this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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I'm so done with therapy. I've been going since 1989 and whilst there have certainly been some worthwhile insights, I believe the whole thing is as much about propping up the economic stakeholders (the 'industry') as it is about effective help. It's a lazy no-effort button GPs, employers, friends, anyone, can press to rid themselves of listening to your 'problems'. So you pin all your hopes on it to find relief. It's such a let down.
There are so many issues. Firstly, it is situated with a culture. A western capitalist culture. I reckon it's all about making you feel less like the obvious wage/mortgage slave you are and more like an 'empowered' 'aspirational' boss. CBT is definitely gaslighting. But the biggest elephant in the room is how the 80% of your problem -- the societal and market forces pushing down on you -- are never referenced as the cause. They are scarcely offered an a discussion point. Like, the very thing which fucks you up is indiscussible. It's always what 'you' can do. Basicallly it's: 'you've got an attitude problem'.
I'm going to push back but only slightly, as I agree that society itself and this hierarchy we're stuck in is the root of a lot of mental health problems, maybe even the biggest sole contributer.
But where I'll push back is that improving your mental health is different from improving your material situation. Both are important. The latter is about survival and between the two, arguably the far more important one. But the former is about how you react to the latter.
If you're having panic attacks each time you think about your material situation, that's going to make it much harder to deal with that situation. If you have trouble motivating yourself to get out of bed, that probably also affects your ability to do anything about your situation. If you lose your temper to the point where you destroy objects or relationships around you, that doesn't help either.
Or on the perception side, if you're constantly paranoid about everyone around you to the point where you don't let anyone get close, it can help to recalibrate your expectations or where you draw your line for not trusting others.
Or if you recognize a pattern of using or manipulating people and want to break it or figure out why you keep returning to it.
I think in regards to how society is, therapy can teach you acceptance. I don't mean "accept that this is the way it is and that it is fine", you don't have to do that second part. But the first part is true: the world is the way it is and unhealthy reactions won't punish the world or change it, nor will allowing your nervous system to go into overdrive.
Whether you want to change it or just find a place in it, you need to first accept it for what it is, for better or worse. Then when you have that foundation of understanding and healthy coping skills, you have a much better chance of accomplishing, well, anything. Note that that is relative, I'm not going to try to push BS platitudes like "you can do anything!" It's just "if you have a healthy mind or healthy ways of dealing with an unhealthy mind, you'll have a better chance at doing anything compared to if you don't".
Anyways, therapy is one potential path to that. I see therapists as guides for a journey of introspection and getting to know yourself better as well as understand how you interact with the world and find new ways of doing so. Ultimately you are the one that needs to walk that path and the destination is still this reality, just with a healthier way of seeing and interacting with it.
Fixing this shit will involve a lot more than therapy, but it will require healthy minds.
Though I also don't think the "gee thanks I'm cured" mindset is a healthy one. While I agree that it's easier said than done, mental health is heavily influenced by your mindset and deciding "this won't help" can be the reason why it doesn't. Part of getting better, an essential part of it, is deciding that's what you want and fighting the part of you that wants to just keep going like you have been because you're comfortable with your habits, both good and bad.
All this is true but just taking the time to validate those externalities would be so helpful. You know, giving their take on how screwed up the forces outside have become on making people's lives difficult. That validation alone would be such a helpful therapy tool. But in my experience it's almost like they barely want to touch it. Why not? It's almost dehumanising not to. What are they so competent or wealthy they don't feel the awful pressures as well? They don't have an opinion as to why the voters around the world, say, are increasingly turning to fascist alternatives for example out of desperation? It almost seems weird.
Yeah, true. I mean, there's probably some that do, some that are in denial themselves, some that think they are on the winning side, and some that think anything negative will hinder the process. The formal parts of the process itself could have been coopted by the ruling class such that therapists are trained to perpetuate the system like cops and teachers are.
i need a psychoanalyst who can break rule 1 and “mentor” me at the same time, but with no cbt horseshit
The alternative is to acknowledge that society is fucked and needs to change to make you (and most everyone) feel comfortable and safe, which they (and you) can essentially do nothing about.
You've brought them a problem, the only tool they have is to try to mold you not to care so much about it.
The therapist doesn't need to change society for you/us (which is impossible of course), but acknowledgement just of itself would be so validating. So, so validating.
pshaw, there's no money in you not being the problem....
