It's cheaper is what it is
It's cheaper is what it is
141 comments
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There's a lot of evidence that modern CBT therapy just doesn't really connect with men very well. Mainly because we don't really tend to solve problems by "considering more gratitude" or "trying yoga at sunrise maybe?" (Was a legit suggestion when I had a therapist lol.)
Edit: yoga and exercise are awesome, and physical activity can be therapy in itself for many people! There's some truth to the trope that some men like to hit the gym to deal with their complex feelings lol.
Men tend to want practical steps and solutions to things. And there isn't a whole lot of practical solutions one person can try to repair the effects of an increasingly alienating society and collapsing socioeconomic structures.
Therapists can be very helpful, and by all means you should definitely try to find a good one.
But sadly when you realize a lot of your issues are circumstantial and practical though, things like "Well I'm depressed and anxious because I feel everything is out of my control, like layoffs and rent hikes."...
...Sometimes it feels like the prevalent training and methodology seems to say "Well that sounds like a you problem."
There's a really good podcast about this called "It's Not Just In Your Head"
And a YouTube guy "Dr. K" (actually a doctor btw) who runs a channel called "HealthyGamerGG.
The topic is definitely worth analysis and discussion, why therapy isn't working for men in particular, as it's often swept under the rug as just "Men being stubborn and toxic" or whatever, but there is a lot more at play here.
We need to make sure men are heard and cared for, before they get warped by all the "alpha grind real man" grifters that understand how they work, and use it for malicious means.
EDIT: I'm really glad this seems to have started a somewhat productive discussion! I want to clarify that I'm NOT tearing down CBT or therapy or yoga or anything!
I'm merely calling attention to certain blind spots I've experienced (and therapists have also been discussing) when it comes to how therapy is conducted, and how it might get better in dealing with how men tend to experience the world.
Again, therapy is great and I encourage you to try it. But I'm mainly talking about why men shy away from it, and how we need to seriously talk about how to help them before they start thinking people like Andrew Tate have their best interests at heart.
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There’s a lot of evidence that modern CBT therapy just doesn’t really connect with men very well. Mainly because we don’t really tend to solve problems by “considering more gratitude” or “trying yoga at sunrise maybe?” (Was a legit suggestion when I had a therapist lol)
Source?
I'm asking because this sounds nothing like CBT that I did. I'm a woman, but it was gut-wrenching and scary to do exposure therapy. Nothing at all about yoga or gratitude... sounds more like traditional talk therapy to me.
I would give CBT a chance, honestly... I feel like you have some kind of misinformed opinion or maybe had a crappy therapist.
Edit: just for clarity, CBT is a type of talk therapy, but the stuff this person I'm replying to describes sounds more like traditional armchair therapist self-help-book Freudian therapy.
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Maybe we have a slight misunderstanding about CBT? CBT I'm referring to is "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy", not exposure therapy. I hope the exposure therapy was beneficial to you though. :)
Basic CBT I'm talking about is a talk therapy modality where the patient is trained to observe the cycle between their thoughts, feelings, and actions, and pay a bit more mindfulness to how they react to things.
I don't wanna bash it! But my point is, sometimes men in particular are not raised to understand or differentiate their emotional feelings on a deep level, so this talk therapy alone doesn't really give them something "actionable" to start solving the problem when you keep getting asked:
"So how does that make you feel?" "Bad?" "Why?"
It can be helpful and it certainly helped me! BUT alone, it also has a blind-spot where it's not as helpful to the way men experience the world. Usually much more externally, and less "pondering feelings."
I know I'm not articulating this the best way, there's a lot of nuance, but I'm glad it's started a productive discussion!
I'm merely saying it can be better, not trying to tear it down. :)
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Mainly because we don't really tend to solve problems by "considering more gratitude" or "trying yoga at sunrise maybe?"
