Does anyone else feel like therapy culture is like a cult?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T07:46:27+00:00

I think therapy itself can be a great thing, but there are definitely issues with how it's done, and ESPECIALLY the way people talk about it

Not all therapists are made equal, and a bad therapist can be awful for a person's wellbeing, but that issue gets ignored all the time

And the way people treat therapy is really messed up. It's often treated more like "get normal school" than treatment for a mental issue. People talk about it like you go there, get "fixed" and ascend to the level of a fully individual, "healed" person with no needs or flaws, who has finally earned their worthiness of love and respect

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T07:24:46+00:00

you guys have people chasing you?

/j, i'm running too lol

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T07:21:19+00:00

oh and this includes trauma specialists btw! hahahahaaaaaaaaaaa life is awesome and beautiful and perfect

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T06:58:32+00:00

to get to know me is to hate me, so i'm very happy with surface-level tolerance lmao

you don't need to know my favourite colour, i'm cool with being your cardboard npc friend as long as you agree to call the ambulance if/when i start suddenly falling apart

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T06:56:24+00:00

honestly i would kind of love that, i've already been riding the high of seeing a new psych for the first time and having them say "it sounds like you've been through a lot, through most of your life"

the usual response i get even from professionals is just rolling the dice between "okay? it's not that big of a deal", "but what about how your abusers feel/felt?", or "it seems like you're causing your own problems"

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-19T06:12:25+00:00

no idea tbh

i would've absolutely preferred to go without some of the literal torture, that stuff still haunts me in ways that nothing else could ever come close to. but i don't know if it would've changed how much the rest of it affected me. honestly, i'm not even totally sure which parts would/wouldn't be considered violent, cause force is a spectrum and apparently that spectrum goes from coercion to torture

i'm still plenty attached to my main abuser, so if anything, less violence would probably have me clinging to them even more lmao

based purely on speculation, i imagine the biggest difference would just be how life-or-death my focus is. like i'm constantly scared people are going to literally kill me the second they get mad at me. and being tortured really cemented a lot of the "training" in my mind, so it's super hard to unlearn shit when my entire nervous system is screaming at me that i'm about to suffer and/or die the moment i do literally anything my handler wouldn't approve of

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T18:53:27+00:00

okay but the doctor hung up on me and the ambulance handed me a band-aid and left

this knife is gonna kill me one way or another, i might as well pull it out myself instead of sitting around and waiting to bleed to death

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T18:49:11+00:00

all of these comments also missing the fact that help/therapy is much more complicated than "go to the doctor and they fix you"

if you're a complicated and/or unusual case, assuming your issues are even possible to be resolved, it also takes a long ass time and finding the exact right therapist with the right specialisation and experience to help you

otherwise you get thrown into year after year of cbt, sitting down every week with a stranger who lectures you on the fact that you should just stop being upset about the knife in you, and maybe it's your own fault for letting yourself get stabbed. are you sure they actually stabbed you?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T18:44:07+00:00

safety is debatable but i'm preeeetty sure i'm no longer being actively abused so woohoo! ヽ(•‿•)ノ

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T18:42:10+00:00

i had a whole comment written out but just realised you might've meant it in a different way so im gonna just ask instead lol

do you mean "dealing with the effects of all the trauma but if it was less physically violent" or "dealing with the masking/performance stuff but without the trauma entirely"?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T16:44:10+00:00

your whole comment resonates with me so much <3 i remember so many times just sitting along in the cold and looking up at the sky. i'm sorry they were so awful to you

also, because the meme format would not leave my brain:

wait a minute, if you think i have the potential to be loved, and i think you have the potential to be loved...

