Every negative emotion I have, I’m told to go to therapy.
Negative emotions are human!
Why have we, as a society, grown to fear them?
Some might find this an interesting opinion piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/mental-health-exercise-charity.html
there was another one just today about teenage girls and how they come to therapy with 20 self-diagnosis, and the therapist has to unpack all the therapy speak babble they have convinced themselves of because they just use it to obscure their own emotional experiences as systematic pathologies… rather than just like admit the felt bad about something.
it’s getting way worse than pathologizing life, people can’t even process basic relationships without filtering them through words like ‘narcissist’ and ‘gas light’ now. and everyone is convinced they have adhd rather than just admitting they are lazy or distracted sometimes.
and you can see lots of folks here pulling the ‘everyone has to be in therapy all the time’ nonsense…
if you ask me it’s basically just a place holder for what religion did for people in generations past. you also notice how many people talk about it in mantras or like bible verses and just parrot/repeat the ‘truths’ of therapy… and assume that everyone is as traumatized as them… and if they aren’t they are lying.
therapy culture has all this weird cognitive distortions. i’ve always felt uncomfortable how many therapy people like, need to justify their own journey through therapy by insisting everyone else who ever lived also has to go through with it… almost as if they are still desperately trying to ‘normalize’ themselves…
Sounds like something you should talk over with a therapist.
I’m pretty sure the sarcasm in your post was totally lost on most people who modded you up. And just for that, have a mod point 🙂
Modded you up? Mod point? What are these?
If you get 1,000 Mod Points you become a Moderator
The Mods
I’m pretty sure the sarcasm in your comment was totally list on most people who voted you down. This includes me.
Therapy is great because we’re a social species who live in a world in which we are growing increasingly disconnected from both each other and the world we evolved to live in. It causes our minds a lot of stress and talking to other people about it is a great way to alleviate it.
Though I do agree with you that negative emotions are human and that we shouldn’t necessarily fear them. Sometimes you’ll be in situations where you’ll be uncomfortable and upset, and you’re going to experience things you don’t like or you’ll have to do things you don’t want to do. That’s part of the human experience and dealing with it is an important life skill to learn, especially for children.
The problem is rich people don’t handle their emotions, they outsource that labor to therapists.
And they now expect everyone else in society to follow that model and it has trickled down.
The issue with mental health resources is must are being taken up by trivial nonsense of rich folks, where as people who legit mental health problems can’t get the resources they need because they are inaccessible to them. Very similar to physical health care. Hence why the advice is ‘oh you are feeling mad about something, go to therapy’, because that’s what a rich person does. Just like they have the luxury of going to a doctor over ever trivia healthcare concern.
There is a special suite for high roller patients at the one of the hospitals near me now. Basically, if you can pay them 100,000 in cash, you can get your own army of exclusive doctors for every little ache and pain, meanwhile the average person has to wait months or years for basic medical checkups and appointments…
Imagine actually believing that therapy is only for rich people.
I’ve known plenty of therapists, and every one of them had a sliding scale based on income if insurance didn’t pay.
cool. i have known many therapists and they all hate poor people because their insurance pays them shit, so they day dream about building up their practice full of exclusively rich clients who can pay out of pocket so they can make 300-500hr in private practice.
they only ever see treating the poor as a ladder to climb up out of.
Negative emotions are human but some people need help to learn to handle them in healthy ways.
Why have we, as a society, grown to fear them? - Yes, people have been conditioned to ask are you OK but not actually do anything. We have also as a society become more fluffy and less accepting of anger and frustration which are very valid feelings. But you are expected to just to just go be quiet elsewhere. If you make a scene you are called dramatic/karen etc.
I think its great we can talk about feelings, and let them out, we as a society have absolutely gotten better at being able to express…(if politely) but in terms of help and support when fixing that’s a bit lacking.
The therapy thing seems a very USA/entitled thing, just pay to have it fixed. Most don’t have that luxury. But the bottom line is you may need to work on how you handle things. I know its easily said but anger and resentment can be used to fuel you to do good. Just remember there are people who care, even if its just another internet buddy.
the issue in the USA is the folks who horde all the mental health resources, need them the least.
they often use access to therapists as a social status symbol more than anything else, because in order to have regular access to therapy you have to be a higher income person.
Can I have some of whatever drug caused you to believe something so stupid?
no, but i can block you for replying to my comments with insults instead of any legitimate commentary.
Good riddance, coward
It kind of depends if your negative emotions are grounded in reality or if they’re grounded in past trauma/cognitive distortions.
The very strong tendency of therapy is to assume the latter despite evidence of the former.
Society has completely lost its ability to deal with any personal/spiritual/psychological/social issues outside the context of professional talk therapy.
