On Apple TV’s “Shrinking,” the running joke is that therapists are often in need of therapy just as much as their patients.
As much as the sitcom mines the lives of its therapist characters for laughs, it also commits to portraying therapy as honestly as possible. It’s not alone.
“Shrinking” is part of a larger wave of media, including shows like “In Treatment” and “Sex Education,” but also on social media, that has exposed more people to the idea of therapy and mental health care.
Experts say the mainstreaming of therapy through such shows, and so-called “therapy talk” on platforms like TikTok, where people talk openly about their mental health and diagnoses, has made discussions around mental health more accessible. But it also comes with a potentially dangerous tradeoff that puts some therapists on edge, the experts say.
“It’s become fashionable,” said Sara Hueso, a practicing therapist of more than 25 years. “You’re not cool if you’re not going to therapy or haven’t been going to therapy. But I think there’s a lot of questions as to what’s in the collective mind about what therapy is about.”
The number of Americans seeking therapy increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that trend has only continued, according to the American Journal of Psychiatry. This same period marks the first time that therapy played a bigger role in mental health care than medication.
More people are not only going to therapy but talking about the kind of ideas that would have once been isolated to a therapist’s office. Movies, TV shows and now influencers on social platforms like TikTok have brought broader awareness to trauma, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism and relationship dynamics, said William Sharp, a teaching professor of psychology at Northeastern University and practicing therapist. They have also fostered genuine connections between people who bond over a shared diagnosis and the power that comes with identifying it.
There is, however, a danger, experts say. People end up self-diagnosing, either correctly or incorrectly, in these spaces without a trained therapist to guide them beyond what that diagnosis means for their life. It can create a psychological trap that, instead of freeing the person, hinders them.
“Where I get into an issue is when people establish a diagnostic label as a part of their personality, which the person then absorbs as their entire personality,” Sharp said. “The diagnosis is a maybe necessary starting point, but so many people just stop there and there’s no better understanding of, ‘Who am I?’”
In widening the conversation around therapy, some of the depth of what it requires and provides has been lost, said William Sharp, a teaching professor of psychology at Northeastern University and practicing therapist. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
For Leah Alexander, a psychoanalyst who works mostly with adolescents and children, the appeal of psychological influencers and the high-engagement design of social platforms like TikTok are a recipe for disaster.
“When a person is really seeking and trying to connect and trying to look into things, if something resonates, if something grabs their attention, as these platforms are specifically geared to do, to create a certain feeling that keeps you connected and keeps you attached and keeps you coming back, that could lead to a false sense of being in treatment that for some might be fun and harmless, but for others could be really dangerous,” Alexander said.
All three therapists interviewed for this story agreed that there is value in destigmatizing therapy and getting more people comfortable with talking about their mental health. But they also have experienced how broadening the conversation has not always resulted in the depth required by therapy.
Hueso points to “therapy speak,” the often incorrect but popularized use of jargon and terminology from therapy and mental health, as just one way that an increasingly therapy-conversant culture has not matched the actual work of therapy.
Words like trauma, gaslighting and even depressed, which all have more clinical or technical definitions, have become common parts of speech, especially for younger generations. That’s not to say those terms don’t hold power, Hueso said. But when broadly applied, they lose some of that power and become broadly prescriptive instead of descriptive of a patient’s identity and mental health, he said.
“Recently, I got a phone call where someone said, ‘I have some trauma history and I need to find my grounding and I’m not grounded,’ and my thought was, ‘Oh my god,’” Hueso recalled. “Before we shave through all this and get to actually something real … she’s loaded with so much vocabulary that it is actually preventing her from knowing anything.’”
There are positive ways in which the destigmatization of therapy has impacted the field. Social media has created a space for people to “find their tribe,” Sharp said. The communities formed on these platforms offer a space where people can talk openly about their own struggles.
As for shows like “Shrinking,” they might actually be just as good for therapists as patients, Sharp said.
“It humanizes the therapists, and it doesn’t leave them as these two-dimensional blank slates,” he added.
These shows bring therapy into public discussion, he said. “That in my mind can only be good.”