TRIGGERnometry - Our Kids Are NOT Alright - Psychologist, Stella O’Malley

00:00:00.000 The fairytale childhood is lasting too long and then they're falling from a cliff with disappointment. It's a big issue.

00:00:06.000 These young people didn't get born this way, they've been made this way.

00:00:10.000 They have. They get shuttled off to a therapist and it all gets professionalised and pathologised and weirded out.

00:00:18.000 Who am I will lead to.

00:00:20.000 Well you might be trans. I know that sounds elite but if people Google it as if you're a teenager you'll see the jumps go quite fast.

00:00:28.000 Stella O'Malley, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:31.000 Thanks for having me.

00:00:32.000 It's a real pleasure having you on the show.

00:00:34.000 We're going to talk all about teens and mental health and all of that interesting stuff and of course the trans issue which you can never get away from these days. 0.87

00:00:41.000 Before we do, tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

00:00:48.000 Well, as you said, I'm a psychotherapist and I'm based in Ireland.

00:00:53.000 And up until I came late to psychotherapy, didn't kind of qualify until I was about 30.

00:00:59.000 And then up until about the last five years, I was very general and I wrote, you know, books and articles in the national media in Ireland about mental health.

00:01:09.000 So mental health is my thing. And I'm particularly interested in teenagers and young people because when I had my kids, which was 2007 and 2009, I kind of realized with a shock that it was incredibly unhealthy.

00:01:26.000 Their life styles as such that was being shown just, you know, the general presuming of how we should raise our kids was very intensive and almost like battery chickens, if you follow me.

00:01:38.000 And that's when I got really, really into the kind of mental health of children.

00:01:45.000 And then, you know, when you're good at something, it more of it comes to you.

00:01:49.000 I started seeing way more teenagers and then I became inundated with teenagers.

00:01:53.000 So more and more of kind of I had a hard life as a teenager.

00:01:57.000 So that's where my sympathy, that's where my heart lies, really.

00:02:00.000 And doing the calculations, you've got two teenagers now as well.

00:02:03.000 I do. They're having an easy time so far.

00:02:07.000 They'll tell me they're having a hard time with their own life.

00:02:10.000 Yeah. And obviously, there's a lot going on with teenagers nowadays.

00:02:14.000 Yeah.

00:02:15.000 It seems to be that they have challenges that we didn't have when we were kids.

00:02:19.000 They do. They do in lots of ways.

00:02:22.000 You know, when when I was a teenager and when you were teenagers, in a way we kind of we had just about left repression.

00:02:31.000 We were just starting to kind of find our way.

00:02:34.000 I know some people say, oh, no, we were repressed and so we were kind of pulling out of it.

00:02:38.000 It might have been quite difficult to be gay.

00:02:40.000 It might have been certainly difficult as a girl to find your, you know, sexual place. 1.00

00:02:46.000 You know, I mean, it wasn't particularly easy, but where they are now is just horrendously difficult.

00:02:53.000 It's no comparison. There's no doubt it's a lot worse.

00:02:56.000 And I thought like up until really up until the end of the 20th century, arguably, you know, life was getting better and better and better.

00:03:06.000 But mentally, it's like we've regressed in quite a significant way in the last 20 years or so.

00:03:11.000 And that is absolutely borne out by all the evidence.

00:03:14.000 I mean, the research shows that very clearly people's I mean, it's subjective.

00:03:18.000 So we don't know whether it's genuinely happening, I suppose, or whether it's people feeling worse.

00:03:24.000 You know, they think they're feeling worse, but they can't, you know, we can't compare.

00:03:28.000 But the studies do show that. Right.

00:03:31.000 Why do you think that is?

00:03:34.000 It's very subjective, because if a kid thinks they're really depressed and I meet them and they tell me how anxious they are and how depressed they are.

00:03:42.000 And you look at them and you think, I know you think you are.

00:03:46.000 But actually, if we look at the actual facts of your life, they're not that bad.

00:03:52.000 Certainly compared to your own mother who might have had, you know what I mean?

00:03:55.000 Quite difficulty.

00:03:56.000 So then you think is pain worse just because I know.

00:04:00.000 Because I think of like my grandparents, like my grandmother lived through Stalinism, the gulags, German Nazi occupation.

00:04:07.000 I don't remember her ever talking about depression.

00:04:10.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:04:11.000 Of being an adolescent.

00:04:12.000 Yeah.

00:04:13.000 Yeah.

00:04:14.000 Yeah.

00:04:15.000 It's a real.

00:04:16.000 We can't compare any of the previous studies because there's there's such a heightened emphasis on mental health these days.

00:04:22.000 And there's so much kind of are you OK?

00:04:25.000 Are you depressed?

00:04:26.000 You know, like kids coming in and they kind of say, I think I'm depressed and I think it's clinical and have all this language.

00:04:34.000 And I'm like going, I think you are very distressed and I think you are very in plugged into the mental health industry, which has sold you, frankly, a line that it could be serious and you might need serious attention.

00:04:48.000 As if there's a man behind the green curtain who'll come out with some sort of magic elixir that will kind of make them better rather than actually the human condition is quite difficult.

00:04:59.000 Being a human, once you get into adolescence and you complexify your brain, you realize actually life is really difficult.

00:05:06.000 And they haven't often figured that bit out.

00:05:10.000 They think I'm finding life really difficult.

00:05:13.000 So actually, to go back to your question, I do think they're lost and being lost is a particularly horrible place to be.

00:05:20.000 And they're incredibly uncertain of everything.

00:05:23.000 They can't even depend on the news.

00:05:25.000 Remember, the news was the news and maybe not for yourself and Russia, but like, but used to be the news was the news.

00:05:33.000 You knew where you stood.

00:05:34.000 Like, yeah, there was the odd scandal.

00:05:36.000 But really, you knew what was what was solid.

00:05:39.000 There isn't a solidity.

00:05:41.000 They can't. Everything is fake news.

00:05:42.000 I don't know.

00:05:43.000 I don't believe that.

00:05:44.000 I reject those facts.

00:05:46.000 So they have this uncertain, really, really, really kind of clay that they're standing on.

00:05:52.000 And it's making them feel incredibly uncertain.

00:05:54.000 And all the markets, the economic markets will say bad news is fine.

00:05:58.000 Good news is great.

00:05:59.000 Uncertainty is what what really wallops the mind.

00:06:03.000 That's what we can't actually cope with.

00:06:05.000 And that's what the adolescents are living in a very uncertain world, but they can't trust anything. 0.99

00:06:11.000 Well, isn't part of the problem as well is that adolescence is crap. 0.99

00:06:15.000 It's always been crap. 0.99

00:06:16.000 It's always been terrible. 1.00

00:06:17.000 It's always been really, really unpleasant.

00:06:22.000 And you hear kids talk about all of these things.

00:06:27.000 And there's a part of me that goes, yeah, that's just being a teenager.

00:06:30.000 Yeah, I don't know, because sometimes I go, yeah, yeah, right. 0.99

00:06:34.000 OK, my adolescence is crap. 0.95

00:06:37.000 Part of me thinks we, you know, we arrived on the teenager in the 1950s. 0.99

00:06:42.000 And when we did, we sexualized girls at a very high speed. 0.96

00:06:47.000 And the songs from the 50s and 60s, they're saying some really crazy things about little girl.

00:06:53.000 Oh, yeah.

00:06:54.000 There's a very famous song by Gary Puckett and the something union called Young Girl Get Out Of My Mind.

00:06:59.000 Oh, I know that song.

00:07:00.000 Yeah.

00:07:01.000 And it's, I mean, it's a brilliant song that you listen to the lyrics.

00:07:03.000 A BBC classic.

00:07:04.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:07:05.000 And it's, but you know, and it's, you go, well, this is, you know, this is disgusting.

00:07:09.000 Sweet little 16 by Chuck Berry.

00:07:11.000 Yeah.

00:07:12.000 Yeah.

00:07:13.000 There's so many of them.

00:07:14.000 Like it's Rolling Stones and stuff.

00:07:15.000 There's some really, really extraordinary.

00:07:16.000 And this happens in the 50s.

00:07:18.000 Well, yeah.

