I got a better help therapist and after I explained that I was in a pretty heavy depression streak, she actually suggested I go seek help elsewhere and assisted me through my process of finding a new doctor. At first I was offended (like I was too crazy for any help) but it was honestly the best thing she could have done for me. After I started getting help with my new therapy we parted ways but I actually appreciate that woman for being candid with me.
That is awesome. We started with them for out teenaged son and the first session that was just parents she told us about a state funded program that gave in person therapy for free though the school system. She felt that it would be more helpful for him and more cost effective. My son has been in that therapy now for 3 years.
The best thing a therapist can do is admit that they aren't qualified to help you. I struggled for two years to find a therapist due to my history being complicated. I then moved and tried again and my husband really wanted me to seek anger management therapy. I found an amazing anger management therapist who was also qualified to help with my complicated history. When I asked her if she could help me with therapy for my relationship with food she said that she's got a fine line on that and said she doesn't touch on disordered eating or a few other specific things. She actually had another therapist who worked in the same clinic who specialized in food therapy and eating disorders and said that if anything hit a point that she couldn't help she'd happily transfer me over. We just ended 10 months of therapy with me feeling like a new person and she reminded me to not hesitate to reach out to her if I needed more sessions. But she was prepared with options just in case my issues were beyond her skillset.
YES. If a therapist tells you to find help elsewhere, they know they don't have the capacity to help you, and they know what's up with their job. Please listen. Glad you're getting help.
I'm a psychologist and I literally covered my mouth and gasped after the first video LOL. That's like going to a surgeon for your appendicitis and having him Google what an appendix is right in front of you
For anyone confused about C-PTSD vs PTSD: PTSD is trauma from a singular event. A car wreck, a mugging, an assault. It is a single deep cut into the psyche. C-PTSD, on the other hand, is death by a thousand cuts. Thousands of small repeated traumas from a situation you cannot escape. POWs, children abused by caregivers, or a long term abusive relationship are some examples of what can cause it. In both situations, the psyche is deeply wounded, just in a different way, and so while some symptoms are similar, some are not.
I tried looking up C-PTSD and my eyes just immediately glazed over, so thank you for the easy-to-understand explanation of the differences between them.
To this day friends and family don't believe that I have either. They say I'm just "fine" because i don't show visible trauma. Both these conditions are very real.
Thank you :) As someone with a long term trauma (for which regular PTSD treatments don't work), I've looked at C-PTSD a bunch of times but it usually seems to be about childhood trauma so it doesn't apply. I was secretly wishing I would find a comparison between PTSD & C-PTSD that actually made me resonate with one over the other and here you gave it to me.
When I had psychosis I was DESPERATE for some help but absolutely terrified. My therapist told me the only other person she had seen with my type of symptoms never got better unalived themselves. Really uplifting! I’m much better now no thanks to her
She also was just completely unqualified to deal with complicated issues, but she never identified that and talked herself up. Overall said things that triggered me and made me much worse :(
why the hell do people think saying this like "oh if i went through that i would unalive myself" or "i know about this person who unalived themself bc of this" is helpful at all??? fucking insane
My guess is they think they're telling you how strong you are for still holding on while others have given up. Like it's supposed to help you feel good about yourself. Or maybe, they want you to be aware that it might never get better, no matter how much therapy you get? I don't know. It's pretty dumb, but I believe it usually comes from good intentions. Doesn't stop it from being stupid and dangerous though.
I am so sorry to hear that you had such a disgusting experience with ANY therapist! My opinion (which you can take, leave, or toss in the trash) is that a platform like that is absolutely not even remotely qualified to assist persons who are dealing with such acute symptoms as active psychosis. In my opinion, they should have told you that before they took your money or scheduled an appointment for you. I hope that you were able to find legitimately better help.
I had a BetterHelp therapist who was 15 min late for the very first session, she didn’t go over our time to compensate and I was still charged in full. The next session I waited around for 15 min and she hadn’t shown up so I left. She then texted me an hour later accusing ME of missing the appointment and swearing up and down she was waiting for me on the site. The way the site is set up, that’s literally impossible to do. I quit and found an incredible therapist a few months later.
Well I had a therapist, a REAL ASS THERAPIST, not a scam one that was always 30-45 mins late every single time. So yeah even real ones can be fucking useless. Then one day I cancelled one apointment cuz I was so fed up with this bs of my therapist always being late and shit. And I got the message that I was banned from ever seeking help from that clinic ever again because I canceled... Wow... Really? Really??!!! I never even complained about her being late to anyone but I should have. I find that most free mental health help that is covered by our tax money in Sweden is useless dogshit, and some real unprofessional dogshit people that never should've been allowed to be therapists to begin with. I had 2 therapists that I felt actually cared about me and was actually DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB, not just some placeholder person sitting opposite me acting like an absolute uncaring robot only reading questions from their manual... The majority of the ones I've had falls under the uncaring robot category sadly. Why the fuck are psychopaths allowed to be therapists? Who let these useless people into a profession where they have such easy access to retraumatize people??
I'm not saying your therapist was telling the truth necessarily but I have had at least two issues with BH not showing me or my therapist as being in the room even though both of us were in there. They should message you though, mine sends messages if I'm not showing as there after 5 minutes or so
As a Betterhelp therapist, your therapist more than likely was telling the truth. It has been known to show that someone isn't online so we are waiting on the client and it may show the same on the side of the client. I sometimes will contact the client to let them know I am waiting, but it depends on the client's history regarding sessions. If a client has a history of no showing or late canceling, I am less likely to reach out compared to a client who is consistent with showing up. Also, we have nothing to do with what the client is charged. We actually have no idea of any plan the client is on as we are not giving that information.
Recently my boyfriend(after years of being told therapy made you weak) decided to better his mental health. His last session with this woman consisted of him explaining the most traumatic event he has ever had to deal with in his life. Her actual follow up question was "Could we meet up in person and get drinks?" He was completely chest fallen and sad. He stopped talking to her and she decided to send him one last duck face selfie. I hate her. FUCK BETTER HELP.
Same. I've desperately commented to get Cinema Therapy to look into these claims and stuff but they haven't yet. Which makes me sad since Jono is a therapist.
@@twobats it makes me a bit sad too. But I think they honestly try to see the best in a company that is lying about their practices? But they're also Mormon I believe (both Jono and Alan went to BYU, a pretty-much, strictly Mormon college). And Mormons have notoriously strict views on a lot of things. So I've wondered if they're fully honest about some of their statements and where they stand, especially Jono, on trans/enby rights and such.
@@Orion_TheyThem I thought they (Cinema Therapy) had put up a video a while ago saying they had looked into the company and couldn't find anything inappropriate. I stopped following them after that -- it didn't sound right to me. But it sounded like they had decided to stand by their sponsorship.
I'm a white woman from the US, my husband is Chinese and from China. We live and work in China. My therapist went on for 30 minutes about how I needed more "friends like me". When I didn't understand, she said "more American friends like her and myself." Still not understanding, I explained that my friends in the US are all American, born and raised there. Then I realized that she meant white friends. Not to mention her telling me about the time she went skinny dipping with her friend and almost got arrested.
If I were living in another country and someone told me that I needed friends like me, I would absolutely think that meant other people who had moved to a different country as adults. Regardless of skin color. Being a foreigner is the common link.
I mean I don’t think that’s necessarily racist? I’m Moroccan, I study abroad and sometimes I need to spend more time with other Moroccans or Arabs because they’re the ones who can understand me in some aspects. I also see Turks or South Asians, Persians, East Asians, Albanians, West Africans etc happy in their own communities that they make. At the same time I also have friends from all those communities. Wanting to be around people like you doesn’t mean you don’t want to be around people from other backgrounds. So if her point was that you should be around more White Americans makes some sense to some extent because in USA, different ethnicities usually still have cultural differences so a white American would most likely be more like you and have the most in commun with you. Assuming that’s what she tried to say and she didn’t just base it on race.
NICE. Because expertise, training, and professional experience matter. Mental health professionals are licensed for a REASON, the reason being that we are all naturally somewhat deferential to authority, and so with authority comes power and with power comes responsibility. People who are not experts who are portraying themselves as experts are attempting to get the power without accepting the responsibility that comes with it.
@@MickeyAtkins Oh nice! I clicked it and scanned the page a bit but didn't see that your license has to be approved and in good standing, that's really good to know!
I have CPTSD as well and my Better Help therapist immediately wanted me to do a Trauma Narrative. She compared it to her experience having a spider crawl on her as a toddler making her have a fear of spiders as an adult, and once she processed the memory with her mom, her fear of spiders magically went away... Lmao my current therapist who actually knows what she's doing was horrified when I told her and said I am no where near ready to do a Trauma Narrative since I still really struggle with dissociation and feeling present in my body on a normal day. Having a fear of spiders is not the same as having 18+ years of repeated trauma, abuse and neglect. Also, the Better Help therapist was a social worker for child protective services her entire career and only switched to online therapy after she retired and wanted a convenient way to make easy money from home...
I hate hate hate hate hate having a social worker being pushed on me as a therapist. I had horrible social workers from child protective service do terrible jobs of helping me when I was a small child, and I certainly don't want help from them now.
I also have CPTSD, and I'm so sorry you went through that. I've also had awful therapists that messed me over, and left my last therapist appalled at what they did. There's not enough info out there about how to help with CPTSD. (Also, I've never done a trauma narrative and I don't think I ever will, but I'm in a much better place overall, so don't feel bad if you can't ever manage it)
Okay, I have no idea what a Trauma Narrative is... it's not that thing that takes literal years and even sometimes decades to piece together because CPTSD typically involves huge gaps in memory and heavy dissociation, is it? What was she expecting you to do, sit there and recount your life story? 😵
@@rebeccabarrand5132 just fyi, the title of social worker can mean different things but there are many social workers who are great therapists. Mickey being one of them. She has other credentials, but her base degree is social work.
Ooh, the ED one has me a little bit burning with rage! My actual doctors didn’t notice my ED for almost 2 decades because my BMI was “normal”. Meanwhile, I was severely malnourished and my teeth were falling apart, and my dentist accused me of being on meth. No…I was on antidepressants and other meds for my misdiagnosed mental illness (they said bipolar when it was obvious CPTSD) and the meds were CAUSING the ED because it was causing IBS and it was too physically painful to eat. This was the 90’s and early 2000’s. We should be better than this by now!!! The only reason I was diagnosed with malnutrition was that I got hurt at work, and the company doctor was a naturopath. I think I’d be gone by now if it wasn’t for her.
It it considered an eating disorder when you don't eat due to health problems? I stopped eating for years after my gallbladder removal complications made it severely painful and difficult to keep food down. I was never sure if that would be considered an ED, because it's natural to avoid things that cause pain.
@@e_i_e_i_broYes, it can be. I lost a ton of weight and had anemia issues because I went through nearly 2 years of near daily migraines and the pain and the nausea made it very difficult to eat. Even after my migraines were finally under control, I struggled to start eating normally again because I was so terrified that I was going to trigger a migraine and end up being physically sick and be in blinding pain. When I would talk to my friends with anorexia or other eating disorders, there were a lot of similarities. The only thing I didn’t have was my own brain telling me “look how fat you are! You don’t deserve food!” (Though I did experience that when I was a teen and in college and was terrified this more recent experience was going to trigger a relapse of that kind of thinking too. Thankfully it didn’t.) Unfortunately, this happened in the middle of Covid, so I couldn’t even get in to see a medical doctor easily, and seeing therapists in my area was impossible. So I just had to get my husband to help me force myself to very gradually start eating solid, heavy foods again. It’s honestly not a method I’d recommend unless you have no other choice _and_ the underlying illness seems to be managed.
@@Annie_Annie__ Wow your story sounds similar to how I was conditioned to fear food. Even though my symptoms are manageable now I still have that avoidance. I hope you're able to make a recovery and develop a healthy relationship with food. One thing that helped me personally was cooking (which I love now but used to hate). Maybe the exposure to it or something. Can't help but feel hungry when you smell things cooking.
@@e_i_e_i_bro yeah. This actually is quite common in children as well. They may choose to not eat due to fear if eating is painful or has been in the past. Parents often misinterpret it as just fussiness.
I have BPD and when I told a betterhelp therapist about how I didn't have many friends because I kept pushing them away she literally said: "Well, it seems like you're just kind of a bitch then"
Damn dude. I'm so sorry too. I hope you were able to report her, and I would find if she has a health grade page and leave a review of what she said. Also I'd see if you can find Better Help on the BBB, and post this story.
There may be some truth to that. You acknowledge and know why you don’t have friends and now you need to find the solution for that. I had family members that had that and had steps and systems to navigate through it when episodes would come on. The way she spoke to you was still wrong though. I had an individual speak harshly to me and I cut them off, but I acknowledged wheee they were right.
Honestly... With BPD, always go to someone who really wants to work with someone with BPD. People with BPD are considered by psychologists and therapists as the 'nightmare client'. It's not uncommon for people with BPD to hear: sorry I can't help you. But instead of a therapist actually telling them: 'Go to someone specializes in BPD', they just wonder from therapist to therapist and get rejected over and over again. Hopefully you have found someone who supports you now.
I tried better help my freshman year of college. My first therapist was actually great. I opted for chat only therapy (my first go at any form of therapy so it was intimidating to actually speak with someone at all). And within a week, she said she was leaving better help. I was sad because she was really compassionate and understanding. Then I got reassigned to another therapist. This woman straight up was like why don’t you just not think that way. Why don’t you just fix it. Totally disregarding any feelings or the fact that this was my first time trying to deconstruct any trauma I had experienced in my life. I ghosted her, canceled my account and it took me 5 years to revisit therapy.
Same, I was lucky to have a good therapist. Although I'm reluctant to use the service again since I don't think it's honestly worth it since both others experience and Betterhelp's scandals
Shout-out to my BetterHelp "therapist", that I paid thousands of dollars for, just for her to tell me to "calm down" and "try to relax" during anxiety flare-ups 🙃 for real shout-out to my current therapist, who has done both telehealth and in-person appointments with me, and is an absolute rockstar.
Oh man, it's like, yes you SHOULD calm down and try to relax but you need to learn the tools to do that effectively which takes time, just saying "Oh just relax" isn't helpful at all!
100% this!! All of these Uber-like, Airbnb-ike companies hire independent contractors who ARE credentialed in their state. (Well, unless the "providers" created fake id's, which is possible I suppose.) That's how they get away without providing any professional oversight or supervision. These providers are legally allowed to practice independently. That means that violations of ethics and competency should be reported to that licensing entity through a complaint process. All of these different professions have Codes of Ethics, and states do too. Anyone with enough tech skills to sign up for and use Better help could find the license information on state registries and the different Codes of Ethics online (they're quite similar of course but are different for psychologists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage & family therapists.)
Assuming they are licensed/accredited. There's was some controversy over them perhaps not all being licensed therapists because of something in the t&c about how BH don't or can't (I can't remember which) guarantee the person you match with will be licensed or a good fit with your needs...something to that effect iirc.
@@hawkeyescoffee6399 that was about "licensed in your area" or "competent to treat your problem area" (basically about if they were suited to help YOU) but it's a requirement to be independently licensed (and therefore can legally work without supervision.) I've been in this field for 20 years and formally a supervisor for 6 and it's AWFUL how little accountability there is for ensuring competent, ETHICAL care. Ethics codes all state things like "keep getting training, don't treat disorders you know nothing about, don't lie about your qualifications/expertise, consult with colleagues when you aren't sure"
@@hawkeyescoffee6399if they are presenting themselves as being accredited without actually being accredited… u can also report them to the board they are usurping, and that board can sue them
My better help therapist encouraged me to seek un - aliving services at the clinic in Switzerland. That's all I need to say about Better Help. I'm glad I was able to go back to my original therapist. She saved my life.
My therapist on Better help told me to withhold sex to force my now husband to propose. I was feeling anxious about uprooting my life to move across the country with him for his new job, and I wasn't yet sure if our relationship was worth leaving my family and giving up my career. She basically said "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" And that he wouldn't ever give me the security I wanted. Very helpful 🤦♀️Fast forward: we're very happy, I make three times as much money as I did before we moved, and my family isn't all I cracked them up to be. I still haven't found a good therapist, though.
