Therapy: a second rate substitute for a real friend.

uh yeah so on this we profoundly
disagree in in a hypothetical scenario let's say you had a lot of money and money wasn't an issue and you were able to spend some time you know going through the therapists website find you know pick one out find somebody with credentials you respect maybe have some consultations find somebody you click with do you would you see value in that like what is the value of a therapist to you if you could bypass all of those issues you've mentioned that do seem surmountable potentially if you just did you know it's it's a lot like prostitution right you're paying someone to pretend to be your friend you're paying someone to pretend to care and they don't care the legitimacy you ascribe to the role of the therapist is probably reciprocal with what you see is the legitimate role of a friend if your idea of a friend is just someone who will go out and get drunk with you i'm not saying this to insult you but like you know i used to live in scotland you know i've lived in cultures where really the idea of a friend is someone who watches sports with you someone who drinks alcohol with you like this is very specific it's very gender specific also with women it's different from men but you know if that's your idea of a friend and then there's this huge gap in your life to talk about anything serious and get meaningful advice and maybe to have someone tell you that you got to quit drinking like maybe it is something as simple as that but still as difficult to do as that um those people will probably be very willing to ascribe legitimacy to the role of other therapists yeah i mean you've heard my reckless optimism about social media in many ways it's it's very easy to talk about you used this phrase last time learning the lessons of history learning from your own mistakes what video technology gives you is the opportunity to really see your mistakes really see what you said and i think most people find that very difficult to do i think most people you know they some people would find it difficult to admit themselves how angry they got about something or you know like little things that but if you can if you record that conversation then you watch it afterwards you say look you see at this point i was talking about this issue but in your reply you were talking about something totally irrelevant and even if it's little things like that yeah i really do i really do believe that's much more useful than our current uh paradigm of uh of formal you know therapy but you mentioned that if i i'm paraphrasing but my understanding was that you found talking about sort of personal things in your life to have a more of a positive impact on you than if you were to say go to a therapist and talk about your issues there and you gave a couple anecdotal examples of experiences you had with therapists that didn't go well where there was different situations stuff so i kind of wanted you to elaborate on that because it's it you brought it up really quickly but i feel like it's kind of a big topic great topic you know uh recently i filmed some videos with my girlfriend that we didn't upload we filmed it just to watch it back ourselves and you know just watching back a conversation like that afterwards it's like you know she means well but i can say things like you see here during this part of the conversation you're blaming me and when i point it out to you you say oh yeah no i know i don't mean to blame you but then five minutes later you're still blaming me you know you can just being able to watch back what it is you're saying at the government just be able to do that uh you know a therapist can never do that for you and even if you have a therapist sitting there and so like let's say it's a husband a wife and a therapist and the husband complains hey stop it you're blaming me and even if the therapist agrees like yeah you were blaming him you know the wife oh yeah sorry i didn't mean to and then later on she starts blaming the husband she won't believe it the therapist would look that's twice you've gone back to blaming him even though you said it's not his fault like it's really simple things like that wouldn't the presumed advantage be of there being like a cup we're gonna stick with couples therapy isn't it kind of like hard to get an objective viewpoint if if a couple is having issues how are the two of them expected to if they're not already resolving it wouldn't kind of the purpose of a therapist be to provide an objective third party perspective and although i understand you haven't a story where this person was not doing great or the the person you were getting therapy with wasn't being totally honest about it which through uh created problems but saying that those specific issues weren't there wouldn't it generally be potentially do you not do not see any value in having like a third party come in with a sort of not any sort of bias towards either of you theoretically and the great news is you can combine the two i mean if you've got the money we could have a therapist come in and sit down in front of the video camera i could do a youtube video with their you know it doesn't it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive you can record video and watch the video afterwards but i think for many many people it's it's just very difficult to accept no you really said that no that's that is really what you meant like it's very easy to make an excuse oh well yeah but i didn't mean that what i meant to say was this yeah but this is what you said and this is what you meant and this is how you feel look at the video you can see that's how you feel that's very powerful and very meaningful can you do that you know with two people talking to each other plus a therapist absolutely and there are now websites doing it basically via skype via video conference where you have a therapist as a third party present but you're also sitting there on on camera so the these methods can be combined however the the word you used again and again was objective i think right the two of your subjective points of view but what we're after here is really