In my opinion, you can’t really call yourself depressed or say you have anxiety if your living situation is bad. If you’re poor, stuck in a grey city, working a soul crushing 9-to-5 or you’re the scapegoat of your family, basically just suffering under capitalism don’t call yourself depressed. That implies your reaction is the problem, not the unnatural, dehumanizing circumstances you’re reacting to.

If someone has knee pain and they’re obese, it makes sense to work on the obesity first, right? Even if it doesn’t fix everything, at least you’re removing a major contributing factor. Same thing with depression and anxiety. I’m sorry, but trying to “manage” your mental health while being broke and overworked under capitalism is ridiculous.

In that case, you’re not looking for real solutions you’re building workarounds. Yeah, maybe your brain chemistry is messed up, but how can we act like poverty isn’t a massive factor? My point is: save your money. Don’t go to therapy unless you’ve done what you can to fix your living situation. After that, sure go to therapy or whatever.

This leads me to my second point: therapy has gotten a ton of traction over the past decade. Everyone’s all about “talking through your feelings” and “getting help” But are people actually getting better? I don’t see it. My theory? Therapy is being promoted as a way to gaslight people out of realizing they’re being crushed by capitalism.

And if a therapist did tell you that your living situation is a major risk factor? People would turn on them. “How dare you criticize me? Why do you hate poor people?” Like… why are you mad at someone for recognizing reality? In the real world, you need to know what your baseline health looks like physically and mentally.

If you’ve never even had a day of low cortisol in your life if stress is your constant companion if a Teams notification makes you flinch or an email makes you want to cry how are you supposed to “manage” that? Why are we obsessed with treating symptoms instead of removing the source?

Now, if someone lives a stable life decent income, access to healthcare, no major crises but still has this irrational, pathological anxiety for no reason? Yes. Absolutely. Go to therapy. Go to psychiatry. Try meds, try hypnosis, try whatever. I’m not here to stop you. More power to you.

But that’s not most people. Most people are just reacting appropriately to a f’ed up world. They don’t want to admit that, because admitting it means acknowledging that the system itself needs to change. And that’s uncomfortable. So instead, everyone’s just playing along.

The best analogy for therapy in this context? It’s the elephant in the room. There’s a giant elephant squashing all of us, and instead of saying “hey, there’s an elephant” everyone’s complaining about how cramped the room is. And then someone offers mindfulness apps.

Anyway, if you’re struggling, maybe you’re not broken. Maybe you’re reacting appropriately to your conditions.

And you know I’m right. Bye.