I mean, when you think about it therapy really is based in philosophy of being a person. It’s no wonder even a degree can’t save you from being shit at it.

I know the idea of a therapist not being quality or trustworthy can be a touchy subject for many, because for some people, therapy was a life saving move. Hell, I consider some of the therapy I’ve had to be pretty worth going to, because it helped me reframe a lot of my thinking during times when I needed to. But I think about the vulnerability I had back then and how that could have been easily taken advantage of. I think about how there were many other things I needed to learn and be told that didn’t reach me. I think about the huge amount of people who are looking for therapy right now and how easy it is to get stuck with one that even if they mean well, could have a very flawed approach. Actually, the more you really think about what therapy is aiming to do and how it aims to do it, it starts to fall apart under just how fuzzy it all becomes. Who has discovered the fool-proof, most efficient way to think and approach their lives, if anyone? And if that supposed thing exists, what is the best way to teach it to someone, who is usually under duress? I mean, have we? I’m all for CBT when it can bring people out of trauma or circular thinking, but I know it doesn’t much help to give for someone experiencing genuinely unfair systems that hold them back. I am sure many therapists have an agreed upon method for all kinds of setbacks and conditions, but I am skeptical that every supposed cure is definitive science and not just what is taught to be most efficient. I am sure when good evidence is there it’s taken into heavy consideration, but this is something where much of the data is self reported. I also have to be honest, there’s really no safety nets for malice or incompetence in this practice that I know about. If you get told you actually need to find a religion to be less depressed, and you are a minor, there’s really nothing you can do but pretend to do that. I would know, that was my first experience with a therapist lol. Of course I learned quickly that religion has bought and sold many of these people, and adjusted what I told them accordingly. How much help it would have been if this person had not only a better understanding of how mentally damaging magical thinking is, but how growing up an ADHD female has it’s own unique challenges that shaped my growing self-hatred. Even just understanding the loneliness of being an only child with overprotective parents would have helped me a lot more than telling me to find some sort of religious practice to waste my time on. How could it be that other kids my age were providing better advice and healing than a grown man with a degree in advice and understanding? Of course I’ve been biased from the start, but I did keep trying. Something I noticed about the therapy from when I was a child vs an adult is how strangely cold they seemed towards me and my issues. I’m sure on some level they found me to just be a spoiled weirdo child, whining about how hard it is to be a kid who shuts themselves off from her peers to play video games and read comic books. But when I look back I see someone going through hard things for the first time, who was never told or shown that it’s okay to make mistakes, who was never given any freedom or privacy, which led to a lot of difficulty knowing not only what it means to be respected, but how to demand it for myself without feeling extreme guilt. I can tell you as an adult that anyone who I feel is trying to make me feel guilty, however justified, makes me feel an extremely strong wave of hate instead. I have zero trust for anyone who ever wants me to feel guilt ever again. I am lucky this didn’t manifest further into completely eroding my ability to feel empathy at all, but I suspect I would have if I let my parents choose my adulthood therapists.
My main therapist in adulthood, which still I haven’t talked to in about 10 years now, was not a bad lady. But at this point I had stopped talking too much about any depressive thoughts and was more wanting to work on my crippling anxieties and newly found ADHD. So when I say she helped me by talking about techniques to handle my ADHD, I do mean that. My anxiety issues really didn’t get solved, and my ever increasing doses of aderall made the anxiety issues WAY worse, basically putting me even more on edge and scared to do anything, other than smoke cigarettes, drink diet coke mixed with cheap vodka, and play gatcha games on my phone while hiding somewhere in my car. Such a fulfilling life! I was just trying to survive until the next day because I had completely given up on the idea that I could even have potential to be anything in life or that I would be able to do anything involving taking care of myself independently. Of course I could shower, but I certainly hated the way the water feels on me, but I’m told I can’t cook or clean to save my life, and I can’t figure out how to pay a bill or show up to work on time or often enough, and I believed that and made those things true. The only times I think I felt better was when I was laughing at other people I thought were beneath me. Life with degrading empathy is a hard one. I feel tired and sad just remembering it all. I felt completely alone and like no one would really get my issues so I kept them pretty quiet except for maybe vent blogs on tumblr. I instead tried my best to make the conversations with my therapist pleasant and do what I did in every conversation back then; which is anything I can do to make the other person like me and think I’m funny, smart, and charming. Like everyone else in my life I needed her to like me and I needed her to like me more than most of the people she talks with. I needed to win that contest every time, with every person. Each loss of that would feel like being stabbed. I stopped making art around this time once I was completely dropped out of college. I didn’t even want to think about art again. My friends were either moving away or just becoming sick of my bullshit because of how angry and opinionated I was getting on social media, at a time when they were also getting a bit more intense about politics than usual. I really doubled down to one-up them for no reason other than wanting to feel like I had the smartest opinion in the room. It was cringe, tbh, and now I’m sure that’s why they’re not even that enthused when I reached out to them again. I tried to show them I’m less of an asshole now, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t really care at this point once they realized being without me is completely livable and fine. Which is fair, I really can’t be bitter at anyone other than myself. I don’t even know if I would want to content many of them again, because so many of them are just going to want to talk on Discord or something while I’m wanting to see them in person For Real, either going out for a coffee, a drink, or just at my house for a smoke or something. I don’t think anyone really hangs out like that much anymore without weeks to months of the weird texting or messaging rituals that I genuinely cannot stand. Even facetime or phone calls are exhausting and annoying to me. Just see me in person or write/type me a letter. Does anyone else feel this way? Last night I had a pretty good time with my husband and brother in law just watching youtube and talking. Even if it wasn’t anything special, I liked it more than any chat on Discord I’ve ever had. I’m not built for this era lol.
