The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2109 - Abigail Shrier

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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00:00:12.000 Hello, Abigail.

00:00:13.000 Good to see you again.

00:00:14.000 It's great to see you.

00:00:16.000 What was it like the last time you did the show?

00:00:21.000 Well, they tried to kick it off Spotify.

00:00:25.000 Yeah, it was a very small, noisy group of people, by the way.

00:00:28.000 It wasn't the head people.

00:00:31.000 They tried to make it seem like there was this big movement to get it kicked off Spotify.

00:00:35.000 But when you examine what you were saying, and, you know, many more people are saying what you were saying.

00:00:43.000 This was like, what year was this when you were on?

00:00:45.000 2020. 2020. Yeah.

00:00:48.000 It sort of just started boiling.

00:00:50.000 Yeah.

00:00:51.000 You know, and now, four years later, there's a lot of people pushing back.

00:00:55.000 That's right.

00:00:56.000 And honestly, I thought you were going to never have me on your show again.

00:01:00.000 Why?

00:01:00.000 Because, you know, it was very, I mean, they had 10 meetings with the employees demanding that it be removed.

00:01:06.000 I thought, Joe's going to be so mad at me.

00:01:09.000 No, they're wrong.

00:01:11.000 They're wrong.

00:01:12.000 Every time someone wants to stop discussions, they're wrong.

00:01:16.000 They're wrong.

00:01:17.000 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.

00:01:29.000 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.

00:01:38.000 And they're using terms like life-saving, gender-affirming care instead of castration and removing breasts and hormones. 0.67

00:01:48.000 It's a very, very strange time.

00:01:50.000 So I'm glad we had that podcast and I would have a hundred more of them.

00:01:54.000 Great.

00:01:54.000 I think it's very important to talk about this and I think there's too many people that are scared to talk about it and that's why this stuff is getting so much traction.

00:02:02.000 And it's scary.

00:02:03.000 It's scary.

00:02:04.000 It's scary that people aren't willing to Admit that children are very easily influenced.

00:02:10.000 That's right.

00:02:10.000 I think that's the scariest thing of all, that people are afraid to just say the truth.

00:02:15.000 Yeah.

00:02:16.000 And that's not a good world because we can fix most problems if we can talk about them.

00:02:21.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:02:22.000 And that's my position on anyone trying to stop you from talking about things.

00:02:27.000 Yeah.

00:02:27.000 You know, they're wrong.

00:02:29.000 It's not the way to do it.

00:02:31.000 It's definitely not the American way. 0.79

00:02:33.000 And it's not the way we've ever solved problems in this country.

00:02:36.000 And it's a bad thing when you can't be honest about things.

00:02:40.000 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.

00:02:45.000 So they'd like to bully them into silence.

00:02:47.000 They like to scare them into silence.

00:02:49.000 They like to...

00:02:49.000 Get them cancelled.

00:02:50.000 And, you know, before Elon purchased Twitter, you used to be able to do that much more effectively.

00:02:57.000 What?

00:02:58.000 The silencing?

00:02:58.000 Yeah, the silencing was so easy.

00:03:01.000 That's right.

00:03:01.000 I mean, look, Megan Murphy was kicked off of Twitter for years.

00:03:06.000 That's right.

00:03:07.000 Just for saying a man is never a woman.

00:03:09.000 That's right.

00:03:10.000 And look, I mean, there's no question, I think, that Elon taking over Twitter broke open the monopoly on a lot of conversations.

00:03:17.000 I do think that had that effect.

00:03:19.000 Yeah.

00:03:38.000 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.

00:03:51.000 Well, the really scary thing is when you see these de-transitioners get attacked. 1.00

00:03:57.000 That's terrifying.

00:03:58.000 That's terrifying because that's just so – it's so cruel.

00:04:04.000 The complete lack of compassion for someone that's done, as the title of your book, Irreversal Damage to their life.

00:04:12.000 Forever.

00:04:13.000 They'll never have children again.

00:04:15.000 They'll never have breasts again. 1.00

00:04:16.000 And the fact that this is just a part of this bizarre cult that a giant swath of our population is consumed by right now.

00:04:29.000 That's right.

00:04:29.000 And they didn't let detransitioners be part of the story.

00:04:33.000 That there was a growing number of these women who were regretting their transition.

00:04:37.000 And they were brave enough to speak up.

00:04:40.000 And that took real courage.

00:04:41.000 Because they're talking about their own experience, their own damage to their own bodies.

00:04:45.000 I mean, they were the most courageous of all.

00:04:47.000 And they were treated horribly by the activists.

00:04:52.000 Yeah.

00:04:52.000 Yeah, it's so dark.

00:04:53.000 Like, you don't want to think that people can make mistakes.

00:04:57.000 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?

00:05:04.000 That's insane.

00:05:06.000 Right.

00:05:06.000 You think that everybody who goes through surgery to remove parts of their body because they feel like they're in the wrong gen, you think all those people are going to be happy?

00:05:18.000 That's insanity.

00:05:19.000 Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, like a religion in the sense of the fundamentalism of belief against all evidence to the contrary.

00:05:27.000 I mean, these people believed this on faith.

00:05:30.000 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.

00:05:38.000 Well, finally now the New York Times is on board though, which is really interesting.

00:05:43.000 It is, isn't it?

00:05:43.000 I saw someone commenting on Twitter, and I think they're probably correct, and they said this is because the trial lawyers are involved now.

00:05:51.000 And I think they're correct.

00:05:52.000 I think this is why the New York Times has kind of shifted sides, because I think they realize the lawsuits are coming.

00:06:00.000 And once a few of them are successful, and they will be, it's going to get crazy.

00:06:06.000 Well, I think that is a part of it, 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 and the multiple personality disorder,

00:06:22.000 all these people who thought they had repressed memory of various kinds of harm and were imagining childhood molestation that didn't happen.

00:06:33.000 Are you talking about the satanic stuff?

00:06:35.000 Yeah, from the 80s.

00:06:37.000 I think that got reversed through lawsuits in part because they weren't following clear medical, clear protocols of their profession.

00:06:46.000 The problem with the gender, going after the gender regime through the courts, and I'm in favor of it, don't get me wrong. 1.00

00:06:53.000 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. 0.98

00:07:10.000 They were actually following affirmative care, which was the official protocol.

00:07:13.000 So I just...

00:07:15.000 Which is crazy.

00:07:15.000 It's crazy.

00:07:16.000 It's crazy.

00:07:17.000 It's so crazy that...

00:07:18.000 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, but yet we'll let them in this case.

00:07:30.000 That's right.

00:07:33.000 It's so nuts.

00:07:35.000 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.

00:07:43.000 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,

00:08:00.000 had some depression, encouraging her down this road as the solution.

00:08:04.000 Yeah.

00:08:04.000 But it's also not recognizing what we know about what happens to people when they give them testosterone.

00:08:12.000 So testosterone alleviates anxiety.

00:08:14.000 Testosterone creates a feeling of euphoria.

00:08:17.000 Right.

00:08:17.000 Especially when you give it to someone in doses that their body would never normally have.

00:08:23.000 That's right.

00:08:24.000 That's right.

00:08:25.000 And so the girls would go on it, and they would feel great, and they would become evangelists for testosterone. 1.00

00:08:30.000 They would tell all their friends, you've got to do this.

00:08:32.000 I feel great.

00:08:33.000 All my anxiety is gone.

00:08:34.000 Of course, now they may have a permanent 5 o'clock shadow.

00:08:39.000 Change of their voice.

00:08:40.000 Change of their voice.

00:08:41.000 When they detransition, that never goes away.

00:08:43.000 Yeah, it's very dark.

00:08:45.000 It's very dark and I would have never imagined this.

00:08:48.000 I would have never imagined that.

00:08:50.000 Before COVID, I had a completely different opinion of the medical establishment.

00:08:54.000 My opinion of the medical establishment is that they were there to help people.

00:08:58.000 That's it.

00:08:58.000 I never questioned it.

00:09:00.000 I questioned the motives of some of the pharmaceutical drug companies that were trying to sell drugs.

00:09:04.000 But I felt like the medical establishment always figured that out eventually and then they banned those drugs, the ones that were harmful.

00:09:12.000 But that's not real.

00:09:14.000 That's not really what happens.

00:09:15.000 It's a money game.

00:09:16.000 The whole thing is a money and influence game and it's run by very powerful people.

00:09:20.000 And no one wants to think that those same factors are at play when it comes to gender transition. 0.92

00:09:28.000 But, you know, I've shown people the map of gender transition clinics in 2007 versus gender transition clinics in 2023 and it's fucking insane. 0.95

00:09:40.000 It's insane. 0.95

00:09:41.000 Yeah.

00:09:42.000 Hundreds and hundreds of new gender clinics all across the country.

00:09:45.000 You know, the industry expanded so rapidly with very little oversight.

00:09:52.000 And it was just how fast could we get these drugs to these kids?

00:09:56.000 Yeah.

00:09:57.000 So, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.

00:09:59.000 There wasn't enough oversight, but there also weren't enough good people speaking up.

00:10:04.000 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.

00:10:10.000 They said, why don't you, you know, let me refer you to a specialist.

00:10:13.000 Well, actually, the gender surgeons often, you know, weren't even, you know, adequate to the task because it's very, very complicated surgery, you know, involving, you know, transferring peripheral nerves and whatnot.

00:10:25.000 So it's not easy surgery, depending on which surgery you're talking about.

00:10:30.000 Very often they weren't even the most qualified surgeons doing the surgery, so you had a lot of, you know, surgeries that didn't go quite right.

00:10:37.000 Well, none of them go quite right.

00:10:39.000 I mean, that's what's dark about it. 1.00

00:10:41.000 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. 1.00

00:10:52.000 This is not like heart surgery. 0.99

00:10:56.000 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.

00:11:04.000 The whole thing is very twisted.

00:11:06.000 Yeah, the rates of, you know, all kinds of things going wrong. 0.93

00:11:10.000 I mean, you know, if you talk about the creation of the neophallus, the ones that take a vagina to make something like a penis, the number, you know, getting it to, you know, urine to go in a stream as opposed to a spray. 0.88

00:11:27.000 Or making it so that the person can have an erection, then a strong enough erection to actually penetrate. 0.99

00:11:31.000 These all require separate surgeries very often.

00:11:35.000 Very often it doesn't go quite right, and there's all kinds of complications with the surgeries.

00:11:40.000 I mean, I've talked to people who've been really butchered.

00:11:43.000 So, again, what was it like for you?

00:11:47.000 When you wrote that book, did you expect the kind of blowback that you experienced?

00:11:51.000 What did you expect when you wrote the book?

00:11:54.000 Obviously, you felt the need to express this and you felt the need to share this information because you recognize that there's this contagion, this social contagion that seems to be happening.

00:12:06.000 It's a big part of what's going on.

00:12:08.000 And a lot of these kids are very easily influenced.

00:12:11.000 A lot of them are on the spectrum, and they're being led down this road.

00:12:14.000 So you write this book.

00:12:16.000 What did you expect was going to be the reaction to it?

00:12:19.000 Well, most books get very little attention at all.

00:12:22.000 So most books write...

00:12:24.000 I certainly didn't expect the massive reaction that I got.

00:12:30.000 I mean, the...

00:12:31.000 Public campaign to ban me from every possible outlet was so hypercharged.

00:12:37.000 And to some extent, it was successful.

00:12:39.000 I mean, they kept the book on Amazon.

00:12:41.000 It was deleted from Target.

00:12:42.000 You can't find it in a public library in America, no matter how many people try to donate it to their libraries.

00:12:49.000 So, to some extent, it was successful.

00:12:51.000 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, people got it.

00:13:01.000 Parents got it.

00:13:03.000 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.

00:13:18.000 If you don't do exactly what I say and let them transition now. 0.51

00:13:21.000 This lie was the prevailing narrative and I think I was able to break through and I think that's what made people so angry.

00:13:30.000 That lie falls apart under scrutiny when you look at the suicide rates of people that are trans.

00:13:34.000 Right.

00:13:34.000 There's actually a new study out of Finland showing that, a really good long-term study, I think it came out maybe just this week, showing that the rates when you control for other mental health issues, the rates of suicide among those with gender dysphoria,

00:13:50.000 the discomfort with the biological sex, the rates of suicide are no higher than for the general population.

00:13:59.000 That's crazy.

00:14:01.000 Your new book, Bad Therapy, Why Kids Aren't Growing Up.

00:14:06.000 Yes.

00:14:06.000 What's wrong with therapy?

00:14:08.000 What are they doing wrong?

00:14:09.000 You know, they're giving it to kids who aren't sick, who aren't actually struggling with mental illness or disorder.

00:14:16.000 They're giving it to everybody.

00:14:18.000 So what they're doing is they're making existing problems worse and they're introducing new problems because therapy has side effects.

00:14:27.000 Just like any intervention that has the power to help, it also has the power to harm.

00:14:32.000 In what way?

00:14:33.000 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.

00:14:51.000 All those are well-known iatrogenic effects.

00:14:54.000 Once you have a mental diagnosis, the labeling, feeling limited by that label.

00:14:59.000 Oh, I have anxiety.

00:15:00.000 I can't.

00:15:01.000 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.

00:15:11.000 And we know that, of course, drugs and surgeries always come with, even the life-saving ones can come with some harm.

00:15:19.000 And what people might not know is that therapy comes with these risks as well.

00:15:23.000 So is this your opinion on therapy in general?

00:15:27.000 Do you think there's a place for therapy?

00:15:28.000 Absolutely.

00:15:29.000 But I guess the big picture theme here is that therapy with kids and teens is totally different for therapy with an adult, right?

00:15:39.000 An adult sits down.

00:15:40.000 First of all, an adult makes the decision on their own.

00:15:43.000 You know, I really want to work on this.

00:15:45.000 I'm going to go to a therapist.

00:15:46.000 And you get the patient buy-in, and they're ready to do the hard work of therapy.

00:15:50.000 But a child or teenager is usually strong-armed into therapy, so they don't want to be there in the first place.

00:15:55.000 But more importantly, you know, they can't say as easily to a therapist, listen, I don't really think...

00:16:03.000 I think I gave you the wrong impression.

