I think of labor questions for therapists: Could much of the current, epidemic levels of depression and anxiety be caused by loss of meaning, overwork, lack of time to cook healthy food, lack of energy to really listen to the people who matter, because at the end of the day there’s nothing left to give? What would happen to our addiction rates if people didn’t feel compelled to numb themselves out at the end of the day, or before work started?
I think the Great Resignation, and the pandemic, raised these questions again, and the Amazon and Starbucks union drives are one answer, and the conversations about remote work are another answer, and the efforts to reduce student loan debt are yet another answer. These answers seem to me to fall more on the “bread” side of the house. So how do we get more roses?
I think therapists are being recruited to salve the wounds of labor. That somehow, we’re supposed to be the roses. I think the explosion of apps and services created by tech companies trying to turn therapy into a service that is an adjunct of HR departments is evidence of the evacuation of care at both the familial and the structural levels. It’s an open opportunity for corporations to monetize these needs by creating a kind of therapy that isn’t, actually, therapy, but instead something vaguely termed “support” that can happen at the other end of a text message, late in the night.
