12 ms·

Therapy as a way of aligning with your subconscious

• foxfired 3y ago
  I hesitate to comment on these threads, because no one wants to take the risk of saying anything adverse. "What if I say something bad about therapy? would this cause someone else not to see a therapist and end up dying?" But I will say this. As people are becoming more lonely in a crowd, as they can't silence the noise in an empty home, as they can't find someone to listen to them even when they surrender, therapy will be the only outlet. You often see the cases in japan where people rent friends. It's not that therapy is bad (it's pure luck if you find the right therapist), it's that there was a solution for the problems it is trying to solve. A community. And the friends that come with it.
  • zephyrthenoble 3y ago
    Why can't you have a therapist and friends?
    • ReactiveJelly 3y ago
      Having friends is an expensive hobby in money and time.
      • sfpotter 3y ago
        This is a horrible framing, and in fact, not even true.
      • haswell 3y ago
        Eating healthy food is an expensive hobby in money and time. Do it because it is important. Spending time with friends is only as expensive as you choose to make it. Most of the time, I’m riding the bike I already paid for to a public park or to a restaurant I would have eaten at anyway. Human social connection is a pretty critical component of a psychologically healthy life.
      • more_corn 3y ago
        None of my friends charge me $200/hr. Maybe you have therapy and friends mixed up? Or are your friends perhaps ladies of the night? Not that there’s anything wrong with visiting ladies if the night. I often wonder if that might be cheaper than therapy. I just worry that if they’re charging you, they might not be the most genuine of friends.
        • ReactiveJelly 3y ago
          I didn't mean to imply that one substitutes for the other. I meant literally that having friends, with or without therapy, is expensive
        • watwut 3y ago
          I think it is that you need to pay money to be with friends - food, drinks or activities you do together. While some groups socialize for free sitting in parks and chatting, many people do not like that. They get bored. The situation can get pretty bad if you are outlier earning less money then friends. Friends groups centered around activity cost money to participate - whether materials for crafting, sports equipment, entrance fees, whatever. Friends groups centered around partying cost money too.
      • chpatrick 3y ago
        I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment.
      • hackernewds 3y ago
        Equating everything with money is a downward spiral. Given time, I would spend it all with the right friends, instead of working to earn money.
      • ReactiveJelly 3y ago
        My point is that the payoff for friendships is dubious to me. 5 people answered with a belittling tone, and I certainly don't feel any more inspired to befriend them. It makes you think.
        • SanderNL 3y ago
          You don't sound like a great friend either. Doesn't make you a bad person. We don't need to be surrounded by people all the time. Maybe you are introverted like me. Just one or two people in the background is enough. Any more and it starts being a net negative.
      • svnt 3y ago
        People are being really hard on you, but there is truth and probably painful experience in this statement. 1) Your friends may have begun to make and spend more money than you, and you cannot participate in their activities. Many people here will say “just find new friends” not realizing how different their ages, lives and skillsets may be from yours. You only have to say no a few times before you are left out. You might even feel bad every time you turn them down. 2) You may be overburdened with work to the point where your most meaningful social connections are at work. Especially if this is a startup, if you take the night off to go drinking you might not deliver on a critical contract which may cause your work friends, who may have in the interim become your only friends, as well as you, to no longer have a place of employment. Whatever it is I’m sorry you are going through this.
        • CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago
          Yes. For me personally, I found the framing that “building and maintaining friendships takes time, energy, and sacrifice, but is so totally worth it for our healthy wellbeing,” very helpful to inspire me to focus on the kinds of relationships I want and justify the investment to be a better friend. GP’s comment is a wry (“hobby”) and pithy and provocative take that’s not wrong. IMO, friends are the nutritious meal that’s more expensive than friend substitutes. GP seems to have a different conclusion on cost/benefit. But nobody can deny there is a cost!
      • SanderNL 3y ago
        I don't think you appreciate the meaning of "expensive". You know what's expensive? Marriage, kids, mortgages, illness.
        • slumberlust 3y ago
          I don't think you appreciate the meaning of "expensive." You know what's expensive? Starting your own business.
          • SanderNL 3y ago
            That too can be expensive.
  • cbsks 3y ago
    I can pay money and see a therapist. It’s a lot harder to find a community.
    • xyzzy4747 3y ago
      It's hard but the #1 way in my opinion is to create a family, and then live near relatives. Like people used to do for thousands of years.
      • cbsks 3y ago
        Joining a religion is another solution that has been used for thousands of years.
      • Mezzie 3y ago
        Given a lot of people in therapy are there due to abusive families of origin, this is kind of difficult. I was neglected to the point of near-death and abused. My relatives are not trustworthy supports.
  • totetsu 3y ago
    It’s hard to access talk therapy in Japan because drugs can be prescribed evenly to all people and the results can be measured soon after, where as therapy could take many months before there is any results and is more person specific. I’ve seen so many people I know who could have benefited greatly from a little bit of CBT but were completely unable to access it.
  • eyelidlessness 3y ago
    > there was a solution for the problems it is trying to solve. A community. And the friends that come with it. People who have strong community and friendships seek and benefit from therapy. Having community and friendship certainly can help navigate many of the myriad reasons that people might see a therapist for, but having them doesn’t necessarily solve those things. And the expectation that they would, or could, can be an acute burden and even sometimes a terminal strain on those relationships.