00:16:04.000 I don't think I would call my mom emotionally abusive.

00:16:07.000 Or...

00:16:08.000 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. It's harder for a kid to say that because they don't have the life experience behind them to know that.

00:16:22.000 And they don't know if they're getting better as easily.

00:16:24.000 An adult can say, you know, I've been seeing this therapist for three years.

00:16:28.000 You know, my depression's as bad as it ever was.

00:16:30.000 It's just not working.

00:16:31.000 And move on.

00:16:32.000 Maybe find a different therapist.

00:16:33.000 It's much harder for a teenager to know that.

00:16:36.000 Yeah, I have never been in therapy, although a lot of people told me I should.

00:16:41.000 But they all are in therapy, and it doesn't seem to be helping. 0.99

00:16:44.000 But the people that I know that are in therapy, the ones that are in therapy regularly, are the most fucked up. 0.99

00:16:50.000 And I don't see improvement. 1.00

00:16:52.000 I don't...

00:16:54.000 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.

00:17:07.000 And there's something about going to a therapist and talking about yourself constantly and your problems constantly that sort of reinforces this self-indulgent.

00:17:19.000 And that's what can lead depression to get worse, sadness to get worse.

00:17:22.000 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.

00:17:33.000 And I think that's what we're seeing.

00:17:34.000 But what about the good therapists?

00:17:36.000 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?

00:17:44.000 So if you're struggling with a condition of some sort, a phobia, anorexia, OCD, you know, any number of problems that you want to deal with, therapy can be great.

00:17:56.000 Cognitive behavioral therapy especially can be great.

00:17:59.000 But if you go, if you're a teen or kid who shows up bummed out, Or just generally kind of anxious.

00:18:08.000 To a therapist, you have a good shot of having that problem made worse.

00:18:14.000 But why is that?

00:18:16.000 What is it about going to therapy with that problem that's going to make it worse?

00:18:21.000 Because you're going to sit and talk about your worries regularly.

00:18:25.000 They're not going to say, you know that exercise is amazing for depression?

00:18:29.000 Study after study.

00:18:30.000 In fact, there have been recent studies showing it's better than antidepressants for a lot of, you know, 1.25%.

00:18:38.000 I mean, it's amazing, right?

00:18:40.000 Oh, excuse me.

00:18:41.000 One and a quarter, like one times better.

00:18:44.000 Right.

00:18:45.000 Dancing is apparently amazing for low mood.

00:18:49.000 Now, I'm not talking about severe major depressive disorder, okay?

00:18:53.000 When you have severe chronic depression, you may need to treat it with medication or therapy.

00:18:58.000 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.

00:19:08.000 But let me give you an example of a teenager I talked to.

00:19:11.000 So I talked to this girl, Becca, is what I call her in the book.

00:19:14.000 But she was a high school senior, and she had been in therapy since age six, okay, when her parents divorced.

00:19:20.000 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.

00:19:29.000 So I asked her as a high school senior, so what are you working on with your therapist now?

00:19:33.000 And she said to me, my therapist is getting me ready to make friends in college.

00:19:38.000 She's helping me.

00:19:39.000 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.

00:19:45.000 That gives me anxiety just thinking about it.

00:19:48.000 Somebody coaching me to go make friends is like, what?

00:19:52.000 Right.

00:19:52.000 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.

00:20:02.000 They're in their heads all the time.

00:20:05.000 And what motivated you to write this book?

00:20:08.000 Do you have personal experiences with people that are going through this?

00:20:12.000 Well, two things.

00:20:14.000 One is I'm raising three kids in this generation, 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?

00:20:29.000 And why were they so afraid to grow up?

00:20:31.000 And we shouldn't see that.

00:20:33.000 They should be the picture of wellness.

00:20:35.000 Nobody worried about anybody's mental health more than we worried about their mental health.

00:20:38.000 And yet they're the picture of despair.

00:20:41.000 So I really wanted to know what was going on with them.

00:20:45.000 And also, of course, I had written Irreversible Damage.

00:20:47.000 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...

00:20:56.000 It was with a therapist.

00:20:58.000 And here's the thing.

00:20:59.000 It wasn't necessarily a gender therapist.

00:21:01.000 Most often, it was just your vanilla psychodynamic therapist who was there to talk to an anxious or depressed little bummed out teen, you know, mildly depressed teen about their bad feelings.

00:21:13.000 And lo and behold, during the course of, you know, regular psychodynamic therapy, they would say, and what are your feelings on gender?

00:21:20.000 And with the therapist, they would go down that route.

00:21:27.000 Wow.

00:21:29.000 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.

00:21:35.000 Absolutely.

00:21:36.000 Absolutely.

00:21:36.000 Social media is a huge part of the story.

00:21:40.000 There's no question.

00:21:41.000 I wrote about it in the first book, and 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 – extracting kids from their social world is bad.

00:21:55.000 Yeah.

00:21:56.000 And getting them – making them – getting the dopamine hit and the anxious worry about who's going to write me back and when and then getting the dopamine hit when they get that response and that whole cycle.

00:22:10.000 There's no question that plays on our natural sort of propensities for addiction and makes kids more anxious.

00:22:19.000 But I think it's part of what we're seeing.

00:22:22.000 I don't think it's the whole story.

00:22:26.000 And the reason I don't think it's the whole story is a few things.

00:22:30.000 First of all, childhood mental health and adolescent mental health has been in precipitous decline in this country since the 1950s.

00:22:38.000 How do they measure that?

00:22:40.000 By every measure, by the way.

00:22:43.000 But let's say between 1955 and 1988, the rates of adolescent suicide quadrupled.

00:22:50.000 So that's just one measure, but there are many.

00:22:52.000 I mean, we've seen it from non-suicidal self-harm, suicidal self-harm.

00:22:56.000 All of these rates have gone up for adolescents.

00:22:58.000 But they've been in decline for—mental health of teens has been in decline for years.

00:23:04.000 There's also some other statistics or some other reasons.

00:23:07.000 I don't think phones explain the whole story.

00:23:09.000 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, between the ages of two and eight, one in six kids had a mental health or behavioral diagnosis.

00:23:25.000 That's a lot of kids.

00:23:27.000 That's a lot of kids with a mental health diagnosis, right?

00:23:31.000 Do you think that it factors parents with mental health issues?

00:23:34.000 And there's, I think, more adults are anxious.

00:23:38.000 More adults are suffering from anxiety and depression, at least diagnosed anxiety and depression, now than ever before.

00:23:45.000 I think adults are absolutely passing on their anxiety to their kids.

00:23:50.000 And actually, we're seeing that in, you know, Jean Twenge came out with this book, Generations.

00:23:55.000 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.

00:24:08.000 So why should that be?

00:24:09.000 We know the girls are on social media more, right?

00:24:12.000 Boys, you know, that's not their thing, right?

00:24:15.000 They're into video games or whatever.

00:24:17.000 But I think part of the reason is what you said.

00:24:21.000 There are certain families that are passing on anxiety about things like climate change.

00:24:25.000 But I also think it shows that it's in the environment we're giving them.

00:24:29.000 We're not giving kids a healthy life, right?

00:24:32.000 Right?

00:24:33.000 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.

00:24:40.000 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,

00:24:55.000 countries like Japan and Israel.

00:24:57.000 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,

00:25:14.000 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.

00:25:25.000 So that's an interesting statistic that you were saying.

00:25:29.000 So conservative families have less depressed kids?

00:25:34.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:25:36.000 Apparently, boys from liberal families have higher anxiety rates than girls from conservative families.

00:25:44.000 But if you just looked at the norm, more girls generally have anxiety. 0.97

00:25:51.000 Right.

00:25:52.000 But in conservative families, girls are less anxious than boys from liberal families.

00:25:59.000 That's right.

00:26:01.000 And I mean we could speculate as to why.

00:26:03.000 There are lots of proposed reasons for that.

00:26:06.000 But one of the many things that we might – first of all, we know it's in the environment at that point.

00:26:11.000 It's not an organic – whatever these kids are going through, it's not organic, right?

00:26:15.000 So we know it's something we're pouring into their life.

00:26:17.000 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.

00:26:29.000 We've known for generations now that authoritative parenting, meaning not cold parenting, not cruel, not unloving, but rules.

00:26:37.000 Those kids have better mental health, they're happier, and they're more successful in all kinds of ways.

00:26:42.000 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.

00:26:51.000 So what is the speculation as to why rules alleviate anxiety?

00:26:56.000 Is it because there's structure?

00:26:59.000 There's more structure to the world, so things seem less open-ended and less chaotic?

00:27:05.000 That's right.

00:27:06.000 I think it's something to do with that.

00:27:07.000 Kids need guardrails. 0.81

00:27:08.000 They know they're not ready to be in charge.

00:27:11.000 You know, parents today are so quick to put kids in charge.

00:27:13.000 What do you want?

00:27:14.000 Where would you like to go to school?

00:27:16.000 What would you like to eat for dinner?

00:27:17.000 You know, putting kids in charge.

00:27:19.000 But we've known since the 1960s, Diana Bomeran 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.

00:27:29.000 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 knows there are guardrails.

00:27:43.000 And here's the thing, the people who are making the rules aren't some expert mom hired.

00:27:48.000 They're the people who love me most.

00:27:50.000 They're my parents.

00:27:51.000 They're the ones in charge.

00:27:53.000 I think that's really comforting to kids.

00:27:56.000 That's interesting because that's not what people think of when they think of authoritative parents.

00:28:04.000 They think of parents that are restricting their children and the children are going to rebel.

00:28:09.000 That's right.

00:28:09.000 I mean, there's a lot of really good research on this, but it actually doesn't create more rebellious kids.

00:28:15.000 By virtually every metric, they do much better in all kinds of circumstances.

00:28:21.000 And in all kinds of situations and the permissive – what they used to have was permissive parents and authoritarian parents.

00:28:28.000 Those were the other two extremes.

00:28:29.000 Permissive parents let kids do whatever they wanted and authoritarian parents said obey at all costs and they were fairly cold.

00:28:36.000 And their kids didn't end up great in terms of mental health.

00:28:39.000 But here's – but today we don't even have permissive parents in my view.

00:28:46.000 I think we have something even worse.

00:28:47.000 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.

00:28:56.000 They're hovering and surveilling their kids.

00:28:59.000 And so it's permissive without the independence.

00:29:05.000 Yeah.

00:29:05.000 That's a weird one, right?

00:29:07.000 Like the Snap Maps and stuff where you're following your kids everywhere on Snapchat.

00:29:11.000 They're surveilling them.

00:29:12.000 These kids have no independence.

00:29:14.000 They have no space for mom or dad and it's not doing them any good.

00:29:20.000 Why do you think it is that things have moved in this general direction?

00:29:27.000 Like, why do you think it is that more parents are seeking psychotherapy for their children and that it's having this negative effect?

00:29:37.000 So I think, you know, I'm at the tail end of Gen X, 1978 was the year I was born.

00:29:43.000 And I think with my, you know, we were the high watermark of divorce.

00:29:46.000 And I think a lot of, you know, teenagers who grew up when I did, they felt like, you know, my parents were divorced.

00:29:53.000 They weren't there for me.

00:29:54.000 I wish I had had someone I could talk to.

00:29:56.000 And so they sort of naively, and they had good experiences in therapy.

00:29:59.000 And they sort of naively, you know, watched Good Will Hunting and they thought, you know, therapy is good for everyone.

00:30:05.000 And they sort of naively turned their kids over to a mental health expert right away.

00:30:10.000 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 their life, even routine events.

00:30:20.000 And yeah, look, having your grandparents die is very sad, but that's not – A unexpected trauma that's part of life, right?

00:30:30.000 And signing up your kid with a therapist might help if they're having a real problem, but it could also introduce other problems.

00:30:40.000 And I think that's what we're seeing.

00:30:42.000 Yeah, there's a reluctance to let children experience discomfort.

00:30:47.000 Right.

00:30:48.000 Exactly.

00:30:48.000 Yeah.

00:30:49.000 Exactly.

00:30:50.000 And that's really the only way you learn.

00:30:52.000 You have to...

00:30:54.000 We learn...

00:30:55.000 I mean, obviously, bad feelings can be devastating.

00:30:57.000 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.

00:31:09.000 You know, I had some friends when I was growing up that got...

00:31:13.000 that became addicted to drugs.

00:31:15.000 And it...

00:31:18.000 It sealed the deal for me.

00:31:19.000 Like, with cocaine was a big one.

00:31:21.000 Like, I've never tried cocaine.

00:31:22.000 And one of the main reasons is because of my friends that I had when I was in high school.

00:31:26.000 I saw the negative.

00:31:28.000 It was horrible.

00:31:29.000 It was horrible to experience.

00:31:30.000 It's horrible as a friend to watch all that go down.

00:31:34.000 But those bad feelings teach you something.

00:31:37.000 They teach you something very important about what the consequences of certain behavior are.

00:32:02.000 That's exactly right.

00:32:03.000 And it wasn't the rich kids who didn't feel the depression at all.

00:32:06.000 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.

00:32:14.000 Those people ended up so scrappy and so strong.

00:32:17.000 And here's the thing.

00:32:18.000 They also ended up happy, really happy because they were resilient.

00:32:22.000 They had lived through something.

00:32:23.000 They had learned it.

00:32:24.000 And they learned this amazing gratitude when things went right.

00:32:28.000 Yeah, that's the thing.

00:32:30.000 Overcoming adversity and becoming resilient.

00:32:34.000 There's no pill for that.

00:32:37.000 You can't just talk through that.

00:32:39.000 You have to actually experience it.

00:32:40.000 That's right.

00:32:40.000 And we spent so much time worrying about trying to make our kids happy, and we don't spend enough time trying to make them strong.

00:32:46.000 And you know what?

00:32:47.000 We've made them neither.

00:32:49.000 Because making happiness your goal is actually a recipe for being unhappy.

00:32:53.000 And if you don't make a kid strong, he can't be happy.

00:32:57.000 And I think about my grandmother because everybody has – if anybody thinks about their grandparents, they went through some hard stuff, right?

00:33:06.000 I tell the story in the book.

00:33:08.000 My own grandmother lived through the Depression.

