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Seeing a therapist might be infinitely better than reading a book, and not just for narcissism. We're all broken in our own wonderful and unique ways. I've bee
by ggambetta 7y ago
Seeing a therapist might be infinitely better than reading a book, and not just for narcissism. We're all broken in our own wonderful and unique ways.
I've been seeing a therapist for 5 years now, and the positive impact this has had in my life and on my general self-awareness can't be overstated.
As engineers and tech people we have one tool that has proven incredible useful in our careers: our brilliant rational minds. So we tend to think that we can solve any problem in life with this tool. Turns out we can't; thinking that therapy is somehow beneath us is pure hubris.
I also resisted therapy for a long time as a matter of principle. In high school I learned about the id, ego and super-ego, and in my 17 year old wisdom I thought "This is all bullshit! Did the guy open someone's head and see three parts? No! This is all made up!" Being unquestionable older and hopefully wiser now, I've understood that "all models are wrong, but some are useful"[0]. And therapy happens to have some useful models to offer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
- moretai 7y agoWhat are examples of problems you couldn't solve with your mind?
- Ididntdothis 7y agoEver been in a relationship? There are a lot of problems you can’t just solve with rational thinking.
- vorpalhex 7y agoEmotional intelligence and empathy are still part of the mind.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vanderZwan 7y agoThe original comment mentioned rational minds, which is relying on neither of those things.
- stonogo 7y agoRational was an adjective. If you think that "rationality" is some objective feature that humanity can separate from emotions, you are deluded.
- vanderZwan 7y agoThis reply somehow gets and misses what I was trying to get at. No, of course I don't believe rationality is like that. The implicit point was that many people in tech do have an attitude like this. They overvalue their "objective" rational reasoning, ironically due to irrational needs.
- jodrellblank 7y agoProblems which can't be expressed as a ratio.
- namanyayg 7y agoAny that involves interaction with multiple people; you cannot predict others, especially since most people don't always act fully rationally.
- tbs_ 7y agoNo one always acts fully rationally
- bawolff 7y agoI think people say that others dont act rationally, when really they just don't understand the other person's goals and how their behaviour contributes to their goals. If i pass up $100 to get a burger, am i acting irrationally? It depends if i'm hungry. It depends how much $100 means to me (Am i bill gates?). Its impossible to say from the outside. I'm convinced much behaviour is basically the same except much more complex with multiple conflicting priorities.
- tonyh249 7y agoNo, people really just don't think rationally. Read Daniel Kahneman. It's been studied extensively.
- drinfinity 7y agoBroken heart Broken leg Blindness Losing a child Having a low (or too high) IQ Having severe mental disorder(s)
- slumdev 7y agoThis is what happens when you run country music through lossy compression.
- krick 7y agoOk, this was funny.
- Sohcahtoa82 7y agoNeeds a "Broken truck" line.
- 1000units 7y agoThere's no such thing as an IQ too high. This is always some other problem like anxiety.
- halfnormalform 7y agoUnless you're trying to be a police officer in the USA, then an IQ too high is absolutely a real thing.
- 1000units 7y agoIn this situation one can use her high IQ to ham her IQ test.
- numpad0 7y agoSome 80% or so of worlds’ problems are human interfacing problems than mathematical-engineering challenges, and its best to exploit native ability to handle it that we all received when born.
- texasbigdata 7y ago-Job loss -Romantic losses -Self compassion -Self care Conceptually, think about how many times your friends have an issue that seems trivial for you (on the outside) to fix. Surely the same applies to you. Especially if you're high functioning, by definition anything left to work on is relatively outside your awareness and can't be solved from the "inside".
- Izkata 7y agoYou need blank lines for the pseudo-bullets to not combine together like this. (Caught my eye quickly scrolling down because they look like java command-line options)
- collyw 7y agoWorld peace.
- vanderZwan 7y ago> As engineers and tech people we have one tool that has proven incredible useful in our careers: our brilliant rational minds. So we tend to think that we can solve any problem in life with this tool. thinking that therapy is somehow beneath us is pure hubris. To add to this: we also tend to think we can correctly assess any problem without external help, but especially when it comes to the "self" this fails. It's kind of inevitable: being able to analyze a problem requires some distance, but taking distance from yourself, especially your problem areas, fundamentally goes against that. The result is blind spots.
- numpad0 7y agoThat had been my excuse for ignoring my own problems for years so I’d add: If you think you’re insane but also thinking it could be self-mis-diagnosis, no, you are not sane. There is no such inherent contradiction in an ability for a logical system to detect its own anomaly were you one. If it had been a false positive, the fact that a false positive is occurring itself is an anomaly, and an issue.
- sci_prog 7y agoHow do you distinguish these thoughts from the intrusive ones?
- vanderZwan 7y agoYou go look for external help with figuring that out. Which brings us back to...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rytill 7y agoCan you elaborate on this? This reads okay but it's at a higher level of abstraction and I don't know the specific phenomena to which it's referring.
- fiv0 7y ago
- s_c_r 7y ago100% agree about seeing a therapist. I also resisted for years because I thought it was a waste of time and money. Now that I see one once a week I've come to realize how useful it can be to have a person you can go to who is paid to be laser focused on your mental well being for an hour at a time. One thing mine has encouraged me to do is journal. It helps air out the negative thought patterns that infect my behavior and also serves as a good way to synthesize ideas. I set aside 10-15 minutes at lunch to write in a moleskine notebook. My problems are more related to anxiety and depression, but the same concepts apply. I also think that you get out of therapy what you put in. It sounds like you are in a good frame of mind because you want to improve yourself. That's probably the best attitude you could take going into therapy.
