And personally, I have beef with the continuing commodification of what communities used to offer. Nothing against therapists (a man's gotta eat), but making transactions the first line of defense sits wrong with me.
Church has been on my mind a lot. Religion is a tricky topic to bring up publicly, but regardless of how you feel about it, it's true that having a shared community context every Sunday is something that's hard to find a replacement for. After all, priests were the OG therapists. And after each session you felt like you made some progress, or at least that you got your sins off your back for a bit.
Regardless, religion of old is more or less gone, and it's not coming back. If there's an alternative, I imagine it might become pretty popular. But the digital age is moving us further apart; http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html seems even more prescient after covid moved us away from offices too.
At church I learned how much I am loved and valued by God. The priests and the faithful at Mass demonstrated that love to me in many ways. In Catholic school, these lessons were reinforced and again, demonstrated by religious sisters in habits with their strict rules and adorable Irish brogues, as well as celibate priests and deacons who were faculty and staff in my high school. Every one of these Catholic men and women under vows always treated me with utmost respect and upheld my dignity, always and everywhere.
When the abuse scandal broke I couldn't quite understand it, but I realized later that I'd been subjected to decades of trauma in my childhood, only at home by family members--women. The abuse I suffered was just as real but it was ignored and denied while people went after the priests and sisters who had loved me and shown so much solicitude for me and my classmates.
I'm coming to terms with that now and I'm beginning to explore the root causes of my mental illness--which incidentally became severe when I lived in Silicon Valley and had a high-paying consultant career.
Thankfully I returned to my faith in Christ, rather than rejecting Him, and I receive daily reminders of my dignity, my self-worth, and how much we are loved. And that's worth more than any Silicon Valley career.
Beyond religion, we are much more individualist and busy mentally and emotionally. If it isn't one's immediate network being unavailable, odds are they themselves are. Neither of which is inherent to becoming more digital alone.
Like, do people even notice the advice we were given the last 2-3 decades? Of course we're more lonely collectively, it was practically a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Religion of old is gone in some bubbles and more than thriving in others.
When people are left to deal with these issues alone, the instinctual thing to do is to suppress it rather than confront and actually manage it. I think that distinction between motivations is what causes unhealthy coping mechanisms, like seeking drugs, to be the first pursuit of people suffering from these issues.
Finding someone to talk to encourages one to actually evaluate and understand what the issue is simply by trying to explain it to someone else. This can be done with anyone you trust. Although, as you say, it's certainly not as effective as someone with training and experience that can keep the expression going in the right direction, I'd posit it's much more effective than trying to do it alone because the approach just tends to be circumstantially different.
For what it's worth, my therapist felt pretty genuine. One thing that helped is to actually ask about his day, and how he's been. I think he was surprised I cared.
Another thing that helps is that BetterHelp makes it effortless to try out someone new. Maybe we've been lucky, but me and two other people haven't needed this feature; we all stuck with the first one we matched with. But it's there if you need it.
I am a member of a Christian Health Sharing ministry which is not insurance, so they work with my therapists to share the costs. My mental and medical health costs are shared by other Christians in a community of mutual support, rather than being bankrolled by insurance company premiums. And all I need to do is arrange "self-pay" terms with the provider and have the bills sent to the ministry!
Even though it is not insurance, health sharing ministry members are exempted from the tax on Americans who do not carry health insurance. It's a pretty sweet deal; my monthly shared amount is about half of the premiums for a "catastrophic" Obamacare plan found on the market.
The therapists I know do certainly work with every day people struggling with (perhaps existential) anxiety/fear/depression. Where those concerns are negatively impacting someone's life, they are real and pressing concerns - if common.
These therapists also regularly work with clients that are dealing with the effects of being victims (or perpetrators) of various forms of physical, sexual, and physiological violence. Even in wealthy areas, people do terrible things - particularly to the weak and the young.
That job can be very intense.
I think the unvarnished therapist response to existential questions is something like: that’s fine, those are valid, but they do in fact have no answer; the only way out is to turn our attention to the day to day problems of living.
If you keep harping on unsolvable problems, I think they’ll mostly feel annoyed.
That said, if your therapist was "destroyed" by your unsolvable but grave questions - you should just move onto someone else. That isn't likely to be a common occurrence.
Most therapists I know agree that there are many grave questions which are not "solvable" in therapy.
If you're going to be spending out of pocket for anything, at least try getting help through in-network therapists. There are so many fantastic mental health practitioners who are amazing that do not subscribe themselves to online platforms like BetterHelp.
What's better? By spending less out of your pocket, you can see them on a more frequent basis.
The cost of therapy is covered by an increasing number of insurance plans, so it's worth doing a few minutes of research/phone calling before paying out of pocket.
I feel like I'm in a better spot, but one thing I've learned consistently is that this is a universal, human issue. Very few people are lucky enough to go through life without what some would call mental illness.
We're also woefully underprepared to deal with these realities. You don't take a mental health class in high school, or college. At what point is someone supposed to train you to take care of yourself? Well, your parents, of course. But they usually have their own issues.
One thing that helped me was to get into therapy. BetterHelp is $320/mo, which is frankly a massive cost. But it was good to be in therapy on a weekly basis, and to explain all of the things that I felt were going on.
"Safe space" has been used pejoratively, and it's hard to say it without wincing. But if a safe space is important at all, therapy is the exact place that needs to be safe. And having a spot where you can simply vent to someone for 45 minutes straight was... quite therapeutic.
One advantage you have as a programmer, if you are one, is that you probably have more money than average. So if you're going through similar struggles, I encourage you to throw $320 at the problem and see what happens. It's not a cure-all, but nothing is.