There’s something immediately uneasy about the word better. It carries with it a sense of hierarchy, of comparison, of one thing being placed above another. In a therapeutic context, this feels jarring. The implication—however softly it’s spoken—is that what you’ve known, what you’ve been doing, who you’ve been seeing, is somehow less. Less than what? Less than this. BetterHelp.

When a brand names itself better, the question isn’t just about the word itself. It’s about who or what that word is being positioned against. That’s where the discomfort lives. BetterHelp isn’t offering a niche alternative in a crowded field. It’s presenting itself as a platform that is therapy now—or at least, the improved version of it. The name alone implies that all that came before—private practice, local therapists, face-to-face relationships—was somehow lacking. That’s a bold thing to say in two syllables.

What’s most uncomfortable, though, is the way this brand draws its entire value from the very thing it casts doubt on: practitioners. Without us, it doesn’t exist. And yet it implies it has somehow moved beyond us. It is better, while quietly relying on the same flesh-and-blood therapists it positions itself above. There’s something not quite intact in that. It’s a structure that doesn’t take care of itself. A house that undermines its own foundations.

Therapeutically, the word better itself is thorny. It runs counter to almost everything I try to hold space for in the room. We don’t aim for perfect. We aim for good enough. That’s Winnicott. And it’s everywhere in the work. Again and again, we invite people to step away from the exhausting pursuit of being better than their peers, their siblings, their younger selves. The work of therapy is to come into contact with what already is. Not to escape it, or upgrade it, or fix it—but to meet it. To dwell in the humanity of it.

That’s why this word better rubs. It smuggles in a value system that therapy is often working hard to dismantle. When people arrive in therapy, they’re usually already feeling not good enough. They’ve been trying to be better—at life, at love, at being human—and finding themselves burnt out or broken by the effort. Therapy isn’t about becoming better. It’s about becoming more yourself. And sometimes, that’s quieter than improvement. Sometimes it looks like undoing.

Of course, better can also carry hope. I’m not denying that. People want to feel better. To live better. To be better parents or partners or listeners. But when those desires are named from the inside, they’re full of life and agency. When they’re imposed from the outside—especially by a company that benefits from our feelings of lack—they take on a different shape. Something more hollow. Something more like a sell.

And who doesn’t want help?

When we’re lost, overwhelmed, uncertain, who doesn’t want someone to come along and offer it? Whether it’s a blocked sink, a broken heart, a badly formatted CV—there are times when we need someone else to step in, lift the weight, make something happen that we can’t manage alone. Help can be an act of grace. There’s no shame in needing it. Sometimes, asking for help is the bravest thing a person can do.

But therapy is different. Or at least, it should be. The word help, when applied to therapy, becomes something more complex, more loaded. Because the heart of therapy isn’t about solving problems for someone else. It’s about sitting beside them long enough that they begin to see the shape of their own way through.

That’s the distinction. A therapist doesn’t help you in the way a plumber helps fix a pipe, or a friend helps carry your boxes. The therapist doesn’t arrive with tools in hand, ready to intervene. They arrive with presence. With attention. With a capacity to stay with your experience without needing to fix it. Sometimes that alone creates the conditions for change.

And when change does come—when the client begins to make sense of things, to feel stronger, to take steps toward a more integrated life—that transformation doesn’t come from being helped. It comes from being witnessed. From being accompanied. From being taken seriously. In good therapy, what emerges is not a person who was helped, but a person who was allowed to meet themselves more fully.

Still, it’s tempting—for therapists and clients alike—to want help to be more active, more directional. And sometimes it can be. Sometimes a therapist will offer a suggestion, a framework, even a challenge. But if they slip too easily into the role of helper, the relationship becomes unbalanced. The therapist becomes the one with the answers, and the client the one waiting to be fixed. That might bring short-term relief. But long-term, it risks dependency. It leaves the client reaching outward for solutions instead of discovering what they already carry.

That’s the paradox. Help can soothe, but it can also interrupt the deeper work. It can patch things up without ever touching the structure beneath. It’s a plaster, not a reckoning. It’s a new paint job on an old façade. And therapy—real therapy—isn’t about cosmetic change. It’s about the slow, often painful process of facing what’s been hidden, denied, distorted. It’s about learning how to live with what’s yours.

So yes, help has its place. But therapy is not help in the traditional sense. It’s not charity, or rescue, or advice. It’s something quieter. Stranger. More exacting. And ultimately, more enduring.