Based Camp - July 09, 2024


Shock Study: Psychologists (+Far Left) Turn Teens Against Parents (& Destroy Their Mental Health)


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

190.35675

Word Count

9,537

Sentence Count

653

Misogynist Sentences

21

Hate Speech Sentences

18


Summary

In this episode, we talk about a recent study from the University of California, Los Angeles, on the effects of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) on teen emotional well-being, and why it might not be as good as we think it is.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The main findings, DBT intervention did not improve outcomes.
00:00:03.980 Significant deteriorations were observed across outcomes immediately.
00:00:08.360 It made things worse.
00:00:10.280 Largest deteriorations were seen in depressive symptoms.
00:00:14.060 If you really need the help, it makes things even worse.
00:00:16.840 Teen participants continued to report significantly poorer quality of parent-child relationships,
00:00:21.720 specifically mother relationships.
00:00:23.480 And I think that comes down to the way in which this kind of behavior can irreparably
00:00:30.140 recontextualize the way that you see your relationship.
00:00:33.540 And I think it's really hard to fix that damage.
00:00:35.300 And it's a very effective cult tactic.
00:00:36.980 Pretty much all cults do this.
00:00:38.720 They try to convince you that your primary support network is being abusive to you.
00:00:45.160 And your primary support network is usually your parents or your birth culture.
00:00:49.040 And you are of high intellect, Peggy.
00:00:51.540 No matter what you've been told by your husband, your father, not really, mother.
00:01:00.520 How did you know?
00:01:02.140 Because we love you.
00:01:04.060 This ultra urban monoculture is what we historically would have recognized as a cult.
00:01:11.260 Excuse me, are y'all with the cult?
00:01:13.240 We're not a cult.
00:01:14.480 We're an organization that promotes love.
00:01:16.800 Yeah, this is it.
00:01:17.540 It didn't used to be like this.
00:01:18.920 Like, I was in the chest thing in high school.
00:01:20.280 I supported it in high school.
00:01:22.100 It has been taken over by a cult.
00:01:24.200 The clue that is the holy guide to living pure.
00:01:27.080 This will help explain.
00:01:28.840 First.
00:01:35.340 Her name's Lorraine, too?
00:01:37.260 We're all Lorraine.
00:01:38.600 And you will be Todd.
00:01:41.040 And name chosen especially for you.
00:01:43.620 Oh.
00:01:44.040 You're an oppressed minority.
00:01:46.760 You're a cult.
00:01:51.100 Would you like to know more?
00:01:52.760 Hello, Simone.
00:01:53.960 You sent a study to me that absolutely shocked me.
00:01:57.520 And I really want to go over the results of it because I think it is terrifying.
00:02:02.420 Fascinating.
00:02:03.580 Disturbing.
00:02:04.180 But also, pretty definitive proof of your claim that one of the primary means by which
00:02:12.620 the urban monoculture spreads is through therapy culture and that it uses therapy culture
00:02:17.720 primarily to alienate young people from their support networks.
00:02:22.120 So let's dive into it.
00:02:23.260 Exactly.
00:02:23.900 And leading to these absolutely horrible, we did another episode recently showing that
00:02:28.280 one in ten kids in school right now has thought about unaliving themselves this past year.
00:02:32.780 Like, that is an insane statistic.
00:02:35.240 The percent that made a plan to unalive themselves, 24% among young women, 12% among young men.
00:02:41.020 The ones who seriously considered attempting it, 30% young women, 14% young men.
00:02:45.840 The feeling persistent sadness, 57% of young women, 29% of young men.
00:02:51.140 So what is happening in schools right now is not working.
00:02:54.480 And a big part of this is the infiltration of, as I have always said, modern psychology has
00:02:58.600 become more like a cult.
00:03:00.640 What you get if you go into a modern psychologist today is much closer to what Scientology was
00:03:08.440 doing with people in the 90s than what would happen if you saw a psychologist in the 90s.
00:03:12.800 And I'm not saying all psychologists fall into this, but the ones that are influencing
00:03:16.720 the policy, what's happening to kids are.
00:03:19.380 And we can see this in the study data.
00:03:21.940 So what was the name of the study again, Simone?
00:03:23.420 I've got all that information on it.
00:03:24.800 The study is called Investigating the Efficacy of a Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Based Universal
00:03:30.880 Intervention on Adolescent Social and Emotional Well-Being Outcomes.
00:03:36.040 That's a mouthful, but they're basically like, does DBT help teens?
00:03:40.760 That's what they're trying to find out here.
00:03:42.600 So this is a AI summary of what the study ended up showing and the way the study was constructed,
00:03:48.780 which I'm guessing is probably what you were going to read.
00:03:50.340 AI explains it in plainer English, how it is with these academic studies that like decide
00:03:54.880 to make them harder to understand.
00:03:56.620 I love how much they buried the lead with the title of this study because the results are
00:04:00.200 shocking.
00:04:01.300 It could be one of those instances in which they primarily did this research to try to
00:04:06.060 show how good and effective DBT was, and then it turned out to really hurt.
00:04:11.220 So they had to obfuscate things in the wording just so that, you know, the people who funded
00:04:15.900 it didn't get super offended and never fund them again.
00:04:18.700 I think that's more probably what's going on here.
00:04:21.820 Yeah.
00:04:21.960 So study design and participants.
00:04:24.040 It was a non-randomized controlled trial, which is pretty good.
00:04:27.700 It had over a thousand participants, pretty well split on gender.
00:04:32.000 The intervention group had 563 participants and eight sessions of a wise teens program.
00:04:38.000 We'll be talking about this group in a second that you did the DBT and the control group
00:04:42.180 with around 508 participants, class as usual.
00:04:44.800 Just so people know what this means from like a science perspective, it means that the results
00:04:49.900 of this were likely very robust.
00:04:51.980 Not something where you can be like, oh, the sample size was small or it wasn't controlled
00:04:55.420 or blah, blah, blah.
00:04:56.520 The main findings, the wise teens intervention did not improve outcomes overall.
00:05:02.580 So it's the DBT intervention.
00:05:04.960 Significant deteriorations were observed across outcomes immediately post-
00:05:09.640 Worst.
00:05:11.300 Largest deteriorations were seen in depressive symptoms.
00:05:14.920 If you really need the help, it makes things even worse.
00:05:18.500 Yes.
00:05:19.020 And it explains.
00:05:20.240 I remember how I was showing like the rate of depression going up in young kids.
00:05:23.340 And yet we're seeing more and more like DBT therapy being put on these otherwise mentally
00:05:27.880 healthy young kids.
00:05:28.400 It's like adding fuel to the fire.
00:05:30.020 It's adding fuel to the fire.
00:05:31.160 Yes.
00:05:32.160 But while most group differences dissipated at follow-up, if you can get out of the therapy
00:05:36.380 culture, but if the kids get roped in and they end up building a trauma dependency on
00:05:41.100 a therapist, a lot of therapy culture today is about trying to incept people with the idea
00:05:45.000 of trauma.
00:05:45.800 Yeah.
00:05:45.920 Stop them from detracting.
00:05:48.040 Where they would try to get you to believe that like something in your use created the
00:05:51.760 thing that you couldn't get away from and that you needed to keep seeing them to create
00:05:55.580 dependency.
00:05:56.140 Right.
00:05:56.300 But the thing that didn't disappear, okay, was wise teen participants continue to report
00:06:03.260 significantly poorer quality of parent-child relationships, specifically mother relationships.
00:06:08.400 And I think that comes down to the way in which this kind of behavior can irreparably
00:06:15.860 recontextualize the way that you see your relationship.
00:06:19.240 And I think it's really hard to fix that damage.
