Psychology needs no help promoting itself at all. It's a profession built on self-promotion. You can't switch on a tv without a psychologist popping up telling how we should feel or why we are thinking/feeling/acting a certain way.
The structured interventions offered by psychology are useful even it just gets people to sit down and talk about what is going on in their life. However they are not the panacea psychology often promotes them to be, (look at how CBT is getting a kicking these days).
I would be worried if psychology started doing more stuff on the net promoting "self help tools". A therapy to be effective there needs to be engagement between the patient and the therapist, ground rules, expectations, etc. That's what worries me about self help books, you tube videos there is none of that.
I think psychology, particularly in America, needs to be reined in. It seems anyone with a degree can go out and start offering therapy. Whereas in a clinical setting there are months of supervised learning to go through before you can start doing that.
The likes of Teal do worry me as we don't know her agenda, she has no supervision to pick out things she is doing wrong or what changes she needs to make. Therapists are in positions of power after all.
Having been to therapy in my mid twenties to deal with disturbing dreams, and again, sought marriage counceling in my thirties, I know the value of a real, experienced, psychologist. It took a few sessions just to be convinced they were not going monkey with my brains. A mutual effort offered through CBT was useful for me. I was assigned some homework, guided to a particular workbook that I was encouraged to buy at a bookstore, and work through it, and I would bring my workbook to the sessions. His goal was to teach me the tools to understand my own thought processes, and to recognize the causes of my anxiety.
He was very good at helping me see myself, my strengths, my weaknesses, my areas where I could grow as a human being, but he did it by guiding me to teach myself, using the tools he gave me.
Occasionally he would say something to make me think. His observations sometimes pissed me off a little, but if I thought about it, I could see where he was coming from. After 10 weekly sessions, a lot of self study, and having him push my buttons, I found the strength and confidence I needed to know how to move forward, and I had the tools I needed to be able to recognize my twisted thinking when it popped up.
I moved on with higher self esteem, a belief in my own abilities, and a maturation to be able to handle things properly as an adult. It did not make me perfect, and I wasn’t done with everything... but there was a point where it likely saved my life.
At the time, there was no You Tube, and seeing what I see out there now, I doubt I could have been helped much by it. However, today is the world where people usually look to the net to solve everything, from working on a car to identifying a spider in their house, to how to lose weight, how to get a super body. It is only natural for people to seek answers for themselves, and I agree that we do not want them mislead by self declared healers.
Self declared healers have existed for centuries, and I am glad You Tube now brings them to the forefront to be studied.
Many people resort to the net, because they do not have the means to attend a real, expensive, professional.
YOU TUBE is free... and people like Teal are figuring out how to gain the support they need to possibly grow rich from that... maybe psychology needs to realize how to utilize these tools better so they can offer some workable alternative. Otherwise, these ‘healers’ are going to continue to prosper by doing what they are doing...
It cannot be regulated away... they will just go back underground.... but it’s impact it can be changed if real self help tools are made just as attractive. Compete using attraction and beauty. Accept all living things. Show there is nothing to fear.