Contemporary therapy is one of the greatest escapes and illusions available to the masses. If medical doctors were to say: “Our job is to make you believe that optimal health is but a logical, positive, rational thought away,” or “We won’t operate on your damaged heart because it might hurt,” they would be like the majority of today’s therapists who believe our pain and disorder come from thinking or can be healed by thinking.
In a terrible daydream, I imagine the most destructive yet hidden conspiratorial movement, where demonic cognoscenti have convinced the world that depression and mental agony and rage, existential emptiness and anxiety and trauma are dark matter that can be made light by thoughts and facts and yoga and a thousand behaviors that do not touch the source of disability: injury and pain. A tidal wave comes and we, surfers, smile as it drives us into the rocks. See what happens when we ignore early pain: We “forgive” parents who caused it and we perpetuate the damage into the future. We see the adult world as separate, an alien plateau above children. Children become minimized and invisible. We fail to know the source of crime. We live on momentary feel-good puffs of air.
See what happens when we understand that pain and injury built and bent us. We treat children with respect and they grow up to respect us. We improve our marriages as partners come to know each other’s fundamental needs. We may be cleared enough of our own pain that we see sociopaths for what they are, and don’t allow them to become our leaders. Empathy and care become the medium of exchange.
We become a place of living and feeling, not escaping.
