"The therapeutic industry is platonic prostitution"
If any therapists are reading this, feel free to skip this post or at least know that I do not intend to offend you or your profession.
I happened upon that phrase while scrolling somewhere. I thought that it is a harsh thing to say and while it is not something I entirely agree with, I also do not entirely disagree with it. It was real provocative too, so it really got me thinking.
As someone that has done hundreds of hours of therapy with little to show for it, I feel like it is an understandable thing to say because on a deep fundamental level, I truly get it.
If you are talking to a friend or loved one (who is not being paid to talk to you) about mental health, if you bring up some personal issue, raise a life problem, anything deeper than surface level interpersonal stuff, there is a high likelihood that the conversation will steer towards a version of this question: have you tried therapy?
That is - probably unintentionally and unbeknownst to them - the signal to me that the conversation is now over. They do not have the mental capacity to talk about it at the moment, maybe they feel they are out of their depth with such a heavy subject matter, or perhaps they do not have the life experience to relate to it. Maybe all of the above. It is all fair enough. So they bring up their best bet for a solution that in their mind might help. It gets very old but I remind myself to appreciate their good faith and good intentions.
The answer to that question is that yes I have indeed tried therapy. I have tried so much therapy, in fact, that whole teams of therapists have concluded that therapy cannot help me. I would be remiss if I was not open about that bias, and it is probably the reason I have found the incentive to spend so many hours writing this post in the first place.
The way we behave and interact with each other is unrecognizable compared to just one or two centuries ago before industrialization. It used to be that whatever troubles you were dealing with, you probably had a community around you. Even if you did not talk about what troubled you directly, the people were there to make you feel safe. You didn't have to talk about diagnostic criteria and therapeutic methods and psychiatric theories and mindfulness and self-help resources... you had people to talk to. The simple fact that people were around you all day every day meant that you got on with it and coped with things. You had a neighborhood or village or whatever in which friends and family lived and worked closely together every day. People to talk to all day. That is therapeutic in itself.
Nowadays, work-life balance is such an enforced thing that connections seem to be in rigid boxes. Not that people are not friends with their coworkers, but it is my impression that it is kind of rare to truly befriend a coworker. So you have a box that is called work, and you have a box that is called life. And you do not much mix them together - you certainly do not talk about heavy life things at work. Big no-no, even though it is the former that takes up a majority of most people's time awake during the week. Not to go on a tangent about capitalism, but the way our entire system is built up around individualism is not something that can be ignored here either. Through urbanization, we seem to have lost our sense of one another. I of course cannot speak to other societies than my own, but I do see these sentiments from people that live in other countries of the western world too.
I do not think that it is controversial to conclude that individualism can be extremely harmful. The we-society of the past pretty quickly transformed into our current me-society. So much so that "self-help" is a huge industry. A lot of people are getting by just fine of course, but for those of us who are not fitting into boxes, this societal obsession with individualism only worsens our states of mind. Off to school, off to university, off to work, start a family, get married, build a house, mow the lawn, rinse and repeat for the next generation. That is what the majority is doing and they have little to no problems doing it. Some of them think it is so normal and easy, even, that it becomes repetitive so they find themselves calling it the hamster wheel and start writing articles about how boring it is to be married and have children and own property.
But if you do not fit into those boxes, are not capable of these things, do not have a supportive environment, well good luck to you, there will be no networking, no meaningful connections, there will be major hardship ahead if you have not somehow managed to figure it all out on your own. Due to being even slightly socially inept, behind your peers in any way, or if you chose a different path in life, chances are that you are sooner or later going to run into this so-called platonic prostitution of the therapeutic industry.
On your own, family might be there but they are not truly supportive, might have a friend or two but they are not really close friends that can be relied upon for important stuff. Try to talk to them about things and they end up distancing themselves because it is either not that kind of relationship or they do not actually care or you are simply too much to handle for them. Therapy becomes the answer when you bring up the tough subjects and the things that happened as a child, be it bullying or emotional neglect or some kind of violence against you that the adults should have been there to protect you from or at least have seen the signs afterwards but never did. You are far enough outside of what is considered the normal problems, or you are already far enough into a long spiral of mental health issues, or far enough into the depths of psychiatric diagnoses that in order for someone to talk to you, to help you, they have to be paid to do it. How humiliating. But you are told therapy is the only way to help you.
Unfortunately all you can get is one session every two weeks. And the therapist does not even have time for all your problems despite being paid a hefty hourly rate by you or by the system. Come back next time and hope they remember their notes because otherwise you will spend half of their precious scheduled time reiterating your issues and reminding your therapist of your history. But you tell yourself that it is fair enough that they forgot some minor details like the death of your loved one. They are paid to be there, but they are only human after all, you tell yourself it is not fair to expect them to perfectly remember everything. Never mind all the other problems that arose in the time since the previous meeting, but there is not enough time to talk about that. But this is therapy, this will help and things will get better now!
I would usually spend the rest of the day after a therapy session thinking about what I forgot to bring up. The next day I would try to write a few things down, but once the next session comes around, those things are already out-dated and they do not seem to be relevant anymore. It does not matter anyway because there might have been a new cut on my arm because of things brought up in therapy that there was not enough time to process, and I did not care to hide it, and so now the entire new session is spent treating this tiny symptom of illness instead of the years of trauma that is the reason for it. That is how it has to be because the therapist has rules to follow, a system designed in such a way that something like self-harm must immediately be brought front and center. Forget your traumas for now. Forget your life circumstances. Let us do some breathing exercises! Let us do some grounding techniques! We should engage in some mindfulness!
Anyone would probably become mentally unwell and fulfill diagnostic criteria for something or other if their living situation became bad enough. Top of your class, job interviews, get romantically involved and move in to a great apartment together, get accepted to university, probably not going to be a whole lot of symptoms there when things are going great and breezing by. Lose it all though and you are suddenly a textbook example of multiple mental illnesses. Have you tried therapy?
But it will not cure loneliness, unemployment, financial ruin, bad environments, abusive homes. Probably not a lot of therapists would claim that it does, but those unfamiliar certainly do tout it as the cure-all, because they simply do not know better, because individualism is taught as the way of life from the moment you exit the womb. And it is so harmful. The things that therapy claims to solve is to stand on your own two feet and be self-sufficient, self-reliant, stable, need minimal help from the outside. It has even gone so far that a concept of co-dependency has been invented to be a criteria for diagnoses because god forbid you are actually a human being who relies on others like the pack animals we are. Even if you do not rely on others, if you truly desire to do it all on your own, it takes months and months and years and years to get there because of the time between each appointment you can get. It is not even in any way a holistic approach. It is one piece in a huge puzzle, the rest of which you probably cannot even find professional help with.
Let us say that the solutions to all sorts of problems in life are contained in a big toolbox. All those tools will be needed in one way or another, at one point in time or another, throughout life. Therapists are, for some reason, said to know the entire toolbox. Again, they do not claim this themselves. It is society that vaguely thinks so. But the therapist really only knows how to use a small set of the tools needed to repair you. Hopefully the therapist you find is competent, but you might get unlucky and not even know it before it is too late and damage has been done by the wrong treatment being used. They specialize in specific methods but end up applying the wrong one to you. Laymen put them on a pedestal as a mythical force that can solve all manner of serious and complex issues with just a few words of wisdom here and there, or they have hidden gems of mind blowing advice.
But as I have come to see it, the cure to most things that therapists try to solve is simply the formation of a bond. Yet when they undergo their training, it is specifically instilled in them that they should not ever form a bond with their clients because they should not get emotionally invested in them on account of it would cause burn-out to take on so much suffering from people every day. So they create a wall between themselves and the client, a distance they proclaim to be healthy for themselves but what most people would think was worryingly cold if it were any other meetings between two humans. But because one part is paying the other, it is fine, and it is also not a real bond with another person anyway because money was exchanged and services provided. It is robotic.
A bond and a community is what would solve the problems a lot of people who are in therapy have. But we are on average way too individualistic for that. Therapy would not exist to the extent it does if it wasn't so difficult to find solid friends and relationships in modern society. If we all had a tight knit circle that we could lean on, there would not be anywhere near the current demand for therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers and mentors and advisors and teachers and whatever other mental health professionals I could list.
