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The Joe Rogan Experience.
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Hello.
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Good to see you again.
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It s great to see you.
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What was it like the last time you did the show?
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Well, they tried to kick it off Spotify.
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It was a very small, noisy group of people, by the way.
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It wasn t the head people.
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Right.
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They tried to make it seem like there was this big movement to get it kicked off Spotify.
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But when you examine what you were saying, and, you know, many more people are saying what you were saying, this was like, what year was this when you were on?
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2020.
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2020.
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Yeah.
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It had sort of just started boiling.
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Yeah.
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You know, and now four years later, it s, there s a lot of people pushing back.
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That s right.
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And I honestly, I thought you were gonna never have me on your show again.
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Because, you know, it was very, I mean, they had 10 meetings with the employees demanding that it be removed.
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I thought Joe s gonna be so mad at me.
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No, they re wrong.
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They re wrong.
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They re wrong.
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Every time someone wants to stop discussions, they re wrong.
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They re wrong, especially when you want to try to stop discussions about a very serious and permanent thing that people are advocating to do to children that is also very profitable.
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And it s a dark, weird sort of a scenario that we re in here right now that s unprecedented, that no one s ever experienced before.
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And they re using terms like life-saving, gender-affirming care instead of castration and removing breasts and hormones.
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And it s a very, very strange time.
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So I m glad we had that podcast.
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And I would have 100 more of them.
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I think it s very important to talk about this.
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And I think there s too many people that are scared to talk about it.
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And that s why this stuff is getting so much traction.
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And it s scary.
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It s scary.
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It s scary that people aren t willing to
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Admit that children are very easily influenced.
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That s right I think that s the scariest thing of all that people are afraid to just say the truth Yeah, and that s not a good world because we can fix most problems if we can talk about yeah Yeah, exactly when that s my my position on anyone trying to stop you from talking about things.
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Yeah, you know, they re they re wrong and
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It s not the way to do it.
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It s definitely not the American way.
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And it s not the way we ve ever solved problems in this country.
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And it s a bad thing when you can t be honest about things.
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And the reason why they want to try to do it is because they know that there s too many people that agree with it and that these people have been silenced before.
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So they d like to bully them into silence.
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They like to scare them into silence.
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get them canceled.
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And, you know, before Elon purchased Twitter, you used to be able to do that much more effectively.
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What, the silencing?
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Yeah, the silencing was so easy.
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If you said, I mean, look, Megan Murphy was kicked off of Twitter for years.
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That s right.
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Just for saying a man is never a woman.
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That s right.
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And look, I mean, there s no question, I think, that Elon taking over Twitter broke open the monopoly on a lot of conversations.
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I do think that had that effect.
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And it s really important.
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I mean, look, if their position, if the gender activist position was a good one, they wouldn t have to shut everyone up, right?
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They wouldn t have to object.
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I mean, they took my book off Target.
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They threw a fit and Target removed the book.
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And they did it because even though they have hundreds
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of trans celebratory books, hundreds of books celebrating gender transition for teenagers, even one that was critical of it, that was too much for them because they knew it would break their monopoly on the narrative.
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Well, the really scary thing is when you see these detransitioners get attacked.
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That s terrifying.
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That s terrifying because that s just so, it s so cruel.
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The complete lack of compassion for someone that s done, as the title of your book, irreversible damage to their life.
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forever.
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They ll never have children again, they ll never have breasts again.
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And this, the fact that this is just a part of this bizarre cult, that a giant swath of our population is consumed by right now.
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That s right, and they didn t let detransitioners be part of the story.
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That there was a growing number of these women who were regretting their transition, and they were brave enough to speak up, and that took real courage, because they re talking about their own experience, their own damage to their own bodies.
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I mean, they were the most courageous of all, and they were treated horribly by the activists.
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Yeah, it s so dark.
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Like, you don t want to think that people can make mistakes.
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Even if you think that people should be allowed to transition when they re young, you don t think that some people are going to do it and regret it?
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That s insane.
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Right.
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You think that everybody who goes through surgery to remove parts of their body because they feel like they re in the wrong gender, you think all those people are going to be happy?
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That s insanity.
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Yeah, I mean, it s, you know, like a religion in the sense of the fundamentalism of belief against all evidence to the contrary.
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I mean, these people believe this on faith.
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It was a creed and there was no disabusing them of this, even when there was growing evidence of thousands of young women regretting it.
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Well, finally, now the New York Times is on board, though, which is really interesting.
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It is, isn t it?
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And I saw someone commenting on Twitter, and I think they re probably correct.
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And they said, this is because the trial lawyers are involved now.
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And I think they re correct.
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I think this is why the New York Times has kind of shifted sides, because I think they realize the lawsuits are coming.
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And once a few of them are successful, and they will be, it s going to get crazy.
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Well, I think that that is a part of it.
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But I don t think the lawsuits are going to solve it as easily as they did, say, the repressed memory scandal of prior eras.
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And, you know, the multiple, you know, personality disorder, you know, all these people who thought they had repressed memory of various kinds of harm.
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And we re imagining, you know, you know, childhood molestation that didn t happen and put, you know, that you re talking about, like the the satanic stuff from
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Yeah, from the 80s.
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I think that got reversed through lawsuits in part because they weren t following clear medical, clear protocols of their profession.
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The problem with the gender going after the gender regime through the courts and I m in favor of it.
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Don t get me wrong.
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But the problem is that the gender therapists, the therapists, the doctors, were all following protocol when they transition a kid to, you know, and cut up their bodies in various ways, you know, incapacitated them in various ways.
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They were actually following affirmative care, which was the official protocol.
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So I just- Which is crazy.
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It s crazy.
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It s crazy.
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It s so crazy that
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There s so many things that we don t allow children to do because we know that children can t really make lifelong decisions at the age of 11 and 12 and 13.
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But yet we ll let them in this case.
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That s right.
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So nuts.
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Yeah, I, you know, when I look back on it, you know, there are a few, I sort of had a few, there were a few sort of lessons of it, but one of the things that really stood out was that almost in every case, there were medical professionals who should have known better and very often therapists who should have known better encouraging a young girl who was a little anxious or had some anxiety, had some depression, encouraging her down this road as the solution.
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Yeah.
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But it s also not recognizing what we know about what happens to people when they give them testosterone.
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So testosterone alleviates anxiety.
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Testosterone creates a feeling of euphoria.
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It does, especially when you give it to someone in doses that their body would never normally have.
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That s right.
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And so what the girls would go on it and they would feel great and they would become evangelists for testosterone They would tell all their friends you got to do this.
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I feel great.
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All my anxiety is gone Of course now they may have a permanent five o clock shadow You know their voice when they detransition that never goes away.
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I
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Yeah, it s very dark.
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It s very dark.
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And I would have never imagined this.
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I would have never imagined that.
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Before COVID, I had a completely different opinion of the medical establishment.
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My opinion of the medical establishment is that they were there to help people.
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That s it.
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I never questioned it.
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I questioned the motives of some of the pharmaceutical drug companies that were trying to sell drugs.
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But I felt like the medical establishment always figured that out eventually and then they banned those drugs, the ones that were harmful.
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But that s not real.
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That s not really what happens.
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It s a money game.
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The whole thing is a money and influence game and it s run by very powerful people.
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And no one wants to think that those same factors are at play when it comes
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to gender transition.
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But, you know, I ve shown people the map of gender transition clinics in 2007 versus gender transition clinics in 2023.
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And it s fucking insane.
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It s insane.
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Yeah.
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Hundreds and hundreds of new gender clinics all across the country.
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You know, the industry expanded so rapidly with very little oversight.
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And it was just how fast could we get these drugs to these kids?
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Yeah.
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So, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
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There wasn t enough oversight, but there also weren t enough good people speaking up.
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A lot of the best doctors who are like, I didn t enter the medical profession to do this, they went silent or they referred to others.
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They said, why don t you, you know, let me refer you to a specialist.
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Well, actually, the gender surgeons often weren t even adequate to the task because it s very, very complicated surgery involving transferring peripheral nerves and whatnot.
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So it s not easy surgery, depending on which surgery you re talking about.
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Very often, they weren t even the most qualified surgeons doing the surgery.
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So you had a lot of surgeries that didn t go quite right.
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Well, none of them go quite right.
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I mean, that s what s dark about it.
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I mean, you re creating a new thing, you know, whether you re creating a penis or whether you re turning a penis into a vagina.
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This is not like heart surgery.
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This is not something they ve been doing forever, that they have this long history of doing it successfully and they know exactly how to do it correctly.
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The whole thing is very twisted.
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Yeah, the rates of all kinds of things going wrong.
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I mean, if you talk about the creation of the neophallus, the ones that take a vagina to make something like a penis, the number of getting urine to go in a stream as opposed to a spray,
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or making it so that the person can have an erection, then a strong enough erection to actually penetrate.
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These all require separate surgeries very often.
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Very often, it doesn t go quite right, and there s all kinds of complications with the surgeries.
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I mean, I ve talked to people who ve been really butchered.
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So again, what was it like for you?
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Did you expect when you wrote that book?
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Did you expect the kind of blowback that you experienced?
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Like what did you expect when you wrote the book?
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I obviously you felt the need to express this and you felt the need to share this information because You you recognize that there s like this contagion the social contagion that seems to be happening.
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It s a big part of what s going on.
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I
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And a lot of these kids are very easily influenced.
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A lot of them are on the spectrum, and they re being led down this road.
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So you write this book.
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What did you expect was going to be the reaction to it?
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Well, most books get very little attention at all.
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So most books, right, you know, I certainly didn t expect the, you know, massive reaction that I got.
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I mean, the
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public campaign to ban me from every possible outlet was so hypercharged.
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And to some extent, it was successful.
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I mean, they kept the book on Amazon.
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It was deleted from Target.
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You can t find it in a public library in America, no matter how many people tried to donate it to their libraries.
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So to some extent, it was successful.
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But, you know, the campaign to stifle the book, but because I made it onto places like your podcast, because I made it into Amazon,
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People got it.
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Parents got it.
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And for the first time, I think parents had another source of information besides the activist narrative of, oh, you know, you re either going to have a live son or a dead daughter, this lie that your child s going to kill themselves if you don t do exactly what I say and let them transition now.
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This lie was the prevailing narrative.
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And I think
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You know, I was able to break through, and I think that s what made people so angry.
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That lie falls apart under scrutiny when you look at the suicide rates of people that are trans.
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Right.
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Right.
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There s actually a new study out of Finland showing that, a really good long-term study, you know, I think it came out maybe just this week,
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Showing that the rates when you control for other mental health issues the rates of suicide among those with gender dysphoria the you know You know discomfort with the biological sex the the rates of suicide are no higher than for the general population That s crazy Your new book bad therapy why kids aren t growing up.
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Yes What s wrong with therapy?
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What are they doing wrong?
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You know, they re giving it to kids who aren t sick, who aren t actually struggling with mental illness or a disorder.
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They re giving it to everybody.
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So what they re doing is they re making existing problems worse, and they re introducing new problems.
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Because therapy has side effects, just like any intervention that has the power to help, it also has the power to harm.
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In what way?
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Well, there s a whole body of research on some of the side effects of therapy, and they include things like alienation from spouse, alienation from parents, worsening of depression, worsening of anxiety, feeling of incapacity, feeling like you can t do things without consulting your therapist.
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All those are well-known iatrogenic effects.
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Once you have a mental diagnosis, the labeling, feeling limited by that label, oh, I have anxiety, I can t.
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So all those things are well known, what they call iatrogenic effects, meaning whenever a medical procedure actually introduces harm, that s an iatrogenic effect.
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And we know that, of course, you know, drugs and surgeries always come with, you know, even the life-saving ones can come with some harm.
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And what people might not know is that therapy comes with these risks as well.
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So is this your opinion on therapy in general?
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Do you think there s a place for therapy?
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Absolutely.
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But I guess the big picture theme here is that therapy with kids and teens is totally different for therapy with an adult, right?
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An adult sits down, first of all, an adult makes the decision on their own.
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You know, I really want to work on this.
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I m going to go to a therapist.
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And you get the patient buy-in, and they re ready to do the hard work of therapy.
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But a child or teenager is usually strong-armed into therapy.
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So they don t want to be there in the first place.
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But more importantly, you know, they can t say as easily to a therapist, listen, I don t really think, I think I gave you the wrong impression.
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I don t think I would call my mom emotionally abusive.
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It s much harder for them to say, listen, I know I was bullied in middle school, but I don t think I have PTSD.
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It s harder for a kid to say that because they don t have the life experience behind them to know that.
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And they don t know if they re getting better as easily.
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An adult can say, you know, I ve been seeing this therapist for three years.
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You know, my depression s as bad as it ever was.
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It s just not working.
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And move on.
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Maybe find a different therapist.
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It s much harder for a teenager to know that.
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Yeah, I have never been in therapy, although a lot of people told me I should.
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But they all are in therapy, and it doesn t seem to be helping.
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But the people that I know that are in therapy, the ones that are in therapy regularly, are the most fucked up.
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And I don t see improvement.
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I don t...
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I mean, maybe it s just a biased sampling of the people that I know that are doing it, but it s the people that, it s not all of them, but the ones that I find problematic are very self-indulgent.
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And there s something about going to a therapist and talking about yourself constantly and your problems constantly that sort of reinforces the self-indulgent.
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And that s what can lead depression to get worse, sadness to get worse.
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As you sit and focus on your pain, if you re not careful, especially with teens and kids, it can make the pain, the worry, the feeling of being harmed worse.
