Not just for the super-rich: the Covid boom in online therapy means we’re all seeing shrinks now

Once upon a time, if you got a therapist you were labelled peculiar. These days, you’re more likely to be labelled peculiar for not seeing one. The old woke was being open with friends about mental health, the new woke is knowing when to stop draining friends — and drain a paid professional instead.  

Not that it’s a surprise so many of us need to unload onto someone, Covid plays with our conception of sanity. We don’t know what’s normal anymore, so we figure we might as well ask a therapist . And it’s not just because of Covid: given we think we can probiotic our way to our best lives, it’s hardly a surprise we want to have a stab at unpicking our neuroses too. Apart from allowing us to enjoy our lives more, we believe therapy enables us to be better people and, most of all, nothing like our parents.  

Therapy used to evoke images of slipping into the Priory, repressed emotions from school in tow, but the shift to online therapy during the pandemic has equalised Harley St and Specsavers-

type shrinks, while many offer discounts to compensate for the trauma of divulging childhood trauma over the internet — people spend what they would have on their weekly travelcard.

Young women in particular talk about finding the right therapist like finding The One: “Don’t be afraid to meet up with a few — you just get a feeling, you know.” After appointments, we pepper the group chat with our therapist’s quotes, as though we’ve had a private audience with Oprah. Perhaps the therapists of yore were non-judgmental and placid-jawed but the ones I know are full of zingy one-liners and cutting character analyses, which we repeat to one another hooting with laughter. I’m sure we’re supposed to view therapists as sages above worldly pleasures but try explaining that to my friend who got hers into Selling Sunset over the summer.

Of course, we aren’t open about our therapy with everyone: in lockdown we’re stuck indoors with the people who are the exact reason we’re in therapy. One friend who moved in with her parents for lockdown, escapes to the local moor for her sessions; iPhone in hand, she screams into the wind about her mother to her therapist in Belgravia. Another shuts himself in the loo for his appointments, playing tinny music to cover up the noise.  

We used to say everyone in New York goes to therapy but I reckon everyone in London goes too, it’s just that you never heard about it before because we like to stiff upper lip and Blitz over our troubles. It’s no wonder we have so much to talk to our therapists about.

This week Pfizer delicately pipped Moderna’s announcement of a 94.5 per cent-effective vaccine, announcing they’d revised their original success rate to 95 per cent. Those Americans can’t help but try to one-up each other like they’re exes at a party, “Oh he has a PhD? My new girlfriend’s a model.” It was all quite entertaining until today when, fed up of being left out, Oxford felt the need to weigh in with a triumphant announcement that their vaccine has a (drumroll please) “encouraging” immune response.  

It’s not that we expected Oxford to chip in with a 95.5 per cent success rate, it’s just a bit embarrassing that our treasured institution has been outflanked by the new kid on the block. It’s like the War of Independence all over again, only this time the Americans are winning because of Dolly Parton.