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> You need to see a therapist You should reword that. Otherwise how did humanity last this long? Psychotherapy is less than two centuries old. You should in

> You need to see a therapist You should reword that. Otherwise how did humanity last this long? Psychotherapy is less than two centuries old. You should instead say something like, "One option is to see a therapist." There are friends, elders, books, and a number of other ways to climb out of a mental rut. Traipsing "Psychology Today" for a therapist who will charge the insurance $150 for 40 minutes of a session, through Zoom no less, with your $40 co-pay after deductibles is such a commercial approach to what is fundamentally a human problem. You know a very modern problem? You can't sit easily and talk with friends over a drink about your issues and have someone give you constructive advice. Everyone is remote, busy, prefers chatting online, and as a result a lot of loneliness manifests as "Oh my god, what am I doing with my life."

geoah 4y ago
Humanity "survived" this long, many people did't make that cut, and many of those who did lived in misery, denial, or in the comfort of alcholor and/or drugs. IMO the cost of a couple of sessions to see if it works for you is better than not giving it a shot. OP: Life can be good and does indeed gets better, if you are not in a good place, please do talk to someone, try to make a change, no matter how small, and stay strong.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Also organized religion. After preparing sermons to give on Sunday, the church's pastor served as a therapist and did couples counseling for their local community. It's only recently that outside avenues have come to be formalized an relied upon in this way.
roughly 4y ago
It's worth considering a therapist as similar to a medical intervention - yes, good eating, clean living, and regular exercise can keep you healthy, but after a very long time of not doing so, it's possible to find oneself too far down the road for that kind of change to sufficient on its own. Similarly, the help of friends, family, etc. can do wonders for one's mental health, but after a very long time of neglect, that can be beyond one's reach. I say this as someone who rather successfully turned things around with a therapist - I simply did not have it in me to have those conversations with others and I didn't feel I had the relationships or support to do so (in retrospect I probably did, but that's the thing about mental health). I don't think your diagnosis is wrong, particularly - there's a lot in the modern world that promotes alienation, feelings of low self esteem, and depression, but I think a lot of people find themselves at the bottom of the well before realizing quite what's happening and without the support structures to get out on their own. (Edit just to note that, like physical health, mental health is not just the consequences of one's own actions - both genetic predispositions and unexpected life events can necessitate professional intervention by no fault of one's own. It's not what we're talking about, but just so nobody takes my post to be a psalm from the church of the self-sufficient.)
- mancerayder 4y ago
  I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I don't think therapy is useless. Especially when one is past a point where there are few other options. It's just a sad state of affairs that there are so few other options for people. I continue to pin the blame on the remote-first nature of society, which seems to make in person interaction secondary. It perpetuates loneliness which perpetuates mental health issues.
  - crtified 4y ago
    Jumping in here. I suspect that the number of people who could benefit from quality therapy, greatly outnumbers the amount of quality therapists that exist in the world. To the point where, I surmise, a vast majority of the world's population simply would not have meaningful access to it, due to location, finances, availability, introversion, etc. So for me, it's not that "get therapy" is bad advice. Good thing is good. Therapy has proven techniques and results. But that doesn't help the majority of the world's population, who do not have access to the luxury of visits to high end trained professionals that only exist in suitably affluent settlements of certain countries.
    - roughly 4y ago
      Honestly, echoing some of mancerayder's sentiment here - I actually think there's a ton of mileage one can get from a not particularly extensively trained listening partner - I think there are cases where you genuinely need a highly qualified therapist, I think there are situations where an under-qualified individual can do a great deal of harm when dealing with someone with particular types of mental issues, but I think there's also a huge amount of therapy that can be done by someone a whole lot closer to an RN or a PA than an MD. I also suspect that the broad lack of coverage for therapy and other kinds of mental care in most medical plans, as well as a "treatment/cure"-type paradigm when it IS covered ("we expect your 40 years of accumulated neurosis to be adequately addressed within 6 months, otherwise we're not going to pay anymore") is part of why this is out of reach for many people. (I also suspect providing the population with broad access to mental health care would almost immediately pay for itself in terms of better physical health outcomes, improvements in the crime rate, and better economic outcomes, but that's the kind of second- and third-order thinking we're pretty notoriously bad at in this country, policy-wise)
ineedausername 4y ago
Spo on, in this isolated atomized western reality, the end result is posts like that and therapy suggestions as replies.
javajosh 4y ago
Yes, too often "You need to see a therapist" is just a euphemism for "I don't want to listen to your problems." This is an important data point and a general trend toward the cheapening of human relationships. Friendship means something very specific, and for a lot of people now it means only the superficial. Anything deeper than that is actively discouraged. I think of those surveys about friendship took this kind of friendship into account. The number of people without any friends at all would be outrageously high.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Sometimes that might be true, but let's say you have the option to talk to two people about a problem. Person 1 is your friend that you've known all your life. They haven't gone to school for this and have plenty of problems of their own, half of which you know about, the other half, you're a part of, so they're biased and on their side, and not your side. Person 2 is a licensed therapist, has a literal master degree in the subject of dealing with people and their shit, has passed an ethics exam, and supervised experience program, and is on your side and won't judge you for your decisions. Who do you think would be able to help more?
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Person 1 is available now, and by just listening to you affirms that you matter, and that your problems are important, and the fact of your suffering matters to someone other than you. It may resonate with their own experience, maybe even something they didn't reveal because of shame or guilt, in which case both people are helped. Person 2 is first of all, hard to find, unavailable, and extremely expensive. They don't know you, and in general aren't willing to share their own personal experiences with you. The interaction with Person 2 is transactional and does nothing to affirm the importance of your suffering to someone other than yourself. It's a little like your suggesting to have sex with a prostitute because they're better at it. But that misses the point of what sex is even for. A lot of the time we just want to be assured that we matter, that our experience matters, and that we aren't alone. But yeah, a lot of people see it like you do, and I think that makes it a worse culture.
  - 4y ago
gernb 4y ago
I recently looked into seeing a therapist for reasons similar to the OP's. I tried lyra. All the wording and questions ask screamed to me "these are not my type of people". I'm not going to go into specifics but imagine you walked into a help conference and every table had energy stones, power of pyramids, astrology books, etc... If you're anything like me you'd walk out. Once I made it past all that it recommended some therapists all of whom were white. The metro area I live in, 8 million people, is only 60% white in total and many areas are majority not white. I tried changing my location to an area known for being majority not white but it just gave me the same people. It just got me wondering how much of therapy is a white culture thing because it seems statistically unlikely that of the 11 therapists it recommended, all 11 would be white if the demographics of the area say that only 60% of the population is white. It was no different on BetterHelp.
- oblio 4y ago
  > It just got me wondering how much of therapy is a white culture thing I assume non-white majority countries also have psychologists/therapists, though.
  - gernb 4y ago
    It sounds like therapy is not common in many cultures https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-therapy-is-like-around-the-world_l_5d2f2930e4b02fd71dddab1c https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-therapy-is-like-around-t...
    - oblio 4y ago
      It's not common anywhere. If anything, it's quite new and generally a rich man's thing. Poor people generally avoid discussing issues in public and then discuss them with family. But far more frequently violence and alcohol are the default "therapy".
  - o_nate 4y ago
    The WHO has data on mental health workers relative to population in various countries around the world. The median number of mental health workers per 100,000 population across 156 countries, is 8. In the US its about 100. China is at the median. India is one of the lowest, at around 1 mental health worker per 100,000 population.
csomar 4y ago
> Otherwise how did humanity last this long? Religion and procreation?

