How modern life erodes community, increasing our need for therapy

When we have community, we have support. We have people to call when things fall apart, someone to bring soup when we’re sick, or a neighbour to keep an eye out when we’re low. We look after our vulnerable because they are ours. But we don’t always have that. So instead, we pay someone to listen and guide us.

Therapy could be viewed, in many ways, as a space where we outsource what once belonged to community life, a place to be heard, to be cared for, and to make sense of things when the world feels too much. This isn’t a criticism of therapy itself as it’s a lifeline to so many, but it’s rather a reflection on the conditions that make it necessary.

Does losing our sense of community mean we’re losing our ability to disclose, to open up to others when we need to be listened to?

The quiet transaction of care

In today’s world, we often hold back from sharing our struggles with friends or family. We fear being a burden, or we assume everyone else is too busy, too tired, or too overwhelmed themselves. Instead, we might take our pain to a professional, in private, in confidence.

There’s something both comforting and sad about this. Comforting, because therapy can offer a deep, meaningful connection and healing. Sad, because it reflects a cultural shift: we now pay for what communities once provided freely, understanding, empathy, and collective care.

We are also complicit in this shift. Many of us hesitate to step out of our own boxes to offer support to others. We’re often kind, but privately generous, but selectively. Our social structures encourage self-protection over interdependence.

Are we normalising the idea that emotional support belongs to the market?

The rise of the individual

As a structure, capitalism rewards independence. It prizes the individual who achieves, competes, and keeps going. It sells the idea that needing others is a weakness, that self-reliance equals success.

But the cost of this narrative is isolation. As we become more self-contained, we become less available, both to give and receive support. Community becomes optional, not essential.

Sociologists describe this as hyper-individualism: a cultural state where the self is the main project. We work on our fitness, our careers, our personal growth, our mental health, all in isolation. Even the language of self-help is steeped in this logic: self-care, self-improvement, and self-actualisation.

Therapy, in this context, sometimes becomes another form of self-optimisation. But for many, it’s also one of the last remaining spaces where genuine human connection can happen, where someone truly listens without judgment or agenda.

The erosion of connection

Capitalism thrives on growth, productivity and competition. Community thrives in presence, patience and mutual aid. One cannot easily coexist with the other.

In typical capitalist societies, even friendship can become comparative: who’s doing better, who’s more successful, whose life looks more stable. Social media can accelerate this, turning connection into performance. We scroll through other people’s highlight reels while sitting in our own silence, feeling lesser.

The result? A quiet epidemic of loneliness. Research consistently shows that social trust, community participation and collective belonging have declined in the UK and other capitalist economies. Loneliness is now considered a public health issue, and therapy, while helpful, is often a symptom of that larger social wound.

The double edge of therapy?

In some ways, we could view therapy as something that risks reinforcing the system it seeks to heal us from. It is, after all, a paid service, operating within a market. It individualises what are often collective wounds, turning societal disconnection into a private experience of anxiety or depression. This is not to diminish its value at all. Many therapists (myself included) work consciously to reconnect people to a sense of belonging, to themselves, to others, to community. 

Therapy is not the enemy here. In fact, it can be one of the few remaining places where people experience genuine presence. It provides structure, consistency, and care, all things that capitalism neglects. Mick Cooper describes relational depth as those times when we feel “totally tuned in to the other” and experience a “common humanity”. He points out that the therapeutic relationship helps us to realise that we are not alone, but “part of a community, connected with another”.  

In this way, we can view counselling as a tool that helps us to overcome individualism, the panacea for disconnection. Therapy is a safe space for people to be vulnerable and therefore grow more connected to one another. It is with this practice at the very core of therapy that people can then feel safe and confident to show their vulnerability with others in their lives and, as a by-product, grow community and connection. 

That being said, I remain curious. What would the world look like if we didn’t have to pay for this kind of connection?

References

Mearns, D, Cooper, M. (2017).  Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Office for National Statistics (2020). Social capital in the UK: 2020 statistical bulletin.

Harkin, L., Stuart, A., Stevenson, C., Talbot, C., et al. (2024). Being cut off from social identity resources has shaped loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic: A longitudinal interview study with medically vulnerable older adults from the United Kingdom.