#725 - Seerut Chawla - The Problem With Taking Therapy Advice From Instagram
01:15:27 Share

What's time when people welcome back to the show? What my guess today is sir traveller. She's a licensed psychotherapy and founder of the trenches and organization focusing on mental health and social media dynamics.

There is a trend of online influences who can identify your trauma and diagnose your attachment problems over social media. Is this an important new frontier for discussing mental health, or called psychology of the internet? Expect to learn the biggest problems with cuddling and how IT enables the victim hood.

The difference between pain and trauma, why being triggered is your responsibility, what everyone gets wrong about self worth, why we spend so much time obsessing over emotion in the west, the biggest problems with self healing and much more. Empower your business or digital agency with blue host trusted by over five million wordpress users globally. Blue host features top to bottom hosting optimizations designed specifically for wordpress, giving you twenty four, seven access to a team of experts for support, plus thousands of wordpress health articles.

So if you want to streamline wordpress website creation with intuitive controls and premium support, choose blue host powering over two million websites worldwide. Dear fancy gift rappers, you continue to amazes us. No present is too large or .

too complicated for you. Your creativity with the labor .

collection phy is answer past. Your inventive use of glitter leaves us amazed. This holiday season, you have a gift rap and work out out for you, but you can leave the big red bows to us, get offers on select vehicles at the lexus december to remember sales event.

Now you are january second is amazing at your lessons dealer. This episode is brought to you by paton. If you're looking for flexible workouts, palatine got you covered summer runs or playoff season mediations.

Whatever your vibe, pet has thousands of classes built to pursue you and has something there to adapt with you, whether you need a chAllenge or rest on, has everything you, whenever you find your push, find your power. Paton, visit one peloton dot com.

But now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome. See rock traveler.

What's your issue with carbon?

I think there's a few different things and they're all sort of um the they are all part of the same sort of sticky web of dis function. Um so there's codling the social media, there's therapy culture um the sort of pop psychology after day that I criticize a lot and they're they're all very related.

So coddling you could almost look at coddling as safety culture of the children and which of course children need safety but over protecting children and um too much safety IT seems to stunt t development IT seems to stunt your ability to overcome obstacles to mitigate your emotions, your aggression, your impulses 嗯 to to have any part of resilience um when you know to the victims of life， which no ones no one's a nunes to um and then and and the sort of extension of childhood that called that called childhood, which is now extended. You know, IT used to be that you you are an adult on fifteen or or sixteen or eighteen and now that seems to go on and on, you know into into the early twenties, if not further. You have thirty year old saying i'm adult um if you aren't adult just baby it's not adult um and then I guess safety culture, which is which is like coddling for adults. It's it's like treating adults like infants um incapable infants who who couldn't cope with a different opinion. And if they you know have the misfortune of of coming into contact with the opinion that makes them uncomfortable, then they need a safe space with puppies and coLoring books.

Yeah what what are the ways that this safety culture, cuddling culture for adults? How does that manifest? What are the behaviors that we see?

So you you I mean you would see IT everywhere. So you see you see IT probably the most obvious um example I think come from university campuses.

So you see when anybody who's not um completely dialed ed into the sort of american flavor of social justice leftism, when they are invited onto college campuses to have a talk, the huge, huge in in north america, the huge demonstrations to break out um people accuse them of personally victimizing them. Um there you know sometimes the people are sare for their safety. They worried they are gonna attacked.

Um safe spaces are often provided. There's trigger warnings um you know within aca, within your actual academic work, the trigger warnings and the research shows that trigger warnings don't actually work. They make things worse because then there's that anticipatory anxiety about um gonna get triggered um there you you see IT in in this part psychology stuff where um everybody's traumatized and um we can't say anything that might hurt anyone's feelings ever. The greatest crime anybody can, the greatest thing is causing a fence. So they're all they're all quite closely linked.

i'd say. But this this to me sounds a lot like the concern over um over protectionism strategies, especially on college campuses, especially in liberates colleges and stuff around american maybe creeping into the U K. As well. But what does this have to do with adult mental health? Like how is this not just a culture war topic like because you have expertise, you practicing .

yeah he .

also knows a bit of like psychoanalysis stuff too that's .

going to move my area so of I would say psycho dynamic or psychoanalytical psychotherapist um everyone .

knows .

about this is the form of therapy that's a derivative of what people think of when they think of you know ford um but it's um uh an update dated modern version of IT and the you know of basic premise of this form of therapy um is that the mind is divided against itself. So there there's all these different forms of um all these different conflicts or different parts of us that want different things have different needs um and so we're constantly working across purposes with ourselves and that often happens unconsciously.

Um IT looks at how the past is alive in the here and now and then you know like A A good example would be like the D S M thinking is that any any mental health issue is a disease um so to action to the way we think of um psychological diseases and in psychotic and of course they're all they're all very mental. This is very real um but in psychoanalytic thinking you would see something like depression or anxiety as um I sort of sort of a like a fever or like a symptom that's telling you there's an underlying infection that's causing this symptom. So you'd of course have you know your patient or client um see a psychiatrist or get whatever they need but at the same time you would work on addressing the underlying online infection.

Yeah I had a JoNathan shadow er a little while ago and he yeah he was phenomenal. And that was the first time that I really started to see a bit of the psychology psychodynamic key stuff. I'm still largely i'm like an E P boy thrown through like I know my evolution and then all the rest of this stuff is like you again, outside of my area of expertise but yeah, so again, just round this out for me you are mental health x, but work with clients, one of one so very well qualified. But draw this line between what kinda sounds a little bit like what bench peria might talk about a lot and mental health like how do your expertise give you an an, an insight of what is happening in these environments that impacting your world and the people that enter your world?

okay. Well, first just want to say I don't I don't see myself as an expert. I'm barely a about a decade into my career and then in the people all the people I admire have had like forty years under their belt, son, and they are fucking amazing.

But anyway um the the line I would draw is that when you when you prevent children and it's not always because you know parents are doing the wrong thing, it's also the the environment wearing um everything's screens, you know children Younger Younger are getting on social media um there's a level of disconnection. There's far less rough and tumble play which children need to develop. You know play isn't a fun treat is actually a developmental necessity.

