#2109 - Abigail Shrier

26:54It's not great for the kids mental health, no doubt. But they have much better rates of anxiety and depression than we do. Countries like Japan and Israel where kids have more independence, they have more freedom, they have more, they're able to take more risks on their own and they they walk home from school. They kind of they do all kinds of jobs outside of the house, like run errands for the family. And they get a feeling of first of all short term joy and long term satisfaction from being able to take risks, see what they can handle, but also a feeling of efficacy in the world. So that's interesting to statistic that you were saying that so conservative families have less depressed kids.

27:39Is that what you're saying? Apparently boys from from conservative families, sorry boys from liberal families have higher anxiety rates than girls from conservative families. But above like if you just looked at the norm, more girls generally have anxiety. Right. But in conservative families, girls are less anxious than boys from liberal families. That's right. And I mean we could speculate as to why there are lots of proposed reasons for that. But one of the many you know things that we might first of all we know it's in the environment at that point. It's not an organic whatever these kids are going through.

28:18It's not organic right. So we know it's something we're pouring into their life. And I think one of the things might be that aside from the fact that parents and conservative families may be more comfortable asserting their authority with kids. And that's that's an old finding. We've known for generations now that authoritative parenting means meaning not cold parenting, not cruel, not unloving rules. But rules, those kids have better mental health. They're happier and they're more successful in all kinds of ways. So it may be something to do with comfort with rules, but also they're less likely to turn their kids lives over to a mental health expert.

28:57So what is the speculation is to why rules alleviate anxiety? Is it because there's structure? There's more structure to the world. So things seem less open -ended and less chaotic and... That's right. I think it's something to do with that. Kids need guardrails. They know they're not ready to be in charge. You know parents today are so quick to put kids in charge. What do you want? Where would you like to go to school? What would you like to eat for dinner? You know putting kids in charge. But we've known since the 1960s. Diana Bomberin did these research years ago. And it's some of the most...

29:29It's some of the sturdiest research we have because they've replicated it at hundreds of times. And they've shown that loving parents who are also rule bound, they call them authoritative, not authoritarian, which is the cold, unloving rule bound. But the loving and rule bound parents tend to raise the happiest kids because kids knows their guardrails and here's the thing. The people who are making the rules aren't some expert mom hired. They're the people who love me most. They're my parents. They're the ones in charge. I think that's really comforting to kids. That's interesting because that's not what people think of when they think of authoritative parents.

30:09Right. They think of parents that are restricting their children and the children are going to rebel. That's right. I mean, there's a lot of really good research on this, but they actually doesn't create more rebellious kids. By virtually every metric, they do much better in all kinds of circumstances and in all kinds of situations. And the permissive... What they used to have was permissive parents and authoritarian parents. Those were the other two extremes. Permissive parents let kids do whatever they wanted and authoritarian parents said, obey at all costs and they were fairly cold. And their kids didn't end up great in terms of mental health.

30:44But here's... But today we don't even have permissive parents in my view. I think we have something even worse. We have permissive parents who are therapeutic, meaning they're always asking kids what they want. And they're never asserting their authority, but they're doing something else. They're hovering and surveilling their kids. And so it's permissive without the independence. Hmm, yeah. That's a weird one, right? Like the snap maps and stuff. Yeah. Following your kids around. Right. They're surveilling them. These kids have no independence. They have no space for mom, it's not, or dad, and it's not doing them any good.

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32:13It's bold and sophisticated yet incredibly smooth finishing long and deep. It's authentically American representing uncompromising quality for the rugged, the powerful, and the passionate. Tap the banner to learn more or visit buffalotracedustillery .com. That's buffalotracedustillery .com. Distilled, aged, and bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery, 90 proof, Franklin County, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace, American, family -owned, independent, and perfectly untamed. Why do you think it is that things have moved in this general direction? Why do you think it is that more parents are seeking psychotherapy for their children and that it's having this negative effect?

33:07I think I'm at the tail end of Gen X 1978, as you're I was born in. I think with my, we were the high watermark of divorce. I think a lot of teenagers who grew up when I did, they felt like my parents were divorced. They weren't there for me. I wish I had had someone I could talk to. And they had good experiences in therapy. And they sort of naively watched good, well -hunting, and they thought therapy is good for everyone. And they sort of naively turned their kids over to a mental health expert right away. You know, at the first, I talked to moms who signed their kids up for therapy because a cat died, because their grandma died, because basically anything that would happen in the life, even routine events.

33:50And yeah, look, having your grandparents die is very sad, but that's not, you know, an unexpected trauma. That's part of life, right? And signing up your kid with a therapist might help if they're having a real problem, but it could also introduce other problems. And I think that's what we're seeing. Yeah, there's a reluctance to let children experience discomfort. Right, exactly. Exactly. That's really the only way you learn. You have to, we learn, I mean, obviously bad feelings can be devastating, but bad feelings also can let you understand the landscape of the world better, and understand what to do and what not to do and what the consequences are of certain actions.

34:39You know, I had some friends when I was growing up that got, that became addicted to drugs. And it, it sealed the deal for me like with cocaine was a big one. Like I've never tried cocaine. And one of the main reasons is because of my friends that I had when I was in high school, I saw the negative, it was horrible. It was horrible to experience. It's horrible as a friend to watch all that go down. But those bad feelings teach you something. They teach you something very important about what the consequences of certain behavior are. That's exactly right. There's this amazing long term study on kids who lived through the depression.

35:18And they found that the kids who ended up, and they followed these kids from, from their born in 1920, 1921, and they followed them long term. And you know who did the best in the great depression? It wasn't the poorest kids whose parents, you know, killed themselves or abandoned them. And it wasn't the rich kids who didn't feel the depression at all. It was the kids who of the deprived middle class. The ones who had to take in extra jobs, wear hand -me -downs, do extra work. Those people ended up so scrappy and so strong, and here's the thing. They also ended up happy. Really happy. Because they were resilient.

35:52They had lived through something. They had learned it. And they learned this amazing gratitude when things went right. Yeah, that's the thing. The overcoming adversity and becoming resilient. There's no pill for that. You can't just talk through that. You have to actually experience it. That's right. And we spent so much time worrying about trying to make our kids happy. And we don't spend enough time trying to make them strong. And you know what? We've made them neither. Because making happiness your goal is actually a recipe for being unhappy. And if you don't make a kid a strong, he can't be happy.

36:27And, you know, I think about my grandmother, and you know, because everybody has, you know, if anybody thinks about their grandparents, they went through some hard stuff. Right? I tell the story in the book. My own grandmother lived through the depression. Her mother died in childbirth, giving birth to her. She was bounced around. She had to be taken out of her father's home. I don't know if there was abuse. It's not clear. But somebody decided she should be taken out of her father's home. And he was raising four kids by himself. And when her older sister married at 17, she went to live with her.

36:58Then she ended up at 16. She got spinal bulbor polio. She ended up in an iron lung for a year. And she went on to college. She raised, she married. She raised three kids. She went to night school. She became one of the first judges in Maryland, female judges in Maryland. And I, she was the happiest person I knew. And that's the kicker. Like, it wasn't just that she achieved so much. She was someone who took in foster kids her whole life. She was a happy person who felt grateful all the time. And today, a school counselor would take one look at her and say, you've been through a lot of trauma. We should talk about it.

37:40But there's got to be some middle ground, isn't there? Is there some middle ground where children can have someone they can confide in and have conversations with that can express these things to them? That although you're going through something awful, that resilience is actually going to serve you in the long run. And even though this feels terrible now, on the other side of it, you will have new tools that will help you manage life. If that were what school counselors said to kids, that would be amazing. But the problem is the mental health profession doesn't look at, doesn't track. There's no requirement that they track negative side effects.

38:16They're not measuring in general. Now, I have some exceptions that I mentioned in the book. But in general, they're not measuring. Is your anxiety going getting better? Like cognitive behavioral therapists will often measure. And they'll often say to a parent, I'm going to see him for this many sessions. And we're going to measure and make sure the phobia is improving. But very often, they'll just talk about the pain. And talking about the pain regularly endlessly, you know, is often not as good for a kid, is joining the basketball team. So we are talking about essentially the tidalie book, which is bad therapy.

38:51Yeah. There has to be some good therapy. Sure. There, good therapy is therapy for a kid who needs it. Not preventive. Holy. I think so. So like, what do you think the requirements would be for someone to get good therapy? Like, what would have to be wrong in the child's life? I think it would be something where you can't, the parent has tried to stabilize the kid. That it's, they have a problem. It's interfering with functioning. And they can't stabilize the kid. They've tried other methods. And if they still can't stabilize the kid, I think therapy could be absolutely, you know, really helpful.

39:24And I think you should then research the therapist like you would any surgeon. So do you think it's something like antidepressants where it's just over prescribed? Yes. Where it's everything looks like a nail if you have a hammer. Right. It's way, way, way over prescribed. By the way, we have so many mental, you know, mentally unwell people in our streets who are completely underserved and underdread it. And I think the reason is treating them is really hard. We also have a lot of mentally ill therapists. You know, I was reading this crazy story about this therapist who convinced her client, her patient to murder her ex.