geoah 4y ago

Humanity "survived" this long, many people did't make that cut, and many of those who did lived in misery, denial, or in the comfort of alcholor and/or drugs. IMO the cost of a couple of sessions to see if it works for you is better than not giving it a shot. OP: Life can be good and does indeed gets better, if you are not in a good place, please do talk to someone, try to make a change, no matter how small, and stay strong.

fragmede 4y ago
Also organized religion. After preparing sermons to give on Sunday, the church's pastor served as a therapist and did couples counseling for their local community. It's only recently that outside avenues have come to be formalized an relied upon in this way.

roughly 4y ago

It's worth considering a therapist as similar to a medical intervention - yes, good eating, clean living, and regular exercise can keep you healthy, but after a very long time of not doing so, it's possible to find oneself too far down the road for that kind of change to sufficient on its own. Similarly, the help of friends, family, etc. can do wonders for one's mental health, but after a very long time of neglect, that can be beyond one's reach. I say this as someone who rather successfully turned things around with a therapist - I simply did not have it in me to have those conversations with others and I didn't feel I had the relationships or support to do so (in retrospect I probably did, but that's the thing about mental health). I don't think your diagnosis is wrong, particularly - there's a lot in the modern world that promotes alienation, feelings of low self esteem, and depression, but I think a lot of people find themselves at the bottom of the well before realizing quite what's happening and without the support structures to get out on their own. (Edit just to note that, like physical health, mental health is not just the consequences of one's own actions - both genetic predispositions and unexpected life events can necessitate professional intervention by no fault of one's own. It's not what we're talking about, but just so nobody takes my post to be a psalm from the church of the self-sufficient.)

