#1 open thread: does talk therapy actually work?

tell me, how does this topic make you feel?

Hey Juvenati,

From today I’ll be hosting weekly open threads here on Juvenescence, as part of Memoir Club.

I’ve already met and chatted with some fascinating, funny people in the comment section of this newsletter and I look forward to longer, deeper and even more delightful conversations in the weeks to come.

Open thread topics will be wide ranging and broadly focussed on the challenges of story-telling, creativity, crafting personal narrative, as well as the quandaries about writing, perspective, truth versus fiction, permission, perception and the human condition. In other words, just your average Monday morning office water-cooler chit chat — if your office happens to be a solitary writing shed and your colleagues are an assortment of houseplants. Juvenescence is meant to be an ‘intellectual and emotional safe space’ of sorts — I want subscribers to share as freely as you’d like — so please be respectful and remember it’s monitored by yours truly. As I say to my kids about 857 times a day: Conflict is fine — just don't be a dick about it.

The first open threat topic one of my favourite Big Nagging Questions, if only because it runs contrary to one of the great received wisdom-nuggets of our time.

Does talk therapy actually work?

I should preface this by saying I’ve done loads of talk therapy over the years — Jungian, EMDR, life and creative coaching, couples, group, cognitive behavioural, tantric sexploration. Okay maybe not the last one but you get my general drift. Over two and half decades my head has been well and fully shrunken, and at great expense. At this point it ought to be the size of a pin. I’ve experienced Freudian transference, had epiphanies and breakthroughs, stormed-out, broken-down, had my dreams forensically analysed and my family trauma tree mapped (see my recently published memoir for more details). But here’s the thing: I’m not entirely convinced it works.

It’s not because therapy hasn’t helped me — it has, it does. Everyday, in one way or another, I draw upon the lessons I’ve learned on the couch. But as the years have worn on I’ve found that it helps me less and less in an active way, especially compared to other stuff — obvious, elemental activities like long walks, loud music, laughter, dancing and making a whole bunch of pickles and stacking them neatly in Mason jars on my kitchen shelf.

I’m not saying talk therapy is a scam or a crock; the benefits are self-evident. The most obvious one is that it helps us to order our thoughts and draw coherent stories from the muddle of human experience. As a writer — and a human —I’m all for that.

I’m just not sure it ultimately fixes or cures anything. And in certain cases, I worry it can actually be a hindrance, for instance with people who are prone to rumination, not that I know anyone like that (*whistles and looks at the sky*). Perhaps I’m mistaking the point of therapy and it’s purely about cultivating self-awareness? Maybe it’s not meant as a cure? In any case, in recent years I haven’t felt it’s done much for me compared to say…. yoga or sunshine or sleep.

I have a rather unscientific pet theory which is that talk therapy (or ‘psycho-analysis,’ as it was once called) tends to work best for the sort of people it was originally created for e.g. rich late 19th Century Viennese repressives.

Freud’s patients experienced trauma and heartbreak just like us, but they lived in a much more codified, formal society in which the idea of actually talking, let alone thinking about certain emotions was pretty close to anathema. If you think such people are extinct, you clearly haven’t spent much time at a golf club in Southern Ontario. My suspicion about therapy is similar to the point Michael Pollen brilliantly makes about vitamins: If you’re taking them, you are the kind of person who needs them. In my view it’s usually the people who would never even set foot in a therapist’s office, for whom the whole idea of talking about their feelings is galling, who would benefit from therapy the most. This would also explain why therapy was such a revelation for me at first and also why, over time, its effects diminished as I was able to internalise its lessons. As for those of us who fall more squarely into the category of “over-sharey,” I’m not saying we’re all fine — I’m just not sure talking more is the cure for those of us who probably already talk a bit too much.

(Like I said, it’s just a theory.)

One thing that’s certain is that talk therapy is the great panacea of our age — despite being a wildly imprecise science. I have several great friends who are therapists and know plenty more who are in training, and the interesting thing I’ve found is that therapists themselves are often the first ones to question the nature and benefits of their work. There are great strides being made in the psycho-therapeutic field that extend far beyond the so-called “talking cure” and work on a more holistic, integrative level. All of these are of interest to me. I’d try them if I could afford them.

So does talk therapy work? Has it worked for you? If so how so and in what capacity?

Conversely, has it not worked? Are you feeling sceptical, even cynical, about it? If so how come?

Are you a therapist or training to become one? If so, what’s your honest expert view on the benefits of the talking cure, or lack-thereof?

Do you think I’m ruminating here? Be honest — but not too honest.

LMx