What is the point of therapy? It’s a question that I’ve never thought about properly. In the last ten or so years the calls for everyone to get therapy, do therapy, live therapy have been rising.

Young people, depressed at the state of the world, ruined by social media and driven into loneliness, are told over and over again to get therapy — that the simple act of speaking to another human being will fix their brains.

Therapy is presented as a thing you do once and you’re magically fixed.

The idea that therapy is a sort of silver bullet to all your problems isn’t new, but like everything else, my generation thinks it’s the first to discover it. TikToks and Twitter threads and Reddit posts and articles on sites aimed towards Zillenials all say the same thing: therapy is good, necessary and will fix all your problems.

This constant call for everyone to get therapy, while naive, is a step up from the other type of popular mental health advice perpetrated by brands aimed at men.

“Just talk to your mates,” they implore, implying that if we had a conversation, not about Nuts magazine or football, suicide would cease to be the number one cause of death for men under 40.

Sadly, it’s not as simple as that. I’ve been having therapy on and off for a few years and while, sure, it has helped, it’s very much an ongoing process, something that the Go To Therapy Industrial Complex will never acknowledge.

A new Netflix film, Stutz, is about the closest representation I’ve seen to the idea that traditional therapy might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

In this meta, Nathan Fielder-esque documentary, a collaboration between Jonah Hill and his walking New York Jewish stereotype therapist Phil Stutz, the pair talk about practical tools that give you an instant buzz right from the first session and therefore more faith in the concept of therapy.

Cameos from Jonah’s mum and revelations about Stutz’s past punctuate what is basically a therapy session from an Old Bronx Jew who says he’s gonna “kick your f***king ass” if you don’t sort your head out.

One of Stutz’s tools is the pyramid of reality. Yeah, I know it sounds very new-age Hollywood BS, but bear with.

When life becomes hard, you’re told to imagine your perception of reality as a three-layered pyramid.The bottom, your relationship with your physical body, the second, your relationship with other people, and at the top of the pyramid your relationship with yourself.

Without confronting these three aspects of self, he argues, it’s impossible to move forward.
If you take the time to do the things you know help your relationship with your body, those around you and yourself, then everything else will usually fall into place.

It’s imperfect and won’t work for everyone, but it’s something more than a CBT worksheet from an overstretched NHS psychiatrist.

Stutz will undoubtedly help viewers pick at the Gordian knots inside their heads. But it’s also more than that.

For me at least, someone who has faced some semblance of the issues Jonah talks about, the film speaks to something deeper: a recognition that even with the best therapy money can buy, in the nicest LA 40th-floor offices, some days you’ll still wake up under a dark grey cloud.

I think the reason that so many people treat therapy as a magic cure-all is because they want it to be true. If you believe that anyone can just outsource introspection to any schmuck with a couch then you don’t need to develop empathy for people for whom that doesn’t work.

So yes, better recognition of mental health and depression in particular is good and needed, but unless you’re offering something practical then it’s just hollow words. Attaining happiness is a process with no quick-fix solution. Once I work it out, I’ll let you know.