undated, circa 2022-3 because of the reference to a certain interaction as well as my use of em dashes which i didn’t use for most of my life.
context: this was a somewhat passive-aggressive vent post set in a fictional story where a reformed demon gives a lecture to the protagonist on becoming a therapist friend; they’re both self-inserts to some extent. i wrote this when i was around sixteen or seventeen. i think i knew vaguely that being a therapist friend was insincere, but worth it to “fix” people as i’d never be able to have a true relationship anyway since [redacted].
anyway, several months later i ended up having multiple intense moments—i don’t know if you can say breakdowns because i’m not really mentally ill—by realising all of the below was inconsequential, ghosted everyone, and spent the next several months acting insane enough to one of my remaining “friends” that they finally believed i was abusive. (^^,)
plot-wise i think the demon is going to be told to kill himself (to the tune of dogleg’s “remember alderaan?”) and then he jumps in front of a magic train. which is nice and symbolic because the protagonist’s idol is also represented by trains. wow what creativity!!!!111!!!
i also add clarification in [brackets].
so you’ve decided to be a therapist friend. what are you, some aplatonic dissociative? if you’re trying this out because you want to see if your friends care about you, or because you just don’t like yourself—well, you can’t fix those issues with an unhealthy coping mechanism. so i hope you talk to your friends, or maybe find new ones.
because being a therapist is about sacrificing yourself. you aren’t “you”; you’re doing a job, where you say specific things. often every day for months on end. and it’s not healthy; you should have relationships where you feel connected to the other person. so don’t.
this sounds like hypocrisy, huh? but… being a therapist friend is about sacrificing yourself for people you won’t ever be friends with. people who might not even realise what you’ve done for them. people who will just drift away when your thankless job is done. if you think you should seek revenge on them, then this isn’t for you. but if you don’t care about it, then let’s get started.
first things first. there’s no “right” way to therapy. each person likes being treated differently. some people want to be validated. some people want logical replies. some people want you to touch them—platonically or sexually. some people want you to listen, and just stay with them. some people want you to protect them, and directly help them. some people want you to chill with them and talk about something else. sometimes, people just want some time alone. what you should do depends.
nonetheless, you can follow a certain structure. the first thing you do is reach out. ask them, “hey, how’re you doing?”. and if they vent to you about some terrible thing that’s happened, you can ask them open-ended questions about how they feel. almost like an interview. you want them to open up.
don’t get caught up in their emotion. your priority is taking care of them, and making sure they’re safe. you can use grounding techniques, helping them breath and settle down. if necessary, give them recommendations on first aid (you might want to take a class for this). they can’t do anything while having a breakdown. and sometimes they just need to let the flood of thoughts out.
and as they get all that stuff out, you can think about how to reply. like, you want to reassure them that somebody understands. so you can start off with “it sounds like this is what happened…” or “i’m sorry, you went through something awful…” et cetera. and tell them their emotions aren’t stupid, and what happened to them is bad. you might think this is unnecessary if the patient already recognises this, but the validation does help a lot.
you need to be able to read them. to know what they feel. sometimes they won’t say things directly, and sometimes they won’t say things at all. sometimes they say one thing and they mean another thing, because they can’t speak clearly through the haze of emotion—or even through a language barrier, if their first language is not your first language. (it’s sometimes useful to treat people as autistic in general [nowadays we would probably use “neurodivergent”], especially if they are actually autistic, because they might not intend the social implications of their statements.) and you don’t want to challenge them- you just want to let them explain their perspective of what happened, while keeping in mind that their perspective doesn’t say everything about what happened. and that their suspicions about the situation aren’t necessarily true, even if they know the situation better than you, because they’re also being more emotional than you.
and there’s a certain aspect of… tough love. self-harm is a thing. and it’s often not as obvious as someone saying “i cut myself”—it can be a strict diet, or sleep deprivation, or self-isolation from friends, et cetera. anything that’s self-defeating. you are only their therapist; you cannot force them into following everything you say, and even if you could, it would probably be unhealthy to. i admit that people can feel unbearable when they make jokes about self-harm, but those jokes are a coping mechanism. the self-harm is a coping mechanism.