39:59Wow. Yeah. She got this guy to fall in love with her. And then she got him to go and murder her ex. I mean, I believe it. You know, like, I mean, there are, there's no question. There are people. There are people. There are people who are human and a lot of times when you talk to people who went through a PhD in psychology they'll tell you that some other colleagues were a little scary because they entered the profession because they had mental health struggles of their own. And it's important that a therapist not, you know, inject their own problems into the therapy. And for that, you need a really good qualified person.

40:34And I don't think that's the majority of what kids are getting. No. So, so how do you know what these kids are experiencing when they're having this therapy? Like, what are we basing this on? Do we get reports from the children or what they talked about with the therapist and know that that has had a negative effect? Oh. Okay. So, first of all, there is no oversight, which is a huge problem. Right? There's no one, the profession doesn't require it. They're not measuring harm, so not tracking harm. The medical professions, of course, do require it. Right? They're federally required. If you have an adverse reaction to a drug, it gets reported.

41:12But with therapy, there is no tracking. But there's something else too. We know that as a treatment enters a population pool, and it becomes more accessible and more prevalent, the rates of disease or malady or disorder should go down. Right? We've seen this with breast cancer. 1989 was the high water markup breast cancer, you know, death from breast cancer, as screening improved, as it got more prevalent and more accessible to people, rates of death from breast cancer have plummeted. So, why are the people who are getting the most treatment and the most access to mental health treatment, they're having the worst anxiety and depression?

41:56Why? It's skyrocketing. It should be going down. If the treatment were effective, it would be going down. Right, but there are those other factors that we talked about, like social media, living in the age of the internet. This is a bizarre time to be a child. I think that children today are experiencing unprecedented pressure in a weird way that no one knows how to navigate, because no one grew up with it besides them. Right, so if you're talking about things like social media, I do think that makes childhood worse and harder. There's no question, but there are other things that are making childhood uniquely, you know, hard in some sense.

42:33Now, of course, we have generations that have lived through pandemics, you know, depression, great depression, you know, economic deprivation and all kinds of things. But, you know, two things. One, with any population, you would want to see some dent in the depression. We're not seeing that. Okay. But the other thing is, we're the mental health experts with social media. Right? They could have called for a ban. They didn't. I don't think they knew right away. Right? It never existed before. No, but there's been really good evidence for the last eight years. I don't think there's a parent alive who doesn't already know that social media is bad for kids.

43:15Right? We've known the fonts. We see what they do. We say how angry kids get when you try to take them away. We know that there's like this, a dick development and that kids act a little crazed. We can see it and we've known that. I mean, there's been good research out for eight years now. Why have the mental health organizations who have been in 2020 warning the Congress about climate change, systemic racism, police tactics, they were quick to announce, you know, their views on all those things. They had nothing to say about the lockdowns. They had nothing to say about about social media. They'd never called for a ban on social media.

43:50They never issued the same warning that doctors gave about cigarettes. Why? Because social media does have some positive aspects to it unlike cigarettes. There's cigarettes have positive aspects. They're neural stimulants. They're social. Right, but it gives you cancer. Long term? Yeah. Look, I'm saying, I'm not an advocate for cigarettes. I'm not an advocate for cigarettes. I'm sure you're saying. I'm sure you're saying. But bottom line, they lead to cancer. The medical establishment, the surgeon general felt like we had to warn the public they lead to cancer. And just like that, if you're a responsible organization, you have to warn people, hey, you know what?

44:26The social media is really bad for kids. We're seeing their anxiety get worse. They're having, they're on their phones all day long, even in school. We've known for eight years now that the research has been out. Sorry, we're warning parents. We don't want to see smartphones in schools. And we think no kid, no teenager should be on social media. They could say that. Do you think anybody would listen to that? That seems like the problem with that is it's like trying to put the water back in the dam. It just, I just don't believe that that would be effective. Well, maybe they could have said something about it at the very beginning.

45:05If we knew the consequences of social media, let's go back to like 2005 or something like that. But before it was really a thing, if they started seeing it happen, if they could put the kebash on it then. But now that it's so ubiquitous, I just, I can't imagine a world where anybody would effectively say, there's a state that's trying, was it Montana that's trying to ban TikTok? Okay. I don't know. I believe you. There's like some state that's trying to ban TikTok for kids. A few states have sued a multiple companies. Let me find out. For what though? Something about kids using it. States. Is it because of their access to questionable material?

45:48I thought it was specifically October 24th here. Multi -state federal lawsuit. It doesn't, on the screen, dozens of states are suing Instagram, parent meta over addictive. Hmm. Okay. Dozens of states sue Instagram, parent meta over addictive features and youth mental health harms. So this is, I think they're, they're talking about algorithms. They're talking about how algorithms target children, demand users' constant attention. Meta has profited from children's pain by intentionally designing its platforms of manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self -esteem.

46:26Hmm. Yeah, that's that lady from New York. Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable.

46:42Interesting. Florida's got a separate lawsuit for misleading users about potential health risks. How did they mislead them? I don't have to read the lawsuit. Hmm. So it says Meta's design choices and practices take advantage and contribute to young users' susceptibility to addiction, the complaint reads. They exploit psychological vulnerabilities of young users through the false promise that meaningful social connection lies in the next story, image or video and that ignoring the next piece of social content could lead to social isolation. That seems like a stretch. I don't think they say that.

47:20No one says that ignoring the next piece of social, social content could lead to social isolation. What they do say is that children feel left out if they're not on social media because there's a lot of these little chat groups and they share videos and information. That's how they find about songs and bands that they like and movies that they like and television shows that they like. So it is a part of society today in sort of an inexorable part of society. Well why? I mean, I think there are a couple of reasons why. One of them is we made no effort to even stop them during the school day, right?

47:58That would have been really easy. You can be on your phone just not during the school day. That's so obvious that it's almost pathetic that we don't have that already in place, right? Because why do you need to be checking your texts? You're in school with your friends, right? So there were things that we could do and could have done, but we didn't do them. And I think one of the reasons was that I think that mental health experts, I mean, I know there are therapists who allow therapy over text message, right? They are, they have. It seems crazy. Yeah, it's crazy, but they have made no effort to stop this.

48:35The mental, to warn the public about this. And frankly, I think in many cases they've undermined it, right? They're a therapist who went on Zoom and never went back, right? Yeah, well Zoom is a little different, right? Because you actually are interacting with a person, even though it's through a screen. You're communicating with them, right? You are, but you get none of the benefits of in person. So, you know, this they have measured and the benefits of being in person, seeing someone face to face, the psychic benefits are real. Even when you're with someone you don't want to be with. The kids who went home for the lockdowns and were in a big household full of relatives, they didn't want to be stuck with when they wanted to be in college.

49:17Right. They did better in terms of mental health and the kids who were isolated in state and school. Right, but you're sort of arguing against therapy, but yet saying therapy in person is better than therapy on Zoom. For sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm not arguing against, first of all, adults can see therapist for any reason. And that's totally not only up to them, I think they have the stand to get, they are in a much better position to possibly benefit from it. I'm concerned about therapy for kids, especially kids who don't really need it, who are a little bummed out. But in any case, we know that Zoom therapy or text therapy for the most anxious generation, for the most socially phobic generation, supposedly, well, that's not helpful.

50:03So the thing that gets me about therapy that I've always talked to the people that I know that are doing it all the time, is I don't know how much you should be thinking about yourself. I don't know. I mean, is there a certain amount of time you should allocate to thinking about yourself and your own feelings and problems? And how much of that is self -indulgent and how much of that feeds that anxiety itself? I mean, it does. Thinking about yourself is the same as unhappiness in a certain sense, right? It is indistinguishable from anxiety and depression. And if you just think about, think about how our football coach has motivated a team at halftime.

50:47What do they do? They focus the team on the task ahead. That's the way to get them motivated. That's the way to help them complete it. What they don't say is Johnson, are you still upset about your parents' divorce? Yeah, that's not good. That's not good. Tell me about your feelings. Yeah, that's not good. Why don't they do it? It's not just because they're repressed. It's because they know that if you want to get anything done in this world, you need to, yes, repress your feelings for a time and focus on the task. But is it even repressing your feelings or is it just not indulging those feelings and letting those feelings be the primary focus?

51:24I think it's the same thing. I don't mean permanently. I don't mean there isn't a place for it. But when you're in the school, focusing on school, focusing on seeing your friends and going to recess or whatever it else is, the basketball, whatever the activity is really good for you as opposed to sitting around and thinking about doing social emotional learning and thinking about the pain you're feeling right now, the emotional pain. That's not going to help you get through your geometry test. Yeah. Well, that is one thing that's fascinating about human beings is that tasks and difficult endeavors seem to make people happier, especially when you complete them.

52:03That's right. And it gives you positive reinforcement that you actually can get through something difficult and that the end result, the feeling of accomplishment is very valuable. That's right. And one of the hardest, most worrisome parts of this generation is that they have the, they have the lowest sense of efficacy. They have, they report an external locus of control, meaning they don't think they can improve their lives. See, millennials thought they could do anything, right? They are the Mark Zuckerberg generation. And that's why we had so many tech founders in that generation. We're not seeing that with these young people.

