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September 25, 2003
To therapy or not to therapy?
I am a strong proponent of therapy. I believe that just like we take care of our bodies, the same is required, and essential, for our minds. While I believe it is terrific to “talk it out” with our friends, family, or in my case, anyone who will listen, I believe therapists are better qualified to deal you out some heavy truths. Let’s face it, your friends are only going to advise you with a “what’s in it for me?” stance and because they’re so emotionally involved with you, their advice can sometimes border on the insane. Maybe insane wasn’t the right choice of word here.
Thankfully many things (like Oprah and self-help books) have helped lessen the shame previously associated with seeking professional help for the mind. In the 100 odd years of its evolution, therapy has gone from being seen as a treatment for the ‘insane’ to the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today; in fact there are 400 kinds of therapies available. However, of late, therapy has been getting a bad rep.
I recently read a report published by a group of super brain experts at Harvard University which stated that 140 millions Americans are being treated for depression. However, there is a problem with this report which San Francisco Gate’s honorable columnist Mark Moroford points out: the same people who wrote this report are serving on boards of pharmaceutical firms that manufacture pills for depression. Do you see what I’m getting at?
I’m not sure where I stand on people popping anti-depressants pills like it’s candy. Before you make a beeline for my throat, let me state that I do understand the importance of pills in the treatment of clinical depression etc. but I’m talking here about ordinary folks who pop pills without seeking medical help. They have no way of monitoring their progress and fail to realize that these pills do have side effects. Pills with names that end “xil” have been known to cause suicidal tendencies but, hey, according to Moroford, this is the stuff your friendly pharmaceutical company would rather you not know about.
I have to admit that up till May this year, I was quite a cynic when it came to therapy. For starters, I believed it was an expensive way to seek attention from someone who is paid to pretend to care about you. It was far too self indulgent a process not to mention very lengthy; you could be in therapy for years and end up with nothing to show for it except a certificate stating that you wasted your life away being analyzed and not living it. However, after my own brush with a therapist (she’s my sister’s best friend but it still counts) I have had to eat humble pie.
Therapy is self-indulgent because it allows you to pop yourself on a couch and just let it all out — Barbara Ellen of The Guardian called it “spewing out your inner toxins”. For myself, I realized how it helped me talk without fear of being judged or told to grow up or get over it, which is what happens in real life.
I sometimes think that if I hadn’t had that chance encounter with MK (the therapist and not my alter ego) I may have ended up brooding and becoming another Sylvia Plath — who was a good writer but let’s face it, she stuck her head in the oven and killed herself. (I’m sure many would like to see me do that but that’s besides the point.)
Therapy isn’t a cutesy American thing any more. Granted, no one does “letting it out” better than the Americans but people all over the world are turning to psychiatrists for help. So you can understand why someone like me, a newly liberated person courtesy therapy, isn’t very pleased with reports like the aforementioned and others similar to it which state that counselling is useless and at worst is likely to make people more depressed.
According to George Bonnano, assistant professor of psychology at New York’s Columbia University, it is better to repress your memory of trauma then to relive it. He isn’t alone in his views. However, these activists aren’t writing therapy off completely. They’re just advocating therapy for the “big stuff”, the truly traumatized. Oh yeah? How does one decide that they’ve hit the traumatic jackpot then? Do we sit here and repress ourselves until we’ve turned into pressure cookers, waiting to fly off the handle at any given point? It’s ironic that psychologists and the likes spent decades convincing us that it’s good to talk only to do an about turn and encourage us to shut up already.
So what are you supposed to do? On one hand you have reports that state billions of people are depressed and millions are on some sort of behaviour modifying pill which can cause really dangerous side effects. And then on the other side, you have reports where “they’re” telling you to forget about your problems and move on. Holistic types suggest that instead of therapy one should do yoga, exercise, eat healthy, meditate, eat non-processed foods — and ultimately find inner peace.
Then you have me, who has no qualification whatsoever when it comes to doling out advice, scientific or otherwise, who is advocating that one should go for therapy. My logic is that it won’t kill you to discover that you’re normal.
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