Mental health spaces are built around the idea of help. Helping is what we are trained to do, praised for doing, and often judged by. And yet, many people who enter these spaces leave feeling unseen.

Recently, while teaching a session on therapeutic communication, we began not with techniques or skills, but by asking a deceptively simple question. What does helping mean? The answers came easily. Advice. Fixing. Guidance. Reassurance. Care.

But when we stayed with the question longer, something else surfaced. Many people could name experiences where they had received help and yet felt erased in the process.

Medication without listening.
Discipline framed as care.
Protection that came with silence.

Help was present. Sometimes even effective. But it came at the cost of being known. Which raises an uncomfortable question. Is that help at all?

Across mental health systems, an unspoken binary often operates. You can be helped, or you can be seen. Rarely both.

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