I feel eternally bitter at most of my old therapists.
One therapist I was seeing in the California Bay Area in the late 2010s just couldn't get my anger over my messy t4t break-ups, the crab bucket that is online spaces, and my alienation from modern culture. She encouraged me to see these things as boundary problems rather than systemic issues.
What kind of terrifies me is how much I wanted to believe her. I matured little during that time. Worse still, just "having boundaries" did exceedingly little to protect me from getting violently and traumatically mugged in 2019, from future relationships souring, spotty health, and the clusterfuck that is the pandemic.
The whole thing just kind of hurts. I honestly believe she was trying to give me the best advice. There's a degree to which I can't blame her for her indifference- she clearly wasn't trauma or neurodivergent specialized, I do have privilege, and I look stable to normies. Still, most of what I got from her was useless. Her advice felt largely parental or- well- naively neoliberal.
Like sure my life would be better I just lived in my ivory tower house in the suburb. If I drove in my ivory tower car to my ivory tower workplace. If I married some rich able white girlboss raking in that bread. If I hung out with my rich white friends who have so much fucking $$$ and privilege that it's inconceivable for them to be desperate or homeless or have drama about disability. That's totally what my life looks like- if I just snapped my fingers and had boundaries. What's the worst that can happen? Market crash, fascist takeover of America, pandemic, crippling disability, poor health? You think Nancy Pelosi would let that stuff happen in the prestigious state of California?
(Sorry, I'm more than a little bitter about my time in the Bay Area.)
Recent changes in my ideology have really made me rethink therapy. I still think it can be great- if you can find the right person. But modern therapy isn't great at affecting any real change, can be largely unsympathetic or ignorant to modern issues, and can sometimes be harmful. Worse still, if your state is in anyway hostile to you (states are pretty hostile to any vulnerable group as a default) therapists can easily become cops.
Out of the dozen or so psychologists, I've seen as an obviously queer and neurodivergent person (I was really obviously neurodivergent as a kid) two of them helped me and everyone else was harmful or meh. That's an awful track record.
