ANYONE CAN BE A “THERAPIST”

I am reminded of how I heard of this sometime
on the radio in the late 1990s or earliest 2000s.

It is my understanding that you can call yourself
a “therapist” right this second if wanted, for it is
not a legally-defined occupation.

If you feel like it, you could just display a shingle
and then see whomever you want.

If you are not making professional announcements,
and giving yourself incorrect credentials, it seems
to be permissible across-the-board.

Want to display a plain “FREE COUNSELING” outside your door?

Someone would probably come to see you. The “professionals”
could get irritated and, well, would you really mind? I would not.

Also, realize that any thing can be “therapy”.

Quoting psychologist Roger Mills from the 1980s, “The field
of psychology today is literally a mess. There are as many
techniques, methods, and theories around as there are re-
searchers and therapists. I have personally seen therapists
convince their clients that all of their problems come from
their mothers, the stars, their bio-chemical make-up, their diet,
their lifestyle, and even the ‘karma’ from their past lives.”
{added here 20th May, 2019}

Mere hobbies may become something else while under
the umbrella of “care”. There is no standardization, and new
so-called treatments are created all the time … yet they are
plainly just people doing activities under a “trained” person’s eye.

Insurance helps pay for the most-ridiculous things that
are suddenly “treatment” because those in the field claim
it is so. Art “therapy”? Rubbish. Just because of where the
term originated or where the patients do it, it becomes
more than the activity it is?

You know that people can create art on their own {or in
the company of others}, yes? We do not need to disguise
our enjoyable hobby under the guise of it being exclusive
to a group setting or only possible from a leading-person
“trained” in it.

Do not be fooled.
You know better than that.

Why not discover your own helping activities?
If you feel like calling them “therapy”, so be it.

For us here, however, writing is never “therapy”.
This is merely an interesting project, done to
express disappointment with past mistreatment
while exposing problems of the system and helping
others know there is life apart from the worldly
ways of psychiatry/ology.

Although enjoyable and beneficial, nothing here is
something done to help in coping with a “mental illness”.

Be your own discoverer of yourself.
Call yourself a “counselor” if you choose.

In that position, nobody else can.
No one else will do better.

Copyright © 2019 Dee Essem/MIND MADE UP

UPDATE1: 21st January, 2020; just a few sentences improved
UPDATE2: 8th May, 2020; added a sentence’s missing word