Comment by itsme0000
2 days ago
I saw many therapists and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. I honestly it did a lot for me when a therapist simply said “Wow that’s a bad situation I feel really bad for you. It so unfair.”
But anytime I looked for instructions or objectives on how to improve my life they would basically say “I can’t tell you exactly what to do, you need to come to that conclusion for yourself.” The problem was I genuinely didn’t know what to do. They always tried to see things from my side, but never really believed that spending my night in a drunken stupor watching TV until I passed out was actually contributing to my happiness more than being in agony every night slowly building my contempt for humanity. Even though it’s against their training, they can’t help but judge you lifestyle and unusually that manifests as silence on important issues instead of disagreement.
> The problem was I genuinely didn’t know what to do.
That is the problem, yes.
I think a lot of the confusion from people just beginning their psychotherapeutic journey is that they think the point of therapy is to make them happier. No. The point of therapy is to make them happier, and sadder, and angrier, and more driven, and aware of their fear, and connected to their shame and guilt, and able to love. In short, it's to give you perspective on emotions, so that you can feel them on a minute-to-minute basis and decide what you want to do, and realize that "because you want to do it" is just as valid as any other reason, if not more.
> spending my night in a drunken stupor watching TV until I passed out was actually contributing to my happiness more than being in agony every night slowly building my contempt for humanity
A therapist would be naturally conflicted about this, because spending your night in a drunker stupor watching TV will make you happier, but being in agony every night slowly building your contempt for humanity is the work that needs to be done. The point of therapy is to help your understand a.) that you are in agony every night and b.) why are you building your contempt for humanity? It's to help you feel the emotions, and to feel them as emotions, and then to eventually integrate them into your life in a way that is constructive.
Yeah actually I don’t need to be in agony or improve my outlook at all or even understand my motivations for my own actions to be happy. I needed real medical care. Therapists think pain can teach you to accept something, but true pain, it can’t teach you anything. It only makes you a worse person. There’s no possibility for the rationalization of true agony. Attempts to do so simply lead to worse, more dangerous mental problems.
The majority of people are tourists in the world of pain. They enter, make observations, then exit, assured that they had a harrowing experience. But for those of us who are residents in the city of pain, we know it stinks and it will grind us down until we become evil people. We are stuck there due to some kind of undeserved poverty which is not within our power to control. No amount of compromise or contemplation can escape you from a physical prison. It’s a cage that exists inside you rather than around you and it does nothing to shake the bars other than annoy the tourists who gawk as they pass by.
I know that’s pretty dark, but people simply will never acknowledge that life long happiness is somewhat dependent on luck. It would likely cause society to fail if the lucky people realized evil people were actually equally self aware but just fundamentally less lucky and under the influence of random inexplicable pain, that’s just a result of human biology. People just reject this idea even though it’s obviously true. Therapists simply don’t understand this simple fact because it’s not their job, they are there to guide the tourists.
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> But anytime I looked for instructions or objectives on how to improve my life they would basically say “I can’t tell you exactly what to do, you need to come to that conclusion for yourself.”
It comes down to this. I can meet and talk with you and pronounce judgement on your life, but me telling you what to do isn't the same as you figuring it out for yourself. You have to do that hard work. you have to sit there until you're past bored and reflect on the things you've done. and it sucks, and it's boring, and why can't you just give me the answer. But human psychology is what it is. me telling you just isn't going to be internalized the same way. One external entity has has better questions that others. some of the deepest and best insights have come from random strangers I don't know and have little connection to, in random and serendipitous moments. Watching TV, your not going up find that, imo. you've got to go out there to find yourself, as hokey as that sounds.
> me telling you just isn't going to be internalized the same way
Sometimes, you need to be pointed in the right direction (or even told they exist). All the self-searching won't do any good if you're continually looking in the wrong places.
Your comment reminded me of this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx2JA8KzV3s