00:06:21.020 It's one thing to, oh, you're framing or you're ruminating on something.
00:06:24.000 I think therapy can, when presented the wrong way, especially when not really outcome oriented
00:06:28.620 or fixing things oriented CBT, really get you to ruminate on the bad thing and identify
00:06:33.500 with the bad thing.
00:06:34.340 And if you start living life and getting distracted, you can get over that.
00:06:37.120 So if you stop the therapy, you can get better.
00:06:39.000 But once you recontextualize a relationship or you start to reframe something that happened
00:06:44.080 in the past as traumatic, whereas you didn't view it as traumatic before, undoing that really
00:06:49.440 freaking hard.
00:06:50.200 And it's a very effective cult tactic.
00:06:51.760 Pretty much all cults do this.
00:06:53.100 They try to convince you that your primary support network is being abusive to you.
00:07:00.760 And your primary support network is usually your parents or your birth culture, i.e.
00:07:05.080 your parents' religious community.
00:07:07.500 And so a core tactic of the urban monoculture, which is essentially a cult, is to use emissaries
00:07:12.980 that basically it's preacher cast are the psychologists and social workers, because they're the ones
00:07:18.180 who recruit new members and ensure that people don't defect, they first to get you into it.
00:07:24.600 And they're not doing this intentionally.
00:07:26.340 It's just the iterations of this culture, because it has almost no kids itself, that were able
00:07:30.460 to convince people that they had abusive relationships from their primary support network
00:07:35.100 and birth culture were better at growing than the ones that didn't adopt these tactics.
00:07:39.280 Because most people, if they deconvert from their birth culture, it happens between 15 to
00:07:43.040 23.
00:07:43.740 So it makes a sense to try to get this stuff into schools from the perspective of the
00:07:48.200 urban monoculture.
00:07:49.020 Like you would expect after a large study, like this sort of thing would be shut down.
00:07:53.840 And yet it's continuing expansion.
00:07:56.740 So you can look at, and that's what social emotional learning is, which really should have
00:08:00.420 no point in our school systems.
00:08:01.940 And we'll do a whole other episode on social emotional learning.
00:08:04.340 We do.
00:08:04.580 We need to cover SEL deep.
00:08:06.040 The problem is, it's such a deep rabbit hole, because it really is.
00:08:09.260 People are like, it's not cult-like.
00:08:11.100 SEL is covered for a very specific cult.
00:08:14.880 You can look at James Lindsay has talked about this a lot, and he has done some great research
00:08:18.360 on this.
00:08:19.020 I wanted to have him on the show.
00:08:20.260 We had talked about having him on the show at one point, but I don't know if we ever got
00:08:22.980 him booked.
00:08:23.760 But basically, it's not like a vague cult or an accidentally evolved cult.
00:08:27.700 It is a perennialist mystic cult.
00:08:30.800 That is what it is.
00:08:32.860 It is very dangerous.
00:08:34.180 And it is, yet you can see from the downstream effects that we're seeing in the people that
00:08:37.220 it's converting, because the communities where it is most widespread are often like LGBT
00:08:41.260 communities.
00:08:42.260 And if you look at things like, here's the statistic right here, 70% of LGBTQ plus students
00:08:47.400 experience persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.
00:08:50.060 And the unaliving attempts in that community, 20% every year are attempting.
00:08:55.740 Like it is really bad in the communities that it has most deeply penetrated, because it often,
00:09:00.520 uses those communities.
00:09:01.820 What is a sign of the urban monoculture but the colonizer's flag?
00:09:04.920 And for people to know what the colonizer's flag, it was named in our Discord, and I absolutely
00:09:07.900 love this, where they took the gay pride flag, which literally meant everyone under the rainbow.
00:09:13.000 It wasn't like the colors meant specific things.
00:09:14.940 And then they started covering it up with specific groups, absolutely animal farming it.
00:09:19.440 Like some groups are more equal than others.
00:09:21.520 And now they put it on every institution that the urban monoculture has conquered, like
00:09:26.700 bull baiting towards the LGBT community, anger.
00:09:29.860 And it's wild that they're doing this, because they control pretty much every institution of
00:09:33.460 power in our society.
00:09:34.460 Why do they need to have a minority group targeted for their actions?
00:09:39.300 It's just bull baiting.
00:09:40.080 They don't care.
00:09:40.740 But let's talk about what this wise group that's causing all these negative effects, it's
00:09:45.140 breaking up families, is doing right now.
00:09:47.100 If you go to their website, and I'll put this on stage, this is front and center.
00:09:51.300 When it comes to prevention, our mantra is early and often.
00:09:55.340 Think about that.
00:09:55.940 This harmful thing that we know is causing a breakdown of familial relationships, their
00:10:00.540 motto is early and often.
00:10:02.620 We know it's causing negative mental health outcomes in a place where this is already a
00:10:06.280 crisis, increasing rates of depression early and often, and increasing them among the
00:10:12.720 most damaged communities.
00:10:16.480 You can look at something like 70% of LGBTQ students, which is the group that the urban
00:10:22.480 monoculture is most represented in, and this therapy culture is most represented in, experience
00:10:27.000 persistent feelings of sadness and unhappiness.
00:10:29.380 This is going up as their level of oppression is going down, but as the level of infiltration
00:10:34.280 of their culture is going up by the urban monoculture.
00:10:37.000 And 20% of them have attempted unaliving themselves year over year.
00:10:41.760 Just absolutely chilling to me.
00:10:43.760 And then if you look at what they are pushing out, what does WISE do?
00:10:49.880 How does it do this?
00:10:50.740 It does this both with just general urban monoculture conversion.
00:10:55.140 You can see this through their words of things like the WISE elementary school program builds
00:11:01.380 blah, blah, blah, protective skills of empathy and safety.
00:11:05.020 Like, what do they mean by empathy and safety, right?
00:11:07.700 Like they mean that they are medicalizing and therapizing normal human child interaction because
00:11:14.760 of what's good for pulling kids out of their birth culture.
00:11:17.040 That's why they're doing this, even though we know it hurts now.
00:11:19.460 Like, why would they still be doing this?
00:11:20.820 Because they built a bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is self-reinforcing.
00:11:24.400 Kids who get sucked into this culture find it very hard to get out of it once you're in
00:11:28.520 it.
00:11:28.660 Once you've broken their relationships with their support network, that's why cults do that.
00:11:32.400 Let's talk about dialectical behavioral therapy for a second.
00:11:36.120 It's an evidence-based psychotherapy that was originally developed to treat borderline
00:11:39.380 personality disorder, but has since been adopted to address various mental health conditions.
00:11:43.500 In this context, DBT is a structured form of therapy that combines elements of cognitive
00:11:47.320 behavioral therapy with concepts of mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.
00:11:53.220 Skills training.
00:11:54.460 DBT typically involves group sessions focused on teaching four core skills.
00:11:58.480 Again, mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotional regulation.
00:12:02.400 However, when they say emotional regulation, they actually mean the exact opposite of emotional
00:12:06.540 regulation, but we'll get to that in a second.
00:12:09.000 I think when they teach mindfulness, instead they're teaching rumination and identification
00:12:12.760 with mental illness.
00:12:15.760 So understanding emotions.
00:12:17.100 DBT teaches the function and importance of emotions, helping clients see them as valid and
00:12:21.440 meaningful.
00:12:22.520 So i.e.
00:12:23.600 you should experience all the emotions that your body outputs.
00:12:26.680 It's very much like a lot of people think the inside out is this like totally non-threatening
00:12:32.820 message.
00:12:33.560 I've heard this from a lot of conservatives.
00:12:34.940 They're like, it's not woke.
