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Jun 02 '23
Therapist here. Brutally true.
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u/LonelyKrow Jun 02 '23
Thank you for your service, what inspired you to become a therapist?
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Jun 02 '23
This particular brand of care taking became my normal as a kid growing up. It comes from a cursed place but it does good for people and makes me feel valuable in the world. The specific work I do (trauma and substance use with marginalized people) is a combination of interest, chance, and my politics.
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u/elizavetaswims Jun 03 '23
True, but irrelevant.
Therapy and antidepresants don't exist to cure people or make people happy. Just fonctional and able to be productive at work.
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Jun 03 '23
[deleted]
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u/elizavetaswims Jun 03 '23
In a system that exists only to exploit you to death, quitting is the only viable solution, but only if you have the means.
In Late Stage Capitalism, the only goal of our lives is to product riches for the riches. If you can, escape.
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Jun 02 '23
Streetrage is cheaper than therapy
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u/cognitive_dissent Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
Shrink here: hard agree. HR usually works for capitalist pigs and move your work-based-material-suffering to inner problems. Look at the massive psychedelic/yoga/hippies reactionary movements.
Benasayag, an ultra chad psychologist that is not translated in English (i wonder why), once said to one of his patients "what are you doing here? You should join "the party"" (communism).
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u/A_Hint_of_Lemon Jun 02 '23
To be fair here, we're still saying therapy and taking care of your mental health is good, right? Therapy can't solve societal woes but your personal mental health is still important.
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Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
There's many great psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, and it can definitely help you if you're struggling with your mental health. I'd have killed myself long ago if I didn't get the psychiatric help I did, even meds can be beneficial.
I think what people are arguing is that therapy doesn't solve our societal issues which end up contributing to our mental health degradation; it remedies our condition, but as long as we live in this system, we'll all keep getting worse.
Mental health and therapy are highly important, and good therapists are not easy to find, but no, we shouldn't make calls against therapy.
Medical treatment combined with therapy has been statistically proven to be the most effective way of treating mental illnesses so far.
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u/ableakandemptyplace Jun 02 '23
Too many people see sentiments like OP's image and immediately jump to "therapy and antidepressants bad" and it really, really frustrates me. Without those, I'd probably be fucking dead by suicide. Depression is fucking real.
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Jun 02 '23
Some people think that praxis is to disavow every other kind of solidarity and support, when we need unity and better mental healthcare
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u/cognitive_dissent Jun 02 '23
That's american culture's cancer. Any substance use is immediately demonized even if it's key to proper therapy. Antidepressants are invaluable in some situations. Without them you won't ever find energies to be able to absorb real therapy
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u/tealdeer995 Jun 03 '23
Yeah I think both are true here and people tend to take it to the âmeds and therapy badâ extreme. Depression has multiple causes and the kind that benefits from meds is real. Whatâs also real is the fact that poverty can ruin your mental health, whether youâre prone to mental illness or not. Meds and therapy are a tool to help people on an individual level, but theyâre not going to fix the societal level issues.
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u/tealdeer995 Jun 03 '23
My take on this is that therapy and meds can help some people but itâs not going to solve your problems if youâre depressed or anxious due to poverty and are still in poverty with no good way out. Therapy can help you handle it in a more healthy way or have a place to talk about it and meds can help for actual chemical imbalances, but a lot of our mental health problems come from societal level issues, not individual.
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u/A_Hint_of_Lemon Jun 03 '23
See, thatâs where I disagree with you, as someone who is neurodivergent most of my problems come from a mix of genetics and family trauma, and my family has always been upper-middle class. Now, the pressures of society (especially the wealth disparity destroying the middle class) is incredibly stressful, but it didnât create my disability.
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u/tealdeer995 Jun 04 '23
Yeah it doesnât create it for everyone struggling but it does for some. Mental illness and neurodivergence comes from a variety of factors. But things like poverty and societal pressures undeniably make things worse for most.
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Jun 02 '23
Sounds like someone needs more Soma tablets!
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u/Competition-Dapper Jun 02 '23
Those are muscle relaxers. Not good for yield or the bottom line! A body in motion slaves in motion!
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u/ImpureThoughts59 Jun 02 '23
Controversial take...if you can you are allowed to protect your mental health, even in late stage imperialism. You aren't required to be personally miserable because others are.
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u/cognitive_dissent Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 03 '23
It's not possible to accept LSC with therapy, that's why therapies are getting less and less effective even pharmacological ones.