00:33:10.000 Her mother died in childbirth, giving birth to her.

00:33:13.000 She was bounced around.

00:33:15.000 She had to be taken out of her father's home.

00:33:16.000 I don't know if there was abuse.

00:33:17.000 It's not clear.

00:33:18.000 But somebody decided she should be taken out of her father's home.

00:33:21.000 I think?

00:33:39.000 She married.

00:33:40.000 She raised three kids.

00:33:42.000 She went to night school.

00:33:43.000 She became one of the first judges in Maryland, female judges in Maryland. 0.69

00:33:47.000 And she was the happiest person I knew.

00:33:50.000 And that's the kicker.

00:33:51.000 Like, it wasn't just that she achieved so much.

00:33:54.000 She was someone who took in foster kids her whole life.

00:33:58.000 She was a happy person who felt grateful all the time.

00:34:01.000 And today, a school counselor would take one look at her and say, you've been through a lot of trauma.

00:34:07.000 We should talk about it.

00:34:10.000 But there's got to be some middle ground, isn't there?

00:34:14.000 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?

00:34:22.000 That although you're going through something awful, that resilience is actually going to serve you in the long run?

00:34:28.000 And even though this feels terrible now, on the other side of it, you will have new tools that will help you manage life?

00:34:35.000 If that was what school counselors said to kids, that would be amazing.

00:34:39.000 But the problem is the mental health profession doesn't look at, doesn't track.

00:34:43.000 There's no requirement that they track negative side effects.

00:34:46.000 They're not measuring in general.

00:34:48.000 Now, I have some exceptions that I mentioned in the book.

00:34:50.000 But in general, they're not measuring.

00:34:52.000 Is your anxiety going, getting better?

00:34:55.000 Like cognitive behavioral therapists will often measure.

00:34:57.000 And they'll often say to a parent, I'm going to see him for this many sessions.

00:35:01.000 And we're going to measure and make sure the phobia is improving.

00:35:05.000 But very often, they'll just talk about the pain.

00:35:09.000 And talking about the pain regularly, endlessly, you know, is often not as good for a kid as joining the basketball team.

00:35:16.000 So what you're talking about is essentially the title of your book, which is Bad Therapy.

00:35:21.000 There has to be some good therapy, right?

00:35:24.000 Sure.

00:35:24.000 Good therapy is therapy for a kid who needs it.

00:35:27.000 Not preventively.

00:35:29.000 I think so.

00:35:30.000 So what do you think the requirements would be for someone to get good therapy?

00:35:34.000 What would have to be wrong in the child's life?

00:35:37.000 I think it would be something where you can't—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.

00:35:47.000 They've tried other methods, and if they still can't stabilize the kid, I think therapy could be absolutely, you know, really helpful.

00:35:54.000 And I think you should then research the therapist like you would any surgeon.

00:35:58.000 So do you think it's something like antidepressants where it's just overprescribed?

00:36:02.000 Yes.

00:36:03.000 Where everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer?

00:36:05.000 Right.

00:36:06.000 It's way, way, way overprescribed.

00:36:08.000 By the way, we have so many mentally unwell people in our streets who are completely underserved and undertreated.

00:36:15.000 And I think the reason is treating them is really hard.

00:36:18.000 We also have a lot of mentally ill therapists.

00:36:21.000 I was reading this crazy story about this therapist who convinced her client, her patient, to murder her ex. 0.91

00:36:29.000 Wow.

00:36:30.000 Yeah. 0.84

00:36:31.000 She got this guy to fall in love with her and then she got him to go and murder her ex. 0.99

00:36:37.000 I mean, I believe it.

00:36:39.000 You know, like, I mean, there are there's no question.

00:36:42.000 Therapists are humans.

00:36:43.000 Therapists are humans.

00:36:44.000 And a lot of times when you talk to people who went through a PhD in psychology, they'll tell you.

00:36:48.000 That some of their colleagues were a little scary because they entered the profession because they had mental health struggles of their own.

00:36:54.000 And it's important that a therapist not inject their own problems into the therapy.

00:37:00.000 And for that, you need a really good qualified person.

00:37:03.000 And I don't think that's the majority of what kids are getting.

00:37:08.000 No.

00:37:09.000 So how do you know what these kids are experiencing when they're having this therapy?

00:37:16.000 Like, what are we basing this on?

00:37:19.000 Do we get reports from the children of what they talked about with the therapists and know that that has had a negative effect?

00:37:28.000 Okay, so first of all, there is no oversight, which is a huge problem, right?

00:37:31.000 There's no one – the profession doesn't require it.

00:37:33.000 They're not measuring harms.

00:37:34.000 They're not tracking harms.

00:37:35.000 The medical professions, of course, do require it, right?

00:37:38.000 They're federally required.

00:37:39.000 If you have an adverse reaction to a drug, it gets reported.

00:37:43.000 But with therapy, there is no tracking.

00:37:46.000 But there's something else, too.

00:37:49.000 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?

00:38:02.000 We've seen this with breast cancer. 0.88

00:38:04.000 1989 was the high-water mark of breast cancer, you know, death from breast cancer.

00:38:08.000 As screening improved, As it got more prevalent and more accessible to people, rates of death from breast cancer have plummeted.

00:38:17.000 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?

00:38:26.000 Why?

00:38:26.000 It's skyrocketing.

00:38:28.000 It should be going down.

00:38:29.000 If the treatment were effective, it would be going down.

00:38:32.000 But there are those other factors that we talked about, like social media, living in the age of the internet.

00:38:37.000 This is a bizarre time to be a child.

00:38:39.000 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.

00:38:50.000 Right.

00:38:51.000 So if you're talking about things like social media, I do think that makes childhood worse and harder.

00:38:57.000 There's no question.

00:38:58.000 And there are other things that are making childhood uniquely hard in some sense.

00:39:03.000 Now, of course, we have generations that have lived through pandemics, great depression, economic deprivation, and all kinds of things.

00:39:12.000 But two things.

00:39:15.000 One, with any population, you would want to see some dent in In the Depression.

00:39:20.000 We're not seeing that.

00:39:22.000 Okay?

00:39:23.000 But the other thing is, where were the mental health experts with social media?

00:39:28.000 Right?

00:39:29.000 They could have called for a ban.

00:39:30.000 They didn't.

00:39:31.000 I don't think they knew right away.

00:39:33.000 Right?

00:39:34.000 It had never existed before.

00:39:37.000 No, but there's been really good evidence for the last eight years.

00:39:40.000 I don't think there's a parent alive who doesn't already know that social media is bad for kids, right?

00:39:45.000 We've known the phones.

00:39:46.000 We see what they do.

00:39:47.000 We see how angry kids get when you try to take them away.

00:39:50.000 We know that there's like this addictive element and that kids act a little crazed.

00:39:55.000 We can see it.

00:39:56.000 And we've known that.

00:39:57.000 I mean, there's been good research out for eight years now.

00:39:59.000 Why have the mental health organizations who have been in 2020 warning the Congress about climate change, systemic racism, police tactics, they were quick to announce their views on all those things.

00:40:12.000 They had nothing to say about the lockdowns.

00:40:15.000 They had nothing to say about social media.

00:40:18.000 They'd never called for a ban on social media.

00:40:20.000 They never issued the same warning that doctors gave about cigarettes.

00:40:24.000 Why?

00:40:25.000 Because social media does have some positive aspects to it, unlike cigarettes.

00:40:31.000 Cigarettes have positive aspects.

00:40:33.000 They're neural stimulants, they're social.

00:40:35.000 Right, but it gives you cancer.

00:40:37.000 Long term.

00:40:38.000 Yeah.

00:40:39.000 Look, I'm saying I'm not an advocate for cigarettes.

00:40:41.000 I see what you're saying.

00:40:42.000 I see what you're saying.

00:40:43.000 But bottom line, they lead to cancer.

00:40:46.000 And the medical establishment, the surgeon general felt like we had to warn the public they lead to cancer.

00:40:51.000 And just like that, if you're a responsible organization, you have to warn people, hey, you know what?

00:40:56.000 The social media is really bad for kids.

00:40:57.000 We're seeing their anxiety get worse.

00:40:59.000 They're on their phones all day long, even in school.

00:41:03.000 We've known for eight years now that the research has been out.

00:41:06.000 Sorry, we're warning parents.

00:41:08.000 We don't want to see smartphones in schools.

00:41:11.000 And we think no teenager should be on social media.

00:41:16.000 They could say that.

00:41:18.000 Do you think anybody would listen to that?

00:41:20.000 That seems like the problem with that is it's like trying to put the water back in the dam.

00:41:28.000 I just don't believe that that would be effective.

00:41:32.000 Maybe they could have said something about it at the very beginning.

00:41:35.000 If we knew the consequences of social media, let's go back to like 2005 or something like that, before it was really a thing.

00:41:42.000 If they started seeing it happen, if they could put the kibosh on it then, But now that it's so ubiquitous, I just, I can't imagine a world where anybody would effectively say, there's a state that's trying, was it Montana that's trying to ban TikTok?

00:41:57.000 Okay.

00:41:58.000 Wasn't it?

00:41:59.000 I don't know.

00:41:59.000 I believe you.

00:42:00.000 There's like some state that's trying to ban TikTok for kids.

00:42:03.000 A few states just sued multiple companies.

00:42:07.000 Let me find out.

00:42:08.000 For what though?

00:42:10.000 Something about kids using it.

00:42:12.000 State.

00:42:14.000 Is it because of their access to questionable material?

00:42:20.000 October 24th, multi-state federal lawsuit.

00:42:25.000 On the screen, dozens of states are suing Instagram parent meta over addictive features and youth mental health harms.

00:42:38.000 I think they're talking about algorithms.

00:42:41.000 They're talking about how algorithms target children demand users constant attention.

00:42:47.000 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.

00:42:56.000 Hmm.

00:42:58.000 Yeah, that's that lady from New York. 1.00

00:43:01.000 Social media companies including Meta have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable.

00:43:10.000 Yeah.

00:43:12.000 Interesting.

00:43:13.000 Florida's got a separate lawsuit for misleading users about potential health risks.

00:43:18.000 How did they mislead them?

00:43:21.000 I'd have to read the lawsuit.

00:43:24.000 So it says, Meta's design choices and practices take advantage and contribute to young users' susceptibility to addiction, the complaint reads.

00:43:32.000 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.

00:43:46.000 That seems like a stretch.

00:43:48.000 I don't think they say that.

00:43:50.000 No one says that ignoring the next piece of social content can lead to social isolation.

00:43:55.000 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.

00:44:05.000 That's how they find about songs and bands that they like and movies that they like and television shows they like.

00:44:12.000 So it is a part of society today.

00:44:17.000 It's sort of an inexorable part of society.

00:44:20.000 Well, why?

00:44:21.000 I mean, I think there are a couple of reasons why.

00:44:23.000 One of them is we made no effort to even stop them during the school day, right?

00:44:28.000 That would have been really easy.

00:44:29.000 You can be on your phone, just not during the school day. 0.90

00:44:31.000 That's so obvious that it's almost pathetic that we don't have that already in place, right?

00:44:37.000 Because why do you need to be checking your texts? 0.69

00:44:41.000 You're in school with your friends, right?

00:44:43.000 So there were things that we could do and could have done, but we didn't do them.

00:44:50.000 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, right?

00:45:00.000 That seems crazy.

00:45:01.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:45:02.000 But they have made no effort to stop this, to warn the public about this.

00:45:07.000 And frankly, I think in many cases they've undermined it, right?

00:45:10.000 There are therapists who went on Zoom and never went back.

00:45:14.000 Yeah, well, Zoom is a little different, right?

00:45:16.000 Because you actually are interacting with a person, even though it's through a screen.

00:45:20.000 You're communicating with them, right?

00:45:21.000 You are, but you get none of the benefits of in-person.

00:45:26.000 So, you know, this they have measured.

00:45:29.000 And the benefits of being in-person, seeing someone face-to-face, the psychic benefits are real.

00:45:37.000 Even when you're with someone you don't want to be with, 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.

00:45:52.000 Right, but you're sort of arguing against therapy, but yet saying therapy in person is better than therapy on Zoom.

00:45:59.000 Is that...

00:46:00.000 For sure.

00:46:00.000 Yeah.

00:46:01.000 I'm not arguing...

00:46:01.000 I mean, I'm not arguing against...

00:46:03.000 First of all, adults can see therapists for any reason.

00:46:13.000 I'm concerned about therapy for kids, especially kids who don't really need it, who are a little bummed out.

00:46:20.000 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.

00:46:33.000 So the thing that gets me about therapy, that I've always talked, the people that I know that are doing it all the time, is I don't know how much you should be thinking about yourself.

00:46:45.000 I don't know.

00:46:46.000 I mean, is there a...

00:46:48.000 Is there a certain amount of time you should allocate to thinking about yourself and your own feelings and problems?

00:46:57.000 And how much of that is self-indulgent and how much of that feeds that anxiety itself?

00:47:03.000 I mean, it does.

00:47:04.000 Thinking about yourself is the same as unhappiness in a certain sense, right?

00:47:09.000 It is indistinguishable from anxiety and depression.

00:47:13.000 And if you just think about how our football coaches motivate a team at halftime, what do they do?

00:47:18.000 They focus the team on the task ahead.

00:47:21.000 That's the way to get them motivated.

00:47:23.000 That's the way to help them complete it, okay?

00:47:26.000 What they don't say is, Johnson, are you still upset about your parents' divorce?

00:47:32.000 Right?

00:47:32.000 Tell me about your feelings.

00:47:35.000 Why don't they do it?

00:47:36.000 It's not just because they're repressed.

00:47:38.000 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.

00:47:47.000 But is it even repressing your feelings or is it just not indulging those feelings and letting those feelings be the primary focus?

00:47:54.000 I think it's the same thing.

00:47:55.000 I don't mean permanently.

00:47:56.000 I don't mean there isn't a place for it.

00:47:58.000 But when you're in the school, focusing on school, focusing on seeing your friends and going to recess or whatever it else is, the basketball, whatever the...

00:48:07.000 The activity is really good for you, 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.

00:48:17.000 That's not going to help you get through your geometry test.

