You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 103. Group Chat FINAL.mp3
Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: It's easy to fall into that hopeless mindset, believing that everything is just going to crap, nobody cares, and everybody is just going to affirm drug addicts and genders and delusions and let everybody just, you know, live on the street and, you know, that our world is going to turn into a dystopian nightmare. There is hope. I hope the audience recognizes that too. There's hope. And if you agree with us or recognize that there are people that are there to not affirm dystopia, to not fall into that pit,
SPEAKER_00: You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Welcome back. We are doing another one of those group episodes today, which I announced at the beginning of the year and have done a few of now. It's so good to be able to reconnect with guests who I've had on this show in the past, find out what they've been up to and see what happens when we put our minds together. So today I'm here with Pamela Garfield Yeager, Soad Tabrizi and Michael David Cobb Bowen. I'm going to welcome everyone. Thank you for being here. I'm going to let you kind of go around and remind listeners where they might have heard you before.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Pamela? Hi, so happy to be here again. This is so fun. So yes, my name is Pamela Garfield Yeager. I was on your episode 45, which was a number which was easy for me to remember due to a certain former president. And my episode was called Real Talk with a Truthful Therapist, which is what I'm known as online. the truthful therapist, because I do tell the truth. Not all therapists do that, unfortunately.

Soad Tabrizi: I am Soad Tabrizi. I was on episode 65, Conservative Patients in Therapy, and we discussed basically exactly what the title says, therapists that are more conservative and basically what the world looks like for us being in an industry that's highly progressive left.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Michael David Cobb-Bowen, you call me Mike. I was on episode 16, and that was Wisdom in World Bridging, where I talked about what it's like to cross over philosophies, places to live, and all the ways that you can find ways to accommodate the differences in all of us.

Stephanie Winn: Awesome. It's great to see you all again and tell us what you've been up to. We'll go in the same order. Okay.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Wow. What have I been up to? I've been up to so many things. I think I had just launched my website last time we spoke. On my website, I do consultations for parents that are looking to understand if they need therapy at all or how to find an appropriate therapist that has skills that is not going to be ideologically driven. I do get a lot of gender issues because that is the hot topic. Unfortunately, a lot of families have fallen prey to the gender ideology, and I have a whole online program there, and I'll do those consultations. I also now am about to release a book. which is called A Practical Approach to Gender Distress, Tips and Tools for Families. And it is going to come out March 12th, which in honor of Detrans Awareness Day. So I thought that would be a cool day to release it for everybody to remember in honor of all the detransitioners. And yeah, so it's a book that it's written for the normies, I'll say. So if you're an online creature, you probably know most of what I wrote about, but it also has my clinical background expertise set. quite frankly, wasn't focused on gender, but just was focused on teens and families and really the idea is, and if you listen to this podcast, you all know, this is the gender stuff is much about underlying issues, family issues, other things to look out for. So really, how do you talk to your teenager about other issues and maybe address what's happening within your family?

Stephanie Winn: Well, congratulations, Pamela, on your book. That's really exciting. And I think that's a great release date. I will let you know that this episode will be airing after your release date. So if you're listening to this episode, it means Pamela's book is out in the world. Will people be able to find it on Amazon?

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Yeah, it'll be on Amazon. It doesn't have a presale now. But I guess by the time this airs, it'll be out there. Yes. So there'll be an ebook and there'll be a paperback. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Great. So that means that it will go in my bookshop and it'll be in the show notes. So I'll use those Amazon links at some therapist.com slash bookshop. You'll be in the featured section right at the top with all my previous guests. And then we'll have that Amazon link in the show notes as well.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: And so, so, so I had wrote my forward in my book. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Stephanie Winn: How fortuitous that we're all here.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I didn't even, I didn't even know that she has read it and wrote, wrote the forward and it was so beautiful. So

Soad Tabrizi: Sorry, I don't mean to like, steal some of your thunder by speaking but I am going to speak about your book. Your book is amazing. So it's, it's, it was such a quick and easy read. It's not one of those that's uses too much vocabulary that you have to have a dictionary sitting next to you in order to understand it. It's not like that at all. It's just it's a simple read to help people really truly understand a how to help your teenage kid who is maybe going through some gender confusion. And as a therapist, it was wonderful to read because it provided me the backup that I needed to help the kids and the parents because it has some studies and research in there, of course. And then just even kids who are confused, they can understand why they're confused. Pamela does a great job in explaining, well, these are the reasons why you're probably confused. This is what probably happened to you. So overall, it's an amazing book. I was honored to write the foreword and I'm very excited to be able to give it to my clients myself. So good job, Pamela.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you so much for that endorsement. So besides writing the foreword to Pamela's book, anything else you've been up to? Yeah.

Soad Tabrizi: So I actually did, I think after our episode or maybe during, I can't remember, I'm sorry, but I published a journal. So it was a journal that's on Amazon. It's called It's Me and it's a 30 day guided journal. For anyone who wants to basically start journaling and don't know how because I get that question often in my sessions I don't know how to begin I don't know what to journal about well this 30 day journal gives you a prompt every day for 30 days, just to get you to get into the habit of journaling, and then you're on your own after that. It's more geared towards finding out what your core beliefs and values are so that you can kind of learn from that and not walk in contradiction to those core beliefs and values because a lot of times that's what we do. So that's the main theme of the journal. I've also created two directories actually. I have one directory that is called conservativecounselors.com and it's a directory for all conservative therapists, counselors in general, so psychologists, LCSWs, which are social workers. marriage and family therapists, and coaches and counselors. They showcase their practices on that directory. And whoever's looking for more affirming reality therapists, that's where they can go to find a therapist to help them so that they're not indoctrinated by a lot of the progressive left ideologies. And then the second directory that I have is called Simply Well, simply with an I at the end instead of the Y. SimplyWell is a directory for holistic practitioners. So if you're a holistic practitioner, you can actually get on that directory and or if you're a patient looking for a holistic practitioner, that's where you would go to find one.

Stephanie Winn: Those are the things that I've been up to. That's really exciting. Those are great resources to know about. When you say holistic practitioners, is there any sort of fundamental set of values that practitioners are committed to in your directory?

Soad Tabrizi: Their core belief and idea is that our bodies do have the capability of being able to naturally heal ourselves. We're not against or opposed to pharmaceuticals, but we tend to steer more towards natural and holistic ways of approaching your health. And then if we need some other help and resource from the pharmacology kind of industry, sure, we'll be okay with that. But the idea and the premise is that we know that our bodies are capable of taking care of themselves if our bodies are healthy enough to do so. And the goal of a holistic practitioner is to get your body back to its original state so that you can start taking care of yourself on your own without having to go to today's pharmacies to get medicine and stuff. So that's generally what the holistic practitioners are.

Stephanie Winn: That's great. And I'm so happy for you about your journal as well. I have not yet included that in my bookshop. So I need to do so. So I'll put that in the show notes, and in my bookshop as well. And I can already think of someone who might benefit from that journal. It sounds really good. Michael, what have you been up to?

