Excellent article - I enjoyed it immensely, for you have illuminated precisely a problem I have been trying to solve.
I have three children under the age of 5, and as an atheist, the question of how best to raise them without a religious or cultural doctrine is constantly on my mind.
I think you are absolutely right - we as a species need something more to satisfy our mental wellbeing, but how to do so without compromising our scientific rationale?
I have been trying to come up with ways that might blend “sensing” with “sense-making” to safeguard my family against the modern helpless-indecisive malaise your article discusses.
What this currently looks like:
- Celebrating annual events that demonstrate the wonder and sublime of the material world; for example going outside during the nighttime every August to watch the Perseid meteor shower, seeing the Acer trees in Autumn in our local park, and watching the sunrise on summer solstice.
- Taking part in annual events that celebrate and/or remember our national history; for example having fireworks in our garden for Bonfire Night, singing carols in the Advent season or attending a Remembrance Day service and having two minutes of silence.
Given that I believe there are no “answers” when it comes to existential questions, other than the relatively “bleak” ones that science has already uncovered (I think back to Richard Dawkins when regarding this, and his claim that science isn’t supposed to be comforting, but only true), I feel that the best I can do is to give my family a routine. One that reminds them of the wonders that surround them every day and can be found in any place, and one that reminds them of the history of their ancestors.
Is this a worthy project in your opinion? (The well-being of my children lie in the balance, so no pressure…!)
Thank you for such an interesting and thought-provoking article.
"we as a species need something more to satisfy our mental wellbeing, but how to do so without compromising our scientific rationale?" - a perfect summary, and although I can't guarantee the well-being of your children, I really like your solutions :) Ultimately, the content of them is probably less important than the process. So you can go exploring for any reason, or celebrate pretty much anything; it's the exploring and celebrating that count.
I'll think a bit more about blending sensing with sense-making. I like that.
I had a teacher in college who talked about wrestling with whether she should raise her children religiously so they had the capacity for it later. She didn't think a child raised atheistically could develop a religious or spiritual appendage as an adult. Seems like what you're doing is keeping that spiritual limb alive.
When pressed about the reticence they have about giving practical advice, I've heard some of my therapists friends reach farcical levels, like "my job is to give my patients the tools so they can make better decisions themselves". Which would be fine, I guess, if the patients were not already overwhelmed, as many of those who seek professional help are. But even then, I'm never given a satisfactory explanation of what those tools should consist of. The answer seems indeed to be something mystical.
And I think that's one of the reasons many people are veering towards coaches of all kinds. I myself only have a small blog where I talk about women to men who don't understand them, I specifically say I am NOT a coach, and yet I receive messages from men asking for help with their specific situations. Then again, most of them have no intention to put any suggestion to practice. They either want reaffirmation, comfort in knowing how things work even though they'll do nothing to influence them, or they want to be scolded and get some kind of catharsis from it, like in a religious confession.
I came to have a very pessimistic attitude towards this, so I'm glad you put it in a way that doesn't make it seem such a terrible thing in your article!
Completely agree that the whole "tools" thing is mostly bogus. Hardly does anyone have a good example of one. I don't deny that there are some things that the average person may not know - like some grounding techniques such as counting 5 things you see, 3 things you can touch, 1 thing you can smell - that the therapist can deliver as a "tool" to a client. But this stuff is relatively basic, and a client could learn all the tools in a 20 minute Youtube video. So therapists aren't, or shouldn't be, getting paid for that.
In your situation, I'd guess the problem is the format. You're only exchanging messages with these men, right? And anyone can send a message for a relatively low cost? (As in, maybe they pay you money, but they don't have to show up to your office and be in your physical presence for 45 minutes, week after week.) That does skew things in a way that would be difficult for me, too, not to become pessimistic about the motivations. Not to at times feel like a punching bag. But my guess is that if you could establish a more long-form relationship with these people, it'd be much more uplifting. I'm much different over a computer than in person, and by different I mean worse, so I'd imagine others are too :) Even if you can't do this, it might be helpful to keep in mind that maybe much of what's going on is the format...
I think you're right on point! These men just exchange messages with me. On very rare occasions I talk to them on the phone. The only boundary I have set so far, unless it's someone I've become somewhat friends with, is no voice messages. Especially long voice messages. It really gets under my skin when someone I don't know can't be bothered to take a moment to write down their story, yet expects me to sit through several minutes of "uhm... so... like...".
