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Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

A therapist can only help you if you don't understand yourself or your situation (they can help to make sense of it by helping you to unlock new information). But I understand my situation perfectly. I will probably end up converting the therapist to my world view unless they're too shallow to understand it... In which case why would I want such shallow person as a therapist?

If I want to unlearn information, maybe old-school electroshock therapy is a better way...

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It is also possible that many of the experiences that you’ve had in life have wired you into relationships that are functional but sub-optimal. Either a local minima or a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium if you will.

Some modes of therapy are like you mentioned an attempt to reframe your world view. Those modes of therapy would be unlikely to help someone in your circumstances. Other modes of therapy are more focused on helping a person escape the local minima and start moving to something more optimal.

For example a victim of traumatic car crash can’t be taught that cars aren’t dangerous. Life experience has shown him that cars are dangerous in a more direct way then most people would be able to understand but therapy techniques such as EMDR have been shown to help.

In other cases early relationships may have been with people who could not or would not act as healthy, reliable partners. It is impossible to un-learn that a relationships (or most relationships) can be highly one-sided or exploitive. Attachment therapy can help a person model what a mutually beneficial and trusting relationship can be. This can help them to recognize unhealthy relationship patterns and provide them the tools to establish healthier ones and move into more enriching relationships.

I don’t know what your experiences are but likely they aren’t entirely unique. Hurt people, hurt people. Soon the entire world is traumatized. In an ideal world we’d all be embedded in families and communities that modeled healthy relationships that could heal us from these wounds. The world isn’t ideal and sometimes we need professional help.

What you’re describing is not how the vast majority of society works. You aren’t convincing the therapist of anything other than you need a new set of folks to hang out with.

I would agree with others, if these posts aren’t just your way of some internet trolling you really should seek out some help. What you’re describing is incredibly unhealthy and I can assure you not a single one of my close friends care a bit about how much money I have.

So you state that whoever is not sharing your worldview after you shared with them are too shallow to understand it. This seems pretty black and white to me and my experiences with therapists are pretty different both in professional and private settings.

>But I understand my situation perfectly. I will probably end up converting the therapist to my world view unless they're too shallow to understand it

Or, and here is a radical thought, you don’t perfectly understand the complexities of human relationships. Maybe your arrogance and narrow world view lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy that also serves to validate your world view. See a therapist.

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, regardless of how narrow someone's world view is or you feel it is. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this again, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: you did it twice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29106710. That's definitely not cool.

This person doesn't want to see a therapist and as such shouldn't go see one. While I understand the sentiment, a therapists job isn't to change this guy's world view. A therapist is supposed to help people with the problems they want help with. (This person doesn't believe that they have a problem, it seems.)

No one should force him to go and he shouldn’t go if he “knows” he is right and they will be wrong. I definitely went over the line, but I was trying to point out that I thought he likely did have an issue and a therapist would help give him a perspective outside his own.

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