Your Therapist Isn't God

They may not even be competent

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert recently published Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided. Outside of being repetitive in parts, Alpert offers a brutally honest analysis of his own profession that is both insightful and disturbing. I considered doing a full book review, but I don’t have enough time to do it justice. Having said that, there are three areas Alpert touches on that are particularly troubling and worth briefly teasing out.

Therapists as Social Sovereigns

Long before Alpert, the late Alasdair MacIntyre criticized both “managers” and “therapists” as competing, insufficient symbols and sources of moral authority in culture (After Virtue). Both pretended to their own kind of authority, said MacIntyre, but neither could provide moral standards by which to evaluate whether their guidance contributed to “the good life” or not.

One of the concerning aspects of therapy culture highlighted ad nauseam in the book is the degree to which many patients tend to view their therapists as supreme authorities in how they should live their lives. Particularly for the non-religious, therapists often seem to occupy a liminal space between the natural and the transcendent good—a kind of shaman without the monkey bones and weird clothes.

Accordingly, therapists are often perceived as experts at providing special “spaces,” helping people “protect their peace,” guiding people toward “well-being,” aiding patients in their quest for “genuine authenticity,” and partnering with the struggling to help them cope with “toxic” people and energy.

It isn’t difficult to see that when someone is perceived in this way, their nearly mystical authority goes before them. In chapter 14, “The Cult of Therapy,” Alpert opines, “Therapy hasn’t helped these patients grow; it’s turned them into entitled bullies, armed with the gospel of their therapists. They parrot their therapist’s words as if they were sacred truth, shutting down anyone who dares challenge them.”

In other words, “My therapist said X” becomes the ultimate trump card to your concerns about their behaviors or patterns of thought. What do you know? Would you give exercise advice to someone if you had never had a personal trainer yourself?

Then lock it up.

Alpert gives example after example of this unhealthy level of trust leading to dependence: patients asking their therapist who to invite to the party, whether they should cut off their parents because of their political views, and whether they should confront their boss, etc. What their therapist says is right is right.

Until it isn’t. Which is where the irony emerges.

As it turns out, the idea that therapists are perceived as social sovereigns comes with an important caveat: should a therapist challenge a patient’s foundational assumptions or fail to give the expected validation of a powerful emotional response, they frequently get fired. This means that while the counsel of therapists often serves as a sovereign, reassuring guide for patients, their counsel must fall within patient-determined guidelines or their $150 will quickly be lining the pocket of another shrink every other Thursday from 2:00–2:50.

The challenge this poses for foundational change and improvement is too obvious to require commentary. Furthermore, believing that a therapist’s counsel always trumps that of the pastor, the friend, the supervisor and the family member (who observe them in real life) actually serves to enslave patients rather than helping them think for themselves in community with sober-minded people.

The result is that we collectively get worse, not better.

The Abuse of Boundaries

Boundaries are important. We require them to function in life. We are responsible for setting and adhering to boundaries for our own behaviors, in addition to being responsible for preserving boundaries that we have established to protect our physical, mental, and spiritual health. Boundaries are not the problem.

The problem, as Alpert indicates, is when establishing or maintaining “boundaries” amounts to little more than demanding that everyone else interact with us and exist in our lives according to the rules of our kingdom as we determine and administer them. When boundaries become a therapy-baptized way of licensing self-centeredness under the guise of “self-care,” the result is people insisting on their own way but with a “clear” conscience.

In many cases, already fragile people are led to believe that a rigidly adopted and enforced set of social rules will keep them mentally safe and healthy. But in reality, abusing boundaries and boundary language only serves to further stifle social and emotional development, shut down good-faith compromise, and hinder learning how to relate to others as people instead of problems.

Sure, sometimes people have to be cut out of our lives. But that should be the exception, not the rule. The appeal of boundary-motivated action is clear enough—announcing that you don’t know how to socially interact with your friend who voted for Trump because your feelings control your life or because you can’t charitably disagree sounds bad; insisting that you are courageously drawing boundaries for the sake of peace sounds far better and is easier to sit with, even when it means fewer people will be sitting with you.

My suspicion (and I think Alpert would agree, given what he says in the final chapter, “Back to Sanity”) is that the proliferation of boundary language and misguided boundary-enforcing behavior is strongly correlated with a general atrophy of social skills and emotional health, particularly within Gen Z and younger millennials. Many people are anxious, socially maladapted, emotionally turbulent, and ideologically confused. This makes interaction with flesh-and-blood human beings feel dangerous and tense. Thus, it’s likely that part of fixing the boundaries-gone-wild problem will involve not only helping people distinguish between healthy boundaries and justifying self-centeredness, but also helping them become secure, stable people more generally.

Social Media Therapists

I don’t have a very active social media presence anymore, but I alternated between giggle-snorting and shaking my head as I read through Alpert’s discussion of therapeutic counsel on social media. Sadly, I’ve seen a lot of it.

True, not all of it is bad—a legit counselor can have a social media presence. But the overwhelming number of people giving therapeutic counsel on social media aren’t professionals. Instead, the space is dominated by ordinary folks (mostly women) weighing in on how to determine if your spouse or friend is a narcissist or whether you are on autism spectrum.

Umm, huh?

Language that used to be confined to academic anthropology and professional psychotherapy has now gone mainstream, along with people who feel as though they need nothing more than goodwill and AI editing to engender the trust of unwitting scrollers. Broadcasting from the front seat of her car, Sibyl from Missouri is eager to contribute to our collective mental health by helping us determine if we are being emotionally abused or if it’s likely we have unprocessed childhood trauma. Perhaps we are engaging in “emotional labor” that we shouldn’t have to endure.

Or perhaps we should keep scrolling, if we are to scroll at all.

Alpert details case after case of social media self-diagnosis that, upon professional evaluation, proves to be inaccurate. To be sure, it’s easy to understand why people seek out and imbibe TikTok therapy: life can be challenging, relationships are tough, and real counseling is expensive. Furthermore, people often don’t have friends or parents whom they look to as trusted advisors. Nevertheless, and despite the handful of legitimate counselors with a social media presence, the trend is a disturbing one indeed.

It often leads people into unhealthy patterns with false confidence that they have a firm grasp on themselves and those around them. They often come to believe that they have been provided with the categories and labels to name their struggles in a way that leads to empowerment and/or healing. In most cases, this simply is not true. Instead, confirmation bias leads them to seek out self-designated gurus who affirm their convictions and validate their feelings without having to face poignant challenges about themselves or be held accountable for their own behaviors and patterns of thought.

I’m thankful for wise, courageous therapists like Alpert whose goal is to help patients progress by speaking truth—even when it results in him getting fired—and prioritizing results. Sadly, he is a minority within a field that is currently in a dismal state. Despite the fact that Alpert does not approach counseling from a Christian perspective, my hope is that people who are in therapy will read his book and ask themselves the question that Alpert encourages: “Is this working? Can I tell I am making progress?”

And if the answer is no, it’s time to move on.