For the longest time, I thought therapy was a scam. Flat out. Everybody around me thought the same too. Instinctively, I started to stigmatize it myself, and until last year I had that opinion.
And you might ask, what do you mean it’s a scam?
Not as an “I think it doesn’t work” type of scam, but as a “Why would I spend hundreds of dollars to tell someone about my life every week” type of scam.
Yet, now that I look back on it, I think that so many other reasons came into play when shaping my perspective on therapy.
- My mother is very anti-therapy. I think that because for years, she was raised in a household where it was normalized to not want outside help. This screwed up her views on how my siblings and I should be treated. Stigma in Black households is very normalized and oftentimes is tied to when Black people would be put on more drugs then they needed when seeking professional help.
- Therapy has a cost. No matter how you look at it, you can get a few FREE therapy sessions from this place or the next, but it’ll end up costing you eventually. And depending on how good the therapist is or how high quality they are at helping you, then you will end up spending that money eventually to keep getting services.
- Time. I was offered a therapist when I was younger, but he was around 40 minutes from where my mom lived and even further from where my dad lived. They didn’t have the time to go to and from the therapist’s, and also go to work, on top of sports and many other things.
All of these different reasons culminated into one big fat NO regarding therapy. But, no matter what, looking back I think that even with the cons of getting therapy there are a lot more pros. It just depends on your individual situation.
Those pros could be so many different things, but I think the main one is that you have to be able to vent or explain yourself in a setting where the person next to you knows how to rightfully answer your questions or respond to your feelings. Your best friend may not always have an answer, but a professional should. And that’s what’s important. Not only that, but a therapist is able to get you things like medications, as well as accommodations that you may need in different settings.
I still haven’t gotten therapy. Yet oftentimes, I ask myself if I was in a different environment, would I have gotten therapy, and would that have affected my life now? Honestly, I’m not too sure….
So let me know about your opinions about therapy and how you may have navigated life without it! Follow @DealingWithDiversity on Instagram and have a nice week!