But anyway, my skepticism still remains even with the “good ones” because most of our expensive hang outs were just us talking about our exes or just whatever was going on in life. I think she could tell I needed a friend badly and knew it would be easier to just keep it all light instead of pushing me to work on my issues. And I feel that can be a bit of a pitfall, because truthfully while I appreciate a kind demeanor immensely, I think she could have gently tried to push me to getting down to business to approach my issues in a way that made them less overwhelming to me. At the very least, she could have helped me find the language I sorely needed to express what I’m going through, and how to look at my actions and limits uncritically. I cannot express how much neutrality really did save me in terms of how I approach myself. A lot of my issues were really stemming from everything I did dripping with emotion and drama when I desperately wanted to escape from it. I would in turn respond with being as angry and unemphatic as I could to anything happening to anyone else. I regret that of course, but it’s the wallowing in self hatred and emotion in general that I regret the most. I am a sensitive person. I feel a lot and I feel strongly. That’s actually a pretty strong ADHD symptom, and I wish I had known that when I was so overwhelmed I could barely breathe as a teenager. But I didn’t, and I’m just glad I made it through somehow. I was also the type to really buy into the whole “other people have it worse, so you should feel bad for feeling bad” kind of bullshit that people will run others through. So of course, to feel better about my own feelings being worthless to myself, I had to make others feel as small and unloved as I did. I think if anyone had given me honest compassion during those times I would have either ran away or responded with violence or something. That shit would have taken me out in one hit because of how weak I was.
I know there was this talk about how being lonely, of what I assume is the metal distress that comes with chronic loneliness, is actually physically bad for you. That kinda worries me lol, because I spent YEARS crying every night out of loneliness, along with years of drinking and smoking cigarettes and my weight going up and down so uhhh am I fucked? I’m really trying my best to get healthier but sometimes I think about that and wonder if 29 was too late to bounce back from it all. Maybe I’m gonna be okay, and I guess it’s just better to assume that and keep trying to do better. I really do feel so much better and more capable than I used to. I suppose we’ll just see.
Something that really bothers me is seeing all these therapists on social media like TikTok where they are obviously trying to either sell their practice or gain enough internet clout to be famous. Actually, there’s got to be something a little unwell about wanting to be famous in general, even with the understanding it could lead to financial stability, because I don’t think humans are meant to be known by that many humans. I don’t think it’s normal to create a presentable online persona specifically so people like you and consume videos of you. I used to be addicted to making myself likable because it felt so safe and I would dream of the rewards of someone liking me so much that they gave me things or did stuff for me. I would daydream and wish so hard that people would like me so much they would come together and make me a surprise party like on TV shows...when in reality I would struggle to reach out to anyone ever and most people wouldn’t remember my birthday if Facebook hadn’t told them about it. And really, when had I done the same for anyone else? I never made a surprise party for anyone and I don’t think I remembered their birthdays much either. So why was I so obsessed with the world giving me excess praise and attention?
