I hope you'll write about the reverse as well — being from Southern Europe, whenever a friend says "sorry to dump on you," I go, that's what friends are for! You should be able to share your grief & sadness with friends. When did it become a norm to have to pay someone exorbitant fees only to be able to open up about our normal, common human problems?
Yes—well said. And as a psychologist specializing in parental estrangement, I would add that therapists can also contribute to a false model of what one can—or reasonably should—expect from parents: namely, that parents, like therapists, should be endlessly empathetic, exquisitely attuned, and unconditional in their love, regardless of constraints such as limited financial resources, troubled marriages, or their own histories of childhood adversity. Within this framework, the failure or inability to provide that *therapeutic* level of care (barring genuine abuse) is treated as a reasonable justification for estrangement.
The broader culture reinforces this myth by implying that if the now-adult child had received that level of attunement, they would be a fully realized and empowered person—rather than the anxious, struggling, or insecure individual they have become.
As sociologist Eva Illouz writes: “Far from being unable to bestow coherence on a given life, therapeutic narratives can be faulted for making too much sense of one’s life of binding too tightly the present the past and the future in a seamless narrative of psychic wounding and self-change.”
Very true, I have only encountered a few cases where neither parent had enough empathy, although I admit selection bias in terms of who brings their kids in. For parents with a lot of problems, it is especially important that the therapist teaches teens to change their expectations and not judge their parents failings--the temptation is to join with the kid's frustrations, which can get in the way of them appreciating the limited, imperfect love they are shown. No human gets a perfect parent, and parents just have to be "good enough".
Really imporant point, David. One of my early clinical supervisors told me when I was working with a teen with difficult parents, "She has to go home to those parents at the end of the day, so it doesn't serve her to make her feel so mad at them that she closes down on their positive contributions to her life."
That's a really interesting insight I think on two levels Joshua, combining the new and totally absurd set of expectations from modern parents with the externalizing attitude of a generation who is the first to be doing worse financially and by many other wellbeing metrics compared to their parents.
I'm currently switching my career (28yo) to become a family therapist and I'm curious about this: what would your clinical experience say about the (simplified) narrative below?
1. A generation of parents were sold a new style of gentle parenting and instead of the focusing on "raising functional adults" as the primary goal, they focused on "maximizing the child's emotional wellbeing and minimize discomfort" as a primary goal
2. New sheltered generation has generally become more infantilized and unable to deal with requirements of normal adult life. Failure to launch.
3. Trauma informed therapy and other cultural exports of pop psychology have placed an increased importance on adverse childhood experiences and really lowered the threshold for what would constitute real trauma
4. Externalizing young people, under the guidance of the therapist who validated the wrongdoings of the past develop a grudge against parents
This narrative also somewhat blames the parents as the originator of the problem, but from a the opposite side of spectrum. The child thinks the parent did too little but maybe they did all too much. What do you observe?
Therapy malpractice might be a symptom of greater systemic issues in academia and healthcare, but they are not the cause of family breakdown, estrangement, etc.
Freya is describing how parental neglect, is a reason young people are instead turning towards their therapists to be parental figures (and honestly- much better a therapist, than a cult/drugs/etc, which can often be the case for young people that have no support system). They should not have to do this. Their parents should be those stable figures. She’s describing how many parents of young adults today, have utterly failed in this regard.
You are twisting what she’s written to justify your own narrative of estrangement, in bad faith, for your own political (and clearly personal) convenience.
Unspoken in the ads of providers like BetterHelp is that they have a financial incentive to convince as many people as possible that they need therapy, in part by convincing them that family and friends can’t help. And once they have you onboard, they have a financial incentive to keep you coming back as long as possible (or until your insurance stops paying).
I’m not saying that this is the only reason therapists do what they do. But the perverse incentive is real, and you ignore it at your peril.
Therapy doesn't reimburse that well for continued care, intakes bill higher and the incentive is actually to cycle through. I think therapists truly believe they are making a difference. Sometimes, they are. We too often congratulate ourselves for changes done by the patient.
My friends and family are 100% my therapists and vice versa and I wouldn't have it any other way. Why would I pay a stranger to listen to me talk when I don't even know if they're a person I would want to listen to in real life? I've met several peers lately who are therapists by day and horrible to their own children / spouses. They're people I don't want to even associate with, yet they have clients who pay them to be some sort of authority. There are great therapists out there, but it seems to be luck of the draw and we shouldn't imbue them with god-status, which a lot of people tend to do.
100% agree, Rebekah. Some of the mental health professionals I know are disasters in their personal lives.
Made me think of this other thought: In a phone call with a potential date, he brought up his therapist and what she thought he should do and not do over and over. His therapist's voice seemed to be the loudest in his life, even louder than his own, and that is really sad. It's HIS life after all, and he needs to be coming to trust HIMSELF, not a paid therapist, with it!
You are fortunate to have good relationships within and beyond the family.
Why would you pay another person to listen to you?
Sometimes the family and the friends or the partner are the source of concern, and you would feel better if not too many knew your concerns.
Sometimes you have the problem, be it job loss, a heath issue, anything.
It is easy from your vantage point to think it ill-considered to seek therapy. There are reasons that do not suggest individual weakness.
The realization that therapists are flawed -- and sometimes dangerously so -- is a realization about the human condition, not grounds for indictment of therapists in general.
