You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 105. Joe Burgo FINAL.mp3
Joe Burgo: The fact that these boys, particularly if they're artistic, they're odd. They don't fit in. They don't make friends very well. They're often bullied for being weird. It's not all that different from what's happened with some of the girls. All of a sudden, here's this way in which you get to belong. You finally get to belong. People might bully you for being strange, but if you say you're trans, you're celebrated, you're welcomed, you make a whole new set of friends. It's not just the other trans kids. It's like the adolescent school environment is very trans-affirming these days. That's really appealing. I mean, why wouldn't you do that? Most of the boys that I've seen, they're heterosexual. It gives you a way to be around girls. You could never be around girls before because you were too weird.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I'm accompanied by Dr. Joseph Bergo. He is a licensed clinical psychologist and graduate psychoanalyst who has been practicing for more than 40 years. As a writer, he's the author of several works of non-fiction, bringing his insights and experience as a therapist to a popular audience. And his articles and commentary on the topics of shame and narcissism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and most of the large news outlets online. In his private practice, he currently focuses on gender distress and works with trans-identified adolescent boys, male detransitioners, and men who struggle with autogynephilia. So as you can imagine from hearing that bio, listeners, he is very on topic for this podcast. We're so glad to finally be bringing him on. Welcome, Dr. Burgo. Thanks for joining me.

Joe Burgo: Thanks for having me, Stephanie. It's nice to finally be here.

Stephanie Winn: I think we postponed this like six times, but we finally meet. So really glad to have you here with your clinical expertise on shame, narcissism, autogynephilia, and the ROG craze, specifically how it affects boys and men. Anyone who's been in the gender critical community knows that we love to talk about social contagion and how prevalent it is among girls and how something like four out of five trans identified young folks are female. But that doesn't mean that it's not affecting our young men. And I think you and I would agree that there are some some particular issues that affect boys disproportionately. So we're going to give them some attention today. And and we know that we can't really talk about this without talking about autism. Before we started recording, you had mentioned that anecdotally, although we don't necessarily have you know, all the data, it does appear that a significant majority of trans-identified adolescents and young men are on the autism spectrum. So there are so many questions related to that, like, why is autism increasing as a diagnosis? So maybe we can start there with your thoughts on autism.

Joe Burgo: Well, if you look at the evolution of autism as a diagnosis over the various editions of the DS, you know, it was something kind of specific and severe originally. And then we got Asperger's, so we got the idea of high-functioning autistics, and then we got the spectrum. So part of the reason why we're having an increase in the number of diagnoses of autism or autism spectrum disorder is just because it encompasses a lot more territory now. I don't think that's everything, but I think that's a big part of it. And yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people who today meet the diagnosis in the DSM-5 for autism spectrum disorder that You know, I don't know. I don't know that that's what I would call autism. I mean, I think of autism in the way that I was trained to think about it, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and it's changed so much. I think what we're looking at more is like a kind of dissociation. We have been living through some major cultural changes that are encouraging a kind of dissociation from our bodies. I think it's partly social media, video gaming, being online. When you're engaged in video gaming, you're engaged in a primary visual mode. When you're in social media or any kind of internet usage, it's primarily a visual medium. It's a cerebral experience, and I think it encourages you to detach from or ignore what's going on in the rest of your body. which is why I'm sure you say this to your parents that you consult with, and every therapist I know says this, is get them off of the internet, get them outside, get them using their bodies. You know, sometimes I think that what these kids need is like an outward bound kind of program. It's just like completely off the grid, get them out in nature doing something. But I do think that's part of why autism has increased as a diagnosis. It's because of this cultural upheaval we're going through. I think it predates the Internet. There's other things that have gone on, but I'll save that for my paper.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it's so interesting the way that you connected the dissociation and spending so much time in our heads with specifically the visual input. And I'm just going to riff off that and free associate a little bit because I'm doing a brain retraining program right now to help with how my nervous system is responding to illness. And I know that later in the program, I'm going to be introduced to eye exercises. as part of brain retraining. One of the reasons it's been explained for this is that the eyes are one of the places in the body that we have the highest concentration of mitochondria. But I know that it also has to do with the way that our visual processing and the movement of our eyes is connected with our brain. And that's why we have things like EMDR therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. So not just that, I mean, there's the component of being disconnected from your body, the world around you. from things that you can do with your hands and your body, then there's also limiting your visual input to a narrow range of focus and not even experiencing the whole range of movement of your eyes, just thinking about what that does to. So, I mean, that's a little bit of a tangent, but I do agree with a lot of what you're saying, and it makes me think of psychology in more of a developmental framework, not in terms of that there's normal people and then there's people who have this difference, this neurodivergence, but more in terms of that it takes a lot of different types of experiences to create a whole, healthy, functioning human being and all that that entails. And what happens when a person doesn't have as many of those experiences, whether it's social experiences, physical experiences of connection to the natural world, whether it's responsibilities, like I just read a paper the other day about how children who are given chores at ages as early as age four and five are shown to be healthier, happier, and more successful later in life. So when you take away the sensory inputs, the sensory interactions with the world around you, Does a lack of experience lead to the lack of development of certain skills and capacities?

Joe Burgo: Absolutely, especially what you're saying about social interaction. Heather Haying, in her recent book with Brett Weinstein, she has a chapter in which she's taught. At the end of one chapter, she talks about the increase in autism. She says, in her view, it coincides with the advent of video screens in lieu of parenting, that parents handed their parenting over to a screen so that the children didn't have interpersonal interactions. They had interactions with an inanimate object. I find that a compelling, uncompelling idea as well. I mean, I don't know how we ever know these things for sure, but it seems like so many of those kind of technological innovations are implicated in what's happening. I mean, Jonathan Haidt's writing about this now too, you know, about the anxious generation. His book comes out today, on the day we're recording.

