Considering talking to someone, but...

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

In revisiting the mental health sphere lately, I'm reminded of just how unbelievably weak and cliché the various tropes are. I feel like people just parrot each other over and over with this garbage. Youtube and social media are the worst for this kind of thing.

"It's okay to feel how you feel." Well thanks, Random! I was really beating myself up over it. What I needed was permission from a total stranger to allow myself to feel my own feelings. What a crock.

"There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't." Are you serious? What if someone was terminally ill, would you still tell them that? Hope is incredibly toxic if there is no realistic chance of improvement.

"This too shall pass." No dipshit, many things never pass. We're often stuck with them. Why is that so hard for people to reconcile? Sometimes there is no getting better.

"You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you." Wow, is that all? If people knew how to do that, they wouldn't struggle with mental health in the first place.

I just can't anymore with this stuff. I'm going to do something less torturous, like put my balls in the blender.

 

[Forveleth]

"It's okay to feel how you feel."

I had a therapist that would say something like this after almost everything I told her. I wanted to scream. I do not need validation from my shrink I need them to tell me how to not be fucked up.

I tried a bunch of therapists and they all repeated the same things to me. It is like they are all taught the same damn unhelpful script.

 

[ColorlessTrees]

Half the problem is denying the very real suffering that is baseline for many people in favor for a feel good rejection of life's reality—this isn't a doomerist take either, it's just the truth for a huge population, be it due to environmental factors, health, loneliness created artificially by our current state of affairs, or heck, even just being from a lesser developed country for many folks I know and talk to regularly. I think that on its own, that we are so afraid to sit with these feelings raw instead of always having to twist them into being pathologies is inherently harmful.

It'll get better, but they won't give you an action plan that doesn't fall short with a few poked holes, if they bother to continue yammering at all. You are loved! Okay, by who? A random internet stranger? The reality is plenty of people don't have a single reliable person in their life. Just love yourself! Healing comes from within! And while I don't think self assurance is necessarily a bad thing, I've dealt with some horrible insecure people just constantly projecting that crap onto me and being a self fulfilling prophecy, I won't love myself until I feel I am worthy of it. Until then it's self neutrality.

I think the very cornerstones of mental health infrastructure are built on very patronizing sentiments to begin with. Therapists gotta know logically their tools are limited when it's a societal problem and talk therapy is a bandaid on a bullethole. Because I seriously doubt this many people would be depressed or so emotionally crippled without a third driving factor than mere "brain chemistry", go get it fixed to sell more pills!

I'd like some honesty for a change instead of this sanitized version of topics we do and don't touch, don't get so involved because it's a business, always keep a clinical distance instead of trying to connect human to human.

 

[Pluto]

 

[_Gollum_]

Everyone in this thread has articulated this problem so well. I've had the same experience. It's made me hyperallergic to ANYTHING "mental health" related (that's not on SaSu), to the point where whenever I see a mental health-related ad in public, I have to repress the urge to vandalize it.

I truly do think this space would be so much more humane if more people would take a pro-choice approach to suicide. If we could just admit that life sucks in some intractable ways, that it's not for everyone, and that merely living longer should not be the be-all end-all.

 

[Scythe]

"Consider talking to someone."
"No don't talk to suicidal people on that death cult forum."
"Your friends won't cut you off if you tell them. Trust."
"What do you mean you can't get therapy? Just sign up."

 

[Quietist]

Yeah, regarding the "controlling the thoughts" thing... I've recently been down the "nonduality" rabbit hole online, watching the videos, going on Reddit, reading Eckhart Tolle, because I was convinced that this idea of awakening/realizing that the "thinker/doer/character" is not actually me was the solution.

So far I can only intellectually assent to all of it, I haven't had the experience of awakening, and it's difficult to remain in state of "pure" awareness of sheer will and without being lulled into distractions. I guess my point is I know that nondual teachers say that awakening won't end one's suffering, but there is this idea that it is supposed to give one a sense of peace, albeit fleeting if one can actually grasp any of it.

But as far as therapy goes, at this point in my life, there is nothing a therapist can tell me that I don't already know. That I haven't already analyzed to shit.

 

[pleroman]

And they want money for these hyper-advanced profoundly helpful medical techniques and insights. Many scientific papers prove these phrases fix you right up.

 

[left0vers]

Therapy sessions have the depth of a "keep calm and carry on" poster and the efficiency of drinking a homeopathic solution once a week. At least in my experience.

I seriously don't understand HOW the healthcare system allows this particular branch of medicine to be so useless most of the time. Imagine a normal doctor taking five 1-hour visits to address the fact you have a bone sticking out of your leg, and then suggesting breathing exercises to cope with it.

 

[Forveleth]

Half the problem is denying the very real suffering that is baseline for many people in favor for a feel good rejection of life's reality—this isn't a doomerist take either, it's just the truth for a huge population, be it due to environmental factors, health, loneliness created artificially by our current state of affairs, or heck, even just being from a lesser developed country for many folks I know and talk to regularly. I think that on its own, that we are so afraid to sit with these feelings raw instead of always having to twist them into being pathologies is inherently harmful.

It'll get better, but they won't give you an action plan that doesn't fall short with a few poked holes, if they bother to continue yammering at all. You are loved! Okay, by who? A random internet stranger? The reality is plenty of people don't have a single reliable person in their life. Just love yourself! Healing comes from within! And while I don't think self assurance is necessarily a bad thing, I've dealt with some horrible insecure people just constantly projecting that crap onto me and being a self fulfilling prophecy, I won't love myself until I feel I am worthy of it. Until then it's self neutrality.

I think the very cornerstones of mental health infrastructure are built on very patronizing sentiments to begin with. Therapists gotta know logically their tools are limited when it's a societal problem and talk therapy is a bandaid on a bullethole. Because I seriously doubt this many people would be depressed or so emotionally crippled without a third driving factor than mere "brain chemistry", go get it fixed to sell more pills!

I'd like some honesty for a change instead of this sanitized version of topics we do and don't touch, don't get so involved because it's a business, always keep a clinical distance instead of trying to connect human to human.

Dismantling the modern mental healthcare system in a single post. God, I have thought the same things for a long time and it brings me a bit of happiness that someone else does too. Thank you for saying this.