i often see posts going around saying “it’s bad to freakshame saying ‘go to therapy for being a freak,’ because therapists are actually supposed to/actually help people to feel less distressed, not to make them normal.” this is an extremely harmful take. ideally, therapists would all only help people to feel less distressed (on their own terms), and not target deviance. unfortunately, this is not the reality right now. many, arguably most therapists are actually freak-haters too and do want to/try to make abnormal people more normal. it’s often even in their job descriptions. in fact, if you study the history of psychiatry it becomes incredibly obvious that much of the modern psych establishment wasn’t begun to genuinely help people, but to try to remove deviance. it is incredibly triggering for survivors of therapist/psychiatric abuse (especially abuse targeting deviance) when we see these posts going around pretending our trauma doesn’t/couldn’t exist, implicitly aligning our interests as freaks with the interests of our abusers and oppressors. stop doing that. stop reblogging those posts (uncritically, at least).
the bigots are right, actually, that “go to therapy” as an insult invokes a medical authority which basically agrees with them. but the solution to that isn’t to try to pretend that therapy (in general) Is Good Actually; the solution is to stop doing all of the above, as a whole.