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Disillusioned with psychotherapy?
- Steph Turner
- Dec 7, 2024
- 12 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2024
Are you disillusioned with psychotherapy? Tired of trying to change for others who rarely change for you?
Consider the emerging alternative of need-response. It’s a new professional service in development to address needs the law cannot effectively address.
Based on anankelogy, the new social science for understanding our needs, it applies and prioritizes responses to our inflexible needs. One caring act at a time.
Which do you prefer?
Stick with established institutions and attempts to reform them, then hope for the best.
OR
Join efforts to co-create a fresh alternative for accountably responding to your needs.
When asking ChatGPT for a “List of pain points of those disillusioned with psychotherapy,” it offered these 20 pain points. See how the new professional service of need-response answers each one.
Click on the listed item to go there instantly. Return to this list by clicking on any header below in green text.
After each of these items below, see how need-response can be far, far better. Click the right arrow to expand the text.
After each point below, see how need-response can be far, far better. This is where you can join the effort. You are welcomed to respond to this vision, add to it, critique it, and help shape this alternative. Join us in resolving more needs to improve our overall wellness, which the law itself can never do.
According to ChatGPT, “Here are some common pain points experienced by people who feel disillusioned with psychotherapy.”
“Many feel that therapy is prohibitively expensive, with sessions and ongoing treatment placing a financial burden on individuals who need help.”
Need-response doesn’t expect you to pay to solve a problem created largely by others.
Need-response starts as a free service. A client initiates a wellness initiative or a wellness campaign with a free trial.
Then they invest as little as $5 per week to get started. Just enough to ensure they have some skin in the game, per se.
They invite others they know to support their improvement efforts. They attract followers, supporters and patrons interested in their noble cause.
The more the improvement they seek and find when speaking truth to power in our pioneering engaging way, the more support they likely will inspire. There are more opportunity costs than any financial burden.
“A frequent frustration is the gradual pace of progress in therapy, leading some clients to feel that improvement is too slow or that they aren’t getting tangible results.”
Need-response incentivizes prompt progress to measurably improve wellness.
Need-response puts the client in the driver seat of creating the necessary change. Not only internal change, but external change as well.
Other’s needed adjustments to respond better to the client’s needs could also drag on at a frustrating slow pace. But that frustration can be shared by the growing support team, who can lean on those failing to adjust in a timely manner.
Or inform them that their “services are no longer required” and shall be removed from having any further negative impact upon the client. Tangible results of improved outcomes can occur in the process, even if the ultimate goal itself remains elusive.
“Some clients are disappointed by a perceived focus on talking rather than actionable solutions or coping strategies to address specific issues.”
Need-response incentivizes prompt responsiveness to each other's needs.
Need-response recognizes internal change through talking serves only as a starting point. This internal focus lays a foundation for pursuing actionable steps addressing external impacts on the client’s wellbeing.
The focus of any therapy is less on changing one’s own thinking and more on changing the dynamics of the client’s relationships with others. Instead of treating individuals like psychotherapy, need-response treats relationships.
Mostly those of significant influence or “power” over their life. Instead of seeking coping strategies, need-response aims to resolve the inflexible needs causing pain. The process encourages all involved to identify and resolve their inflexible needs in ways least imposing on others.
The process enables all to effectively address each other’s specific issues.
“Concerns that therapy can create a dependency on the therapist, with clients feeling unable to cope or make decisions independently.”
Need-response cultivates each other’s independence from professional expertise.
Need-responders encourage their client’s personal agency by nurturing their emerging independence from professional help. Need-responders start out in a coaching role, then gradually fall back as a prompter.
They shift any reliance upon their services to the growing support team. Clients the get a taste of their own “power” over their situations by being peer supported to speak their truth to power.
As clients learn how to incentivize the powerful to respond more effectively to their needs, in a mutually beneficial framework, they naturally become less dependent on the professional need-responder.
“Difficulty finding a therapist whose approach or personality aligns with the client’s needs or expectations, often leading to frustration or discomfort.”
Need-response shifts focus on externalities, which can make it easier to build rapport.
Need-response builds an expanding social support team and growing social network. With this expanding universe of social capital, the client tends to be less constrained by a need-responder’s particular style.
It can be much easier to build therapeutic rapport when the emphasis is less about potentially embarrassing personal problems and more about being fortified to address social problems. If a client still cannot gel with a need-responder, both are encouraged to shop around to find the best match for each other.
“Some people feel that therapy overly focuses on past experiences or trauma, even if they want more future-oriented, problem-solving strategies.”
Need-response is holistic; addressing both past and present, yourself and others.
Need-response may start with a client’s past experiences for helpful context. But the need-responsive process quickly dives into the here and now.
Instead of endlessly talking about how to personally adjust to problems like past trauma, the client learns what they can do to confront—in a proactive way—any continuing sources or triggers of such trauma.
Solutions emerge not merely from within but between people getting to know each other’s vulnerable needs on a much more personable level. Mutual need-resolving provides a problem-solving strategy hardly considered in psychotherapy.
