GeniesLoki

(I think therapy clearly helps if you have a great patient/therapist match, a willingness to work on your problems yourself, a lot of money to throw at the problem, and the sort of problems that are amenable to solving with therapy, but that's a lot of preconditions)

I think therapy has become a dumping ground where instead of saying the reactionary "shut up and deal" (because society at large doesn't want to support you) you can say the progressive "go to therapy" (because society at large doesn't want to support you)

I think it's worth distinguishing therapy from the weaponisation of go to therapy discourse - the latter basically never actually results in people going to therapy, it's just a tool for shifting blame because you know they won't. Actual therapy almost doesn't come into it.

I want tools of therapy in the water, but it basically just means real friendship A real call to go to therapy would be more like go to poker night, go camping, go hunting, go to Vegas with the boys You need space and time for men to be men

I don't think it just means real friendship. There are a lot of skills of communication and emotional awareness that tend to come out of therapy that are not present in the general population and that no amount of real friendship substitutes well for.

Real friendship gets you a long way of course, but if everyone is traumatised and doesn't know how to work through their trauma it can only get you so far.

I think I agree, but how do you define and work through trauma?

Got an hour for that answer? But it's mostly a collection of different skills: e.g. how to notice you're triggered and not act on that, how to clearly identify your feelings and communicate them well.