Overall, I guess I really am a bit too accessible. The fact that I don't charge any money certainly contributes. I should probably put forward some layers, be it a fee or a limit, though I confess I'm quite hesitant on the first especially. I've received A LOT of pushback from psychologists through social media for what I do and if I start to actively charge for consultations I wouldn't know what to expect. Coaching sits in a very grey legal area in my country, as far as I know. If I put my mind to it, first thing I'm gonna ask legal advice.
"Overall, I guess I really am a bit too accessible." - Agree, and best of luck if you do move forward with laying in layers. Fwiw, I really don't think the psychological training programs are worth much. Most of my colleagues admit they didn't learn anything that helped them actually help people. But that's not the only thing it sounds like you have to consider.
I agree that what makes a good therapist isn't so much the training they got, but a mix of their own personal wisdom and their experience with patients. Sure, there's things you have to know, but how long does it really take to learn them? One year? Two maybe?
Having watched my younger sister go through NINE years of increasingly questionable education – five years to get a degree in psychology, then another four to get licensed as a therapist – only to be denied her licence at the very end by her analytic school because her approach with one of the patients during her thesis was deemed "too cognitive-behavioral" – never mind it worked – I tend to consider the purpose of the whole thing to be mostly branding. Or, as I usually put it, creating keyfabe.
The very fact that in order to become a therapist one has to to through therapy themselves, at least here, always seemed more like a cult initiation than something of practical purpose. But I could be wrong on that.
No I think you're right about all of that. Hopefully one of these days I'll finish a draft I have going on therapeutic training, but the long story short is, yes, it's more cult initiation than knowledge transfer or technique training.
Modern life bombards us with choice. We have to remove as much as possible. I wear the same clothes everyday and eat the same food to reserve that energy for meaningful decisions.
We need structure, rules to live by. Secularism is not doing us any philosophical favors. Also, a lot of people are trying to replace religion with their political beliefs and its causing all manner of shenanigans.
My answers to a couple of the big questions: We have to create our own meaning, and we get to choose our own flavor of suffering. For me, these two things are closely entertwined. I figured out what kind of suffering worked best for me, and meaning followed.
Since I leaned away from atheism, and began to entertain the idea that magic exists, my quality of life increased dramatically. I don't see any other way except atheism+nihilism. Our brains are so phenomenally powerful, especially in terms of our connections to each other. We are nowhere near explaining this power, so for now, its magic. Ive had some inexplicable instances of intuition that were frightening. Knowing something without any sensory input, and being correct, is a strange feeling.
Also, I love that material science is now explaining things that we have known intuitively for thousands of years. The lessons of religions backed up in studies. Studies still require faith/doubt.
I reckon that the pendulum is fixing to swing back into another great awakening of some sort. Maybe not Christianity, but something more than material secularism.
I've often had the fantasy of wearing the same shirt for every day of the week. So, like, a blue T-shirt for Tuesday. That way everyone (including me) would know what day it was by what shirt I was wearing. Not sure why I haven't followed through...other than that, sometimes, simplicity is harder than complexity. In particular the upfront costs (like buying those shirts and committing to the bit).
Anyway, I agree with your points and thank you for commenting. I do agree with you that a new direction is needed, although I'm not sure what. Also really liked this: "Our brains are so phenomenally powerful, especially in terms of our connections to each other. We are nowhere near explaining this power, so for now, its magic."
Rotating the same outfits through the week makes a big difference. And the clothes dont have to be boring. Just without the need for decision making. Eating the same thing everyday eliminates so much wasted money and energy. Plus I dont overeat, and I dont eat out of boredom.
The change in suffering that made all the difference in the world was creating a job for myself where I dont have to deal with a ton of people everyday. Needed to only be responsible for myself, and to not have a commute. Did a lot of sales jobs where I literally spoke to hundreds of people per day. Like being in a major city or on the internet, its impossible to humanize large volumes of people. The overwhelming amount of human interaction burned me out and made me isolate outside of work. Then there were the problem coworkers who made everyones lives harder everyday.
Now, I do copywriting and marketing work remotely. Most days I dont have to speak to anyone at all. Just write. However, I work from a coffee shop so I can be around people and interact with them. But not hundreds of people. The freedom of this is priceless. Aiming to finish this book, and survive on creative writing in the coming years.
"Like being in a major city or on the internet, its impossible to humanize large volumes of people." - yeah, so true. Sounds like your shift resulted in less suffering overall though. As in, not the same amount of a different kind, but just less overall, no?