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Like usual, I'm in over my head in lots of things. That's what I get from being a big brother and making promises and trying to keep them all. So I am a co-founder of a nonprofit called the Foundation for Free Black Thought. I serve as vice president on the board. And Free Black Thought is about black diversity. It's like saying 46 million Americans don't think the same way. And too often, we're very reductive in our describing of race. I'm kind of a race abolitionist myself, and I think we've wed race to too many ideas and concepts. And we think this race owns this, this race owns that. It's very difficult, especially when you're talking about what we all commonly know as Black culture. But there's progress to be made. People understand that the Black community is not monolithic. So we have lots of resources. We have a fairly good following online. One of the things we started last year is our podcast. So the Free Black Thought podcast is, I'm understanding it's in the top 10% of podcasts in terms of the number of people that we do interview. There's been about two dozen men and women that we've done. We also have the Substack, which is FreeBlackThought at Substack.com. We have the compendium for Free Black Thought, which is a library of a resource of over 600 writers on every side of every topic. So we can talk about controversies within African America, past and present. And we just put out newsletter number five, which features some of the things from our personal perspectives. One of the things that's new this season of the podcast is one with myself and Wink Twyman. It's called Bowen and Twyman. And we are just kind of a counterpoint to the over-serious stuff. We're older gentlemen who've seen a lot. And it's fun. It's interesting. People have even said it's wise. So look for that at Free Black Thought. On my own, I've always been a writer, an essayist, a critic. So one of my essays will be included in the next version of a publication of the Woodson Center called Red, White, and Black. Volume one is already on Amazon. Volume two will be available shortly. So you can probably pre-order it. I also have three substacks of my own because I like to put my interests in buckets. I generally talk to multiple different audiences, so I want to make sure I give my audiences what they want. My primary one is stoic observations, which is how I deal with everything as a practicing stoic and be reasonable. That comes from my growth out of the intellectual dark web and being something of a contrarian. used to be in right politics. The second one is new. It's called Human Race Man, and it's basically about personal deracination. And it's about the mental health benefits that you can get by stopping thinking about people in racial terms or ethnic terms. And one of the things I want to take up is what does it mean now that everybody's getting genetic tested? I just took mine and found out that I'm 17% French. So does that change who I am? I don't know. And the third one is my newest project. And that one is where I take my professional stuff in data science and data engineering and steam in general. That one's called Tessellations. And basically I'm doing a lot of mentoring here in Los Angeles County. And I'm very interested into the educational integrity of STEAM with some emphasis on the arts that I, as an affluent parent, was able to get my kids, but I see how other kids are kind of stuck without an arts education. And so that is a passion that might end up taking over my life. We'll see. But yeah, it keeps me busy and I love doing all of that work.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Wow. I only just wrote a book.

Stephanie Winn: You did like a million things. Well, I'm just, I'm having the same reaction. You are Pamela, just to all of you, like just the intellectual caliber of the people I have on this podcast. And the fact that it's been going long enough as we're, you know, somewhere in the ballpark of a hundred episodes ish now. And I've met all these people and each of them just have such rich intellectual lives and contributions to their community. And part of me is like, what the heck am I doing? talking to more than one person at a time with the level of intellectual caliber that these people are at, because we're just going to have so many ideas branching out. I have no idea where to start.

Soad Tabrizi: I mean, like, you're too good for my ego. I really appreciate it.

Stephanie Winn: I'm just, I'm just buttering you all up so that I can, you know, have the social capital to challenge you later when I disagree with you on something. But I mean, there's so many places to start. Like, I want to ask more about Pamela's book. I also want to know, you know, Michael, the things you said just intrigued me with your thoughts on what's happening in the field of STEAM right now. And, and I want to ask, like, what are the mental health benefits of de-racializing your mindset? I mean, there's just so many places to start. I like that topic.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I want to talk about that more. I would love to discuss that. I mean, I think that's a great idea. It's strange to even, we didn't used to have to even think, to me, I guess, I didn't think about that so much when I was a younger person, I'd say in the 80s and 90s, as we are thinking about it today because of the way our culture has shifted so much to divide people by race and talk about race and equity and privilege, not privilege, you know, all the critical race theory things. But in general, yeah, so it was always there. We can't deny that, but it's just more extreme now. But yeah, I want to hear more from Michael about that.

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Michael David Cobb Bowen: I think the most important thing to recognize is that everybody agrees that race is a social construction. It's a social construct. It's something that we inherit from our society. And the question then becomes, how serious do you take that inheritance? The American history, things that happen that we have no control over, okay, so there's a stoic angle, gives us a racial identity. So how seriously do we take that? Do we, when we hear a call, do we necessarily respond? And is it healthy to do so? I give a perfect example, I think. I just read about Aaron Magruder, who wrote The Boondocks. And one of his characters says, you know, something that came in a Public Enemy video like 30 years ago. My people have been persecuted. I got a right to be hostile. So if that's your attitude, if you feel like you have some kind of obligation to be hostile in society, what good does that do you? Is it really helpful to be? And I think it substitutes a political standpoint in dealing with people rather than a social one. If you have to negotiate all of your relationships with everybody, and then you racialize everybody, then you come with these certain assumptions that your hostility is going to get you something, and it's going to get you something as a black person. So it's, you know, I think the crisis that we see in what's called the, oh geez, I forget now, It's like the complaint studies. Everyone comes to the table with, these are my complaints, and you have to study my complaints, and only then will America be better. And it's like, if you grew up long enough ago, you'd say, you know, people don't need college courses to make friends across boundaries. You know, it's happened naturally.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: And now we're going away from

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Yeah, it does. It does make it worse. Because, you know, there's some inherent clumsiness in social science anyway, because you're abstracting people away from who they are. You're not necessarily taking their psyche into consideration. And then we see the same thing with gender now. It's like you are this kind of person. So therefore, in order to be successful in society, you have to make these kinds of moves. And that kind of prescription stuff almost always goes wrong. And if we adopt that identity, whether it's hostility or obsequiousness, we are still damaging ourselves for things that have nothing to do with who we actually are. So Free Black Thought is trying to let people be themselves. trying to take advantage of this individualistic culture that we have so we can have self-possession and self-agency. And I think that's always good in terms of mental health. And so it's not a Black problem that nobody else can understand. It's a psychological problem that we all share. So let's get healthy about it, shall we?

Soad Tabrizi: I love that. That was, if you don't mind, I'm going to speak a little to my own experience in regards to that. I'm obviously not Black, but I am of Middle Eastern culture. And I grew up in, in a town that's that was predominantly just white. And I went to high school with that was, you know, everyone was well off. We had to pay tuition to go to the school. So everyone was pretty well off. And in this high school, and I went into high school in the 90s, early, early 90s, actually 1990s when I started high school. So we were taught in high school that if you're not white, you're other. And not by the whites. They didn't care. It was by the other cultures that cared. You don't hang out with the whites because you're not white. We're other. And it was during high school that I started recognizing and knowing, oh, I'm something else. Prior to that, I didn't know anything. And it was this social idea that if we're not white, we're other, and we hang out over here, we dress like this, we do this, this is what we do. And that became my identity. I'm no longer friends with my white friends because I'm supposed to be this other group, this other ethnicity. And most of the people in that group were either Middle Eastern, some Blacks, some Filipinos, Asian cultures, but pretty much no whites. And again, not done by any of the white people. They didn't care. It was us that did this to us. And I remember one year, I think it was towards the end of high school, that I decided that I wasn't going to dress like them because I really wanted to just wear what I wanted to wear. I wanted to have that free thought that you talk about. So I did. I wore what I wanted to wear to school. And the first thing that one of my friends from that group said was, oh, my God, you're a sellout. And I remember that hitting my soul, like, what am I selling out? I literally just dressed differently. I'm still the exact same person. I don't even get it. It wasn't until later years that I was able to remove myself from thinking that white people are the enemy, white people are bad, white people don't like me because of what I am. And again, never from anything the whites ever did to me, never. But it was just the psychological banter and the continuation of it being in my brain over and over again from the culture that I was just engulfed in that told me they're bad. So therefore we are different. We are not good. We're different. They're great, they're wonderful, but we can never be them. We're just different. And I hated that. And I think it wasn't until maybe my late 20s, early 30s, that I was able to actually fully break free from that thought. And it's 100% a psychological warfare. It is nothing else. It is not based on reality. It is not based on my experience against white people. It was just something that was taught to me at a very young age that I have to be this. So that's what I wanted to share on that one.

