Are We Too Quick To Promote Professional Therapy?

Meandering thoughts on a recent Better Help video advertising

This is a popular Ad, I’ve seen it a number of times at this point, and I think the actor in it is terrifically relatable, has a great face for the camera, and acts the part well. But there’s an undertone that bothers me every time I see it and I wanted to talk a little bit about it. I’m going to take it line-by-line and, before I do, this will be meandering, but I’d love to know your thoughts.

“I want a job that I don’t hate.”

Whose choice is this? When we hate something, is it some phantom menace that has caused us to hate the thing or have we decided to hate it? We’ve decided to hate it, of course. We’ve decided, inside, that this job is something worthy of being hated — which is such a strange thing to say out loud.

I get it, of course. I have had many, many jobs that I’ve “hated” — who among us hasn’t? But why did I hate them? Because I wasn’t good at them? Because it wasn’t the job I wanted? Because it wasn’t my passion? Because I didn’t feel “called” to do it?

What do those things have to do with a job? Isn’t the purpose of a job to serve your cosmopolis? To play your social role well? To feed yourself and your family? To contribute to the greater good by being a tax-payer? If there were a pyramid of “job requirements”, for us, as individuals, wouldn’t “being passionate about my job” be at the very top the way that ice cream and candy bars are atop the Food Pyramid?

And to this you might say, “No! It should be at the base! Because loving your job is fundamental to your efficacy at the job!”

Ouch. That’s quite a thing to say, isn’t it? That your personal contentment is more important than the other things the job enables for everyone else who isn’t you? Doesn’t this seem a little backwards? Shouldn’t we want to serve more than we should want to be served? We feel this way about other things, don’t we?

I’d be hard pressed (I hope) to find a parent who valued their own desire to buy a sports car over their desire to see their child flourish in their education. Could you imagine telling your kid they couldn’t be part of band because you needed to save money for a sport car you really wanted (but didn’t need)?

“But that’s our family! That’s different.”

I don’t know how much different it is. You have a responsibility to your child, and you have one to society as well. Is it particularly virtuous to prioritize liking your job over serving your cosmopolis and your family?

Maybe you hate your job because you’ve been told what a job should mean to you, and how it benefits you, instead of what it means to everyone else and how it benefits the whole?

“I want to do something that matters.”

My dear friend! What could matter more than packing boxes of imported produce at the docks so that thousands of people get their nourishment at their local grocery store? What is this mattering you’re so concerned with.

Do you mean you want it to matter on your terms? Do you mean that in order to feel like something matters, you have to view its mattering as mattering at all?

Do you push paper for some jerk in a corporate job? Is it boring? I would believe you that it was! But what are you doing? Approving insurance claims? Wow! That’s a great job! You’re in a position to fight for insurance claim approvals that directly effect someone’s life and health? How could that not matter?

Or, maybe you’re a police officer. Maybe you feel like your career choice isn’t what you thought it would be, you feel that you’re one of the few good ones and there’s corruption all around you and nothing you do matters. Are you insane? Have you lost your mind? You’re the hero of the story! The one good guy in a den of bad guys, in the position to save a life or expose something terrible! And if you’re gone, what’s left? Will you leave that to go work at a waterpark because you love slides and sunshine?

Perhaps what you need is perspective and not a new job.

“I feel like I want someone to tell me exactly what to do.”

You want to do something that matters, you want to not hate your job, but, at the same time, you want to become a slave to another’s orders? That’s madness! Anyone who wanted to become a passionate agent of change could not, at the same time, desire to be a soldier simply following orders, these are not compatible wants!

Perhaps you are simply afraid of what will happen if you don’t, or do, do this or that? Perhaps you want someone else to be responsible for your choices? What better way to do that than to give up your ability to choose and gift it to someone else?

But do you really want that? Do you want to give up your agency? Your choice?

“I want to stop feeling like if I take one more step…”

It sounds as if you feel there are ways of knowing the future. There aren’t. You don’t know where your choices will lead, no one does, and if you took no risks, you’d never succeed. You’d also never fail, that’s true, but never failing is even worse than never succeeding! If you get it right on the first try, you see, you already knew the answer. If you fail, you’ve learned something. Don’t you want to learn things? Don’t you want to learn what it feels like to be terribly mistaken, so that you can rise from ashes of ignorance and succeed next time? Don’t you want to say, someday, something like, “Oh I was terribly wrong. It cost me dearly. But, not too long afterwards, that lesson provided an opportunity, and then I succeeded where no one else thought I could!”

What do you want? An easy life, or a character that enables you to successfully navigate a challenging one? Which is more valuable to you, really?

Of course I understand this is an ad promoting therapy…

I’m a fan of therapy — hard to be a Stoic and not be — but this ad is more concerned with convincing you of your need for a therapist than it is with providing any answers; which is of course true because it is an advertisement, not a public service announcement. The thing that really bothers me, however, is that these sorts of concerns are so normalized as “mental health issues” that they can be leveraged in an advertisement by a for-profit corporation.

The concern is, I suppose, that therapists aren’t free. Therapists cost money. Money isn’t easy to come by (I probably don’t need to tell you), and with the bar for “needing a therapist” being set this low (and reinforced by ads like this one), we’re setting up and encouraging a mental health crisis. Namely: everyone thinks they need a therapist to navigate very basic challenges — a reality we are already living because philosophy and virtue ethics aren’t taught as part of any standard K-12 curriculum in the United States.

So what does our man in the ad really need? Therapy, or a future that incorporates philosophy and virtue ethics in the education of our children?

I guess therapy is easier than changing the world but, going back to what I said earlier, since when easy the best option?