Stephanie Winn: Oh, I just downloaded the audio book. Yeah, you just mentioned two of my favorite thinkers right there, Heather Hying and Jonathan Haidt, such brilliant contributions. I mean, Heather thinks about things in an evolutionary lens. And so, you know, she talks about Chesterton's fence, for example, which I talked about when I interviewed her about like what happens when you take away things like seeing stars at night because now we have light pollution and air pollution and we're just not connected to stars or we're not connected to the element of fire because we don't need to sit around a fire anymore. What happens when you take these things away? And so we are living in this hyper-modern world where we're seeing an increase in dissociation, people spending a lot of time in very comfortable, controlled environments, being in their heads in these mental constructs and in these alternate worlds where you can sort of create your own avatar. And then is it any surprise that we see a rise in, let's say, autistic traits? regardless of what we think about diagnostic over expansion. And where at the same time, we're seeing all these young people saying, I am not my body. In fact, I am the opposite of my body. I have this, of course, this isn't the language they use, but I have this magical gendered soul that is the opposite of my body. And now I need to customize my avatar. So I need to make my meat Lego suit match my mind as Mary Harrington. might put it. So there are some popular narratives in the gender critical community that you and I and a lot of listeners have heard about why this is affecting young people the way it is. But I think there are also some less common ideas that you have. So what are some things that you think maybe we're not talking about enough that could be contributing to this issue specifically for boys and men?

Joe Burgo: You have probably talked about it and other people have discussed the fact that these boys particularly if they're autistic, are, you know, they're, they're, they're odd. They don't fit in. They don't make friends very well. They're often bullied for being weird. And I think it's, it's not all that different from what's happened with some of the girls is that all of a sudden, here's this way in which you get to belong. You finally get to belong. And. People might bully you for being strange, but if you say you're trans and you come out as a trans woman, trans girl, you're celebrated, you're welcomed, you make a whole new set of friends. It's not just the other trans kids. I think the adolescent school environment is very trans-affirming these days. So that's really appealing. I mean, why wouldn't you do that? And it gives you a chance. Most of the boys that I've seen, they're heterosexual. It gives you a way to be around girls, which you could never be around girls before because you were too weird. Yeah. I think Tiresias on Benjamin Boyce, who was on the spectrum, talked about that very thing, about how great it was to be around the girls because he never was fit in with or got accepted by the boys. And he was interested in girls.

Stephanie Winn: It's kind of a perfect storm. I think some of the unique insights that you have to offer around this that you've shared in other interviews are that the role of narcissism and shame, not necessarily, you know, clinical level narcissism, but just the narcissism that we all have and the ways in which it can be difficult for anyone, especially a young, vulnerable person to know how to deal with shame. And so when you're talking about kids who, let's say, were bullied in middle school and then you combine them with boys not knowing how to get access to girls in an era where the messages are admittedly pretty confusing for boys about what girls want in the post Me Too world. It seems like it's just this perfect storm that I'm so ashamed of who I was, that kid that was bullied. I'm so ashamed of my desires for girls because I'm being told that my desires for girls are creepy and oppressive. And now here's this way that I can just be surrounded with girls and be one of them and get them fawning over me. I imagine that's part of the picture for some of these boys.

Joe Burgo: It is. I think it is definitely some of it. But if we want to talk about shame and narcissism, let's define those terms first, because I use them in a specific way that most people might not be familiar with. Great. Most people, when they think of shame, they think of either John Bradshaw, toxic shame, or Brene Brown, which is social shame, I'd call it. And I admire both of those people, and I agree with pretty much everything they say. I talk about something I call core shame, and it's not necessarily that you were shamed in a toxic way or in an abusive way by your parents. It's more this kind of felt awareness that you're screwed up, that things went really wrong, there's something not right about you. A lot of people feel that way. I think that's a lot of what's going on in borderline personality disorder, also in narcissistic personality disorder, but that's a different conversation. So anyway, it's this felt awareness that you're damaged, that you're defective in some way, and it's that your development did not go as you might have expected. You know, you didn't have a normal development. So that's what I call core shame. And I think the primary way of coping with that, the primary defense, let's say, against it is narcissism. It's the creation of an idealized false self-image that denies and covers over all of that shame. And that's not a conscious choice, right? These are unconscious processes. That's what drives narcissism and narcissistic behavior. That's what my book, The Narcissist You Know, is all about, is just describing all the different ways you can see people doing that in everyday life, how they're trying to put forward an idealized false self. And my belief is they're defending against this sense of defect. So if you grow up autistic, whatever that might mean. You're bullied. You're excluded from peer groups. Nobody likes you. People make fun of you. You know, you, you, you, you got, you're carrying around a lot of shame. So I think that the, that dynamic I just traced where narcissism is a defense against this shame, I think so adopting a trans identity does the same thing. It's like the new and improved you.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I talk a lot with the parents I work with about the construction of an alter ego and the functions that that can serve. There's also a kind of a related concept, and I'm looking for the words because I know there are words in psychodynamic theory to describe what I'm thinking of, and I can't recall. Maybe you can. But let me see if I can describe it. So when I was an adolescent, I was also unpopular, bullied, very vulnerable for a while. And then I went through a rebellious phase where it was like, well, I'm punk now and you reject me. Well, I reject you too. I, you know, I really played up my difference. And, and so it's sort of like this, if you can't beat them, join them. Or, you know, there are people who use humor as a defense that way people who are made fun of who whose whole style is, haha, I'm the laughing stock. Look at me. I'm using all the self-effacing humor so that you can't hurt me. Sometimes there's that like, I'm just going to absorb almost like the grain of sand becoming the pearl. I'm going to absorb the thing that hurts and take it on and make it part of my persona and play it up. I think that something really uncomfortable to acknowledge that I'm sure would all get a lot of hate for saying this, but when it comes to people, transing themselves, whatever that might mean in the course of an individual's life. One pattern that I've noticed from talking to families and also from seeing people just out and about in the world is that oftentimes there's an aesthetic that deliberately undermines one's capacity to make the most of whatever natural beauty they have. Because we're all flawed. Nobody's perfect looking, but there are ways to sort of bring out the best in whatever features a person has. And then there are ways to almost deliberately make oneself less attractive. And I've heard lots of stories of parents concerned about how their daughters are dressing because they feel like they're deliberately making themselves less attractive. We talk about sort of the defensive function that that serves. And then there's the fact that A woman who goes, let's say, all the way through with all the transing stuff, who's like 5'1", is never going to be registered as a hot guy. A guy who's tall with masculine features, no matter how much he goes through, thinks he's never going to be registered, although there are a lot of narcissistic fantasies about how beautiful he looks. You know what I'm saying? There's almost this kind of I, oh yeah, the world thinks I'm ugly. Well, I'm gonna, like, ugly is the new beautiful. Like, do you know what I mean? I'm having a hard time putting the words to it.