trying to give them a wake-up call will create a lot of stress, and you have to be gentle with them. it’s hard to strike a balance between being an overbearing conservative who takes away all coping mechanisms, and being someone who encourages their delusions. it’s the healing crystal problem. sure, healing crystals are a load of butterscotch and they’re wasting their money on it. but at the same time, it’s a grounding mechanism for them. a way to explain and control how their world works. and even a hobby of collecting cool rocks.
sometimes- you have to disagree with the norm. i believe religion is nonexistent, and i think the whole transgender thing is more complicated. i don’t challenge people over it, because i understand they feel the way they do. instead, i interpret those beliefs just like i do coping beliefs—they are there for a deeper reason that needs to be sorted out. [i’m not sure if i was thinking specifically of postgenderism at the time of writing this; i’m surprised this doesn’t mention neo-pronouns.] i have a patient who believes in the spirit world, and has existential crises over whether they’re the “true” host. their alters seem to be caused because of trauma, so i try to help them have less breakdowns. and their spirit thing seems to be caused by loneliness, so i try to help them talk to people. that’s all.
and i guess it’s necessary. you can’t agree with everything they say. partially because it might not be healthy. and partially because of consistency. that you feel like a real person, even when you’re just being their therapist.
you have to understand why they’re doing this. the point of psychoanalysis is not to “call out” the patient on being stupid for making assumptions or whatever, even if it makes you look cool. (it’s a common rhetorical device.) the point is to recognise what problem they’re having, and try to help them through it.
in other words, you want to slowly deal with the root problem.
i personally try to follow a more cognitive approach, where i try to psycho-analyse people and go “it sounds like your ex marked a change in your life. the first time you interacted with romance. and they taught you a lot about more mature stuff, to the point where you feel they define you. but trauma doesn’t define you, and at the end of the day, they did hurt you. you tried your best.”
however, you might like to use a different method of therapy, perhaps because you hang out in a different corner of the internet. where people might prefer you to use a validation-based approach, and be like, “damn, that’s really rough. like, they just asked you to do more and more, and you felt all the stress was piling up on you. it isn’t your fault you snapped to your friend.”
and, as said at the start of this article, it depends. what do you like to say? what does the other person like to hear? develop your own methods that you feel work.
it’s hard to give advice on this, because the conversation just flows. you want to listen, provide validation, emphasise that this is logically alright, and tell them that they can change the situation (if that is appropriate). and maybe you want to ask them how they feel.
as you gain more knowledge and experience, you will get better at talking to people.
knowledge is, for example, a sort of intuitive sense of reasons why somebody might have a mental issue, and what common worries somebody might have after an event (even if they don’t bluntly say it). [in other words, cold reading.] it’s also knowledge in the more basic sense, of knowing how the professional psychologists diagnose and treat abnormal minds. and being aware of the controversies within psychology, and forming your own opinion on the whole anti-psychiatry thing. and having that baseline knowledge so that if somebody says, “I’m on SSRIs, I’m going to do an MRI next Tuesday, and the doctor says I should consider ECT” you know what they’re talking about without having to search Wikipedia. [sadly, I no longer remember what SSRIs are.]
experience is more about… learning about the effect your words have. if you’re too logical, you can seem confrontational (“you are objectively incorrect”). if you’re too validational [sic], you can seem like you don’t understand the nuance of the situation. et cetera. it’s not just getting better at praising people, but also getting better at… making compliments implicit in what you say, and convincing people to accept what you say. and getting better at empathy, and understanding the situation. i know people piss on literature analysis, but our words do have basic connotations.
and, well, situations have nuance. it’s hard to explain, but many situations aren’t a simple “right” or “wrong”. for example, discord drama. you don’t really… want to argue with somebody and tell them “this is my opinion”, especially when you might not know the full extent of the situation. remember that your job is to help them. acknowledge their emotions. praise them a bit. get them to calm down and move on.