The key is that the client-therapist relationship is inherently transactional. And so it can never be the nurturing environment that it needs to be to get better and to improve and to become a functioning individual. Even terms like emotional labour have been invented only to become a commodity through which an entire industry is built. People selling their time to help the less fortunate because they sure as hell will not do it to such an extent for free. Maybe some of them also volunteer their services, but I have a hunch that they are few and far between. They are good people for trying to help, but at the same time, they really are only even talking to me because they are getting paid to. That simple fact ruins any and all feeling of sincerity right away.
Why is a therapy-like session not something the average person simply just does for their next of kin? A favour to be returned when the time comes. Some people require more, some people require less, and that ought to be fine. But instead we have this whole industry of people that can sell themselves as the solution to oftentimes unsolvable problems. And those that never even tried it will also help sell it because their social media regurgitates fancy terms that sound smart on their feed, making it sound like a miracle.
But because of our individualistic way of life, or because what we struggle with is outside the norm, or because we did not grow up in a supportive environment, or we experienced things when we were very young, or we do not fit into exact boxes... Whatever it is. It is now entirely socially acceptable for everyone and anyone to say that they cannot deal with this, it is too much, you should get professional help. You do not need a friend, you need therapy.
I am not a therapist. I am not your therapist. I am just a stranger on this pseudo anonymous website of interesting people.
It sounds like you have had some difficulties with therapy or therapists, and you haven't been helped. It sounds like you feel unheard. That deeply deeply sucks.
I don't disagree with much of what you say about society and community. We have become increasingly atomized. Support networks thin as individualism ascends. Everything around us is biased towards isolation. We are a social species, so this is stressful for us, in fundamental ways.
Nonetheless, I sometimes think it's helpful to hear the reminder that our conclusions are contingent - our perspective is incomplete and biased and informed by our past experiences interpreted today. It is not universal, and cannot be. With that in mind, there are a few things I think it might be worth hearing some other perspectives on. These are mine (or near enough for discussion), and they are similarly contingent, but hearing them may bring another's context to the phenomena you are discussing.
You have had difficulties in therapy, sure, and maybe it's not the right approach for you. That doesn't mean it is "prostitution" or a replacement for community. It just means you didn't respond to that treatment. Would you call a doctor a quack because one medicine didn't work? I will say not every therapist half-forgets who you are.
You feel that friends recommending therapy ends a conversation. Have you asked them? I'm sure you feel strongly - your passion and earnestness are clear - but feelings are not objective. If you feel you can't trust them to answer honestly (perhaps you fear they would feel pressured to answer in a comforting way), maybe the challenge is to cultivate those friendships differently, so you can trust your friends to respond.
You call "emotional labor" a "commodity," but perhaps a reframing is appropriately. Maybe, instead of focusing on the transactional nature, you could focus on it being a resource that people do not have an inexhaustible supply of. Someone may care about you and want to share more, but maybe they are also struggling and need to "put on their own mask before helping others"?
Talk therapy seems to me to be about giving a venue for you to work on your own thought processes in a guided/chaperoned manner. It works when you are able to make the connections yourself. In that way, lack of emotional engagement can help the therapist take a step back and look at the problems a person has in their life and help them connect the dots. Is it the only way or the way it has to be? Of course not. But it's the way it seems to be. Maybe that's just not what you need right now?
It doesn't seem to me that therapy is intended to help you stand up alone. No matter who is in your community, you have to be within yourself all the time, and you have to tolerate that person. So, rather than focusing on standing alone, maybe it is about being able to be with yourself, alone or with others?
Regardless of how you read this, thank you for sharing. I hope my words can help you understand what others get from it, and may soften some of your frustrations about it all.
One medicine? No. But there is a point somewhere beyond that where I kind of do, and did. I had a psychologist and then a psychiatrist when I was about 17-21, and had various medications prescribed to me for social anxiety, depression and panic disorder. Psychiatry at that time especially, looking back on it, I consider it to be have been quack science. It was just a rotating platter of medications, some of which at least they were paid by pharmaceutical companies to shovel at people, and they never did anything except have side effects, in some cases significant ones.
Nowadays I'm told they have genetic tests and such so that they can tell what you're supposedly more likely to have success with, too fucking late for me at this point but I guess if it's true then it may not be quack science anymore.
And I say this as someone who had a deep interest in the study of psychology and sociology at some points in my life in my younger years, but I didn't and don't find the study of psychology to be the problem, only the practice of it. Practicing psychotherapy or psychiatry at that point, and maybe still today for all I know, is like reading a children's book about dogs and then going into practice as a veterinarian. Guess if you're one of the few who has read that children's book up to that point, you're the leading dog expert so that means you're qualified to take people's money and operate on their dogs.
I don’t think that idea is wrong per se, it’s just giving too much special attention to prostitution. It’s like saying Starbucks is coffee prostitution.
For good and for bad. How many people through human history have gotten dogshit advice from their friends and family? How many gay people have stayed in the closet because they know the “advice” from their community is going to be “we’re going to throw rocks at you until you die”? How many people have been told to just man up? How many women were ignored, or literally lobotomized? Women with post-partum depression just told to deal with it, or that they’re freaks for being depressed in what should be the happiest time in their life. On and on. It’s overly romanticizing the past to say that communities served the role of therapists and always had your back.
In the end, therapy exists alongside friends and family. Laymen aren’t trained, and sometimes you signal to your friend you want to kill yourself and they’re just like “tbh you right, ngl”.
Secondly, some people have toxic family and/or toxic or nonexistent friends. Is what it is, it takes two to tango and no one is obligated to be your friend. Some people will have no friends and it is no one’s fault, just how the dice rolls. Therapy is a backstop there.
Your comment reflects exactly how I feel about this post. I'm not saying it's entirely wrong (and maybe we overcorrected some), but as a person straddling multiple minorities, I'm very leery of looking at "the way things were" with rose coloured glasses. It is possible to find friends you can talk to AND go to therapy, it just takes effort to find the right people (both friends and therapists). Also therapists are also impartial in ways family and friends aren't able to be, even when they have the best of intentions.
Also please let's not use "prostitution" to ascribe a particular negative connotation to something. Sex workers deserve respect, not derision.
Cosign your point here about the use of the term prostitution in this way! Thanks for making the point
So I apologize for not being as thorough as you were, however as someone who's a big advocate of therapy despite my difficulties finding therapists that know how to help me, I wanted to respond to some of the condensed points you make with counterpoints. If I'm off base on any of these let me know.
First of all as an overall counterpoint, the premise that therapy is simply talking and that that's something you can do with friends instead of a therapist is inherently flawed. There's a reason that people say not to use your friends, family, or partners as therapists, and to not consider your therapist a friend.
The thing is all humans are flawed, and therapists aren't all perfect, but at least they've had training and strict ethical boundaries in place that prevent harmful advice being given and how they should respond to harmful ideations of their patients. They are also trained to not let their own personal opinions get in the way. Your friends and family do not have those same boundaries or constraints. They might not have the tools to identify harmful advice, or their biases can subconsciously taint the advice they give you where it prioritizes things like their own comfort over your wellbeing.
I'm not saying don't ever try to talk to your friends and family about your problems, just that there's a huge difference between therapy and talking to your friends and family and they aren't the same things or have the same purpose.
Even in close-knit societies, people did not always just rely on friends and family for processing personal difficulties or problems. Most societies still had specific people who filled that role but called them elders, priests, shamans, monks, spiritual advisors, mentors, village leaders, or other respected figures.
People went to them because not every problem could be solved by casual community support. Some problems involved grief, shame, family conflict, trauma, fear, moral confusion, or major life decisions. Those were often taken to someone seen as wise, neutral, experienced, or spiritually authoritative.
That is not identical to modern therapy, but it is close enough to matter as analogous to how therapy is supposed to be used in our society. The role of “person outside your immediate circle who listens, guides, interprets, and helps you process difficult things” is not some modern invention. It has existed in different forms across societies for a very long time.
And sure, our society is more transactional, but that's because the people that general serve the rolls above need a place to live and be able to afford food.
In the non-transactional societies, the elders, priests, and shamans were often cared for by the community.
Point being, people need to eat and have a place to live, so therapists can't just offer that role freely in this society.
But I blame capitalism for that, not the therapists themselves.
Also, for me at least personally, I use therapy as a means to help me see issues from different angles, and to help solve problems. I don't consider my therapist a friend at all and I don't value their personal opinions of me or what I talk about (keyword being personal opinions, not professional opinions), they are a person who for 1 hour I can have their full attention and focus, who can listen and provide feedback and counterpoints to my internal thoughts and feelings.