Um and when you look at the coddling and the overprotection you think of sort of like closely, you might call IT a helicopter parent. So parents always having hovering around and um far too closely, so you don't give the child one the space actually develop um and that they often removing obstacles from a child's path, obstacles they need. Um so if you prevent a child from experiencing anything difficult, you stop any form of conflict or difficulty without the children.

Um you don't give them age appropriate responsibility, essentially stunting the the ability to have those skills as an adult um and you also starting the ability to to learn how to um how to go through something difficult and and and manage emotions around IT. You know we see this black vast groups of adults that they just can't they just can't manage their motions when something difficult comes up like they can't take the punches standing up every single time they flatten. Um and you know that would be that would be the line. So JoNathan hate, who has know done some incredible work and his his incredible book, the example he always gives is of the immune system um and which which is into um the seam tOliver no idea of antiviral and the immune system for us to develop community, we have to come into contact with pathogen, we have to come into contact with things that threaten the new system and stress IT out, and it's only by coming into contact with those difficult things that the immune system sort of learns to um fight them. But do you see .

that a children who live in a household that got a dishwasher have doubled the rates of, uh, asthma, and children who live in households that have a dog have half rights of us? M.

so you feel that makes perfect sense because the the the peanut allergies, the rate of peano allergies is also skyrocketed. You know this um because you know again, the safety culture is so much protectiveness um about some child in this class might have a peanut allergy. So there's nothing .

no not right. So we we have almost A. There's a mirror scenario going on here between what happens biological in terms of the immune system and what happens psychologically in terms of our ability to be robust.

absolutely.

What do you think you know, victim hood, victim hood culture being a victim, again, very popular term, has been thrown around a lot. What do you think most of the conversations around victimhood, miss?

Like most things on social media, everything turns into a very reductive binary. You have one side that is what allowing in victimhood and it's you know um just ludicrous and and you just think, good god, to get a life like vision flat new um and and you know collecting I I call IT wound collecting you know all these different things that that add to the you know victim hood matrix. That means they're more special, more important somehow.

And then on the other side, you have people that seem to have absolutely no basic human empathy and um you know just sort of shame and castigate anybody whose who might be having a holiday with them through difficult things. And I think the new ones to gets lost is that there's a big difference between actually having been victimized and identifying as a victim. And what i'm criticizing is always the latter.

So there are people who been have been victimized. And in my anecdotal experience and in my clinical experience, I find that people really been through horrible, horrific things, often do not want to see themselves as a victim because that that adds to you know, the retro motivation feelings of having the agency taken away from them. They're often people who had no choice but to to find the resources to survive, who are still suffering the impacts of what they went through. And it's more the people who have you know a certain degree of anxiety and new rotis m and um low mood and you know great difficulty regulating the effect of the emotions that identify as the really sort of honey on this on this victim od stuff because IT gives them a really helpful convenient framework that explains what's going on for them while also giving you social currency. And um and you're much less likely to to be demonized and attacked if you're a victim.

And what's the difference between pain and trauma?

Pain is, but pain is just a reality of life. We all have pain. Every single one of us has has has painted that's just you know the human condition trauma is um well the word traumas. Well it's it's it's so flattened and difficult to to sometimes pass IT out.

But traumatic exposure is going through something that like like having lived through war or being physically abused or sexually assaulted you know any any of those sorts of things that completely overloaded your capacity to cope to the point that you might not even be able to form memories of what happened to you um or what you went through。 And then IT IT leaves an injury and IT is an injury that's that's neuber logical. So um they actually changes the structure of the brain. IT changes um and you know it's out of psychological injury um and people have symptoms like you know the stereotypical al things that you see in films which is flashbacks and um um you reliving this is what you went through and nightmares, but also things like um insomnia and intrusive thoughts and pervasive overwhelming feelings of shame, what you are a bad person um complete damage to your capacity to attached to other people because you are trust and so badly broken it's it's one of those things that so alive in your every day that it's almost as though you're always responding to the traumatic thing you went through and there is also a difference between going through something like that, something traumatic and developing P T S D because not everybody goes through something dramatic c and developed P T S D and um the the protective factors there seem to be meaningful relationships and support. Um if you have that before during an afa IT can I can help mitigate um the impacts of of of the traumatic experience um and and then people who do develop IT often don't have don't have support and also sometimes have a have a history of some form of abuse or mental health difficulty easier and temperament individual one of the quotes .

from you that I love is being impacted by what happened to you isn't victimhood, is human making an identity out of IT .

is victim hood?

Yeah yeah. And it's that sort of degree of attachment, right? This sort of romanticizing of pathologies .

ation not such a good way to put yeah. that. When you have been victimized, you might make an identity out of victimhood or you might always feel like a victim. And that's not the same again as what what i'm criticizing, but it's something you have to work on you you really do because when your agencies is taken away um and when I say your agencies is taken away, but I mean is that something is done to you against you are well and you and and there was nothing you could do to prevent IT, it's incredibly powerless, paralyzing feeling um and again, you know it's part of the injury that left on you, especially for happens in early life. So anything happens to us when we're developing because uniforms, the fabric of of who we are.

So you might then gone to always feel as though you don't have agency because you never you never felt that you 对 你们 你们 you something that you have never really um even accord to you that that you could you could tap into or use um and you might live in the world as somebody who has no agency， who things just happen to and it's directly related to having your agency previously taken away. So again, those people need help. They need help integrating what happened to them, forming a cohesive narrative around IT um and and learning how to how to take that agency back or or learning how to tap into IT um and then the other group and IT IT really frustrates me because it's like you're making a mountain for yourself when you need them.

If you if you knew what people suffer, when what a living nightmare IT is to actually live with the after effects of being traumatized, you would not wanna claim that for you so trust me, you wouldn't survive a day of IT. Um so you know beating the drum with i'm so victimized and so offended um I deserve special treatment. I have no agencies that everybody has to do things for me um that that would be the difference between the two groups. I'd say.

yeah it's it's interesting. I I kind of made an as analogous. Point between these tiktok of girls that had said, this guy gLanced over three times in ninety seconds while I was videoing myself doing group ges in a gym. Therefore, this is toxic male gaze and it's a patriot.

