Is this where psychobabble starts creeping in?
What I found interesting in something like this is not just the joke of it, though there is something darkly funny about people almost parodying therapy and still ending up sounding uncomfortably close to the real thing. What unsettles me more is how little distance there sometimes is between satire and the actual world of therapy. When you can make up a model, dress it in a bit of confidence, add some goal setting, psychoeducation, and a few persuasive sounding claims, and it still feels believable, that says something. Not always something good.
It says, to me at least, that therapy can be far too open to packaging. Too caught up in presentation. Too easily influenced by people who know how to sound convincing. And once that happens, it becomes harder for ordinary people to tell the difference between something thoughtful and something simply well marketed.
That is where my mind tends to go with this sort of thing. Not just, look at the absurdity of it, but how has the profession made this absurdity so plausible? How have we ended up in a place where a new angle, a fresh label, or a slightly polished bit of language can create the feeling of authority before anything solid has really been shown? That is not a small problem. That is a profession-level problem.
And I do not think it stops with made-up models or exaggerated claims. You see the same thing in the way some therapists lean on neuroscience to make what they do sound more scientific than it really is. A few references to the brain, the nervous system, the amygdala, or some old reptilian brain language, and suddenly ordinary human conversation is made to sound like a technical intervention. But two people talking in therapy do not become more truthful or more effective just because someone throws in a few bits of brain language.
To me, this is where psychobabble starts creeping in. Not always because people mean harm, but because the field seems far too willing to borrow the appearance of science when what is really happening is still one human being talking to another. That does not make therapy worthless. Far from it. Talking can matter deeply. Relationship can matter deeply. Understanding can matter deeply. But why not just say that? Why the need to dress it all up in language that sounds more medical, more advanced, more impressive than it really is?
I think too many therapists, and too many people around therapy, are trying to stand out. They want a niche, a branded way of working, a special insight, something that makes them look different from the person down the road. And I understand the temptation. The field is crowded. People want to be noticed. But once that hunger to be seen gets mixed up with vulnerable people looking for help, things can go wrong very quickly. What starts as self-promotion can end up being dressed up as care.
Sometimes I wonder whether a lot of this modern therapy language says more about the therapist’s need to sound important than it does about the client’s actual experience. A phrase catches on, people repeat it, training courses build around it, and before long it starts sounding established simply because everyone is saying it. But repetition is not proof. Popularity is not evidence. And in therapy of all places, I think we should be especially careful about turning human suffering into a marketplace of clever phrases.
For me, the more useful question is not whether someone can speak the latest therapy language, or borrow enough neuroscience to sound authoritative. It is whether they can think clearly, stay grounded, and help a person make sense of what has happened to them without covering it in jargon. Real pain does not need decorating. It needs honesty, thought, and enough humility to admit when something is still uncertain.
So yes, there is humour in it. There is something almost comic about creating a new therapy model and watching it begin to mirror the very nonsense it may have been trying to expose. But there is something sad in that as well. Because it reminds us how easily therapy can drift from helping people into selling itself.
If a made-up or half-mocking version of therapy feels believable, then the profession needs to ask itself why. And not defensively either. Honestly.
Source material
Carrie and Ben create their own model of therapy. Goal setting! Psychoeducation! Exploitation and worrisome sales tactics! What does it say about psychotherapy when our progressively cynical efforts to develop a modality end up mirroring some of the norms in our field? This episode is evidence-based and supported by neuroscience. Thank you for listening. To support the show and receive access to regular bonus episodes, check out the Very Bad Therapy Patreon community. Introduction: 0:00 – 5:13 Part One: 5:13 – 1:08:54 Part Two: 1:08:54 – 1:11:44 Very Bad Therapy: Website / Facebook / Bookshelf / Tell Us Your Story Show Notes: Mental health clinical exams’ evident adherence to industry standards for testing How to Spot Hype in the Field of Psychotherapy The efficacy of non-directive supportive therapy for adult depression: a meta-analysis Insight Exchange: Guide to Selecting a…
Source: Very Bad Therapy