We are designed to live in, and take care of, small communities. I vastly reduced my exposure to people. Moved to a small town. Dont have to talk to people for work. No commute. But Ive also gotten crazy about exercise, a form of voluntary suffering. For whatever reason I dont mind physical suffering. Its the social flavor that I cant take a lot of. Also been learning to write fiction, which takes forever, and is often unpleasant. But Im doing work that means something to me. Whats that Frankl quote? "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." To me, that means that if we create meaning in our lives, we can suffer through anything.
Nutshell: every change is a tradeoff. Is there, in fact, less suffering in my life? No. Ive just finally chosen how Im willing to suffer, and created meaning in my life. Not making lifes big choices is a short road to misery. The more we avoid suffering, the more suffering our minds create for us.
For instance: I dont have to deal with traffic, or even get into my car most days, but there are no decent restaurants or bakeries within an hour of me. But since I Reorganized my life around writing, and connecting with people in other meaningful ways, things are a lot sunnier.
Makes sense. Also, I've had plenty of clients express this exact sentiment: "For whatever reason I dont mind physical suffering. Its the social flavor that I cant take a lot of."
I think that, maybe, its because I have more control over physical pain, and I know that I get something out of it. At the very least, I get a new scar story. I can make sense of that. Its honest. But social aggression is never honest.
Can only speak for myself, but the vast majority of social punishment Ive endured has been completely senseless. Someone projecting, taking their internal insecurities and shadow out on the external world. These people are a constant lose/lose situation. Yet I found myself dealing with this in different people over and over and over again. So I isolated for a long time. Until in 2021 when a chaotic relationship made me take a long hard look at myself, and what I am attracted to. Not surprisingly, I brought the nonsense onto myself.
Have to say that I really love what you wrote, and thank you for indulging me in the comments. Appreciate you.
> For other questions, science has discredited existing answers without replacing them.
I think we should worship that emptiness. That's not unprecedented. We should all become practicing, observant agnostics. Yes, you might ask me what exactly that entails and the answer would be 'I don't know', the answer I should be perfectly comfortable with as a practicing agnostic. Maybe I don't know *yet*, maybe I'll never know, but for now let me just be in awe of it :)
Something tells me you should go read Rob's post on Awe :) Anyway, thank you for reading and commenting. I'll give some thought to worshipping emptiness/not having answers.
Oh, which one is that? I vaguely remember reading something like that but can't quite put my finger on it.
> I'll give some thought to worshipping emptiness/not having answers.
Last night my girlfriend and I tried sitting in silence for a while and then saying a true sentence beginning with "I don't know" in a Quaker-like vocal ministry fashion. It was surprisingly difficult and very insightful. A lot of things I thought I didn't know, I actually kind of knew. I think I'll give it another go in a day or two.
I do not think there is litterature about it, but "I am the Science" is what Fauci said when grilled for his COVID response: i refer to the behaviour of people that treat Science not as a method but as a faith, like those that attacked Yonnaidis (the man that kickstarted the replication crisis problem) because he dared to fight COVID response because that meant fighting "Saint" Fauci...literally, there are people that treated Fauci as a Catholic saint (https://theluminaryandco.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-prayer-saint-candle).
Like your boss, I don't think therapists should be so reticent about giving advice. Whenever anything mechanical needs fixing I go straight to my engineer brother-in-law. He has thought about engineer-y things for decades and I would always prioritize his thoughts above my own since my thoughts are crummy.
Perhaps 'life' and mechanical stuff aren't exactly the same, but when a person is so at sea that they refer themselves for therapy, that's kind of an admission that they are out of their depth. I know at times in my life I just couldn't think things through and would read ANYONE for some hints about how to go forward. Zen? Try it. Religion? I just can't, more's the pity. But not only do you have experience on your side, you also see things from the outside, which is a massive advantage. And even if your advice turns out to be rubbish, at least it's something solid to cling to for a while for the person drowning in a sea of uncertainty.
Totally agree and I've been leaning more into giving advice for those very reasons. The main thing is to create an environment where the person can come back and say, "your advice was crummy."
Very good, and while reading it it seemed both important and true. But the same is true of most posts I read and by tomorrow, after reading 10 more articles, this one will have faded from memory. Pity. It could be just the one I need, the missing part of the jigsaw. Now, onto the next Substack article.
Excellent article - I enjoyed it immensely, for you have illuminated precisely a problem I have been trying to solve.
I have three children under the age of 5, and as an atheist, the question of how best to raise them without a religious or cultural doctrine is constantly on my mind.