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And I think that s what we re seeing.
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But what about the good therapists?
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Aren t there good therapists that can give you tools to sort of change your patterns of thinking and behavior and move in a positive way?
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So if you re struggling with a condition of some sort, a phobia, anorexia, OCD, any number of problems that you want to deal with, therapy can be great.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy especially can be great.
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But if you go, if you re a teen or kid who shows up bummed out,
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or just generally kind of anxious.
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To a therapist, you have a good shot of having that problem made worse.
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But why is that?
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What is it about going to therapy with that problem that s going to make it worse?
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Because you re going to sit and talk about your worries regularly.
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They re not going to say, you know that exercise is amazing for depression?
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Study after study.
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In fact, there have been recent studies showing it s better than antidepressants for a lot of, you know, 1.25%.
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I mean, it s amazing, right?
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Like, excuse me, one and a quarter, like one times better, right?
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One, you know, dancing is apparently amazing for, you know, low mood.
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Now, I m not talking about severe major depressive disorder, okay?
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When you have
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severe chronic depression, you may need to treat it with medication or therapy.
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But for, you know, low mood, you know, sort of mild to moderate depression, exercise turns out to be better, and it doesn t have those side effects.
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But let me give you an example of a teenager I talked to.
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So I talked to this girl, Becca, is what I call her, in the book.
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But she was a high school senior, and she had been in therapy since age six, okay, when her parents divorced.
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She didn t have any diagnosed mental disorder of any kind, but she had regularly been in therapy because her parents divorced and they said, you got to go to therapy.
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So I asked her as a high school senior, so what are you working on with your therapist now?
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And she said to me, my therapist is getting me ready to make friends in college.
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She s helping me.
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So we re rehearsing, we re going through my past experiences and we re talking about how to get me ready to make friends in college.
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It gives me anxiety just thinking about it.
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Somebody coaching me to go make friends is like, what?
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Right.
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Do you see this generation feels that it can t do because they ve gotten so much oversight and so much needless mental health intervention that they re questioning themselves all the time.
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They re in their heads all the time.
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And what motivated you to write this book?
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Do you have personal experiences with people that are going through this?
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Well, two things.
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One is I m raising three kids in this generation.
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So I wanted to know, why was the generation that got the most mental health intervention, the most therapy, the most psych meds, the most interventions in schools, the most therapeutic parenting, why were they in the most distress?
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And why were they so afraid to grow up?
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And we shouldn t see that.
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These should be the picture of wellness.
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Nobody worried about anybody s mental health more than we worried about their mental health.
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And yet they re the picture of despair.
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So I really wanted to know what was going on with them.
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And also, of course, I had written Irreversible Damage.
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And I knew from that experience that very often when a young woman would tell a story about when her life went desperately off track,
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It was with a therapist.
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And here s the thing, it wasn t necessarily a gender therapist.
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Most often, it was just your vanilla psychodynamic therapist who was there to talk to an anxious or depressed, a little bummed out teen, you know, mildly depressed teen about their bad feelings.
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And lo and behold, during the course of, you know, regular psychodynamic therapy, they would say, and what are your feelings on gender?
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And with the therapist, they would go down that route.
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Wow.
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There s a lot of other factors, too, right, that s contributing to kids  anxiety today, and a big one has to be social media.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Social media is a huge part of the story, there s no question.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, I wrote about it in the first book, and, you know, Jonathan Haidt, Gene Twenge have been talking about it for eight years now, and they ve brought rigor and important research to show that that has, you know, extracting kids from their social world is bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
and getting them, you know, making them, you know, getting the dopamine hit and the, you know, the anxious, you know, worry about who s gonna write me back and when, and then getting the dopamine hit at when they get that response and that whole cycle.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no question that plays on our natural sort of, you know, propensities for addiction and makes kids more anxious.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s part of what we re seeing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think it s the whole story.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the reason, I don t think it s the whole story, is a few things.
2
SPEAKER_01
First of all, childhood mental health has been, and adolescent mental health has been in precipitous decline in this country since the 1950s.
2
SPEAKER_01
And how do they measure that?
2
SPEAKER_01
So from, let s say, by every measure, by the way.
2
SPEAKER_01
But let s say, take between 1955 and 1988, the rates of adolescent suicide quadrupled.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s just one measure, but there are many.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we ve seen it from non-suicidal self-harm, suicidal self-harm.
2
SPEAKER_01
All of these rates have gone up for adolescents.
2
SPEAKER_01
But they ve been in decline for mental health of teens has been in decline for years.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s also some other statistics or some other reasons.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think phones explain the whole story.
2
SPEAKER_01
One of them is that in 2016, the CDC came out with a report, and they said that one in six kids between the ages of two and eight, these aren t kids with smartphones,
2
SPEAKER_01
Between the ages of two and eight, one in six kids had a mental health or behavioral diagnosis.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a lot of kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s a lot of kids with a mental health diagnosis, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you think that it factors parents with mental health issues?
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s, I think, more adults are anxious, more adults are suffering from anxiety and depression, at least diagnosed anxiety and depression now than ever before.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think adults are absolutely passing on their anxiety to their kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
And actually we re seeing that in, you know, Jean Twenge came out with this book, Generations, and one of the things she said in it is that boys, even though teenage girls have the worst mental health in general, boys from liberal families had worse mental health than girls from conservative families in terms of anxiety and depression.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, why should that be?
2
SPEAKER_01
We know the girls are on social media more, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Boys, you know, that s not their thing, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
They re into video games or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I think part of the reason is what you said.
2
SPEAKER_01
There are certain families that are passing on anxiety about things like climate change.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I also think it shows that it s in the environment we re giving them.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re not giving kids a healthy life.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
We think that we can give them an unhealthy life and just pour in the mental health resources and remediate, but it doesn t work like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the last reason I don t think that phones totally explain everything or social media is because in societies where they use just as much social media, it s not great for the kids  mental health, no doubt, but they have much better rates of anxiety and depression than we do, countries like Japan and Israel.
2
SPEAKER_01
where kids have more independence, they have more freedom, they re able to take more risks on their own, and they walk home from school, they do all kinds of jobs outside of the house, like run errands for the family, and they get a feeling of, first of all, short-term joy and long-term satisfaction from being able to take risks, see what they can handle, but also a feeling of efficacy in the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s an interesting statistic that you were saying that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So conservative families have less depressed kids.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is that what you re saying?
2
SPEAKER_01
Apparently boys from conservative families, sorry, boys from liberal families have higher anxiety rates than girls from conservative families.
2
SPEAKER_00
But above, like, if you just looked at the norm, more girls generally have anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in conservative families, girls are less anxious than boys from liberal families.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And, I mean, we could speculate as to why.
2
SPEAKER_01
There are lots of proposed reasons for that.
2
SPEAKER_01
But one of the many, you know, things that we might, first of all, we know it s in the environment at that point.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not an organic, whatever these kids are going through, it s not organic, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So we know it s something we re pouring into their life.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think one of the things might be that, aside from the fact that parents in conservative families may be more comfortable asserting their authority with kids, and that s an old finding.
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve known for generations now that authoritative parenting, meaning not cold parenting, not cruel, not unloving, but rules.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those kids have better mental health, they re happier, and they re more successful in all kinds of ways.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, it may be something to do with comfort with rules, but also they re less likely to turn their kids  lives over to a mental health expert.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, what is the speculation as to why rules alleviate anxiety?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it because there s structure?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s more structure to the world, so things seem less open-ended and less chaotic?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s something to do with that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Kids need guardrails.
2
SPEAKER_01
They know they re not ready to be in charge.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, parents today are so quick to put kids in charge.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you want?
2
SPEAKER_01
Where would you like to go to school?
2
SPEAKER_01
What would you like to eat for dinner?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, putting kids in charge.
2
SPEAKER_01
But we ve known since the 1960s, Diana Bomran did this research years ago, and it s some of the most, it s some of the sturdiest research we have because they ve replicated it hundreds of times.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they ve shown that loving parents who are also rule-bound, they call them authoritative, not authoritarian, which is the cold, unloving rule-bound, but the loving and rule-bound parents tend to raise the happiest kids, because kids know there are guardrails.
2
SPEAKER_01
And here s the thing, the people who are making the rules aren t some expert mom hired.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re the people who love me most.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re my parents.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re the ones in charge.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that s really comforting to kids.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s interesting, because that s not what people think of when they think of authoritative parents.
2
SPEAKER_00
They think of parents that are restricting their children, and the children are going to rebel.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s a lot of really good research on this, but it actually doesn t create more rebellious kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
By virtually every metric, they do much better in all kinds of circumstances.
3
SPEAKER_00
circumstances and in all kinds of situations.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the permissive – what they used to have was permissive parents and authoritarian parents.
3
SPEAKER_00
Those were the other two extremes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Permissive parents let kids do whatever they wanted and authoritarian parents said obey at all costs and they were fairly cold.
3
SPEAKER_00
And their kids didn t end up great in terms of mental health.
3
SPEAKER_00
But here s – but today we don t even have permissive parents in my view.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think we have something even worse.
3
SPEAKER_00
We have permissive parents who are therapeutic, meaning they re always asking kids what they want, and they re never asserting their authority, but they re doing something else.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re hovering and surveilling their kids.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so it s permissive without the independence.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hmm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s that s a weird one, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like the snap maps and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re following your kids, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
snapchat.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re surveilling them.
3
SPEAKER_00
These kids have no independence.
3
SPEAKER_00
They have no space for mom is not or dad and it s not doing them any good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hmm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think it is that things have moved in this general direction?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, why do you think it is that more parents are seeking psychotherapy for their children, and that it s having this negative effect?
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think, you know, I m at the tail end of Gen X, 1978 was the year I was born.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think with my, you know, we were the high watermark of divorce.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of, you know, teenagers might, you know, who grew up when I did, they felt like, you know, my parents were divorced.
3
SPEAKER_00
They weren t there for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wish I had had someone I could talk to.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so they sort of naively, and they had good experiences in therapy, and they sort of naively, you know, watch good will hunting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they thought, you know, therapy is good for everyone.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they sort of naively turned their kids over to a mental health expert right away.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, at the first, I talked to moms who signed their kids up for therapy because a cat died, because their grandma died, because basically anything that would happen in the life, even routine events.
3
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, look, having your grandparents die is very sad, but that s not, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
an unexpected trauma.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s part of life, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And signing up your kid with a therapist might help if they re having a real problem, but it could also introduce other problems.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s what we re seeing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s a reluctance to let children experience discomfort.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s really the only way you learn.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
We learn.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean obviously bad feelings can be devastating but bad feelings also can let you understand the landscape of the world better and understand what to do and what not to do and what the consequences are of certain actions.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know I had some friends when I was growing up that got that became addicted to drugs and it
3
SPEAKER_01
It sealed the deal for me like with cocaine was a big one like I ve never tried cocaine and One of the main reasons is because of my friends that I had when I was in high school I saw the negative.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was horrible.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was horrible to experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s horrible as a friend to watch all that go down But those bad feelings teach you something they teach you something very important about what the consequences of certain behavior are and
3
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly right.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s this amazing long-term study on kids who lived through the Depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they found that the kids who ended up – and they followed these kids from – they were born 1920, 1921, and they followed them long-term.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know who did the best in the Great Depression?
3
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t the poorest kids whose parents killed themselves or abandoned them.
3
SPEAKER_00
and it wasn t the rich kids who didn t feel the depression at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was the kids of the deprived middle class, the ones who had to take in extra jobs, wear hand-me-downs, do extra work.
3
SPEAKER_00
Those people ended up so scrappy and so strong, and here s the thing, they also ended up happy, really happy, because they were resilient.
3
SPEAKER_00
They had lived through something, they had learned it, and they learned this amazing gratitude when things went right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s the thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Overcoming adversity and becoming resilient.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s no pill for that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t just talk through that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to actually experience it.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we ve spent so much time worrying about trying to make our kids happy, and we don t spend enough time trying to make them strong.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve made them neither.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because making happiness your goal is actually a recipe for being unhappy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you don t make a kid strong, he can t be happy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, I think about my grandmother and, you know, because everybody has, you know, if anybody thinks about their grandparents, they went through some hard stuff, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I tell the story in the book.
3
SPEAKER_00
My own grandmother lived through the Depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
Her mother died in childbirth, giving birth to her.
3
SPEAKER_00
She was bounced around.
3
SPEAKER_00
She had to be taken out of her father s home.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if there was abuse.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not clear.
3
SPEAKER_00
But somebody decided she should be taken out of her father s home.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was raising four kids by himself.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when her oldest sister married at 17, she went to live with her.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then she ended up at 16.
3
SPEAKER_00
She got spinal bulbar polio.
3
SPEAKER_00
She ended up in an iron lung for a year.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she went on to college.
3
SPEAKER_00
She raised, she married, she raised three kids.
3
SPEAKER_00
She went to night school.
3
SPEAKER_00
She became one of the first judges in Maryland, female judges in Maryland.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she was the happiest person I knew.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s the kicker.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, it wasn t just that she achieved so much.
3
SPEAKER_00
She was someone who took in foster kids her whole life.
3
SPEAKER_00
She was a happy person who felt grateful all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And today, a school counselor would take one look at her and say, you ve been through a lot of trauma.
3
SPEAKER_00
We should talk about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there s got to be some middle ground, isn t there?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there some middle ground where children can have someone they can confide in and have conversations with that can express these things to them?
3
SPEAKER_01
That although you re going through something awful, that resilience is actually going to serve you in the long run.