Trust me, I'm a person who considers themselves extremely self-aware and who has a major issue intellectualizing his emotions, which is what has made finding therapists difficult, however I am consistently surprised that there are still new ways of looking at things that can end up being beneficial to me and my perspective on my life and trauma.
Ok, sorry I have to actually stop there, but I did want to post. I might add to this later, but that's as much as I currently have time to respond to.
Wow so many of the replies are long.
I will say that I agree with you. I haven’t done as much therapy as you have, but I loathe the culture that popped up in the last 10 years surrounding it. That it’s somehow become this universal, “you have to do it” thing as if it were the same as eating healthy or working out.
And I’ve met people with clear mental health issues that use therapy and, from their point of view, get a lot out of it. But when I probe, it’s usually the therapist going “oh that’s great. Just be safe” to whatever self-destructive behavior the patient is showing.
Something I also learned, as someone that didn’t want that normal life of just get a job, settle down and start a family. That it is extremely rare to meet people who wanted to do anything other than that. Who don’t feel suffocated, or don’t feel like they’re dying on the inside doing a job they don’t actually care about. Mostly because they don’t care about anything. I’ve met people that want kids because it gives them something to do.
I found that my depression is caused by the gap of where I wanted to be in life and where I actually am. And no amount of therapy is going to fix that. Nor is getting a better job, or getting married, or having kids. If anything the latter two would make me feel worse. But it’s difficult to have those conversations with others who have no frame of reference for what I’m feeling. Which just increases my sense of isolation.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to respond in a decent fashion. You understand me exactly.
Just sharing some anecdotes that
Is also my experience of the advice I've heard people have gotten from therapists (including myself.) Sometimes it really wasn't that bad, the "self-destructive" behavior wasn't inherently causing harm, it was just a symptom of a larger problem. But its difficult for me to find people in my life who feel like they've had any meaningful growth or progress through therapy alone.
I don't say this to totally discredit therapy or anything, I just think like any industry its probably got plenty of underqualified and overcommitted people who don't have the ability to actually help as many people as they might think they do.
I met someone once that told their therapist that they were doing heroin and that was the response they got.
Another one was a woman telling her therapist she was having unprotected sex with a lot of men and they also got that response, along with a “I know you were miserable before and this seems like it’s making you happier.”
I relate to that feeling of being a square peg in a round hole societally. I have found though that in a reasonable sized city there are generally little niches where the square pegs hang out together and finding those niches has been incredibly important for me. I seem to find them in the arts and adjacent spaces but that's just me, I'm sure there are others.
I have, though, lived in a couple of places that were just too small to harbour any sizeable number of misfits and my god that is hard graft mentally.
I live in a smaller city but it’s the biggest city in the state. Theres a little bit of an art scene here, with me it’s movies so there’s a little bit of that here. But, that kind of gets depressing because of how many times I’ve talked to people who are just shit out of luck and at the end of their ropes.
And to OP’s point, I think a lot of the alternative art crowd would be the first ones to tell you to go to therapy and be hyper critical if you step away from a certain dogma.
It is my experience both personally as a mental health professional with a degree in counseling and my peers, that counselors/therapists absolutely do use those same skills, for free, all the time, without stepping into the fully professional therapeutic role, with people in their lives.
I disagree rather firmly with your perceptions of the field, the intentions of the practitioners and the idea that things were better in the past.
I understand this is coming from a place of your own person al pain and I'm not offended. But I think your bias, though acknowledged, is deeply influencing your feelings here. Others have said more better, but I just disagree and hope others don't get discouraged from seeking out professional support when needed.
pausing for a bit with a tonal indicator emote, tapping leg with a pen in abstract space
I'm curious on your opinions of the concept of professional but not friendly & vice-versa here.
Has a lot to do with the definition of bias & variance implicit here with a sample space of one (1).
I'm intentionally not participating in this thread further as OP finds it upsetting and because my response will seem biased or insincere to those with that perception of the field. Apologies that this impacts my responding to you but it's not personal.
Smoontjes, I read your post. Just putting that out there that you're heard. I have other thoughts and comments etc that I'll hold back on because honestly that doesn't matter in this context; if we went fishing / chilling for a week on an island cabin somewhere, maybe after board games and late night movie, we'd turn off the devices and get into the weeds together. I do feel like you've tried to be fair to everybody in your post, but you also wanted to be clear that whatever this (gestures at wider society) is, it's unhealthy for us. To borrow the analogy from an excellent comic essay on how others respond poorly to mental health issues, hyperbole and a half,
And these days, instead of even helping you look for them or offer help, they just tell you have you looked for them at your Therapist's, end conversation. To be fair, "have you tried praying / talking to the Pastor" has existed since time immemorial alongside "have you tried shutting up and slave harder before the slave owner comes over to whip us". But there might have been a brief golden time when people stopped just buying you a new Bible, when they actually listened because they also felt stuck and alone and understand no one else can know about this secret you just shared with them.
Thanks for reading and hearing me. I thought that I was being fair too so thanks for seeing that. And the dead fish analogy is great, thanks for sharing that as well.
too bad not easy to get a new
fish metaphorwithout trepanation or something!... actually grew up with koi pond & I think like, one with a bunch of dead fish sort of tricky to change the water & such without giving the rest shock decent metaphor now that I think of it.
but hard not to miss em.
(I'll delete this message if/when I notice an edit, but I think your link is broken?)Oh thanks for catching that kacey, I made a mistake with the link :) also shocking to see that was posted in 2013. I always hoped that Allie would be okay. Her and Bo Burnham.
Hyperbole and a half at the internet archive.
Reading that feels like clearly you're missing something about yourself, but I can't say I know what it is.
Despite that I can't say I disagree with many things you say.
I have successfully used therapy in the past more than once, and I think it's true that:
All of those apply even more if you don't know what exactly you want from therapy. However, not remembering important issues in your life and feeling deeply impersonal, despite the neccessity of some professional distancing, do not happen with a good therapist.
I think it's also trivally true that long-term stable tight-knit groups of people can help a lot with all kinds wellbeing, we're probably evolutionally programmed to need them, and that industrialization and urbanization made those much less common.
I think it's still possible to build and have something like that, it's just not easy or automatic. "Have you tried therapy?" may be common, but it's certainly not something every friend is going to tell you when talking about your problems. I think it may be hard to build a group like that when you're already going into it full of your own trouble. It's different when you're already part of a functional group and you talk about it gradually, vs. when you're in deep shit and need to try to find new friends who can handle it.
That said, although I empathize with you in some ways, clearly what you say either isn't the whole picture or doesn't generalize, because there are many people who are reasonably content without living in traditional tight-knit communities and while living objectivelly difficult lives. Without understating the importance of social enviromnent, I think there's clear evidence that contentment may not be too dependent on external things.
There are two reasons why mindfulness became popular. The first is somewhat shallow similarly to therapy, it's where the term "McMindfulness" comes from and can be discarded, but the second is that it truly is a useful tool when wielded right, because it allows you to gradually uncover and understand your subconscious thought processes better and even slowly rewire them. People often stop at the fact that it can give you some grounding, calm you down and lessen the intensity of emotions, but you can use it for much more than that.
Of course, it still has similar issues to therapy - it's much easier to do it and it works better when you're not already in deep shit and when you kind of know what you want out of it.
But I do believe that some sort of metacognition, learning to examine and change how your brain functions every day, by default, is necessary to get out of a mentally difficult long term situation.
I've seen people who had issues that seemed broadly similar in magnitude and complexity to yours (it is of course not exactly possible to judge that over text), who had success with ketamine assisted psychotherapy. Psychedelics in general seem to function as a shortcut for rewiring your brain into less "difficult" pathways, when used properly in a controlled environment, and ketamine especially seems to be relatively low-risk in terms of difficult experiences compared to say psilocibin. Also more accessible.
That is the one thought I have in terms of potential help. Despite everything that you say I don't think the solution must be external.
You are right that society is sick and our independence is leading people to become mentally ill and spiritually tortured. The focus on self-reliance and emotional detachment is making people sick, and the fact that people seem unwilling to help or create bonds that would help you is a major problem.
But I have to say that your distaste with therapy is misguided. Frankly it seems like your problem is simply that you’ve had bad therapists who have either been guiding you the wrong way or who have simply been unable or unwilling to meet you where you were. Probably all of these things. Therapists aren’t great at communicating this, but when you notice that therapy isn’t helping, it’s really up to you to speak up and find a solution - either let them know or fire them and find someone who can actually help you. There are many therapists out there who simply will not have the ability to empathize with you enough to be able to guide you to where you need to go. That’s just how things are.