That’s a very unprofessional (and extremely rude) thing to say! I’m so glad that you’re doing well now and I hope you find a therapist that you love. 💗💗💗
So I tried BH…they matched me up with a senior citizen. She was literally retired and moved to Florida and was trying to rebuild her practice online for something to do. I was nervous about being matched with someone so much older but I thought I was being closed minded and biased and she probably had a lot of experience to share. She complained about the time of the appointment I had made, that that’s when she plays tennis. It would be more convenient if I could schedule on Fridays instead. I was choosing the times that were available on the app…so if she didn’t want to work those times, I didn’t know why she didn’t block those times off on her end? So on the third session I did what she asked and moved it to Friday before my work day started….and she didn’t show up. 😂I left the app open for 30 minutes and the session never started. Because I had rescheduled based on her preference to the end of the week, I was just out the money for that week since I paid for the month not the session so I notified BH that I wanted them to extend my time an additional week, which they accommodated. I guess my therapist didn’t like that I had notified BH because then BH told me that this therapist decided she was no longer available to work with and I could pay for another month and start over with another therapist! I asked for money back and they obliged.
When my father moved out, he consented to go to therapy for a month to prove nothing was wrong with him. The older children were asked by the therapist to come in and give their perspective on things. I went in with my sister, and because I stupidly had hope things were finally going to get fixed, I told him about a lot of the abuse I'd suffered from my dad. This man (wearing crocodile print shoes with tassels, so that should have been a clue in itself) had the audacity to listen to me, watch me cry and shake and almost panic, and then look at me and say "Well, I'm going to need you to start helping your dad now. If you want him to get better, your going to have to help us out here." No acknowledgement of my distress, not a single word about how my dad should not have done what he did, AND putting me in the position of helping my abuser with his own mental health. Even I knew that was dangerous! When I said no, he kept trying to guilt trip me into it and talking up my dad like some kind of publicist. Anyway, pretty sure he's moonlighting at better health now 🙃 Best of luck to whoever gets him!
That’s some kind of gaslighting monster of a therapist. Omfg. The medical gaslighting is a real issue that just creates mental health trauma by their own narcissistically driven patient exploitation. The way most of the profession treats adolescents and victims is criminal.
I might have had him! Lol. When I used BetterHelp about my family's abuse, I was told that I should forgive them and resume contact with them because they're my faaaaaamily.
My first experience with therapy was a 15 minute in-person assessment where the therapist didn't know what sleep paralysis is and said to me "just tell me what you think you felt" which I found extremely insulting. I ended up sticking it out for 15 mins and then rage crying in the parking lot to a friend on the phone and didn't seek help for my depression for like 8-10 more years. He also put a diagnosis on my file w/o any discussion about it with me. It's sad that these stories are so similar despite mine being in person, it really can fuck you up when your introduction to therapy is so bad. Thankfully now I have a therapist who's amazing and I trust and vibe well with!
Oh yeah, I had some low-life people report me as automutilating because I swam (mandatory every Friday) with long swimming trunks and a surf shirt because I was ashamed of my acne. Then, at the next therapist practise I was suddenly too difficult... 😕
Dear God! I'm so sorry you went through that! I ended up working through stuff in therapy from my former church chucking me and my kids out because they are LGBTQ+ It's disgusting that such things are allowed to happen. Glad you're getting the right help now. A good therapist is worth their weight in gold
I had been thinking of getting a BH therapist when somebody in the atheist community posted a short chat with their BH therapist who told somebody suffering from RTS (religious trauma syndrome) THat they were declining to treat them and that they shouldn't be angry with god for the actions of people, and that they needed to find a good, supportive church to deal with their anger towards the actions of the other church. You could probably find something worse to say to somebody with RTS, but it would be very difficult to do. I've been soured towards them since and I have found that has been an excellent decision on my part.
I've heard similar stories, where non-christian folks specifically requested to either be matched with a therapist with a similar background, or who wasn't christian - the platform gives you an option to specify this, similar to choosing someone who's LGBTQ informed. And yet they were being matched with christian therapists who tried to proselytize in the first session. I get that some people may have good experiences with the platform, but when they aren't thoroughly vetting therapists and allowing predatory people like this to target vulnerable folks, I really doubt the intent of betterhelp
I left during a therapy session crying because the therapist triggered me and then she wrote to my doctor about how I can’t take criticism for doing that😅
I have CPTSD and the therapist triggered me too - A TRAUMA THERAPIST, for God's sake. Have they no clue about the window of tolerance?! FR, I'm traumatized from the trauma therapist. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
@@DeathnoteBB a great way to find good ones is if you've got anyone you know and trust that currently attends therapy, and see who they'd recommend. that way you don't have to bounce around trying to find the right one. but its also understandable that your trust has been completely lost as well.
Thanks for explaining about the fat phobia in eating disorders. When I was a teenager I stopped eating for months, but didn’t lose “enough” weight to qualify for a diagnosis of an eating disorder. I think this is partially why I felt it was okay for me in later years as an adult to stop eating again, because it must not be that big a deal if it didn’t even qualify for a diagnosis. It really messed me up.
this video reminded me of a ‘therapist’ i saw on there when i was 15. she straight up didn’t show for one of our meetings with no warning, regularly talked about herself and her own personal life, and one time gave me “homework” to consider things from my sexual assaulter’s point of view and mitigated the event. she was the first person i told about this happening and after that, i didn’t open up about my sexual assault to ANYONE until two years later. i also haven’t returned to therapy since. better help needs to regulate their professionals better.
The 1st girl's therapist sounds like she was either hungover(maybe still a little intoxicated) or flat out intoxicated. Obviously we can't know for sure. But I can't imagine a sober person with an education and career in mental health thinking ANY of that was acceptable.
the fact that she was wearing sunglasses in a dark house tells me she was almost definitely smoking weed. as a stoner myself it's a common tactic to hide the bloodshot eyes lol
I recently started therapy through my school and they had an option to ask for a queer or black or indigenous therapist which was really great. I’ve only had two sessions but it’s really helpful and I got lucky finding such a great therapist first try and that I don’t have to pay for it
They should add disabled too. Spoken as a disabled person in a very patriarchal country whose able bodied therapist told to find a husband to feel better. No, that wouldn't help at all and would in fact make things worse for an already vulnerable person.
Im so glad you got the right person! I told my better help therapist that I was extra depressed after George Floyd's murder, and his response was, "Well, what are the chances that could happen to you?" Dude, I'm not worried about it happening to me. I'm depressed that it happened at all and that there are still STILL people who think it was justified. I think my next therapist will have to be a woman of color.
@@captainblacksand8484 @captainblacksand8484 Ohmigod. I'm a white woman and every time a person of color is in the news because they were murdered or hurt it upsets me. It upsets me that someone's life has been ended or permanently altered, that someone lost a family member. You shouldn't have to be in danger of that happening to care and feel bad that this happens to other human beings. I find it weird that people are so unbothered by hate crimes. Therapy is supposed to help people cope with these sorts of disgusting acts of violence and cruelty. I'm very sorry they said that to you, and I hope you find one that isn't devoid of empathy.
My mom is a BetterHelp therapist, and usually when she sees a client has issues in something that she's not very well educated in, she doesn't take on that client (because she knows how important it is to actually help the client and not traumatize them or waste their time). However, sometimes BetterHelp forces their therapists to take on clients as well. There are good therapists out there on BetterHelp. Hopefully they will figure out a way to make sure these bad experiences don't keep happening. UPDATE: My mom is going to be quitting BetterHelp soon. She's not getting enough clients therefore she is not getting paid a lot. BetterHelp therapists don't get paid hourly like most mental health jobs. She only gets paid for every time she talks to a client. That is not enough to pay the bills, so she should hopefully be starting at a different place soon.
Bad experiences like this happened before Better Help and they'll happen after. As long as humans are doing this degree of care, it will not be perfect. How is anyone surprised zzzzz
@Sidney H. Thank you. I mean, obviously I don't know everything that goes on between my mom and her clients, but from what my mom has told me she doesn't do this to her clients. My mom's main priority is to help people, not argue with them.
@@fricketyfracktraintrack I'm not too sure. A lot of times my mom is able to decide whether or not she wants to take on a client. However, there have been numerous times where BetterHelp is basically like, "Here's a client. You have no choice but to take them." One time BetterHelp had my mom take a client whose preferred language is Spanish...my mom doesn't know any Spanish. But, my mom wasn't able to decline that client, so she had to message that client to let them know that she doesn't speak any Spanish, so it would be best to contact BetterHelp and see if they can transfer her to a therapist who does speak Spanish. It's very frustrating for my mom when BetterHelp doesn't give her a choice.
It feels like you're the only UA-camr I see criticize better help loads still being sponsored by them. I think you're going to be proved right when some huge scandal comes out, probably over data protection or something.
@@beyondallmeasure Yep I have unsubscribed from a couple of channels because their main sponsor was BH, I was either you can't research or you don't care so how can I trust the info that you are giving me.
@@amandamandamands yep. I'm not watching Cinema Therapy for that reason. They even went as far as saying in one of their videos (or a community post maybe) that they saw the comments, did a deep research into BH and are happy to proceed with them as their sponsor...
YEARS ago there was a better help controversy, where it was shown the “therapists” where faking their own reviews and that a lot of the therapists weren’t even properly listened. It seemed to go away and it popped back up with the advertisement that all their therapists where verified. I would still never trust a company that even thought it was okay to have unlicensed ”therapists” matched with vulnerable people seeking help, believing they’d get professional care. There was more to the controversy, but once I saw Anthony Padilla taking their sponsorships this past year I got sick to my stomach. Not again.
The controversy was even worse, manu of the "therapists" hired werent even real therapist, like you could end up with someone whos only qualification is like a shit coaching course or something. Sad
I made the mistake of trying better help when I came out because the only session I went to the person first called me out for using the texting feature cuz I wasn't comfortable with the other options and then when they ask me how I realized that I might be trans, they decided to ask me about my dick. This person said they had a roommate in college who was also trans and realized they were trans because their dick was small and was asking me if had something I could relate to. Now, luckily I've resolved a lot of the lingering thoughts in my head about all of this so I no longer requires therapy for it, but that is an extremely inappropriate question to ask within the first 10 minutes of starting a session for the first time
I am so sorry. We aren’t all like that. The counselors have to be licensed which means there is a licensing board that can be called if BH doesnt respond.
This reminds me of time when I was 9 and I was in psych ward for depression/anxiety (I didn't know it was possible in kids, but I guess it sure was because of some trauma of my past) and I thought they will help me. Mind that I was a kid and had very little understanding of how mental health works, I didn't know why I felt the way I felt etc. But the nurses have drugged me so bad because I kept crying and I eventually passed out, it was worst two months and half of my life, they later got fired (or maybe left idk) but now looking back at what they have been doing to me and other kids is horrifying. It has traumatized me to avoid therapy at all cost, because I believed that all therapy ends up the same and never wanted to go through that again. I really understand how important therapy is and how one bad session can leave a scar on a person.
Ahh, as someone with CPTSD (officially diagnosed as PTSD for now) and a wonderful therapist who understands, I hope the person in the first video doesn't give up 🥺 I've dealt with a traumatizing therapist unrelated to BH and I know how awful and demoralizing it is. But having a good one is AMAZING and so helpful.
@@swaggerish complex. It's a form of PTSD that develops from a long period of ongoing trauma, rather than a single traumatic event (or collection of traumatic events). It's permanent, more difficult to manage than PTSD, and often comes with additional symptoms such as emotional dysregulation.
I have cptsd and ptsd.. my therapist was really helpful and knowledgeable I think it's also really interesting how two very different traumas (long term abuse and neglect and a single SA ) stayed different in my brain... Because my therapist was knowledgeable she was able to treat my ptsd during those sessions and whilst picking at my cptsd which needed a different approach
I didn’t know you had to meet certain weight requirements to be diagnosed with certain EDs. That’s insane! It should be about the symptoms, not the results!
I've struggled with food for most of my life, I went from binge eating to starving, one extreme to another. Lost 50 pounds in 2 months and no one blinked an eye because I didn't look like I was starving mysmyself. Didn't matter that I was weak and nearly passing out and snapping at everyone all the time. Still haven't gotten a diagnosis because I don't look unhealthy enough
I understand the base logic behind it - people think of EDs as "you aren't eating food so therefore you're unhealthily skinny" but then if you actually take a second to think about it it's like, oh yeah, it's actually possible for people who aren't 10 pounds to have some of eating disorder. It's like telling someone that they can't possibly have a tumor unless there's some visible bulge. It can start at any point at any size, you still have a tumor even if it's small, and you can still have an ED if you're a pretty normal weight. It's not like you just start to have the ED once you're underweight, you had to have had the ED BEFORE you got there, so why wouldn't people who are above a certain weight also have ED? Also can the health community please work out better abbreviations so it doesn't look like you have to be a certain weight to have Erectile Dysfunction?
@@FrenkTheJoy I am overweight and have developed symptoms of ED because I’ve been binging and purging. Weight hasn’t changed. I’m worried that no one cares because I am still overweight.
@@LunaCidnie people care, you just haven’t found the right ones yet ❤️ I’m a no one on the internet, but i care. And I’ve been there too so i understand. I struggled with EDs my whole life and was always over weight. I’d flip flop between binging and not eating anything, but no one would help me bc i was overweight for my body type or whatever bs they push. Unfortunately i never got help for that by doctors, but i have a better relationship with food, and i found a passion and that majorly helped me control my urges to eat and not eat. For me it was the gym and being active, i never had the chance as a kid and it gave me so much energy and made me so happy. Not even factoring in the physical changes, just the mental and emotional ones made a lasting difference. Going to the gym forced me to create a better relationship with food at the time, i had to feed my body better to do what i loved. It forced me to look at my meals differently, be more conscious of what i put in my body and how it makes me feel. The gym gave me a sense of purpose that I’d never felt before, a sense of who i was. All trauma and people are different, but maybe if you could find something that forces you out of your comfort zone, and creates a mentality shift, it might help a little bit. Will my advice cure your EDs? No likely not, but my hope is that I’m able to inspire you to find something that forces you out of your comfort zone with food. Or even just your mentality or emotional strength, obviously it’s a disorder and it’s not cut and dry, but in my experience, my passion improved my life all around, and imo that shift in my mentality is what triggered some change. Ofc it takes a village to help treat these things, but as someone with multiple serious mental illnesses, i promise you can do this. All of that to say that there are so many people that care, not all of them qualified to help, but many many that do care. Even for a stranger on the internet. You are IMPORTANT, you are LOVED, and you are WANTED here. What you go through mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically should matter no matter what size, shape, or color one is. I know it won’t change anything, but i am truly sorry that you feel like no one cares, and even more so that your doctors and those around you enable that feeling. You deserve happiness, and contentment, whatever that means to you. Be strong, stay true to yourself, and you will find the light. In my experience, i turned out to be my own light, and i bet you can be too❤️
I was considering BH as I live in South Korea where mental health resources are pretty terrible, let alone in English. However, someone ended up recommending their therapist to me who does online services independently and is properly accredited and she has been a genuine Godsend. My anxiety has alleviated immensely and she has been extremely transparent and patient the whole time. Hearing these stories about BH has made me so glad I made that choice…
I feel like even the less horrifying Better Help stories are like…just as valid, too. Like the therapist I had on there triggered me really badly in one session, and when I came back later and explained what I’d experienced, he just made excuses instead of like…exploring why that might have been triggering and what was behind it. It was so disheartening. But I found a sliding scale therapist who cost *less* than BH and was still telepractice, and specialized in trauma. They’re out there!
