The other side of “we need free therapy” is “we need a better system for training and vetting therapists to make sure they can actually do their jobs well” because lots of therapists are straight up unqualified and abusive.
Just to be clear yes we still need free therapy but that alone won’t solve everything
But yeah like also specialties exist for a reason and matching a talk therapist with someone who has OCD, etc can be really harmful
I also just want to add that I’m not anti-therapy. In fact, I’m incredibly pro therapy. But bad therapists/counselors are incredibly easy to come by and do so much harm to people already struggling
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So many people don’t realize that they have OCD because actual obsessive compulsive disorder is rarely talked about openly. So here are the basics: 🧵(thread)
I think that a lot of people forget that OCD is a mental illness, emphasis on the MENTAL. When it’s portrayed on TV, it’s always shown as a very behavioral disorder. And while it’s true that overt behavioral compulsions are part of OCD, they don’t begin to tell the whole story
OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder. That’s obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. The OCD cycle is the cycle of obsessions that lead to compulsions that lead to more obsessions that lead to more compulsions etc etc etc.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that they think they have OCD but they don’t do any compulsions, so here are some common OCD compulsions that are easy to miss: 🧵
- self reassurance (telling yourself “it’s gonna be okay” or trying to talk yourself out of your intrusive thoughts)
- asking for reassurance (asking your family/friends if they think your fears are reasonable. Ex: do you think I’m a bad person? Do you think I washed my hands well enough? Do I look sick? etc)
- replaying memories (Ex: if you think something you did makes you a bad person, replaying the event to reassure yourself that it wasn’t that bad)
- excessive apologizing. This one is often used to seek reassurance that you did nothing wrong.
Thread about intrusive thoughts, by someone who has intrusive thoughts:
I’ve seen people on here say they’d end friendships over someone’s intrusive thoughts. As someone who’s had some disturbing ones, I want to address that. Intrusive thoughts don’t make me a bad person.🧵
I think one of the biggest problems is that we don’t talk enough about intrusive thoughts. People don’t understand them. They’re not purposefully being insensitive, they just genuinely don’t understand the nature of intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are INTRUSIVE.
That means you can’t control them. They’re NOT PLEASANT. No one wants to have these thoughts running through their heads at inconvenient times. No one is having disturbing intrusive thoughts because they’re in the mood to be disturbed.
“You are in control of your thoughts” is an incredibly invalidating thing to say to mentally ill people who literally suffer because they CAN’T control their thoughts
Literally NO ONE can completely control their thoughts. Tell someone not to think of a blue elephant and guess what they’ll do. Thoughts are automatic. And mentally ill people feel that on another level
Also as someone with OCD... what do y’all think “intrusive thoughts” are?