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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

"See a Therapist" being the first, top-voted comment is to me a sign of a sick society, where loneliness reigns. In a world where in middle-age your closest friends are married with kids, and most people prefer to be 'remote-first' in friendships (you chat online with even friends you know), the answer "see a therapist" is for most people instead just a proxy for the gap: the gap of close friends and family to be able to bounce ideas and feelings off of.

What should see a therapist is society itself, with top answers like that. Therapy should be reserved for the eccentric pathologies, not for routine middle-age crises and life situations.

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Why so hostile to therapy? I have a great supportive network of friends and family, but even so a few times in my life I have seen a psychologist that gave me actionable advice that really helped me deal with personal hardships. An impartial trained professional can often see much more clearly what you’re blind to; friends mean well but sometimes their intuitive advice is actually the opposite of what you need to hear.

An impartial, trained professional...in what exactly? Therapists / psychologists are glorified life coaches. "Psychology" is a mess. All therapists can do is act as a programming rubber duck equivalent.

What makes the psychologist more qualified to give advice to you than yourself?

Maybe the misconception comes from this "training" idea - people think there is some magical solution in psychology and it's not all a pseudo-science. P.S. if you are a trained psychologists, try to summarize psychology to me. Tell me what's left after you take away the failed theories of Freud, aversion therapy, Jung, etc?

It could be a valuable confidence booster to be able to talk to someone who projects confidence that they know how to help you, even if their advice boils down to little more than pep talks and encouragement to take some common-sense steps.

Actually the programming rubber duck is extraordinarily effective

Refreshing to see this point of view. I see therapy being recommended as a full solution on reddit all the time

Why would you call a therapist an impartial, trained professional? They’re no more impartial than a priest or imam and their provisional training has no bearing on the effectiveness of their treatment. By far the most important predictor of a positive impact of sending a therapist is the feeling that you and they have similar values and are working together[1]. Much as with teachers training has no detectable impact on effectiveness while experience does[2]. A priest who vines with you is as good as counselling as a therapist. It’s the vibes that matter, not the trappings of professionalism.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_alliance#:~:text....

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Crits-Christoph/pu...

[2] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-10064-001

Psychologists are just humans, it’s true, and so they can be just as fallible as anyone. A good priest may also be helpful but for the non-religious they won’t have the essential shared values. By impartial I mean that they are at a remove from your day to day life, and are at least trained in how to ethically counsel someone.

I'm not saying psychotherapy is useless, only that its proliferation is a sign of a gap in society, and that psychotherapy would ideally be reserved for fairly edge cases (traumas, genetic conditions, sudden extreme events, PTSD, etc.). NOT so much a routine go-to for common existential problems. The fact that this is the solution is a sad reflection of a society with holes in it. And further that the proliferation of an 'online presence' taking the place of in-person interactions can't be a coincidence. That's what I am saying.

I don't see why psychotherapy should be reserved for fairly edge cases. On the opposite, I think that mental health is even more widely applicable than physical health.

In Europe, we live in societies that witnessed two world wars, a Holocaust, and the less lucky corners of it Stalinism and also civil wars. That is enough trauma for anyone to take. And these are not edge cases.

We are children and grandchildren of people who went through all that and did not have any meaningful way to process it.

Our society is not sicker than it used to be. It is likely the opposite. And that is partly because we understand mental health better today so we can process our trauma. Including that which was handed over to us in the form of alcoholism, abuse, or neglect by our less fortunate ancestors.

Thank you for having the time and patience to reply to everyone about psychotherapy and how it's not a one-stop-shop to fix all your issues. I feel the same but honestly do not have the patience to take on this immense debate with mostly people who blindly believe that some person with a basic degree has the knowledge, insight, authority, etc. to solve your life's problems. I personally cannot reason with people who have based their beliefs on 'blind faith'.

You hit the nail on the head, but it's too late for that now, therapy is the new trend and will only keep growing from here. And it's not a bad idea, what do you have to loose anyway.

In a sick society, everyone is sick by definition anyway... so yeah... therapy

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