"Men don't know what their role is"

Who goes to therapy? Elena Puig Guitart explains that not everyone who would or should go: "We don't have resources on a public scale. Going to a psychologist is a luxury, and it should be universal." Puig is a psychologist, but she has also found passion in giving advice on social media, where she has managed to gain thousands of followers who, precisely, cannot go to therapy and they ask for help about relationships, emotional management or mental health.

Puig discovered her calling well into the working world: after 20 years working in a consulting firm and already having three daughters, she made a radical change in her life. Concern over the lack of public access to psychology has been a recurring issue throughout her career. But not only that: the gender bias she encounters also worries her. It's mostly women who come to Elena. And it's no coincidence.

Men who "don't know how to behave"

"We have a culture that dictates. Women are raised to care, to be accommodating, to not set limits." And that means women ask for help more and talk about emotions more, something that also gives them "more attributes for being more competent," even though the world is "set up according to the male pattern." Now, women go to therapy, but what about men? Puig affirms that there are still a large number of men who "don't know how to handle themselves and don't see the need" to go to a psychologist. You have to "have patience and faith": "From a sociological point of view, men don't know what their role is. Now women demand that men communicate, that they have emotions, that they participate in caregiving..." Demands they've never encountered before.

Changing this traditional sexist mindset requires education and therapy, Puig argues. These factors are still closely tied to privilege: "There are pockets of poverty, precariousness, and stigma, and we can't imagine people from these backgrounds seeing women as beings of light, because they barely have the resources to support themselves."

A pandemic of anxiety

Although it seems that the taboo around going to the psychologist is disappearing, "Mental health is very bad, and the outlook is that it will get worse."The psychologist isn't delivering good news. Perhaps that's why more and more people are turning to social media to resolve their problems and feel heard and understood. This is what Puig is trying to do on Instagram (@latevapsicologa): "People consume [content on social media] because they have nowhere else to go."

Social media can be a place to express ourselves and receive support, but it's also part of the problem: overstimulation from screens doesn't help calm our brains and makes us hyper-alert. "We're experiencing a pandemic of anxiety," Puig announces. This is caused by our lifestyle and social context, which leads us to live in a state of anxiety and feel threatened. Just like when we experience real danger—for example, if we come face-to-face with a bear—our nervous system is activated, going into survival mode: "There are a lot of people who live as if they have a bear in their house every day."

Overall, the advice is "not to limit the hours we spend on our phones, but rather try to increase contact with nature, spending time with friends, reading... Not to force ourselves to put our phones down, but to force ourselves to do other things and, as a result, stop looking at them." It's also important not to fall prey to discourses that disempower or blame us: "We shouldn't embrace the 'I'm weak' narrative. They really make it very difficult for you."

Incorporating therapy as a universal resource still seems unattainable, but it's clearly a resource that society is asking for if so many people see the need to ask Instagram for help and advice, no matter how dystopian it may seem.