3
SPEAKER_01
And even though this feels terrible now, on the other side of it, you will have new tools that will help you manage life.
3
SPEAKER_00
If that were what school counselors said to kids, that would be amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the problem is the mental health profession doesn t look at, doesn t track, there s no requirement that they track negative side effects.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re not measuring in general.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now I have some exceptions that I mention in the book, but in general they re not measuring.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is your anxiety going, getting better?
3
SPEAKER_00
like cognitive behavioral therapists will often measure, and they ll often say to a parent, I m going to see him for this many sessions, and we re going to measure and make sure the phobia is improving.
3
SPEAKER_00
But very often, they ll just talk about the pain.
3
SPEAKER_00
And talking about the pain regularly, endlessly, you know, is often not as good for a kid as joining the basketball team.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mm-hmm.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this was so we re talking about is essentially the title of your book, which is bad there Yeah, there has to be some good there.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure, right there good therapy is therapy for a kid who needs it not prevent only I Think so.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like what do you think the requirements would be for someone to get good therapy?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like what what would have to be wrong in the child s life?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it would be something where the parent has tried to stabilize the kid, that they have a problem, it s interfering with functioning, and they can t stabilize the kid.
3
SPEAKER_00
They ve tried other methods, and if they still can t stabilize the kid, I think therapy could be absolutely really helpful.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think you should then research the therapist like you would any surgeon.
3
SPEAKER_01
So do you think it s something like antidepressants where it s just over prescribed.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Where it s everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s way way way over prescribed.
3
SPEAKER_00
By the way we have so many mental you know mentally unwell people in our streets who are completely underserved and under treated.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think the reason is treating them is really hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
We also have a lot of mentally ill therapists.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was reading this crazy story about this therapist who convinced her client, her patient, to murder her ex.
3
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
She got this guy to fall in love with her, and then she got him to go and murder her ex.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I believe it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s no question.
3
SPEAKER_00
Therapists are humans.
3
SPEAKER_00
Therapists are humans.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of times when you talk to people who went through a PhD in psychology, they ll tell you,
3
SPEAKER_00
that some of their colleagues were a little scary because they entered the profession because they had mental health struggles of their own.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s important that a therapist not, you know, inject their own problems into the therapy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for that, you need a really good qualified person.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think that s the majority of what kids are getting.
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_01
So how do you know what these kids are experiencing when they re having this therapy?
3
SPEAKER_01
What are we basing this on?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do we get reports from the children of what they talked about with the therapists and know that that has had a negative effect?
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so first of all, there is no oversight, which is a huge problem, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no one, the profession doesn t require it.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re not measuring harms, they re not tracking harms.
3
SPEAKER_00
The medical professions, of course, do require it, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
They re federally required.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you have an adverse reaction to a drug, it gets reported.
3
SPEAKER_00
But with therapy, there is no tracking.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s something else
4
SPEAKER_02
too, we know that as a treatment enters a population pool and it becomes more accessible and more prevalent, the rates of disease or malady or disorder should go down, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
We ve seen this with breast cancer.
4
SPEAKER_02
1989 was the high watermark of breast cancer, you know, death from breast cancer.
4
SPEAKER_02
As screening improved, as it got more prevalent and more accessible to people, rates of death from breast cancer have plummeted.
4
SPEAKER_02
So why are the people who are getting the most treatment and the most access to mental health treatment, they re having the worst anxiety and depression?
4
SPEAKER_02
Why?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s skyrocketing.
4
SPEAKER_02
It should be going down.
4
SPEAKER_02
If the treatment were effective, it would be going down.
4
SPEAKER_01
But there are those other factors that we talked about, like social media, living in the age of the Internet.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a bizarre time to be a child.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that children today are experiencing unprecedented pressure in a weird way that no one knows how to navigate because no one grew up with it besides them.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
So if you re talking about things like social media, I do think that makes childhood worse and harder.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s no question.
4
SPEAKER_02
And there are other things that are making childhood uniquely hard in some sense.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, of course, we have generations that have lived through pandemics, great depression, economic deprivation, and all kinds of things.
4
SPEAKER_02
But two things.
4
SPEAKER_02
One, with any population, you would want to see some dent
4
SPEAKER_02
in the depression.
4
SPEAKER_02
We re not seeing that.
4
SPEAKER_02
But the other thing is, where were the mental health experts with social media?
4
SPEAKER_01
They could have called for a ban.
4
SPEAKER_01
They didn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think they knew right away.
4
SPEAKER_01
It had never existed before.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, but there s been really good evidence for the last eight years.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t think there s a parent alive who doesn t already know that social media is bad for kids, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
We ve known the phones.
4
SPEAKER_02
We see what they do.
4
SPEAKER_02
We see how angry kids get when you try to take them away.
4
SPEAKER_02
We know that there s like this addictive element and that kids act a little crazed.
4
SPEAKER_02
We can see it, and we ve known that.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, there s been good research out for eight years now.
4
SPEAKER_02
Why have the mental health organizations who have been, in 2020, warning the Congress about climate change, systemic racism, police tactics?
4
SPEAKER_02
They were quick to announce their views on all those things.
4
SPEAKER_02
They had nothing to say about the lockdowns.
4
SPEAKER_02
They had nothing to say about social media.
4
SPEAKER_02
They d never called for a ban on social media.
4
SPEAKER_02
They never issued the same warning that doctors gave about cigarettes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because social media does have some positive aspects to it, unlike cigarettes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Cigarettes have positive aspects.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re neural stimulants.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re social.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it gives you cancer.
4
SPEAKER_02
Long term.
4
SPEAKER_02
Look, I m saying, I m not an advocate for cigarettes.
4
SPEAKER_02
But bottom line, they lead to cancer.
4
SPEAKER_02
And the medical establishment, the Surgeon General felt like we had to warn the public they lead to cancer.
4
SPEAKER_02
And just like that, if you re a responsible organization, you have to warn people, hey, you know what?
4
SPEAKER_02
The social media is really bad for kids.
4
SPEAKER_02
We re seeing their anxiety get worse.
4
SPEAKER_02
They re on their phones all day long, even in school.
4
SPEAKER_02
We ve known for eight years now that the research has been out.
4
SPEAKER_02
Sorry, we re warning parents.
4
SPEAKER_02
We don t want to see smartphones in schools and we think no teenager should be on social media.
4
SPEAKER_02
They could say that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you think anybody would listen to that?
4
SPEAKER_01
That seems like the problem with that is it s like trying to put
4
SPEAKER_01
the water back in the dam.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just don t believe that that would be effective.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe they could have said something about it at the very beginning.
4
SPEAKER_01
If we knew the consequences of social media, let s go back to 2005 or something like that, before it was really a thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
If they started seeing it happen, if they could put the kibosh on it then.
4
SPEAKER_01
But now that it s so ubiquitous, I can t imagine a world where anybody would effectively say,
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a state that s trying, was it Montana, that s trying to ban TikTok?
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I believe you.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s like some state that s trying to ban TikTok for kids.
4
SPEAKER_00
A few states just sued multiple companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let me find that.
4
SPEAKER_01
For what though?
4
SPEAKER_00
Something about kids using it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is it because of their access to questionable material?
4
SPEAKER_00
October 24th here, multi-state federal lawsuit.
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On the screen, dozens of states are suing Instagram parent meta over addictive... Okay, dozens of states sue Instagram parent meta over addictive features and youth mental health harms.
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So this is, I think they re talking about algorithms.
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They re talking about how algorithms target children, demand users  constant attention.
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Meta has profited from children s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem.
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Hmm.
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Yeah, that s that lady from New York.
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Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis, and they must be held accountable.
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Yeah.
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Interesting.
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Florida s got a separate lawsuit for misleading users about potential health risks.
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How did they mislead them?
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I d have to read the lawsuit.
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So it says, Meta s design choices and practices take advantage and contribute to young users  susceptibility to addiction, the complaint reads.
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They exploit psychological vulnerabilities of young users through the false promise that meaningful social connection lies in the next story, image, or video, and that ignoring the next piece of social content could lead to social isolation.
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That seems like a stretch.
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I don t think they say that.
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No one says that ignoring the next piece of social content could lead to social isolation.
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What they do say is that children feel left out if they re not on social media because there s a lot of these little chat groups and they share videos and information.
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That s how they find about songs and bands that they like and movies that they like and television shows they like.
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So it is a part of society today.
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as sort of an inexorable part of society.
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Well, why?
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I mean, I think there are a couple of reasons why.
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One of them is we made no effort to even stop them during the school day, right?
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That would have been really easy.
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You can be on your phone, just not during the school day.
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That s so obvious that it s almost pathetic that we don t have that already in place, right?
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Because why do you need to be checking your texts?
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You re in school with your friends, right?
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So there were things that we could do and could have done, but we didn t do them.
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And I think one of the reasons was that I think that mental health experts, I mean, I know there are therapists who allow therapy over text message.
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Right.
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They are they they have seems crazy.
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Yeah, it s crazy.
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But they have they have made no effort to stop this mental to warn the public about this.
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And frankly, I think in many cases they ve undermined it.
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Right.
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There are therapists who went on Zoom and never went back.
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Yeah, well, Zoom is a little different, right?
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Because you actually are interacting with a person, even though it s through a screen.
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You re communicating with them, right?
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You are, but you get none of the benefits of in-person.
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So, you know, this they have measured.
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And the benefits of being in person, seeing someone face-to-face, the psychic benefits are real.
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even when you re with someone you don t want to be with.
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The kids who went home for the lockdowns and were in a big household full of relatives they didn t want to be stuck with when they wanted to be in college, they did better in terms of mental health than the kids who were isolated and stayed in school.
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Right, but you re sort of arguing against therapy, but yet saying therapy in person is better than therapy on Zoom.
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Is that- For sure.
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Yeah.
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I m not arguing, I mean, I m not arguing against, first of all, adults can see therapists for any reason.
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And that s totally not only up to them, I think they have the stand to get, they are in a much better position to possibly benefit from it.
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I m concerned about therapy for kids, especially kids who don t really need it, who are a little bummed out.
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But in any case, we know that Zoom therapy or text therapy for the most anxious generation, for the most socially phobic generation, supposedly, well, that s not helpful.
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Mm-hmm So the thing that Gets me about therapy that I ve always talked to the people that I know that are they re doing it all the time It s just I don t know how much you should be thinking about yourself.
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I Don t know.
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I mean, is there a
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Is there a certain amount of time you should allocate to thinking about yourself and your own feelings and problems?
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And how much of that is self-indulgent and how much of that feeds that anxiety itself?
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I mean, it does.
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Thinking about yourself is the same as unhappiness in a certain sense, right?
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It is indistinguishable from anxiety and depression.
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And if you just think about how our
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football coaches motivate a team at halftime.
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What do they do?
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They focus the team on the task ahead.
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That s the way to get them motivated.
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That s the way to help them complete it.
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What they don t say is, Johnson, are you still upset about your parents  divorce?
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Tell me about your feelings.
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Why don t they do it?
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It s not just because they re repressed.
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It s because they know that if you want to get anything done in this world, you need to, yes, repress your feelings for a time and focus on the task.
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But is it even repressing your feelings or is it just not indulging those feelings and letting those feelings be the primary focus?
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I think it s the same thing.
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I don t mean permanently.
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I don t mean there isn t a place for it.
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But when you re in the school, focusing on school, focusing on seeing your friends and going to recess or whatever else it is, the basketball, whatever the activity,
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Is it really good for you?
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As opposed to sitting around and thinking about doing social emotional learning and thinking about the pain you re feeling right now, the emotional pain.
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That s not gonna help you get through your geometry test.
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Yeah.
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Well, that is one thing that s fascinating about human beings is that tasks and difficult endeavors seem to make people happier.
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Yeah.
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Especially when you complete them.
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That s right.
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And it gives you positive reinforcement that you actually can get through something difficult and that the end result, the feeling of accomplishment is very valuable.
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That s right.
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And one of the hardest, most worrisome parts of this generation is that they have the lowest sense of efficacy.
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They report an external locus of control, meaning they don t think they can improve their lives.
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See, millennials thought they could do anything, right?
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They are the Mark Zuckerberg generation.
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And that s why we had so many tech founders in that generation.
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We re not seeing that with these young people.
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They don t want to be in charge.
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They re afraid.
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And they don t feel up to it.
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I talk to – there s a friend of mine I call every year on her birthday and she s a research scientist, cell biologist.
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And every year she invites kids to her lab for an internship who are top kids, pre-med graduates from college before they go on to med school.
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And she said to me in the last decade, when I called her this year for her birthday, she said to me, I can t believe you re writing about this generation.
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They are so different.
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And I said, tell me why.
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She said, I m seeing the smartest, most prepared kids.
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And they re afraid to run their own experiments.
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They tell me they re getting ready.
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They re working on their skills.
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They re not yet up to it.
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And they constantly report to me about their mental health, how they re feeling today.
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They can t just take a chance and go with it.
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It s weird because as a parent like you want to hear kids out and when they re having like some sort of anxiety and issue You want to talk with them and you want to talk through it?
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You want to give you don t want to tell them?
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Hey, you re gonna have to suck it up.
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I Never say that and I probably should I mean, I don t know if I should but I mean if I had boys I probably would I think I would probably treat them differently, but I think that
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There s a fine line.
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Where is the point of diminishing returns?
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Where is it valuable to address feelings and anxiety and thoughts?
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And is it irresponsible to do so without giving them tools to mitigate those things?
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And along with those tools, to explain to them that there s things that they re going to have to do in this life that are very difficult, but that there s a great reward in doing these very difficult things.