“Concerns about feeling judged or stigmatized by therapists, especially if clients feel misunderstood or if therapists inadvertently impose biases.”
Need-response shifts judgment and stigma onto imposing powerholders.
Need-response shifts the onus onto powerholders who pressure clients against their will. Stigma shifts away from the vulnerable individual and onto the identified powerholder. All sides get ample opportunity to convey their affected needs.
The emerging team provides clients with multiple perspectives to check biases and misconceptions. Indeed, need-response can be much more therapeutic with this group dynamic. Not merely as a kind of group therapy, but actively engaging each other’s impacted needs, and addressing any biases in the process.
“Anxiety about the limits of confidentiality, which can make clients hesitant to share sensitive information, especially if they worry about mandated reporting.”
Need-response focuses on wellness without exposing any shameful coping behaviors.
Need-response focuses on what others can do for the client, which doesn’t bring up as much sensitive information. Need-responders pledge to keep confidential any personal matter, such as any embarrassing addiction.
When addressing client’s addictions, the process uses the proxy of financial management or weight gain/loss, or both. Need-responders never need to know the actual addiction.
If the process helps the client overcome their private porn addiction, for example, it can become evident in their healthier handling of money, spending habits, eating and exercise.
Along the way, clients discover others struggling with their own coping mechanisms and share their wellness goals to improve their own spending habits and physical wellbeing.
“Clients may feel frustrated if therapy lacks clear objectives or measurable progress, leaving them unsure if therapy is beneficial or effective.”
Need-response identifies unmet needs and sets a path for how to best resolve them.
Need-response exists to improve wellness by resolving inflexible needs. Need-responders help their clients identify which needs to focus upon for resolution, namely those hindered by people in positions of power.
As the wellness effort grows, other needs can be identified for resolution—both the client’s and the affected needs of those involved. The process guides the client to set a noble cause: something that can improve the lives of others as well as their own.
For example, an improved path toward exonerating the wrongly convicted innocent that others can apply to their similar cases. Measurable progress toward these goals remains key.
The process starts with a baseline of the client’s level of anxiety and depression, and gaged later to check for any improvement. Measurable wellness outcomes grounds the process.
“Some clients feel that their concerns or emotions are minimized or misunderstood by therapists, leading to a sense of being dismissed or invalidated.”
Need-response relies on perspectives and affirmations of supportive group members.
Need-response exists as a group project, with complementary perspectives. The client’s team members can help keep the professional need-responder accountable to the client’s state goals, concerns and emotions.
Need-response uniquely appreciates emotions as how the body compels the body to attend to needs vital for functioning, for wellness. The process keeps need-responders accountable to client’s measurably improved wellness outcomes, like lowered anxiety and reduction of an addiction.
Need-responders do not get fully paid if dismissing or invalidating a client’s input.
“Frustration with therapists who seem too focused on labels or diagnoses, rather than treating the person holistically and as an individual.”
Need-response shifts focus from psychiatric disorders to social barriers on wellness.
Need-response focuses on how a client’s needs get impacted by power dynamics, which challenges the medical model of diagnoses of psychiatry. Instead of diagnoses or labels looking inward, need-response utilizes “defunctions” and “refunctions” that looks holistically inwardly and outwardly, to appreciate the full context of the client’s reported problem.
The process appreciates the client as an individual with a unique set of defunctions and remediating refunctions for restoring wellness unique to their situation. Need-response appreciates how wellness is psychosocial, so the process does not stray into neglecting the individual nor overemphasizing individuality in socially potent circumstances.
“Negative or even harmful experiences, such as feeling judged or encountering a dismissive therapist, can lead to distrust of the entire therapeutic process.”
Need-response holds need-responders accountable with engaging assessments.
Need-response rates the quality of each need-responder’s service. Clients evaluate the need-responder’s effectiveness in particular situations, helping future clients find the best match.
Profiles of need-responders let you see which deliver the best quality service for your specific circumstances. For example, how many of their clients were significantly better off from their support.
Need-response earns its trust over standard psychotherapy by complementing internal changes with external changes needlessly provoking stress. While it true that the client chooses how to respond to stressors, need-response reduces and potentially removes such pointless stressors to improve overall wellness.
“Clients may feel disillusioned when a particular therapeutic approach (e.g., CBT, psychoanalysis) doesn’t work for them, but therapists insist on sticking to it.”
Need-response complements inward improvement with external improvements.
Need-response does not rely exclusively on personal therapy, as most problems stem (at least in part) from outside of oneself. Need-response recognizes how your wellness is psychosocial.
Of course, psychotherapy fails to work if personal change is not even the issue. Seeking social changes through politics and the law also fails to accountably improve wellness.
The target of need-responsive change—or therapy—is the dynamics of relationships. Namely, power relations. The more responsive a powerful person to the client’s vulnerable needs, the greater the wellness level of that individual.
Once these powerful persons recognize they can turn negative impacts into more positive ones, need-response incentivizes them by affirming their demonstrated legitimacy. When all internal changing proves insufficient, need-response steps in to nurture and incentivize the external changes for improving each other’s wellbeing.
