TRIGGERnometry - ＂Safety Culture is Hurting Us＂

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissin. And this is a

00:00:10.460 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our terrific guest today

00:00:16.400 is a therapist and has been quite vocal on the woke stuff, which is an important part of the

00:00:20.980 conversation. Sira Chawla, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks for having me.

00:00:26.940 Listen, it's so great to have you. You've been one of my absolute favorite people to listen to

00:00:31.500 and follow on Twitter over the last few weeks and months. But before we get into some of your

00:00:36.140 views and how they've come to be formed, most of our followers won't know who you are. So tell

00:00:41.240 everybody, who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey that leads you here?

00:00:46.880 Because it's a very interesting one, isn't it? So I grew up in Delhi. I'm sick, so I come from

00:00:53.120 the Sikh community and um it was yeah not not an easy place to grow up necessarily there's a lot

00:01:02.020 going on there there's a um it's a patriarchal country and I grew up during a rape crisis which

00:01:10.280 was really really difficult and really frightening actually um it it took a really long time even

00:01:17.260 after I came to the UK to not be frightened all the time, um, and not be frightened around men.

00:01:24.180 I'd say that was a really big one. That is why we're doing this interview remotely.

00:01:30.420 Yes. Excellent endorsement of that joke. Perfect. Uh, so, so you grew up in, in, in this very,

00:01:40.180 uh, you know, in a place where you fell in danger, you come over here, things, uh, you know,

00:01:44.680 you're trying to adjust to a new world uh and what was that like before we get into into therapy and

00:01:49.980 woke stuff and everything else it was um on one hand I was I suppose acclimatized because um like

00:01:57.340 during the 84 riots my parents moved here because they were anti-sick riots my mom is culturally I'd

00:02:04.740 say British so I had that influence all the way through growing up which I think made it even

00:02:10.520 harder to be, um, in India. Cause I had this completely different cultural understanding at

00:02:16.780 home. And then the world around me was much more, um, I'd say orthodox, patriarchal,

00:02:25.800 illiberal in some way, in many ways. Um, and coming to the UK felt like a breath of fresh

00:02:32.120 air, felt like you could breathe again, go walk on the street. Um, every man you see is not danger

00:02:38.480 to you because it definitely can feel like that sort of navigating the world in India

00:02:45.060 and it just I think I felt like I ran away to the UK so it's sort of I'd say my first few years

00:02:57.280 were very much just being here breathing again and just trying to get my bearings

00:03:04.240 things more than, more than really accomplishing much. I used to, um, I think my first job was

00:03:10.480 ironing. I used to work for an events company and iron all the linen. That was, um, and it was just,

00:03:17.900 just, it was such a simple sort of, um, you know, you don't, you don't, you can completely zone out

00:03:24.720 as you stand there with the steam coming into your face. That's probably the hardest bit and just,

00:03:29.780 do something really repetitive

00:03:31.960 and

00:03:33.460 I think I was just

00:03:36.300 trying to regulate the world around me

00:03:38.440 and just get used to being somewhere safe

00:03:40.220 And Sarah

00:03:41.860 you touched very

00:03:43.900 sort of lightly touched over

00:03:46.180 the rape crisis in India

00:03:48.140 For those people

00:03:50.300 who are not aware of that

00:03:52.160 what actually happened and what does that mean?

00:03:55.800 So

00:03:56.100 it's been named

00:03:58.220 now in the last five to seven to ten years but it's always been there um and I think it's uh

00:04:06.900 there's an amalgam of factors sex is very much taboo people aren't uh you know you just you

00:04:12.900 just don't talk about it it's sort of this dirty secret thing you're dirty if you have sexual

00:04:18.920 desires so there's a lot of repression and I think with such a sort of culture of repression

00:04:23.640 it's metastasized into this strange

00:04:26.660 perverse thing

00:04:29.140 it's like people will grow

00:04:32.120 even if you put them into strange contorted shapes

00:04:34.660 which is what I feel repression does

00:04:36.580 but you grow in a warped way

00:04:37.940 and I think that's what's happened

00:04:39.580 and I think that combined with the way women

00:04:42.320 are seen as less than

00:04:44.860 I wouldn't say

00:04:47.460 maybe second class citizens even

00:04:49.460 and women are looked very much

00:04:52.700 this sort of archetypal understanding of mother maiden crone and you have a service role you're

00:04:59.460 not necessarily an individual in your own right and a human being in the world you have a you have

00:05:05.920 a function I think to perform to be sexy to bear children to be maternal to be a matriarch so I

00:05:13.760 think when you look at women in that way and combine it with this real sort of perverse

00:05:19.800 ideas around sex the power imbalance and we've ended up with this pretty horrifying epidemic of

00:05:28.560 um you know even children aren't safe children are raped and abducted women are gang raped

00:05:37.660 and the new thing is now that they um they burn them alive sometimes after and i think the

00:05:47.200 But maybe not the most horrifying, but the one that got the most attention was a few years ago, a girl who was gang raped and they disemboweled her.

00:06:00.000 It was just...

00:06:01.460 I remember seeing that story. It was tragic.

00:06:04.880 So you come from that to the UK and this is kind of we're getting towards the main subject, I suppose, of the conversation.

00:06:13.760 And you keep being told that in this country you live in a patriarchy that's oppressive.

00:06:19.060 How does that feel?

00:06:21.940 I think James Lindsay has named it really well by calling it a pseudo-reality.

00:06:26.860 That's how it feels.

00:06:30.040 I think I finally come to a place where I very much trust my own possessions.

00:06:34.520 And for a long time I think, well, let me try and understand how it's a patriarchy here.

00:06:38.840 And how do women feel oppressed here?

00:06:40.940 And then I think through listening to this stuff and then finally giving myself permission to think, actually, I can say what I really think.

