Every negative emotion I have, I'm told to go to therapy.

Negative emotions are human!

Why have we, as a society, grown to fear them?

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[–] 15 points 1 month ago (26 children)

Are you American? As a European, it seems that Americans are obsessed with therapy, whereas I don't think it's at all common over here.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    you seem to think therapy in america is some kind ofad, or a phase. more and more people are coming foward for therapy, plus recently women/girls are being properly recognized for adhd/autism properly now. when before they could mask it easily, and sometimes they were seen as lazy, still living at home types.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (7 children)

    It's a rich American thing.

    poor Americans don't have access to therapy. it's a luxury good, like travel.

    and the people who tell you you have to have travel 3x a year are the same ones who think you must have a therapist.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago

    it's a luxury good, like travel.

    It shouldn't be.

    A lot of major health insurance providers have free "self-help" style mental healthcare options, which are better than nothing even if they're kind of lame, but even one of the worst insurers I've been on (Kaiser Permanente) had decent mental health benefits. They like money and they know that subsidizing therapy is way cheaper than paying claims for a lot of the issues poor mental health can lead to

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    That's bullshit. Most places have free or extremely low cost therapy available. Most. Not all.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Fuck, if you're really broke you can pirate a CBT or DBT workbook. Less effective than the real thing, but if you're committed to change it can really help

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    You don't even have to do that, there are free CBT, DBT, and shadow work exercises that are printable.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Good to know. You can also probably find books describing techniques at the library.

    I'm not saying self administered CBT alone fixed me, but it took me from unstable to manageable, and from there practice and experience got me pretty far. Also lsd helped.

    So yeah, if you're too poor for therapy (and medicaid doesn't cover it in your state) self administer CBT/DBT then when you're more stable if you don't have a family history of psychosis pop a few tabs of acid

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I was in and out of available low-cost, therapies, often with poor or outright bad therapists, for a long time. It was sort of a convergence of factors that healed me, beginning with someone who said something that prompted me to look up something from early childhood behavioral psych from decades earlier that no therapist mentioned: attachment theory, and from there another year or so of floundering my way along, until I was able to access good telehealth therapy, from a good therapist, who attended a horrible school, and finished out months later, in person.

    Yes, there have been ups and downs since, and a couple of times I almost spun out, but was able to catch myself until I was able to get privacy and time to do the work while actually feeling the feelings. The point is, if you really want it, you'll do whatever it takes as often as possible.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago (16 children)

    That is a bad thing. While therapy can't solve every problem, it can solve a lot. That American's can admit to using therapy means we can get the help we need when needed. I don't know how, but Europe needs to fix their culture and get people the help they need, not be smug in the "we don't need it" attitude which harms those who need help.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    You're reading a lot into that comment, it's indeed not that common over here, but it isn't non-existing either. If people need/want therapy, it's available.

    Edit: It's also not that common to talk about therapy over here. Not that it's taboo, but we don't like to over share our medical history.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Perhaps then you’re also reading into Americans obsession with therapy as being a [fad? Perhaps?], and less the reality that many Americans desperately need therapy and is actually a real, tangeable problem

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Americans actually need affordable housing, medical care, education, vacation time, workers' rights, etc. Therapy is how oligarchs want you to "solve" your problems.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago*

    We can have all these things. Many therapists connect their patients to resources or even are volunteers in their community. I don’t see how these are exclusive

    But also therapists are doctors, “people need housing not medical care” basically. We need all of them, holistically, every single resource we need to survive includes medical specialists. Would you say don’t go to an oncologist because the oligarchs want to die of cancer? What even is this logic

    Also the oligarchs need therapy too for their psychopathy but their power systems wouldn’t allow someone non syncophantic in their circles so 🤷‍♀️ guess we all suffer cause of that too

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  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago (11 children)

    everyone could benefit from a personal trainer too!

    should everyone have personal trainers?

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    Actually yeah, if everyone could check in with a personal trainer every month or two for free, that would probably return many times the value of its cost through how much healthier it would make the population in the long term

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    that would probably return many times the value of its cost

    This seems like a testable hypothesis.

    Personally, I'm skeptical that it would offer significant benefits over much cheaper interventions.

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  • [+] -8 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    cool, do you live in a world where money grows on trees too?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    No, money grows in the pocketbooks of the rich because we let them avoid paying their fair share.

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  • [+] -5 points 1 month ago* (3 children)
  • [+] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, I don't need one because I can take care of my own workout routines myself.

    Almost as if... not everyone needs therapy either for the minor inconveniences of life...

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Almost as if you deliberately ignored the operative word "could" in my original reply so that you could pretend I thought everyone should be forced to see a personal trainer and get mad about that

    When people have the choice to receive benefits, they typically only do so when they would actually benefit. People without a problem they believe therapy can address typically won't choose to see a therapist, for the same reason you would not choose to see a personal trainer.

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