Basic Trope: A character refuses to go to therapy.
- Straight: Charlie refuses to go to therapy.
- Exaggerated:
- Charlie has debilitating depression to the point in which he's practically suicidal, but still doesn't want to go to therapy.
- Nobody in the work wants to go to therapy.
- Downplayed: Charlie does go to therapy, but finds it extremely boring.
- Justified:
- Charlie has a Psycho Psychologist, or has had one in the past.
- Alternatively, Charlie has heard stories about bad psychologists harming their patients.
- Charlie has a disability such as autism, and worries that he will end up in an abusive ABA therapy (either because he's heard of such abusive therapies or because he's experienced them himself).
- Charlie dislikes the way therapy is formatted.
- Charlie doesn't believe he even needs a therapist.
- Charlie hates being told what to do, period (the therapist may find some headway with therapy if he manages to convince Charlie that anything he needs to do was his idea, but he also better hope nobody ever corrects Charlie on that belief otherwise Charlie will toss it all away out of spite).
- Charlie comes from a culture where people who need and go to therapy are ridiculed and ostracized (especially men).
- Charlie is afraid that if his mental problems become known, he'll lose his job.
- Charlie has extreme social anxiety and agoraphobia, and doesn't know that a meeting can be arranged through a phone or online.
- Charlie has serious self-esteem issues, and downplays his issues. He doesn't think they are serious enough to seek help, and that the therapist would ridicule and/or embarrass him for thinking they are.
- Charlie believes that, if he goes to therapy, the therapist or Charlie's meddling parents will brainwash him to get rid of the things they consider "horrid character flaws" on top of the trauma and, for all means and purposes, lead to Charlie having a Death of Personality.
- Charlie went to therapy at some point in the past, but it either didn't improve his situation or made things worse for him.
- Inverted: Charlie loves going to therapy so much that he sometimes drops by his therapist's office to say hello.
- Subverted: Charlie believes this, but after the first visit he changes his mind and starts looking forwards to future meetings.
- Double Subverted: After the first few visits, Charlie's therapist has to be replaced with someone he doesn't find as helpful, which lowers his faith in the effectiveness of therapy.
- Parodied: Charlie believes his problems would just make a therapist see another therapist.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- There Are No Therapists in the first place.
- Charlie goes to therapy. That's it.
- Enforced: Charlie is mentally ill but never sees a therapist, so the writers had to come up with a reason as to why he never does besides There Are No Therapists.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Bob's father teaches him that Men Are Tough and should never ask for help with their emotional problems.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:Bob: Going to therapy does not make me weak! It means that I have the guts to admit that I have a problem and need help to deal with it, which is more than all of you can manage!"
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob has a Hair-Trigger Temper but refuses to go to therapy — and then his Suppressed Rage boils over and he kills a man for bumping into him.
- Reconstructed: Not only was the man not actually killed, he would have attacked Bob first due to having similar issues, and uses his epiphany not to press further charges and ask for the court to only send Bob to therapy.
Back to Therapy Is for the Weak
