Is psychological counseling an "antidote" for the middle class?

It is said that the current middle class is gradually anxious,

Suffering from "heart disease".

Saying goes

"Heart disease still needs heart medicine", find someone who can replace it

A psychologist who solves problems by himself, makes an appointment call, and takes an hour out of an afternoon that is not in a hurry to have an immersive psychological intervention, and when you walk out of the counseling room, the world is rejuvenated. 

This is a common scene in many movies and series. 

Stills from the movie "Soul Catcher".

In many Western countries, regular visits to a psychiatrist are like a haircut, a hallmark of middle-class life, but in China, it seems like a long way from meeting that standard. This is due to the fact that the middle class itself has not yet fully adapted to solving intimate problems through the outside world, as well as many reasons such as the psychological counseling and therapy industry. 

According to many media reports in recent years, as well as the investigation and research of the psychological counseling industry, the reporter found that the psychological counseling industry in China is still in the exploration stage, and there are many chaotic phenomena: online institutions that claim to be free and actually guide consumption, psychological counseling apps that attract laymen to quickly train and take up their posts, and professional certificate application information with the advertisement of "hourly salary billing, earn 200,000 yuan a year later...... How to identify professional psychologists and avoid blind consumption and secondary harm has become a new problem that the middle class who are interested in seeking psychological intervention need to face. 

In addition, we have to explore a fundamental question: can psychological intervention really become a "good medicine" for the middle class?

Beijing, November 15, 2023. People waiting at traffic lights at intersections during evening rush hour. (Photo/Visual China)

"There are very few people in the middle class who have a strong desire to express themselves

, everyone wants to be invisible. After chatting with a friend from a wealthy family, the reporter found that "quitting" and "hiding" have almost become the consensus of today's middle-class circles, and they rarely spend money on the "back of the knife" that should not be spent. 

Some people say that middle-class families have higher spending power and better understand that it takes to change themselves from the inside out and have a more far-reaching impact on their lives.

In this way, an effective psychological intervention seems to have found a "knife edge" for the middle class. 

Stills from the movie "Soul Journey".

An Xin is 31 years old and lives in Shanghai. She confessed to reporters that after quitting her job at the beginning of 2022, she applied for the civil service examination in a district of Shanghai for two consecutive years.

Now in her third year, reality often makes her feel stagnant. 

She was originally interested in psychology, and she wanted to take a psychological counselor certificate, and by the way, she also adjusted her mentality, but she found out after a search.

As early as September 2017, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security removed "psychological counselors" from the "National Vocational Qualification Catalogue".

The "psychological counselor qualification exam" that is now flooding the Internet is essentially collecting an "IQ tax". 

In order to be able to calm down and continue to prepare for the public examination, An Xin had to install a psychological counseling app with a considerable number of downloads on her mobile phone.

The counselor's advice to her was to counsel twice a week. With the mentality of giving it a try, An Xin chose to charge 500 yuan/hour once a week. 

However, what she didn't expect was that after four weeks of such an attempt, her mood became even worse. "Every week I would wait for her online, hoping for some comfort, but the attitude of the other person was always hot and cold, leaving me feeling confused and helpless. I was very dependent on her, and she felt that I was 'empathetic' to her, that I should transfer this emotion, and that she wanted to give me a different counselor to help me transfer. As a result, this way of dealing with it made me feel sad, I didn't want to replace her, I wanted to continue my relationship with her. An Xin said. 

A still from the movie "Dangerous Methods".

It is understood that from the technical point of view of psychological counseling, the client's empathy is a good time to understand and repair

It is best to maintain a state of relative dependency.

However, online

, or the psychological intervention of professionalism to be verified, can easily cause new emotional problems.

It is neither predictable nor controllable.

There are many complaints of unprofessional psychological counseling services on the Internet. The most difficult thing to accept seems to be that some counsellors like to criticize their clients. 

They do not shy away from pointing out the "shortcomings" of other people's minds, as if having a psychological problem is like making a big mistake. This lack of empathy can cause the client to quickly blame themselves for believing that everything the counselor said was right. 

