Therapy doesn’t fix any of the most pressing issues I have. I’d wager about 85% or more of my stress is economic or environmental in nature. My big three worries are how am I gonna afford a house by myself, how am i going to be able to retire on little money and without kids, and is the envrioment going to lose the ability to sustain human life while I’m still alive and on nothing more than a fixed income.
I don’t need to journal my thoughts and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist, I need some damn material security in my life.
The thing therapy has helped me with in regards to that is feeling okay despite it all. Being content despite not having all of our wants and needs fulfilled is a valuable skill.
Being content despite not having needs met feels like a skill thats more valuable to my boss than me. Nah im gonna get my needs met.
There’s only so much that can be done to meet one’s needs. There will always be wants and needs that go unfulfilled, it’s just the nature of being human. Being able to exist with that, without it causing you extreme distress, is a very valuable coping skill that’s lost in a lot of people.
This doesn’t mean eschew meeting your needs completely, but simply acknowledging that some may be actually impossible to fulfill right now, at least safely, and working on an actual viable plan, instead of panicking and doing whatever short-term fix seems handy.
I understand your point, and I also think a bit in this direction. But i think there may be two counterpoints.
First you beeing depressed over the status and worrying at home and online about it, is not really helping your or doing anything against your boss.
Second, as i understand it, the goal is not to get really content, but to get more control over your feelings. It is perfectly fine if zou feel sad or angry over the situation. It shows you what you want or do not want. But this doesn’t need to control your life. If you have the possibility you should definitely use your anger to give you energy for the fight for better working conditions. But if you can not, you should your feelings taking complete control over you
I think it is worth pointing out that while therapy can certainly help you manage stress better and be more content maybe, if you are truly struggling and falling further behind here in the US, no amount of therapy (which you can’t afford anyway) is going to make you stop being hungry, sleep deprived, heal severe injury or illness, or give your home back. And going without food, sleep, or housing can lead to death.
Those items are a bit trickier for sure. There’s a biological need for them and so they can be pressing. There’s a certain bare minimum that yeah, you can’t just not have. Anything past that, though, past the absolute critical for life level, is something you can learn to be content with, learn to not desire more than, and instead just be thankful for the excess above starvation that you enjoy in this moment.
If you are content without a need being filled, it does not fit my description of need.
So again you are saying it is what it is
You have needs that go unfulfilled all the time. You’ve never been hungry without any immediate food? Part of being content is being able to go without needs for a certain period of time, being safe in knowing that it ISN’T going to be forever.
This, of course, doesn’t mean you can forego every need forever. Yeah, being without food or water too long can and will kill you, but that doesn’t mean you have to have that need 100% met 100% of the time.
Of note, I’m not saying that people just shouldn’t eat. That’s the kind of need that we as a society should have figured out by now, truly. But going without SOMETIMES okay, and learning that is huge.
True. It’s also a good formula for PTSD. When your traumas have to take a back seat to material needs, disorders develop.
What if your needs take a back seat to your trauma? That can’t be good either.
Therapist: you need to focus less on the things that are outside of your control, and come to accept the fact that there are some things you just can’t change.
Me: crying you mean some things just be what they be?
There’s a lot of evidence that modern CBT therapy just doesn’t really connect with men very well. Mainly because we don’t really tend to solve problems by “considering more gratitude” or “trying yoga at sunrise maybe?” (Was a legit suggestion when I had a therapist lol.)
Edit: yoga and exercise are awesome, and physical activity can be therapy in itself for many people! There’s some truth to the trope that some men like to hit the gym to deal with their complex feelings lol.
Men tend to want practical steps and solutions to things. And there isn’t a whole lot of practical solutions one person can try to repair the effects of an increasingly alienating society and collapsing socioeconomic structures.
Therapists can be very helpful, and by all means you should definitely try to find a good one.
But sadly when you realize a lot of your issues are circumstantial and practical though, things like “Well I’m depressed and anxious because I feel everything is out of my control, like layoffs and rent hikes.”…
…Sometimes it feels like the prevalent training and methodology seems to say “Well that sounds like a you problem.”
There’s a really good podcast about this called “It’s Not Just In Your Head”
And a YouTube guy “Dr. K” (actually a doctor btw) who runs a channel called "HealthyGamerGG.
The topic is definitely worth analysis and discussion, why therapy isn’t working for men in particular, as it’s often swept under the rug as just “Men being stubborn and toxic” or whatever, but there is a lot more at play here.