Joe Burgo: No, I get what you're saying. I'm trying to, I can't think of what psychodynamic concept that would correspond to. It's not exactly reaction formation. But what I think about it, what I call it in my book on shame, is I call that shame defiance. It's like it's the first step of getting out from under shame is to just sort of be just exactly the way you described. You think I'm ugly and disgusting. Well, screw you. And I'm going to embrace that. And I'm going to make myself deliberately offensive and unattractive to you. That's a way of getting control over the experience, I think.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. I think shame defiance is a really good term for it. Thank you.

Joe Burgo: Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense. I also think what's going on, and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know, is sometimes with these girls who are making themselves unattractive, it's because they're really uncomfortable with the attention they're getting as a result of maturing sexually.

Stephanie Winn: And that's the other side of it.

Joe Burgo: Yeah, they don't want to be sexually attractive, especially if there's an abuse history.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, or just exposure to porn, which I'm sure we're going to talk about when we talk more about the boy stuff. I think, too, there's also this function that it serves sometimes that I tune into when I listen to certain parents' stories. I kind of get the impression. And the analogy that comes to mind is the chrysalis. So the caterpillar goes into the chrysalis, and it becomes completely shut off to the outside world in order to liquefy, transform, and reconstruct itself. as a butterfly. And we know that adolescence is a time in life of powerful transformation. The brain is going through so much rapid change. And so there is something healthy during adolescence about periods of, at least this is my opinion, about periods of withdrawal, periods of needing privacy in order to reconstitute oneself when so much is under construction. And so sometimes when parents describe their daughter's behavior to me specifically, and the baggy clothes and the dim colors. Sometimes I almost get the sense it's like, don't look at me, I'm under construction and I can't be seen.

Joe Burgo: The way you describe it there, that sounds actually like a good thing, like protecting the chrysalis while you're developing. My concern about that is that these trans identities tend to get locked into place and they stop further development. And, you know, what if you medicalize? What if you do something to your body then? Then you've really locked in the identity development process or you've foreclosed it.

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. Let's talk about the really hard stuff. So so porn, right. So so you'd mentioned how sexual abuse history could contribute to a girl feeling uncomfortable with her body, wanting to protect herself from objectification and sort of an internalizing defense of of what's the word I'm looking for, scapegoating one's own body, so to speak, making one's body the problem rather than the mistreatment, the problem. But for boys, I mean, we know that exposure to pornography for girls can contribute to these feelings of, well, I don't want to be female if that's what it means to be female. For boys, it's complicated. It's different. So what are some of the themes that you notice in your work with boys and their families around how pornography factors into all of this?