Y and you should be worried because many of predators, what that does, if it's responded to positively and if the internet says, yes, you are in the right, what happens is many other goals use that as their new bar for what isn't is not acceptable behavior for men. And the bar continues to just move lower and lower and lower, right? That what we've previously been innocuous is now something that should warrant anxiety inside of yourself.

It's almost like the concept creep of interpersonal interactions, right? But IT continues to just get more and more and more sensitive. I think our employees at netflix are only allowed to stare at the opposite sex for no more than five seconds.

There was um uh posters on the london underground uh selling men that they won't supposed to look at women for more than a particular amount of time the toxic male gaze again um but going back to something you mentioned delay or on you spoke about a people might struggle uh attaching, they might have intrusive thoughts, they might speed down, depressed and a blab. Like everyone has that right? Everybody has that.

And there is a there is a spectrum upon which everyone exists from having absolutely none of IT. And there's one out of a hundred maybe that's there and having IT all the time and there's maybe one out of a hundred that's there. And this this sort of lovely little belt of in the middle that and this is again, something else I learned from you, the difference between the worried well and people with genuine mental illness.

And again, it's this romantic ization of pathologies, ation of the sort of weapons zone of, in a way, because the victim is what's being pedestaled. There is a type of odd type of status that comes from being at the bottom of the pile in some way, even if you're only at the bottom of the pile because you've identified that you are and you know it's the people who have been through absolute hell that seem to be the most robust. And IT is a paradox that the ones that the most privileged are the people who are the most fragile.

But my point being that because everybody has this, everyone has a degree of legitimacy to claiming, I am that, you know, I do have intrusive thoughts. I do get down inside. I do have all the rest of also, our new experiences is completely opake to everybody else.

So god knows exactly what's going on here. But yeah the the this desire, this desire from people who don't have a real mental illness issue to use the label because IT gives them some sort of power. And I don't think it's all to do with this, uh, desire over reach for status by being a victim. I think a good chunk of IT as well as by pathologies ing whatever the problem is that gives you a sense of control over what's happening, right, that it's not just wow, the world is random and and sometimes I end up on the receiving end of bushed. It's I know this is because of a it's got a name to the right that helps me to kind of box IT into a particular type of of issue and and that gives me some sense of order right outside of the chaos um but yeah this the difference between people who are genuinely mentally ill or have a struggling with with issues and then yeah this this other concern this the worried well.

as you call him. Well, the thing about netflix is hilarious. And what like sounds like, sounds like something between, like you are cross between the S. N L sketch, our sketch, and like the hand made its tail, just sounds so stupid. Like you, me, look at me look for five second what happens if you look at someone for six.

you get not good good alarm is .

there quote you have to look for five like you look at four for only four it's rude um and IT reminds me of of when Jordan Peterson was writing a second book and a couple which who the publish was and they announced IT in .

all the employees and just it's .

yeah it's just it's a ridiculous that is it's ridiculous. And the same with london transport does does IT work the other way. Women also need lowed to look at men for five seconds or whatever IT is.

I'm I think that there would be a campaign for men, for women to look at them for longer. You can only look at me for a minimum of ten seconds, but long longer if you can.

Um but yeah this this really seems to be the worried well and the genuinely the genuinely traumatized, the genuinely sort of mentally and upset 嗯 they seem to be the you know the two one group is lapping as the other， wishing that they could be and this group is looking at that one going. Why would you wish any of the things that i'm currently struggling with? I wish that I could get rid of .

all they just go very quiet. Um i've received a look as up because I I make a fair mont of posts distinguishing actual trauma from social media trauma。 And every time I do, I get the deluge of emails from people with actual P T S D. So thank you for saying that I don't talk about you know what I ve been through anymore because I I live with this that in the other it's like it's like having a disability and my friend who just had to break up is saying that we we're sufficing from the same thing so I just don't talk about IT anymore.

Um the worried well I mean really that uh just another way of a sort of new orkis M I guess which is being um suspected to negative feelings and um and I think the level of of information online that shared under the guys of psychology cation really doesn't help because it's completely d contextualized knowledge. You know like in the U K. Therapies, psychotherapy are not allowed to diagnose.

You have to do quite a of additional training and you have to be as a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist and IT takes time to learn you know how to um how to discern what what something is. Um it's not that aren't necessarily the same kind of bright lines in you know psychopathology that they are in with physical illnesses and you know Lucy said think everything will it's call medical students disease. So when you're training to be a doctor of their ability or something, you everything you read, you think of, my god, I must have this and it's um and and we're just doing that to everybody is doing this is unleashing that on the public, the differences, you continue your training and then you understand, you understand why IT all resonates.

You understand that? No, I don't I don't have every single no um diagnosis in the D S M. But the lay but you know public don't don't have that.

They they just get the five signs. You have an anxiety or six signs that you've got O C D, and it's all human behavior like you said. So things will resonate with you. But there's also a difference, you know, like what one person might call an intrusive thought might be. Oldest random thought popped into my head, but somebody with O C D, O O P T S D, might, might. Well, what they what isn't intrusive thought for them is suddenly I had this awful flash that i'm going to, you know, imagine my head of stabbing my mother and I and i'm really scared we going to lose control. And do IT.

I suppose the fact that you need to communicate this, and especially when it's done online on instagram captions or whatever, that is done in a manner that is still largely open to interpretation and maybe is even designed to be done so kind of the same way that a medium or an astrology card is purposefully vague and uses language that so, Willy, that IT could be interpreted by anyone like the astrology of psychology that we've got going here. Well, yeah, you allow IT to be interpreted, or that me, this post, this post is so me, or this post is my spirit animal, right? Like that, that feeling .

of being a problem .

animal. Problematic.

I believe IT. It's a problematic because you are culturally appropriating a native american idea.