Stephanie Winn: So, Ed, what you were just saying reminded me of my experience hearing about conservatives from liberals, like being taught what to think about conservatives, being taught what Republicans think. But none of it was coming from the mouths of conservatives, Republicans. It was coming from the mouths of liberal Democrats. And, you know, it wasn't until my 30s that I was like, wait a minute. Do I actually know what conservatives think? I mean, of course, being a therapist along the way, you have conservative clients, you get a little exposure, but then there's a moment where the whole thing sort of falls apart and you're like, wait, this is not a direct experience that I'm having.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I was just reflecting on, so I'm a social worker from New York City. I started out my career working in Harlem and in the South Bronx. And you can see the color of my skin if you're on YouTube. I have light skin. I'm, I don't know how you'd categorize me, either white or Jewish or both. I don't even know. Like you said, it's a social construct, right? But I'm not black. And I remember visiting the, the projects for several years and having more of a liberal mindset kind of like, well, here I am helping these poor people in this poor neighborhood. I'm, you know, do my best. I have much respect. I never looked at them as victims per se, but at the same time, they had a chip on their shoulders and then I was worried about the chip. So there was this, you know, a little bit of a tension. And I remember with experience, getting more used to that dynamic and letting go of that chip and just saying, you know what, I'm Pam and I'm here to help you as a human being. And I remember engaging them and walking through the neighborhoods. And honestly, I remember like saying hello to the drug dealers. It was right when like Nokia phones were popular and, you know, the drug dealers would like call and be like, hey, she's cool with the kid. She helps our neighborhood. Very different world. So just that was in the 90s. But there was certainly a phase where it took a little time to earn their trust. And not just because I'm a social worker, there's that piece, but I think it really had a lot to do with the color of my skin. And it's just such a shame because in the end, I formed some really strong bonds with some of those clients. In fact, some of them became members of the board or whatever of the agency I was working for. So I even kept in touch with them beyond being clients for a long time, I wasn't really doing therapy. So it was not the same as regular therapy where you don't stay in touch with their clients, but they were a part of this agency. So it became part of this community. So there wasn't that divide with race, but there certainly was something to overcome because of that race. And it really is kind of a shame. And I think nowadays, if I were to do this now, I don't know if we would overcome that quite as easily as we did back in 1997.

Soad Tabrizi: So Michael, I was listening to your podcast with Stephanie earlier, and you had said something that your grandmother had taught you that some people just stay mad to stay mad. And and I'm wondering if if that influenced you in any which way to know, like, I, I'm, I'm making a conscious choice in my, in my views and my, my ideologies. And, and if I am going to choose to be angry about something just to be angry about it, that's not the person I want to be. Like, did, did that affect you in any which way growing up or did you not understand it until you became an adult?

Michael David Cobb Bowen: I come from one of those—I'm very fortunate to have a fairly stupendous family. It's one that I think is, by Black American standards, fairly mobile. My mother is from New Orleans. She's Catholic. Well, she's an ex-Catholic, like many ex-Catholics. My dad is from New Haven, Connecticut. Episcopalian. My grandfather on my father's side was in the Connecticut State Guard, so he had a state-issued pistol right over at the end of World War II. On my mother's side, my grandmother was a master fabric cutter for the company that invented the seersucker suits. So we've had skills and the ability to travel around. My wife is from Michigan, My son was born in Brooklyn. My daughters were born in Atlanta. And I basically got family all over the place, including South Dakota and Florida. And so I always had the ability to reject racial stereotypes because it's like, well, I don't have a single parent family. I have all these cousins. I have all these aunts and uncles. I'm part of that. You know, sometimes I look at There's a new movie on Netflix or a series called The Brother's Son, where you have this very traditional family and you don't go against the family. And the family is a central part of your first education. So I always had that big family around me. I didn't have to go to school to a grievance studies class and say, this is what it means to be black. It was like, I know, I know what it is. In fact, my parents were there at the first Kwanzaa. So I know the guys who founded Kwanzaa. My dad was one of the Watts poets. So I had this easy, it was easy for me to be Black. And I'm like, okay, so I'm Black. So what? What kind? What am I going to do now? And, and there's this kind of, I don't know, you might even call it black privilege, where you say, okay, I'm black, and I have the privilege to speak for all kinds of black folks. So you're going to do what I say. And there's an industry in this. It's been around forever. So I was fortunate to have good parents, good grandparents. Both my parents were social workers. So they're helping other parents be good parents. It's like having a parent that's a teacher in elementary school. You already know what to do because you do it at home. So yeah, I had that good fortune. And a lot of people just depend on unreliable sources, and they're not taking necessarily responsibility because it's easy to fall behind a stereotype. I don't know if any of you have heard of a guy named Tajfel, T-A-J-F-E-L. I never hear his, but he, in the 70s, was the guy who basically came up with the theory behind groupthink. And so I can now understand why groupthink is so powerful, because Tajfel proved that it could be over any difference, anything. I could just say, all right, pick up your pencils, and whoever picks up their pencil in 30 seconds or an odd second, they go to that side of the room. And he split up a classroom of, you know, same public school boys in England. So they all pretty much had the same background and he could get them to fight against each other. So you can come up with kind of any kind of social construction and then retain a kind of groupthink that puts people at odds. And I'm sure you guys have discovered this with Republicans and Democrats. who aren't the same people they were, you know, when we grew up. There's nobody like Paul Simon anymore as a Democrat, you know, taken over by progressives. So that's kind of our weakness. It's kind of our Achilles heel. We're social creatures and we need to bond with people, but we can bond over some trivially and bad stuff. So that's the way I see it. Psychologically, it helps a lot.

Stephanie Winn: There's something I want to kind of put my finger on that I think we're all concerned about. And I think it has to do with personality development, the development of character. You know, Michael, earlier when you were speaking and you talked about the grievance and the, well, I'm entitled to have a bad attitude because of what happened to my people or whatever, that sort of attitude. You know, I think just knowing us, you know, all three of you, I think what we're really concerned about, if I may speak, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself, It's about how these mentalities and behaviors and cultural trends interfere with the development of a personality of a character that can actually get you through life successfully. And, you know, I think that's coming from experience, just life experience. You know, those of us who are mental health professionals here have seen the real cost that it takes, the toll it takes on people down the line and their families, their health, their finances, and the public welfare, really, to allow bad ideas to fester, to allow unhelpful attitudes to become a part of your personality over time, to rely on them as your means of getting through the world. You know, we have a term for that in psychology, it's called personality disorders, and they're what you don't want, right? And so we've seen how not cute it is When you're 30, 40, 50, 60 years old, and your whole way of getting through life is to blame other people and exploit and manipulate and take what you can get for yourself and not care about the consequences on other people. We've seen how ugly and nasty that can get. And so we observe these trends that are popular amongst the youth and the sort of the lightheartedness and the glibness with which they're embracing these unhelpful attitudes. And I suspect that I'm not alone in this group when I say that, you know, the anxiety that it gives me to see that because we know where it can lead and how dangerous and destructive it is and how little tolerance other people have for that once you're past a certain age and how the consequences fall on you.

Soad Tabrizi: And I think about that often, Stephanie, where I'm like, I don't necessarily know if I'm one of the lucky ones. I don't know if that's the right word. It's a lack of a better word, I guess. But I got lucky I got out of that mentality. I got lucky that I see things in a different way than a lot of progressives do. And I worry, like, OK, how many other lucky people are there going to be from this generation that's learning? that you can be any gender that you want at any age you want, including at birth. When will they wake up from that, if at all, and be able to say, oh my God, what have we done to our generation? And how are we going to now fix it? It is frightening. It's a lot of work. We're already behind. We're already going to have to clean this up. We know that. And what else is going to happen between now and cleaning up this the ideology about gender stuff, what else is going to happen in there? What other social contagions are going to happen that we're going to have to clean up after this gender confusion? There's a lot of fear involved. And literally, I sometimes say it out loud, I don't know how we're going to do this without God in this, because it's so sometimes overwhelming to think that this is on us to clean up because it's a lot to clean up.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I was listening to Michael and when you were talking about the people with the anger or the, you know, kind of get through things with that mentality. I mean, I was thinking about, honestly, some of my background and some of my family that tiptoe, sadly, this sounds awful, but I've watched certain family members tiptoe around Black people because they don't want to appear racist. They want to be so superior, but then they, in my opinion, they look like idiots. And sadly, what's happening is I see it as this divide and conquer tactic that we're all walking on eggshells around each other because of this, like, or that we want to look a certain way that we're tolerant or we're inclusive, or at least all these, honestly, I believe very stupid words that just make certain people feel good. And for me, it just makes me uncomfortable. I've rejected all of that. So I'm tired of it. I've let it go. Just like you said in the beginning, I think looking at people through race is just destructive. I don't do it. Maybe I did it a little when I was younger as a social worker, sociology major. I was taught about my white privilege and I did think that I had some of that and I'm ashamed of believing that. I'm ashamed of thinking I had some kind of white guilt that I should have worked through, which is really stupid. And I didn't believe it as literally, I think, as it's taught today, you know, that like, no matter what context people are in, there's oppressed and oppressors. I didn't believe it to that level. But once they took it to that absurdity, I realized believing even a little bit of that, it was all a lie. Everything was a lie. There's no such thing as systemic racism. All the data shows that there are an equal amount of, like, Black people are not shot by police more than other races. These are all the lies that were told over and over again, that if you're supposedly a good liberal and a good progressive, that you concede to those things because you care. And I think those attitudes, I think that really hurts our relationships. It hurts our society. I think it hurts all of us. It hurts our connections. And especially it hurts children who are being taught this and can't connect with their classmates and who could potentially be their best friend. because they have to worry about what they're saying to each other and that they're going to get in trouble if they say the wrong thing. I mean, how are we supposed to connect in this kind of environment? It's just ludicrous.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: That's a great observation. Thanks, Pamela. Well, the first thing I wanted to say is I was very lucky to have read a book by Meg Meeker, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters. She was conservative, but I didn't care about that because she was bringing a clinical information to this, you know, this is this is what happens if you don't do this correctly, you know. And and as soon as you started talking about borderline personality disorder, which I went to a NAMI class and. How come we don't talk about that, even in pop psychology, we talk about people who are narcissistic. But then we give over to certain cultures or subcultures. Well, it's OK, because we know that anybody who is in this genre of death metal, there's something borderline personality wrong with them. But we kind of, well, it's not that bad. But if it's this gangster hip hop, I don't even know how to go there, because I shield myself away from that stuff. But you can really say that is a culture of borderline personality disorders, and these are the predictable dysfunctions that are going to come from that. And every time people try to racialize those results, I'm like, why aren't you just saying, you know, that person is crazy? I mean, just bluntly. And then we accept that they're crazy. Well, you know, that's how we do. And that's the kind of thing that I wish people with your background had more visibility so they could say, okay, this person is just crazy. This person could benefit by doing X, Y, and Z, and then you would find out that it's not because they grew up in the fifth ward of Houston. People escape the dangers of the Fifth Ward of Houston all the time. You get actually creative people out of there, but because they're willing to change and they work on themselves.