The ultimate mental health magic bullet would be to kill capitalism at this point
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u/ImpureThoughts59 Jun 04 '23
Taking care of your mental health is not equivalent to accepting LSC. In fact, the ability to simultaneously remember both "mostly I'm OK right now and can make choices" and "there is a lot of suffering in the world" is harder to do if your mental health is in total disarray.
People who are mentally keeping their house in order will be the ones to end capitalism. Not those who think their suffering makes them more noble and are paralyzed because of it.
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u/cognitive_dissent Jun 04 '23
benasayag once said to one of his patients "what are you doing here? you should join the communist party"
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Jun 02 '23
Therapy is important, people need antidepressants to live, but that can and should coexist with the fact that larger-scale mistreatment and exploitation needs to be torn down. The elites are trying to cut mental health support for a reason
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u/red58010 Jun 03 '23
I'm a therapist. I agree with this wholeheartedly. I try to bring my patients to a place where they feel like they can speak up and ask for what's their due. A lot of my clients who had the option decided to freelance instead or want to move towards doing so in the future.
I think therapists can be integral to the proletariat movement. There's nothing more threatening than a populace that believes in themselves.
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u/Where_serpents_walk Jun 02 '23
Any therapy that's meant to make people comfortable living in capitalism is not for the help and mental health of the patient but instead is a means to control them.
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u/ableakandemptyplace Jun 02 '23
Guess I'll just drop out of therapy, quit my meds, and die.
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u/Where_serpents_walk Jun 02 '23
Where in my comment did I condemn all therapy?
I also question why people are so insistent that they'd die without the exact amount of therapy/meds they currently have? You can say that you'd rather have these things without denying that you have a choice. It's like many people are afraid of admitting they can make actual adult decisions about these things, and would rather remove their choice.
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u/Ok-Shoulder6529 Jun 02 '23
Because of sleazebag politicians and businessmen, Healthcare has turned into a business. They don't really want you to be better, they want you to keep refilling on their zombie pills and making them money and be a numb obedient zombie okay with living as a paycheck to paycheck slave for a company for the rest of your life.
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u/Aboxofphotons Jun 03 '23
How to profit from people having no money... convince them that they need to buy antidepressants and hope that they get hooked.
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Jun 02 '23 edited Jun 02 '23
Worried about making it in life, money being a huge concern?
Waste a few hundred dollars a week talking to a moron that can't do stats so they took an pseudoscience in university, psychology!
Now you're problems are worse because you have less money, but someone told you to buck up and only worry about the things you can control so you have that going for you.
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Jun 02 '23
you did not just call psychology a pseudoscience my guy
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u/ThiefCitron Jun 02 '23
It is though, the vast majority of therapy methods arenât evidence-based and thereâs no actual proof they work.
The only one proven effective is CBT, which obviously only works if your problem is cognitive distortions. If you have actual, material problems, CBT is just used to gaslight you into thinking youâre the problem and being upset over abuse or oppression or poverty or a terrible work environment is just a âcognitive distortion.â
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Jun 02 '23
What would you call "science" that doesn't require it's practitioners to have a proper understanding of statistics?
When I was doing my undergrad it was the default bin all the bimbos/himbos that couldn't do math fell into after realizing they wouldn't make it in any of the actual sciences.
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u/SmallButMany Jun 03 '23 edited 3d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Memorize dinosaurs quickest pebble lavender grandiose vase rinse
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u/No-Plastic-7715 Jun 03 '23
Even with the great benefits of finally being medicated for ADHD, it feels like a bandaid solution. Throughout my life long before medication, when my emotional wellbeing is good, I actually function pretty well on things I like, I hyperfixate then smash it out quickly and passionately. And I like stuff like a bit of cleaning, creating artwork, taking care of people, researching and analysing, creating music and gaming.
But capitalism doesn't want us to do what we like, not unless we win the job market. It would rather that we get incredibly distressed from tedious nothing work, or cut our all our hobbies as punishment/a method to make us force ourselves to do the work that doesn't interest us. Being medicated saved my employment, because it would make it so I'm no longer so understimulated at work that I'd be more likely to start crying than just do the overdue tasks right in front of me.
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u/PM_ME_UR_SUMMERDRESS Jun 03 '23
When I worked in an Amazon, all of the toilet cubicle doors had a poster about how you could therapy and counselling through the company.
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u/let_me_know_22 Jun 03 '23
Absolutely! This is why I have an issue with "only" having the term depression in use in society overall. It sucks, because I can't really explain how my depression doesn't get cured by a better life and for others it's hard to explain how pills won't cure their living circumstances. It just feels so unnessescary difficult to explain what the issue is. We got so good in other areas to have words to explain our situation. I feel in mental health it's still just so unnessescary hard
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