Therapy Culture: America’s Favorite Religion?
Friday, February 28, 2025.
There was a time when if you told someone your father wasn’t speaking to you, they’d assume it was because you totaled his Buick, or stole money from his wallet.
Now, they assume you set a boundary.
Welcome to therapy culture: the religion of our modern age.
While our ancestors fretted over sin and salvation, we wring our hands over trauma and self-actualization. One used to confide in a rabbi, imam, or priest; now, one unloads to a therapist (or, more commonly, on the internet).
Instead of redemption, we seek closure.
Instead of community, we have self-care.
Instead of a Higher Power, we have (most appropriately) our inner child.
And, in many ways, this shift has done wonders—destigmatizing mental health struggles, improving emotional intelligence.
But, like all religions, therapy culture has its excesses, hypocrisies, and unintended consequences.
So let’s talk about it. It’s ok. I’m a marriage and family therapist.
The Birth of Therapy Culture: Freud, Oprah, and TikTok
Therapy culture wasn’t born in a vacuum. It emerged from a cocktail of historical, economic, and technological forces that turned our psyches into perpetual self-improvement projects.
First, blame Freud.
The man took our deepest existential questions—Who am I? Why do I suffer?—and answered them with mother issues.
Then came the self-esteem movement of the 1970s and 80s, which told children they were special just for existing (Baumeister et al., 2003).
Then, Oprah.
The woman mainstreamed therapy language in a way few could have predicted, teaching America that if someone doesn’t treat you well, you must love yourself enough to walk away (Winfrey, 1996).
And finally, TikTok. Now, anyone with a ring light and a vaguely soothing voice can diagnose your mother with borderline personality disorder.
The Key Tenets of Therapy Culture
Therapy culture, like any belief system, has its core doctrines:
Your Feelings Are the Truth
In a society that once valued stoicism, we now treat emotions as infallible data points. If you feel hurt, you were harmed. If you feel unsafe, you are unsafe. If you feel invalidated, the other person is toxic.
The problem? Feelings are real but not always reliable (Gross, 2002). It’s a fact that you have a feeling, but that feeling is not necessarily a fact. Sometimes you’re anxious not because your partner is emotionally unavailable but because you had three espressos on an empty stomach.
Every Problem Has a Psychological Explanation
Once upon a time, if you were sad, it might be because you needed more friends or a hobby.
Now, it’s because of childhood attachment wounds. If your spouse is distant, it’s not that they’re stressed—it’s because of their dismissive-avoidant attachment style.
If you’re bad with money, it’s not because you make dumb financial decisions—it’s because of financial trauma (Shonkoff et al., 2012). While therapy is helpful, it’s not the only lens through which to see the world.
But sometimes, Occam’s Razor is all you need: Perhaps you’re just cranky because you need more sleep.
Boundaries Solve Everything?
Boundaries are wonderful.
They prevent burnout, resentment, and codependency. But they’ve also become the emotional equivalent of a restraining order.
Instead of working through interpersonal difficulties, people are ghosting their best friends under the banner of “protecting my peace.”
Setting boundaries used to mean telling your mother-in-law you’d like her to call before stopping by; now, it means cutting her out of your life because she made a comment about your gluten-free diet (Pincus et al., 2020).
Self-Care is a Moral Imperative?
There was a time when self-care meant taking a walk or reading a book.
Now, it’s a $4.5 trillion industry (Global Wellness Institute, 2021). And while there’s nothing wrong with face masks and bubble baths, the overemphasis on self-care often leads to self-indulgence disguised as self-love.
In its extreme form, it fosters a culture where people justify neglecting obligations, abandoning relationships, and quitting anything that requires effort.
After all, if your boss stresses you out, why have a difficult conversation when you could just quit? If your spouse annoys you, why try therapy when you could just leave and focus on your personal growth?
The Consequences of Therapy Culture
I do not wish to be misunderstood. Therapy culture has improved many aspects of modern life. I am a therapist. It is my calling.
It has made emotional intelligence mainstream, reduced stigma around mental illness, and taught people that “just toughen up” isn’t always the best advice. But it’s also come with a few unintended consequences:
The Pathologization of Normal Life – Everyday struggles now come with clinical labels. Feeling tired? You might have burnout. Irritated with your partner? Emotional neglect. Parents weren’t perfect? Childhood trauma. When everything is trauma, nothing is (Friedman, 2021).
The Rise of the Victim Mindset – While therapy should empower, therapy culture often encourages people to see themselves as permanent victims. This can be a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more you view yourself as powerless, the more powerless you become (Seligman, 1975).
A Culture of Emotional Fragility – Resilience is built through discomfort. But therapy culture sometimes promotes a mindset where any distress is harmful. The result? A generation of people who struggle to tolerate disagreement, setbacks, or even mildly awkward conversations (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018).
The Cult of the Self – The focus on self-improvement and self-care has eroded the sense of duty to family and community. The idea of sacrifice—once seen as noble—is now framed as a lack of self-respect. We’ve shifted from “ask not what your country can do for you” to “ask what your country has done to traumatize you.”
So What Now? You’re a Therapist… Don’t you Want Any Clients?
Gentle readers, I’m not suggesting that we abandon therapy altogether and go back to drinking too much whiskey and repressing our emotions.
No. But we should treat therapy as a tool, not a worldview.
Feelings Matter, But So Do Actions – It’s great to acknowledge your emotions, but maturity means acting based on values, not just feelings.
Not Every Problem has a Therapeutic Remedy – Some problems have no off-the-shelf therapy solutions. We will not solve climate change, inflation, or the war in Ukraine in therapy, and thought leaders should not pretend to do so. Sometimes, you just need better habits, more sleep, or to stop watching sad TikToks at 2 a.m.
Resilience > Fragility – Life is hard. Discomfort is inevitable. The goal of therapy should be to build strength, not just to avoid pain.
Ultimately, therapy is best when it helps us live well with others, not just ourselves.
And if that means occasionally enduring your mother-in-law’s unsolicited opinions on your diet without calling it an emotional boundary violation, so be it.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/1529-1006.01431
Friedman, R. A. (2021, October 11). The mental health crisis that isn’t. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/opinion/mental-health-crisis.html
Global Wellness Institute. (2021). The global wellness economy: Looking beyond COVID. Retrieved from https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048577201393198
Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2018). The coddling of the American mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Penguin Books.
Pincus, A. L., Wright, A. G. C., & Cain, N. M. (2020). Interpersonal assessment of narcissism: A review of recent advances. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 11(2), 157–167. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000367
Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Learned helplessness: Depression, development, and death. W. H. Freeman.
Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., Siegel, B. S., Dobbins, M. I., Earls, M. F., McGuinn, L., Pascoe, J., & Wood, D. L. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2663
Winfrey, O. (1996). The Oprah Winfrey show: Oprah’s book club selections. HarperCollins.