DISCLAIMER: I'm not talking about pharmaceutical interventions! I'm talking about psychologists who claim they can cure you just through the power of talking.

I consider myself quite well-rounded mentally. I am generally happy, I'm happy with life, I have good relationships, and I think I can control my emotions. I also think I give good advice to people: in the sense they report substantial improvements to their welfare.

Giving psychological support is just a mix of being a "friend" and common sense!

Half of helping people is just being there. To listen and to show you're interested. The other half is basic common sense. Here are few common sense principles I use in my life.

• Although you can't control your emotions directly, you can control the environment. If you spend too much time with a possible romantic partner, you risk falling in love.
• Life is devoided of meaning and it's up to us to create meaning to it. Just keep yourself busy and don't think about it.
• If you lack will of spirit to do stuff because you're melancholic, make wholesale decisions. It's much easier to practice exercises if there are people there expecting you.
• Most human beings don't have emotional intelligence. It's your fault if you're in conflict with one of those human beings.
• You should try to build relationships with people that have great emotional intelligence.
• Take care of your body. Doing exercises release endorphin.
• You're a human being, you're a social animal. You'll suffer if you're alone.
• You're not special. Just in the present there are 8 billion people just like you. Enjoy the gift of being and that your life is great.
• Happiness is expectations minus reality.
• Objective of life isn't happiness. It is to be free through being ethical.

Obviously the list above isn't an exhaustive. My point that you can go very far in helping people through talking with basic common sense principles that how to live a worthy life.

I BELIEVE THAT PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAINING WON'T I PROVE SUBSTANTIALLY THE ABILITY TO IMPROVE PEOPLE'S WELFARE THROUGH TALKING.

(Obviously psychological training provides the basic heuristics some way or other. And more importantly, it helps practitioners to know how to talk with people! There, if you put a psychologist vs a random person as the control group, the psychologist will pass the random test. Also, obviously, you can't do a double blind test. But if you compare with coaches or sacerdots, I dunno the results would be substantially different)

1- The fact that there is no true way in psychology, and even stuff like psychoanalysis has so much following by practicioners show that not even psychologists can get into an agreement themselves on what are the best methods to improve people's lives. The reason for this is that the human mind is so complex that the moment you exit the basic heuristics and try to create more sophisticated theories, you get to substantially bigger levels of complexity. 2- Most people can't graduate from psychology. One friend of mine was said she was neurotypical by her psychologist, but nonetheless she still does therapy. 3- A big big problem are relationships with other people, like a couple or a parent and a kid. But curing two people is even harder and has mixed results. 4- Most psychologists I know dont have great emotional intelligence slash aren't free of psychopatologies themselves. On the other hand, most physical education practitioners I know are hot and healthy. And most dentists have a good smile.

What would change my mind? Evidence that having the psychologist training means you can have more tools for specific situations, maybe you can have small heuristics for many many situations. Or a way better theory of how the mind works. Or something else.