I got a free month of betterhelp from a sorority that I was briefly in and to this day I’m convinced that the therapist was either an AI or just not fluent in English (no shame to people learning a new language but if you’re going to be my therapist you do need to be fluent enough in my language to actually be able to talk to me)
Boi. That bathroom story is wild 😳 Edit: I once watched a video explaining that the people using the app are given 24 hour access to the people employed with the app. So these people acting as therapist essentially never get a break from the constant trauma dumping. They don't have one or two clients, but potentially hundreds. Constant messages and emails, advertised by the company as a prompt responder. I've never tried BetterHelp, but what turned me off from the company was being made to think about how therapists are still people, and that they're doing a job. Therapy can be a highly emotionally taxing experience, and it's just as important for the therapist to be able to take a break to recuperate for the next session as it is for the patient. I don't want to talk to a person about my issues when they're potentially overwhelmed with their own. Sitting in a designated space at a scheduled time negates that feeling of guilt I would normally get if I were to go to friend or a family member. I feel weird and paranoid about the next time I go in, but the next week is fine, and I feel okay to open up again because my therapist is in a pleasant mood. It's really unsettling how quickly the mental health industry became so commodified. Everyone wants to be a therapist because someone on the internet told them that helping people will get them through their own trauma, so they forgoe doing further studies, and end up traumatizing the people they set out to help. Turning this service into a "get rich quick" work from home opportunity was a dire mistake.
everytime i see a youtuber being sponsered by better help i get so pissed. Cinema therapy, a youtube channel with a film maker and a LITERAL THERAPIST support better help even after they were called out abt it :/. i still watch their vidoes tho
@@mcgovemj Yeah, I don't trust any of their sponsorships. To their very limited credit, I haven't seen any for Established Titles after I found out what a scam that was. So I was hoping they didn't know better and backed out of the sponsorship when they learned.
I’m sending this video to every UA-camr I watch who still gets sponsored by them. I’m really glad that so many people have been learning about how bad BH is. I remember at one point almost every channel I watched was sponsored by them. Now it’s just a few, thankfully!
Do u send it to their DMs or??? Cause I know a few, whether they see it or do anything about it is another thing....but I still wanna bring it to light cause I genuinely believe they aren't aware....somehow :/
@@-404notfound-74 Yep, either DMs or tag them on Twitter if they have one. Usually if they’re pretty active on Twitter, they’ll see it. Which can be better than sending it through DMs since many of them probably don’t even read their messages. Unless it’s a smaller creator. &Yeah I’m definitely going to try my best at tagging & DMing every UA-camr I’m aware of that still promote them, but like you said it’s up to them what they choose to do with the info.. Unfortunately many people are so greedy they might not even care about what a shitty company it is, as long as they’re getting paid by them. It’s a shame really.. 😕 Let’s hope that the majority do actually care🤞🏼
I've noticed that I haven't seen a single sponsored video by BH on my favorite youtubers in quite a while. I haven't seen any public video/announcement on why that is but it probably is because of what happened to Mickey's first video and they don't wanna deal with such an issue.
@@-404notfound-74 Please send it to Cinema Therapy. I commented on one of their videos before but they're still getting sponsored by them. The more of us, the better.
Idk about Psychology in Seattle but I left a comment under a Cinema Therapy video that was sponsored by BH for the umpteenth time, telling them very politely to look into them and consider not endorsing them in the future and it got deleted 🙃 It's high time I accepted they can't be unaware by this point, they just don't care. Either to do their due diligence in picking their sponsors, or how said sponsors may affect their audience. Neither is a good look and it has put me off their content. Edit: I forgot to mention that BH aside, they have a long history of accepting shady sponsorships. I couldn’t even tell you how many times they’ve been sponsored by Established Titles and Kamikoto Knives, both of which are owned by the same known serial scammer. Like is there *no* shady company they won’t advertise to their audience? I doubt they look into their sponsors at all. They don’t care.
@@chiefpurrfect8389 oof deleted is bad. The other thing too is if they have a different opinion I would be curious to hear their perspective but I assume because of the sponsorship they probably can’t address it. Which is also not great. I’d be curious if either has addressed it in their patreon communities.
@@chiefpurrfect8389 It was a while ago, and perhaps they've taken it down, but I'm pretty sure they made a video defending their sponsorship with Betterhelp. They said they looked into it and that all the criticisms BH had received in the past had been addressed. At least based on my memory of that video, I think they really stand by their choice.
As someone who’s had a hell of a ride through mental illness (Schizophrenia, severe Depression and severe anxiety as a result of Schizophrenia) from personal experience, my therapists and psychiatrist were instrumental in getting me to where I am today. I went from 16 years old with child schizophrenia, not knowing if I’d make it. Now I’m preparing to start a new job. God bless them for their work on the mess I was
@@thomasfallon5632 i worry about passing my mental health problems onto them too, thats why its soo important to heal yourself beofre having children..good on you
I’ve been seeing my therapist on better help for about 6 months now I believe and I love her so much. She has her own private practice and took on better help to find new clients. She goes above and beyond to make sure I’m aware of any scheduling issues (we’re human, things happen) and she’s always doing her best to make sure she knows what I want and need as far as therapy.
When BH first came out. I had a therapist and i REALLY loved her so much. She was so kind and sweet. I have her coversations written in my journal. That sucks that this is happening.
Maybe you’ve discussed this elsewhere but I’ve called over 40 professionals who take my insurance not one taking a new patient. I think better health sounds like a nightmare but the way you speak about finding a therapists sounds like it rings more true of 2010. There are no therapists left in my area to treat me which is why Better Health gets people. I would rather not receive services at all so thank you for making this but finding a therapist these days is literally impossible. Even out if pocket I’ve paid $200 an hour and got nothing from it. It’s too expensive to shop around and find someone you vibe with. It’s just not a reality.
Where I live there just are not that many therapists and clinics don’t let you switch so easily, in part because there just are not that many therapists.
Came here looking for this sense. We need better regulations for ALL therapists. It should not be up to the consumer to tell if some therapist or another will traumatize them by being biased or simply a moron. I'm having trouble figuring out how to take mental health advice from a morbidly obese person as well, but I guess that's me. If other people are thinking that, no one is saying it, but how is this person's mental health well enough for them to give advice? They need therapy for their own bad habits, to me, it seems.
You might look in to a local university that has a counseling program. Mine offered therapy sessions for way less than the going rate because clients understood they were working with a trainee. Our room had a two way mirror so our supervisors could watch & take notes and debrief with us before & after each session. Most clients said they actually preferred it because they were getting the benefit of two therapists. As the therapist I felt confident I was offering my best and sharing what I learned as we worked together. I hope you do find a good therapist at a reasonable price!
I have a BH horror story, I’ve told it around UA-cam before when this topic comes up: I had been working with my counselor, an older lady, for about 3 weeks by this point and she was chill. Actually somewhat helpful. This one session I brought up some issues I was having with a guy I was seeing (my now boyfriend). When I tell you she WENT OFF on me. “Oh no you really dealing with all that? You’re gonna get yourself messed up. These men will use you and abuse you. My niece was dealing with a man and now he’s driving her car and talking disrespectful to her, no you’re really gonna get yourself messed up, you need to let it go-“ she went on a tirade so long that I could hold the phone away from my ear for a full minute and still hear her going on and on. I eventually hung up on her when she started getting more angry and vitriolic. She never reached out to me or tried to call back or send a message to apologize. Granted I quickly asked to be disconnected from her and block her, but still that was a couple of hours after our session. The funny thing is - NOTHING I said about this man indicated that I was being used or abused. It was a typical “I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this” scenario. She would always brag about how qualified she was and all of her degrees and certifications… clearly that didn’t mean much. I’m sure there are some great counselors and therapists on there but I think the betting process leaves much to be desired!!
I agree fully with the whole video. The only thing i wanted to add was how i relate to the last video about the ED. Why is it so hard to find an eating disorder specialist (irl even!!!) that wont go "ah nah you re doing good by starving yourself, keep going" just bc by BMI aint low Like please stop telling me im fat and i need to lose weight and then when i ask for legit advice, the only thing anyone tells me is to eat less. And when i collapse and have to go to the ER im told "why you eating this low" like fuck society for this. Please tell me if you have anyone online who actually specializes on ED medically andpsychologically.
I'm a fat therapist and I assure you there are therapists who know that there are ED at every weight and that weight loss is not a sign of health, nor is it a goal in therapy.
isn't the definition of restrictive-type bulimia literally that the patient isn't eating and is over-exercising but isn't underweight? like that's it. eating disorders are about DISORDERED. EATING. not weight.
I do not know eating disoder specialist,but this youtube channel talks abot eating disarders so maybe you find new usefull information.Chanal name is:What did mia do next
The whole medical field has a lot of fatphobia. About 10 years ago I started rapidly dropping weight. My hair was falling out, I was constantly sick, my immune system was a mess, and overall I thought I was dying. I lost 70 pounds in 5 months then another 30 pounds in 3 months. I was still obese according to the BMI scale. I still remember seeing a doctor to talk about how I needed testing due to my rapid weight loss. First words out of his mouth were, you need to lose some weight. I stood up and said, sir, if you had read why I was here you'd know that I've rapidly lost a lot of weight and need testing to make sure I'm not dying. I walked out and cried. I was so stressed that I started wandering around NYC and saw a random doctor's office and I walked in to ask if I could make an appointment. The doctor actually had just had a cancellation so she saw me that day. She was appalled and actually reported the other doctor for me and scheduled a follow up and some tests for me.
@@bboops23 The fatphobia in the medical field is AWFUL! I've experienced it more often than not (not by every one of my doctors but I've experienced it with quite a few doctors. Just had a bad experience last week with a primary care doctor I was stuck seeing because my regular one wasn't available until January.) and he not only didn't treat me well but he acted disgusted and grossed out by me. He didn't even say anything at the end of our appointment. He just told me what he thought was going on with me (which I think is wrong), said a prescription would be sent over to my pharmacy and no "Bye. Have a nice day!" NOTHING! He just walked out of the room and I had to have a nurse come into the room to tell me the appointment was over. I wasn't given my discharge paperwork either. I am "obese" but recently have been actively losing weight. The last year I've lost about 40 pounds. I also quit drinking alcohol completely almost 2 years ago (January 2023 will make it 2 years) mainly because I had a bad problem with alcohol and also it destroyed my liver/spleen/blood/body. This dude DID NOT look at my medical chart AT ALL (at least not when he was in the room with me. He didn't go into my charts on the computer even once! I had to explain things to him about my variety of medical conditions and he was still acting ignorant af.) and I was just reading his "notes" in my files yesterday and of course on my appearance notes he had to write in "obese." Like NO SH*T SHERLOCK! I know I'm overweight but I'm ACTIVELY LOSING WEIGHT RIGHT NOW and if he would have looked at my medical records/charts he would have known that and wouldn't be so quick to make any judgements. I'm gonna call tomorrow and find out where I can file a complaint against him! He made me feel horrible!
I am almost 100% sure that without the couple therapy on Better Help, my relationship would not exist anymore. Now half a year later we are better and stronger than ever and about to get married. I guess we got lucky with our therapist - this is kudos to her, not to Better Help as a company. Thank you Julie, I wish you could see us now 🥰
Thank you so much for this video. Nearly every podcaster I listen to advertises for Better Help, and I cringe every time. Our therpist gives us a sliding scale. 💗 I loved your previous videos about BH and I hope you don't get this one taken down too. 💕
In my one and only BH session, after describing (both in writing and verbally) my struggles with deep depression, crippling anxiety, and severe inertia preventing me from doing the simplest things; the therapist spent the whole session telling me that I have the same number of hours in the day as everyone else, and I just have to get organized and get things done. I did finish the session, but cancelled right after.
So infuriating😡 i told one of my last therapist that I couldn't bring myself to at least have a shower, eat or go outside because there was no point and I was too depressed to do it and she told me 3 sessions in a row "but you have to do them anyways" yeah really helpful
Why is this infuriating? I don't understand half of this thread. There are a limited number of hours in a day, and organizing your life to be productive is 90% of overcoming a disorder. Do you think other productive people don't have depression? Do you think a therapist will wave a magic wand and you'll be cured? Chemical imbalances are often for life. Learning how to cope and be productive in spite of feeling very depressed is all some of us can do. I think people here have very unreasonable expectations for their therapy.
@@LadyVandMrT Some empathy is needed here: being depressed and gathering enough impulse/energy/bravery to decide to seek help and actually going through the process is a hard enough thing to do. And mental health *professionals* should know that. If after all that hard work you are met with clueless people that think that saying "organize your life" is a good response to a depressed patient seeking help, it is absolutely logical to be dissapointed and angry. You wouldn't tell a person with a broken leg to "just grow bone and stop complaining". You give that person a chair and a cast and help them through the whole process. No one is complaining that they are not cured after one session, as you want to make it sound
@@zandeehdz1 well, a person with a broken bone isn't physically able to regrow it. There are ways to combat depression that involve just starting to act, cleaning your life up one tiny piece at a time. I don't think empathy from my end is remotely an issue here.
omg reminds me back when i was 18, after years of depression and an attempt, i was forced to go to a therapist. so, my mom called an office and after explaining all that, the lady just went “has she tried taking a 30 minutes walk every day?” maam… i am not leaving my bed bffr
i didn't go to therapy for a decade bc of trauma and ptsd caused by mental health professionals. it is hard to put yourself out there, but i have been back in therapy for 3 years now with two amazing therapists! it is possible to find the right professional for you.
9 months late, but as someone who is seeing a telehealth therapist on a sliding fee scale, THANK YOU for reminding people that resources are available. My therapist did not advertise his sliding fee scale, so it is always worth asking imo.
I’m so sorry you’re feeling that way! You’re not doing anything wrong- it is genuinely hard to find a perfect fit therapist. There are links in the description to a variety of therapist search engines that should be a good place to start!
As someone who's had to search for a lot of mental health professionals and dealt with bad and good ones, I definitely agree with Mickey that using a search engine is the best way to find a good fit (rather than a referral)! Researching them on your own will give you an idea of what they're like and what they specialize in, and can help you avoid ones that are unsafe (ie. I needed someone who specialized in trauma, but seeing that a therapist also had interests in LGBTQ+ issues, cultural issues, etc also made me feel so much safer about them). A lot of them will even say on their pages what their rates are and if they have sliding scale payment. From there, you can email or call ones that look promising to get a feel for their personality, and then make an appointment to see how you feel with them. Personally, I could tell after my first session with my therapist (who I've been seeing for 2+ years now) that she was right for me. And if it doesn't feel right after the first encounter, I would suggest looking for someone else. I really hope you're able to find someone who can help you, you deserve it! 💜
I'm trying someone new out next month. I literally spent several hours looking through therapists covered by my insurance who are local, researching their areas, and looking through reviews. I also chose to make sure to only select a therapist who is listed as pro-LGBT, because I don't want to risk winding up with someone who is not on the same page as I am with the things that are most important to me. I'm cautiously optimistic.
About furniture being arranged to allow the patient to bolt out of the room if they are stressed...I am in the UK under the NHS and because of my severe neurobehavioural history due to global brain damage from birth and severe almost lifelong trauma that just kept on coming and I finally got out of it, I think, I have a history of dissociative rage violence and rapid reactivity. The staff in the room when I'm with not just mental health but even general healthcare set up the room so the staff can get out asap if they need to, and they almost always get an extra nurse in for security reasons. Its something I just saw as a reasonable consequence of my neurobehavioural issues but I just found it interesting that most people get the opposite. In A&E they have security next to the exit of my cubicle. Disclaimer: none of my rage attacks are intentional, I have remorse afterwards and I always try to remediate anything with formal apologies etc. I live in self imposed self segregation from most of human contact because it wasn't working me doing anything else and the trauma I kept of getting has finally stopped. I have reached a point in my life where I finally feel some peace, but I'm banned from all NHS referrals, rpobably for the best as I have medical PTSD.
My bf signed up for BH last year and was instantly spammed by literally hundreds of spam calls and emails. When I found out he signed up I immediately told him what a scam they are and how bad their reputation is so thankfully he didn’t see one of their therapists but he’s still to this day getting spam from them obviously selling his info. So gross.
My partner (a bi enby Dionysian pagan, with religious trauma from southern baptist racist/homophobic family background) was put with a woman who refused to used pronoun preference, and insisted their depression would fix itself if they went to church. When they started every call defending their choice to not go to a christian church when that isn't their faith, the therapist dropped them. Meanwhile I'm on a waiting list for the waiting list for a therapist because no one in my or the next county over is taking new patients.
As a psychology student, i genuinely appreciate your approach and versatility towards topics ranging from mental health to calling out corporations that profit from the public . Thank you
I'm grateful I got to watch your original better help video before you had to take it down. Great idea reacting to others' criticisms as a workaround! Your efforts to shine a light on this issue are greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work! I love your channel 😊 hope you have a great day!
