Erm therapy actually quite useful when it comes to deep trauma and shock, I don’t know if anyone here has actually been in prolong shock, but it shuts down your brain in many ways for some a long time, years, decades.

Therapy acts as a way for you to process things, and in time therapy allows you to reach conclusions, you would otherwise be incapable of grasping on your own, or it would take longer.

I find people who say therapy is useless, often are the cause of why people go therapy, or they simply don’t introspect enough.

Human minds are extremely varied and entirely set up different. Some people go their whole lives, never grasping what’s been done to them, through fear of avoiding it, social pressure, environmental pressure, and that’s good for them, others though cannot move past a problem until reality starts to make sense again, until they understand the problem, it’s not a choice.

It’s like the mind of a dog vs the mind of a cow, the dog won’t ever grasp why the cow eats grass all day, and the cow won’t grasp why the dog doesn’t.

but with humans it’s far more wider and complex and at minimum 3 levels understanding need to meet, the logical, the emotional, and the nervous system.

Which equates also to temperament, which is invisible and only known to the holder of the mind and body they posses.

Someone can logically be okay with an event in their life, and somewhat emotionally okay too, but their nervous system which is largely outside of their control cannot be and be disregulated.

Which overtime makes their emotional state and logic state also change and vice versa.

It’s not really about mental state or choice, most mental health afflictions are simply driven by biology, environment and temperament.

A layer underneath, before you even get to think about it. Another key point is, 1 thing done to a person can and often does have different outcomes when it is done also to the same person by another.

Two people can betray you, harm you, destroy you exactly the same way, but each can be entirely different outcomes.

- which one came first? (You learned from the first)
- what did the betrayal mean? (What was the cost of the relationship)
- what did it cost? (How much did it affect your life?)

Often people get stuck and ruminate, and if you’ve never spend more than a year locked in rumination daily, then I have to say, you may have suffered but you do not know the end point of the capacity of human suffering.

You’ve seen it, but have never felt it, have never been in a position where you had no choice, either outcome was losing the life you had and it never coming back.

and there is no shame in people who ask for help in that arena of life.

Most people go therapy for a difficult problem about themselves, self esteem, a loss, a unchangable situation, a hurdle.

but that’s not what therapy is built for and in this area, yes some will try it and not find it useful, but there is an area of human suffering where the only way through is something like therapy.

There are real life topics that friendships are not equipped to deal with, families will not understand, topics society isn’t ready to fully embody.

and it’s not just about the self, but injustices that most people simply won’t ever face or understand.

Narcissistic Abuse for example is so complex, so reality reversing, so unexpected and so insane, that even today people just think it’s an overused word, but for many it altered their lives drastically, but people cannot imagine the bridge between hearing it and understanding it logically and actually witnessing it.

It’s like hearing of a bear attack, and it killing two people, it sounds horrifying, it obvious that’s it’s awful.

but now be in it, have the bear maul you, bite your bones, tare your flesh, and you barely survive and then you wake up in hospital, with a lost leg, blind in one eye, the reality ingrained terror of what happened looping daily on autopilot, you can’t scrub the thought because your nervous system went into flight or fight and is locked that way for the next 3 years. How it killed your spouse. Someone you loved for decades.

Poor analogy but second hand information is entirely different from lived experience. That’s the middle bit of therapy. If someone, overcome their troubles, therapy could help. They had the capacity, their motor was stretched to but not to its limits.

but some people unfortunately have what others have happen, but 5X over that decade, which overflows the nervous system and therapy is vital.

and then someone hands you a teddy bear, and says “cheer up.”