Wow Freya, this is wonderful. As a trained mental health professional, I found myself cringing and being taken aback by some of the wording therapists are telling their Gen-Z patients - it's definitely not professional or appropriate for a therapist to be taking on those parentified roles (and if they are, it's about the therapist's need, which is not professional - they're supposed to be aware of their own transference and countertransference). Everything you're saying about the need in kids for this kind of approval is spot-on, but I'm surprised by the breakdown that seems to be happening in the professional boundaries that should exist between these therapists and clients. This seems to show therapy done wrong, moving the wrong way as a profession, not truly serving and empowering clients but creating enmeshment (not the goal!). I hope clients experiencing this can find a truly empowering therapist, that does not ensnare them in a pseudo-family web, but empowers them to repair their own family systems.
I wonder if the recent shifts in therapist education have a part in this. See Leslie Elliott Boyce's work on counselor training. Apparently therapists are being trained to bring their own issues into the therapy, for example to bring up diversity/DEI stuff unprompted by the client, etc.
Wow, I hadn't heard of this at all. Though I graduated from my masters degree training in 2012, so I'm out of the (recent) loop. Back then, we were always encouraged to only share a minimum of personal information, enough to enable connection, but to keep the session focused on the client and what brought them in to the session, and to keep our stuff out of it. I can't imagine why anyone would want to shift that, doesn't seem to be in the client's benefit at all.
I just graduated (Dec 2025) with my MSW. Perhaps it is school/state specific, but I was trained as you- disclosing the bare minimum and when self-disclosing, really self-reflecting on whether it is benefitting the client or the therapist. The only area where I have seen self disclosure happening at a higher level is with addiction counselors who are sharing their experiences of recovering and building rapport. At least in my experience as a recent graduate, the training I have received is still focusing on the client and limiting self disclosure.
I have an MSW too, so perhaps it's specific to the way we with that degree are trained, as the purpose is specifically to empower clients in their goals. Addiction counselors yes, definitely, especially if they've struggled with similar substances, are prone to sharing more, and for good reason. Maybe MFTs and other types of counselors are trained differently?
I second Ficus, in my training, we were constantly told to encourage dialogue around DEI, representation, and feminist/oppression theory. It was a good thing that I was an older adult with a formed set of experiences and some formation in formal logic and philosophy, otherwise I might not have had the critical background to push back on the ideology creep.
Appreciate your writing! Do you know about Bowen family systems? Whole approach is to engage one's actual family with more maturity. The idea is that the change happens not in the therapy room but in the relationships. The therapist is more of a consultant. Less emphasis on emotion and more on being responsible for oneself in life. No diagnostic language used.
Sounds almost more like a mediator- which is basically what alot of us need. A third party, who is aware of coercive control techniques (and won’t be fooled by them) and can discern patterns of personality disorder. THAT person can help hold bad actors accountable — or at least expose the manipulation to the other family. Old fashions priests used to do this well, they had good BS meters, knew the family for generations and would mediate and lower disordered members’ power. The new priests live and let live and don’t seem to know anything about psychology. The old ones might not have known the terms but they had the wisdom of knowing family for generations (I’m talking about the good old priests - obviously not the priests who are disordered themselves). Anyhow these days apparently you can hire a mediator to do the same thing. Bring whole family in. Cult exit therapists also do this- try to get to know the whole family. THIS is more what we need. Almost more of a soft judge to help figure out who is lying, who is playing with people’s hearts.
As our attention fractures I don't think this will get any better sadly. Our worlds are becoming bubbles without friction, to choose friends and family is choosing some friction. Therapists who are affirming, or even moreso AI that is affirming has no friction. You just pay the monthly or weekly or session fee. I worry more and more people are going to go into the frictionless future. So it will be less interpersonal and familial relationships. I wish it weren't so.
Could be, but could be men in particular have grown weary of being demeaned.
Recent discussions of "emotional labor" are discomfiting to the extent that the suggestion is that there should not be any demands or obligations attached to a relationship.
Would that it were so, that relationships could unfold with great joy, much like the early 21st century advertisements for birth control promised: ladies leaping through flowers, enthralled, worry free.
And on the women's end of things seeing what is happening with porn aimed at men online would be at best a turn off and at worst makes them fear men. Way too many stories online from women and teen girls about their boyfriends or husbands who are addicted to pornography, sometimes really sick stuff, but really it's gross even if it's tame. And then there's the Gisèle Pelicot case, so many men normal looking men, can't help but wonder what they consume of women in their online porn habits. Makes it hard not to look at men differently.
....but yeah "emotional labor" talk I'm sure that's so very demeaning
I fear that you are correct. Survival -- let alone good health -- will depend on taking the time and paying the attention necessary to foster good relationships. This can be time well spent if spent with an awareness that benefits do not always immediately follow. The more we lose the capacity for deferred gratification, the harder social life will become. Harder is not impossible, though.
I was shocked a few weeks ago when a good friend in his 30s, who has been in therapy since a teen, told me he went to his wife to talk about his despondent state of mind. She told him, “Go talk to your therapist.”
My friend was devastated and saddened.
I too believe there is a place for therapy in difficult cases, but it has replaced lived time and lived relationships.
We raised our daughter with family dinners every night, no TV on, no phones and distractions. It was our sacred time to check in with her. Witnessing how both parents treat dinner time, giving her their full attention was enough even if she chose to stay quiet. She would often open up to her mother on other occasions because of the quiet moments we shared where trust was built.
