A few years ago I had a conversation with someone about therapy that stuck with me. The point they made was that therapy creates selfishness in people. Although I disagree, I think there is a valid and important point that strikes a chord with many people which requires clarification.
Often someone will go to therapy and after some time they will begin focusing more on their own needs, wants, and desires. For them, its freeing, they feel empowered to be themselves. However, for those that live with them, its often perceived as selfishness, especially when the therapy client is putting their own needs ahead of others.
Therapy helps people understand themselves better. Through that process, many people uncover beliefs about themselves that have caused them to suffer. For example, a common belief is that one’s own needs don’t matter, and that it’s wrong to tend to their needs and wants, especially when others disapprove. This belief often leads to ignoring their own wants and needs and focusing on other people’s needs exclusively.
Ignoring ones own needs and wants doesn’t make them disappear. Instead, they get ignored and suppressed which causes its own set of issues which may lead someone to seek therapy.
In therapy they will discover the above belief and it’s root. This frees them to recognize their own inherent value and that their needs matter just as much as everyone else’s.
Here’s where the trouble can happen. After neglecting one’s own needs for so long, it’s common and normal to have a short time period in which there is an excessive focus on one’s own needs. This is the natural reaction of suppressing one’s needs for so long. However, this is meant to be temporary. Sometimes it persists and that’s when it causes problems.
The belief that one’s own needs don’t matter is usually based in childhood. One reason that childhood experiences make such a lasting impact is due to the way children process information. Children think in black and white terms. Black and white thinking sounds like this; Either I’m good or I’m bad, either my needs are important or they are not. Either your needs are important or they are not.
As we grow into adulthood, the brain develops the capacity for nuanced thinking. That sounds like this; “I do both good and bad but I’m not defined by one exclusively.” “My needs AND your needs matter.”
The belief that one’s needs don’t matter is a black and white thought process. So is thinking that ONLY you matter. When someone gets stuck in the place of excessive focus on their own needs, what’s happening is they are remaining in the same childhood black and white thought process, except in the opposite way. They’ve switched from “I don’t matter at all” to “I’m the only one that matters”.
Again, this a normal process but it’s meant to be temporary, with the goal being an integrated adult perspective which has nuance, “I matter, but so does everyone else matter too.” That adult, nuanced thought process will enable one to balance being able to care for their own needs while simultaneously caring for others as well.
Does therapy make people selfish? If you have a belief that your needs don’t matter, therapy will uncover it and help resolve it. This may lead to a temporary state of selfishness. Quality therapy will quickly move through that, resulting in a healthy, integrated perspective which allows one to value and tend to both their own needs as well as others.
Chaim Moshe Steinmetz, LISW
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Can we take a survey and see how many people in therapy have moved past that “temporary” phase and how long it lasted if they did?
I’m not at all negating the very necessity of therapy for some. But we don’t need to downplay the negative side of it
Tbh I didn’t thoroughly read the article. No need to rehash old fights. All I’ll say is, I don’t know someone who went to therapy and didn’t get really messed up. They certainly were much more stable before therapy. I’m sure you can try to justify it but the facts are just there.
I think that is really rude and insensitive to the thousands working really hard in therapy. Many people do very well in therapy, and probably most do. Definitely most of the people that I know. If you know of a few horror stories, that can definitely be possible and I am sorry for what you, or your friends experienced. But that does not give you the right to negate what is a very sensitive part of many people’s lives.
@Authentic
The only ones whom I’ve come across hearing them say that are the abuse-givers who are put out that they lost their punching bag while insisting as to how loving they were being to the person who went in to therapy to free themselves.
I hope you’re just misinformed, and not THE type person I’m thinking you might be.
Personally, I found that therapy made me much more perceptive of other people.
Therapy can create selfishness for the therapist who charges $250 a session from a person in pain that cannot afford it. Studies show that the mentally ill earn less than average yet pay out of pocket the full cost of therapy. The shortage of frum therapist’s has caused the cost per session to increase exponentially the last few years.
How about selflessly pay to go to school for 3 years and then dedicate your life to clients like Lakewood Guy, Authentic, Not Sure and Anonymous all day (and answering their calls in middle of the night when they’re spiraling out of control) and see how long you’ll last on $80k.
$250/hr is a lot of money per hour for the clients, but for what the therapist is providing and giving up from their own lives, they deserve to have a decent living from it. And yes, it’s a decent living, but they’re not getting rich off the backs the “mentally ill”
$250 a 45 minute session, not a hour. If you see 8 clients a day, that’s 2k per day. 5 days a week, 11 months a year = 440K.
That’s a very high income in Lakewood where most of your clients are poor & cannot afford therapy.
The schooling is quite affordable & only takes a few hours a day.
If you can get other therapists to work under you, your income can skyrocket.
The Frum community is dealing with enough mental health issues & Sholom Bayis breakdowns to keep an army of therapists busy. This demand has outstripped supply because we can only see Frum therapists. The result is very high costs & sometimes mediocre care by an inexperienced clinician. Listen to the lecture “When Therapy Goes Mad” By Dr Shmuel Mandelman on Torah Anytime. “All you have to do is have a few letters after your name, put a shingle on your door & your full!”