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So the problem, as I see it, is not that you re not saying suck it up.
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It s that no one ever says suck it up, no matter how minor the scratch to these kids, okay?
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And sometimes being told you ll live.
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Remember when dad used to say you ll live or shake it off?
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We never hear shake it off anymore.
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No one says it.
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So they don t know they can overcome even minor injuries.
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And the truth is they can.
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They can.
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But they recently did these studies on these coping techniques.
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They taught coping techniques to teenagers, over a thousand teenagers in Australia.
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It was called the Wise Teens Program.
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And that was the point.
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It was just to help them with emotional regulation.
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And it turned out it made kids sadder and more anxious.
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They measured this.
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And the reason was regularly ruminating on your bad feelings can make you feel worse.
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Hmm.
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Did you talk to therapists when you did this?
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Yeah, a lot of therapists.
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How many of them agree with you?
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So there was a huge split.
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The academic research psychologists overwhelmingly agreed.
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They were aware of the literature and they said, yeah, these are bad practices.
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Here are things we shouldn t be doing with kids.
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What was interesting is a lot of the clinical therapists were either either minimized the risks of therapy or denied that there were any.
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Mm-hmm.
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But isn t that like Jiffy Lube?
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Like when you tell them, you don t need to change your oil that much.
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Well, it s their business to change oil.
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Right.
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Exactly.
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Exactly.
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So like I talked to this one amazing, you know, child psychologist who said to me, I start by having my patients sign a waiver in which they acknowledge that there can be risks.
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And the reason I would do that is because I don t want them to experience harm.
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So if they see that their worries are getting worse, they have to tell me.
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Huh.
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But do they?
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Would they?
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I mean, it seems like the therapist is the one who s in control, right?
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Right.
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The therapist is the expert.
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They re the one who has the authority.
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Right.
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Well, I mean, you know, this one was Camilo Ortiz was one of the, you know, he was the one I talked to and the one that I was referring to there.
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And first of all, he always starts a therapy by setting the number of sessions.
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He doesn t treat a kid like an annuity.
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You re going to be my income stream for years.
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He attacks, and also they come to him with an actual problem, like chronic bedwetting, like various kinds of phobia.
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There are people who treat anorexia.
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They re tackling a problem.
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And some of those therapies are extremely necessary and very successful.
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Um, when this person gets, this person that you were just describing, if they get someone that comes to them that doesn t have a real problem, do they turn them away?
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Well, you can ask, but very often therapists don t turn them away.
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That s the problem.
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Too many therapists.
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I mean, you know, I saw, you know, I think back to the first book and I would ask, like, was there ever, did anyone have a therapist who said, you know what?
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I don t think the trans identity fits you.
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You know, that doesn t seem to make sense to me.
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On almost no cases did the therapist stop a girl from going down that road.
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No, you don t have gender dysphoria.
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Listen, it s mostly little boys.
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Okay, it s overwhelmingly, starts with little boys and you see it in men.
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It s overwhelmingly male phenomenon and it always starts ages two to four.
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So you discovering this at age 12, let me tell you something, with your friends, it s so unlikely we don t even need to go there.
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They never said that.
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Mm-hmm.
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Well, I think they get scared of the blowback as well Yeah, sure what they would hear from their parents.
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You re telling my child.
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They don t have a problem when they have a problem Well, also the incentive is for therapists to treat the least sick for the longest period of time That s the incentive because you don t want the schizophrenic patient who really needs you, right?
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They re really hard to treat
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Almost impossible.
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Almost impossible, right?
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You don t want the bipolar patient.
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Right.
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Some people will refuse to see those patients.
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But a teenager with a little social anxiety?
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Parent pays on time.
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They re not getting violent in your session.
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Oh, boy.
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Wow.
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You know, I never really considered that until your book.
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Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it, I never really considered it.
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I never considered that.
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thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow.
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That s right.
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I mean, it s the number one symptom of depression is what they call rumination, this pathological obsessing over your pain.
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Yeah.
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That s why stuff like exercise, that s one of the reasons, aside from chemical reasons, one of the reasons that doing anything, you know that running errands is good for your mental health, getting out of your house and accomplishing anything?
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is good for you, but sitting around talking and thinking about your problems, that s a bad habit.
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And the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others, the dialectical behavioral therapists, the ones who do really well with depression, the first thing they do is try to break that bad pattern.
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But a lot of therapists just indulge it.
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It s also it s a luxury that s provided to you by a life that s fairly safe You know people that live in war-torn countries and have very difficult lives They they don t have that luxury of just sitting around all day and doing nothing and oh I go outside and run errands That s gonna make me feel better.
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You re dealing with like real stress.
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That s right
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And I think that there s a expression that someone told me once and I say it all the time the worst thing that s ever happened to you is the worst thing that s ever happened to you if it s you got a dent in your car or It s your parents get killed in a car accident either one of those things is the worst thing depending upon the level of whatever stress or anxiety or horrible things you ve experienced in your life
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That sort of measure, that s your watermark for what you can and can t tolerate.
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That s right.
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And what we should be telling kids is that the amazing story of human history is of resilience.
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It used to be the case that people lost a sibling.
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That was common.
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People lost a parent.
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That still happens, right?
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These things still happen.
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And the amazing story of human history doesn t mean it s not painful, but of resilience.
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They get on.
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They aren t permanently suffering with mental illness or mental problem.
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They form families.
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They are responsible in their jobs.
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They show up for work.
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They can be dependent on by their friends.
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That s the story of human survival and resilience.
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And unfortunately, we re telling kids, no, you ve had trauma.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, you ve had trauma and you need to work through that trauma.
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Right.
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It s not just this is just a part of life.
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And, you know, what you need to do is just go out there and live your life and you ll get over it.
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And, you know, the thing is, the truth is that most kids and most people did.
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In other words, that didn t mean that dad didn t lose his job and they were forced out of the, you know, they had to lose their house or these things happen.
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They ve happened in every family.
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And I think one of the many reasons that kids don t know this today is we ve cut them off from extended family.
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The story of their grandparents is a story of resilience in almost every case, right?
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You hear about your family history and you re going to hear a story of pain and survival and resilience and overcoming.
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But today you ve got teenagers who say, oh, I can t drive past my middle school where I was bullied because of my PTSD.
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They don t have PTSD.
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But they think they do.
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What do they have, though?
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If you are bullied, that does have a significant psychological effect on kids, and it can lead to lifelong depression.
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I don t know that it can.
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I don t think so.
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Like for young people that like get treated like shit and told that they re nothing and useless and that sort of like... I didn t really get bullied in high school, but I remember going back towards my high school when I was like 19 and I d get anxiety.
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I d get weirded out by it, you know?
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Right.
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So let me just say, yeah.
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You start feeling like you used to feel when you went there.
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Absolutely.
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But that s not a PTSD flashback, right?
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What is that?
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That s a bad memory.
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And we have them.
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And by the way, when I say you can t have, you know, bullying can mean anything.
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Right.
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So when I say, you know, I m talking about teasing.
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I m not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through.
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But do you have anxiety?
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Yeah.
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Anxiety exists for a reason.
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It s actually adaptive.
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And so there are benefits to anxiety and there are negative parts of anxiety.
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Now, I m not talking about anxiety disorder.
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We don t want anyone to suffer with an anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life.
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But a little anxiety and a bad memory, that s not only part of life, but it can have positive effects.
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So some of the positive effects of anxiety is it helps with performance.
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If I weren t nervous for this right now, I wouldn t have prepared so much to make sure I remembered what I was going to talk about, right?
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And we don t want someone with no anxiety crossing a street because he s not going to look for cars.
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And we re going in with medication and we re deleting things like anxiety and depression.
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Anxiety helps you make beautiful memories.
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you remember Christmas morning because of all the nerves about it ahead of time, or you remember your first kiss, partially because of the anxiety.
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That s why the memories are so clear.
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And when we go in and we give kids a pill for that, not only are they not developing an emotional musculature they re gonna need as adults, but we re actually, they re losing a really important part of the human experience, like feeling low because you were dumped and then seeing you can get over it.
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That s a very important thing we just said about experiencing anxiety.
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It actually helps you be sharper.
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It does.
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It really does.
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You have to be nervous before you do things.
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That s right.
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They re difficult.
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It s just that uncomfortable feeling people avoid because they get scared of the anxiety.
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If you talk to, like, one of the best examples is UFC fighters.
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UFC fighters, before they fight, they re all nervous.
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They re all scared.
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Every one of them.
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Terrified.
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And they don t want to fight if they re not.
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If you re too calm and too relaxed, you actually have bad performances.
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And I ll tell you something else, same is true with depression.
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Now, I m not talking about major depressive disorder that s chronic and needs treatment, of course, right?
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But if you have something bad happen to you, you go through a divorce, you go through something hard, okay?
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That doesn t mean you should never try, you know, use meds or therapy if you absolutely need it.
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But there can be good, and here s what can be good, okay?
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Depression is adaptive.
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Okay, and the purpose, I learned this from talking to interviewing a lot of evolutionary psychologists.
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And one of the good things about depression is it shuts us down so we don t do anything rash and we think about what change we might want to make in our life.
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Because sometimes we need to make a change.
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And if we just medicate away the bad feelings, the worst feelings might be dampened, but we also might be locked into that low state and never make the change we need to make.
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Right.
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Because we ll lose the motivation.
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That s the thing.
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We won t say, you know what?
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He treated me badly.
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I m tired of this.
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I m not getting back together with him.
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We might just accept it and keep on.
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Right, especially if you re medicated.
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SPEAKER_00
Especially if you re medicated.
6
SPEAKER_00
That will to make a big change often happens after we ve been brought low.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting because this conversation is such a blanket conversation.
6
SPEAKER_01
And when you re talking about people s personal experiences, their personal depression and trauma, people are always very quick to sort of accentuate the negative aspects of whatever they ve gone through.
6
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, you re talking about, but mine was worse.
6
SPEAKER_01
But mine was this.
6
SPEAKER_01
Mine was unbearable.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s something that our society, for whatever reason, encourages.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so one of the psychiatrists I interviewed was this man, Paul McHugh, who used to be the head of the Johns Hopkins psychiatry department.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he looked at vets, combat vets, in America and Israel.
6
SPEAKER_00
And what he wanted to know was, why was there less PTSD among the combat vets in Israel?
6
SPEAKER_00
And one of the things he noticed was that they treat them very differently.
6
SPEAKER_00
When an Israeli soldier saw something traumatic, a potentially traumatic event, maybe an IED exploding or something, their buddies torn apart and killed, they took them out of battle.
6
SPEAKER_00
They said, listen,
6
SPEAKER_00
Just so you know, your reaction is totally normal.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re sending you home for a few weeks.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re going to feel better.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then we re going to put you right back.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you re going to recover.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re going to put you right back with your men.
6
SPEAKER_00
And with America, when someone had seen something horrific, they would pull them out of battle.
6
SPEAKER_00
They would meet with a therapist who would tell them, you have the symptoms of PTSD.
6
SPEAKER_00
Here is PTSD.
6
SPEAKER_00
Your government did this to you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s possible you may be suffering with this chronically.
6
SPEAKER_00
and they didn t recover at the same rates.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s a get back on the horse type thing?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it is, which doesn t minimize what people, you know, all the traumatic things.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, some people will have harder time getting back on the horse.
6
SPEAKER_00
They may need more treatment than other people.
6
SPEAKER_00
But what s amazing is most people, even who go through traumatic experiences, even most combat vets, the majority don t get PTSD.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because actually, the story of human history, the story of our experience, is of resilience.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if we just think back to our grandparents, we know this is true.
6
SPEAKER_00
We can t guarantee for our kids that they won t go through hard things.
6
SPEAKER_00
In fact, the one certainty is that they will.
6
SPEAKER_00
But the message to them has to be, but you re so strong.
6
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Our family is strong, our family has gone through hard things, I ve gone through hard things, and you can too.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if you say that to kids, you have a much better shot that they will.
6
SPEAKER_01
How do we know that the majority of combat vets don t experience PTSD?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because they, there s this crazy study.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they look through, this is just one example, Vietnam vets, they know what percentage saw combat.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was something like 12 to 15% actually saw combat.
6
SPEAKER_00
But for whatever reason, when they surveyed Vietnam vets, 30% of them were reporting PTSD.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s iatrogenesis.
6
SPEAKER_00
That means that they ve been hearing about the symptoms of PTSD, they were thinking about their friends who ve had PTSD, and more people were coming to believe they had VTSD than actually could have had it.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you re still talking about a small percentage of people who go through some really hard things in combat.
7
SPEAKER_02
Something like, you know, at 70% to 80%, no matter how many traumatic experiences they ve seen, and you have four tours in Iraq, they still, for whatever reason, don t have the symptoms.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ve talked to friends of mine that are veterans about this.
7
SPEAKER_00
And one of the things they said is that, my friend who was a SEAL said that,
7
SPEAKER_00
Special Forces guys experience it less, although they do experience it, because they re proactive.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re acting.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re doing something.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re moving.
7
SPEAKER_00
Whereas he said the real people that experience it are sometimes people that are stuck on a base.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re always worried about being attacked.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
The fear of constantly being worried that you re going to be attacked versus the fear of going out on a mission.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly right.
7
SPEAKER_00
Having a deployment, going out there and
7
SPEAKER_00
and engaging the enemy, that they re task-oriented, and that they re the ones in control.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_02
And what we want to say to kids is, be a Navy SEAL.
7
SPEAKER_02
Go out there and attack those tasks, whatever they are.
