THERAPY DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU

Something deeply disturbing is happening in the waiting rooms of contemporary therapists’ offices. I’m not referring to the usual anxiety of those seeking help — that is legitimate, and often moving. I’m talking about something else: the silent transformation of the pursuit of development into a shield against life itself.
We live in a curious moment in human history. For the first time, talking about psychological suffering is no longer taboo. People recognize their wounds, name their ghosts, publicly declare their internal battles. This should be celebrated. And it is. But there is a caveat that needs to be said, even if it hurts: we are confusing self-knowledge with self-absolution — that premature forgiveness we exempt from giving to others but easily grant to ourselves.
The question is not whether therapy works — it does, of course. The question is what we are doing with it. Or rather: what we are not doing. Because there is an abysmal difference between someone who seeks to understand their own behavioral traps and someone who collects diagnoses as shields to justify why they hurt others without guilt.
Observe the conversations around you. How many times have you heard someone end a discussion with “that’s yours, not mine”? How many people use the term “healthy boundary” to describe the simple act of ignoring legitimate requests from those around them? How many say they are “in the healing process” while leaving a trail of emotional destruction wherever they go?
We have created a sophisticated language to talk about ourselves. Projection. Narcissism. Trigger. Emotional regulation. Avoidant attachment. All these words circulate like common currency in conversation circles that previously were limited to the weather and the latest news. Suddenly, everyone has become an expert in relational dynamics — but curiously, only when it comes to diagnosing others.
Here lies the central problem: therapy, when misunderstood, becomes a device of moral exemption. “I’m like this because my father was absent.” “I do this because I was bullied in school.” “I can’t commit because I have a disorganized attachment pattern.” All these statements may be true. But none of them is a blank check to continue causing pain.
Understanding the roots of one’s own behavior is not equivalent to being exempt from changing it. Naming a destructive pattern is not the same as transcending it. And here is what no one wants to hear: sometimes, we simply make bad choices. Not because we were programmed to do so. Not because our trauma forces us. But because, deep down, it’s more comfortable to blame the past than to take responsibility for the present.
And here arises a delicate tension we must face with brutal honesty: when we say “not all discomfort is trauma,” we are dangerously close to repeating what entire generations did with legitimate pain — silencing it, minimizing it, burying it under layers of “you’re exaggerating.” How many women heard that their exhaustion was fussiness? How many racialized people were instructed to “not play the victim”? How many dissident bodies learned that their pain didn’t deserve a name?
The line between recognizing that not all discomfort is pathological and invalidating real suffering is as thin as a sharp blade. Walking on it demands something our binary culture hates: nuance. The ability to simultaneously hold two seemingly contradictory truths: yes, we live in a time that trivializes diagnosis and turns suffering into identity; and yes, there are still countless pains that remain invisible, delegitimized, silenced.
The problem is not that people are naming their traumas. The problem is when this naming becomes an endpoint instead of a starting point. When it becomes an explanation that dispenses change. When it becomes an identity that dispenses responsibility.
Real cognitive and behavioral transformation — the kind not content with superficial insights — demands something our era detests: continued effort without immediate reward. There is no app for this. There is no quick technique. There is no guru who can do it for you. It’s slow, silent, sometimes imperceptible work. It’s looking at your own contradictions without romanticizing them. It’s accepting that you are not only a victim of your history — you are also its author.
But that doesn’t sell. It doesn’t generate followers. It doesn’t fit into a motivational post. So, instead, we cultivate a culture of self-indulgence disguised as self-care. We prioritize our needs while ignoring that need also includes connecting, responding, being present for those around us. We talk about “setting boundaries” when we are actually just fleeing the uncomfortable task of negotiating differences.
There is a veiled narcissism in the contemporary obsession with wellness. It manifests in the assumption that our internal process is always more important than the external impact of our actions. That our journey justifies the bodies we leave along the way. That being “working on this in therapy” absolves us of the need for immediate reparation.
And here we find another uncomfortable paradox: the pressure for immediate reparation can, itself, transform into violence. It can become another form of narcissistic demand — the demand that the other process their pain on our timeline, transform according to our schedule, respond to our closure needs while they are still bleeding inside.
Where is the space for the other’s time? For the fact that some changes take years, not weeks? For the possibility that someone is genuinely trying, but still can’t? Is there any margin for error, for imperfect attempts, for clumsy movement toward change?
Or has our performance culture transformed even emotional reparation into just another item on the to-do list? Another demand to be met under penalty of cancellation? Another way to exert power over the vulnerable?
The issue is thorny because both things can be true at the same time: there are people who use “I’m in process” as an infinite excuse to never change; and there are people who genuinely need time to rebuild patterns of an entire lifetime. How to distinguish? How to not be unfair to either side?
I am not defending that people sacrifice themselves in the name of others. Far from it. But there is a glaring difference between taking care of oneself and using self-care as an alibi for selfishness. Between establishing healthy boundaries and simply refusing to be responsible for the consequences of one’s own actions. Between processing traumas and using them as a permanent identity.
The question no one asks is this: if we are all so committed to our personal development, why do human relationships seem increasingly fragile? If so many people are in therapy, why is the ability to coexist with difference at a historical low? Why does frustration tolerance dwindle while therapists’ couches multiply?
Perhaps because we are confusing therapeutic process with self-realization project. Therapy was never about you becoming the “best version of yourself” — that’s market rhetoric, not genuine transformation. Therapy is about you managing to live with yourself and with others without destroying everything in the process. It’s about reducing the damage you cause, not about maximizing your comfort.
And here we enter even more complex territory: how to operationalize this when the “other” is not simply different, but structurally oppressive? How to apply this relational ethic in organizational contexts where hierarchy is not just a difference in perspective, but a difference in power? Where the “other” is the harassing boss, the exploiting system, the sickening structure?
