Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we talk about how therapy almost ruined my marriage.
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I was reading a Substack recently, where the author believed that the rise in demand for therapy among Gen Z is primarily due to family breakdown.
“There’s all this infantilisation too, this obsession with our inner child. Of course talking about childhood is part of some therapy but I don’t mean psychoanalysis, I mean therapists treating patients as if they are their children. Healing your inner child seems to mean regressing to being a child—being spoken to like a baby, treated like a toddler, paying for attention and affirmation,” wrote Freya India .
“This is happening, I suspect, because of family breakdown. For all the discussion about Gen Z’s demand for therapy, something barely mentioned is the decades-long collapse of the family. Divorced parents, single parents, overworked parents. Shrinking and strained and scattered families. My argument here is not only that traumatised children are in therapy to understand problems with their family, but that they are simulating family, with therapists,” she added.
This was interesting to me for several reasons, but mostly because this is likely true in part. Some of the most therapy-obsessed people I know come from broken families. Still, I have lost count of how many people who have suggested I go to therapy don’t come from these types of families. In fact, (at least on paper) their family lives seem to be as good as they get – they grew up in a two-parent household, both parents were intently involved in their lives, and there is a genuine love among their siblings.
But ever since I was a child, there was this insistence that I go to therapy every time I had unresolved feelings toward a disruption in my life. Eventually, the wave of pressure took hold, and I gave in. After my husband and I had our second daughter, I finally went to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I’d actually work through these events and the feelings that lingered. But to my surprise, it only made things worse, not better. And in fact, this is true with every person I have ever known who has used therapy to heal from trauma.
But for me in particular, I went in to talk about something that happened long before I even met my husband, but walked out with homework that somehow made me blame him for everything that had happened. He was required to write me an apology letter for not being more supportive of the unresolved emotional baggage that I had brought into our marriage, even though there was no indication from me that he had neglected me in that way. Still, I listened to my therapist and forced him to go through the struggle session of accepting blame for something he had no part in.
I was fully immersed in the practice and even increased my appointments to twice a week to get the most out of the experience. This went on for 6 months, until my husband’s work schedule started including a lot of international travel, which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. At the time, I was distraught, but looking back, it was like a cold-turkey sobering event. And the more I moved away from my therapist, the better my mental health became. It felt like the dark cloud that made me wallow in my perceived victimhood had lifted. I was more confident in my decisions. I trusted my husband to help me when I needed guidance.
I remember how, for months, I had to dodge her office calls begging me to come back. “Hi Mary, this is Such-n-Such Behavioral Health Clinic, checking in to see if you wanted to reschedule your appointment this week. According to our notes, you haven’t been in since March.” It was like a drug dealer reminding me that he’s still on the same corner peddling his toxins if I ever fancied a fix.
If it isn’t obvious by now, I regret ever going. However, if there is a silver lining to this, it’s that the experience brought my husband and me closer together and deepened my faith.
After almost losing my husband in August, people have been once again begging me to get back into therapy. There is certainly trauma that accompanies near-death experiences, especially when they happen to someone in your life who feels like your whole world. So I don’t begrudge them for wanting to help me process all of these emotions. And I would be lying if I said that his almost dying doesn’t still affect me. However, I have found that prayer is the only way to truly heal.
Therapy made me feel disgustingly weak. At no point in that office or in the hours after leaving did I feel empowered to tackle the past or forge through the present. Instead, I felt like my entire body was fighting invisible quicksand. I was made to believe that I was a victim, and a victim I would stay for the rest of my life. But in stark contrast, prayer allows me to admit my weakness and ask for help. There is someone ready and willing to rescue me from this pain, and all I have to do is ask.
“Well, if I can’t handle this, I know my God can.” There’s something so incredibly empowering about admitting that.
I used to say as a caveat that I know therapy helps a lot of people, but it just didn’t help me. But that was a lie. I have never met a single person who is stronger in themselves after going through the process. I can see where India can conclude that therapy has replaced the parent-child relationship, but I think it’s actually more spiritual than that. If you believe, as I do, that you are a child of God, it becomes so obvious that it’s not our earthly parents we are replacing.
The next time someone tells me to talk to someone (a therapist) about something going on in my life, I’ll just tell them that’s a good idea. “I’m probably overdue for an intimate prayer session anyway.”
WHAT I SAW THIS WEEK:
The Caller’s Natalie Sandoval wrote an intriguing history lesson on harems and how Elon Musk is running his inefficiently. However, I would argue that nothing can replace a loyal wife, and there is little stopping you from having 10-15 children with her, especially if you are the world’s richest man. Read that here: How To Choose Your Harem
Also, State of the Day had a guest writer whose job was reduced due to DOGE’s efforts to streamline the federal government. Instead of joining his fellow fired colleagues in lawsuits demanding their jobs back, he championed more bureaucratic cuts. Read that here: My Job Got DOGE’d — Trump Didn’t Go Far Enough
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.
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