00:06:48.860 This is not a fucking patriarchy.

00:06:50.380 And women are, yeah, of course, there's violence against women.

00:06:59.000 There's in every culture all over the world.

00:07:01.540 There's also specific kinds of violence against men.

00:07:04.320 Like gangs target men much more than women because, you know, so you can take any one fact and spin a narrative around it, can't you?

00:07:14.420 The point is that we should really try to be tethered to reality and we're not.

00:07:18.980 And I think this whole idea about the West as a patriarchy and as oppressive is, well, it's not true.

00:07:26.360 and you say it's not true and what has been your experience when you have put forward your point

00:07:34.100 of view and your own lived experience shall we say he's quoting scripture then it's really

00:07:42.400 really interesting because at first it was like you're a woman of color and you're almost fetishized

00:07:48.480 as if you have some secret knowledge that white people could don't can't possibly um have access

00:07:55.160 too. And, um, you know, it's sort of white people shut the fuck up and listen to this woman of

00:08:00.500 color. And then as soon as you go against their dogma, you're scapegoated in, in like they switch.

00:08:08.200 It's such a strange thing. And it's interesting because it's very close to what, um, the pathology

00:08:14.560 of narcissism where that, you know, they'll at first perhaps put you on a pedestal and say how

00:08:21.640 wonderful you are and then they'll devalue you completely it's a feature of a few personality

00:08:27.080 disorders um so yeah if you if you go against the dogma and you don't toe the party line

00:08:35.780 they will they will do what they can to assassinate your character and um there's even a

00:08:45.300 a white lady in, I think she's in Canada, who started insisting that I'm actually secretly

00:08:52.820 white. So yeah, it's just absurd. Well, the light on your face does make you look quite white at

00:08:58.720 the moment. So maybe she's right. But, you know, the reason we were so curious to have you on

00:09:06.100 is, I think, as a therapist, you're uniquely positioned because, you know, people can resist

00:09:12.880 all this critical social justice stuff on an ideological level but I think as someone who's

00:09:19.500 who works with people who works with mental health one of the aspects that has been massively

00:09:25.040 under explored I think of teaching people this way of thinking is that if you teach people

00:09:29.220 that they're victims you are actually damaging their mental health that's always been my view

00:09:35.140 and I haven't heard enough people talk about it do you agree with that yes I do um I think the

00:09:41.400 pendulum has swung far too far. And we're now doing people a great disservice. And there's

00:09:48.140 vast swathes of people that really, really believe the world is an awful place. They're

00:09:56.080 traumatized, that their immutable characteristics limit them. And it's really, really unhealthy.

00:10:07.020 I think coddling, it's partly a type of coddling.

00:10:11.800 It's sheltering people too much.

00:10:13.640 It's treating, instead of treating people like autonomous adults,

00:10:17.540 we're treating everybody like they're a vulnerable adult.

00:10:20.920 You know, that's a very particular class of people.

00:10:24.260 It's strange and not helpful.

00:10:26.920 It feels like if your mental health was a muscle, it atrophies.

00:10:31.540 It's a very, very interesting way of putting it.

00:10:34.540 If your mental health is a muscle, it atrophies.

00:10:38.160 Because we do seem to want to coddle everybody now.

00:10:42.720 We talk in this language like microaggressions.

00:10:47.020 Why do you think this is so particularly unhelpful, this culture of microaggressions,

00:10:52.040 and I've got to be kept safe, and I want to be safe, and words of violence, etc., etc.?

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00:11:26.880 it's um i mean the genesis of it i'm sure you know people like james lindsey and helen pluckrose

00:11:35.000 probably addressed in their book but the mental health impacts i mean this this sort of safetyism

00:11:41.620 it's not helpful um coddling people and limiting um you know sort of their experiences because

00:11:50.560 you're worried it's going to damage them somehow and you're conditioning them to think that um

00:11:56.600 You know, if I'm not wrapped in cotton wool, something really awful is going to happen to me.

00:12:01.900 I'm going to fall and fall to pieces.

00:12:03.780 It's the opposite of teaching people resilience.

00:12:06.760 It's the exact opposite of teaching people resilience.

00:12:10.440 And you're not the first person to say that on our show.

00:12:12.880 I think when we had Linda Papadopoulos on the show, she literally said they're doing the opposite of what we do in CBT.

00:12:19.040 and so I suppose the question would be you know as a therapist I imagine you deal with people who

00:12:24.700 who already got some kind of big problem that they're trying to address usually but what I

00:12:30.140 don't think the question really often gets asked is what is actually a healthy attitude to challenge

00:12:37.080 and to difficulty and to disagreement and to being uncomfortable and being inconvenienced

00:12:42.880 and being questioned and all like what would be a template for a healthy behavior in when you're

00:12:48.700 faced with all of that stuff so i do agree when they say don't bypass your feelings i think that's

00:12:55.640 there's some truth to that and that's really important um so if something difficult or

00:13:01.560 stressful happens it's worth checking in with yourself and not sort of glossing over it and

00:13:06.520 putting it away because seeps out in some other way usually but also don't don't make it so big

00:13:14.720 and magnify it that you are sort of crushed under the weight of it you know like we need to teach

00:13:22.100 people some sorts of like strategies around stress management and when something difficult happens

00:13:29.160 that how to mentalize that that doesn't mean because this difficult thing happened to me today

00:13:33.900 the rest of my life is going to be marred by this and I'm going to fall into a depression

00:13:38.600 sort of like this isn't forever this hurts but it's going to pass it will be okay um sort of

00:13:46.180 leaning into your own sense of competence and your own inner resources your sense of resilience and

00:13:52.640 having a sense of trust that you can you will be okay and you've dealt with much you know with

