“My diagnosis is that you’re nuts.

My recommendations is to stop it right now”.

Yeah, assisted by having them shoved down our throats by the media for much of our lives. I told my children that I would happily support them through any degree they chose… except journalism. They chose wisely.

Thanks for sharing your story and so glad to hear you found a path away from your pain.

The fourth therapist I worked with held group therapy sessions for couples. My wife and I were coming back together after a separation that was primarily fomented by our grief and the different ways we processed it. Again, this therapist was a facilitator who mostly listened and offered suggestions. Group therapy’s value lies in hearing other people talk about their issues and realizing that relationship difficulties are not unusual or rare. Listening to others talk often led me to insights about my own issues.

One night, I made a breakthrough. I had been cramming down a lot of anger for years related to the way we had abandoned the South Vietnamese when my friends had died there. The futility of their sacrifices had really cranked my chain. Something set me off. I don’t remember what. I went into a rant about the unfairness of life, how awful it was that good men died young and left their grieving families, and how duplicitous politicians could be, etc. etc. I got pretty heated, and after ten minutes of ranting, I shut up and looked around the room. It was stone cold quiet. A couple of thew wives were sobbing. We sat there for some time before anyone spoke. Then our therapist said words to the effect that we had just witnessed a breakthrough.

That knight she referred me to a therapist who specialized in anger management. He was the man who helped me bring all the stifled anger out through specialized sessions in a padded, sound proofed room. He guided me, I did the work. I learned how to get in touch with my anger, to express it safely, and to work it out of my system. That was 37 years ago. I still use what I learned from that therapist today.

Maybe I’m a psycho, but I needed help, and fortunately I found it. So, I’m a believer in therapists, but you need to find the right fit. It’s not a sign of weakness to look/ask for help. A therapists will not solve your problems. They can guide you to helping you solve your problems.

All that said, I don’t doubt that there are some bad therapists out there. Politics has invaded every facet of our lives. It’s sad.

People have experiences, some awful. They also have duties to behave well, even if behaving well in some contexts is especially difficult for them because of past trauma.

For me, then, talking to a standard counselor, therapist, psychiatrist, religious advisor was out of the question — I had seen enough of those people — and I doubt would have helped unless I was very lucky.

So, I headed off into less orthodox approaches. That could have gone badly too.

Fortunately, I was attracted to “tough love” approaches — Gestalt Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and wildly dissimilar cult teachers like Ayn Rand, Stephen Gaskin, Werner Erhard and Tony Robbins — emphasizing personal responsibility.

That’s still the bedrock for me. And why I find the the Woke approach, in which everything reduces to identity and victimization, to be not just wrong, but crippling.

Say, if one were a real black slave who, hypothetically, consulted a therapist about feelings of anger and depression.

Or a concentration camp guard with feelings of sadness and depression.

Or, perhaps, closer to home, conservatives with feelings of sadness, anger and depression about America’s decline and its real effects on their lives.

I don’t mean to be contrarian here. I’m happy to grant that most people’s problems don’t reduce and shouldn’t be reduced to politics.

Then there’s also the issue that some political analyses are more useful than others.

https://www.lightondarkwater.com/2022/08/rieff-was-right.html