In the process of writing up some overdue therapy notes, I had a realisation

Specifically, the ableist issues with metaphorical deployment of "using something as a crutch" are well-documented. FwD suggests the alternative "training wheels", which never really worked for me; something about the connotations, I think.

I've just noticed that "using ... as a buttress" really does: while buttresses are reassuring and nice to look at, they fundamentally arise because we didn't understand physics so couldn't build things that stayed up without them. As we've deepened and developed our understanding of the world and our place in it they become superfluous: there are less visible and more efficient ways to achieve the same effect, but they require thought and work.

Which has a different flavour, to me, around whether there's an expected stepping stone to build confidence (as training wheels so often are), or whether one is fundamentally struggling to replace a maladaptive approach that was the best that could be done at the time but has been rendered obsolete, if you can get the budget and the time and the support to do the upgrade work.