Estrangement Ideology – Part 25. The Therapist as a Business Model

The business of therapy: Where do clients come from and is your therapist really there to fix you?

This is number twenty-five in a series of articles concerning Estrangement Ideology. Key concepts are introduced in Part 1. Tenets, Goals and Methods; Part 2. Transgressions, Moral Certitude and Traditional Values; and Part 3. The One-Sided Path to Redemption. Other parts can be found here.

The modern therapy industry operates within a market-driven framework, necessitating a continuous influx of clients to sustain revenue. Clients enter therapy from various pathways, with social media, self-help books and online mental health communities acting as primary recruitment mechanisms. Platforms like Reddit, TikTok, Instagram and Substack expose millions to therapeutic concepts and language, teaching them to pathologise personal struggles through the lens of trauma, toxicity and self-care. This framing not only normalises therapy as a necessity but also fosters the perception that many familial or relational conflicts require professional intervention.

As discussed in Part 4. The Therapist, the work of therapists who specialise in family estrangement extends beyond private practice into social media influence, content creation and book publishing. For instance, Whitney Goodman of the Calling Home website primarily markets estrangement not as an unfortunate reality but as a step toward self-actualisation. By validating estrangement as a means of healing and freedom, therapists in her model don’t just counsel existing clients—they actively cultivate new ones.

The online dissemination of therapy-speak conditions users to reinterpret ordinary family tensions as “abuse” or “toxicity”, making them more inclined to seek professional validation and intervention. As discussed in Part 24. Estrangement Narratives as Propaganda, this is further reinforced through articles penned by various invested commentators providing personal stories that ground the pathologistion of relationships in narratives designed to reinforce the therapeutic model and language.

Interestingly, it is estimated that:

“The global online therapy services market size was worth around USD 9.7 billion in 2023 and is predicted to grow to around USD 69.7 billion by 2032 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of roughly 24.5% between 2024 and 2032.”

The Role of Repeat Business: Therapy as an Ongoing Journey

Unlike traditional mental health treatment, which often aims for resolution, much of modern therapy—especially when framed within self-help and personal empowerment narratives—is structured around ongoing engagement rather than definitive healing. This is evident in strategies promoted within the therapy industry for ensuring client retention, which include:

• Framing therapy as a “journey” rather than a solution – Encouraging lifelong introspection rather than resolution

• Encouraging dependency on professional validation – Clients are taught to externalise decision-making and trust expert guidance over personal or familial wisdom

• Pathologising normal emotional experiences – Encouraging clients to continuously dissect their emotions, ensuring an ongoing need for therapy.

Estrangement Ideology plays a key role in expanding the market for therapists. The demand that parents “do the work” to maintain a relationship with their adult children creates a multi-client ecosystem, in which not only Estranged Adult Children but also parents seeking reconciliation are driven to therapy. This conditional restoration model ensures that therapists can offer services to both sides:

1. For the estranged child – Therapy validates estrangement as necessary for their well-being, reinforcing the idea that healing requires continued professional guidance.

2. For the parent – Therapy is framed as a means to “earn back” their child’s love through proof of accountability, emotional work and compliance with the adult child’s terms.

This expansion of clientele ensures a lucrative, long-term revenue stream for therapists. The path to reconciliation is not about organic relationship repair but about ensuring both parties engage in ongoing, therapist-mediated emotional work.

The Role of Technocratic Governance and the Shift from Traditional Guidance

Historically, family disputes, moral dilemmas and intergenerational tensions were resolved within the structures of family, community, religion and tradition. These systems provided guidance on conflict resolution, respect and duty without reliance on professional intervention. However, the rise of technocratic governance—which privileges expert management over organic social processes—has positioned therapy as the new arbiter of interpersonal ethics and emotional well-being.

The erosion of traditional moral and relational frameworks has left a vacuum, which therapists, social workers and self-help figures now fill. Unlike past generational models, where disputes were addressed through religious confession, elder wisdom or social mediation, the modern model places individual well-being above all else, with therapists acting as the custodians of emotional truth. This model benefits the state and corporate interests in multiple ways:

• Social atomisation – Weakening family bonds ensures individuals are more dependent on state welfare and corporate services.

• Consumer-driven mental health industry – The demand for therapy, self-help content and coaching continues to expand, generating billions in revenue.

