It’s not even that it’s “bad” therapy exactly. It’s clearly well intentioned and thoughtful, with a lot of thought put into it, and that’s a lot more than some people get from therapy if stories are any indication (and better than some other experiences I’ve had with it). But the part that shows up over and over again in the background is how focused it is on the individual. It sounds like it sort of makes sense at first, you are there to address your own problems, after all. But the thing is that a therapist has no solutions for what is beyond that. And the solution they often do have, in my experience, is some form of rugged individualism; be better at being you in a vacuum because you can’t control others and most things are outside of your control.
Self-improvement can be a thing, I don’t think that’s somehow wrong. Healing from trauma can be a thing. But the most abled, neurotypical, “healthy” of individuals in western capitalist society are still dealing with a lot of bullshit from capitalism itself and its consequences. Maybe I just wish people in mental health would call attention to that. I don’t expect the existing society to casually teach people how to be revolutionaries. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating when you go to get help and feel like you’re being asked to either pretend a huge portion of what impacts you is not a factor, or take it like it’s some kind of inevitable stress of life and just cope.
It’s like this sort of “it doesn’t get better out there, so you have to make it better in here” is the best way I can think to put it. Like tacitly giving up on a fundamentally better world, even if that’s not the conscious intention.
After engaging with these topics and having spent quite a lot of time in therapy I have also realized that capitalism is the cause of most mental health issues (or at least aggravates them to an extreme level), and mental health care exists to get you back to work. Because it has to work within the system which is causing the sickness it cannot address the core issues and is left with individualist band-aids.
I def feel that pull at times. Even though I think my therapist genuinely means well and wants for me to get my needs met, even though they seem overall patient with my progress, the curve of it def seems bent toward “get back on track” and the track is the status quo.
In my experience it is very often the major goal behind that: Being able to work again. Even if doing trauma specific therapy, its quite usual that it is somewhere centered around that. This can be exhausting.
I had a whiplash moment in therapy (an intense inpatient program) where I was feeling the best I could remember feeling, but at the same time felt really sad about it because feeling good and being healthy means I have to go back to doing wage labour.