I did therapy for around a year.  Six moths with a Ph.D and another six months with a MFCC.  The PH.D was charging a lot, but I really thought she  would help me.  I had a horrid case of anxiety, and panic attacks that came on during a holiday, and would go away.<p>I believed in Therapy, and really wanted it to work.  It didn&#x27;t work in the slightest.  It actually made things worse.  I didn&#x27;t learn any fancy tools.  I didn&#x27;t find any out anything about myself, that I didn&#x27;t already know.<p>I will say this though, if I didn&#x27;t go through therapy; I would always wonder if I could have changed my destiny.  In my case, I needed medication.<p>I found no difference between the PhD, and the MFCC.  I did talk to a psychiatrist about my unsuccess in therapy, he said I didn&#x27;t do it long enough.  I will never know if he was right?<p>Because I was feeling so bad, for so long, and those Therapy sessions were expensive, I was completely honest in therapy.  I  devulged  my innermost secrets, thoughts, warts, everything.  In my case, it just didn&#x27;t help my condition.<p>Drugs, time, and exercise helped my condition.  I&#x27;m still not the person I used to be before the breakdown though.  (I was told not to use word breakdown, but my brain just decided to breakdown.  If I said anything different, I would be lying.)<p>I don&#x27;t want to discourage anyone from seeking the help of a Therapist, but if you are a well adjusted individual, happy, going to school, or working, and don&#x27;t have any real complaints, but one day your brain decides to bust a gasket--I would try to see a Psychiatrist.  But even then a lot of them want you to go through therapy before they medicate you.<p>And if you decide to go through the medication route, realize you might be on the drugs a long time?  Especially the benzodiazepines.  I&#x27;m not sure if what I know now about addiction, I would have ever used them, but then again they are better than self medicating with booze?<p>It&#x27;s a shame  we still know so little about mental illness, or even how the brain works.  I really thought we would have made huge strides in treating the mentally ill by now, but they haven&#x27;t.