Joe Burgo: Yeah, first of all, I want to state up front that I don't think pornography makes anybody anything. I don't think it makes them trans. I don't. I definitely don't think that that watching sissy porn makes men into autogynophiles. I think it can exacerbate something that's already there, and I do see that. I do see that happening. But I don't think you could take somebody who doesn't already have these basic issues, show them sissy porn, and suddenly they're going to become an autogynephile. I just don't believe that. There are all sorts of things going on with the boys. I mean, one of them is, what if you're a pretty sensitive kind of boy and you've grown up in the age of Me Too and the critique of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and you really, you've absorbed it all. You've taken that all in. And then you hit puberty and you have all these sexual drives and you look at porn. that you're excited by things that are really distressing to you. I think that's one way in which boys kind of take flight from their sexuality. I've talked about that in the Lost Boys documentary. I think I talked about it there, certainly as Hakeem has talked about it. It's not, it's, I don't think it's the main thing, but it's a, it's a, and then there is, there is the, the whole sissy porn thing, which I've seen with some of the guys I work with where it's, they're pretty shame ridden. You know, shame is a big factor for them. And, and they, there's so much of this sexualization of humiliation and shame experiences that goes on in sissy porn that, that I think that plays a big role, but it's, it's. It's building on something that's already there. I talked about it in my Kalarni presentation about the sexualization of shame, where there's this preexisting feeling of being damaged, you know, damaged goods fit for the trash heap. And then you find this way of to get some weird sort of comfort from sexualizing it and getting sexual gratification out of being humiliated or being, you know, made into a… I will say that It's hard to talk about pornography because the feminists have an understandably different point of view, and they are outraged by the exploitation of women in pornography. And for them, it's just a uniformly bad thing. period. I'm not quite so harsh on my clients. I see them using it a lot to self-soothe. It's a comfort thing. These guys are all struggling. They're in a lot of pain. They don't know what to do with it. So, you know, masturbation and pornography are sources of comfort. I know it's not a popular view, but it is.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I think there's a difference, and this difference comes up too with the issue of autogynephilia between the perspective of feminists who are not in the field of psychology, who are primarily interested in what laws and boundaries and rules and social norms should we have in place to protect people. That's a different question from the deeply psychologically intimate work of helping an individual. with whatever they're struggling with. And I think a therapist could hold the most anti-porn views possible in terms of their ideas about how the culture should take place. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to shame a client for their coping tool. So it's interesting that you don't think that the porn makes anybody anything Here's what I want to do. I want to run by you my working model of how I think it works, and then I want you to tell me where you think I've got it wrong. Because I've given this description a few times. It's something that is not based on any particular expertise so much as just kind of life experience, observing trends, reading things here and there, putting two and two together. And I think that your opinion is somewhat different from mine, so I just want to kind of describe the way I think it works, and then you tell me where you disagree. So I think it's like this, right, that let's say you start off with young men. Young men have high libido. Let's say you're talking about straight young men. So that starts off with porn and, you know, the whether it's the comfort, the instant gratification, the dopamine hits, the high libido, all the factors that can drive young men to turn for turn to porn for comfort or release or distraction. And then I think of it like an addictive process. And the way that I've said this before, and I'll say it again, is that with certain addictive substances, let's say you would use more of the substance. With porn, yes, you could do it more in terms of frequency, but there's also the intensity factor. And what makes porn intense might be the emotions that it cross wires in your brain. So although someone might be initially starting off with only an interest in sex and the dopamine rush that comes with that, and maybe they're not looking for anything particularly bizarre, between the way the brain works, it's seeking novelty and increased intensity, and the algorithms, they end up looking at more and more bizarre content. And part of what makes things bizarre includes the breaking of taboos and norms, and as well as, like I was saying, the cross wiring. So you talk about the sexualization of shame. So normally, people who are you know, let's say, happily married, well-adjusted, want sex to be connected with love, pleasure, all good things. We don't normally associate sex in a healthy relationship with things like disgust, shame, terror, rage. And yet, the content of more and more extreme porn is going to spark all of those feelings and more. And when I imagine this for, let's say, straight white young men, where you have on the added layers of feminist narratives of oppressed and oppressor and all those mixed feelings, you just, now you have a whole lot of different emotions cross-wiring with sexuality and you have the reinforcement of dopamine playing a role in that. So that there's a craving for more and more intensely bizarre content. which at some point leads into things like hypno-sissy porn. And then you have people like Andrea Long Chu saying, sissy porn made me trans. And the sissy porn, I imagine, at this point in the process, offers some of the most bizarre stuff out there, as well as a relief from the guilt, I imagine, the guilt and shame that this person's been carrying about being associated with the male oppressor role. And so in my mind, that's how it all works. And that's how young men who wouldn't have had any interest in autogynephilia or in anything particularly kinky can end up developing these complexes. I want you to tell me where you think I got it right, where you think I got it wrong.

Joe Burgo: I don't think you're wrong, necessarily. However, there are two questions I have. I've heard this said that pornography is such that you keep wanting more novelty and it leads you into ever more bizarre types of porn. I don't know. I don't know that it's true. It's one of those things that's out there that people take for granted, and I don't know that that's true. I don't really believe that that's true. people might want novelty in that they don't want to watch the same sex scene with the same two porn stars over and over again. They want a variety of bodies and positions. But I'm not willing to just accept this theory that because the algorithms keep leading you on, you're going to go deeper and deeper into more bizarre kinds of sexuality. That I don't, I don't, I don't believe that. The other thing is I've, you know, porn has figured in every case that I've worked with men who have autogynephilia. And there's always something pre. And this is some precondition. I don't think you could take somebody who had a normal, healthy upbringing with strong self-esteem, reached adolescence, and ended up an autogynephile from watching pornography. I don't believe that.

Stephanie Winn: You don't think people end up autogynephilic just like that. You have also said, I think it might have been your interview with Cynthia Brehany, Paradox Institute, that you don't buy this idea that autogenophilia is just another normal so-called sexual orientation, which is the point that Phil Illey would like people to believe. I gave him the opportunity to try to make that point on my podcast. It doesn't mean I agree with him. I just said, well, let's get your position out in the open here. I'm very skeptical of it myself, so I'm glad to be able to have your perspective on this. There are people, Phil Illey being one of them, I'm sure there's people who never want to hear that name again. But anyway, there are people who would have us believe that this is a normal variety of human sexual behavior. What are your thoughts on that?

Joe Burgo: I think that's preposterous myself. I just find it absurd because other kinds of human sexuality are directed towards another person. And to take yourself as the object of your own desire is the definition of narcissism, if I ever heard one. Right. So I think, you know, in a slightly academic terms, we're talking about the tension between narcissism and object relations. And object relations means that you're in relation to other people, that the objects are the other people, and you have relations with them and your instinctual drives play out in relation to the objects of your desire and interest and love. Just to say, well, actually, it's just the same in autogynephilia, only those other people are yourself. That just seems preposterous to me. Anne Lawrence in one of her papers says that, you know, the older autogynephiles come to have a feeling about their female identity that's like the way heterosexual men feel about their wives.