    • ungamedplayer 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • JimtheCoder 3y ago
        "If your relationship can't survive the talk you would have with your therapist, you have not developed the quality of friends that you should have." Therapists are disposable. Friendships are not. I would rather not risk finding out if a friendship can handle some temporary, dark sh*t. You usually won't know until it is too late...
    • FreshStart 3y ago
      But the therapy actively attacks community by turning everyone into a sociopathic island? Its basically the digestive juices of a highly individualistic society?
      • camillomiller 3y ago
        What!? LOL.
  • aschearer 3y ago
    If only life were that easy.
  • crickey 3y ago
    Freud stated this in his future of an illusion. The (righfull in his opinion) decline of chritian church institutions would lead to higher untreated mental illness. Though he also predicted the regression of the subconscious into a more supressed state. Leading to a society unable to deal with it in any meaningful way.
  • oidar 3y ago
    "Life Coaching" is another service that's trying to fill this hole. It's completely unregulated, it attracts shysters, scam artists, and lots of unsavory MLM looking businesses.
    • hackernewds 3y ago
      I like to refer to these as "paid friends". Although I do feel like in some friendships I'm an "unpaid life coach". hah
      • haliskerbas 3y ago
        Exactly this. A lot of the friends I grew up with have no interest in what I find interesting. And I don’t care much for their lifestyle of going to the same kind of club for a 100th time. Sometimes I talk shit on here, sometimes I just talk to the AI bot. Otherwise no one wants to talk to me or cares so I am the target fool to rent a life coach or whatever just to be able to rant to another person.
        • Obscurity4340 3y ago
          Me, myself, and AI
        • mahathu 3y ago
          It sounds like you resent your friends
    • Eumenes 3y ago
      The number of HR shills I use to work with are all becoming life or executive coaches. And the insane thing is ... they're getting work! You can book 45 mins for $200 so they can tell you to channel your empath or take a Myers Briggs test.
  • rayiner 3y ago
    Or, to put it in softer terms, as people become more isolated, common mental ups and downs can become more serious problems requiring medical intervention. It’s interesting to go back to TV shows and movies from even the 1980s and 1990s and see how much bigger people’s social networks were. Like people would have regularly scheduled bridge nights with neighbors and shit like that.
    • JimtheCoder 3y ago
      "It’s interesting to go back to TV shows and movies from even the 1980s and 1990s and see how much bigger people’s social networks were. Like people would have regularly scheduled bridge nights with neighbors and shit like that." To be fair, those are TV shows and movies...not real life.
      • wincy 3y ago
        My grandma and grandpa had… regularly scheduled bridge night with the neighbors and shit like that.
        • JimtheCoder 3y ago
          I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying that using TV and movies as a reference for what real life was like in those times (or any time) may not be the best idea.
          • rayiner 3y ago
            I take your point. But remember that TV shows and movies are highlighted at contemporaneous audiences. Unless they’re trying to draw attention to something out of the ordinary, the depictions of day to day life are probably going to be close enough so that at least the audience of the time doesn’t view it as unusual.
            • watwut 3y ago
              This is not true? Neither Friends nor Big Bang Theory are drawing attention to their protagonists living in massively unusual or even impossible setup. And they are as popular as it gets.
  • the_only_law 3y ago
    > it's pure luck if you find the right therapist A while back I caved and asked some people I know about finding a therapist. Though, I was still very half assed about the whole idea. I ended up giving up, because when I was looking, every therapist I could find that looked like a good fit was “not taking new clients” and the ones that were available seemed to specialize in things that were just not me.
    • fsckboy 3y ago
      when you call a therapist and express that you are having trouble, if they are not taking new patients they will generally refer you to someone else, and they will check in advance that the referral does have an opening. It would be highly unusual to leave somebody adrift.
      • mahathu 3y ago
        It's different in Germany where you have to call around for weeks or even months to find a licensed therapist. The alternative would be to pay for one out of pocket but i don't see paying 90+€/hour as a good foundation for lasting mental change
        • krisoft 3y ago
          > i don't see paying 90+€/hour as a good foundation for lasting mental change That is such a currious thing to say. Why is that?
          • mahathu 3y ago
            I have only experienced it for a few sessions last summer so my judgement may not be that accurate. I didn't mean to sound so "authoritative" in my last comment. Anyway, i felt like it was putting me under a lot of extra stress, even though fortunately i was relatively well off at the time - i couldn't imagine not feeling extremely stressed out paying 90€/$ for therapy when youre already struggling to make ends meet. Seeing a regular therapist that I don't pay for (except indirectly through my health insurance, as a student around 140€ currently although it keeps getting more expensive every year) really gives me peace of mind that I'll be able to continue seeing her for the next 40-50 sessions and slowly work on lasting change. Becoming a licensed therapist is a long and strenuous process in Germany. As a client, it gives me some peace of mind, although before my current therapist I also had some "bad" ones in the past (ones i didnt match with). As a result of this, getting into therapy in Germany is a availability issue, not a financial one, usually. Clients have to write dozens of emails/phone calls to therapists, which can be a big struggle especially considering the population we're talking about. The process definitely needs a huge overhaul. There are a lot of willing and able prospective therapists, who can't, for example because they didn't have the perfect high school grades requored to study psychology here (unless you go to Austria, which the Austrian students understandably are a bit unhappy about), or because they can't years of expensive, badly paid training required to become a licensed therapist.
  • SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    I really disagree that therapy is trying to solve a lack of community. This may work for eg depression or social anxiety. But it’s much less clear if we’re talking about trauma recovery, psychosis management, etc. a community is very rarely well equipped enough to manage all manner of disordered eating, psychosis, compulsive disorders, etc. It’s important to recognize that it can be traumatizing for an undereducated person to be thrust into dealing with someone else’s mental illness crisis!
    • civilitty 3y ago
      It’s important to recognize that community is the cause of many problems like eating disorders and couldn’t possibly be the solution. Therapy helps integrate the way we view ourselves into the rest of our community.
      • hutzlibu 3y ago
        "It’s important to recognize that community is the cause of many problems like eating disorders and couldn’t possibly be the solution." Except, when it is a healthy community. Bad habits spread, like good habits do.
    • travisjungroth 3y ago
      A community member trying to play therapist doesn’t usually go well. At the same time, being part of a community seems to be correlated with significantly better well-being for people with mental illness.
      • winternewt 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • axioms_End 3y ago
          Maybe, but having a friend and a bad therapist may end in dumping therapist and looking for another one, having friend as therapist for serious issues may end up in having no friend and being lonely.
  • flatline 3y ago
    “Therapy” provides many modalities, and generally they are based on pathology, which I feel is very limiting when you look at the broad scope of psychological wellness. One niche which it can end up filling is that of the (paid) friend. If that is missing in your life, you now have an ill-fitting surrogate for genuine companionship. It’s really not the purpose of therapy, but it is often the reality. While I think that close friendships are important, I feel like that still falls well short of community.
    • fsckboy 3y ago
      therapists are not paid friends, that would be like saying that your lawyer is a paid friend.
      • DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        Lawyers aren’t trying to do something like “make you mentally well::make you feel better.” An attorney is hired to provide a legal service. The difference is an entire level of abstraction.
  • safety1st 3y ago
    I saw a therapist for several years and it was very valuable, so I'm not knocking therapy. Specifically I chose to see a psychiatrist who was well versed in talk therapy, not just drugs, because I think this stuff should be approached as evidence based, medical in nature, and administered by a doctor. However, one takeaway for me was that when it comes to talk therapy, some of it is evidence-based, scientific, and backed by high quality studies, however most of what's out there is not. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has good evidence of efficacy and so do maybe a few other techniques - Googling "evidence based therapy" is a good way to start going down the rabbit hole. It's not that hard to learn how to do CBT, at first with a professional, and eventually on your own. Once you progress past the evidence-based stuff, IMHO you're basically just talking to a (hopefully) wise friend who you trust, which is great and might work similar to placebo, but also $200/hr and has the potential to medicalize stuff that doesn't need to be medicalized, so your time and money may be better spent building connections with other people (support groups, plain ol' friends etc). So my point here is I think as long as you understand its limitations therapy is great. If someone is unambiguously suicidal they should probably be put on drugs plus talk therapy and then weaned off the drugs as it becomes clear they are no longer a risk to themselves, since the alternative is they die.
    • zealtrace 3y ago
      I used to have the same opinion and found my model has shifted quite a bit. There are a surprising lack of high quality studies on a lot of this. However, there’s really good data on a couple points: Therapy is likely to create significant, lasting improvements compared to placebo, and the more significant factor is therapeutic relationship, not modality. There’s a lot of evidence for CBT because it’s a modality that is relatively easy to study, and so it’s studied a lot. It’s very structured and designed to produce results quickly. This doesn’t mean it’s superior in general. Chronic psychological disorders are strongly correlated with early attachment issues and adverse childhood experiences. There are many ways to address this, but I would view a successful long term therapy as reprogramming a nervous system rather than talking to a friend or building new habits. In my experience, even many therapists fail to understand this distinction. Like hiring any skilled professional, finding the right match can be a time consuming process.
  • ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
    > it's pure luck if you find the right therapist I won't say what I truly think about "therapy" as an industry, but this fact is always something that sticks out to me. Sure there are bad surgeons, but I wouldn't go into heart surgery expecting to have to try a few surgeons before they performed a double bypass successfully. There are no objective standards in the industry. In an industry with even basic standards you shouldn't have to keep trying to find a therapist that "helps".
    • fsckboy 3y ago
      therapy is about emotions; there are no objective standards for emotion.
  • watwut 3y ago
    > It's not that therapy is bad (it's pure luck if you find the right therapist), it's that there was a solution for the problems it is trying to solve. A community. And the friends that come with it. Pretty common problem people are trying to solve is "why do I always pick friends/partners that get me into trouble or abuse me" or "how do I stop repeating to others what my family done to me". Otherwise said, for healthy person that does not need therapy, yep community solves loneliness. For people who do need it, if dont.
  • camillomiller 3y ago
    I think you start from a misconception of what therapy is. Also, there is not ONE therapy. CBT, which is an insufficient band-aid invented to give us practical tricks to cope with the contradictions of a capitalistic society in order to get back to being productive and “functional”, may very well fit your description. In fact it gives you tricks and homeworks you would not need if you had a community or good and deep relationships. Psychoanalysis on the other hand is something else completely. It does not solve you, judge you, nor offer answer. It’s a language method for you to rearrange your internal warehouse, not by removing or adding items, but rather by rearranging what’s in there for it to make more sense.