00:07:19.000 If you think about it, James Dean, the teenager arrived and it was very cool.

00:07:22.000 It was very Americanized.

00:07:23.000 It was very consumer culture, but it was still very attractive.

00:07:27.000 But arguably the sexualization of the teenage girl has happened since then.

00:07:32.000 And arguably since then, maybe since then, I don't have data to back it up.

00:07:37.000 We weren't checking out the mental health of teenagers in the 30s or the 20s.

00:07:41.000 But there's a, there's a, there's a question to be asked about the sexualization of girls because anorexia arrived in the 70s and then bulimia in the 80s.

00:07:51.000 Then we've got self harm.

00:07:52.000 We've got gender. 1.00

00:07:53.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:07:54.000 You can see these are girls who hate their bodies and you can't help but think, well, teenage girl as a thing hasn't gone very well, has it?

00:08:03.000 And the concept of teenagehood is what you're actually talking about.

00:08:08.000 More and more, I'm thinking because everybody says adolescence is awful.

00:08:12.000 And I'm like, yeah, we don't actually know what was it like to be, I don't know, a 15 year old in any other era.

00:08:20.000 Because there was no such thing as a teenager.

00:08:23.000 So they kind of, they grew up and then they worked.

00:08:26.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:08:27.000 There wasn't that period.

00:08:29.000 The actual concept of the teenager was created in about 1911 by Stanley Hall, a psychologist.

00:08:35.000 Like that this is a thing.

00:08:36.000 This is the time of storms and stresses.

00:08:39.000 And then it built on and then, you know, the pop culture created it in a big way with the 50s.

00:08:44.000 It's just not gone well, is all I can think.

00:08:47.000 And then you factor in social media on top of that.

00:08:50.000 And that has just made it infinitely worse.

00:08:53.000 It's so sophisticated and it's happening so young.

00:08:56.000 And it's so horrible to see this kind of hyper-sexualization of kids.

00:09:00.000 I have so many kids, and this is pre-teen.

00:09:03.000 This is when they're 10 and 11.

00:09:05.000 And it's happening all the time.

00:09:06.000 It's extraordinary how often that one kid in the class gets a phone.

00:09:10.000 One kid in the class is hyper-sexualized, maybe by their older brother or their older son.

00:09:14.000 There always was one or two kids.

00:09:16.000 But they come in with their phones and they take photos.

00:09:19.000 And some kid has taken their top off or their bottoms off.

00:09:22.000 And there's photos taken.

00:09:23.000 They are so out of their depth.

00:09:25.000 They are so not able.

00:09:27.000 They're babies still.

00:09:29.000 They're usually prepubescent.

00:09:32.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:09:33.000 And they've got this kind of device that's just way beyond them that we've allowed to happen.

00:09:40.000 Well, it'll be like the smoking.

00:09:42.000 Do you remember when, you know, in the 1950s and when I was a kid, like you could buy single cigarettes around the corner because they knew all the children were smoking.

00:09:50.000 So you didn't have to buy 10.

00:09:52.000 Do you follow me?

00:09:53.000 That's how common it was to smoke.

00:09:55.000 It'll be the same, I think, with the phones that will go, wow, look at the way they had those phones for the kids.

00:10:02.000 And why is it not more of a scandal?

00:10:04.000 Because we're seeing the effects that Instagram in particular is having on young girls.

00:10:09.000 Can we talk about that a little bit?

00:10:11.000 Because to me, that is, it's horrendous.

00:10:14.000 It's horrible.

00:10:15.000 And they become really vain because society has taught them to be.

00:10:19.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:10:20.000 It's not that they grew, they kind of woke up as vain.

00:10:23.000 They were created vain.

00:10:25.000 And they become incredibly judgmental of everybody else's looks and their own looks.

00:10:30.000 And they're obsessed with their look, whether it's not only just vanity of, of, but like they know about their, whether their lips are nice or their nose.

00:10:38.000 Their eyes are nice or their nose is nice or their eyes are nice when they're 10.

00:10:41.000 Like, you know what I mean?

00:10:42.000 Their, their self-consciousness arrives much earlier now because of all the photos.

00:10:47.000 But people, you know, in fairness, parents are taking photos of their kids at a very young age.

00:10:52.000 So this photo, photo, photo, photo, photo.

00:10:55.000 And then they have this pose.

00:10:56.000 By the time they're five, the kids have this pose.

00:10:58.000 They know how to pose.

00:10:59.000 And then by the time they're, you know, in their preteens, they're on Instagram and it's, it's just vanity writ large.

00:11:07.000 And what, what, what effect does that have on things like eating disorders, self-perception, body dysmorphia, et cetera?

00:11:14.000 It's a direct line.

00:11:15.000 It's a direct line between if you're constantly looking at yourself and, you know, putting filters in of yourself and then kind of trying to improve your pose at all times.

00:11:26.000 And then you're comparing yourselves with others.

00:11:30.000 I remember Time magazine did a study of the different platforms and they were kind of astonished to find out that Instagram was the one that made people feel worse.

00:11:40.000 The one that's supposed to be, which is classic of this world.

00:11:43.000 What you think is never what you think.

00:11:45.000 You know what I mean?

00:11:46.000 The one that's supposed to make you feel good is the one that actually wrecks your head.

00:11:49.000 But with girls, what it, what it moves very quickly from vanity to kind of a very critical analysis of what's wrong with them.

00:12:00.000 And they generally hate various aspects of them.

00:12:03.000 I remember one girl who came in to me and she, we had a lovely relationship and it took a while, you know what I mean?

00:12:08.000 And I'll change the details of this, but effectively then after a while she said, well, you know, you know, my eye and I says, what about your eye?

00:12:16.000 And she's like, my eye, as if there was this massive thing.

00:12:20.000 I couldn't even tell which eye she meant.

00:12:22.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:12:23.000 And basically from looking at, if you look at the mirror for hours upon hours, I figured it out during Zoom.

00:12:29.000 I'd never looked at my face so much during the Covid era.

00:12:32.000 You know what I mean?

00:12:33.000 All those Zooms, I suddenly thought, oh my God, all those things wrong with my face. 1.00

00:12:36.000 But this girl had decided that there was something wrong with her eye.

00:12:39.000 It was so minor, you couldn't see it visibly.

00:12:42.000 From just looking at herself all the time, looking at herself critically.

00:12:46.000 But it turns, it sounds silly and it is in a way, but it ends up not silly when you got gripped into either anorexia or a body dysmorphia,

00:12:58.000 which is an obsession about one part of your face, maybe your or your body, your nose or your breasts or your eye or whatever.

00:13:04.000 And the grip of mental illness, then it's not funny.

00:13:08.000 Then it's a it's a hell. It's a prison. It's really awful.

00:13:12.000 So when you tip in just because you've tipped in because of a vacuous culture that was all around vanity doesn't mean that when you've gone in, it isn't extraordinarily powerful.

00:13:23.000 It's devastating.

00:13:24.000 Oh, absolutely. And it feeds a narcissism as well.

00:13:27.000 I remember my wife and I were on holiday in Spain and we went to a castle and there was a girl there taking a selfie of herself.

00:13:36.000 And I just caught out the corner of my eye.

00:13:39.000 She was staring into her phone, ready, ready to take the selfie.

00:13:43.000 And it looked like she looked like she was in love.

00:13:46.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:13:47.000 I do. She had this like being in love.

00:13:51.000 And I remember just thinking, whoa, that is quite a weird emotion to be experiencing when you're taking a photo of yourself.

00:13:59.000 You know, and I think the one thing that doesn't get said enough that I'm so glad you said is these young people didn't get born this way.

00:14:10.000 They've been made this way.

00:14:11.000 They have. Yeah.

00:14:13.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:14:14.000 And when you chat with them on a deep level, which I would be doing, you wouldn't you would think at core, you know, that they know it's all crap. 0.99

00:14:23.000 They know it's all vain and vacuous. 0.90

00:14:25.000 They have deeper impulses, but nothing about social media, Instagram, nothing about society has lifted the better part of themselves.

00:14:35.000 And everything about society is feeding into the base, more basic parts.

00:14:40.000 But just to say about the beaming in, when I went to see the Eiffel Tower with my kids last year, it was unbelievable.

