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Why Psychology Didn’t Work Before (and What’s Different Now)

Why Psychology Didn’t Work Before (and What’s Different Now)

You tried therapy once. Maybe a handful of sessions, maybe just one or two. You showed up, you did what they asked, and then it stopped.

Nothing much changed.

So somewhere along the way, you decided the problem was you. That you were just no good at therapy, or somehow too hard to help. And you haven’t been back since.

Getting help shouldn’t be this hard, or cost this much, or feel like one more thing you couldn’t do right.

And if psychology didn’t work before, the reasons are usually structural. They’re about how the help was set up, and that can be changed. The next few minutes are about how.

Why psychology didn’t work before

There are at least four things to think about, and not one of them has anything to do with who you are as a person.

You probably didn’t get enough therapy to begin with. In 2021, Australians using Medicare’s Better Access program had about 5 sessions each across the whole year, and more than 8 in 10 had 10 or fewer. The research on how much therapy people really need to reliably improve sits much higher, somewhere around 13 to 18 sessions for half of people to get better (that figure’s from overseas, there’s no Australian version of it).

So a first attempt that stopped after two or three sessions was never really a test of anything. It’s like a course of medicine you stopped halfway. You just hadn’t finished it.

Then there’s money. Most sessions come with a gap to pay (the part of the fee you cover yourself), and the Medicare rebate only covers 10 sessions a year. So the cost climbs quietly, week after week, until for many it just isn’t doable. If you stopped because you couldn’t keep paying, that’s the cost adding up, the way it does for a lot of people. There are free and low-cost options now, and we’ll get to those below.

The third reason is more common than it should be. No one may have been checking whether it was working. For years the biggest Medicare psychology program had no routine way to measure whether people were actually improving, and psychologists often can’t tell who’s slipping backwards when nothing is being tracked. So when it wasn’t helping, no one noticed, and you stopped going.

And sometimes the therapy was aimed at the wrong thing. If there was an undiagnosed ADHD or autistic brain underneath the anxiety or the low mood, a lot of standard advice asked the struggling part of your brain to fix itself. Plan your week. Break it into steps.

That advice relies on the part of the brain that helps you plan and get started. It runs on two brain chemicals, dopamine and noradrenaline, which power focus and the motivation to get going. In an ADHD brain those chemicals work differently, so the strategies don’t stick, and it feels like you failed them.

Australia’s national ADHD guidelines are blunt about it: therapy for ADHD has to be built specifically for ADHD. One client spent three years being treated for anxiety before anyone thought to ask about ADHD. Not everyone who struggles has ADHD, and plenty of people get told they have it when they don’t. The real cause, whatever it was, may never have been named.

This last one isn’t from a study, but it’s real. If you sat across from someone who didn’t understand your family or your culture, or you spent the hour translating your own feelings into a second language and losing half of them along the way, that’s a real barrier too. It means the service wasn’t built around people like you.

Sometimes, honestly, it’s just the therapist. A bad match is a real reason therapy stalls, and trying someone new is one of the more sensible things you can do. We’ve written about how to choose a psychologist separately.

How to give therapy a fair second go

These are practical steps you can take before you start again, so therapy has a fair chance this time.

  1. Treat the first try as information. Go back over it. Which part actually didn’t fit: the approach, the person, the pace, the timing? That tells you what to change next time. Take the client who spent every session with her first psychologist on breathing techniques, when what she really needed was help with looking after her father full-time, which had worn her out. A different psychologist gave her a plan aimed at the real problem.
  2. Plan for enough sessions. Before you book, decide this isn’t a two-session experiment. Ten subsidised Medicare sessions a year is a fair start, and if you need more, the free programs or NDIS can keep it going. Deciding that up front is what stops you giving up on therapy again at session three.
  3. Ask them to measure it. Good psychologists have proper tools for this: short questionnaires that track your symptoms and progress over time, and show whether the plan is working. Many don’t use them. Ask yours to. You can say it in one line: “Can we track whether this is working, so we’d both know if it isn’t?” It won’t fix therapy on its own (the research says the effect is small), but it turns “this isn’t working” from a private worry you carry alone into something you can both see early and change.
  4. Ask whether the real problem was ever properly assessed. If what you’re dealing with has been there for as long as you can remember, rather than something that arrived after one hard year, it’s worth asking whether the right thing was ever looked at. ADHD, autism, trauma. Naming the real cause can change the whole plan. There’s more on what an assessment actually involves here.
  5. Sort out the money first. Money ends a lot of second attempts too, so settle it before you start rather than halfway through. If you live in the South Western Sydney region, some of our psychology support is free, funded by the local Primary Health Network. Give us a call and we’ll explain what you can get. Star4Kids is there for children, and You in Mind for anyone aged 13 or older. On the NDIS, most people pay nothing themselves. Through Medicare, a Mental Health Treatment Plan from your GP brings the cost down to a smaller gap you pay yourself. And you can come privately, with no referral, if you’d rather not wait.

What the second time actually gives you

So what changes? This time it runs long enough to work. Someone’s keeping track of your progress with you, so if progress stops, it’s spotted in week three instead of month six. The plan fits the actual problem. And the cost is sorted, so you’re not forced to stop the week it finally starts to help.

The people who go back and get somewhere the second time usually just had a better set-up: enough sessions to finish, and a plan aimed at the right thing.

The other option is another few years believing the problem was you. You’ve spent enough time doing that.

Where to start

If there’s one move to make first, call us. We’ll tell you what you’re eligible for, including the free and NDIS-funded support that doesn’t need a GP referral. If you’re after Medicare’s subsidised sessions, or our free Star4Kids program for children, those start with a Mental Health Treatment Plan from your GP, so book a longer visit and ask about one.

If years ago you decided therapy wasn’t for you, and you’ve wondered since whether that was really the full story, that wondering is worth trusting. It usually means part of you hasn’t given up. Starting again can be that small, and when you’re ready, you can book your first session here.

References

Harvard style, accessed 11 August 2026.