  • asimovfan 3y ago
    One can also look into Buddhism and meditation.. a lot of stuff about what is really causing loneliness and depression
    • mcshicks 3y ago
      20 year zen practitioner here. Don't expect meditation or buddhism to make your problems go away. If you have an acute mental problem like depression, bipolar syndrome or are suicidal get professional help first. Then go study buddhism. Some teachers will even ask you to sign a waiver acknowledging this.
      • Mezzie 3y ago
        Also it can be a really, really bad idea if you're dissociative. Detaching myself from my body is Not Good.
  • pizza234 3y ago
    > it's that there was a solution for the problems it is trying to solve. A community. And the friends that come with it. Very wrong. I have some familiarity with therapy, and in a way, community is actually detrimental when it comes to mental disorders. Depression is a typical example. When somebody suffers from therapy, friends (community) will give all sort of cheesy advice like "relax, go out, do sports". This is detrimental because it's frustrating, but especially, because it triviliazes a serious problem (people not going to therapy because of stigma, when they should, is a real problem). No amount of community can address a problem like depression, and this should be crystal clear. Mental disorders, like serious illnesses, require a knowledgeable and systematic approach in order to be addressed. Surely, modern isolation is causing mental health problems in the population, but community may be the solution to those specific problems, not to disorders in general. > it's pure luck if you find the right therapist It's not pure luck; it takes attempts.
    • hrnnnnnn 3y ago
      > friends (community) will give all sort of cheesy advice like "relax, go out, do sports" I get your point here, it's hard to get going with these things when you're depressed, but physical exercise is one of the only things that uncontroversially helps prevent depression. Maybe a better way to deliver that advice would be to ask someone to come for a walk with you, or invite them to join your sports team.
      • pizza234 3y ago
        > physical exercise is one of the only things that uncontroversially helps prevent depression. You clearly never had to deal with a case of clinical depression.
        • pizza234 3y ago
          And just to clarify: prevention is different from treatment (the context was treatment). But most importantly, for clinical cases, physical exercise and similar won't do anything; just imagine a typical case of child abuse.
  • wvh 3y ago
    You've got a point, but depression often leads to isolation. One clear benefit to therapy is that – if the therapist is any good – you will get a relatively neutral, objective opinion reflected back at you. Friends, community and religious or other support systems rarely give sufficiently objective advice or a bird's eye view of the problem. It's not so much about renting a friend as it is to pay an outside professional who can hopefully give you more insight into why things are not going as well as you were hoping for. It is notoriously hard to analyse your own issues, even if you are knowledgeable about psychology or feel you have good self-knowledge. I want to pay for neutral insight from somebody not vested in me personally.
  • jdietrich 3y ago
    Nearly all of the clinical benefits of psychotherapy are delivered in the first few sessions. Some studies suggest an inverse correlation between duration and effect size - people in long-term therapy may have worse outcomes than people who complete a short course of therapy. Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for most common mental health problems, but if you're going to therapy for more than 12-18 weeks, you're doing something other than treating a mental illness. You're likely getting something out of it otherwise you'd stop going, but that thing isn't improving your mental health in any meaningful way and may be actively causing harm. I'd strongly encourage people to try psychotherapy if they're experiencing psychological distress, but I'd also strongly advise them to go in with a clear sense of what they'd like to achieve. If a therapist isn't willing to work with you in the first couple of sessions to create a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound plan for your therapy, you should be very wary. Therapists who advocate an open-ended approach that eschews goal-setting and objective outcomes in favour of a nebulous sense of "insight" or "growth" aren't delivering evidence-based care and aren't acting in the interests of their clients. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/duration-of-psychotherapy-has-little-association-with-outcome/CD51BB442A15328952834A5B1FCE7DD0 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-...
    • nequo 3y ago
      The source that you linked points out that there is no experimental data to study this because experiments are designed with a fixed duration. This seems like a serious limitation. Someone who stays in therapy longer might have a more complex issue that they seek to address, resulting in the negative association (that is, correlation) that you mention. But I do agree that having a clear goal is a good idea.
      • jdietrich 3y ago
        We have randomised trials comparing long-term with short-term therapy; they show no significant difference in outcomes. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735811001863?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
    • 3y ago
  • screye 3y ago
    When dealing with a difficult situation, people need a combination of faith, discretion, empathy, and consistency. Therapy is ideal for those who need all 4. Note that confessions and visits to the local astrologer also provide all 4. Communities are essential. They provide empathy and have faith in you. Discretion can be harder to find, and consistency can be even harder....especially with the ungrounded nature of modern society. To that degree, Therapists serve a distinct purpose for the community. The long term therapist is replacing community, but even more often, it is replacing spiritual gurus as a consistent & general purpose life guide.
  • Eumenes 3y ago
    > therapy will be the only outlet Its not good to speak in absolutes. Therapy, and more broadly psychology, is a somewhat new invention that reflects whatever the academics at the top want it to be at the moment. Its current focus is to validate the self. The centralization and top down approach to categorizing behavior and wellness, imo, is dangerous.