00:12:35.880 And I'm like, no, it is the worst of woke.
00:12:37.860 It is therapy, culture, cartoonized and given to kids.
00:12:43.280 It treats all of their emotions as in many ways equally valid.
00:12:47.940 And you need this balanced emotional landscape where sometimes you're angry and sometimes
00:12:53.300 you're sad and all of the emotions play a role.
00:12:55.640 And I actually heard this when I was talking to my old school and they're trying to get
00:12:57.860 money from me.
00:12:58.480 They're like, inside out really taught us this.
00:13:00.680 And I'm like, that is not what the data says.
00:13:03.520 As from like the studies, like if you allow yourself to succumb to an emotion like anger,
00:13:07.940 like if you go and punch a wall after getting angry, your level of anger actually rises in
00:13:12.160 the probability that you feel that in the future rises.
00:13:14.040 If you allow yourself to feel really any negative emotional state, one decreases your ability
00:13:20.240 to inhibit those states in the future, allowing them to spiral out of control.
00:13:24.020 This is how you get like anxiety spirals and stuff like that.
00:13:26.800 And why we're seeing this explosion in anxiety, that and the removal of corporal punishment,
00:13:31.240 the removal of negative stimuli discipline for kids.
00:13:34.540 Because when you don't experience negative stimuli, you become hypersensitized to it.
00:13:37.680 And then you need things like trigger warnings, which we've talked about before, which creates
00:13:41.060 these negative effects.
00:13:42.140 But when you teach kids, oh, just experience all your emotions, like this is not what the
00:13:48.140 data says.
00:13:48.640 This is a made up cult version of psychology.
00:13:51.640 What the data says is you should treat your brain like a fascist landscape where your logic
00:13:57.100 controls your emotions because your logic can control your emotions.
00:14:01.320 You can largely control what you feel through the narratives you create about how you interact
00:14:06.960 with the world around you.
00:14:08.160 And you have a duty to exercise that control.
00:14:11.980 And I will continue to do something here.
00:14:13.740 So what else does it teach when it's teaching like emotional control?
00:14:18.000 Mindfulness.
00:14:18.680 Practicing awareness of the present moment without judgment helps observing and experiencing
00:14:23.220 emotions without being overwhelmed by them.
00:14:26.020 This observing and experiencing emotions is the very last thing you want to do.
00:14:30.660 Your brain is not a democracy.
00:14:32.540 And if your brain is a democracy, if you have logic as one tiny voice in your brain and all
00:14:37.960 the emotions are these very loud voices in your brain, you're going to spiral into negative
00:14:42.360 mental health outcomes because these emotions were evolved within a very different social
00:14:47.680 and technological context.
00:14:49.440 Basically, the emotions that we feel, both positive and negatives, are just the things that
00:14:53.000 our ancestors, when they felt them, they had more surviving offspring.
00:14:55.840 And if you succumb to those, if you're like, oh, I'll just let those guide me, like those
00:15:01.700 will be one voice among the logic in my head.
00:15:04.860 And we'll have like counsel where the logic is like one member and then we have anger and
00:15:08.080 then we have blah, blah, blah.
00:15:08.900 And you're taking an average of opinions that you're going to be making catastrophically stupid
00:15:14.300 decisions.
00:15:15.040 And these decisions will then cause more negative emotional output, which causes a spiral.
00:15:19.400 And then they break the relationship with your family and birth culture by saying, oh, that
00:15:23.960 caused trauma, all these things that they did were trauma causing, like discipline, as we
00:15:28.580 say, like corporal discipline, which we know from the data is good.
00:15:31.180 You can look at the study, don't show the baby out with the bass water, parental punishment.
00:15:34.500 This was done in 2023, big meta study.
00:15:36.720 And it showed that when you actually match it, it does help with mental health outcomes.
00:15:41.140 And duh, like anyone could have told you that.
00:15:43.700 They could have told you that the earlier results were manipulated, but they didn't.
00:15:47.080 They don't, just in case people are wondering how they're manipulated, I'll just say it really
00:15:50.400 quickly, although watch for the virtual will know this.
00:15:52.120 What they did is they didn't match results.
00:15:54.980 So they would take a family like ours where our daughter doesn't get corporal punishment
00:15:57.620 because she just doesn't need it.
00:15:59.120 They put her in the no punishment group and they put our sons in the punishment group
00:16:01.600 and then say, see the punishment group's acting out more.
00:16:03.720 And it's like, that is astronomically stupid that you did that.
00:16:06.740 But anyway, but why would they do that?
00:16:08.280 They really benefit from these negative mental health effects because when you create these
00:16:11.840 negative mental health spirals in young teens and you've broken them off from their
00:16:15.920 birth culture, you've broken them off from their parents, what else are they going to
00:16:18.960 turn to, but these affirming cults.
00:16:22.720 And that's what, when you, when anyone can identify, for example, as non-binary and then
00:16:28.260 enter the queer community, which is one of the things we complain about, when anyone can
00:16:32.540 identify as non-binary and enter the queer community, and then you get loved bombed for
00:16:36.540 doing this.
00:16:37.600 Or for example, us, we would be considered trans within the modern context, right?
00:16:41.280 Because I don't particularly care what my gender is.
00:16:43.700 Neither does Simone.
00:16:44.440 If I broke up to her a different gender, I'd figure out a way to make it work.
00:16:47.000 And that would be called agender, which is a form of genderqueer, which is a form of
00:16:50.040 trans.
00:16:50.440 They have expanded the definitions of all this, or demisexual, they would say, which
00:16:55.520 actually is the standard sexual presentation among women.
00:16:59.160 And yet they treat it like it's a form of being queer.
00:17:01.500 For people who aren't inducted into the insane leftist cult, demisexual means that you usually
00:17:07.480 only feel sexually aroused when you already have an emotional attachment to somebody.
00:17:12.700 And it's like, yeah, normal female sexuality works that way.
00:17:15.480 Yeah, some women are outside of that, but mostly for most women, that's how sexual, but now
00:17:20.120 they're saying that means most women are queer.
00:17:22.060 So queer identification is not seen to me when you're looking at, and when I'm looking
00:17:27.320 at statistics, it's primarily a sign of something like same-sex attraction or even a real trans
00:17:32.700 identity anymore.
00:17:33.840 It's more of an identification of being a member of this extremist cult.
00:17:38.200 And we're seeing the negative mental health outcomes with one in five of them trying to
00:17:43.240 unalive themselves every year, who are adolescent people in this community, 70% having this intense
00:17:49.060 dissatisfaction with their lives.
00:17:51.000 Like it is not leading to good outcomes.
00:17:53.480 It comes around with this, we will affirm you, we will affirm you, we will protect you
00:17:57.720 with trigger warnings.
00:17:58.340 We will protect you from negative stimuli, sort of candy cart.
00:18:04.140 And so you go when you're in this intense state of emotional insecurity and self-questioning
00:18:10.700 and a poor mental health that's created by these sorts of programs, and then it can use
00:18:16.340 that to snatch you up because you've been disconnected from all of your classic support
00:18:19.740 networks.
00:18:20.220 Because the classic support networks are going to tell you what you need to hear, which
00:18:23.160 is discipline is good.
00:18:25.000 You need to, austerity is good.
00:18:27.140 You should experience unpleasant things.
00:18:29.560 You should not learn to love yourself as you are.
00:18:32.800 You should be pressured to become the type of person worthy of you loving.
00:18:38.540 But that in the moment, that isn't cotton candy.
00:18:41.960 So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Simone.
00:18:45.220 I'm just sad with how far we've gone.
00:18:48.080 And I'm disturbed by how much good and responsible sounding language is presented to people like
00:18:54.520 parents who are genuinely concerned about their kids' well-being and how their really well-meaning
00:19:00.140 attempts are backfiring and causing them to lose their children even more.
