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.
Totally, and thanks for such a comprehensive, though targeted response(i just mean i get you didn’t respond to everything and I get the “I more or less agree, but that’s not really what I meant.” vibe)- what your saying makes more sense to me now. Also, just to name- I don’t think me not fully understanding what you are/were trying to say has anything to do with me being a therapist per say, could just be a feature of two people passing notes about really complex ideas on the internet and I agree with you, I think we are both in this exchange fully in good faith. Everything from your OP(and this one) seemed sincere and I hope my response felt that way too.
Hearing this idea of ‘gentle defensive individualism’, I also wanna put out there again- maybe not the right fit. It sounds like you’re experiencing some alienation in the session, which is at the very least something to identify and explore between yall and potentially a less lib (individualist) clinician could be more effective…maybe? I do hear you saying you feel like they’re often trying to put things in a box- which is annoying to me as a clinician- Thats what we do for insurance companies: pretend to reduce a full, dynamic, complex human being into a dozen sheets of paper to get a stamp. Best practice we ought be doing for a cl is ‘tailor made’ tx tho.(edit: so if you aren’t feeling that, something may be off)
and 100, no such thing as un-biased, not how humans work and implicit bias regarding everything is totally baked in, best we do is name it, get good at recognizing it (retroactively, then next) in the moment, and then attempt to make intentional decisions around it. I am curious about what tactics you see as being liberally biased? I also hear something like the ideas your being presented with don’t acknowledge that things are fucked up, or that we live in a racist, sexist, classist, capitalist world(I’ll add on here something like “rooted in time”-like I would be awful at therapy for someone who was alive 150yrs ago cause our biases and context are so radically diverged- even if we were mostly using a technique, like EMDR or CBT or something)- which also annoys me! Because obviously we do and just like implicit bias, name it; recognize it; make intentional decisions around it- attempting to ignore it is literally the worst outcome decision.
Again, I’m circling back to, it might be the match that isn’t quiet right, I have a lot of commie LAC/LPC/LMSW, etc homies who normatively name some of the above things, as is appropriate. I know this is going on and on and I hope you know I’m not trying to defend any of your helpful well meaning or otherwise therapists- I will say, in my personal experience therapists that are POC; LGBTQ+; trans affirming; not native to USA(im in the usa) are more likely to have competency in addressing the impacts that normative society has on folks. sorry for writing such a big response- also feel free to DM, happy to continue the convo in whatever space works, if you’d like.