To think therapy culture is creating narcissists?

[ThatIcyAnt]

It’s one thing to understand your trauma. It’s another to weaponise it as a reason to never change. “This is just how I am” isn’t growth, it’s avoidance in a self-help disguise.

Completely agree

Agree. Way too much naval gazing.

This mentality is everywhere. See it a lot in SEN children at work. "I cannot help my behaviour, it's just who I am."

Sorry, the world won't bend for you once you are out of here... The effort to be the best you can be will gain a lot more favour then that growth avoidance. Let us help you, but you have to make the best of this.

How do you deal with it at work?

Decent therapy does not promote this

I agree, not specifically with your points, but with the overall topic. Far too many people with ordinary life issues throwing around language like toxic, boundaries, gaslighting and DARVO. Also using the term mental health as a catch-all for poor mental health. Not to mention, totally cringeworthy phrasing like 'love language'.

I'm afraid when that stuff starts being thrown around I just switch off. Go 0 to 100 with the self-obsession all you like but don't expect me to join in. I'm not your therapist. Not to mention, 95% of people in therapy probably don't really need to be there.

With varying degrees of success. Experience in applying the behavioural policy whilst having an eye experienced enough to see which behaviours are voluntary and which are not is a big help.

I agree. I think so many people think with the mentality of ‘hurt people hurt people’ when it shouldn’t be that way. People need to learn to be accountable for their actions instead of being coddled into believing that their actions are a result of them being a ‘victim’. My ex is like that, he abused me but he went to therapy and apparently the therapist told him that he’s not at fault because him being an addict and his childhood trauma caused him to behave that way. I have lifelong trauma because of him including the fact that I have severe ptsd and anxiety and I push away any relationships I have with people - but hey he’s a victim so that’s ok.

No, I see stressed and traumatised young people, whose coping strategies aren't up to scratch.

My narcissistic parent hasn’t had any therapy. Why would she? There’s nothing wrong with her 🤣

I agree

But every time someone starts a thread like this, it gets deleted.

Then you'll get lots of people coming along saying if therapy hasn't worked for someone, they need more therapy!

Problem is, the very nature of therapy is analytical and involves looking inwards, so as much as you might say it doesn’t, it does.

Far too many people with ordinary life issues throwing around language like toxic, boundaries, gaslighting and DARVO

this - and it’s annoying. No more can someone say ‘MIL keeps coming around without phoning or messaging first and it’s really annoying.’ Now it’s ’MIL will not respect my boundaries.’ And everyone is a narcissist.

I know what you mean (I think) but wouldn't pin this on therapy exactly. It seems to me to be more the way everything has gone in this country. It runs through the workplaces, schools, universities, social media and everything else, Personal responsibility is now unfashionable, viewed as a bad thing in some scenarios. Whereas blaming other things, be that trauma, one's parents/upbringing, a diagnosis, is now positively encouraged. I feel I fell into that trap in my late twenties and early thirties to an extent but I now have the opinion that we all have to draw a line and realise we are responsible for ourselves as adults. Therapy has a place but definitely encourages the sort of thing you're posting about, and can be a weapon for certain types of people.

Absolutely. A lot of the advice is impractical and doesn't put a spotlight on your own shortcomings.

Therapists love to use the term narcissist and it does my nut in, at first you think it's some sort of clever revelation. It's thrown at anyone and everyone except the subject themselves and before they know it they're even calling their own 6 year old son narcissistic.

I suspect narcissism is everywhere and we're all a bit more narcissistic than we think.

Therapy needs to get people to accept each other more, not be the victim and consider their own actions and responsibilities. Be practical and commonsense about relationships and people's limitations.

Cane on to say this too

There’s a bit of a no true Scotsman thing with therapy though; it works, if it doesn’t, it isn’t very good therapy.

This. (Disclaimer- I am a therapist)

In fact, its important for me to see how my client fits into their social network.

And I've never even used the term narcissist, tbh. Maybe you mean social media rather than actual therapy?

I disagree. Good therapy does promote the kind of self growth that you’re talking about.

I think the problem is that a lot of people can’t access the therapy they need. So they maybe have a couple of sessions and cherry-pick a few You Tube videos and get stuck in an echo chamber. Without the guidance people will often take too narrow an interpretation of their problems where they aren’t seeing the role that they are playing in it.