00:14:46.000 All around the Eiffel Tower, everybody was taking selfies with this Eiffel Tower in the back.

00:14:50.000 No, everybody had their back to the Eiffel Tower taking photos.

00:14:55.000 It was like, oh, my God, what is happening?

00:14:58.000 Nobody's looking at the Eiffel Tower and everybody was looking at it with their back.

00:15:02.000 And it was horrible to watch. It was like, we've really lost it. We've really lost it.

00:15:07.000 Because it's also encouraging people, especially women, to focus on their looks.

00:15:13.000 But what happens as you get older and your looks start to fade, as will happen with all of us?

00:15:18.000 Yeah, I know. And it has been researched that the better looking women find it harder to get older. 1.00

00:15:24.000 And I can see why. You know what I mean?

00:15:26.000 You know what I mean?

00:15:27.000 Well, you're losing more.

00:15:28.000 Yeah.

00:15:29.000 Yeah.

00:15:30.000 And it's not only that.

00:15:33.000 So many doors opened for you.

00:15:36.000 So many.

00:15:37.000 I remember I was in a, I was with somebody and she had been gorgeous and she asked the waiter to do something for her.

00:15:43.000 And he said, sorry, like, no.

00:15:46.000 And she's like, oh.

00:15:47.000 And she's like, I used to be gorgeous.

00:15:49.000 She said to me, like she used to be able to get anything like that.

00:15:52.000 Like an awful lot of doors slam in your face when you're not as pretty anymore.

00:15:57.000 But I think I have to say one thing I've noticed, like when, let's say I was growing up in the eighties and nineties and the boys were joyfully unselfconscious in many ways.

00:16:05.000 There was the odd.

00:16:06.000 There's always going to be extremes.

00:16:07.000 There was the odd.

00:16:08.000 But mostly they weren't that bothered about their looks.

00:16:10.000 And the girls were very preoccupied.

00:16:12.000 But rather than the girls following the boys, the boys have followed the girls.

00:16:16.000 Boys have become much more vain.

00:16:18.000 They're much more into bulking up.

00:16:20.000 And bulking is a huge part of, you know, eating disorders.

00:16:24.000 You know, the girls are getting skinnier and the boys are bulking up.

00:16:26.000 And it's an issue.

00:16:27.000 It shouldn't be underestimated because it's they're really becoming very bothered about their looks, the boys.

00:16:33.000 And what and why is that social media as well?

00:16:37.000 Or is that or are there other factors involved?

00:16:40.000 Yeah, that's massively to do with social media and the looks.

00:16:43.000 And frankly, there's been a huge amount of targeted consumerism.

00:16:48.000 You know what I mean?

00:16:49.000 There's an awful lot of sales going to the boys to up their game.

00:16:54.000 And it's working.

00:16:55.000 I think it's it's it's just we've become such a brand oriented society.

00:17:01.000 That we all look much better.

00:17:03.000 If any of us were from 40 years ago, none of us would look as good as we do now.

00:17:07.000 Yeah.

00:17:08.000 We all look better.

00:17:10.000 But we've been in a lot more effort.

00:17:12.000 We do.

00:17:13.000 Yeah.

00:17:14.000 I don't know.

00:17:15.000 I don't.

00:17:16.000 I really don't bother too much.

00:17:17.000 But, you know, it's interesting.

00:17:18.000 I've noticed this trend as well.

00:17:20.000 I actually wrote a piece about my sub stack about Jordan, why they hate Jordan Peterson.

00:17:24.000 And one of the observations I made in it, I think as we've got to a society where we've

00:17:30.000 tried to suppress healthy masculinity or perhaps in the desire to deal with unhealthy masculinity,

00:17:36.000 we've also suppressed healthy masculinity because we've tarred everybody with the same brush.

00:17:40.000 Looking bulky is one of the few socially acceptable ways of like being a man.

00:17:46.000 Now, do you know what I mean?

00:17:48.000 I do.

00:17:49.000 I agree with you.

00:17:50.000 No, I agree with you.

00:17:51.000 I think there isn't much of a place for there isn't many decent role models for men, for

00:17:58.000 young boys, for boys, you know, to aspire to.

00:18:01.000 And I think they they're the kind of the veering wildly from Andrew Tate to kind of Jordan Peterson

00:18:08.000 and, you know, various other people.

00:18:10.000 And some of these people are great and I'm well aware of it.

00:18:12.000 But I think the boys don't have a firm idea of where they're going.

00:18:17.000 And I think it's difficult to contend with.

00:18:22.000 And I know the girls have their own challenges and I'm not underestimating it at all.

00:18:25.000 But I do think there's something about being a boy that they don't quite know what.

00:18:30.000 For example, this is a big one for boys these days and I've really noticed it.

00:18:34.000 So when testosterone comes in, you know, they have very strong sexual urges.

00:18:39.000 Right. And it doesn't come in like the way it seems to come in for boys.

00:18:43.000 It comes in much more.

00:18:44.000 Well, for me anyway, and for most girls, it seems to be much more gradually. 0.97

00:18:48.000 But it seems to hit boys over the head and suddenly going to go sex mad quite quickly. 0.93

00:18:53.000 Quite quickly. So they're quite sweet boys and then they turn into two boys.

00:18:57.000 Yeah.

00:18:58.000 Yeah, they do.

00:18:59.000 They do.

00:19:00.000 And they're kind of ashamed of it now.

00:19:04.000 You know what I mean?

00:19:05.000 And I remember, for example, my daughter was talking about her friend

00:19:11.000 and her friend's best friend is a boy.

00:19:14.000 So it's a girl and a boy and they're best friends.

00:19:16.000 And the boy is staying over in her house in the same bed and they're 15.

00:19:20.000 And I said, well, that's insane.

00:19:23.000 And everybody, all the teens that were around me were like, he's not a creep.

00:19:28.000 He's not going to just suddenly lunge at her.

00:19:30.000 And I was like, well, no, I wasn't saying he's a creep.

00:19:34.000 But I was thinking of this poor guy feeling like he's a creep if he wants to lunge at her.

00:19:38.000 But he's a 15 year old boy in bed with another 15 year old girl. 0.95

00:19:42.000 It's mad.

00:19:43.000 But it felt to me like the kind of weird double speak that happens these days.

00:19:48.000 That's it.

00:19:49.000 Yeah.

00:19:50.000 He's a creep if he kind of has his very normal natural impulse in the middle of the night

00:19:56.000 with a 15 year old girl, a very pretty 15 year old girl beside.

00:19:59.000 I just thought everything about that was wrong.

00:20:02.000 And it says a lot, that story.

00:20:04.000 There's so much of this going on in society where we want to pretend reality isn't what it is. 0.98

00:20:09.000 And then all of the shit cascades down from that. 0.99

00:20:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:13.000 Which is what you're talking about there, which is if you pretend boys don't have the sexual urge at 15 0.95

00:20:18.000 and if they do, they're creeps.

00:20:19.000 Then everything else follows.

00:20:20.000 You're supposed to be able to sleep in a bed with a girl that you're not. 0.99

00:20:23.000 Yeah.

00:20:24.000 At 15.

00:20:25.000 No.

00:20:26.000 Regularly.

00:20:27.000 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:20:29.000 You know what I mean?

00:20:30.000 Now we know this because we're old world almost.

00:20:32.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:20:33.000 Because they were, there was a group of them that were stunned.

00:20:36.000 And their big emphasis was he's not a creep.

00:20:39.000 Why would you think that?

00:20:40.000 And I'm like, but he's a 15 year old boy.

00:20:42.000 I've never met the boy.

00:20:44.000 It's just that's not a healthy scenario that you would regularly expose a 15 year old boy to.

00:20:50.000 And I'm not, you know, we can all see what you, it could be implied by what I'm saying.

00:20:55.000 I'm not saying any of that.

00:20:56.000 I'm just saying you've got to respect the fact that there's an influx of hormones that is very intense for boys.

00:21:03.000 And they don't quite know what to do with it now.

00:21:06.000 And honestly, they're shaming themselves like bold.

00:21:09.000 Don't think that.

00:21:10.000 And they, I've no doubt because I meet these boys.