Soad Tabrizi: You should follow my Twitter more often. I'm calling people crazy left and right all day every day. I will survive. And I agree with you. We have to call a spade a spade. Enough of this tippy-toeing around, caring about everyone's emotions, about how they're going to feel if I call you bonafide crazy. If you're acting whack, you're whack. Stop acting that way. And it has nothing to do with your race. You're just acting a fool, and you've got to quit it. And if it happens to be that you're a Black woman with borderline, then it just happens to be. But there's plenty of Asians that are borderline. My God, there are Persians galore that are borderline. So it's not a race thing, but we do need to be comfortable in saying, hey, you're not acting right. And you got to own that. You got to stop blaming the white man because of how you're acting. That's silly. Nothing is going to get resolved by you pointing the finger at somebody else. Let's look at you. Let's fix you and let's see how you can live in a world with a bunch of white dudes that perhaps might be narcissistic. Fine, but you got to figure that out. And we don't do that enough as therapists, 100%. I can say us three therapists do for sure, but not most of us.

Stephanie Winn: I think a better term for a mental health professional is sanity specialist. I like that. You guys are reminding me of this video that I saw the other day. It was this woman had set up her camera to film herself having a rage fit.

SPEAKER_00: I saw that. Oh, you saw that. I saw that.

Stephanie Winn: So it's this young woman. I'm just going to describe it for people who haven't seen it. There's already holes in her closet door. And then she films herself punching and kicking more holes in her closet door. And the caption on this video, I don't know if it was originally on TikTok or what was something like what it's like living with ADHD and BPD, BPD meaning borderline personality disorder. And I thought, gosh, that's a dangerous message to send because you know, there are going to be some impressionable people who are like, Oh, I have ADHD. I have BPD. I guess I can't control my emotions either time to punch a hole in the wall. And it's like, no, no, you can absolutely live with and recover from ADHD and BPD without punching any holes in walls. It just means you have to work harder at emotion regulation, not to hurt yourselves and other people. But I think what we're not talking about in society is, you know, I think it's socially acceptable to say, This person needs help under certain conditions. It's okay to say that person needs help. But what we're not saying often is enough, enough. In addition to that is this person should not be influencing other people. They're not a good influence. And that is something that 20, 30 years ago, parents were comfortable saying to their children that, you know, in terms of pure influence, but now we have all these influencers, we have, you know, anybody can get on camera and influence other people. And we have a lot of really unwell people who frankly, Someone needs to, as was said earlier, call a spade a spade and say, this person's not a good influence and you shouldn't be looking to them. And, you know, I'm not, I'm anti-censorship. I don't believe in censorship, but I, you know, I think the responsible thing to do in some cases, if you're close enough to someone is, is like, can you somehow take away their ability to influence other people?

Soad Tabrizi: Pamela, you should do a remix of that as a reel and do like what it's really like to have ADHD and BPD and just be sitting there having coffee Or you know what would actually, if I can build on that idea, would be

Stephanie Winn: to narrate the inner dialogue of someone who does have BPD who is, let's say, tempted to punch a hole in the wall because they just felt some rejection or abandonment, let's say. But what is the mindful inner dialogue that that person has learned to do to self-soothe so that they can put some distance between their emotions and their impulses?

Michael David Cobb Bowen: That's funny. The first thing that comes to mind is Eminem lyrics. I'm sorry, mama. I didn't mean to hurt you. But tonight I'm cleaning up my closet. Right? You got to do that. You got to say, look, I was whack. I had these issues. Right? Or even Andre 3000. I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson, but I'm for real. I never meant to make your daughter cry, but I got problems. Right? And those kinds of messages that start with an apology says, I was bad, but I could be better. Please give me a chance. Let me prove myself. That's what we need. and people should know that they have second chances.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: That video is interesting too because it's a video as you described of a woman who clearly set up a camera. to then go destroy her closet. So there's something more to that. That wasn't her having an impulsive, I just want to destroy something. That was about her wanting to get attention, which is what our society is about now, and having this great excuse for being destructive, these labels. So there's so many layers to that, which is beyond someone who's just really seriously having struggling with impulse control. I don't think that was what was going on in that video because if that were the case, she wouldn't have set up her phone before she started hitting the closet, right? And also, usually, in the past, we felt some shame about that and we wouldn't post it and boast about it. She should feel some shame about destroying a closet that I think someone noted was a place that she rented and doesn't own. So the fact that we don't have any shame about destroying property and wanting to use labels and set up our camera and create a viral TikTok video with captions with our mental health labels, it's a whole extra label of crazy, as we said earlier, to just call a spade a spade. That is really a sad state of affairs to, I think really a sad testament to our culture.

Soad Tabrizi: Yeah, and you said the right word shame, like we have made it as a culture that we're not allowed to feel shame anymore, like shame on us for giving shame or feeling shame or causing shame on someone else. Shame, just like anger and anxiety, and those, those negative feelings and emotions that we have that that don't feel good, are actually great Emotions that help us change and shift who we are. They're warning signs for us. They're there for a reason. And this culture that we've created is, you're not allowed to feel shame. Don't make them feel shame. Don't shame them. Stop shaming them. But what they're doing is a little crazy. And there needs to be a level of shame in order to get them to shift, to just try something different.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: And it's bad for them. It's harmful for them. Like, it's not just about, like, just feeling good or bad or whatever, but it's about helping somebody make better choices so that they could live a better life. I mean, her life is about getting likes and clicks for destroying a closet on TikTok. Like, that doesn't sound like a very fulfilling life to be reinforcing that. Like, I think that's the reason we would want to. Shame or or just say that this isn't something that I think is a good idea.

