The Therapy Trap: How Psychotherapy May Be Making You Worse

09/28/2025

The Therapy Trap: How Psychotherapy May Be Making You Worse - by Adam Scott

They’ll tell you therapy heals. They’ll tell you that by “processing” your past, by revisiting the darkest corners of your memory, you’ll find freedom. But what if the opposite is true? What if every hour you spend on the couch is quietly rewriting your history, exaggerating your pain, and deepening your wounds? What if psychotherapy isn’t healing you at all—but trapping you in a story that never really happened?

This is the part nobody wants to talk about.

Memory Is Not Truth

We grow up believing our memories are like files in a cabinet, ready to be pulled out intact. Science says otherwise. Memory is not a recording—it’s a reconstruction. The brain stores fragments—sensations, images, emotions—and when you recall a memory, it stitches those pieces back together like a patchwork quilt. Every time you remember, you don’t just replay the past—you rewrite it.

Elizabeth Loftus, one of the most respected memory researchers, proved how fragile memory really is. Her research showed that simple suggestion can implant false memories—convincing people they had been lost in a mall as children, or even that they met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland (an impossibility) (Loftus, 2005). If a passing comment can alter memory, imagine what years of therapy can do.

Each recall makes memory malleable again (Nader & Hardt, 2009). After every therapy session, the “remembered” story isn’t just replayed—it’s edited by the emotions of the moment, the therapist’s responses, and the brain’s own negativity bias. Over time, the story hardens into something darker than it ever was.

How Therapy Amplifies Negativity

The human brain already leans negative. It’s called the negativity bias—an evolutionary adaptation that made us more attentive to threats than rewards (Baumeister et al., 2001). We remember the insults more than the compliments, the heartbreak more than the love.

When therapy asks you to relive painful memories, those neural pathways fire again—and because of neuroplasticity, they strengthen (Kandel, 2001). Add a therapist’s validation—“That sounds emotionally abusive”—and suddenly, a painful relationship is reframed as abuse. Each recall burns the new interpretation deeper.

The darker the narrative, the more airtime it gets. The client leaves feeling raw, fragile, and paradoxically more dependent on therapy to “heal” the very pain therapy is reinforcing.

The Business of Endless Retelling

Here’s the part that makes people squirm: the therapy industry profits from endless retelling. Long-term clients mean long-term income. The darker the story, the more likely the client will return.

But here’s the science: reliving trauma activates the amygdala, spikes cortisol, and re-engages the stress response as if the event were happening again (McGaugh, 2000). This isn’t healing—it’s re-traumatization. Patients are left convinced they’re making progress when, in reality, they’re reinforcing their suffering.

The Fallout Nobody Talks About

When memory is distorted and negativity amplified, the consequences are enormous:

• Exaggerated Abuse Narratives: A difficult relationship becomes “emotional abuse.” A regretted one-night stand becomes “sexual abuse.” The accuser feels validated, but the accused is cast as a villain for life.

• False Trauma Identities: People begin to see themselves through a permanent lens of victimhood. Anxiety and depression grow—not from the original event, but from the distorted narrative.

• Destroyed Reputations: Once labeled an abuser, the accused rarely recovers. Careers, friendships, and families collapse under the weight of accusation.

• Societal Inflation: The more trauma language stretches to cover regret, incompatibility, or shame, the less meaning it has for genuine survivors.

The cure becomes the disease.

The Path Forward

Does this mean therapy is useless? Not entirely. But talk therapy as it’s commonly practiced is dangerous. Healing doesn’t come from endless excavation of the past—it comes from building resilience in the present.

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): Challenges distorted thinking instead of inflating it.

• Somatic therapies: Calm the nervous system without digging deeper into unreliable memories.

• Solutions-focused approaches: Build skills and forward movement instead of glorifying suffering.

Real healing happens when therapy stops rewriting the past and starts equipping the present.

The Forbidden Question

If memory is a story, and every therapy session rewrites that story, then you have to ask yourself:

How much of what you believe about your past is even true—and who profits from keeping you in that belief?

References

• Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323

• Kandel, E. R. (2001). The molecular biology of memory storage: A dialogue between genes and synapses. Science, 294(5544), 1030–1038. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1067020

• Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.94705

• McGaugh, J. L. (2000). Memory—a century of consolidation. Science, 287(5451), 248–251. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5451.248

• Nader, K., & Hardt, O. (2009). A single standard for memory: The case for reconsolidation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(3), 224–234. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2590