08/12/2026
Help is the sunny side of control.
Anne Lamott wrote that in Almost Everything: Notes on Hope - and it's one of a handful of quotes that have reorganized my molecules in the past few years.
I think those of us in a helping profession should be checking for it in our work once a week.
And before you decide this is a problem other clinicians have, look at what our field has done in the name of care. The kid dragged to Weight Watchers. The person coerced into treatment nobody asked them if they were ready for. The chronic illness rewritten as anxiety because anxiety is something we know how to treat. The antipsychotic prescribed for "anxiety" when weight gain was the point. Conversion therapy, treating q***rness like a tumor.
The benign version in my work is good pattern recognition. Catching hypomania at the first spark, treating it before it becomes a wildfire.
The malignant version undermines a person's humanity and calls the result stability.
It doesn't have to be this way. Not if we're willing to reckon with the unpleasant thing in ourselves, instead of passing it along like a candy whose bitterness has been coated in sugar.
Once a week. Your patients will notice if you do. I guarantee you they'll know if you don't.
Longer version is at the OutPsych blog - check it out if you want. That's your decision. :)