I think you are absolutely right - we as a species need something more to satisfy our mental wellbeing, but how to do so without compromising our scientific rationale?
I have been trying to come up with ways that might blend “sensing” with “sense-making” to safeguard my family against the modern helpless-indecisive malaise your article discusses.
What this currently looks like:
- Celebrating annual events that demonstrate the wonder and sublime of the material world; for example going outside during the nighttime every August to watch the Perseid meteor shower, seeing the Acer trees in Autumn in our local park, and watching the sunrise on summer solstice.
- Taking part in annual events that celebrate and/or remember our national history; for example having fireworks in our garden for Bonfire Night, singing carols in the Advent season or attending a Remembrance Day service and having two minutes of silence.
Given that I believe there are no “answers” when it comes to existential questions, other than the relatively “bleak” ones that science has already uncovered (I think back to Richard Dawkins when regarding this, and his claim that science isn’t supposed to be comforting, but only true), I feel that the best I can do is to give my family a routine. One that reminds them of the wonders that surround them every day and can be found in any place, and one that reminds them of the history of their ancestors.
Is this a worthy project in your opinion? (The well-being of my children lie in the balance, so no pressure…!)
Thank you for such an interesting and thought-provoking article.
"we as a species need something more to satisfy our mental wellbeing, but how to do so without compromising our scientific rationale?" - a perfect summary, and although I can't guarantee the well-being of your children, I really like your solutions :) Ultimately, the content of them is probably less important than the process. So you can go exploring for any reason, or celebrate pretty much anything; it's the exploring and celebrating that count.
I'll think a bit more about blending sensing with sense-making. I like that.
I had a teacher in college who talked about wrestling with whether she should raise her children religiously so they had the capacity for it later. She didn't think a child raised atheistically could develop a religious or spiritual appendage as an adult. Seems like what you're doing is keeping that spiritual limb alive.
Many of your solutions look like "religion with extra steps".
When pressed about the reticence they have about giving practical advice, I've heard some of my therapists friends reach farcical levels, like "my job is to give my patients the tools so they can make better decisions themselves". Which would be fine, I guess, if the patients were not already overwhelmed, as many of those who seek professional help are. But even then, I'm never given a satisfactory explanation of what those tools should consist of. The answer seems indeed to be something mystical.
And I think that's one of the reasons many people are veering towards coaches of all kinds. I myself only have a small blog where I talk about women to men who don't understand them, I specifically say I am NOT a coach, and yet I receive messages from men asking for help with their specific situations. Then again, most of them have no intention to put any suggestion to practice. They either want reaffirmation, comfort in knowing how things work even though they'll do nothing to influence them, or they want to be scolded and get some kind of catharsis from it, like in a religious confession.
I came to have a very pessimistic attitude towards this, so I'm glad you put it in a way that doesn't make it seem such a terrible thing in your article!
Completely agree that the whole "tools" thing is mostly bogus. Hardly does anyone have a good example of one. I don't deny that there are some things that the average person may not know - like some grounding techniques such as counting 5 things you see, 3 things you can touch, 1 thing you can smell - that the therapist can deliver as a "tool" to a client. But this stuff is relatively basic, and a client could learn all the tools in a 20 minute Youtube video. So therapists aren't, or shouldn't be, getting paid for that.
In your situation, I'd guess the problem is the format. You're only exchanging messages with these men, right? And anyone can send a message for a relatively low cost? (As in, maybe they pay you money, but they don't have to show up to your office and be in your physical presence for 45 minutes, week after week.) That does skew things in a way that would be difficult for me, too, not to become pessimistic about the motivations. Not to at times feel like a punching bag. But my guess is that if you could establish a more long-form relationship with these people, it'd be much more uplifting. I'm much different over a computer than in person, and by different I mean worse, so I'd imagine others are too :) Even if you can't do this, it might be helpful to keep in mind that maybe much of what's going on is the format...
I think you're right on point! These men just exchange messages with me. On very rare occasions I talk to them on the phone. The only boundary I have set so far, unless it's someone I've become somewhat friends with, is no voice messages. Especially long voice messages. It really gets under my skin when someone I don't know can't be bothered to take a moment to write down their story, yet expects me to sit through several minutes of "uhm... so... like...".
Overall, I guess I really am a bit too accessible. The fact that I don't charge any money certainly contributes. I should probably put forward some layers, be it a fee or a limit, though I confess I'm quite hesitant on the first especially. I've received A LOT of pushback from psychologists through social media for what I do and if I start to actively charge for consultations I wouldn't know what to expect. Coaching sits in a very grey legal area in my country, as far as I know. If I put my mind to it, first thing I'm gonna ask legal advice.