00:21:13.000 It goes weird. 0.91

00:21:14.000 If you keep on telling all your sexual impulses are kind of toxic and creepy. 0.98

00:21:19.000 Do you follow me? 0.97

00:21:20.000 It's not going to end very well.

00:21:22.000 It's basically shaming boys for their sexual impulses.

00:21:25.000 And then you factor in hardcore pornography, which they all have access to.

00:21:30.000 Yeah.

00:21:31.000 And I was just imagining this poor boy and God knows him.

00:21:33.000 I don't know him.

00:21:34.000 Okay.

00:21:35.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:21:36.000 But I was just imagining him being shamed in the bed and then lashing out to the toilet for some hardcore porn. 0.99

00:21:40.000 Coming back. 0.98

00:21:41.000 And I was just thinking this is enough.

00:21:43.000 No, he's not a creep though.

00:21:44.000 So that's all right.

00:21:45.000 Yeah.

00:21:46.000 In the Catholic Church on top.

00:21:48.000 Oh, dear.

00:21:49.000 Oh, dear.

00:21:50.000 So I suppose the question, first of all, is, you know, there'll be a lot of parents who have teenagers as you do.

00:21:58.000 Yeah.

00:21:59.000 What can parents do before we get to the advice for kids and stuff like that?

00:22:04.000 What can parents do about this?

00:22:05.000 Yeah.

00:22:06.000 Well, the reason I wrote my book, I'm a therapist.

00:22:07.000 I'm a psychotherapist.

00:22:08.000 I kind of believe in psychotherapy less and less every year, but I still do believe in it.

00:22:14.000 And thankfully, I seem to be good at my work and I seem to I've seen huge kind of differences from working with teenagers.

00:22:22.000 So that's been lovely.

00:22:24.000 However, my my reason for writing the book was to kind of encourage parents to take control of their own families and not to immediately triangulate by bringing in the experts, by bringing in a psychotherapist, by bringing in a CBT, because actually, in my experience, it hasn't gone very well.

00:22:41.000 That we've kind of got this lightweight pseudo mental health industry that is making everybody kind of think that they need therapy and it's not going well for these teenagers.

00:22:54.000 So the teenager might be, as you said, all the adolescents, it's quite a hard place to be.

00:22:58.000 They're a bit depressed, distressed in the middle of depressed and they get shuttled off to a therapist and it all gets professionalized and pathologized and weirded out.

00:23:09.000 And the kids think they're especially upset and it's suddenly turned into this crown kind of major event as opposed to you're just suffering from the human condition.

00:23:21.000 You've complexified your brain and you've realized life is deeply unfair and incredibly unsatisfactory in many ways.

00:23:29.000 And that's something you're going to have to get your head around, maybe with art or literature or music or film.

00:23:34.000 There's lots of ways to get around.

00:23:36.000 Charging off to the therapist is sending a very wrong message to young people that they can be fixed and that there's this kind of golden world out there where there's golden people and golden friendships.

00:23:51.000 And, you know, you get out of bed and you feel good and you feel good all the way through the day and you never have moments of despair and anxiety.

00:23:58.000 That's what we're selling them by by sending them to the therapist too early to think, you know what I mean?

00:24:04.000 It's their first juncture of, oh, my God, life is hard.

00:24:08.000 And they say, oh, you think life is hard.

00:24:11.000 OK, well, you know, let's get you to the therapist.

00:24:14.000 It's a real huge issue.

00:24:16.000 So it's kind of a book to say, don't send them to the therapist, read the book, equip yourself.

00:24:20.000 Just if they've got a little bit of anxiety, you know, learn a bit about of anxiety.

00:24:24.000 If they're starting to kind of towards disordered eating, learn a bit about it, read up a bit about it and handle your own child.

00:24:32.000 You know, to equip yourself so you can handle your own child, because it's very disempowering for a parent to bring in.

00:24:39.000 It triangulates the situation and a triangulation in any situation would make.

00:24:44.000 Let's say, for example, the child would be the the victim.

00:24:49.000 The the parent would be the persecutor and the therapist is the savior.

00:24:53.000 And triangulation happens all the time in different like it happens with divorces.

00:24:57.000 You know, the father is the persecutor.

00:24:59.000 The mother is the savior.

00:25:00.000 The child is the victim.

00:25:01.000 It's always bad.

00:25:03.000 So bringing in this savior person to fix the child is such a dangerous thing. 0.99

00:25:09.000 I'm not saying never.

00:25:10.000 Sometimes there's real deep trauma and distress and we need professional help.

00:25:15.000 A lot of the time, I think the person can handle this.

00:25:20.000 They can handle this in lots of different ways.

00:25:22.000 One thing I've really noticed, which I think is kind of important to note, is that an awful lot of childhood these days is is gorgeous.

00:25:30.000 Actually, it's kind of like they you know, the fabulous activities, amazing birthday parties.

00:25:36.000 They've got Christmas, which is just magical.

00:25:39.000 They've even got all sorts of new kind of type Christmases like tooth fairies and Easter bunnies and Halloween.

00:25:44.000 It's unbelievably magical.

00:25:46.000 And it's we as parents, because we're we're grim and jaded.

00:25:50.000 We kind of get into it in an extremity that's never happened before.

00:25:54.000 So you have a lot of people, for example, live believing in Santa until really quite an old age.

00:26:00.000 I remember I say it in my book.

00:26:02.000 There was my my beauty therapist.

00:26:04.000 She was doing my nails or something.

00:26:05.000 I don't usually get things like that done, but she did.

00:26:08.000 And the first time she got drunk was when she learned about Santa.

00:26:13.000 She didn't. Do you follow me?

00:26:15.000 So she was 13 and she still believed in Santa.

00:26:18.000 And she was with our mates and they were all getting drunk.

00:26:21.000 And she said, what are you getting for Santa?

00:26:24.000 And they said, no, there's no Santa.

00:26:27.000 And everybody laughed at her.

00:26:28.000 And she was drunk and she cried all the way home, drunk and crying and went into her mammy's arms. 0.93

00:26:32.000 At 13?

00:26:33.000 No.

00:26:34.000 You, you, wait, you see your kid will grow up and you'll think, when is he going to stop?

00:26:39.000 No, no, my kid.

00:26:40.000 You remember, I'm Russian.

00:26:41.000 He's getting a hard dose of reality at about three.

00:26:44.000 Yeah.

00:26:45.000 You say that, wait, you see, because the whole school will say, why have you wrecked it?

00:26:48.000 Yeah.

00:26:49.000 Why have you wrecked it on everyone?

00:26:50.000 Yeah.

00:26:51.000 So it was a massive conspiracy.

00:26:52.000 She was 13.

00:26:53.000 Yeah.

00:26:54.000 That sounded a few years ago.

00:26:55.000 The great Santa conspiracy.

00:26:57.000 I taught an 11 year old who believed in Santa.

00:26:59.000 And I told him at the age of 11, Santa doesn't exist.

00:27:02.000 Well done, son.

00:27:03.000 Yeah.

00:27:04.000 And then his mom had a go at me. 1.00

00:27:06.000 Yes.

00:27:07.000 And I went, your kid is about to go to comprehensive school in East London.

00:27:10.000 It's better that he hears it from me than he goes to a comprehensive in East London

00:27:14.000 and announces to the mandem that he believes in Santa. 0.97

00:27:17.000 He gets his head kicked in. 0.97

00:27:18.000 Yeah.

00:27:19.000 You would be surprised how many of them now believe in Santa.

00:27:24.000 11, 12, 13.

00:27:25.000 You would be surprised.

00:27:27.000 Loads of kids are believing in Santa until an old age.

00:27:31.000 Like I say, she was getting drunk and it was just such a crazy combination of, and it's

00:27:37.000 what I think is really important, which is this kind of magical childhood where all

00:27:43.000 everything is just gorgeous.

00:27:45.000 It's all kind of, you know, sparkles and Easter bunnies and stuff and fairies.

00:27:50.000 And then they hit adolescence and very quickly it becomes grim and hard and life is difficult.

00:27:58.000 And actually, your friends don't really like what you like.

00:28:01.000 Yeah.

00:28:02.000 They're quite competitive.

00:28:03.000 They're slagging you off.

