[jrgoff]

I'm curious if you have any suggestions for such people to find a successful therapy fit (I'm asking both out of personal curiosity as well as hoping that it will help others)? I'm not in that category of brilliant, but I tried therapy off and on for 10 or 15 years before I started feeling like it really helped. I think part of the problem is that I didn't know what was "wrong" with me - I knew that I had trouble with maintaining romantic relationships and I knew that I was sometimes unhappy (though I was rarely willing to admit to myself how unhappy I often was), but I didn't really know why. And I spent a lot of time introspecting, so generally when I tried therapy out the therapist wouldn't have any real insights that I hadn't thought of already. I didn't dislike my therapists, but generally would give up after a few months of not feeling like any progress was being made.

I'm not sure all of what went into things working out for me in therapy the past couple of years, but I think at least a part of it was shifting into a more emotions based approach. I'm not sure how open to that I would have been when I was younger. My tendency to approach most things intellectually was a very powerful tool, but it wasn't successful at getting to the underlying feelings I was not really aware of. Having more access to those feelings has been overwhelming at times, but also has enabled a lot of ongoing progress on being more satisfied with my life.

[mnky9800n]

I would recommend schema therapy to anyone. It has helped me immensely to understand feelings, thoughts, reactions, and also to decide what is and isn't something I should attend to. Additionally I would recommend dialectical behaviour therapy to anyone. It gives you the skills to interact with the knowledge gained from schema therapy. Lastly, I recommend doing mindfulness training. If you only spend 5 minutes a day it will change your life. I am able to be calm when before I wasn't, able to be thoughtful about others when before I would react, able to focus on a task and organise my day when before I could not muster the executive function to brush my teeth. These things have made my life considerably better.

[light_hue_1]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is at the moment the most effective form of therapy we have. It can take a few tries to find someone who you click with.

CBT isn't about someone giving you an aha moment into your own feelings or giving you advice you hadn't thought of (although that does happen). It's more about giving you skills to reinterpret those feelings, their sources, and the actions that result from them. So even if you feel like you introspect and understand how you're doing, CBT can be very effective in being more satisfied with life.