Therapy cannot replace uncles, aunts, community, positive role models. Therapy cannot replace our grandmothers in Bulgaria sitting on a bench, sharing about life and family while watching the children from the apartment complex run around on the playground.
Therapy can not replace my spiritual father, either. One's spiritual father is a very important component of being an Orthodox Christian. Decline of religion may also be feeding this dynamic.
If churches, priests and concerned laity want to help alleviate suffering, here’s one way to start. Educate ourselves :
I compiled the “view the archive” button section for my diocese. It’s my notes on all books I read on abuse, coercive control, alienation, and I complied it all and applied it to Catholic thought. Feel free to use in your diocese, amend for other denominations. I think the churches WANT to help but don’t have resources and time. This was my attempt to help those who don’t have time to read all the books.
Also that priests used to spend decades in a community, gaining wisdom and seeing patterns of personalities and disorders. Now they are moved around every couple years and so tend to offer horrible advice. Either a priest should stay and learn a community for decades — or else, the priest needs continuing education in psychology, especially in recognizing and stopping coercive control and in recognizing patterns of personality disorders. Having a naive priest give advice has been very dangerous in our family. I really miss the priest we had who’d been with us for three generations— he could sense BS because he was around long enough to see patterns.
RE personality disorders. I'm sorry you've had to deal with that. I had a business partner who I believe has a personality disorder. Of course, I'm not a psychologist, but when you are on the receiving end of such craziness, well. I did see an actual licensed therapist to deal with the fallout from that. Our priest was pretty clear when we were being catechized that priests are not therapists. There are still some decent therapists out there who hold the proper ethical boundaries, and work with the client's best interest in mind. I suspect it's easier to find if you look for a therapist who is middle aged or older.
Thank you for understanding about personality disorders. A (likely) sociopath in law, posing as a Christian, has destroyed our family and local church . It’s been devastating on multiple levels, and shook my faith. He’s salting all the fields we spent years tending…. Faith, family, virtue— all twisted. Our old pastor saw right through him and protected our parish from him. But he retired during Covid mania, and the message was not passed to the new pastor, who fell for the con and promoted the guy, laying groundwork for naive parishioners to also fall for his lies. We’re isolated. So. I have lots of time to research and write notes 😕🤷♀️ Bill Eddy and Evan Stark are my favorite idea men (tho I disagree w Stark blaming men/patriarchy - anyone whose been to high school - or read the Bible - knows women can be just as abusive).
As a device that can help in understanding selfish and destructive behavior, labels such as "personality disorder" or "Cluster B" may be of assistance.
Nonetheless, it is well beyond time to abandon diagnoses in favor of addressing reality. This could be accomplished by dealing with the "personality disordered" or "Cluster B" personalities as the criminals they not infrequently are.
Our archpriest has been at our Orthodox parish for 20+ years, and we have 3 other priests who also are long timers. I'm not sure how it works in the Catholic church, but I agree that relationships are built on trust, and thus can not be stopped and started. People are not interchangeable. Our system works because our clergy know us. You are able to develop a trusting personal relationship with your confessor, who is wise, and thus if and when he asks you to undertake something for your spiritual benefit, you trust him enough to obey. They are not moving every couple years, by any means.
I'm fairly new to Orthodoxy, and so I don't have a framework for how it is even at other Orthodox churches. Surely there are some where this is not working as well. But I feel so lucky to be where we are.
A local pastor, trained as a psychotherapist, may be attuned to parishioners' concerns but by his own account he is terrified of the parishioners. A good bit of this is not only the long shadow cast not only by the child sexual abuse damage but also by #metoo.
This may hobble his otherwise ample generosity of spirit, but I do not criticize him for a moment.
What I do criticize is the pressure to celebrate yard-sign social justice. If that were not enough, clerical participation in 'social justice' can be well-intentioned while blind to reality.
Agreed. Sometimes older is wiser. Definitely long term relationships, while keeping eyes wide open for manipulation, is part of the priest’s (any every elder, even laity!) role. Mostly the whole church must get away from extolling the nuclear family. Anyone can control a spouse and bear kids. The point is - how do you treat your own parents? Are your children allowed to be whole and have meaningful relationships with both sets of grandparents aunts/uncles? Is your spouse encouraged to have meaningful and independent relationships with their own family of origin and other important people? I don’t clap at prolife rallies when speakers number of kids is extolled. Number of kids is not a substitute for character. Tell me the guy spends weekends caring for his parent’s garden, or that his wife loves to take the kids for week long visits to her moms. THEN I will know theres some accountability for that person’s character.
To be fair, you only (I assume) have his perspective. Maybe it was absolutely right for him to be devastated and saddened. Maybe his despondency had been taking a toll on his wife for some time - if they have children, despondent people don’t necessarily do their share of the parenting. The partner relationship cannot be everything, because of the impact of one partner on the other - the extended family, close friends, here, may be much better placed to listen and to help.
Many thanks for this. I personally find that many therapists nowadays are quite unprepared. I recently stopped seeing my therapist because I found her very patronising, always pushing this kind of toxic positivity, offering advice and constantly trying to make me see the silver lining, which was the opposite of what I needed. What I needed was someone more realistic and neutral.
Millennial girl I know has depressive episodes and if she can't get hold of her therapist during one she spirals. If her therapist is on vacation and not responding to texts she feels abandoned and alone/unmoored, can't make decisions. I suspect this is a common thing among people in permatherapy.
Notable that she does not trust her parents (for some good reasons), so therapist has become a surrogate.