"Overall, I guess I really am a bit too accessible." - Agree, and best of luck if you do move forward with laying in layers. Fwiw, I really don't think the psychological training programs are worth much. Most of my colleagues admit they didn't learn anything that helped them actually help people. But that's not the only thing it sounds like you have to consider.
I agree that what makes a good therapist isn't so much the training they got, but a mix of their own personal wisdom and their experience with patients. Sure, there's things you have to know, but how long does it really take to learn them? One year? Two maybe?
Having watched my younger sister go through NINE years of increasingly questionable education – five years to get a degree in psychology, then another four to get licensed as a therapist – only to be denied her licence at the very end by her analytic school because her approach with one of the patients during her thesis was deemed "too cognitive-behavioral" – never mind it worked – I tend to consider the purpose of the whole thing to be mostly branding. Or, as I usually put it, creating keyfabe.
The very fact that in order to become a therapist one has to to through therapy themselves, at least here, always seemed more like a cult initiation than something of practical purpose. But I could be wrong on that.
No I think you're right about all of that. Hopefully one of these days I'll finish a draft I have going on therapeutic training, but the long story short is, yes, it's more cult initiation than knowledge transfer or technique training.
Modern life bombards us with choice. We have to remove as much as possible. I wear the same clothes everyday and eat the same food to reserve that energy for meaningful decisions.
We need structure, rules to live by. Secularism is not doing us any philosophical favors. Also, a lot of people are trying to replace religion with their political beliefs and its causing all manner of shenanigans.
My answers to a couple of the big questions: We have to create our own meaning, and we get to choose our own flavor of suffering. For me, these two things are closely entertwined. I figured out what kind of suffering worked best for me, and meaning followed.
Since I leaned away from atheism, and began to entertain the idea that magic exists, my quality of life increased dramatically. I don't see any other way except atheism+nihilism. Our brains are so phenomenally powerful, especially in terms of our connections to each other. We are nowhere near explaining this power, so for now, its magic. Ive had some inexplicable instances of intuition that were frightening. Knowing something without any sensory input, and being correct, is a strange feeling.
Also, I love that material science is now explaining things that we have known intuitively for thousands of years. The lessons of religions backed up in studies. Studies still require faith/doubt.
I reckon that the pendulum is fixing to swing back into another great awakening of some sort. Maybe not Christianity, but something more than material secularism.
I've often had the fantasy of wearing the same shirt for every day of the week. So, like, a blue T-shirt for Tuesday. That way everyone (including me) would know what day it was by what shirt I was wearing. Not sure why I haven't followed through...other than that, sometimes, simplicity is harder than complexity. In particular the upfront costs (like buying those shirts and committing to the bit).
Anyway, I agree with your points and thank you for commenting. I do agree with you that a new direction is needed, although I'm not sure what. Also really liked this: "Our brains are so phenomenally powerful, especially in terms of our connections to each other. We are nowhere near explaining this power, so for now, its magic."
What kind of suffering worked best for you, btw?
Rotating the same outfits through the week makes a big difference. And the clothes dont have to be boring. Just without the need for decision making. Eating the same thing everyday eliminates so much wasted money and energy. Plus I dont overeat, and I dont eat out of boredom.
The change in suffering that made all the difference in the world was creating a job for myself where I dont have to deal with a ton of people everyday. Needed to only be responsible for myself, and to not have a commute. Did a lot of sales jobs where I literally spoke to hundreds of people per day. Like being in a major city or on the internet, its impossible to humanize large volumes of people. The overwhelming amount of human interaction burned me out and made me isolate outside of work. Then there were the problem coworkers who made everyones lives harder everyday.
Now, I do copywriting and marketing work remotely. Most days I dont have to speak to anyone at all. Just write. However, I work from a coffee shop so I can be around people and interact with them. But not hundreds of people. The freedom of this is priceless. Aiming to finish this book, and survive on creative writing in the coming years.
"Like being in a major city or on the internet, its impossible to humanize large volumes of people." - yeah, so true. Sounds like your shift resulted in less suffering overall though. As in, not the same amount of a different kind, but just less overall, no?