In addition, unprofessional psychological counselors will simply classify clients as more superficial social signs such as family of origin, marital relationship, love psychology, interpersonal socialization, workplace pressure, etc., and ignore the particularity of individual experiences and social complexity, and respond to clients in a superficial and perfunctory manner. 

A still from the movie "Dr. Edward".

"I won't continue to pay anymore, and I'll go to a psychiatrist after that. An Xin told reporters that the unpleasant psychological counseling experience reminded her of the advertising slogans of the intermediary agency when she applied for the "psychological counselor" application before-"zero threshold", "high income" and "employment when you get a certificate", which made her feel a little ironic and absurd, but she didn't expect to be charged an "IQ tax". 

The reporter later learned that An Xin used a psychological assessment applet to test herself for "moderate depression", and the stigma made her reluctant to tell her family, so she could only pin her hopes on modern medicine. 

However, as a means of soothing and healing people's hearts, the evaluation of the effect of psychological counseling is already very complicated, and it is even more complicated at present.

As urban lifestyles become more and more diverse, people's awareness of mental health is gradually increasing, and the psychological counseling industry is attracting more and more attention. 

According to the data of enterprise survey, among the mainland enterprises, the business scope includes psychological counseling has reached 120,000. The consultation fees of individual psychological counseling social institutions are often 300-500 yuan per hour, which is in stark contrast to the average psychological counseling and treatment fees of public mental health institutions of several tens of yuan per session. 

Articles 23 and 51 of the "Mental Health Law of the People's Republic of China" clearly stipulate the practice norms for psychological counselors and psychotherapists, and psychological counselors may not engage in psychotherapy. 

Psychotherapy is the assessment and treatment of psychological disorders of abnormal individuals or groups, and is a goal-oriented long-term service to correct, eliminate or alleviate psychological disorders and promote the healthy and coordinated development of personality.

March 13, 2024, Yinchuan, Ningxia. In a fight club, a female student is doing target shooting training. (Photo/Visual China) 

The Chinese Journal of Mental Health has also set up a discussion column, inviting experts and scholars from all over the country to express their opinions and reach a consensus on the handling of the doctor-patient relationship:

To accurately understand the specific problems of each specific patient, and to be honest and open about all treatments,

As much as possible, we should start from the interests of the patients and maximize the benefits of the patients. 

Chen Xiaolin is 35 years old, her hometown is in a county in Hunan, and after returning from studying abroad, she worked and lived in Hong Kong for 10 years.

Two years ago, Chen Xiaolin used her savings to buy a house in Hong Kong and successfully took on a mortgage.

INFP personality

She is suffering from internal friction every day, going straight in the workplace, often getting angry while working, and her heart is also struggling repeatedly between "staying in Hong Kong and carrying the mortgage" and "going back to her hometown to lie flat". 

When chatting with reporters about his hometown that he couldn't go back to, Chen Xiaolin said frankly that in addition to economic binding, it was more about cultural differences and the lack of integration of life. 

Stills from the TV series "I'm Good in Another Country". 

She has always had a certain knowledge and understanding of psychology and psychological counseling, and at first she was looking for a psychological counselor in Hong Kong because she was suffering from emotional distress caused by large and small events in her life, hoping to better deal with her emotions, and also wanted to explore her inner self and have a deeper understanding of herself. 

According to Chen Xiaolin's sharing, her psychological counseling

The counselor belongs to the "psychodynamic" school, and the change occurs in a gradual process, the counselor uses words to help her describe her feelings, open up the channel of feelings, and gradually let her know the reasons that make her unhappy. 

"The most obvious feeling during this time is that I feel that my feelings have become more direct, and I can connect with my emotions very quickly, rather than just trying to explain everything with reason and reason. His emotions surfaced under the cover of his original reason, and he cursed and cursed when he was angry, and he didn't like it

Huan refuses, respecting his feelings. ”

Chen Xiaolin said that these seem like clichés, but it is not easy to really do them. 