Another excellent piece Freya. As both a mom and someone who counsels, I couldn’t agree more. I’m at an age where many of my peers are experiencing estrangement from their children and sadly, in most cases “professional” therapy is involved. And in my opinion, the profession is becoming more and more suspect as time goes by. I’d love to see the Church and Faith communities step in here in a more meaningful way.
I write the “view the archive” button section. It has to be downloaded, but essentially it’s my notes on all books I read on abuse, coercive control, alienation, and I complied it all and applied it to Catholic thought. Feel free to use in your diocese, amend for other denominations. I think the churches WANT to help but don’t have resources and time. This was my attempt to help those who don’t have time to read all the books.
Our diocese is trying to educate parishioners on coercive control, grandparent alienation, etc. I agree! People are hurting in the pews and another homily on holy marriages and nuclear families (without mentioning individual dignity, autonomy and the value of extended family on BOTH sides!) isn’t going to cut it.
Please let me know what you think. Segments are added monthly. In mid January, a segment on grandparent alienation will be added. After that I’ll be addressing spiritual abuse/bypass, moral vs immoral forgiveness and then Bill Eddy’s works on high conflict personality disorders. That’s if my contact at the diocese allows me to continue publishing. Feel free to privately message me to discuss :). I look for all signs of hope I can - mostly in terms of people wanting to learn. Incidentally, any Christian therapist who applauds their own years of marriage /number of children WITHOUT equally mentioning a great relationship with their family of origin and in laws I completely discount. It’s especially a red flag if one’s spouse is alienated from their family of origin.
In addition to giving up on family as therapists (or, worse, on family altogether), I also note there's more reliance on paid therapists to provide affirmation as people have given up on religion.
The Christian religion that was once dominant in the West explicitly teaches that we are all children of God, and that we have a divine Father who loves us and are siblings who have a duty to love and support each other. Now you might think that's false, but as long as I'm convinced that it's true I have a source of comfort lacking from those who do not believe. As long as I am surrounded by fellow believers who see me as a sister to whom they owe support, I can seek support from and lend support to them. This love and support are real even if the atheists are correct and God is not.
But in a post-Christian society, I as a single individual have nothing: no blood family I can rely on, no community of spiritual brethren obligated to help me, not even a Holy Father to whom I can pray. All I have is someone I can pay to signal that they love me; but everyone knows in their heart that a love you pay for is not real.
Please be aware that there is a movement within therapeutic circles to consider belief in God as delusional. Thus far they have not gained a great deal of traction but it is early days for this kind of erosion of the notion of well-being or soundness of mind.
It is true that many people are ill-informed about beliefs and others do suffer from psychoses that manifest as spiritual matters. That is a far cry from diagnosing a person of faith as inherently unstable, though.
Children need parents not therapists. Yet even babies and tots are pacified with tech gadgets, teaching them early on to resolve their emotional needs and distress digitally. This disconnect is difficult to bridge once it takes hold and plays out in reaching out to therapists and social media rather than a caring parent.
" The connections we establish in early childhood bear fruit especially in the teenage years. As our children entered this new phase of life, we found it helpful to focus less on technology battles and more on having conversations. We spent countless hours processing the day’s events, relationship challenges, theological questions, moral dilemmas. We decide to stay up late at times, because this is often when teens begin to talk, and we know that processing their difficulties and questions binds us together. It anchors them back to reality and to their family. "
I have two teenagers and have tried to focus on conversations as well. I don’t always do it perfectly, but when they get going, there seems to be a bottomless need for processing and connection. I wish we had more time for it.
The world seems like a playground of illusions nowadays, full of false paths, false ideas, false values. We live in strange times, where a loving mom dad at home, a mother who lovingly cooks for her kids and a dad who is a rock to the family is regarded as rare and backwards.
"We lowered expectations for parents and raised expectations for professionals. The assumption today is that it’s healthy to rely on experts, unfair to rely on family. Which is why we have a constant cry for more mental health funding and better access to resources, but barely anything for defending families, for expecting parents to stay together or spend more time with their children; that would be backward."
Brilliant. We have commoditized every aspect of parenthood and childhood. Instead of spending quality time together, families are torn apart. Therapists, daycares, and the internet have monetized the void. The downstream effect is that young people don't have healthy attachments or want families and kids of their own. South Korea's 4B movement has led to record row birth rates and is a warning for the west on unhealthy over-therapized activist culture: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/4b-movement-grief-grandparents
I also immediately thought of daycare when reading this essay. When my daughter was born 14 years ago, we had 4 grandparents living in our same city. None of them wanted any part in caring for her while my husband and I worked. I was totally stunned. It changed me, a lot. How is it ok that a baby be cared for by people who don't love her, when there are other options? It's not okay. I ended up terminating my career so that I could be the kind of parent I want to be.
Brilliant as always ...
I hope you'll write about the reverse as well — being from Southern Europe, whenever a friend says "sorry to dump on you," I go, that's what friends are for! You should be able to share your grief & sadness with friends. When did it become a norm to have to pay someone exorbitant fees only to be able to open up about our normal, common human problems?
Yes—well said. And as a psychologist specializing in parental estrangement, I would add that therapists can also contribute to a false model of what one can—or reasonably should—expect from parents: namely, that parents, like therapists, should be endlessly empathetic, exquisitely attuned, and unconditional in their love, regardless of constraints such as limited financial resources, troubled marriages, or their own histories of childhood adversity. Within this framework, the failure or inability to provide that *therapeutic* level of care (barring genuine abuse) is treated as a reasonable justification for estrangement.