00:28:04.000 And, you know, homelessness, we have no solution for that.

00:28:07.000 And racism, we have no solution for that.

00:28:09.000 And, you know, it's just it's so grim, so fast that they fall from a cliff from disappointment.

00:28:14.000 So I see a lot of kids in and around 12 or so.

00:28:17.000 They've just gone to their first year of secondary and they come in like they walked into a wall.

00:28:24.000 And generally, after a little bit of time, I say something along the lines of, are you a bit disappointed in life?

00:28:29.000 And they're like, yeah, it's awful.

00:28:32.000 It's nothing like what I thought it was going to be.

00:28:35.000 Like childhood was lovely.

00:28:36.000 And then it's just bang, really hard, very quickly.

00:28:41.000 And I think that the massive change has never happened before, because when we were kids, there was a dawning at a much earlier age that all of this, that life was actually harder.

00:28:51.000 It was much slower dawning.

00:28:53.000 And it crept up on you while the kind of the fairy tale childhood is lasting too long.

00:29:00.000 And then they're falling from a cliff with disappointment.

00:29:02.000 It's a big issue.

00:29:03.000 That's a really interesting point.

00:29:04.000 We had a guy called Mark Walshon, who's a trauma expert.

00:29:07.000 He worked with trauma.

00:29:08.000 And one of the things he was talking about is the lack of initiation rituals that we would have had in the past.

00:29:14.000 I mean, we say primitive and then technologically they're more primitive, whether they're culturally more primitive is another conversation.

00:29:22.000 But for boys, for example, you're a boy and you stay with the women for a while and you're not really part of the male society.

00:29:31.000 And then when you hit puberty, it's like you go out and you kill a whatever, and then you wear its horns on your neck or whatever it might be.

00:29:39.000 And from this point on, you get treated like a man and that means different things are expected of you.

00:29:44.000 And this like, you know, comfortable world that you live in, you are now rewarded by being initiated into the male world to which actually all boys aspire, actually.

00:29:54.000 Right.

00:29:55.000 But we don't have that anymore.

00:29:57.000 What happens when you're 13 or 12 or whatever it is, nobody initiates you into a different world.

00:30:02.000 And I imagine there would have been a similar thing for women where there is obviously a natural transition from girlhood to adolescence, to sexual maturity.

00:30:11.000 Again, there's a transition.

00:30:12.000 I don't know how many, whether as many girls immediately aspire to that right at the beginning.

00:30:18.000 But my point is, we don't have a way of, you know, a path for people to follow.

00:30:24.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more and we need to bring them back.

00:30:27.000 Those ceremonial rites of passage, they were with us for millions of years and suddenly we've done away with them.

00:30:33.000 And I do think it makes people, again, that uneasiness, the uncertainty of young people.

00:30:39.000 They don't have anything to kind of grab onto as in I have done this rite of passage and I am now in the next stage.

00:30:47.000 They don't have any of that and they feel it like little boys look at men and they can't imagine being a man.

00:30:54.000 It's just so hard for a little boy to imagine being a man.

00:30:57.000 You need these stages and then don't worry, you're part of a process.

00:31:01.000 Your daddy did it before you and your granddad did it before you.

00:31:04.000 That's been taken away.

00:31:05.000 Nothing's been replaced.

00:31:07.000 And as a result, you've got people who are just very anxious.

00:31:11.000 It's no wonder that's what they are, because there's nothing they can rely on.

00:31:15.000 There's no certainty. There's no solidity.

00:31:17.000 And as a man, something I'm thinking about, what can you do with your son to offset that as much as you can?

00:31:25.000 I think if at all possible, I think it's important.

00:31:28.000 And that's where I'm really into like parents kind of going for it and saying, well, what can I do?

00:31:32.000 Well, you can bring in a kind of a very definitive knowledge of your ancestors.

00:31:37.000 Easily done. You know what I mean? You look it up.

00:31:39.000 But so that they know where they came from and they know that there was different walks of life in their families.

00:31:44.000 And secondly, you can bring in rites of passage.

00:31:47.000 I don't know what it would be, but you look through your culture and you figure out what you should bring back.

00:31:52.000 Just because society has got rid of it doesn't mean that you should allow it to be got rid of for your kids,

00:31:58.000 because I think it would make a huge difference so that they realize they're part of the circle as opposed to they're just cast into this 21st century digital age.

00:32:08.000 And this is why religion actually is so valuable in many ways, because I was raised Catholic.

00:32:13.000 You had your first communion. You were baptized.

00:32:16.000 Then you had your first communion.

00:32:18.000 Then you were confirmed and so on and so forth with Judaism bar mitzvahs.

00:32:23.000 That's really important to have these rituals so that people understand where they are when it comes to the circle of life.

00:32:32.000 It's really interesting like this now we're I think we're in the post religious age.

00:32:36.000 I know other people would say we're not.

00:32:38.000 And there's all sorts of kind of upsurge in religion.

00:32:40.000 But the kids I see that normal Western kids I see just God and religious nothing to do with them. 0.93

00:32:47.000 And there's an icon. I'm a Catholic as well.

00:32:49.000 So went through all those ceremonies.

00:32:51.000 And my kids are my kids are Protestant.

00:32:53.000 And I thought my husband was going to give them all these. 0.97

00:32:56.000 He was useless at us. 0.99

00:32:58.000 Yeah, you can't trust the Protestants. 1.00

00:33:00.000 We've known that for a while.

00:33:01.000 Right. Let's not start the troubles right here on the show.

00:33:04.000 Thank you very much.

00:33:05.000 I should have known.

00:33:08.000 Yeah, but we did bring in some kind of ceremonial events.

00:33:14.000 Do you follow me?

00:33:15.000 And I remember thinking this is going to make weirdos of us if we don't watch ourselves in the town.

00:33:21.000 You know what I mean?

00:33:22.000 Because it's so unusual if you follow me to do stuff like that.

00:33:25.000 So that that was a bit of a shock.

00:33:27.000 But when you look at some of the anxiety that's manifesting, you really start thinking about the post religious age.

00:33:33.000 Because OCD is very is a very good example.

00:33:36.000 OCD is often very much about repetitive gestures.

00:33:41.000 And there's a lot of kind of what would you call them symmetrical gestures with OCD.

00:33:48.000 And when you look at a lot of religious ceremonies like blessing yourself and the rosary beads and all those kind of they were like for the anxious people who were inclined towards looking for a framework.

00:34:01.000 The feeling that God's in his heaven and if I do, you know, seven decades of the rosary, I'll be OK.

00:34:07.000 It was so calming for anybody that there was somebody looking after them and they didn't need to think all that much because there was actually something going on that they didn't understand.

00:34:17.000 And all of those people have been plugged out of that framework.

00:34:22.000 We took it away from them and they have nothing.

00:34:24.000 And where are they going?

00:34:25.000 They're going into anxiety and OCD.

00:34:27.000 I remember reading this extraordinary kind of account of this this boy who just kept on blessing himself, even though he'd never had anything religious.

00:34:35.000 And I thought, yeah, that's that makes sense to me now that we've left religion, that it feels it's not accidental for thousands of years.

00:34:45.000 They had all these symmetrical gestures that calmed people and then we took them away and they're coming in in different ways.

00:34:52.000 And you no longer worship God, but that doesn't mean you're going to stop worshipping something or someone, which again is when the social media thing comes back into it.

00:35:01.000 When you worship celebrity, you worship follow accounts, you worship all of these things.

00:35:05.000 Yeah.

00:35:06.000 The social media aspect.

00:35:08.000 I think we're still in the baby pool.

00:35:11.000 We don't know.

00:35:12.000 I don't think anybody's in any doubt.

00:35:14.000 It's been devastating.

00:35:16.000 It's been fabulous for people who are older, but I think it's been devastating for young people.

00:35:21.000 And yeah, you're right.

00:35:23.000 The human disposition is towards idolizing people, idolizing gods, looking towards other people who have it sussed.

00:35:32.000 Just give me anybody.

00:35:34.000 And if it's if the culture is teaching you, it's that that person on TikTok who does funny dances.

00:35:39.000 It's teaching.

00:35:40.000 It's like we've taught the entire generation of kids coming up to be quite vacuous because that's what we've given them.