One thing that particularly stood out to me is the idea that therapists are only able to see you once every two weeks, and that seems particularly odd to me. The last time I went to a therapist one of the things we did in our intake was to determine how often I should come, and after that they actually adjusted the frequency several times. It changed from once every two weeks to once a week, and at a point we considered if I needed to go more than once a week. Towards the end we spaced things out again as I was better able to adapt to the situation I was dealing with. There are some forms of talk therapies which do not do well with frequency changes, but the most common forms do.
With that being said I have to say that while society is sick, that doesn’t mean everyone around you is sick in the head. It sounds to me that you need good friends. Even if society around you is broken, making friends is a micro-society in and of itself. By making friends you start to fix society itself. And no, therapy can’t do much to help you with finding and making good friendships.
You're romanticizing the old times a bit. As far as I know, people didn't use to talk about sentiments or personal issues with others because these weren't perceived as issues, at least in public. Before psychoanalysis, depressed people were just “melancholic”. Plus, relationships in pre-industrialization weren't so deep as they are today, not even marriage, which was more a transaction than a feelings affair.
Therapy doesn't exist to “cure” anything. It's a set of tools to help you figure out things unclear or even unknown to yourself that affects you. The therapist has the knowledge and the tools to help you in this journey, which is valuable. Eventually, you can overcome some trauma, recognize some bad behavior and/or patterns on you or people around you, and develop better tools to handle stressful and hard situations. These are very useful.
If you think you're ill — and that's a plausible guess, given modern society —, maybe you could see a psychiatrist as well. I was very resistant to taking pills for depression, but they improved my well-being so much. YMMV, obviously.
Also, if your therapists were so neglecting that they didn't remember what you discussed in previous sessions, try another one. Like in any other profession, there are good and bad therapists, and even a good one couldn't be a good match for you.
If ever a citation was needed.
This is massively off topic but I suspect the root of sentiments like the above is a lie of capitalism and marketing, which seeks to convince us that if you just buy this thing you'll be happier. A necessary cognitive side effect is that we discount the capacity of past peoples to have achieved intimacy, joy or happiness, because they didn't have cars or electricity or anything else we've been sold as imperative. Thus concludes this morning's potentially misguided hot take.
For most people and most of human history, peasants rarely had money and didn’t have banks or insurance. In hard times they relied on family and the charity of their neighbors.
So yeah, relationships were vital because without them, if you got in trouble, you were dead. In good times, banqueting your neighbors was a way to build those relationships.
This mode of existence was forced on them. Being able to travel by yourself, move to a new city, and make your own friends is only feasible due to the various innovations we take for granted in modern society. (Particularly for women.)
But none of those suggest that relationships were more shallow in the past. Quite the opposite in fact.
I assume so, but I don’t think historians know all that much about what they talked about.
I strongly suspect most people would end up with very deep relationships with others as an outcome of that situation.
We know that modern humans haven't changed significantly in an evolutionary sense for what, at least on the timescale of civilisations, is a very long time. The needs and desires that you and those around you possess are strongly informed by the context you exist in but at a biological level they are the same as those of an a peasant 5,000 years ago or a tribesperson 25,000 years ago. If you have the capacity to take joy from time spent with someone you care for, so did your ancestors, and mine. If you need some of that joy in order to feel that life is worth living, so did peoples past.
As far as being forced upon them - sure, but only in the sense that one's external context is always imposed without consent. I'm not sure what a world where that's not the case would look like. You are likely forced to many things alone that your ancestors would pity you for, as you pity their lack of independence.
I am honestly a bit stumped by the idea that making your own friends is something that's only possible in modern society. What leads you to suggest this?
Traveling by yourself is a recent development, but I think you could also make a good argument that the desire to do so is a recent development as well. To me, it's very interesting to consider what has engendered that desire.
I am very wary of thinking that positions modern civilisation as any kind of utopia. That doesn't mean we should give in to nostalgia and start moaning on Facebook about how everything was better when we made stuff here and other gripes ad-nauseum, but it is clear that the modern world doesn't have everything right, by a long margin. We have had more sustainable ways of living in operation for most of our time on the planet. Were they happier times? I don't know, but I'd need good evidence to believe that they were less happy.
I assume people had friends, but you don’t choose your neighbors. I’m wary of speculating any further about their relationships.
We do know that the material existence of peasants was absolutely awful. Half their children died.
Most people today still take their friends from those already around them, doesn't mean they're not chosen. I feel you did speculate, through saying that being able to make your own friends is a modern innovation. It's just that that's a negative speculation, which is somehow ok, which is the attitude to the past I was taking a dig at in the first place.
I know they mourned, we have accounts from the Victorian era and before, and if I want to be sure I can go for a walk through my local cemetery and look at the money thrown at headstones for kids in the 1800's.
I'm not suggesting the past is a utopia any more than the present is, born not that long ago I'd have been one of those dead children, on account of the appendix that ruptured when I was seven. But to believe that the people that lived 200 or 2,000 years ago had a diminished capacity for connection or capacity for happiness, when they are as human as we are, is I think both wrong and very convenient for those that want to sell us shit.
It seems like you’re reading that the wrong way. I didn’t intend to imply that anyone didn’t have the capacity for happiness or that friendships didn’t happen. However, I do think being able to leave the community where you were raised often has positive benefits. Anyone who comes from a conservative or religious community that didn’t suit them should appreciate this.
I've no argument with that and resemble it somewhat.
I think that need has probably been tackled many different ways over the millennia.
Both things can be true. I agree with your take :)
I apologise that I didn't read all of this. With that in mind, you may take this comment with a grain of salt.
The human mind is capable of conceiving impossible things, such as a circle with four corners, or something wonderfully positive, or utterly negative. The parts of this post that I read seem to represent the latter. It's a normal phenomenon but experiencing it feels awful, obviously. And it's probably no consolation that feelings (and the seemingly logical thoughts that arise from those feelings) are not facts.
Some comments, nevertheless.
We are all members of dysfunctional communities, groups, nations and organisations. Being socially connected does not shield us, it may even expose us more to particular types of dysfunction. Every family dynamic has unhealed wounds - some deeper than others but no one is immune to this. Every friendship and every romantic relationship is imperfect. So is every therapist, one way or another.
We have the freedom, but also the responsibility, to interact in this imperfect environment with some sort of deliberation. You are free to take therapy or not, to change to another therapist or not, to make friends with someone or not, to spend time with family members or not, to choose what to share with whom, etc. What you can't have, ever, is a perfect connection that meets all of your needs and makes you happy. No one can. Even if it looks like to you that some people have it, in reality they do not.
Only when you are a baby (and if you're also lucky) will you have your needs extensively catered to by someone who isn't getting paid to do so. As an adult, you can choose to pay for professional grade listening or not pay and not get the service. You can choose to be happy with the unprofessional listening your friends are able to give, or be disappointed that they aren't professionals.
Personally, I've paid one psychiatrist and four therapists (excluding people directly related to diagnosing ADHD). I ditched the psychiatrist because he tried to cajole me to taking SSRI medication for what could potentially be tackled without, in a way that I didn't appreciate. I was disappointed in the first therapist because she wasn't on my level in terms of cognitive processing ability but I decided to focus on the positives of that connection and ended up finding it very helpful. Later when I needed more therapy, she had a long queue and I found another one. I was disappointed in him for several different reasons and only went for as long as it took me to find a replacement. I was disappointed in her because she was sort of like the first one but worse. There were positive elements to that connection though and I decided to explore them. This became probably my most significant therapeutic healing experience, but it's only clear to me in hindsight.
I'm now with my fourth therapist whom I chose due to his ability to take in and process complex work related information, and I call him a career coach even though he is a licensed therapist because I don't spend as much time processing emotions as I've done before. I just need someone to verbally describe my career challenges and situations to who will retain some of the information and sometimes give insightful comments or ask a good question, without getting stuff wrong all the time.
All these people have their shortcomings because they are people. I have benefited extensively from three out of five of these connections, even if the process was fundamentally transactional. When I see a really great film, is my enjoyment of it without value because it's not a documentary and therefore not real? I suppose I could choose to see it that way, but that choice would make my life much duller than it needs to be.
If you've developed too grave allergies towards the idea of transactionality, maybe try Heidi Priebe's channel on YouTube for life advice? With an ad blocker, you can bring the transactional element close to zero. The channel is really good IMO and manages to avoid the usual pitfalls of negativity/ragebait/whathaveyou.
Peace!