Thank you Mickey for this PSA, I'm a therapist too and wow I had no idea that this was going on, it's appauling! Good to be informed and bring these issues to light, because yes if anyone needs therapy, please keep trying until you find a good fit, you're worth it!!
I just got a thera, and the amount of highly personal information I had to share to get there, was so uncomfortable- I can't imagine having to share that with a stranger who is indifferent to my struggle or cruel is just so terrifying. Like if bettərhelp has anywhere near the amount of creepy contractors that uber does, people (especially femmes) are in deep trouble. Like it's one thing to have a weird person handle your food or drive you somewhere, like that's awful, but usually you can be prepared for something to go wrong, I can't imagine the person having detail questionnaires about my psyche and trauma(and address potentially?). I'm so glad I went through GP.
I got a therapist about two months ago, because I was truly ready for improving my life and improving my way of thinking, and it has helped immensely. I cannot imagine what others people must of felt reaching out and doing the first steps to try to change their life for the better, just to be more traumatized, disrespected, and dismissed. Thank you for bringing awareness to this. :,(
I tried betterhelp for like a week but they put me with a therapist who specialized in roleplay therapy (whatever tf that is) and it was so remarkably awkward. I suggested that I sometimes struggled with connecting to people, and he wanted to role-play a talk with a random person on the streets and I was like??? Brother, that was not the move lmao
I have never dealt with Better Help. However, I have a Therapist horror story. My first therapist didn't help me at all, and I should have discontinued the sessions a long time ago. I would go to these therapy sessions, and we wouldn't talk about my problems that I was dealing with. Instead, we would argue about politics. At the time, I didn't know what therapy was supposed to be like. At the time, I knew I had PTSD. Some time after leaving this therapist, I discovered that I had C-PTSD, depression, Autism/Asperger's, and ADHD. At the end, my first therapist thought that I was not recovering from PTSD because of my political leanings. That's what made me end the therapy sessions with her. I really don't like getting a new therapist because I have to relived the trauma again.
Like, if you and the therapist don't agree on politics, that shouldn't be part of the discussion. And if that impedes your ability to have good therapy, then that means you personally would need a therapist who agrees with you politically, or is apolitical. And the therapist should not be the one who brings up the politics first. That should be you, if anyone is to bring it up.
@@lsmmoore1 I totally agree with you. I have told my next several therapists that I don't want to talk about politics, and they didn't. I'm so grateful about that. Since I was focused on my problems, I was able to figure more stuff out. My first therapist should have ended the political arguments, and focused on my problems. It still gets me angry, but that was in the past.
@@lsmmoore1 Not appropriate. Doesn't matter what your politics are, imo. I had some right wingers and we didn't talk about. Of course, that was years ago.
In a similar vein, I had a therapist who would spend most the time either talking about my religion (that I was a bad person, that I didnt need therapy because I'd be going to hell anyways, that she was better than me because she was wealthy and a Christian, etc) or simping for my abusive family (that I deserved the abuse, that I deserved the SA i went through as a child, that they should abuse me even more, gave them tips for physically and mentally abusing me "better"). I've been in therapy since I was 9 and have been through 3 therapists/psychologists now. I'm 22 and terrified to start therapy again
Thank you for covering betterhelp again. It is so frustrating knowing the truth about them and still constantly seeing them advertised at every turn, both by creators and during ad rolls. They suck for so many reasons. Anyone who hasn't seen her previous video about them, please go watch it. Thanks again, you're amazing!!
Also the practical consequence of this is how you have way more trauma that you have to pay for to fix on top of what you already had to. It’s literally costing people so much money in future therapy costs.
As someone who has seen therapists through telehealth, not through BetterHelp thank god but through my insurance, I was kind of nervous to have therapy in my own room and through video chat. But it comforted me to know that my therapist would probably have at least thought about those aspects. The more I hear about BetterHelp the more afraid it makes me.
This feels like the Uber/Lyft ableism BS to me in all the worst ways. “Oh we just provide tech portal. Access, safety or discrimination issues aren’t *our* fault or purview “ ugh
first of all, you're my new favourite youtuber, i've watched a few videos that have popped up on my home page and finally subscribed after this one. second of all, this is the first time i've heard the encouragement to simply leave if something crosses your boundaries and makes you feel unsafe even in person and it just blew my mind. i wish i'd thought of it as something i could do years ago and it makes me feel a lot more confident about trying therapy again sometime, so thank you for that!
Glad I didn’t go through with Better Help! I’ve only heard their ads & im looking for a new therapist since my last therapist (through a different office) would derail my sessions to talk about her beach vacations despite me saying that I needed help for anxiety/depression/loneliness/etc. Like damn if I wanted to talk about beach vacations, I’d talk to my friends instead of paying $200 a session
I was given 6 therapy sessions on betterhelp from my former employer after experiencing a traumatic event on the job. Unfortunately, it did nothing to help me with the trauma I was going through. I ended up quitting my job after running out of FMLA hours because the trauma and PTSD was too much. I did end up finding a wonderful therapist locally who has helped me immensely over the past 16 months. I'm thankful I kept searching for help and didn't give up after that first bad experience. Thanks for all your videos, Mickey. I talk about this channel in therapy a lot now.
Listen. I know you say that BetterHelp is not industry standard in terms of care, but honestly after 10 years of experiencing nothing better then mediocre, and most times absolutely awful and traumatizing care, I am never going back to any therapy. You sound wonderful as a therapist, but I just wish there were more who were like you. Thank you for at least raising awareness about this so less people end up getting hurt.
Imagine a person who was sexually abused, like myself, goes onto a therapy session, to only have your "therapist" go to the bathroom while your eatching. I would be traumatized for life. That is severly unsafe, and i personally think that should be a criminal charge, if it isnt already.
BetterHelp is the therapy covered by my new insurance, so I’ve tried to make it work. My first therapist was terrible. Our first meeting was retraumitizing and invalidating. She didn’t even show up to the second meeting. So I switched and my second therapist was just… unhelpful? Kind of like talking to a brick wall that just nodded at me and asked me about workplace gossip, which was stressing me out but not the primary reason I was in therapy. Fortunately it seems that the third time is the charm and I found a decent therapist that I connect with and is helping me set goals and take actions. It took a lot of patience to find a decent therapist.
Thank you SO much for explaining C-PTSD. I finally started trauma therapy about 6 months ago and the way she explained C-PTSD and DID (and overlap with previous incorrect dissociative dx’s like DPDR and BPD, and why those are often confused) was SO validating during my testing/diagnostics process. I thought I was very well therapy educated, from a client perspective, but meeting someone with such extensive knowledge, who took so much time with extensive testing, and who is also very kind and safe… just blew my mind. Like oh, I’m not just gonna learn a million more grounding techniques even though I’m never fcking grounded? We’re gonna do… root work, and help all parts of me through this work? Didn’t know that was a thing outside of memoirs 😂 The downside is I’m barely able to afford it, but there are so few options for the super specific things I need in a therapist, and I know lots of other people who very much need and deserve this kind of trauma therapy and it’s simply not accessible, which really sucks. And yeah, ED therapists can be absolutely wild, lol. It’s really unfortunate. It makes me sad in general how difficult finding GOOD help is. Reaching out is difficult enough, and getting met by someone who doesn’t care, or is entirely uneducated, or is straight up harmful can be the catalyst to so much more pain than would’ve ever happened if good therapists were the norm.
i tried doing teletherapy once but i got freaked out before i could even schedule a session, however this video is tempting me to have another go! just because seeing the way you talk about therapy in such a positive way makes me way less scared of it
I can't thank you enough for this video. As a counselor in training, I've experienced both sides of this drama. Bad experiences with BH and another similar awful therapy alternative as a client and being marketed to as though they are a viable career path.
(A) thank you for making this video. (B) I really hope it stays up because bringing awareness to this 💩 is important. Better help also pays creators a 💩 ton for sponsorship. Dr Youn, who is one of my favourite creators, and has a huge platform recently was sponsored by better help. I don't believe he knew the extent of the damage better help inflicts before accepting the sponsorship as he is generally an extremely kind and empathic individual who I don't believe would have allowed the sponsorship if he had known. Luckily 90% of the comments were kind messages telling Dr Youn what a shady company better help is. Awareness for this is so important. 💩y therapists are harmful, make mental health struggles worse, and feed ammo to individuals who are completely anti therapy in general.
My experience with better help was they asked me the same questions over and over without responding to any of the messages answering their questions that I put a lot of time into, then charging my card 3 months later which sparred an angry phone call. Good times!
My first therapist started me on in-person appointments and kept those going for the first couple appointments before we switched to online appointments. She ended up not being a good fit and I shouldn't have stayed with her for as long as I did, but it was not the online appointments and she wasn't rude or anything, I just didn't feel heard. I am now in psychiatric care and being treated with ADHD-meds and antidepressants and I am doing much better. I think psychologists very much have their time and their place and I might eventually approach therapy with a different psychologist at some point in the future to work through some stuff that still messes with my head, but at this point, just medication and self-improvement are doing wonders for me.
this makes me so sad cause i use better help and i love my therapist. i had no idea about any of these things happening and i hope anyone who has had issues doesn't give up on therapy and finds a therapist somewhere (doesn't have to be better help of course) that really helps them cause when you find a good one it's so very helpful
As a recent social worker, I have to say I appreciate you calling out our profession. I am going more into policy and advocacy but my friends I just graduated with are in therapy. I am beyond thankful to our professors for instructing us to think critically and to fight against the system when it is causing our clients harm. Our duty is to our clients and not to some structure or system that no longer works or doesn't benefit everyone. Social work and therapy have the ability to cause great harm and they are in fact professions that have a sketchy past (and present let's be real) it's our job to fix those parts and to help our clients to reach their fullest potential while causing as little harm as possible, ideally none. I wish more people would be critical of their professions.
It's hard to imagine any agency hiring a therapist who doesn't know what CPTSD is. Also the whole using the bathroom in front of the client thing??? WTF?
I swear clients who’ve had bad therapists need a support group for ourselves 🥴 my first one recommended I conceal a firearm on my college campus bc I didn’t feel safe as an LGBT+ student during a string of anti-LGBT attacks nearby, then had the gall to not believe me when I told her about the trauma from a bad car wreck with the justification of “men don’t get scared. Toughen up.” This is def my new fave comfort channel lol
That’s so sad for that girl with cptsd to have a “professional” adult exposing themselves by using the washroom on the phone with her. How triggering that must have been I can’t even imagine I wanna 🤜
I was going to use BetterHelp, but my dad suspected something suss. He insisted that I see a therapist in person, when I has already paid for a.month's worth of sessions in advance. I cancelled my appointment; and after some back and forth between me and Better Help, I got reimbursed. I found my current therapist, who specializes in CPTSD, anxiety, autism, and addiction. After a few years, I started hearing horror stories about Better Help. My dad's instincts were right.
I've had a sleep disorder (which is even listed in the freaking DSM) since childhood. After over a week of back and forth messages, the "shrink" I was assigned hadn't even bothered to Google it and instead questioned its existence (not just for me, but generally).
This makes me so glad that I met my therapist over 10 years ago. It did take a few therapists for me to find the one I felt a good connection with, so I always tell people that when I bring up or suggest therapy.
There are good and bad therapists everywhere. I have used this app. There is a reason it is so easy to click a button to just select another therapist. Use this option until you match with one that is actually helpful. I had a bad experience too when I started with the app, but I wanted the mental health help more than I wanted to let the bad therapist get in my way of getting to that help.
My therapist switched to telehealth when the pandemic started and has been doing it ever since. I’m so glad he’s not like the therapists referenced in these videos. He’s always in his home office, professional, has clearly reviewed my file before speaking with me & never uses the bathroom while we’re talking. Yikes, I couldn’t imagine having to go through that! It’s hard enough finding a therapist that you click with.
a video idea: best practices for therapists treating EDs, and what to look out for as a client to make sure youre getting good treatment or what things to bring up/strategies to bring up with a therapist. this could also be helpful for ptsd, depression, etc.
I had a horrible experience with an in person therapist. There were a million red flags (refusing my repeated requests to leave religion out of it and condescendingly calling my higher power the “universe” with air quotes and everything, literally crying over my own story which he barely knew, and not letting me get more than 2 sentences in for the entire hour long session), this video made me realize that he literally stood in front of the door instead of sitting in his chair on the other side of the room which may have been part of why I felt so uncomfortable there.
I got a better help therapist and after I explained that I was in a pretty heavy depression streak, she actually suggested I go seek help elsewhere and assisted me through my process of finding a new doctor. At first I was offended (like I was too crazy for any help) but it was honestly the best thing she could have done for me. After I started getting help with my new therapy we parted ways but I actually appreciate that woman for being candid with me.
That is awesome. We started with them for out teenaged son and the first session that was just parents she told us about a state funded program that gave in person therapy for free though the school system. She felt that it would be more helpful for him and more cost effective. My son has been in that therapy now for 3 years.
I honestly feel like that therapist infiltrated BH just to steer people AWAY from BH. Probably not but I like that idea in my head.
That's the mark of a great therapist, someone who knows their limitations and puts the patient first
The best thing a therapist can do is admit that they aren't qualified to help you. I struggled for two years to find a therapist due to my history being complicated. I then moved and tried again and my husband really wanted me to seek anger management therapy. I found an amazing anger management therapist who was also qualified to help with my complicated history. When I asked her if she could help me with therapy for my relationship with food she said that she's got a fine line on that and said she doesn't touch on disordered eating or a few other specific things. She actually had another therapist who worked in the same clinic who specialized in food therapy and eating disorders and said that if anything hit a point that she couldn't help she'd happily transfer me over. We just ended 10 months of therapy with me feeling like a new person and she reminded me to not hesitate to reach out to her if I needed more sessions. But she was prepared with options just in case my issues were beyond her skillset.
YES. If a therapist tells you to find help elsewhere, they know they don't have the capacity to help you, and they know what's up with their job.
Please listen. Glad you're getting help.
I'm a psychologist and I literally covered my mouth and gasped after the first video LOL. That's like going to a surgeon for your appendicitis and having him Google what an appendix is right in front of you
I did the same and I’m just a pool boy
im unemployed and i also gasped
I'm a student and also gasped
I’m a market researcher I also gasped
I'm an aircraft mechanic and I did too
For anyone confused about C-PTSD vs PTSD:
PTSD is trauma from a singular event. A car wreck, a mugging, an assault. It is a single deep cut into the psyche.
C-PTSD, on the other hand, is death by a thousand cuts. Thousands of small repeated traumas from a situation you cannot escape. POWs, children abused by caregivers, or a long term abusive relationship are some examples of what can cause it.
In both situations, the psyche is deeply wounded, just in a different way, and so while some symptoms are similar, some are not.
I tried looking up C-PTSD and my eyes just immediately glazed over, so thank you for the easy-to-understand explanation of the differences between them.
great explanation!
To this day friends and family don't believe that I have either. They say I'm just "fine" because i don't show visible trauma. Both these conditions are very real.
Not real it's just ptsd
Thank you :)
As someone with a long term trauma (for which regular PTSD treatments don't work), I've looked at C-PTSD a bunch of times but it usually seems to be about childhood trauma so it doesn't apply. I was secretly wishing I would find a comparison between PTSD & C-PTSD that actually made me resonate with one over the other and here you gave it to me.
When I had psychosis I was DESPERATE for some help but absolutely terrified. My therapist told me the only other person she had seen with my type of symptoms never got better unalived themselves. Really uplifting! I’m much better now no thanks to her
She also was just completely unqualified to deal with complicated issues, but she never identified that and talked herself up. Overall said things that triggered me and made me much worse :(
why the hell do people think saying this like "oh if i went through that i would unalive myself" or "i know about this person who unalived themself bc of this" is helpful at all??? fucking insane
My guess is they think they're telling you how strong you are for still holding on while others have given up. Like it's supposed to help you feel good about yourself. Or maybe, they want you to be aware that it might never get better, no matter how much therapy you get? I don't know. It's pretty dumb, but I believe it usually comes from good intentions. Doesn't stop it from being stupid and dangerous though.
