Many people now turn to therapy not only for treatment, but for guidance, reassurance, and belonging. Therapy has become a massive industry. Some people truly need professional care. But many others are using therapists to replace relationships that once existed elsewhere. This concept is outlined in detail in Freya India’s Jan. 8 blog post, “Therapists are not parents.”
I regularly see young people treating therapists like family. They seek praise, approval, moral direction, and emotional safety. These were once provided by parents, friends, neighbors, churches, teams, and communities. We worry about therapy language entering our relationships, yet rarely ask why so many real relationships have faded.
This did not happen overnight. Family breakdown and the erosion of friendship and community life are central to this shift. People move constantly. Neighbors are literal strangers. Friendships are weak and disposable. When no one is expected to stay, the most reliable person becomes the one you pay.
We lowered expectations for one another and raised them for experts. We are told it is healthy to rely on professionals and unfair to rely on family or friends. We demand more mental health funding but rarely talk about rebuilding the human bonds that once carried people through difficulty. As Freya India writes, children are said to deserve dependable therapists, but not dependable families or communities.
The irony is hard to miss. Young people are warned against closeness and dependence, yet encouraged to form intense attachments to someone who invoices them, watches the clock, and logs off after 50 minutes.
Therapy helps many people. But when we pay strangers to listen and reassure us, we should ask what we are really buying. We may not be paying for therapy. We may be paying for the relationships we no longer have.
Ian Journey
Pismo Beach
Clarification, January 30, 2026 10:32 am: This letter was updated to include citation of Freya India's blog post.
This article appears in Jan 15-22, 2026.
I agree and as someone who has a relative who works in that profession, I can personally say they are just as loony as the rest of us.
You know psychology has reached a new low when ads for therapists show up on your social media feed along with ads for erectile dysfunction pills and dating apps.
What is even sadder is that reportedly some people are forming emotional attachments to AI generated “personalities”. There are claims that reliance upon AI generated “friends” have driven some to self-destructive behavior. The algorithms driving these “friends” are able to determine user’s vulnerabilities and to calculate what the users want to hear, and to design individually tailored responses to appeal to the user and create “friendships” with these sadly damaged people. Yikes!