Stephanie Winn: You know, I tried to get Phil Oe to explain that in ways that an average person could relate to, like, because, you know, here I am, I'm happily engaged, and the relationship that I am in, we're constantly nurturing the relationship through various expressions of affection and support, and there's a daily dance that you're doing when you're in a relationship with someone. I was like, so how does that dance play out with you in your inner self that you're in love with? I couldn't really get a straight answer, but I think you've said it really well, which leads to the question, which came first, the autogynephilia or the narcissism?

Joe Burgo: Well, I think they're the same thing. I think what comes first is the shame. At base, there's some feeling that something's not right. What I see in a lot of the guys that I've worked with is this feeling that they're not quite up to the job of being a male in a good sense, in a forceful sense, a male in reality, being someone who is assertive in the world. They feel somehow that they're lacking in a certain kind of drive or strength. They feel like they're kind of weak. I've seen this. And the creation of yourself as an object of desire is narcissistic and autogynephilic. It's like you create this incredibly desirable self there. And I don't know, the idea that you could just satisfy all of your sexual desires with yourself and the mirror, that's, I'm sorry, that's narcissism. And you know, Let me just say one thing about, I mean, I've tried to read that book and I, you know, I just start arguing with it from the beginning, but it feels to me like what Phil Illey and people who share his views, what they keep, what their argument boils down to is it just is. Autogynephilia just is. There's nothing to be understood. There's no unconscious drivers. There's nothing to be explored. I don't know. That, that seems to me what they're saying. What do you think?

Stephanie Winn: There is a narcissism inherent in the message that I see other people trying to understand this thing, trying to come up with psychological explanations for it. And I'm just going to tell you that all your explanations are that's sort of like a dead end. I asked, so what would you say to people who say this is just narcissism? His answer is, it's not narcissism. And you're just supposed to take that at face value. But when you said that the thing that came first was the shame, what I imagined where my mind was going that you might say, although your answer makes perfect sense, it is what came first was the retreat. And I'm not exactly sure why, but I know you've talked about retreat and defenses, and there's a pulling away from relatedness, from the pursuit of relatedness. And that's something that we see with the trans identification as well. There's a pulling away from the enormously overwhelming developmental tasks of adolescence and early adulthood to establish an identity that is in relationship with the world, with all of its demands and all of its uncertainties. And so this leads into, I want to know your thoughts on ex-military men who have ended up going down this path. So there's a famous story of Chris Beck, I think, who was basically the poster child for trans people in the military. He was the first one and was made famous for it. He has since then spoken out. Of course, the same mainstream media platforms that were happy to go waving the trans flag in praise of you know, the first American trans woman in the military, have not interviewed him to hear what he thinks about it now. It's people like Landon and Robbie Starbuck who are willing to interview someone like Chris Beck and his wife. But we have people like that and, you know, these stories of men who were in extremely masculine roles. I don't think there's a role we consider more masculine than being in the military. And then there's kind of parallels between that And the cases where it's probably more clear cut that there's grandiose narcissism at play when you look at men in positions of a lot of power who, in middle age, with all this wealth and status, decided to go trans on top of it all, where, again, their background was in occupying this very masculine role. So I think we could look at the narcissism of the people in the positions of power, but I'm especially interested in your thoughts on the people where It's not so clear cut that this is somebody who had a strong narcissistic personality, but maybe there was some wounding around the burden of masculinity, the burden of being the hero. And then there's this retreat into the opposite of that, the comfort that they find. It starts off with this comfort that they find in wearing women's lingerie, things like that. What do you think is going on in these ex-military men and other men who are in these positions of power and responsibility?

Joe Burgo: Autogynephilia aside, there is a tradition of men who deal with feelings of fear and vulnerability by becoming tough guys, right? They have to armor up and become really aggressive and tough in the world to shield all that vulnerability. And then I think that at some point there's a kind of a breakdown, like they can't sustain it anymore. This is just a theory because I haven't had a chance to talk to him or any of them, but I've read about these guys and this is what makes sense to me, that it just sort of breaks down. The keeping up the tough guy facade. to avoid dealing with all that vulnerability finally breaks down and then they just retreat. They retreat into this false feminine identity, which as you say, is a kind of a comfort. It's a comfort because you don't have to do anything. You don't have to be a tough guy out there in the world. You just have to wear pretty clothes and relax. Judy Blume read a really funny article about conservative men in conservative dresses talking about this aspect of cross-dressing, is that it's this comfort. It's that women just really, God, it's great to be a woman because you don't have to do anything. You just have to be pretty.

Stephanie Winn: So there's the grass is greener syndrome. Totally. And so let's let's talk about that, right? I mean, the women are laughing. 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. So Grasse's Greener Syndrome, this fantasy that I've certainly seen in the psychology of trans-identified people of both sexes, that life would be easier as the opposite sex. I think it's funny, if not angering, to women to hear The naive fantasies that some males have about how easy it is to just, you know, wear a dress and look pretty, given the reality of our lived experiences being the physically weaker sex, the one much more likely to be raped and assaulted, the sex that is responsible for menstruation and childbirth, I mean, there's You know not to mention all the body image stuff I mean there's just so many burdens that come with the life path of being born female and there are also I'm sure an equal number of burdens that come with being male and yet We have these naive fantasies playing out where males imagine that being a woman is so simple and easy and preferable. And likewise, these girls and young women imagine that life would be easier as a male for a number of reasons. The freedom from objectification, maybe the freedom to be crude. or to wear the same boring, dirty clothes day in and day out and not have anybody judge you for it, or to not have to smile. I mean, there's just so many ways this can play out. What are some of the ways that you've observed this type of thinking in the people that you've worked with?