Please find a doctor, a psychiatrist. A therapist is not the professional to deal with psychosis.
I am so sorry to hear that you had such a disgusting experience with ANY therapist! My opinion (which you can take, leave, or toss in the trash) is that a platform like that is absolutely not even remotely qualified to assist persons who are dealing with such acute symptoms as active psychosis. In my opinion, they should have told you that before they took your money or scheduled an appointment for you. I hope that you were able to find legitimately better help.
I had a BetterHelp therapist who was 15 min late for the very first session, she didn’t go over our time to compensate and I was still charged in full. The next session I waited around for 15 min and she hadn’t shown up so I left. She then texted me an hour later accusing ME of missing the appointment and swearing up and down she was waiting for me on the site. The way the site is set up, that’s literally impossible to do.
I quit and found an incredible therapist a few months later.
Well I had a therapist, a REAL ASS THERAPIST, not a scam one that was always 30-45 mins late every single time. So yeah even real ones can be fucking useless. Then one day I cancelled one apointment cuz I was so fed up with this bs of my therapist always being late and shit. And I got the message that I was banned from ever seeking help from that clinic ever again because I canceled... Wow... Really? Really??!!! I never even complained about her being late to anyone but I should have. I find that most free mental health help that is covered by our tax money in Sweden is useless dogshit, and some real unprofessional dogshit people that never should've been allowed to be therapists to begin with. I had 2 therapists that I felt actually cared about me and was actually DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB, not just some placeholder person sitting opposite me acting like an absolute uncaring robot only reading questions from their manual... The majority of the ones I've had falls under the uncaring robot category sadly. Why the fuck are psychopaths allowed to be therapists? Who let these useless people into a profession where they have such easy access to retraumatize people??
I'm not saying your therapist was telling the truth necessarily but I have had at least two issues with BH not showing me or my therapist as being in the room even though both of us were in there. They should message you though, mine sends messages if I'm not showing as there after 5 minutes or so
As a Betterhelp therapist, your therapist more than likely was telling the truth. It has been known to show that someone isn't online so we are waiting on the client and it may show the same on the side of the client. I sometimes will contact the client to let them know I am waiting, but it depends on the client's history regarding sessions. If a client has a history of no showing or late canceling, I am less likely to reach out compared to a client who is consistent with showing up. Also, we have nothing to do with what the client is charged. We actually have no idea of any plan the client is on as we are not giving that information.
This is why BetterHelp literally needs to disappear
The same thing happened to me. One time they never showed up.
Recently my boyfriend(after years of being told therapy made you weak) decided to better his mental health. His last session with this woman consisted of him explaining the most traumatic event he has ever had to deal with in his life. Her actual follow up question was "Could we meet up in person and get drinks?" He was completely chest fallen and sad. He stopped talking to her and she decided to send him one last duck face selfie. I hate her. FUCK BETTER HELP.
Holy shit
She sent him a selfie, which is HORRIDLY inappropriate to begin with, but a DUCK FACE selfie is even worse
That's so unprofessional smh
Please, please report her. She needs her license taken away.
@@AnnieLanham yea fr, that's like the number one "no, no" for therapists, I would report that
BetterHelp is really gross. They clearly have zero regard for everyone's safety. I'm so sick of seeing sponsorships from this company.
Same. I've desperately commented to get Cinema Therapy to look into these claims and stuff but they haven't yet. Which makes me sad since Jono is a therapist.
@@Orion_TheyThem I was thinking about them specifically while watching this video. How can Jono, in good conscience, recommend this company?
@@twobats it makes me a bit sad too. But I think they honestly try to see the best in a company that is lying about their practices?
But they're also Mormon I believe (both Jono and Alan went to BYU, a pretty-much, strictly Mormon college). And Mormons have notoriously strict views on a lot of things. So I've wondered if they're fully honest about some of their statements and where they stand, especially Jono, on trans/enby rights and such.
@@Orion_TheyThem whoa, he said what about trans and enbies?
@@Orion_TheyThem I thought they (Cinema Therapy) had put up a video a while ago saying they had looked into the company and couldn't find anything inappropriate. I stopped following them after that -- it didn't sound right to me. But it sounded like they had decided to stand by their sponsorship.
I'm a white woman from the US, my husband is Chinese and from China. We live and work in China. My therapist went on for 30 minutes about how I needed more "friends like me". When I didn't understand, she said "more American friends like her and myself." Still not understanding, I explained that my friends in the US are all American, born and raised there. Then I realized that she meant white friends. Not to mention her telling me about the time she went skinny dipping with her friend and almost got arrested.
wtf...
Holy shit
If I were living in another country and someone told me that I needed friends like me, I would absolutely think that meant other people who had moved to a different country as adults. Regardless of skin color. Being a foreigner is the common link.
Those stories of betterhelp are so crazy that it feels unreal
Just how 😭
I mean I don’t think that’s necessarily racist?
I’m Moroccan, I study abroad and sometimes I need to spend more time with other Moroccans or Arabs because they’re the ones who can understand me in some aspects. I also see Turks or South Asians, Persians, East Asians, Albanians, West Africans etc happy in their own communities that they make. At the same time I also have friends from all those communities. Wanting to be around people like you doesn’t mean you don’t want to be around people from other backgrounds. So if her point was that you should be around more White Americans makes some sense to some extent because in USA, different ethnicities usually still have cultural differences so a white American would most likely be more like you and have the most in commun with you. Assuming that’s what she tried to say and she didn’t just base it on race.
Oooh youtube has a new banner thing for licensed mental health professionals? Cool!
Yeah I was gonna say-
Yeah it’s a new thing! You have to apply and provide proof of current licensure in good standing to be approved. I’m super excited to be a part of it!
@@MickeyAtkins so proud of the work you're doing mickey. thank you!
NICE. Because expertise, training, and professional experience matter. Mental health professionals are licensed for a REASON, the reason being that we are all naturally somewhat deferential to authority, and so with authority comes power and with power comes responsibility.
People who are not experts who are portraying themselves as experts are attempting to get the power without accepting the responsibility that comes with it.
@@MickeyAtkins Oh nice! I clicked it and scanned the page a bit but didn't see that your license has to be approved and in good standing, that's really good to know!
I have CPTSD as well and my Better Help therapist immediately wanted me to do a Trauma Narrative. She compared it to her experience having a spider crawl on her as a toddler making her have a fear of spiders as an adult, and once she processed the memory with her mom, her fear of spiders magically went away... Lmao my current therapist who actually knows what she's doing was horrified when I told her and said I am no where near ready to do a Trauma Narrative since I still really struggle with dissociation and feeling present in my body on a normal day. Having a fear of spiders is not the same as having 18+ years of repeated trauma, abuse and neglect.
Also, the Better Help therapist was a social worker for child protective services her entire career and only switched to online therapy after she retired and wanted a convenient way to make easy money from home...
Social work is not the same as therapy.
I hate hate hate hate hate having a social worker being pushed on me as a therapist. I had horrible social workers from child protective service do terrible jobs of helping me when I was a small child, and I certainly don't want help from them now.
I also have CPTSD, and I'm so sorry you went through that. I've also had awful therapists that messed me over, and left my last therapist appalled at what they did. There's not enough info out there about how to help with CPTSD. (Also, I've never done a trauma narrative and I don't think I ever will, but I'm in a much better place overall, so don't feel bad if you can't ever manage it)
Okay, I have no idea what a Trauma Narrative is... it's not that thing that takes literal years and even sometimes decades to piece together because CPTSD typically involves huge gaps in memory and heavy dissociation, is it?
What was she expecting you to do, sit there and recount your life story? 😵
@@rebeccabarrand5132 just fyi, the title of social worker can mean different things but there are many social workers who are great therapists. Mickey being one of them. She has other credentials, but her base degree is social work.
Ooh, the ED one has me a little bit burning with rage! My actual doctors didn’t notice my ED for almost 2 decades because my BMI was “normal”. Meanwhile, I was severely malnourished and my teeth were falling apart, and my dentist accused me of being on meth. No…I was on antidepressants and other meds for my misdiagnosed mental illness (they said bipolar when it was obvious CPTSD) and the meds were CAUSING the ED because it was causing IBS and it was too physically painful to eat. This was the 90’s and early 2000’s. We should be better than this by now!!!
The only reason I was diagnosed with malnutrition was that I got hurt at work, and the company doctor was a naturopath. I think I’d be gone by now if it wasn’t for her.
It it considered an eating disorder when you don't eat due to health problems? I stopped eating for years after my gallbladder removal complications made it severely painful and difficult to keep food down. I was never sure if that would be considered an ED, because it's natural to avoid things that cause pain.
@@e_i_e_i_broYes, it can be.
I lost a ton of weight and had anemia issues because I went through nearly 2 years of near daily migraines and the pain and the nausea made it very difficult to eat.
Even after my migraines were finally under control, I struggled to start eating normally again because I was so terrified that I was going to trigger a migraine and end up being physically sick and be in blinding pain.
When I would talk to my friends with anorexia or other eating disorders, there were a lot of similarities. The only thing I didn’t have was my own brain telling me “look how fat you are! You don’t deserve food!” (Though I did experience that when I was a teen and in college and was terrified this more recent experience was going to trigger a relapse of that kind of thinking too. Thankfully it didn’t.)
Unfortunately, this happened in the middle of Covid, so I couldn’t even get in to see a medical doctor easily, and seeing therapists in my area was impossible.
So I just had to get my husband to help me force myself to very gradually start eating solid, heavy foods again.
It’s honestly not a method I’d recommend unless you have no other choice _and_ the underlying illness seems to be managed.
@@Annie_Annie__ Wow your story sounds similar to how I was conditioned to fear food. Even though my symptoms are manageable now I still have that avoidance. I hope you're able to make a recovery and develop a healthy relationship with food.
One thing that helped me personally was cooking (which I love now but used to hate). Maybe the exposure to it or something. Can't help but feel hungry when you smell things cooking.
@@e_i_e_i_bro yeah. This actually is quite common in children as well. They may choose to not eat due to fear if eating is painful or has been in the past. Parents often misinterpret it as just fussiness.
@@e_i_e_i_bro I think it might be called disordered eating rather than an eating disorder, but the line is not very clear tbh
I have BPD and when I told a betterhelp therapist about how I didn't have many friends because I kept pushing them away she literally said: "Well, it seems like you're just kind of a bitch then"
Holy shit 😬. I'm so sorry
Damn dude. I'm so sorry too. I hope you were able to report her, and I would find if she has a health grade page and leave a review of what she said. Also I'd see if you can find Better Help on the BBB, and post this story.
Your therapist is the real bitch here.
There may be some truth to that. You acknowledge and know why you don’t have friends and now you need to find the solution for that. I had family members that had that and had steps and systems to navigate through it when episodes would come on. The way she spoke to you was still wrong though. I had an individual speak harshly to me and I cut them off, but I acknowledged wheee they were right.
Honestly... With BPD, always go to someone who really wants to work with someone with BPD.
People with BPD are considered by psychologists and therapists as the 'nightmare client'.
It's not uncommon for people with BPD to hear: sorry I can't help you. But instead of a therapist actually telling them: 'Go to someone specializes in BPD', they just wonder from therapist to therapist and get rejected over and over again.
Hopefully you have found someone who supports you now.
I tried better help my freshman year of college. My first therapist was actually great. I opted for chat only therapy (my first go at any form of therapy so it was intimidating to actually speak with someone at all). And within a week, she said she was leaving better help. I was sad because she was really compassionate and understanding. Then I got reassigned to another therapist. This woman straight up was like why don’t you just not think that way. Why don’t you just fix it. Totally disregarding any feelings or the fact that this was my first time trying to deconstruct any trauma I had experienced in my life. I ghosted her, canceled my account and it took me 5 years to revisit therapy.
Same I've been lucky enough to have been matched with someone good
Same, I was lucky to have a good therapist. Although I'm reluctant to use the service again since I don't think it's honestly worth it since both others experience and Betterhelp's scandals
Shout-out to my BetterHelp "therapist", that I paid thousands of dollars for, just for her to tell me to "calm down" and "try to relax" during anxiety flare-ups 🙃 for real shout-out to my current therapist, who has done both telehealth and in-person appointments with me, and is an absolute rockstar.
Oh man, it's like, yes you SHOULD calm down and try to relax but you need to learn the tools to do that effectively which takes time, just saying "Oh just relax" isn't helpful at all!
how did you find them?
did it work tho😂 jk
Thousands?? Ugh. I could just call my mom instead 😂
My betterhelp therapist did this too wtf
Worth saying that you can still complain through the therapist's licensing board or accreditation body even if you met them on BetterHelp.
100% this!! All of these Uber-like, Airbnb-ike companies hire independent contractors who ARE credentialed in their state. (Well, unless the "providers" created fake id's, which is possible I suppose.) That's how they get away without providing any professional oversight or supervision. These providers are legally allowed to practice independently. That means that violations of ethics and competency should be reported to that licensing entity through a complaint process. All of these different professions have Codes of Ethics, and states do too. Anyone with enough tech skills to sign up for and use Better help could find the license information on state registries and the different Codes of Ethics online (they're quite similar of course but are different for psychologists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage & family therapists.)
Assuming they are licensed/accredited. There's was some controversy over them perhaps not all being licensed therapists because of something in the t&c about how BH don't or can't (I can't remember which) guarantee the person you match with will be licensed or a good fit with your needs...something to that effect iirc.
@@hawkeyescoffee6399 that was about "licensed in your area" or "competent to treat your problem area" (basically about if they were suited to help YOU) but it's a requirement to be independently licensed (and therefore can legally work without supervision.) I've been in this field for 20 years and formally a supervisor for 6 and it's AWFUL how little accountability there is for ensuring competent, ETHICAL care. Ethics codes all state things like "keep getting training, don't treat disorders you know nothing about, don't lie about your qualifications/expertise, consult with colleagues when you aren't sure"
Yes!! So important to know you can do this.
@@hawkeyescoffee6399if they are presenting themselves as being accredited without actually being accredited… u can also report them to the board they are usurping, and that board can sue them
My better help therapist encouraged me to seek un - aliving services at the clinic in Switzerland. That's all I need to say about Better Help. I'm glad I was able to go back to my original therapist. She saved my life.
😦 ... I can't even imagine prescribing or being prescribed that... Jesus Christ man.
Glad you got back with your original therapist and you didn’t take that advice. 😮
My therapist on Better help told me to withhold sex to force my now husband to propose. I was feeling anxious about uprooting my life to move across the country with him for his new job, and I wasn't yet sure if our relationship was worth leaving my family and giving up my career. She basically said "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?" And that he wouldn't ever give me the security I wanted. Very helpful 🤦♀️Fast forward: we're very happy, I make three times as much money as I did before we moved, and my family isn't all I cracked them up to be. I still haven't found a good therapist, though.
That’s a very unprofessional (and extremely rude) thing to say! I’m so glad that you’re doing well now and I hope you find a therapist that you love. 💗💗💗
Isn’t that manipulative? To like withhold physical affection in order to get your way? I’m so sorry you received such terrible care
that is reddit tier advice😭😭
@@haileys5224 yes. 100% manipulative
Holy crap. That's incredibly toxic. Good on you for yeeting her
So I tried BH…they matched me up with a senior citizen. She was literally retired and moved to Florida and was trying to rebuild her practice online for something to do. I was nervous about being matched with someone so much older but I thought I was being closed minded and biased and she probably had a lot of experience to share. She complained about the time of the appointment I had made, that that’s when she plays tennis. It would be more convenient if I could schedule on Fridays instead. I was choosing the times that were available on the app…so if she didn’t want to work those times, I didn’t know why she didn’t block those times off on her end? So on the third session I did what she asked and moved it to Friday before my work day started….and she didn’t show up. 😂I left the app open for 30 minutes and the session never started. Because I had rescheduled based on her preference to the end of the week, I was just out the money for that week since I paid for the month not the session so I notified BH that I wanted them to extend my time an additional week, which they accommodated. I guess my therapist didn’t like that I had notified BH because then BH told me that this therapist decided she was no longer available to work with and I could pay for another month and start over with another therapist! I asked for money back and they obliged.
Thanks for your comment. I'm glad they gave you your money back.