  • pierat 3y ago
    Having actually done the therapy thing, and summarily discontinued it; here's my observations. 1. There's no endpoint. There's always some "deeper seated something" that necessitates further sessions. 2. The goal seems to change to the current deep-seated-something. 3. Sometimes, you need drugs. Psychologists have to use techniques and talk, and psychiatrists administer drugs. However, the field has yet to combine both into effective treatment.
  • siva7 3y ago
    At least we can solve this problem as tech entrepreneurs to society by making renting friends as a service possible.
  • dkarl 3y ago
    Community doesn't cut it. Communities judge you, they gossip about you, and they contain people who rightly or wrongly feel a sense of rivalry with you, feeling ambiguous or even opposed to you thriving. Even among your friends, some will unwisely share information in ways that turn out to hurt you, despite their best intentions. A therapist is more like a grandparent, in a way that most grandparents can't be any longer. Once upon a time, your grandparents understood the world you lived in, or at least understood how people in your world related to each other. They understood how survival and respect and love worked for you and the people you dealt with. Virtually none of my friends could say that about their grandparents now, or even their aunts and uncles. None of my aunts, uncles, or grandparents ever lived in a world resembling mine. Everything about my life, including my emotional concerns, is alien to them. Now, instead of talking to a relative who can't relate to your life and your concerns, or talking to friends who can't be trusted with secrets or aren't comfortable discussing the topics that are upsetting you, you can pick a therapist who understands the place and social milieu you inhabit, is bound to confidentiality, and on top of that has professional training and experience.
    • somehowlinux 3y ago
      Sounds like you'd be a good grandparent. Maybe consider being the one to build that community, family, of understanding and acceptance first above all else.
  • aredox 3y ago
    Community is also creating its problems. The past wasn't better in terms of mental health, as the evolution in alcohol consumption between now and then demonstrate.
  • solatic 3y ago
    > A community. And the friends that come with it. You make it sound like a therapist doesn't do any work, they just get paid to sit there and socialize. There's a huge amount of emotional labor for therapists, like building trust with people whose stories they can't naturally empathize with. A lot of people need someone to just unload on (which, incidentally, is part of trauma recovery). If you do that to your friends, time after time, you lose your friends pretty quickly. That's (among other reasons) why therapists deserve to be paid for their work. You're right that a community and friends (really, social connections) are key to good long-term mental health. But a lot of people get into a place where they no longer have that, or the community and friends they have are detrimental to their mental health (consider: LGBT people in ultra-conservative religious communities). No therapist can replace a community and friends, but they can be that "I'm not going to give up on you" (because payment) level of "friend" (airquotes because payment) to help you find those social connections.
  • steve_adams_86 3y ago
    I think we need both.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• asu_thomas 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • lorenzo95 3y ago
    What is your earliest childhood memory about that? ;)
• ergonaught 3y ago
  If your therapist is helping you "align with your subconscious", you should probably keep looking. But, hey, whatever gets you through.
  • droopyEyelids 3y ago
    What do you interpret "aligning with your subconscious" to mean?
    • wahern 3y ago
      To my ears "aligning" sounds New Age-y. Similarly, "subconscious" is an abused cultural meme. So I can see where the OP might be coming from. But in the context of the article the meaning seems to be improving self-awareness and self-reflection.
• xyzelement 3y ago
  I've spent a few years in therapy with an excellent therapist who was recommended by my then-gf who was a psychiatrist herself. I would describe it as learning how to monitor, debug, and rewrite the code that rubs in my head. By default you assume that what you think/feel is somehow objective but a lot of it is shaped by past experience etc and then you bring outdated models into your current life and it is an anchor.
  • gmadsen 3y ago
    why does this take a few years to figure out, or even seeing a therapist? A couple of specific books and introspection makes all those things quite obvious. Even before the giant rise of therapy, most old business and/or self help books say the same thing.
    • fsociety 3y ago
      I’m not sure if I should leave you with a recommendation to watch Good Will Hunting or suggest that therapy can be quite different from self-help books.
    • occamschainsaw 3y ago
      Stretching the analogy from the original commenter, the code is “in production “. It is already running, it is the conscious part of you. Reading all the self help books in the world will only reinforce the things that the system already believes and reject uncomfortable things. As for introspection, often by the time people get therapy, the processor load is already high enough that there is little room for introspection. A therapist is a trained debugger, and can help you get out of your own head and see things more “objectively”. Also knowing is different from doing. What’s stopping you learning karate or bjj from books or even videos? You already have the hardware for it. But you need to learn new patterns, and a coach can often get you there more effectively. Also having a sparring partner is a good way to break old patterns and build new ones. Now replace karate with mental models/peace of mind etc, except now your system is not performing optimally by this point.
    • CTDOCodebases 3y ago
• themodelplumber 3y ago
  > I suggest that you find a therapist you deeply like and trust Massively hard suggestion here for many. For a lot of reasons. Nice to read the article though. Back when I was taking coaching clients, I got "can you be my therapist" requests all the time (answer: polite no), and it still makes me a bit sad to think about the stories I heard, compared to the amazing result in the article. Some people...well, what seems like a LOT of people, are paired up with mental health pros who are a terrible match for them, and there's not much they can do about it. Anyway, it's good to be able to think about the unconscious zone[0] and I do admit I generally like "awareness"-style wording better than "un/sub/conscious" wording, in general. It focuses way more on the solution than the problem. But in the problem zone, the "unaware" word is not nearly as cool as "unconscious" or "subconscious." Which, I've seen quite a fascinating range of these issues and there are even some interesting ways of deriving a given group's likely unconscious zones, a.k.a. blind spots. 0. Note, this is a high-growth study/pursuit, which means you can exhaust yourself and raise your anxiety in no time at all. Part of your body/mind will instinctively believe it is dying, so to speak, and it will react accordingly, so please be careful.