00:13:58.760 difficult things before and just like that you'll deal with this it's sort of challenging these

00:14:04.120 limiting thoughts that we, which is what most of this, um, safetyism is. It's limiting thoughts

00:14:11.220 on a mass scale and, um, it's challenging them. It's talking yourself through them. It's using

00:14:16.640 reason, um, while looking after yourself and not, not making it this, um, your mental health

00:14:24.800 and your feelings, the sort of apex enterprise of your life, because other things are more

00:14:30.140 important you know you have to look past the end of your nose and we're teaching people the exact

00:14:34.740 opposite of that the just navel gaze all day long and nothing else is particularly important

00:14:41.920 and sir do you think in a way now you we've talked to we've used the word or fetishizing

00:14:47.740 once do you think we've started to fetishize mental health like people start to see being

00:14:52.540 a depressive or having borderline personality disorder it's not only a disorder anymore it's

00:14:58.500 now become an identity people put it in their twitter bios yeah mental health has been fetishized

00:15:06.040 in a really i don't want to use the word disgusting i'd probably say the word worrying

00:15:13.320 way um and it's become yet another you know in the intersectionalities of i'm brown and i'm a

00:15:22.960 woman and i'm this and i'm that and i have self-diagnosed autism and i've got something

00:15:27.560 else and I've got borderline and on and on. And again, it's making these immutable characteristics,

00:15:35.240 these sort of central axes of your identity and of your being rather than, you know, it's so

00:15:44.320 limiting. It's shoving yourself in a grubby little box and saying, this is all I am. And

00:15:50.000 And in being just these small things, my color, my race, my gender and whatever, that's really important and everybody else must see it as really important.

00:16:03.000 It's a very unrealistic and inappropriate way to approach your identity as opposed to what you love, what books do you read, what makes your heart sing, what are you passionate about?

00:16:14.720 Why are those not more important questions about identity?

00:16:18.720 That's a really good point.

00:16:20.320 I suppose we all focus on the negative at the moment so much.

00:16:23.920 And there is quite a lot of negatives to be focused on at the moment.

00:16:26.900 Which, as a pessimist, is fucking brilliant.

00:16:29.180 Yeah.

00:16:30.400 But actually, I mean, as a therapist, I would imagine that making, from your point of view,

00:16:37.680 I would imagine that making some kind of mental health issue or problem or whatever diagnosis part of your identity

00:16:46.360 would make it essentially impossible to ever recover from that

00:16:50.520 because you've bought into the identity so much.

00:16:53.260 Is that fair to say or am I exaggerating?

00:16:55.440 I think it's a double-edged sword because there are people who are quite unwell

00:16:59.160 and will have lifelong struggles with mental health.

00:17:03.300 They're people whose lives are sort of crossed by the shadow of depression

00:17:07.220 and other illnesses.

00:17:10.440 And for them, it is something that informs who they are.

00:17:14.200 but that's not what's being done publicly or in this sort of um in what you described that's sort

00:17:21.600 of glamorizing and fetishizing a disorder that you might or might not have because you've

00:17:27.740 they've often self-diagnosed um and and just talking about that constantly again what you put

00:17:37.620 what you all the stuff you focus all your attention on which is that the world is an awful place

00:17:43.380 um there's white supremacists around every corner waiting to murder everybody

00:17:48.120 um you know the the west is a patriarchy i'm oppressed um people don't care about my mental

00:17:57.080 illness this is very pseudo realistic understandings because you know people don't

00:18:05.220 stop talking about mental illness there's there's so many even the royals are talking about the

00:18:10.740 importance of mental health talking of like a stuffy institution they're talking about it

00:18:15.820 it's there's constant campaigns it's it's very much mainstream it's very well understood

00:18:22.860 but they're they're behaving like none of that exists it's really peculiar they do they are

00:18:32.040 it's a great point they do behave like none of that exists why do you think that is

00:18:35.740 i don't know whether it's um an echo chamber thing i don't know whether it's um i think

00:18:42.780 there's a lot there are a lot of people who get really really um a big payoff out of being part

00:18:50.000 of a group that's against something because again they're not they're not necessarily building

00:18:56.000 anything they're not um creating you know they're not coming up with strategies or solutions

00:19:01.960 they're not um helping people up they're tearing things down and there's a real you know even with

00:19:10.960 the some of the footage of the riots there's a real chilling sort of sense that people are having

00:19:16.280 a really good time doing this they're singing they're skipping around they're smashing things

00:19:22.180 there's like a pleasure from the sense of destruction oh i totally get that i'm a

00:19:27.700 I hate people, but I would totally, I mean, I can totally see how much fun it would be

00:19:34.420 to be in a group of other people with a common purpose, uh, just smashing something up.

00:19:40.480 What a great way to spend a day. It was brilliant. It is. I can totally relate to it, which is

00:19:46.260 where you need sort of to play to people's better angels and encourage them to be involved in,

00:19:52.400 in even in movements for change. If you believe that there's injustice or whatever,

00:19:56.120 but that are constructive but that that doesn't that doesn't seem to be what's happening um but

00:20:02.200 you know from your point as as someone who works with people and helps to improve their mental

00:20:08.160 health what do you think would be a healthy societal approach to talking about these issues

00:20:13.940 and having these conversations because as francis says you know we seem to talk about all the time

00:20:18.220 now yet i think it's fair to say that if you were to measure people's sense of well-being over the

00:20:24.680 last 50, 60, 70 years. I think all the data shows that we're getting more miserable, aren't we?

00:20:30.240 We're getting more miserable and there's so many reasons for that. Um, we're not, you know,

00:20:35.600 we sit inside all day. I mean, the last year has been pretty devastating for that.