52:37They don't want to be in charge. They're afraid and they feel, they don't feel up to it. I talked to, there's a friend of mine. I talked to, I call every year on a birthday and she's our research scientist, cell biologist. And every year she invites kids to her lab for an internship who are top kids, pre -med graduates from college before they go into med school. And she said to me in the last decade, when I called her this year for a birthday, she said to me, I can't believe you're writing about this generation. They are so different. And I said, tell me why. She said, I'm seeing the smartest, most prepared kids.

53:13And they're afraid to run their own experiments. They tell me they're getting ready. They're working on their skills. They're not yet up to it. And they constantly report to me about their mental health, how they're feeling today. They can't just take a chance and go with it.

53:34It's weird because as a parent, you want to hear kids out. And when they're having some sort of anxiety and issue, you want to talk with them and you want to talk through it, you want to give, you don't want to tell them, hey, you're going to have to suck it up. I never say that. I probably should. I mean, I don't know if I should. But I mean, if I had boys, I probably would. I think I would probably treat them differently. But I think that there's a fine line. Where is the point of diminishing returns? Where is it valuable to address feelings and anxiety and thoughts? And is it irresponsible to do so without giving them tools to mitigate those things?

54:21And along with those tools, to explain to them that there's things that they're going to have to do in this life that are very difficult, but that there's a great reward in doing these very difficult things. So the problem, as I see it, is not that you're not saying suck it up. It's that no one ever says suck it up, no matter how minor the scratch to these kids. And sometimes being told, you'll live. Remember when dad used to say you'll live or shake it off, we never hear shake it off anymore. No one says it. So they don't know they can overcome even minor injuries. And the truth is they can. They can.

55:00But they recently did these studies on these coping techniques. They taught coping techniques to teenagers, over 1 ,000 teenagers in Australia. It was called the WISE TEANS program. They talked to, and that was the point. It was just to help them with emotional regulation. And it turned out it made kids sadder and more anxious. They measured this. And the reason was regularly ruminating on your bad feelings can make you feel worse. Did you talk therapists when you used to this? Yeah, a lot of therapists. How many of them agree with you? So there was a huge split. The academic research a psychologist overwhelmingly agreed.

55:41They were aware of the literature and they said, yeah, these are bad practices. Here are things we shouldn't be doing with kids. What was interesting is a lot of the clinical therapists were either minimize the risks of therapy or deny that there were any. But isn't that like Jeffy Loub, you know, like when you tell them, you don't need to change your oil that much? Well, it's their business to change oil. Right. Exactly. So like I talked to this one amazing, you know, child psychologist who said to me, I start by having my patients sign a waiver in which they acknowledge that there can be risks.

56:16And the reason I do that is because I don't want them to experience harm. So if they see that their worries are getting worse, they have to tell me. Huh. But do they? Would they? I mean, it seems like the therapist is the one who's in control, right? Right. The therapist is the expert. They're the one who has the authority. Right. Well, I mean, you know, this one was Camilo Ortiz. It was one of the, you know, he was the one I talked to and the one that I was referring to there. And first of all, he always starts it there by setting the number of sessions. It's not, he doesn't treat a kid like an annuity.

56:53You're going to, you know, be my income stream for years. He attacks and also they come to him with an actual problem like chronic bed wedding, like, you know, various kinds of phobia. You know, there are people who treat anorexia. They're tackling a problem. Right. And those, some of those therapies are extremely necessary and very successful. Um, when this person gets, this person that you were just describing, if they get someone that comes to them that doesn't have a real problem, do they turn them away? Well, you can ask, but very often the therapist don't turn them away. That's the problem.

57:28Right. Too many therapists. I mean, you know, I saw, you know, I think back to the first book and I would ask like, was there ever, did anyone have a therapist who said, you know what? I don't think the trans identity fits you. Right. You know, that doesn't seem to make, make sense to me. On almost no cases did the therapist stop a girl from going down that road? No, you don't have gender dysphoria. Listen, it's mostly little boys. Okay. It's overwhelmingly little, starts with little boys and you see it in men. It's overwhelmingly male phenomenon and it always starts ages two to four. So you discovering this at age 12, let me tell you something with your friends.

58:06It's so unlikely we don't even need to go there. They never said that. Well, I didn't think they get scared of the blowback as well. Yeah, sure. What they would hear from their parents, you're telling my child they don't have a problem when they have a problem. Well, also the incentive is for therapists to treat the least sick for the longest period of time. That's the incentive. Yeah. Because you don't want this schizophrenic patient who really needs you. Right. They're really hard to treat. Almost impossible. Almost impossible. Right? You don't want the bipolar patient. Right. Right. Some people will refuse to see those patients.

58:41But a teen major with a little social anxiety, parent pays on time. They're not getting violent in your session. Oh boy. Wow. You know, I never really considered that until your book. Till I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it, I never really considered it. I never considered that thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow. That's right. I mean, it's the number one symptom of depression is what they call rumination, this pathological obsessing over your pain. That's why stuff like exercise, that's one of the reasons, aside from chemical reasons, one of the reasons that doing anything, you know that running errands is good for your mental health, getting out of your house and accomplishing anything is good for you.

59:33But sitting around talking and thinking about your problems, that's a bad habit. And the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others, you know, the dialectical behavioral therapists, the ones who do really well with depression. The first thing they do is try to break that bad pattern. But a lot of therapists just indulge it. It's also, it's a luxury that's provided to you by a life that's fairly safe. You know, people that live in war -torn countries and have very difficult lives. They don't have that luxury of just sitting around all day and doing nothing and oh, I could go outside and run errands.

1:00:08That's going to make me feel better. You're dealing with like real stress. That's right. And I think that there's an expression that someone told me once and I say it all the time, the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. If it's you got a dent in your car or it's your parents get killed in a car accident. Either one of those things is the worst thing. Depending upon the level of whatever stress or anxiety or horrible things that you've experienced in your life, that sort of measure, that's your watermark for what you can and can't tolerate. That's right.

1:00:45And what we should be telling kids is that the amazing story of human history is of resilience. It used to be the case that people lost a sibling. That was common. People lost a parent. That still happens, right? These things still happen. And the amazing story of human history doesn't mean it's not painful, but of resilience. They get on. They aren't permanently suffering with mental illness or mental problem. They form families. They are responsible in their jobs. They show up for work. They can be dependent on by their friends. That's the story of human survival and resilience. And unfortunately, we're telling kids, no, you've had trauma.

1:01:24You know, you've had trauma and you need to work through that trauma. It's not just this is just a part of life. And what you need to do is just go out there and live your life and you'll get over it. And the thing is, the truth is that most kids and most people did. In other words, that didn't mean that dad didn't lose his job and they were forced out of the, they had to lose their house. So these things happen. They've happened in every family. And I think one of the many reasons that kids don't know this today is we've cut them off from extended family. The story of their grandparents is a story of resilience in almost every case, right?

1:02:06You think of it, you hear about your family history and you're going to hear a story of pain and survival and resilience and overcoming. But today you've got teenagers who say, oh, I can't drive past my middle school where I was bullied because of my PTSD. They don't have PTSD, but they think they do. And what do they have though? If you are bullied, that does have a significant psychological effect on kids and it can lead to lifelong depression. I don't know that it can. I mean, I'm sorry. For young people that like get treated like shit and told that they're nothing and useless. And that sort of like, when I didn't really get bullied in high school, but I remember going back towards my high school when I was like 19 and I'd get anxiety.

1:02:51I get weirded out by it, you know? Right. So let me just say, yeah. You start feeling like you used to feel when you went there. Absolutely, but that's not a PTSD flashback, right? What is that? That's a bad memory. And we have them. And by the way, when I say you can't have, you know, bullying can mean anything, right? So when I say, you know, I'm talking about teasing. I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through. But do you have anxiety? Yeah, anxiety exists for a reason. It's actually adaptive. And so there are benefits to anxiety and there are negative parts of anxiety.

1:03:24Now, I'm not talking about anxiety disorder. We don't want anyone to suffer with an anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life. But a little anxiety feeling bad and a bad memory, that's not only part of life, but it can have positive effects. So some of the positive effects of anxiety is it helps with performance. If I weren't nervous for this, this right now, I wouldn't have prepared so much to make sure I remembered what I was going to talk about, right? And we don't want someone with no anxiety crossing a street because he's not going to look for cars. Right. And we're going in with medication and we're deleting things like anxiety depression.

1:04:02Anxiety helps you make beautiful memories. You remember Christmas morning because of all the nerves about it ahead of time or you remember your first kiss partially because of things. That's why the memories are so clear. And when we go in and we give kids a pill for that, not only are they not developing an emotional musculature, they're going to need as adults, but we're actually, they're losing a really important part of the human experience, like feeling low because you were dumped and then seeing you can get over it. Right. That's a very important thing we just had about experience anxiety and it actually helps you be sharper.

1:04:38It does. It really does. You have to be nervous before you do things. That's right. They're difficult. It's just that uncomfortable feeling people avoid because they get scared of the anxiety. But if you talk to like one of the best examples is UFC fighters. UFC fighters before they're all nervous. They're all scared. Every one of them terrified. And they don't want to fight if they're not. If you're too calm and too relaxed, you actually have bad performances. And I'll say something else. Same is true with depression. Now, I'm not talking about major depressive disorder that's chronic and needs treatment, of course, right?