00:48:20.000 Yeah.

00:48:21.000 Well, that is one thing that's fascinating about human beings is that tasks and difficult endeavors seem to make people happier.

00:48:31.000 Yeah.

00:48:31.000 Especially when you complete them.

00:48:33.000 That's right.

00:48:33.000 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.

00:48:44.000 That's right.

00:48:45.000 And one of the hardest, most worrisome parts of this generation is that they have the lowest sense of efficacy.

00:48:52.000 They report an external locus of control, meaning they don't think they can improve their lives.

00:48:58.000 See, millennials thought they could do anything, right?

00:49:00.000 They are the Mark Zuckerberg generation.

00:49:02.000 And that's why we had so many tech founders in that generation.

00:49:05.000 We're not seeing that with these young people.

00:49:07.000 They don't want to be in charge.

00:49:09.000 They're afraid.

00:49:10.000 And they don't feel up to it.

00:49:13.000 I talked to – there's a friend of mine I call every year on her birthday, and she's a research scientist, cell biologist.

00:49:21.000 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.

00:49:31.000 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.

00:49:38.000 They are so different.

00:49:39.000 And I said, tell me why.

00:49:40.000 She said, I'm seeing the smartest, most prepared kids.

00:49:43.000 And they're afraid to run their own experiments.

00:49:46.000 They tell me they're getting ready.

00:49:47.000 They're working on their skills.

00:49:49.000 They're not yet up to it.

00:49:51.000 And they constantly report to me about their mental health, how they're feeling today.

00:49:56.000 They can't just take a chance and go with it.

00:50:00.000 Yeah.

00:50:04.000 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 you want to give you don't want to tell them hey You're gonna have to suck it up.

00:50:20.000 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 There's a fine line.

00:50:36.000 Where is the point of diminishing returns?

00:50:38.000 Where is it valuable to address feelings and anxiety and thoughts?

00:50:44.000 And is it irresponsible to do so without giving them tools to mitigate those things?

00:50:50.000 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.

00:51:01.000 So the problem, as I see it, is not that you're not saying suck it up, it's that no one ever says suck it up, no matter how minor the scratch to these kids, okay?

00:51:11.000 And sometimes being told, you'll live.

00:51:14.000 Remember when Dad used to say, you'll live, or, you know, shake it off?

00:51:19.000 We never hear shake it off anymore.

00:51:20.000 No one says it.

00:51:21.000 So they don't know they can overcome even minor injuries.

00:51:25.000 And the truth is, they can.

00:51:28.000 They can.

00:51:30.000 But they recently did these studies on these coping techniques.

00:51:34.000 They taught coping techniques to over 1,000 teenagers in Australia.

00:51:40.000 It was called the Wise Teens Program.

00:51:43.000 And that was the point.

00:51:45.000 It was just to help them with emotional regulation.

00:51:47.000 And it turned out it made kids sadder and more anxious.

00:51:50.000 They measured this.

00:51:51.000 And the reason was regularly ruminating on your bad feelings can make you feel worse.

00:51:58.000 Did you talk to therapists when you did this?

00:52:01.000 Yeah, a lot of therapists.

00:52:02.000 How many of them agree with you?

00:52:03.000 So there was a huge split.

00:52:06.000 The academic research psychologists overwhelmingly agreed.

00:52:11.000 They were aware of the literature and they said, yeah, these are bad practices.

00:52:14.000 Here are things we shouldn't be doing with kids.

00:52:16.000 What was interesting is a lot of the clinical therapists were either minimized the risks of therapy or denied that there were any.

00:52:26.000 But isn't that like Jiffy Lube?

00:52:28.000 Like when you tell them, you don't need to change your oil that much.

00:52:30.000 Well, it's their business to change oil.

00:52:32.000 Right.

00:52:33.000 Exactly.

00:52:34.000 Exactly.

00:52:35.000 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.

00:52:46.000 And the reason I do that is because I don't want them to experience harm.

00:52:50.000 So if they see that their worries are getting worse, they have to tell me.

00:52:54.000 Huh.

00:52:55.000 But do they?

00:52:56.000 Would they?

00:52:56.000 I mean, it seems like the therapist is the one who's in control, right?

00:53:00.000 Right.

00:53:00.000 The therapist is the expert.

00:53:02.000 They're the one who has the authority.

00:53:06.000 Right.

00:53:06.000 Well, I mean, you know, this one was Camilo Ortiz.

00:53:10.000 He was the one I talked to and the one that I was referring to there.

00:53:14.000 And first of all, he always starts a therapy by setting the number of sessions.

00:53:20.000 He doesn't treat a kid like an annuity.

00:53:22.000 You're going to be my income stream for years.

00:53:25.000 He attacks, and also they come to him with an actual problem, like chronic bedwetting, like various kinds of phobia.

00:53:35.000 There are people who treat anorexia.

00:53:37.000 They're tackling a problem.

00:53:38.000 And some of those therapies are extremely necessary and very successful.

00:53:45.000 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?

00:53:54.000 Well, you can ask, but very often therapists don't turn them away.

00:53:57.000 That's the problem.

00:53:58.000 Too many therapists, 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, I don't think the trans identity fits you. 1.00

00:54:13.000 You know, that doesn't seem to make sense to me.

00:54:16.000 On almost no cases did the therapist stop a girl from going down that road.

00:54:20.000 No, you don't have gender dysphoria.

00:54:22.000 Listen, it's mostly little boys.

00:54:24.000 Okay, it's overwhelmingly little boys, starts with little boys, and you see it in men.

00:54:28.000 It's overwhelmingly male phenomenon, and it always starts ages two to four.

00:54:33.000 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.

00:54:39.000 They never said that.

00:54:42.000 Well, I think they get scared of the blowback as well.

00:54:45.000 Yeah, sure.

00:54:46.000 What they would hear from their parents.

00:54:47.000 You're telling my child they don't have a problem when they have a problem.

00:54:51.000 Well, also the incentive is for therapists to treat the least sick for the longest period of time.

00:54:57.000 That's the incentive.

00:54:58.000 Yeah.

00:54:59.000 Because you don't want the schizophrenic patient who really needs you. 1.00

00:55:02.000 Right.

00:55:02.000 They're really hard to treat.

00:55:04.000 Almost impossible.

00:55:05.000 Almost impossible, right?

00:55:07.000 You don't want the bipolar patient.

00:55:08.000 Right.

00:55:09.000 Some people will refuse to see those patients.

00:55:11.000 But a teenager with a little social anxiety, parent pays on time, they're not getting violent in your session.

00:55:18.000 Oh, boy.

00:55:20.000 Wow.

00:55:23.000 You know, I never really considered that until your book.

00:55:26.000 Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it, I never really considered it.

00:55:32.000 I never considered that Thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow.

00:55:41.000 That's right.

00:55:41.000 I mean, it's the number one symptom of depression is what they call rumination, this pathological obsessing over your pain.

00:55:49.000 Yeah.

00:55:50.000 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?

00:55:58.000 Getting out of your house and accomplishing anything?

00:56:01.000 Yeah.

00:56:02.000 Is good for you.

00:56:02.000 But sitting around talking and thinking about your problems, that's a bad habit.

00:56:07.000 And the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others, you know, the dialectical behavioral therapists, the ones who do really well with depression, the first thing they do is try to break that bad pattern.

00:56:18.000 But a lot of therapists just indulge it.

00:56:21.000 It's also a luxury that's provided to you by a life that's fairly safe.

00:56:26.000 You know, people that live in war-torn countries and have very difficult lives, they don't have that luxury of just sitting around all day and doing nothing and, oh, I go outside and run errands.

00:56:38.000 That's going to make me feel better.

00:56:39.000 You're dealing with, like, real stress.

00:56:41.000 That's right.

00:56:42.000 And I think that there's an expression that someone told me once and I say it all the time.

00:56:47.000 The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

00:56:51.000 If it's you got a dent in your car or it's your parents get killed in a car accident.

00:56:57.000 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.

00:57:10.000 That's your watermark for what you can and can't tolerate.

00:57:14.000 That's right.

00:57:15.000 And what we should be telling kids is that the amazing story of human history is of resilience.

00:57:22.000 It used to be the case that people lost a sibling.

00:57:25.000 That was common.

00:57:27.000 People lost a parent.

00:57:28.000 That still happens, right?

00:57:29.000 These things still happen.

00:57:31.000 And the amazing story of human history doesn't mean it's not painful.

00:57:36.000 But of resilience.

00:57:37.000 They get on.

00:57:38.000 They aren't permanently suffering with mental illness or mental problem.

00:57:42.000 They form families.

00:57:43.000 They are responsible in their jobs.

00:57:45.000 They show up for work.

00:57:46.000 They can be depended on by their friends.

00:57:48.000 That's the story of human survival and resilience.

00:57:51.000 And unfortunately, we're telling kids, no, you've had trauma.

00:57:56.000 Yeah.

00:57:56.000 Yeah, you've had trauma and you need to work through that trauma.

00:57:59.000 Right.

00:58:00.000 It's not just, this is just a part of life.

00:58:03.000 And, you know, what you need to do is just go out there and live your life and you'll get over it.

00:58:09.000 And, you know, the thing is, the truth is that most kids and most people did.

00:58:14.000 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.

00:58:22.000 They've happened in every family.

00:58:24.000 And I think one of the many reasons that kids don't know this today is we've cut them off from extended family.

00:58:30.000 The story of their grandparents is a story of resilience in almost every case, right?

00:58:36.000 You hear about your family history and you're going to hear a story of pain and survival and resilience and overcoming.

00:58:43.000 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. They don't have PTSD. But they think they do.

00:58:55.000 What do they have though?

00:58:56.000 If you are bullied, that does have a significant psychological effect on kids and it can lead to lifelong depression.

00:59:04.000 I don't know that it can.

00:59:05.000 I don't think so. 0.99

00:59:06.000 Like for young people that like get treated like shit and told that they're nothing and useless and that sort of like...

00:59:13.000 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. 0.97

00:59:21.000 Right.

00:59:21.000 I'd get weirded out by it, you know?

00:59:23.000 Right.

00:59:24.000 So let me just say, yeah.

00:59:25.000 You start feeling like you used to feel when you went there.

00:59:28.000 Absolutely.

00:59:28.000 But that's not a PTSD flashback, right?

00:59:30.000 What is that?

00:59:31.000 That's a bad memory.

00:59:33.000 And we have them.

00:59:34.000 And by the way, when I say you can't have, you know, bullying can mean anything, right?

00:59:38.000 So when I say, you know, I'm talking about teasing.

00:59:41.000 I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through.

00:59:45.000 But do you have anxiety?

00:59:47.000 Yeah.

00:59:47.000 Anxiety exists for a reason.

00:59:49.000 It's actually adaptive.

00:59:51.000 Yeah.

01:00:13.000 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?

01:00:21.000 And we don't want someone with no anxiety crossing a street because he's not going to look for cars.

01:00:26.000 And we're going in with medication and we're deleting things like anxiety and depression.

01:00:32.000 Anxiety helps you make beautiful memories.

01:00:35.000 You remember Christmas morning because of all the nerves about it ahead of time.

01:00:38.000 Or you remember your first kiss partially because of things.

01:00:42.000 That's why the memories are so clear.

01:00:43.000 And when we go in and we give kids a pill for that, not only are they not developing an emotional musculature they're going to need as adults, but 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.

01:01:01.000 Right.

01:01:03.000 That's a very important thing we just said about experiencing anxiety.

01:01:06.000 It actually helps you be sharper.

01:01:08.000 It does.

01:01:09.000 It really does.

01:01:09.000 You have to be nervous before you do things.

01:01:11.000 That's right.

01:01:12.000 That are difficult.

01:01:12.000 It's just that uncomfortable feeling people avoid because they get scared of the anxiety, but...

01:01:17.000 If you talk to, like, one of the best examples is UFC fighters.

01:01:22.000 UFC fighters, they're all nervous.

01:01:25.000 They're all scared.

01:01:26.000 Every one of them.

01:01:27.000 Terrified.

01:01:28.000 And they don't want to fight if they're not.

01:01:30.000 If you're too calm and too relaxed, you actually have bad performances.

01:01:33.000 And I'll tell you something else.

01:01:34.000 Same is true with depression.

01:01:36.000 Now, I'm not talking about major depressive disorder that's chronic and needs treatment, of course, right?

01:01:40.000 But if you have something bad happen to you, you go through a divorce, you go through something hard, okay?

01:01:46.000 That doesn't mean you should never use meds or therapy if you absolutely need it.

01:01:52.000 But there can be good.

01:01:53.000 And here's what can be good, okay?

01:01:55.000 Depression is adaptive.

01:01:57.000 And the purpose, I learned this from talking to interviewing a lot of evolutionary psychologists.

01:02:01.000 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.

01:02:10.000 Because sometimes we need to make a change.

01:02:13.000 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.

01:02:24.000 Right.

01:02:26.000 Hmm.

01:02:26.000 Because we'll lose the motivation.

01:02:28.000 That's the thing.

01:02:29.000 We won't say, you know what?

01:02:30.000 He treated me badly.

01:02:32.000 I'm tired of this.

01:02:33.000 I'm not getting back together with him.

01:02:35.000 Right.

01:02:35.000 We might just accept it and keep on.

01:02:38.000 Right.

01:02:38.000 Especially if you're medicated.

01:02:39.000 Especially if you're medicated.

01:02:41.000 That will to make a big change often happens after we've been brought low.

01:02:46.000 Yeah.

01:02:48.000 It's interesting because this conversation is such a blanket conversation.

01:02:53.000 And when you're talking about people's personal experiences, their personal depression and trauma, people are always very quick to sort of...

01:03:05.000 Accentuate the negative aspects of whatever they've gone through.

01:03:09.000 No, no, no.

01:03:09.000 You're talking about, but mine was worse.

01:03:11.000 But mine was this.

01:03:12.000 Mine was unbearable.

01:03:14.000 And I think that's something that our society, for whatever reason, encourages.

01:03:19.000 That's right.

01:03:20.000 And there's this – so one of the psychiatrists I interviewed was this man, Paul McHugh, who used to be the head of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department.

