Debating Therapy Culture & Gen Z - Abigail Shrier

I have been fully immersed in this therapeutic nightmare with my two very hyperactive boys. One boy was kicked out of a preschool, and I was told to get him play therapy. We tried it, and we also tried a few of the therapeutic like parents coaching intensives. Some of these ideas work, some don't, and most make parenting feel exhausting. We stopped all this. Removed every screen in our home that was accessible to them, told them to go outside, setup rules and boundaries we enforce for proper behavior at, for example, the dinner table. Sometimes, they are still energetic and crazy, but our lives are all much less stressful. The meltdowns are now infrequent, they can sit quietly at the dinner table to eat. They play with toys. After reading Abigail's book, I had my older boy (the one who was kicked out of pre-school) order from the meat counter and check out. We are planning to have him get some groceries this summer when we have a planned vacation. Expectations, no screens, and time outdoors playing mostly unsupervised in our yard has been a God send for our sanity.

Finally, a podcast that wasn't brought to me by Betterhelp

I work at a high school and I agree 1000% with Abigail. Kids these days can’t deal with normal life and normal developmental challenges.

I have been a teacher for 17 years. The coddling and validating of emotional Dysregulation is wild. I have watched kids cry because of the high expectations (going to all their classes). It’s a sad waste of potential.

I saw a psychologist for 2 years and she kept me a victim. I left her a found a new family counselor and was able to work through my trauma and issues within 6 months. She gave me tools to not dwell on my trauma. I am so thankful.

My dad died 2 weeks before my 17th birthday having been ill with lung and then brain cancer for 3 years. I was obviously sad about his death, but my grieving process started when I was told his brain tumour was inoperable, when I watched him loose his faculties and become something other than my dad in a hospital bed. On the day he died and in the weeks after I felt relief, relief for him, for my mum, for myself because the dying was so much harder to deal with than the death. I was sent to mandatory NHS grief counselling. The therapist told me I was struggling to come to terms with my dad’s death. Asked me to describe the hardest parts of my dad’s illness which I felt no benefit in talking about. I was in the middle of A levels, had a boyfriend who wasn’t very nice to me and was in the throws of teenage hormones, if anything my dads death was the thing I most clearly understood at that time. At no point then or in the 26 years since have a felt that I struggled to accept my dad’s death. But as a 16/17 year old I had a professional adult TELLING me that I had a problem and I wasn’t accepting it. I was strong minded enough to write it off as bad therapy. But I can 100% see how to a different child this kind of approach could have led to years of issues because our minds are so malleable as children and teenagers. So not all therapy is good, and too much intervention with the wrong motivation is definitely not good. Being a child is all about learning what you can withstand to make you a strong adult. I am a stronger adult because of the grief I suffered, but the grief counselling would have had me believe otherwise.

I've been saying this for 25 years! When I was a teenager they started advertising medications on tv, then all of a sudden all my friends and schoolmates were being diagnosed left and right with anxiety, depression, ADHD, you name it. I knew it wasn't them though, it was the doctors and medical establishment convincing people they were ill when they actually weren't. I'm glad this conversation is happening now. It sickens me to see the overmedicated population we've become

I was cornered at a pediatrician office because I had post partum depression and when I declined counseling they automatically assumed my partner told me to say no and asked if I’m being abused at home. I said no because I knew it was hormones and I moved through it fine. Now, they want my son in physical therapy because he’s not walking at 12 months (totally normal!!). I said no that’s not necessary and had to say no on three separate calls. When I call this same office about my son’s extreme constipation they offer no help and just asked if he’s in PT yet. The healthcare system and mental health system can’t survive if we’re all happy and healthy so they fish for issues it’s ridiculous.

I've started pushing back on students when they tell me they "have" anxiety, as though an emotion is something you have or don't have, rather than merely experience. I don't have happiness, I experience it. I don't have depression, I experience it. When we say we "have" something, we take it on and make it a core of our identity. To say "I experience X" is to say, "I am human and experience feelings, but all feelings are fleeting. They aren't the sum total of who I am. They areny my personality"

Hello you savages. Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Here's the timestamps: 00:00 The Modern Mental Health Crisis 05:21 Are Therapists the Problem? 08:53 Do We Just Need to Connect to Our Feelings More? 14:39 Does Therapy Make Mental Health Worse? 22:17 Gen-Z Are Learning to Be Avoidant 27:31 Finding a Sweet Spot With Therapy 33:27 The Paradox in Depression Treatment 37:47 Therapy Culture Vs Bad Therapy 43:19 Are Smartphones & Climate Change to Blame? 51:23 The Impact of Single-Parent Households 55:04 Schools Making Parents Into Enemies 1:01:28 Overuse of the Word ‘Trauma’ 1:05:57 Is Mindfulness a Better Way? 1:14:34 Kids Are Too Over-Medicated 1:19:31 A Better Way Forward 1:23:35 Where to Find Abigail