I say.

no, nothing and anymore the native .

americans come for me. I, I, I will I will apologize appropriately after you've chopped scalp to me. Shop my idot um yeah this this um almost purposeful ly Willy language and and there is you .

know again, I don't need .

to seem like anybody that's going through. I'd been through mental health strugling myself for all of my twenties. Like I really, really want people to understand that there is a conversation, understand that there is, there are resources and there is help and all the rest of things that you can do.

So I don't want IT to be like a slam basting IT. But the main reason is that people feel like their emotions are a personal curse on them, right? I would. I never, no matter how good friends mean you become, i'm never going to know the text of your own mind. I'm never going to know what IT feels like to be syrup, right? I'm not going to know, when you say sad, do you mean what I mean when I say sad, when you say that you couldn't sleep because you had you you are over thinking last night.

Do you are you over thinking at the same sort of pace that I am? I just how visual is the emotion you sweating and I you know, I mean, and this desire for us to feel seen right in a world that's very atomized and the individualized, where the self is upheld more highly than everything else, and were obsessed with our own emotions in this world, someone that posts something that makes us feel like, why not this isn't some individual a uh like custom drug that's being pumped into our veins to make a suffer oh, it's just a part of the human experience that me so that I understand the compulsion to pathologies and put a label on the things that we're feeling because IT makes us feel less objectified by our own emotions, less of a less of a victim of our own of our own issues. It's I just just just you know it's it's every look twenty thousand likes on this instagram post like all of those people are too.

Some of those some of those accounts are very clever about how they do IT and they put things in a way that will resonate or will cost the wider wider net possible because um we put IT IT IT benefits them. There's there's a couple of things that a one absolutely when if you're struggling with something and you find out um that the you know this is this is something other people from suffer and suffer from two. There's a name for IT. IT changes your relationship with the thing that you're suffering from. Imagine, for example, having the symptoms of anxiety and your heart races and you have always got, you know, butterflies in your tummy and and your hands of a tremor and you always worried and you know some of those feelings and you don't know what that is and you don't know if anybody else feels that way.

I think IT would be absolutely horrific um and then you find out something called anxiety and then you find out, you know, why does anxiety for what's the evolutionary purpose of of of having feelings like anxiety and IT IT can change your relationship to IT IT can um change the way you regulate and and manage and respond to those feelings of anxiety um and I guess the other side of the coin is taking every Normal little human emotion and attempting to um attempting to I guess label IT and and pathologies IT so you know some of the the definitions of trauma on um online or in among inter therapy, they're ridiculous as this was basically just they'll describe the human experience and say this is true ma. 嗯 you know do you ever do you ever brings have you ever seen the color blue？ You have trauma sort of I think what you said was was really insight ful, because it's true.

You we don't like uncertainty. We don't like feeling um we're not very good tolerating uncertainty or feeling that we don't have control over something. And so if you combine that um. You know having this emotional experience that that is quite difficult, turbulent and you don't have you know a lot of control over, you don't know it's ever gonna end you good managing with having been coddled and protected to the point that you don't have the skills to cope or manage and probably LED to some of those feelings that you're feeling.

And then you add to IT this pop psychology culture that's telling you all this is a legitimate agnolo is and nobody should ever make you uncomfortable and no one should ever, you know criticize you or suggest that you have to take responsibility or you have a role to play and learning how to how to deal with this or navigate this. Um it's it's far more convenient then I have trauma oh I have this diagnosis or that die the other and IT doesn't always lead to um changing your relationship. Sometimes that leads to IT becoming a bit of a rush or IT becoming your defining characteristic, you know.

Um like what my hold personality is having A H D well that's not is nothing interesting about you. Um is is that IT? So yeah this this a few different things there.

What do you mean when you talk about therapy culture? Is that a culture of people getting therapy?

No um it's it's A T IT of IT seems to be this overwatched thing is enveloped society and even you know done to the way we speak. So um therapy culture is this you you you hear your friends, they you know have a small disagreement and then they start having this whole struggle session like a therapy sons and you know like you trigger my in a child and when you didn't show up to this thing. Or people setting boundaries with with each other, but they're really setting boundaries that are sort making demands and other people or um you know it's it's the way people speak has shifted and changed um instead of necessarily developing any real understanding of mental health， we've developed this sort of codification of fragilities. Um that's that's I guess become its own its own language um you know i'm triggered uh when often they mean i'm offended um and it's the whole you know I guess pop psychology in the therapy stuff beginning to dominate the mainstream understanding of the mental health.

So what would so talk to me about the difference? You have used that a couple of times today. Pop psychology, what's the difference between that and mental health and and why is IT an issue that it's master ating as IT?

Because it's it's not related to psychology or psychotherapy often um we speak like a therapy, something you just said that was um suggested maybe are natural like a therapy when you're talking about. I don't know what sad means to you and that something again, in in amytis therapy that that you would do. So if you said I feel sad, I would ask you what that means to you.

You take anything that's abstract and you make IT specific as possible. But yeah, but have an aside. The difference is that. Actual mental health is rarely spoken about in any railway apart from maybe anxiety and depression.

You know when they talk about mental health awareness, it's almost always it's like instagram therapies have become modern day clergy or something or like pastoral councillors telling people how to behave so um getting people's ript for life um watering down important concepts like trauma P T S D um learning the bar like you said for you know like no being someone pinching your bomb is not nice, unwanted but it's not the same as actually being assaulted and conflicting the two things is absurd um so it's it's all of those things kind of creating this this blanket around people, this coddling blanket that. Ensures that you you you won't necessarily be a sort of really rumbling. And I think i'd look, you know, when you start sentencing, like I really hope I find my way .

to i've got i've got some of one of my favorite posts from you. Some ways pop psychology lies to you. Everyone you'd dislike is not an arctic st.

Every unpleasant experience is not trauma. Having needs does not make you co dependent. Disagreement is not gas lighting conflict is not abuse. Taking offence is not being triggered. Everything does not need to be Normalized and speaking like an H R memo is not self awareness at these sort of the whatever is nine horseman of pox psychology of these sort of the most common culprits.