01:03:29.000 And he looked at vets, combat vets in America and Israel.

01:03:35.000 And what he wanted to know was why was there less PTSD among the combat vets in Israel?

01:03:41.000 And one of the things he noticed was that they treat them very differently.

01:03:44.000 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.

01:03:56.000 They said, Just so you know, your reaction is totally normal.

01:04:01.000 We're sending you home for a few weeks.

01:04:03.000 You're going to feel better.

01:04:04.000 And then we're going to put you right back.

01:04:06.000 But you're going to recover.

01:04:07.000 We're going to put you right back with your men.

01:04:09.000 And with America, when someone had seen something horrific, they would pull them out of battle. 0.56

01:04:13.000 They would meet with a therapist who would tell them, you have the symptoms of PTSD. Here is PTSD. Your government did this to you.

01:04:21.000 And it's possible you may be suffering with this chronically.

01:04:26.000 And they didn't recover at the same rates.

01:04:29.000 Hmm.

01:04:30.000 So it's a get back on the horse type thing?

01:04:32.000 Yeah, it is.

01:04:34.000 Which doesn't minimize what people, you know, all the traumatic things.

01:04:38.000 I mean, some people will have harder time getting back on the horse.

01:04:41.000 They may need more treatment than other people.

01:04:43.000 But what's amazing is most people, even who go through traumatic experiences, even most combat vets, the majority don't get PTSD. Because actually, the story of human history, the story of our experience is of resilience.

01:04:58.000 Right?

01:04:59.000 And if we just think back to our grandparents, we know this is true.

01:05:02.000 We can't guarantee for our kids that they won't go through hard things.

01:05:05.000 In fact, the one certainty is that they will.

01:05:08.000 But the message to them has to be, but you're so strong.

01:05:12.000 Our family is strong.

01:05:14.000 Our family has gone through hard things.

01:05:15.000 I've gone through hard things, and you can too.

01:05:17.000 And if you say that to kids, you have a much better shot that they will.

01:05:22.000 How do we know that the majority of combat vets don't experience PTSD? There's this crazy study.

01:05:29.000 So they look through – this is just one example.

01:05:34.000 Vietnam vets, they know what percentage saw combat.

01:05:38.000 It was something like 12 to 15 percent actually saw combat.

01:05:42.000 But for whatever reason, when they surveyed Vietnam vets, 30 percent of them were reporting PTSD. That's iatrogenesis.

01:05:51.000 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 PTSD than actually could have had it.

01:06:02.000 But you're still talking about a small percentage of people who go through some really hard things in combat.

01:06:09.000 Something like, you know, at 70 to 80 percent, no matter how many traumatic experiences they've seen, you know, four tours in Iraq, they still, for whatever reason, don't have the symptoms.

01:06:20.000 Yeah, I've talked to friends of mine that are veterans about this, and one of the things they said is that my friend who was a SEAL said that Special Forces guys experience it less, although they do experience it, because they're proactive.

01:06:38.000 They're acting.

01:06:39.000 They're doing something.

01:06:40.000 They're moving.

01:06:40.000 Whereas, he said, the real people that experience it are sometimes people that are stuck on a base.

01:06:45.000 They're always worried about being attacked.

01:06:47.000 Oh, wow.

01:06:48.000 I love that.

01:06:49.000 Yeah.

01:06:49.000 The fear of constantly being worried that you're going to be attacked versus the fear of going out on a mission.

01:06:57.000 That's exactly right.

01:06:57.000 Having a deployment.

01:06:58.000 Yeah.

01:07:00.000 And engaging the enemy, that they're task-oriented and that they're the ones in control.

01:07:05.000 That's right.

01:07:06.000 And what we want to say to kids is, be a Navy SEAL. Go out there and attack those tasks, whatever they are.

01:07:12.000 Make a new friend.

01:07:13.000 Go play a sport.

01:07:14.000 Go do things.

01:07:15.000 Don't sit around thinking about yourself.

01:07:17.000 Well, it's also, there's a rite of passage that goes with being a Navy SEAL. It's a very difficult thing to acquire.

01:07:22.000 Most people quit.

01:07:24.000 That's the ringing the bell thing.

01:07:26.000 They bail.

01:07:29.000 They can't take the stress of it because they put you through hell.

01:07:32.000 And they put you through hell to find out who's resilient and who's not.

01:07:35.000 And to show you that you can do it.

01:07:37.000 But we're not even teaching kids to aspire to that anymore.

01:07:40.000 No.

01:07:40.000 There's a lot of ways to be a Navy SEAL. 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.

01:07:50.000 And that message that your friend mentioned, that's a good message for kids.

01:07:54.000 It's not what we're telling them.

01:07:56.000 Right.

01:07:57.000 It's also, to speak to him and his situation, he said that they're trying to lower the standards.

01:08:03.000 They're saying that because occasionally guys will die or get severely injured in training, that they're trying to make it more easy.

01:08:10.000 That's right.

01:08:11.000 And he's like, that's terrifying.

01:08:12.000 The last thing you want is someone who can't quite make it on your team.

01:08:17.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:08:18.000 And we're lowering the standards and expectations.

01:08:21.000 I mean, this is the trauma generation, right?

01:08:24.000 We've told them over and over, you can't handle very much.

01:08:28.000 Don't worry, I'm going to write you.

01:08:29.000 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 anytime they're feeling anxious.

01:08:41.000 Well, how's a kid going to sit through anything if they've been given this pass to leave class, any class they don't like?

01:08:47.000 Right.

01:08:48.000 I would use that constantly.

01:08:50.000 Anybody would.

01:08:51.000 Anybody would.

01:08:51.000 And teachers tell me it's getting abused like crazy.

01:08:54.000 Of course, yeah.

01:08:54.000 You know?

01:08:55.000 They're not keeping the standards for kids high.

01:08:58.000 And you know what?

01:08:59.000 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.

01:09:07.000 There's this one woman I talked to. 0.70

01:09:09.000 She was raising three kids out of foster care with her wife, okay?

01:09:13.000 And these kids had gone through horrible traumatic experiences.

01:09:17.000 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.

01:09:26.000 And she said to me, 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.

01:09:55.000 And all these teachers are just asking them about their trauma all day long.

01:09:59.000 It's not helping.

01:10:03.000 That's a very specific case though, right?

01:10:06.000 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.

01:10:13.000 So who are we helping?

01:10:14.000 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?

01:10:23.000 Yes.

01:10:24.000 And in fact, it would just be more beneficial to be friendly to that kid and kind and offer encouragement.

01:10:29.000 That's right.

01:10:30.000 Give them activities and give them encouragement and support.

01:10:33.000 That's right.

01:10:33.000 Most people who work with kids care about kids.

01:10:36.000 I have that prejudice.

01:10:37.000 I assume, and I think it's true, that most people who work with kids want to do what's best for kids.

01:10:42.000 Sometimes they do things that aren't best for kids.

01:10:44.000 And having them focus on their feelings all the time is not best for kids.

01:10:47.000 That's the way to make you more emotionally dysregulated.

01:10:51.000 This is going to be very difficult for people to hear that are very sensitive and very concerned about their children.

01:10:59.000 Their strategy has always been to move it in a general direction.

01:11:05.000 Also, people that are experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression themselves who are raising children.

01:11:13.000 I think they become accustomed to talking about it and dwelling on it.

01:11:17.000 That's right.

01:11:18.000 And in fact, some of the most effective ways to treat childhood anxiety is by treating the parents.

01:11:23.000 Oh boy.

01:11:24.000 Parents are a huge source of anxiety for kids.

01:11:28.000 What's the primary source of anxiety that comes from parents?

01:11:32.000 Worry over everything.

01:11:34.000 Teaching kids they have to be afraid of everything.

01:11:37.000 That they can never do anything without the parent's supervision.

01:11:40.000 They could never go anywhere where their parents won't see them because they could be abducted or hurt or abused.

01:11:46.000 Calling the teacher and saying, my daughter was bullied because someone said something mean to her. 0.53

01:11:50.000 The child gets the message, I can't handle something mean said to me.

01:11:54.000 I will fall apart.

01:11:55.000 That's what my mom's saying.

01:11:56.000 She's so scared I'm going to fall apart.

01:11:58.000 She's calling my teacher.

01:11:59.000 Yeah.

01:12:01.000 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.

01:12:11.000 I have a friend whose mom was a severe alcoholic, and because of that, he became very disciplined.

01:12:20.000 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.

01:12:27.000 And that's a really strong person as a result.

01:12:30.000 And part of his strength, which I'm sure, is having that real life experience, which was hard.

01:12:35.000 And it was painful.

01:12:37.000 And it taught him a lesson that no teacher could give him, which is that you need discipline in life.

01:12:44.000 Right.

01:12:44.000 But it's very difficult to learn from a bad example sometimes, especially if your parent's constantly worrying and constantly negative about things.

01:12:51.000 Right.

01:12:52.000 Yeah.

01:12:52.000 Right.

01:12:53.000 But you know what we do?

01:12:54.000 We let kids try.

01:12:55.000 We give them freedom from our oversight.

01:12:57.000 You know what they do in Japan?

01:12:58.000 In Japanese preschools, they have these little areas.

01:13:02.000 They're designed to have areas for kids where the teachers can't see so that they work out their own problems.

01:13:09.000 Remember we used to say to kids, work it out?

01:13:11.000 Now the teachers get involved in every squabble.

01:13:14.000 They think it's their job to go in there and give kids tips on how to make friends and get involved.

01:13:20.000 We never tell kids, look, work it out.

01:13:23.000 And you know what they learn from working it out?

01:13:26.000 I can.

01:13:27.000 I don't need my mom calling my boss, as a lot of this generation's parents are doing.

01:13:32.000 I'll handle it.

01:13:33.000 I can.

01:13:34.000 I've been doing it since preschool.

01:13:35.000 Right.

01:13:38.000 Huh.

01:13:39.000 What has the reaction to this book been?

01:13:41.000 Have you had some negative reactions?

01:13:43.000 Have you had anybody that wants to debate you on this?

01:13:45.000 It's a good question.

01:13:46.000 Overwhelmingly, it's actually been surprisingly positive, but you want to know the truth?

01:13:50.000 The dads especially love the book.

01:13:53.000 Really?

01:13:53.000 The dads will be like, can you give this to my wife?

01:13:56.000 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, and I think therapeutic parenting take it over, everybody's trying to be a mental health expert with their kids.

01:14:12.000 But I think the biggest change was dad's.

01:14:14.000 Dad stopped, you know, I think, being a sort of a backstop and saying, he's fine.

01:14:21.000 He'll handle it.

01:14:22.000 I did it.

01:14:23.000 He can do it.

01:14:24.000 Or, I did it.

01:14:25.000 She can do it.

01:14:26.000 She's fine.

01:14:26.000 Shake it off.

01:14:27.000 Go back to the, you know, keep playing soccer.

01:14:29.000 Whatever it is.

01:14:30.000 They stopped doing that in part because they didn't feel like we were told.

01:14:34.000 I mean, in general, we've all been told, right?

01:14:36.000 The mental health experts tell you how to talk to your children.

01:14:40.000 They tell you what your child can handle.

01:14:42.000 They pretend they're experts on the brain.

01:14:45.000 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.

01:14:54.000 And a lot of these therapists don't know anything about the brain.

01:14:57.000 We certainly don't know much about emotion in the brain, right?

01:15:01.000 And so the idea that we need brain science in order to raise our kids is just not true.

01:15:06.000 And it's not helpful.

01:15:08.000 It's undercutting parents' confidence.

01:15:10.000 Parents need to trust themselves.

01:15:12.000 We've been raising good kids for a long time.

01:15:16.000 Are there any studies about the cultures or the civilizations, whatever countries, that have the most mentally healthy people?

01:15:27.000 Well, that's a good question.

01:15:28.000 So I interviewed one woman who runs the Georgetown Emotions Lab, and she's a cultural psychologist.

01:15:34.000 Boy, the Emotions Lab.

01:15:36.000 Yeah.

01:15:36.000 It was actually really neat.

01:15:38.000 I went into her lab and we did these.

01:15:39.000 She showed me these tests she does with subjects behind a one-way mirror, and she hooks them up to electrodes.

01:15:45.000 And she looks at – her name is Yulia Chensova-Dutton.

01:15:48.000 She's amazing.

01:15:49.000 And she looks at Russia, Japan, America, and other countries, especially in the West.

01:15:57.000 So I guess you want to look at like and compare like to like.

01:16:00.000 So sort of similar Western cultures, I guess Asian, but similar levels of development and stress, a certain kind of stress.

01:16:08.000 And one of the things she noticed in her research was that American kids tended to exaggerate dangers.

01:16:17.000 So when they listed things they were afraid of or things that scared them, they would say, stranger looking at me funny.

01:16:24.000 Things that weren't actual dangers.

01:16:27.000 But teenagers from other countries, Russia, Japan, they tended to be able to calibrate what was an actual danger much better.

01:16:37.000 And that's what we're seeing on campus.

01:16:39.000 We're seeing these kids having nervous breakdowns because someone dumped them or because a teacher gave them a bad grade.

01:16:45.000 Yeah.

01:16:45.000 Because they couldn't hand her a paper in on time.

01:16:48.000 One of the things that drives me the most nuts about universities is this term microaggressions.

01:16:53.000 Right.

01:16:53.000 Which is so crazy.

01:16:55.000 It's like looking for things to be bigger than they are.

01:16:58.000 Taking a very small thing, whether it's someone like rolling their eyes at you or saying something that You know, might be insensitive and calling that insensitive thing a microaggression.

01:17:12.000 That's right.

01:17:12.000 And it's exactly right.

01:17:13.000 And one of the things I looked at was, are we turning these kids into emotional hypochondriacs?

01:17:19.000 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.

01:17:30.000 And what is it?

01:17:32.000 So it turns out what it is, is people who put hyper focus on the normal pains we all feel.

01:17:38.000 They're not faking it.

01:17:39.000 They're just attending to the normal pains and increasing their pain by doing that.

01:17:46.000 And people who turn their pain into an organizing principle of life, of their whole lives, they have a hard time overcoming it.

01:17:54.000 It becomes their identity.