00:35:48.000 We've given them quite a quite an empty culture, which is funny and, you know, great for passing attention in every 10 seconds.

00:35:57.000 But it's like we're like if we're not careful, we'll create a generation of epsilons where they're just never thinking a long thought, never thinking a deep thought.

00:36:07.000 It's just go, go, go next thought.

00:36:09.000 You know, nothing wrong with their brains.

00:36:11.000 And when I find and that's one thing if a parent was saying, well, what do I do?

00:36:15.000 And the one thing I said, well, maybe if not, don't go to a therapist, maybe figure out yourself what's going down and get in there.

00:36:21.000 But another thing I would argue that parents should do is go in with depth.

00:36:26.000 This idea of keeping things light because it'll be heavy.

00:36:30.000 That's not what teenagers want.

00:36:32.000 Teenagers want depth.

00:36:33.000 They want kind of why?

00:36:34.000 Why?

00:36:35.000 Why haven't we figured out homelessness?

00:36:37.000 Why is there starving people in different countries?

00:36:40.000 Do you follow me?

00:36:41.000 So going in with depth is much more nourishing than maintaining this silly, vacuous thing that society is teaching us to kind of maintain.

00:36:52.000 And it's also as well that I feel that more and more and I saw it when I was a drama teacher, actually.

00:37:00.000 It seems that every year the kids got a little bit worse at relating to one another because a lot of drama is, you know, you create long form improvisations and devised improvisation and devised improvisation is where people create a play.

00:37:15.000 And it doesn't have a script, but they create it and then they perform it.

00:37:20.000 And it just seemed more and more that the kids were losing the capacity to listen and share ideas.

00:37:27.000 And not only that, they've lost the capacity because they've measured this to kind of rough play has really gone to pieces because they're hitting each other too hard because they've no ability to hit each other lightly.

00:37:39.000 Because do you follow me?

00:37:40.000 Their actual physical interaction skills haven't been nurtured in the way they would have been in other generations because they had screens instead.

00:37:48.000 So, you know, the way you have to practice a lot of times before you get it right.

00:37:52.000 So when you're two and three and stuff, you're practicing.

00:37:54.000 Well, they didn't get to practice. And so, yeah, they their their ability to interact has been walloped by social media.

00:38:03.000 And it's happening all over the place where you can see it.

00:38:06.000 And I, you know, it's amazing because it was happening and everybody was talking about it.

00:38:11.000 And I was writing about it. You were talking about it. No, everybody was.

00:38:13.000 And then COVID happened and it just, you know, multiplied by by a magnitude during COVID.

00:38:21.000 And so those kids are literally coming out every teacher because I often talk to, you know, teachers because I'm working a lot with teenagers and they're all saying these COVID kids like there's a significant issue because they've been on screen so much there.

00:38:35.000 The ability to handle social life is really reduced. So a lot of the teenagers I'd be working with.

00:38:42.000 So they were very lonely during COVID and loneliness is is awful.

00:38:45.000 And then they were very reluctant to become back friends after COVID.

00:38:51.000 They were anxious because, you know, the world had made them frightened of a disease that doesn't affect them.

00:38:57.000 Yeah. Yeah. That they were never going to die.

00:39:00.000 It sparked that they were anxious for that reason.

00:39:03.000 And so they'd be very, very, very often telling me how they're messaging their mates.

00:39:08.000 And I'm like, isn't your mate like doesn't doesn't she live 200 yards from you?

00:39:12.000 And they're like, ah, yeah, but we prefer messaging or like another kid.

00:39:17.000 And every time he called over to his friend, his friend would send him back home saying, let's just talk on Xbox like you go home.

00:39:25.000 And I said, I'm going on Xbox, you're going on Xbox.

00:39:29.000 We can talk or whatever it was, PS4, whatever, because not massively comfortable being in each other's company, much happier.

00:39:38.000 Still wanted to hang out with him.

00:39:40.000 But you go back to your house and I'll talk to you on on Xbox.

00:39:44.000 This is really common, this and this kind of late night text. 0.95

00:39:47.000 And so they're they're kind of very vacuous, very vain, very funny and silly, arguably in school.

00:39:53.000 Then real life comes in because you're on your own and bedroom and stuff like that. 0.67

00:39:57.000 And they're sending really quite dark messages to each other late at night, which will be filled with real kind of revelations about their self harming or their eating disorder or some really quite awful distressing things.

00:40:10.000 And it'll be done by text, which is not the same as if I spoke to you or if I spoke to you and we had a real hard time.

00:40:17.000 There's a feeling of nourishment or something.

00:40:20.000 Now, if it goes bad, it's awful and it's very vulnerable making and you feel very alienated.

00:40:24.000 If it goes well, you feel really like we've deepened our relationship and it's actually very hard to describe how much of an impact that makes.

00:40:32.000 These kids aren't doing any of that.

00:40:34.000 There's none of that. It's not.

00:40:36.000 Obviously, I'm generalizing wildly, but just to make the point, because it's notable among the different age groups is they're messaging each other.

00:40:45.000 So I'm hurting myself and all that. The kid might write back, oh, that's awful.

00:40:50.000 That sort of thing is happening. And then the next day and it's go, hi.

00:40:54.000 And it's back to bakery. And then that nice, dark messaging again.

00:40:59.000 That's not that's that wouldn't have happened in any other generation.

00:41:03.000 So in terms of social media and all the rest of it, then is I mean, do your kids have smartphones?

00:41:10.000 They do. They do.

00:41:11.000 They do.

00:41:13.000 Well, I mean, yeah, I'm all over them, if that's what you're asking.

00:41:18.000 Well, I guess the question really is, should kids have smartphones?

00:41:21.000 I don't. Yeah, I think, you know, I think they shouldn't have them as long as possible.

00:41:26.000 I think as we get older, I imagine by the time your kid has grown up, it won't be so ubiquitous by the time they're 13.

00:41:34.000 I was very resistant to them getting them. And when they got them, they got crappy ones that didn't quite work.

00:41:39.000 And we're old phones of ours that just press lots of times and kept going out of battery.

00:41:43.000 So they kind of got a very stilted introduction to it.

00:41:46.000 And I'm all over them, like get them out of the bedrooms and you know what I mean?

00:41:51.000 Have them plugged in outside my room at night and stuff like that.

00:41:54.000 But yeah, I think trying to raise a kid without a smartphone, a teenager without a smartphone, it's such a Herculean task that I wish you well if you do it.

00:42:06.000 But I think it's really hard these days.

00:42:08.000 I think you'd be better off just like learning everything difficult in life, you'd be better off learning, teaching them how to handle themselves, how to put it away.

00:42:19.000 It's like junk food and it's like alcohol when you're older. Do you know what I mean?

00:42:23.000 You have got to learn how to deal with this. Do you know what I mean?

00:42:26.000 Yes, but we know with both of those things, there are some people who are not capable of dealing with it properly without really like, you know.

00:42:34.000 Totally. And I think there's the same with smartphones.

00:42:37.000 Oh, no doubt. There will be people whose brains are literally broken by the thing, for sure.

00:42:41.000 And by the way, I say people, there are times that I found when I had COVID, I had it three times, it made me incredibly angry.

00:42:50.000 I was constantly very angry all the time, which is the natural go to place for me when things aren't the way that I want.

00:42:56.000 It's my natural response, which I generally keep really under control most of the time.

00:43:01.000 But when I had COVID, I was really angry and I was a prick to everyone on social media, right?

00:43:06.000 So I'm thinking, what if I was 13? My brain is completely unregulated.

00:43:10.000 Yeah.

00:43:11.000 I haven't had 40 years of trying to work out who I am, what I'm supposed to do with myself, etc.

00:43:15.000 So I just, that I think is the real, and you say we may not be as ubiquitous.

00:43:22.000 I wonder what the future of that is, because I don't think parents giving the children unfettered access to the internet is working out.

00:43:31.000 No.

00:43:32.000 No.

00:43:33.000 I don't think it's working out.

00:43:34.000 I think even 10 years from now, I think there'll be more knowledge not to have control.

00:43:39.000 For example, when I was first started talking, so my first book came out in 2015 and I was all over social media saying parental controls and all this.