for example. i know a guy who tended to vent in a server about how everybody was ignoring him. and i suppose, to some extent, they were. but eventually he left, and after some time the server owner refused to let him back in. i sort of told him, “look, you never liked that server anyway; just say he’s a bitch and let it go.” and i told the server owner (who was blaming himself), “the guy was pretty paranoid. every server’s culture is different, and his need for attention just didn’t match with the casualness of your server. there’s too many bad memories, and not letting him in was the best choice for the both of you.” [as aforesaid, i later started to interpret this approach as patronising.]
later the server owner talked to his friend, who then talked to the original guy, who promptly had another argument with the server owner. that shebang was… suboptimal. anyway, i talked to all three of them, and i got the friend to vent their frustrations to me, and it was a nasty last bump in the road. sometimes it’s not possible to have a happy ending, and the best you can do is support people going forward.
people sometimes won’t thank you. they feel too awful to thank you. and sometimes they’ll go away because you made a mistake. they’ll vent to you again and again, and it feels like you aren’t making any difference against the tidal wave of their life issues. so you have to trust yourself. trust that you’re doing the right thing. and know that every time you give them a place to talk, you are helping them. that doesn’t mean everything you do is right, but it means not everything you do is ineffectual.
on the flip side, people sometimes will become obsessed with you. they’ll say they love you. they don’t. it’s just that you’re the only person who’s treating them well right now, and maybe the first in a long time. they’re feeling strong emotions. you don’t need to argue with them right away—it would imply invalidating their emotions, anyway—but you should be careful not to… believe that the patient genuinely likes you. you are their therapist, not their friend.
but that doesn’t mean you’re cold and distant, only there to listen to their vents. you can try to cultivate a semi-friendship, by reaching out to them. this shows to the patient that somebody is thinking about them, and somebody enjoys listening to their mundane interests. always have some conversation starter in your pocket. memes, “would you rather” questions, fandom news… it depends on what they like to do. personally, i keep a folder of cat memes seperate from my folder of normal memes. [I still do that!]
always keep the focus on them. you never want to talk about what you’re going through, or what your past experiences were, or what you like—unless it’s integral to supporting some point. and if you do this well, they’ll be too preoccupied with their own problems to notice. see my other article “how to lie about your depression”. [i don’t recall where this is or if i ever wrote it; long story short, it’s basically just admitting you have a problem and providing some justification or alternative explanation for it. because people are psychologically less likely to push if they believe they’ve already found out your secret.] just say something random, true or not. even a funny story about meeting an animal. and say you’re doing alright. never say you’re doing fine, because at this point “i’m fine” is passive-aggressive for “i’m not fine”.
sometimes people will want you to talk about stuff. maybe they’ve been triggered by something, or maybe they’re just feeling lonely. choose a specialisation area, so that you seem… real, and so you have something to talk about. personally, i like talking about clash royale. this is because nobody likes clash royale, so they quickly become disinterested when i start talking about e-golem tech.
you will need a certain level of general pop culture knowledge. just so if they change their profile pic or make some reference, you can ask them about it. but you don’t need to go full-on nerd and actually watch Star Trek or whatever, especially if you don’t like it. you can just ask generic questions like, “what’s your favourite episode?” or “why do you like this?”. and chances are, they’re going to tell you all about what happened anyway. at which point you can just say, “damn, that’s funny. really fits with the whole theme of the show.” it’s useful to know a bit about literature analysis, so you can say smart things about personification or metaphor or whatever.
you will need to memorise some things about people, like their timezone (so that if they’re talking to you at 3am and say they’re doing fine, you can guess there’s something wrong.) feel free to keep a document of your patients. this can range from simple stuff, like writing their birthday, timezone and age in the discord notes thing. to more complex stuff, like making a full document of the history of their life and relationships, and what they like to talk about.
when you go online, that means you’re free. even if you’re do-not-disturb, some people are always on DnD [implying that to some people, DnD just means muted pings and doesn’t actually mean DnD so they’ll contact you anyway] and in any case somebody might be feeling shitty enough to contact you. you sort of have to always be on call. ready to switch on “therapist mode” as soon as they send you a message. and if you do it well, they won’t see your effort—they’ll assume that you just happen to be free, and they will have no qualms about talking to you. again, trust in yourself, and trust you’re doing the right thing.
