10 tweets · October 2020 · 60 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
"therapy" is doing a tricksy ambiguity 1. therapy = "go see someone registered as a therapist" (may not help, or retraumatize) 2. therapy = "untangling your stuff, particularly via therapeutic reconsolidation process" by defn #2, @visakanv's DMs may actually just *be* therapy
Meanwhile, by definition #2, it's entirely possible to *go to a therapist and not get therapy*. Not dissimilar to how a mechanic might fail to repair your car, some product you buy is not what it says on the tin, or court might have a injust show trial, etc.
(Defn #2 needs to be expanded on in order to actually be useful. It's just a placeholder, to point out that there's an actual process that can happen-or-not. Expanding on defn is out of scope for this thread you're reading now, but check out over here👇)
From this perspective, someone who went to a therapist and didn't get therapy is a customer who got ripped off, and telling them they got therapy is institutionalized gaslighting.
Therapy boards have got a nice jerky circular regulatory racket with defn #1. Defining "therapy" as "what therapists do" implies: 🤷♀️ if it didn't work for you, that's your problem. can't say it "wasn't therapy" 🙅♀️ if you're not a licensed therapist, can't do therapy
It makes sense to me that there be ways to verify who's gotten which kinds of training, but the idea that some people are legally qualified to help and others aren't is second only in absurdity to the idea that all "therapists" provide the same service. </hyperbole>
I don't know what the solution looks like, but one piece is encouraging people to trust their own sense of what works for them 🙏 This is, however, the very self-trust that schools traumatize out of people, by telling you they know how you should learn.
Giving adequate therapy to the world is a major bootstrapping process, involving both better frameworks (like Emotional Coherence & memory reconsolidation - see Unlocking the Emotional Brain) and also increasing numbers of people able to guide other people to & through it.
Also bootstrapping because in order for your brain to fully unlearn coercive culture, you need a real experience that something else is available, which is only possible to the extent that it exists for you to experience *even while you don't fully trust it* ❤️
And here's a great thread from @QiaochuYuan on how therapy works and doesn't, from last year.