IRL with Arielle: Capitalism makes therapy the solution to everything

Arielle Andrews, Staff Writer

It would not be controversial to say a lot of you need therapy. 

In an era where we are healing demons and purchasing shadow work journals, therapy is trendy and a lot of us are realizing how desperately we need it. 

I’m in therapy myself. ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder are not going to deal with themselves, and I’ve been on the couch since I was fifteen. I love my therapist, and I have a general appreciation for the industry — emphasis on “general” —, but I have some questions. 

Therapists and wellness professionals will tell you that everyone will benefit from talk therapy, and that is probably true to some extent. However, what if I told you the research shows this is not always the case? And what if — gasp — a lot of our therapy kick is a capitalistic scheme for productivity? 

Whenever you go through something traumatic or have a period of blues, you will meet plenty of people who will tell you to see a therapist. 

Talk therapy involves “talking to a trained professional about your thoughts, feelings and behavior,” according to the UK’s Mental Health Foundation. 

The main selling point of talk therapy is its ability to help individuals cope with daily stressors. Stress is a pivotal part of daily life and it has a simple evolutionary purpose to edge us forward and into action. However, too much stress, or acute stress, can lead to long-term mental and physical problems. 

Therapists will tell you that we are not meant to handle all that stress on our own. That statement is both true and false. 

Most people recover from high levels of exposure to acute stress without professional help, researchers Anthony D. Mancini and George A. Bonanno found in a brief for the Center on Children and Families.

Most people assume that acute stress will lead to poor long-term mental health. That’s the “trouble with averages,” the researchers found. 

“Our research has confirmed — in study after study — that people respond in surprisingly diverse ways to a wide variety of life events and acute stressors … whatever the explanation, when we rely on averages, we often invent a normative reaction that does not exist,” the brief details. 

There is no “normative” reaction to acute stress and often only those with “persistent and elevated distress” will need intensive therapy, according to Mancini and Bonanno. Their research somewhat confirms the natural recovery process humans have that allows us to bounce back from stressful situations. 

Interventions like grief therapy or trauma unpacking can actually harm the natural process of recovery and make the client worse emotionally than they were before, Mancini and Bonanno found. 

Psychological treatment has its merits, but no research confirms that it is always necessary, especially for minute problems. 

The harmless pros of therapy are talking through your problems with someone. This is almost always a good thing. Still, most people will not need to pay hundreds of dollars an hour to a therapist to deal with their problems. Most people will find some way to cope with their stress on their own. 

So if therapy is not essential, why are we hearing so much about it? 

The world is kind of a hellscape right now. A lot of people are feeling more stressed than ever before. Our capitalist society’s solution is to place the burden on the individual to heal instead of, you know, solving the actual problems creating our stress. 

Most people’s mental and emotional problems could be solved through community and societal fixes. Instead of working toward that, we tell them to go to therapy and recite mantras. While this can help us cope, it does not actually help us in the end. 

Capitalism recognizes that many of its workers are sick. Instead of self-deleting, it pushes them towards wellness and therapy as a loose bandaid. As a bonus, this becomes a booming industry to make a quick buck off the pain and suffering that capitalism itself has caused. 

Are you struggling to pay rent? Go to therapy. Are you stressed out and lonely? Go to therapy. Are you sick of working? Well, obviously something’s wrong with you, and maybe you should go to therapy. 

When the answer to everything becomes “go to therapy” and everyone needs it — when, typically, we do not — you have to question if the system is broken and not the individual. 

The answer is yes, by the way. Of course, the system is broken. 

Capitalism does not want you to know that, though. It wants you to continue dedicating your lives to your corporation and bow down to the god of profit. 

Do you not understand that everything you do is to make somebody money? Even, and especially, your attempts to heal yourself? 

Therapy may not be for everyone, but it is certainly for capitalism.