Why Therapy Isn't Working + What We Need To Do Instead
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Why are more people in therapy yet struggling with mental health?
What they found is truly shocking. Self-reflection had no significant relationship to positive mental health. It had no significant relationship to higher satisfaction or positive wellbeing. What they did find was self-reflection had a significant relationship with depression and anxiety. And so what does that tell us? That being so focused inwards, where I think therapy culture often pulls us, actually makes us depressed and anxious. We have to get outside of ourselves. How far should we take that? Like, was ignorance fully bliss? Should we be like, la, la, la, I don't want to think about my childhood.
What is the nocebo effect and how does it impact mental health?
If you dig deeper into this line of research, what you'll find is that a lot of us are just self-reflecting wrong. Welcome to the Liz Moody Podcast, where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Maytel, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. The reason that I wanted to have you here today is because one in five U.S. adults receive some kind of mental health care, like therapy. But one in three U.S. adults now report symptoms of anxiety or depression, which is roughly three times as many people as in 2019. I feel like that number feels low to me. If more of us are in therapy than ever, why are so many of us anxious and depressed?
You are one of the top therapists in the country. So I wanted to have you on here to ask you directly, is therapy even working? I think this is the most important question right now. I think every single person in the field of psychology that's a therapist out there should be asking this question. And I call this idea the fact that it's not that just more people are in therapy than ever. It's that therapy culture has exploded and our mental health doesn't seem to be getting better. It actually seems to be getting worse. So I call this idea the therapy paradox. I think the way for us to make sense of it is to kind of look at two different layers.
How can you tell if your therapy is actually working?
So the first layer is what are the academics? What are the researchers? What are the people in the field of psychology that are looking at the literature, that are looking at the data, what are they finding? And layer two is looking at the deeper, more invisible forces at play. If we look at layer one, what are the academics finding? What are the researchers finding? And what they're finding is that as therapeutic diagnoses have crept into the most mild and mundane corners of our lives, As we've started labeling our ordinary day-to-day experiences as trauma, as ADHD, as depression, as anxiety, as autism, we have accidentally created something called a nocebo effect. Most people have heard of the placebo, right?
If you take a sugar pill and you think it's going to cure you, it does because the power of belief is absolutely remarkable. The nocebo effect is like the same thing, but the opposite. So with therapy, as more and more of us are identifying all these mild experiences in our lives as therapeutic symptoms, we're actually causing ourselves to have more therapeutic symptoms. So for example, if you had a horrible experience with your boss at work, And you go on and start identifying that as a work trauma. And you sort of start convincing yourself, I was traumatized at work. What the research is finding is that can literally lead you to have more trauma symptoms. So there was like a really interesting study done a few years ago with this researcher at Harvard.
And he took two groups of students. And for group A, he had them read all these materials about trauma. And the material said that
What signs indicate that self-reflection may be harmful?
Okay, trauma is this really rare thing. It only happens if you go to war or it happens if you have some horrific experience within a natural disaster. Like it's super rare. It doesn't ordinarily happen. The second group was asked to read a bunch of materials that had them understand trauma is this thing that can happen all the time. It happens to everyone. It's ordinary. It can happen in breakups.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why are more people in therapy yet struggling with mental health?
0:00–0:34
2
What is the nocebo effect and how does it impact mental health?
0:34–1:57
3
How can you tell if your therapy is actually working?
1:57–3:29
4
What signs indicate that self-reflection may be harmful?
3:29–4:41
5
How does attachment style affect our relationships?
4:41–6:27
6
What is 'McVulnerability' and why is it concerning?
6:27–7:54
7
What is an effective way to improve mental health in two weeks?
7:54–9:25
8
How can group therapy be a beneficial alternative to individual therapy?
9:25–1:40:14
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Liz Moody Podcast
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