Stephanie Winn: And it's like I was saying earlier about personality development. The woman in the video looks no older than 25 to me. It can feel cute now, right? But what kind of life, as you're saying, is she going to live if this is the standard that she holds herself to? And it reminds me of this very cynical view in the mental health profession and in the culture at large that I think all three or all four of us have criticized, which is the idea that to have compassion for someone or to respect or care for them has to mean that you agree with them. I think that's cynical. I think that's setting the bar really low and it's not believing in people's higher potential. Speaking of things that have gone viral on the internet, have you guys seen this guy who's been criticizing mental health professionals for labeling delusional beliefs as delusional? Have you guys seen this one? Can you repeat that again, Stephanie? I'm sorry. There's this guy, he's, I guess, a writer and a patient, he's not a professional in the mental health field, but he's been getting a lot of attention on x lately, for his idea that mental health providers should not label delusional beliefs as delusional, that it is condescending to do so that that people who have what we would call delusional beliefs, that they just have, you know, unconventional beliefs or different ways of perceiving you know it's sort of this like magical thing thing that maybe they're on to something so I was like well have you worked in the field what what would you say we should what what term should we use to describe if we have a patient who believes sincerely that they are the second coming of Jesus or that the CIA is after them like you know, and, and I found myself getting into this back and forth with him, because I think his beliefs are really cynical. I think it's cynical. And and it's also lacking in compassion to fail to recognize how much psychotic people are actually suffering. I mean, those of us who have encountered true psychosis, you know, I have an a late on she's deceased now. who had schizoaffective disorder for my whole life. And then I've worked with people with schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia, and their lives are full of suffering. You know, they're not able to function and take care of themselves. What to speak of pursuing goals when it comes to education, career, hobbies, relationships, they're not able to have functional lives. And it's because they're busy, you know, interacting with the voices in their head and their delusional beliefs, like they're unable to wake up from a dream. That's actually what's happening in their brain. There's an abundance of delta waves. It's like their brains are dreaming. And to romanticize that to say, oh, these people have these this special knowledge. I can remember a time, I'll admit that I thought a little bit that way, too. And but it's actually not romantic at all. And I think it's really irresponsible. to, you know, to actually have such a cynical view of mental health providers who are trying to help by saying that they're being condescending or patronizing. And I found myself saying things to him like, you know, your worldview as it as it stands now, is paranoid, it takes all these well meaning skilled therapists who you're disagreeing with, and frames them as some kind of villains for asserting the belief that their grasp on reality is indeed better than someone else's grasp on reality. That was the idea he was And I'm thinking, you know, I would not challenge the idea that someone else's grasp on a heavy weight is stronger than mine. I can't lift very much weight. I have no problem admitting that someone objectively is better than me at a lot of other things. Why is it not okay to say I objectively have a better grasp on reality than someone who thinks they are the second coming of Jesus? Whether you're a long time or first time listener of the podcast, Odds are you're just as concerned as I am about the gender ideology crisis that's affecting today's youth. What you may not be as aware of is another insidious practice occurring in med school classrooms, practitioners' offices, and hospitals alike. The discriminatory practices that focus on race instead of qualifications of healthcare providers. These universities, associations, and sometimes even states are breaking federal laws in their racially discriminatory practices. And one group is holding them accountable. Do no harm. Do No Harm's membership-based organization is fighting so that patients get the best quality service, and so that today's med students succeed as tomorrow's medical providers. If you're a medical provider, I encourage you to join Do No Harm today. Learn more and sign up at donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist. That's donoharmmedicine.org slash sometherapist.

Soad Tabrizi: And you're absolutely right about that, Stephanie. We have lost The gift of being able to look at someone and say, God, there's so much better than me at so-and-so. There's so much, God, there's so brilliant at that. And I'm not like we're, we're unable to do that now as a society. to give praise to people who actually know how to do something better than you. And instead, what we've done is become the victim, that whole victimhood mentality. I am a victim because I don't have what they have. Therefore, I'm going to punish them for having what I don't have. It's unfair. They're privileged. It's not right. And I should be able to have that. And since I don't,

Stephanie Winn: And we miss out on so much when we deprive ourselves of that. So for example, I am really good, I would say above average, at taking ideas in my head and turning them into words. I am not good at all at taking ideas in my head and turning them into images. I can describe an image with words, but I cannot paint or draw for the life of me. That is a skill that I am so grateful other people have. If other people didn't have it, I would not be able to surround myself with beautiful things. I love to surround myself with beautiful things. I could never have created this, this thing behind me that I'm pointing to for those who are just listening. So, I mean, we get to live in a better world, subjectively experience a better world when we can say, wow, I could never have done that. Isn't that amazing? I get to benefit from living in a world where someone has that skill and I don't. And to think that anyone else being good at something is an affront to you is just such a narcissistic belief and it creates such an impoverished and sad world to live in.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Yeah. Jealousy really gets in the way. and that we can't have gratitude and appreciation. But back to what you were saying before, you're basically saying, I don't know the tweet, but it sounds like that person is kind of doing another form of affirming therapy. So they want to affirm these delusions. And that is really dangerous, especially if someone is having dangerous delusions or if it leads them to do things in their life that are dangerous. And I actually, I had a horrible situation in my private practice years ago where I did have a patient who became delusional after smoking too much weed. And then because of his delusions, he ended up getting into an altercation with the police. And it was, I don't even want to say. it had a tragic ending. And I just, I just think about how, and he wasn't really saying anything dangerous in the moment, but the fact that he was having these delusions, if it still had a tragic ending, but if I had just said like, Oh, that's great. Or Oh, you're, you're right. Like, all these people are after you, you know, we got to go do something. Let's investigate that. Like I would have just, I would have just increased his anxiety even more. You can't just affirm someone's delusions when you know that they're not true. I mean, maybe this guy is thinking, well, maybe there's something that seems outlandish, but it could be true. We always watch those movies where we're in on the main character that knows that there's something crazy, but it really is true. But that's the movies, that's not real life.

Soad Tabrizi: We're dangerously getting close to a place where we're basically going to then affirm a schizophrenic listening and hearing their voices or seeing people in the room. That's exactly what it sounds like. That's where we're going. We're going to that area.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Yeah, the key word there is lived experience. This is my lived experience. And nobody has a right to tell me that my lived experience is not correct. I hate that place. Because every time I encounter somebody with blonde hair, I know that they're out to get me. Or anytime I see a brick building, I know there's systemic racism happening in that building. Now, I'm never going to go inside and check it out because I'm fearful. It's very strange. It's interesting to see, as a parent, my teenage daughters when they started going to high school, they found out how all these girls would introduce themselves in terms of their weakness. They're just like kind of bragging, you know, I could never do this, or I could never do that, and I can't run faster. And it was just a weird kind of insinuation that was kind of friendship, but it was also passive aggressive. in a weird kind of way. And I just said, you know, you guys go out and excel at what you want to excel. And don't worry about that. But I wonder, especially here in California, how Mental health becomes a stalking horse for other kinds of things that take parents away from their children, takes that conversation out of the home, takes other ways of doing it, and they kind of institutionalize it in the public school. Your parents don't have any rights. We're the professionals where they're actually not mental health professionals, but they use that to get, you know, And that gets it to gender dysphoria and all that kind of stuff.