  • winternewt 3y ago
    IMHO this is such a huge sign that therapy has no scientific rigor. If there was a clinically proven methodology it wouldn't matter so much who performs it. But with the therapists I've seen they all just seem to be applying their own pet theories to what's wrong instead of drawing from anything like an actual education. Of course this means you need to try a bunch of different therapists to see which one works. It's basically random chance whether they can offer something that resonates with you. You might as well ask a Tarot deck for help.
    • waffleiron 3y ago
      > IMHO this is such a huge sign that therapy has no scientific rigor. If there was a clinically proven methodology it wouldn't matter so much who performs it. Doesn’t need to mean no scientific rigor, it could be that it isn’t regulated properly. It really matters who performs brain surgery, the outcome of me performing it and a trained and licensed professional are massively different. Even if I follow the clinically proven methodology as an untrained person.
• Taaanos 3y ago
  If anyone is interested in reading a fiction book related to therapy, read “When Nitzsche Wept” by Irvin D.Yalom. > The book combines fact and fiction to imagine a meeting between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the physician Josef Breuer. In the story, Breuer helps Nietzsche with his despair while Nietzsche offers philosophical insights that challenge Breuer’s own beliefs and practices. The book delves into existentialism, psychotherapy, and the therapeutic process in an engaging manner. It provides a fictional account of the possible origins of psychotherapy while exploring the deep emotional and intellectual challenges faced by both men.
• neom 3y ago
  Her twitter and tiktok are interesting, one of the few young folks publishing about philosophy. https://twitter.com/noampomsky https://twitter.com/noampomsky https://www.tiktok.com/@bookbearexpress https://www.tiktok.com/@bookbearexpress
• airbreather 3y ago
  There are undoubtably many cases where therapy is needed to help someone who is stuck, or so badly hurt or damaged they really need some one elses help to get past where they are at.. But, TBH, my experience is that in a fair few cases therapy is for people that just can't be honest with themselves.
  • serpix 3y ago
    Well I was both. Really hurt by a toxic person because I wasn't honest to myself how bad i felt with her.
  • CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago
    Is the median person capable of being consistently honest with themselves? Honest with themselves about the most important things?
    • airbreather 3y ago
      well in some cases maybe the the problem is being too honest or self critical, I guess it just comes down to the quality of self awareness.
• abhaynayar 3y ago
  Really well put. I don't like the idea of going to a therapist because I tried one once, and did not have a good experience. Yes, I could probably keep trying therapists until one clicks, but instead I decided to read up on CBT on my own. So I have been doing "behavioral experiments" which help me challenge my irrational negative thoughts by surfacing them and then taking action in the real world to "gather evidence" and prove to myself that those negative thoughts were irrational. It really is amazing, but the only problem with this is that you have to keep doing it and failing at it for a long time. I have given up and gotten back on it so many times, but that's the key -- to keep at it despite everything, with no excuses, for a very very long time. Expect failure, and keep picking yourself back up, again and again.
  • Sakos 3y ago
    I tried this for a long time and had some success, but I was never happy with my rate of progress and it's only when I found a decent therapist who did it with me that I was able to make major breakthroughs that have massively improved my life. Absolutely, people should look into this on their own and get the process started. I highly recommend eventually supplementing the process with a therapist.
  • bowsamic 3y ago
    CBT is a kind of therapy that is explicitly designed to be able to be done alone. Not all therapy is like this
  • steve_adams_86 3y ago
    I’ve found having a human being explain to me how I’m wrong in ways I’d struggle to know I’m wrong was indispensable. I used CBT for a few years before finding someone and they very effectively poked holes in many ideas I had about myself and the world. Nothing profound, but useful enough to help me make progress I wouldn’t have otherwise. Individuals can’t know everything. We need other people to help bring more perspective and correct biases. It’s hard to find someone, but worth the effort if you can afford it.
• fullmoon 3y ago
  > For example, if all of your best friends agree on one thing, and you’re like, yeah, they just don’t get it: you’re in denial. That is dangerously close to woo, but is a good example on the lack of rigor in the field. Of course, any true believer disagreeing with me will can now just point towards me being in denial.
  • bardan 3y ago
    Yeah this is what bothers me. Any argument that has an innate, automatic means of dismissing criticism is innately worth dismissing automatically.
    • H8crilA 3y ago
      The article is exaggerating to make a point. It is usually, or almost always, true that people around you know more about what you should do in such situations than you do.
      • trabant00 3y ago
        > people around you know more about what you should do in such situations than you do Nobody knows the entire story of what you're going through better than you. People around you know bits and pieces. They do not have the time and energy to devote to your problems, they are making quick and dirty judgments. The often suggest something you've already tried. Or a solution they think solved a problem of theirs that superficially resembles yours. Or just what the current culture generally accepts. And since we're talking psychology here I'm gonna go ahead and be keyboard Freud: saying that everybody knows better than you is just your low self esteem talking. I would have had a miserable life if I went with what people around me thought I should do.
