I feel like therapy gets a bad rep in media and books…like all I can picture is the evil therapist, the pissed off/tired of protagonist's shit therapist or the therapist being such a minor character that we get nothing out of it.
SO that brings me to my question of how to make therapy and therapists not shitty? Or at least what mannerisms or interactions could reassure the audience that all is well and my character is getting good help? I really wanna make sure that this is done right and that there is no red flags since even if my characters go through hell and back in the mental department I want to make healing a strong part of their development and progression instead of making them save the world and letting them suffer in silence.
If you're going the Write What You Know route, then if you've been a patient of good therapists then that can show in what you've drawn from, or if you're a therapist yourself then you can tell the story from the therapist's point of view.
Or if you've healed from similar challenges in life yourself, what support would have been the best to have so as to get somebody to that healed place more effectively.
If you're going by the media reference route, I do like the Next To Normal musical in which the therapist plays a supporting role—it's a complicated issue and I know not everyone will agree with how it's been handled, but I think it showed the various sides well enough.
The Oyster podcast stars a character who is functionally a therapist, who collects the stories of people who survived the end of the world. It was equally effective as a narrative device—because how else to show the apocalypse on an audio drama?—as it developed the character of the therapist.
Other times, like the Girl, Interrupted movie, the main character could only "live down" her own resistance before the therapist can effectively be there for somebody willing to recover. So, it wasn't that therapy was ineffective, it was a demonstration of how going the extra mile was a mile too far. (I've heard that professional therapists really do not like Good Will Hunting for the opposite reason: It's compelling character exploration, but that is also absolutely unprofessional conduct if in real life.)
