Therapy made a bargain with the medical model: trade definitional control for legitimacy. New post on what it actually got in return, and what it gave up. corygradlcsw.substack.com/p/…

When I see all these therapist on social media claiming to be authentic and real in their session, breaking away from the 'blank slate therapist' (not an actual term), many reference Freud. I have not heard a single one mention Carl Rogers at all.

I see AI companies promising a utopia, but they assume the audience does not question what their incentives are for creating it. Multi-billion dollar companies are not know for their benevolence unless it benefits them in some way. If they're authoring a paradise, where exactly do YOU fit in it?

Optimization into hell. You will become a non-participant in your own life.

In the most basic sense: Whatever we’re doing right now is setting us up for an eventual heaven or hell. Thinking longer term about the consequences of seemingly less important acts can help us get closer to a life worth living.

As I reflect on this and the last 10 days, I'm noticing a trend with these therapists who overstep professional boundaries on social media. They usually have a large following and are proud to be radically authentic with their clients. However, I begin to wonder what effect internet fame has on one's sense of professional identity. After all, internet fame is a hell of a drug. From my limited observations, it creates a certain sense of hubris. If it falls outside the boundaries of the official codes of conduct, it's fair game. And so we get things like TherapyJeff posting about handjob techniques, Therapy Steph posting a reaction video of a client getting her words tattooed on her body, and YourTherapyMom (seems to be a trend) posting a picture of a note she gave to a client to take to that client's fiancé (the note said, “get hobbies and go to therapy”). None of these things were a problem to them until they got negative feedback.

Day 11 of Exploring Influencer Culture: So there's a thing going on with a therapist with the handle Therapist Steph. Apparently, Steph posted a reaction video of a client getting a tattoo of something Steph said in session one time. The reactions blew up, calling for her to lose her license, and Steph took the video down. After a while, it all gets so tiresome. I honestly believe that most therapists on social media cannot conceptualize the therapy relationship with a necessary degree of clinical depth. Hot take? Unreasonable take? Well, when confronted with this, it always goes back to the usual defense of “I Followed The Rules” and “did not break the code of ethics.” Why did she feel the need to post this reaction video? How does she feel about her client getting her words permanently tattooed onto their body? How does this affect the client involved in this controversy? How does this affect her other clients who are aware of this? None of this is talked about.

Searching for competent therapists in North Carolina this week, drop a comment if that’s you! #referralqueen

Encountered a therapist on TikTok who was told that therapist shouldn't be influencers. They took it as an attack on their freedom of expression. After all, they also have a background in acting and fashion, so why shouldn't they be able to post and talk about those things? In fact, why shouldn't they be able to talk about their mental health struggles as well? They went to say those comments came from those were antagonistic towards their freedom of expression and that they need to take some distance from that comment since they 'have a hard time with negative feedback and don't like when people don't like them.' Why is there no separation between your personal and professional self online? Why does expressing your 'authentic self' need to be online on a public page? Why does it also entail it being on a profile with a landing page to your products and services? There's a whole dimension of thinking -- transference, countertransference--gone from the conversation. It gets compressed down into "I'm living my best life so what's your problem with me?".

Nothing feels like home more than salt air and moonlight. Keep life romantic 🤓

Day 10 (yesterday was Day 9 but I mislabeled it) of Exploring Influencer Therapy Culture: I see a concerning trend where therapists post about clients they saw or something a client a did in a previous session. There's even a few who vent about their clients. Others mention insights or things they've learned about therapy by doing therapy. This raises the question: where are these people getting supervision/consulting from? Are they getting it at all? Hell, what is the quality of supervision like out there? Many of these videos I can't help but think, "this is really something you should bring up with a supervisor or a consolation group." I can't definitely say who is getting supervision and who is not, but I get the impression that many of these clinicians practice in a bubble. If they did, a competent supervisor would question why they felt the need to indirectly reference a client on social media. They have introduced a third party, the audience, into what is supposed to be a two person relationship. ( two party for couples, families, etc). That audience can include: the client, other present clients, past clients, prospective clients. Are they prepared to deal how that affects the therapy relationship? Have they even thought about how that could affect the relationship? Again, I think not since when challenged, they often release a video reassuring how they Follow The Rules. Somewhere between career ending boundary violations and following guidelines, there's a category of behaviors that are unhelpful to treatment but feel good to both client and clinician.