00:20:39.820 Sit inside all day and you stare at screens. Um, most of us aren't moving. We're not eating things

00:20:46.500 that would nourish our body and make us feel better. And, um, you know, movement is really,

00:20:53.360 live incredibly sedentary lives if you look at history. Even if you exercise for an hour or even

00:20:59.780 two a day, that's still kind of nothing compared to how we were living. All those things have an

00:21:06.500 impact because the world around us might have changed, our wiring hasn't. We're sort of a

00:21:13.800 primitive thing in this strange changing world and I think that gap is ever widening and we're

00:21:20.700 not learning how to deal with that gap very well. And we're suffering because of it. And it's doing

00:21:27.940 really funny things to people's minds. So even with the last year and the pressure people have

00:21:34.760 been under, not just being stuck indoors all day, which being stuck inside for pretty much an entire

00:21:40.340 year is going to have a pretty profound impact on your sense of feeling good in the world and good

00:21:47.960 yourself but even some of the conspiracy theories that have come out of the last year

00:21:53.920 or um some of the sort of analyses people are putting out about this capital um you know this

00:22:02.780 attack that's just happened it's how are you making these connections this has absolutely

00:22:10.320 you know looking at the the footage of these people they're a bunch of clowns there's a bunch

00:22:16.240 of idiots who've broken into this building, but to then call it a targeted insurrection or coup,

00:22:24.520 sort of like, how are you spinning this? Why are we not looking at reality, naming it very clearly

00:22:30.200 and staying tethered to it instead of spinning these narratives? And everyone is confused.

00:22:38.200 The media has, not just the media, social media, everyone is getting into your head and confusing

00:22:44.920 you further um and then you know we remove the meta narratives people don't have um a sense of

00:22:53.720 community and meaning based on anything else and then they lean into stuff like wokeness

00:22:59.260 or on the other end of the spectrum q anon you know just wacky ideas that are not based in reality

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00:24:43.780 He knew that bit off by heart.

00:24:47.960 And we talk about not being based in reality,

00:24:50.300 and we talk about the impact that the previous year has had.

00:24:54.620 Isn't the problem, Sir, a large part of it is social media,

00:24:58.180 and now we're spending hours and hours on our phone,

00:25:00.740 and essentially having our brains hacked by these social media companies

00:25:05.100 whose only vested interest is keeping us on our phones

00:25:08.140 or on our laptops for ever longer periods of time.

00:25:10.340 Follow us on Twitter at TriggerPod.

00:25:12.480 Absolutely, and all other social media platforms for unvarnished truth.

00:25:18.100 Abso-fucking-lutely, and at the same time, how do you get off them?

00:25:24.160 I'm as addicted as anybody else.

00:25:26.440 I go to Wii and I'm looking on Twitter.

00:25:28.600 It's just, you can't stop.

00:25:30.280 it's like it's almost like the phone is handcuffed to your wrist and and that's how it feels it it

00:25:38.400 weirdly um it's like the phone is an extension of your mind and when you leave your phones

00:25:45.820 none of us would would um not understand the the kind of discomfort you feel if you leave

00:25:53.440 your phone at home by accident we all know that it's like you're suffering till you get it back

00:25:59.020 this is this is not normal and we're so attached to this device yeah well i mean that is what

00:26:07.000 makes it so empowering too right like we are tapping in literally with our brains into this

00:26:12.180 big network of into the cloud and that's what makes it so powerful on the other hand it's also

00:26:17.660 what makes it so powerful as in terms of having an impact on our brain yeah so i think we've got

00:26:23.740 to the diagnosis very well sir you've talked about all the reasons that we are as messed up as we are

00:26:28.960 what sort of advice would you give people or do you give people, particularly now where

00:26:33.900 certainly in the UK, we're all stuck indoors in other countries, it's, you know, they've got

00:26:37.720 different rules. What are some of the healthy things you can do to protect your body and mind

00:26:43.540 from both, you know, the impact of lockdown, but also the bombardment of social media and all this

00:26:48.420 other stuff? I think we have to really, there's social media elicits a lot of really big emotional

00:26:55.620 stuff. It's really easy to get high on hate. It's really easy to get self-righteous. It's really

00:27:01.120 easy to go online and just sort of fire off all these horrible impulses that you're carrying

00:27:07.160 around because you're not feeling very happy because life is difficult. And you have, that's

00:27:12.920 a muscle that you have to build. You have to practice not doing that. You know, if someone

00:27:17.040 comes to your, I mean, it's a difficult line to walk and I don't want to be a hypocrite here

00:27:23.140 because if someone comes and is really, really rude, I won't take it and I don't suffer fools

00:27:27.520 gladly. But at the same time, um, there's also lines that I won't cross. And I think you have

00:27:33.260 to figure out what that is for you. Um, and you know, I know we're allowed to go out and exercise

00:27:39.760 and all that stuff in the UK with the lockdowns, but I think that's a lot of people are even

00:27:45.860 struggling to access that at the moment. I think there's not just the sort of adjustment disorder,

00:27:51.280 sort of depression, let's say, from the pandemic and all that stress, because then we have a lot

00:27:56.800 less sunlight at the moment. This is typically the time most people are slightly lower in mood.

00:28:01.700 So just look after yourself, you know, don't, don't engage with horrible stuff, guard your mind,

00:28:07.820 because that's, that's the most important thing. Don't feed your mind horrible, miserable,

00:28:13.540 toxic things, unplug from, from some of that stuff. And really, um, there's, there's this

00:28:20.800 term in, um, one of the trauma therapies. So you know what a trigger is something that,

00:28:27.000 that, um, of course, you know what a trigger is.

00:28:30.680 Yeah. I think, I think we know what a trigger is.

