Hacker News Reader

Comment by jemmyw | Hacker News Reader

Therapy! I think it might be causing people way more problems than it's solving. I was talking to a very nice gentleman before Christmas who had moved back home to his parents after his relationship ended due to his ex having an alcohol problem. But it seems clear to me that the reason he can't move on after so long is because of the constant introspection and therapy.

We're just not very coherent beings. There's conflicting ideas and fuzziness in our minds. If you bring that under the microscope with the goal of "accepting yourself", it's just a recursive never ending hole. You are yourself, there's nothing really down there other than the thoughts you generate as you think about the thoughts you have, and it all ends up being rather made up. Moving on means doing something different. When I was treated for anxiety problems the idea was to prevent endlessly grinding over the same thoughts, but therapy for other things seems to encourage it.

View on HN

I think this is pretty much correct. The problems I deal with, if they are to be called problems, do not stem from a lack of information. They are largely the same ones I dealt with 5 or 10 years ago. Admittedly it took a long time since childhood to realize - no, my childhood was not normal, in fact it may have been an extreme outlier. But there wasn't too much to gain beyond that insight. The more I discuss it, the more it weighs down on me.

If I dismiss this I usually expect the conversation to swing in the direction of "alright, so what do you want out of life?" I mean, if you ask me so suddenly, I would just respond "I don't really know." I do understand this is because of my mindset and upbringing, etc. But I feel that's a "wrong" answer when it comes to many people I have spoken to in and out of therapy. I certainly have gotten pushback from such an answer from people I was supposed to trust. I have also gotten pushback from stating therapy as it pertains to me isn't quite as effective as I thought it would be. Because I think "go to therapy" is often a last resort for talking to a person about their larger-than-life problems, so if that doesn't work out, what are they supposed to do? It seems to often be taken as saying "I don't want help," which I disagree with.

Such statements from me sound like a shallow dismissals. Although I was used to handing out such dismissals when I was younger out of pessimism and a lack of insight, nowadays my general feeling is "no, this really is what I think. I just don't know what I want right now." I don't want to count that as a loss, as depression permanently changing my brain chemistry, because what will that do for me? Make me more depressed. It's certainly a downside of introspection.

I was in a similar position to you (I hope dang does not mind a throwaway being used for such purpose). You're actually better off then where I was at the time, because you've already traced it to childhood issues.

I could feel myself sinking but I didn't know what was causing it. I started getting caught up in drugs, alcohol, etc., and I knew that it wasn't me but at the same time like a hydra if I cut off one vice suddenly another way to "cope" would surface. I now understand where the traditional notion of being "possessed" comes from, it's not possession by an external force but possession by your own inner demons that simply can't be suppressed any longer.

You are right that most therapy was useless, they don't address the core issues. I will suggest the book "The Presence Process". I'm sure you're tired of self-help books, but this one is the first one I've read that actually "pulls up the weeds of trauma" out of your mind (actually it can't do such a thing and it even says so, what it can do is pull back the facade to allow you to feel for yourself where the weeds are and allow the mind's natural garbage collection mechanism to take over. This isn't an easy process, as the shadow self surfaces you're going to feel worse). And what you wrote about issues being "largely the same ones I dealt with 5 or 10 years ago" is actually almost straight from a chapter in the book, it calls it the "7 year cycle" of resurfacing trauma.

For what it's worth, I did enjoy reading Gabor Mate and his writing gave some reassurance that addiction is a common way of responding to trauma. Although in my mind, sometimes it verges on "well, I guess I have to be addicted to something," which underscores how lucky I got. I think I dodged a bullet by deciding not to drink alcohol regularly (I can count the number of drinks I've had on one hand, none of them social). I'm not sure what it was but I just sensed something about that route wasn't giving me a good feeling early on. Plus I didn't quite understand the point of drinking a can of beer at home when juice or something was enough. I think I am happy to remain ignorant there.

Because I refused all substances my addiction went to computer-related things and for a very long time that was work, which I guess wasn't all bad since now I have some amount of capital. But since then I've learned to take a better work-life balance and stay healthier. Actually I was afraid for a very long time of becoming a literal NEET and holing up in my room for years expending my life on television and games. If instead I was "productive" then I could create my own virtue and produce objects of substance. But of course life is more nuanced than that. So instead I decided to give myself a break this year and marathon some pieces of media I put off due to "being productive" taking a higher priority for so long. Maybe it's a better problem to have since I likely did several times the amount of work I needed to in a relatively short timespan, so I see it as being "caught up" so to speak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com