Listen. Y’all need to understand something. I know systemic issues are bad right now. But the constant posting of “I’m not supposed to be happy when society sucks!” needs to stop. This is supposed to be an affirming space with positive attitudes towards mental health and mental health treatment in general.
When you encourage others to STOP GETTING TREATMENT because society is bad?? You are posting anti-MH content.
When you say “It’s not normal to be well-adjusted to a sick society”, you are posting anti-MH content.
The point is not to be “happy”. It’s to find meaning, build a life worth living, make choices consistent with your values, and manage the stressors of a fucked up society more effectively so that you can actually do something about it.
But instead, I am seeing posters around here telling each other to drop out of therapy because what’s the point with Trump in the white house. Are you freaking kidding me???
Please remember that the universe being harsh and society being awful has always been the default. It is our challenge to find a way to thrive in those conditions. If you still don’t get it, I encourage you to look into the work of Viktor Frankl, a psychologist who drew from his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. The work of therapy begins with rising above the suffering. Not from turning away from it.
I work in mental health and frequently interact with people at some of the worst moments of their lives. I can tell you for certain that some people can take adversity in stride and continue to find meaning in life, while others crumble and fall into depression or anger or despair. I think a portion of the difference is genetic, as people often have a “baseline” level of contentment that’s pretty consistent across their entire lives, but another portion is absolutely learned.
The people who struggle most almost universally have a trauma history as children and have difficulty with emotional regulation and distress tolerance, both of which they might not have had modeled for them growing up.
I agree with you 100% on this post. People go to therapy to tackle individual goals of all kinds, and encouraging people to stay feeling depressed because bad things exist in society is a toxic attitude. In a relationship, an attitude like that would be categorically abusive. Someone encouraging others to wallow in depression is only ever doing it for selfish reasons, e.g. to justify their own mental state, to feel less alone, or even possibly to derive pleasure from the suffering of others.