about our faceblindness, you can read about how eye-contact is emotional-violence to us, you can read about how social-process-circuitry is broken in us, you can SEE for yourself the autistic-bodylanguage in Richard Feynman's videos, and even-more-extremely in Temple Grandin's TED talks, etc. )

• "acute, child-onset 'schizophrenia'" ( I will be linking to a paper SHOWING that that is brain-injury, according to medical-research scans, later. The cause of that 5-year-long wave-of-cell-apoptosis brain-decimation is, according to the evidence I've got, epigenetic, and both mitigatable-before-it-hits and mitigatable-after-the-fact, as my obvious recovery would testify, outside fundamentalist Scientism. )

• when the bullying-prejudice's gaslighting got too-strong, I began trying to cudgel-my-will-to-live-to-death, so that I could then murder my life, as a means of teaching the Soul/CellOfGod/Atman that was having my life to GROW THE FUCK UP AND STOP INDULGING IN SUCH ABUSE-TOY LIVES. I failed, obviously, and now have bad memory-problems as a result of about 1000-ish hard-concussions with weapons, of whatever was ready-to-hand, through more than a decade.

What worked:

• Solitude.

Many YEARS of Solitude & Isolation.

Getting away from the abuser/prejudice/gaslighting, and since it is normal-culture, itself, whose prejudice is my fundamental abuser, then getting away from everybody, for years, gave me the means to continue existing, eventually living, & even healing.

I don't expect solitude to work for anybody other-than the ones that "Enneagram" calles a "5".

( Richard Rohr commented that monasteries are filled with enneagram-5's: he was right. )

That, combined with Frawley's ayurvedic appropriate-to-one's-metabolism ingredients food, which massively helped my health,

IF you've the intellectual-integrity to DO the experiment, THEN https://www.amazon.com/Ayurvedic-Healing-Comprehensive-David-Frawley-ebook/dp/B003TO5EF0/ and https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-your-Type-Ayurvedic-Approach-ebook/dp/B0028UBEVO/ BOTH are required for necessary-and-sufficiently-complete understanding:

the "Ayurvedic Healing" book includes the best test-checklist I know-of, and it is the ingredients-lists that make the book into scientific-experiment's basis:

Simply discover which of the 7 possible metabolic-types you are, then, IF you are not of the all-3-mixed-together one, THEN you can do the experiment thusly:

1. identify the ingredients, the cooking-methods, and the balance-of-kinds-of-ingredients that is most-pacifying for your metabbolism/dosha, AND
2. identify the ones that are most inappropriate for your metabolism/dosha, AND
3. prepare pairs of dishes, such that you have 2 complete, though small, meals, for yourself, AND
4. sit down without distractions, & see if you can identify your body's reaction to the different dishes
5. honestly consider your results.

I consider the probability of Frawley's book ( and NOT ANYTHING of the bullshit "ayurveda" from the internet! ) of being as stunningly-accurate in its prediction of what would be beneficial vs harmful to be extremely low: it was TOO consistently & improbably right.

It has proven, through the years, to remain so, as I've broken my metabolism from the one I spent nearly 1/2 century in, and then I broke that one, and so on, ending-up in a mixed metabolism.

Having that ingredients-list on me, when I was shopping, improved my health significantly, no matter how much contempt/prejudice Western Medicine has for such evidence.

They won't do the experiment, because they already "know" that "That Can't Happen!" and "That Isn't Possible!", which, exactly as many have noted since the 1800's, is one of several White prejudices.

& William J. Walsh's "Nutrient Power" book, which really oughta be corrected, a bit...

https://www.amazon.com/Nutrient-Power-Heal-Biochemistry-Brain-ebook/dp/B00J75IQUA/

I replicated both his Undermethylated-DNA-disorder treatment and his Pyrrol-disorder treatment, each 4 times, and at-least 2 different ways.

Undermethylated-DNA-disorder: enteric-coated SAM-e, 40mins before breakfast, with clear water ( or tea, but NO carbs/food ) worked in 3 months, and Methionine worked in 4 months. The only times in my life I've ever experienced ZERO stress, which was awesome.

Takes-away my academic-drive, though, so I only would use Methionine now to "take the edge off", if the stress of Undermethylation-distortion were gimping me or my life.

*** END OF PART1 ***

Solitude.

Many YEARS of Solitude & Isolation.

Getting away from the abuser/prejudice, and since it is normal-culture, itself, whose prejudice is my fundamental abuser, then getting away from everybody, for years, gave me the means to continue living.

That, combined with Frawley's ayurvedic appropriate-to-one's-metabolism ingredients food, which massively helped my health,

& William J. Walsh's "Nutrient Power" book, which really oughta be corrected, a bit...

I replicated both is undermethylated-DNA-disorder treatment and his pyrrol-disorder treatment, each 4 times, and at-least 2 different ways.

Undermethylated-DNA-disorder: enteric-coated SAM-e, 40mins before breakfast, with clear water ( or tea, but NO carbs/food ) worked in 3 months, and Methionine worked in 4 months. The only times in my life I've ever experienced ZERO stress, which was awesome. Takes-away my academic-drive, though, so I only would use Methionine now to "take the edge off", if the stress of undermethylation-distortion were gimping me or my life.

