Bad Therapy, Weak Parenting, Broken Children | Abigail Shrier | EP 427

Abigail Schrier’s comment about children being asked to dwell upon bad feelings reminds me of a recent news article which told the story of how a tribe in Africa ended up asking a group of care workers, who had been assigned to help them deal with the trauma of genocide, to leave. When asked why, the tribal representatives said that it was harmful to seclude a person suffering from bad feelings and memories in a darkened room and ask them to relive their trauma. The tribe, they said, dealt with these feelings by drumming, dancing and singing in the sunshine to defeat them together and drive them into the past where they belonged. That way, they said, the person who suffered was given support, and embraced by the whole community.

When I was a little kid my brother and the two boys next door to us were my best friends. We were out and about every day climbing trees and ‘camping.’ Being the only girl I was a real tomboy, I’d climb the highest trees to prove I was just as good as them but whenever we argued they pulled the ‘girl’ card. ‘You can’t do this cos you’re a girl.’ It was just kid stuff but I’d go home in a rage and cry to my ma that I wished I was a boy. And I meant it. Thank god there were no lunatics back then, because if someone had said that I could be a boy if I felt that strongly I’d have jumped at the chance! I remember how strongly I felt at age 7 and I would have insisted I was a boy if told it was an option. I grew out of it by 13, it was just part of my childhood, a phase. I can see how easily small children can be manipulated- especially through my own experiences and it horrifies me that there are adults who are trying to normalise this.

Jordan Peterson was the first person in my life that told me it was ok to fail and encouraged me to do so. I should have learned that lesson at 8 not 28.

My father lost 3 siblings and his girlfriend (who had been his high school sweetheart that he reconnected with later in life) within a year. He's been handling it very well, but he comes over often to hold my babies and talk and just to get comfort. He's grieving. My sister very much believes in therapy everything and has been trying to convince him to go to a therapist and get on antidepressants. She became irate when he jokingly called my baby daughter his therapist. I got so frustrated that we have pathologized human emotions so much that she thought he needed medical intervention just because he was sad and grieving. Holding your grandbabies actually is good therapy and I live a mile from my dad, he comes over every day so I know how he's doing and he's doing as well as can be expected. She lives over a thousand miles away, but insists that therapy is essential and specifically advised SSRI'S

My wife introduced me to Jane Eyre and there is a part in the story where she is being questioned and is asked “so what is your sob story?” She says she has none and lists all the things in her life to be grateful for. Earlier In the story her horrific abuse in childhood is detailed, and when she had the opportunity to talk about her life she choose to speak on the good in it. That just struck me so deep. I decided to be like her in that moment. If I ever have a daughter I want to name her Jane Eyre.

This kind of conversation is the first step towards healing this broken generation.

There is a very popular TV show in Japan called Hajimete no otsukai, where young kids are given a task to do something by themselves for the first time in their life, usually something like walking down to the local store to get ingredients for dinner. They get a little purse with change and a shopping list (pictures if they cannot read yet) and the parents and TV crew follow them from a distance and monitor them. It is just absolutely adorable to see them grow, in the end the parents are always in tears and the kids are proud of their accomplishment.

I'm a 38 yo male and I recently quit seeing a therapist after seeing him on and off for about 8 years. Our sessions had become really combative as he would try to give me advice on things I didn't ask for, like how much to list my house for or how to manage my relationships. I started realizing that years of therapy had caused me to distrust my own intuition for making decisions, which was the main reason I had to leave. With my therapy experience, my biggest takeaway is that anyone in this profession could quickly develop a really unhealthy, codependent control issue with clients, since most coming into therapy are emotionally dysregulated or looking for someone to guide them. Even the best, well-meaning therapists can be guilty of this IMO.

Therapist here. Sad to say that I have very few people in my industry that I would actually trust

Our kids are so malnourished too. That has a HUGE impact on mental health.

When my brother was 16 in 1976, my Mom gave him her 1972 Impala with automatic transmission. He wanted a standard shift so he and my dad went to a junkyard and bought a transmission from a wrecked Impala. Brothet and his friends welded an engine hoist from scrap metal with minimal supervision by Dad. They unhooked the engine, hoisted it, swapped out the transmission, dropped the engine and hooked it all back up, and cut a hole in the floor for the stick shift. Dad checked in once in a while but brother and his friends basically did it all themselves. Brother drove that car for 5 more years. Can you even imagine parents of a 16 year old allowing this nowadays? Brother became a very successful electrician, made more $$ than his friends that had masters degrees, invested wisely and retired at 60 with a higher income than when he was working. As for me, Mom taught me to sew when I was 7. I was sewing my wardrobe when i was 12, making dinner so it would be ready when Mom got home from work at 11. My brother and I both were mowing the acerage on a tractor starting at 9, along with trimming along the house with a push mover that didn't have safety stop. I raised my kids losely. They're all successful and independent young adults now. We've robbed kids of competence.