Stephanie Winn: You know what, Michael, that is the perfect segue to Pamela's book.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Take it, Pamela. So I just moved out of California, but I have been living in California since 2003 in the Bay Area of California. And I was a school counselor there. And I think I did some good work there as a school counselor. I actually supervised a team on school on schools, but we struggle to do good work. And that was back in 2016 when there wasn't this push to divide families. But even so, the model of school counseling is really not very effective. I would find all the time that the kids would come and we would work with them. Maybe we'd placate them for an hour, but because we really couldn't reach the families, even when we tried, it wasn't effective. We wanted to reach the families. This was at a time when the therapists and the counselors wanted to or made an attempt. Now they don't want to, as you just said. Now the goal, it seems, is to divide these families and to impose ideology on them to affirm their genders. and to turn the kids against their families, whether that's intentional or not, that is the outcome, very much so. But even before that, the parents would say, hey, school counselor, fix my kid. Now I don't have to drive my kid over to counseling after school and take up after school time, and I don't have to make that effort. So they're not involved in that way too, which I think really just makes a difference. When the parent is not involved in the process, it renders itself almost completely negligent and ineffective. But yeah, so about my book, which is really for parents and families, but like Sowad said, I mean, really anybody could benefit from it, but I guess it's written to them. It really is about empowering parents, which is my message overall, is that please don't believe that a therapist or any expert's going to fix your kid, regardless, even if they're a competent one. You always stay involved. And my book talks a lot about all the corruption that's happening in the mental health field, specifically with gender. I attended a workshop in California in the Silicon Valley area for a camped California Association for Marriage and Family Therapists. And one of the classes there was for parents on how to work with gender diverse children. And what it really was, was a class on how to manipulate parents to affirm their kid's gender. parents who are, most parents, I'd say even those that lean left are usually ambivalent or I mean it depends, there are certain ones that really want their kids to be trans, but let's just say most parents don't and they have questions, they know their kid, they know this is coming from somewhere else or that they know they've had underlying issues and this class actually taught the therapist to believe that the parent is in the wrong for even considering this, that they need to grieve their cis child. And they actually went through the whole Kubler-Ross stages of grief to help the parent grieve. So they use this weird emotional compassion to manipulate them from actually just feeling what they really feel, their gut feeling, which is, no, my kid has some autistic traits or no, my kid has had an eating disorder since she was young and she's always been at odds with her body. So I believe this is related to that or anything, you know, so there's so many scenarios like that. And this workshop taught us therapists that if the parents are not affirming that we should call Child Protective Services. And all of that is really scary. I did, there was one little moment when this I'd say very stupid instructor said, well, sometimes they're attention seeking. And then I was like, raise my hand. And I was like, well, how do you know? How can you tell the difference? Well, I don't want to be a conversion therapist. I said that from the back of the room. And, of course, she had no answer. She went over time. I tried to ask it again. It was funny because there was a woman on the other side of the room who has a trans child, so she was trying to back up the teacher. And they were all talking in circles. They made no sense. And then all of a sudden, she's like, oh, time's up. I have no answer, and I don't know what to say. But we know that these professionals don't have a leg to stand on, but they're so grounded in this Gnostic belief system that they're just stuck and you can't be rational with them. But regular parents, they're not in that belief system, but they're being manipulated by these therapists. who are a lot in the schools, and the school counselors are being trained this. It's all over the place. So yeah, all of this is in my book.

Stephanie Winn: You're very brave for going and putting yourself in that situation, Pamela. I have so little stomach for it at this point. And let's just dissect for a moment what you said about them. Well, that's what you did.

SPEAKER_00: That's how we connected.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I do put myself in crazy situations. That's probably why I'm still sick two years after my first COVID infection, because the amount of stress I've let into my life. But I mean, the whole, you know, applying Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief theory to the idea that you need to grieve the cis child you thought you had in order to accept the trans child that you are now discovering you have. There is so much to that. I just want to dissect that. Isn't that sick? It's sick. I mean, for one, it's like faux compassion, right? Because we know that the parents are treated badly. We know that the parents are gaslit and manipulated and criticized. And so on the one hand, it seems like a welcome relief from that for someone to say, oh, we understand your grieving. We will help you with your grief. But on the other hand, it's not compassionate at all. It's basically telling the parent to give up and accept that your child as you knew them has died, and this is final, and they have been replaced with the true person inside of them that you never knew, which is this magical trans being for whom the laws of nature and physics do not apply. So it's ascribing a finality and telling parents to give up. And again, there's more gaslighting because your most basic instinct as a parent is to fight to the death to protect your child. Most parents would sacrifice their own life so that their child could live. So it's going against that basic instinct saying, nope, nope, give up on your child, give up on protecting them, and let go prematurely. so that you can do the really, truly virtuous thing, which is to accept that the best outcome, the best outcome for your child in life, the one that most reflects who they truly are, is one that involves a foreshortened lifespan of being a medical patient, being sterile, with ongoing, you know, cardiovascular health problems, bone health problems, brain health problems, systemic inflammation, you name it. right? Everything we know that will happen as a result of the medicalization. It's just so cynical and twisted and sick.

Soad Tabrizi: I seriously, for all the- I'm going to even take it further and use SOAD language and say we're basically asking these parents to believe in their child's delusions. Because that's essentially what it is. It's like, listen, your child has a delusion that they think they're in opposite sex, and you're going to have to believe that delusion. You're living in that fantasy world now. We're all going to have to live in that fantasy world with them. Forget about reality. So you're a bad person. Yeah, and you're a bad person for being real. You're a bad person for knowing science. Shame on you for believing in what is real in this world. We are now going to be delusional. So get with it. Like that is essentially what we're saying. I'm not talking about the adult who's 45 and wants to transition. I'm talking about the child who is 12 and is completely confused and now is delusional and thinking, I'm not a girl. I'm actually a boy and I'm going to grow a penis. That's what I'm going to do. Full stop. No, you're not. You cannot do that. And that is what a parent's supposed to say. But instead we're saying, you know what? That's a great delusion to have. Lots of fun.

Stephanie Winn: Whatever you want, sweetie, as long as you're happy in the moment. Right. Right. Exactly. Right.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Right. Oh, my goodness.

Soad Tabrizi: Michael, how does this all make you feel?

Michael David Cobb Bowen: No, it makes me feel angry and sad. because there's definitely an institutional gap between the state of California or any state, I imagine, their ability to get good mental health to folks. My son is a disabled veteran and he was schizoaffective and it got worse. And it took me two years after he was discharged and bounced off the bottom to get him the proper treatment, the proper institutionalization. And it's always an ongoing kind of thing. And I have to, you know, deal with the fact that he's, you know, he's never going to have it easy. And it's tough. But, and I've had to see him hit bottom. You know, and if you are in a military family, you know that there's a kind of self-sacrifice that you're willing to do. And he presents himself very well. He's polite. He's good looking. And so, you know, I'm in the emergency room when it finally takes about three hours for the psychiatrist to get there and do an evaluation. And, you know, it's like, what do I have to do to get him 24-7 support. I have to wait till he comes back, you know, naked and with two teeth missing. And they're kind of like, well, maybe something like that. And so it's not really easy if the mental health issue is severe enough that it requires. And then you just drag the family out to the maximum they can take. And you're like, how do I navigate the system? And if it wasn't for VA and a number of nonprofit organizations that work in this network of support, I'd be broke. Because parents will want to break themselves to do that. And I know that I had to come to that hard realization. I can't, I can't fight this. Am I going to sacrifice my life, my family's life to try to correct this? I'm at my wits end. And I think it's something that all of us, I just, I just wish we could get past the Woody Allen stereotypes about therapy and people, ordinary people can understand this is not just a bourgeois thing or an affluent thing. And that there's real help that can be gotten. If you do have to do the work, you do have to search, it's like, I don't know. I don't know any parallel to it where parents are really going that far to get their kid the help that they need. Some parents that send their kids to Kumon or Mathnasium or get them in the community theater or something like that, they may have an idea. But for a mental health problem in a young person, that's very, very difficult.

Stephanie Winn: I'm sorry, Michael, I had no idea that you had a son with schizoaffective.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: I like to put myself out there to say, you know, I've dealt with that hard thing. And that's kind of how I know that there's a for me, a stoic way. You're saying the universe has some order. I can't respond emotionally to all these things. I have to respond rationally. I have to understand that there's some rationality behind psychology. And everybody out there is not just a charlatan trying to get my money, but some people are. And there's a way to get better. And there's a way to use too many drugs or not enough drugs. And you really have to get out there and do the work and cover the ground to find out what it takes. And then once you know that it's possible, you see a homeless encampment and… I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00: It's so hard for so many people. And you know that they could be helped.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: And we're not helping them. We're lying to them. That's not fair.

Soad Tabrizi: You're right, Michael. It's not fair. And I appreciate you being vulnerable this way. Thank you. I know it's not easy. My heart goes out to you and your son. I work with vets and I actually help sponsor a program here. I'm in Orange County, California, not too far from you. And the program's called Care Possible. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, Care Possible. They're a wonderful organization that helps veterans in need with mental health care, and all of it's free. They depend on people like me to help donate. either our time or our finances to our vets who are hurting mentally and emotionally. So that is an option for you out there as well. Like I said, I know it's a little further an hour south.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: No, we got our son through Bob Hope. Great. So the Bob Hope Center is literally 10 floors of specialists. Wonderful. And they all know each other and they know the county programs, the state programs, the federal programs. It works.

Soad Tabrizi: And just As a sister, I want to let you know that you do have someone here. If your son ever does need something immediately or right away, I'm not far. You can call anytime you want. I'm going to toot my own horn and say I'm a good therapist. I'm on solid ground. My head's on straight. And if anything, my heart's in the right place to want to help your son if he needs it. Or you. Or you.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: I know there's people who are better than me. And there are experts out there. And we ought to take advantage of that.