you may find it hard, at first. but soon it’ll be a mere annoyance. you’ll be constantly checking your phone, in case somebody has pinged you. you won’t be able to start anything, because you know somebody’s going to break your focus—because you know you have to turn on therapist mode for the next thirty minutes. → protagonist asking demon why it’s so hard, and demon giving her a free pass out of school.
know the limits of what you can do. when you act as a therapist, you- aren’t portraying yourself as a friend, or even as a human being. because you want to make them feel comfortable with talking to you about anything. you want them to feel free to talk to you, even when they believe all they do is hurt their friends. but this also means you cannot replace their friends. you cannot substitute for genuine social interaction. and if they aren’t talking to people, you need to encourage them to talk to people.
you cannot do everything. for example, if somebody feels disconnected from their romantic partner, you could mediate between the two—but it’d be massively more efficient to encourage them to talk to each other. moreover, this makes the person learn about how to discuss serious topics, and puts them in a position of power where they feel they can change things.
it’s not healthy for the patient to be so reliant on you, even if you could be there 24/7 for them. so try to teach them to be less reliant on you. like, even if irl issues make you go offline for a bit, ensure that they won’t collapse. for example, if a patient’s homework software requires them to answer a math question every ten minutes (hello, IXL) show them how to set up a macro with the selenium IDE.
but you don’t need to obsess over what you say. rather, you want make an environment where they can ask you for clarification. if you say something wrong, you can apologise and say you misphrased it, so they feel you’re owning up—regardless of how you thought they should’ve read it. and if you don’t understand their request, you can ask them for clarification. sometimes, people don’t mean much by messages, and they’ll forget about whatever you reply the next day. [this is kinda why i’m never really sure about whether i’m really nice or just moderating my speech, because neurotypicals tend to say this is good practice.]
similarly, remind them they don’t need to apologise. even if they’ve slighted you. because you want them to feel you understand them, and how their life experiences have shaped what they say. you want them to feel you’re stable, and can handle whatever they want to say. again, trust that you’re doing the right thing—you aren’t a person, you’re a tool that provides for them, so you can’t be physically insulted.
finally, know your own limits. you cannot be there for them 24/7, because you are physically and mentally human. being a therapist stresses you out. take care of yourself—eat well, get sleep, et cetera. because if you don’t, then you’ll provide worse therapy, or even snap at them. that can undo a lot of the patient’s progress. moreover, if you don’t regard stuff like healthy sleeping patterns as “normal”, then you might not immediately recognise warning signs.
…you know, it’s not so simple as listening to people vent. sometimes they will lie to your face—they will gaslight you, and talk in bad faith, and insult you, and pressure you into doing stuff, and even strike you. because they believe you deserve it. so i guess i want you to think whether you’re doing this. if you can do it, and you want to do it, then sure. but if you can’t do this, then you don’t need to. you aren’t a coward for doing so.
i- i’m strong. i can’t do all that flashy stuff that VK does. but it means people can’t intimidate me. they can’t really kill me, or trap me. they can’t take my money, because i have no money. they can’t threaten my family, because i don’t have family. i just talk to people. and i like to think when i’m nice to people, they’re nice to others. [this is a specific reference to the lecturer’s demon powers and how most people literally can’t harm him. maybe you could read it as a metaphor for online convos, idk.]
tone indicators? they can be useful. but i try not to use them, because if it’s not obvious from my words alone, there might be a way to word things better. i also think not using tone indicators requires more trust from the patient—because they’re reading your words instead of a universal tone indicator—and thus means words carry a greater impact. [I still maintain this.]
…me? i’m doing alright, thanks. i use the exact same word every time, and nobody notices. maybe because i never say “i’m fine”. so don’t worry. [hence the passive-aggressiveness i claimed earlier. i think people did notice at least subconsciously and just didn’t want to pry.]
thanks for listening. good luck- and i hope this doesn’t destroy you. :)