I recently bought some developmental psychology books on Jean Piaget’s ideas, and while I haven’t had the time to start reading one yet, I am excited to read them soon.

I stumbled upon this Twitter post that reminded me about my opinions on therapy, parenting, and young adults just up and coming in America like me. Please take the time to read through it, if you are unsatisfied about how you are doing and how therapy is working for you.

“Gentle parents”—please listen to this before you create another kid like me, whose life was nearly derailed by 15+ years of therapy.

By the time I was four or five, it was clear I had emotional problems. I would sometimes sit at the foot of our stairs, hyperventilating over… https://t.co/mpmpnD04kx

— Olivia Reingold (@Olivia_Reingold) February 27, 2024

I’ll just say it now, I think a lot of young adults who are in therapy right now don’t need it. I do not at all want to invalidate the experiences of people who are suffering and need help to fight through the problems that are plaguing them. There was a time in my life in high school when I was confused and angsty, unable to name my feelings and understand what was happening to me, why I felt so angry, sad, and unable to function in the ways that my local society wanted me to perform. What changed was I went through things applied for colleges, and decided that I needed to “escape” from my local environment. Not everyone will have that chance in their life to transplant themselves into a faraway land where the people and culture look, think, talk, and smell differently. I had to take it. I needed a space to allow my mind to make sense of things, to heal, and to grow.

I had interacted a bit with my university’s on-campus counselors, who are not therapists, but just people you could talk to about your problems and they would just try to give you advice. There are limitations and all that, but they can be helpful if you cannot already clearly articulate what is happening to you by yourself, in the privacy of your own mind. I promise I am not romanticizing suffering, as I understand that is one of the many reasons the male loneliness epidemic exists.

I find it hard to articulate because I feel my own mind retaliating recalling painful memories. I imagine someone who isn’t mentally well, and their problems don’t seem to stem from some childhood trauma, the problems just seem to be there. Just a series of incorrect decisions that allowed the problem to build up, instead of helping the person to deal with them. Opting for a solution that isn’t a solution at all. To allow the dragon to grow ever bigger, under the carpet. Until it becomes an undeniable pest, a parasite of the mind. It needs to stop, and I think people are always stronger than they think they are.

Just push through. Just shut down the doubts in your head, and push through blindly on the path that your gut instinct tells you is right. Alternatively, learn to dive in deep. Allow yourself to be comfortable with all the crevices of your mind.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl G. Jung

Your unconscious, sympathetic nervous system, the compute that runs without any accord with your will for the survival of self, is there for you (unless you are unlucky). Honestly, these are quite mean things to say. But I think they are the right things to say. Between trying to tell people to just deal with their internal pain, face the seemingly impossible task of getting themselves into a position that allows them to execute executive function and attempt to develop their best version of themselves with baby steps, day by day, or however small of steps they need to take. Week by week. Month by month. I suppose the keywords are “seemingly impossible”. Because these things are not impossible to change about yourself. You have to believe that that is true or have someone hound that to you every single fucking day until you make the miracle happen yourself. I believe that many times in life, you will have to face your own darkness, your own fears, your insecurities, your flaws, etc. and acknowledge them but do not let them control you. It’s not about domination, it’s about acceptance and validating your desire for change within yourself. If you are unhappy most of the time, it might be because you haven’t accepted these things about yourself yet, like truly just take them in for it is about your meatmobile, and find the inner strength to just move forward.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” - Carl R. Rogers

Shit’s hard out there, but I have to remember that by many other metrics, the arrow of human civilization progress is moving forward, there’s just a lot of problems as well. Focusing on some things more than you should, will hurt you deeply. Perhaps my ability to acknowledge the problems big and small, but prioritize my own individual’s and the immediate people around me that I care about’s well-being, is anchoring me to my local reality to find the intuition to know what are the next steps forward. And sometimes, you just got to take a leap of faith if you aren’t seeing any options.

So take the leap of faith with me, into the future where we have to have the optimism that things are better and wonderful. Or else we die, not even trying, as cynics and forever stuck in our mind prisons.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” - Carl G. Jung

Jung’s quotes are always fire

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Addendum - 04/22/2024

Please seek therapy if you need help. Get professional help and don’t just vent to your friends. It’s not fair or right, in any way, to dump your problems or trauma on your friends. Stop it, get some help.