00:19:03.720 It breaks my heart that a parent that is doing everything they can to help their kids, who
00:19:08.840 really cares and who really does want to help them, is ultimately doing so much worse for
00:19:15.680 their kids' outcome than a parent who is actively negligent and who actively doesn't care.
00:19:20.140 It shouldn't be the case in modern society that literally neglectful parents are going
00:19:25.740 to see better mental health outcomes for their children.
00:19:28.420 And yet that's what we're seeing.
00:19:29.580 It's no wonder that people who are more affluent and educated and have all these resources and
00:19:33.540 who like really care about getting their kids right are terrified of becoming parents because
00:19:38.860 when you look at the outcomes of their kids and the kids of their peers, they are worse.
00:19:43.640 And I don't think they realize that a lot of it's because of their culture and they're probably
00:19:48.280 thinking, oh, neglectful, irresponsible parents are probably seeing something even worse.
00:19:52.160 And I don't know.
00:19:53.340 It would be really interesting to see that divide.
00:19:55.700 I just listened to that one YouTuber's really long piece on the other pro-natalist Collins
00:20:01.800 family and they actively don't do a lot of things to take care of their kids.
00:20:08.160 Like they may not take their kids to the doctor a whole lot.
00:20:10.080 They certainly don't send their kids to therapy as far as I'm aware, but I could reckon that
00:20:15.300 their kids are probably mentally a lot healthier than kids who are getting tons and tons of
00:20:19.240 resources as their critics would argue they should be doing.
00:20:23.520 It's just sad to me.
00:20:24.960 So this reminds me of an influencer.
00:20:27.460 There was this like, obviously completely brainwashed by the cult young gen alpha gen Z YouTuber.
00:20:34.220 I was watching who was complaining that mental health outcomes keep getting worse.
00:20:37.740 And she is, we can fix this by getting more psychologists that are cheap.
00:20:41.460 I think it's a very complex conversation as to why gen Z is not wanting to have kids because
00:20:48.040 it doesn't just pertain to financial issues or inflation eating out our arses clean.
00:20:54.660 But gen Z has a rampant problem with mental health issues that have gone long unaddressed,
00:21:00.520 mostly for the reason being that the mental health system is largely lacking.
00:21:05.080 For example, I am still on a wait list to see a psychologist.
00:21:09.420 It has been what, eight months, nine months?
00:21:11.560 I can't even remember the last time that I even followed up on that.
00:21:15.500 Because the last time I did, I remember calling the psychologist and he's on the phone like,
00:21:21.500 well, I'm actually leaving for holidays next week.
00:21:24.940 So we're going to be pretty backed up.
00:21:27.240 I'll give you a call in a few weeks time.
00:21:29.780 I saved the day in my phone and everything like that.
00:21:32.660 I never got a call.
00:21:33.880 So a week later, I called them again and I was like, hey, just following up, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:38.960 Well, actually, no, we don't have any appointments available until mid-December.
00:21:43.960 This was in, I think, June last year.
00:21:46.840 What are you, there are more youth psychologists today, more psychologizing was in school than
00:21:52.160 there's ever been.
00:21:52.820 Do you think this stuff existed in the old west?
00:21:54.320 Do you think that in the greatest generation or in our parents' generation, when they were
00:21:58.480 objectively, we can look at the data, had better mental health outcomes, that they were not
00:22:02.820 being exposed to this, that when you get in this cult, you see the mental health problems
00:22:07.980 that are downstream of these sorts of mechanisms.
00:22:10.660 And all they can think is turn up the volume.
00:22:14.060 Now, if you're here and you're a parent or you are a person who is struggling with a mental
00:22:19.180 health outcome, I used to say that CBT at least still worked.
00:22:22.800 I now no longer think that.
00:22:24.240 I think it's been so infiltrated and twisted that it doesn't really work that well anymore.
00:22:28.320 We wrote the practice.
00:22:29.140 Or maybe what we were exposed to is CBT, like you when you studied psychology in school and
00:22:33.940 me when I went through it, is basically an extinct strain of it.
00:22:38.160 And now what is happening is totally different.
00:22:41.180 Yeah.
00:22:41.360 So what I would recommend people do if they are like, what's the alternative is the
00:22:46.700 Pragmatist Guide to Life.
00:22:47.540 The first book we wrote, I wrote it as an alternative to CBT, actually.
00:22:51.360 If you read it, you'll notice a lot of if-then functions, basically.
00:22:54.860 It was really meant as a user manual for a type of psychologist that we were eventually
00:22:59.540 going to spin out, but we just never really got around to it.
00:23:02.780 We got in with our company right now, blah, blah, blah.
00:23:05.000 But it's still very usable from an individual perspective.
00:23:08.540 And it focuses on a completely different mechanism for therapy.
00:23:13.000 Essentially, the mechanism is determine what you think has value in life.
00:23:17.920 And we go through all the various things that somebody might think has value in life.
00:23:20.920 And then using those set of things you think have value in life, how do you maximize those
00:23:25.780 things?
00:23:26.340 And then develop a conscious system from doing that.
00:23:28.820 And then here's all these mental hacks you can use for controlling the way that your brain
00:23:33.360 outputs emotion and to give you more mastery over your emotional states.
00:23:39.020 So you have much less.
00:23:40.460 And I think that that's one of the problems is when we say like the things that you think
00:23:43.640 have value, we call this your objective function.
00:23:45.560 And the problem with the urban monoculture is that it doesn't have an objective function
00:23:49.900 for many people other than reduce the amount of suffering that anyone's experiencing in
00:23:53.460 the moment.
00:23:54.440 And because of that, and because people recognize that isn't a thing of actual value, it leads
00:23:59.340 to these really terrible mental health outcomes.
00:24:02.380 Another thing I would want to point out when people are like, oh, you shouldn't be dismissing
00:24:05.280 trauma this much.
00:24:06.080 We have a whole episode on this topic, but there's a great study done on trauma.
00:24:10.140 And I really just need to beat this because this is an important thing that the general
00:24:13.220 public knows.
00:24:13.860 It looked at correlations between reported trauma in childhood and negative mental health
00:24:20.080 outcomes.
00:24:20.820 Great correlation.
00:24:22.260 Then it tried to correlate reported trauma with actual documentable trauma, looking at court
00:24:27.460 records and stuff like that.
00:24:28.800 And it found that there was almost no correlation.
00:24:31.140 In other words, contextualization is everything.
00:24:33.360 And if you believe that you've been subject to trauma and identify as someone who has been
00:24:37.840 traumatized, you will suffer mentally.
00:24:40.340 If you don't, then you probably won't.
00:24:42.400 It doesn't really matter what actually happened to you.
00:24:45.020 Of course, there are exceptions to this.
00:24:47.280 If you have PTSD that is real, by the way, not the, not the, I've self-diagnosed with PTSD
00:24:52.820 or I tripped on the way to a store and I have PTSD now, but that doesn't count.
00:24:58.760 But there are some like real mechanical things that can go wrong.
00:25:01.660 And also there's depression that is real and mechanical and that can be triggered by
00:25:05.560 hormones and a whole bunch of other things.
00:25:07.820 This is not to deny any of those things.
00:25:09.560 And I am afraid for when we have an instance of a kid who is actually depressed, who probably
00:25:15.520 needs some form of chemical intervention that we can only get from a psychologist because
00:25:21.320 it has to be prescribed.
00:25:22.460 Our book and our methods can only go so far.
00:25:25.760 And as we explained in the Pragmatist Guide to Life, sometimes you actually do need-
00:25:29.260 Psychologists don't prescribe medication.