Joe Burgo: What's interesting is that this is nothing new, right? This isn't a byproduct of the trans era, because I've been seeing this in my practice since I started. You know, men envying women and women envying men. I mean, you observe something that the other sex may have that you don't have. It's undeniable that men have had a certain kind of privileged position. women want that. I had a very long-term patient early on who, you know, trans identified before that was a thing and wanted to be a man because she thought men had everything. They just, I mean, epitomized by the fact that men had a penis and it wasn't a penis envy. It was not that outmoded idea. It was just this idealized state in which men had everything. I think it's not all that different from the way an autogynephilic male thinks about women. Women just have everything in their bodies, but it's an idealized state, right? It takes as a kernel of truth. something in reality, and then it idealizes it. It builds it up into this perfect sort of state, which you then want to embody. I don't know. That kind of makes sense. It's nothing new. And as any number of people have been saying recently, particularly on the feminist sides of things, that your idea of womanhood, you can't have any idea what it's like to be a woman because you're not one and you didn't grow up as one. You know, it's easy to idealize it and make it into something, you know, you know, fabulous that you want to possess, but you don't really know what it's like to be a woman any more than these young adolescent girls know what it's like to be a boy, even though they absolutely insist on their trans male identity. They have no idea what it's like to be a

Stephanie Winn: When you talk about idealization, the therapist listening might have the same thing going on in their head. When you hear the word idealization, the next word you hear is devaluation, because they tend to go together. They tend to be two sides of the same coin and both reflect a shallow understanding, a limited capacity to take perspectives and to truly be related as equals with other people, to have empathy for the sort of universal human experience that suffering You know, we all have suffering in some way, shape or form, and you might not understand another's type of suffering doesn't mean it's not there.

Joe Burgo: Idealized. The interesting way in which idealization and devaluation works in trans identification is this splitting that goes on where the new trans identity is idealized and the former is devalued. All the shame, all the damage, sense of damage, it's all split off into female.

Stephanie Winn: Right. And that can be so painful for families who are part of what's being devalued and discarded and cut off. The young people are rewriting history, rewriting their story. They're telling these fictional narratives about themselves that their parents could poke any number of holes in about how they were always this way. It's like, no, you weren't. And, you know, and they're rejecting their birth name. They're rejecting their parents' memories of them, their parents' affection for them. So it's hard to separate out the it's actually I think of it sort of a trifecta of the the trans ideation, the personality changes and the social justice narrative, social justice culture out of all the families I've talked to. There was only one family I can think of where there was not a social justice component to their kids' trans ideation, and that family was different because in their case, the trans identity had started in early childhood as opposed to more rapid onset, like adolescent onset. And so they always go hand in hand. And it's like one feeds the other. The social justice narratives fuel narcissistic ways of relating to other people and oneself. And all of it feeds into the idealization and devaluation, the personality changes, the nastiness, the respect my identity, and I'm going to disrespect you in the process.

Joe Burgo: And all of that seems so typically teenage at the same time, doesn't it? I mean, teenagers have always had causes, right? And they've always been up in arms about injustices, and they've always been so sure that they know everything and their parents are idiots. You know, it's like I do see trans as kind of the latest incarnation of adolescent rebellion.

Stephanie Winn: So I just recorded an episode, it'll probably be the one right before this if I release them in order, with Bob Withers and two detransitioners, Leighton and Nicholas Blooms, and we had a group conversation about what detransitioners need in therapy and what are the obstacles to people with trans ideation getting proper care in psychotherapy. And something that came up for me around that, when you were speaking about idealization and I brought up devaluation, is that the tense climate and the legal intimidation and the cultural aspects that are keeping therapists locked in fear, preventing therapists from providing effective psychotherapy for people with gender ideas, one of the things that gets prevented in that climate is exploration of the fantasy that the other sex has at all, or whatever is attached. When you described how you had this patient who thought men had everything, and we're talking about grasses greener and idealization and splitting, it's such a rich, sort of ripe situation for proper psychodynamic therapy to explore this fantasy, to explore the projection, because we know it's not real. We know that no matter how successful someone of the opposite sex might seem, they have their own problems. But the fantasy itself is considering that you've managed to be successful as an exploratory therapist in this climate. Have you been able to explore those fantasies with people?

Joe Burgo: I've actually gotten very pessimistic about my ability to do what I've always done with trans-identified teens who are all-in. Because for the first time in my entire life, most of the world is supporting this delusional belief system. So, you know, people used to come to us because we supposedly knew something, right? And we were authorities about, you know, human nature and psychology and not anymore. I don't, I find that, you know, that the teens are so supported by the schools, by the online community, by all of our institutions, that they, the idea that you would question it just to explore it is, they're kind of opposed to it. So I've actually, to the extent that I've been successful, I've tried to focus on other issues, like not make gender the focus, because it feels like it's, well, what I said, it's a problem. So I really try to focus on identity formation in a larger sense and adulting and your future. because you've probably seen it. These kids, once they trans-identify, it's like everything stops, you know. Sasha Ayad likes to say, you're more than a walking gender identity. I love that. And it's true. You still have to figure out what you're going to do with your future. What career do you want to do? How are you going to earn a living? Do you want a family? But all that stuff kind of goes out the window when transing becomes the focus. So the only way I've been able to be at all effective with the kids is to not focus on gender.