The broader culture reinforces this myth by implying that if the now-adult child had received that level of attunement, they would be a fully realized and empowered person—rather than the anxious, struggling, or insecure individual they have become.
As sociologist Eva Illouz writes: “Far from being unable to bestow coherence on a given life, therapeutic narratives can be faulted for making too much sense of one’s life of binding too tightly the present the past and the future in a seamless narrative of psychic wounding and self-change.”
Very true, I have only encountered a few cases where neither parent had enough empathy, although I admit selection bias in terms of who brings their kids in. For parents with a lot of problems, it is especially important that the therapist teaches teens to change their expectations and not judge their parents failings--the temptation is to join with the kid's frustrations, which can get in the way of them appreciating the limited, imperfect love they are shown. No human gets a perfect parent, and parents just have to be "good enough".
Really imporant point, David. One of my early clinical supervisors told me when I was working with a teen with difficult parents, "She has to go home to those parents at the end of the day, so it doesn't serve her to make her feel so mad at them that she closes down on their positive contributions to her life."
Exxxxactly
That's a really interesting insight I think on two levels Joshua, combining the new and totally absurd set of expectations from modern parents with the externalizing attitude of a generation who is the first to be doing worse financially and by many other wellbeing metrics compared to their parents.
I'm currently switching my career (28yo) to become a family therapist and I'm curious about this: what would your clinical experience say about the (simplified) narrative below?
1. A generation of parents were sold a new style of gentle parenting and instead of the focusing on "raising functional adults" as the primary goal, they focused on "maximizing the child's emotional wellbeing and minimize discomfort" as a primary goal
2. New sheltered generation has generally become more infantilized and unable to deal with requirements of normal adult life. Failure to launch.
3. Trauma informed therapy and other cultural exports of pop psychology have placed an increased importance on adverse childhood experiences and really lowered the threshold for what would constitute real trauma
4. Externalizing young people, under the guidance of the therapist who validated the wrongdoings of the past develop a grudge against parents
This narrative also somewhat blames the parents as the originator of the problem, but from a the opposite side of spectrum. The child thinks the parent did too little but maybe they did all too much. What do you observe?
I think that's a good summary and one shared by Jonathan Haidt in his books The Coddling of the American Mind and The Anxious Generation.
The Coddling of the American Mind was such a worthwhile read. The Anxious Generation is on my bookshelf to read this year.
I'm glad clear-seeing people you are going into this field to hopefully help strengthen families instead of weaken them!
Therapy malpractice might be a symptom of greater systemic issues in academia and healthcare, but they are not the cause of family breakdown, estrangement, etc.
Freya is describing how parental neglect, is a reason young people are instead turning towards their therapists to be parental figures (and honestly- much better a therapist, than a cult/drugs/etc, which can often be the case for young people that have no support system). They should not have to do this. Their parents should be those stable figures. She’s describing how many parents of young adults today, have utterly failed in this regard.
You are twisting what she’s written to justify your own narrative of estrangement, in bad faith, for your own political (and clearly personal) convenience.
Unspoken in the ads of providers like BetterHelp is that they have a financial incentive to convince as many people as possible that they need therapy, in part by convincing them that family and friends can’t help. And once they have you onboard, they have a financial incentive to keep you coming back as long as possible (or until your insurance stops paying).
I’m not saying that this is the only reason therapists do what they do. But the perverse incentive is real, and you ignore it at your peril.
Therapy doesn't reimburse that well for continued care, intakes bill higher and the incentive is actually to cycle through. I think therapists truly believe they are making a difference. Sometimes, they are. We too often congratulate ourselves for changes done by the patient.
The DSM Bible of BILLABLE codes. The therapists can take that and shove it up their arses!
My friends and family are 100% my therapists and vice versa and I wouldn't have it any other way. Why would I pay a stranger to listen to me talk when I don't even know if they're a person I would want to listen to in real life? I've met several peers lately who are therapists by day and horrible to their own children / spouses. They're people I don't want to even associate with, yet they have clients who pay them to be some sort of authority. There are great therapists out there, but it seems to be luck of the draw and we shouldn't imbue them with god-status, which a lot of people tend to do.
100% agree, Rebekah. Some of the mental health professionals I know are disasters in their personal lives.
Made me think of this other thought: In a phone call with a potential date, he brought up his therapist and what she thought he should do and not do over and over. His therapist's voice seemed to be the loudest in his life, even louder than his own, and that is really sad. It's HIS life after all, and he needs to be coming to trust HIMSELF, not a paid therapist, with it!
You are fortunate to have good relationships within and beyond the family.
Why would you pay another person to listen to you?
Sometimes the family and the friends or the partner are the source of concern, and you would feel better if not too many knew your concerns.
Sometimes you have the problem, be it job loss, a heath issue, anything.
It is easy from your vantage point to think it ill-considered to seek therapy. There are reasons that do not suggest individual weakness.
The realization that therapists are flawed -- and sometimes dangerously so -- is a realization about the human condition, not grounds for indictment of therapists in general.