00:43:47.000 There was massive resistance from parents.

00:43:50.000 Now they're like, it's accepted that there should be parental control.

00:43:53.000 So I've seen that happen in eight years.

00:43:56.000 That just a kind of acceptance that either you should be controlling it or you're guiltily not controlling it.

00:44:02.000 You know what I mean?

00:44:03.000 Which brings us, in terms of people's opinions of something changing over time, very nicely,

00:44:08.000 onto the biggest issue that anybody ever talks about on the internet nowadays, which is, of course, trans.

00:44:14.000 How does trans play into all of this?

00:44:17.000 Massively.

00:44:18.000 Massively.

00:44:19.000 Tell us more.

00:44:20.000 You know, like, it's amazing.

00:44:22.000 Like, that first book I wrote was Cottonwood Kids.

00:44:25.000 And it was about how these kind of over-parented kids weren't turning out very well.

00:44:31.000 They were becoming very anxious.

00:44:32.000 They were on the internet too much.

00:44:34.000 They were online too much.

00:44:35.000 And then I never knew.

00:44:37.000 Obviously, this is 2015.

00:44:39.000 And I had no idea that this bomb was going to explode in my life a few years later.

00:44:45.000 And when it did, I thought, they're the kids I've always been talking about.

00:44:48.000 They're the same kids.

00:44:50.000 Clever, cerebral, over-parented kids who aren't out enough, who aren't outside playing,

00:44:58.000 who are kind of inside and very, very impressive with their extracurricular activities, their

00:45:05.000 music and their, you know, whatever, their dance or whatever, and also their academics.

00:45:10.000 And it's on paper, they're very impressive.

00:45:13.000 And then they go online too much and they get sucked into something because they're looking

00:45:17.000 for depth and meaning because that's the noble and natural aspiration for any teenager.

00:45:22.000 And when you're looking for depth and meaning and you're 14 today and you're kind of thinking

00:45:28.000 the very, very normal question, healthily appropriate, which is, who am I?

00:45:33.000 What am I for?

00:45:34.000 Who am I?

00:45:35.000 I don't fit in.

00:45:36.000 That's what you should be thinking when you're that age.

00:45:38.000 They will find very quickly who am I will lead to.

00:45:42.000 Well, you might be trans.

00:45:44.000 I know that sounds a leap, but if people Google it as if you're a teenager, you'll see the

00:45:49.000 jumps go quite fast.

00:45:51.000 Queer theory and that entire kind of movement is offering teenagers what every era of teenagers 0.98

00:46:01.000 have sought, which is a kind of sticking it to the man.

00:46:04.000 It's, you know, turning it upside down.

00:46:07.000 It's rejecting your parents' values.

00:46:09.000 Do you follow me?

00:46:10.000 I mean, it's it's doing all the things that teenage culture has been doing since arguably

00:46:16.000 the 50s.

00:46:17.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:46:18.000 And it is got an added specter of medicalization that, you know, other other generations, you

00:46:27.000 know, the 60s, they had loads of drugs and that didn't go so well.

00:46:30.000 You know what I mean?

00:46:31.000 Punk, whatever.

00:46:32.000 But this one, the medicalization of children just feels really grim.

00:46:36.000 And I had my own experience as a kid.

00:46:38.000 I had when I was about three, like as far back as I go.

00:46:42.000 When I was a kid, I was I was I wanted to be a boy and it lasted many years and it was

00:46:49.000 horrible feeling.

00:46:50.000 It wasn't nice and it was very deep and it was very ingrained.

00:46:55.000 And I was a strange kid.

00:46:57.000 I was an unhappy kid, but it was a strange kid.

00:47:00.000 And I wanted to be a boy and I was very good at being a boy.

00:47:02.000 I could beat up all the boys and played.

00:47:05.000 And I still see that boyishness in me.

00:47:07.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:08.000 It doesn't stun me.

00:47:09.000 I think I would have been a great boy.

00:47:10.000 I could have been great.

00:47:11.000 But yeah, I obviously wasn't a boy and puberty.

00:47:16.000 So many years later, puberty was very grim for me.

00:47:19.000 It was awful.

00:47:20.000 It was like, oh, my God, like to go to the toilet thinking, what's going to happen next?

00:47:25.000 Like it was awful.

00:47:27.000 It was awful.

00:47:28.000 That is a very good way of describing it.

00:47:30.000 It was a terrible, terrible time.

00:47:32.000 I was lonely and devastated and all over the place.

00:47:35.000 But ultimately, long story short, I pulled out of it.

00:47:40.000 And I'm glad I'm a woman.

00:47:41.000 And actually, the most important thing to me is the fact that I became a mother.

00:47:44.000 I love being a mother.

00:47:46.000 Badass as I am. 0.84

00:47:47.000 But no, I love being a mother.

00:47:49.000 And it's so so much such a part of me.

00:47:51.000 And I kind of in the midst of all my mental health world, I realized what are they doing with kids?

00:47:59.000 Kids like me, kids who had the experience that I had and they're medicalizing them so that they'll be one day infertile and a different sex and have impaired sexual functioning. 0.96

00:48:09.000 I was horrified when I realized kids like me were being medicalized.

00:48:14.000 Of course, obviously, it's completely imposing my own experience on these kids.

00:48:19.000 And yet there's validity with it.

00:48:21.000 I did have that experience.

00:48:23.000 I had it for years.

00:48:25.000 And arguably, sometimes, experience does count for something.

00:48:30.000 And as well as that, obviously, I have expertise in mental health.

00:48:34.000 To put the two together, I started talking about it and it's been insane ever since.

00:48:40.000 The thing that always gets me is that they talk about this as if it's one particular issue.

00:48:46.000 And you go, this is several issues that we're talking about here.

00:48:51.000 The fact that, you know, it just seems that more and more and more girls are transitioning.

00:48:58.000 42% of them was a statistic that I saw recently were autistic.

00:49:03.000 That's very different to the boys.

00:49:05.000 That's very different to men transitioning when they're older.

00:49:09.000 Why can we not have a conversation where we look at all of these things individually as opposed to lumping them all together under the umbrella of trans?

00:49:19.000 Stop being transphobic, mate.

00:49:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:21.000 What's this?

00:49:26.000 I suppose we're living in a soundbite culture that wants the quick solution very, you know, what's the headline on that, Francis, is what they're saying.

00:49:33.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:49:34.000 Yeah.

00:49:35.000 Give it to me in four words.

00:49:36.000 Well, I just did.

00:49:37.000 Stop being transphobic.

00:49:38.000 Well done.

00:49:39.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:49:40.000 So I suppose because people aren't seeking the long-winded explanation, people aren't interested.

00:49:46.000 But you're right.

00:49:47.000 Like, you know, never before there was always a cohort of very young children.

00:49:50.000 I'm actually classic.

00:49:51.000 My experience is very typical.

00:49:53.000 There was a small number of very young children who are extremely strange.

00:49:58.000 And generally about 70% of those kids ended up being gay, lesbian or bisexual.

00:50:05.000 And some of them, like myself, weren't.

00:50:07.000 But that's kind of irrelevant as in they were always there.

00:50:11.000 And then there was always a group of middle aged men who sought medical transition, certainly in the last hundred years.

00:50:19.000 Again, a very small number.

00:50:21.000 And then suddenly out of nowhere, the teenagers who had never before been seen in the literature, vanishingly rare, no kind of no studies on them because nobody ever saw teenagers seeking medical transition.

00:50:33.000 And they arrived.

00:50:34.000 And when you look at the graphs of social media, when you look at the graphs of smartphone use from around 2012, it shoots up.

00:50:43.000 Social media shoots up and gender issues shoot up.

00:50:47.000 And if you if you do a graph on it, you think it's incredibly similar as arcs.

00:50:52.000 And, yeah, it does seem to be very much supported online.

00:50:56.000 And it's a certain type of kid.

00:50:58.000 And that kid is very often, like you say, neurodiverse, very often autistic, ADHD, a little bit isolated, a little bit lonely, often after a traumatic incident.

00:51:09.000 And what did they do?

00:51:10.000 Do you remember back in the day if you were lonely and you were, you know, you'd had some trauma, as you often do in adolescence.