Soad Tabrizi: And I hope in some way, Pamela and Stephanie and I give you some hope in knowing the field itself is not totally doomed. I can see why it seems doomed. Trust me. But we're not a hundred percent doomed.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: At least not here. So Ed runs a, can I say it? Can I talk about the group? She runs a group on Facebook with conservative therapists and that group really gives me hope. You know, like Stephanie said earlier, you don't really have to be conservative to be a good therapist. have to be not ideologically driven and you have to be based in reality, but that it does give me hope. And Michael, I'm just really glad you shared that because there is a lot of banter on Twitter about how just psychology and mental health field is just completely useless, like literally 100% useless and that we should just throw it all out, like throw the baby out with the bath water. And I think I think us here in this chat would all agree that while we understand there are so many problems and issues within the mental health field, we also recognize that there are people who truly need this help. And they're not just the people on TikTok making videos. They're not the Woody Allens like you just described. There are people who have real needs, and we need to recognize that. Unfortunately, the waters have gotten so muddy with all this attention-seeking behavior and over-diagnosing and over-medicalization and running to experts too quickly when it could just be handled within the family. But also, I think people of all political affiliations or backgrounds or whatever, and you just need to recognize that there really are people that do need help. And we can't just abandon the entire system. We need to fix it. And that's why we're all here, I think, talking about these topics. to help people like your son so he can get appropriate care. Because, yeah, if the system is oversaturated by people that don't really need it, then the people who do need it don't get the help.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: You know, I went to a 12-week course with NAMI and AMI, and I was feeling sorry for myself and my family until I saw some of the things that these other folks are facing. So, I mean, I feel like I'm doing very well. But, but again, when I see the homeless encampments, especially during COVID, I said, you know, our institutions are not responding well enough. And we have social media that monetizes all this flim flam. So I just, you know, there's sometimes you just hope you're like, okay, that person's gonna hit their head in the brick wall and suddenly realize, you know, everything they told me was a lie. Now I have to fix myself. And I don't want to feel like the world has to burn because there's problems that nobody seems to be able to solve. So I'm actually hopeful. I have reason to have faith in the skills of people who do make a difference and heal people. And that's real. The healing is real.

Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. I'd like to chime in with some personal experience. So I grew up with an aunt with schizoaffective disorder. And when I was little, so we're talking like late 80s, early 90s, she was in you know, full institutional, you know, hospitals. And, and then as a result of policy and funding changes in California, she was sort of in and out of like halfway houses and assisted living type places and grandma's house and just, there was never really the right place for her. And she, you know, in some of these environments was sort of left to I mean, she was eating like a gallon of ice cream a day at one point, and her skin was all broken out with rosacea. And then it wasn't until I was in college that I started taking a course on nutritional psychology or nutritional psychiatry, which is fascinating. Unfortunately, I had to drop it because I had too many credits that semester to keep up with. But one of the things I remember was that The professor's daughter had started to develop prodromal schizophrenia. So she had, she was basically in the early stages of what could be a lifelong, very serious mental illness. And they were actually able to trace her psychosis to a gluten allergy. And when they took her off of gluten, her symptoms remitted. Now, I am not saying that everyone with psychosis has a gluten allergy. Clearly, it's, you know, a lot more complicated than that. But for me, just knowing that for even one person, that that was the cure. it just makes me so angry that we let people rot in institutions or worse, because in many places, there aren't those institutions anymore. They don't even exist. They're just people are, like you say, they're in homeless camps or they're in halfway houses or they're in their family's home or God knows where they are, but they're not doing well. And just to know that we are not trying everything we can to, and putting all the resources necessary into trying to help people with one of the most disabling mental conditions possible is just outraging. I think every nutritional cure should be attempted. You know, we should be ruling out allergies, deficiencies, And we should be experimenting with things that affect what's actually going on with the brain besides just antipsychotics. Antipsychotics are, you know, a short-term sort of stopgap solution. Oh, another one I heard about recently. You guys know about Bartonella? Okay. You know about toxoplasmosis? No. Okay. So for anyone who's not familiar, there is a bacteria that lives in cats called toxoplasmosis that can create neurological changes. It's basically evolved to affect their prey like rodents, but it also creates neurological changes in humans. While there's actually another bacteria, toxoplasmosis is the one that I'm most familiar with, but there's also one called Bartonella something that creates similar symptoms, some similar neurological symptoms. So I recently read a story of a 14 year old boy who was presenting again with early signs of psychosis. And again, the prognosis, if someone is presenting as an adolescent or young adult with signs that they might be on the path to developing schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, the prognosis is devastating, right? But somehow, miraculously, thankfully, doctors are able to identify that he had this basically bacteria from a cat And when they treated him with antibiotics, like whatever the right antibiotic was for that bacteria, his symptoms remitted. So that is just fascinating to me. And to think that, you know, there are so many possible causes of psychotic symptoms. The fact that we're not trying everything. medically, not, you know, not just anti psychotics and therapy. And I feel like, personally, I worked with this population as well. My first job out of grad school, I spent a year and a half working in a residential facility for 18 to 24 year olds with schizoafferent schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, complex trauma, many of them were post suicide attempts. And I can tell you that the resources for this population are not good. We were just keeping people alive in that facility and like keeping them from hurting themselves and other people. It was hard to get them out of bed in the morning. It was hard to introduce them to resources. Just to know that the concerns Pamela and Soad and I have about the mental health field, that we are wasting so many resources on the wrong problems when there are real problems like this that need solutions.

Soad Tabrizi: And Stephanie, what you're basically describing is just that whole thing that I talked about, the holistic approach to health. And that's what it is. It's finding the The bringing together the whole person and going, what is going on with the whole person versus just let me look at the symptoms and give you a medication for it. It's like, no, what's actually happening to the person? What's the food that they're eating? What are they exposed to? How's their digestive system working? Is it working? Let's take some blood tests. Let's look at the whole before we just jump to fixing the symptoms. And that's essentially what you're describing is a holistic approach to health.

Stephanie Winn: Even the gut microbiome, there was a fascinating case study of a woman who had a condition called C. diff, which is the only medical condition in the United States for which it is FDA approved to treat it using a fecal transplant. And fecal transplants, although they're only legal in the US for that one condition, have actually been showing promising results for a number of conditions. Anyway, there was this woman who needed treatment for C. diff and the woman herself was not obese, she was not overweight, and her daughter was the fecal donor for the transplant and her daughter was obese and the woman got the transplant and it cured the C. diff but then the woman became obese. So it just goes to show how impactful the microbiome is on metabolism. I've also heard of fecal transplants curing obsessive compulsive disorder and agoraphobia. So the gut-brain connection is huge. And I just feel like so frustrated by the pace that our field of psychology is moving at with so little regard for that holistic component.

Soad Tabrizi: There's no money involved in holistic components, that's why. Don't get me started on that soapbox.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I work with that population too. I actually worked in IOP and PHP and residential programs with a lot of people with bipolar type 1 and schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder. I'm very familiar with that population. I think that's why I'm so outspoken when a big influencer who's going to really name nameless says that nobody needs mental health and they just need to buck up or whatever.

Soad Tabrizi: He has retracted a little bit. Yeah, he has. He's redeemed himself quite a little bit. Yeah, no, he has.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: He kind of softened. The other thing that we're probably running out of time, but I'm going to bring up a really controversial thing is marijuana use. I have found that that population, especially the young adults who you were describing, Stephanie, a lot of them became psychotic or used marijuana to try to null their psychosis. And I think there's a huge correlation. I don't think there's enough data about it, but I know there is data that shows that people will have a predisposition for psychosis when they use marijuana, especially the way it is now where it's much more potent than it used to be. that it can induce schizophrenic symptoms and it's not talked about enough. People think, oh, well, that's just rare. That doesn't happen. I have seen it firsthand so many times. I've talked to so many families that their young adult, they said he was normal before and he just started smoking weed at school and then he became psychotic and then it became permanent. The fact that that's looked at as benign and the whole comparison to alcohol, alcohol obviously has a whole bunch of horrible effects too that you could get into, but usually it isn't psychosis. So just to recognize that that piece of it, it's so minimized and when it comes to mental health, it's crazy because it's looked at as medicine.