Wow Freya, this is wonderful. As a trained mental health professional, I found myself cringing and being taken aback by some of the wording therapists are telling their Gen-Z patients - it's definitely not professional or appropriate for a therapist to be taking on those parentified roles (and if they are, it's about the therapist's need, which is not professional - they're supposed to be aware of their own transference and countertransference). Everything you're saying about the need in kids for this kind of approval is spot-on, but I'm surprised by the breakdown that seems to be happening in the professional boundaries that should exist between these therapists and clients. This seems to show therapy done wrong, moving the wrong way as a profession, not truly serving and empowering clients but creating enmeshment (not the goal!). I hope clients experiencing this can find a truly empowering therapist, that does not ensnare them in a pseudo-family web, but empowers them to repair their own family systems.
I wonder if the recent shifts in therapist education have a part in this. See Leslie Elliott Boyce's work on counselor training. Apparently therapists are being trained to bring their own issues into the therapy, for example to bring up diversity/DEI stuff unprompted by the client, etc.
Wow, I hadn't heard of this at all. Though I graduated from my masters degree training in 2012, so I'm out of the (recent) loop. Back then, we were always encouraged to only share a minimum of personal information, enough to enable connection, but to keep the session focused on the client and what brought them in to the session, and to keep our stuff out of it. I can't imagine why anyone would want to shift that, doesn't seem to be in the client's benefit at all.
I just graduated (Dec 2025) with my MSW. Perhaps it is school/state specific, but I was trained as you- disclosing the bare minimum and when self-disclosing, really self-reflecting on whether it is benefitting the client or the therapist. The only area where I have seen self disclosure happening at a higher level is with addiction counselors who are sharing their experiences of recovering and building rapport. At least in my experience as a recent graduate, the training I have received is still focusing on the client and limiting self disclosure.
I have an MSW too, so perhaps it's specific to the way we with that degree are trained, as the purpose is specifically to empower clients in their goals. Addiction counselors yes, definitely, especially if they've struggled with similar substances, are prone to sharing more, and for good reason. Maybe MFTs and other types of counselors are trained differently?
I second Ficus, in my training, we were constantly told to encourage dialogue around DEI, representation, and feminist/oppression theory. It was a good thing that I was an older adult with a formed set of experiences and some formation in formal logic and philosophy, otherwise I might not have had the critical background to push back on the ideology creep.
Appreciate your writing! Do you know about Bowen family systems? Whole approach is to engage one's actual family with more maturity. The idea is that the change happens not in the therapy room but in the relationships. The therapist is more of a consultant. Less emphasis on emotion and more on being responsible for oneself in life. No diagnostic language used.
Sounds almost more like a mediator- which is basically what alot of us need. A third party, who is aware of coercive control techniques (and won’t be fooled by them) and can discern patterns of personality disorder. THAT person can help hold bad actors accountable — or at least expose the manipulation to the other family. Old fashions priests used to do this well, they had good BS meters, knew the family for generations and would mediate and lower disordered members’ power. The new priests live and let live and don’t seem to know anything about psychology. The old ones might not have known the terms but they had the wisdom of knowing family for generations (I’m talking about the good old priests - obviously not the priests who are disordered themselves). Anyhow these days apparently you can hire a mediator to do the same thing. Bring whole family in. Cult exit therapists also do this- try to get to know the whole family. THIS is more what we need. Almost more of a soft judge to help figure out who is lying, who is playing with people’s hearts.
As our attention fractures I don't think this will get any better sadly. Our worlds are becoming bubbles without friction, to choose friends and family is choosing some friction. Therapists who are affirming, or even moreso AI that is affirming has no friction. You just pay the monthly or weekly or session fee. I worry more and more people are going to go into the frictionless future. So it will be less interpersonal and familial relationships. I wish it weren't so.
"Our worlds are becoming bubbles without friction, to choose friends and family is choosing some friction."
I suspect without any firm evidence that this is the real reason behind the MGTOW/femcel/AI relationship trend.
Could be, but could be men in particular have grown weary of being demeaned.
Recent discussions of "emotional labor" are discomfiting to the extent that the suggestion is that there should not be any demands or obligations attached to a relationship.
Would that it were so, that relationships could unfold with great joy, much like the early 21st century advertisements for birth control promised: ladies leaping through flowers, enthralled, worry free.
And on the women's end of things seeing what is happening with porn aimed at men online would be at best a turn off and at worst makes them fear men. Way too many stories online from women and teen girls about their boyfriends or husbands who are addicted to pornography, sometimes really sick stuff, but really it's gross even if it's tame. And then there's the Gisèle Pelicot case, so many men normal looking men, can't help but wonder what they consume of women in their online porn habits. Makes it hard not to look at men differently.
....but yeah "emotional labor" talk I'm sure that's so very demeaning
I fear that you are correct. Survival -- let alone good health -- will depend on taking the time and paying the attention necessary to foster good relationships. This can be time well spent if spent with an awareness that benefits do not always immediately follow. The more we lose the capacity for deferred gratification, the harder social life will become. Harder is not impossible, though.
I was shocked a few weeks ago when a good friend in his 30s, who has been in therapy since a teen, told me he went to his wife to talk about his despondent state of mind. She told him, “Go talk to your therapist.”
My friend was devastated and saddened.
I too believe there is a place for therapy in difficult cases, but it has replaced lived time and lived relationships.
We raised our daughter with family dinners every night, no TV on, no phones and distractions. It was our sacred time to check in with her. Witnessing how both parents treat dinner time, giving her their full attention was enough even if she chose to stay quiet. She would often open up to her mother on other occasions because of the quiet moments we shared where trust was built.
Therapy cannot replace uncles, aunts, community, positive role models. Therapy cannot replace our grandmothers in Bulgaria sitting on a bench, sharing about life and family while watching the children from the apartment complex run around on the playground.