I feel like at some point all the therapists, at least Western ones, got together and decided that instead of helping men with practical advice and solutions, they would offer help that while being far less practical, would, at least hopefully, in some small way, make them feel a smidge bit better about the problems.
Will yoga at sunrise fix the issues? No. Will it help you feel better about them? That's the hope. Because, unfortunately, a lot of issues are outside of our control, so the modern therapy approach seems to be centered on getting patients to focus more on the things within their control, like how the things outside of their control make them feel.
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You're right! This is a very pragmatic approach and I'm not bashing it.
It's hard to articulate this properly, but if I'm bashing anything, it's the empty corporate way that modern therapy has sometimes been co-opted by the self help industry.
"Oh your boss yells at you? Maybe try some mindfulness to let it go."
It's kinda sad because, from a personal experience, I've run into that wall where I fought the constant mindfulness battle, tried making my work stresses not bother me, knowing quitting and losing the income would be much worse, and that circle of crazy just never stopped.
But hey, it helped me hold on until I could quit, which was a practical move that seemed to solve a ton of my inner turmoil. :p
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As far is i understand it, yes this is the point of therapy. I mean which problem could your therapist really solve? The can't tell you what to do to get for example a better job.
They can help you to find the root cause of your problems and may help you find a way to solve them. However, as you said, many of the problems can't be solved by oneself. But is it useful to be in depression over this? I don't think so. Is it useful to be sad or angry about this? Yes, i do think so. In principle this feeling shows you, that there is a problem. This anger may help you in some situations to get what you want. I do not think therapists want you to do away with the feelings. But where they want and can help you, is that these feelings do not take full control over your thinking. For example, when you a lie in bed, these feelings do nothing good.
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Nothing wrong with me that a million dollars or two wouldn't fix.
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One of the hosts of "It's Not Just in Your Head" mentioned this in an early episode.
He said he's talked to other therapists who've straight up wearily declared "I can only do so much to help them, but it's astonishing how many people's problems would go away if they just...had more money."
It's a lot easier to train your mindfulness when you're not in a constantly embattled state for increasingly scarce resources against a corrupt and uncaring system, isn't it?
There's a point when mitigations aren't going to fix the long term stressors that are causing so many people to snap.
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“trying yoga at sunrise maybe?”
Shitty half assed suggestion but for real one of the original big motivations of yoga is that a lot of people struggle with meditating and “just clearing their mind”. Yoga isn’t just about physical strength and flexibility, it is also about providing a very direct physical practice to make the process of mentally reaching a meditative state easier.
I think it is a great compliment to therapy since in therapy you can talk about how best to rewire negative thought processes into positive ones and in yoga you can practice actually doing that while getting some good moderate exercise.
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And there isn’t a whole lot of practical solutions one person can try to repair the effects of an increasingly alienating society and collapsing socioeconomic structures.
Doing something about that is something practical to do, no?
Become an Anarchist like myself and never suffer from the dread imposed on you by living in a surveillance dystopia.
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And how do you do something "practical" about it, with any ideology and not just anarchism? Becoming radicalized and aware of surrounding ideology doesn't suddenly make you able to throw everything away, it doesn't eliminate your need for food and roof over the head which is something you need money and a job for.
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Fellow anarchist (Christian variety), and I hear you friend.
"Never suffer from the dread imposed on you" is a bit of a lofty promise! Oftentimes even with the best aims, somebody feels overwhelmed.
For example, I tried to rile up all my coworkers, and they agreed with me, but didn't want to rock the boat. So nothing changed. And I left, not being able to singlehandedly turn tables on management myself.
I think you can be energized and feel a sense of purpose when you find your way to make positive change in the world absolutely.
But it's still a fight, because everything is stacked against people who want more than just going round and round on the labor/consumption cycle. It doesn't end. The System(TM) doesn't need to sleep or vent its feelings on its path to consumption.
It wears on you after a while.
