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I have been in consistent therapy since December 2023. Before that, it was scattered bits and pieces, random sessions that didn’t really work out for me. Maybe I wasn’t ready, or maybe I didn’t find the right person. My current therapist, S, works best for me. I look forward to my sessions with her. They ground me.

But even now, every time I book a session, a small part of me hesitates. Therapy is expensive. I can feel the price of every minute I spend in that Gmeet box. And it’s not just the money, it’s what the money stands for. Therapy is a privilege - and self-care, as everyone likes to call it, is deeply intertwined with privilege.

It’s easy to romanticize healing. To make it sound universal, available to anyone willing to try. But the truth is, therapy is for those who can afford it, emotionally and financially. For those who can say, “I’ll talk about my trauma for an hour every week” without worrying about losing a day’s wage or how to pay rent. For those who have language, in both sense and vocabulary, to articulate their pain in a way that psychology recognizes.

When I first started therapy, I wasn’t sure how to behave. I am an independent person by nature. I analyze, decide, and then present my thoughts. My therapist, thankfully, is non-directive. She listens. She holds space. She never tells me what to do; she just makes me see where I am standing. And that works best for me.

My ex-partner, on the other hand, has immense trust in therapy. For them, the therapist is almost a guiding figure - someone whose words they take without questioning. They would often say, “I’ll check with my therapist before deciding.” And every time they said that, I felt our differences widen. It made me wonder how therapy works so differently for different people - for some, it’s structure; for others, it’s space.

But what’s common is this: the system surrounding therapy isn’t neutral. It is political.

Because the idea that “everyone should go to therapy” sounds beautiful - until you remember how few people can.

Mental healthcare in India is a luxury. According to the World Health Organization, India has fewer than one psychiatrist per 100,000 people. The National Mental Health Survey (2015-16) found that nearly 80% of people with mental health issues don’t receive any form of treatment. The government’s allocation for mental health is still less than 1% of the total health budget. That’s not an accident; that’s policy.

So when people online say, “Just go to therapy,” they forget the reality of those who can’t.

Therapy needs time, money, access, safety, and a cultural vocabulary that makes it possible. It needs family support or at least the absence of opposition. In a country where people still whisper the word “psychiatrist” like it’s contagious, therapy becomes not only a form of care but also an act of defiance.

And yet, even for people like me who can access it, there’s politics in every layer.

The way your therapist talks, the language they use, the frameworks they draw from - all of it is shaped by class, culture, and training. I was lucky to find someone intersectional. My therapist doesn’t erase my queerness or my politics. She doesn’t look at my sadness as a symptom but as something that exists in a world that is often cruel to people like me.

But that’s rare. I’ve had friends who were told to “think positive” when they came out as queer.

I’ve known survivors of abuse who were told to “forgive” for their own peace.

I’ve met neurodivergent people whose therapists kept telling them to “try harder to be normal.”

So no, therapy is not always a safe space. It’s shaped by the therapist’s politics as much as by the client’s pain. The neutrality that psychology claims to have; it’s not real. There’s no neutral in a world of hierarchies.

And I sometimes wonder what healing even means in this context.

Is healing about adapting better to a broken system, or is it about resisting it?

Does my therapist want me to cope or to question?

There’s quiet politics in that, too.

My sessions often end with silence. Not the kind of silence that means “we’re done,” but the kind that stretches, thoughtful. I sometimes tell her I write because that’s the only way I survive. She doesn’t romanticize it. She doesn’t call it “art therapy.” She just lets it be what it is - a coping mechanism that works better than anything else.

And still, now and then, I calculate the money.

One session a week. Four in a month. A few thousand rupees gone — money that could pay bills, buy books, or food. Therapy doesn’t come cheap. Healing doesn’t either.

That’s when I realize how unequal the language of “self-care” is. The scented candles, the journaling prompts, the “take a break” slogans - they’re not made for people who are struggling to survive. They’re made for those who can afford to pause.

I write about therapy because it sits at that intersection - between care and capitalism, empathy and economy, privilege and pain.

Sometimes, I wish therapy were free, available, accessible, and culturally sensitive.

But I also know that even then, healing is not just about access. It’s also about power - who gets to define what’s healthy, what’s normal, what’s “better.”

So yes, therapy helps me. My therapist, S, is one of the few people who has seen me at my worst and never flinched. But I can’t ignore the fact that the world where I get to heal is the same world that keeps so many others from doing so.

Maybe that’s the quietest truth about therapy: it’s both personal and political. It heals individuals, but it exists in a system that wounds collectively.

And as I sit down to book my next session - calculating cost, time, mood - I know healing will always be a privilege. But if I have it, I might as well use it to question the very world that made it one.

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