Psychology works off of “norms.” So they don’t lock you up for believing in sky daddies and they can’t treat society’s economic system.
My therapist (who has stated she will join the revolution when it kicks off) and psychiatrist know that our system sucks ass but they have to try to help me cope with that.
But they could still explain those “norms”. A lot of people identify systemic issues as personal inadequacies because there’s been a deliberate effort to make people internalize the shortcomings of the system. I imagine it would be a sort of a cathartic release to know there’s nothing wrong with you and it’s the systemic pressures that make you feel that way.
Now that’s just the crazy talking, here have some more meds and oh by the way have you tried CBT? Let’s reframe those thoughts…
Like I can’t tell you how many times I’ve described this as gaslighting and people tell me that’s not true because medical gaslighting doesn’t exist. Oh please…
Are there any scientific studies on this? Learning about these problems does unusually not improve your situation in any meaningful way on its own, but might also lessen your willingness to deal with that system.
in my experience metal health professionals talk explicitly about the externalities that are affecting you
stabilising your life is the first step to getting better
so i think saying this is not the case is nonsense
When I was on unemployment I asked them what the state expected me to do if I still didn’t have a job despite my best efforts, and the unemployed benefits ended. They just awkwardly laughed.
We live in the bad place because we let people be rich, and then let them make the rules.
I’m with you but with disability. I’m too disabled to work consistent full hours and sometimes I don’t have enough for rent, but I want to work and have a profession. However, the income and asset caps make it so that I literally have to stop working completely and get evicted to qualify (roughly $1600 a month, $2000 in total assets). So it seems like disability “benefits” are just a trap to become a punching bag for the kinda people that want to point and complain about “lazy welfare queens”.
One of the most depressing parts is that even with the draconian enrollment requirements, the welfare system you’re under is still critically underfunded and gives out all the money it has. It’s absolutely insane how welfare is structured, regardless of country (fucking hell, I have disabled brit friends and somehow it’s actually worse than the US. I mean, how the fuck do you manage that??)
On the UK, where do you think your Protestant work ethic came from along with all its adjacent problems? Basically us and the Dutch.
I’m going to start to correct people when they say, “the system isn’t working” in cases like this. No, the system is working exactly as intended.
I was never depressed until I couldn’t find a job and fell into debt and felt worthless.
I should probably just smile more or something
Hey I got these pills that will perk you right up!
I totally get what you’re saying. I just become apathetic though. You rent goes up and your pay goes down. Somehow you’re supposed to be okay with it.
Blaming the individual for social problems is big business. Frank Freeway is burned out and angry from a two hour commute to a dead end job with shitty pay, mandatory weekends, high deductible health care, and draconian bosses. Meanwhile, his kid’s school funding has been cut and high prices are breaking the finances.
So Frank’s boss complains that he’s not happy-smiley at work, and sends him to a shrink who tells him he’s ungrateful, and prescribes powerful antidepressants. So, hey, the psychiatry business makes money as long as everyone blames the individual.
His boss… sends him to a shrink? What fantasy is this??
I mean, this is patently false. Mental health professionals - especially therapists - aren’t there to “allow” or not “allow” you to talk about things. You can talk about whatever you like.
And most therapists, especially clinical social workers, are well-versed in systemic perspectives and anti-oppressive practices.
I’m a clinical social worker and a therapist, and I talk with my clients about socioeconomic factors all the time. Especially because I see a lot of people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and it’s impossible to do therapy with any marginalized community without mentioning the social aspects.
I get that there are bad therapists out there who may not do this. But still, these kind of posts just gaslight people about what therapy is really like.
Yeah feel like maybe 60-70% of my therapy sessions involve talking about socioeconomic factors behind my problems and I’ve never felt like my therapist downplayed that
Me: I don’t want to get up and leave my house. Everything feels pointless.
My psychiatrist: want me to up your medicine?
Me: Honestly, I think I’m having a normal response to late stage capitalism. I don’t think more medicine will improve my mood.
My psychiatrist: that’s a fair assessment.
Sounds like a good psychiatrist. Like I think we can acknowledge the cause is valid and acknowledge you deserve to be happy and able to live.
Some say that’s denying reality, maybe it is, but humans have had to endure some really bad times. For us it is natural to be able to find something to enjoy even at the worse of times, just a biological drive to survive. Honestly I think the destruction of our normal living patterns, extended family groups interconnected forming small communities to this extremely isolated nuclear family, has absolutely trashed our natural coping mechanisms
Yep, take their Soma, their blue pill, their alcohol and try to blur out the horrors. Miss most of life. Or raw dog reality and don’t feel great.
Whatever anyone does, don’t let these fuckers pretend, imply, assert or claim there is fault with you.
If your therapist doesn’t “allow” you to talk about the systemic problems with capitalism, then you should find a new therapist asap
Yea I feel like that criticism is coming from people who have never been to therapy and want to convince themselves its beneath them
It’s not beneath me, I just don’t see how it will help when all my problems are based off my limited resources or societal issues that won’t change. What are they going to do for me besides teach me ways to cope? I’m already doing that. If I’m paying for it I want the end result to be happiness, not just coping. If some therapist showed up and offered me a freebie I might try it out but I’m not paying for it unless someone can convince me I’m wrong in my stance.