  • trabant00 3y ago
    That quote bothered me the most out of the entire article. It's indoctrination 101 - if you don't believe/agree there is something wrong with you.
• strogonoff 3y ago
  Even as someone sincerely interested in psychology as serious science, I’m not really comfortable with the idea[0] of therapy—I assume mental health treatment is what’s usually meant by “therapy”?—especially if it implies that somebody can just “tell” me what my “subconscious” is “feeling” and expect me to take that at face value. 1) A prospect of looking for a person I can trust is quite daunting if it necessarily involves sharing sensitive things with those I wouldn’t trust once I get to know them. If you have the money and the confidence required to share very personal things with four different psychiatrists, it may work for you—it doesn’t seem likely to for me. 2) Knowing my own dislike for pseudo- or cargo cult science, I foresee how we would have to spend a lot of time diving into the “why” underlying every point, and I know from experience how it’s awkward (not to mention a waste of money and time) when you have done your own research and start noticing that a professional, in fact, (A) doesn’t know something and (B) unable to admit it and do more research (made worse if that person (C) charges by the hour). Really, I can get on board with the idea of someone telling me that I’m in denial and me snapping out of it, but assuming I can’t acknowledge that when my friends say so why would I suddenly believe a person who knows me much less and, no offence, for all I know may well be making a living doing something not very far removed from fortune telling? Long story short, it’s likely a Bad Idea(tm) to take these matters into your own hands[0], but I instead try to educate myself on the fundamentals by reading books. Among my recent findings on this topic is Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, if the above resonates with you may like it too (though I’ve only recently started it, not yet halfway through). Iain is, no surprise, a psychiatrist, but with a huge lean towards neuroscience, which is a good combination that to me makes for an interesting/palatable read. Being more or less the opposite of a self-help book, it builds on analysis of fairly hardcore well-sourced research and so far I feel enabled to make my own conclusions as to how it may (or may not, yet to be seen) apply to my psychological balance (slash lack thereof). [0] Of course, this should go with a big red warning label that *I have not tried therapy* (yet?). Don’t listen to me, probably.
  • tveita 3y ago
    It might be a helpful framing to think of handling emotions and dealing with adversity as life skills, like cooking. There isn't one single "correct" way to cook. Most people pick up some cooking skills naturally as they grow up - from family, from friends, through reading books or TV shows. But some people grow up with parents who are bad at cooking, in an environment where most people don't cook, and they will themselves be bad at cooking as adults. If they realize that later, "How come all my friends talk about cooking rice like it's no big deal", they might benefit from taking a cooking class, or sitting down and reading a basic cookbook. It could be a "food science" book that tells you the chemistry of Maillard reaction, but it doesn't have to be. The important thing is to try out different ways to cook than what you're used to, guided by someone who is good at cooking. That will be more effective that sitting down and trying to rediscover how to make an omelette from scratch. Most people are getting by with their normal cooking skills, but everyone who could probably discover some ways to improve by watching a cooking show, or taking a cooking class. We could consider teaching more cooking in school to make sure everyone knows some minimum amount of cooking to get by in life.
• mustafabisic1 3y ago
  I live in a country where there’s a lot of stigma about therapy, but I really loved my experience with it. In my first session I discovered a huge sticking point of mine. I go and do something for self-care like gym or a massage, but the entire time I feel guilty because my wife’s home with kids. It was obvious when I realised it, but it happened for years prior. Niw my experience during these activities js so much better. P.s. Whenever I see a headline with all lower case letters I immediately like it more. Lol
  • ncr100 3y ago
    Appreciating life is worth discovering: lower case subtleties UPPER CASE SHOUTING ... Knowing that you're not alone can reduce stress (tension in your mind between what you think are the expectations for you versus what you actually would prefer) which has been distracting your thinking and creating discomfort. Loving oneself, and improving / impacting your relationship with Yourself, can Open up a pathway to developing and using skills to connect with other people, helping them become more expressive. Ultimately I find therapy helps provide additional mental freedom, allowing stronger self-assertion.
• mvncleaninst 3y ago
  > But if you have a good therapist, they’ll find a way to slowly but firmly explain to you what your subconscious is telling you over weeks and months and years. People are turning this into a religion and need to come clean about it. The language is almost identical, except they've replaced the word "God" with the word "subconscious". What's actually going on is eerily similar
  • LightHugger 3y ago
    Maybe it's more that people have been confusing signals from their subconscious with religion for a massive part of human history.
    • CTDOCodebases 3y ago
      This is it. A prayer can also be thought of as an affirmation or just positive self talk.
• bowsamic 3y ago
  Therapy is no more a monolith than medications in general are a monolith. Different therapies do very different things, just as different medications do different things. I don't even see where this article mentioned what kind of therapy is done: is it counselling? CBT? DBT? Behavioural therapy alone? Depth psychology? Psychoanalysis? MBSR? Without this information, it's as useless as saying "Prescription medication as a way of treating your bacterial infection" Of course, many of the things they're saying here absolutely do not apply to all kinds of therapy.
• CTDOCodebases 3y ago
  It's wild how people don't acknowledge the subconscious mind or care to examine or experiment with how the conscious and subconscious mind interact. Even subconscious is a bad word for it. Outer conscious would be better.