00:25:31.620 Psychiatrists.
00:25:32.180 No, wait.
00:25:32.480 That's safer.
00:25:33.160 If you're sending a kid.
00:25:34.140 So my parents used to do this with me as a kid.
00:25:36.580 They would-
00:25:37.520 Psychologists.
00:25:38.560 No, there's therapists who don't prescribe and then there's psychologists who do.
00:25:42.100 No, it's not a matter.
00:25:44.320 Psychologists don't prescribe.
00:25:45.420 They are the people you go to regularly.
00:25:46.720 It's a different degree pass.
00:25:48.160 Then who-
00:25:48.360 Psychiatrists do prescribe.
00:25:50.060 Psychiatrists, thank you.
00:25:51.920 Sorry, I'm ignorant.
00:25:53.380 I was on the pathway to become a psychologist and not a psychiatrist.
00:25:56.780 And I thought about changing career trajectories to become a psychiatrist, but it's a different
00:26:00.880 degree pathway.
00:26:01.820 I see.
00:26:03.040 So anyway, so this is coming from somebody who knows a great deal about all of this, but
00:26:09.140 just thinks outside of their framework.
00:26:10.860 I am not coming to you here as an anti-mental health person.
00:26:15.500 I am coming to you here saying that there used to be a functioning mental health system
00:26:19.160 in the West and it doesn't exist anymore and it is just a danger now.
00:26:23.160 And what my parents used to do as me, which is what we do as our kids, is warn them against
00:26:27.940 these individuals, warn them that these individuals will try to manipulate them into joining these
00:26:31.720 weird cults and cultural groups.
00:26:33.780 And that they, this is what you say to them to get the meds you need, basically, because
00:26:39.900 they are just really toxic right now.
00:26:42.220 And when people are like, oh, you shouldn't go so far as to call it a cult, like the urban
00:26:46.560 monoculture isn't actually a cult.
00:26:48.040 These institutions aren't actually a cult.
00:26:50.000 I want you to consider the language I've been reading here recently.
00:26:53.720 And I'm going to play some scenes from a King of the Hill episode about what cults are,
00:26:58.680 what they look like, and how they act.
00:27:00.980 And I think you will see very quickly, Omega House is Luann's sorority.
00:27:05.860 What I'm babbling about is how the Omega cult recruits unsuspecting young women from
00:27:09.800 campus, deprives them of protein, bathrooms, and all contact with their families and friends,
00:27:15.000 then ships them off to a ranch for general enslavement.
00:27:18.240 Oh, God.
00:27:19.100 Excuse me, are y'all with the cult?
00:27:21.040 We're not a cult.
00:27:22.360 We're an organization that promotes love.
00:27:24.560 Yeah, this is it.
00:27:25.380 In this part, I would call your attention to the name changes, which is a very common tactic
00:27:30.620 in cults, to have people adopt new names and new identities, as well as unique titles,
00:27:36.520 salutations, and greetings.
00:27:38.440 Cults do this for a few reasons, but probably the biggest is it's really powerful at separating
00:27:43.260 people from their existing support networks, because when their support networks regard
00:27:47.900 these individuals by their old identities, the cult will say, like, well, that's an attack
00:27:54.920 on you, or that's violence against you.
00:27:56.840 And through that, they're able to prevent these people from being able to reconcile as easily
00:28:02.900 or have as fluid conversations with their natural support network.
00:28:07.600 It also makes it very hard for these individuals to talk to people who aren't indoctrinated into
00:28:14.280 the cult's ways, and therefore don't know how to talk to them within this very narrow and
00:28:20.000 from a mainstream societal perspective, bizarre rule set, which is unique to the cult itself.
00:28:25.420 Peggy, Luann, it's me, your husband, and your uncle.
00:28:29.000 We don't have any Peggy's or Luann's.
00:28:31.540 You're thinking of blonde Jane and old Jane, and they don't want to see you.
00:28:35.420 Another common cult tactic to look out for is any group that shames individuals for eating
00:28:41.260 meat or getting proper sleep.
00:28:43.560 Through denying people the, well, the regular resources that the human brain needs to stay
00:28:49.300 sharp, it's very easy to cloud an individual's mind and convince them of absurd things.
00:28:55.580 It's too late.
00:28:56.860 They've been deprived of protein so long that their bodies are feeding off their own brains.
00:29:01.220 They're nothing but soulless autonomatonamatons.
00:29:04.040 I'd also really encourage people, if a loved one, a parent, a sibling, tells you you have
00:29:11.460 joined a cult, or they think that you have joined a group that is acting like a cult, and
00:29:16.580 this is not an accusation that they've made to you before.
00:29:19.460 Or, like, okay, maybe you have a sibling or a parent that just says everything's a cult,
00:29:23.740 basically.
00:29:24.140 They say Pokemon's a cult.
00:29:25.500 Whatever.
00:29:25.980 Ignore that.
00:29:26.440 But if you have one who has not said this to you before, or even worse, if they have
00:29:32.620 said it to you before, and on reflection you realized after leaving that group that it
00:29:37.180 actually was displaying cult-like behavior, please, please take that seriously.
00:29:42.060 Parents and siblings don't just drop this accusation out of the blue.
00:29:44.960 If they say that you've been brainwashed, or that you're being manipulated, please take
00:29:49.800 it seriously.
00:29:50.600 This is a common scene with all cults.
00:29:53.080 It's parents yelling at their kids, you are being brainwashed, you are being brainwashed,
00:29:57.340 and the kids thinking that the parents are just out of touch.
00:30:01.200 You can't get on the bus.
00:30:03.140 Trust me, you joined a cult.
00:30:05.900 Come on.
00:30:09.740 No, do not listen to that he person.
00:30:12.540 He is on the wrong side of the love fence.
00:30:16.680 The more times you hear a group use terms like love, validation, acceptance, belonging,
00:30:25.120 especially when they twist these words to mean things that they historically didn't mean,
00:30:30.640 you know, like in this scene, they call it a love fence.
00:30:34.460 That is high red blaring signs that you are dealing with a cult.
00:30:40.000 Cults always coat their actions in this facade of love, and particularly unity, because unity
00:30:49.480 can be used as a concept to stamp out dissenting thought.
00:30:52.580 I'm sorry, Hank.
00:30:53.800 My new friends have invited me to spend eternity, I think, with them.
00:30:58.380 All right.
00:30:59.180 Have fun, then.
00:31:00.040 But maybe a bite for the road.
00:31:01.920 Jane, get back here!
00:31:03.600 My name is not Jane.
00:31:05.120 My name is Peggy.
00:31:06.740 And I love meat.
00:31:08.360 That's funny.
00:31:09.820 I can't remember my name.
00:31:11.640 I think it starts with an R.
00:31:14.280 It's in the van.
00:31:18.840 Jim, Julie, Jim, Julie!
00:31:22.280 Next scene will show how cults often recruit people.
00:31:25.940 And it's very important to look for these actions in the organizations that you are interacting with.
00:31:31.160 First, you'll note love and unity are going to be two of the core values that a cult will
00:31:37.260 always put out, because unity allows them to silence dissent as a concept, and also it
00:31:44.460 often means, you know, unity under the accepted authority or hierarchy of the group.
00:31:49.800 If you're talking about the urban monoculture, this might be a gender or ethnic-based authority,
00:31:55.020 but in more traditional cults, it'll just be a generic hierarchy.
00:31:59.800 Another thing that you'll see very frequently is love bombing, and it's a very important
00:32:03.640 thing to look out for.