These are these are definitely some of them so so yeah thank you for bring that up because that um helps and um it's it's stuff like the the the dialogue nassim um it's creating this strange you know fanfiction version of nis and the only lives on the internet um and anybody you don't like is an oxide.

Any form of abuse or or poor treatment is in noisy um again, you know words mean things especially when there is clinical language um and we've taken this you know therapy speak which is a part of therapy culture and you use IT to inflate every little thing so yeah you know you you're not just defended IT or you don't like something or are uncomfortable. You've been triggered when when triggered means the involuntary you know emerged into a past traumatic experience and you haven't been triggering. You don't like this or it's caused cognitive dissidence.

Anything difficult is trauma. I can't be pain. I can't be bad luck IT can't there can be it's a foregone conclusion that no there IT just closes the door on any any other possibilities any any any explanation um that might not be this very convenient um botto up around you yeah .

any any disagreement is gas lighting any conflicts abuse yeah .

you know so someone disagreeing with you what a convenient way to shut down the conversation, demonized them make yourself the victim and and not have to sell reflect just call them just say the best late you you don't have to learn how to how to um argue properly or defend your ideas you can just say everyone's a gas later how convenient um and this kind of I get police ed a lot on how I speaks and quite straightforward and I just I resent having to put tons of fluff er around my words because you know someone can handle just being spoken to like an adult and I don't not want to do IT 嗯 and I guess this is what they call tone police since I get a lot of a lot of comments dms with from people saying。

You know your message is good, but the way you come across is a really hard I shall I just think IT really isn't. If you try and read IT neutrally, it's just stating a simple fact or opinion most of the time. And if you heard me say IT in my tone to your face um I don't think you take at the same the same way and um there's this sort of I think a tonen people bring to things um and again, it's it's so I simulated what I wrote in that post. I I see a lot of that just in in some of the responses I get um even in this last week, i've had to just the steady stream of abuse to do with um anything i've said about israel and palace ine when mostly my position is been um don't bomb children like I don't you know I don't I don't know what's i'm not i'm not argued enough to pretend I know what the answer to the solution is and I think anybody who thinks it's simple is a idiot. You know you just very, very stupid because.

You IT IT goes back a very long time that so many fact is to consider here anywhere and I thought, I don't know what the right answer is, but I do know that you don't just in discriminating kill children, just don't um and people read things that you that you haven't written and they attack you for them so you know like your your jew hater or your um isla phobic or you're not taking enough of a stand or something else。 But then the other thing they do is they begin to use the therapy language to analyze you uh and then you get that in some of the dims. I think you're insert some diagnosis or your your gas lighting of everybody or your um and you know it's it's um again, it's web nizing this language and I think that that one of my big problems with the is that get used as a casual against people yeah so web nizing this language you know inhibiting any sort of actual self reflection um finding a way to always landon the victim position, abdicate responsibility is .

there any argument to be made that this Normalizes the conversation around mental health, which overall is a net benefit? We've got people maybe more appropriate language using IT inaccurately improve sely. But this is a conversation now where people are opening up about the way that they in experience feels a this is a move in the right direction. What's you how do the scales baLance in your .

world as IT is a really difficult actually cause on on because I often don't think we are even talking about mental health when we say we're talking about mental health. But I think you're right.

I think it's it's it's good that there's a more receptive atmosphere to people being able to say actually my mental hel sufficing at the moment and and there's a decent chunk of people who won't turn away or turn against you who would be understanding and incredibly empathetic. And um that probably is incredibly different to know our parents generation, for example. And I think yeah but isn't that positive?

That's that's really good. What would a what would an actual conversation round mental health look like?

Being an actual conversation on mental health would look like discussing actual mental health issues, what is what it's like to suffer from them, identifying um you know some of the signs that maybe this isn't Normal distress or Normal hard time to something a bit deeper going on um helping people you know learn how to manage their mental health similar to how a diabetic has to watch the sugar intake and take insurance. When you have an ongoing mental health issue you you need to you need to manage IT.

You you know have kind of got IT in my head that does this. It's kind of like a global wide concept creep or an over to window of what we've considered uh, within the realm of the conversation about mental health yeah as we ve identified you know, by dsm criteria, many people who say or use particular sort of pathological language to identify whatever IT is that they go going on might not meet the criteria if they were to be assessed using that.

But they've got something going on, right? They're sad or they are depressed or they are down, they feel anxious or they whatever, or they they feel depressed like they are not depressed, right? Yeah um so I think that yeah maybe you could say i'm using the that sort of psychoanalytic uh treatment style language is not really helping and its pathological zing and its causing issues but all that you do really there is kick the can and down the road, right the okay, so we're not going to use that language anymore.

But we still now need a huge new bucket within which people who are feeling a little bit sad, people who who are feeling a little bit agitated, a little bit frustrated, a little bit whistle there, a little bit whatever right there, now needs to be an entire new bucket within which we put those people. And maybe it's not mental health, maybe mental health should be um um held for a different an entire different lexicon, entire different set of world. But the people who are lying about IT and not completely making me up, which he is a good chunk of them, the people who are genuinely feeling something that isn't meeting the medical criteria, but is still doing something that disrupts the quality of life.

That group of people you know like that, I would guess the the large group of people. But if that's not mental health, we now need to we need to think about IT. I think what's happened is it's become conflated, right, like the acute acute. But mild distress has been moved into this much more sort of aggressive medical language. But we still need to treat those people, and we still need to have a conversation on whatever those feelings are and whatever the name is that we give those things that feeling.

Why can't we just say sadness or wishfulness or loneliness? Or why doesn't need the home new section of words that that again, it's the, you know, it's the human experience. And I think this is one of the things that we've lost along the way with the whole like follow your bliss and people thinking, holleywood films are what life is going to be like.

Life is working difficult. Um you know your you're feeling sometimes are incredibly hard to manage. Um things happen all the time. You know you never know what's around the corner. 嗯， life is incredibly an unpredictable ly.