When my father moved out, he consented to go to therapy for a month to prove nothing was wrong with him. The older children were asked by the therapist to come in and give their perspective on things. I went in with my sister, and because I stupidly had hope things were finally going to get fixed, I told him about a lot of the abuse I'd suffered from my dad. This man (wearing crocodile print shoes with tassels, so that should have been a clue in itself) had the audacity to listen to me, watch me cry and shake and almost panic, and then look at me and say "Well, I'm going to need you to start helping your dad now. If you want him to get better, your going to have to help us out here." No acknowledgement of my distress, not a single word about how my dad should not have done what he did, AND putting me in the position of helping my abuser with his own mental health. Even I knew that was dangerous! When I said no, he kept trying to guilt trip me into it and talking up my dad like some kind of publicist.
Anyway, pretty sure he's moonlighting at better health now 🙃 Best of luck to whoever gets him!
That’s some kind of gaslighting monster of a therapist. Omfg.
The medical gaslighting is a real issue that just creates mental health trauma by their own narcissistically driven patient exploitation.
The way most of the profession treats adolescents and victims is criminal.
I might have had him! Lol. When I used BetterHelp about my family's abuse, I was told that I should forgive them and resume contact with them because they're my faaaaaamily.
Disgusting. There’s gaslighters everywhere I see. 😮😮
The only reason why BetterHelp is online is because otherwise the patient would slap the therapist
@@kelleywyskiel8513 Can we mot promote more ableism by vilifying NPD?
My first experience with therapy was a 15 minute in-person assessment where the therapist didn't know what sleep paralysis is and said to me "just tell me what you think you felt" which I found extremely insulting. I ended up sticking it out for 15 mins and then rage crying in the parking lot to a friend on the phone and didn't seek help for my depression for like 8-10 more years. He also put a diagnosis on my file w/o any discussion about it with me. It's sad that these stories are so similar despite mine being in person, it really can fuck you up when your introduction to therapy is so bad. Thankfully now I have a therapist who's amazing and I trust and vibe well with!
Oh yeah, I had some low-life people report me as automutilating because I swam (mandatory every Friday) with long swimming trunks and a surf shirt because I was ashamed of my acne. Then, at the next therapist practise I was suddenly too difficult... 😕
they diagnosed you off a 15 mins first meeting???? someone strip their license away
@@GabrielleFct seriously!!! I didn't even realize till months later I saw it on my online portal under like known health issues
SAME therapist LOVE invaildating your feelings...
My first therepy was conversion therepy for my "same sex attraction". I now go to therepy to recover from that therepy😅
I'm so sorry you went through that. I hope you're healing well.
Terrible! I hope you are doing better.
same lol gotta love when the "therapy" gives you lifelong trust issues
@@rulesofrose lol ikr?
Dear God! I'm so sorry you went through that! I ended up working through stuff in therapy from my former church chucking me and my kids out because they are LGBTQ+ It's disgusting that such things are allowed to happen. Glad you're getting the right help now. A good therapist is worth their weight in gold
I had been thinking of getting a BH therapist when somebody in the atheist community posted a short chat with their BH therapist who told somebody suffering from RTS (religious trauma syndrome) THat they were declining to treat them and that they shouldn't be angry with god for the actions of people, and that they needed to find a good, supportive church to deal with their anger towards the actions of the other church. You could probably find something worse to say to somebody with RTS, but it would be very difficult to do. I've been soured towards them since and I have found that has been an excellent decision on my part.
I've heard similar stories, where non-christian folks specifically requested to either be matched with a therapist with a similar background, or who wasn't christian - the platform gives you an option to specify this, similar to choosing someone who's LGBTQ informed. And yet they were being matched with christian therapists who tried to proselytize in the first session. I get that some people may have good experiences with the platform, but when they aren't thoroughly vetting therapists and allowing predatory people like this to target vulnerable folks, I really doubt the intent of betterhelp
Sounds like my mother in law…
I left during a therapy session crying because the therapist triggered me and then she wrote to my doctor about how I can’t take criticism for doing that😅
I have CPTSD and the therapist triggered me too - A TRAUMA THERAPIST, for God's sake. Have they no clue about the window of tolerance?! FR, I'm traumatized from the trauma therapist. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
So sorry you went through that. Please don't let it stop you from searching for a decent therapist.
@@jenajohnson526 Nah fuck that. I’m not retraumatizing myself just to pay them for it.
@@DeathnoteBB a great way to find good ones is if you've got anyone you know and trust that currently attends therapy, and see who they'd recommend. that way you don't have to bounce around trying to find the right one. but its also understandable that your trust has been completely lost as well.
Omg it’s nuts how similar my experience was. It’s awful that you went through that. I’m glad I am not alone.
Thanks for explaining about the fat phobia in eating disorders. When I was a teenager I stopped eating for months, but didn’t lose “enough” weight to qualify for a diagnosis of an eating disorder. I think this is partially why I felt it was okay for me in later years as an adult to stop eating again, because it must not be that big a deal if it didn’t even qualify for a diagnosis. It really messed me up.
Therapy is already nerve wracking enough when you have a good therapist, I can’t even imagine how terrible these experiences are for these people
this video reminded me of a ‘therapist’ i saw on there when i was 15. she straight up didn’t show for one of our meetings with no warning, regularly talked about herself and her own personal life, and one time gave me “homework” to consider things from my sexual assaulter’s point of view and mitigated the event. she was the first person i told about this happening and after that, i didn’t open up about my sexual assault to ANYONE until two years later. i also haven’t returned to therapy since. better help needs to regulate their professionals better.
It sounds like we had the same therapist
They need to regulate their therapists, period!
The 1st girl's therapist sounds like she was either hungover(maybe still a little intoxicated) or flat out intoxicated. Obviously we can't know for sure. But I can't imagine a sober person with an education and career in mental health thinking ANY of that was acceptable.
the fact that she was wearing sunglasses in a dark house tells me she was almost definitely smoking weed. as a stoner myself it's a common tactic to hide the bloodshot eyes lol
I recently started therapy through my school and they had an option to ask for a queer or black or indigenous therapist which was really great. I’ve only had two sessions but it’s really helpful and I got lucky finding such a great therapist first try and that I don’t have to pay for it
They should add disabled too. Spoken as a disabled person in a very patriarchal country whose able bodied therapist told to find a husband to feel better.
No, that wouldn't help at all and would in fact make things worse for an already vulnerable person.
Im so glad you got the right person!
I told my better help therapist that I was extra depressed after George Floyd's murder, and his response was, "Well, what are the chances that could happen to you?"
Dude, I'm not worried about it happening to me. I'm depressed that it happened at all and that there are still STILL people who think it was justified.
I think my next therapist will have to be a woman of color.
@@captainblacksand8484 @captainblacksand8484 Ohmigod. I'm a white woman and every time a person of color is in the news because they were murdered or hurt it upsets me. It upsets me that someone's life has been ended or permanently altered, that someone lost a family member. You shouldn't have to be in danger of that happening to care and feel bad that this happens to other human beings. I find it weird that people are so unbothered by hate crimes. Therapy is supposed to help people cope with these sorts of disgusting acts of violence and cruelty. I'm very sorry they said that to you, and I hope you find one that isn't devoid of empathy.
Wow that is so cool! That must help a lot making people feel safe and understood
@@captainblacksand8484 really recommend a black therapist, never felt so comfortable being myself.
My mom is a BetterHelp therapist, and usually when she sees a client has issues in something that she's not very well educated in, she doesn't take on that client (because she knows how important it is to actually help the client and not traumatize them or waste their time). However, sometimes BetterHelp forces their therapists to take on clients as well. There are good therapists out there on BetterHelp. Hopefully they will figure out a way to make sure these bad experiences don't keep happening.
UPDATE: My mom is going to be quitting BetterHelp soon. She's not getting enough clients therefore she is not getting paid a lot. BetterHelp therapists don't get paid hourly like most mental health jobs. She only gets paid for every time she talks to a client. That is not enough to pay the bills, so she should hopefully be starting at a different place soon.
Bad experiences like this happened before Better Help and they'll happen after. As long as humans are doing this degree of care, it will not be perfect. How is anyone surprised zzzzz
Hopefully your mom also doesn't force her clients to explain their diagnosis and then argue that their condition isn't even real?
@Sidney H. Thank you. I mean, obviously I don't know everything that goes on between my mom and her clients, but from what my mom has told me she doesn't do this to her clients. My mom's main priority is to help people, not argue with them.
Respectfully, how the fuck does better help force someone to take on a client? That doesn't even seem like a thing they should be able to do
@@fricketyfracktraintrack I'm not too sure. A lot of times my mom is able to decide whether or not she wants to take on a client. However, there have been numerous times where BetterHelp is basically like, "Here's a client. You have no choice but to take them." One time BetterHelp had my mom take a client whose preferred language is Spanish...my mom doesn't know any Spanish. But, my mom wasn't able to decline that client, so she had to message that client to let them know that she doesn't speak any Spanish, so it would be best to contact BetterHelp and see if they can transfer her to a therapist who does speak Spanish. It's very frustrating for my mom when BetterHelp doesn't give her a choice.
It feels like you're the only UA-camr I see criticize better help loads still being sponsored by them. I think you're going to be proved right when some huge scandal comes out, probably over data protection or something.
Hilariously, there already was a data-leaking/selling scandal, but for whatever reason, it didn't sink the company. Bummer tbh
I agree. It's super disturbing to see a lot of mental health related accounts sponsored by BH
@@beyondallmeasure Yep I have unsubscribed from a couple of channels because their main sponsor was BH, I was either you can't research or you don't care so how can I trust the info that you are giving me.
@@amandamandamands yep. I'm not watching Cinema Therapy for that reason. They even went as far as saying in one of their videos (or a community post maybe) that they saw the comments, did a deep research into BH and are happy to proceed with them as their sponsor...
@@AnnaEmilka WTF, it isn't a channel that I have watched so good to know. Hate to think what their research skills are like then.
YEARS ago there was a better help controversy, where it was shown the “therapists” where faking their own reviews and that a lot of the therapists weren’t even properly listened. It seemed to go away and it popped back up with the advertisement that all their therapists where verified. I would still never trust a company that even thought it was okay to have unlicensed ”therapists” matched with vulnerable people seeking help, believing they’d get professional care. There was more to the controversy, but once I saw Anthony Padilla taking their sponsorships this past year I got sick to my stomach. Not again.
The controversy was even worse, manu of the "therapists" hired werent even real therapist, like you could end up with someone whos only qualification is like a shit coaching course or something. Sad
I made the mistake of trying better help when I came out because the only session I went to the person first called me out for using the texting feature cuz I wasn't comfortable with the other options and then when they ask me how I realized that I might be trans, they decided to ask me about my dick.
This person said they had a roommate in college who was also trans and realized they were trans because their dick was small and was asking me if had something I could relate to.
Now, luckily I've resolved a lot of the lingering thoughts in my head about all of this so I no longer requires therapy for it, but that is an extremely inappropriate question to ask within the first 10 minutes of starting a session for the first time
Omg wtf? I'm so sorry you went through that!
Terrible! Where are they finding these scummy people?
Speechless
W H A T T H E A C T U A L F U C K
I am so sorry. We aren’t all like that. The counselors have to be licensed which means there is a licensing board that can be called if BH doesnt respond.
This reminds me of time when I was 9 and I was in psych ward for depression/anxiety (I didn't know it was possible in kids, but I guess it sure was because of some trauma of my past) and I thought they will help me. Mind that I was a kid and had very little understanding of how mental health works, I didn't know why I felt the way I felt etc.
But the nurses have drugged me so bad because I kept crying and I eventually passed out, it was worst two months and half of my life, they later got fired (or maybe left idk) but now looking back at what they have been doing to me and other kids is horrifying. It has traumatized me to avoid therapy at all cost, because I believed that all therapy ends up the same and never wanted to go through that again. I really understand how important therapy is and how one bad session can leave a scar on a person.
Ahh, as someone with CPTSD (officially diagnosed as PTSD for now) and a wonderful therapist who understands, I hope the person in the first video doesn't give up 🥺 I've dealt with a traumatizing therapist unrelated to BH and I know how awful and demoralizing it is. But having a good one is AMAZING and so helpful.
What is the C for?
@@swaggerish complex. It's a form of PTSD that develops from a long period of ongoing trauma, rather than a single traumatic event (or collection of traumatic events). It's permanent, more difficult to manage than PTSD, and often comes with additional symptoms such as emotional dysregulation.
I have cptsd and ptsd.. my therapist was really helpful and knowledgeable
I think it's also really interesting how two very different traumas (long term abuse and neglect and a single SA ) stayed different in my brain...
Because my therapist was knowledgeable she was able to treat my ptsd during those sessions and whilst picking at my cptsd which needed a different approach
I didn’t know you had to meet certain weight requirements to be diagnosed with certain EDs. That’s insane! It should be about the symptoms, not the results!
I've struggled with food for most of my life, I went from binge eating to starving, one extreme to another. Lost 50 pounds in 2 months and no one blinked an eye because I didn't look like I was starving mysmyself. Didn't matter that I was weak and nearly passing out and snapping at everyone all the time. Still haven't gotten a diagnosis because I don't look unhealthy enough
I understand the base logic behind it - people think of EDs as "you aren't eating food so therefore you're unhealthily skinny" but then if you actually take a second to think about it it's like, oh yeah, it's actually possible for people who aren't 10 pounds to have some of eating disorder. It's like telling someone that they can't possibly have a tumor unless there's some visible bulge. It can start at any point at any size, you still have a tumor even if it's small, and you can still have an ED if you're a pretty normal weight. It's not like you just start to have the ED once you're underweight, you had to have had the ED BEFORE you got there, so why wouldn't people who are above a certain weight also have ED?
Also can the health community please work out better abbreviations so it doesn't look like you have to be a certain weight to have Erectile Dysfunction?
You don’t, but insurance companies will often not provide treatment to those meeting normal bmi requirements
@@FrenkTheJoy I am overweight and have developed symptoms of ED because I’ve been binging and purging. Weight hasn’t changed. I’m worried that no one cares because I am still overweight.
@@LunaCidnie people care, you just haven’t found the right ones yet ❤️ I’m a no one on the internet, but i care. And I’ve been there too so i understand. I struggled with EDs my whole life and was always over weight. I’d flip flop between binging and not eating anything, but no one would help me bc i was overweight for my body type or whatever bs they push.
Unfortunately i never got help for that by doctors, but i have a better relationship with food, and i found a passion and that majorly helped me control my urges to eat and not eat.
For me it was the gym and being active, i never had the chance as a kid and it gave me so much energy and made me so happy. Not even factoring in the physical changes, just the mental and emotional ones made a lasting difference.
Going to the gym forced me to create a better relationship with food at the time, i had to feed my body better to do what i loved. It forced me to look at my meals differently, be more conscious of what i put in my body and how it makes me feel. The gym gave me a sense of purpose that I’d never felt before, a sense of who i was. All trauma and people are different, but maybe if you could find something that forces you out of your comfort zone, and creates a mentality shift, it might help a little bit.
Will my advice cure your EDs? No likely not, but my hope is that I’m able to inspire you to find something that forces you out of your comfort zone with food. Or even just your mentality or emotional strength, obviously it’s a disorder and it’s not cut and dry, but in my experience, my passion improved my life all around, and imo that shift in my mentality is what triggered some change.
Ofc it takes a village to help treat these things, but as someone with multiple serious mental illnesses, i promise you can do this.
All of that to say that there are so many people that care, not all of them qualified to help, but many many that do care. Even for a stranger on the internet. You are IMPORTANT, you are LOVED, and you are WANTED here. What you go through mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically should matter no matter what size, shape, or color one is.
I know it won’t change anything, but i am truly sorry that you feel like no one cares, and even more so that your doctors and those around you enable that feeling.
You deserve happiness, and contentment, whatever that means to you. Be strong, stay true to yourself, and you will find the light. In my experience, i turned out to be my own light, and i bet you can be too❤️
It is literally so easy to just say "excuse me, I'm going to use the restroom, I'll be back shortly" like????