You’re not entirely wrong. I haven’t had therapy in a while now, but every session during 2025 was just them pretty much agreeing with me that everything is fucked (yes, including capitalism) and nothing I was saying was at all irrational.
I eventually realized that it got to a point where there just wasn’t anything they could tell me to assuage my depression or anxiety, because they didn’t disagree with my reasons for being upset and angry. And I didn’t need to spend money to have someone tell me that my fears and anxieties are justified every few weeks
Maybe you’re right, but all the people passing around the memes about therapists trying to somehow cover for society’s failings, as if they’re part of the Illuminati, are still just making stuff up
They obviously aren’t part of the “illuminati”, but just as obviously are both invested and well-positioned in that society. Their job is to help integrate you. It’s not a conspiracy, and honestly not particularly complex.
That theory sounds good, and you’re right that it’s simple to understand, but in reality it doesn’t hold water. Everyone I know who goes to therapy, reports that their therapist is totally open to saying that the world is just fucked up, and that’s a big part of the problem, and putting blame on economic or political sources. So this idea that therapists direct away from that, regardless of the cause, just seems to me to be a total falsehood propagated by people who haven’t even spoken to therapists. Its totally mythological as far as I can tell.
I don’t see how this contradicts anything I said. Ascribing societal failings to the world just being fucked up is actually a pretty good example to my point. The therapist is there explicitly to help make changes in an individual so they can better participate in society. Their position has no ability to facilitate systemic change even if that happens to be their intention. No therapist is going to help you self-actualize into the best revolutionary you can be, how could they?
My previous therapist literally recommended that I join a leftist organization to meet people with similar views
This entire post and thread is about how therapists won’t mention capitalism and the housing crisis and instead say that it’s something like depression or a personality disorder that causes someone to feel bad or suicidal. Do you think this claim is true or not? What I am saying directly contradicts that.
Recently had to tell my psychiatrist that you cant reframe poverty into something positive.“But you do have x y and z don’t you?” Yhea while others have the alphabet and all the unicode charaters and we can’t get them unless we do things you can’t recommend. silence “same time in two weeks?”
I think you need a new psychiatrist
No, she’s fine, she reached out after other clients said the same thing.
Mental health professionals rarely allow you to talk about the socioeconomic factors too
While there are certainly going to be individual examples to the contrary, as commentary on the entire field of psychology, this is utter bullshit. Social determinants of health are a huge part of the work.
Here in the UK, the far right fly those as “false” flags protecting us all, not only from those socio-economic factors, but providing the final solution as applies to blacks, browns, Jews, LGBTQ+, non-Christians etc. I am not religious, but never has it been a greater truism that the devil himself will quote scripture should it serve his purposes.
Greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he didn’t exist.
Mental Health services have been deliberately degraded since the Nixon era in America to prevent any explanation on what causes or exacerbates depression and anxiety. No one is allowed to say bad things about capitalism or they’re othered.
Why would they be afraid to mention the legitimate factors of a person’s depression?
I can imagine it would help to say, these things are real and we can’t change them in this room; What we can change is how we feel about them and direct those feelings to activities outside that can change the real problems. Basically help empower people to embrace activism, as a coping mechanism for their depressive problems, which are caused by the thing they can advocate against.help empower people to embrace activism
How many psychologists do you know that help their clients unionize?
Oddly enough, the ones I know tried to start a post-graduate union during their time at university.
Since then, they do mostly research and analysis…
That’s right! One has been seeing some clients for, something I don’t remember. I could ask her about it tomorrow, during our D&D Zoom game.
I knew a psychiatrist who would complain about how stupid her patients were. These were people in crisis whose problems often repeated themselves due to the environment. But as a well off boomer who never had to deal with cost of living pressures in her life, she had no concept of their life’s problems and just saw all these suffering people as idiots who don’t make good choices.
Don’t make me talk about psychiatrists, who did not inform me about the severe side effects of my medication on my sleep even when i was complaining that i had livid nightmares that stuck in my head for days, and instead just prescribed sleeping pills.
From my current standpoint, most psychiatrists should get an itchy rash on their butts that keeps them awake all night for a few years just as they kept me awake and fearing sleep.
We all just say a national case where one could argue that psychiatrist’s and their medical instruction caused a woman to kill her own children and jump out of a 2nd story window attempting suicide.
What a joke of a field.
Isn’t the repression of the working class the point. Make them seem stupid and irrational, to take away even more of their rights. Pretty much the main activity of psychologists.
Psychology as a tool of alienation and isolation has been called out before.
Only problem is that Scientology took it way off in the other direction, and now people read criticism of psychology as cult apologia.
L Ron Hubbard has got to be among the most interesting cult leaders in modern history. A lot of scientology dogma can be traced back to one neurosis or another he formed at some point in his life, most blatantly the Sea Org resembling a navy. He created an extraordinarily wealthy cult with sprawling lore that ruins lives and bankrupts people rather than address his issues.
A real piece of shit, but a fascinating one.