1:05:11But if you have something bad happen to you, go through a divorce, you go through something hard. Okay. That doesn't mean you should never try, you know, US meds or therapy if you absolutely need it, but there can be good. And here's what can be good. Okay. Depression is adaptive. Okay. And the purpose I learned this from talking to interviewing a lot of evolutionary psychologists. And one of the good things about depression is it shuts us down so we don't do anything rash and we think about what change we might want to make in our life. Because sometimes we need to make a change. And if we just medicate away the bad feelings, the worst feelings might be dampened, but we also might be locked into that low state and never make the change we need to make.

1:05:54Right. Right. Because we'll lose the motivation. That's the thing. We won't say, you know what? He treated me badly. I'm tired of this. I'm not getting back together with him. We might just accept it and keep on. Right. Especially if you're medicated. Especially if you're medicated. That will to make a big change often happens after we've been brought low. Yeah. It's interesting because this conversation is such a blanket conversation. And when you're talking about people's personal experiences, their personal depression and trauma, people are always very quick to sort of accentuate the negative aspects of whatever they've gone through.

1:06:39No, no, no, you're talking about, but mine was worse. Right. But mine was this. Mine was unbearable. Mine was that, and I think that's something that our society for whatever reasoning encourages. That's right. There's this, so one of the psychiatrists I interviewed was this man Paul McHugh who used to be the head of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department. And he looked at vets, combat vets in America and Israel. And what he wanted to know was, why, where's there less PTSD among the combat vets in Israel? And one of the things he noticed was that they treat them very differently. When an Israeli soldier saw something traumatic, a traumatic, and potentially traumatic event maybe an IED exploding or something, their buddies torn apart and killed.

1:07:25They took them out of battle. They said, you're, listen, you're just so you know your reaction is totally normal. You're going to, we're sending you home for a few weeks. You're going to get feel better. And then we're going to put you right back, but you're going to recover. We're going to put you right back with your men. And with America, when someone had seen something horrific, they would pull them out of battle. They would meet with a therapist who would tell them, you have the symptoms of PTSD. Here is PTSD. Your government did this to you and you maybe, it's possible you may be suffering with this chronically.

1:07:56And they didn't recover the same rates. Hmm. So it's a get back on the horse type thing? Yeah, it is. Which doesn't minimize what people, you know, all the traumatic things. I mean, some people will have harder time getting back on the horse. They may need more treatment than other people. But what's amazing is most people, even who go through traumatic experiences, even most combat, that's the majority don't get PTSD. Because actually the story of human history, the story of our experience is of resilience. And if we just think back to our grandparents, we know this is true. We can't guarantee for our kids that they won't go through hard things.

1:08:35In fact, the one certainty is that they will. But the message to them has to be, but you're so strong. Our family has gone through hard things. I've gone through hard things and you can too. And if you say that to kids, you have a much better shot that they will. How do we know that the majority of combat vets don't experience PTSD? Because they, oh, there's this crazy study. So they look through, this is just one example. Vietnam vets, they know what percentage saw combat. It was something like 12 to 15 % actually saw combat. But for whatever reason, when they surveyed Vietnam vets, 30 % of them were reporting PTSD.

1:09:19That's Iatrogenesis. That means that the, they've been hearing about the symptoms of PTSD. They were thinking about their, their friends who've had PTSD. And more people were coming to believe they had PTSD than actually could have had it. But you're still talking about a small percentage of people who go through some really hard things in combat. Something like, you know, at 70 to 80%, no matter how many traumatic experiences they've seen, you know, four tours in Iraq, they still, for whatever reason, don't have the symptoms. Yeah, I've talked to friends on the revetions about this. And one of the things they said is that my friend was a seal, said that special forces guys experience it less, although they do experience it.

1:10:06Because they're proactive, they're acting, they're doing something, they're moving. Whereas he said the real people that experience it, or sometimes people that are stuck on a base, they're always worried about being attacked. Oh wow, I love that. Yeah, the fear of constantly being worried that you're going to be attacked versus the fear of going out on a mission. That's exactly how having a deployment, going out there and engaging the enemy, that they're task oriented and that they're the ones in control. That's right. And what we want to say to kids is be a Navy seal. Go out there and attack those tasks, whatever they are.

1:10:42Make a new friend, go play a sport, go do things, don't sit around thinking about yourself. Well, it's also, there's a right of passage that goes with being a Navy seal. It's a very difficult thing to acquire. Most people quit. That's the ring, the bell thing. You know, they, they, they, they, they, bail. They can't take the stress of it because they put you through hell. And they put you through hell to find out who's resilient and who's not. Right. And to show you that you could do it. But we're not even teaching kids to aspire to that anymore. No. There's a lot of ways to be a Navy seal. I mean, some is the official being a Navy seal and actual Navy food seal.

1:11:16But there's so many ways to be strong and make a difference in the world and do things. Yeah. And that message that your friend mentioned, that's a good message for kids. It's not what we're telling them. Right. It's also to speak to him and his situation. He said that they're trying to lower the standards. They're saying that, you know, because occasionally guys will die or get severely injured in training that they're trying to make it more easy. That's right. And he's like, that's terrifying. The last thing you want is someone who can't quite make it on your team. Yeah. That's right. And we're lowering the standards and expectations.

1:11:50I mean, this is the trauma generation. Right. We've told them over and over. You can't handle very much. Don't worry. I'm going to write you in. They have these things in schools called anytime passes, where if a kid's feeling a little anxious, they'll get a path pass from the school counselor and they're allowed to leave class anytime they're feeling anxious. Well, how's the kid going to sit through anything if they've been given this pass to leave class and any class they don't like? Right. I would use that constantly. Anybody would. Yeah. Anybody would. And teachers tell me it's getting abused like crazy.

1:12:23Of course. Yeah. You know, they're not keeping the standards for kids high. And you know what? Kids who've gone through hard things and there are those kids. They need high standards. They need expectations and they need to be told you can do it. There's this one woman I talked to. She was raising three kids out of foster care with her wife. Okay. And these kids had gone through horrible traumatic experiences. I mean, so bad, so abused by their birth parents, that the detective who took them from their home cried on the stand, talking about what they had lived through. And she said to me, you know, my kids, I have therapists who are dealing with them.

1:13:01They're in a lot of serious there. They've been through a lot. And I can't, one of the hardest things in my life is that I have to send them to public school, where teachers and counselors are constantly playing amateur therapists, asking my kids to open up about their trauma. I'm trying to get them with actual professionals that I have picked to get through the day and not think about the hard things they went through. And all these teachers are just asking them about their trauma all day long. It's not helping. That's a very specific case, all right? Well, yeah, but I guess the point is it doesn't help the kids who live through serious trauma and it doesn't help the kids who are just fine.

1:13:43So who are we helping? So is the problem that these people that are teachers are well -intended? They just don't understand that dwelling on this and talking about it constantly is not beneficial. Yes. And in fact, it would just be more beneficial to be friendly to that kid and kind and offer encouragement. That's right. Give them activities and give them encouragement and support. That's right. Most people who work with kids care about kids. I have that prejudice. I assume, and I think it's true, that most people who work with kids want to do what's best for kids. But sometimes they do things that aren't best for kids.

1:14:14And having them focus on their feelings all the time is not best for kids. That's the way to make you more emotionally dysregulated. This is going to be very difficult for people to hear that are very sensitive and very concerned about their children. Their strategy has always been to move it in this general direction. Also, people that are experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression themselves who are raising children. I think they become accustomed to talking about it and dwelling on it. That's right. And in fact, some of the most effective ways to treat childhood anxieties by treating the parents.

1:14:53Parents are a huge source of anxiety for kids. What's the primary source of anxiety that comes from parents? Worried over everything. Teaching kids they have to be afraid of everything. That they can never do anything without the parents supervision. They could never go anywhere where their parents won't see them because they could be abducted or hurt or abused. Calling the teacher and saying my daughter was bullied because someone said something mean to her. The child gets the message, I can't handle something means that to me. I will fall apart. That's what my mom's saying. She's so scared I'm going to fall apart.

1:15:28She's calling my teacher. Yeah. There's also the opposite of that too. Where if you grow up with a parent that's very weak, you get the spies that and you become strong because of that. Like if you grow up, I have a friend whose mom was a severe alcohol. And because of that, he became very disciplined. Because he realized like if you let something like that control your life, he saw what happened to his mother and he's like, that's never happened to me. Wow. And that's a really strong person. As a result, and part of his strength, I'm sure, is having that real life experience, which was hard and it was painful.

1:16:07And it taught him a lesson that no teacher could give him, which is that you need discipline in life. Right, but it's very difficult to learn from a bad example sometimes, especially if your parents constantly worrying and constantly negative about things. Right, but what we do, we let kids try. We give them freedom from our oversight. You know what they do in Japan? In Japanese preschools, they have these little areas they're designed to have areas for kids that where the teachers can't see so that they work out their own problems. Remember we used to say to kids, work it out. Now the teachers can involve them in every squabble.