As usual, those not trapped by the externalities of a toxic system aren't very sympathetic. I'm sorry to see your lucid analysis be sandbagged as though you have no concept of the excuses for the therapeutic complex. I have a lot I could say, but can't get into it all right now, might come by later and respond more deeply.
I find this response even more oddly presumptuous than the original post. There's a common thread of treating personal experience as a universal truth. Others have had different experiences; that doesn't mean they don't struggle, don't feel trapped, or don't 'get it.'
No, actually, it does mean that they don't get it. And it is truth to me. Which is why I made this post but I deeply regret it on account of a lot of the responses I got. About half of the people replying in this thread did not in any way understand what I said. Instead they went on self-righteous or at least selfish tangents about crap like I somehow derided sex workers (when??? where???) or that well since therapy worked for them I am therefore wrong about it and I didn't put in enough effort - despite having clearly said in my post that I have done hundreds of hours of therapy. I have fucking tried. Instead I am met with now yet another personal attack being called presumptuous. Why??? For sharing my personal journey and decades-in-the-making experiences and opinions therapy? I haven't been able to figure out how the hell to respond to everyone about it but here you go: I have been extremely hurt how either tone-deaf or willfully misunderstanding a lot of commenters are here. Putting everything I said aside to take things out of context, go off being defensive about daring to criticize the thing that worked for them, and therefore pushing back on whatever the hell I somehow upset them with. Meanwhile I am also having conflicting feelings of being grateful that people took the time to read my write-up in the first place, so how should I even dare to feel offended by responses. There's been 3 comments that actually understood what I said. Another handful engaged meaningfully with my writing but also pushed back which you know what that's fair enough. The rest, about half the comment section, only push back and criticize and it in a sense feels like victim blaming me for not being either good enough at English, good enough at getting my points across, but it doesn't even matter because the damage is already done, my app is reset, my clean streak is gone, all I can feel is regret that I ever dared open my mouth about something so central to my experience as a human. But most of what I got was just being misunderstood, a trigger as old as time for me, people just don't get me, I don't fit in, it's completely meaningless to even try. And I fucking try and try and try to no avail. I spent all night writing this post, I put so much time and energy and thought into it, making it grammatically correct, it's genuinely just the story of my life to do my absolute utmost best and STILL it's NEVER good enough. I even had a disclaimer at the very top of my post because I knew it was controversial, I did not mean to ever offend anyone yet it seems people did take offense and didn't care that I was posting in good faith from what I myself thought was a rational point of view about hardship for years and years and nothing works and ffs just fuck this
I hear you.
There are a lot of threads worth pulling at in this response, and I won't be able to get to all of them. But I hear a lot of anguish and pain coming through your response, and I want you to know I recognize it and in no way intend to belittle it.
In my response I didn't intend to discount or criticize your original post or condescend. I apologize that it functioned that way; clearly that is my error. I read the whole of your post and found it very well written and interesting. Thank you for typing it up and contributing it, it's given me a lot to chew on.
I have a lot of feelings about it, but none of them - seriously ZERO - are that you or your writing are not good enough. In your jumping to that I feel that I'm seeing a window into some of your personal anguish. You are good enough, and this post was well written. I think I speak for more than just myself in declaring that that is not in question here and you are not being personally judged in that nature. I am not intending to victim blame, criticize your English (you seem like a native speaker to me), or doubt the effort that has gone into your engagement.
Among the contents of the post, like with any longform written material, there are things that resonate with me and things I disagree with. I 100% agree with your disdain for an atomized, individualistic, and altogether 'separated' culture; on the other hand I agree with others that you're romanticizing a past that never existed in the sense that you long for it (I also do this all the time...). Your difficulties with finding a therapist, compressing what you need into appointments that were too short and too expensive, and finding the bond to be lacking really resonates with a lot of the therapy experiences I've had. On the other hand I've also had a couple of therapists in the past 20 years who did care, who did find a way to form a bond across the personal/professional divide, and ultimately changed my life in a way that no friend or family member could have. One of them I largely credit with saving me from suicide.
As I read the whole piece, through the parts that resonated with me and the parts that didn't, I did pick up on, as I referred to, a common thread of viewing ones own personal views and experiences as the one 'real' or 'true' appraisal of society / existence, as opposed to the folks who are trapped in their atomized life where they pay for platonic prostitution or whatnot. I didn't initially respond because some of the other responses already covered it much better than I could have, but in seeing this additional response that doubled down on that element I felt compelled to chime in.
I freely admit that's due to my own sensitivities of having my mental health struggles minimized. I spent years and years of my life in and out of psychiatric hospitals, on dozens of meds, with a whole cast of therapists, wanting to kill myself off and on the whole time. I'm surprised (and glad) that I never did. It left a lot of scars. One of them is a sensitivity to presumptions about what I've been through.
I'm sure that was not their intention, but it felt, to me, that the implication of that post was that anyone who didn't agree fully with your (and their) perspective are simply not 'trapped by the externalities' of our 'toxic system,' and are, ‘as usual,’ making excuses for the 'therapeutic complex.' That's a ton of charged terms, loaded with presumptions, that hit squarely on my sensitivity. That's a me issue. Like you I am a human being with emotions and sensitivities.
This gets to another thing that strikes me about your response here, though - I hear you taking all of the other folks' thoughts and feedback very, very personally. I disagreed with wervenyt's response and thus wrote up my own but I don't feel that they attacked me, hate me, or that it's personal in any way like that. Yet it's clear here from what you've written that you're really hurting, on a very personal level, from some of the responses you've received.
First of all, I apologize I have caused hurt and anguish. It is certainly not my intention.
Second, can you help me understand how I, and others, can respond to what you write, including disagreeing with some of your viewpoints, without making it personal or making you feel like you're not good enough?
To reiterate again: you are good enough, I'm glad you wrote this up and shared it with us, and I hope you stay with us in the Tildes community. Also your English is better than many native speakers!
I would like to apologize for my part in your feeling attacked, as the tone you read my comment in is not what I meant, but I see why it stung, and I'm sorry for that. The toxicity I was referring to goes deeper than therapy, and has nothing to do with whether or not psychiatric practices are helpful, so I hold nothing but gladness when people are helped through those structures, even if those of us on the margins are stranded by some of the same features.
I promise I was not presuming the shape of your or anyone else's pain, and had no intentions of dismissal. My only intent was to frame the conflict as something our OP might be able to situate apart from a comment on themselves, and any blame or ire was directed at the institutional elements, not anyone who couldn't be here today without the assistance of those institutions or the compassionate people who are trying their best to help in a terrible situation.
I appreciate your thoughtful response here - but also, not to worry. I didn't (and don't) feel attacked at all. I didn't take your post personally in any way, I just wanted to share a counterpoint to (my read of) your comment.
In times like these one wishes there was a better way to express tone and intent via text on the internet. I'm guessing there is a lot of overlap in the ire we feel the institutional elements you're referring to.
Be well and I hope you have a great weekend - or as great as is reasonably possible, given the world as it is.
I’m having a hard time coming up with a response to this in a way that I'm confident it won't come across as dismissive of your experience, even though that is not my intent. That is kind of my own "no matter how hard I try I'm afraid of not being understood" reflection here.
I had written a response to your post earlier, and I'm unsure if that was one that you considered dismissive, but frankly it wasn't intended that way, it is just my communication style. One of the hallmarks of having autism and ADHD is missing social ques and being too blunt, direct, or analytically trying to solve problems or help sharpen opinions or perspectives, all of which is something I'm guilty of when I let my guard down and miss the part of being sensitive of someone's emotions. It's also something I've had to consider about others when I perceive them as dismissive or malicious of my experience or something I've said, I could be misunderstanding them the same way I've been misunderstood by others.
With that being said I believe you when you say you have been hurt, misunderstood, and exhausted by years of trying to explain yourself. I also understand why the responses you received would feel especially painful if being misunderstood is already a deep trigger for you.
That said, I do think there is a distinction worth making between being attacked and receiving criticism. Someone saying your post came across as presumptuous is criticism. It may feel personal, and it may hurt, but that does not automatically make it a personal attack. Feeling attacked is a real emotional experience, but it is not always the same thing as someone actually attacking you.
I think part of the tension here is that your post came from a very personal place, but it also made broader claims about therapy, therapists, society, individualism, emotional labor, and the way people respond to suffering. Once something moves from “this has been my experience” into “this is what therapy is” or “this is what society is doing,” people are going to respond not only to your pain, but also to the conclusions you drew from it.
