On Therapy

One of my pet peeves is when people demand, jokingly or otherwise, that a stranger or fictional character "needs therapy." Whether it's because the person is behaving in a harmful way, or because they’re struggling, or simply because they're acting strange - I don't love it. There's a tendency for this kind of comment to shut down any further attempt to understand the person. It’s a trained professional’s job to understand them, or so the saying goes, and they should go and get one and stop bothering the rest of us with their damage.

I think this is an especially sensitive topic for autistic people, since we’re one of the groups that are routinely given therapies that are coercive in nature. (Obviously, we’re not the only such group.)

Yet, here I am, filling out the intake forms at a therapy place.