33. Queer, cis, femme. She/her/hers. Aspiring vet tech student. Feminisms. Old movies. Occasional drawings. Random videos. Sexuality. Bats. Vampires. Batgirl. Gifs of bunnies flopping over. Ridiculous old pictures of myself being ridiculous. Queer stuff. Pictures of my cat. Lots of pictures of bunnies, actually.
That's pretty much it.
Mutuals, I love you, but how many times do I have to say that you can’t make blanket statements like “ALL horror is about love/romance” if you’re just talking about the Ari Aster/Robert Eggers/Andrzej Żuławski coalition
Jigsaw voice: Hello, horror bloggers. You like to make dozens of posts about how every work in the horror genre is, at its core, a love story. In front of you is a pen, paper, and a VHS copy of Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses. I expect a well-developed essay about the themes of love and romance present in this movie by the time three hours are up, or I’ll make this a House of 1001 Corpses.
seeing the west get booster shots while covid variants are mutating in the developing world because vaccines are still patent protected tooth and nail by the same westerners that are now closing borders… how does that not radicalise you.
love to follow veterinarian practices on facebook because every one in a while they’ll post a picture of something so bizarrely funny. this axolotl getting an x-ray just took me out
ive been getting a lot of people really worried for this axolotl so i thought i’d clarify: she’s fine. she’s moist on the puppy pad so she won’t dry out and the x ray only takes a few seconds. the x ray was because she had an internal gut blockage due to the wrong substrate being used. they took another x ray after giving her barium to determine where in the gut it was, but the barium lubricated her gut enough that she passed the blockage with no invasive surgery and she’s completely fine. here she is not-flattened
I’m loathe to link to the Daily Dot, but this article (and the TikTok content) gives a good overview of why BetterHelp is a hot mess in so many ways.
I used the service for a while myself, and during that, saw three different “therapists.” The first therapist seemed to think that therapy meant just having a chat an allowing me to vent, which was largely unhelpful.
She was a Christian, but kept bringing that up, which also irked me because I’d rather not have religion part of my therapy goals. She wasn’t overly pushy, but it did bother me when she said, “As a therapist I have to say that this witchcraft stuff is your choice, but as a Christian I don’t approve.”
I cancelled and requested a new person after that.The second therapist seemed alright at first, but would regularly go on tangents about politics and her own life. I cancelled and requested a new therapist after a disturbing incident where she did the entire session (on cam, as usual) while loudly and angrily doing dishes in her kitchen.
In both of those cases, it felt like these people thought “therapist” means “online friend” or something, and never seemed to have real treatment plans or much to offer.
The third therapist I saw via BetterHelp was just for a single session. Despite consistently telling them, “I would prefer a non-religious therapist,” I was matched with someone who incessantly quoted the Bible. She kept repeatedly asking me if I was a “Bible believer” or had “accepted Jesus.” She also praised me to not standing up for myself, weirdly. She said it was best to let my husband take the lead because submission is a good quality or something like that.
It was ridiculous, and at that point I requested a full refund for that month. Around that time, I learned that BetterHelp doesn’t actually vet their “therapists.” In fact, scrolling their list of offerings, I came across “therapists” with such dubious credentials as graduating from Liberty University with a degree in “marriage” and specializing in “maladaptive sexual behaviors.”
I had to call their offices to get the refund. I’ll be honest; I wasn’t exactly polite during that call, and essentially said, “What you are doing is sick - some people do actually need help, y’know. You’ve wasted my time and money.”
If you want online therapy, I recommend looking for therapists who are semi-local and offer online sessions. Many do these days, and it’s much better than rolling the dice with BetterHelp. That and, y’know, they won’t sell your data.
BetterHelp is also tied to sevencups.com (“7 cups of tea”) which is entirely unlicensed therapy done by volunteers who have passed a few multiple-choice quizzes and now feel confident to hold chat sessions where they tell people to look on the bright side and have you tried some mindfulness exercises?
It’s semi-anonymized and has exactly the level of “show us your tits!” that you’d expect.
BetterHelp will not allow you to start actually talking to therapists - enough to get a sense of their communication style, their schedule, their preferred focus areas, all those things you might want to know before you hire someone - until you pay.
Their rates start at $60 per week. Not per month. While they are accurate in saying that most therapy costs substantially more than that… most therapy is done by therapists whose credentials you can verify before you start paying.
(How to tell BH is a scam, method #523: You can’t contact the therapists outside of BH. They don’t have any info about their private practices. BH absolutely does not want you to make arrangements to continue therapy in a setting where BH doesn’t get their cut. If the therapist is GOOD, they’re preventing them from getting long-term patients. They’re definitely preventing patients from seeking the best care options.)