I'm 27, gen z and when I was in middle school, around 11 years old, I was experiencing severe emotions, I was feeling suicidal and my classmates were bullying me because I couldn't act normal in school. So my mom came to the school and said "DISCIPLINE THESE BULLIES!" multiple times, and never once did my teachers discipline the students who were harassing me. I saw teachers watching the bullying happening and then looking away when I looked into their eyes for help. It was pathetic and as most of us girls know, puberty is really really hard and it's a very vulnerable time where kids need to protected to a certain extent or else they could go down some bad paths. My mom ended up pulling me out of school and then she home schooled me for grade 8 and I honestly credit that move with helping me recover from my severe depression and anxiety. She was nurturing but also very strong on the point that being 11-12 is really hard emotionally and that she felt the same way when she was a kid. She said it would pass and I would be stronger for dealing with these emotions.When I went to high school, my peers thought I was gay because of how I dressed and acted but I was just a tomboy who liked to play video games and I didn't like to dress in girly clothes. I wasn't trans, I just despised that society told me I needed to act feminine (that's not the case now, I dress and act a healthy level of feminine). I'm just imagining this same scenario but instead my mom was advised to bring me to therapy. Without a doubt, I would tell a therapist that I don't like girl things and I relate more to boys, and they'd probably suggest to me that I might be trans. I definitely could've been led down that path because I truly didn't relate to girls and I felt very uncomfortable doing girly things. It's just so wrong and I would hate it if I was trans now. I might've been labelled with autism and ADHD, too and felt tied to those identities.

You are bang on. My 11 year old goes to therapy because we had a family tragedy where our family was murdered. During a session, the therapist told me, in front of her, that she should be allowed to have tic toc and that I'm the one with the issue when I don't allow it!! It's been a total fight in our house ever since. As though it wasn't hard enough to be a parent.

As a father of a diagnosed autistic child under my wing, I'm wholeheartedly grateful for this conversation. I have been led to believe instilling discipline and temperance is just too harsh for a brain that's wired "differently", but my instincts tell me to keep going and keep trying to push her to do better, to lead her to take accountability for her own mistakes, and to learn from them and see them as an opportunity for growth, rather than a boogieman to be avoided. It isn't always easy and she has an indomitable character, but I know this child has the potential in her to do great things with the right direction, because she's also incredibly smart and determined. I'll be damned if I let my child fall prey to the victimhood culture our current society is trying to force into their minds. Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for articulating what so many parents out there ought to understand about children.

Great conversation. Spot on. My wife is a doctor of clinical psychology, and she is one of the few that see through the bs. She practices very much so the way that you, Dr. Petersen would support. Consequently, her practice is packed, she has almost 100% success in her clients in a relatively short time, and the referrals keep going. She’s on a mission to heal via objective therapeutic intervention - which holds people accountable to the fact that they are (and in many cases the parents) totally in control of the source of their issues. It’s not for everyone. Many can’t face or take responsibility to make it through the screening process. But for those who are ready to be responsible and take action to clear up the forces driving their challenges - they will most undoubtedly succeed with her. She also happens to be a Japanese born North Korean and now American Citizen - so she’s no stranger to adversity, and doesn’t put up with any BS!!

In junior high we had this event called "we day". At one point they had us in smallish groups and had us go around and basically share everything wrong in our life. What happened was a lot of oversharing, people crying, and random peers knowing the deep dark secrets of someone else. Junior high students don't have the capacity to deal with those things, and for those with actual problems I imagine that did nothing to solve anything. When it was my turn, I said, "um I don't have anything to say, my life's really good". Looking back i'm glad I knew even at that young age that what was happening wasn't ok

A REAL relationship with God is the most therapeutic and healing thing we can do for ourselves.

I wish I'd listened to Dr. Peterson when I was younger. I had my fallopian tubes fully removed at 23 (also only 6 months sober from 9 years of alcoholism), and I had absolutely no bloody idea what I was doing. Now at 28, my husband and I are in the process of adopting a teenager. Although I'm blessed to be able to do this, I still grieve that my younger self believed the left-wing idiocy of my doctor, who happily told me that she's "willing to remove the tubes of any woman". Thank you Dr. Peterson for helping me to (eventually) embrace my desire to be a mother. I'm looking forward to seeing you on your tour on 3/24, thank you for coming to Arizona!

"it's run by women with a misplaced maternal instinct" I have never heard words that made more sense... No blame placed, just a gentle narrative that leads to a sensible conclusion. I love these sit downs!

As someone who is currently in my masters program to become a counselor, this is an extremely important topic to touch on. I believe our society has a tendency to over diagnose and pathologize normal human experiences. There’s this great quote “Our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.”