00:28:34.120 But in, in, in trauma terms, a trigger isn't necessarily the internet form of being triggered,

00:28:39.700 but like an actual trigger where you're involuntarily immersed in in something you know

00:28:46.400 something that reminds you of your trauma and it's sort of quite a horrible thing so a glimmer

00:28:51.820 is the exact opposite of that it's something that involuntarily puts you in a really good state so

00:28:58.400 imagine when you listen to a song that you just fucking love and you haven't heard it in a while

00:29:03.920 and then it kind of makes your heart sing and you feel it in your body that's a glimmer so you know

00:29:10.420 you have to incorporate more things like that into your life you'd be really intentional about it

00:29:14.640 because the shitty stuff is a deluge that you can't stop you know that dam has been broken

00:29:20.820 so you have to build like a wall around yourself and all of these sorts of practices are what look

00:29:27.620 after you and don't be scared of discomfort and adversity that's what makes you grow

00:29:32.300 don't you know do difficult things prove to yourself that you have a sense of competence

00:29:39.560 that you're strong that you're capable you can go through hard things and survive them

00:29:44.020 um you know if I had it my way I would completely get rid of safety culture because I think it's

00:29:50.120 making people unwell um but as we can't do that I guess we do what we can with what we have and

00:29:57.020 And I think that's a good attitude to take into life as well, which is don't be defeatist.

00:30:02.520 Do what you can with what you have.

00:30:04.800 And you'd be surprised at how much more you have than you really think.

00:30:10.300 Have you ever been abroad and felt out of place because you didn't speak the language?

00:30:14.420 No, because I voted Brexit.

00:30:16.620 Brexit means Brexit.

00:30:18.180 I know that sometimes you're abroad, you don't speak the local language.

00:30:21.080 It's very awkward, like France is talking to a woman.

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00:31:01.540 code which is of course trigger that's babble b a b b e l dot co dot uk slash play and use the

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00:31:17.760 go to babble.co.uk forward slash play use our code trigger and enjoy babble

00:31:25.900 And do you think part of the problem as well is that,

00:31:28.880 and again, this goes back to social media,

00:31:30.940 we're in a constant state of feeling that actually we're being denied,

00:31:35.220 that people are doing better than us.

00:31:36.940 We've lost our ability to be grateful.

00:31:39.440 I don't feel that way. I'm crushing it.

00:31:42.140 And not just lost our ability to be grateful.

00:31:45.860 There's active messaging saying you're under no obligation to be grateful.

00:31:50.120 That's toxic positivity.

00:31:52.140 You don't have to find gratitude.

00:31:55.100 Yeah.

00:31:55.200 Yeah. I didn't, I haven't heard that one. Is that, is that a thing?

00:31:58.840 Yeah, it's a thing.

00:32:00.200 So what's toxic positivity? It's when...

00:32:02.380 There's some truth in it, which is that, you know, there's a lot of like woo-woo spiritual

00:32:06.920 type of people who, you know, I'm in a different reality and racism is, you know, lower vibration

00:32:14.460 rubbish. It's just, you know, silly people saying silly things. And it's evolved into

00:32:18.920 this idea that even when say you're mentally ill or you've had trauma or something you just try and

00:32:26.880 feel positive and be grateful. Oh that doesn't work you have to deal with the issue. Yeah so

00:32:32.940 that's what but that toxic positivity has now as always been taken too far and now the there's a

00:32:40.160 real rhetoric amongst so I'm in the Instagram therapy niche and every day I'll see two or three

00:32:46.780 posts. You don't have to find a lesson in your trauma. You don't have to, um, of course you

00:32:52.460 don't, but maybe you should try and maybe you should think about things. Why limit yourself

00:32:57.580 before? Um, you know, you don't have to feel gratitude. If you're not feeling a Christmas

00:33:04.280 cheer, that's completely fine. It's this constant, you know, what they think is this validating,

00:33:11.060 affirming stuff, but it's subliminally messaging. The subliminal messaging to people is,

00:33:17.880 positivity is not aspirational. People who are successful, people who are functional,

00:33:25.120 people who make something of themselves and build themselves up, that's now a privileged villain.

00:33:31.880 And the virtue and the good stuff comes from people who are sitting and hurting.

00:33:36.080 And there's a lot of the subliminal messaging that's, I think, really damaging and worrying and a horrible idea.

00:33:46.540 And Sarah, if the people come in with this particular mindset and they're already thinking like this, thinking of this particular victim, constructing themselves as victim narrative, doesn't it make it incredibly difficult for you to treat them?

00:34:00.040 very very difficult they're the hardest people to work with um you know in private practice

00:34:06.180 anyway because you don't take on necessarily people who are very seriously unwell wouldn't

00:34:10.900 be appropriate in this setting but yes it's very very very difficult and um it's because they have

00:34:18.920 a real investment in in staying as they are because they get a social reward from it the

00:34:24.500 in-group rewards them constantly they get social status from it they get attention um they've now

00:34:31.100 they've constructed an identity around being a person who is hard done by suffering not okay

00:34:38.860 and i think there's a real sense of fear around being okay being successful and being functional

00:34:46.960 because for one you're going to get kicked out of your your social group if you do and i think we

00:34:52.760 we don't kind of think about that. That's a big thing, especially if you're young in your late

00:34:58.280 teens and early twenties, that's a massive loss. Um, so I, I have a few clients like that and

00:35:06.520 all of them have had some version of I'm scared to be well, I'm scared to be better.