To be honest, this AI chatbot boom would have been a big deal for me back then. Helpful? Maybe. Getting to program an anime girl to tell me how amazing I am, and give me good morning texts when I woke up at 2pm would probably have made me a bit worse but I would have hurt less real people with how sour I was. Fake people I could bully and gossip to would have definitely made me worse but it would have beat the hours I spent on 4chan with other losers. A therapist chatbot would probably have about the same results but I would have had much more time to talk to them at any point, so I really don’t know. I gave Pi a chance a few times these past couple years and it does have the ability to talk me through my emotional sensitivity, but it fails to understand my dramatic responses are not always looking at the situation rationally, so it will agree with any frustration I might feel about whoever and tell me I need to essentially tell them to do better or stop talking to them, which doesn’t factor in that I could be an unreliable narrator and simply in the wrong. I look back after cooling down on my conversations there and see the reasoning behind validating my feelings but I also see how endless validation in our interactions can warp someone’s sense of reality and have them fail to realize their part in the distressing experience. Of course, this is where I have to say the one size fits all approach will just never work. Sometimes you need a bit of a push to see you’re being irrational, and sometimes you need to know that not only how you feel but why you feel it is completely okay. Therapists sometimes feel like a well meaning relative who’s trying to make you feel better but doesn’t really understand that you’re parents don’t hate you and are abusive; they’re just (as an example) not going to let you go to a concert alone or whatever because they’re genuinely concerned for your safety and can’t go with you. Then again, some therapists are incapable of realizing the deliberate behavior to demean you, disrespect your boundaries, and deny you a certain amount of privacy is not you being a brat or ungrateful, but instead legitimate distress that this person needs advocating for. Therapists are either people or made by people, which means they’re going to have the very human flaws that therapy is essentially meant to call out and navigate. Of course someone from a christian background wouldn’t understand a childs very normal need for reasonable privacy, or understand any frustrations they may deal with in regards to sexism or homophobia, because those are things they feel are normal and justified. This is what normal is to them, so when they’re told they are abnormalities, they will deflect and say you must be abnormal for having an issue with it, and need to work on making sure you don’t feel that way any more. They will tell you it’s because you haven’t learned the right self talk to diminish what they feel is a made up problem out of delusion. Do you see why I get a bit worried for the kids they’re working with? And of course, who is the person with the perfect opinions or viewpoints that gets to be the flawless Alpha Therapist? Can such a thing really exist? The entire process is much too human and fuzzy. I don’t think anything made by a human is going to suffice as a replacement, either, because it’s going to be trying to emulate an amalgamation of imperfect people. I can only wonder if maybe a set of multiple people or pseudo-people in a council could come closer to being a good therapy experience because you could be advocated for in many ways through many philosophies. But damn, if finding one therapist is either impossible or expensive, I know getting a group of them to duke out how to best handle your ADHD, depression, or whatever would go crazy.

I actually think reading books for what ails you mentally can be a good idea. I think it’s just important to know about who wrote these books and what they have connections with. And honestly, most self help books are out there to sell courses and have strong connections to churches like the lds church in particular. You may find that books about philosophy help you best. You may also enjoy books that are critical of social norms like I do, because reading a lot of atheist books really helped me understand why the people around me act the way they do. History is a great thing to learn about too, but I hope you look for many sources and viewpoints and not just one white guy posturing his bias. It’s crazy how learning can be this healing thing when you’re not just learning about current events that depress you.
The less spoken element to mental health is the physical one, not for lack of being spoken about in the past, but more because we’re sick of being told to go for a run or do yoga when we can’t even get out of bed. But it does change how I can handle things; more vitamin D and protein helps me have more energy to tackle my day, feeling satiated helps me think more rationally, and moving around helps my body know it needs to stay awake and releases a lot of my stress. It’s just the truth that our bodies need attention and care if we want the brain to operate better, too.
I think a lot of people who have good therapy experiences usually have something akin to a mentorship, where the person might have similar life experiences with what they’re dealing with. It’s why I don’t think I ever want a guy therapist personally. But I’ll admit I do struggle getting along with people in my exact age range so maybe there’s more to it than just matching identities. I know if I found an older, equally nerdy chronically online type woman who loves messy art projects I would be in her office every time I could afford it, even if I don’t need anything.
And maybe that’s the real thing myself and others need, which is permission to have a friend to talk to and be vulnerable around. The truth is that you’re going to have to be that for them, too, so it’s not like someone is out there to be your end all, be all person. That’s just not a thing that really exists. Which means you have to get out there and start talking to real people and maybe even reading a book or two.
I guess a lot of what I’m typing is to vent and process what I’ve been through, but maybe this is still worth reading to someone out there. However for me, most of it’s worth is from writing it.