"I keep wondering if these younger folks react so badly because they haven't experienced enough actual hardship. On the other hand I've reacted to very minor criticism my whole life, not because I didn't have hardship but because I didn't get mentally strong or healthy. Lord knows Im trying!"
"Therapy is not supposed to be about affirmation. It's supposed to be about the hard work of understanding yourself and trying to make changes and move through the world with some strength and some peace."
What you are describing is LIFE before social media and a wired childhood (and adulthood) became ubiquitous.
This just about sums up Jonathan Haidts thesis in "The Anxious Generation". If you havent read it, stop what you're doing and read it now (or listen on Audible. graphs are included in PDF).
No, young people have NOT experienced enough hardship. And schools/colleges/parents are making it worse.
Yes, EVERYONE is now primed from almost birth to react to, well, everything, especially criticism. And they wont get mentally healthy because their brains are rewiring from childhood in a way that used to be quite rare but overnight has exploded.
Our arousal system is constantly alert to low level threat as if its high level threat. When a persons brain and everything they know is jamming on the gas to escape what they percieve are very real threats and a therapist tries to remind her to slow down... good luck! This kind of treatment is very specific, takes trained specialists, and a LOT of time. The poorly constructed and harmful beliefs about ourselves are being intentionally and constantly reinforced for profit. A "therapist" , in America right now, on our insurance model, has no hope of managing cluster B disorders and mental habits. Narcissism, Borderline, etc. When you go through Haidts book you realize what we have done is CREATE very very hard mental problems that we are ill equipped to treat individually. There HAS to be a culture shift. This is indeed a collective action problem.
Therefore, I think its time we stop talking about therapy all together as a solution or as a part of the problem. Ive been following Haidts work on substack since he started After Babel. Every time he dropped a new graph I added it to the puzzle. I see Trans, race politics, critical social justice activism as a whole, as being directly related to and exacerbated by if not caused by the specific brand of wired (attention) economy we introduced in 2010. The book makes it even more clear because he walks through the evolutionary biology we tampered with. The rates at which we upended millenia of work to stabalize our behaviors and mental processes is mindblowing.
We are in a crisis that utterly transcends "mental health" and "therapy". And it is imperative that every parent, school board, and town coincil understand this immedietly so we can shore up our defenses. What defenses? NOT more mental health services! Our defense is simple... go back to nature. Get kids off phones till 18 (i said that, not Haidt... he says 16).
Im going to be brutally honest here, the focus cannot be on genZ or Gen Alpha. That are gone for the most part. The focus must be on the next generation that are still in elementary and preschool. This is why I truly believe the fight is in schools and local governments. We have to clearly SEPARATE ideology from government (social justice etc out of schools and local community governance). These ideologies are like catnip to the young minds who are primed by a wired/phone based life. Soon they become like meth. At the same time we are miswiring the brain of kids earlier and earlier.
Why not focus on separating them from medicine too? Great question! Simple answer. Money. In America the medical industry is incentivised in a way public education and local govt is not. If we are able to separate "church" and state again, at some point people who see the pendulum shift back will demand ideology out of medicine with their wallets. They will demand gender surgeries be considered cosmetic, not "treatment". Hate to be the debbie downer but transhumanism is here to stay but it can be pushed to the fringe.
The reason liberal democracy works is our ability to "other" something that causes material harm. We "other" thw unhealthy and the unpopular out to the fringe of society. Then we can focus any extraordinary compassionate response in an efficient and specialized way. In a democracy there will always be a fringe. Thats where major mental health interventions should be focused, NOT on the mainstream. Queer theory seeks to eliminate the fringe by making everything and everyone "fringe". Its the fundamental deconstruction of society and our ability to help those in need. Its an incredibly childish worldview... If im having a hard time then lets give everyone a hard time so my pain wont seem so special anymore. Whereas a liberal democracy does not seek to eliminate the fringe but rather seeks to provide a space for individuals to persue happiness, however they define it, in peace with and alongaide others, while also providing opportunities for those at the fringe to access help if they need it.
So I believe none of this really stops until we take our losses and begin to hard core focus on the base of society, the children and the local laws and norms. Town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood, school by school. As we take childhood back, a counter narrative of mental health and stability will emerge and this insanity will become fringe again.
