A patient recently came to see me, saying she was furious with a friend. What began as an ordinary disappointment—a canceled dinner and a text returned too late—had become something far larger and far more charged. The friend was now “toxic.” The exchange had become a “violation of boundaries.” The hurt itself had been elevated into “trauma.” She had screenshots and a polished story about what the episode revealed about her friend’s pathology.
What she didn’t have was introspection. She was no longer asking the most psychologically useful questions: Could this have been carelessness rather than ill intent? Was the reaction intensified by other things that may have been going on? Had she contributed in any way to the conflict? The language she brought into the room gave her something powerful: certainty. But certainty is often the enemy of insight.
This scene has become one of the defining features of my work as a psychotherapist, and it sits at the center of the argument in my forthcoming book, Therapy Nation: Too much of modern therapy culture keeps people stuck, reinforcing grievance, externalizing blame, and turning everyone else into the reason their lives are so miserable.
The problem begins with my own field. For years, my profession has trained clinicians to elevate validation over challenge, affirmation over interpretation, and emotional fluency over the harder work of behavioral change. What has followed is the rise of grievance culture dressed up as psychological sophistication. Too many therapists now function less as clinicians than as reinforcers of the most self-protective interpretation available, teaching patients to locate the problem everywhere but themselves. Of course it is your boss’s fault. Of course your colleague is toxic. Of course your ex is a narcissist. Of course the world keeps wounding you. In this softened therapeutic frame, frustration is rarely something to examine; it’s something to assign.
