Why Mental Health Therapy Needs a Warning Label

For decades, we’ve been taught that therapy is the primary—if not the only—path to healing when life becomes overwhelming. Whether we’re struggling with destructive coping patterns like substance use, compulsive behaviors, or the ripple effects these issues create within a marriage or family, the common message is clear: Go to therapy, and that will fix it. And while therapy can be a powerful resource, the truth is more nuanced. 

A healthy life is rarely one-dimensional. Many individuals and families discover that true change requires exploring the deeper roots (thinking) that lead to unhealthy behavior choices,

Our conversation this week contains warnings and suggestions to help you understand the current state of mental health counseling and how to navigate good care when you choose to go to therapy.

Diagnoses

The first thing we should understand is that the DSM is a resource for clinicians to use to help code treatment for insurance purposes. Yet for years, we’ve taken these labels as psychological diagnoses, many of which often result in changing the trajectory of our well-being, adding prescription meds that do not actually treat the issue, and believing we are somehow chemically altered.

In other cases, diagnoses become excuses for why an individual does not function well or to use to not be held accountable for behavioral choices.

Pathologizing human behavior, scaling it in terms of neuro-normal or neuro-divergent, is also a popular ‘trend’ in mental health. 

What is even more frightening is that many of the models used to make these determinations are not even scientifically empirical. They are biased views, posed as ‘theory’ to sell courses and to influence the human mind.

Recent Studies

Several studies have looked at the impact of therapy on memory in both children and adults. The potential to implant ideas of events that have never occurred is a risk that we need to be aware of. 

In one case, a group of children was asked to tell the story of how they broke their arm. None of the children in the study had broken an arm. After several conversations, the children started to relay vivid details of experiences they had never had when they broke their arms.

The ability of a so-called research prompt to adjust a person’s memory is greatly influenced by the setup prompts given during the study, the context of the study instructions, and the unstructured conversations before the official start of the study. Influencing study participants is often a big part of the process.

Mandela Effect

If you have believed things were said a specific way in a movie, or a character had a particular feature, and that is not what is currently being shown, you may be experiencing what is known as a “Mandela Effect.” This phenomenon is very similar to what happens to many people in the above-mentioned studies when a small suggestion can alter a belief or a memory. 

Whether we’re talking about a broken arm, being lost in a mall, the struggle with a parent, witnessing an automobile crash, or Mickey Mouse’s suspenders, we have the kinds of minds that do not reconstruct memory accurately for many reasons – not all of which are trauma or problem-related. Sometimes a suggestion can have a powerful influence on what we think we remember, but never actually experienced. Other times, we see or believe what fits our needs or wants best. Trying to convince someone otherwise is pointless.

Therapeutic Suggestion

If you’ve had a therapist suggest that you may have repressed memories, or maybe gave you a reason for why something happened to you, even though they do not have proof of such, you are likely one of the many who have been unethically influenced by therapy.

It is important to note that most therapists have good intentions and are often following what they were trained to do. Regardless, when you hold the responsibility for someone’s memory reconstruction, for the answers to their ‘why’ questions, the stewardship to not replace their experience with biases of your own, should be of the utmost importance to the clinician.

The term “Therapeutic Suggestion” is a phrase we use at Center for Peace to address the condition where a therapist gives a reason for an event or experience to a client. This is a common practice, but one that should be carefully administered, especially when making suggestions for events of which the therapist had no participation, did not witness, or has not spoken to others involved.

Additionally, suggestions made by a therapist should remain within the wheelhouse of that therapist’s area of expertise. Not every type of human behavior is addressed in the academic period of training. Therapists often specialize in areas of interest to them. However, with all of the ‘social-media-therapy’ we have at our disposal these days, we all need to be very careful that we do not assume what is being suggested is fact. Many ideas or theories have been debunked over the years, despite the fact that many still share these myths online.

Memory Distortion

Memory distortion is an issue that everyone may experience from time to time. It can occur in many ways, such as therapeutic suggestion or the recounting by an individual who witnessed but did not personally experience an event. It can happen from social media, cultural, or even religious influences, to name a few. 

We’ve all heard the varying stories of witnesses to a car crash by those present at the event. We all see what we think we see — we believe what we saw to be fact when more often they are subjectively influenced.

Memory often depends on what we need from the experience or how we code it in our own unique way. There are many reasons people do not remember events equally or even accurately.

Warning Labels

Therapy should have warning labels. More importantly, therapists should be taught to be careful with the reasons they give for why an event happened in a person’s life – especially when the therapist was not present at the event. 

In many cases, the problems presented in therapy often involve other people who share in the experience.  Even if the other individual is present, they may or may not accurately retell the events. Context can be added or omitted. Stories are told by an adult to a child, who lacks the life experience to make full sense of the events, or to consider the perspectives of others. Over time, those stories morph or are embellished to fit the individual’s need not to be held accountable for the behaviors that follow. Additionally, as many wives who have abusive husbands know, sometimes the storyteller lies. 

Therapy and psychological research studies should all come with a warning label to ensure that clients or patients have informed consent, because many so-called theories are just plain wrong to the point of being trash psychology.

Informed Consent

Years ago, informed consent was not required of researchers. As such, many people were seriously harmed by this carelessness. 

Today, social media has become the place where great harm can occur due to the lack of informed consent. Innumerable posts are made daily that suggest, as fact, specific reasons for specific human behaviors. These statements are believable to many unsuspecting people, many of whom are made by untrained influencers. 

Likewise, many things that have been scientifically proven wrong are still taught in academic programs and spouted in social media posts. We’ve addressed several here on this platform. One example that sets a lot of us off is the misinformation of amygdala hijacking, a process that does not occur in the kinds of brains humans have (you can read more of this on other blog posts).

Trusting Yourself vs. Therapy

We’ve moved away from trusting ourselves as authorities of our own experience. Tragically, this is the impact of mental health practices today. We are too focused on feelings, which are not the be-all-end-all gauge for experiential impact and meaning. 

We are wrongly taught about how our brains work and the main job of the brain.

We take counsel from so-called experts, assigning them as the ‘authority’ for the meaning of life, when in truth, these are just regular people struggling with their own stuff. 

What we really need is a therapeutic process that teaches people to trust themselves, to lean into the internal systems all human beings possess, known as discernment. Each of us has a conscience that guides right and wrong behaviors — whether we listen to that voice or not — it is there.

What we also need is less of a focus on the ‘whys’ of life that tend to be unexplainable, and more focus on what happened, and what is the right thing to do next. 

If you are seeing a therapist or believe you need to see one, our recommendation is to remember you are the authority of your life. Therapy/Therapists should never tell clients what to do; rather, they should encourage the client in the decisions they need to make. It should help build confidence within the individual by cautiously examining the meaning being made of life experiences. Most importantly, a therapist should never impose their beliefs or values on a client.

Choose wisely those to whom you turn for guidance in life.

Center for Peace – Living Well Academy

For those of you looking for a different approach to therapy, the Living Well Academy of Center for Peace is just that place. We’ll be having Live Q/As monthly, open discussion forums available for questions and concerns you have at any time, and much more. 

To learn more about the Academy, please use our contact form for additional information.

Until then, we wish you all the very best as we wrap up 2025!