I was considering BH as I live in South Korea where mental health resources are pretty terrible, let alone in English. However, someone ended up recommending their therapist to me who does online services independently and is properly accredited and she has been a genuine Godsend. My anxiety has alleviated immensely and she has been extremely transparent and patient the whole time. Hearing these stories about BH has made me so glad I made that choice…
Viewing Betterhelp as an mlm makes a lot of sense on why it sucks and they lie
I feel like even the less horrifying Better Help stories are like…just as valid, too. Like the therapist I had on there triggered me really badly in one session, and when I came back later and explained what I’d experienced, he just made excuses instead of like…exploring why that might have been triggering and what was behind it. It was so disheartening. But I found a sliding scale therapist who cost *less* than BH and was still telepractice, and specialized in trauma. They’re out there!
I got a free month of betterhelp from a sorority that I was briefly in and to this day I’m convinced that the therapist was either an AI or just not fluent in English (no shame to people learning a new language but if you’re going to be my therapist you do need to be fluent enough in my language to actually be able to talk to me)
What kind of problems did you have with them? Like they didn’t know words or just worded things weird?
@@dogouchu4356the wording was really really strange, like something a really bad chatbot would say. It didn’t seem like a human at all.
AI would do a better job
Boi. That bathroom story is wild 😳
Edit:
I once watched a video explaining that the people using the app are given 24 hour access to the people employed with the app. So these people acting as therapist essentially never get a break from the constant trauma dumping. They don't have one or two clients, but potentially hundreds. Constant messages and emails, advertised by the company as a prompt responder.
I've never tried BetterHelp, but what turned me off from the company was being made to think about how therapists are still people, and that they're doing a job. Therapy can be a highly emotionally taxing experience, and it's just as important for the therapist to be able to take a break to recuperate for the next session as it is for the patient. I don't want to talk to a person about my issues when they're potentially overwhelmed with their own. Sitting in a designated space at a scheduled time negates that feeling of guilt I would normally get if I were to go to friend or a family member. I feel weird and paranoid about the next time I go in, but the next week is fine, and I feel okay to open up again because my therapist is in a pleasant mood.
It's really unsettling how quickly the mental health industry became so commodified. Everyone wants to be a therapist because someone on the internet told them that helping people will get them through their own trauma, so they forgoe doing further studies, and end up traumatizing the people they set out to help. Turning this service into a "get rich quick" work from home opportunity was a dire mistake.
everytime i see a youtuber being sponsered by better help i get so pissed. Cinema therapy, a youtube channel with a film maker and a LITERAL THERAPIST support better help even after they were called out abt it :/. i still watch their vidoes tho
Yeah I love that channel too, it's very disappointing to see them continue to promote it :(
Forgive the tangent, but CT also does spots for Established Titles.
This is how I feel about Dr. Kirk Honda. I love his videos and still watch them but I felt so disappointed when he started advertising for them.
they need to be called out
@@mcgovemj Yeah, I don't trust any of their sponsorships. To their very limited credit, I haven't seen any for Established Titles after I found out what a scam that was. So I was hoping they didn't know better and backed out of the sponsorship when they learned.
I’m sending this video to every UA-camr I watch who still gets sponsored by them. I’m really glad that so many people have been learning about how bad BH is. I remember at one point almost every channel I watched was sponsored by them. Now it’s just a few, thankfully!
Do u send it to their DMs or??? Cause I know a few, whether they see it or do anything about it is another thing....but I still wanna bring it to light cause I genuinely believe they aren't aware....somehow :/
@@-404notfound-74 Yep, either DMs or tag them on Twitter if they have one. Usually if they’re pretty active on Twitter, they’ll see it. Which can be better than sending it through DMs since many of them probably don’t even read their messages. Unless it’s a smaller creator.
&Yeah I’m definitely going to try my best at tagging & DMing every UA-camr I’m aware of that still promote them, but like you said it’s up to them what they choose to do with the info.. Unfortunately many people are so greedy they might not even care about what a shitty company it is, as long as they’re getting paid by them. It’s a shame really.. 😕 Let’s hope that the majority do actually care🤞🏼
I've noticed that I haven't seen a single sponsored video by BH on my favorite youtubers in quite a while. I haven't seen any public video/announcement on why that is but it probably is because of what happened to Mickey's first video and they don't wanna deal with such an issue.
@@-404notfound-74 Please send it to Cinema Therapy. I commented on one of their videos before but they're still getting sponsored by them. The more of us, the better.
@@Em-ih5du Anthony Padilla is another big youtuber who is getting sponsored by them
I want psychology in Seattle and cinema therapy to see this and your taken down video. Their sponsorships with betterhelp make me cringe so hard.
Idk about Psychology in Seattle but I left a comment under a Cinema Therapy video that was sponsored by BH for the umpteenth time, telling them very politely to look into them and consider not endorsing them in the future and it got deleted 🙃 It's high time I accepted they can't be unaware by this point, they just don't care. Either to do their due diligence in picking their sponsors, or how said sponsors may affect their audience. Neither is a good look and it has put me off their content.
Edit: I forgot to mention that BH aside, they have a long history of accepting shady sponsorships. I couldn’t even tell you how many times they’ve been sponsored by Established Titles and Kamikoto Knives, both of which are owned by the same known serial scammer. Like is there *no* shady company they won’t advertise to their audience? I doubt they look into their sponsors at all. They don’t care.
@@chiefpurrfect8389 oof deleted is bad. The other thing too is if they have a different opinion I would be curious to hear their perspective but I assume because of the sponsorship they probably can’t address it. Which is also not great. I’d be curious if either has addressed it in their patreon communities.
I stopped watching psychology in Seattle today actually because some of his comments and the consistent sponsorship with betterhelp
@@chiefpurrfect8389 It was a while ago, and perhaps they've taken it down, but I'm pretty sure they made a video defending their sponsorship with Betterhelp. They said they looked into it and that all the criticisms BH had received in the past had been addressed. At least based on my memory of that video, I think they really stand by their choice.
@@martinajohnson Somehow this keeps getting more and more disappointing
As someone who’s had a hell of a ride through mental illness (Schizophrenia, severe Depression and severe anxiety as a result of Schizophrenia) from personal experience, my therapists and psychiatrist were instrumental in getting me to where I am today. I went from 16 years old with child schizophrenia, not knowing if I’d make it. Now I’m preparing to start a new job. God bless them for their work on the mess I was
❤❤❤❤❤❤
do u see yourself having kids?
@@littleleah310 I’m not sure to be entirely honest. I’d love to have children but the possibility of passing this onto them is heartbreaking to me
@@thomasfallon5632 i worry about passing my mental health problems onto them too, thats why its soo important to heal yourself beofre having children..good on you
im so proud of you!! I mean that
They went from bad to worse. Good job BH. 👍
I’ve been seeing my therapist on better help for about 6 months now I believe and I love her so much. She has her own private practice and took on better help to find new clients. She goes above and beyond to make sure I’m aware of any scheduling issues (we’re human, things happen) and she’s always doing her best to make sure she knows what I want and need as far as therapy.
Could you share her name? I’ve been thinking of trying therapy out (online works better for me) but I don’t trust most reviews on the site. Thanks!
I am not a therapist at all and I know the basic difference between C-PTSD and PTSD. Wtaf. 😳
When BH first came out. I had a therapist and i REALLY loved her so much. She was so kind and sweet. I have her coversations written in my journal. That sucks that this is happening.
Maybe you’ve discussed this elsewhere but I’ve called over 40 professionals who take my insurance not one taking a new patient. I think better health sounds like a nightmare but the way you speak about finding a therapists sounds like it rings more true of 2010. There are no therapists left in my area to treat me which is why Better Health gets people. I would rather not receive services at all so thank you for making this but finding a therapist these days is literally impossible. Even out if pocket I’ve paid $200 an hour and got nothing from it. It’s too expensive to shop around and find someone you vibe with. It’s just not a reality.
Where I live there just are not that many therapists and clinics don’t let you switch so easily, in part because there just are not that many therapists.
Came here looking for this sense. We need better regulations for ALL therapists. It should not be up to the consumer to tell if some therapist or another will traumatize them by being biased or simply a moron.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to take mental health advice from a morbidly obese person as well, but I guess that's me. If other people are thinking that, no one is saying it, but how is this person's mental health well enough for them to give advice? They need therapy for their own bad habits, to me, it seems.
You might look in to a local university that has a counseling program. Mine offered therapy sessions for way less than the going rate because clients understood they were working with a trainee. Our room had a two way mirror so our supervisors could watch & take notes and debrief with us before & after each session. Most clients said they actually preferred it because they were getting the benefit of two therapists. As the therapist I felt confident I was offering my best and sharing what I learned as we worked together. I hope you do find a good therapist at a reasonable price!
@@jenajohnson526 wow awesome I will thank you so much for this
I have a BH horror story, I’ve told it around UA-cam before when this topic comes up:
I had been working with my counselor, an older lady, for about 3 weeks by this point and she was chill. Actually somewhat helpful. This one session I brought up some issues I was having with a guy I was seeing (my now boyfriend). When I tell you she WENT OFF on me. “Oh no you really dealing with all that? You’re gonna get yourself messed up. These men will use you and abuse you. My niece was dealing with a man and now he’s driving her car and talking disrespectful to her, no you’re really gonna get yourself messed up, you need to let it go-“ she went on a tirade so long that I could hold the phone away from my ear for a full minute and still hear her going on and on. I eventually hung up on her when she started getting more angry and vitriolic. She never reached out to me or tried to call back or send a message to apologize. Granted I quickly asked to be disconnected from her and block her, but still that was a couple of hours after our session.
The funny thing is - NOTHING I said about this man indicated that I was being used or abused. It was a typical “I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this” scenario. She would always brag about how qualified she was and all of her degrees and certifications… clearly that didn’t mean much.
I’m sure there are some great counselors and therapists on there but I think the betting process leaves much to be desired!!
I agree fully with the whole video.
The only thing i wanted to add was how i relate to the last video about the ED.
Why is it so hard to find an eating disorder specialist (irl even!!!) that wont go "ah nah you re doing good by starving yourself, keep going" just bc by BMI aint low
Like please stop telling me im fat and i need to lose weight and then when i ask for legit advice, the only thing anyone tells me is to eat less. And when i collapse and have to go to the ER im told "why you eating this low" like fuck society for this. Please tell me if you have anyone online who actually specializes on ED medically andpsychologically.
I'm a fat therapist and I assure you there are therapists who know that there are ED at every weight and that weight loss is not a sign of health, nor is it a goal in therapy.
isn't the definition of restrictive-type bulimia literally that the patient isn't eating and is over-exercising but isn't underweight? like that's it. eating disorders are about DISORDERED. EATING. not weight.
I do not know eating disoder specialist,but this youtube channel talks abot eating disarders so maybe you find new usefull information.Chanal name is:What did mia do next
The whole medical field has a lot of fatphobia. About 10 years ago I started rapidly dropping weight. My hair was falling out, I was constantly sick, my immune system was a mess, and overall I thought I was dying. I lost 70 pounds in 5 months then another 30 pounds in 3 months. I was still obese according to the BMI scale. I still remember seeing a doctor to talk about how I needed testing due to my rapid weight loss. First words out of his mouth were, you need to lose some weight. I stood up and said, sir, if you had read why I was here you'd know that I've rapidly lost a lot of weight and need testing to make sure I'm not dying. I walked out and cried. I was so stressed that I started wandering around NYC and saw a random doctor's office and I walked in to ask if I could make an appointment. The doctor actually had just had a cancellation so she saw me that day. She was appalled and actually reported the other doctor for me and scheduled a follow up and some tests for me.
@@bboops23 The fatphobia in the medical field is AWFUL! I've experienced it more often than not (not by every one of my doctors but I've experienced it with quite a few doctors. Just had a bad experience last week with a primary care doctor I was stuck seeing because my regular one wasn't available until January.) and he not only didn't treat me well but he acted disgusted and grossed out by me. He didn't even say anything at the end of our appointment. He just told me what he thought was going on with me (which I think is wrong), said a prescription would be sent over to my pharmacy and no "Bye. Have a nice day!" NOTHING! He just walked out of the room and I had to have a nurse come into the room to tell me the appointment was over. I wasn't given my discharge paperwork either. I am "obese" but recently have been actively losing weight. The last year I've lost about 40 pounds. I also quit drinking alcohol completely almost 2 years ago (January 2023 will make it 2 years) mainly because I had a bad problem with alcohol and also it destroyed my liver/spleen/blood/body. This dude DID NOT look at my medical chart AT ALL (at least not when he was in the room with me. He didn't go into my charts on the computer even once! I had to explain things to him about my variety of medical conditions and he was still acting ignorant af.) and I was just reading his "notes" in my files yesterday and of course on my appearance notes he had to write in "obese." Like NO SH*T SHERLOCK! I know I'm overweight but I'm ACTIVELY LOSING WEIGHT RIGHT NOW and if he would have looked at my medical records/charts he would have known that and wouldn't be so quick to make any judgements. I'm gonna call tomorrow and find out where I can file a complaint against him! He made me feel horrible!
I am almost 100% sure that without the couple therapy on Better Help, my relationship would not exist anymore. Now half a year later we are better and stronger than ever and about to get married. I guess we got lucky with our therapist - this is kudos to her, not to Better Help as a company. Thank you Julie, I wish you could see us now 🥰
Thank you so much for this video. Nearly every podcaster I listen to advertises for Better Help, and I cringe every time. Our therpist gives us a sliding scale. 💗 I loved your previous videos about BH and I hope you don't get this one taken down too. 💕
FOR REAL I’m mad at these podcasters for not doing their due diligence!!
@@meghansullivan6812exactlyyyyyyyy! Do your research if you’re gonna do an ad read!
In my one and only BH session, after describing (both in writing and verbally) my struggles with deep depression, crippling anxiety, and severe inertia preventing me from doing the simplest things; the therapist spent the whole session telling me that I have the same number of hours in the day as everyone else, and I just have to get organized and get things done. I did finish the session, but cancelled right after.
So infuriating😡 i told one of my last therapist that I couldn't bring myself to at least have a shower, eat or go outside because there was no point and I was too depressed to do it and she told me 3 sessions in a row "but you have to do them anyways" yeah really helpful
Why is this infuriating? I don't understand half of this thread. There are a limited number of hours in a day, and organizing your life to be productive is 90% of overcoming a disorder. Do you think other productive people don't have depression? Do you think a therapist will wave a magic wand and you'll be cured?
Chemical imbalances are often for life. Learning how to cope and be productive in spite of feeling very depressed is all some of us can do.
I think people here have very unreasonable expectations for their therapy.
@@LadyVandMrT Some empathy is needed here: being depressed and gathering enough impulse/energy/bravery to decide to seek help and actually going through the process is a hard enough thing to do. And mental health *professionals* should know that. If after all that hard work you are met with clueless people that think that saying "organize your life" is a good response to a depressed patient seeking help, it is absolutely logical to be dissapointed and angry. You wouldn't tell a person with a broken leg to "just grow bone and stop complaining". You give that person a chair and a cast and help them through the whole process. No one is complaining that they are not cured after one session, as you want to make it sound
@@zandeehdz1 well, a person with a broken bone isn't physically able to regrow it. There are ways to combat depression that involve just starting to act, cleaning your life up one tiny piece at a time. I don't think empathy from my end is remotely an issue here.
omg reminds me back when i was 18, after years of depression and an attempt, i was forced to go to a therapist. so, my mom called an office and after explaining all that, the lady just went “has she tried taking a 30 minutes walk every day?” maam… i am not leaving my bed bffr
i didn't go to therapy for a decade bc of trauma and ptsd caused by mental health professionals. it is hard to put yourself out there, but i have been back in therapy for 3 years now with two amazing therapists! it is possible to find the right professional for you.
9 months late, but as someone who is seeing a telehealth therapist on a sliding fee scale, THANK YOU for reminding people that resources are available. My therapist did not advertise his sliding fee scale, so it is always worth asking imo.
How do I find a fun and non-judgmental therapist like you?
I feel like I can't even do therapy right 😕
Exactly how I feel. I see it as the final nail in this coffin
I’m so sorry you’re feeling that way! You’re not doing anything wrong- it is genuinely hard to find a perfect fit therapist. There are links in the description to a variety of therapist search engines that should be a good place to start!
