Psychological snake oil

I remember what happened when I decided to take a master's degree in counseling. Some of my conservative Christian friends were alarmed and told me they'd be praying for me. Others asked if I knew of some obscure prayer-filled, scripture verse reciting method of counseling--that sounded to me to be more like a exegetical study than psychological healing. One woman shook her head sadly and told me that she believed that I'd lose my way, spiritually. Pretty soon, she said, I'd get my ears pierced, stop returning tithe to God, and then it would be downhill on ice all the way to the hot place (I never understood that...).

I went into my master's studies quite fearful that I was going to learn a bunch of hocus-pocus for infidels that would do little more than entertain the idle rich. My family is the sort that needs to have a product for the work they do: a lesson plan delivered, a hardwood floor laid, a patient washed and given medications, or a quilt made. When I announced to them that I would be studying to be a therapist, it was mostly blank confused looks that I got. "But what will you actually do?" they asked. "Who is going to pay you for listening to them? I just can't see that." I wasn't sure, but people were doing it all over the world and there must be more to it than just listening.

Three years later, I was a new counselor. One of my friends, an internist, told me about mutual friends who had gone to see a counselor to save their marriage. "I was shocked!" she exclaimed. "That stuff actually works!" I'm afraid I smirked then. And you've acted superior and scorned my career choice for three years! She thought it was all hooey.

Therapy is an art, based on science. Sometimes it is slow going and it looks and feels as though nothing is happening. There are sessions when I look at my clients and wonder if I should take money for what happened or didn't happen in the room that day. But almost imperceptibly, something begins to shift for them, and they begin to change and report very interesting growth and new perspectives. Sometimes it happens when we can see it, bring it out in the open and explore what it means to have these changes. Other times, it comes out when I'm not around and there is no way to know that anything happened. One must believe in the value of the process--change happens, as well as growth, in our subconscious, when we're busy with our lives.

This intangibility was very difficult for me as a new therapist. In fact, I'd say that only in the last four years has my faith in good therapy become solidified.
So tonight, when I happened across a wonderful blog entry by Irene*Unraveled, I realized that skeptics are of every stripe, and therapy can help anyway. Next time you feel like blowing off therapists as snake oil peddlers, pause.