Therapy can not replace my spiritual father, either. One's spiritual father is a very important component of being an Orthodox Christian. Decline of religion may also be feeding this dynamic.
If churches, priests and concerned laity want to help alleviate suffering, here’s one way to start. Educate ourselves :
I compiled the “view the archive” button section for my diocese. It’s my notes on all books I read on abuse, coercive control, alienation, and I complied it all and applied it to Catholic thought. Feel free to use in your diocese, amend for other denominations. I think the churches WANT to help but don’t have resources and time. This was my attempt to help those who don’t have time to read all the books.
https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/offices/parish-life/marriage-and-family-ministry/hope-healing/unhealthy-relationships
Also that priests used to spend decades in a community, gaining wisdom and seeing patterns of personalities and disorders. Now they are moved around every couple years and so tend to offer horrible advice. Either a priest should stay and learn a community for decades — or else, the priest needs continuing education in psychology, especially in recognizing and stopping coercive control and in recognizing patterns of personality disorders. Having a naive priest give advice has been very dangerous in our family. I really miss the priest we had who’d been with us for three generations— he could sense BS because he was around long enough to see patterns.
RE personality disorders. I'm sorry you've had to deal with that. I had a business partner who I believe has a personality disorder. Of course, I'm not a psychologist, but when you are on the receiving end of such craziness, well. I did see an actual licensed therapist to deal with the fallout from that. Our priest was pretty clear when we were being catechized that priests are not therapists. There are still some decent therapists out there who hold the proper ethical boundaries, and work with the client's best interest in mind. I suspect it's easier to find if you look for a therapist who is middle aged or older.
Thank you for understanding about personality disorders. A (likely) sociopath in law, posing as a Christian, has destroyed our family and local church . It’s been devastating on multiple levels, and shook my faith. He’s salting all the fields we spent years tending…. Faith, family, virtue— all twisted. Our old pastor saw right through him and protected our parish from him. But he retired during Covid mania, and the message was not passed to the new pastor, who fell for the con and promoted the guy, laying groundwork for naive parishioners to also fall for his lies. We’re isolated. So. I have lots of time to research and write notes 😕🤷♀️ Bill Eddy and Evan Stark are my favorite idea men (tho I disagree w Stark blaming men/patriarchy - anyone whose been to high school - or read the Bible - knows women can be just as abusive).
As a device that can help in understanding selfish and destructive behavior, labels such as "personality disorder" or "Cluster B" may be of assistance.
Nonetheless, it is well beyond time to abandon diagnoses in favor of addressing reality. This could be accomplished by dealing with the "personality disordered" or "Cluster B" personalities as the criminals they not infrequently are.
Exactly but hard to do when he’s convinced all he’s a saint.
Our archpriest has been at our Orthodox parish for 20+ years, and we have 3 other priests who also are long timers. I'm not sure how it works in the Catholic church, but I agree that relationships are built on trust, and thus can not be stopped and started. People are not interchangeable. Our system works because our clergy know us. You are able to develop a trusting personal relationship with your confessor, who is wise, and thus if and when he asks you to undertake something for your spiritual benefit, you trust him enough to obey. They are not moving every couple years, by any means.
I'm fairly new to Orthodoxy, and so I don't have a framework for how it is even at other Orthodox churches. Surely there are some where this is not working as well. But I feel so lucky to be where we are.
A local pastor, trained as a psychotherapist, may be attuned to parishioners' concerns but by his own account he is terrified of the parishioners. A good bit of this is not only the long shadow cast not only by the child sexual abuse damage but also by #metoo.
This may hobble his otherwise ample generosity of spirit, but I do not criticize him for a moment.
What I do criticize is the pressure to celebrate yard-sign social justice. If that were not enough, clerical participation in 'social justice' can be well-intentioned while blind to reality.
Yes. Yard sign social justice is just virtue signaling. The tough work is left to few.
Agreed. Sometimes older is wiser. Definitely long term relationships, while keeping eyes wide open for manipulation, is part of the priest’s (any every elder, even laity!) role. Mostly the whole church must get away from extolling the nuclear family. Anyone can control a spouse and bear kids. The point is - how do you treat your own parents? Are your children allowed to be whole and have meaningful relationships with both sets of grandparents aunts/uncles? Is your spouse encouraged to have meaningful and independent relationships with their own family of origin and other important people? I don’t clap at prolife rallies when speakers number of kids is extolled. Number of kids is not a substitute for character. Tell me the guy spends weekends caring for his parent’s garden, or that his wife loves to take the kids for week long visits to her moms. THEN I will know theres some accountability for that person’s character.
It's the person to person contact that has been severely undermined.
To be fair, you only (I assume) have his perspective. Maybe it was absolutely right for him to be devastated and saddened. Maybe his despondency had been taking a toll on his wife for some time - if they have children, despondent people don’t necessarily do their share of the parenting. The partner relationship cannot be everything, because of the impact of one partner on the other - the extended family, close friends, here, may be much better placed to listen and to help.
Many thanks for this. I personally find that many therapists nowadays are quite unprepared. I recently stopped seeing my therapist because I found her very patronising, always pushing this kind of toxic positivity, offering advice and constantly trying to make me see the silver lining, which was the opposite of what I needed. What I needed was someone more realistic and neutral.
Thanks for articulating, so beautifully, what I have been thinking about for quite some time. Your work keeps me thinking, thinking, thinking.
