Relationships
fromPsychology Today
10 hours agoI Don't Want to Be Fixed, I Just Want to Be Heard
Couples often fight over whose reality is valid, but what they truly desire is to be heard without judgment or correction.
Devon Hase states, 'People are trying desperately to fix, optimize, or escape their way out of relationship difficulty - and suffering more for the effort. Social media has made this worse! We're surrounded by images of perfect partnerships while quietly drowning in our own ordinary struggles.' This highlights the pressure couples feel in the age of social media.
There is a unique kind of pain in losing your mind, not just once, but over and over. Losing your perception of reality, of your emotions, of your closest relationships-both across months and multiple times a day. Knowing deep down that something is wrong but being unable to stop it.
Anyone who is under psychiatric care, or loves someone who is, may want to read the book The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today, by Susanne Paola Antonetta. If you care about history, particularly the history of eugenics, you may be interested as well. The book may offer us more respect for the mind, for consciousness, and its diversity.
If you saw something in the sky that you genuinely could not explain-something now officially categorized as an unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP-would you tell your therapist or psychiatrist? For many people, the honest answer is no. Not because they doubt their own perception, but because they worry about what might happen next. They fear being seen as unstable, having the experience reframed as a symptom, or having it documented in a way that could affect future care, employment, or credibility.
They arrive on time, think clearly, and care about their clients. Outwardly, everything seems fine. In private, though, things can feel very different. A clinician's depression may not show up as clear despair. More often, it feels like emotional numbness, quietly withdrawing, or slowly losing interest in things that once mattered. Pleasure fades, curiosity lessens, and the work goes on, but it feels heavier and less alive.