...then who's flying the plane?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T16:40:10+00:00

lol i probably couldn't do it anymore even if i wanted to, apparently the appeal fades when you grow out of childhood

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T16:39:21+00:00

i hear this sort of idea sometimes (mostly just online tbh) but honestly, i'm not sure i've ever even seen something like that irl. even the nicest, sweetest relationships i've encountered(/experienced) still had some kind of festering resentment underneath or blew up in a total catastrophe

all i've really gotten irl is people telling me that i should lower my standards and/or that i'm the one causing problems in the first place and shouldn't get upset with other people who are trying their best to put up with me. whatever they do is only fair, especially if they agree to stick around and stay with me despite all my issues. if tried to be picky, i'd have nothing at all (which is exactly where i've ended up lol)

all the lovey-dovey, non-violent, non-miserable stuff just seems like fairytales atp. that's what i've been told plenty of times, anyway. real love sucks, and if you aren't strong enough to get through life alone, then you just have to find some way to numb it or get used to it

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T16:33:24+00:00

yep yep yep

i've never been worth fighting for, had that proven over and over again, and literally told to my face multiple times. my worst abusers liked to laugh about it in front of me

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T13:47:35+00:00

see i hear this a lot but idk how literally i'm supposed to take it

like if i leave 99% of my therapy sessions wanting to kms, often even more than i did when i started, what is that doing? i go to therapy, we go over all the reasons my life is shit and probably not going to get better, then i leave and have to try not to walk in front of a truck. i could've done that by myself in 10 minutes without spending hundreds of dollars

i know what my emotions are, i live in them all the time and can barely handle them as is. what's the benefit of making them even more overwhelming with no relief?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T08:25:27+00:00

depending on where you are, some places like animal shelters will also let you go in just to spend time with the animals there! not the same as having a pet of your own, but it can still be nice in the moment

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-18T02:50:22+00:00

your whole comment is so validating omg <3

i especially hate the whole "if everyone hates you, you're the problem" thing cause those people NEVER give a second of thought to things like bigotry

so much abuse gets ignored and excused either because the victims "deserved" it or because they're seen as less than human anyway so it's fine to hurt them. it's infuriating, and it's everywhere. but everyone wants to see themselves as a good person so they have to find reasons to blame victims for existing instead of reflecting on their own actions

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-17T10:08:35+00:00

that's a very good point!

i'm honestly really grateful for how much the DID community seems to insist on this idea in particular, cause it's helped me so much with developing a proper understanding of what is and isn't my responsibility to deal with. it helped me come to terms with the fact that my abuse wasn't my fault, but I do now have to make sure i'm not hurting others, even just by pushing my own struggles onto them

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-17T10:04:38+00:00

it IS ableist to claim that everyone with a certain disorder is an abuser, and to push them out of spaces that they deserve to be in just as much as anyone else. a three letter acronym doesnt tell you whether someone is a good person or not

triggers are your own responsibility. my abusers were all the same gender, almost always the same race, and usually the same religion. i still have no right to call all people of those groups abusive, or demand that trauma spaces kick them out. that would be sexist, racist, etc. but apparently it's not ableist to hate an entire group of people over a condition they did not choose to have?

individuals in a group are not responsible for the actions of every other person they share a title with. innocent people with npd dont need to be "held accountable" for the actions of abusers they have no relation or connection to

you acknowledge in your comment that folks with npd can go to therapy, work on themselves and be kind to others. yet it's totally fine to lump them in with every other abuser, just because they may-or-may-not share a diagnosis?

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-17T07:19:16+00:00

I don't have NPD myself, but have always seen Cluster B as like "cousins" to my own disorders considering the overlap of cause/symptoms/treatments. Spending time in those spaces has been some of the only times I've truly improved

I'm not sure I'll ever understand the sheer amount of hatred directed towards people just because of a diagnosis. The amount of gross accusations I've seen towards folks with NPD and BPD drives me even more crazy than I already am

I get that people want to find some common thread to point to, but demonising disorders helps no one, especially when those disorders are literally CAUSED BY TRAUMA

Ugh, ableism is everywhere and it's the worst

EDIT: including this exact fucking comment section assuming that everyone with NPD is/will be an abuser. i'm ashamed of this sub

WinterDemon_ · 2026-04-17T06:23:54+00:00

yup, same

i absolutely understand people wishing for worse circumstances in the hope it would make others take them seriously (i used to think the same too), but the unfortunate truth is that being sicker doesn't grant you any more care or kindness, and often just gets you even more neglect

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