7
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Make a new friend.
7
SPEAKER_02
Go play a sport.
7
SPEAKER_02
Go do things.
7
SPEAKER_02
Don t sit around thinking about yourself.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s also, there s a rite of passage that goes with being a Navy SEAL.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a very difficult thing to acquire.
7
SPEAKER_00
Most people quit.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s the ringing the bell thing.
7
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bail, they can t take the stress of it because they put you through hell.
7
SPEAKER_00
And they put you through hell to find out who s resilient and who s not, and to show you that you could do it.
7
SPEAKER_02
But we re not even teaching kids to aspire to that anymore.
7
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of ways to be a Navy SEAL.
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, some is the official being a Navy SEAL, an actual Navy SEAL, but there s so many ways to be strong and make a difference in the world and do things.
7
SPEAKER_02
And that message that your friend mentioned, that s a good message for kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not what we re telling them.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s also, to speak to him and his situation, he said that they re trying to lower the standards.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re saying that, you know, because occasionally guys will die or get severely injured in training, that they re trying to make it more easy.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, that s terrifying.
7
SPEAKER_00
The last thing you want is someone who can t quite make it on your team.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s right.
7
SPEAKER_02
And we re lowering the standards and expectations.
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, this is the trauma generation, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
We ve told them over and over, you can t handle very much.
7
SPEAKER_02
Don t worry, I m going to write you.
7
SPEAKER_02
And they have these things in schools called anytime passes, where if a kid s feeling a little anxious, they ll get a pass from the school counselor, and they re allowed to leave class.
7
SPEAKER_02
anytime they re feeling anxious.
7
SPEAKER_02
Well, how s a kid gonna sit through anything if they ve been given this pass to leave class, any class they don t like, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, I would use that constantly.
7
SPEAKER_02
Anybody would, anybody would.
7
SPEAKER_02
And teachers tell me it s getting abused like crazy.
7
SPEAKER_02
Of course, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
You know?
7
SPEAKER_02
They re not keeping the standards for kids high.
7
SPEAKER_02
And you know what?
7
SPEAKER_02
Kids who ve gone through hard things, and there are those kids, they need high standards, they need expectations, and they need to be told, you can do it.
7
SPEAKER_02
There s this one woman I talked to, she was raising three kids out of foster care with her wife.
7
SPEAKER_02
And these kids had gone through horrible traumatic experiences.
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, so bad, so abused by their birth parents that the detective who took them from their home cried on the stand talking about what they had lived through.
7
SPEAKER_02
And she said to me, you know, my kids, I have therapists who are dealing with them.
7
SPEAKER_02
They are in a lot of serious there.
7
SPEAKER_02
They ve been through a lot.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I can t, one of the hardest things in my life is that I have to send them to public school where teachers and counselors are constantly playing amateur therapist, asking my kids to open up about their trauma.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m trying to get them with actual professionals that I have picked to get through the day and not think about the hard things they went through.
7
SPEAKER_02
And all these teachers are just asking them about their trauma all day long.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not helping.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s a very specific case though, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
Well, yeah, but I guess the point is it doesn t help the kids who ve lived through serious trauma, and it doesn t help the kids who are just fine.
7
SPEAKER_02
So who are we helping?
7
SPEAKER_00
So is the problem that these people that are teachers, they re well-intended, they just don t understand that dwelling on this and talking about it constantly is not beneficial?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, it would just be more beneficial to be friendly to that kid and kind and offer encouragement.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_00
Give them activities and give them encouragement and support.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_02
Most people who work with kids care about kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
I have that prejudice.
7
SPEAKER_02
I assume, and I think it s true, that most people who work with kids want to do what s best for kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes they do things that aren t best for kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
And having them focus on their feelings all the time is not best for kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s the way to make you more emotionally dysregulated.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is going to be very difficult for people to hear that are very sensitive and very concerned about their children.
7
SPEAKER_00
Their strategy has always been to move it in this general direction.
7
SPEAKER_00
Also, people that are experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression themselves who are raising children.
7
SPEAKER_00
They, you know, I think they become accustomed to talking about it and dwelling on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, some of the most effective ways to treat childhood anxiety is by treating the parents.
7
SPEAKER_02
Oh boy.
7
SPEAKER_02
Parents are a huge source of anxiety for kids.
7
SPEAKER_00
What s the primary source of anxiety that comes from parents?
7
SPEAKER_02
worry over everything.
7
SPEAKER_02
Teaching kids they have to be afraid of everything.
7
SPEAKER_02
That they can never do anything without the parent s supervision.
7
SPEAKER_02
They could never go anywhere where their parents won t see them because they could be abducted or hurt or abused.
7
SPEAKER_02
Calling the teacher and saying, my daughter was bullied because someone said something mean to her.
7
SPEAKER_02
The child gets the message, I can t handle something mean said to me.
7
SPEAKER_02
I will fall apart.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s what my mom s saying.
7
SPEAKER_02
She s so scared I m gonna fall apart, she s calling my teacher.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s also the opposite of that, too, where if you grow up with a parent that s very weak, you despise that, and you become strong because of that.
7
SPEAKER_00
I have a friend whose mom was a severe alcoholic, and because of that, he became very disciplined, because he realized if you let something like that control your life, he saw what happened to his mother, and he s like, that s never happened to me.
7
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
7
SPEAKER_02
And that s a really strong person as a result.
7
SPEAKER_02
And part of his strength, which I m sure is having that real life experience, which was hard and it was painful.
7
SPEAKER_02
And it taught him a lesson that no teacher could give him, which is that you need discipline in life.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, but it s very difficult to learn from a bad example sometimes, especially if your parent s constantly worrying and constantly negative about things.
7
SPEAKER_02
Right, but you know what we do?
7
SPEAKER_02
We let kids try.
7
SPEAKER_02
We give them freedom from our oversight.
7
SPEAKER_02
You know what they do in Japan?
7
SPEAKER_02
In Japanese preschools, they have these little areas.
7
SPEAKER_02
They re designed to have areas for kids where the teachers can t see, so that they work out their own problems.
7
SPEAKER_02
Remember we used to say to kids, work it out?
7
SPEAKER_02
Now the teachers get involved in every squabble.
7
SPEAKER_02
They think it s their job to go in there and give kids tips on how to make friends and get involved.
7
SPEAKER_02
We never tell kids, look, work it out.
7
SPEAKER_02
And you know what they learn from working it out?
7
SPEAKER_02
I can.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t need my mom calling my boss, as a lot of this generation s parents are doing.
7
SPEAKER_02
I ll handle it.
7
SPEAKER_02
I can.
7
SPEAKER_02
I ve been doing it since preschool.
7
SPEAKER_00
Huh.
7
SPEAKER_00
What has the reaction to this book been?
7
SPEAKER_00
Have you had some negative reactions?
7
SPEAKER_00
Have you had anybody that wants to debate you on this?
7
SPEAKER_02
It s a good question.
7
SPEAKER_02
Overwhelmingly, it s actually been surprisingly positive.
7
SPEAKER_02
But you want to know the truth?
7
SPEAKER_02
The dads especially love the book.
7
SPEAKER_01
Really?
7
SPEAKER_02
The dads will be like, can you give this to my wife?
7
SPEAKER_02
I mean, sometimes they ll say that to me because I think, you know, the biggest change in the last generation in parenting aside from the role of therapy sort of taking over is and I think therapeutic parenting take it over.
7
SPEAKER_02
Everybody s trying to be a mental health expert with their kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
But I think the biggest change was Dad s.
7
SPEAKER_02
Dad stopped, I think, being a sort of a backstop and saying, he s fine.
7
SPEAKER_02
He ll handle it.
7
SPEAKER_02
I did it.
7
SPEAKER_02
He can do it.
7
SPEAKER_02
or I did it, she can do it, she s fine, shake it off, go back to, you know, keep playing soccer, whatever it is.
7
SPEAKER_02
They stopped doing that in part because they didn t feel like we were told, I mean, in general, we ve all been told, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
The mental health experts tell you how to talk to your children.
7
SPEAKER_02
They tell you what your child can handle.
7
SPEAKER_02
They pretend they re experts on the brain, when the truth is, and I ve interviewed a lot of neurobiologists and, you know, academic psychologists and psychiatrists, and they will tell you, we know very little about the brain.
7
SPEAKER_02
And a lot of these therapists don t know anything about the brain.
7
SPEAKER_02
We certainly don t know much about emotion in the brain, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
And so the idea that we need brain science in order to raise our kids, it s just not true.
7
SPEAKER_02
And it s not helpful.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s undercutting parents  confidence.
7
SPEAKER_02
Parents need to trust themselves.
7
SPEAKER_02
We ve been raising good kids for a long time.
7
SPEAKER_00
Are there any studies about the cultures or the civilizations or whatever countries that have the most mentally healthy people?
7
SPEAKER_02
Well, that s a good question.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I interviewed one woman who runs the Georgetown Emotions Lab, and she s a cultural psychologist.
7
SPEAKER_02
Emotions Lab.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was actually really neat.
8
SPEAKER_00
I went into her lab and we did these, she showed me these tests she does with subjects behind a one-way mirror and she hooks them up to electrodes.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she looks at, her name s Julia Chentsova-Dutton, she s amazing, and she looks at Russia, Japan, America, and other countries, especially in the West.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I guess you wanna look at like and compare like to like, so sort of similar Western cultures, I guess Asian.
8
SPEAKER_00
similar levels of development and stress, a certain kind of stress.
8
SPEAKER_00
And one of the things she noticed in her research was that American kids tended to exaggerate dangers.
8
SPEAKER_00
So when they listed things they were afraid of or things that scared them, they would say, stranger looking at me funny.
8
SPEAKER_00
Things that weren t actual dangers.
8
SPEAKER_00
But teenagers from other countries, Russia, Japan, they tended to be able to calibrate what was an actual danger much better.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s what we re seeing on campus.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re seeing these kids having nervous breakdowns because someone dumped them or because a teacher gave them a bad grade.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because they couldn t hand her a paper in on time.
8
SPEAKER_01
One of the things that drives me the most nuts about universities is this term microaggressions, which is so crazy.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s like looking for things to be bigger than they are.
8
SPEAKER_01
Taking a very small thing, whether it s someone like rolling their eyes at you or saying something that
8
SPEAKER_01
you know, might be insensitive, and calling that insensitive thing a microaggression.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it s exactly right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And one of the things I looked at was, are we turning these kids into emotional hypochondriacs?
8
SPEAKER_00
And what I mean is, I interviewed a world expert, this man Arthur Barsky at Harvard Medical School, on hypochondriasis, being hypochondriac, what they now call it illness, anxiety disorder, or somatic symptom disorder.
8
SPEAKER_00
And what is it?
8
SPEAKER_00
So it turns out what it is is people who put hyper focus on the normal pains we all feel.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re not faking it.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re just attending to the normal pains and increasing their pain by doing that.
8
SPEAKER_00
And people who turn their pain into an organizing principle of life, of their whole lives,
8
SPEAKER_00
They have a hard time overcoming it.
8
SPEAKER_00
It becomes their identity.
8
SPEAKER_00
It becomes their identity.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s what kids are doing today about their emotional pain.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I have social anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_00
I had trauma from my breakup.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t have trauma from your breakup, okay?
8
SPEAKER_00
You had a breakup, and it s painful.
8
SPEAKER_00
But using these, you know, psychiatric terms... Trauma.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not helping.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s exaggerating the pain, and it s making that pain feel worse.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I m not minimizing these kids  pain.
8
SPEAKER_00
They are in real pain, and they re making it worse.
8
SPEAKER_01
I would be really fascinated to see you have a conversation with someone who is a therapist, who engages in this, who thinks it s beneficial.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would love, I mean, I d be happy to, I would love to.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I would like to see, you know, look, there are therapists that I ve met who I would take my own kids to, who I ve, you know, very impressed by what they have to say and what they ve done.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the therapists who claim that everyone needs to talk about their problems, well, no, they don t.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s not true.
8
SPEAKER_00
I interviewed a lot of great therapists who tell me that a lot of people who have experienced terrible trauma, they do better by not talking about it.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re therapists who deal with, and I m talking about people who work with convicts, people who have unspeakable childhood abuse, actually are very helped by acknowledging, I know you went through some hard stuff, let s talk about what you re doing now.
8
SPEAKER_00
That turns out to be better for some people.
8
SPEAKER_00
So this endless rehashing of your pain, this myth that you can only be helped by talking about your pain, it s just not true.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s no evidence behind it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, you know, there s these crazy studies that burn victims, people who ve experienced all kinds of first responders, breast cancer survivors have been made to feel worse by talking about it, by being therapy, in therapy.
8
SPEAKER_00
They had control groups.
8
SPEAKER_00
They ve done these studies.
8
SPEAKER_00
where burn victims, one portion of them went to group therapy, the other portion didn t, and the ones who didn t go to therapy ended up better with less symptoms after, you know, nine months, I think it was.
8
SPEAKER_00
And why do you think that is?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because they did other things that are healing, too, like spend more time with family, like get involved in work, like, you know, pick up a phone and call a friend you haven t seen in a while.
8
SPEAKER_00
Find a natural way to mitigate that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Exercise is amazing.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, study after study has shown that exercise is amazing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you know what it doesn t have?
8
SPEAKER_00
All these bad side effects.
8
SPEAKER_00
of loss of sex drive, like SSRIs have.
8
SPEAKER_00
We know that the antidepressants come with all these horrible side effects, especially for adolescents, like the risk of suicide and other things.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know what doesn t have that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Exercise.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m not saying don t get help, and if you really need it, get the medicine and get the therapy.
