#things pharma does to deal w his problems but they both help and dont help

[lord-squiggletits]

The hard thing about writing therapy sessions into fics is that like. The story is predicated on drama, and even in therapy characters are still people that may or may not be able to communicate, and then there's the fact that even when you're successful in therapy you still have to deal with relationships and life outside of that where your coping is actually put to the test

Like it's weird because "characters dialoguing in therapy speak" is a current day hated trope, but in this case the characters going to therapy (sometimes even with each other) is LITERALLY part of the plot. But then you don't want the therapy to just instantly solve every interpersonal conflict so the characters still need to beef over something. Which, fine, lots of people go to therapy and don't cooperate during the session, are unwilling to apply the advice IRL, other things happen due to the flawed nature of existence, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that at least in stories/worlds with no therapy, ppl being severely malfunctional and getting in deep shit makes sense bc there's no education or support or help for them to make the optimal choices. But in stories with therapy, you want the therapy to be an in-universe part of the world that characters react to as real people react in therapy. But you don't want the therapy to turn into a meta device that you as an author use to magic away a character's emotional/interpersonal problems effortlessly with disregard to how long/difficult therapy is.

I feel like this might be a genre issue, idk? There's just so few stories that involve therapy (many of which are biographical in nature and not fiction/narrative focused), maybe due to how mental health is only a recently destigmatized/educated topic. So this feels like a writing problem exclusive to some sort of contemporary, "just like the real world" genre of writing that I'm unfamiliar with and maybe the answer is just "yeah you have to write it as a fictional story but also like it's real life." Idk.