Therapy doesn’t really exist. Only self-change exists. Someone else can help you change, but nobody else can change you other than YOU. Force or intimidation may frighten you into compliant behavior–but compliance is not change. Change is not performed on you, like a medical procedure. Self-change is 100 percent active. Medical procedures are entirely passive. The psychology field made a terrible mistake when it labeled self-change “therapy”, implying it’s medical. It’s not.
One reader replied:
In my opinion, sometimes mere compliance is a necessary first step.
I don’t particularly like this AA mantra, but it can apply if you don’t let yourself get stuck: “Fake it until you make it.”
My reply:
True, in that sometimes you have to go with your head over your feelings. But this is at least compliance with your own mind.
The same reader commented:
It’s hard work that no one — regardless of how desperately they might want to — can do for you!
The rewards of that hard work are priceless and worth every ounce of effort necessary to succeed.
Another reader said:
Therapy does exist. Any parent knows it does. Help a frightened child to ride without training wheels – that’s therapy.
Teach a child to survive bullying – that’s therapy.
Help an adult grow beyond their fears – that’s therapy.
Therapy exists and has value, whether snake oil bitches devalue it or not.
My reply:
You have to define your term “therapy.” The therapists you’re advocating would not agree with your use of the term here. I maintain that self-change is what people are calling therapy. Self-change applies mainly to adults, though to young adults to a lesser degree. You’re talking about children, and how they learn from their parents’ care, concern and instruction. That’s child rearing. There are people who call themselves therapists who are doing good things. But this doesn’t alter the fact that the therapists are simply helping a person change himself. They are not changing or transforming the person, as a surgeon changes or transforms a person to remove illness, etc.
Another reader said:
Many moons ago, I had a major breakdown as a teen. Wise doc said he did not want to hear about what may have been in my past. I cannot control that. I can control my future. He turned me around.
My reply:
I would rephrase what you wrote this way: You turned yourself around. The wise doc helped you, with his wisdom.