Contra on Nostr: My 2 Sats… Shrinks/therapists can’t verify a word you say. They just get your ...
My 2 Sats…
Shrinks/therapists can’t verify a word you say. They just get your performance of yourself.
That’s the whole rot at the center of it. A guy walks in, tells a story about his week, his marriage, his mother. The therapist takes it as data. But it’s not data, it’s a press release. And most rooms reward the press release. Push back too hard and the client doesn’t get better, he just finds a new therapist who nods more.
So you get validation dressed up as treatment. Feelings get affirmed instead of tested. A rational response to a genuinely bad situation gets filed under “cognitive distortion” because the framework needs a distortion to fix. Diagnosis stops being a description of symptoms and turns into a personality. Guy isn’t having a hard month anymore, he’s Anxious now, forever, capital A.
And nobody’s on the hook for any of it. A surgeon botches an operation, there’s a body and a lawsuit. A therapist runs the same client in circles for six years, that’s just called “the work.” Slow is indistinguishable from broken from the inside the chair.
None of this means the whole field’s a grift. Plenty of people in it do the harder thing, actually challenge you, actually let the session end. But the incentive structure doesn’t reward that by default. It rewards keeping you comfortable and keeping you coming back.
A few good friends will outperform a decade of sessions. They know your history, not your narrative. They’ll tell you when you’re wrong because they’ve got nothing to sell you. That’s the whole system a shrink is trying to simulate for money imo.
Published at
2026-08-12 22:44:35 CESTEvent JSON
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"content": "My 2 Sats…\n\nShrinks/therapists can’t verify a word you say. They just get your performance of yourself.\n\nThat’s the whole rot at the center of it. A guy walks in, tells a story about his week, his marriage, his mother. The therapist takes it as data. But it’s not data, it’s a press release. And most rooms reward the press release. Push back too hard and the client doesn’t get better, he just finds a new therapist who nods more.\n\nSo you get validation dressed up as treatment. Feelings get affirmed instead of tested. A rational response to a genuinely bad situation gets filed under “cognitive distortion” because the framework needs a distortion to fix. Diagnosis stops being a description of symptoms and turns into a personality. Guy isn’t having a hard month anymore, he’s Anxious now, forever, capital A.\n\nAnd nobody’s on the hook for any of it. A surgeon botches an operation, there’s a body and a lawsuit. A therapist runs the same client in circles for six years, that’s just called “the work.” Slow is indistinguishable from broken from the inside the chair.\n\nNone of this means the whole field’s a grift. Plenty of people in it do the harder thing, actually challenge you, actually let the session end. But the incentive structure doesn’t reward that by default. It rewards keeping you comfortable and keeping you coming back.\n\nA few good friends will outperform a decade of sessions. They know your history, not your narrative. They’ll tell you when you’re wrong because they’ve got nothing to sell you. That’s the whole system a shrink is trying to simulate for money imo. ",
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