And I think there's this idea that you that IT IT should be easy in some way or that you you know if you're not happy, blissfully happy all the time, that there's something wrong and there isn't who unless you're a complete blithering idiot who's happy all the time, like I didn't know anyone, everyone has you know um ups and downs and and differences and changes and mood and um their own personal difficulties and I think maybe you are using a word that i've come to load. Maybe that's what we need to Normalize is that this is what being a person is um and you know you you have to find you can't change that. What you can change is making yourself stronger and more resilient and to know how to respond when these things happen.

You might not be able to control um bouts of of sadness or wilfulness or agitation, but you can learn that when you're in a hole to stop digging, you can learn that you can learn how to how to climb out. You can learn how to avoid that hole sometimes. Um why did you go .

to if let's say that you're going through bit a tough time yourself for whatever reason, where do you go to in your mind, what are the things that you rely on? You know IT seems like people are relying on labels and and and medical language. What about you given that you're a practice of this and have been at the front lines for a decade, what are the things that you reliant to help improve your mood or to give you some perspective when you are kind of caught in the world pool, that is the vaccination of the human mind?

嗯， so. I've I OK i've i've had a kind of events for life and been through some really, really tough stuff um becoming basically homeless um a soul just know I want going to all of IT, but difficult things or sometimes there are things that I think would be really difficult for some. You didn't have those experiences that don't always even register with me um because I guess that thread hold has been expanded to the point where it's it's it's different.

I'm sure other people who got what kind of history can can relate but then I also I think because i've had that and i've been in the complete depth like drowning um and had to had to find a way the hard way to deal with those emotions that i'm not scared of them and not only were not scared of them, are not scared of other people's either. So if something happens like anxiety, which sometimes, you know anxiety feeling is the depression. I lost my mom two years ago, so it's been a lot of grief um even rage.

Gene sy, all the feelings that people feel. I let myself fill them. I let them exist. I don't necessarily even have to you don't necessarily even have to participate, you know you just have you just let them be, let them exist, let them run their course um not not panic about IT not necessarily think that it's a problem to solve this up.

There's a feeling um if you're so inclined you could figure out and the practicing that very good at this to get what cause there was that coming from all I had that thought or that's that's what just deflated my mood or um that lady a ran into the supermarket today SHE reminded me of the way my mum bitted me and that's why have been so sad and anxious over since. So you can trace that back, you can figure you can figure that out um and also just just knowing that like you've survived every single tough thing, bad day, bad mood after this point, you're onna survive this one too. Why is this any different? And the thing about not being scared of IT is like anxiety can be incredibly frightening. And i've been through the the um you know been through been through the experience of being very frighten by panic and thinking, you know, something something really awful was gonna en. And then my dad taught me this because he struggles with some things like to do and he said, when I think, remember seventeen or eighteen in a panic attack my dad said just things like I can't do anything to you um and when IT comes up, look at right in the iron to do your worst you can't do anything to me and I think that's kind of my attitude to to a lot a lot of things that seems .

based on what I know about you that.

But IT IT can help and knowing that， knowing that that um meta cognition, watching your thoughts, thinking about your thoughts, knowing that right now I am panicking and I think i'm gonna a health attack and die. But I know that the anxiety in the panic, it's not going to happen and I said to wait this out White enough alone if you have to um and then the other thing is with anxiety and panic, especially a move meta lizer that chemistry like burn in off quicker, just run down the street like crazy person I will go away and yeah and so so IT does depend but you also have to develop some form move mental health hyg e around IT um just made a course for I I have this little online community and I made courses for them course on mental health hygiene and and you know how to actually look after your mental health and the fact is that contribute to you being, well.

why should people go if they wants to check that out?

There's a link in my bio and instagram and on twitter or you can connect to IT through my website.

Um what's .

the best site? It's my name, dot com seit g of the dot com. And you know for for looking off to yourself and for for feeling well. You need certain things and then non negotiable um like purpose if you don't have a reason to wake up in the morning, of course you're gone to become depressed unanxious if you don't go outside ever um which I struggle with some plans to work from home and some plans that absolutely everything delivered um so you know you can force yourself, you you have to have meaningful social interactions, internet, government content um social media made us so connected and yet so isolated from actual real human beings um you need to you know we evolved in nature.

We didn't evolve in these in these concrete boxes um you you have to you know once in a while going to look at a tree, forgot sink if you live in the city or what the certain things you need um and the way that our environment is now of course, everybody is struggling with something and there's not only the codling and the you know safety culture in the whatever else, it's it's your stuck on devices, you looking at social media, which is you know we know that a threat mental health, we know that it's it's a contributing factor to depression and anxiety. We know the impact that IT has on Young people and teenagers, sometimes to really tragic conclusion and then you're indoors all day and you're second tree, which is gonna you incredibly depressed if you're not moving where we want designed to visit on our bombs all day. We were designed to move um and I found that like i've gotten really until working out since last december.

And um it's gotten to the point now where. Know, so finish work. And as soon as I finish, I just get on the trade milk. Sometimes I finish quite late, so I just just just my my transition.

And um it's almost even if I tired, even if I don't want to do IT as soon as I start, it's that feeling of like, you know, when you sink into a warm bath and it's that that kind of whole body like us Better is that the feeling and you know that that i'm sure a really good reason for that for why IT feels that good for why you you know um that there's so much that we need to be. Well, that isn't a part a natural part of the environment anymore, even even staying up late, looking at the blue light in our phones. And there's so much that actively contributes us being disconnected, sedentary eating food that that doesn't give us the nutrition that we actually need. The same the size. Some of those you know some of that europe chemistry um you're dealing with this on slaw of the most horrific, devastating things happening all around the world all the time which went a wide to handle know we can't cope with that like before you know I think that the figure is something like you would only know the bad news of your area and only maximum in your whole life know about hundred and fifty people um in the kind of radius of the the village or town ever you live and you know to hear the bad news from this happened to the neighbor, this happened the next town and this kind of now we're hearing everything that happens everywhere all the time at the same time and you and you can't you can't cope IT um yeah given that is so much .

that that you ve gone through, which is, you know, outside of the south, the way that we move, the things that we eat, the amount of sunlight twor ks exposed to the friends that we have, the purpose that we are use to propel us through life, why do you think we've spent so much time obsessing about the self and our emotions in the west?