00:35:13.740 That doesn't surprise me at all. I think the group instinct and group status and approval

00:35:18.360 That's such a big thing. It's quite similar in substance abuse, isn't it? Like someone who wants

00:35:23.140 to stop taking certain substances or drinking alcohol with friends or whatever, they will often

00:35:28.020 have to let go of that group. And that can be quite a big obstacle. But let's, let's talk about

00:35:33.940 you a little bit because, you know, you're a therapist, you're in private practice. I would

00:35:38.860 not have thought that coming out publicly and having strong views on cultural issues would

00:35:44.460 necessarily be uh you know the most helpful thing for you from a sort of business point of view

00:35:50.020 why have you chosen to to be as vocal as you are about these issues it felt irresponsible not to

00:35:57.800 and why is that because it feels like well for one i think it's ruining my field

00:36:04.620 i think um now we we have much less actual psychotherapists um that are doing actual

00:36:12.100 psychotherapy as opposed to either guidance counselors who want to validate everyone for

00:36:17.420 everything or activists who are just labeled therapists it's like all the grievance study

00:36:23.600 scholars they are um all activists with different labels one is a teacher one is a scholar one's a

00:36:29.760 social worker one's a therapist but their primary function is is activism and that can't it just

00:36:37.440 can't infiltrate therapy. It's sort of against any form of proper work. And it's sort of also

00:36:48.080 against most of my personal things I believe in. I believe in stoicism and in not being a defeatist

00:36:57.800 and being, you know, striving and moving forward and doing difficult things and not blaming

00:37:06.000 everybody else and taking responsibility for the stuff you can control and it's the

00:37:12.360 pretty much polar opposite messaging it's being given to people and being called therapeutic

00:37:19.240 no i was going to say it seems to me that what they're doing and correct me if i'm wrong is

00:37:24.680 politicizing therapy which it's it's just insane can you explain why politics and and therapy and

00:37:32.520 therapies should be i can't believe i'm asking this question but it needs to be asked why should

00:37:37.380 they be completely separate well it's like saying well why should spaghetti and spaceships be

00:37:43.300 separate well it's just two things that have nothing to do with each other they shouldn't

00:37:50.280 have been together it's just absolute like i'm so angry about this and you have these these people

00:37:55.940 talking about how the personal is political well if you question them you scratch you know on the

00:38:01.700 veneer a little bit well there's nothing under there they have no responses for that what that

00:38:05.700 really means therapy is political uh why because you know there's white supremacy and and patriarchy

00:38:14.120 and all these different oppressions and therapists um you know it impacts clients so therapists have

00:38:20.780 to be really involved and advocate for this it's like well you're not a fireman and you're not a

00:38:26.360 social worker and you're not a police, you know, you're a therapist, do your actual job and let

00:38:32.280 other people do their jobs. And the point of therapy is that you provide somebody a safe,

00:38:39.260 unbiased container in which that, you know, they can start to become who they are, deal with their

00:38:48.700 stuff, like make quite deep, in-depth exploration of really difficult things. You don't need

00:38:55.920 biases and the therapies that i mean that's completely contrary to anything that would

00:39:02.300 would create useful therapy the therapist bias the therapist politics the therapist's lived

00:39:08.400 experience all of why is the therapist all of a sudden this um why are they the star of the

00:39:15.820 therapy they shouldn't be it should always be about the client and i suppose one thing we

00:39:22.200 haven't actually asked you about is what is the therapy industry or the field like at the moment

00:39:28.420 um so i've been in private practice for a little while so i'm not necessarily around a lot of

00:39:35.220 therapists all the time but based on the instagram niche which is you've got hundreds of therapists

00:39:42.200 in it it's increasingly woke even therapists in this country you know the the some of the ones

00:39:50.120 that I know, they, um, I think people just go along with it. They're told this is the right

00:39:55.800 thing. This is the PC thing. You just have to go along with it. And it's a slow creep. You know,

00:40:01.120 it's like boiling a frog and slowly before you know it, you're talking about, um, you're lecturing

00:40:07.160 your white clients on their privilege in the session. A guy comes in and says, I'm depressed

00:40:16.000 and you go, that's because you're a white man.

00:40:18.880 That sounds great.

00:40:21.120 The best bit is they're paying for it.

00:40:22.480 That'll be 50 quid.

00:40:23.600 Thank you very much.

00:40:25.580 It's awful.

00:40:27.120 And for how, I mean, this obviously,

00:40:29.400 you've talked about the boiling frog metaphor.

00:40:32.220 This didn't obviously happen overnight.

00:40:34.560 For how long has this been coming?

00:40:36.960 I mean, I think this has been coming for a really long time.

00:40:40.380 But the infiltration into therapy seems to be a more,

00:40:43.720 you know,

00:40:44.400 I'm not sure but for me I've seen it in the last couple of years

00:40:51.660 and where it's become really prominent and really difficult to ignore and I started being quite

00:40:58.120 vocal about it because it got to the point where I thought you're gonna you're not doing therapy

00:41:02.380 you're not helping people you're doing something really um unethical and awful and calling it good

00:41:09.720 um and i couldn't be quiet about that it felt really strongly about it um it's you know you

00:41:18.640 have therapists constantly talking about their own privilege um you have a lot of infighting

00:41:24.360 you know therapists behaving like um crabs in a bucket over just this hierarchy of i'm the most

00:41:35.400 woke i'm the most anti-oppressive um i'm the least privileged look at my you know 35 different

00:41:43.300 intersectionalities it's just become this weird narcissistic performance and again it just has

00:41:50.280 nothing to do with therapy there's nothing to do with the psyche and helping people it's a good

00:41:55.860 example though of what their psyche or a good illustration of what their psyche might be like

00:42:01.040 um beyond that no not really and isn't this just an example of society becoming more and more

00:42:08.940 narcissistic yeah that's all we're doing aren't we just focusing on ourselves yeah it's great

00:42:15.140 it's great and it's also a nightmare and it's you know just this this navel gazing like what

00:42:23.360 has happened to everybody um i don't know maybe i'm really old-fashioned in this way and maybe

00:42:29.980 i've got it wrong but i think sitting around thinking about your feelings all day is just a

00:42:36.080 horrendous idea and you're going to make yourself upset you're not going to be a good partner

00:42:41.840 employee parent any of those things um and broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical

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00:43:15.780 i just don't even know yeah i know words sometimes uh evade all of us on this issue

00:43:24.280 But let me ask you about this. You mentioned intersections, and here you are, pseudo-brown, foreign-born woman, oppressed in every way, religious minority, you know, all the rest of it.

