CHICAGO — Your friend who insists they don’t need therapy, which they describe as self-indulgent bullshit for weak people desperate for validation, sure is talking your goddamn ear off about every problem they have accumulated over their lifetime, sources confirmed Friday.
“I’ve spent entire evenings being held emotionally hostage by this guy after making the mistake of asking how he’s been,” you said. “He’ll start by saying he’s ‘totally fine’ then almost immediately jump into a three-hour monologue about his childhood, exes, and overall inability to feel joy. At one point tonight, I tried to just pause him for a minute by going to the restroom, but he just followed me and kept talking about his parents, recurring anxiety dreams, and the panic attack he had in a CVS parking lot this morning through the door.”
When asked why they won’t just go to therapy, your friend Dave Mays was quick to respond.
“Dude, therapy is fake. I mean, what are you doing, paying somebody to tell you what to do or what a special unique snowflake you are? Come on, just fix your problems yourself like a grown-ass adult,” said Mays, before immediately launching into his fear of abandonment, a detailed account of his parents’ divorce, and a humiliating seventh-grade basketball incident that still keeps him awake at night. “It’s like, do you even have friends? Talk to them, weirdo. Unless, obviously, your problems involve those friends, in which case you can’t really talk to them without potentially damaging the relationship. Man, if only there were some kind of neutral stranger to tell all your problems to, without fear of judgment or reprisal. Kinda sucks that no one has thought of that. But anyway, what was I saying about my crippling fear of intimacy?”
Behavioral psychologist Dr. Alicia Rennick said it is very common for people to want to process their emotions more “naturally.”
“Many individuals who reject therapy choose to process their emotions on their own, organically, by coercing friends into providing thousands of dollars worth of unpaid psychological labor every week,” said Rennick. “This type of individual does not want traditional therapy and instead prefers to haphazardly recreate the entire therapeutic process, without confidentiality protections or the freedom to speak honestly, and with significantly more text messages sent after midnight asking if they’re fundamentally broken as human beings.”
At press time, Mays had reportedly started complaining how annoying people who say they have “trauma” are, before wondering aloud whether he sabotages every meaningful relationship in his life because he believes he doesn’t deserve love.