Pyrrol-disorder ( amygdala-hijack always pressuring, and ambushing/breaking one into PTSD-RAGE, with any "straw that broke the camel's back" ), was treated best with the mixture of Zinc Gluconate, Zinc Picolinate, Arachidonic-acid-precursor Evening Primrose Oil ( 2 big capsules / day ), and P5P form of one of the Vitamin B's. This gave me the ONLY experience I've ever had, in my life, of not-fighting-the-pressure-of-pending-amygdala-hijack-every-second, and it left me .. HAPPY. Never experienced anything like that, before... Why'd I quit it? I'm a Vajrayana, & meditation must be my primary-weapon of self-conquering, not pills, AND taking Zinc every 6 hours was a brutal regime, and it was razor's-edge chemical-balance to maintain. Walsh is right that people with pyrrol-disorder ( which wrongly eradicates zinc from our bodies, leaving too-little for normal management of copper, or for methylation-of-DNA for that matter ) require dangerous ( to others! ) levels of metals-intake to reach correct-balancing between copper & zinc. I was taking enough to probably kill any non-pyrrol-disorder person: 4x the Tolerable Upper Limit. It worked, though, exactly as Walsh indicated.

So:

Solitude, & systematically healing food, & the corrections for 2 epigenetic-disorders that Western Medicine won't allow are real ( because it'd GUT authority-based psychiatry if the evidence were admitted ), that demonstrated exactly what actually is wrong, and gave me leverage in owning my life, more completely.

EVIDENCE-based knowing.

.: Scientific Method is itself one of the therapies I broke the gaslighting of doctors ( and medical-professional parents ) with, and so must be considered a valid therapy, too.

Kaizen, aka relentless evolving, as one's personal Religion. ( my cosmology is Vajrayana, simply because Universe's-speech, aka Evidence, broke the worldviews I was brought-up in. Ramakrishna Vivekananda too contempted the prejudice masquerading as "science", that I call Scientism, which presumes materialism, and therefore presumes that Awareness/Knowing/Meaning/Will can't be real, but that is prejudice: all those are testable and objectively-real.

Some have even tested entanglement in the macro-scale by experiment:

• the experiment of having dog-owners set a video recorder in their home, with timestamping on, and they mark down when they decide to leave for home, at work, and the video records if the dog(s) light-up right then .. obviously, it doesn't matter how many such pairs don't demonstrate such entanglement: if even 1 pair is so good at demonstrating it, then that falsifies the dogma that "That Can't Happen" and "That Isn't Possible".
• the experiment of having women in some quiet context, and a wired camera that can see them is connected to a switcher, and one, or another, person is watching a monitor, and sometimes that monitor is showing the woman... can she identify when someone is watching her?? IF yes, THEN that, too, falsifies the materialist Scientism/prejudice "That Can't Happen" and "That Isn't Possible".

Since I've experienced enough evidence to know when authority-based-"science" is gaslighting me, and since even physicist Weinberg commented on the fact that 100 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE contradiction between evidence & established-theory, re the measured Cosmological Constant, vs The Standard Model of Cosmology

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant_problem

Scientism is unfalsifiable, Science holds that ONE "Black Swan", that really exists, FALSIFIES "All Swans Are White", no matter how Scientism keeps conveniently-measuring only white swans, as a means of "proving" that only white swans exist...

Karl Popper would have called-out that NON-falsifiable dogma ISN'T AND NEVER WAS Science, as would have Carl Sagan...

Evidence convinced me of what I hold to be true, and I'm continuing on that path, until I die, in the hopes of breaking my Soul/CellOfGod/ChildOfGod/Atman from getting perpetually-recycled in Universe.

IF you prefer authority-based-medicine, and have the gall to ignore the evidence even called-out in one of John Brockman's books, probably "This Idea Must Die" ( that "evidence based medicine" which provably ISN'T evidence-based, it is authority-based ), then contempt me, categorically, as defective, in your religion.

Addiction-to-integrity & addiction-to-Universe's-actual-bizarre-unfolding/opening both are good addictions, to me.

You have your assumption-river/religion, fundamentalist-materialists have theirs, I have mine.

Eternity is going to continue reprpocessing/recycling ALL energies contained within Universe, and I want out, pronto.

Remain within, if that makes you feel great.

That is what evolution means, within a continuum/soul, obviously: your soul sows, through you, your soul reaps, through future "lives"/incarnations. How could it work properly if you just don't mean anything? MEAN what you mean: self-honesty, no matter how contempted by the currently-fashionable prejudice, is healing!

: )

Born autistic, lost 10% of my brain between about 10-16, then, in the last 14y or so ( I'm gaining on 60yo ), a thousand-ish concussions, trying to break my will-to-live with a cudgel, so I could murder my life, but eventually learned that will-to-live is stronger, in this brain, than I am, so I'm stuck living, and therefore am stuck living with the consequences of all-3 waves of brain-injury.

It takes years to grow-in new/replacement brain, but the meditations do speed the process.

( Western minds may find convincing in a book named "Super Genes" by geneticist Tanzi & co-author Chopra, and it cites the science backing its arguments for malleable/earnable healing )

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