1:16:44They think it's their job to go in there and give kids tips on how to make friends and get involved. We never tell kids, look, work it out. Yeah. And you know what they learn from working it out? I can. I don't need my mom calling my boss as a lot of this generation's parents are doing. Right. I'll handle it. I can. I've been doing it since preschool. Right. Huh, what is the reaction to this book, Ben? I mean, if you had some negative reaction, is there, if you had anybody that wants to debate you on this? It's a good question overwhelming. It leads actually been surprisingly positive, but you want to know the truth.

1:17:20The dads especially love the book. Really? The dads will be like, can you give this to my wife? I mean, sometimes they'll say that to me because I think, you know, the biggest change in the last generation in parenting, aside from the role of therapy, sort of taking over is and I think therapeutic parenting, take it over everybody's trying to be a mental health expert with their kids. But I think the biggest change was dads, dads stopped, you know, I think being a sort of a backstop in saying he's fine. He'll handle it. I did it. He can do it. Or I did it. She can do it. She's fine. Shake it off.

1:17:57Go back to, you know, keep playing soccer, whatever it is. They, they stopped doing that in part because they didn't feel like we were told, I mean, in general, we've all been told, right? The mental health experts tell you how to talk to your children. They tell you what your child can handle. They pretend their experts on the brain. When the truth is, and I've said to them, psychologists and psychiatrists, and they will tell you, we know very little about the brain. And a lot of these therapists don't know anything about the brain. We certainly don't know much about emotion in the brain, right?

1:18:31And so the idea that we need brain science in order to raise our kids is just not true. And it's not helpful. It's undercutting parents confidence. Parents need to trust themselves. We've been raising good kids for a long time. Are there any studies about the cultures or the civilizations, whatever countries that have the most mentally healthy people? Well, that's a good question. So I interviewed one woman who runs the Georgetown Emotions Lab, and she's a cultural psychologist. One of the emotions. Yeah. It was actually really neat. I went into her lab and we did these. She showed me these tests.

1:19:14She and she looks at her name is Julia Chensova. She's amazing. And she looks at Russia, Japan, America, and other countries, especially in the West. So I guess you want to look at like and compare like to like, so sort of similar Western cultures, I guess, Asian, but you know, similar levels of development and stress, certain kind of stress. And one of the things she noticed in her research was that American kids tended to exaggerate dangers. So they, when they listed things they were afraid of or things that scared them, they would say, stranger looking at me funny. Things that weren't actual dangers, but but but teenagers from other countries, Russia, you know, Japan, they tended to be able to calibrate what was an actual danger much better.

1:20:09And these kids having nervous breakdowns because someone dumped them or because the teacher gave them a bad grade. Yeah. Because they didn't couldn't handle a paper on in on time. One of the things that drives me the most nuts about universities is this term microaggressions. Right. Which is so crazy. It's like looking for things to be bigger than they are. Right. Taking a very small thing, whether it's someone like rolling their eyes at you or saying something that you know, might be insensitive. And calling that insensitive thing a microaggression. That's right. And it's exactly right. And one of the things I looked at was, are we turning these kids into emotional hypokondriacs?

1:20:49And what I mean is I interviewed a world expert, man, Arthur Barski at Harvard Medical School on hypokondriasis, being hypokondriac, what they they now call it illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder. And what is it? So it turns out what it is is people who put hyper focus on the normal pains we all feel they're not faking it. They're just attending to the normal pains and increasing their pain by doing that. And people who turn their pain into an organizing principle of life of their whole lives, they have a hard time overcoming it becomes their identity. It becomes our identity.

1:21:26And that's what kids are doing today about their emotional pain. Oh, I have social anxiety. I had trauma for my breakup. You don't have trauma from your breakup. Okay. You had a breakup and it's painful. But using these psychiatric terms, it's not helping. It's not exaggerating the pain and it's making that pain feel worse. And I'm not minimizing these kids pain. They are they're are in real pain and they're making it worse. I would be really fascinated to see you have a conversation with someone who is a therapist who engages in this who thinks it's beneficial. I would love I mean I'd be happy to I would love to.

1:22:07I mean I would like to see you know look there are therapists that I've met who I I would take my own kids to who I try who I've you know very impressed by what they have to say and what they've done. But the therapists who claim that everyone needs to talk about their problems will know they don't that's not true. I interviewed a lot of great therapists who tell me that a lot of people who experience terrible trauma they do better by not talking about it. They're a therapist who do with and I'm talking about people who work with convex people who are unspeakable childhood abuse actually are very helped by acknowledging.

1:22:40I know you went through some some hard stuff. Let's talk about you know what you're doing now that turns out to be better for some people. So this endless rehashing of your pain, this myth that you can only be helped by talking about your pain. It's just not true. There's no evidence behind it. And in fact you know there's these crazy studies that burn victims. People who've experienced all kinds of first responders, breast cancer survivors have been made to feel worse by talking about it by being therapy in therapy. They had control groups.

1:23:20They've been forced and didn't and the ones who didn't go to therapy ended up better with less symptoms after you know a nine months I think it was. And why do you think that is? Because they did other things that are healing too. Like spend more time with family. Like get involved in work. Like you know pick up a phone and call a friend you haven't seen in a while. Find a natural way to mitigate that. Exercise is amazing. I mean they study after study has shown that exercise is amazing. And you know what it doesn't have all these bad side effects. Right? Of loss of sex drive like SSRIs have. Right?

1:23:56We know that the antidepressants come with all these horrible side effects, especially for adolescents like the risk of suicide and other things. Right? You know what doesn't have that exercise. So I'm not saying don't get help. And if you really need it, get the medicine and get the therapy. But what I'm saying is if you don't really need it, gosh there's a lot of ways to feel better and we seem to have forgotten about those. Is there a chart or a graph that shows the the amount of therapy that was given to children over the years now versus the past? So we know that it's gone way up. I don't know if there's a chart, but I know that they say 40 % roughly 40 % of the rising generation has had therapy.

1:24:38That's a lot. It's way more than any prior generation. 42 % of them have a mental health diagnosis. That's a lot. 42 % of kids have a mental health diagnosis. Yeah. 42. There was just a news article saying that 86 % of them think they have menu anxiety. Menu anxiety. That's ordering from a menu in a restaurant. What? They have a friend order for them. Oh my god. Yeah. I mean, these are kids who think of themselves as unwell. Menu anxiety. That's a thing. I mean, climate anxiety. Summer anxiety. Dis when your parents move, dislocation depression. They call it all summer anxiety. Summer anxiety.

1:25:22So here it is. 42 % of Gen Z diagnosed with a mental health condition. She's Louise. That's a lot. That's crazy. Right. But that's what my question would be with like, what is that internationally? Like when you're dealing with other countries. It's much better. International. I mean, there's no question. We have the most anxious and most depressed teens and adolescents. And what caused that is that the rise of this industry, the rise of the therapy industry, is it something that is in the zeitgeist where people in this culture sort of gravitate towards that sort of thinking that therapy and talking it through is very important.

1:26:08Like, what is it? I think we're not giving them a healthy life. And that includes. It's like, remember, they used to give us what sugar cereals they used to say? Like there'd be a bowl of sugar cereal and there'd be like eggs and toast and orange juice. And they would say, for us, part of a nutritious breakfast. Right. And we knew it was bad for us, but we had these other healthy things around us. I don't think we knew it was bad for us. How was it, kids? For us, the flakes. I never thought it was bad for us. Really? Well, we didn't know sugar was bad for you. Well, in my, I mean, we thought it gave you cavities.

1:26:37Well, okay. The only thing anybody worried about. I mean, kids weren't allowed, I mean, at least in my house, we weren't allowed to have sugar. I'm a little older than you. I'm 10 years older than you. Okay. So we weren't allowed to have sugar cereal. And the best thing we ever got was honey nut Cheerios. That was like a miracle. When that came in, it was so exciting. We used to put sugar on our frosted flakes. You were allowed to have sugar and put sugar on everything. I love that. Yeah. We, people, in my generation, people ate sugar all the time and there was no fear. It was just brush your teeth.

1:27:08I know it's, it's psychotic. But, you know, I'll obviously know the story behind that. That was all because of the sugar industry, bribing scientists to pass the blame on saturated fat. Yeah, because sugar was causing heart disease. It was causing all sorts of problems that people were having. It was causing obesity. And the sugar industry bribed some scientists in the 1960s to pass the blame on to saturated fat. And that's where margarine came from and all the other stupid shit. It's terrible for you. Right. Seed oils, all these different things, canola oil that people thought was actually better for you.

1:27:46Right. It's not. It's not better for you at all. Your body doesn't even know how to digest that shit. Right. So we've given kids worst diet over the years. We've given them, you know, yeah, we've been the less exercise. We've given them less connection to family people, relational stability, having the set of friends or relatives who are ret cousins around you, grandparents who love you unconditionally over your life. Kids don't have that anymore. They don't have the neighborhood. And they don't have, they don't have space from mom monitoring them or another adult. She's hired to monitor them or the recess monitor or why kids have bus monitors.

