A Culture of Introspective Captivity

Of course, therapy and its vernacular are not solely to blame for our era of isolation. Rather, therapy and other tools of introspection have become ways to justify our lack of access to external stimulation. Instead of using therapy to untangle our desires and fears so that we may effectively act on them, therapy becomes the goal in itself—to crea... See more

Therapy is not bad. It is often good. But, I think, it is easy to find tools in this world to force our focus inward. It is encouraged that we constantly check ourselves and check in with ourselves and self-care ourselves. To live externally is to live more dangerously; it is to live a life that takes up public space, a life that is messy and confu... See more

under capitalism, we all do live on a spectrum of captivity, with access to social and physical and intellectual stimuli unequally distributed. And thus we live on a spectrum of forced introspection, in which we ruminate on our own lives excessively because we do not have adequate access to external stimuli.