a kind of inter-subjective perspective right and the therapist is gonna have his or her own um subjective perspective that i may not be interested in i may not respect uh one of the therapists i talked to with my with my ex-wife who was talking to lawyers today about my divorce it's still ongoing you know the therapist was really impressed with me intellectually he was like oh wow so you know how did you decide to study cambodia i know what what kind of philosophy did you study in university and like they're good questions like i don't mind but it's completely irrelevant to the problems in the marriage right now of course you could have the opposite i haven't had this kind of therapist there are plenty of therapists who are like traditional christians and you know they look at that in a totally different way you know especially in family counseling family values and they're like well they they come from the church and they grew up playing the guitar in the church basement and then they got their university degree in counseling or whatever you know and you know they're going to sit there and be like what why why did you why did you go to cambodia what doesn't matter you know i mean you know and and again that's a subjective perspective i'm not interested at all i uh so this is partly in the interest of honesty and partly because it is relevant to this conversation i tried to pay for one of those online counseling services so in theory that's that's a therapist um and when you sign up you fill out a form for what kind of person you're looking for and a lot of things are about whether you're gay or straight whether you want a therapist who's gay or straight like fair enough i don't care uh so you kind of go through this form and then they tell you who they've recommended for you who's who's available to your therapist and then you either accept or walk away and i remember the person they recommended just had a degree in um uh social work they were a social worker they didn't have another thing you know so this also but it brings this other person what you know i've many videos talking about this it's very easy for people to say to you get professional help what professional help is there there may be none or it may be of such a low quality or someone with an education that's just irrelevant to your problems you know so you know if there is no professional help then we get the much richer question of what can you do for yourself and i would absolutely say recording a conversation like again you don't have to upload it to youtube you don't have to upload anywhere you can record a conversation on a computer and just sit and watch it afterwards yourselves and really sit there and analyze what's going on and what your problems are and i think that can be much much more productive than uh than seeing a therapist well interesting because a lot of therapists will recommend journaling and it's almost like a very modern technical technological version of journaling in a way right but okay if you were honest enough to really note this stuff down in your journal you wouldn't need the therapy to begin like it's i mean it's so hard to admit to yourself okay let's let's talk about trisha paytas for one second as an example because it's on video i mean every minute of his lives on video i saw trisha paytas get furious at ethan h3h3 when he said correctly that she was not ready to get pregnant and have a baby because she ate an unhealthy diet she was incapable of having a disciplined diet during the pregnancy now it is an offensive thing to say in trisha paytas case it's also completely true and you could see just how hurt she was by that just how scorned and furious and she's someone she has a long track record of just completely freaking out when people mention her food or diet or obesity she is a very she's a hair trigger temper for that okay do you think trisha paytas could have if that were not on videotape if there were no videotape evidence do you think she really could go home and write a journal and be like you know today somebody said something to me that was completely factually correct completely well-intentioned saying that if i want to have a baby i got to get my head together and and eat a disciplined healthy diet and i'm not and i freaked out and i completely lost my tampon real quick of course she can't of course she can't write that in her journal she also can't say that to her therapist so the level of detachment and self-knowledge and introspection you have to have i think exactly what you want to address is captured by the video camera and is never captured um never captured in a written journal and it's very unlikely to be presented honestly to uh to a therapist or a psychiatrist okay so initially when i heard you talk about this my uh my understanding was almost like you would dismiss therapy altogether um so let me now it sounds like that's not the case so let me ask you this in a hypothetical scenario where let's say you for whatever reason whatever reason you were initially you went to that app let's say instead of going to the app let's say you had a lot of money and money wasn't an issue and you were able to spend some time you know going through the therapists website find you know pick one out find somebody with credentials you respect maybe have some consultations find somebody you click with do you would you see value in that like what is the value of a therapist to you if you could bypass all of those issues you've mentioned that do seem surmountable potentially if you just did you know it's it's a lot like prostitution right you're paying someone to pretend to be your friend you're paying someone to pretend to care and they don't care keeping it all the way real i mean but fair enough if that's your perspective but i don't know i'm going to push back in that a little bit because my understanding is that that's the idea is your friend shouldn't be doing that for you because you know let's say i have a problem let's say uh someone died and i need somebody to talk to about it my friend's not equipped so i could do that maybe they could help me but maybe they'll say something that