About Everyone Needs Therapy

SOH (on the Oh Zone) read a few of my posts and even though she likes me :), a few of her readers apparently found the original title of the blog a little silly, maybe even dumb. That's why I changed it from Everyone Needs Therapy to Lessons from a Family Therapist, peeps. I pretty much agreed.

Does EVERYONE need therapy? What's wrong with having a good friend, a shoulder to cry on, or even handling one's problems ones self?

Frankly, when I hear the advice that caring significant others shell out for free I want to die. My patients have generally suffered from the advice of friends and family, not gained. The advice is often so off the mark, I'm sorry, so wrong, so out of touch with the client, so self-serving, so biased, so blind.

Sorry, guys, but we DO learn a lot in school.

Professionals, even bad ones, are more client centered, less emotional, and have more expertize in psychopathology. They have seen several hundred of whatever "this" is. And they care, too, believe it or not.

This is only one of the reasons, I made that now legendary proclamation, "Everyone needs therapy." There are more.

The wrong people come in for therapy half the time. Literally half of the time the problem is that the person who is making the client miserable is not in touch with his or her own pathology. The identified patient would be HEALTHY were it not for the pathology of another(others).

When I wrote the original blog with the original title it was because at the time it really did seem as if everyone needed therapy. I'd be driving, someone would cut me off, flip the finger.

Or even riding my bike, people would get all upset, have to honk at me as if to say,

"Why don't you get a car, like a normal person? I have to actually slow down to make sure I don't kill you, you foo.'" :)

Then beyond the ragers, face it, there are so many sick people in the world, emotionally and physically, so much grief and suffering, that the sheer strength of the karma made me feel that were it not for professional shoulders, people would simply fold up into little balls, grieve, never re-ravel.

Of course that's not true, but that day, the day I created a URL, it felt true.

The title was always meant to be provocative. Indeed, if you think you need it, you probably do. It can't hurt. But good grief, make sure you check out your provider pretty well. And if you get bad vibes, you really don't have to come back, and if you're in anyway treated poorly, you should speak up, confront.

We don't mind the confrontation. Assertiveness communicates, essentially, "I'm alive. Hello. Yo. Let's discuss."

So hey, SOH, how are ya'? A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Copyright 2006, Therapy Doc