When Did Sharing Grief Become a Paid Service? — On Friends, Therapy, and Emotional Distance

You know, a while ago I went through something traumatic. Shortly afterwards, I discovered not only that I was completely on my own, but also that I had apparently crossed some kind of boundary: 

I expected something from my friends that no longer seems self-evident these days — actually talking. 

I even felt ashamed of it, as if I had done something inappropriate.

I desperately needed to talk about what had happened, but I quickly noticed that my friends stopped showing up for me. I was deeply disappointed by that.  Especially because whenever someone needs me, I immediately drop everything for them myself. Unless I genuinely can’t in that exact moment — but even then, I usually tell them I’ll get back to them as soon as I can. And then I actually do.

Because honestly, I see it as a compliment when someone turns to me like that. To me, it means they trust me enough to choose me as the person they feel safe talking to.
Meanwhile, when I needed my friends, I got the very strong impression that they experienced me as a burden. I experienced that as deeply inhuman. At the very least, I clearly have a very different idea of friendship. 

Not long afterwards, I started wondering to what extent I still considered those people “my friends” at all. 

That question ended up answering itself. Because I’ve barely heard from most of them since.

Sometimes I secretly wonder:
have they disappeared because they’re afraid I might “burden” them again with my problems?
Or because, deep down, they know they abandoned me and simply don’t know how to come back from that? Since I couldn’t really turn to my friends, while still feeling an overwhelming need to talk about what had happened to me, I eventually started looking for a therapist instead.

About that therapist, I can be brief.
I never found one.

Not because there weren’t any therapists around — quite the opposite. There are therapists everywhere where I live. I had honestly never realized that until I started looking for one myself. But almost all of them had waiting lists of at least six months. And that was another shock. I hadn’t expected my friends to disappear when I needed them. But I also hadn’t expected there to be so many therapists — let alone all of them having half-year waiting lists. While trying to process my trauma, I kept wondering:

What exactly is happening here?
Are there really that many people struggling psychologically?
And is it just in my area, or is this everywhere?
You hardly ever hear anyone openly talk about it.
Maybe mental health is still a huge taboo?
But then again… it always was.
And years ago there weren’t nearly this many therapists, were there?
Back then, you could actually get an appointment immediately.

Not long afterwards, I spoke to my rheumatology nurse. I check in with her every six months to go over how I’m doing physically, and I mentioned this to her as well.

“Yes, we see it too”, she told me. “We can barely refer patients to mental healthcare anymore because there’s simply no capacity.”

I asked whether she had any explanation for it.
“Are there really that many people with serious psychological struggles?”, I asked.

“Apparently”, she replied. “We don’t really understand it either.” 

A few months later I saw my daughter, who’s 30. I don’t see her very often because she lives in New York and I live in Amsterdam. She told me she was seeing a psychologist too. Not because she was dealing with mental illness — at least not as far as she tells me — but simply because she sometimes needs someone to talk to. “Otherwise I might eventually develop mental health problems”, she explained.

I honestly didn’t quite understand what she meant.
“So you’re going to therapy preventively”, I asked in disbelief, “to avoid possibly developing psychological problems at some point in the future?”
To me, that sounded a little far-fetched.

But no — she, too, simply doesn’t really have anyone she can truly talk to. She has friends to do things with: archery, barbecues, dinner, hiking, things like that. But actually talking? No. And to my daughter, that’s normal. By that I don’t mean my daughter has strange values or unhealthy ideas about relationships — quite the opposite. If anything, I increasingly see her as a kind of barometer for how social life works nowadays.

Apparently these kinds of developments have passed me by completely. 

Yet again, another surprise. 

So apparently it has become “normal” not to talk to your friends about difficult things anymore, but to take those conversations to a therapist instead? 

I even asked ChatGPT what it thought about this — partly as extra confirmation of what I had already started noticing through my daughter.  And indeed, the conclusion was more or less that calling friends — especially out of the blue — is no longer really done. You’re supposed to send a text message first, because texting is now the default mode of communication. And through that message, you’re supposed to ask whether and when someone might be available to talk, and whether they “have the emotional space” for something heavy. 

By now, thankfully, I can laugh about it a little sometimes — the same way I laugh about other absurdities in modern society that are actually deeply sad underneath. 

At least now I finally understand why all those therapists have six-month waiting lists! 😉 

And now I also understand why the few people who were willing, at the time, either to help me practically or to listen to my story, eventually turned out not to be doing so selflessly at all, but expecting something in return. That, too, left me deeply appalled.

What I completely failed to realize, apparently, is that talking to your friends is no longer something self-evident. It almost feels as though sharing grief has become a paid service — outsourced to “the professional.” 

I’m genuinely curious how you experience this. 

Have you noticed a shift in how we talk to each other when something difficult happens?
Do you still feel you can turn to your friends when life gets heavy, or has that space moved elsewhere for you too?
At what point did it become normal to carefully “check in” before calling someone, even when you’re struggling?
And does that change feel like protection of boundaries… or more like distance?

Do you recognise the idea that deep conversations are increasingly something you “schedule” or outsource — rather than something that simply happens between friends? Or is this just my experience, shaped by a specific moment in my life?

I’d be very interested to hear how you see this.

If this resonates with you or makes you think of your own experiences, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments — or share the article with someone you might normally have had this kind of conversation with in the past.
Featured in SATURDAYS with Diana "Are Friends Still Really Friends?" Read the issue → Photo: Farnaz Kohankhaki