| Wow! You're doing exactly what you seem to know on some level is bad: you're giving him lots of very specific advice without having any basis for doing so. Apologies for any harshness but I want to answer you strongly. 1. It's very possible that leaving his current therapist in order to "pivot" is a terrible idea. He should talk to his current therapist about his feelings that therapy isn't work, and consider talking to another professional, maybe one who takes a different approach, at the same time until he feels clarity about what to do. A lot of work gets done in 7 years of therapy. Sometimes there are low points, but it is a major step to throw that away. 2. It's incredibly obvious that telling him to try to have a child is an insanely bad idea. Getting a dog is less conspicuously destructive but is also a serious commitment and not something you're in a position to recommend. 3. Your "tough love" approach just sounds like being gratuitously hard on yourself. You can't bully yourself into becoming healthy. His condition isn't "fabricated" by his brain, and he cannot talk himself out of it. I know you didn't mean it in this spirit, but the ultimate effect of that line of thinking is putting responsibility for his problems on his own shoulders. No one chooses to have psychological issues, and they can't just opt out of them either. 4. The rest, doing jumping jacks, taping up yoda quotes, answering a mental health questionnaire in public, these things aren't likely damaging in any way, but they won't do anything to address the underlying problems or meaningfully change the situation in question. Again, OP: if you feel that your current treatment isn't working, you need to address that by talking to your therapist about it and, if that doesn't help you feel more optimistic about the current regime, you need to talk to someone else at the same time about the current problems you're having. If you have to make a drastic change, like leaving your current therapist and presumably changing your meds, I'd think it would be a good idea to involve someone you trust who can help give you perspective from outside of the therapeutic context. And, obviously, if you get to anywhere near self-harm, make sure to get emergency care right away, even if it seems like an over-reaction. |
It is my experience that if things aren't working with a current therapist--whether this is the case needs to be seen, but after 7 years with the same therapist, he's on 10 pills/day, he experiences a serious relapse and feels he has to call on HN for help, is not a good sign. After 7 years there should be some more professional safety-nets installed.
Anyway, if it's not working well, get a new therapist. From personal experience, sticking with the same one for too long while you know it's not going further has done nothing but slow progress. The reasoning is, a therapist is also a creature of habit and they're not going to change their general approach much, even if you discuss the matter with them. And I don't mean trying out different meds or therapy, but the sort of general approach they use in their profession. And there's nothing wrong with that, even the really good ones do it, and even with them I still got stuck after some time, simply because their bag of tricks (as good as it may be) ran out and we tried all the things. And that's nobody's fault because therapy isn't a hard science or engineering problem, so it's very possible that even the "best" one runs out of ideas while another may have some approach that fits you right now (which is another factor: a patient changes as a person, the therapist that was right when you were at point X in your life may not be the one you need right now).
Disclaimer: this may be bad advice because of reasons of US Healthcare that I know nothing about. So, Think For Yourself. But also don't go waiting for a therapist to fix things if it doesn't seem like they're doing that. Which I need to repeat, is not (necessarily) a failure of the therapist, but sometimes a new pair of eyes can get you moving again, if the old pair got stuck.