Asking someone to “live with others without destroying everything” sounds reasonable in a relationship between equals. It sounds perverse when the “other” is the one with the power to fire, silence, punish. When the required “coexistence” is, in fact, submission. When “reducing damage” means accepting being damaged.
Here, individual therapy meets its structural limit. Because no amount of self-care can solve toxic environments. There is no emotional regulation technique that cures systemic exploitation. No personal insight can topple abusive hierarchies. And confusing these dimensions — individualizing structural problems — is perhaps the most dangerous trap of contemporary therapeutic culture.
Then arises the convenient question: where to invest energy — in understanding oneself or in transforming structures? As if they were exclusive paths. As if there existed any coherent version of change that dispensed with either. But this opposition is too comfortable to be true. It allows you to obsessively dedicate yourself to deciphering your internal patterns while remaining surprisingly passive in the face of systems that destroy you. Or to throw yourself into collective struggles while olympically ignoring how you privately reproduce exactly what you publicly fight. It is no coincidence that both choices spare you the hardest part. Working only on the internal exempts you from confronting real power. Working only on the external dispenses you from facing your own contradictions. And in both cases, you can feel virtuous, in process, evolving — while half the problem remains carefully untouched.
Real transformation does not offer this comfort. It demands that you recognize how your personal dynamics are traversed by larger structures beyond you. And how oppressive structures are sustained also through the patterns you, individually, perpetuate. They are different records of the same project: becoming less destructive. And you don’t choose one or the other. You face both or you are merely performing change.
The problem arises when we use therapeutic language to depoliticize structural issues. When we transform moral harassment into “toxic dynamics I need to learn to handle.” When we rename exploitation as “challenging environment that makes me grow.” When we internalize oppression as “my responsibility to set better boundaries.”
But comfort is what we sell. Five-step techniques. Transformative weekends. Promises of emotional liberation that demand nothing but payment. And in the midst of this, we forget that authentic human development hurts. Not because pain is necessary in itself, but because growing implies letting go of comfortable narratives about who we are. It implies accepting that perhaps you are not only the resilient survivor of your story. That perhaps you have also been, at some point, the person who caused the wound. And that intention does not undo damage — only reparation does.
And it also implies accepting the inverse truth, equally uncomfortable: that perhaps you are not only the villain in someone else’s narrative. That sometimes, establishing genuine boundaries will hurt people who counted on you to sustain a dysfunctional arrangement. That leaving destructive relationships will leave someone hurt. That your growth may mean the end of bonds that only worked while you remained small.
Contemporary therapeutic culture has created a subtle trap: it taught us to look so much inward that we forgot to look around. It taught us to validate our feelings so much that we stopped questioning our behaviors. It taught us that every discomfort is a sign that something is wrong — when sometimes discomfort is just the price of being alive and in relation.
Because true relation is uncomfortable. It demands adjustments. It asks you to consider perspectives that contradict yours. It demands that you sometimes do things you don’t feel like doing, simply because someone you value needs you. And that is not losing your authenticity — it’s discovering that authenticity without empathy is just well-articulated selfishness.
We need to have this difficult conversation: not all suffering needs to be pathologized. Not all inadequacy is trauma. Not every difference of opinion is aggression. Not every request for change is an attempt at control. Sometimes, the people around us are simply signaling that our behavior has consequences — and that is not an attack, it’s information.
And at the same time: not every request for change is legitimate. Not every criticism is constructive. Not every demand for adjustment comes from someone concerned with our well-being. Sometimes, what they call “feedback” is an attempt at control. What they name as “concern” is invasion. What they sell as “helping you grow” is keeping you small.
Navigating these waters requires discernment that no manual delivers ready. It requires the ability to distinguish between genuine responsibility and manipulated guilt. Between real transformation and performance of change. Between love that challenges and abuse that destroys.
Genuine cognitive behavioral development is not about you always feeling good about yourself. It’s about you developing the capacity to exist in complexity — yours and others’. It’s about building internal structures that allow navigation in difficult emotional terrain without needing to destroy bridges or burn people.
And this is not learned in weekend retreats. It’s not bought in online courses. It’s not conquered with positive affirmations. It’s built day by day, in the friction of the real, in the embarrassment of realizing you were wrong, in the humility of apologizing, in the discomfort of changing ingrained patterns.
So yes, do therapy. Seek help. Name your wounds. Understand your dynamics. But don’t stop there. Don’t turn self-knowledge into self-indulgence. Don’t use understanding as an excuse. Don’t confuse internal process with a license to neglect the external consequences of your choices.
And also: don’t accept being convinced that all your pain is fabricated. That all your suffering is exaggeration. That all your need for change in the environment is your inadequacy. There is a difference between responsibility and blame-shifting. Between healthy self-criticism and self-destruction disguised as growth.
Because in the end, the question that matters is not “why am I like this?” — it’s “what am I going to do about it?”. And that second question, no therapist can answer for you. It demands something our culture of individual wellness has forgotten: responsibility. Not as a burden, but as power. The power to choose, at every moment, whether you will use your history as explanation or as excuse.
True mental health is not in never hurting anyone — that is impossible. It’s in recognizing when we hurt, understanding why we hurt, and doing the hard work to change. Not to be perfect. But to be a little less destructive. A little more capable of coexistence. A little more human.
And it’s also in recognizing when we have been hurt unjustly. In naming abuse without turning it into identity. In leaving places that make us sick without needing to wait until becoming a martyr. In choosing relationships that challenge us without destroying us.
And that, yes, is worth every minute of the process. Every unresolved contradiction. Every question without an easy answer. Every truth that bothers you as much as it bothers me to write it.
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