“Many people feel discouraged by the challenge of finding a therapist they connect with, as well as the time, money, and energy it requires.”
Need-response gives you a free taste of its value before you commit yourself.
Need-response fills a key service gap left open by psychotherapy, and that is someone who can address their challenges holistically. Seeking a need-responder is much like finding a therapist to fit your needs.
You find one equipped to serve your goal, your specialized situation, and who already demonstrates a track record of producing results for clients. A simpler way to find such a match is to first become a ‘follower’ supporting other clients’ wellness cause.
You then can get to know each need-responder up close. Your precious time, money and energy could best focused on first helping others reach their wellness goals. Then using that to orient you to the many options available in need-response.
“Unlike medication, therapy can take a long time to show results, which can feel frustrating for those in acute distress who want quicker relief.”
Need-response stretches your ability to endure pain so you can remove its cause.
Need-response may not be right for those requiring prompt relief from acute distress. But it can instantly reduce stress in most situations. As soon as others join your team, you no longer must bear the stress alone.
As soon as you’re supported to engage powerful stressors, like an angry boss or demanding landlord, you start to experience less stress. Along the way, you learn to stretch your capacity to endure life’s many natural discomforts.
You find more meaning in the anguish you endure on your path toward resolving needs. You appreciate prompt relief in some areas while eventually removing cause for pain by meaningfully removing the threats causing you pain.
“Some clients feel overwhelmed by the responsibility placed on them for their own healing, without feeling they have the tools or guidance needed to succeed.”
Need-response complements self-healing with an emotionally invested support team.
Need-response spreads responsibility for your healing with those contributing to your lack of wellness. Without compromising your personal agency, you complement those areas you do have adequate control by incentivizing those in power to address those areas you lack control.
You respond better to their needs to inspire them to respond better to yours. You address both internal and external impacts to wellness in ways psychotherapy never can.
In sharp contrast to psychotherapy’s primary focus on your internal thought processes and behaviors, neglecting social pressures limiting your wellness options, need-response appreciates how wellness is psychosocial. This itself can guide you to succeed in ways like never before.
“Therapy can bring up painful emotions or memories, which may feel destabilizing and even counterproductive to some clients.”
Need-response melts the intense pain of emotions and memories by resolving needs.
Need-response links every emotion, no matter how disconcerting, to some affected need. Need-responders only invite you to share your feelings to get to the needs such feelings exist to convey.
Then unpack both internal and external barriers to resolving such needs. Along the way, you learn to expand your capacity to work through painful emotions. You find that you can endure the discomfort of processing traumatizing memories like never before.
Because now you see a reachable path to redressing the external sources of such pain. You receive broad support to remove the cause of your pain on your path to greater wellness.
“Some people feel that therapy can feel transactional or impersonal, where the therapeutic relationship is seen as one-sided and limited to the scheduled hour.”
Need-response emphasizes continual engagement of each other’s affected needs.
Need-response goes from an interpersonal dynamic between the professional need-responder and the client to an expanding social network of different levels of personal support. Some of these can feel more transactional than emotionally reciprocal.
Others can provide necessary supports outside of scheduled sessions. Need-responders help the client to negotiate their terms for each of these support relations.
The process incentivizes mutual responsiveness to each other’s needs, and a lack of sufficient responsiveness that feels coldly transactional can suggest to either improve responsiveness by greater engagement or to let that relationship go.
To drop what no longer serves. Then make room for what is more responsive to each other’s needs, to improve overall wellness.
“Clients may feel unsure when therapy should end or may feel pressured to continue without clear milestones, creating a sense of dependency or ambiguity.”
Need-response sets a schedule of progressing stages with a clear end point.
Need-response follows a set program of an individually-led wellness initiative or team-led wellness campaign. Similar to treatment planning in psychotherapy, the need-responder spells out a four- or five-stage process with a clear end point in mind.
Each stage reaches a milestone that’s agreed upon early. Each stage gages the key wellness level of the client, to help determine if the process actually reduces anxiety, depression and pain coping habits.
The first stage segues into the next by shifting dependency from the need-responder to the support team. The need-responder then serves more as a prompter than a director of the process.
As the program draws to a scheduled conclusion, the need-responder can invite engaged clients to optionally serve as an experienced supporter for another’s wellness campaign.
“A common pain point is the feeling that support is only available during sessions, leaving clients to cope alone between appointments.”
Need-response nurtures peer support beyond the time with the need-responder.
Need-response features a support team whose members can be called upon in between scheduled sessions. The client learns who among these they rely upon the most for certain functions.
They may find one of their support team members provides the best feedback to crucial decisions. Another may serve as the best active listener. Yet another may offer the most appropriate legal or technical advice.
You might be lucky enough to include a support team member who completed the program as a previous client, and can now offer you the kind of informed support they wished they had at the start.
Does this speak to you? Could you benefit from what need-response potentially offers?
Thank you for your interest. Follow developments by listening to the Need-Response podcast each Wednesday, starting 30 April 2025.
Let’s build this amazing service that can more effectively serve your overlooked needs.
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