Totally get where you’re coming from. If you’re staring down the barrel of something massive like trauma, abuse, an enitre system that’s completely fucked and seems way bigger than you and the others fighting it are or ever will be, it feels like no matter how much “self care” you do, the external crap stays the same, right?? It’s fucking maddening.

But idk, to me, therapy (actual, good therapy with a non-shitty therapist) isn’t about giving us power over the root cause, not always anyways because like you said, sometimes it’s impossible. Imo, a lot of times it’s about helping people stop handing more power to “it” (whatever it may be) than “it” already has. We don’t get to choose what happens to us sometimes, but we do get to choose how we respond to it, how we carry it, how we let it affect us, how we pass our pain onto others. It can be a super uncomfortable, yet extremely liberating, paradox. Like, okay, I might not be able to slay the dragon here (sorry, nerd here), but I can sure as hell stop feeding it in whatever way way I was (constant unhealthy thought patterns, my own actions or the lack thereof, etc).

Therapy doesn’t fix the world for sure, but it can help us decide which parts of the suffering are necessary, or which parts we might be unconsciously choosing to carry longer than we need to. Idk, that’s where our power really is, imo.