My Experience with Henrik Bischoff on BetterHelp Part 1

Before I start, I would like to remind you that this is my personal subjective opinion. If you had a different experience, good for you.

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again was to leave a review on my experience with therapy. Unlike physical locations, where you can leave a review on google maps, BetterHelp doesn’t offer a public way to review your therapists.

I originally wanted to make this a single review, but I think it might be easier for me to split this into multiple parts, since I found out there was a decent amount I wanted to say. I’d like to say right away that this experience was very negative. Especially in my last session with him, I found his behavior extremely unprofessional. Before that, I had found his methodology different from what I was used to, though not really any more helpful than before.

Now, I guess I would like to back up a bit and talk about my experience in therapy in general.

I’ve been in and out of therapy for at least ten years by now. I first started in highschool for help :with my social anxiety. My social anxiety has gotten a lot better since then (thanks you, Big Pharma), but later I return to therapy due to depression.

Depression may have started around Covid time, but after coming to Germany it got a lot worse. I had no friends in Germany, the place I lived was far away and made daily travel a hassel, and the darkness in Germany during the winter just made everything so sad. So I was in a dark place (literally) at the time. That was my first year in Germany.

My second year in Germany was slightly better in that I intereacted with more people. I joined our Fachschaft in attempt to intereact more. Howver, I also met someone I never expected to meet in Germany: a bully. She was the most rude person I had ever met. And she was a regular member of the Fachschaft. She basically turned the Fachschaft into a gossip section, and ensured nobody changed that status. Ironically, this worked to her benefit. She made people leave, and she volunteered herself for taking over their responsibilities. Unfortunatly, she was an incredibly irresponsible and unreliable person. So one day, after a semester of enduring her talking, I decided to take a stand in the name of the Fachschaft and call her out. And I didn’t call her out rudely, I just asked her to please be on topic. But from that day on, she decided it was her job to make my life harder. She constantly tried to be discouraging and rude. She made inapprpriate comments towards me, and just tried to be as uncooporative as possible. She tried to say her friend also found me annoying/didn’t like me. She tried to belittle me for my lack of eye contact (Many years of social anxiety has given me some habits that are hard to change), and just acted so rude towards me. There was so much damage she did to me and the Fachschaft, but I think I will save that for another post.

Needless to say, this was not in a happy stage of my life.

My mother had advised me to get a therapist immediately in Germany. But I didn’t because it is so annoying getting a therapist in Germany. They make call them for some reason, because they hate complicated technology such as email. If you do send them an email, do not expect a prompt response. After you call them, they tell you they are full, and you have to find someone else.

So after almost two years in Germany, I finally got my first therapist. I don’t have any strong opinions on my first therapist. It was not great, I will say, but I don’t have particularly high standards for therapy. It was better than nothing, and there was always the chance that I could learn something. I think the biggest reason though, was I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time finding another therapist. Betterhelp basically finds you one in a few days, and you can switch whenever you want.

Eventually, she said she couldn’t take me anymore because she gave birth to her baby. So I was more or less forced to find an alternative.

Also during this time, I had been writing my thesis. But depression had really been taking a toll on me. The normal amount of time it takes to write a thesis and complete the oral examination was 6 months. I had been working on the thesis for a year and a half. It was taking so long, my residency had expired twice already. I was seriously considering just dropping out because I didn’t think I could take it anymore.

That’s when I decided on BetterHelp. I’ve heard youtubers talk about it. After looking on reddit, they all say it is terrible and you should stay far far away from it. But I hate reddit, so to prove them wrong, I decided to try it.

They make you take a survey to see what kind of therapist would be a match. I just wanted to try something different. They had some interesting questions, one of which that stood out was “Do you want someone that is tells you the truth even when it’s hard to hear or someone who will be indirect” or something like that. I selected “someone who tells the truth”. And I sure got this kind of person.

I remember reading his bio reading “I think therapy may be unconfortable at times”, and it definitly was unconfortable.

Next time, I’ll talk about my first impressions and how the initial therapy sessions went.