According to the American Psychological Association, approaches to therapy fall into five broad categories:
Psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies, involving all sorts of delving, primarily into unconscious meanings and motivations. Tl;dr It’s your mother’s fault. Or, if you’re a mother, it’s your fault.
Behavior therapies, which focus on learning when it comes to “normal” and “abnormal” behaviors1. These can include operant and classical conditioning, and cognitive behavioral therapy, which attempts to knit thoughts and actions together into some sort of deliberate something.
Cognitive therapies, which insist that it’s what people think that matters, not what they do; as long as you think positively and stop all that gloom and doom stuff, things are sure to improve. Also go ahead and slap the shit out of that person, as long as you’re thinking kind thoughts.
Humanistic therapies, which eschew the concept of therapist as the authority in the relationship2, instead focusing on assuring the client they are being seen, and emphasizing the opposing goals of self-responsibility and free will.
And then, of course, there are integrated therapies that mix and match all or some of the above.
Where do people find the time for this stuff?
For at least the last dozen years I’ve found solace and relative mental health through another modality somehow missed by the APA. I buy domain names.
I buy them often. I’m a complex bundle of trauma.
They’re fairly cheap, usually between $9 and $15 each. Sometimes less. Averaging that out, that’s a mere $200 a year for what I’ve got now, which is roughly a single visit to some shrinks’ offices. And it’s effective. I always feel better immediately.
Take SnickerBitches.com. I was sitting in a conference I’d worked hard to organize, watching at least a quarter of the 300 attendees scrolling on their phones instead of paying attention to the speaker. These attendees would at some point during the 3-day event likely complain to me about the price of the hotel rooms, the price of the event, the food, the affiliation of a presenter, the temperature of the lecture hall, or some other injustice they were actively ignoring while looking at Instagram.
What if, I thought, there was an app that sent prompts to conference attendees at random intervals that would hold their attention?
Can you believe what seat 7, 3rd row did to their dog?
Saw seat 2, row 1 sneaking out of the presenter’s room at 4:00 am.
Right behind you they’re talking about what happened at the bar last night.
And there, from my chair by the conference room door, SnickerBitches.com was born.
Well, bought. I haven’t developed the app yet.
In 2015 I was working to up voter registration among college students. The need was dire with Trump looming, but passivity and people’s denial that he might actually win were a tough hurdle to clear. We needed an issue that the demographic cared about.
They cared about weed, and making it legal.
I bought Fweedom.org.
I was watching the news one night when a ratty, smelly-looking, woman-hating, undoubtedly gun-toting white guy was stopped for his man-on-the-street opinion about something.
He needs some fashion help, I said to my son.
Then I bought Incellegant.com. Where incels shop to meet their fashion needs.
I’ve made it clear how I feel about being overly-positive, so when a certain self-help book was suddenly everywhere I felt compelled to purchase FindYourOwnFuckingJoy.com.
Bromances are commonly referred to in pop culture. Why, I wondered, nothing for us? Homance.com.
I’d been writing for about six months when I bought ConsciouslyIncompetent.com.
I can’t remember what prompted WhatTheEverLovingFuck.com, but really, it could have been anything. It’s kind of evergreen.
NameCheap, where I register my domain names, has an app, and I was still sitting at the table in a meeting with an unpleasant colleague I’d decided not to continue doing business with when I registered ByeBitch.org. I figured that one was a charity, a gift to my volunteers who’d no longer have to deal with her.
Speaking of charities, BringABoomer.org will someday be an app where condescending younger generations take Boomers out to restaurants, movies, and concerts to “give us a clue.” They can write it off, because it’s a nonprofit, and we can go out for free and pretend it isn’t lame as we remember coked up nights with Andy Warhol in the clubs, and drinking psilocybin iced tea at Disney World while riding Magic Mountain in a bikini.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with GuessMyMood.com.
I still own one that is simply five expletives in a row, a personal website I made for a friend who learned of a calamitous diagnosis and broke the news thusly, and one involving tides, a private view of the marsh I set up with a camera for my father so he can still see it when he can’t get to the Cape.
I have no idea how many domains I’ve bought over the years. I currently own sixteen, which is not very many for me. I’ve been trying to budget myself for upcoming house construction, so I shed a tear and let some expire. NoReallyItsFine.com, a website I made as a wedding present for a friend when she and her husband had a very bad year leading up to the nuptials. SoStupidWeDeservedIt.us. WereScrewed.us. You can guess what those followed.
The fun thing is, there are new domains being developed all the time. TheRapture.dog will someday be a site where, for a small fee, people can sign their pets up to be taken care of when the ultra-holy abandon their responsibilities en masse and rise up into the clouds. It’s a subscription thing.
Which led to NotTodaySatan.boo. Just because we’re warding off a dark lord doesn’t mean we can’t show him a little endearment.
These are sensitive times.
Morning Teaistisms
I feel that I’ve traumatized the traditionalists here, so today we’re going back to English Breakfast tea.
Twinings is my go-to bagged English Breakfast, but a kind soul sent me a box of Harney & Sons teas, and I’ve been enjoying theirs as well.
Who, exactly, is determining “normal” and “abnormal” behavior?
This tends to be the least popular of the approaches for reasons Freud might want to investigate.
It goes without writing that I am deeply, deeply offended by your profusion of profane domains.(But ... what’s the fee to house my small but feisty cat when I rise in The Rapture?)
Another priceless post!