Yes I think you've hit the nail on the head here.
More of us need to start saying this. All therapists are powerless to help you with the existential angst inherent to living within a Western capitalist system, but many of them will flat out deny that current material and economic conditions are a root cause of many societal problems that lead to chronic stress and mental illness.
CBT is jank as fuck. You can't reframe your way out of poverty, especially not once you start developing physiological issues related to chronic stress and depression. The notion of it is offensive to me, and the CBT worksheets I was given are the epitome of paternalism. What a waste of time. I have had some luck with using DBT strategies on my own though, and I'm hoping to get referred to a DBT therapy group. Group/peer support has been more helpful than I had thought it would be.
Ok but it's great for what it's great for. CBT can't fix poverty, but it can fix a tendency to let minor setbacks spiral into full blown panic attacks or an inability to ask loved ones for help.
Plenty of problems aren't the sort therapy can help with despite them having huge mental effects. But plenty of people have problems therapy is actively good for. In the same way therapy won't fix your (rational) economic anxiety, if you torpedo every relationship you're in communism won't fix you, but DBT might.
That's great for the people for whom talk therapy and CBT is effective, but the point of my comment and presumably the point of the comment I replied to is that talk therapy using CBT is the de facto standard in the West even when it harms people.
Again, happy that the CBT-lovers have found their thing, but those of us that find it patronizing and minimizing to be told we're what's wrong (for CBT not working like it does for others) instead of the clinical framework not being right for us should have the right to push back against clinicians and pro-therapy laypeople placing specific models of care on a pedestal.
If you can't see that CBT is being applied as a one-size-fits-all solution, especially for young adults and at free/subsidized municipal clinics (who have clients highly affected by poverty and minority stressors), I really don't know what to tell you. It's harmful to people but you feel like you can't talk about it because then people think you're either entirely anti-therapy, antisocial/defiant, or drug-seeking.
Ok cool, you're absolutely not taking my argument as I made it. I was acknowledging that it's bad for several things it's bad for (implying it's commonly prescribed for those things) but also acknowledging that it's worth accepting that it's good for what it's good for. Maybe it's bad for some people who have problems it's good for. But I've seen people who desperately need the skills it teaches parrot the rhetoric of it being useless and harmful before so I do feel a desire to speak up in its defense as well.
Hopefully you'll get what you need, regardless of what it is. And yeah, poor people disproportionately need financial assistance more than training to see cognitive distortions.
Hopefully you get what you need so that you don't react like someone shot your dog for suggesting CBT isn't the fucking amazing solution you believe it is. I don't need your pity or fake concern.
It's ironic that you're the one who thinks your point was completely ignored when you still don't understand that the "skills" it "teaches" to you are not the same skills it teaches others that the framework literally doesn't work for. But it seems like you don't want your preconceived notions challenged by alternative lived experiences, so I suppose that shouldn't be surprising.
I'm sick of paying for therapy that doesn't work and having the therapist not offer me any alternatives other than CBT after years of it not working. I have asked for DBT, knowing it works specifically for me personally (from experience with a sole therapist who actually listened), and been denied because "CBT is more broadly effective." So I'm sort of done propping it up and I want others to stop too.
Ok yeah, wanting DBT instead and not being able to get it because CBT isn't working is infuriating. And in general it really just sucks to deal with providers refusing to accept that something hasn't worked and you'd like to try other things.
Anyways good luck getting DBT, or whatever else works for you. I'm sorry that I came off as dismissive of alternative experiences.
There's one person acting like their dog was shot here and it's you
Even if that were true, it would be because you're being confrontational about my and others' lived experiences in defense of a clincal practice being broadly applied to people who have stated that it has harmed their mental wellbeing.
I'll never be sorry for asserting my belief in effective mental health management that treats people with dignity rather than CBT-no-matter-what. That's really all there is to it, and you're the one who intially replied to me, so it really does seem from my point of view like you're the one with the issue.
I'm actually not the same person.
Ah, I didn't notice. You still did initially reply to me though. My first comment in this thread was intended to be commiseration with someone who shares my perspective and I wasn't anticipating being attacked for agreeing that CBT is not all sunshine and rainbows for everyone forced into it.
Maybe because you framed CBT as inherently and universally "jank as fuck", without initially acknowledging that there are many situations it does work for.
Also, no one is forced into CBT without a court order.