Because life too easy. You know, like where nobody human beings aren't wild to just sit back on their laurels and enjoy the fucking sunshine, like that's not what we were wired to do or why to to overcome obstacles and chAllenges and keep moving forward in some way.

And when you remove all the chAllenges and make life too comfortable as like people started now functioning and you know when those there's and I think they're there a lot of people who absolutely bulk at this and say, how do you say life is easy in the west? And then I I just think going live somewhere else for a little bit and and then you understand how good you are. We have IT like from every little thing like um you know you know not gonna a power cut every day.

You can rely on the electricity um all the sort of public services you might find them to bureaucratic or annoying, but they work like swiss watch compared that some of the only places in the world um you relatively safe, you've got free education and free health care. This country you know like there are dogs in this country to have Better lives than people in other places and um and when there's no nothing external to necessarily struggle against. And then you have had these know coddling helicopter overprotective parents removing any obstacle from your path what's that phrase you prepared the the child for the road, not the road for the child um and and you end up with um sorry, I looked away for a second and I completely lost my first thought.

I've got something i've i've what I like. Something really interesting just came now, which is IT seems like victim hood culture has horizon because the human systems demand for chAllenges yeah in life has outstripped to the modern world's ability to supply them.

Yeah, I think that's one factor. And those really well said. I think the other factor is also that because things have been so good, people have an unrealistic idea of what life should be like.

So there should never be anything difficult. No one should ever be offended. You should be protected from your feelings of being hurt. Um and this sort of very unrealistic cama lot like idea for how a person should feel you should you know you see some of some of these posts on instagram like you deserve this and you are worthy in and I don't know about you but I didn't get that messaging as a kid and i'm really grateful um when the messaging I got was yeah you can do anything you want but get off your on IT um you know i'm glad and if you're good enough IT wasn't you deserve IT because you you think you do who are you none of us none of us um go through your schooling system and uni.

If you go to uni then you meet someone your soul mate fall in love um then you're going to find your perfect career, which is gonna rewarding, and pay you what you want. And you know, then you somehow magically have a really nice house in a car and kids if you want them. And then they actually you reach adult od and they're e in for such a rude shock because um IT doesn't necessarily go that way.

Um instead you kind of you struggle and you realize no there is no dream job and solmet that's gona fall in your lap and does you know you you have to make things happen. You have to take responsibility and you know, combined with this self fest in parenting that tells children constantly how special they are, how clever they are, how talented they are, when then they grow up and find out that the world doesn't reflect that back to them because maybe they aren't that talented and an amazing um and become incredibly depressed and analisa. What do you think .

IT seems like self worth? All the interpretation of our own self worth is kind of an important element here. What do you think people get wrong about self worth and where comes from?

Think what they get wrong about IT is that self worth that does not come from other people inflated or you know blow smoke up your us. That doesn't do anything that doesn't like that doesn't hit the core of you. Is this whole like validation? You know how it's so important you have you've invalidated me like so fucking what like you're an adult um and I think IT doesn't IT doesn't touch the sides.

And the thing that does is make people constantly independent on more from from those around them, which is why it's so crucial to have everybody validate your feelings and your viewpoint and tell you how wonderful you are. But actual self worth is hard one and its owned through surviving things and um you know setting a chAllenge for yourself and actually accomplishing IT um keeping your word to yourself. Do you know how fun difficult that is and how few people can do IT? Um and I started with the all the time it's a constant battle but don't stop ever trying um keeping your word to yourself will change your relationship with your sense of self worth developed competence in something you know um have a purpose that makes you excited to be alive all those things will not only take your focus off you know this idea that having self steam, self worth and you know woman fuzzy feelings inside is be all and end all of life but it'll give you that grounded sense of self shows self shadings assurance I don't know that that changes how you feel in the world.

I think you have just described probably the large, the big changes that I made of the last decade yeah you know yeah absolutely keeping my word to myself, being able to build up trust that if I said I was going to do a thing that was going to do a thing, i'm creating a competency in something that I genuine. He felt proud of myself about having a purpose that gave me a reason to get up in the morning.

You these these have been the big movies for me um and you know that's wrapped in Better sleep and wake and more of a focus on like holistic health, fitness and not just looking jacked and having people around me that seem to care about me and integrating not just on the internet all the rest those things right but like the big move is the big move is largely have been my sense of self which was born out of making promises to myself in keeping them and I remember the first episode that I did with Jordan Peterson three years ago. Now maybe more um was, uh he's got this little line. People can go back and listen to IT. He just like throws IT away towards end of the episode and he says, if you want a true adventure in life, if if you want an exciting adventure in life, tell the truth, I tell the truth, and see how big of an adventure that is is like, boy, that's an adventure. And it's true like if if you want to, one of the most difficult, scary, terrifying things to do is to regularly just keep telling the truth over and over again, to not people please, to not be a bitter al resenting posture, to, uh try and inflate what IT is that you ve achieved or downplay IT, to just say what IT is, which is really the path of least resistance because you don't need to create this big fucking merage of of stuff that's all hiding what's actually going on and yet for some reason that seems to .

be just IT is very.

very difficult to do.

is very and telling the truth to yourself I think that can't be stated enough is the ways in which you pull will overall ise is brilliant but there's I completely agree and like the truth is one of my you know like this is a really important value to me.

Um and a lot of people really hate some Harris, but I I I like him for this is because he doesn't try to panda to any tribe, especially the sort of like a oke and anti woke binary and he just says what he actually thinks and feels about things. So everybody seems to hate him but he's he's, i'm always mind, is organza in in a different way. And I agree.

I I show a lot of stick for having him on the show three months ago. And there was summer harasses world embarrassment to people are commenting. And I thought to myself, I had so much fun, I did three and half hours with him, and I had so much fun SAT down, opposite and talking.

And I understand that people don't like him because of his view on there. So, you know, this just shows that you are not going to hold someone's feet to the fire about this that at the other it's like, dude, there are people out there that I know that I find fact are way less trustworthy, but just said the right things. They made the right mouth noises at the time when you wanted to about the issue that you care about. And you wouldn't sooner have a lying but complicit. I I supposed to be honest but antagonised cessile.