Change also comes at a price, the first is money, the second is time,

It takes patience to get through these moments of exploration, which may not be pleasant, depending on how willing and determined you are. 

After a period of psychological intervention, Chen Xiaolin found that over time, although her emotions can be at the same frequency as her body, she still feels powerless from time to time, and sometimes even has confusion of consciousness, happiness is always accompanied by frustration, and she always blames herself for no reason after anger. 

Stills from the movie "Drop of the Heart". 

Later, through a friend's introduction, Chen Xiaolin met another user

IFS and EMDR methods

therapists. 

In the process of receiving psychotherapy, the therapist discovered that the root of the so-called "problems" in her body actually came from the place where she was born for more than ten years, as well as the psychological trauma she had during her formative years. At the time, she was also diagnosed with some degree of schizotypal personality disorder. 

"In the past, it was very abstract to hear others talk about 'accept yourself and love your inner child', but this time, the therapist found the hidden corner of my mind based on the traumatic events I had when I was growing up and the discipline of society. Chen Xiaolin told reporters that the findings of IFS suggested:

Strict mothers, frightened children, and hardworking children are actually protecting themselves.

None of the parts are bad, they all play an important role in a person's growth, what we have to do is to know each one

parts, go and talk to each part.

Stills from the movie "Dog Thirteen". 

In this way, Chen Xiaolin gradually learned to reconcile with herself, and some parts that were stuck in the past are slowly growing and transforming. 

In the opinion of many psychotherapists, there are too many kinds of scientific psychotherapy, while

Finding what works and works for you may require a long-term and continuous process of experimentation.

This process requires the trust and patience of the client, which is what a qualified therapist needs to work on. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." This sentence can also be extended to "The only thing we have to be anxious about is anxiety itself." 

We have to ask what is the root cause of "heart disease". The friend from a wealthy family also asked the reporter a rhetorical question. In his view, "middle class" is a social label, and their anxiety comes more from external reality than endogenous psychological problems. 

Even if there is a certain degree of psychological problems, it is also related to the original family, marital relationship and other issues, but most people will have such emotions, not only limited to the middle class. 

In this way, it seems that discussing the effectiveness of psychological intervention on middle-class anxiety has become a false proposition. 

In his book The Society of Fear, the German sociologist Heinz Bude argues that fear (or anxiety) is a major feature of modern society, and that this emotion has no social boundaries and affects everyone from the bottom, middle class to the upper class, from adults to children. 

The Society of Anxiety, Heinz Bude, Peking University Press, 2020-07

But in general, the changes of the times, especially the process of globalization and the change of industrial structure, have put all individuals in the great flood of the times: the pace of life to which individuals have adapted is declining, the experience of the past is no longer applicable, and everyone seems to have reason to be anxious when no one tells us what will happen in the future. 

In recent years, the form of social integration has shifted from promising success to threatening elimination—we struggle desperately with the threat of negative consequences instead of a positive incentive. 

However, the rise of neoliberalism in urban life, which emphasizes the need for individuals to achieve happiness through self-improvement, is a reflection of the current popularity of "chicken soup", success studies, and even knowledge payment products in China. 

But can this kind of life, which is highly tied to society, really be reversed by self-improvement? In other words, can anxiety about uncertainty be overcome by psychological intervention? 

The answer is clearly no. The middle class may have such a mentality: "If I had bought that class, I might have improved myself", "If I had gritted my teeth and sold that apartment earlier, I might not be worried every day now", "If I had earned more money to let my children go to that private school, maybe my children would not have been left behind in the future". 

Heinz Bud believes that in middle-class anxiety, this contradiction that seems to be "possible" by relying on personal ability, but may actually "not be done" is actually emotionalizing the logic of "choice determines destiny". In the reporter's opinion, trying to look at everything a little bit and ignore anxiety may save a lot of money for psychological counseling.

Screenshot of the movie "Soul Journey".

        Written by Duan Zhifei

                     cover 

 Soul Catcher   

               Title picture "Soul Catcher"

Typography Cu

This article was first published in the 656th issue of New Weekly "Forty Not Won"