There are lots of myths about therapy and some that lawyers buy into more than others. My personal favorite is that we are mind readers or constantly analyzing other people’s behaviors. Only one of the two is true.
In following posts, I will delve deeper into specific myths that can give people an inaccurate perception of psychotherapy. But first, why do myths and stigma exist at all? After all, there’s no stigma against getting treated for cancer (at least not in the United States*), so why should there be stigma against getting treated for anxiety? Many of the myths have to do with the fact that psychology and mental health can feel intangible and difficult to measure and, therefore, difficult to research. You may have heard of the replication crisis** that is happening across all scientific industries and is most noticeable in the world of psychology.
The idea of emotions and personality is tied up in our cultural understanding of ourselves and our learned values. Confronting those beliefs, or being confronted by others, can be challenging and cause an understandable reflexive rejection. Even those of us who embrace psychology and believe in its effectiveness can have strong and emotional opinions about things like causation versus correlation or how different techniques work and why. In some sense, this reaction is the same kind of reflexive reaction based on our own personal experiences and culture. (Therapists are, however, trained to prevent our personal opinions from negatively affecting our work. More on this in a later post.)
These deep-rooted instincts make it easy for myths to spread, especially if we are used to cold, hard evidence. We also know, however, that some things can’t be proven that way and yet are undeniably true. Or at least mostly true (we try not to generalize around here). Stay with me through the next few posts to explore different myths about psychology and psychotherapy.
* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-jan-june11-cancerstigma_06-15
** https://thewire.in/208014/replication-crisis-science/
For more information on the replication crisis, see the following links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453748/medical-research-replication-crisis-growing-problem
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-science-forward/