And for me like i'm not saying that i'm going to like I don't agree with tons of the stuff that sam said by fucking believe that he believes IT and the fact that I believe that he believes that gives me a lot of faith that in the future when he says a thing that I can believe IT too and given the fact, the truth and being able to actually have faith in someone's word is really important and maybe there's stuff that he said that contradict and i'm sure that there is all the rest of caviar, caviar, caviar for the internet but yeah like I I believe that he believes the things that he says and I don't I don't think that that can be said for an awful lot of people. So that was why I was super excited to sit down with him. And I will do IT again.

And, you know, like fucking the internet for, like I I had, I had so much fun talking to him, I thought I was really, really interested. I learned a lot. And you know, if if, if, if people have got an issue with the way that he comes across with things, then, you know, I guess he's not for you anymore.

And the felt sense, one of the things i've reflected on this a lot, one other things I think people have, they thought sam was their guy. And sam was their guy for a little while. yeah. Now sam feels like he's not their guy. And one of the big emotions that seems to be driving this is .

kind of like a betrayal yeah yeah um it's like a group thing, try thing and people trying to to pretend the above IT none of us are really you kind of have to mitigate your impulses. And I think I think that's what IT is like. These very tribal groups online that dominate this course of everything.

um. That the formal punishing of heros and dissidents then they are of like actual adversaries. I think um if you if you change your mind and you you speak out against the group and you absolutely should um you absolutely should.

You shouldn't. You shouldn't because there's a real Price to IT IT. It's not nice. And I i've had a lot of IT said this last week a lot of IT attacks and um losing followers and all that like a fun stuff. But but I think there's a bigger Price to pay to just simulate with the group and and sacrifice. What do you actually think go against your conscience and not tell the truth, which is why I respect some parris I don't agree with anything or not with everything he says. I don't agree with everything anyone says um but what I can respect about him is that he seems to have integrity he has the courage to tell the truth as best as he can see IT um and he tries to think things through um and I like you know like you said, I don't think that that many people like that out then that you have this like legion of parrots with huge platforms that just you know all say the same thing um were slightly differently um or they say things that you know on purpose to inflame um you know inflame their own audience against the other group .

of people in my rule of whether a creator is or is not acting in good faith is is that audience mostly bound together over the hatred of an out group of the mutual love of any group that's one of the easiest rubrics to use okay like do they do they born together by identifying the other and then saying, we are not that or is IT this is a community people because shared hatred are much more powerful than shared lobs, right? Way more powerful wartime fucking patriotism.

This is piece time patriots. M you kidding me? Um but at one of your other posts that I really loved, that was a sometimes we are toxic ones and no one wants to admit that no one wants to actually point the finger at themselves you know whether it's fundamental attribution error or you know whatever type of motivated reasoning to wigged your way out of being culpable for the things like everybody is a prick, lots of the time, right?

Me, me included and know just accepting the fact that we can be like that and and to kind round out that something i've been feeling a bit recently, what deep into the episode now, which means that all of the people who don't actually usually listen to this don't aren't listen anymore. So I can talk more openly. And i've been feeling IT a bit recently because the channels grown so much.

It's like tripled this year. I think maybe more by the end of this, a little more than tripled uh and and an awful lot of like increasing levels of scrutiny. And then you kind of become you become a thing, you're no longer a person, your representation of ideas and these expectations and this not judgment, but does a uh A A rhythm to how people expect you to show up in your kind of put into this particular box.

You like Chris used to be x or Chris a part of y. And I feel in myself these dynamics moving below the surface and this kind of engine begin to tune up, which is precisely the one that sam is kind of feeling the other side of at the moment, which is like we thought that you were on our side, x or y or that. And if you seem to be an unreliable ally, if you seem to do something that goes against what the main group was supposed to do, I made some, had an interesting conversation with constantly kiss.

And I know you've been on trigonometry. I had this conversation with him about how people on the right say you shouldn't judge people by one interaction. But you know, boodles had had a pretty Stellar c career of making like watery beer for americans, and then they did the dilma of anything, and now the entire company was thrown at the bus like that.

I know it's just a thought experiment like it's an interesting should this maybe you know maybe I could be A A different perspective and we could think about IT in this kind of a way but people are so incapable of seeing any idea or any uh, any discussion is anything shy of a hill that someone prepared to die on that they immediately come back with that same sort of energy i'm like, wo wo wow, this is this journey is evidently not for fucking you, right? If I can't play about with ideas on here, uh, but again, you know I see this dynamic, the one that were talking about with salmon and maybe the one that he is on the other end of where you go, well, it's way easier for me to just not play about with those ideas anymore. You know, this month, like twenty million people, i've seen the channel.

And it's way easier for me to not ever say to just feed, read me to the mob to not say anything that's like interesting or adventure or playing around with ideas or exploratory because I know that if I do do that and i'm imprecise or i'm off that day, or it's just a fucking shit idea, which I have all the time, like I know that ultimately that's going to come back to buy me in us. So why should I do that? And again, like that dynamic is one of the reasons why I think the people that are deciding, yeah, i'm gna, even if it's unpopular, even if it's and the same goes for you, you know, like you could continue to sort of spout cotton Candy for the soul at people, but to say something which is gonna get you as many hate as as to the lovers is a more difficult path.

Yeah, I I I love you. I I really appreciate your your contrarian, slightly uh prickly but very, very honest uh, approach to all of this stuff. I think that is a very important address to the sort of cod psychology stuff that we do see on the internet.

And IT validates people in a much more honest way like IT is still validation. It's just not the kind of sort of cotton Candy for the sole validation that everyone's looking for. So let's say that someone's loved what you've heard today. Where should they go to find out more of the posts? You've got everything else .

you um you can find me on instagram and on twitter and my handle in both places in my first named seat, kate travel. Um my website is the same, my named dot com and that links to this online community there are around but courses and so on if the interest people um so if that's what you can find me online, don't try and find me in person .

please yeah so I really appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you so much.