Is Therapy for Everyone?
The internet is ablaze with the commercialization of mental health. Mobile apps promise to improve your memory or mood, services like Better Help claim to be the next step in accessible and affordable (it’s not) therapy. Mental health influencers base their platform on their struggles with depression, anxiety, or post traumatic stress disorder.
It’s safe to say that mental health is a trending topic. There is still a lot of stigma surrounding the conversation — many people have experienced derision and dismissal when they tell their families about seeking therapy. “Don’t let your therapist turn you against us,” they say. Or, “therapists only exist to validate your bad behaviors and opinions.”
While bad therapists exist, that sort of lazy counseling is not the standard. A good therapist will challenge your negative beliefs and help you discover patterns, thoughts, and feelings you were unable to process on your own.
For the less initiated, the idea of therapy brings to mind lying on a leather couch and delving into the most painful parts of your past. Exploring the origins of mental health concerns is certainly still a core aspect of therapy today, but often the focus is more on addressing current symptoms and finding healthy ways of coping with the present day.
But that in no way negates the fact that events in our past — in every person’s past, no matter whether they’ve been deemed traumatized or “well adjusted” — have a direct impact on our development. We become who we are based on the things we experience and the way we cope with them.
In that way, old memories and experiences do play a crucial role in how we navigate the world. When I first began counseling, I fixated on the idea that I might have repressed memories of terrible things — a very pop culture view of mental health that many professionals have recently begun to question — and that therapy would awaken and unlock those events.
But the truth has been largely different. In fact, after three years of therapy I’ve never encountered what I would deem a repressed traumatic memory. Old wounds have surfaced, and plenty of mundane or even pleasant memories — a favorite pink pencil sharpener with a hand-crank I installed on my bookshelf when I was in elementary school, the smell of honeysuckle during summer, and other little forgotten details. But they weren’t repressed or forced into a dark corner somewhere.
I had simply been unaware of their significance.
What I’ve encountered during therapy sessions focused on understanding current fears or hangups or negative thoughts, is the emotion surrounding memories. Unpleasant or even traumatic events that I was aware of, but had detached from emotionally. Talking through those old memories allowed the unprocessed emotions associated with them to surface again.
This included “good” memories that had become dull and lifeless, as well as “bad” memories I’d carried around for so long I didn’t realize how much they’d impacted my self-image and thought patterns as an adult. These memories were always there, but now they gained color and richness, a tangibility I could then contextualize and understand from a more informed perspective. There are things I suspect I’ll always struggle with, such as a tendency to over-analyze and lingering doubt over my abilities as a writer. But these feelings are now tolerable and recognized and accepted, rather than shoved in a mental box, ready to surface as soon as a bad thing happens.
Years ago, I visited a counselor who explained to me that she saw therapy like “chocolate”. It made you feel good and after you’d tasted it, you wanted more. Instead of an unpleasant necessity, it felt to her like a treat to savor and look forward to. While that metaphor might be off-putting to some people, the lighthearted subversion of the antiquated Freudian image of couch, scribbling pen, and invasive questions is a helpful one.
Some therapists may be crap, just like there are crap people in any profession. But the overall field of psychology— especially in the realm of life and family counseling — has shifted away from the grim approach of tearing the client down, toward a more constructive method of building up self-confidence and coping mechanisms, and unraveling negative behaviors. Whether that means digging into unhappy childhood memories or venting about current, day-to-day experiences is up to the individual client and counselor. But most importantly, therapy is something that every person, regardless of background or mental health status, should be able to access without shame.
Achieving that universal access depends on many complex issues, including (but not limited to) social and cultural bias, financial resources, and government policy. It may yet be years before the idea of seeking a counselor is no different from any other form of socially acceptable self-care like going to a spa or attending a religious service. The industry and its advocates have some growing pains to overcome — a critique of mental health trends on TikTok and other social media is a headache for another time — but the stigma is weakening, educational programs improving, and accessibility gradually expanding.
So go find a therapist, and tell your friends.
