About three years of weekly sessions with two different therapists who cost me a lot lol. I don't regret it but I've been sitting with this feeling that what I actually got out of it was a much more sophisticated way of describing why I am the way I am without changing the way I am. I can trace every pattern back to its origin now. I know exactly which childhood trauma is responsible for which adult behavior. I can explain myself in a way that makes people nod and say that makes so much sense and then go home and do the same thing I've always done because understanding something and changing it are two completely different skills that therapy only teaches one of.
I have some money saved up and I've thought about going back because maybe I just had the wrong therapists or the wrong approach but I also think there's something worth saying about how therapy as a cultural institution has gotten very good at producing people who are articulate about their trauma and less good at producing people who behave differently because of that articulation. The insight comes easy after enough sessions. The actual behavioral change is apparently on you and nobody really foregrounds that going in.
The thing that made me finally say this out loud is watching people in my life who have been in therapy for years talk about their patterns with complete clarity and then repeat them in real time without seeming to notice the gap and the reason I see that now is because I've done the same thing. I'm probably doing it now in some way lol. I'm not saying therapy doesn't work or that people shouldn't go or try, not at all. What I'm saying is that the version of it that gets sold and the version of it that gets delivered are different enough that more people should notice.