makes it even worse whereas a therapist they've been trained yes they're kind of filling in this spot of a person you need but i feel like to compare them to a friend would suggest that a friend should be playing that role of a therapist normally which i disagree with okay so so you know me pretty well now you know if if you were upset and you had a death in your family you had some kind of unexpected thing i think you could talk to me and and my friends do and i i think i'm exactly the kind of friend people go to for help that way and it's basically been the case all my life and people expect me to be reliable and sober and intelligent and detached and to really tell them something honest and useful i mean like a therapist in theory your therapist is supposed to be willing to tell you things you don't want to hear in reality they don't in reality they're flattering because they want you to come back and keep paying this money this experience means there are different kinds of bias that creep in with with uh with therapists but i mean that that kind of role you're talking about um another comparison would be to a grandparent you know can you go to your grandparent and ask this an idealized perfect right like maybe not the actual grandfather grandmother you have it would be nice to imagine you could go to a grandparent and talk about some of these problems and really get advice that's meaningful for you um i i think it's fair to say i've played the role of a grandparent for some of my friends maybe for all of them you know and i'm not i'm not uncomfortable with that so i think you're correct in pointing out there's a kind of reciprocal relationship between these things like the legitimacy you ascribe to the role of the therapist is probably reciprocal with what you see as the legitimate role of a friend if your idea of a friend is just someone who will go out and get drunk with you i'm not saying this to insult you but like you know i used to live in scotland you know i've lived in cultures where really the idea of a friend is someone who watches sports with you someone who drinks alcohol with you like this is very specific it's very gender specific also with women it's different for men but you know if that's your idea of a friend and then there's this huge gap in your life to talk about anything serious and get meaningful advice and maybe to have someone tell you that you gotta quit drinking like maybe it is something as simple as that but still as difficult to do as that those people will probably be very willing to ascribe uh legitimacy to the role of a therapist but for me i'm i'm it's the other way around i do see that kind of responsibility it's something you have to look to your friends for if you have a great family maybe your relatives i don't i have a terrible dysfunctional family so no i looked to that i looked at my friends for that and my friends looked to me for that and i think that's very positive so what about like okay this is interesting because i have a you know i'm open to your perspective on this but i see it very differently whereas like for me both sides of this so the idea of me presenting my issues to a friend the reason why i wouldn't do that is maybe i just i mean maybe there's some magical friend that i've never experienced but to me i would see that as a burden i would see that as something they're not equipped to deal with i would also potentially i would i've tried that before in my past and it's like because they're not a trained therapist and don't know what to say they actually say stuff to me that makes me feel more isolated it's like oh you don't understand my problem even my friend doesn't get me oh this is completely backfired and then on the flip side people these scenarios where people have come to me for this type of advice maybe i've attempted more recent because of a bunch of failed attempts where i realized like i don't know what i'm doing i don't want the responsibility of giving you advice and finding out that it actually damaged you and stuff i basically created this sort of like zero tolerance policy on being sort of in this therapist role for a person and uh what you were saying was sort of this idea that you can't have deep conversations or but that's what i'm talking about like deep conversations absolutely talking about important things in your life with your friends absolutely but getting to that point of these are the problems in my childhood that i want to kind of figure out how is this applying like therapist stuff i feel like you're really walking onto a minefield to engage with that in a non-professional context with some someone who you have a relationship with or even a stranger do you not see those things uh yeah so on this we profoundly disagree um you know who who else would know that i mean i mean this is part of the definition of a friend and then we have another kind of reciprocal question which is what what do you think the professional expertise is that these people have gained that make them capable of doing something helpful or avoiding doing harm by listening to you talk about your your childhood trauma can talking to a therapist help you my perspective is that there are a lot of people who have no friends there are a lot of people like me also who you know don't have a grandparent they can turn to for this stuff so certainly it is quite possible a therapist will be better than nothing that a therapist will be better than than nobody um it's also possible that talking to a prostitute is going to be better than nothing and nobody and i you know i say that with a human heart there are people who lead really terrible isolated lives and they have nobody to talk to and nobody who cares and often enough you know they end up having some kind of meaningful relationship with a prostitute who knows them well and and cares and talks to them about these problems of the way i'm not i'm not stereotyping i'm not dismissing anything um but no i don't start from the scientistic assumption you know that that there is a true treatment that there is a viable valid treatment and that you would be depriving yourself of it by talking to your friends