I am totally irritated by people over pathologising everything and throwing labels all over the show on social media too. But that is not what a good therapeutic relationship usually leads to.

I don't think it creates narcissist but I do think it can give a narcissist a socially acceptable reason for their behaviour.
I had a family member tell me they had an affair because I had a child with a chronic illness.
He absolutely believes that is the reason.

It's always been a very American thing, with the rise of social media it's turning global.

I'm my experience, those with genuine mental health illness don't inflict others with their issues. They tend to beat themselves up instead. Yes they have 'introspection' constantly going on in their heads, but it's not narcissism.

I can't bear the "I say it how it is because that's how I am" saying.

These are the very people who have zero patience when others say anything slightly offensive to them.

Therapy culture - sure. I think that is a thing distinct from actual therapy. It is the magazines saying "is your mother a narcissist, take this quiz" and Oprah interviews, and all that.

Therapy itself should not be like that, but I think there are quite a lot of bad therapists.

I also think that even at the best of times, therapy is limited. Because a therapist can't impose anything on the patient, they help the patient in a sense on his or her own terms. but for some people that will not be enough. It's like when Tony Soprano went to therapy, it was never going to make him a better person.

I also think that therapy can't really help much with problems of meaning, which I think of as spiritual sickness, but whatever you call it, therapy can't give it to you.

I think in a way trying to use therapy for things that it isn't suited for is a symptom of a culture that is missing something important, and that produces narcissists.

I had a therapist who actually encouraged me to do this. ‘You can’t help it, you’re neurodivergent!’

I am not in fact neurodivergent, although she was herself and so were both her kids.

Therapy culture has become an issue.

So many bodies in society try to do the good thing and be sympathetic to victims but they only validate and accommodate the victimhood, they propose nothing to make you take the next step, go beyond the victimhood and reach resilience and autonomy.

Be kind doesn’t work any better than being harsh used to. Because both are extremes and you need a little bit of everything to make things right. They’re just 2 sides of the same coin.

As you can see with quite a few « be kind » people showing more and more they’re actually not that kind or caring if you don’t share their views.

My ex is like that, he abused me but he went to therapy and apparently the therapist told him that he’s not at fault because him being an addict and his childhood trauma caused him to behave that way.

No competent therapist would excuse abusive behaviour in the basis of early trauma. The language of therapy is everywhere, social media is rife with people encouraging self diagnosis and self help. So people have a framework to fit their own and others struggles and dysfunctions into.

The range of qualifications held by “therapists” has changed too - people can move from being a bank manager to a therapist after 2/3 years of part time study. They often don’t have the depth of knowledge and understanding and, crucially, haven’t done their own long term therapy - and it shows. They give clients a language based on diagnosis (that they aren’t qualified to make) and avoid the discomfort that is inherent in facilitating change.

Good therapy, by a well qualified, experienced therapist yes involves self reflection, but it also involves challenge and change. The rise of 6 session behavioural based therapy has undermined the value of long term, relational therapy with a well qualified therapist.

YABU OP. Big difference between internet “therapy speak” and actual therapy.

Seeing as it’s been impossible for anyone who isn’t in serious psychiatric crisis (or even then) to get any kind of therapy on the NHS for about fifteen years now, I think YABVU. Even private therapy is vanishingly rare these days. You can be depressed and suicidal as all hell and even psychotic, and you still won’t even get access to in-person CBT, never mind any kind of other talking therapy.

Being “signposted” to a website for a DIY CBT questionnaire is as much as you are going to get, and there’s not much therapy-speak involved in that. Decent private therapy — as opposed to counselling or CBT — can cost £120-150+ per hour. Not many people are accessing this at all, and certainly not the average young person.

Wherever the “therapy” you’re complaining about is coming from, it certainly isn’t from any actual therapy.

Absolutely this. Society is suffering vastly from an overdose of “ a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” re therapeutic/ psychological awareness.

it’s painful to see people taking their half assed neuroses as their “ true self” and justifying their issues and shaming others into accepting utter bilge about them… bilge that would be worked through and discarded in good therapy.