01:17:56.000 And that's what kids are doing today about their emotional pain.

01:17:59.000 Oh, I have social anxiety.

01:18:01.000 I had trauma from my breakup.

01:18:03.000 You don't have trauma from your breakup, okay?

01:18:06.000 You had a breakup, and it's painful.

01:18:09.000 But using these psychiatric terms, it's not helping.

01:18:15.000 It's not.

01:18:15.000 It's exaggerating the pain, and it's making that pain feel worse.

01:18:19.000 And I'm not minimizing these kids' pain.

01:18:21.000 They are in real pain, and they're making it worse.

01:18:25.000 Right.

01:18:25.000 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.

01:18:34.000 I mean, I'd be happy to.

01:18:36.000 I would love to.

01:18:37.000 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'm very impressed by what they have to say and what they've done.

01:18:47.000 But the therapists who claim that everyone needs to talk about their problems, well, no, they don't.

01:18:53.000 That's not true.

01:18:54.000 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.

01:19:02.000 There are 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.

01:19:14.000 That turns out to be better for some people.

01:19:17.000 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.

01:19:25.000 There's no evidence behind it.

01:19:27.000 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,

01:19:42.000 in therapy.

01:19:43.000 They had control groups.

01:19:45.000 They've done these studies where burn victims, one portion of them went to group therapy, the other portion didn't.

01:19:51.000 And the ones who didn't go to therapy ended up better with less symptoms After, you know, nine months, I think it was.

01:19:59.000 And why do you think that is?

01:20:01.000 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.

01:20:11.000 Find a natural way to mitigate that.

01:20:13.000 Exercise is amazing.

01:20:16.000 I mean, study after study has shown that exercise is amazing.

01:20:19.000 And you know what it doesn't have?

01:20:20.000 All these bad side effects.

01:20:21.000 Right?

01:20:22.000 Of loss of sex drive, like SSRIs have. 0.90

01:20:25.000 Right?

01:20:25.000 We know that the antidepressants come with all these horrible side effects, especially for adolescents, like the risk of suicide and other things.

01:20:32.000 Right?

01:20:33.000 You know what doesn't have that?

01:20:34.000 Exercise.

01:20:35.000 Yeah.

01:20:36.000 So I'm not saying don't get help.

01:20:38.000 And if you really need it, get the medicine and get the therapy.

01:20:42.000 What I'm saying is, if you don't really need it, gosh, there's a lot of ways to feel better.

01:20:46.000 And we seem to have forgotten about those.

01:20:48.000 Yeah.

01:20:49.000 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?

01:20:59.000 So we know that it's gone way up.

01:21:01.000 I don't know if there's a chart, but I know that they say 40%, roughly 40% of the rising generation has had therapy.

01:21:08.000 That's a lot.

01:21:09.000 It's way more than any prior generation. 0.99

01:21:12.000 42% of them have a mental health diagnosis.

01:21:15.000 That's a lot.

01:21:16.000 42% of kids have a mental health diagnosis?

01:21:19.000 42?

01:21:20.000 There was just a news article saying that 86% of them think they have menu anxiety.

01:21:24.000 Menu anxiety?

01:21:25.000 That's ordering from a menu in a restaurant.

01:21:28.000 What?

01:21:28.000 They have a friend order for them.

01:21:30.000 Oh my god.

01:21:31.000 Yeah, I mean, these are kids who think of themselves as unwell.

01:21:37.000 Menu anxiety?

01:21:39.000 Really?

01:21:39.000 That's a thing?

01:21:40.000 You know, I mean, climate anxiety, summer anxiety.

01:21:45.000 When your parents move, dislocation depression.

01:21:49.000 They call it...

01:21:50.000 Summer anxiety?

01:21:51.000 Summer anxiety.

01:21:52.000 So here it is.

01:21:52.000 42% of Gen Z diagnosed with a mental health condition.

01:21:56.000 Jeez, Louise.

01:21:57.000 That's a lot.

01:21:58.000 That's crazy.

01:22:00.000 Right?

01:22:00.000 But that's what my question would be.

01:22:03.000 What is that internationally?

01:22:06.000 Like when you're dealing with other countries?

01:22:08.000 Oh, it's much better internationally.

01:22:10.000 I mean, there's no question.

01:22:11.000 We have the most anxious and most depressed teens and adolescents.

01:22:18.000 And what caused that?

01:22:20.000 Is that the rise of this industry?

01:22:23.000 The rise of the therapy industry?

01:22:25.000 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?

01:22:38.000 Like, what is it?

01:22:39.000 I think we're not giving them a healthy life.

01:22:41.000 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.

01:22:53.000 Right.

01:22:54.000 Right?

01:22:54.000 And we knew it was bad for us, but we had these other healthy things around us.

01:22:58.000 I don't think we knew it was bad for us when I was a kid.

01:23:00.000 Frosted Flakes?

01:23:00.000 I never thought it was bad for you.

01:23:02.000 Really?

01:23:02.000 Well, we didn't know sugar was bad for you.

01:23:04.000 Well, in my, I mean...

01:23:06.000 We thought it'd give you cavities.

01:23:07.000 That was the only thing anybody worried about.

01:23:10.000 But, I mean, kids weren't allowed, I mean, at least in my house, we weren't allowed to have sugar.

01:23:13.000 I'm a little older than you.

01:23:14.000 I'm 10 years older than you.

01:23:15.000 Okay.

01:23:15.000 So we weren't allowed to have sugar cereal, and the best thing we ever got was Honey Nut Cheerios.

01:23:19.000 That was like a miracle.

01:23:20.000 When that came in, it was so exciting.

01:23:23.000 We used to put sugar on our Frosted Flakes.

01:23:26.000 You were allowed to have sugar and put sugar on everything.

01:23:29.000 I love that.

01:23:30.000 Yeah.

01:23:30.000 People, in my generation, people ate sugar all the time and there was no fear.

01:23:36.000 It was just brush your teeth.

01:23:38.000 I know.

01:23:39.000 It's psychotic.

01:23:40.000 But, you know, obviously you know the story behind that.

01:23:44.000 That was all because of the sugar industry bribing scientists to pass the blame on saturated fat. 0.94

01:23:51.000 Yeah, because sugar was causing heart disease.

01:23:54.000 It was causing all sorts of problems that people were having.

01:23:57.000 It was causing obesity.

01:23:58.000 And the sugar industry bribed some scientists in the 1960s to pass the blame onto saturated fat. 1.00

01:24:06.000 That's where margarine came from and all the other stupid shit that's terrible for you. 1.00

01:24:11.000 Seed oils, all these different things. 1.00

01:24:13.000 Canola oil that people thought was actually better for you.

01:24:16.000 It's not.

01:24:17.000 It's not better for you at all. 1.00

01:24:18.000 Your body doesn't even know how to digest that shit. 1.00

01:24:20.000 Right. 1.00

01:24:20.000 So we've given kids worse diet over the years. 1.00

01:24:23.000 We've given them...

01:24:24.000 Processed foods.

01:24:26.000 Yeah.

01:24:27.000 We've given them less exercise.

01:24:28.000 We've given them less connection to family.

01:24:30.000 People...

01:24:31.000 Relational stability, having this set of friends or relatives who are cousins around you, grandparents who love you unconditionally over your life.

01:24:42.000 Kids don't have that anymore. 0.99

01:24:44.000 They don't have the neighborhood.

01:24:45.000 Mm-hmm.

01:24:46.000 And they don't have space for a mom monitoring them. 0.99

01:24:50.000 Or another adult she's hired to monitor them.

01:24:53.000 Or the recess monitor.

01:24:55.000 Or my kids have bus monitors.

01:24:57.000 They have monitors everywhere.

01:24:58.000 And monitoring is the same as stress for kids.

01:25:03.000 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.

01:25:13.000 Really?

01:25:14.000 So if they have a subject and then they're going through a test and they have someone stand over and watch, that introduces anxiety?

01:25:20.000 That'll introduce stress.

01:25:21.000 Yeah.

01:25:22.000 Yeah.

01:25:24.000 And that's the condition we're raising kids in.

01:25:26.000 We're going to track you on your phone even in college.

01:25:29.000 Oh, how is your trip to the Rite Aid?

01:25:31.000 I can see you on my phone.

01:25:33.000 We're doing that.

01:25:34.000 Yeah.

01:25:35.000 Kids are doing it to each other.

01:25:37.000 Kids are doing it to each other.

01:25:38.000 Yeah, my daughters, all her friends know where everyone is on Snap Map.

01:25:42.000 Right.

01:25:43.000 It's not good for them.

01:25:44.000 They don't have freedom to just be.

01:25:47.000 Yeah.

01:25:47.000 So I think we're giving all kinds of things.

01:25:50.000 We're making their lives less healthy.

01:25:51.000 And then we just pour in the mental health resources.

01:25:53.000 Oh, we're going to keep your life unhealthy, but we're going to pour in SSRIs, antidepressants.

01:25:58.000 We're just going to pour in the therapy.

01:26:00.000 Well, that doesn't remediate.

01:26:02.000 Have you had anybody push back?

01:26:05.000 On this, like you said, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, but what has the negative response been?

01:26:11.000 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 kid really had sensory deprivation issues, so I really did need to see that therapist.

01:26:30.000 I don't know the situation.

01:26:31.000 I mean, I think in general, parents know their own kids, right?

01:26:35.000 And if they have tried other things, the problem is not parents seeking out help.

01:26:41.000 The problem is it's when it's the first resort.

01:26:44.000 The problem is not that parents ever allow their kid to get a diagnosis.

01:26:48.000 The problem is that some parents are going diagnosis shopping because sometimes a neuropsychologist will say, your kids, sorry, they're within normal range, and the parents will keep going.

01:26:59.000 Yeah.

01:27:00.000 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.

01:27:10.000 They're unwilling to impose any kind of discipline.

01:27:13.000 The kid is disordered.

01:27:15.000 The kid has a lot of tech.

01:27:16.000 And then lo and behold, he can't concentrate in school.

01:27:19.000 And they're sure, and the teacher has a problem with him.

01:27:22.000 Well, I talked to parents where they said one year my teacher thought my kid had ADHD and the next year they didn't.

01:27:28.000 Why would that be?

01:27:29.000 And why is the teacher diagnosing the kid?

01:27:32.000 Yeah.

01:27:33.000 Are they qualified?

01:27:34.000 Are they qualified?

01:27:35.000 Well, they're a little conflicted, right?

01:27:37.000 Yeah.

01:27:38.000 Because they have an interest in getting you bolted to your seat.

01:27:40.000 Right.

01:27:41.000 They don't care about the long-term effects of, or they might not be aware of them, the long-term effects of stratera, concerta, you know, Ritalin.

01:27:50.000 Yeah.

01:27:50.000 The fact that you might need to take more and more of it over time to get the same effects.

01:27:54.000 Right.

01:27:54.000 The withdrawal for some of these things, Adderall, people have told me it's brutal.

01:27:58.000 Yeah, it's brutal.

01:27:59.000 Well, it's amphetamines.

01:28:00.000 Right.

01:28:01.000 They're highly addictive.

01:28:02.000 Right.

01:28:03.000 And we're giving them out like candy.

01:28:04.000 Like candy.

01:28:05.000 That's the problem.

01:28:06.000 It's the like candy part.

01:28:07.000 There was a recent study that said 39 million, what is the number of prescriptions per year It's something bonkers.

01:28:45.000 And 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. 0.98

01:28:59.000 But you're not thinking of the long-term consequences of ramping up someone on fucking amphetamines all day long. 0.96

01:29:07.000 What's the number? 1.00

01:29:09.000 Even worse.

01:29:10.000 41.4 million Adderall prescriptions were dispensed in the U.S. in 2021, up more than 10% for 2020, according to IQVIA, a health research firm.

01:29:24.000 What's happening?

01:29:24.000 Getting a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. By the way,

01:29:45.000 that would have been me. 0.99

01:29:47.000 If this shit was around when I was a kid, I'd never paid attention in school, and I would have probably thought that I had a disease. 0.98

01:29:54.000 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. 0.99

01:30:08.000 Yes, but the trouble with such rapid diagnosis is that it can be difficult to tell whether ADHD is actually the problem.

01:30:15.000 Anxiety can present as ADHD and depression can present as ADHD. As Sanford Newmark said, Sanford Newmark, a professor at University of California, San Francisco Medical School.

01:30:26.000 Of course.

01:30:27.000 I mean, look, if you give someone stimulants, they're going to feel better.

01:30:30.000 That's why people do coke.

01:30:31.000 You know, it makes you feel better.

01:30:33.000 And what if you start them on it when they're four or five?

01:30:36.000 And guess what?

01:30:37.000 There are a lot of jobs where ADHD might not harm them.

01:30:40.000 In other words, it might even be an asset, right?

01:30:43.000 Oh, it's a superpower.

01:30:43.000 I think it can be.

01:30:45.000 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, you know, other companies or constantly looking into, being able, someone who's constantly shifting their focus turned out to be an asset, unmedicated.

01:31:01.000 Yeah.

01:31:01.000 Well, I think that the idea is that it came from hunter-gatherer tribes.

01:31:06.000 Oh, interesting.

01:31:07.000 Yeah.

01:31:08.000 See if you could find that, that ADHD, the trait emanated from hunter-gatherers.

01:31:17.000 The thing is, like, a lot of ADHD people, if they find a thing that they really enjoy, they get very focused on it.

01:31:25.000 Right.

01:31:26.000 Which is what was the thing with me.

01:31:28.000 Exactly. 0.96

01:31:29.000 I thought that because I couldn't pay attention in school, that I was going to be a loser.

01:31:33.000 A recent review of the evidence by child and adolescent psychiatrists, Annie Swanepole, how do you say that?

01:31:43.000 I don't know.

01:31:44.000 And colleagues made the case for the latter.

01:31:47.000 They argue that ADHD traits likely evolved in early human environments that rewarded exploration, novelty seeking, and movement such as nomadic and migrating communities.

01:31:58.000 It's probably how you stayed alive.

01:32:01.000 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. 0.53

01:32:09.000 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. 0.96

01:32:17.000 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. 0.96

01:32:26.000 Right. 0.96

01:32:27.000 And you know what they could do with those kids?