So my point is, therapy is great for discussing those feelings. But we often hit a brick wall where I was mentally handling things in a constructive, mature, self aware way, but there just wasn't anything to be done because the circumstances just don't stop wearing on you.
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The few times in my life I've been to therapy or counseling on times at very different ages in my life for wildly different reasons, it's interesting that every single time, it amounted to them nicely asking me to let it go. Just stop letting whatever IT is affect you. Thanks asshole. How is that a fucking career?
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Better than my experiences.
Which involved one laughing at me, and telling me to stop being silly and be serious when I was being serious.
and the other one being a christnut that, in their christlike duty, decided to bilk me for a few thousand dollars before telling me I needed to go to church and submit to jesus, because being a godless heathen was why i had my problems.
edit.
Not tryin to gate keep ya or play who has the best misery, to be clear. Just sympathizing.
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Where do you live? I'm asking because my experience couldn't be more different and I'm in Germany.
I'm also a man, went to therapy and my therapist was just fantastic! She could relate to me, gave excellent advice etc., really changed my life for the better.
PS: of course I didn't have go anything or so, just if I'd miss a session ^^ (in theory, but even 30m late to a 50m session was still fine hehe)
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Not the person you asked, but I'm from Spain and I've had a fairly similar experience.
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Toxic masculinity and autism makes it hard to open up to loved ones, let alone strangers.
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It can be worth it to push through. It might just be for a sanity check. However, often, what is a huge issue to you, is far smaller to others. Once you start breaking it down, with someone who knows what they are doing, the problem ends up a lot smaller than it seemed.
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It can be so worth it. Sometimes I'm stressing about this great nebulous cloud of bullshit that just seems insurmountable and existential, but then when I explain it to someone, it's like... 3 things. And yeah, those things may legitimately be a source of stress, but knowing that they are finite and number, and probably solvable, makes daily life a lot less daunting.
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It can also be a cliff you just jumped off
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So you are in favor of people taking the off ramp instead of reaching out for any kind of support because someone else might have it worse.Edit: Maybe I misread what you are telling them to push through, but it really sounds like you are minimizing their concerns with the second sentence.
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I went to therapy and now I'm a girl...
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Were you also a girl before therapy? If so, this isn't that uncommon.
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I went to therapy as a teenager and now, decades later, I'm a grown man. Explain that, science!
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If you're happier now then awesome!
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just as long as you aren't in a barbie world...
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Oh no...
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I have a fun story on this. I'm male, and I have fairly recently been diagnosed with adult ADHD, which has given some context to why I am the way I am.
I also fairly recently hit burnout, which isn't fun. But I have recovered and wanted to return to work. To facilitate this, I engaged with my doctor for a referral to a therapist to help deal with the unique challenges I faced. I had a call with the therapist (they're entirely remote), in October, they gave me some "homework" of stuff to check into as I transition back into working, and set a follow up call for about a month later (mid November)...
I still haven't heard from them and it's now mid-December.
I was forgotten about by my therapist.
It is what it is.
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Being forgotten is the worst thing that happens to adhd adults, been forgotten most of this year
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Yeah and then you have too feel motivated enough to push through. An affliction were these things are particularly difficult...
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Go to therapist.
Therapist says it is what it is.
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and then... how does that make you feel?
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exactly! this is my experience.... that and "you can have drugs to deal with your drug problem if you want."... i didn't want and glad i that's the decision i made. it is what it is
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i genuinely hate that phrase, it's usually used by people to get you to stop complaining about a valid issue
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…or people that don’t otherwise know how to respond, but want to acknowledge your statement.
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I'd say more than half the crappy situations I end up in are both outside of and beyond my control. Sometimes, you just have to ride the suck train until things improve. Therapy is a powerful tool, but it has its limits, and it's important to know when and how it can be helpful.
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I know a female supervisor that uses it daily to demean her employee's valid concerns and needs. She was nicknamed The Witch and she has witch paraphernalia and decorations all over her office. She knows how far she can push and abuse people without raising any alarms to the executive staff.
