re: therapy

what is therapy, is it good or bad, how it contrasts with modern therapy

the etymology of therapy is "healing", but contextually it is your mental health healing. It's quite silly to say you would never, ever need it.

To suggest you don't need healing is akin to saying you would never, ever be wounded in the mind. folly.

So why does modern therapy not work? Because it is about reintegrating you into the economy. The fact that it costs $200/hr and unlocks xanax is evidence of this.

You aren't here to heal. You're here to learn coping mechanisms and take drugs to make you ignore how work sucks.

Good therapy, however, is dealing with pain and feelings, not avoiding them. Bottling it up makes it come out in unpredictable and destructive ways. You're basically sweeping it under the rug for it to fester and ferment, stinking more and more until you can't cover it anymore.

Modern medicine treats pain as a disease itself, but naturally pain is an alert that something is wrong. Pain is 100% natural and part of the human experience.

The pain is there for you to fix the root cause, not ignore it.

Good therapy is meditation. Bad therapy is xanax and a passive aggressive therapist telling you bad things aren't bad, or at least, ignore that fact.

So how to have good therapy (healing)? Well first, admit those feelings are there. Search why you have those feelings.

Remember, you are being candid to yourself in your own mind. Posturing for good social standing means nothing. Literally nothing.

I don't know where this meme came from, but the "men never have feelings" is incredibly cowardly. Every manly man I've known irl has been at peace with their feelings.

repeat: they don't ignore their feelings, they are at peace with them

in this vein, good therapy can come from multiple sources. As long as it helps you heal mental wounds, such as venting with friends, meditation, a night walk, it works.

If you have to pretend to your friends that shit isn't wrong in your life, they aren't your friends btw

look inward, see the world
look outward, see yourself

socialization is a great way to see yourself
looking inward with capital M meditation is a great way to understand the world around you

People will pretend nothing is wrong, but a group of bros sharing a beer can help each other express issues and feelings

This also does not require $200/hr

Online you will hear "you don't need a gf, you need therapy" said to men.

In reality, these men don't even have a group of bros to hang out with irl.

No joke, you can boil down 99% of therapy sessions to "I feel alone and alienated, I have no ways to genuinely express myself" and then the therapist just gives them xanax

As for deeper seated issues and ambivalence towards existence in the universe, you will have to contemplate it yourself, no amount of money can hire someone to explain it to you

Thus, good therapy is about YOU exploring, and being honest, bad therapy is about reintegrating you as a wageslave into the economy.

Don't think mindfulness is bad because therapists are soul-sucking vampires.