  • HPsquared 3y ago
    I'd call the conscious the "outer" and the subconscious the "inner". It's hidden inside the black box. See also the structure of the brain (neocortex is on the outside, built on top of the other layers).
    • CTDOCodebases 3y ago
      Why would you call the conscious the outer though if the conscious does not directly experience what we refer to as the external world? i.e it appears to be filtered through the subconscious.
  • uoaei 3y ago
    My mental model is that the ego is a shield that separates the space of thought into subconscious and conscious parts, and it moves its boundaries to draw shadows (in the Jungian sense) around parts of the subconscious for the purpose of self-coherence and self-preservation.
    • CTDOCodebases 3y ago
      Would it be fair to say that according to your mental model it casts a shadow on those parts but reflects light other parts? As a side note I'm both amused and curious why my original comment currently has negative votes. I would think that there would be many people here that share that sentiment though I guess some people find it scary to question the nature of reality.
  • dyno12345 3y ago
    It might be because psychological science has long since given up on these concepts as unscientific.
• heisnotanalien 3y ago
  Great post. Us engineer types I would say are generally too conscious. That is we prioritise the cognitive left-brain side waaaaayy too much.
  • serpix 3y ago
    This makes us engineer types vulnerable to the irrational nature of people. We try to make sense out of irrational behavior and choose wrong partners or company due to it. We try to apply logic where logic is controversial. An OCD sufferer can clean their hands five times every time yet their teeth are rotten. We try to look and look to a person realizing their illogical ways and we suffer unimaginable amounts while waiting.
• trabant00 3y ago
  She's in an upswing stage of mental energy. Live long enough and find out that these up and down swings are constant throughout anybody's life. When people are up they look for reasons and form semi-religious devotion to a pattern they identify: therapy, running, meditation, lifting weights, drugs, yoga, forming a family, you name it. Thing is though: this too shall pass. You will go down again even though you keep doing that wonderful thing that you thought changed your life. And maybe you will abandon it, stay a year or two down, then go up again and find another thing. My point being: the causality is often perceived backwards. You start feeling better and then you start doing a thing (or more) you suddenly have time and energy for. And as you feel better and better you point to that thing as the cause even though it's just an effect.
  • mvncleaninst 3y ago
    > You start feeling better and then you start doing a thing (or more) you suddenly have time and energy for. But then, why even bother calling the feeling "better" in the first place if the cause is really something unknowable? Why bother calling it "better" or "worse" if there isn't anything to be done about it and it's just another phase of mental energy like clouds in the sky? Is a clear day "better" than a stormy one? What does the "better" even mean here?
• eimrine 3y ago
  I am amazed of reading an article about psychology with no "psy" occurrences.
• nathias 3y ago
  can't imagine a worse fate than being 'aligned' with my subconscious
• reilly3000 3y ago
  I like this notion of therapist as facilitator. It’s not really been the majority of my experience with mental health professionals. The prevailing attitude seems obsessed with pathology and normalcy.
• effed3 3y ago
  One (vgood IMHO) point of wiew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We%27ve_Had_a_Hundred_Years_of_Psychotherapy_%E2%80%93_and_the_World%27s_Getting_Worse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We%27ve_Had_a_Hundred_Years_of...
• whycome 3y ago
  I think this is going to be one of the important uses of AI -- therapy bots. Just having someone to seem like they're listening (ELIZA was kind of on to something -- but this is the chance to actually have meaningful interaction rather than just conversational tricks). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
  • steve_adams_86 3y ago
    I hope it’s not. I think we need people to connect directly with one another, not move further away from doing so. If in our more intimate moments we’re interfacing with machines, I have the sense that we will be losing more than gaining something.
• javier_e06 3y ago
  What about Bob? Can a therapist become your friend and go with your to visit your parents on Thanksgiving? I lean more on the external world than the internal world on my quest to understand my own behavior. After all, I always eat before going shopping at the grocery store and is no coincidence that that I am surrounded by palm size candy less than 12 inches away from me at the cashier.
  • gubneor 3y ago
    because others want to manipulate you into bettering themselves?
• notShabu 3y ago
  therapists IMO is a paid "listening as a service". but many therapists won't have the necessary life similarity overlap to truly listen. this is esp true for individuals who end up needing therapy b/c they think in ways that are not aligned with society. so most therapists teach coping mechanisms to fit in more w/ society so that it becomes a source of support vs judgement. it's a nice and controlled "lobotomy" of the parts that "should" be excised. vs the "integrate the shadow/subconscious" stance which believes that these parts cannot truly be excised and instead are suppressed instead of integrated.
  • chris37879 3y ago
    This is a large part of why you should shop around for your therapist. I’m currently seeing a psychiatrist that also offers talk therapy, and we have similar backgrounds and life experiences, but he’s about 15 years ‘ahead’ of me. I’ve made more actual progress and seen more genuine peace in seeing him for 6 months than I did in years of therapy prior. And as you said, a large part of it for me was “I can’t change this about myself, but I know it now and can consciously work around it and communicate my needs better to those around me” and that alone has been immensely positive for me.
• kayo_20211030 3y ago
  I don't know much about therapy, but > I suggest that you find a therapist you deeply like and trust is probably the one best piece of advice anyone can give about selecting colleagues, partners, friends, teammates and even therapists. Follow that, and you're off to a good start.