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They want you to stop complaining because they have no solution or there isn't one. Bitching isn't going to do any good.
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I've about had it with all these people complaining about COVID. Listen, you'll be fine. You cough a bit, you sometimes develop symptoms that stay with you for the rest of your life, and if you're over 60 you die. You would be dying soon anyway, what's the use of complaining? This is just how things are.
Covid-19 vaccine researchers, if your opinion had any merit.
And you know what? I really need to hear less about all this climate change shit. It's done. We fucked the world to get ours. I got my yacht and my mansion. Oh, you didn't get yours? Well yeah, your kids will die. My kids might die too, but if they sell my yacht they'll probably live more than yours anyway lmao. It's over, you lost, gg, stop complaining. Bitching isn't going to do any good.
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"It is what it is" works until it doesn't. Then, after you've swept all your problems under the rug for 10+ years, it'll all come crumbling down. The idea that men should not show emotions and should always stay "strong" is one of the most toxic and destructive ideas out there. If you're a guy going through some shit, please know that it's okay to cry, it's okay to feel weak, it's okay to ask for help. Shit often won't go away by ignoring it, it'll come back later to bite you.
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In America, asking for help often only results in a lighter wallet and additional related or semi-related stress. " It is what it is " is not only cheaper but offers more peace faster.
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Why have 3 mental health and no monies, when I can have no mental health and 3 monies!? taps head
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They don’t think it be like it is.
But it do.
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I have seen several therapists both individually and in a group setting, and the therapist's approach can range from "why don't you try to cater to everyone else's insecurities all of the time instead of standing up for yourself in a constructive way" to actual support that can lead to change. It isn't a perfect solution and can require trying more than one therapist to find one that actually listens and helps if you want to actually fix something instead of just someone to listen to you complain.
They were all ridiculously expensive and only one was actually helpful. Heck, the successful one ended with less frequent sessions and then ending with a plan to schedule if needed. I can see why someone who only had experience with the other approaches wouldn't want to waste money on not resolving anything.
In my limited experience the therapists who were men actually acknowledged issues and tried to resolve them, which makes a bit of sense as therapists come from the same society where women frequently want to just be heard and men want to do things because that is how they are raised.
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Completely correct, and it seems that mentality is alive and well.
Bluntly, society seems to put the burden of being independent and successful squarely on the shoulders of men with little regard to their well-being. For most men, everything has a solution where you "just need to do x" and you'll "fix" the issue. This works for stuff like a job, where something that's a problem requires an active task to find and execute the solution. Soft skills not required.
Meanwhile, a lot of traditionally female held roles in society, usually in the form of care (mother/parent, nurse, customer service) are very soft-skill heavy. There may be no solution, and their job is to make everyone okay with the situation.... More mitigation, than fix. Just make the problem less bad.
Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye when a woman mentions that they see a therapist, but when a guy mentions it, he's seen as weak, that he doesn't have the solutions to the issues he faces, yet the men have never been given the tools to deal with situations that they cannot control. Either you fall in line with a "yes, sir!" Or you find a new solution to fix the problem. Just accept it and move on with life, or find a better way. There's no grey area, so many just go with "it is what it is" rather than actually trying.
With society getting to the point where many traditionally gendered roles are being assigned to anyone (which, don't get me wrong, this is progress), the thinking needs to change.
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I mean, that's pretty much exactly what all three of my therapists told me
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Psychologists after the pandemic: that'll be $250 AUD out of pocket after the Medicare rebate.
Me: Yeah I'd rather be depressed and anxious than pay that once every 2 weeks thanks 👍
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It's better to fix problems by ourselves than give money to therapist and pretend it's helping.
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https://openpathcollective.org/ provides a long list of therapists that work on an affordable, sliding scale. I know it's just a meme, but if you think you would benefit in any way, please seek support for your mental health
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Shrug.