1:28:26They have monitors everywhere. And monitoring is the same as stress for kids in psych academics. Wonderful. Academic psychologist Peter Gray told me this that when they want to introduce stress to a subject, they introduce monitoring because it's the same thing. Really? So if they have a subject and then they're going through a test and they have someone stand over and watch, that introduces anxiety. That'll introduce stress. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the condition we're raising kids in. We're going to track you on your phone even in college. Oh, how is it? How is your trip to the right aid? I can see you on my phone.

1:29:03They're we're doing that. Yeah. Kids are doing it to each other. Kids are doing it to each other. My daughters or friends know where everyone is on Snap Map. Right. It's not good for them. They don't have freedom to just be. Yeah. So I think we're giving all all kinds of things we're making their lives less healthy. And then we just pour in the mental health resources. Oh, we're going to keep your life on healthy, but we're going to pour in SSRIs, antidepressants. We're just going to pour in the therapy. Well, that doesn't remediate. Have you had anybody push back on this? Like you said the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

1:29:40But what is the negative response been? So I think that some parents feel like, you know, some it seems to be mostly moms, but some of them feel insecure. Like, well, you don't know, you know, my my kid really had sensory deprivation issues. So I really did need to see that therapist. But I don't know the situation. I mean, I think in general, parents know their own kids, right? And if they have tried other things, the problem is not parents seeking out help. The problem is it's when it's the first resort. The problem is not that parents ever allow their kid to get a diagnosis. The problem is that some parents are going diagnosis, diagnoses shopping because the kid there sometimes a neuro psychologist will say your kids, sorry, they're within normal range and the parents will keep going.

1:30:30And they're doing it because they haven't they don't have, you know, sometimes they don't they're unwilling to be in authority in their home, maybe because they feel that that's traumatizing. They're unwilling to impose any kind of discipline. The kid is disordered. The kid has a lot of tack. And then lo and behold, it can't concentrate in school. And they're sure and the teacher has a problem with him. Well, I talked to parents where they said one year my teacher thought I my kid had ADHD and the next year they didn't. Why would that be? And why is the teacher diagnosing the kid? Yeah. Are they qualified?

1:31:04Are they qualified? Well, they're a little conflicted, right? Yeah. Because they have an interest in getting you bolted to your seat. Right. They don't care about the long term effects of or they don't know they might not be aware of them. The long term effects of strutera, concerto, you know, riddle in. Yeah. The fact that you might need to take more and more of it over time to get the same effects. The withdrawal for some of these things, Adderall, people have told me it's brutal. Yeah, it's brutal. Well, it's some fattabins. Right. They're highly addictive. Right. And we're giving them out like candy.

1:31:34Like candy. That's the problem. It's the light candy part. There was a recent study that said 39 million. What is the number of prescriptions per year of Adderall? It's something bonkers. When you really know what Adderall is. And essentially, this is like what they were doing in the 1940s with crystal meth in Germany. They were giving it to soldiers. They're giving it to people. They're giving them meth amphetamines because meth amphetamines make you more alert. Makes you more hyper focused, makes you more productive, makes you more willing to engage in things. And it's an unnatural stimulant that you're adding to someone's mind and you're getting a result and you receive, you perceive those results to be positive because they fit along with what we're looking for in terms of outcomes.

1:32:29Right. But you're not thinking of the long term consequences of ramping up someone on f***ing and fedamines all day long. What's the number? Oh, even worse. 41 .4 million Adderall prescriptions were dispensed in the US in 2021 up more than 10 % for 2020. According to IQVIA, a health research firm, what's happening? Getting a diagnosis of attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, which can be treated by Adderall and other stimulants got significantly easier during the pandemic. A wave of telemedicine startups hit TikTok and Instagram with advertisements been suggesting that people who took look into ADHD medication if they felt distracted.

1:33:15By the way, that would have been me. This shit was around when I was a kid. I never paid attention in school. And I would have probably thought that I had a disease. Some startups diagnose people with ADHD and prescribes stimulants after 30 minute video calls entirely remotely and much faster than a typical diagnosis from an in -person psychiatrist, the Wall Street Journal reports. Yes, but the trouble with such rapid diagnosis is that it can be difficult to tell whether ADHD is actually the problem. Anxiety can present as ADHD and depression can present as ADHD. A Stanford Newark said Stanford Newark at Professor University of California San Francisco Medical School.

1:33:56Of course, look, if you give someone stimulants, they're going to feel better. That's why people do coke. It makes you feel better. And what if you start them on it when they're four? Five. And guess what? There are a lot of jobs where ADHD might not harm them. In other words, it might even be an asset. It's a superpower. I think it can be. I mean, you know, there's this, there's an amazing piece in the Wall Street Journal by a guy who argued that in the military, invent your capital where you have to have your constantly checking, you know, other companies are constantly looking into being able to someone who's constantly shifting their focus turned out to be an asset.

1:34:30Unmedicated. Well, I think that the ideas that it came from hunter -gatherer tribes. Oh, interesting. Yeah. What is it? See if you could find that. The ADHD, the the the trait emanated from hunter -gatherers. The thing is like a lot of ADHD people, if they find a thing that they really enjoy, they get very focused on it. Right. Which is what was the thing with me. Exactly. I thought that because I couldn't pay attention in school, that I was going to be a loser. A recent review of the evidence by child and adolescent adolescent psychiatrist, Annie Swampo. Swane, Swane Poe. How do you say that?

1:35:13I don't know. And colleagues made the case for the latter. They argue that ADHD traits likely evolved in early human environments that rewarded exploration, novelty seeking, and movement, such as nomadic and migrating communities. Yeah, it's probably how you stayed alive. And if you were strapped down doing something really fucking boring, that seems completely unnatural, which is part of the problem with children in the first place. We're subjecting them to eight hours a day of doing something you don't want to do because they say it's for your mental development. And what they're essentially doing is teaching you how to do something that you fucking hate so that you will be able to do that for the rest of your life.

1:35:56Right. And you know what they could do with those kids? Give them longer recess. They could. They also could tell them that there's other things you could do for a living. If you could find the thing that you actually enjoy and focus on that. And that was the thing that I didn't know until I started doing things outside of school. I didn't know that there was things that I could excel at because I actually enjoyed them. And I would focus on those things and get very good at them. And I didn't know that that was a part of me. I didn't, I had never been told that everybody was just like, if you can't do this, you're going to be a loser.

1:36:30If you can't sit and pay attention to this boring -ass teacher, teach this boring -ass thing if they have no emotional investment and whatsoever. Right. And it was never true. That's the thing. You were incredibly successful, despite what they said. But imagine if they had said to you, actually, there's something wrong with your brain. It's called ADHD. You need a pill so you can be like everybody else. Would you have had the same motivation to go keep looking for what you were good at and what you were passionate about? No, I probably wouldn't have. I probably would have been medicated. If I had the wrong parents at the wrong time in history, I probably would have been medicated.

1:37:05And who knows? I probably would have some fucking horrible job where I was, I couldn't wait to get to my, my pharmacy so I could refill my prescription because I'm running low and I talked to the doctor and ramping up my adderol. We're putting seven -year -olds on Lexa Pro. So - That's crazy. That's so crazy. FDA just approved it for seven -year -olds. These are kids who are going to have their sex drive deleted before they ever have a sex drive. So when they reach the teenagers because kids do not go off them, they put them on antipressants and they put them on more, they'll never have had a sex drive.

1:37:40They won't even know what they're missing. And that's the problem. The problem is not and I'm not saying no medication for anyone ever. What I'm saying is when you get in there and change a kid, you put a kid in an emotional snow suit. Not only will they never have the feeling I overcame that on my own, I thought I had a HD but I'm so excited about this other thing I got into. Not only will they'll never know they could get through a breakup without a pill. Right. Because they've never done it. Isn't that sort of the problem with the diagnosis of depression in the first place? Because one of the things you never ask is how's your life?

1:38:12It's always you have depression. You have a clinical issue. You have a disease. You have a thing called depression. It's not your fault. It's not you have a terrible life. Your job sucks, your apartment sucks, your neighborhood sucks, your friends suck, your family sucks. You don't have any joy. That's exactly right. Which one makes you depressed? Right. And by the way, of course the best psychologist would point that, would point out those things. And here's the most important. If you start such a person on an SSRI meeting they're feeling depressed because of their circumstances, they might be less likely to make the important change they could make.

1:38:47Yeah. Because it takes an acute problem and it turns it into a chronic one. But it's also very profitable and that's the problem. That's the really difficult thing in getting these out of our lives. And despite the fact that as time goes on, we find out that the research on the efficacy of SSRIs is dubious at best. It's not good. Right. It depresses all emotion. So doesn't treat depression. I don't know. It seems to depress all kinds of things. Maybe you know, also, you know, depending on the drugs, some depress anxiety, but they depress everything. But I do have to say that I have had friends that were suicidal, that got on SSRIs.

1:39:29And then because they felt better, improved their life and then weaned off of those drugs. I think that there's a place for these drugs. Absolutely. And by the way, trying to get off of them, if you can, is a good program. In other words, not saying I'm going to be on it forever. Right. But in a kid, they won't even know what life was like, what it was supposed to be like without it. They'll never know what they could handle. And so they will show up for college and say, I've had trauma because of a breakdown. I have PTSD because of my breakup. And they'll believe it. They won't know any better because they never went through that heartache on their own.

