this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 77 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Therapists are treated like they’re supposed to be miracle workers. You’re experiencing some sort of mental health struggle? Just go see a therapist, because they know how to make your mind magically better. If it doesn’t work, it’s because you aren’t trying hard enough.

I spent years and thousands on therapy to realize that my problem is that I have zero support system, and have been always viewed as disposable by my family. I’m awkward, probably autistic, but was born female so never got diagnosed - just tortured in the “troubled teen industry.” I’m queer, so I’m not really a human being where I live.

Therapy doesn’t fix those things.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 42 points 6 months ago (1 children)

well.. therapy absolutely helps you figure out your needs as an autistic person (complete with a real diagnosis) and helps you develop safe coping strategies for this and being queer in a hostile place.

A good should help you build a real support system and protect your self-identity from harmful family, including forming a plan to leave them. And learning to love yourself, awkward as you may think you are.

I guess I see a lot of things in your post that a therapist could and should help with. I'm wondering if you had good ones, and what they were doing with you in that time.

Just as you wouldn't go to a surgeon or dentist and let them work without a treatment plan, you should agree on your goals and the modalities a therapist intends to use to get you there, at the beginning. And you can refer back to this to see if you're making progress or not.

Unfortunately like all healthcare now, you often have to research and become your own self advocate first. You should fire a therapist long before you spend thousands and years doing nothing. Bad therapists are out there, a lot of them. But good therapists can move mountains.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

good/fitting therapy. Not all therapy is created equal. e.g. in my country there's a huge shortage of therapists qualified for adult autism diagnosis and treatment (well you can't really "treat" autism like you can treat depression, but y'know), and that's on top of the shortage of regular therapists.

But I guess that just moves the issue from the individual therapists to the general healthcare systems - therapy can deal with most mental issues in theory, it's just that real world healthcare systems often don't allow it to actually do that.

[–] agavaa@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the modern society teaches us that if we have any problems, be it health, financial or anything else, it's all fixable and we are supposed to fix it. Yet there is so much we don't have control over. Mental health problems are especially hard to tackle, as there are so few options, they are expensive, time consuming and often don't really help.

[–] porksnort@slrpnk.net 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For over 4 thousand years, the most functional weirdos got pushed to the periphery and they sometimes used the freedom that ostracism gave them to discover self-directed cognitive/behavioral methods that profoundly changed their perspectives.

They might take a risk now and then, wander down to town and interact a bit. It sometimes resulted in a social interaction in which a well-placed individual was able to understand a bit of what the weirdo had learned. The weirdo would then experience a bit of social acceptance and some townsfolks might actually come visit the weirdo later.

Not usually though. Most often the weirdo would re-experience the initial rejection and they would go back to counting their breaths while sitting on a rock.

I have just recounted the most brief history of the study of yoga that is possible.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 points 6 months ago

Also, mental health problems make it hard to actually get on that chair in the therapist's office even if there are opportunities!