I don't think people who are in a precarious financial situation spend their time talking to chatbots, they are probably too busy for that

I go to a therapist and she treats me like a five year old.

I can literally just read her basic CBT training online, its not hard to find.

Then I do the excercises at home.

CBT being basically the only kind of approach to therapy that is actually empirically shown to reliably actually help most people.

Oh, you're seeking an therapist qualified and specialized for high functioning autists?

There aren't any in the state anymore.

...

I also think that using ChatGPT as a therapist is a fucking horrible idea, but uh, therapy in America is expensive, and often shit quality, oh and they just hand out pills that you'll become dependent on, willy nilly, as opposed to trying everything else first and using that as a last resort.

Well it was men's mental health month. Funny how I just found that out today. But please, let's talk about women's mental health issues.

Yeah but have you tried going out in the sun? You can have that tip free of charge!

The performative masculinity of many men is also reinforced by partriarchichal norms in many women, who consistently belittle men who attempt to express their emotions without judgement, who demand macho men, who belittle men who aren't financially better off than them.

Men can't talk to most men, and they can't talk to most women, society in general still largely demands they conform to the 'bottle it all in, buck up and deal with it' norm that is so very obviously harmful to men, and whoever they eventually take it out on when they have a breakdown.

... These are broad generalizations, but they are still broadly accurate.

Yep, the psychology industry/field has been unfair to women for a long, long time, often hideously so.

But no widespread progress on deconstructing and at least softening male machismo norms will be possible until we as a society acknowledge that... men are not the only sex/gender that often have ingrained patriarchal norms.

Wow thanks, I never would have thought of that!!!!

Oh jeez, the copay is... $80 bucks?

Boy, I could have just looked that up on the interwebz... uh, outside, of course, on a laptop.

Almost like questioning an AI is free while a therapist costs a LOT of money.

Yeah, but also one of them is helpful and the other is the exact opposite. If the choices are AI therapist or no therapist, you are still better off with no therapist.

Look, if you can afford therapy, really, fantastic for you. But the fact is, it's an extremely expensive luxury, even at poor quality, and sharing or unloading your mental strain with your friends or family, particularly when it is ongoing, is extremely taxing on relationships. Sure, your friends want to be there for you when they can, but it can put a major strain depending on how much support you need. If someone can alleviate that pressure and that stress even a little bit by talking to a machine, it's in extremely poor taste and shortsighted to shame them for it. Yes, they're willfully giving up their privacy, and yes, it's awful that they have to do that, but this isn't like sharing memes... in the hierarchy of needs, getting the pressure of those those pent up feelings out is important enough to possibly be worth the trade-off. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. Would it be better if these systems were anonymized? Absolutely. But humans are natural anthropomorphizers. They develop attachments and build relationships with inanimate objects all the time. And a really good therapist is more a reflection for you to work through things yourself anyway, mostly just guiding your thoughts towards better patterns of thinking. There's no reason the machine can't do that, and while it's not as good as a human, it's a HUGE improvement on average over nothing at all.

Got it. No therapist it is.

That's what I'm doing. That and screaming into a pillow most nights.

are people using their brains or what?

What? No. Seriously, are you new here? And by here I mean Earth.

I see idiots all around me. Everybody only interested in advancing themselves. But if we advanced the group, it would be better for EVERYBODY.

But we as a species are too stupid to build a society that benefits everybody.

So no. No brain use here.

Everything collects data. To extrapolate, it’s stupid to post on lemmy or shitter because the same will happen.

And you, coward? You can shove your downvote. You should feel ashamed of yourself for shaming people for seeking help because YOU don't approve of the way they go about it.

There are other causes here.

They've been talking for a while about how the low participation in dating by Gen Z women is because they're tired of being the entire support system for men experiencing a loneliness epidemic.

It's a lot of pressure for the women to be under, and so they're withdrawing.

I'm guessing this is one of the driving forces as well. Lack of real, emotionally intimate human connections around them. Many men are quite fucked in that regard right now.

CBT being basically the only kind of approach to therapy that is actually empirically shown to reliably actually help most people.

Learning that as an acronym for cock and ball torture before the therapy version makes me laugh every time.

My experience with women therapists was always about how I just wasn't paying enough attention to other people when I pointed out that the people around me weren't consistent enough to figure out their patterns. My one therapist who was a man explained that most people are just better at handling it when they were wrong and it is fine to be wrong, plus he helped me get diagnosed with ADHD instead of telling me to just try harder. I'll bet there are some therapists who are women who are just as good as he was, but it became pretty clear that social norms are just as hard for people who specialize in behaviors to overcome.

Even in Canada, where mental health is still a value-add for most of us and not a right even under our current system, we are offered a fund with some jobs to use for either physiotherapy or mental health, and it's a limited fund.

Give us a choice, and 10/10 times we will prioritize being able to walk and move and sleep effectively over feeling good about it.

And you people complain about our ignorance...

This is a great example of the kinds of problems that can crop up.

Fish doesn't realize its swimming in water, kind of thing.

One approach is basically just gaslighting you:

The things that bother you and cause you trouble... well they just shouldn't, and you should be fine with that.

The other approach is.... you know, actually diagnostic, and can lead to... actually useful diagnosis, and thus more specified therapy and potentially other kinds of help.

As an autist, I've gone through many similar situations.

Sex/Gender independent... just 90% of therapists don't get it all. Always try to diagnose me with something else, and its different every time.

Doesn't matter that I've done the full RAADS V test and I'm basically off thr charts autistic, rofl.

Half of them have never even heard of it, don't know anything about how diagnosing or providing help to an autistic person works at all, tend to think all autists are low functioning with very severe, general social deficits.

Then I get stuck on ... well they will rephrsse what I just said, and say/ask it back to me, and I'll say no, no I phrased what I said specifically, because I meant exactly that.

Then I see in their notes later that I am 'arguementative' or 'agitated' or 'aggressive'... far, fsr more often if its a woman psych/soc worker/counselor who I am... not even 'correcting', just trying to not have them put words in my mouth.

Men tend to be less intimidated and more open to my insistance that I meant exactly what I said... and I am talking in the same voice, same mannerisms, same everything, with everyone.

Some women get it, most don't, some men get it, most don't.

... But the field is vastly disproportionately populated with women.

So the end result for a lot of guys is... hey look, another woman that isn't really listening to me.

Wait, we have one of those?

Genuienly had no idea.