“Therapy is for crazy people.”
I was eating dinner with a guy I had been dating when he dropped this bomb casually over scallops. We had been talking about someone we knew who had just revealed that she was seeing a psychiatrist.
Little did he know, I had just started going on my own.
I had been experiencing extensive amounts of stress and felt like I wasn’t coping with it well. I was anxious all the time about everything: my friendships, the progression of this relationship, my success at work, being away from my family in a big city.I stayed silent and used the moment to take a sip of wine instead.
Unsurprisingly, things didn’t work out with the therapy shamer. However, his words had a ripple effect. I found myself experiencing a sense of shame the moment I stepped into my therapist’s lobby. I took my date’s general (and inaccurate) remark about therapy and internalized it.
I’m not alone: Research shows that mental health stigma ― both self-inflicted and perpetuated by others ― often prevents people from seeking help when they’re experiencing problems. As a mental health writer, I’ve reported on this fact time and time again. Suddenly, I found myself in a personal situation that gave that stat some validity.
But, thanks to the very thing that was being stigmatized, I was able to work through my…
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