00:32:05.300 This will often happen if you see, like, a group of people in a circle, and they're all
00:32:10.300 just constantly affirming someone, you know, telling them how great the decisions they're
00:32:14.680 making are, how great what they're doing is, how great they are as a person, especially
00:32:19.500 if they're doing this while looking for ways that they can create divisions between this
00:32:25.720 individual and their traditional support network, like their family, that is almost certainly
00:32:30.880 a cult.
00:32:31.260 Even if it wasn't, like, created as a cult, as we've mentioned in other episodes, like,
00:32:35.180 has a cult evolved under the trans movement?
00:32:37.160 It just, a cult-like behavior, if it is protected from criticism, begins to self-replicate, and
00:32:46.320 in society where we have certain groups that, you know, I think may need legitimate protection,
00:32:52.160 like the trans community, unfortunately, within far progressive circles, any accusation of,
00:32:57.580 oh, you're doing something wrong here, you're doing something bad here, is unallowed if it's
00:33:01.680 targeted at something that's seen as trans.
00:33:03.200 So, the negative behavioral traits weren't able to be called out, and it basically evolved
00:33:09.820 a organically formed cult with most of the behavior patterns that you see in other cults,
00:33:16.880 as you'll see from this scene.
00:33:19.360 As an organization that promotes love and unity, Omega House appreciates a mother as caring as
00:33:26.320 you are.
00:33:26.820 I wish I could jump in your head and crawl around.
00:33:29.460 You seem like a fascinating individual.
00:33:31.780 You are probably very popular.
00:33:35.240 Actually, no.
00:33:36.820 It's difficult to find people you can really connect with.
00:33:39.960 People of high intellect often intimidate people.
00:33:43.460 And you are of high intellect, Peggy.
00:33:46.480 No matter what you've been told by your husband.
00:33:49.140 Mmm.
00:33:49.720 Your father.
00:33:51.480 Mmm.
00:33:51.740 Not really.
00:33:53.400 Mother.
00:33:54.280 How did you know?
00:33:56.600 Because we love you.
00:33:58.460 You know what I love about this place?
00:33:59.840 Nobody ever gets tired of hearing about me.
00:34:02.560 My hobbies, favorite movies, my deep-seated resentment towards my soul-crushing mother.
00:34:08.100 Oh, okay.
00:34:08.780 This is a cult.
00:34:09.920 Yeah.
00:34:11.140 I should have known, yeah, this ultra-urban monoculture is what we historically would have
00:34:16.740 recognized as a cult.
00:34:19.380 And they do all of the cult things.
00:34:21.400 One joke I remembered, and I have constantly tried to find this.
00:34:24.220 It was from an old 90s media.
00:34:25.420 So I am done because I've asked AI and I can't find it, and maybe somebody in the comments
00:34:29.160 will find this source of media.
00:34:31.600 I found it.
00:34:32.380 It was from Bubble Boy, and you'll get to see it.
00:34:35.780 And it even includes the name change that I mentioned before.
00:34:39.820 It's just a classic cult thing.
00:34:41.700 Any group where people start changing their names, watch out, buddy.
00:34:45.780 But I remember a scene where a bunch of people were on the bus, and the cult members
00:34:50.800 had their genitals removed, because that was seen as a joke thing that a lot of cults
00:34:54.280 did, is that the cult members would have themselves castrated.
00:34:57.560 And that was seen as like a sign that you would join a cult.
00:35:00.480 Or the types of wording that I will put from the King of the Hill episode, that would be
00:35:04.600 seen as like a sign that you would join a cult.
00:35:06.760 And you should know when a group's talking like that, stay away from them, stay away
00:35:10.240 from them, stay away from them.
00:35:11.540 The clue that is the holy guide to living pure.
00:35:14.360 This will help explain.
00:35:15.480 First, we prepare our souls by stripping ourselves of all sexual desires.
00:35:26.820 Her name's Lorraine, too?
00:35:28.940 We're all Lorraine, and you will be Todd.
00:35:32.640 A name chosen especially for you by guilt.
00:35:36.360 Oh, you're an oppressed minority.
00:35:39.360 You're a cult!
00:35:43.740 Finally, stop!
00:35:44.760 But people don't know anymore.
00:35:46.600 They don't know, oh, there's this weird vegetarian group that tells me to hate my parents, and
00:35:51.320 that my parents have traumatized me.
00:35:52.920 They say that they're all about love and caring, and that they're the people who really care
00:35:57.240 about me.
00:35:57.920 This is not like the modern GSA.
00:36:01.560 And it didn't used to be like this.
00:36:03.180 Like, I was in the GSA thing in high school.
00:36:04.620 I supported it in high school.
00:36:06.360 It has been taken over by a cult.
00:36:07.760 We've entered Clown World Timeline, and it's different.
00:36:16.000 It's different.
00:36:17.140 People want to hear your thoughts, Simone.
00:36:19.800 Oh, by the way, anyone who's here is like, you're just trying to shill your book.
00:36:22.400 I'm sorry.
00:36:22.740 Our book is owned by a nonprofit and costs 99 cents in its e-book form.
00:36:26.300 And in its physical form, we have it literally the lowest margin.
00:36:29.860 Amazon will allow it to set it.
00:36:31.440 So no, we're not trying to make money.
00:36:34.020 We're not going to make any money.
00:36:35.260 And if you literally don't have 99 cents to spend on the book, just email us at partners
00:36:40.260 at pragmatistfoundation.com, and you'll get it for free.
00:36:43.140 So leave us a positive review, though.
00:36:44.700 I'd really appreciate that.
00:36:45.600 That would help a lot.
00:36:46.760 Yeah.
00:36:46.940 The more positive reviews we get, the more that we can get it in the Amazon algorithm,
00:36:51.280 which helps us a lot.
00:36:52.260 But Simone, I want to end with saying that the fans keep saying they want to hear you
00:36:55.600 talk more.
00:36:56.060 You're the smart one of the two of us.
00:36:57.600 All the fans think.
00:36:58.840 I hear it in the comments.
00:37:00.200 They go, Simone is the mastermind.
00:37:02.360 Why doesn't she talk more?
00:37:03.860 Go.
00:37:04.360 And I will explain that the audience thinks that I'm the mastermind or thinks that I'm
00:37:07.960 smart because I don't speak as much.
00:37:10.020 And I once read this book when I was a kid that was all about how to do corporate power
00:37:15.760 plays in the political world as a manly man who has wide shoulders.
00:37:21.080 And one of the big power plays was to basically never speak and just to look unimpressed and
00:37:28.300 lean back in your chair and be very pithy.
00:37:31.420 And I'm not intentionally doing that.
00:37:33.740 I just really think that what Malcolm has to say is far more interesting.
00:37:36.860 And I don't have a whole lot to add.
00:37:38.600 The role that I play in our relationship is I ask them questions.
00:37:41.540 And then often when Malcolm tries to explain herself himself or clarify what he's trying
00:37:45.620 to say, then he ends up coming up with some new idea that's even better.
00:37:49.860 Use my techniques and I don't care who you're negotiating against, you'll win.
00:37:55.900 You're going to wear dark colors with a single power accent.
00:37:59.420 Every hair in place, hair movement is a sign of weakness.
00:38:03.480 And whatever you do, don't speak first.
00:38:06.860 90% of negotiations are lost by the person who speaks first.
00:38:11.860 Because what is speaking a sign of?
00:38:17.280 Weakness?
00:38:17.900 You outfired.
00:38:21.200 So you've lost the initiative, perhaps by being a woman or a shorter man.
00:38:25.420 But you can regain it by fighting on your home turf.
00:38:29.120 I thought you might do that, which is why I'm going to be the first person to do power quiet
00:38:33.060 talking, forcing you to lean in and wonder if you're missing any key phrases, like an idiot.
