A Review for a Restaurant I've Never Been To

For the sake of this article, there is a hypothetical restaurant named Rosa's Samosas, and you've been dying to go there. I checked the restaurant's website and read everything on it, I researched every item on the menu and even watched some YouTube videos about how their samosas are made. I read some comments on the Rosa's Samosas Instagram & Twitter page, and then studied the history of restaurants in general. I sat down at my computer and started writing the following review on Google for Rosa's Samosas, which you will happen to read when deciding if you should go to the restaurant or not:

"You HAVE TO eat here!! Five stars for sure. I agree with other reviewers about the atmosphere of the restaurant - it's perfect, and it's exactly what every customer loves. I highly recommend the potato and pea samosa, and ask for extra of their special dipping sauce! DELICIOUS!!"

I did all of the things I just mentioned, but I've never actually eaten at (or been inside of) Rosa's Samosas. When reading my review, you'd have absolutely no way of knowing that, and might make a whole night's plans based on that review/opinion.

What does this have to do with mental health you might ask? I believe it is a great analogy for therapy*. (*this is not to bash therapy or therapists in any way. It is only meant to bring awareness to the fact that not everyone will know what is best for you and it is always important to use your own discernment.) I use this analogy as a comparison to taking mental health healing advice from someone who has never experienced it, but claims to know what is best for you based on what they've studied. There is not a therapist on earth who can fully address an issue they've only read about. They can egoically assert their educated opinion, but they will never know the intricate details of someone's mental health issues and how they make them tick, so to speak. It is only the individual who can truly assess what is right or wrong for them. What a person experiences in life is so unique that even two siblings who experienced nearly the exact same upbringing can have completely different outlooks on how they were raised. What traumatized one child might've motivated the other, therefore an outside opinion may be essentially useless.

That's just one way a therapist's appointment is a lot like a restaurant review. Here are 5 other reasons why counting solely on a therapist or professional opinion of your mental health is like a restaurant review:

1. At the end of the day, even if someone has tried everything on the menu, you may have different tastes than them. Maybe they loved the potato and pea samosas because they weren't very spicy, but you tried it and found it too bland. The same can be said for certain therapeutic treatments - while one person may thrive in a group therapy session for example, another person may shut down completely and inadvertently cause more trauma in themselves. No two people are the same, just as their traumas and the ways they need to be treated will not be the same. What may help one person may actually cause damage for another.

2. You might try a specific food suggestion from an online review only to find out there's an ingredient in it you're allergic to. Similarly to the point made previously, the wrong advice can cause damage without intending to. In terms of this analogy, lets say the part you're allergic to is the way the therapist's advice is presented. In the first point it was more about the actual means of treatment (the meal), where this is more intricate (the ingredients). Lets say group therapy DOES work, but every couple of weeks there's a person in the group that reminds you of a person who hurt you, and the therapist kindly suggests you "try to let it go". The use of these words triggers your abandonment wounds, as growing up you were always brushed off and told to get over it or let it go. The therapist didn't mean to harm you, and the other person certainly didn't mean to remind you of someone who hurt you, but the triggered trauma response has now made it difficult for you to even want to go to the group at all, causing a metaphorical allergic reaction to this type of treatment. In this case, self talk is what is needed to either coach yourself through it or decide it's not worth it to keep triggering yourself. No one can tell you what is best, and it might not even be the same answer every time. Maybe it's more like mild lactose intolerance that acts up only when consumed on certain days (pretend that's a thing). Either way, it doesn't feel good.

3. Sometimes restaurants have bad days, and you maybe that's the day you trusted a positive review but had a bad experience with your meal. Maybe the restaurant had a lot of orders that day, or ran out of an important ingredient. Maybe they're short-staffed or the new guy is on the grill and made a mistake. Whatever the issue, a therapist is much the same. Therapists are humans who not only have bad days, they have their own traumas and biases as well, and it's not always possible to turn them off. A therapist may unintentionally come from a place of personal experience in their approach to you, and it may unintentionally cause harm to the client. They may be tired but seem uninterested, they may yawn after a sleepless night and seem rude, they may give an answer that feels insensitive because they don't necessarily agree with your views but are trying to be supportive anyway, and it could leave a bad taste in your mouth. You just never know, so it's important not to put all your meal responsibilities on restaurants - cook some meals for yourself too.

4. Is there anything you used to love to eat as a child but can't stand now (or vice versa)? For me, as a kid I used to think cantaloupe was a disgusting inedible poison that must've been sent straight from hell. I was repulsed by it. I'm 35 now, and sometime within the last 4 years I've grown to absolutely love cantaloupe. I don't even remember when I gave it a chance again to be honest. I must've been desperate. But I do know I was very confused when I realized I thought it was delicious. This is sort of like certain advice or healing tips you may receive from a treatment facilitator. What might not have been ideal for you at one stage of your life might now be perfect, or what might have worked for you at one point no longer does. To put it in context outside of the healing or mental health realm, it's sort of like giving a kid in grade 4 homework that is meant of a grade 8 student. Eventually that advice might be perfect for you, but if you try to do or heal something before you're ready, you're likely going to struggle. I have so many analogies and metaphors I kind of forgot this was meant to be restaurant review related, but this works. Because I definitely would've avoided a cantaloupe restaurant as a kid, even if the reviews were good. It wouldn't be until later in life that the positive reviews would be accurate or applicable to my life.

5. Some people get paid to write reviews for restaurants (and other products). They don't care about the quality of the review, they just want to get paid. At the end of the day, being a therapist is that person's job. Their income does not equal empathy or even require it. Just because someone is getting paid to do something doesn't mean they know what they're talking about or you have helpful advice. They may just be there to get paid. Hopefully this is only in extreme cases, but it is absolutely a reality in our world that money comes first in most cases. A person who is paid to care about you will never be the same as someone who genuinely cares about your wellbeing. That statement can feel lonely or isolating for a lot of people, as it is hard to have someone who genuinely cares for you. But what I'm suggesting here is that you are the person who cares about you. It's got to be your number one priority, because if you don't care about you, how can you expect anyone else to?

Try the restaurant out for yourself, and if you don't like it, try another one. But if you ask me, the best way to stay nourished is to learn to cook for yourself.