I also think people can be at very different stages in their mental health journey, and that affects what they are able to hear, both on your side and theirs.
Sometimes people responding to you may be speaking from realizations they had to work through in their own lives. If those realizations do not line up with where you are right now, they may sound like invalidation, even if that is not what they mean. And the reverse can also be true: some people may be reacting from places where they have not yet had the experience needed to understand what you are trying to say.
A good example is mindset. If someone is fully convinced that happiness is determined by outside circumstances, then being told that mindset matters can sound dismissive, like someone is saying “just think positive” or “your suffering is your fault.”
But that is not the actual point.
Outside circumstances obviously matter. Poverty, loneliness, trauma, abuse, unemployment, housing, health, and support systems all affect happiness. I do not think anyone should pretend those things are irrelevant.
But mindset still shapes how a person interprets those circumstances. It affects what options they can see, whether they notice opportunities, how they handle rejection, how much agency they believe they have, and whether they experience pain as temporary or as proof that nothing will ever change.
So two people can be talking about the same issue from totally different levels of experience. One person may be trying to describe a realization that took years to reach, while the other person hears it as invalidation because that realization does not feel true, useful, or accessible to them yet.
I also think it is worth being careful with the assumption that people who disagree with you are being defensive because you criticized something that worked for them. Some people probably were defensive. Some probably misunderstood you. But some may have understood your point and still disagreed with the way you framed it.
That is not necessarily tone-deafness. Sometimes it is just disagreement.
There is also a useful skill here that I have had to learn myself: taking what applies and disregarding what does not without taking it personally. I have ADHD and autism, and I know what it is like to be misunderstood even when I feel like I am being as direct and clear as possible. People still interpret things through their own assumptions, experiences, defensiveness, trauma, and biases. It is incredibly frustrating. I have compared it before to being stuck in an MMO where most people feel like NPCs, and finding someone who actually understands you feels rare.
So I get the exhaustion of feeling like, “I tried as hard as I possibly could to explain this, and people still did not get it.”
That does not mean you failed. It means the subject is emotionally loaded, and your post touched a lot of people’s own experiences with therapy, loneliness, support, and survival.
And with that, I’ll end with a quote that I have had to internalize through my own mental health journey, because it has helped me when I have gotten into a similar headspace:
Your intent here is clearly good, but I don't think this lands like you want it to. Sometimes when someone is hurting it's better to just say "that really sucks."
What is hard for me personally is that if I were the one opening up about something complicated and someone only responded with “that really sucks,” or something akin to that, I would probably experience that as dismissive or impersonal. To me, something like that can feel like a conversation-ender rather than real engagement, or something someone says with low effort disinterest.
Which is probably why it's not a coincidence that that was basically the point I was making: people, including myself, approach these conversations from very different perspectives, experiences, wounds, and levels of self-awareness. What feels like useful nuance to one person can feel dismissive to another.
And without a person directly and clearly communicating "This is what I need right now, this is what I do not need" without any room for interpretation, it can be difficult to nail the right approach.
I'd say that strategy works best in person. It can work in text but it relies on people hearing you the way you're intending which is not guaranteed
I hear you; if that would seem dismissive to you, by all means say something else. My broader point is that when someone, clearly very upset, is talking about how they feel like nobody is actually listening to them or understanding their pain, it's not the best time to lecture (which again, was clearly well-intended) on the differences between being attacked and receiving criticism.
I hear and feel your anguish, to the extent that 25 years ago I would have agreed with a good proportion of it. You have my empathy. I would suggest that most people responding here have understood you, but they also either disagree with you or at least have a different perspective. That doesn't mean you have failed to express yourself, haven't presented a valid point of view or aren't valuable.
I think it may be helpful to consider what you were hoping for in making your original post. You are on a website that doesn't really do uncritical affirmations, and even though people here are almost universally respectful and polite you will receive critique whether you post about sandwiches or your mental health and that probably shouldn't be a surprise. Sometimes that critique arrives without any niceties beyond good grammar and politeness. Perhaps those critiques could be couched better when we are discussing a topic so central to someone's identity and experience but it's not a requirement here (or really anywhere on the internet). This fact doesn't diminish you.
FWIW I've had plenty of therapy, mostly for good. It didn't work at all when the therapist was rubbish, which is where you have clearly spent some time. It worked best when I worked out what I wanted to work on for that session and came in and told the therapist that. It was important to communicate this intent to the therapist (while letting them have input) but the real key is that I drove the work that day. It's my brain, I'm in charge. Turning up and relying on the therapist to drive things was sometimes necessary but rarely resulted in the best sessions. I understand you have been to a boat load of therapy but it's difficult to get a sense of what frame of mind or approach you took.
Beyond that reading, and accepting, a good bit of Buddhist philosophy, particularly zen/thien, has done more to get my mind on an even keel than therapy did but I don't think I would have done that work without therapy opening the door.
Just so you know, I'm glad you shared. It takes a degree of bravery (or desperation) to open up like this. If we all were a little more comfortable being a little uncomfortable (as such open discussion often makes us), the world would be a better place.
I hope that you can look to the responses that comfort you to find nourishment. And I hope you find help for what ails you, no matter what that looks like.
I'm very much highlighting a difference in personal experience and did not in any way make a statement of universality, unless you mean the idea that people who aren't affected by things tend to have blindspots for them. Most comments have not been sympathetic. They may have come from a place of such intent, but the words consist of gentle corrections and mild condescension. That's not some awful offense, it's just a difference of opinions.
Being sandbagged is exactly what I'm feeling by all these responses, thank you.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I disagree with a lot of it, but reading through your unhappiness and your anguish, something that might be helpful to you is the perspective of why someone who cares about you might suggest therapy, instead of trying to be there to listen.
I was once a teenage girl, and I would spend many hours on the phone with friends. I don't even remember what we talked about, but we had a talk circle, listening to each others' struggles and being as supportive as we could. In my adult life, I try to be supportive to friends in a similar way, but with my own responsibilities, traumas, and introversion, I have neither the time nor the energy to immerse myself in all of the dramas of my friends' lives, even when I want to. We settle for an hour or two every couple weeks, because it takes a lot of time and energy to help someone sift through their emotions, and if I'm going to listen, I want to be mentally present. It's insulting to a friend if I can't be there as fully as I can, but I'm not 14 anymore, and I can't devote my whole life to my friends in that same way.
For you in particular, it stood out to me that you felt very frustrated with only an hour with your therapist every two weeks, that things had changed so significantly in that time that you had too much to talk about, especially if they couldn't keep track of what you said last time. For me, as someone who has sought out therapy multiple times for the same awful period in my life...this struck me as an unusual amount of turmoil for one's life. When I make time for friends, there might be new issues, but often they relate to a central theme or two (bad relationship, personal misery, grief, health issues, etc). If they had so many new issues in two weeks that the whole situation had changed, I think I would feel very overwhelmed, and perhaps suggest professional help simply because I do not have the emotional bandwidth to even begin to engage with so many things. Handling my own issues is hard, and shouldering the burdens of another can be difficult, especially if you're really trying to be present for them, and they have deep, difficult problems. I will very gently suggest to you that the amount of time a close friend would need to help you work through your emotions may be rather large, and thus difficult for them to tackle regularly. Not because they don't care, or you're not close. But because it's a lot for a second person to take on purely out of love or caring. That's why the profession can be so helpful. The main post you made took you many hours to prepare - that's a lot on your mind, and I imagine it barely scratches the surface of all the things you're thinking and feeling. I think it's very likely then that friends and family might be feeling overwhelmed with the wide breadth of your unhappiness. That's not a condemnation of you, I'm trying to understand the magnitude of trouble you experience and the difficulty you've had getting friends and family to helpfully engage.
The other thing to consider is the type of help you need. I feel very good at chatting about relationship drama, burnout, imposter syndrome, disappointment, malaise, and confusion. There are some things that are "over my pay grade": I had friends with openly abusive parents, suicidal thoughts, and who were self-harming. A family member once spiraled into a tirade after experiencing sexual assault, making connections between childhood trauma with their current brokenness. These are not things I have any good knowledge of, and there's a very real chance that any "advice" I provide could cause irreparable harm. If you have any situations that are sensitive like this, it could be that your friends and family are afraid of causing you further harm, and thus are suggesting a professional to help guide you through these difficult times carefully. I would feel absolutely rotten if I triggered a violent episode for a friend. That's the last thing I want to do to them.