1:40:05And psychiatrists are incentivized to prescribe these things. Yeah, but you know, who else is prescribing them, you know, regular physicians who aren't experts in these drugs. So regular prescriptions or regular physicians are allowed to prescribe. Pediatricians are a huge source of SSRI. And they're not even psychiatrists? No. So it's very easy for according to psychiatrists I spoke to. They feel that pediatricians are giving out these drugs way, way too easily. That seems crazy. So pediatrician has to look at legitimate problems, all sorts of issues that a child might have medically. And then on top of that, psychiatric disorders and then prescribe medication for those psychiatric disorders.

1:40:50Pediatricians are usually the ones who give you the ADHD medication. That seems insane. Is that insane? I mean, I'm not being judgmental. No, I think it is because they're doing it more easily than they should. I think too many of them are not appreciating. I'm going to go in there and mess with this kid, change this kid. Before I do it, I better make sure this is urgent. And there's nothing else we can do to improve the life. Just like you said, improve the life and see if we can get there without it. And then there's also the problem the parents want to fix. And if the parents believe the narrative that these medications are beneficial and they believe that this is what the stuff is for.

1:41:33And then this pediatrician wouldn't be prescribing this. If they didn't know what they were doing, we went to an expert. The expert has an opinion. Let's listen to the expert. Let's get a little Johnny on pills. Now little Johnny's doing better. He just sits in front of the TV with a fucking blank staring his face. Right. I mean, parents aren't exercising their authority. And they're not trusting themselves. They're feeling like, oh, this is above my pay grade. The second the kid isn't what the teacher wants. They're sure they need an expert involved. And they never asked their own parents who raised kids to adulthood.

1:42:05My take is if you want to talk about a parenting expert, to me, a parenting expert is someone who raised successful people to adulthood, meaning people who are good, stable adults who are productive, who can be dependent on by others. Brad, but you might not have access to those. I didn't have access to those when I was a child. I didn't have access to people that had raised successful. Well, I see when you were a child. Yeah. I didn't even look. I know a lot of people today that had terrible parents. Right. And they had terrible grandparents. And they never had an example of someone who raised good children.

1:42:40They had the occasional child that was exceptional, that made its way out of that fucked up maze. Right. And it usually became hyper successful. But the other siblings, oftentimes are a mess. And sometimes the parents want to take credit for the hyper successful sibling. You know, like, oh, I showed you the way. Like, no, you didn't do shit. You know, like, that could figure it out on their own without having anybody as a positive role model or example. But I think that if they were successful, there were certain good things in their life. Meaning they weren't on the couch. Right. They weren't the 54 % of Gen Z who doesn't want to live with anyone, but mom.

1:43:21These are 18 to 25 year old. Sorry. 54 % of them are living with parents. Well, that's that old expression, right? The healthy bird leaves the nest. Right. Right. There was something healthy. There was some healthy message or example that taught at least made the kids think I can. Yeah. And the kids today are thinking I can't. I need to be with mom and dad, even at 18 to 25. Yeah, because it offers you comfort. Right. Yeah. But then there's other cultures where people are happy and the families are very tight unit and people don't leave the house until they're married. Right. That's not our culture.

1:43:57So in those cultures, I think it's a different situation and it is healthier. Meaning they have their own ways of doing things and, you know, they get a job and they don't get they don't leave the home until they're married. And that is that is the way they define growing up. But in this culture, we have always defined growing up is leaving your parents home, getting some sort of job, supporting yourself in some way, making strong, you know, enduring relationships with others, starting a family. Right. We have a vision in this culture and we are not producing that. Hmm. Which one's right? Which culture is correct, though?

1:44:33Is the culture that that enforces family and they have this very tight bond and they don't leave until they're establishing their own family. And then they that family stays in connection with the other family. Is that the way to do it? Or is the way we do it? Will we cast them out? So I tend to think that, you know, they have a version of adulthood in their culture. It's just defined differently. And those are people you can rely on. They do become adults in other cultures. It depends who you're talking about. But but in cultures, they India where families, you know, live with, you know, in the same home with extended family and as soon as you marry, you go and live with the mom and dad.

1:45:12They know how to do that so that the young people who are raising the family are, you know, absolutely dependable independent adults, right. They're not sitting home playing Xbox while they're living with their parents, right? Right. They're not that's the difference. It's a healthy, it's different from ours, but it is healthy. And you can rely on those people. They are raising children. They are like being good neighbors, right? We got it. We got a generation who's sitting at home and what doesn't want to show up for work. Because they think they have mental health issues. I have to attend to my mental health.

1:45:48I can't. Trump was just elected. I need to I need a mental health day. Yeah, emotionally fragile. Yeah, it's a problem, right? Yeah. What's going on? Like, it doesn't matter who's president get to work. Yeah, constantly. Yeah. Um, boy, what a complicated thing. And it's so complicated. If you're a parent, if you're dealing with this medical establishment, it's so quick to prescribe drugs. And you're dealing with this world where therapy is so ubiquitous. And you're dealing with this world where people think that the way to handle things is to constantly discuss all these small problems and so that people can be heard.

1:46:30You know, we want people to be heard. I don't know if you're seeing there's a hilarious video of this socialist meeting. And they they're they're calling each other comrades and one. Have you seen this video? No, it's it's a wonderful video. Because one person says, could everyone please stop making as much noise? Because I'm easily distracted. I forget the term that they use. And then could you guys please do that? Just recognize that there's others around here us that are this is it. Listen this. This is amazing. Thank you so much. Uh, quick point of privilege. Uh, yes. Um, guys, uh, first of all, James Jackson Sacramento, he, him, I just wanted to, can we please keep the chatter to a minimum?

1:47:19I'm one of the people who's very, very prone to sensory overload. There's a lot of whispering and chatter going on. It's making it very difficult for me to focus. Please can we just I know it's we're all fresh and ready to go, but can we please just keep the chatter to a minimum? It's affecting my ability to focus. Thank you. Thank you, Comrade. Right. Comrade. Wow. Again. Let's. Yes. Point of personal privilege. Yes. Please do not use gendered language to to address everyone. It goes on further. This is a clip of it. But that's what you're dealing with. Right. Like, and if you're going to a university, right, and this is a part of the environment, this is the culture that you are existing in.

1:48:01It can't help, but have some sort of an effect on you, especially if you're young and impressionable and naive and you don't understand these people are mentally ill. Like that is, that is a mentally crippled person. Right. Point of privilege. Like the good luck. Good luck out there in the world. You fuck right. Good luck. But I'll tell you this at, you know, all these things, there are things to be negative about or pessimistic about in society, not this because you know what? Honestly, parents have an absolute ability to turn this around. We don't need to let our kids down this way and tell them, you need to silence an entire room because of your sensory discomfort.

1:48:40We're going to focus on your sensory issues and we're going to tell an entire room of people to be quiet for you. No, I tell the thing happened to me that I thought like I was on a plane and I was seated behind these, this family of four. Okay. There were two little girls and one starts to scream and I mean scream like, like it was painful to listen to. And I hear the father tell her, honey, what's wrong? Are you, what, what did your sister do? And she's screaming. Okay. It is so loud. It's so late at night. And okay, well, let me just see what I can do. All right. Well, don't be upset. He never once said to her, you know, there are other people in this plane.

1:49:22And when I ask people from other countries, I talk to the emotions expert who does cross -cultural research, I said, what would they say in other countries about that? And she said to me, they would say that's bananas. They would not believe in Japan that you do not tell your kid, you know, there are other people in this plane, not just you. We're part of a society. We have to care about others. The world isn't just you in your feelings. And that's a message. Parents can absolutely give to kids. They don't have to say, oh, let me attend to your every discomfort. They can say, I know you're feeling a little discomfort, we're in a room with a lot of other people.

1:50:01We need to think about them. So, but you're also, you're dealing with emotionally challenged parents. Parents could relay that message to children and tell them, hey, you're not the only person on this plane and you are ruining this flight, this experience for a lot of people that are trying to sleep and trying to relax. You are causing damage. You're causing a problem. These parents are fucked up too. You're not going to just fix them by having them fix their kid, which is part of the problem is that there's no real test to see if you're emotionally stable enough to have children. So you just have children.

1:50:40I don't think those parents are necessarily emotionally unstable. I tend to think they've just got it all wrong. They think the old school parenting is unloving and cruel and the most gentle parenting will produce the most gentle children. It's not true, but they think if I always ask a child, how are you feeling and attend or ever feeling, I'm going to make stronger happier, kinder kids. No, you're not. You're going to raise a child who thinks she can scream or thinks she can march into a room and silence the entire room based on her preference. They aren't liberated to trust their own instincts and what they have seen work for others.

1:51:18And you know what? The examples are all around you, if you look. There are people who are good people and you can ask them, by the way, immigrants, because they don't go for this nonsense usually. You can ask them, what was it like in the old country or what was it like where you came from? What are you doing? And they call this the, you've ever seen this the Latino paradox. They call this in the psychology. Why are Latinos? Why do they have better mental health when they come to this country when they are immigrants before they assimilate? And the more they acculturate to American culture, the worse their mental health gets.

