Explaining that an overwhelming amount of feminists are insufferable to me due to their performative white, liberal bullshit with zero intersectionality and not because I'm an edgy anti-feminist teenage male with a lot of toxic masculinity.
"You make fun of feminists because you're a cringe toxic male.
I make fun of feminists for their complete lack of intersectionality, their liberalism & their cracker behaviour.
We are not the same."
:)
Explaining that I hate therapy because the historical relationship between therapists and queer people is adversarial and not in a cool leftist way
I've had literally a dozen therapists over the course of my life and after I get through my deep lore, they usually find reasons to stop seeing me. Haven't gone longer than a year with the same doc since I was a pre-teen. The last one I had straight-up transferred out of state a week before a followup appointment, despite having scheduled me himself a week before; and I gave up.
Like, I pull up to the check-in kiosk like "I'm here for my three o'clock with Dr. H", and the receptionist just gives me this Kubrick stare while "Dr. H transferred to another facility last week and we don't have any cognitive behavioral therapists here anymore"
Yo, I had a psychiatrist who disappeared once and I called the clinic and they were like "so and so doesn't work here and I don't know who that is. You have the wrong number." and I was like "No?? wtf??" I think the receptionist was just mean or something but they did just leave and ghost everyone. I still don't know the full story lol.
Explaining that I hate therapy in a cool "I will never be able to afford therapy or the time off it would require" way and not a toxic masculinity way
Ngl I really do hate therapy. It's useless without a material change imo. And therapists often are gatekeepers holding the possibility for material change away from you
In certain situations it's just strictly logical that you're an anxious traumatized mess
you mean how continually paying a therapist is what gatekeeps you from the pills needed to function in purgatory?
pretty much. or worse, with transgender stuff, life saving surgical stuff
Explaining that I have issues with therapy as an institution of policing what is considered “normal” in late stage capitalism because modern psychiatry from its inception has been about enacting violence on what it deems to be acceptable targets… and not in a toxic masculine way.
The model for mental health treatment under capitalism is completely backwards. Working from the assumption that there is something wrong with the individual, as opposed to the FACT that most of us live in a deeply diseased, dying society on a dying planet, that rewards anti-social behavior and punishes compassion and empathy is the fucking standard. I've seen countless therapists in my day, pretty much all have been absolutely dog shit. On the flip side, psychedelic therapy has been INCREDIBLY helpful to me. Ketamine injections keep my depression and insomnia under check without needing to take the drugs that scramble your nervous system (antidepressants).
Just want to recommend It's Not Just In Your Head for its cool leftist critiques of mental healthcare under capitalism. Some of the general mental health advice they occasionally drop has been personally helpful. It's nice to hear leftist therapists acknowledge how shitty everything is.
From their bio: Two mental health professionals explore how our capitalist economic system impacts our emotional lives. From precarious housing and employment, to unaffordable healthcare, to endless debt -- it's not just in your head!
I struggle to put into words how I'm pretty sure therapy would be pointless because my presumed depression (not diagnosed just a guess my girlfriend makes) comes from learning communism I think. I can't imagine your average normie therapist would have any treatment that wasn't just an attempt to get you to accept your conditions and get over capitalism so you can return to happily droning for your boss
0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.
my last therapist wasn't a therapist but just a drug pusher who would prescribe anything that allowed him to charge my insurance $400 for the least possible amount of time talking to me each month
real and cool therapy exists but a lot of the most prominent strains of it (looking at you CBT) are individualist nonsense that will never help people see what's actually making them miserable and essentially serve to keep people locked into a capitalist realist mindset
just based off personal experience. CBT as I've experienced it places the problem on the individual and expects them to shift their mindset to essentially become more compatible with this awful world. I think if you're neurodiverse, have an emotional disorder or generally your mental health goes beyond "I get sad/anxious sometimes" it's totally unfit for purpose. I've had numerous psychologists/therapists agree with me on this, it's thankfully coming to be seen as a dated practice that doesn't work for as many people as once thought. Like I said not opposed to therapy in general, I did a course of DBT last year and it helped me more than any other mental health intervention I've ever undergone. But CBT to me as a neurodiverse individual feels like professional gas lighting.
Here is an image from a psychology textbook, an extreme example for sure but it illustrates what I see as the problem with CBT under capitalism. It's individualist in the sense it maps problems with people back onto their own mindset instead of ever helping them see the greater picture that's causing them pain in a lot of cases. Not saying all therapists need to be commie polemicists but good ones help you explore big-picture reasons for why you feel like shit which CBT doesn't.
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I don't think CBT is inherently individualist. Under a capitalist setting maybe, but in a post-capitalist world people would still have to deal with trauma somehow.
well we are under a capitalist setting, I think it would look very different under socialism sure but that's what it's doing currently
What you say may be true, but reading about le communism and "organizing" doesn't make me feel any better. Maybe I am contributing to a better society, but it doesn't make ME feel any better. And that's the thing honestly. For me, being knowledgeable about the larger forces that exploit us and trying to help others or voicing my discontent is just a cope because it's easier to look at something so nebulous and grand than it is to look at myself and contribute to ME. I hate Jordan Peterson or motivational video type assholes, but honestly, there are times where I envy that such people are simple minded enough to hear some asshole yell at them and get up and do something to change themselves for the worse; and I don't mean that I'm not simple minded or smarter than anyone for being depressed and apathetic - I just think those people are idiots lol.
It doesn't matter if society instantly turns into a communist utopia tomorrow and therapy is reformed or whatever. You can't change someone; they have to want it themselves, or at the very least they have to believe there's light at the end of the tunnel. But for me it's like driving in the tunnel and seeing 50 different routes towards the light on the GPS, and I just sit there in the darkness.
i like psychodynamic. It's really the only type i've interfaced with and it's nice, it's literally just me talking and being guided into what I'M saying; not what the therapist is saying
Therapy is a tool, it works great for a lot of people, works okay for others, and isn't super helpful others.
Also whether or not it helps you depends a lot on finding a good therapist which sadly can be difficult cuz there are a lot of mediocre ones out there.
Explaining to my therapist that I hate therapy even though I am training to be a therapist
Me: I am genuinely pessimistic and feel unable to enjoy the present, as I'm deeply concerned about the future due to current and future material conditions. It also causes me to just spend all my money as soon as I have it as I don't expect things to get cheaper, or more easily available later and it is a source of stress and conflict with my wife.
Therapists: Have you tried, not reading the news?Have you tried, not reading the news?
I mean there certainly WORSE advice
