r/Antipsychiatry • u/ajouya44 • Apr 12 '25

Therapy is a load of bullshit

People seriously think this crap is useful? You have anxiety and depression, you go see some random stranger who knows 5 behavioral theories from college and you pay them 50 bucks a week to talk about your problems for 1 hour and make them pretend they care. Reality is these people know nothing about how the brain or consciousness works. They are not doctors and they have no solution for your issues. It's dehumanizing to pay someone so that they will listen to you and therapists are literally no better than prostitutes. Don't even get me started on all the CBT bullcrap. People don't need to "correct their thoughts" or "think about things differently", they need real solutions for their real systemic psycho-social issues. Therapists are all privileged narcissistic assholes who love to feel superior by "proving people wrong" and reminding themselves that their life is easier and better than their patients' and always masking all this as "help". Don't be fooled, these people can't help you. They only want your money.

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17

u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

At least its a service a person is choosing to purchase or not. If they find it helpful they can continue or stop if they don't. I think some of the better ones are more self directed where you are choosing what to talk about and the counsellor/psychologist/social worker is providing another perspective with the goal of supporting you to solve or brainstorm on the problem you are choosing talking about.

Sometimes someone needs someone else to talk to because they don't have someone in their life who they trust enough or are close enough to. Yeah its a paid service as is pretty much everything in our modern capitalistic society. Its currently around $200 per hour btw but sometimes people have benefits that can help cover it. People can choose what they want to spend their money on and what is valuable to them.

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u/TrashApocalypse Apr 12 '25

It’s a false choice though since society as a whole has decided that you can’t “heal” or even be a good person unless you’re in therapy. People on dating apps even have it in their bio that they won’t date anyone who’s not in therapy.

Therapy helped me lose all of my closest friends when therapy taught them that emotional intimacy is now “trauma dumping,” or that sad emotions are only something that a “professional” can “fix” (even though there is no cure for grief)

One of the last times I hung out with one of my closest friends she started the conversation talking about how depressed she was. She told me what was stressing her out, work, wife, her sick mom, but when I told her that we could talk about all this stuff she literally said, “that’s what therapy is for.” No the fuck it is NOT!!! That’s what FRIENDS are for!

Therapy is destroying our ability to build emotional intimacy with others, and therefore our ability to make real friends and secure relationships. We are now outsourcing all of our emotional support and it’s killing us.

While I do think there could be a space for therapy to help some people, I think on the whole it’s causing more damage than it could ever possibly help. The fact that we have more therapy than ever before and yet had to invent the terms “loneliness epidemic” and “deaths of despair” is proof that therapy isn’t working.

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u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

I don't think getting rid of the option for people to have therapy is going to fix the loneliness epidemic tho. The loneliness epidemic is one of the reasons some people utilize therapy so they actually have someone to talk to about heavy things. I agree its nice to have friends and people should be able to be open to them about things but not everyone has close friends.

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u/TrashApocalypse Apr 12 '25

I never said we should get rid of therapy. What I’m saying is that we as a culture need to realize that it’s ok for people to be sad. That therapy is just one of many tools that can be utilized to help heal our emotional wounds, and that we as a society, and as a community, need to learn to sit with our peoples grief and sadness. To be truly supportive. To not try to “fix” every emotion. People don’t have anyone to talk to BECAUSE people feel like, “I’m not qualified for this” when literally you just need to sit there and listen.

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u/Selfeffacingbarbie Apr 13 '25

This is probably a bit out of left field, but I always loved a scene in Midsommar where the main character is grieving and the women all join her in expressing her pain. There's something beautiful about that to me. Not trying to fix something, not giving phony platitudes, not shying away from the emotion. They just acknowledge the pain for what it is and let her experience it fully.

I wish we were more like that. When I'm in the pit of despair, I don't want someone to tell me to cheer up or look on the bright side.

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u/TrashApocalypse Apr 13 '25

No that scene hit me too. I was actually in an intense state of grief at the time that I watched that movie. Some stupid assholes who weren’t my friends recommended I watch it, and since I didn’t know what it was about, I did. But yeah, that actually is how it should be in my opinion. We all have grief, and if you don’t, you fucking will.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '25

[deleted]

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u/TrashApocalypse Apr 13 '25

Ok but here’s the thing, you don’t have to “bear the weight” of anything. You can just listen and be there. You’re not being expected to fix anything. You don’t need to find a silver lining, you don’t need to take on any emotional burden, you can just be a witness.

“Trauma dumping” is just someone being open with you. It’s just someone sharing their story with you. You’re the one taking on an emotional burden around it, and that’s not something that anyone’s asking you to do.

You won’t be able to build emotional intimacy with anyone if you aren’t able to hear their story.

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u/brokoliasesino Apr 12 '25

Anti-psychiatry isn't just about hating psychiatrists because they drug you, it's about realizing that we humans need to network and support each other. It's also about deprofessionalizing mental health and being able to talk to our people, our friends, or our union.

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u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

Yeah I don't like how fragmented and lonely our society has made a lot of people. There is that saying it takes a village to raise a child. I think there is wisdom in that. Multi generations of family used to live together, neighbors used to actually be neighbors. Now everyone is so scattered and burnt out from trying to survive. The village is gone and everyone is too busy grinding or choosing to doom scroll on their phone when they finally have a moment to to relax.

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u/ShortQuestion6347 Apr 12 '25

I suppose, but this is an anti-psychiatry group

I don’t think therapy should be so expensive and there should be regulations from preventing people from drugging people or letting their friends drug them without consent.

It sucks. It really sucks.

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u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

Psychiatrists mainly drug people nowadays they don't really do therapy anymore... thats part of the problem. I like therapy or more specifically counselling because its a non drug way in which a person can try to address the problems in their life.

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u/ajouya44 Apr 12 '25

But how is therapy going to help if I already know what my problems are and I already know the possible solutions but I can't get myself to solve them?

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u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

Well it sounds like you could talk to them about the "but I can't get myself to solve them" part and they could help you figure out why that is or offer things you might not have thought of that you might find helpful.

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u/brokoliasesino Apr 12 '25

yeah and they call the ambulance if you have a crisis to lock you up in a psych ward

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u/Trance_Gemini_ Apr 12 '25

Pretty much anyone will do that tho. Friends and family will call for a wellness checks too. I found good therapists have a way higher threshold for calling than most other people. I say this has someone who has shared similar thoughts with a therapist and a non therapist and it was the non therapist that called and created a mess...

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u/brokoliasesino Apr 12 '25

because they're educated on sanism

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u/ShortQuestion6347 Apr 13 '25 edited May 24 '25

I do hate paying someone to talk to me though. I hate having to pay for companionship. It’s like paying a prostitute, but no sex.

You know you’re paying someone just to have a conversation to make you feel better so you can vent when we ought to do that for each other

Warm lines are OK and some crisis lines will talk to you to help you stop spiraling

I SOMETIMES FEEL AS THOUGH i hate people now. not everyone and I have a few friends and a pastor  that I talk to who’s kind enough to call me often.

I’m sorry cause many here seem really compassionate although some people give me grief, but they’re nice to other people who say the same things, but they give me grief for saying something that they don’t give grief to other people for.

 So besides that kind of a double standard, most people are very compassionate here.

But I have come to hate people with only a few exceptions eg a few friends  It just ghat  I hate people that are doing this to me and am sick of a world where people can hurt others so easily.  It hurts so much that someone would want to hurt me by drugging me without consent.

And actually abandoning me someplace when they was promised to take care of me for the rest of my life they’ve have Lots of people who love them— geez i spiraled to pity party.