We need to make sure men are heard and cared for, before they get warped by all the “alpha grind real man” grifters that understand how they work, and use it for malicious means.
EDIT: I’m really glad this seems to have started a somewhat productive discussion! I want to clarify that I’m NOT tearing down CBT or therapy or yoga or anything!
I’m merely calling attention to certain blind spots I’ve experienced (and therapists have also been discussing) when it comes to how therapy is conducted, and how it might get better in dealing with how men tend to experience the world.
Again, therapy is great and I encourage you to try it. But I’m mainly talking about why men shy away from it, and how we need to seriously talk about how to help them before they start thinking people like Andrew Tate have their best interests at heart.
There’s a lot of evidence that modern CBT therapy just doesn’t really connect with men very well. Mainly because we don’t really tend to solve problems by “considering more gratitude” or “trying yoga at sunrise maybe?” (Was a legit suggestion when I had a therapist lol)
Source?
I’m asking because this sounds nothing like CBT that I did. I’m a woman, but it was gut-wrenching and scary to do exposure therapy. Nothing at all about yoga or gratitude… sounds more like traditional talk therapy to me.
I would give CBT a chance, honestly… I feel like you have some kind of misinformed opinion or maybe had a crappy therapist.
Edit: just for clarity, CBT is a type of talk therapy, but the stuff this person I’m replying to describes sounds more like traditional armchair therapist self-help-book Freudian therapy.
Maybe we have a slight misunderstanding about CBT? CBT I’m referring to is “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”, not exposure therapy. I hope the exposure therapy was beneficial to you though. :)
Basic CBT I’m talking about is a talk therapy modality where the patient is trained to observe the cycle between their thoughts, feelings, and actions, and pay a bit more mindfulness to how they react to things.
I don’t wanna bash it! But my point is, sometimes men in particular are not raised to understand or differentiate their emotional feelings on a deep level, so this talk therapy alone doesn’t really give them something “actionable” to start solving the problem when you keep getting asked:
“So how does that make you feel?” “Bad?” “Why?”
It can be helpful and it certainly helped me! BUT alone, it also has a blind-spot where it’s not as helpful to the way men experience the world. Usually much more externally, and less “pondering feelings.”
I know I’m not articulating this the best way, there’s a lot of nuance, but I’m glad it’s started a productive discussion!
I’m merely saying it can be better, not trying to tear it down. :)
No, I’m confident about what I said. Exposure therapy is one part of CBT.
I did CBT for PTSD and death anxiety, the latter involving large bits of exposure therapy.
https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/techniques/exposure/
Do you have any evidence about men having issues with this sort of therapy or is that a personal observation?
Edit: honestly it sounds like you had a bad therapist experinece and that therapist has no idea what CBT is (and sorry to say, but neither do you particularly)
Edit: had to add the passive aggressive smiley :)
One of the hosts of “It’s Not Just in Your Head” mentioned this in an early episode.
He said he’s talked to other therapists who’ve straight up wearily declared “I can only do so much to help them, but it’s astonishing how many people’s problems would go away if they just…had more money.”
It’s a lot easier to train your mindfulness when you’re not in a constantly embattled state for increasingly scarce resources against a corrupt and uncaring system, isn’t it?
There’s a point when mitigations aren’t going to fix the long term stressors that are causing so many people to snap.
Situational depression is a real fucker. I understand what you mean. I grew up in the Middle East and everything was fucked right and left, people around me were depressed because of society, because of the economy, and because their lives never get better.
I had to move our of there and start healing myself, my brain, my ability to deal with whatever life throws me.
“trying yoga at sunrise maybe?”
Shitty half assed suggestion but for real one of the original big motivations of yoga is that a lot of people struggle with meditating and “just clearing their mind”. Yoga isn’t just about physical strength and flexibility, it is also about providing a very direct physical practice to make the process of mentally reaching a meditative state easier.
I think it is a great compliment to therapy since in therapy you can talk about how best to rewire negative thought processes into positive ones and in yoga you can practice actually doing that while getting some good moderate exercise.
Oh yeah totes. Never meant to bash yoga or exercise! That was exactly my point, that it was a half baked self-help-motivational-book suggestion essentially.
Bash yoga at your own risk… very flexible people will hunt you down and offer you some healthy snacks
Mainly because we don’t really tend to solve problems by “considering more gratitude” or “trying yoga at sunrise maybe?”
I feel like at some point all the therapists, at least Western ones, got together and decided that instead of helping men with practical advice and solutions, they would offer help that while being far less practical, would, at least hopefully, in some small way, make them feel a smidge bit better about the problems.