8
SPEAKER_00
What I m saying is, if you don t really need it, gosh, there s a lot of ways to feel better, and we seem to have forgotten about those.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is there a chart or a graph that shows the amount of therapy that was given to children over the years, now versus the past?
8
SPEAKER_00
So we know that it s gone way up.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if there s a chart, but I know that they say roughly 40% of the rising generation has had therapy.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s a lot.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s way more than any prior generation.
8
SPEAKER_00
42% of them have a mental health diagnosis.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s a lot.
8
SPEAKER_00
42% of kids have a mental health diagnosis?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
42?
8
SPEAKER_00
There was just a news article saying that 86% of them think they have menu anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_00
Menu anxiety?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s ordering from a menu in a restaurant.
8
SPEAKER_00
What?
8
SPEAKER_00
They have a friend order for them.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh my god.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, these are kids who think of themselves as unwell.
8
SPEAKER_00
Menu anxiety?
8
SPEAKER_00
Really?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s a thing?
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I mean, climate anxiety, summer anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_00
When your parents move, dislocation depression.
8
SPEAKER_01
They call it- Summer anxiety?
8
SPEAKER_01
Summer anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_01
So here it is, 42% of Gen Z diagnosed with a mental health condition.
8
SPEAKER_01
Jeez Louise.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s a lot.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s crazy.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right?
8
SPEAKER_01
But that s what my question would be, what is that internationally?
8
SPEAKER_01
like when you re dealing with other countries.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s much better internationally.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s no question we have the most anxious and most depressed teens and adolescents.
8
SPEAKER_01
And what caused that?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is that the rise of this industry?
8
SPEAKER_01
The rise of the therapy industry?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is it something that is in the zeitgeist where people in this culture sort of gravitate towards that sort of thinking that therapy and talking it through is very important?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, what is it?
8
SPEAKER_00
I think we re not giving them a healthy life.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that includes, it s like, remember they used to give us with sugar cereals, they used to say like there d be a bowl of sugar cereal and there d be like eggs and toast and orange juice and they would say, Frosted Flakes, part of a nutritious breakfast.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And we knew it was bad for us, but we had these other healthy things around us.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t think we knew it was bad for us when I was a kid.
8
SPEAKER_00
Frosted Flakes?
8
SPEAKER_00
I never thought it was bad for you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Really?
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, we didn t know sugar was bad for you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, in my, I mean... We thought it d give you cavities.
8
SPEAKER_00
That was the only thing anybody worried about.
8
SPEAKER_00
But, I mean, kids weren t allowed, I mean, at least in my house, we weren t allowed to have sugar... Well, I m a little older than you.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m 10 years older than you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we weren t allowed to have sugar cereal, and the best thing we ever got was Honey Nut Cheerios.
8
SPEAKER_00
That was like a miracle.
8
SPEAKER_00
When that came in, it was so exciting.
8
SPEAKER_01
We used to put sugar on our frosted flakes.
8
SPEAKER_01
You were allowed to have sugar and put sugar on everything.
8
SPEAKER_00
I love that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
People in my generation, people ate sugar all the time and there was no fear.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was just brush your teeth.
8
SPEAKER_01
I know it s psychotic, but you know, obviously you know the story behind that.
8
SPEAKER_01
That was all because of the sugar industry bribing scientists to pass the blame on saturated fat.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because sugar was causing heart disease.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was causing all sorts of problems that people were having.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was causing obesity.
8
SPEAKER_01
And the sugar industry bribed some scientists in the 1960s to pass the blame onto saturated fat.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that s where margarine came from and all the other stupid shit.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s terrible for you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
Seed oils, all these different things.
8
SPEAKER_01
Canola oil that people thought was actually better for you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not better for you at all.
8
SPEAKER_01
Your body doesn t even know how to digest that shit.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we ve given kids worse diet over the years.
8
SPEAKER_00
We ve given them... Processed foods.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
We ve given them less exercise.
8
SPEAKER_00
We ve given them less connection to family.
8
SPEAKER_00
relational stability, having this set of friends or relatives who are cousins around you, grandparents who love you unconditionally over your life.
8
SPEAKER_00
Kids don t have that anymore.
8
SPEAKER_00
They don t have the neighborhood.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they don t have space from mom monitoring them, or another adult she s hired to monitor them, or the recess monitor, or my kids have bus monitors.
8
SPEAKER_00
They have monitors everywhere.
8
SPEAKER_00
And monitoring is the same as stress for kids.
9
SPEAKER_01
A wonderful academic psychologist, Peter Gray, told me this, that when they want to introduce stress to a subject, they introduce monitoring because it s the same thing.
9
SPEAKER_00
Really?
9
SPEAKER_00
So if they have a subject and then they re going through a test, they have someone stand over and watch, that introduces anxiety?
9
SPEAKER_00
That ll introduce stress.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s the condition we re raising kids in.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re going to track you on your phone, even in college.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, how is it?
9
SPEAKER_01
How is your trip to the Rite Aid?
9
SPEAKER_01
I can see you on my phone.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re doing that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Kids are doing it to each other.
9
SPEAKER_01
Kids are doing it to each other.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, my daughter s, all her friends know where everyone is on Snap Map.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s not good for them.
9
SPEAKER_01
They don t have freedom to just be.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I think we re giving all kinds of things.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re making their lives less healthy.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then we just pour in the mental health resources.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, we re gonna keep your life unhealthy, but we re gonna pour in SSRIs, antidepressants.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re just gonna pour in the therapy.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, that doesn t remediate.
9
SPEAKER_00
Have you had anybody push back
9
SPEAKER_00
on this?
9
SPEAKER_00
Like you said, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
9
SPEAKER_00
But what is the negative response been?
9
SPEAKER_01
So I think that some parents feel like, you know, it seems to be mostly moms, but some of them feel insecure, like, well, you don t know, you know, my my kid really had sensory deprivation issues.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I really did need to see that therapist.
9
SPEAKER_01
But
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t know the situation.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think in general, parents know their own kids, right?
9
SPEAKER_01
And if they have tried other things, the problem is not parents seeking out help.
9
SPEAKER_01
The problem is it s when it s the first resort.
9
SPEAKER_01
The problem is not that parents ever allow their kid to get a diagnosis.
9
SPEAKER_01
The problem is that some parents are going diagnosis shopping because the kid, sometimes a neuropsychologist will say, your kids, sorry, they re within normal range and the parents will keep going.
9
SPEAKER_01
And they re doing it because they haven t, they don t have, you know, sometimes they don t, they re unwilling to be an authority in their home, maybe because they feel that that s traumatizing.
9
SPEAKER_01
They re unwilling to impose any kind of discipline.
9
SPEAKER_01
The kid is disordered.
9
SPEAKER_01
The kid has a lot of tech.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then lo and behold, he can t concentrate in school.
9
SPEAKER_01
And the teacher has a problem with him.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, I talked to parents where they said one year my teacher thought my kid had ADHD, and the next year they didn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
Why would that be?
9
SPEAKER_01
And why is the teacher diagnosing the kid?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Are they qualified?
9
SPEAKER_01
Are they qualified?
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, they re a little conflicted, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Because they have an interest in getting you bolted to your seat.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
They don t care about the long-term effects of, or they might not be aware of them, the long-term effects of strotera, cancerta, you know, ritalin.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
The fact that you might need to take more and more of it over time to get the same effects.
9
SPEAKER_01
The withdrawal for some of these things, Adderall, people have told me it s brutal.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s brutal.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s amphetamines.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re highly addictive.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
And we re giving them out like candy.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like candy.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s the problem.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s the like candy part.
9
SPEAKER_00
There was a recent study that said 39 million.
9
SPEAKER_00
What is the number of prescriptions per year of Adderall?
9
SPEAKER_00
It s something bonkers when you really know what Adderall is.
9
SPEAKER_00
And essentially this is like what they were doing in the 1940s with crystal meth in Germany.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re giving it to soldiers.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re giving it to people.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re giving them methamphetamines because methamphetamines make you more alert, makes you more hyper-focused, makes you more productive, makes you more willing to engage in things.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s an unnatural stimulant that you re adding to someone s mind and you re getting a result and you perceive those results to be positive because they fit along with what we re looking for in terms of outcomes.
9
SPEAKER_00
But you re not thinking of the long term consequences of ramping up someone on fucking amphetamines all day long.
9
SPEAKER_00
What s the number?
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, even worse.
9
SPEAKER_00
41.4 million Adderall prescriptions were dispensed in the US in 2021, up more than 10% for 2020, according to IQVIA, a health research firm.
9
SPEAKER_00
What s happening?
9
SPEAKER_00
Getting a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
9
SPEAKER_00
which can be treated by Adderall and other stimulants, got significantly easier during the pandemic.
9
SPEAKER_00
A wave of telemedicine startups hit TikTok and Instagram with advertisements suggesting that people look into ADHD medication if they felt distracted.
9
SPEAKER_00
By the way, that would have been me.
9
SPEAKER_00
If this shit was around when I was a kid, I d never paid attention in school.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I would have probably thought that I had a disease.
9
SPEAKER_00
Some startups diagnose people with ADHD and prescribe stimulants after 30-minute video calls, entirely remotely, and much faster than a typical diagnosis from an in-person psychiatrist, the Wall Street Journal reports.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes, but the trouble with such rapid diagnosis is that it can be difficult to tell whether ADHD is actually the problem.
9
SPEAKER_00
Anxiety can present as ADHD and depression can present as ADHD.
9
SPEAKER_00
As Sanford Newmark said, Sanford Newmark, a professor at University of California, San Francisco Medical School.
9
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look, if you give someone stimulants, they re going to feel better.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s why people do coke.
9
SPEAKER_00
You know, it makes you feel better.
9
SPEAKER_01
And what if you start them on it when they re four or five?
9
SPEAKER_01
And guess what?
9
SPEAKER_01
There are a lot of jobs where ADHD might not harm them.
9
SPEAKER_01
In other words, it might even be an asset, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s a superpower.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think it can be.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you know, there s an amazing piece in the Wall Street Journal by a guy who argued that in the military, in venture capital where you have to have, you re constantly checking other companies or constantly looking into, being able, someone who s constantly shifting their focus turned out to be an asset, unmedicated.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think that the idea is that it came from hunter-gatherer tribes.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
See if you could find that, the ADHD, the trait emanated from hunter-gatherers.
9
SPEAKER_00
The thing is, a lot of ADHD people, if they find a thing that they really enjoy, they get very focused on it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
Which is what was the thing with me.
9
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
I thought that because I couldn t pay attention in school,
9
SPEAKER_00
that I was going to be a loser.
9
SPEAKER_00
A recent review of the evidence by child and adolescent psychiatrists, Annie Swampole, and colleagues, made the case for the latter.
9
SPEAKER_00
They argue that ADHD traits likely evolved in early human environments that rewarded exploration, novelty-seeking, and movement, such as nomadic and migrating communities.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s probably how you stayed alive.
9
SPEAKER_00
And if you were strapped down doing something really fucking boring, that seems completely unnatural, which is part of the problem with children in the first place.
9
SPEAKER_00
We re subjecting them to eight hours a day of doing something you don t want to do because they say it s for your mental development.
9
SPEAKER_00
And what they re essentially doing is teaching you how to do something that you fucking hate so that you will be able to do that for the rest of your life.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you know what they could do with those kids?
9
SPEAKER_01
Give them longer recess.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, they also could tell them that there s other things you could do for a living if you could find the thing that you actually enjoy and focus on that.
9
SPEAKER_00
And that was the thing that I didn t know until I started doing things outside of school.
9
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know that there was things that I could excel at because I actually enjoyed them and I would focus on those things and get very good at them.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t know that that was a part of me.
9
SPEAKER_00
I didn t I had never
9
SPEAKER_00
been told that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Everybody was just like, if you can t do this, you re going to be a loser.
9
SPEAKER_00
If you can t sit and pay attention to this boring ass teacher, teach this boring ass thing that they have no emotional investment in whatsoever.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it was never true.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s the thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
You were incredibly successful despite what they said.
9
SPEAKER_01
But imagine if they had said to you, actually, there s something wrong with your brain.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s called ADHD.
9
SPEAKER_01
You need a pill so you can be like everybody else.
9
SPEAKER_01
Would you have had the same motivation?
9
SPEAKER_01
to go keep looking for what you were good at and what you were passionate about?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, I probably wouldn t have.
9
SPEAKER_00
I probably would have been medicated.
9
SPEAKER_00
If I had the wrong parents at the wrong time in history, I probably would have been medicated.
9
SPEAKER_00
And who knows, I probably would have some fucking horrible job where I couldn t wait to get to my pharmacy so I could refill my prescription.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because I m running low, and I talked the doctor into ramping up my Adderall.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re putting seven-year-olds on Lexapro.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s crazy.
9
SPEAKER_00
That is so crazy.
9
SPEAKER_01
FDA just approved it for seven-year-olds.
9
SPEAKER_01
These are kids who are going to have their sex drive deleted before they ever have a sex drive.
9
SPEAKER_01
So when they reach the teenage years, because kids do not go off them, they put them on antidepressants and they put them on more.
9
SPEAKER_01
They ll never have had a sex drive.
9
SPEAKER_01
They won t even know what they re missing.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s the problem.
9
SPEAKER_01
The problem is not, and I m not saying no medication for anyone ever.
9
SPEAKER_01
What I m saying is when you get in there and change a kid, you put a kid in an emotional snowsuit, not only will they never have the feeling, I overcame that on my own.