• Technocratic control over personal relationships – By mediating conflicts through professional intervention, individual autonomy is subtly transferred to institutional authority.

Therapists like Whitney Goodman represent this new class of emotional technocrat, wielding authority over familial relationships by defining the moral and psychological conditions under which reconciliation is possible. This model allows for therapeutic governance to dictate not only how people should feel but also who they should maintain relationships with and under what conditions.

Estrangement Ideology as a Tool for Market Expansion

Estrangement Ideology serves a dual function: It validates emotional disconnection while creating a recurring demand for therapeutic services. Analysis of adult child discussions on Reddit illustrates how deeply therapy-speak has infiltrated their self-perception, with common themes including:

• Unresolved resentment toward parents despite NC – Many posts reveal ongoing preoccupation with estranged parents, proving that estrangement has not granted them the expected emotional peace.

• The need for external validation – The online community acts as a substitute therapist, reinforcing narratives that encourage continued avoidance rather than resolution.

• Conflicted emotions about parents “not doing the work” – Despite cutting off parents, many still expect them to “prove” their worthiness, demonstrating how estrangement often does not sever emotional dependency—it merely transforms it into an impossible lose-lose test for parents.

Estrangement Ideology also fuels therapeutic concepts that reframe reconciliation as a controlled process, ensuring that therapy is needed for both the estranged and the parent seeking restoration. Logically, this model thrives because it:

1. Encourages emotional cutoffs while ensuring the pain persists, requiring further therapeutic engagement

2. Turns reconciliation into a structured process that demands compliance—meaning parents who want their children back must enter therapy and prove their emotional transformation

3. Normalises the expectation that relational work is best done under professional supervision, keeping clients in therapy long-term.

This deliberate extension of emotional work guarantees repeat business, ensuring that estrangement remains a process rather than a single decision. However, as discussed in Part 17. The Lasting Emotional and Relational Toll on Estranged Adult Children this process frequently fails to grant them freedom from doubt and ongoing pain.

The Role of Social Media: Inculcating Clients in Therapeutic Concepts

Social media platforms play a critical role in conditioning younger generations to adopt therapeutic language, softening them to the idea of seeking therapy. By consuming mental health content from therapists, weblogs like Maggie Frank-Hsu’s “Estranged” Substack and online influencers, individuals are subtly trained to:

• Identify normal family tensions as toxic patterns requiring intervention

• Use therapeutic jargon to justify estrangement—like “narcissistic abuse”, “toxic parent”, “DARVO” and “gaslighting”

• View therapy not as a temporary aid but as a lifelong necessity for personal development

This mass socialisation into therapeutic frameworks ensures that estrangement is not only normalised but celebrated, with influencers reinforcing pathologised interpretations of family conflict. In this way, therapy becomes an integral part of identity formation, creating lifelong clients.

Ostensible Value vs. Reality

The ostensible value proposition of therapy is that it offers healing, self-discovery and personal growth. However, the reality is that therapy, when tied to Estrangement Ideology, often functions as a reinforcement loop that:

• Encourages permanent estrangement rather than conflict resolution

• Creates psychological dependencies rather than emotional independence

• Prioritises ongoing client retention over true closure.

Instead of guiding individuals toward healing, therapy in this model appears to position itself as a lifelong necessity, ensuring a continuous demand for professional validation, external regulation of emotions and therapist-mediated reconciliation.

Conclusion

Therapy, when intertwined with Estrangement Ideology, becomes less about helping clients resolve pain and more about sustaining the conditions that require continued engagement. The therapeutic industry thrives not by resolving conflict but by institutionalising it—ensuring that familial relationships become contingent on therapy-defined work, accountability and compliance.

This shift aligns perfectly with technocratic governance, where traditional relational wisdom is replaced by expert oversight. Instead of family members working through their conflicts organically, therapists serve as the gatekeepers of relational legitimacy, deciding when, if ever, a parent-child relationship can be restored.

Finally, therapy, in its current model, does not just provide healing—it reshapes family structures in a way that ensures continued demand, maximises engagement and perpetuates estrangement as a self-fulfilling industry.

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Note: This article was developed with assistance of ChatGPT, used as a structured analysis and writing tool. All ideas, interpretations and final outputs were authored, verified and edited by me. The model was conditioned to reflect my reasoning, not to generate content independently.