- JonathanMerklin 7y agoHonest question, really trying hard not to word it in a standoffish way: what do you get out of a therapist that can't be obtained from thought or general conversation outside of therapy? I don't think a "brilliant rational mind" is a prerequisite for coming to the conclusion that you're spending money to lock someone in conversation with you - someone that would not associate with you otherwise. To me, the relationship is artificial and the lessons learned can be obtained for free. Therapy seems to be conversational prostitution, more or less. But you and others affirm that therapy has a positive ROI, and some people recommend therapy with such vigor you'd think it was the only (or the best/most efficient) way to get that return. I just don't see it, and to date I haven't met a sufficiently elucidating explanation.
- hoorayimhelping 7y agoA therapist is trained to spot things you miss. It's like asking, "what does a junior engineer get out of being mentored by a senior engineer that they couldn't just figure out by coding or reading blogs?" A therapist brings things like context, breadth of knowledge, and honesty. I felt like the therapist wasn't incentivized to sugar coat things to spare my feelings, something close friends and family might do. I am not sure about seeing one for 5 years, though. The point of a therapist is to make themselves unnecessary, in my opinion - they're supposed to give you the tools needed to do exactly what you're saying people should do - understand their behavior and change it.
- sounds 7y agoI agree that seeing a therapist for 5 years may indicate they're not actually helping you progress. I could offer a different data point, but since it's all subjective experience anyway, just make your own call. I've enjoyed long-term therapy because I found more things I wanted to work on. Ironically, it is my therapist who reviews things on a regular schedule and asks, "why are you coming to therapy now?" (If your therapist isn't doing that, maybe that's a red flag that you are being taken advantage of?)
- Fnoord 7y ago
- melbourne_mat 7y agoI'm going to counter the "therapists are great" theme that I'm seeing here. I think they're a waste of money. Cognitive behavioural therapy is a great tool. With practise and courage you can use it to reform the way you think. It won't fix something like schizophrenia but it might be useful for a narcissist who wants to change.
- walleeee 7y agoPlenty of clinical psychologists use CBT in practice.
- tomnipotent 7y ago> It won't fix something like schizophrenia Your comment is terribly unhelpful. Therapy isn't about "fixing" someone, but to help individuals with issues that negatively affect their life find opportunities to manage those issues. CBT is not something you can start doing by yourself without an external catalyst. I have ADHD, OCD, and bipolar II along with recurring bouts of PTSD from a terribly traumatic childhood. Without therapy, I would have considerable more issues integrating with my peers and navigating the emotional turmoil that is the battlefield of my brain. Therapy has assisted me in shifting my perspective and enabling me to live my best life despite the demons that seem to constantly want to drag me down.
- ItsMattyG 7y ago> CBT is not something you can start doing by yourself without an external catalyst. Sure it is. Self-therapy is useful, getting a therapist is useful. Why is everyone shitting on other people's vibe?
- tomnipotent 7y ago> Why is everyone shitting on other people's vibe? Because people provide horrible advice like this that prevents people from getting the help they need. Stigma is a real thing.
- webmobdev 7y ago
- fossuser 7y agoPeople say this a lot, but it never seems very actionable. How do you do find someone good that you trust? How do you find someone worth the time? The couple of times I've tried to find someone you end up making a lot of unreturned phone calls. Maybe I have an unfairly negative impression of therapists - I both think that it's incredibly valuable to introspect and have someone smart and thoughtful to work things out with, but also suspect a lot of therapists are neither of those things? CBT and growth mindset seems helpful, what's the process to actually find someone successfully? How many people actually are doing therapy vs. just recommending other people do it? It seems a lot more people are recommending it than actually doing it themselves (which would explain the vague advice).
- Psyladine 7y agoI go by recommendations, but I'm initially looking for chemistry - does this person jump to conclusions based on initial statements, is there an urgency in their tone (as in, getting to it rather than getting to know you), and most importantly, being able to verbalize their process and walk you through their methods. It shouldn't be smoke & mirrors or duplicitous, like asking you open ended questions and letting you blow off steam for 45 minutes, it should be a 'conversation' with them drawing you back to the central issues you identified & they've diagnosed. Like all relationships, it's predicated on trust, and that means finding the right professional. There are shops that make their retirement letting people talk about themselves for an hour once a week, and there are others genuinely engaged in the art of helping people heal themselves.
- sounds 7y agoI'm actually attending therapy, on a regular schedule, and struggled to find a good therapist. Shop around? You're inviting someone to perform online brain surgery on you. Fortunately, you can undo the operation if you don't like it (sort of). If you don't like what the therapist is doing, keep looking for a different therapist that works for you. I've heard a story where a therapist got upset with their client because the client said, during a therapy session, they were going to find someone else. Simple point of order: I don't need to tell my therapist if they're fired. I just walk away.
- tarsinge 7y agoSure a therapist is better than books but it’s not true that everyone is broken, that’s the equivalent of saying everyone is sick and should be on medication. Everyone has issues but having a balanced life with lots of social interactions is enough for the majority. And sometimes if you don’t have that the therapist become a substitute but that does not mean you are broken. It’s interesting to see a therapist like a doctor for a check up though.