00:43:39.780 Woman spelt with an X, of course.

00:43:41.540 Obviously. And a Y.

00:43:42.420 Yeah, a WOMK, as we call it on trigonometry.

00:43:45.540 So, do you have any sympathy for the idea that, you know, if you come from a mixture of these groups that are not, traditionally speaking, advantaged in society, that you are more disadvantaged than others automatically, do you have any sympathy with that or do you just think that that's wrong?

00:44:08.060 I think all these ideas have a kernel of truth to them.

00:44:11.300 Yeah.

00:44:11.540 but they're misapplied like intersectionality um isn't it supposed to be for to make sure the

00:44:18.580 legal system doesn't miss out ways in which people are discriminated against or how to make

00:44:25.960 sure you're deploying proper resources and not missing anything out by looking at all the

00:44:31.440 different intersections of ways in which you know you're i don't like using this word but oppressed

00:44:37.780 um but it's it's not it's not applied that way anymore now it's sort of like a blue-haired

00:44:45.060 university student who has you know got 30 different things and 50 different emojis in

00:44:51.940 their bio about how oppressed they are while they scapegoat actual people of color online

00:44:57.960 this is it's really been my my experience since I've been speaking about this I find um a lot of

00:45:06.380 woke white people will, they talk about don't weaponize your identity as a person of color or

00:45:17.420 whatever. So they use this term, don't weaponize your identity, but then they use theirs at every

00:45:24.100 available opportunity and they use it to basically hammer out dissent. So intersectionality is yet

00:45:32.280 another thing to use their term that's been weaponized and been used as an as a exercise in

00:45:38.980 narcissism instead of being applied for what it was which was a tool not a weapon and sir why do

00:45:45.980 you think it is that more people especially people in the field of mental health can see what what

00:45:51.040 is happening can see that these practices and behaviors are deeply unhealthful unhelpful and

00:45:56.120 unhealthy why is it that more people haven't stood up and said this is lunacy it's i mean i'm at a

00:46:03.880 loss for that as well i don't understand how you can be exposed for this to this for a while and

00:46:09.100 not start to say hang on this isn't right something's something's really wrong here um

00:46:14.900 and there's very few people i mean i could probably think of 300 therapists in that instagram niche

00:46:22.940 and maybe three of us talk about it so it's really odd there's a few therapists on twitter

00:46:31.380 that talk about it um i don't know i don't know whether it's to do with personality traits and

00:46:38.320 it's that kind of agreeableness needing to be needed being cooperative staying in the group

00:46:43.280 i think a lot of therapists have that trait the need to be needed um which again you know sort

00:46:49.460 of indicates other traits of needing to be accepted and be in the group.

00:46:55.440 And I don't know whether that is a part of it.

00:46:58.560 I don't know whether it's because, you know,

00:47:02.360 universities are indoctrinating people into this theory and they're coming out

00:47:08.520 into the world with this preconceived blueprint and they superimpose it

00:47:14.480 onto the world and then demand that everybody else sees, you know,

00:47:18.140 looks through their, their rose tinted glasses, whatever, or maybe not rose tinted, whatever the

00:47:24.240 opposite. Um, I don't know. I, I'm really confused about that myself. Like these are people who are

00:47:32.520 supposed to understand human behavior and people who are supposed to, um, you'd think have quite

00:47:38.260 good ethics and they're watching people cancel each other. They're getting involved in it. Um,

00:47:43.960 they're doing just weird anti-social horrible things and i'm very confused by it i think the

00:47:51.640 whole world is very confused by it but uh we we haven't really talked about politics and we don't

00:47:56.520 need to get too much into it but i just wanted to ask do you think uh now that the you know the

00:48:02.540 evil orange man has left the building uh people will calm down a bit do you think a lot of this

00:48:07.720 was a sort of visceral response to, you know, Donald Trump was a divisive figure. The way he

00:48:14.080 spoke made people very uncomfortable. The way he didn't play by certain traditional rules when it

00:48:20.960 came to being president or being a candidate. It made people uneasy. Like, you know, you want,

00:48:28.960 most people want the leader of the free world, so-called, to be this grounding, stable figure

00:48:35.920 who can always be relied on to deliver calm and sort of measured tone.

00:48:41.940 Donald Trump, you know, whether you like him or not, was not that.

00:48:44.800 I think everyone who's rational would agree on that.

00:48:47.620 Do you think that now that he's no longer going to be president,

00:48:51.900 people will sort of feel like, all right, we don't need to fight so hard.

00:48:55.780 We can relax a little bit.

00:48:57.240 We can ease off.

00:48:58.960 Or am I just being very toxically positive about this?

00:49:03.280 I don't know.

00:49:04.320 It's hard.

00:49:05.020 I mean, because it's a group of people that have sort of built their identities and their life purpose about railing against something, whether it's there or not.

00:49:17.560 You know, Donald Trump definitely gave them something, someone to hate.

00:49:24.740 He gave them someone to, you know, complain about.