01:32:28.000 Give them longer recess.

01:32:30.000 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.

01:32:39.000 And that was the thing that I didn't know until I started doing things outside of school.

01:32:43.000 I didn't know that there was things that I could excel at because I actually enjoyed them.

01:32:48.000 And I would focus on those things and get very good at them.

01:32:51.000 And I didn't know that that was a part of me.

01:32:53.000 I didn't...

01:32:53.000 I had never...

01:32:55.000 Been told that. 0.99

01:32:57.000 Everybody was just like, if you can't do this, you are going to be a loser. 1.00

01:33:00.000 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. 1.00

01:33:09.000 Right. 0.97

01:33:09.000 And it was never true. 0.97

01:33:10.000 That's the thing.

01:33:11.000 You were incredibly successful, despite what they said.

01:33:14.000 But imagine if they had said to you... 0.99

01:33:16.000 Actually, there's something wrong with your brain. 0.94

01:33:18.000 It's called ADHD. You need a pill so you can be like everybody else. 0.98

01:33:22.000 Would you have had the same motivation to go keep looking for what you were good at and what you were passionate about?

01:33:28.000 No, I probably wouldn't have.

01:33:29.000 I probably would have been medicated.

01:33:30.000 If I had the wrong parents at the wrong time in history, I probably would have been medicated. 0.99

01:33:35.000 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. 0.98

01:33:44.000 Because I'm running low and I talk the doctor into ramping up my Adderall. 0.98

01:33:48.000 We're putting seven-year-olds on Lexapro.

01:33:51.000 That's crazy.

01:33:52.000 That is so crazy.

01:33:53.000 FDA just approved it for seven-year-olds. 0.99

01:33:55.000 These are kids who are going to have their sex drive deleted before they ever have a sex drive.

01:34:00.000 So when they reach the teenagers, because kids do not go off them, they put them on antipressants and they put them on more. 0.94

01:34:07.000 They'll never have had a sex drive.

01:34:10.000 They won't even know what they're missing.

01:34:11.000 And that's the problem.

01:34:12.000 The problem is not, and I'm not saying no medication for anyone ever.

01:34:16.000 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.

01:34:25.000 I thought I had HD, but I'm so excited about this other thing I got into.

01:34:29.000 Not only will, they'll never know they could get through a breakup without a pill.

01:34:33.000 Right.

01:34:33.000 Because they've never done it.

01:34:35.000 Isn't that sort of the problem with the diagnosis of depression in the first place?

01:34:39.000 Because one of the things they never ask is, how's your life?

01:34:42.000 It's always you have depression.

01:34:44.000 You have a clinical issue.

01:34:46.000 You have a disease.

01:34:47.000 You have a thing called depression. 0.99

01:34:48.000 It's not your fault.

01:34:49.000 It's not you have a terrible life. 1.00

01:34:52.000 Your job sucks. 1.00

01:34:54.000 Your apartment sucks. 1.00

01:34:55.000 Your neighborhood sucks. 1.00

01:34:56.000 Your friends suck. 1.00

01:34:57.000 Your family sucks. 1.00

01:34:58.000 You don't have any joy. 1.00

01:35:00.000 That's exactly right.

01:35:01.000 Which will make you depressed.

01:35:02.000 Right.

01:35:02.000 And by the way, of course, the best psychologists would point out those things.

01:35:07.000 And here's the most important.

01:35:08.000 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 because it takes an acute problem and it turns it into a chronic one.

01:35:21.000 But it's also very profitable.

01:35:23.000 And that's the problem.

01:35:24.000 That's the really difficult thing in getting these out of our lives.

01:35:28.000 And despite the fact that as time goes on, we find out that the research on the efficacy of SSRIs is dubious at best.

01:35:38.000 It's not good.

01:35:40.000 Right.

01:35:40.000 It depresses all emotion.

01:35:41.000 So does it treat depression?

01:35:43.000 I don't know.

01:35:44.000 It seems to depress all kinds of things.

01:35:46.000 Maybe, you know, also, you know, depending on the drug, some depress anxiety, but they depress everything.

01:35:52.000 But I do have to say that I have 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.

01:36:04.000 I think that there's a place for these drugs.

01:36:07.000 Absolutely.

01:36:08.000 And by the way, trying to get off of them, if you can, is a good program.

01:36:13.000 In other words, not saying, I'm going to be on it forever.

01:36:16.000 But in a kid, they won't even know what life was like, what it was supposed to be like without it.

01:36:22.000 They'll never know what they could handle.

01:36:24.000 And so they will show up for college and say, I've had trauma because of a breakup.

01:36:28.000 I have PTSD because of my breakup.

01:36:30.000 And they'll believe it.

01:36:31.000 They won't know any better.

01:36:33.000 Because they never went through that heartache on their own.

01:36:35.000 And psychiatrists are incentivized to prescribe these things.

01:36:39.000 Yeah, but you know who else is prescribing them?

01:36:41.000 You know, regular physicians who aren't experts in these drugs.

01:36:45.000 So regular physicians are allowed to prescribe?

01:36:50.000 Pediatricians are a huge source of SSRI prescription.

01:36:53.000 And they're not even psychiatrists?

01:36:54.000 No.

01:36:55.000 So it's very easy.

01:36:56.000 According to psychiatrists I spoke to, they feel that pediatricians are giving out these drugs way, way too easily.

01:37:02.000 That seems crazy.

01:37:04.000 So a pediatrician has to...

01:37:06.000 Look at legitimate problems, all sorts of issues that a child might have medically, and then on top of that, psychiatric disorders, and then prescribe medication for those psychiatric disorders?

01:37:20.000 Pediatricians are usually the ones who give you the ADHD medication.

01:37:24.000 That seems insane.

01:37:26.000 Is that insane?

01:37:27.000 Am I being judgmental?

01:37:29.000 No, I think it is.

01:37:30.000 That seems like malpractice.

01:37:31.000 Because they're doing it more easily than they should.

01:37:34.000 I think too many of them are not appreciating, I'm going to go in there and mess with this kid, change this kid.

01:37:40.000 Before I do it, I better make sure this is urgent.

01:37:44.000 And there's nothing else we can do to improve the life, just like you said, improve the life and see if we can get there without it.

01:37:51.000 And then there's also the problem the parents want to fix.

01:37:54.000 Yeah.

01:37:55.000 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.

01:38:07.000 We went to an expert.

01:38:08.000 The expert has an opinion.

01:38:09.000 That's right.

01:38:10.000 Let's listen to the expert.

01:38:11.000 Let's get little Johnny on pills. 0.51

01:38:13.000 Right.

01:38:13.000 Now little Johnny's doing better.

01:38:14.000 He just sits in front of the TV with a fucking blank stare on his face. 0.99

01:38:17.000 Right. 0.99

01:38:18.000 I mean, parents aren't exercising their authority, and they're not trusting themselves.

01:38:22.000 They're feeling like, oh, this is above my pay grade.

01:38:25.000 The second the kid isn't what the teacher wants, they're sure they need an expert involved.

01:38:30.000 And they never ask their own parents who raised kids to adulthood, right?

01:38:34.000 Right.

01:38:35.000 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 good, stable adults, who are productive, who can be dependent on by others.

01:38:48.000 Right, but you might not have access to those.

01:38:50.000 I didn't have access to those when I was a child.

01:38:53.000 I didn't have access to people that had raised successful, stable people.

01:38:57.000 Oh, I see, when you were a child.

01:38:58.000 Yeah.

01:39:00.000 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. 0.92

01:39:10.000 They had the occasional child that was exceptional, that made its way out of that fucked up maze, and usually became hyper-successful. 0.92

01:39:19.000 But the other siblings oftentimes are a mess. 0.85

01:39:23.000 And sometimes the parents want to take credit for the hyper-successful sibling.

01:39:27.000 You know, like, oh, I showed you the way. 0.99

01:39:30.000 Like, no, you didn't do shit. 0.98

01:39:31.000 You know, like that kid figured it out on their own without having anybody as a positive role model or example. 0.99

01:39:38.000 But I think that if they were successful, there were certain good things in their life.

01:39:44.000 Meaning they weren't on the couch.

01:39:46.000 They weren't the 54% of Gen Z who doesn't want to live with anyone but mom.

01:39:51.000 These are 18 to 25-year-olds.

01:39:53.000 Sorry.

01:39:54.000 That's wild.

01:39:54.000 54% of them are living with parents.

01:39:56.000 Well, that's that old expression, right?

01:39:57.000 The healthy bird leaves the nest.

01:39:59.000 Right.

01:40:00.000 Yeah.

01:40:00.000 Right.

01:40:00.000 There was something healthy.

01:40:01.000 There was some healthy message or example that at least made the kid think, I can.

01:40:07.000 Yeah.

01:40:08.000 And the kids today are thinking, I can't.

01:40:11.000 I need to be with mom and dad, even at 18 to 25. Yeah.

01:40:15.000 Yeah, because it offers you comfort.

01:40:17.000 Right.

01:40:17.000 Yeah.

01:40:18.000 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.

01:40:26.000 Right.

01:40:26.000 That's not our culture.

01:40:27.000 So in those cultures, I think it's a different situation and it is healthier, meaning they have their own ways of doing things and they get a job and they don't leave the home until they're married.

01:40:38.000 Right.

01:40:38.000 And that is the way they define growing up.

01:40:42.000 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.

01:40:55.000 We have a vision in this culture, and we are not producing that.

01:40:59.000 Hmm.

01:41:00.000 Which one's right?

01:41:01.000 Which culture is correct though? 0.99

01:41:03.000 Is the culture that enforces family and they have this very tight bond and they don't leave until they're establishing their own family?

01:41:13.000 And then that family stays in connection with the other family?

01:41:17.000 Is that the way to do it?

01:41:18.000 Or is the way we do it where we cast them out?

01:41:21.000 So I tend to think that, you know, they have a version of adulthood in their culture.

01:41:27.000 It's just defined differently.

01:41:28.000 And those are people you can rely on.

01:41:30.000 They do become adults in other cultures, depends who you're talking about.

01:41:34.000 But in culture, say India, where families, you know, live with, you know, in the same home with extended family.

01:41:40.000 And as soon as you marry, you go and live with the mom and dad.

01:41:42.000 They know how to do that so that the young people who are raising the family are, you know, Absolutely dependable, independent adults, right?

01:41:51.000 They're not sitting home playing Xbox while they're living with their parents, right?

01:41:57.000 That's the difference.

01:41:58.000 That's the difference.

01:42:00.000 It's different from ours, but it is healthy, and you can rely on those people.

01:42:04.000 They are raising children.

01:42:05.000 They are like being good neighbors, right?

01:42:08.000 We've 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.

01:42:16.000 I have to attend to my mental health.

01:42:18.000 I can't.

01:42:19.000 Trump was just elected. 1.00

01:42:20.000 I need a mental health day. 0.99

01:42:23.000 Yeah.

01:42:24.000 Emotionally fragile.

01:42:26.000 Yeah.

01:42:26.000 It's a problem, right?

01:42:28.000 Yeah.

01:42:28.000 What's going on?

01:42:30.000 Like, it doesn't matter who's president.

01:42:31.000 Get to work.

01:42:32.000 Yeah.

01:42:33.000 Coddling.

01:42:34.000 Yeah.

01:42:36.000 Boy, what a complicated thing.

01:42:39.000 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.

01:43:00.000 You know, we want people to be heard.

01:43:01.000 I don't know if you've ever seen, there's a hilarious video of this socialist meeting And they're calling each other comrades.

01:43:13.000 Have you seen this video?

01:43:14.000 It's a wonderful video.

01:43:16.000 Because one person says, could everyone please stop making as much noise?

01:43:25.000 Because I'm easily distracted.

01:43:27.000 I forget the term that they use.

01:43:29.000 And then, could you guys please do that?

01:43:31.000 Just recognize that there's others around here, us, that are...

01:43:35.000 This is it.

01:43:35.000 Listen to this.

01:43:36.000 This is amazing.

01:43:37.000 Socialism.

01:43:38.000 Thank you so much.

01:43:40.000 Quick point of privilege.

01:43:41.000 Quick point of personal privilege.

01:43:43.000 Guys, first of all, James Jackson, Sacramento, he, him.

01:43:46.000 I just want to say, can we please keep the chatter to a minimum?

01:43:49.000 I'm one of the people who's very, very prone to sensory overload.

01:43:53.000 There's a lot of whispering and chatter going on.

01:43:54.000 It's making it very difficult for me to focus.

01:43:56.000 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?

01:44:01.000 It's affecting my ability to focus.

01:44:02.000 Thank you.

01:44:03.000 Thank you, Kamala.

01:44:17.000 It goes on further.

01:44:19.000 That's just a clip of it.

01:44:20.000 But that's what you're dealing with. 0.95

01:44:22.000 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, 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. 0.98

01:44:40.000 That is a mentally crippled person. 1.00

01:44:44.000 Point of privilege! 0.94

01:44:46.000 Good luck. 1.00

01:44:47.000 Good luck out there in the world, you fuck. 1.00

01:44:49.000 Good luck. 1.00

01:44:50.000 But I'll tell you this.

01:44:51.000 All these things, there are things to be negative about or pessimistic about in society, not this.

01:44:56.000 Because you know what?

01:44:57.000 Honestly, parents have an absolute ability to turn this around.

01:45:02.000 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.

01:45:09.000 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.

01:45:14.000 No.

01:45:16.000 This thing happened to me that I thought...

01:45:19.000 I was on a plane and I was seated behind this family of four.

01:45:23.000 There were two little girls.

01:45:25.000 And one starts to scream.

01:45:27.000 And I mean scream like it was painful to listen to.

01:45:32.000 And I hear the father tell her, Honey, what's wrong?

01:45:36.000 What did your sister do?

01:45:38.000 And she's screaming, okay?

01:45:40.000 It is so loud.

01:45:41.000 It's so late at night.

01:45:43.000 And okay, well, let me just see what I can do.

01:45:46.000 All right, well, don't be upset.

01:45:47.000 He never once said to her, you know, there are other people on this plane.

01:45:52.000 And when I ask people from other countries, I talked to the emotions expert who does cross-cultural research.