9
SPEAKER_01
I thought I had ADHD, but I m so excited about this other thing I got into.
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, they ll never know that they could get through a breakup without a pill.
10
SPEAKER_02
Because they ve never done it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Isn t that sort of the problem with the diagnosis of depression in the first place?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because one of the things they never ask is, how s your life?
10
SPEAKER_00
It s always, you have depression.
10
SPEAKER_00
You have a clinical issue.
10
SPEAKER_00
You have a disease.
10
SPEAKER_00
You have a thing called depression.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s not your fault.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s not you have a terrible life.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your job sucks.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your apartment sucks.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your neighborhood sucks.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your friends suck.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your family sucks.
10
SPEAKER_00
You don t have any joy.
10
SPEAKER_02
That s exactly right.
10
SPEAKER_02
Which will make you depressed.
10
SPEAKER_02
Right.
10
SPEAKER_02
And by the way, of course, the best psychologists would point out those things.
10
SPEAKER_02
And here s the most important.
10
SPEAKER_02
If you start such a person on an SSRI, meaning they re feeling depressed because of their circumstances, they might be less likely to make the important change they could make.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Because it takes an acute problem and it turns it into a chronic one.
10
SPEAKER_00
But it s also very profitable.
10
SPEAKER_00
And that s the problem.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s the really difficult thing in getting these out of our lives.
10
SPEAKER_00
And despite the fact that as time goes on, we find out that the research on the efficacy of SSRIs is dubious at best.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s not good.
10
SPEAKER_02
Right, it depresses all emotion.
10
SPEAKER_02
So does it treat depression?
10
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
10
SPEAKER_02
It seems to depress all kinds of things.
10
SPEAKER_02
Maybe, you know, also, you know, depending on the drug, some depress anxiety, but they depress everything.
10
SPEAKER_00
But I do, I do have to say that I ve had friends that were suicidal, that got on SSRIs, and then because they felt better, improved their life and then weaned off of those drugs.
10
SPEAKER_02
I think that there s a place for these drugs, absolutely.
10
SPEAKER_02
And by the way, trying to get off of them, if you can, is a good program.
10
SPEAKER_02
In other words, not saying, I m gonna be on it forever.
10
SPEAKER_02
But in a kid, they won t even know what life was like, what it was supposed to be like without it.
10
SPEAKER_02
They ll never know what they could handle.
10
SPEAKER_02
And so they will show up for college and say, I ve had trauma because of a breakup.
10
SPEAKER_02
I have PTSD because of my breakup.
10
SPEAKER_02
And they ll believe it.
10
SPEAKER_02
They won t know any better.
10
SPEAKER_02
because they never went through that heartache on their own.
10
SPEAKER_00
And psychiatrists are incentivized to prescribe these things.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but you know who else is prescribing them?
10
SPEAKER_02
Regular physicians who aren t experts in these drugs.
10
SPEAKER_00
So regular physicians are allowed to prescribe?
10
SPEAKER_02
Pediatricians are a huge source of SSRI prescriptions.
10
SPEAKER_00
And they re not even psychiatrists?
10
SPEAKER_02
No.
10
SPEAKER_02
So it s very easy.
10
SPEAKER_02
According to psychiatrists I spoke to, they feel that pediatricians are giving out these drugs way, way too easily.
10
SPEAKER_00
That seems crazy.
10
SPEAKER_00
So a pediatrician has to,
10
SPEAKER_00
look at legitimate problems, all sorts of issues that a child might have medically.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then on top of that, psychiatric disorders, and then prescribe medication for those psychiatric disorders.
10
SPEAKER_02
Pediatricians are usually the ones who give you the ADHD medication.
10
SPEAKER_00
That seems insane.
10
SPEAKER_00
Is that insane?
10
SPEAKER_00
Am I being judgmental?
10
SPEAKER_02
That seems like malpractice.
10
SPEAKER_02
Because they re doing it more easily than they should.
10
SPEAKER_02
I think too many of them are not appreciating.
10
SPEAKER_02
I m going to go in there and mess with this kid, change this kid.
10
SPEAKER_02
Before I do it, I better make sure this is urgent.
10
SPEAKER_02
And there s nothing else we can do to improve the life.
10
SPEAKER_02
Just like you said, improve the life and see if we can get there without it.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then there s also the problem the parents want to fix.
10
SPEAKER_00
And if the parents believe the narrative that these medications are beneficial, and they believe that this is what this stuff is for, and that this pediatrician wouldn t be prescribing this if they didn t know what they were doing, we went to an expert, the expert has an opinion, let s listen to the expert, let s get little Johnny on pills, and now little Johnny s doing better.
10
SPEAKER_00
He just sits in front of the TV with a fucking blank stare on his face.
10
SPEAKER_02
Right.
10
SPEAKER_02
I mean, parents aren t exercising their authority and they re not trusting themselves.
10
SPEAKER_02
They re feeling like, oh, this is above my pay grade.
10
SPEAKER_02
The second the kid isn t what the teacher wants, they re sure they need an expert involved.
10
SPEAKER_02
And they never ask their own parents who raised kids to adulthood, right?
10
SPEAKER_02
You know, my take is, if you want to talk about a parenting expert, to me a parenting expert is someone who raised successful people to adulthood, meaning people who are, you know, good, stable adults who are productive, who can be dependent on by others.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right, but you might not have access to those.
10
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have access to those when I was a child.
10
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have access to people that had raised successful, stable people.
10
SPEAKER_02
Oh, I see, when you were a child.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I didn t.
10
SPEAKER_00
Look, I know a lot of people today that had terrible parents, and they had terrible grandparents, and they never had an example of someone who raised good children.
10
SPEAKER_00
They had the occasional child that was exceptional, that made its way out of that fucked up maze, and usually became hyper-successful.
10
SPEAKER_00
But the other siblings oftentimes are a mess.
10
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes the parents want to take credit for the hyper-successful sibling.
10
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, I showed you the way.
10
SPEAKER_00
No, you didn t do shit.
10
SPEAKER_00
That kid figured it out on their own without having anybody as a positive role model or example.
10
SPEAKER_02
But I think that if they were successful, there were certain good things in their life.
10
SPEAKER_02
Meaning they weren t on the couch.
10
SPEAKER_02
They weren t the 54% of Gen Z who doesn t want to live with anyone but mom.
10
SPEAKER_02
These are 18 to 25 year olds, sorry.
10
SPEAKER_02
54% of them are living with parents.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s that old expression, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
The healthy bird leaves the nest.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right, right.
10
SPEAKER_02
There was something healthy.
10
SPEAKER_02
There was some healthy message or example that taught, at least made the kids think, I can.
10
SPEAKER_02
And the kids today are thinking, I can t.
10
SPEAKER_02
I need to be with mom and dad, even at 18 to 25.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because it offers you comfort.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
But then there s other cultures where people are happy and the family s a very tight unit and people don t leave the house until they re married.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s not our culture.
10
SPEAKER_02
So in those cultures, I think it s a different situation.
10
SPEAKER_02
And it is healthier, meaning they have their own ways of doing things.
10
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, they get a job and they don t get they don t leave the home until they re married.
10
SPEAKER_02
And that is the way they define growing up.
10
SPEAKER_02
But in this culture, we have always defined growing up as leaving your parents  home, getting some sort of job, supporting yourself in some way, making strong, enduring relationships with others, starting a family.
10
SPEAKER_02
We have a vision in this culture, and we are not producing that.
10
SPEAKER_00
Hmm, which one s right which culture is correct though is the culture that that Enforces family and and they have this very tight bond and they don t leave Until they re establishing their own family and then they re that family stays in connection with the other family Is that the way to do it or is the way we do it?
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, we cast them out
10
SPEAKER_02
So I tend to think that they have a version of adulthood in their culture.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s just defined differently.
10
SPEAKER_02
And those are people you can rely on.
10
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They do become adults in other cultures, depending on who you re talking about.
10
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But in cultures, say India, where families live in the same home with extended family.
10
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And as soon as you marry, you go and live with the mom and dad.
10
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They know how to do that so that the young people who are raising the family are
10
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absolutely dependable, independent adults, right?
10
SPEAKER_02
They re not sitting home playing Xbox while they re living with their parents, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
They re not- That s the difference.
10
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That s the difference.
10
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It s a healthy, it s different from ours, but it is healthy and you can rely on those people.
10
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They are raising children.
10
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They are like being good neighbors, right?
10
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We got a generation who s sitting at home and doesn t want to show up for work because they think they have mental health issues.
10
SPEAKER_02
I have to attend to my mental health.
10
SPEAKER_00
I can t.
10
SPEAKER_02
Trump was just elected.
10
SPEAKER_02
I need a mental health day.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Emotionally fragile.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s a problem, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
What s going on?
10
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t matter who s president.
10
SPEAKER_02
Get to work.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Coddling.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Boy, what a complicated thing.
10
SPEAKER_00
And it s so complicated if you re a parent, if you re dealing with this medical establishment that s so quick to prescribe drugs and you re dealing with this world where therapy is so ubiquitous and you re dealing with this world where people think that the way to handle things is to constantly discuss all these small problems and so that people can be heard.
10
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You know, we want people to be heard.
10
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I don t know if you ve ever seen, there s a hilarious video of this socialist meeting
10
SPEAKER_00
And they re calling each other comrades.
10
SPEAKER_00
Have you seen this video?
10
SPEAKER_00
No.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s a wonderful video.
10
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Because one person says, could everyone please stop making as much noise?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because I m easily distracted.
10
SPEAKER_00
I forget the term that they use.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then, could you guys please do that?
10
SPEAKER_00
Just recognize that there s others around here, us, that are, this is it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Listen to this.
10
SPEAKER_00
This is amazing.
10
SPEAKER_01
Thank you so much.
10
SPEAKER_01
Quick point of privilege, quick point of personal privilege.
10
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Guys, first of all, James Jackson, Sacramento, he, him.
10
SPEAKER_01
I just want to say, can we please keep the chatter to a minimum?
10
SPEAKER_01
I m one of the people who s very, very prone to sensory overload.
10
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of whispering and chatter going on.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s making it very difficult for me to focus.
11
SPEAKER_02
Please, can we just, I know we re all fresh and ready to go, but can we please just keep the chatter to a minimum?
11
SPEAKER_02
It s affecting my ability to focus, thank you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, comrade.
11
SPEAKER_01
Comrade, wow.
11
SPEAKER_01
Point of personal privilege.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_01
Please do not use gendered language to address everyone.
11
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It goes on further that s just a clip of it But that s what you re dealing with right like and if you re going to a university and this is a part of the environment this is a culture that you are existing in and
11
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It can t help but have some sort of an effect on you, especially if you re young and impressionable and naive and you don t understand these people are mentally ill.
11
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That is a mentally crippled person.
11
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Point of privilege.
11
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Good luck.
11
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Good luck out there in the world, you fuck.
11
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Good luck.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I ll tell you this, all these things, there are things to be negative about or pessimistic about in society, not this.
11
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Because you know what?
11
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Honestly, parents have an absolute ability to turn this around.
11
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We don t need to let our kids down this way and tell them, you need to silence an entire room because of your sensory discomfort.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re going to focus on your sensory issues and we re going to tell an entire room of people to be quiet for you.
11
SPEAKER_00
No.
11
SPEAKER_00
I tell – this thing happened to me that I thought like – I was on a plane and I was seated behind this family of four, okay?
11
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There were two little girls and one starts to scream.
11
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And I mean scream like it was painful to listen to.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I hear the father tell her, honey, what s wrong?
11
SPEAKER_00
What did your sister do?
11
SPEAKER_00
And she s screaming, okay?
11
SPEAKER_00
It is so loud, it s so late at night.
11
SPEAKER_00
And, okay, well, let me just see what I can do.
11
SPEAKER_00
All right, well, don t be upset.
11
SPEAKER_00
He never once said to her, you know there are other people on this plane?
11
SPEAKER_00
And when I ask people from other countries, I talk to the emotions expert who does cross-cultural research, I said, what would they say in other countries about that?
11
SPEAKER_00
And she said to me, they would say that s bananas.
11
SPEAKER_00
They would not believe in Japan that you do not tell your kid, you know, there are other people on this plane, not just you.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re part of a society.
11
SPEAKER_00
We have to care about others.
11
SPEAKER_00
The world isn t just you and your feelings.
11
SPEAKER_00
And that s a message parents can absolutely give to kids.
11
SPEAKER_00
They don t have to say, oh, let me attend to your every discomfort.
11
SPEAKER_00
They can say, I know you re feeling a little discomfort.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re in a room with a lot of other people.
11
SPEAKER_00
We need to think about them.
11
SPEAKER_02
But also, you re dealing with emotionally challenged parents.
11
SPEAKER_02
Parents could relay that message to children and tell them, hey, you re not the only person on this plane, and you are ruining this flight, this experience for a lot of people that are trying to sleep and trying to relax.
11
SPEAKER_02
You are causing damage.
11
SPEAKER_02
You re causing a problem.
11
SPEAKER_02
These parents are fucked up, too.
11
SPEAKER_02
You re not going to just fix them by having them fix their kid, which is part of the problem, is that there s no real test to see if you re emotionally stable enough to have children.
11
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You just have children.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t think those parents are necessarily emotionally unstable.
11
SPEAKER_00
I tend to think they ve just got it all wrong.
11
SPEAKER_00
They think the old school parenting is unloving and cruel and the most gentle parenting will produce the most gentle children.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s not true.