1:51:50Why? And part of the reason is they have social stability in their relations. They are surrounded by extended family, which also means people are saying the wrong things to them. They're saying insulting things. They're making inappropriate jokes. They're giving them foods. Mom doesn't approve of and they're surviving it all. And they know they can. The reality of hard work is inescapable. That's right. They're not afraid of authority. Parents are in charge. They will give their kids chores and hard work. They will teach them, you know mom's working two jobs. I'm not going to bother her with my trivial problem.

1:52:24But that liberates the kid to realize, hey, my problem is kind of trivial. There are bigger problems. We're doing the opposite in this country. We're telling kids the small problem you have is so big. I'm going to stop everything to focus on it. Right. But if you're dealing with these parents that are emotionally challenged themselves, like how are you going to fix them? Because it's not just the child. It's not just them raising the child in a certain way. It's them realizing the harm that they're doing to their child and the fact that their own view of the world is fucked up. Well, I mean, that's why I wrote the book, right?

1:52:59I'm trying to get the message out that actually the best psychological research and there is good psychological research shows that the things we're doing with kids are not helping. They're counterproductive. And there's a lot of research that shows that that the old way of doing things, which is don't take a pill if you don't need it. Don't go to a therapist if you don't need it. You have a problem. Talk to a friend. Talk to a man. Talk to someone who loves you and really cares how you turn out. Yeah. If you can go to religious, you know, appreased, but go to a therapist if you really need it.

1:53:33But don't do it casually. I mean, I talked to moms who did it because of pet died. Or they did it prophylactically before the kids had any problems. They said, I wanted my my teenager to know she had someone who was on retainer to talk to in case she had a problem. Not having any sense that that therapist could also introduce worries. And then there's also probably the issue of the child going to the therapist and enjoying the fact that the entire conversation revolves around them. Sure. Of course, wouldn't you? I mean, and they get to rise above it all. They get to evaluate the job the parents are doing.

1:54:08They get to casually pass judgment on the, you know, how, whether the parents are doing, they might not have any kids themselves. But they have no problem passing judgment on the job that the parents doing to the child. And by the way, alienation, and I interviewed an expert in parental alienation who is a psychologist and a Joel Coleman was his last name. I think first name, Joel's Coleman or no, sorry, Coleman first name was. I'm blanking on his first name. But he said to me, one of the things he said to me was that alienation very often we're seeing very high rates of parental alienation in this generation.

1:54:44Very often the stories, the therapist, the therapist made the relationship with the parents worse.

1:54:53This is a heavy book. Joshua Coleman, that was his name, sorry. This is a heavy book. I hope not. I hope it's a happy book. I think it is. I think it is. I literally, you're saying bad therapy, why the kids aren't growing up. That's not good. Well, you think it's good in that you're offering solutions and you're explaining the problem. The solution is something we can all do. It's less intervention. It's telling parents, you don't need them. Your kids don't need them. They never needed them. It's telling parents, trust yourselves. If you don't think that diagnosis sounds right for your kid, don't go with it.

1:55:32Because he might just convince a kid for the rest of his life that he's got a brain problem and a limitation when he might not have one. So if you don't think it sounds right, trust yourself. It should be the most liberating book in the world. It's saying that you can trust your God again. Have you talked to any parents that have gone down the road, the bad road that you describe and then reverse course? Sure. All the time. I talked to parents who say, I had my daughter in therapy for three years and honestly, she was no happier at the end. I don't know why I did that. Really? Yeah. I hear that all the time.

1:56:12And did they reverse course with positive results? It depends on the individual case. The one I was thinking about, I don't know the answer, but I know that the three years of therapy didn't help. I talked to one wonderful cognitive, behavioral therapist, Roger McFillin, who often tells people that their kids don't need therapy. I mean, imagine. Probably got a good business. It doesn't need more clients. That's the problem, right? The truth is they all have a good business. It's just some of them have more integrity and they'll say, you don't need it. You don't need this pill. You don't need Netflix series, painkiller about the Sackler family about the opioid crisis.

1:57:00Right. I never watched it. But what's fascinating about it is, first of all, it's fascinating how seeing how the regulatory bodies get captured by money and about how they just decided to make it normal and normalize this idea of prescribing opiates to people and having them on them all the time. But also that there were certain doctors that did have integrity, where the doctors who had integrity were like, what are you talking about? What are you saying? You're saying you want to prescribe heroin to people? Right. In the film, in the series, whether they have these women who are hired, these very attractive women who are hired to go to these clinics and talk to these doctors and push this stuff and try to get these doctors to start prescribing this.

1:57:49They don't have any medical background. And one of them has this conversation with his ethical doctor. It's fascinating. Wow. Because you realize that there are those doctors and if you get lucky, that will be your doctor. But if you get unlucky, you'll get that doctor that 30 minute video calls going to give your fucking kid speed. You know, I talked to this one psychiatrist who told me this story. This guy had come to him, young man, come to him for years and he was saying, I'm just, I'm really paranoid. I'm really paranoid. I've got this, I've got my girlfriend cheating on me. I know there's something wrong with me like I need medication.

1:58:23So this psychiatrist who's a very good psychiatrist, he said, let's talk a little bit about your life. Why are you so paranoid? And it turned out that the guy, the girl, his girlfriend had this very close male friend and sometimes they would have sleepovers. Oh, Jesus. And the psychiatrist said, you're not paranoid. He's like, no, no, no, it's totally platonic. They've been friends for years. And he said, you're not paranoid and it's not platonic. Yeah. Yeah, it's not. You're getting host son. Right. That's what he told him. Yeah, you're not paranoid if it's actually happening. Right. Yeah. Right.

1:59:02And sometimes people need to a good, by the way, a good mental, you know, you know, health professional psychiatrists, whatever. That's a crazy story. Right. This is my platonic friend. We sleep over together. Yeah. Yeah. And he was convinced there was something wrong with him. Wow. Then he was having trust issues. That's what he thought. I'm sure he's getting gas lit. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Gaslight is real. It's real. Yeah.

1:59:32Boy, God, the journey of becoming a healthy human being is so brought with peril. There's so much difficulty. It's so, it's so complicated. Well, I think we make it more complicated than it is to be. Just it is complicated. Look, I'm scared for my kids like everybody else. Sure it is. I mean, especially in our current society with all the crazy influences. Yeah. But, but I know, you know, they've done these studies on human happiness. People who love you and you love back over a lifetime, you know, family, friends, you've had you keep for a long time. Wow. Those, you know, that does a lot to help you be happy surrounding your kids with and giving them freedom to make for maybe don't like their, maybe they're not your favorite friends, but realizing that they're entitled to have their own friends, you know, trusting them to start a job or take a chance you wouldn't have picked for them.

2:00:34They, you have to let them figure some of this stuff out on their, on your own. I mean, one of the things I did, so I changed a little while I was writing the book and one of the things I did was my daughter was begging to walk home from the bus stop by herself and she was little. She was nine and I was scared. I don't even know if it's allowed in my state, but she really wanted to walk home from the bus stop. It's two, she had just crossed two streets and I let her and I let her because I was interviewing parent after parent after parent who weren't letting their kids do things like that and then they had 13 year olds who didn't want to leave the house.

2:01:05Yeah. I was a last key kid. So when I was young, there was no supervision. Right. You just left. When I was six years old, we just opened the door and walked out of the house. Younger than that. I mean, there was never a time where there was any supervision. Walking, by the way, things like walking to school are really good for kids. They learn to navigate their world. It's really healthy to have competency and that's something you don't have to spend money on. That's the thing. All of these fixes are really a lot of them are just common sense and they're things we used to give kids and we stopped because we became so obsessed with the idea that anything could be traumatizing.

2:01:46Well, we're also worried because the media is constantly depicting these stories of children getting kidnapped and killed and this and that and predators. That's a real fear. Right. But you can't protect kids from every kind of pain. We are so obsessed with, I've had parents call me about a bat or I've heard teachers getting upset about bullying and what was the bullying? Someone said something not nice to someone else. Now, I tell my kids to treat people kindly of course. But I have to tell you something. If my kids came to me and said she said something mean to me, I would say, work it out. It's not going to kill you.

2:02:25You'll live. Why? Because if I make my kids think and I learn this from the process of writing, look, if I make them think that my job is to make sure they never feel any emotional distress ever, boy, that's a lifelong journey and it's going to be a losing one. Yeah. Well, listen Abigail, I really appreciate your courage and I appreciate what you did with your first book and the way you handled all the stress and the way you handled all the blowback and you're a courageous person. Thank you. And I think the things that you're talking about are very important. Oh, thanks. It's great to be here.

2:03:02Thanks for inviting me back despite the trouble I caused last time. It didn't cause any trouble. I mean, it was attempted trouble, but it didn't really work. I know you succeeded. Yeah, it's just it's important to talk about really important issues. It is. And these are both very important issues. So your book is out right now. Bad therapy. Go get it. Read it. I'm going to read it. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thanks for being here. All right. Bye everybody.