When my wife was studying to be a psychologist, a professor discussed schizophrenia. After listing the drugs available, he added, “I tell them if you’re a schizophrenic, be the best one you can be. Get up, make your bed, dress well, and go to work.”
But what if the professor treated schizophrenia the way we now treat a girl who thinks she’s a boy, or a boy who thinks he’s a girl? He would say, “The government is reading your thoughts? Here, I’ll help you make an aluminum-foil hat.”
The function of therapy is to help clients accept reality and adapt to it, not to enable their delusions and misperceptions. Or am I ridiculously old fashioned?