00:38:38.280 I thought you'd try power quiet talking, which is why I'm wearing a hearing aid.
00:38:43.760 Still, mate.
00:38:44.660 So I do help him come up with better ideas and I do play an important role in the ideas
00:38:48.820 that we jointly generate, but it's only by asking dumb questions.
00:38:52.500 So don't let the fact that I don't speak a lot make you think that I am somehow this puppet
00:38:57.660 master or this mastermind or this very smart person.
00:39:01.100 It's just because when you don't hear someone talk, it's a whole lot easier to pedestalize
00:39:05.280 them.
00:39:05.640 It's a whole lot easier to assume that they're going to say something smart.
00:39:08.600 And then as soon as they open their mouths, they expose themselves to criticism.
00:39:12.040 They expose themselves to any sort of scrutiny that's going to reveal that they're imperfect.
00:39:18.340 That's what the puppet master would say.
00:39:20.220 No, no, it's not.
00:39:21.660 And I would say everyone who chooses to criticize you, Malcolm, for your whatever out there views
00:39:29.680 or be like, but this and then, and you missed this, or you're wrong about that.
00:39:33.200 Shut the fuck up.
00:39:34.000 And why don't you publish something yourself online?
00:39:36.220 Why don't you expose yourself to scrutiny?
00:39:38.140 So few people online post anything at all.
00:39:40.560 The people who have the balls to even leave a comment are doing something amazing, but just
00:39:44.580 keep in mind that so few people are willing to expose themselves to any scrutiny.
00:39:48.300 Most of the people who do bother to publish something online and expose themselves to
00:39:52.320 scrutiny are just repeating other people's ideas and not actually putting themselves out
00:39:56.440 there in the personal way.
00:39:58.160 And I really admire the fact, Malcolm, that you're doing that.
00:40:00.960 And I'm just reflecting on what you say and asking dumb questions.
00:40:03.520 You make my life easy.
00:40:04.660 You make my job on this podcast easy.
00:40:06.240 And you also do all the prep, all the editing, all the publishing.
00:40:09.320 So I'm grateful to you for that.
00:40:10.380 And I love you a lot.
00:40:10.940 I really like the point you made there that I would say.
00:40:13.780 The point that you're the smart one and know that I love you and you're pretty.
00:40:16.480 Put your ideas out there if you do want to criticize.
00:40:18.660 But if your ideas are just going along with what the urban monoculture thinks or what
00:40:23.220 your cultural group thinks, i.e.
00:40:25.020 like your average Presbyterian view or your average Catholic view, like you're not actually
00:40:30.640 moving anything forward.
00:40:31.800 Yeah, congratulations.
00:40:32.780 You've copied someone's notes.
00:40:34.180 You can't transcribe.
00:40:35.480 But it's not even really putting yourself out there because like you...
00:40:39.120 It wasn't your idea in the first place.
00:40:40.440 No, but what I mean is you have a preset community that's going to back you.
00:40:44.020 Like you don't have to feel uncomfortable with your beliefs or views if it's what some
00:40:49.200 large group that has a defensive mechanism thinks.
00:40:52.520 This is one of my criticisms of Fundy Fridays that we did recently is she has zero takes
00:40:56.900 that go in any way against the urban monoculture.
00:40:59.700 Yes, she goes around criticizing people, but it's with the backing of this giant institutional
00:41:04.080 system where she just refuses to have unique takes.
00:41:08.200 And a note to self here, when Simone is talking, I want to have the Jack Donaghy negotiation
00:41:12.740 advice scene play because he does one about being quiet.
00:41:16.180 Oh, he does?
00:41:17.040 It's such a thing.
00:41:18.060 I can't remember this book that I read.
00:41:19.480 I got it from the library.
00:41:20.620 It was back when I'd walked down library aisles and I had free time and I would just choose
00:41:24.000 books that looked interesting.
00:41:25.320 God, it was so much fun.
00:41:27.120 And it's such a thing.
00:41:28.960 And it's so stupid.
00:41:30.760 It's so stupid.
00:41:31.740 I've got to, I've got to, but the audience doesn't want to hear an explanation of why
00:41:35.780 you're not talking.
00:41:36.400 They want to hear you engage with this subject.
00:41:37.660 So talk about the therapizing of kids.
00:41:40.340 What's going on with this and the dangers of therapy in a modern context.
00:41:43.960 What are your thoughts on this topic, on this study?
00:41:48.180 God, you've just been so articulate in talking about it.
00:41:50.280 I will say that my personal experience with therapy as a kid was that it did not resolve
00:41:56.900 my depression, that at one point I tried to convince my father that instead of paying
00:42:01.320 $60 an hour for a therapist, it was someone who's nice.
00:42:06.040 It just, I didn't find it to be particularly helpful that he should just pay me $60 an hour
00:42:10.600 and I'll just stop acting so sad.
00:42:12.440 That is the most baller based as F move for an adolescent girl who is feeling depression
00:42:22.260 and it was like, I am depressed, but I realized I can get undepressed for $60 an hour.
00:42:27.540 Yeah.
00:42:27.940 That's what you're paying.
00:42:29.180 Shit.
00:42:29.600 Like you got it.
00:42:31.120 I'll put it right in order.
00:42:33.160 But then ultimately my own dad came up with the solution, for example, that cured my extremely
00:42:39.420 dangerous eating disorder where I just was losing and losing weight.
00:42:43.140 Like I'm five, eight and a half and I weighed under a hundred pounds at one point and that's
00:42:45.980 pretty unhealthy.
00:42:47.320 And he just figured out that if I could actually control that for me, it was about control and
00:42:52.620 that if I could weigh and measure all of my food and I had to balance calories and then
00:42:55.780 calories out, I would be able to feel like I still had control and not die maybe.
00:43:00.320 And so I just, I think that parents should not underestimate the extent to which they can
00:43:06.680 look at their children and come up with solutions to their problems.
00:43:11.120 And you've done this a lot.
00:43:12.900 Like you had this revelation a couple of weeks ago where you were like, you know what?
00:43:16.200 We need to stop thinking about what society assumes our kids want for birthday parties,
00:43:21.220 for going to bed, for activities and look at what they say they want and look at what they
00:43:26.300 react to and just build custom solutions for them.
00:43:29.080 And each of our kids need something a little different.
00:43:31.120 And sometimes they're pretty counterintuitive.
00:43:33.080 And I really admire the fact that you said that.
00:43:35.020 And I'll point out that the other major sources of my depression and my, especially like behavior
00:43:40.780 that was maladaptive was in response to a school environment or a lifestyle that really
00:43:47.020 didn't work for me.
00:43:48.100 And that in many cases, the best thing you can do as a parent is try to find the source
00:43:53.420 of the issue.
00:43:54.080 A therapist is not going to change the fact that your kid, for example, is just really
00:43:59.160 not dealing well with your school schedule or that their homeroom teacher is just terrible
00:44:04.680 and hates them, makes their lives miserable every day.
00:44:07.500 A lot of the people who've left comments on the YouTube video that you made on just how
00:44:12.760 bad is daycare and also other YouTube videos you've done on the schooling system, they've
00:44:16.120 pointed out how, oh, my kid would come home with dark circles under his eyes.
00:44:19.640 He would have tantrums.
00:44:20.860 My kid had huge anxiety.
00:44:21.840 And then as soon as we moved them to homeschool.
00:44:23.720 So I would say, trust yourself as a parent, listen to your kid and consider changing their
00:44:28.160 environment and surroundings.
00:44:29.060 And that's probably going to handle 90 plus percent of your kid's mental illness problems,
00:44:35.520 even like serious chemical depression, which is what I was experiencing.
00:44:39.060 I never actually went on antidepressants.