Millennial girl I know has depressive episodes and if she can't get hold of her therapist during one she spirals. If her therapist is on vacation and not responding to texts she feels abandoned and alone/unmoored, can't make decisions. I suspect this is a common thing among people in permatherapy.
Notable that she does not trust her parents (for some good reasons), so therapist has become a surrogate.
This is incredibly sad. She's given the keys to her life and happiness over to a paid therapist. Makes me angry at a therapist who allows this.
Another excellent piece Freya. As both a mom and someone who counsels, I couldn’t agree more. I’m at an age where many of my peers are experiencing estrangement from their children and sadly, in most cases “professional” therapy is involved. And in my opinion, the profession is becoming more and more suspect as time goes by. I’d love to see the Church and Faith communities step in here in a more meaningful way.
I write the “view the archive” button section. It has to be downloaded, but essentially it’s my notes on all books I read on abuse, coercive control, alienation, and I complied it all and applied it to Catholic thought. Feel free to use in your diocese, amend for other denominations. I think the churches WANT to help but don’t have resources and time. This was my attempt to help those who don’t have time to read all the books.
https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/offices/parish-life/marriage-and-family-ministry/hope-healing/unhealthy-relationships
Our diocese is trying to educate parishioners on coercive control, grandparent alienation, etc. I agree! People are hurting in the pews and another homily on holy marriages and nuclear families (without mentioning individual dignity, autonomy and the value of extended family on BOTH sides!) isn’t going to cut it.
Excellent! I will be reviewing this thoroughly. Thank you for sharing.
Please let me know what you think. Segments are added monthly. In mid January, a segment on grandparent alienation will be added. After that I’ll be addressing spiritual abuse/bypass, moral vs immoral forgiveness and then Bill Eddy’s works on high conflict personality disorders. That’s if my contact at the diocese allows me to continue publishing. Feel free to privately message me to discuss :). I look for all signs of hope I can - mostly in terms of people wanting to learn. Incidentally, any Christian therapist who applauds their own years of marriage /number of children WITHOUT equally mentioning a great relationship with their family of origin and in laws I completely discount. It’s especially a red flag if one’s spouse is alienated from their family of origin.
In addition to giving up on family as therapists (or, worse, on family altogether), I also note there's more reliance on paid therapists to provide affirmation as people have given up on religion.
The Christian religion that was once dominant in the West explicitly teaches that we are all children of God, and that we have a divine Father who loves us and are siblings who have a duty to love and support each other. Now you might think that's false, but as long as I'm convinced that it's true I have a source of comfort lacking from those who do not believe. As long as I am surrounded by fellow believers who see me as a sister to whom they owe support, I can seek support from and lend support to them. This love and support are real even if the atheists are correct and God is not.
But in a post-Christian society, I as a single individual have nothing: no blood family I can rely on, no community of spiritual brethren obligated to help me, not even a Holy Father to whom I can pray. All I have is someone I can pay to signal that they love me; but everyone knows in their heart that a love you pay for is not real.
Please be aware that there is a movement within therapeutic circles to consider belief in God as delusional. Thus far they have not gained a great deal of traction but it is early days for this kind of erosion of the notion of well-being or soundness of mind.
It is true that many people are ill-informed about beliefs and others do suffer from psychoses that manifest as spiritual matters. That is a far cry from diagnosing a person of faith as inherently unstable, though.
Children need parents not therapists. Yet even babies and tots are pacified with tech gadgets, teaching them early on to resolve their emotional needs and distress digitally. This disconnect is difficult to bridge once it takes hold and plays out in reaching out to therapists and social media rather than a caring parent.
" The connections we establish in early childhood bear fruit especially in the teenage years. As our children entered this new phase of life, we found it helpful to focus less on technology battles and more on having conversations. We spent countless hours processing the day’s events, relationship challenges, theological questions, moral dilemmas. We decide to stay up late at times, because this is often when teens begin to talk, and we know that processing their difficulties and questions binds us together. It anchors them back to reality and to their family. "
https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/the-nursery-and-the-machine-from
I have two teenagers and have tried to focus on conversations as well. I don’t always do it perfectly, but when they get going, there seems to be a bottomless need for processing and connection. I wish we had more time for it.
So Insightful as always.
The world seems like a playground of illusions nowadays, full of false paths, false ideas, false values. We live in strange times, where a loving mom dad at home, a mother who lovingly cooks for her kids and a dad who is a rock to the family is regarded as rare and backwards.
"We lowered expectations for parents and raised expectations for professionals. The assumption today is that it’s healthy to rely on experts, unfair to rely on family. Which is why we have a constant cry for more mental health funding and better access to resources, but barely anything for defending families, for expecting parents to stay together or spend more time with their children; that would be backward."
Brilliant. We have commoditized every aspect of parenthood and childhood. Instead of spending quality time together, families are torn apart. Therapists, daycares, and the internet have monetized the void. The downstream effect is that young people don't have healthy attachments or want families and kids of their own. South Korea's 4B movement has led to record row birth rates and is a warning for the west on unhealthy over-therapized activist culture: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/4b-movement-grief-grandparents
I also immediately thought of daycare when reading this essay. When my daughter was born 14 years ago, we had 4 grandparents living in our same city. None of them wanted any part in caring for her while my husband and I worked. I was totally stunned. It changed me, a lot. How is it ok that a baby be cared for by people who don't love her, when there are other options? It's not okay. I ended up terminating my career so that I could be the kind of parent I want to be.