Whatever your personal circumstances, I hear your frustration. I will also share that as someone who tries to be there for friends, some people are easier to do that for than others, and it sounds like there are a lot of things that are causing you trouble, and which your loved ones may perceive as over their "pay grade". Think, too: do you ask about them? Do you have good quality time together? Or do you primarily ask them for help? I know that I have some friends that are great listeners and it's easy to reach out when I have a problem, but I have to remind myself that their energy is a gift, not an unlimited resource. I've had to cut off friends that treated me as an information receptacle instead of a person. I do hope you're able to find a space where you feel you can be heard and get the help you need, and perhaps taking up the offers of people in this thread who want to be your listener is a good first step. Good luck.
Sorry; I'm not sure if you're looking for debate, opinions on your opinion, advice, or something else ... I would say that I largely agree with you, but mostly in that therapy has been pretty useless for me (although as the therapist(s) have themselves pointed out, nothing is wrong and I'm just being hysterical, so perhaps there's nothing to help with anyhow).
Definitely agreed that being able to brush off any intense, emotional conversation by suggesting therapy can be insulting. And that western culture (probably others as well) has been peddling individual responsibility quite hard for several decades, so seeking (unpaid) aid from others is a faux pas. I hadn't thought of it before, but agreed that it feels like one leads into the other.
Anyways. I wasn't sure if responding at all would be useful as I don't have anything of import to add, but it seemed like people were generally disagreeing with your post, and I wanted to toss a vague response denoting that it resonated with me, at least. I hope you can find something that works for you.
There are things in my life that are very obviously 'wrong' that therapists love to hone right in on (namely, being a former foster care kid and formerly being in an abusive relationship that I effectively had to alter my entire life to escape), and yet I've also found therapy useless. Nobody has ever accused me of being hysterical — instead, I get accused of bottling things up — and yet, despite how very seriously therapists take me, they consistently miss the mark. I'm not even sure there is a mark for them to hit.
In some cases, particularly when I was a very shy child being analyzed by very confident adult therapists, I found therapy actively harmful. I was way too vulnerable to handle it. (The therapy I received was also very hard on my family, but I don't think they had a choice. I'm pretty sure it was court-ordered.)
Therapy does appear to work for some people. But I increasingly suspect it's for people who happen to have a therapy-shaped hole in their life. That's not the shape of hole that I have.
I've spoken to many different sorts of therapists with different approaches: therapists who were supremely empathetic and cried with me, therapists who were all business and got right down to practical strategy, therapists who challenged me, therapists I really liked and 'clicked' with, etc. But at the end of the day, none of it actually did anything for me. I still felt exactly the same.
There are really only two things that have helped me (neither of which I got from therapy):
Fixing the other supposedly 'little' stresses in my life that weren't the direct problem, but complicated my headspace enough that I couldn't concentrate on the problem. These are things like not getting enough sleep, worrying about money, toxic people in my life, niggling physical ailments like low blood pressure, etc. (To be completely frank, I think small stresses like these are actually a lot worse for mental health than major trauma — or at least that seems to be the case for me. I would rather have significantly more trauma than I already do than, say, fret about my job security or develop a chronic pain condition. Sometimes to get an elephant out of the room, you need to stop staring at the elephant and assess the room.)
Just letting myself wallow and feel sorry for myself when I really need to. I think dealing with trauma or stress (at least for me) is a lot like grieving after losing a loved one. The difference is that when somebody dies, grief is socially acceptable; no one thinks there's something wrong with you for crying in front of everybody at the funeral and barely functioning for a couple weeks after. But when you have the same reaction to trauma or stress or whatever, people act like your behavior is a gaping injury that needs to be treated ASAP before you bleed to death, rather than a natural human reaction to the circumstances. When I abandoned this mindset and learned to let myself do what I most badly wanted to do (which in my case, usually takes the form of taking a day or two entirely to myself to gorge on the absolute most depressing media I can get my hands on, and occasionally indulge in some truly egregiously self-pitying acts of writing), I started doing far better than any therapy — or any talking-to-another-person full stop — has ever gotten me. (Mind you, I don't think this is what everybody needs. But that's the shape of the hole inside me, and there really isn't any realistic way for formal therapy to fill it.)
I query the competence of any therapist that isn't assessing these things for basically every client. It's very hard to do any significant work if you don't shore up the scaffolding you're standing on first.
Similar to you, sleep is massive for me and if you deprive me of sleep for more than about three days my mental health will fall apart. The first person to notice that and help me address it was a therapist. I'm not arguing with your experience at all, it is what it is, but I do scratch my head about the therapist a bit.
As a sidenote I relate to your second point somewhat, a good wallow can be healing. I listen to a lot of pretty bleak music, it's comforting somehow.
I have no idea if those therapists were very good or not. I suspect my childhood therapists in particular were not. (Though, come to think of it, I think they were actually psychologists, not therapists. Granted, I don't think they were very good psychologists, either.)
But in their defense, even the best therapist in the world isn't a mind reader. I'm a very difficult person to get an emotional response out of (we have to be really close) unless it's an involuntary trauma reaction.
Venting about minor issues (even — maybe especially — when someone's trying to fish it out of me) doesn't come naturally to me and doesn't really do anything for me. These kinds of issues do take their toll on me, but not in a way that feels emotional or personal, if that makes sense, so I almost never air an issue unless I'm actively seeking advice on how to deal with it. The truth is that I don't need a therapist to tell me I have low blood pressure or to suggest strategies for increasing my blood pressure. I just need to drink some electrolytes — and just doing that ends up being more productive than months-worth of therapy (not to mention a whole lot cheaper, which is particularly relevant when the stressor is money).
I think one of the biggest harms in my life (I can't speak for anyone else, and I understand I'm a weirdo in this regard) is the widespread assumption that talking about things helps. For me, self-expression is deeply valuable and stating my thoughts clearly has helped me more than words can say (har har), but it's something I do best without an audience. As soon as there's someone else listening in, I start thinking about them instead of me, and then I come out of it exhausted rather than relieved.
To be clear, this is not to say that I don't need other people to care about me. I absolutely need to be confident that the people in my life love me, have my back, and would drop everything for me if I suddenly needed that kind of emotional support. (Thankfully, I do have that. But it's not something I've ever gotten out of therapy, and I'm not sure how I would.)
Just want to say this is a very good observation. I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a complicated illness that is not nearly about feeling tired, and aside from a couple big issues it is composed of twenty little things that are not a big problem on their own, but it is painfully obvious how together they make dealing with everything in life so much harder, whether it's big traumatic events or small nonsense.
Thank you for sharing ... I know it's not the point of all this, but it's at least comforting to read about your experiences, as well as those of a couple other people in the thread. It's felt very difficult to find people who get it -- even if we're all understanding the issue a little differently, it seems like I'm not entirely alone, at least.
I've been doing a lot better since that stint of therapy, mind, in case your comment was in part rooted in concern for my mental state! It's taken a lot of time and effort to learn to trust my own intuition -- and, goodness, do I feel privileged to have been given the time to do so -- but I think things are going well enough now.
I'm glad it resonated with you, thank you for the kind words.
tl;dr: life fucking sucks, yours too, and if you want to talk about it I'm here, but I will also say things that I think of, and sometimes it will be a while before I respond. We can also talk about society, life, love, community, etc and how they all suck too (or are interesting!)
Often when I write here I worry that I will get banned.
If I think about it I'm fairly sure I'm not even above 40% risk of getting banned.
There is no way for me to reason with myself that I'm at no risk of getting banned if I continue like I have been doing so far on Tildes.
I say this to try and explain that I never feel like I fit in, have a place or understand how to achieve that for myself.
I read your post when there where only a couple comments, I assumed I would have time to gather my thoughts and digest all the different things that you are trying to tie together only because I assumed people would not engage with "the crazy person".
Yet again, my gut betrayed me and my "grandeur" around being a rock got the better of me.
Anyway...
I see that you are in pain, that you are lonely and tired.
There are things you write about that I object to, some I don't understand and frankly some I don't even remember and I won't reread your post because it doesn't really matter.
What does matter is this: you.
And I'm sorry your life sucks in the way you tell us here. Because yeah, we are pack animals that require social bonds to thrive. And I know we don't know each other but I'm still sorry, and I still wish you had a good pack of people that sometimes would throw out the whole packet of raisins[0] when they see that you got one anyway because you must try and if the mental health system where you live doesn't offer anything else what the fuck are you supposed to do?