Stephanie Winn: I have some thoughts on that. And a lot of my thoughts are speculative based on the work I do with parents because I don't work directly with the youth. So I listen to what parents have to tell me and then I try to interpret what that could mean. I'm going to get better at it the longer I work with the family because I have a clearer sense of who their particular child is and how they think. So when it comes to the tension between Spending one's time, energy, and focus cultivating this persona, this alter ego of the trans identity, and doing activities related to that, like pursuing affirmation, medicalization, and so on, that's time and energy not being spent, as you pointed out, on these other important developmental tasks. building real confidence and competence, getting a job, or applying for college, or learning how to make friends through something other than just waving a flag and declaring your pronouns. And I guess my best guess about what's going on for a lot of these young people is that so-called adulting looks really scary. and overwhelming. And I will admit, I was one of the people Abigail Schreier interviewed for her latest book. And I was one of the people who did say that, yes, I actually do think that climate anxiety is affecting young people. And then I got a few chapters into her book, and she was disparaging people who thought that way. And I was like, oh. But I mean, I think you're growing up, and you're being told, the whole world is about to die. The oceans are about to rise and robots are going to take your jobs and the ocean is filled with plastic and there's a lot of doom and gloom and a lot of exposure to the problems of the world that we have now through media that takes people out of what they can control in their immediate environment, like we started off talking about working with your body. I do think that adulting looks really intimidating, plus all the social media content about how hard it is to get a good paying job and things like that. So what I imagine is going on in some of these cases is that there's sort of a deflection going on of where what one needs to be doing is summoning the courage to face those challenges head on and find appropriate help, which might be therapy, but it might be coaching or mentoring or someone who works at your college or your parents or your aunt or uncle, but figuring out or it could even be YouTube tutorials, but figuring out how to sign a rental agreement with a landlord and a million other things you got to figure out when you're 20. So what I actually think is going on is that there's a diversion away from the anxiety of those monumental tasks, what feels monumental anyway, And this redirection into something that's much more tightly contained and easily controlled, which is following the step-by-step checklist of how to get everyone to treat you as the opposite sex, or whatever your transition-related goals are there, I actually think that it's sort of a way of saying like, I'm not ready. I don't want to deal with those things. And I shouldn't have to because I'm trans and I need to be busy with this. And that I imagine in some cases, if the parents or the therapist or anybody were to press too hard onto like, no, we need to help get you ready for the world, that that could create almost like a counter reaction if there's not enough acknowledgement of maybe the part of them that doesn't want to be prepared to face the world.

Joe Burgo: Right. I don't I don't think it's I think that's a risk, but I think it's super important. And I often say to parents when I do consulting with parents, as I will say to them, focus less on gender and more on adulting. because they get locked in these struggles where they're trying to persuade their children that they're mistaken, and they bring all this information that they've found on the internet, and then the kids come back with the information they've found on the internet, and they dig in, and it feels like it's like a stalemate. I've never actually said this to a parent, but sometimes, I have this fantasy that the parents should just say, you know, look, you're rejecting my advice. You don't want to be guided by me as a parent. You've decided to go your own way. So we need to do everything we can to emancipate you, to get you on your own so you can make your own decisions and be responsible for yourself. Kind of like calling their bluff. I think that's probably not a good idea, but there's sometimes where it feels like it would be a relief just to say, yeah, You know, you're going to be responsible for your own choices, including your mistakes. Go ahead.

Stephanie Winn: No, I totally think that's appropriate in some cases. And I would imagine as a skilled therapist that that fantasy would probably be coming up in situations where there's something to it. I mean, it depends on the ego strength of the person and the strength of the relationship and how accustomed they are to that level of honesty. But I mean, something you said there connects to advice that I frequently give parents, which is when you are in a double bind, Well, first you have to learn to recognize when you're in a double bind, because oftentimes we feel anxiety when we're in a double bind, but we don't consciously recognize, oh, I'm actually stuck between a rock and a hard place, damned if I do, damned if I don't. So first you have to learn how to recognize when you're in a double bind, and then sometimes just plainly stating it, not in that exact way. But, like, I use Chris Voss' techniques. How am I supposed to do that? You're saying this, but you're also saying that. How am I supposed to reconcile the difference? So, sort of, I think that that ties into that. And I also advise parents not to push when your kid is saying something like, oh, yeah, I'll look at the studies. But every time you send them a study, they find a reason to dismiss it. You know, rather than continuing with that, be like, it seems like every time I try to provide you information, you don't want to hear it and you come up with a reason that's not valid. So I'm not going to keep pushing something that's not working. And then the other component to what you said that echoes a lot of what I talk about with parents is natural consequences. That a lot of these kids are not used to really having to absorb the full consequences of their actions, but they will be soon. And so your job as a parent, as a proxy for the world, is to prepare them for that. And the best way you can do it is by just saying, here are the limits to what I can do. So there's been cases where I've talked with parents about the decision of maybe there's money that they had earmarked for their child's college fund, or for their child's wedding, or whatever future goals they had imagined for their child. And maybe now they need to earmark that money and set it aside instead for potential health care costs related to regrettable mistakes that those kids might be making. And I think there are instances where it might be appropriate to communicate that. You know, your father and I had $20,000 saved up for your wedding, but now it doesn't look like you're on track to get married. It looks like you're on track to make decisions that we think come with a high, you know, rate of regret and complications. And there is not actually decent healthcare coverage for people who suffer results of these procedures. Like we were alarmed that you would be on your own. So we're actually going to have to save that money. as your safety net in case you go through with these decisions that you're telling us you're going to make. We wish that we could be spending that money on a more joyous occasion, but right now, based on your actions, this is what we feel the need to do.

