Dear Readers,
I hadn’t planned to write another post at this time as I am still working on a project. But at this time there’s just too much that needs to be said about misconceptions of mental health.
The world’s been buzzing on a loop with the same questions and comments about Prince Harry’s motives and mental state because the speculative answers are unsatisfactory. Annoying but no real harm done… until now. (I haven’t heard anyone identify the motives accurately yet so maybe I’ll write about that too another time.)
Some of Harry and Megan’s critics have begun making digs at psychotherapy as a whole, attributing their style to “therapy culture” - whatever that means. They are at the very least, ignorant. But with Harry and Megan nominating themselves as ambassadors for mental health, who can blame the ignorant? If I didn’t know better, I would be turned off by “therapy culture” too.
Many have remarked that Harry and Megan’s interviews ‘feel more like therapy than journalism’. I wish I could disagree completely. These interviews do resemble the affirming, feel better approach which might be cathartic for some but isn’t actually therapeutic. (Yes, there’s a difference between cathartic and therapeutic. I can say more about that in a later post if readers are curious.)
It’s a troubling trend that many therapists and clients alike prefer bleeding hearts and allyship instead of professionalism and neutrality. Furthermore, the embarrassing style of bad therapists has become the aspirational model for bad journalists.
So let’s clear some things up - starting with the signs of someone who is doing therapy wrong and for the wrong reasons.
You avoid therapy like it’s going to kill you because you are afraid of what you’ll find there.
You enter therapy out of FOMO when therapy becomes fashionable.
You mention that you’re in therapy to virtue signal or stay relevant.
You hide the deeper problems from your therapist.
You select a therapist who will only affirm your victim narrative.
You ghost your therapist when s/he challenges your distorted narrative.
You publish a review of retaliatory fiction to punish your therapist for confidentially diagnosing you with a personality disorder.
You select a new therapist who cannot see through your bullshit.
You choose a new therapist because s/he has poor boundaries that you can manipulate.
You choose a new therapist whose personality disorder will mirror your own and make your very very comfortable.
You perform therapy and “doing the work” to borrow credibility.
You actually avoid “doing the work” when it’s confidential.
But you sign up to “do the work” on a reality show and act like the ideal client for an audience.
You confuse “doing the work” of psychotherapy with “doing the work” of a political revolution.
You tell everyone that you should get a pass for your destructiveness because it is due to trauma. But actually, you’re also malicious.
You twist psychology terms into amateurish psychobabble for dramatic effect.
You parrot your therapist to impress your friends, manipulate your family, or build a social media following.
You go on camera to demonstrate “a healing moment” when it’s actually what one of my drama teachers used to call “emotional masturbation.”
You privilege your subjective experience of victimhood over objective reality AND you’re incensed by any reality check - especially when the reality is that you’re a perpetrator too.
You refuse to invest financially in therapy. You use therapy like it’s a recreational drug.
Now it must be said that there are individuals whose bravest moments you’ll never know because they are in the privacy of real therapy. Some of them suffer from a personality disorder but they’re in therapy for earnest reasons. The idea of doing therapy in front of a camera is a nightmare to them. Publishing their trauma story is unthinkable.
On the contrary, they do their work in private. Their courage, their humility, their tenacity, and their pain will only ever be known in the privacy of therapy. For many reasons, that’s how it works.
Also, they want to be challenged. They appreciate being called out. Even though they’re in pain, they don’t want to be coddled. They value impartiality more than they desire affirmation.
These people are the real deal.