#it's easy to see the jedi's treatment of Anakin as the path to hell paved with good intentions

[facultativeactivity]

Man, Star Wars has such a great lore, I wish more of it was in the movies

"the jedi don't have therapists-"

jedi philosophy, and in particular the practices and teachings that jedi were expected to implement in their everyday lives, was therapy. dialectical behavior therapy (dbt), to be exact. anyone who's familiar with dbt knows where i'm already going with this, but like genuinely look up the basic tenets of dbt and it's identical with what the jedi were doing.

dbt, to put it simply, is a specific therapy technique that was designed for ptsd and past trauma. it's pretty different from traditional talk therapy. it combines a few different environments (individual, group, etc.), recognizing that no single format of treatment can stand alone.

the key focuses of dbt include:

emotional regulation- understanding, being more aware of, and having more control over your emotions

mindfulness- regulating attention and avoiding anxious fixation on the past or future

interpersonal effectiveness- navigating interpersonal situations

distress tolerance- tolerating distress and crises without spiraling and catastrophizing

i'm sure it's already clear from that list alone how much the jedi teachings correspond with the goals of dbt. the jedi value, teach, and practice the following:

identifying and understanding emotions

mindfulness and living in the present

compassion, diplomacy, and conflict resolution (on interpersonal scales, not just planetary or galactic)

accepting and tolerating certain levels of distress or discomfort (particularly mental, such as discomfort at the thought of losing a loved one to death)

idk man seems almost as if jedi mental health practices and dbt are two sides of a completely identical coin. (fun fact: both star wars and dbt are products of the 70s.)

and guess what? dbt was specifically designed as a treatment for borderline personality disorder. remember that one? or, if you don't, maybe you remember a specific character, the one who was literally used as an example by my professor in my undergrad psych class when she was teaching us about bpd?

tldr: simply existing within the jedi community, practicing jedi teachings, surrounded by a support network of other jedi of all life stages, was the therapy for anakin. even when viewed through a modern lens. it was even, more specifically, the precise type of therapy that has developed in modern times to treat the exact types of mental issues he was struggling with.