00:49:27.940 but i think they might settle down slightly but they are also going to get a lot of institutional

00:49:35.200 power behind them so i don't know i think it's going to be a really um i think we should

00:49:42.040 watch with caution is yeah yeah well i hear you i mean i was saying to the boys here at the studio

00:49:48.860 this morning like what is cnn going to talk about now you know what what are all these woke people

00:49:55.080 going to do? And it sounds like what you're really saying is they've banded together around

00:49:59.660 an identity and they're going to have to direct their energy somewhere. And now they're going

00:50:04.120 to be in power. Now they're controlling all the big tech. Yeah, 2021 is going to be a great year.

00:50:11.480 Started out well, hasn't it?

00:50:18.280 Go on.

00:50:18.860 No, I was just saying, yeah, it really didn't start out very, very well.

00:50:23.840 Is there any optimism for the future, Sirat?

00:50:26.920 There's always optimism.

00:50:28.480 I think you have to hold on to that, don't you?

00:50:31.980 Yes, I think there is.

00:50:33.240 And I think the optimism is that more and more people,

00:50:36.320 perhaps not therapists, but everyone else,

00:50:39.620 are kind of waking up to this.

00:50:43.060 And people are getting fed up of it.

00:50:44.820 And luckily, not everyone is a reactive,

00:50:49.760 or not everyone wants to be a counterforce.

00:50:52.200 there are a lot of people are waking up to this and saying actually this isn't okay I'm not going

00:50:57.460 to be involved in it I'm not going to bend a knee and I'm also not going to bully you back

00:51:02.260 like I'm not having this like strong straight-spined people that are standing up for this

00:51:07.560 and I think that's something to be really optimistic about. It is and you talk about these

00:51:13.000 you know the people standing up to it I think a lot of people now are in a quandary because

00:51:17.220 people like us are coming out and talking and saying this is unacceptable whatever it may be

00:51:23.460 but you get people who for one reason or another are uncomfortable but don't feel that they can

00:51:30.300 speak up what would your advice be to people like them who maybe aren't as inclined or don't have

00:51:35.740 the personality types to confront these bullies well even if you don't want to speak up about it

00:51:41.920 you don't have to um encourage it go along with it um and i think what i'd recommend to those

00:51:51.020 people is to do what i did which is to set up something like a twitter account you don't have

00:51:57.080 to say anything you just start listening to people and see what's being said and you know start to

00:52:03.340 i probably i tweeted because that one of the things that i get out of tweeting is working

00:52:08.160 out my own ideas and then you get instant feedback and it's one way to figure out what

00:52:12.440 how you feel about things but you can also do that just by listening to people not not inflammatory

00:52:18.120 you know nightmare people but listen to reasoned rational people and and a variety of voices don't

00:52:26.680 be in an echo chamber i think people that are stuck in that woke echo chamber wherever it is

00:52:32.400 um they think everyone thinks like that and they're terrified of having that angry mob turn

00:52:37.800 on them as soon as you leave it you realize they're a tiny little very loud you know minority

00:52:42.840 and there's a lot this big world it's full of a lot of different people and it's it's okay you'll

00:52:49.680 be okay listen to what other people are saying as well widen your focus would be my advice

00:52:55.640 it's good advice sir and listen it's been great chatting to you i think one of the reasons we

00:53:01.540 wanted to speak with you is that uh there are so many fields that are being affected in this way

00:53:06.600 And, you know, whether it's comedy, whether it's therapy, whether it's journalism, whether it's sport, you know, all acting, all of these, all of these fields.

00:53:15.740 And we're going to, as the year goes on, speak to more and more people from these different fields.

00:53:20.920 But as you know, when we finish the show, we always finish with the same question, which is, what is the one thing that no one is talking about that we really should be?

00:53:29.840 I think we should be talking about not reacting to things we should be talking about grounding

00:53:40.380 yourself and finding a center we're talking about how your hot take isn't needed in the world

00:53:46.440 it's much more important to look after yourself you know we need to we need to start having

00:53:53.480 conversations around um calming the fuck down everyone has no chill and um just work on yourself

00:54:05.640 you grow those muscles modulate your behavior regulate your emotions stop just reacting to

00:54:13.200 things stop um you know you see someone broke into the capital so you you decide that's white

00:54:19.160 supremacy when you don't have all the facts so without the facts you don't you don't have an

00:54:23.700 accurate assessment so you start thinking like that we need more reason we need you know um

00:54:30.580 people to be more circumspect and to start building bridges because everyone on the left

00:54:35.360 isn't woke and um everyone on the right has been sadly tarred as a bigot and we need to we need to

00:54:43.160 stop all of that, all that division and find a way to actually see each other as human beings

00:54:50.160 and be okay with the fact that people who are not you will have thoughts that you wouldn't have.

00:54:56.100 And that's not something to flip out about. If it's not a thought in your head, it's not your

00:55:01.420 business. Let other people think what they like, you know, just get calm. Yeah, I'm sure that will

00:55:08.660 definitely happen this year. Sira, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. I really,

00:55:15.700 as I said at the very top of the interview, you're one of my Twitter faves at the moment.

00:55:21.160 Where can people find you online? So I'm on Twitter at Sirut K. Chaula and same handle on

00:55:28.180 Instagram. And maybe you can put that in your caption somewhere. We absolutely will. And equally,

00:55:34.380 there may be people who who want to uh get your help in terms of therapy what's the best way for

00:55:39.980 them to to find you for that at the moment i'm not taking on too many people but um i'm building

00:55:45.600 a website which will be up soon which will also be sirat kei chavla so that's being built and it

00:55:51.700 will yeah all right perfect thank you so much for coming on and thank you guys for watching

00:55:57.240 we will see you very soon with another episode or a live stream and they always go out 7 p.m uk time

00:56:03.280 Take care, guys, and see you soon.

00:56:33.280 forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega

00:56:39.580 hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th 2026 the

00:56:46.460 princess of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - January 20, 2021

＂Safety Culture is Hurting Us＂ - Seerut Chawla

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