11
SPEAKER_00
But they think if I always ask a child, how are you feeling and attend to her ever feeling, I m going to make stronger, happier, kinder kids.
11
SPEAKER_00
No, you re not.
11
SPEAKER_00
You re going to raise a child who thinks she can scream or thinks she can march into a room and silence the entire room based on her preference.
11
SPEAKER_02
Hmm.
11
SPEAKER_00
They aren t liberated to trust their own instincts and what they have seen work for others.
11
SPEAKER_00
And you know what?
11
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The examples are all around you if you look.
11
SPEAKER_00
There are people who are good people and you can ask them, by the way, immigrants, because they don t go for this nonsense usually, you can ask them, what was it like in the old country?
11
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Or what was it like where you came from?
11
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What are you doing?
11
SPEAKER_00
And they call this, have you ever seen this?
11
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The Latino paradox, they call this in the psychology.
11
SPEAKER_00
Why are Latinos, why do they have better mental health?
11
SPEAKER_00
when they come to this country, when they are immigrants, before they assimilate.
11
SPEAKER_00
And the more they acculturate to American culture, the worse their mental health gets.
11
SPEAKER_00
Why?
11
SPEAKER_00
And part of the reason is they have social stability in their relationals.
11
SPEAKER_00
They are surrounded by extended family, which also means people are saying the wrong things to them.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re saying insulting things.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re making inappropriate jokes.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re giving them foods mom doesn t approve of.
11
SPEAKER_00
And they re surviving it all.
11
SPEAKER_00
And they know they can.
11
SPEAKER_02
Also, the reality of hard work is inescapable.
11
SPEAKER_02
That s right.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re not afraid of authority.
11
SPEAKER_00
Parents are in charge.
11
SPEAKER_00
They will give their kids chores and hard work.
11
SPEAKER_00
They will teach them, you know what?
11
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Mom s working two jobs.
11
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to bother her with my trivial problem.
11
SPEAKER_00
But that liberates the kid to realize, hey, my problem is kind of trivial.
11
SPEAKER_00
There are bigger problems.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re doing the opposite in this country.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re telling kids, the small problem you have is so big, I m going to stop everything to focus on it.
11
SPEAKER_02
But if you re dealing with these parents that are emotionally challenged themselves, how are you going to fix them?
11
SPEAKER_02
Because it s not just the child.
11
SPEAKER_02
It s not just them raising the child in a certain way.
11
SPEAKER_02
It s them realizing the harm that they re doing to their child and the fact that their own view of the world is fucked up.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, that s why I wrote the book, right?
11
SPEAKER_00
I m trying to get the message out that actually the best psychological research, and there is good psychological research, shows that the things we re doing with kids are not helping.
11
SPEAKER_00
They re counterproductive.
11
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lot of research that shows that, that the old way of doing things, which is don t take a pill if you don t need it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Don t go to a therapist if you don t need it.
11
SPEAKER_00
You have a problem, talk to a friend, talk to an aunt, talk to someone who loves you and really cares how you turn out.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you, you can go to religious, you know, a priest, but go to a therapist if you really need it.
11
SPEAKER_00
But don t do it casually.
11
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I talked to moms who did it because a pet died.
11
SPEAKER_00
Or they did it prophylactically, before the kids had any problems.
11
SPEAKER_00
They said, I wanted my teenager to know she had someone who was on retainer to talk to in case she had a problem.
11
SPEAKER_00
Not having any sense that that therapist could also introduce worries.
11
SPEAKER_02
And then there s also probably the issue of the child going to the therapist and enjoying the fact that the entire conversation revolves around them.
11
SPEAKER_00
Sure, of course, wouldn t you?
11
SPEAKER_00
And they get to rise above it all.
11
SPEAKER_00
They get to evaluate the job the parents are doing.
11
SPEAKER_00
They get to casually pass judgment on whether the parents are doing it.
11
SPEAKER_00
They might not have any kids themselves.
11
SPEAKER_02
Right.
11
SPEAKER_00
But they have no problem passing judgment on the job that the parent s doing to the child.
11
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, alienation.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I interviewed an expert in parental alienation who is a psychologist and a Joel Coleman was his last name.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think first name Jules Coleman or no, no, sorry.
11
SPEAKER_00
Coleman.
11
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First name was I m blanking on his first name.
11
SPEAKER_00
And, but he said to me, one of the things he said to me was that, um, uh, that alienation very often we re seeing very high rates of parental alienation in this generation.
11
SPEAKER_00
Very often the stories, the therapist, the therapist made the relationship with the parents worse.
11
SPEAKER_00
This is a heavy book.
11
SPEAKER_00
Joshua Coleman, that was his name.
11
SPEAKER_00
Sorry.
11
SPEAKER_00
This is a heavy book.
11
SPEAKER_00
I hope not.
11
SPEAKER_00
I hope it s a happy book.
11
SPEAKER_00
No, it s not.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think it is.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think it is.
11
SPEAKER_02
Literally, you re saying bad therapy, why the kids aren t growing up.
11
SPEAKER_02
That s not good.
11
SPEAKER_02
You think it s good in that you re offering solutions and you re explaining the problem.
11
SPEAKER_00
The solution is something we can all do.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s less intervention.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s telling parents, you don t need them.
11
SPEAKER_00
Your kids don t need them.
11
SPEAKER_00
They never needed them.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s telling parents, trust yourselves.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you don t think that diagnosis sounds right for your kid, don t go with it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Because you might just convince a kid for the rest of his life that he s got a brain problem and a limitation when he might not have one.
11
SPEAKER_00
So if you don t think it sounds right, trust yourself.
11
SPEAKER_00
It should be the most liberating book in the world.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s saying that you can trust your gut again.
11
SPEAKER_02
Have you talked to any parents that have
11
SPEAKER_02
gone down the road, the bad road that you describe, and then reverse course?
11
SPEAKER_00
Sure, all the time.
11
SPEAKER_00
I talk to parents who say, you know, I had my daughter in therapy for three years, and honestly, she was no happier at the end.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why I did that.
11
SPEAKER_02
Really?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I hear that all the time.
11
SPEAKER_02
And did they reverse course with positive results?
11
SPEAKER_00
You know, it depends on the individual case.
11
SPEAKER_00
You know, the one I was thinking about, I don t know the answer, but I know that the three years of therapy didn t help.
11
SPEAKER_00
I talked to one wonderful cognitive behavioral therapist, Roger McFillin, who often tells people that their kids don t need therapy.
11
SPEAKER_02
Mmm, I mean I got a good business doesn t need more clients.
11
SPEAKER_00
You know, what the problem the truth is they all have a good business It s just some of them have more integrity and they ll say you don t need it.
11
SPEAKER_00
You don t need this pill You don t need this therapy, right?
11
SPEAKER_02
Did you ever watch that Netflix?
12
SPEAKER_00
a series, Painkiller, about the Sackler family, about the opioid crisis.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
No, I never watched it.
12
SPEAKER_00
But what s fascinating about it is, first of all, it s fascinating seeing how the regulatory bodies get captured.
12
SPEAKER_00
by money and about how they just decided to make it normal and normalize this idea of prescribing opiates to people and having them on them all the time.
12
SPEAKER_00
But also that there were certain doctors that did have integrity.
12
SPEAKER_00
where the doctors who had integrity are like, what are you talking about?
12
SPEAKER_00
Like, what are you saying?
12
SPEAKER_00
You re saying you want to prescribe heroin to people?
12
SPEAKER_00
And in the film, in the series rather, they have these women who are hired, these very attractive women who are hired to go to these clinics and talk to these doctors and push this stuff and try to get these doctors to start prescribing this.
12
SPEAKER_00
And they don t have any medical background.
12
SPEAKER_00
And one of them has this conversation with this ethical doctor.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s fascinating because you realize that there are those doctors and if you get lucky that will be your doctor.
12
SPEAKER_00
But if you get unlucky you get that doctor that 30 minute video call is going to give your fucking kid speed.
12
SPEAKER_01
You know, I talked to this one psychiatrist who told me this story.
12
SPEAKER_01
This guy had come to him, young man had come to him for years and he was saying, I m just, I m really paranoid.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m really paranoid.
12
SPEAKER_01
I ve got this, I ve got my girlfriend cheating on me.
12
SPEAKER_01
I know there s something wrong with me.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like I need medication.
12
SPEAKER_01
So this psychiatrist was a very good psychiatrist.
12
SPEAKER_01
He said, let s talk a little bit about your life.
12
SPEAKER_01
Why are you so paranoid?
12
SPEAKER_01
And it turned out that the guy, the girl, his girlfriend, had this very close male friend, and sometimes they would have sleepovers.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Jesus.
12
SPEAKER_01
And the psychiatrist said, you re not paranoid.
12
SPEAKER_01
He was like, no, no, no.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s totally platonic.
12
SPEAKER_01
They ve been friends for years.
12
SPEAKER_01
And he said, you re not paranoid, and it s not platonic.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s not.
12
SPEAKER_00
You re getting hosed, son.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s what he told him.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you re not paranoid if it s actually happening.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s a funny story.
12
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes people need to, a good, by the way, a good mental, you know, health professional, psychiatrist, whatever.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s a crazy story.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
This is my platonic friend.
12
SPEAKER_00
We sleep over together.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
And he was convinced there was something wrong with him.
12
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
12
SPEAKER_01
That he was having trust issues.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s what he thought.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m sure he was getting gas lit.
12
SPEAKER_00
She was probably saying it to him.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
Gaslighting is real.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s real.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
Boy.
12
SPEAKER_00
God.
12
SPEAKER_00
The journey of becoming a healthy human being is so fraught with peril.
12
SPEAKER_00
So much difficulty.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s so it s so complicated.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think we make it more complicated than it has to be.
12
SPEAKER_00
Don t you think it is?
12
SPEAKER_00
Just it is complicated?
12
SPEAKER_01
I think it is.
12
SPEAKER_01
Look, I m scared for my kids like everybody else.
12
SPEAKER_01
Sure it is.
12
SPEAKER_01
I mean, especially in our current society with all the crazy influences.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I know, you know, they ve done these studies on human happiness.
12
SPEAKER_01
People who love you and you love back over a lifetime, family, friends you keep for a long time, wow, that does a lot to help you be happy.
12
SPEAKER_01
Surrounding your kids with and giving them freedom to make friends.
12
SPEAKER_01
Maybe they re not your favorite friends, but realizing that they re entitled to have their own friends.
12
SPEAKER_01
Trusting them to start a job or take a chance you wouldn t have picked for them.
12
SPEAKER_01
You have to let them figure some of this stuff out on their own.
12
SPEAKER_01
One of the things I did, so I changed a little while I was writing the book, and one of the things I did was my daughter was begging to walk home from the bus stop by herself.
12
SPEAKER_01
And she was little.
12
SPEAKER_01
She was nine.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I was scared.
12
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know if it s allowed in my state.
12
SPEAKER_01
But she really wanted to walk home from the bus stop.
12
SPEAKER_01
She had to cross two streets.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I let her.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I let her because I was interviewing parent after parent after parent who weren t letting their kids do things like that.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then they had 13 year olds who didn t want to leave the house.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
I was a latchkey kid, so when I was young, there was no supervision.
12
SPEAKER_00
You just left.
12
SPEAKER_00
When I was six years old, we d just open the door and walk out of the house.
12
SPEAKER_00
Younger than that.
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there was never a time where there was any supervision.
12
SPEAKER_01
By the way, things like walking to school are really good for kids.
12
SPEAKER_01
They learn to navigate their world.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s really healthy to have competency.
12
SPEAKER_01
And that s something you don t have to spend money on.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s the thing.
12
SPEAKER_01
All of these fixes, or really a lot of them, are just common sense.
12
SPEAKER_01
And they re things we used to give kids and we stopped because we became so obsessed with the idea that anything could be traumatizing.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re also worried because the media is constantly depicting these stories of children getting kidnapped and killed and this and that and predators.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s a real fear.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
But you can t protect kids from every kind of pain.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
We are so obsessed with I ve had parents call me about a bat, you know, or I ve heard, you know, teachers getting upset about bullying.
12
SPEAKER_01
And what was the bullying?
12
SPEAKER_01
Someone said something not nice to someone else.
12
SPEAKER_01
Now, I tell my kids to treat people kindly, of course, but I have to tell you something.
12
SPEAKER_01
If my kids came to me and said, she said something mean to me, I would say, work it out.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s not gonna kill you.
12
SPEAKER_01
You ll live.
12
SPEAKER_01
Why?
12
SPEAKER_01
Because if I make my kids think, and I learned this from the process of writing the book, if I make them think that my job is to make sure they never feel any emotional distress ever, boy, that s a lifelong journey and it s gonna be a losing one.
12
SPEAKER_00
Listen, Abigail, I really appreciate your courage.
12
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate what you did with your first book and the way you handled all the stress and the way you handled all the blowback.
12
SPEAKER_00
And you re a courageous person.
12
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
12
SPEAKER_00
I think the things you re talking about are very important.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, thanks.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s great to be here.
12
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for inviting me back, despite the trouble I caused last time.
12
SPEAKER_00
I didn t cause any trouble.
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was attempted trouble, but it didn t really work.
12
SPEAKER_01
I know you succeeded.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s important to talk about really important issues.
12
SPEAKER_00
It is.
12
SPEAKER_00
And these are both very important issues.
12
SPEAKER_00
So your book, it s out right now.
12
SPEAKER_00
Bad Therapy.
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Go get it.
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Read it.
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I m going to read it.
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I appreciate you very much.
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Thank you.
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Thanks for being here.
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Bye everybody.