00:51:16.000 You went into your bedroom and in my area, you listen to music and I got it changed my life, to be honest, as a teenager.

00:51:24.000 Where they go is the Internet, social media.

00:51:27.000 That's where they go.

00:51:28.000 And that's where they find it.

00:51:29.000 And there's a perfect storm, which is extraordinary to study.

00:51:34.000 Of everything that's going on that lands them into queer theory and they might be trans. 0.57

00:51:39.000 It's weird when you see it because you're like, how's this happened?

00:51:43.000 Well, when you actually unpick it, you can see exactly what's happened.

00:51:46.000 It's such a profound point because when I remember when I was growing up, you know, you talk about a kid who was neurodiverse and a little bit, you know, I had a lot of friends, but very sensitive, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:55.000 I mean, you got into music.

00:51:57.000 I listened to, you know, the bands of my generation, like Nirvana, talking about, you know, teenage angst, not fitting in, not being part of the world, wanting to withdraw.

00:52:06.000 You know, there's also the element of putting two fingers up to the world.

00:52:09.000 I don't see that in kids now.

00:52:12.000 Those kind of pop culture bands, which had and garnered huge followings, they don't really seem to exist anymore.

00:52:20.000 I remember the first teenager I had working with counselling, not, she wasn't the first one that I ever had, but the first one who said, no, I don't like music.

00:52:28.000 I was like, you don't like music?

00:52:30.000 How can you not like music?

00:52:31.000 And she's like, it just doesn't, doesn't do it for me.

00:52:34.000 The vast majority of the music is just something in the background.

00:52:38.000 It's just not that big.

00:52:39.000 Now, there will be, of course, there'll be exceptions and people will write in and say, my kid is mad into music.

00:52:44.000 But mostly, no, music is not that heartbeat of teenagehood that it was for us.

00:52:50.000 Wow.

00:52:51.000 I know they're missing a lot because it's kind of transcendental.

00:52:55.000 It lifts you into a kind of universality.

00:52:59.000 When I realized, when I listened to the lyrics and it was so profound for me and for so many others, they don't have it.

00:53:06.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:53:07.000 I actually am not that into music now, but now that you are talking about it, I remember, as you were talking about it, when I was a teenager, I used to listen to music all the time.

00:53:18.000 Yeah.

00:53:19.000 And it did help me dealing with all sorts of, you know, emotions and whatever.

00:53:23.000 So we're running out of time.

00:53:25.000 We're going to go to locals in a second where our audience are going to ask you their questions and we'll continue the conversation with some of our own.

00:53:31.000 But before we go to our last question, just very quickly, give us a kind of like toolkit or some kind of practical ideas for parents.

00:53:39.000 And if there are teenagers listening, you know, how do you deal with some of this stuff, all of the stuff that we've talked about?

00:53:45.000 What are some of the things to just to focus on, to think about, to maybe do when you when you are in a difficult place?

00:53:51.000 Just a little two minutes on what people can and should do.

00:53:54.000 If you're worried about your kid.

00:53:55.000 Yeah.

00:53:56.000 If you're worried about your kid, there is a there is a way you can go at it.

00:53:59.000 OK.

00:54:00.000 And, you know, first of all, in a way, you have to kind of think I'm going in and there's a kind of a level of confidence needed because, you know, you ask the kid what's going on and you very much zip it yourself.

00:54:12.000 You don't give Hollywood coach and with a towel around your neck kind of inspiring speeches.

00:54:18.000 Instead, you ask them to clarify what's going on, because often you'll think it's a and it'll actually be B.

00:54:23.000 So it might look like it's their friends, but it's something else that's going on.

00:54:27.000 So you ask over a period of time.

00:54:29.000 You don't jump in like you're grueling them, but you ask them questions to clarify.

00:54:33.000 And when you've clarified and any good therapist would know this, when you've clarified, you check that you've got it right.

00:54:39.000 And you say, am I right in thinking that I'm trying to help you and I mightn't have it right. 0.99

00:54:43.000 But am I right in thinking that what's really upsetting you is the fact that you're not doing as well as your other friends in school and it's making you feel stupid. 0.98

00:54:51.000 Is that what it is? And be very open to rolled eyes and no, that's not it. 0.99

00:54:55.000 And it's cool. It's fine.

00:54:57.000 Because when somebody doesn't understand you and you're upset, it's very upset.

00:55:00.000 And so you can be very the kid can be very harsh about that.

00:55:04.000 Let it go. Just just keep plowing on because you've committed to the fact that you want to help them when you've actually when they actually say, yeah, that's what it is.

00:55:12.000 You'll usually see a physical kind of a sigh, a shoulders, a kind of, yeah.

00:55:18.000 You know what I mean? And that's a real crucial point, because so many of us as parents were terrified of our of our kids pain.

00:55:25.000 We're terrified of their distress. We want to think it's just little kids, little problems.

00:55:29.000 And so we think, oh, you'll be all right or just it'll be better.

00:55:33.000 And instead, have the courage to have the empathy to kind of get into the trenches with and say, oh, now I get it. Now I get it.

00:55:41.000 That takes a kind of emotional bravery.

00:55:44.000 And then when you've gone in there, I get it.

00:55:47.000 Then try not to jump in with massive solution very quickly, because that diminishes it.

00:55:52.000 And it's more along communicating solidarity of, OK, I can see this is a big problem.

00:55:58.000 I get it. We're not going to fix this today or tomorrow.

00:56:00.000 Like I will look up things and I'll look for solutions, but you're kind of shown a seriousness to it.

00:56:05.000 So let me let me help you work with work with you on this.

00:56:09.000 And it could take us ages and we could take loads of wrong turns.

00:56:12.000 But just know I've got your back. I'm on your team shoulder to shoulder.

00:56:15.000 Just let's give some time to this.

00:56:18.000 So if you can just do that, if you can kind of clarify what it is, have some empathy and then kind of say, we'll give it some time.

00:56:25.000 Let's try lots of things. That's an amazing feeling.

00:56:28.000 It's an amazing feeling for anybody to think they get it and they know it's not easily fixed and they're willing to try it in the long term.

00:56:37.000 Now that I've said that very fast.

00:56:39.000 But honestly, if you took your time at that and that could take a couple of months to do, it would be worth its weight in gold for any kid.

00:56:47.000 That's really good advice, because I think we do live in a kind of quick fix Hollywood speech kind of environment.

00:56:54.000 Yeah, they don't work.

00:56:55.000 It doesn't work, unfortunately. Sorry, Sylvester Stallone.

00:56:58.000 So before we go to locals, our last question in this part of the interview is always the same, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be?

00:57:10.000 I think what we're not talking about is that there is a kind of a really thick online culture of Reddit and, you know, different social media where they're all affirming each other in a very female empathetic way.

00:57:29.000 And it's making people feel worse and worse and worse. So it's kind of toxic empathy where everybody's, oh, it's really hard for you.

00:57:35.000 Oh, it's really hard for you. And nobody is willing to do the hard kind of the hard challenging conversation with people.

00:57:44.000 You should see my Twitter feed.

00:57:46.000 Yeah, Twitter is its own crazy world, which I enjoy.

00:57:50.000 I'm kidding. Yeah.

00:57:51.000 But I'm talking about the teenage world where everybody is so empathetic and kind to each other and it's all, oh, don't worry, don't worry.

00:58:01.000 And it's it's very on nourishing because nobody will give to you straight.

00:58:06.000 Truth has a value.

00:58:07.000 Yeah. And depth has a value and it's vacuous.

00:58:10.000 And I think it's I think there's a real genuine toxic culture.

00:58:15.000 I know everybody says it, but I think we're not talking about just how toxic it is to be a teenager these days.

00:58:20.000 I think it's I think it's really hard.

00:58:23.000 And I think they're suffering on a on a deep level.

00:58:26.000 And I think it's it's really unfortunate because we've never had it so good.

00:58:31.000 Stella and Mally, thank you so much. Head on over to Locals where we continue the conversation.

00:58:35.000 My daughter is currently six years old. How will I keep her respect and trust if stroke when her or her friends views and desires conflict with mine?

TRIGGERnometry - January 14, 2024

Our Kids Are NOT Alright - Psychologist, Stella O’Malley

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