mancerayder 4y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I don't think therapy is useless. Especially when one is past a point where there are few other options. It's just a sad state of affairs that there are so few other options for people. I continue to pin the blame on the remote-first nature of society, which seems to make in person interaction secondary. It perpetuates loneliness which perpetuates mental health issues.
- crtified 4y ago
  Jumping in here. I suspect that the number of people who could benefit from quality therapy, greatly outnumbers the amount of quality therapists that exist in the world. To the point where, I surmise, a vast majority of the world's population simply would not have meaningful access to it, due to location, finances, availability, introversion, etc. So for me, it's not that "get therapy" is bad advice. Good thing is good. Therapy has proven techniques and results. But that doesn't help the majority of the world's population, who do not have access to the luxury of visits to high end trained professionals that only exist in suitably affluent settlements of certain countries.
  - roughly 4y ago
    Honestly, echoing some of mancerayder's sentiment here - I actually think there's a ton of mileage one can get from a not particularly extensively trained listening partner - I think there are cases where you genuinely need a highly qualified therapist, I think there are situations where an under-qualified individual can do a great deal of harm when dealing with someone with particular types of mental issues, but I think there's also a huge amount of therapy that can be done by someone a whole lot closer to an RN or a PA than an MD. I also suspect that the broad lack of coverage for therapy and other kinds of mental care in most medical plans, as well as a "treatment/cure"-type paradigm when it IS covered ("we expect your 40 years of accumulated neurosis to be adequately addressed within 6 months, otherwise we're not going to pay anymore") is part of why this is out of reach for many people. (I also suspect providing the population with broad access to mental health care would almost immediately pay for itself in terms of better physical health outcomes, improvements in the crime rate, and better economic outcomes, but that's the kind of second- and third-order thinking we're pretty notoriously bad at in this country, policy-wise)

ineedausername 4y ago

Spo on, in this isolated atomized western reality, the end result is posts like that and therapy suggestions as replies.

javajosh 4y ago

Yes, too often "You need to see a therapist" is just a euphemism for "I don't want to listen to your problems." This is an important data point and a general trend toward the cheapening of human relationships. Friendship means something very specific, and for a lot of people now it means only the superficial. Anything deeper than that is actively discouraged. I think of those surveys about friendship took this kind of friendship into account. The number of people without any friends at all would be outrageously high.

fragmede 4y ago
Sometimes that might be true, but let's say you have the option to talk to two people about a problem. Person 1 is your friend that you've known all your life. They haven't gone to school for this and have plenty of problems of their own, half of which you know about, the other half, you're a part of, so they're biased and on their side, and not your side. Person 2 is a licensed therapist, has a literal master degree in the subject of dealing with people and their shit, has passed an ethics exam, and supervised experience program, and is on your side and won't judge you for your decisions. Who do you think would be able to help more?
- javajosh 4y ago
  Person 1 is available now, and by just listening to you affirms that you matter, and that your problems are important, and the fact of your suffering matters to someone other than you. It may resonate with their own experience, maybe even something they didn't reveal because of shame or guilt, in which case both people are helped. Person 2 is first of all, hard to find, unavailable, and extremely expensive. They don't know you, and in general aren't willing to share their own personal experiences with you. The interaction with Person 2 is transactional and does nothing to affirm the importance of your suffering to someone other than yourself. It's a little like your suggesting to have sex with a prostitute because they're better at it. But that misses the point of what sex is even for. A lot of the time we just want to be assured that we matter, that our experience matters, and that we aren't alone. But yeah, a lot of people see it like you do, and I think that makes it a worse culture.
- 4y ago

gernb 4y ago

I recently looked into seeing a therapist for reasons similar to the OP's. I tried lyra. All the wording and questions ask screamed to me "these are not my type of people". I'm not going to go into specifics but imagine you walked into a help conference and every table had energy stones, power of pyramids, astrology books, etc... If you're anything like me you'd walk out. Once I made it past all that it recommended some therapists all of whom were white. The metro area I live in, 8 million people, is only 60% white in total and many areas are majority not white. I tried changing my location to an area known for being majority not white but it just gave me the same people. It just got me wondering how much of therapy is a white culture thing because it seems statistically unlikely that of the 11 therapists it recommended, all 11 would be white if the demographics of the area say that only 60% of the population is white. It was no different on BetterHelp.

oblio 4y ago
> It just got me wondering how much of therapy is a white culture thing I assume non-white majority countries also have psychologists/therapists, though.
- gernb 4y ago
  It sounds like therapy is not common in many cultures https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-therapy-is-like-around-the-world_l_5d2f2930e4b02fd71dddab1c https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-therapy-is-like-around-t...
  - oblio 4y ago
    It's not common anywhere. If anything, it's quite new and generally a rich man's thing. Poor people generally avoid discussing issues in public and then discuss them with family. But far more frequently violence and alcohol are the default "therapy".
- o_nate 4y ago
  The WHO has data on mental health workers relative to population in various countries around the world. The median number of mental health workers per 100,000 population across 156 countries, is 8. In the US its about 100. China is at the median. India is one of the lowest, at around 1 mental health worker per 100,000 population.

csomar 4y ago

> Otherwise how did humanity last this long? Religion and procreation?