Comment on Money doesn't solve everything, but it helps.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day agoMy therapists helped me put my life back together after over a decade of spinning my wheels and struggling with PTSD. Sorry about your sister, and it’s not like I haven’t also seen shitty therapists, but that’s definitely not everyone and I think it’s a bad idea to discourage anyone from reaching out for help. People should leave therapists they don’t click with even if they’re not bad per se, because if you don’t like them or they don’t respect you then nothing productive is going to happen.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
But also there are a lot of alternatives to talk therapy.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Talk therapy is 1 ingredient in the mental healthcare burrito.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
People have existed long before therapy has. Do you think people 500 years just suffered in misery until someone invented therapy?
The problem with therapy, I find, is what you can teach people. You can teach people facts. You can’t teach people what it is like to be someone else. If you have a therapist that can ONLY relate to you in terms of theory, you’re going to have a bad time. So that depends on who you are and what problem you are bringing.
An easy example, that the field is just now grappling with, is existential depression. That is to say, a depression that doesn’t come from distorted thinking but thinking TOO clearly. Unless a therapist has been through it themselves, they might try a bunch of tools to “fix” the depression, trying to convince you that you are having distorted thoughts, etc…
But to come back to my historical point: therapy will just take tools from existential philosophy and recycle them as “therapy”, thereby continuing their monopoly. There are entire fields of therapy that have been entirely lifted from other philosophies. CBT is basically stoicism. ACT is basically Buddhism.
There are great therapists out there, but I think they are DESPITE the systems in place to train and certify them, not because of those systems.
As Daniel Mackler has said, “it is easier to become a good therapist, than to find one.”
wols@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
For the most part, yes. At least in this context. Granted, functions similar to those covered by therapy (teaching, guidance, healing, realignment) have been carried out human-to-human for probably millennia.
But the proportion of people that were helped before there were systems and science was likely much lower than today.
Therapists (especially good ones) aren’t unable to relate to you beyond theory unless they have literally experienced circumstances similar to yours. Empathy + experience goes a long way. Compatibility is an important factor which is why you’re encouraged to keep looking until you find someone that matches, but they don’t need to share your philosophical views in order to be effective.
Well, if you went to them because the depression is making you suffer and you would like to get rid of it, they should try to help you deal with it. How that is best to be achieved is of course a dialog between you and your therapist, but even if the root cause is “thinking too clearly” there are ways to mitigate the depression.
Philosophy and psychotherapy are completely different subjects of study with mostly disjoint areas of applicability. Sure, one draws heavily from the other, but that’s not exactly particular to psychology - philosophy is the mother of all science, after all.
There are areas of philosophy that are particularly rich in resources (e.g. ethics), but even if there are philosophical schools that tell you how to live, for most people they aren’t concrete/practical enough to be applied (not to mention the time needed to sift through dozens of philosophies, and the risk of choosing one that is unhelpful; or worse, misunderstanding it).
Most people need help with this which is why we have a field that actually has the human psyche as its central subject of study.
Therapy works, it helps a great number of people, and for most of them philosophy is not a viable replacement.
Absolutely not. I don’t know if you have qualms with specific institutions in a particular country - those might well be justified. But organizing and systematizing a discipline leads to increased quality of practitioners rather than the opposite. Without training, most therapists would be significantly worse, especially during the early years of their career. Without certification, you’d get many more people doing the job that are simply not qualified for it.
Therapy is hard and unfortunately many therapists are mediocre or worse. There are probably also many institutions that overall don’t produce high quality professionals. But I think laying the blame on the education/certification system as a whole is misguided.
As I said, just now, “it is easier to become a good therapist if you study and get certified than if you don’t”.
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
So what you’re really saying is therapy IS great and vital and people have been getting therapy this whole time but just not calling it that
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I never said there weren’t. Art therapy, equine therapy, music therapy, there are plenty of options that aren’t ’sit on the couch and tell me about your mother.’ But for a lot of people who feel like they can’t talk about their mental health struggles, talking about it is exactly what they need.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yes.
My issue is that a lot of times, talk therapy is presented as the ONLY option, and, as you have pointed out, it isn’t. There are also things that aren’t officially “therapy” that can be hugely therapeautic. But everyone is different, and I think learning to tune into yourself is an important skill that can be learned through therapy or just as well independently.