On Modern Psychology

I’ve been going round and round with myself about this for several weeks now. I have even brought in a few friends to help me try to figure this out. I don’t feel like psychology has done the world justice. It’s not only that, but I feel like it could do us justice. I see people like Jordan Peterson, or Dr. K, who have answers to questions, but feel like they’re in the minority. I want more “if you do this, you get that,” and these people make me feel like such a thing is possible. I once heard someone complain that psychologists weren’t treated enough like other medical professionals. Well, if a doctor has a patient who has a stomach ache, he tells them to take pepto bismol and to cut back on the sugar. When a psychologist has a patient with a broken heart, he tells them there is no cure, but that he needs to add “therapy” to his list of bills for the rest of his life. I am coming to the conclusion that many problems have solutions and that psychologists are hiding them from the public for long-term gain.

I’ll admit, my arguments may sound weak because I have very little experience with therapists in general. I had a counselor in college and although she was helpful at times, I often left sessions questioning why this was worth the commitment. I saw the good it was doing for me, but I started to feel like the same results could, more or less, be achieved with a pen, paper, and a few good prompts. And yet, such prompts were nearly nowhere to be found. Every time I looked, I just got walls of text about how dealing with the issues I was facing is more complicated than that, and that I should seek professional help. But all professional help seemed set up to do was listen as you figured it all out on your own. The whole thing started to feel like a scam, a scam I was trying to circumvent because I couldn’t afford it in the first place! Even the more “affordable” options cost far more than I could cough up out of pocket, so I kept searching far and wide for solutions. If my doctor could tell me what to do about a stomach ache or warts, a concrete solution had to be out there. It was just a matter of time before I found it. 

And I did. At first, it was a snippet here and a nugget over there, but then I discovered a few people regularly had answers for me! People had answers! And guess what else? I started to see improvements! Specifically, I found improvements that many other sources told me I would never find! Although I found my healing, I became enraged with the false saviors, those devious devils that offered me comforting defeat and snuggling surrender. Because of this experience, supplemented by interactions with many that support the current mental health movement, I sneer at how much the culture has taken psychology and warped it to their selfish gain. I feel the hot bile when someone utters one of the trending phrases like “self-care,” (I really hate that one,) or someone’s “social anxiety.” They’re making a problem that “can’t” be solved so that they can generate treatments without a cure in sight.

I feel like many of the people I have interacted with have been washy, insisting that everyone’s way is right to them, and how there’s truly “no right answer.” It sickens me! If someone comes to you in pain, you don’t tell them that they’re doing alright. NO!They are there because they are begging you to fix them! To make them better! They don’t need to be comforted, they need to be improved, and just like a doctor can call you out for a bad diet, a psychologist should tell someone their lack of sleep is eating them alive! There’s a fact-of-the-matter about these things. I see many trying to deny this fact, and it disheartens me. And if it were the entire field that simply is that way, I could understand, but when I discovered people in the field that spoke to me in my own language, saying “do this, and you will get that,” it made me realize that the field of psychology is just the smart kid who never lived up to his full potential. 

For example, I found a Dr. K video on journaling, where he lays out his set of recommendations for how to go about it, and the results you can expect to find. I found Jordan Peterson giving me ways to help cure past wounds, and they started healing! But the amount of reading and youtube-watching I did to get there was discouraging. First of all, I could barely find material on some of the areas of interest, like high-stress upbringings, broken homes, and so on. And when I did, the actual help I found was almost none. There were a few books that I put down half-way through, saying “If I had paid full-price for this, I would have been outraged.” Psychology isn’t a lost field, but from where I sit, it feels like a lot of crap to sort through to find what you’re looking for, and it feels like more bad than good right now.

But there’s redemption in this story: this experience has shaped the foundations of how I write for you. One thing that I have declared absolutely essential to the way I write is that there has to be a clear, concrete takeaway. You can hold me to that! If you finish a post and aren’t sure exactly what to do with it, I hereby promise you can come to me and let me know, and we will work on finding something together. Healing and improvement require action, and I always want that action to be part of the equation. I always want to feel like my posts have action steps! Maybe I should bullet-point my action steps at the bottom of my posts from now on! Maybe we’ll give that a try! But more than anything, my prayer is always that you are able to benefit from my posts beyond just making you “feel nice.” I want you to rise! I want these to feel like a call to arms! I don’t want to nurture complacency, I want to nurture real, genuine CHANGE! I want the world to be different because I set foot in it. I want to see your life get better because of the insights given to me. That’s the goal of Sir Endar’s keep. 

So, let’s give this a shot. Ask yourself: what about this post do you agree and disagree with? Find yourself a medium to get some of your own thoughts out of your head. Try writing, vlogging, blogging, get creative with it! Make it your own! Tamper with every detail of the process until you’re completely satisfied with it. Then, begin sharing your own thoughts with the world, and let me know what you find, because I would definitely be curious to know where your journey leads you. I pray for your wellbeing and wherever this journey takes you. I pray for you, dear reader, wherever you go.

Until next time

Cheers!