Therapist Haters and Trolls

Curt and Katie talk about haters, heated online discourse that seems to delight in shaming other therapists, Schadenfreude, and the laziness of taking other people down while squandering the opportunity for creativity and positive discourse.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

In this episode we talk about:

• The backlash from haters that is created when you step out as a therapist
• The different theories: dehumanizing therapists, protecting the public from bad therapists, pushing back against innovation
• Characterizing this dynamic as Schadenfreude (and defining it)
• The irony that therapists are not showing positive, healthy communication online
• How jealousy and impostor syndrome can show up
• The ways that therapist training may contribute to these unhealthy conversations
• Dehumanizing people into brands or when people become intertwined with their concept and the idea is humanized
• The entitlement that people can feel when interacting with brands, forgetting that there are people behind these brands
• The emotionality and righteousness in the communication
• The act of bringing other people down in a public forum, rather than raising up own arguments
• The plea to bring in alternative perspectives to add to the discourse, rather than focusing on taking the other person down
• The laziness in just saying that you don’t like something, a passive “take down”
• The reinforcement that trolls get (likes, comments, arguments) and a call to action to stop feeding the trolls
• How the bystander role might be relevant
• Responsibilities of original posters and commenters
• The impact of social media on professional reputation
• Curt’s plea to #CitetheStatute
• The way that social media can feel like we’re talking to ourselves, or to people who are far removed and somehow not impacted by us
• The lack of emotional resources that can impact how we engage with our community of therapists online
• The possibilities when we are able to use these social networks for creativity and discourse