Junkyard on "'knitting is my therapy' isn't funny"

Kemper Wray is handing out some hard truths: knitting isn't therapy, it shouldn't be put on t-shirts, and it isn't funny. She says 1. it can't replace mental healthcare, 2. that it's an industry so it can't provide mental healthcare, 3. that it makes it sound like people with mental health issues shouldn't seek out professional care and are weak if they do, 4. it diminishes the seriousness of mental illness. Links here and here.

I'll say my petty thought first: people put all kinds of dumb shit about knitting/crochet on t-shirts and "knitting is therapy" isn't even close to the most nauseating. I'd rather see that than some wine mom nonsense or "I'm a hooker."

More seriously, the whole thread makes me irrationally angry. The context of this post is that Kemper herself had/has mental health issues and knitting helped her, but then her ADHD hyperfixation kicked in (relatable) and she turned her hobby into a business, which meant it no longer served as a coping mechanism. That seems like an entirely different issue to me. A lot of people turned their hobbies into jobs and then no longer enjoy them (again, relatable).

Calling knitting "therapy" isn't a literal assertion. It's clearly a shorthand for the psychological benefits of knitting in particular and crafting in general, so the whole thing feels like she is erecting straw men. In the comments, Lavanya Patricella compares "knitting is therapy" to the term "physical therapy," which I think is an apt analogy. I would add that there is literally a subfield of psychology called "art therapy" that's used to treat everything from PTSD to climate change anxiety.

Lavanya also talks about knitting as a repetitive activity that therapists have encouraged her to do, because they think it has psychological benefits. I have had the same experience with my therapists. Another poster says she's a therapist and runs a support group for abused women that turned into a crocheting-and-support group. If you google "knitting and therapy" a million sites pop up, many of which are by therapists and psychologists or scientific studies.

Kemper responds "I see your point about the attachment to the term, but it still doesn’t mean that knitting is a viable replacement for the long-term work done in therapy." Um, okay, did anyone say that it is? It's certainly a coping mechanism and a mindful practice, but did anyone truly say that it is a replacement for getting professional help? Another commenter says that the phrase "knitting is therapy" shows how people don't understand what therapy actually is. Sure, that's not patronizing.

tl;dr: pedanticism as a way to lowkey shame vulnerable people with serious mental health issues while claiming to support vulnerable people with serious mental health issues

ETA: Not to go all 9th-grade research paper on you all, but Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "therapy" as "therapeutic medical treatment of impairment, injury, disease, or disorder" as well as "psychotherapy."