I love you Lisa and your work (BTW I just cant with "housewife"!...its so real i have to read in spurts. excellent book!). There are warriors in this fight who have risen above and beyond to save our children and I have the utmost respect and admiration for you. And... i think you are being too kind in this piece. Or too subtle? Or maybe just slightly missing the point. Because therapy in America is broken, and its being used as a sideshow.
What Haidt shows in immaculate detail is how almost overnight, large swaths of the population was dosed with a "neurotoxin" that develops cluster B traits in humans. Because of the nature of those traits, therapy will be pointless. We cant train practitioners fast enough or afford it on a mass scale. BUT these traits are simply a mass delusion that will actually dissapate to a large extent in most people if you take away the drug and give back human social connection. Thats not an easy proposition either but its a hell of a lot quicker and easier and fits the problem better than therapy.
We cant "treat" a mass delusion so the quality or quantity or type of therapy is a moot point. The only reasonable solution is to take away the toxin causing the hysteria.
Honestly I love all your work. I just feel like we are passed this topic in a way. Its kind of click bait (not your piece, the topic)
I agree with the statement that exploring someone’s motives and life experience and questioning their reasons for radical actions is not conversion therapy. Every point you made about this is true.
I wanted to comment though because I don’t want anyone left with the impression that the Dutch experiment was proper. I can’t speak to how the psychiatrists conducted their sessions with these children. Perhaps they explored their motives and life experience and their reasons for wanting to medically transition. However, there is no convincing me they what the doctors actually did was appropriate. These children may have been thoroughly convinced they were “trans,” but that means absolutely nothing. These children were deprived of the opportunity to grow up, to go through natural puberty and to see how life might be as adults in their unharmed bodies. I don’t care how together these kids seemed when they were experimented on. It was wrong. I just wanted to make that clear. Thanks.
That poor insane woman is on a crusade to prevent children from getting therapy. Vengeful ideologues like her are the reason that kids who show up at a therapist with gender issues get refused treatment, even if their biggest problems are anxiety and depression, or dealing with autism. All the doors close for them except the one at the gender clinic. If she had any shame, she should be ashamed of herself. Someone saying "have you considered that you may be wrong" is the worst thing that has ever happened in her life? Did she even have parents?
These two quotes strike me...
"I keep wondering if these younger folks react so badly because they haven't experienced enough actual hardship. On the other hand I've reacted to very minor criticism my whole life, not because I didn't have hardship but because I didn't get mentally strong or healthy. Lord knows Im trying!"
"Therapy is not supposed to be about affirmation. It's supposed to be about the hard work of understanding yourself and trying to make changes and move through the world with some strength and some peace."
What you are describing is LIFE before social media and a wired childhood (and adulthood) became ubiquitous.
This just about sums up Jonathan Haidts thesis in "The Anxious Generation". If you havent read it, stop what you're doing and read it now (or listen on Audible. graphs are included in PDF).
No, young people have NOT experienced enough hardship. And schools/colleges/parents are making it worse.
Yes, EVERYONE is now primed from almost birth to react to, well, everything, especially criticism. And they wont get mentally healthy because their brains are rewiring from childhood in a way that used to be quite rare but overnight has exploded.
Our arousal system is constantly alert to low level threat as if its high level threat. When a persons brain and everything they know is jamming on the gas to escape what they percieve are very real threats and a therapist tries to remind her to slow down... good luck! This kind of treatment is very specific, takes trained specialists, and a LOT of time. The poorly constructed and harmful beliefs about ourselves are being intentionally and constantly reinforced for profit. A "therapist" , in America right now, on our insurance model, has no hope of managing cluster B disorders and mental habits. Narcissism, Borderline, etc. When you go through Haidts book you realize what we have done is CREATE very very hard mental problems that we are ill equipped to treat individually. There HAS to be a culture shift. This is indeed a collective action problem.
Therefore, I think its time we stop talking about therapy all together as a solution or as a part of the problem. Ive been following Haidts work on substack since he started After Babel. Every time he dropped a new graph I added it to the puzzle. I see Trans, race politics, critical social justice activism as a whole, as being directly related to and exacerbated by if not caused by the specific brand of wired (attention) economy we introduced in 2010. The book makes it even more clear because he walks through the evolutionary biology we tampered with. The rates at which we upended millenia of work to stabalize our behaviors and mental processes is mindblowing.
We are in a crisis that utterly transcends "mental health" and "therapy". And it is imperative that every parent, school board, and town coincil understand this immedietly so we can shore up our defenses. What defenses? NOT more mental health services! Our defense is simple... go back to nature. Get kids off phones till 18 (i said that, not Haidt... he says 16).