Hello all. We are live! Episode 85 of UnShrink Me is broadcasting on YouTube as we speak. Link to the stream is right here: piped.video/live/wOZuqvQ7pL0…

Therapists:

IT’S GOING DOWN!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

“How to be profitable without being evil?” <— a lot of people are not even bothering to ask this question anymore. It’s fucked. It’s disgusting, for therapists and patients alike. But they’re all being scammed, not because they are “bad therapists,” but because of the lack of regulations, and exploitative loopholes and straight up sociopathic business “ethics” and practices, that should seriously be of tremendous concern to us all. Don’t even get me started on for profit psychiatric hospitals, btw. OK, done for now. ✅

The therapists most financially exploited by managed care settings seem to be: 2-year post-graduate degree license holders, early career, has working parents or spouses to help with bills, and women

So this brings me to Day 8 of Exploring Influencer Culture: Dr. Perin posts some great stuff, and I highly encourage you give him a follow if you already haven't. He brings up just how awful the pay is in this field, especially with the time, energy, and money required for a masters and a clinical license. So today's observation is about the financial aspect of being a therapy influencer. I posted earlier how therapist was making $70k a year through passive income via social media, which is significantly better then the job listing here. So, I don't think we should damn therapist for marketing and selling themselves online, but it does raise several questions. First, what is that fine line between reasonable and unreasonable marketing? Obviously, you're marketing your practice and your services, and perhaps material and additional services. Couples coaching get around the awful reimbursement rate for doing couples work. And selling courses and material generates passive income, which feels like an oasis in a desert when your practice held up by the Never Ending Quest for Referrals. But what about when we start seeing things like emotional support water bottles, t-shirts, supplements, etc. What about when other 'coaches" get in on the action selling ADHD coaching, narcissist abuse coaching, etc. Then there's the flurry of worksheets and courses pumped by everyone that seems to be the same derivative generic shit out there. Then there's odd questions like if an existing client buys one of my worksheets or courses, is that a dual relationship? There is a tension between making a living in a field that says we're important but pays less than a fast food manager and not warping the field with our capitalist endeavors. Making it more complicated are the folks who jump on the band wagon, the non-therapists and coaches and field adjacent professions, who don't worry about the psychological implications of potentially turning the patient into both client and consumer. Pic related as an example of when we say, "Fuck it, all board the money train."

My review of the Resident Evil movie

“What is the cure for depression?” is the wrong question. Depression is the psychic equivalent of fever. Fever is a “non-specific” response to an enormous range of underlying physiological conditions, from the common cold to Ebola. Depression is likewise a non-specific response to an enormous range of underlying difficulties. It is therefore pointless to talk in the abstract about the cure for “depression” because depression, like fever, is not one thing but many things. Depression is an effect, not a cause. Effective treatment means understanding and addressing the causes, not just treating the symptom. Those causes, more often than not, are woven into the fabric of a person’s life. That means the solution requires that we examine ourselves, and how we live, and how we function, and how we relate to others or fail to relate. That is hard work—and what real psychotherapy is about. Without doing that work, the vulnerability to depression will always remain. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. But for most people most of the time, there are no quick fixes are magic bullets. For most people most of the time, depression is a message. That message is: we must change something about ourselves.

Day 8 of Exploring Influencer Therapy Culture: Finally went down the narcissism rabbit hole, and it is wild. Apparently, there's a wide range of types of narcissism. There's cerebral, covert somatic, psychosexual, and spiritual narcissism, to name a few. There are also several observed phenomena associated with narcissism, such as the narcissist smell, the narcissist stare, the narcissist black eyes (this refers to the pupils dilating when someone is angry, but it makes them sound like an otherworldly being), the narcissist collapse (when their defenses fail and their identity collapses inward and yes, there are videos on how to trigger this), the narcissist smirk, and the narcissist discard. There seems to be a higher concentration of non-clinical content creators on this topic, and of course, there are various coaches you can choose from. It is fascinating how a narcissist is held in the same regard as if they were some type of mythological evil come to life. A lot of the content is about how to combat and defeat the narcissist, and I start to get the sense that the term “narcissism” is becoming a container for culturally disowned aggression. The irony here is that it reproduces the interpersonal structure it tries to escape: the narcissist remains incredibly powerful because everyone continues psychologically organizing themselves around them.