As someone who's had to search for a lot of mental health professionals and dealt with bad and good ones, I definitely agree with Mickey that using a search engine is the best way to find a good fit (rather than a referral)! Researching them on your own will give you an idea of what they're like and what they specialize in, and can help you avoid ones that are unsafe (ie. I needed someone who specialized in trauma, but seeing that a therapist also had interests in LGBTQ+ issues, cultural issues, etc also made me feel so much safer about them). A lot of them will even say on their pages what their rates are and if they have sliding scale payment. From there, you can email or call ones that look promising to get a feel for their personality, and then make an appointment to see how you feel with them.
Personally, I could tell after my first session with my therapist (who I've been seeing for 2+ years now) that she was right for me. And if it doesn't feel right after the first encounter, I would suggest looking for someone else. I really hope you're able to find someone who can help you, you deserve it! 💜
It took me 4 attempts before I found a therapist that I clicked with. Don’t give up! I found mine on psychology today find a therapist
I'm trying someone new out next month. I literally spent several hours looking through therapists covered by my insurance who are local, researching their areas, and looking through reviews. I also chose to make sure to only select a therapist who is listed as pro-LGBT, because I don't want to risk winding up with someone who is not on the same page as I am with the things that are most important to me. I'm cautiously optimistic.
About furniture being arranged to allow the patient to bolt out of the room if they are stressed...I am in the UK under the NHS and because of my severe neurobehavioural history due to global brain damage from birth and severe almost lifelong trauma that just kept on coming and I finally got out of it, I think, I have a history of dissociative rage violence and rapid reactivity. The staff in the room when I'm with not just mental health but even general healthcare set up the room so the staff can get out asap if they need to, and they almost always get an extra nurse in for security reasons. Its something I just saw as a reasonable consequence of my neurobehavioural issues but I just found it interesting that most people get the opposite. In A&E they have security next to the exit of my cubicle.
Disclaimer: none of my rage attacks are intentional, I have remorse afterwards and I always try to remediate anything with formal apologies etc. I live in self imposed self segregation from most of human contact because it wasn't working me doing anything else and the trauma I kept of getting has finally stopped. I have reached a point in my life where I finally feel some peace, but I'm banned from all NHS referrals, rpobably for the best as I have medical PTSD.
My bf signed up for BH last year and was instantly spammed by literally hundreds of spam calls and emails. When I found out he signed up I immediately told him what a scam they are and how bad their reputation is so thankfully he didn’t see one of their therapists but he’s still to this day getting spam from them obviously selling his info. So gross.
Oh my god. I never realized there was a correlation between the all the sudden spam and using BH, but yeah, the same thing happened to me.
My partner (a bi enby Dionysian pagan, with religious trauma from southern baptist racist/homophobic family background) was put with a woman who refused to used pronoun preference, and insisted their depression would fix itself if they went to church. When they started every call defending their choice to not go to a christian church when that isn't their faith, the therapist dropped them.
Meanwhile I'm on a waiting list for the waiting list for a therapist because no one in my or the next county over is taking new patients.
As a psychology student, i genuinely appreciate your approach and versatility towards topics ranging from mental health to calling out corporations that profit from the public . Thank you
I'm grateful I got to watch your original better help video before you had to take it down. Great idea reacting to others' criticisms as a workaround! Your efforts to shine a light on this issue are greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work! I love your channel 😊 hope you have a great day!
Thank you Mickey for this PSA, I'm a therapist too and wow I had no idea that this was going on, it's appauling! Good to be informed and bring these issues to light, because yes if anyone needs therapy, please keep trying until you find a good fit, you're worth it!!
I just got a thera, and the amount of highly personal information I had to share to get there, was so uncomfortable- I can't imagine having to share that with a stranger who is indifferent to my struggle or cruel is just so terrifying. Like if bettərhelp has anywhere near the amount of creepy contractors that uber does, people (especially femmes) are in deep trouble. Like it's one thing to have a weird person handle your food or drive you somewhere, like that's awful, but usually you can be prepared for something to go wrong, I can't imagine the person having detail questionnaires about my psyche and trauma(and address potentially?). I'm so glad I went through GP.
I got a therapist about two months ago, because I was truly ready for improving my life and improving my way of thinking, and it has helped immensely. I cannot imagine what others people must of felt reaching out and doing the first steps to try to change their life for the better, just to be more traumatized, disrespected, and dismissed. Thank you for bringing awareness to this. :,(
Here before Better Help hits it with "cease and desist"
I tried betterhelp for like a week but they put me with a therapist who specialized in roleplay therapy (whatever tf that is) and it was so remarkably awkward. I suggested that I sometimes struggled with connecting to people, and he wanted to role-play a talk with a random person on the streets and I was like??? Brother, that was not the move lmao
I have never dealt with Better Help. However, I have a Therapist horror story.
My first therapist didn't help me at all, and I should have discontinued the sessions a long time ago. I would go to these therapy sessions, and we wouldn't talk about my problems that I was dealing with. Instead, we would argue about politics. At the time, I didn't know what therapy was supposed to be like. At the time, I knew I had PTSD. Some time after leaving this therapist, I discovered that I had C-PTSD, depression, Autism/Asperger's, and ADHD. At the end, my first therapist thought that I was not recovering from PTSD because of my political leanings. That's what made me end the therapy sessions with her. I really don't like getting a new therapist because I have to relived the trauma again.
Like, if you and the therapist don't agree on politics, that shouldn't be part of the discussion. And if that impedes your ability to have good therapy, then that means you personally would need a therapist who agrees with you politically, or is apolitical. And the therapist should not be the one who brings up the politics first. That should be you, if anyone is to bring it up.
@@lsmmoore1
I totally agree with you. I have told my next several therapists that I don't want to talk about politics, and they didn't. I'm so grateful about that. Since I was focused on my problems, I was able to figure more stuff out. My first therapist should have ended the political arguments, and focused on my problems. It still gets me angry, but that was in the past.
@@lsmmoore1 Not appropriate. Doesn't matter what your politics are, imo. I had some right wingers and we didn't talk about. Of course, that was years ago.
@@515aleon
After my first therapist, that's what I thought. No politics. Thank you.
In a similar vein, I had a therapist who would spend most the time either talking about my religion (that I was a bad person, that I didnt need therapy because I'd be going to hell anyways, that she was better than me because she was wealthy and a Christian, etc) or simping for my abusive family (that I deserved the abuse, that I deserved the SA i went through as a child, that they should abuse me even more, gave them tips for physically and mentally abusing me "better"). I've been in therapy since I was 9 and have been through 3 therapists/psychologists now. I'm 22 and terrified to start therapy again
Thank you for covering betterhelp again. It is so frustrating knowing the truth about them and still constantly seeing them advertised at every turn, both by creators and during ad rolls. They suck for so many reasons. Anyone who hasn't seen her previous video about them, please go watch it. Thanks again, you're amazing!!
Also the practical consequence of this is how you have way more trauma that you have to pay for to fix on top of what you already had to. It’s literally costing people so much money in future therapy costs.
As someone who has seen therapists through telehealth, not through BetterHelp thank god but through my insurance, I was kind of nervous to have therapy in my own room and through video chat. But it comforted me to know that my therapist would probably have at least thought about those aspects. The more I hear about BetterHelp the more afraid it makes me.
This feels like the Uber/Lyft ableism BS to me in all the worst ways. “Oh we just provide tech portal. Access, safety or discrimination issues aren’t *our* fault or purview “ ugh
first of all, you're my new favourite youtuber, i've watched a few videos that have popped up on my home page and finally subscribed after this one. second of all, this is the first time i've heard the encouragement to simply leave if something crosses your boundaries and makes you feel unsafe even in person and it just blew my mind. i wish i'd thought of it as something i could do years ago and it makes me feel a lot more confident about trying therapy again sometime, so thank you for that!
Glad I didn’t go through with Better Help! I’ve only heard their ads & im looking for a new therapist since my last therapist (through a different office) would derail my sessions to talk about her beach vacations despite me saying that I needed help for anxiety/depression/loneliness/etc.
Like damn if I wanted to talk about beach vacations, I’d talk to my friends instead of paying $200 a session
I was given 6 therapy sessions on betterhelp from my former employer after experiencing a traumatic event on the job. Unfortunately, it did nothing to help me with the trauma I was going through. I ended up quitting my job after running out of FMLA hours because the trauma and PTSD was too much. I did end up finding a wonderful therapist locally who has helped me immensely over the past 16 months. I'm thankful I kept searching for help and didn't give up after that first bad experience. Thanks for all your videos, Mickey. I talk about this channel in therapy a lot now.
Listen. I know you say that BetterHelp is not industry standard in terms of care, but honestly after 10 years of experiencing nothing better then mediocre, and most times absolutely awful and traumatizing care, I am never going back to any therapy. You sound wonderful as a therapist, but I just wish there were more who were like you. Thank you for at least raising awareness about this so less people end up getting hurt.
Imagine a person who was sexually abused, like myself, goes onto a therapy session, to only have your "therapist" go to the bathroom while your eatching. I would be traumatized for life. That is severly unsafe, and i personally think that should be a criminal charge, if it isnt already.
BetterHelp is the therapy covered by my new insurance, so I’ve tried to make it work. My first therapist was terrible. Our first meeting was retraumitizing and invalidating. She didn’t even show up to the second meeting. So I switched and my second therapist was just… unhelpful? Kind of like talking to a brick wall that just nodded at me and asked me about workplace gossip, which was stressing me out but not the primary reason I was in therapy. Fortunately it seems that the third time is the charm and I found a decent therapist that I connect with and is helping me set goals and take actions. It took a lot of patience to find a decent therapist.
Thank you SO much for explaining C-PTSD. I finally started trauma therapy about 6 months ago and the way she explained C-PTSD and DID (and overlap with previous incorrect dissociative dx’s like DPDR and BPD, and why those are often confused) was SO validating during my testing/diagnostics process. I thought I was very well therapy educated, from a client perspective, but meeting someone with such extensive knowledge, who took so much time with extensive testing, and who is also very kind and safe… just blew my mind. Like oh, I’m not just gonna learn a million more grounding techniques even though I’m never fcking grounded? We’re gonna do… root work, and help all parts of me through this work? Didn’t know that was a thing outside of memoirs 😂
The downside is I’m barely able to afford it, but there are so few options for the super specific things I need in a therapist, and I know lots of other people who very much need and deserve this kind of trauma therapy and it’s simply not accessible, which really sucks.
And yeah, ED therapists can be absolutely wild, lol. It’s really unfortunate. It makes me sad in general how difficult finding GOOD help is. Reaching out is difficult enough, and getting met by someone who doesn’t care, or is entirely uneducated, or is straight up harmful can be the catalyst to so much more pain than would’ve ever happened if good therapists were the norm.
I'm so glad for you! I lot of my experience had been not knowing what cPTSD is or assuming it's just another kind of PTSD.
i tried doing teletherapy once but i got freaked out before i could even schedule a session, however this video is tempting me to have another go! just because seeing the way you talk about therapy in such a positive way makes me way less scared of it
I can't thank you enough for this video. As a counselor in training, I've experienced both sides of this drama. Bad experiences with BH and another similar awful therapy alternative as a client and being marketed to as though they are a viable career path.
(A) thank you for making this video.
(B) I really hope it stays up because bringing awareness to this 💩 is important. Better help also pays creators a 💩 ton for sponsorship.
Dr Youn, who is one of my favourite creators, and has a huge platform recently was sponsored by better help. I don't believe he knew the extent of the damage better help inflicts before accepting the sponsorship as he is generally an extremely kind and empathic individual who I don't believe would have allowed the sponsorship if he had known. Luckily 90% of the comments were kind messages telling Dr Youn what a shady company better help is.
Awareness for this is so important. 💩y therapists are harmful, make mental health struggles worse, and feed ammo to individuals who are completely anti therapy in general.
My experience with better help was they asked me the same questions over and over without responding to any of the messages answering their questions that I put a lot of time into, then charging my card 3 months later which sparred an angry phone call. Good times!
My first therapist started me on in-person appointments and kept those going for the first couple appointments before we switched to online appointments. She ended up not being a good fit and I shouldn't have stayed with her for as long as I did, but it was not the online appointments and she wasn't rude or anything, I just didn't feel heard.
I am now in psychiatric care and being treated with ADHD-meds and antidepressants and I am doing much better. I think psychologists very much have their time and their place and I might eventually approach therapy with a different psychologist at some point in the future to work through some stuff that still messes with my head, but at this point, just medication and self-improvement are doing wonders for me.
this makes me so sad cause i use better help and i love my therapist. i had no idea about any of these things happening and i hope anyone who has had issues doesn't give up on therapy and finds a therapist somewhere (doesn't have to be better help of course) that really helps them cause when you find a good one it's so very helpful
Wearing the sunglasses inside? Weird but okay. Sweatpants? Sure. Peeing in front of your client? WTF, I mean seriously. WTF!
As a recent social worker, I have to say I appreciate you calling out our profession. I am going more into policy and advocacy but my friends I just graduated with are in therapy. I am beyond thankful to our professors for instructing us to think critically and to fight against the system when it is causing our clients harm. Our duty is to our clients and not to some structure or system that no longer works or doesn't benefit everyone. Social work and therapy have the ability to cause great harm and they are in fact professions that have a sketchy past (and present let's be real) it's our job to fix those parts and to help our clients to reach their fullest potential while causing as little harm as possible, ideally none. I wish more people would be critical of their professions.
It's hard to imagine any agency hiring a therapist who doesn't know what CPTSD is. Also the whole using the bathroom in front of the client thing??? WTF?
I swear clients who’ve had bad therapists need a support group for ourselves 🥴 my first one recommended I conceal a firearm on my college campus bc I didn’t feel safe as an LGBT+ student during a string of anti-LGBT attacks nearby, then had the gall to not believe me when I told her about the trauma from a bad car wreck with the justification of “men don’t get scared. Toughen up.” This is def my new fave comfort channel lol
That’s so sad for that girl with cptsd to have a “professional” adult exposing themselves by using the washroom on the phone with her. How triggering that must have been I can’t even imagine I wanna 🤜
I was going to use BetterHelp, but my dad suspected something suss. He insisted that I see a therapist in person, when I has already paid for a.month's worth of sessions in advance. I cancelled my appointment; and after some back and forth between me and Better Help, I got reimbursed. I found my current therapist, who specializes in CPTSD, anxiety, autism, and addiction. After a few years, I started hearing horror stories about Better Help. My dad's instincts were right.
I've had a sleep disorder (which is even listed in the freaking DSM) since childhood. After over a week of back and forth messages, the "shrink" I was assigned hadn't even bothered to Google it and instead questioned its existence (not just for me, but generally).
This makes me so glad that I met my therapist over 10 years ago. It did take a few therapists for me to find the one I felt a good connection with, so I always tell people that when I bring up or suggest therapy.
Them taking down these videos just makes these feel more exclusive xD everyone watch while you can before it's gone! Thank you for sharing
There are good and bad therapists everywhere. I have used this app. There is a reason it is so easy to click a button to just select another therapist. Use this option until you match with one that is actually helpful. I had a bad experience too when I started with the app, but I wanted the mental health help more than I wanted to let the bad therapist get in my way of getting to that help.
Can you do more of these? I feel like the public needs to be more educated on better help
My therapist switched to telehealth when the pandemic started and has been doing it ever since. I’m so glad he’s not like the therapists referenced in these videos. He’s always in his home office, professional, has clearly reviewed my file before speaking with me & never uses the bathroom while we’re talking. Yikes, I couldn’t imagine having to go through that! It’s hard enough finding a therapist that you click with.
a video idea: best practices for therapists treating EDs, and what to look out for as a client to make sure youre getting good treatment or what things to bring up/strategies to bring up with a therapist.
this could also be helpful for ptsd, depression, etc.
I had a horrible experience with an in person therapist. There were a million red flags (refusing my repeated requests to leave religion out of it and condescendingly calling my higher power the “universe” with air quotes and everything, literally crying over my own story which he barely knew, and not letting me get more than 2 sentences in for the entire hour long session), this video made me realize that he literally stood in front of the door instead of sitting in his chair on the other side of the room which may have been part of why I felt so uncomfortable there.
This is literally how they do interrogations and have admitted it.