We are designed to live in, and take care of, small communities. I vastly reduced my exposure to people. Moved to a small town. Dont have to talk to people for work. No commute. But Ive also gotten crazy about exercise, a form of voluntary suffering. For whatever reason I dont mind physical suffering. Its the social flavor that I cant take a lot of. Also been learning to write fiction, which takes forever, and is often unpleasant. But Im doing work that means something to me. Whats that Frankl quote? "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." To me, that means that if we create meaning in our lives, we can suffer through anything.
Nutshell: every change is a tradeoff. Is there, in fact, less suffering in my life? No. Ive just finally chosen how Im willing to suffer, and created meaning in my life. Not making lifes big choices is a short road to misery. The more we avoid suffering, the more suffering our minds create for us.
For instance: I dont have to deal with traffic, or even get into my car most days, but there are no decent restaurants or bakeries within an hour of me. But since I Reorganized my life around writing, and connecting with people in other meaningful ways, things are a lot sunnier.
Makes sense. Also, I've had plenty of clients express this exact sentiment: "For whatever reason I dont mind physical suffering. Its the social flavor that I cant take a lot of."
I think that, maybe, its because I have more control over physical pain, and I know that I get something out of it. At the very least, I get a new scar story. I can make sense of that. Its honest. But social aggression is never honest.
Can only speak for myself, but the vast majority of social punishment Ive endured has been completely senseless. Someone projecting, taking their internal insecurities and shadow out on the external world. These people are a constant lose/lose situation. Yet I found myself dealing with this in different people over and over and over again. So I isolated for a long time. Until in 2021 when a chaotic relationship made me take a long hard look at myself, and what I am attracted to. Not surprisingly, I brought the nonsense onto myself.
Have to say that I really love what you wrote, and thank you for indulging me in the comments. Appreciate you.
Great article, thanks a lot.
> For other questions, science has discredited existing answers without replacing them.
I think we should worship that emptiness. That's not unprecedented. We should all become practicing, observant agnostics. Yes, you might ask me what exactly that entails and the answer would be 'I don't know', the answer I should be perfectly comfortable with as a practicing agnostic. Maybe I don't know *yet*, maybe I'll never know, but for now let me just be in awe of it :)
Something tells me you should go read Rob's post on Awe :) Anyway, thank you for reading and commenting. I'll give some thought to worshipping emptiness/not having answers.
> Rob's post on Awe
Oh, which one is that? I vaguely remember reading something like that but can't quite put my finger on it.
> I'll give some thought to worshipping emptiness/not having answers.
Last night my girlfriend and I tried sitting in silence for a while and then saying a true sentence beginning with "I don't know" in a Quaker-like vocal ministry fashion. It was surprisingly difficult and very insightful. A lot of things I thought I didn't know, I actually kind of knew. I think I'll give it another go in a day or two.
It was one of our earlier ones...here's the link: https://thelivingfossils.substack.com/p/awe. I don't know if you'll like it, but I hope you do :)
Your excellent argumetn explains scientism ("I am the Science") mindset.
Hm, haven't heard of that...where can I learn more?
I do not think there is litterature about it, but "I am the Science" is what Fauci said when grilled for his COVID response: i refer to the behaviour of people that treat Science not as a method but as a faith, like those that attacked Yonnaidis (the man that kickstarted the replication crisis problem) because he dared to fight COVID response because that meant fighting "Saint" Fauci...literally, there are people that treated Fauci as a Catholic saint (https://theluminaryandco.com/products/anthony-fauci-devotional-prayer-saint-candle).
Ah, gotcha.
Like your boss, I don't think therapists should be so reticent about giving advice. Whenever anything mechanical needs fixing I go straight to my engineer brother-in-law. He has thought about engineer-y things for decades and I would always prioritize his thoughts above my own since my thoughts are crummy.
Perhaps 'life' and mechanical stuff aren't exactly the same, but when a person is so at sea that they refer themselves for therapy, that's kind of an admission that they are out of their depth. I know at times in my life I just couldn't think things through and would read ANYONE for some hints about how to go forward. Zen? Try it. Religion? I just can't, more's the pity. But not only do you have experience on your side, you also see things from the outside, which is a massive advantage. And even if your advice turns out to be rubbish, at least it's something solid to cling to for a while for the person drowning in a sea of uncertainty.
Totally agree and I've been leaning more into giving advice for those very reasons. The main thing is to create an environment where the person can come back and say, "your advice was crummy."
Very good, and while reading it it seemed both important and true. But the same is true of most posts I read and by tomorrow, after reading 10 more articles, this one will have faded from memory. Pity. It could be just the one I need, the missing part of the jigsaw. Now, onto the next Substack article.
Ha, well said, and godspeed.