"It's [therapy] the safe word of the emotionally illiterate. A convenient, yet enlightened, way to throw the discomfort of care into someone else's lap. As if each kind of care is interchangeable."

LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS!!! I know there are therapists and other various mental health professionals on Pagebound, along with people in general care-focused professions (I'd include librarians here), so I really want to hear y'all's thoughts on this.

Personally, when I was on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the conversations around mental health and emotional literacy were appalling. For context, I was on these apps when I was around 16-18 years old, so, still very much growing in my emotional maturity. At this time, I was exploring things like depression, anxiety, neurodivergence, etc. In the spaces I was in online, these attributes were treated as excuses for an array of disrespectful and immature behavior. And the solution for people on the receiving end of this behavior: "go to therapy!" It was an endless cycle of "you're mentally ill, dump your problems on others"-->"your friend dumped your problems on you, protect your mental health! Tell them to go to therapy." This was so damaging to me as a young person trying to navigate what it meant to be mentally ill, to develop community, and to be present for others while still setting boundaries. Struggling with these things is a natural part of being a teenager, to a degree, but the influence of social media made it all-consuming.

I strongly believe that this concept of "I'm not your therapist" has been extensively damaging to young people's understanding of community. It's also frustrating that any time conversations like this come up, anyone with this stance is expected to provide the caveat of "don't trauma dump though! Therapy still has value!" Even the author immediately does that following the excerpt I quoted above. I think, in this context, it goes without saying that therapy has value. The question is, when does that value become overshadowed by individuals' desire to shift responsibility and "discomfort of care" to someone else? How has this mindset harmed society?

I'm getting to the end of this and realizing I haven't even touched on the last part of the quote, "as if each kind of care is interchangeable." This is another incredibly important consideration! A 15-year-old with social anxiety likely doesn't need the same kind of care as a 40-year-old who just survived a plane crash. How has the conflation of mental illnesses and the singular treatment of "therapy" affected people's views on resources available to them and on the idea/action of community care as a whole?

I'm curious to see how this mindset shows up across careers, cultures, age ranges, etc.. What are your thoughts?