isn\u2019t the \u201cohh those kooky Japanese!\u201d story I feared. All the many reasons you might hire a friend:<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a word in Japanese, gaman<\/i>, that translates roughly as \u201cstoic forbearance in the face of the unbearable.\u201d It\u2019s a deep-seated Japanese value, this idea that you suck it up no matter what. A lot has been happening lately. Anxiety and depression spiked after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The country itself is shrinking, its population plummeting and aging rapidly. And there\u2019s the apparently growing problem of people who literally work themselves to death; a third of suicides have been attributed to overwork. All of that, Yumi and Taka say, but you act like everything\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
Enter the rent-a-friend. Not a miracle cure, no. But maybe a pressure valve. \u201cWith us,\u201d Yumi says, \u201cpeople can talk about their feelings without worrying what their real friends think.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
more<\/a> (and how much of Western therapy is basically rent-a-friend? cultural construction of illness<\/a> -> cultural construction of treatment. I don\u2019t just mean \u201cyou can tell all your problems to a therapist and they have to be interested.\u201d If you have had a hard time making and keeping friends\u2013for any reason, life is hard and complicated\u2013you likely missed out on a lot of examples and life lessons other people learned from their friends. You got yelled at less by people who actually do love you and will forgive you; you watched fewer attempts at personal change by people you really care about, so you saw fewer long-term examples of what works and what doesn\u2019t. Even very technical or focused therapeutic approaches like CBT can serve as prosthetics for these formative experiences. \u2026And as w\/therapy probably the biggest step w\/rent-a-friend is admitting you might get a lot out of this.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
isn\u2019t the \u201cohh those kooky Japanese!\u201d story I feared. All the many reasons you might hire a friend: There\u2019s a word in Japanese, gaman, that translates roughly as \u201cstoic forbearance in the face of the unbearable.\u201d It\u2019s a deep-seated Japanese value, this idea that you suck it up no matter what. A lot has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,125,264],"class_list":["post-10465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friendship","tag-japan","tag-work-is-a-four-letter-word"],"yoast_head":"\n
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