Will yoga at sunrise fix the issues? No. Will it help you feel better about them? That’s the hope. Because, unfortunately, a lot of issues are outside of our control, so the modern therapy approach seems to be centered on getting patients to focus more on the things within their control, like how the things outside of their control make them feel.
You’re right! This is a very pragmatic approach and I’m not bashing it.
It’s hard to articulate this properly, but if I’m bashing anything, it’s the empty corporate way that modern therapy has sometimes been co-opted by the self help industry.
“Oh your boss yells at you? Maybe try some mindfulness to let it go.”
It’s kinda sad because, from a personal experience, I’ve run into that wall where I fought the constant mindfulness battle, tried making my work stresses not bother me, knowing quitting and losing the income would be much worse, and that circle of crazy just never stopped.
But hey, it helped me hold on until I could quit, which was a practical move that seemed to solve a ton of my inner turmoil. :p
As far is i understand it, yes this is the point of therapy. I mean which problem could your therapist really solve? The can’t tell you what to do to get for example a better job.
They can help you to find the root cause of your problems and may help you find a way to solve them. However, as you said, many of the problems can’t be solved by oneself. But is it useful to be in depression over this? I don’t think so. Is it useful to be sad or angry about this? Yes, i do think so. In principle this feeling shows you, that there is a problem. This anger may help you in some situations to get what you want. I do not think therapists want you to do away with the feelings. But where they want and can help you, is that these feelings do not take full control over your thinking. For example, when you a lie in bed, these feelings do nothing good.
Anger is a catalyst for change. The problem is that, all too often the catalyst is used for destructive ends as opposed to constructive ends. And therapy can help to mitigate the chance that someone will use their anger to harm, but like the parable of the broken window, destruction can be creative.
And there isn’t a whole lot of practical solutions one person can try to repair the effects of an increasingly alienating society and collapsing socioeconomic structures.
Doing something about that is something practical to do, no?
Become an Anarchist like myself and never suffer from the dread imposed on you by living in a surveillance dystopia.
And how do you do something “practical” about it, with any ideology and not just anarchism? Becoming radicalized and aware of surrounding ideology doesn’t suddenly make you able to throw everything away, it doesn’t eliminate your need for food and roof over the head which is something you need money and a job for.
You are absolutely right.
However if you do your part in solving the issues we as a people of the world face, it is my opinion that you will feel better as a result.
Say you could do something for the homeless, protest, inform others, like say through founding of a newspaper, start a worker-owned company and many more that I cannot think of at the moment.
Doing something to work towards resolving the issues that bring you down is it’s own therapy.
Fellow anarchist (Christian variety), and I hear you friend.
“Never suffer from the dread imposed on you” is a bit of a lofty promise! Oftentimes even with the best aims, somebody feels overwhelmed.
For example, I tried to rile up all my coworkers, and they agreed with me, but didn’t want to rock the boat. So nothing changed. And I left, not being able to singlehandedly turn tables on management myself.
I think you can be energized and feel a sense of purpose when you find your way to make positive change in the world absolutely.
But it’s still a fight, because everything is stacked against people who want more than just going round and round on the labor/consumption cycle. It doesn’t end. The System™ doesn’t need to sleep or vent its feelings on its path to consumption.
It wears on you after a while.
So my point is, therapy is great for discussing those feelings. But we often hit a brick wall where I was mentally handling things in a constructive, mature, self aware way, but there just wasn’t anything to be done because the circumstances just don’t stop wearing on you.
The few times in my life I’ve been to therapy or counseling on times at very different ages in my life for wildly different reasons, it’s interesting that every single time, it amounted to them nicely asking me to let it go. Just stop letting whatever IT is affect you. Thanks asshole. How is that a fucking career?
Better than my experiences.
Which involved one laughing at me, and telling me to stop being silly and be serious when I was being serious.
and the other one being a christnut that, in their christlike duty, decided to bilk me for a few thousand dollars before telling me I needed to go to church and submit to jesus, because being a godless heathen was why i had my problems.
edit.
Not tryin to gate keep ya or play who has the best misery, to be clear. Just sympathizing.
Where do you live? I’m asking because my experience couldn’t be more different and I’m in Germany.
I’m also a man, went to therapy and my therapist was just fantastic! She could relate to me, gave excellent advice etc., really changed my life for the better.
PS: of course I didn’t have go anything or so, just if I’d miss a session ^^ (in theory, but even 30m late to a 50m session was still fine hehe)
I went to therapy and now I’m a girl…
