I wanted to make a few comments on all the therapy talk as well because (slight power level) my wife is a therapist with her own practice. Somebody made the point that people in therapy should just be talking things out with close friends or family instead. In some cases this may be true, but there are many where it isn't. First off, some people struggle with maintaining good interpersonal relationships due to autism (something all of us here are familiar with), BPD, etc., and simply might not have a good personal support network they can rely on. Therapy gets them the help they need, plus helps them work on interpersonal skills as well with someone who won't take their outbursts personally and dump them (which has often happened to these types of people many times before, leading to abandonment issues that exacerbate their existing problems). Secondly, the average close friend isn't qualified to deal with trauma. Depending on the severity, trauma can cause physical changes to the brain and neural pathways of the brain in a way that's just as "real" as a broken bone, and proper therapy is needed to fix that damage. Also please note that in these cases, "proper therapy" isn't just talking about it until you feel better, it would be techniques like EMDR, KAP, etc., that can reset the physical changes that happened. These techniques are applied like physical therapy, where they target a discreet issue and only last for X amount of treatments until that issue is resolved. It's also worth noting that people are a bit shit and it's difficult to trust them with your deepest darkest secrets - you never know how they'll react, if they'll tell someone else, or if you'll get into a fight with them later and then have what you shared used against you. Going to someone who is legally obligated to keep your info confidential certainly has an appeal with that in mind. Kind of a sad reality and while I don't agree with fully embracing the "can't trust anyone" mindset, I do think we have to be careful. Lastly, my wife used to work for a local agency that dealt with kids who were removed from their parents for various reasons, and those therapy sessions were one of the primary ways that the full extent of the abuse that they suffered would come out so it could be dealt with by the proper legal authorities.
I do agree with some of the critical points that were brought up though. Many therapists have their own issues and want to just talk about it nonstop, and that's why they chose the profession. If all they do is talk therapy and frequently reference themselves, they are probably a bad therapist - though you can find many people bad at their job in every industry. Having a therapist has also become trendy over the last 10 years for whatever reason amongst a certain crowd, so there are a lot of people signing up that don't actually need it. Additionally, many clients don't want to address their deeper issues and instead want to just keep talking about surface level nonsense that won't actually heal them as well, which is something my wife finds personally frustrating.
Anyway, just wanted to offer up a bit of a different perspective given how connected I am to the topic.
