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Joined 4 days ago
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Cake day: March 8th, 2025

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  • Psychotherapist in the UK here. I cannot stress enough that many of these services are quite predatory both on the therapist and clients. Additionally many do not vet their therapists properly.

    I don’t know where you are in the EU but your country should have regulating bodies. Here in the UK we have BACP, BPS, COSCA etc. All of which have online directories that let you search by speciality, filter for online/in-person etc. In the UK (and I’ve heard this is true in some other places in Europe but not sure where) you do NOT have to be qualified to call yourself a therapist or counselor so going with someone outside of these regulatory bodies often means you are doing therapy with someone that did a weekend online course. It is also why these online services are full of people you don’t want to be working with.

    Before COVID, in the UK we were required to have specialist additional training to work via phone/online but since COVID it’s a bit of a wild west. It is substantially different working online than in person - that can be a very good thing… But it can also be a very bad thing too.

    My advise is find a regulatory body, search their directory and look for people who specialize in exactly what you want to work in. Many will tick a box as one of 100 things they can work with - ignore those and look for people that in the description talk about neurodiversity etc.

    Oh and finally, good practice is to offer clients a 15-20 min call so you can explain how you work and help them get an idea of if they’d like to work with you. Take advantage of this and talk to 2-4 people first before picking someone. The number 1 metric for positive outcomes in therapy is how well you connect to your therapist, so don’t compromise on that.

    If you would like more pointers feel free to ask, I don’t want to overshare info that isn’t relevant.



  • Capitalism loves to point at mental health - especially after spending decades shaping public views and systemic approaches mental health to be a personal defect and issue.

    9x out of 10 psychopathology done thoroughly rather than just ticking off some symptoms in the DSM/ICD identifies above psychological or biological factors the main factor in mental health struggles is sociological.

    Simply put: society is depressing people, society is making people anxious… And behind all that it is capitalism that dictates that success and survival is based on ability to produce. And if you fail to produce the whole system is stacked against you to reduce your ability to function mentally.

    For folks interested in this I highly recommend checking out Lucy Johnson of the BPS (British Psychological Society)'s Power Threat Meaning Framework for a radical new way to see mental health.


  • I know some complaints are it doesn’t do anything different to Obsidian to me that is a massive advantage as that’s kinda what I’m looking for. I just want an open source Obsidian, so, it’s on my radar to check in on every few months to see how it is progressing.

    Unfortunately, for me the fact that mobile apps seem to be very far out still is an immediate no-go for me as a practical option yet as I do at least 30-50% of my note making / reading on the go.




  • As a psychotherapist I’ve found myself working with quite a few people in the last 5yrs going through the process of questioning if they are neurodivergent after social media psychoeducation.

    In my experience many professionals are woefully under trained in the area of both trauma and neurodivergence and both would be primary considerations if you friend is resonating with descriptions of experiences and symptoms of ADHD. It is very often overlooked and misdiagnosed or missed as a diagnosis. Additionally many Therapists are trained to stay in the clients frame of reference and would not suggest a diagnosis that would be the job of a psychiatrist (at least here in the UK).

    I think this can be a really complicated field to navigate. The way we diagnose mental health divergence in the west is primarily using the ICD or DSM both very problematic for various reasons but most of all because they look at symptoms to diagnose. Generally when diagnosing a physical condition symptoms are key to bringing people into the doctors office but you wouldn’t want chemo because you had trouble breathing… You’d want some further tests to identify if it was lung cancer or a broken rib. Hell even some good additional questioning can drill down to this. Now in saying that a good mental health professional will do this, but many don’t - especially somewhere like America.

    The reason this is such an issue is many underlying conditions can present as ADHD - and visa versa. Your friend could have complex or chronic trauma, or any number of personality disorders for example. On the flip side I’ve seen people with probable ADHD be turned away from medical help because psychiatrists have (in my opinion) wrongly presumed it’s trauma.

    So to me the thing I tend to focus on more than anything is how does this stuff show up in people’s lives and how can they alieviate the pain. For many seeking a diagnosis and getting medical help will be worth trying. For many other just having a community that struggles with similar issues and supports each other with tools and techniques that help is enough. Whatever it looks like for your friend I’d recommend you ask her what supporting her would look like from her perspective and do your best to be there.

    To be clear I don’t think you did anything “wrong”, we all react from our own frame of reference and yours was different then than it is now as you are considering other angles. But I think you are asking the right question and sound like a good friend.

    On the topic of these psycho education social media platforms - ultimately, I’m more thankful for the increased awareness and access to tools and techniques that help people than for any false self-diagnosis that undoubtably occurs because of it.