Girl, interrupted

I'm just going to say it.

There has been a slow, but sure, development of people going to therapy. In England, 2021-21, there was 1.46 million referrals for talking therapy and of those referrals, 634,649 people completed a course of treatment. Good. We're breaking cycles, appropriately venting to people, being health(ier) with emotions etc etc.

But...

We need to stop acting like therapy is the resistance against the empire. Lunchtime counselling sessions are an active solution against individual pressures, but it's not the answer to the overwhelming significant pressures facing the world.

*Disclaimer, as I know this may have just set off the internet's fight or flight response. I'm well aware of the privilege of living somewhere where therapy is even discussed, let alone to access it. I also know that therapy is also really crucial for mental illness management, as I myself have done, so that's not the point of this post - which is that people are mistakenly replacing therapy as a solution for the behemoth of global social, economic and political crises, instead of significant change. The way we speak of therapy now is akin to putting a plaster on a gaping bullet wound.

If you've ever touched the internet, you may know what I'm talking about. '6 ways to show your partner is a narcissist (proceeds to describe vague and average human behaviours)..' - 'use virtual therapy to fit round you so you can cry into your lunch at work...'- 'we should all be in therapy' (No).

I know this makes me sound grumpy...I am. There's no doubt that therapy is a long stigmatised and underutilised resource and it's overdue for being recognised, but the examples above are just a small representation of how misinformed people are about what therapy can deliver. Does it give people a quiet and judgement-free space to better understand themselves and talk through their problems? Yes. Can it support people through daily stressors up to large, traumatic-scale events in their lives? Yes. Will it provide people with better understanding of their mental health/illness/neurocognitive development? Yes. Do certain therapies, sometimes along medication, help people manage symptoms? Yes.

Will it do anything like fixing or curing? Absolutely not. No. Nada. Mostly as people are not things that are broken. Political and social systems, on the other hand...

Financial insecurity, recessions, increasing inflation and wealth gaps, food-insecurity and food deserts, lack of affordable housing to rent and buy, gas prices etc. Not something therapy can do much about. The amount of conflict, a lot in the global south who have done the least harm to begin with - also out of a therapist's league. Eco-anxiety; a therapist may be able to help you manage the symptoms, but cannot physically bring down the average global temperature or stop deforestation or save the polar bears. Nor can they stop the rising fascism and white supremacy that, whilst never ever went away, is pretty loud. Basically, a therapist is not going to be able to fix any of the current news headlines.

Look, I'm quite aware that if any historian were here, they could give me examples of much worse time periods. I get it. I'm just another white woman but I do have thoughts of my own, which could be quite scary back in the day. And we are facing a unique issue other periods didn't. We are facing injustice at a global scale thanks to modern technology. Not to mention, we are constantly told of complex problems but rarely a solution. So, whilst social media is not the villain, as it has given so many marginalised groups influence they've not previously had, what we can understand is that a lot of us are reacting quite normally to what our body has taken as quite big stressors. Let alone that small event of a Pandemic and the virus behind it is still very much here - long-covid can now be considered an autoimmune disease! So also, a small check-in, you are probably reacting quite healthily to things that are not at all good. No need to always pathologize it, or be so hard on yourself.

What a lot of us need is actual change. I'd actually like to add here too, as someone who has gone to forms of therapy for mental illness, I didn't actually have a great time. My experience is of course anecdotal, but it's not alone. I've studied to masters level in areas of psychology & mental health and the attitudes by a few professionals was pretty telling. So also assuming therapy is the same for us all when actually for many, it risks institutionalisation, experiences of ableism, classism, racism/cultural insensitivity, and I've even known people to experience predatory behaviour, is not realistic. It's reasonable to want to believe mental health professionals are nurturing/caring, but that's just not the reality for a field rooted in a deep history of calling women hysterical and pathologizing being gay.

So of course, there are many benefits to therapy and so I would encourage it as a worthy call if you have access/funds to do so. But it's really important that people a) need to understand there are so many barriers to it, not just financial, so be mindful before presuming someone not going is because they are the problem, and b) remember what a lot of people are actually asking for is more significant than a therapy session. But it's all possible! Everything that has achieved change before us has been done as a group, not alone, and since now we're also so globally connected - we've never been in a better era to begin.