00:44:41.380 I only ever experienced lifestyle changes that significantly evaporated my depression that
00:44:49.460 was very serious and in some cases life-threatening.
00:44:52.420 So that's what I'll add.
00:44:53.460 When you went to therapy as a kid, and that was a great addition, by the way, did they
00:44:58.860 do trauma-based therapy?
00:45:00.400 Were they like, look for trauma in your childhood?
00:45:02.480 No.
00:45:02.940 My therapist was a family friend of my parents.
00:45:05.740 So I think they trusted her, who had primarily stopped practicing and become like a poet.
00:45:13.500 That's good that you were in this sort of last wave of non-trauma-based therapy.
00:45:17.400 Yeah.
00:45:17.580 And this is what people should also note, in terms of like when to nope out, the moment
00:45:22.360 somebody starts talking about trauma, they're trying to brainwash.
00:45:24.680 And she was definitely, so she came from the old school, which I guess now would be seen
00:45:28.740 as mansplaining, right?
00:45:30.080 Like the new philosophy is don't address grievances like a man in a relationship where the woman
00:45:36.320 shows up and she's like, oh, my day was so bad.
00:45:38.180 And he's like, why don't you do this to solve the problem?
00:45:39.800 Why don't you do that?
00:45:40.400 He's supposed to just listen and say, oh, that was so horrible.
00:45:44.020 Oh gosh, I understand.
00:45:45.300 Oh, huh, huh, huh.
00:45:46.180 And that's what therapy has become.
00:45:48.540 Whereas she was at old school therapy, which was more mansplaining.
00:45:51.880 Like I would talk about how like I had these huge like contagion fears and I couldn't touch
00:45:55.220 people.
00:45:55.520 And she's like, what's the worst thing that would happen if someone touched you?
00:45:57.880 Maybe tried it?
00:45:58.820 Like, and that was pretty great.
00:46:00.760 It didn't solve my problems because I still just had this really intense stress.
00:46:04.900 And you still have that.
00:46:06.020 It did solve her problems for anyone who has these sorts of problems.
00:46:09.200 Understanding that those are her limitations and then building systems around them, even though
00:46:14.360 they make her look weird.
00:46:15.540 Which is what my dad eventually did for me.
00:46:17.420 And which is what you helped to expand by being like, it's okay.
00:46:20.200 And also I loved your mom's motto.
00:46:22.520 Like again, and I've mentioned this on other podcasts, but I knew that I could be okay in
00:46:26.980 your family.
00:46:27.720 When your mom told me on a phone call that one of the family mottos was, I'm not okay.
00:46:32.960 You're not okay.
00:46:34.060 And that's okay.
00:46:35.680 Essentially saying we're all fucked up in this family.
00:46:38.500 Don't worry about it.
00:46:39.820 You're still welcome here.
00:46:40.920 I don't have to like the way that you have to weigh all your food when we go to fancy
00:46:44.220 restaurants.
00:46:44.860 Yes, it's going to be embarrassing, but whatever.
00:46:46.580 It's not that big of a deal.
00:46:47.780 I'd rather have you be there.
00:46:48.900 But I think that that was the thing that got you through it.
00:46:52.100 It was realizing you didn't need to worry about other people's judgments at fancy restaurants.
00:46:56.280 Yeah.
00:46:56.480 Like it's not okay, but also screw it.
00:46:59.020 Do it anyway.
00:47:00.220 Or realizing that it's okay for you to ask me for personal space that I don't enter.
00:47:04.740 You know, that is fine.
00:47:05.920 It is okay for you to ask me, don't touch you when you're eating.
00:47:08.140 Well, like it's not okay, but sometimes not okay is going to have to be okay.
00:47:12.200 No, it is okay.
00:47:13.280 The point I'm making is that there are certain fights to have and certain fights not to have.
00:47:17.760 Yeah.
00:47:18.060 Choose your hill to die on for sure.
00:47:19.860 Pick your battles.
00:47:20.340 The way to focus of that is this podcast.
00:47:21.720 We have a lot of new viewers and they don't know why we're in separate rooms in the same house.
00:47:25.700 Simone is autistic.
00:47:26.740 You can explain why are we in separate rooms.
00:47:29.340 Yeah.
00:47:29.660 I really can't think straight when I'm around other people.
00:47:33.560 I guess infants don't count because there's still so much a part of my body, but yeah,
00:47:37.860 if we're actually going to have intellectual conversations, we're going to do it far more
00:47:40.820 effectively if I'm not making eye contact with a person, if I'm not in the room, like literally
00:47:46.520 I'm not even making eye contact with Malcolm on our, on stream yard right now.
00:47:50.800 I am watching an Instagram reel of a Japanese chef cutting tonkatsu again and again on a loop.
00:47:59.120 And then that's how we get mental efficiency from her.
00:48:01.940 And people are like, but that's weird.
00:48:03.700 And it's like, but it works.
00:48:05.300 Yeah.
00:48:05.680 And I think when you are okay, so much of what we're doing, people are like, don't do that.
00:48:10.300 That's a weird thing to do.
00:48:11.720 And it's like, yeah, but why is it bad?
00:48:14.240 It would be bad for me for X, Y, and Z.
00:48:17.060 And it's like, yeah, but we're not you.
00:48:18.860 Yeah.
00:48:19.300 Why is it bad for us?
00:48:21.280 And I think that this is how you really power through as well is one, take control of your
00:48:25.460 emotional states.
00:48:26.040 And two, recognize your limits and build your lifestyle around those limits while respecting
00:48:31.320 the limits of your partner, looking for the actual things.
00:48:35.200 Like if something's just unreasonable, everything, the trigger to someone, then you're like, you
00:48:38.640 just have to get over that.
00:48:40.000 That's the way you are with like going to parties.
00:48:41.640 Like it is a nightmare for you, but sometimes you just have to do it.
00:48:45.580 And I'm like, you don't have a choice.
00:48:47.340 You'll come to me and you'll be like, do I have permission to not go to this?
00:48:49.520 And I often say, no, you don't have permission to not go to this.
00:48:51.520 So yeah, absolutely.
00:48:53.320 What was another thing that we've seen recently was, I don't know.
00:48:56.580 Anyway, I just love you to death.
00:48:57.920 I love that we have found systems that work for us.
00:49:01.000 And I would encourage other people to search for systems that look for them and stay out
00:49:06.940 of the psychology industry.
00:49:08.760 For people who want to hear more on how psychology has become a cult, look up our video, has psychology
00:49:14.420 become a cult or our video to be sad is to send or our video, the trauma conspiracy.
00:49:20.780 All of which deal with this topic or aspects of this topic in a lot more detail.
00:49:26.080 Yeah.
00:49:26.600 Yeah.
00:49:26.940 Stop taking Tylenol and just avoid walking on beds of nails.
00:49:32.560 So love you.
00:49:34.400 Love you too.
00:49:37.040 Okay.
00:49:37.600 I'm going to go downstairs and start shredding that chicken for taco night.
00:49:40.940 Do you remember to re-up the slow cooker?
00:49:43.640 Re-up?
00:49:44.460 Yeah.
00:49:44.860 I did it at like 2 p.m.
00:49:46.700 Great.
00:49:48.520 I love you.
00:49:49.680 I love you too.
00:49:51.060 You're perfect.
00:49:52.280 No, you're perfecter.
00:49:54.240 You're perfecter.
00:49:55.540 The perfect dust.
00:49:57.260 I love you so much.
00:49:59.000 You are just too gay.
00:50:01.040 I'm gay for Malcolm.
00:50:02.600 That's the dream.
00:50:04.020 Love you, Sadat.
00:50:04.880 Love you too.
00:50:05.440 I'll see you downstairs.