Let me introduce you to toxic positivity:
That’s only one form of therapy there’s a whole field and multiple disciplines within it, including the stuff you just talked about
I didn’t mention a therapy.
if they’re grounded in past trauma/cognitive distortions.
You did.
“Past trauma” has been around since Freud. “Cognitive distortion” is a term bandied about by CBT, but the concept has existed since people thought about thinking.
The basics of psychotherapy are extremely stable. Every time I learn about a “new” theory, it is essentially an old theory, repackaged.
It depends on how you manage those negative emotions. Not that you are having negative emotions.
Tbh, there’s been people who have judged me just for being frustrated or mad about something, even if I didn’t act on it. Turns out a lot of people just suck.
Mmm, did they read your mind, or did your expression of your frustration warrant a response. (Doesn’t mean it’s fair. just adding maybe some nuance, but often people do suck)
Sure, people don’t like to be around negativity. But have they repeatedly told you that you should seek therapy like OP?
Probably do to the outsized amount of harm those emotions can create when we don’t know how to deal with them effectively.
Therapists are a major source of learning why, when, how these emotions come up and give you techniques to deal with them.
Society has been conditioned to treat symptoms instead of root causes. You complain about real problems, and everyone acts like you are the problem.
Then, unless you luck out and find a genuinely good therapist, the therapist just helps you cope. The therapist does not fix anything, does not heal. Instead, they give you drugs and techniques for pretending problems aren’t problems, all while the problems get worse and worse.
That has been my experience so far. I’m trying a fifth therapist in a week, but I’m not optimistic. I’m in the United States, everything is a scam.
Are you using one of the online therapy things? My therapist gets tons of offers to join those, but refuses because most of those services are pretty exploitative.
I tried three online therapists from three different services, all with poor results. Recently I went to the local community health center and had a session and a half with one therapist before requesting to be rescheduled with another.
I think part of the problem is that higher education in the US is fucked. Like everything else, it’s a scam, and it also serves other scams. For-profit healthcare is for profit, not for healthcare. So the therapists follow a flawed script and seemingly have nothing to offer but superficial coping mechanisms and prescriptions that treat some symptoms while causing other side effects and not actually fixing any underlying issues.
oh yea and some"therapist" arnt properly certified or accredited in some states. in our state you likely need a license and actual certification to even practice, physical or mental.
Sometimes you just have to find out what tools you need, them find and sort how to use them by looking for yourself. It’s not a meal deal at McDonald’s.
Because humanity didn’t evolve to handle the daily stresses we face today, and the average human isn’t very bright.
People don’t see your emotions. They see your behavior. They hear what you say, observe your actions and reactions, and from that they decide if they want to suggest therapy or not.
I don’t know if you need therapy or not because I’ve never met you in person. But if a large number of people you encounter suggest you seek out a therapist, it’s not because of anything you felt. It’s because of something you said or did. And you may be wise to reflect on those moments when they happen.
I acted out on feelings I didn’t recognize myself when I was at my worst, people told me to go to therapy. Then I finally did, and after three years I was more in touch with my emotions and more in balance with my inner world. I’m still a wreck, just a more functional wreck who no longer shouts out the shit that’s churning inside.
Are you American? As a European, it seems that Americans are obsessed with therapy, whereas I don’t think it’s at all common over here.
you seem to think therapy in america is some kind ofad, or a phase. more and more people are coming foward for therapy, plus recently women/girls are being properly recognized for adhd/autism properly now. when before they could mask it easily, and sometimes they were seen as lazy, still living at home types.
It’s a rich American thing.
poor Americans don’t have access to therapy. it’s a luxury good, like travel.
and the people who tell you you have to have travel 3x a year are the same ones who think you must have a therapist.
That’s bullshit. Most places have free or extremely low cost therapy available. Most. Not all.
Every therapist I’ve known has an income based sliding scale if insurance doesn’t cover it.
Fuck, if you’re really broke you can pirate a CBT or DBT workbook. Less effective than the real thing, but if you’re committed to change it can really help
You don’t even have to do that, there are free CBT, DBT, and shadow work exercises that are printable.
Good to know. You can also probably find books describing techniques at the library.
I’m not saying self administered CBT alone fixed me, but it took me from unstable to manageable, and from there practice and experience got me pretty far. Also lsd helped.
So yeah, if you’re too poor for therapy (and medicaid doesn’t cover it in your state) self administer CBT/DBT then when you’re more stable if you don’t have a family history of psychosis pop a few tabs of acid
it’s a luxury good, like travel.
It shouldn’t be.
