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by javajosh
1058 days ago
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As an aside, the opening disclaimer "get help from a professional" is, in my view, actively harmful. I'm not anti-therapy but I am anti-telling-others-they-need-therapy. The latter is simply a euphamism for "I don't want to talk to you about your problems". The reason can be as petty as the other person finding such talk to be unpleasant. The idea that you should pay someone to talk about your concerns, insights, struggles, degrades the concept of intimate friendship. I just don't buy it that people in the past didn't have the same thoughts, struggles and emotions. It's just that people listened to each other, however imperfectly, and did their best to help each other. Yes, obviously some situations are really out there (like an acute break from reality) but I'm talking about 'normal' stuff like depression, anxiety, guilt, and self-doubt. Our unwillingness to talk about this stuff with each other is bad, and "go see a therapist" is a cop out that degrades the norm of listening to each other. Obviously this is an article, not a friend, so the message should be "go talk to a friend". |
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But second and more importantly, your conception that before people used to talk about mental health issues seems very romantic and unrealistic. People from older generations, at least in the two cultures in my family, tend not to talk about emotions at all. The most striking example is that of my father's grandfather, who fought in the first world war and could not enter a forest for the rest of his life and get very pale and shaky in the vicinity of one (what we would today call PTSD). So what did his wife do when she wanted to collect mushrooms? "Just drive me there and stay in the car, if you do not want to man up. It's just trees, you idiot". You cannot talk about your weaknesses when you are expected to be strong and unbreakable. What a therapist can offer is a space where those expectations of society do not hold, and where the fear of looking weak or dumb can decrease a bit.