This hits really close to home for me, having been through the futile wringer of "help" for many years. No matter how much you're suffering, the world views any resistance to this pain as a deficit of willpower, and sells psychotherapy as the sole solution.
You're right on the nose with this thread, therapy is an absolute ripoff in the vast majority of cases, but this is most apparent when you have a physical health problem which doctors can't solve or don't want to manage.
Having health problems which impair you neurologically are almost a surefire guarantee that you will be sent to talk therapy, despite the fact that it is completely useless for these types of issues and will do nothing but drain your wallet, waste your time, and probably make you feel even worse because the approaches they use are far more akin to theism and religion as opposed to any sort of science.
Therapy conditions you to believe that your responses to objectively terrible life events, like health issues, can be boiled down to poor emotional regulation/a bad mindset. I would like to see these therapists deal with chronic fatigue, pain, cognitive issues, brainfog, etc and then see if they continue to preach acceptance and emotional regulation. It is even more of a piss take when you realize many modalities of therapy are ripped directly from spirituality, hell, DBT was conceived from some batty zen psychologist reciting prayers in her roman catholic church. Nothing more than thoughts and prayers, which certainly cannot cure physical diseases.
Psychotherapy in its modern incarnation is a byproduct of an increasingly atomised and individualised society. It pushes the notion that you have control over your life and it's up to you to simply change your mindset and be happy. However, if you dig deeper and study the materials that therapists use (CBT and DBT workbooks are a good example of this) it becomes crystalline that therapy is meant for people who have minor problems.
It is not meant for people with health issues and disabilities, or those with no community, family, or friends. Yet, we are told to go to therapy for whatever reason because the world has no idea what to do with us and assumes you need to "get help" if you're fed up with shitty life circumstances outside of your control.
Child therapists were complicit in enabling my family to neglect me, encouraged me to get drugged up by psychiatrists as a child even when I was clearly developing lethargy and impotence (which is scary when you're a newly minted teenage girl going through puberty) from the polypharmacy cocktails. They just kept piling on the drugs and the platitudes when I was a traumatized, autistic child who kept getting misdiagnosed with a laundry list of irrelevant conditions like ADHD or anxiety, or depression. I had severe vitamin deficiencies which probably caused my neuropathy and for years I could not even get a blood test, because every symptom I had was made out to be all in my head.
Speaking of that, PTSD is labeled as a mental disorder (which is a term I loathe because it implies that your suffering is solely psychological and you can control it by modifying thoughts) and I was told time and time again that my only option is to go to therapy, and that if therapy isn't working, it is my fault for not trying hard enough. Checks out.
Society acts like therapy is some infallible institution which is incapable of causing harm. I think it's very hard for people to get it through their heads that therapy doesn't do a damn thing for my degenerating spine, my fatigue, my pain, and the massive neglect and mistreatment doled out by doctors and other authority figures throughout my life. Just smile and be positive though, live love and laugh! Do some breathing exercises and mindfulness meditation and you can surely ignore the world going to shit around you. Now, that'll be 200$ for my professional therapeutic advice please!