A lot of major health insurance providers have free “self-help” style mental healthcare options, which are better than nothing even if they’re kind of lame, but even one of the worst insurers I’ve been on (Kaiser Permanente) had decent mental health benefits. They like money and they know that subsidizing therapy is way cheaper than paying claims for a lot of the issues poor mental health can lead to
That is a bad thing. While therapy can’t solve every problem, it can solve a lot. That American’s can admit to using therapy means we can get the help we need when needed. I don’t know how, but Europe needs to fix their culture and get people the help they need, not be smug in the “we don’t need it” attitude which harms those who need help.
everyone could benefit from a personal trainer too!
should everyone have personal trainers?
Actually yeah, if everyone could check in with a personal trainer every month or two for free, that would probably return many times the value of its cost through how much healthier it would make the population in the long term
cool, do you live in a world where money grows on trees too?
What colour is the sky where you are?
No, money grows in the pocketbooks of the rich because we let them avoid paying their fair share.
right, just guillotine the billionaires and then everyone can have a personal therapist and trainer.
i see you clearly live in the real world.
That’s not anywhere close to what I said or even could have been reasonably implying. It was already pretty obvious that you were trolling, but this is just ridiculous.
Congratulations though, with that level of jumping to conclusions you definitely do not need a personal trainer.
that would probably return many times the value of its cost
This seems like a testable hypothesis.
Personally, I’m skeptical that it would offer significant benefits over much cheaper interventions.
Not the gotcha you think it is.
should everyone have personal trainers?
Yes, that would be an awesome thing for universal healthcare to have. It would help people not get sick or injured.
You’re reading a lot into that comment, it’s indeed not that common over here, but it isn’t non-existing either. If people need/want therapy, it’s available.
Edit: It’s also not that common to talk about therapy over here. Not that it’s taboo, but we don’t like to over share our medical history.
Perhaps then you’re also reading into Americans obsession with therapy as being a [fad? Perhaps?], and less the reality that many Americans desperately need therapy and is actually a real, tangeable problem
Americans actually need affordable housing, medical care, education, vacation time, workers’ rights, etc. Therapy is how oligarchs want you to “solve” your problems.
We can have all these things. Many therapists connect their patients to resources or even are volunteers in their community. I don’t see how these are exclusive
But also therapists are doctors, “people need housing not medical care” basically. We need all of them, holistically, every single resource we need to survive includes medical specialists. Would you say don’t go to an oncologist because the oligarchs want to die of cancer? What even is this logic
Also the oligarchs need therapy too for their psychopathy but their power systems wouldn’t allow someone non syncophantic in their circles so 🤷♀️ guess we all suffer cause of that too
And how are all these people affording it?
they either have money, or don’t save any money, or both.
the most pro therapy people I met, are the poor little rich person type. As in living paycheck to paycheck but still getting $5000 handouts form mom and dad every couple of months.
Wow, you seemnto have a chip on your shoulder b about this topic
Or they live somewhere with affordable mental health care.
The same reason folks pay someone else to do their yard work, clean their car, or doordash every meal.
They don’t want to do the emotional work, so they pay someone else to do it for them.
And the folks who pay other people to do this stuff, can’t fathom doing any of it themselves.
Therapy generally takes work or it isn’t effective.
Humans literally cannot feel another’s feelings, this is why empathy is important. No one can process your emotions or trauma. That’s your work.
none of what you said has anything to do with therapy.
empathy existed long before therapy dude. therapy has barely been around 100 years, and was not popular until the 70s.
but keep being ignorant and banging your drum i guess? and conflating stuff that has nothing to do with each other.
Have you been to therapy? It simply doesn’t work if the patient isn’t doing the emotional work. You can’t outsource it.
No I agree with you, no emotions are negative. They all have a purpose, and are a personal message to you (not anyone else). Boredom is a wind up machine for future prospects, that’s where you develop your sense of who you are and want to be. And if you want to be a crazy inventor, grab a white lab coat, mess up your hair and get yourself some Boredom. Anger can fire action to improve your situation. Or, you know if you happen to have a lot of money and no relatives, grab yourself a black rubber suit with wings.
I could go on. But all emotions are a message for you from your sense systems. They’re always reading the room, they’re non verbal, emotional alarm systems are the way they tell you a room is on fire or full of flowers.
It’s when you get stuck in an emotion that can be problematic. Rumination, or inability to emotionally process those emotions can cause life to feel super uncomfortable. And you can absolutely ask for help from someone who went to school to learn the mysterious ways of the emotional brain.
Emotions are kinda like a more sensitive and intricate alert system for danger approaching, as opposed to the more sledge hammer version provided by your fight or flight systems (all the same place).
If you don’t notice your emotions, bottle or ignore your emotions, they feel unheard, and what does any alert system do if it’s mildly sentient and feels like their danger alarts didn’t get heard? They just get louder until they feel like you got the message.
So whilst absolutely all emotions are a full and complete part of the human experience and can be vital and essential to life’s progression and an assistance, they can also start going defcon 5 over the toast being burnt, and therefore need some recalibration.
And then there’s emotional immaturity…