I mean your post matters, and I love the analogy of therapy as platonic prostitution. Obviously it is an analogy so it is not the same, but it paints a great and useful picture for further discussion.
When I write my comments in the monthly mental health topic I always hope to get some response, but mostly it's quiet, and it sucks. Because I actually try and show myself and reach out and invite others to comment, but they don't (except once when I mentioned suicide or maybe I'm factually wrong but that's how it feels). I'm the same, even though I do try to write something sometimes. But it's hard because it's in text and it's in the open, there is some kind of lack of intimacy that I find is hard to get around when writing text on what is essentially a forum.
I'm long winded, too long.
I hope something resonates or that you at least don't feel jumped on by another know-it-all that knows nothing.
[0] being mindful while eating a raisin is one of the classic mindfulness exercises around my parts of the world (maybe everywhere?)
No question that we've lost something, as a society. Have you read Tribe by Sebastian Junger, by any chance? He explores what you're writing about in depth - I think you'd really enjoy it. The synopsis is "a non-fiction book that explores the human need for community, loyalty, and shared purpose, arguing that modern society often fails to meet these fundamental needs, especially for veterans returning from war."
Personally, I've only had bad and mediocre experiences from therapy, ranging from personal experience to second hand. I think they are usually ineffectual and at worst create or exacerbate problems.
Based on this experience, in my mind therapy should be considered like an open heart surgery. Absolutely a lifesaver when you really need it but perhaps don't go there just because you got a bit winded.
I have deeply enjoyed reading this post as it resonates with my lifelong experiences and I have saved it as a comfort read to know there are individuals like me out there. I will respond in a more thorough manner after I get back home, but I have also stumbled upon the expression of "mental prostitution" and based on my encounters with therapists that's exactly how it was. A transactional event.
For the time being you might be interested in the subreddit r/therapyabuse.
I'll see to expand this comment after my shift ends.
@smoontjes
The rest of the comment as follows:
This is why I insist on talking about these and any other deeper topics to my online friends. People normally shy away from that and use the "get a therapist" or "why are you telling me all this?" card, but because that has been used on me too many times, I have started, almost out of spite, to use the "okay, let's talk about it". I am particularly prone to dropping everything I am doing at the moment if the person is highly distressed. I will not go to sleep until they've calmed down or I've offered them a different perspective. Four years ago I failed to listen to someone like that on IRC and even though I've been told it wasn't my fault, I still feel a duty towards struggling individuals.
That signal has caused me so much pain that many times I am unsure whether their intentions were good or they just wanted to cut corners of the conversation. Not because they didn't want to talk to me, but because they both didn't care and were passively taught to use that joker card. There is also a third option where they thought "Someone else will solve this problem." which is a very common approach to social issues in Croatia.
I am of opinion that this way of interaction was more frequent in the pre social media and smartphone era. Our social circles were smaller. I often ask my mother what was it like to live in the 1960s and what was it like for her parents and grandparents to live in the decades before the 60s. She often mentions a particular summer holiday where families would gather round from all parts of the region. This was before people had cars in this part of the world. My mother would walk from before dawn to early evening to get from her village to the one where they all gathered. She said that when her grandmother and her sisters and brothers saw each other, after a period of one year, that their joy and happiness was immeasureable. These days you can just see someone on a screen any time of the day.
There is a part of our humanity that got ripped out of us with the advent of these new technologies and made us that much colder and more distant. Having instant access to emotional bursts without the year long buildup shocks your body and mind. What's left is emptiness.
Early on I was taught to avoid talking about serious topics at work. It's not that it's forbidden, but your colleagues are a pack of sharks. They will rip you apart and gossip and overblow whatever truth you told them. Then again, for neurotypical folks, it seems as if there were friendships formed. I am an extreme outsider so I could never fit, no matter how much I tried. Most people agree, that work is work. The only time it isn't is when your managers want you to work weekends and they use the "we're a family" card. I have gone as far as to create a work persona with whole swaths of made up stories that they then use to gossip about me not being aware that most of it is bullshit. Maybe the corporate culture in Croatia is just so very toxic.
That's how it is for me. After a lifetime of education I realize that networking is important. No one ever told me that. I was just told to study and keep my head down and pass my exams. I was the perfect academic machine. I have never had a true friend. I had no one to rely on. No one to support me emotionally. And yes, I too encountered therapists along the way.
The first one, I still remember what she said to me in one of the sessions:
"You're nodding your head and that implies to me that you are listening to me."
She acted as if that was some grand discovery.
The last therapist I had tried to make my sessions a 2-3 per week event. Her hourly rate was around 60 euros at the time. That's quality food for a week in my book. Every session would leave me in a state of high emotional and physical distress, but I could never go too much in depth about it so we could work on it. And after a while I started feeling as if I was being manipulated into doing more of it. She also offered to physically hug me even though I was very clear on how uncomfortable it made me. I finally ceased the therapy by email as I had spent an entire session trying to break it off like that, but she wouldn't let me.
That's where the issue lies for me personally. Sooner or later you will grow attached to your therapist. You are sharing the most intimate, secret, darkest, carnal, sensitive parts of your self to a third party. But you pay for it. Isn't that kind of emotional connection so very wrong for any two human beings. For any living beings. To pay for vulnerability and acceptance. As if you are paying for a physical act, but this feels even worse than that as every thing you say can be used as a weapon against you. It can be used to further destabilize you.
This is what irked me so much. I could see it in her eyes that she barely remembered the last session and she would speed read through her notes, but the trouble was there were too many notes so there's no way she could have read it all with comprehension in those 2-3 minutes.
This to the power of 25. I had eventually grown so unstable that therapy pushed me backwards a few years and I had to fix that damage on my own. I was in tears after every session. I was restless and agitated 24/7 and I couldn't talk about it. I couldn't talk about the dark thoughts because I would be threatened by police and EMT intervention events.
So there I was in therapy, a place where I am supposed to structurally reinforce the building of self while ignoring the failing support pillars at the same time because if I don't the wrecking crew will just TNT the whole thing.
Therapy is, for the most part, the snake oil of the 21st century. It cures all, unless it doesn't and then it's all your fault. Or genetics. And yes, I know this is an extreme point of view from an individual who has had bad luck both with therapists and civilians. And I can also say that therapy helps people with simpler problems. Or maybe it is placebo at that point. Some of the commenters mention finding a good person in a good therapist, but I have found good people willing to listen to me and console me without having to pay for their time with the same money that buys me food and a roof over my head. To find that perfect combination of a good therapist good person individual would cost me absurd amounts of money. Isn't that terrible on its own and it's very similar to gambling. Always hoping that the next one will be the one. The next game. The next prize.
I live that kind of a life to a certain extent. I live alone, pay my bills, cook my food. I have a job and don't rely on anyone, not even public transit to get me anywhere as I am unable to operate vehicles). I can handle solitude, but at the age of 30 I am starting to feel the burden of isolation and loneliness that has accompanied me for the larger part of my life. I feel the coldness of the walls that surround me and the suffocating idea of living like this until the day I die. I have had a difficult live and was taught to not burden others with my burdens. Because of that I have become extremely withdrawn and reluctant to grow close to anyone. To be alone and self sufficient is a to live in desolation.
The therapists only know what they have learned in school and courses. They go to conventions and do workshops. As an engineer I cannot say that university level education has taught me everything I need to know. I have to continuously evolve through professional experiences. I have been to conventions and workshops and they consist of very vague layman level amounts of mechanical engineering knowledge dispersed in an afternoon. It's a subpar event where you are waiting for lunch more than you are absorbing the knowledge presented.
But, what happens when you encounter something that has not been encountered before. You can't search for it in a book. You have to figure it out. Figuring out takes time and patience. And your hour is nearly up. Pay up, chewonbananas and get lost until the next session.
I will echo the first comment in this thread not to criticize it. Everyone has a right to their own view of the world.
I am not a therapist. I am not your therapist. I am a fellow human. I am a person. I can talk to you if you need someone to talk to because there are so many like us that are suffocating at that in between point where you want to say something and your environment keeps shushing you when you do. I don't mind talking about difficult topics because if there was no one there for me when I needed someone the most, the least I can do is to be that someone for someone else. I try to help people even if we aren't talking, even if they need someone to sit in silence with, I will sit in silence with them. How much have I wanted that when I was younger, but no one had ever wanted to sit besides me. In a way, the people who choose to sit next to me are still wary of being too close. I don't blame them, as I know I will never experience the true platonic intimacy that some people do. Without transactions, without hourly rates. Just experiencing each other's humanity.