It is what it is.
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I decided to start taking shrooms regularly. Works for me. YMMV.
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I'm going to my second session in a few hours :)
After a few years in jobs where violence is expected and treated as "bad ass", I'm finally seeing how my exposure to it has frayed my sense of self.
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How did it go?
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I'll be right...
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Eso si que es.
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The rest of the world -
"You guys go to therapy?!?"
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It is all we have. 😭
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When I was living in the UK I did therapy, and after many years of doing it I was still a wanker, but at least I had learned to accept it.
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I'm good 😁
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hey sometimes your chest just feels like there's a great weight crushing you crushing you from above and the walls are closing in and you're scared and you just sit there stupidly not wanting to make a fuss but knowing absolutely knowing that this is it this is how it all ends--oh and then it kind of passes and you get back on shift and get in trouble for being slow, but it's alright at least you're alive
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OP was so sick of the comments being filled with 'not all men' they changed the meme lol
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Commenter so angry it isn't targeting all men, they have to make the point in comments.
At least we're getting to a point where generalisation is decreasing.
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Well more money for those extra large tires and truck lifts parts...
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Or we could just toughen up a bit. You need to be willing to take life head on. Don't go cowarding away from your problems.
(Just to be clear do go get help if you are facing serious metal health issues. I've lost people to suicide)
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Lol, my father constantly telling me to toughen up is what led to me going to therapy.
Toughening doesn't permanently do the trick, it leads to repression of emotion and is a very isolating thing. It's better instead to be vulnerable and expand your support network. One strong tree isn't as strong as the interlocked roots of a forest.
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Like most things, toughening up can be helpful in some situations but when used for everything it becomes counterproductive. Like letting petty insults slide when they don't matter is a pretty handy skill, but there is a need to also know when not to and when to reach out so that there is support for when it is needed.
I'm sorry your father did that to you.
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I'll bet more than one of them had serious mental health issues that were exacerbated by being told to just 'toughen up a little bit' when they reached out for support. Calling people cowards for acknowledging issues promotes a toxic view of men being able to open up about issues.
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People don't need to toughen up. If they're struggling they are already tougher than you realize and maybe tougher than you can imagine.
Yet even the toughest can't go it alone forever. Nor should they have to. Sucking it up isn't healthy and it isn't a bragging point. It is unwise.
If you need help, you need help. Nobody has the right to tell you that you don't.
This idea that we have to be rugged individualists is bull puckey and is probably responsible for a lot of suicides especially among men.
All people thrive with support and without it they crash and burn eventually.
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141 comments
Therapy doesn't fix any of the most pressing issues I have. I'd wager about 85% or more of my stress is economic or environmental in nature. My big three worries are how am I gonna afford a house by myself, how am i going to be able to retire on little money and without kids, and is the envrioment going to lose the ability to sustain human life while I'm still alive and on nothing more than a fixed income.
I don't need to journal my thoughts and pretend the outside world doesn't exist, I need some damn material security in my life.
The thing therapy has helped me with in regards to that is feeling okay despite it all. Being content despite not having all of our wants and needs fulfilled is a valuable skill.
Being content despite not having needs met feels like a skill thats more valuable to my boss than me. Nah im gonna get my needs met.
I think it is worth pointing out that while therapy can certainly help you manage stress better and be more content maybe, if you are truly struggling and falling further behind here in the US, no amount of therapy (which you can't afford anyway) is going to make you stop being hungry, sleep deprived, heal severe injury or illness, or give your home back. And going without food, sleep, or housing can lead to death.
What did they teach you to do to be okay with it?
Yeah that mentality is exactly why things are as bad as they are
Or in other words, "it is what it is".
If you are content without a need being filled, it does not fit my description of need.
So again you are saying it is what it is
That last thought is Maslow's hierarchy in action.
True. It's also a good formula for PTSD. When your traumas have to take a back seat to material needs, disorders develop.