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I strongly suspect for many demographics, alternatives like a pastor or mentor work better on average at least for mild-medium needs. The money factor is finessed, there is more goodwill, and more humility on the part of the counterparty in recognizing the limits of helping.
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Consulting/exec coaching is therapy adjacent. One of my firm beliefs is that nobody can do both well. So for a client my fit test is “are your personal issues covered enough through either therapy or jackass nerd interests that we can focus externally on management/leadership?”
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Interestingy, from my experiences helping junior individual contributor types (usually as a favor since they can’t afford to pay my rates) their psychological issues are more complex, not less. And typical blue collar types make me go “I’m not touching that with a 10 ft pole”
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In fact a selection pressure working for leadership roles is “are your issues simple enough to compartmentalize and solve with $?” Average mental health issues work are too complex to fix, at an acceptable price, so end up as attrition forces.
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This is counterintuitive because famous leaders often exhibit almost cartoonish mental health issues, but this is in fact a tell. Their issues are simple enough to caricature into archetypes like “entrepreneur with chip on shoulder and adoption trauma” and manage effectively
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The average grunt otoh is trapped in an NP-hard mental condition that’s unfortunately not worth solving given available human unit economics. Give him a “history of Rome” book and hope he copes without opioids.
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Btw even if you interpret “therapy” as synecdoche for not looking inwards at all, I think avoiding and externalizing/displacing is on average sound. Most people suck at introspection, and have like 0 frames for it. Or worse, 1 really bad frame. They’re better of coping outwards.
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Random data-point: Jordan Peterson is a therapist and in fact a very good one if you look at his history/practice and publications and stuff. But the attempt to deliver his abilities at scale to a mass male audience... didn't go so well either for him or the audience.
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I met him once before he got famous, and was quite impressed. Now imagine the outcomes if you try to scale therapy from even the top 20% (I've met a few others in that band and... was not impressed)
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talking to aeraye the issues. and broil and look for purely interpersonal solutions is feminine. men talk to make plans. therapize. analyze. figure out whats up, but the main question a man asks is what should i do, what am i supposed to do. and the the normal default is to be
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