Im going to be brutally honest here, the focus cannot be on genZ or Gen Alpha. That are gone for the most part. The focus must be on the next generation that are still in elementary and preschool. This is why I truly believe the fight is in schools and local governments. We have to clearly SEPARATE ideology from government (social justice etc out of schools and local community governance). These ideologies are like catnip to the young minds who are primed by a wired/phone based life. Soon they become like meth. At the same time we are miswiring the brain of kids earlier and earlier.
Why not focus on separating them from medicine too? Great question! Simple answer. Money. In America the medical industry is incentivised in a way public education and local govt is not. If we are able to separate "church" and state again, at some point people who see the pendulum shift back will demand ideology out of medicine with their wallets. They will demand gender surgeries be considered cosmetic, not "treatment". Hate to be the debbie downer but transhumanism is here to stay but it can be pushed to the fringe.
The reason liberal democracy works is our ability to "other" something that causes material harm. We "other" thw unhealthy and the unpopular out to the fringe of society. Then we can focus any extraordinary compassionate response in an efficient and specialized way. In a democracy there will always be a fringe. Thats where major mental health interventions should be focused, NOT on the mainstream. Queer theory seeks to eliminate the fringe by making everything and everyone "fringe". Its the fundamental deconstruction of society and our ability to help those in need. Its an incredibly childish worldview... If im having a hard time then lets give everyone a hard time so my pain wont seem so special anymore. Whereas a liberal democracy does not seek to eliminate the fringe but rather seeks to provide a space for individuals to persue happiness, however they define it, in peace with and alongaide others, while also providing opportunities for those at the fringe to access help if they need it.
So I believe none of this really stops until we take our losses and begin to hard core focus on the base of society, the children and the local laws and norms. Town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood, school by school. As we take childhood back, a counter narrative of mental health and stability will emerge and this insanity will become fringe again.
I love you Lisa and your work (BTW I just cant with "housewife"!...its so real i have to read in spurts. excellent book!). There are warriors in this fight who have risen above and beyond to save our children and I have the utmost respect and admiration for you. And... i think you are being too kind in this piece. Or too subtle? Or maybe just slightly missing the point. Because therapy in America is broken, and its being used as a sideshow.
What Haidt shows in immaculate detail is how almost overnight, large swaths of the population was dosed with a "neurotoxin" that develops cluster B traits in humans. Because of the nature of those traits, therapy will be pointless. We cant train practitioners fast enough or afford it on a mass scale. BUT these traits are simply a mass delusion that will actually dissapate to a large extent in most people if you take away the drug and give back human social connection. Thats not an easy proposition either but its a hell of a lot quicker and easier and fits the problem better than therapy.
We cant "treat" a mass delusion so the quality or quantity or type of therapy is a moot point. The only reasonable solution is to take away the toxin causing the hysteria.
Honestly I love all your work. I just feel like we are passed this topic in a way. Its kind of click bait (not your piece, the topic)
I agree with the statement that exploring someone’s motives and life experience and questioning their reasons for radical actions is not conversion therapy. Every point you made about this is true.
I wanted to comment though because I don’t want anyone left with the impression that the Dutch experiment was proper. I can’t speak to how the psychiatrists conducted their sessions with these children. Perhaps they explored their motives and life experience and their reasons for wanting to medically transition. However, there is no convincing me they what the doctors actually did was appropriate. These children may have been thoroughly convinced they were “trans,” but that means absolutely nothing. These children were deprived of the opportunity to grow up, to go through natural puberty and to see how life might be as adults in their unharmed bodies. I don’t care how together these kids seemed when they were experimented on. It was wrong. I just wanted to make that clear. Thanks.
That poor insane woman is on a crusade to prevent children from getting therapy. Vengeful ideologues like her are the reason that kids who show up at a therapist with gender issues get refused treatment, even if their biggest problems are anxiety and depression, or dealing with autism. All the doors close for them except the one at the gender clinic. If she had any shame, she should be ashamed of herself. Someone saying "have you considered that you may be wrong" is the worst thing that has ever happened in her life? Did she even have parents?
Thank you, Lisa, for writing about this.
Lisa, How did you find this video? Is it attached to a blog? Is it just floating out in cyber-space and only people "in the know" have a link to it?
It's an insane video. How is it being distributed?