01:45:58.000 I said, what would they say in other countries about that?

01:46:00.000 And she said to me, they would say that's bananas.

01:46:03.000 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.

01:46:11.000 We're part of a society.

01:46:13.000 We have to care about others.

01:46:15.000 The world isn't just you and your feelings.

01:46:18.000 And that's a message parents can absolutely give to kids.

01:46:23.000 They don't have to say, oh, let me attend to your every discomfort.

01:46:27.000 They can say, I know you're feeling a little discomfort.

01:46:29.000 We're in a room with a lot of other people.

01:46:31.000 We need to think about them.

01:46:32.000 But you're also dealing with emotionally challenged parents.

01:46:37.000 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.

01:46:48.000 You are causing damage.

01:46:50.000 You're causing a problem. 1.00

01:46:52.000 These parents are fucked up too. 1.00

01:46:55.000 You're not gonna just fix them by having them fix their kid. 1.00

01:46:59.000 Which is part of the problem, is that there's no real test to see if you're emotionally stable enough to have children.

01:47:09.000 You just have children.

01:47:10.000 I don't think those parents are necessarily emotionally unstable.

01:47:13.000 I tend to think they've just got it all wrong.

01:47:16.000 They think the old-school parenting is unloving and cruel, and the most gentle parenting will produce the most gentle children.

01:47:23.000 It's not true.

01:47:24.000 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.

01:47:32.000 No, you're not.

01:47:32.000 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.

01:47:40.000 Hmm.

01:47:42.000 They aren't liberated to trust their own instincts and what they have seen work for others.

01:47:48.000 And you know what?

01:47:49.000 The examples are all around you if you look.

01:47:51.000 There are people who are good people and you can ask them.

01:47:54.000 By the way, immigrants, because they don't go for this nonsense usually.

01:47:58.000 You can ask them, what was it like in the old country?

01:48:01.000 Or what was it like where you came from?

01:48:02.000 What are you doing?

01:48:03.000 And they call this, have you ever seen this, the Latino paradox? 0.99

01:48:07.000 They call this in psychology.

01:48:09.000 Why are Latinos, why do they have better mental health? 1.00

01:48:12.000 When they come to this country, when they are immigrants, before they assimilate. 1.00

01:48:16.000 And the more they acculturate to American culture, the worse their mental health gets. 0.91

01:48:20.000 Why?

01:48:21.000 And part of the reason is they have social stability in their relations.

01:48:26.000 They are surrounded by extended family, which also means people are saying the wrong things to them.

01:48:31.000 They're saying insulting things.

01:48:32.000 They're making inappropriate jokes.

01:48:33.000 They're giving them foods mom doesn't approve of.

01:48:35.000 And they're surviving it all.

01:48:37.000 And they know they can.

01:48:38.000 The reality of hard work is inescapable.

01:48:41.000 That's right.

01:48:42.000 They're not afraid of authority.

01:48:43.000 Parents are in charge. 0.89

01:48:45.000 They will give their kids chores and hard work.

01:48:48.000 They will teach them, you know what?

01:48:50.000 Mom's working two jobs. 1.00

01:48:51.000 I'm not going to bother her with my trivial problem.

01:48:53.000 But that liberates the kid to realize, hey, my problem is kind of trivial.

01:48:57.000 There are bigger problems.

01:48:59.000 We're doing the opposite in this country.

01:49:01.000 We're telling kids the small problem you have is so big.

01:49:05.000 I'm going to stop everything to focus on it.

01:49:08.000 Right, but if you're dealing with these parents that are emotionally challenged themselves, like, how are you gonna fix them?

01:49:15.000 Because it's not just the child.

01:49:17.000 It's not just them raising the child in a certain way. 0.99

01:49:20.000 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. 0.97

01:49:27.000 Well, I mean, that's why I wrote the book, right? 0.59

01:49:29.000 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.

01:49:38.000 They're counterproductive.

01:49:39.000 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.

01:49:46.000 Don't go to a therapist if you don't need it.

01:49:48.000 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.

01:49:55.000 Yeah.

01:49:56.000 You can go to a religious priest, but go to a therapist if you really need it.

01:50:02.000 But don't do it casually.

01:50:04.000 I mean, I talk to moms who did it because a pet died.

01:50:08.000 Or they did it prophylactically before the kids had any problems.

01:50:11.000 They said, I wanted my teenager to know she had someone who was on retainer to talk to in case she had a problem.

01:50:18.000 Not having any sense that that therapist could also introduce worries.

01:50:22.000 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.

01:50:31.000 Sure.

01:50:31.000 Of course, wouldn't you?

01:50:33.000 I mean, and they get to rise above it all.

01:50:35.000 They get to evaluate the job the parents are doing.

01:50:38.000 They get to casually pass judgment on the, you know, whether the parents are doing.

01:50:43.000 They might not have any kids themselves.

01:50:46.000 Right.

01:51:04.000 But he said to me, one of the things he said to me was that alienation, very often we're seeing very high rates of parental alienation in this generation.

01:51:14.000 Very often the stories the therapist, the therapist made the relationship with the parents worse.

01:51:21.000 Whew.

01:51:23.000 This is a heavy book.

01:51:24.000 Joshua Coleman.

01:51:25.000 That was his name.

01:51:26.000 Sorry.

01:51:26.000 This is a heavy book.

01:51:28.000 I hope not.

01:51:29.000 I hope it's a happy book.

01:51:30.000 No, it's not.

01:51:31.000 I think it is.

01:51:32.000 I think it is.

01:51:33.000 Literally, you're saying bad therapy, why the kids aren't growing up.

01:51:38.000 That's not good.

01:51:40.000 You think it's good in that you're offering solutions and you're explaining the problem?

01:51:44.000 But the solution is something we can all do.

01:51:46.000 It's less intervention.

01:51:48.000 It's telling parents, you don't need them.

01:51:51.000 Your kids don't need them.

01:51:52.000 They never needed them.

01:51:54.000 It's telling parents, trust yourselves.

01:51:57.000 If you don't think that diagnosis sounds right for your kid, don't go with it.

01:52:02.000 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.

01:52:09.000 So if you don't think it sounds right, trust yourself.

01:52:12.000 It should be the most liberating book in the world.

01:52:15.000 It's saying that you can trust your gut again.

01:52:19.000 Have you talked to any parents that have...

01:52:23.000 Gone down the road, the bad road that you describe, and then reverse course?

01:52:28.000 Sure.

01:52:29.000 All the time.

01:52:30.000 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.

01:52:37.000 I don't know why I did that.

01:52:39.000 Really?

01:52:39.000 Yeah.

01:52:40.000 I hear that all the time.

01:52:41.000 And did they reverse course with positive results?

01:52:46.000 You know, it depends on the individual case.

01:52:50.000 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.

01:52:56.000 I talked to one wonderful cognitive behavioral therapist, Roger McFillin, who often tells people that their kids don't need therapy.

01:53:06.000 I mean, imagine.

01:53:07.000 Probably got a good business.

01:53:08.000 Doesn't need more clients.

01:53:10.000 You know what?

01:53:11.000 That's the problem, right?

01:53:11.000 The truth is, they all have a good business.

01:53:13.000 It's just some of them have more integrity.

01:53:15.000 And they'll say, you don't need it.

01:53:17.000 You don't need this pill.

01:53:19.000 You don't need this therapy.

01:53:20.000 Right.

01:53:21.000 Did you ever watch that Netflix series, Painkiller, about the Sackler family?

01:53:28.000 Oh.

01:53:29.000 About the opioid crisis.

01:53:30.000 No, I never watched it.

01:53:32.000 But what's fascinating about it is, first of all, it's fascinating seeing how the regulatory bodies get captured 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.

01:53:50.000 But also that there were certain doctors that did have integrity.

01:53:55.000 Where the doctors who had integrity are like, what are you talking about?

01:53:59.000 Like, what are you saying?

01:54:00.000 You're saying you want to prescribe heroin to people?

01:54:03.000 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. 0.98

01:54:18.000 And they don't have any medical background.

01:54:20.000 And one of them has this conversation with this ethical doctor.

01:54:24.000 It's fascinating.

01:54:36.000 You know, I talked to this one psychiatrist who told me this story.

01:54:39.000 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.

01:54:45.000 I'm really paranoid.

01:54:46.000 I've got this, I've got my girlfriend cheating on me. 0.99

01:54:50.000 I know there's something wrong with me.

01:54:51.000 Like I need medication.

01:54:52.000 So this psychiatrist was a very good psychiatrist.

01:54:55.000 He said, let's talk a little bit about your life.

01:54:57.000 Why are you so paranoid?

01:54:59.000 And it turned out that the girl, his girlfriend, had this very close male friend and sometimes they would have sleepovers.

01:55:09.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:55:11.000 And the psychiatrist said, you're not paranoid.

01:55:15.000 He's like, no, no, no.

01:55:16.000 It's totally platonic.

01:55:18.000 They've been friends for years.

01:55:19.000 And he said, you're not paranoid and it's not platonic.

01:55:23.000 Yeah.

01:55:23.000 Yeah, it's not.

01:55:25.000 You're getting hosed, son.

01:55:26.000 Right.

01:55:26.000 That's what he told him.

01:55:28.000 Yeah, you're not paranoid if it's actually happening.

01:55:31.000 Yeah.

01:55:31.000 Right.

01:55:32.000 That's a funny story.

01:55:33.000 And sometimes people need to, a good, by the way, a good mental, you know, health professional, psychiatrist, whatever.

01:55:38.000 That's a crazy story.

01:55:39.000 Right.

01:55:43.000 This is my platonic friend.

01:55:44.000 We sleep over together.

01:55:45.000 Yeah.

01:55:46.000 Yeah.

01:55:47.000 And he was convinced there was something wrong with him.

01:55:49.000 Wow.

01:55:50.000 That he was having trust issues.

01:55:51.000 That's what he thought.

01:55:52.000 I'm sure he was getting gaslit.

01:55:54.000 She was probably saying it to him.

01:55:55.000 Yeah.

01:55:56.000 Right.

01:55:57.000 Gaslighting is real.

01:55:58.000 It's real!

01:55:58.000 Yeah.

01:56:02.000 Boy.

01:56:03.000 God.

01:56:05.000 The journey of becoming a healthy human being is so fraught with peril.

01:56:12.000 It's so much difficulty.

01:56:14.000 It's so complicated.

01:56:18.000 Well, I think we make it more complicated than it has to be.

01:56:22.000 I think it is.

01:56:23.000 Look, I'm scared for my kids like everybody else.

01:56:26.000 Sure it is.

01:56:26.000 I mean, especially in our current society with all the crazy influences.

01:56:30.000 Yeah, but I know, you know, they've done these studies on human happiness.

01:56:36.000 People who love you and you love back over a lifetime...

01:56:39.000 You know, family, friends you keep for a long time.

01:56:44.000 Wow, that does a lot to help you be happy.

01:56:47.000 Surrounding your kids and giving them freedom to make friends.

01:56:51.000 Maybe they're not your favorite friends, but realizing that they're entitled to have their own friends.

01:56:59.000 Trusting them to start a job or take a chance you wouldn't have picked for them.

01:57:04.000 You have to let them figure some of this stuff out on your own.

01:57:25.000 And I let her.

01:57:26.000 And I let her because I was interviewing parent after parent after parent who weren't letting their kids do things like that.

01:57:32.000 And then they had 13-year-olds who didn't want to leave the house.

01:57:37.000 I was a latchkey kid, so when I was young, there was no supervision.

01:57:42.000 You just left.

01:57:43.000 When I was six years old, we'd just open the door and walk out of the house.

01:57:48.000 Younger than that.

01:57:49.000 I mean, there was never a time where there was any supervision.

01:57:52.000 By the way, things like walking to school are really good for kids.

01:57:56.000 They learn to navigate their world.

01:57:59.000 It's really healthy to have competency.

01:58:02.000 And that's something you don't have to spend money on.

01:58:04.000 That's the thing.

01:58:05.000 All of these fixes are really a lot of them are just common sense.

01:58:09.000 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.

01:58:16.000 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.

01:58:25.000 That's a real fear.

01:58:27.000 Right.

01:58:27.000 But you can't protect kids from every kind of pain, right?

01:58:32.000 We are so obsessed with – I've had parents call me about a bad – or I've heard teachers getting upset about bullying.

01:58:40.000 And what was the bullying?

01:58:41.000 Someone said something not nice to someone else.

01:58:44.000 Now, I tell my kids to treat people kindly, of course, but I have to tell you something.

01:58:49.000 If my kids came to me and said she said something mean to me, I would say, work it out.

01:58:54.000 It's not going to kill you.

01:58:55.000 You'll live.

01:58:56.000 Why?

01:58:57.000 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 going to be a losing one.

01:59:12.000 Yeah.

01:59:14.000 Well, listen, Abigail, I really appreciate your courage.

01:59:18.000 Oh, thanks.

01:59:18.000 And 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.

01:59:26.000 Thanks.

01:59:26.000 And you're a courageous person.

01:59:28.000 Thank you.

01:59:28.000 And I think the things that you're talking about are very important.

01:59:31.000 Oh, thanks.

01:59:31.000 I appreciate you.

01:59:31.000 It's great to be here.

01:59:32.000 Thanks for inviting me back despite the trouble I caused last time.

01:59:36.000 It didn't cause any trouble.

01:59:37.000 Okay, good.

01:59:37.000 I mean, it was attempted trouble, but it didn't really work.

01:59:41.000 I know.

01:59:42.000 You succeeded.

01:59:45.000 It's important to talk about really important issues.

01:59:47.000 It is.

01:59:48.000 And these are both very important issues.

01:59:50.000 Thank you.

01:59:51.000 So your book, it's out right now.

01:59:52.000 Bad Therapy.

01:59:53.000 Go get it.

01:59:54.000 Read it.

01:59:54.000 I'm going to read it.

01:59:56.000 I appreciate you very much.

01:59:57.000 Thank you.

01:59:58.000 Thank you.

01:59:58.000 Thanks for being here.

01:59:58.000 All right.

01:59:59.000 Bye, everybody.

01:59:59.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 27, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2109 - Abigail Shrier

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