Stephanie Winn: And it's the earlier the age that someone starts using it, the more detrimental impact it had. I mean, my aunt who develops schizoaffective disorder was certainly, she was the hippie. She was smoking weed in the sixties. She was also dropping acid. We have no idea how much acid and what, you know, I'm sure that played a role.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: I would weigh in as a data engineer and I'm a little bit of a, an Apple fan boy, but I, my watches are all jealous of my Apple watch because I use it to monitor all these things. I have a nice scale that tells me my bone density and all this stuff. And I think there's something we can do to link all of this new personal health data to people's holistic consciousness. I mean, there are people who understand that there's lots more involved than generally doctors are looking at or can look for. And so there's a new wave of medical data out there. And there's very patient AI chatbots who can ask you extensive questions about your medical history. And there are correlations between things that we don't know that some of these AIs can handle in terms of their ability to deal with 10 dimensions, 20 dimensions, 100 dimensions. And we can took all of these attributes and start beginning to find something more that's personalized. I think young people are definitely interested in taking a 23andMe or Ancestry.com swab, and we're all I think there's something that we can do to be hopeful in terms of gathering more information about people's health. There are privacy protections and considerations, but I think medicine can advance. And if we take this holistic view, then that will work. And take it from me as a person who lost 30 pounds over time, because I just had to take my own personal health more seriously. There's stuff that can be done. And it's about raising awareness, raising consciousness, and really, again, like we said, deferring to experts, not completely, but saying, I'm on a path to get healthier. I don't want to be hostile. I don't want to be angry. I want to take better care of myself. And there's hope ahead.

Stephanie Winn: I wanted to say that on the topic of marijuana and mental health, I've been meaning forever to do a good, well-rounded episode on this topic, and I've not found the right people to interview because, like my friend Jake Wiskirchen, who I recently had on one of these group episodes, he has recommended someone to me, but I looked up that person and they're very clearly anti-marijuana. And I'm actually not looking for that. I'm looking for a balanced perspective on the impact of marijuana on mental health because I do think that the risk of psychosis, especially in the young and the vulnerable and the predisposed, is definitely a huge downside. That said, I am not ready to say that marijuana is all bad. And so, you know, the fact that I've been recommended to speak with an expert who's just going to say, here's why marijuana is bad for everyone all the time, like, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a really in-depth perspective. I know Andrew Huberman did an in-depth episode on cannabis that was like that. That was actually like way over my head. He got into the science. He really did a deep dive. But if anyone listening has recommendations for either a single expert that can really talk about it in a balanced and nuanced way, both the good and the bad, or maybe a combination of two experts who, you know, the two of them combined could offer a valuable perspective, I would like to cover that topic.

Soad Tabrizi: And it might even just be just as a suggestion, Stephanie, a great idea to bring in that person that is heavily anti and come in with your questions to them and challenging that anti and saying, yeah, but what about this? Prove this to me. And what about this? Because I hear this, prove this to me. Just to kind of see how and why they came up with so being anti. And then bring on somebody else later on to rebut that and say, no, actually, I disagree with that person. This is why. Because it'd be interesting just as a listener to hear, why are they so anti? What are their reasons? I'm really curious into hearing about how they got to a place where it's like, don't ever touch it and why. I'd actually love to hear that perspective. And also the perspective of, no, it's okay every once in a while. It's like, okay, well, why is it okay every once in a while? Give me that reason as well.

Stephanie Winn: or the idea that it's helpful for certain conditions. Because there are people who will swear by it, that it helps with this or that. One of the ones I'm most skeptical of, I will say, is people who say it helps with nausea and anxiety. Because I'm sure you guys have seen cannabis hyperemesis disorder. People who get in this vicious cycle of using marijuana to self-medicate anxiety and nausea. And then it does become an addiction. You know, like I've met people who throw up when they start withdrawing because they're just so nauseous that they're not high all the time. So it's like, okay, that's clearly not helping. I also wanted to make sure to recommend while we're on the topic of a holistic approach to mental health, the book Brain Energy by Chris Palmer, because he really looks at all mental health conditions as sort of metabolic disorders of the brain and how that can potentially be addressed through diet. We've had a fascinating discussion. I want to go around and give everyone a chance to share your last burning thoughts, whatever is on your mind still before we do the wrap up with the whole where can people find you thing. So last burning thoughts, Pamela. Oh my gosh. I don't know.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: I just want to say I'm grateful for this talk. I'm grateful for all of you guys. It's easy to fall into that hopeless mindset believing that everything is just going to crap and nobody cares and everybody is just going to affirm drug addicts and genders and delusions and let everybody just, you know, live on the street and, you know, that our world is going to turn into a dystopian nightmare. So I really appreciate all of you and there is hope and I hope the audience recognizes that too, that there's hope and if you agree with us or recognize that that there are people that are there to not affirm dystopia, then, you know, there's to not fall into that pit that I guess you call that black pill, right, where you just think everything's going to crap. So thank you for keeping me out of my black pill pit.

Soad Tabrizi: So I definitely want to basically piggyback on that hope topic, because I'm just looking at the screen and going, okay, there's there's a Jew here, there's a Persian here, there's a black guy here, and there's a white woman here. having a discussion together, and being able to come from different walks of life and really share the same kind of ideas about our society and worldview, which is basically that we just want reality to come back into the picture and to just, that's it, and to love on each other, but with the baseline of just what's normal and not give in to delusions or social constructs or anything that's causing us any kind of harm. So it's just it's a beautiful thing to see. And I hope that the people watching this saw that, too. Like, wow, you know, we're not so segregated. We're not so broken. We actually can have all walks of life to come together and have these discussions. I'm sure we all come from different political sides of the spectrum. So it's also so amazing that we can still do this. So thank you to all of you. And to find me, you can just go to SoadTabrizi.com. Very easy.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Soad, you're just another part of me. as Michael Jackson said in the 80s. I advocate all the time for self-possession. Truth is out there, but the truth can be in here. And trust is the basic currency of civilization. So if we can find the truth, bring it home, and trust that other people will do it too, then we're all just parts of each other. Even if you call us a cult of truth, we're always trying. We're always being open ended. We're always looking to prove that we can be better. And that's something that every individual can do. Know yourself and know that you can be a better you. Just keep your ears and eyes and your mind open and then discipline to ask the tough questions and find out. So learn around and find out.

Stephanie Winn: Learn around and find out. Alright, lovely. Now we'll do the where can people find you?

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger: Okay, so you can find me on Twitter as truththerapist. My Instagram is at the dot truthful therapist. I have a website www.truthfultherapist.org. I actually have a truthfultherapist.com, but I don't keep that one up. So go to org. My book will be coming on Amazon. I don't know what that URL will be, but probably if you Google me, hopefully you'll find that. And also there'll be links to that on all my social medias and all my websites. And that will be called A Practical Guide to Gender Distress, Tips and Tools for Families.

Stephanie Winn: And as I mentioned, I'll make sure that your Amazon links are in the show notes and in my bookshop, where at suntherapist.com slash bookshop, the top section is books written by people who've been on the show. And FYI for listeners, the second section is recommended reading for ROGD parents.

Soad Tabrizi: So I already told you that you can go to sewadtobreezy.com, but I am sewadtobreezy all across all social media. So Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, it's just at sewadtobreezy. To find all my directories and the other little projects that I'm doing, if you go to sewadtobreezy.com, just go down to the footer. There's a little icon that says Simply Abby. That's my umbrella website. If you click on that icon, that Simply Abby icon will take you to a website that has all my projects on it, but everything is on sewadtobreezy.com.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Michael David Cobb-Bowen has been around long enough, so it's almost everywhere. So mdcbowen.org.info.com probably doesn't work, but you can actually even ask ChatGPT, who is Michael David Cobb-Bowen? And it'll write three or four paragraphs that are reasonably accurate. Most importantly, in my social work, I'm a founder and vice president of the Foundation for Free Black Thought. Free Black Thought is pretty much everywhere, too. So you can find me.

Stephanie Winn: Great. Well, it's been such a delight to have you all join me. Thank you again. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you so much.

Michael David Cobb Bowen: Thanks, Stephanie. It was great to be here and meet you guys.

Stephanie Winn: I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Parents, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at DifferentMix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.