Joe Burgo: That's actually a great way of framing it. I love that idea. Because, you know, sometimes parents use the threat of withholding money for college if the kids don't desist Sometimes parents use this threat of withholding their education funds for college if they go ahead and transition. I don't know that that works ever, but the way you said it is such a nicer way. So we're gonna put this money aside for you to take care of you for the medical needs you're gonna have because there is no coverage. You're gonna be at high risk. I really like that. I think that's a great idea.

Stephanie Winn: I'm glad you like that. I think there are definitely times that it seems like I understand wanting to withhold college funding, especially if the college is egging the kid on, you know, if the kid can just go to student health services and get affirmed and get their prescription on campus. It's like, well, this isn't what you had in mind when you started saving for your kid's college fund, now is it? But I do talk to parents like, if you're going to go through with that, you have to be really prepared to go through with that. Because saying that you have a boundary and then not upholding that boundary only teaches people that your boundaries are meaningless. And for a lot of parents, it's too much of an inner dilemma for them because they also want their kid to go to college. So it's a complicated issue. It's something I've spent hours helping families weigh the pros and cons of. I wanted to make sure to ask you a question from the Locals community before we run out of time. So I have a Locals community. It's pretty quiet on there right now, but anyone can join and you do get access. If you haven't heard me pitch this before, this is for the audience. You get early access to new episodes. You get to ask questions for me, ask questions for my guests, and also get private access to special content that I make just for mostly ROGD parents, to be honest. Anyhow, I posted in the locals community that I would be speaking with you, Joe, and 40-something asked, and I'm not sure why they thought you'd be the best person to ask, because this could be framed as like a question for a detransitioner, but I know you have lots of experience working with detransitioners, so I'm just going to go ahead and ask. What are Joseph's tips for coming out as detrans? Are there general best practices that detransitioners recommend? So that's kind of opening up a whole new subject, which is detransitioners coming out. I'm sure you have some thoughts on that. If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make, and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends, such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at organifi.com slash some therapist. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash some therapist and use code some therapist to take 20% off your order.

Joe Burgo: I do have some thoughts on that, and I think you're also right that the detransitioners, especially the very vocal, articulate ones out there, will have a lot to say on this subject. But my experience with the detransitioners that I'm working with is, without exception, I think they would best. They do best if they just got out of gender altogether, just go on and just leave that world behind. Because so often what you see is they go from having this trans identity, that's who they are, to this de-trans identity, that's who they are. Maybe it becomes all about that, especially some of the ones that are You know, someone has to do it. Someone has to bring these lawsuits. Someone has to speak out. So I'm very grateful for all of the mostly young women who are doing that. But for many people, that's not the right thing. The right thing is to just move on. You're going to lose your trans friends. We know that. We know they won't support you if you decide to detransition. So get on with your life. Get on with the rest of your life. Figure out what you're going to do for your career. Get a job. Maybe move. I don't know. Just leave the gender world behind. It's so toxic.

Stephanie Winn: It just is. Yeah. Well, it's like there were so many years. I mean, depending on the individual, different amounts of time. Considerable amounts of time during crucial developmental phases spent building this false sense of self and doing activities related to the creation of this persona. And during that time, like you and I were talking about earlier, other important tasks of growing up were missed. And so, yeah, going back and seeing what you missed, you might have missed certain sort of rites of passage that come with becoming a man or becoming a woman. What are those missing pieces? Or just becoming an adult. And I think for some people probably grappling with the unknown or the emptiness in the absence of knowing who you are, knowing that it's okay to not know who you are. In fact, it's probably healthier if you're 20, 25, It's probably healthier to admit that you don't know who you are and that that's kind of scary, but to be willing to be with the unknown and to try to take positive actions in the meanwhile than it is to cling too tightly to some kind of premature conclusion about yourself. So I think I agree with you that I've seen detransitioners almost like martyr themselves in the public eye. And I agree, it's so important that there are those who are outspoken and who are, whether that's being on social media, podcasts or lawsuits, but for the majority of people, that's not putting themselves first.

Joe Burgo: Right. Yeah. I mean, detransition, you know, just in light of what you and I have been talking about today, it's devastating because not only do you have to deal with all of the mental health issues that you thought were going to be resolved by transition. So you've got all of that. Then you have to deal with kind of the shame, I would say, of having really made this major error. And then there's this grief about time lost and there you are. And now what? Now you've got to figure out all those things that you might have been figuring out during your teens and early 20s when you were trans-identified instead and thinking that was your entire world. So it's so daunting when you think of challenges, the grief, the shame. I don't know.

Stephanie Winn: It's just… The pain and medical complications and the question, who will love me? Like, I'm always so… sort of relieved and gratified when I come across a story of a detransitioner who's happily married or you know in a happy relationship or has successfully gotten pregnant and you know had a healthy birth if that's what she wants because I know a lot of them really struggle with that like who will love me and There's probably a lot that we don't know yet because this is such a new cohort, but I imagine over time as we get to know them as a population that experiences certain themes, just like gays and lesbians have their own sort of themes that they grapple with. detransitioners having certain lived experiences, you know, if there's this shame about their bodies or this the sense of being unattractive or of being less desired as a partner and like, how does that influence relationship dynamics when they do get into relationships? Are they going to be more vulnerable to abuse because of fear that this is the only person who will ever love them? I think there's all kinds of kind of questions that this will open up over the coming decades, really, as as detransitioners grow in number and age.

Joe Burgo: Yes, there's going to be a lot of need for a lot of people like you and me to help them. Let's hope that more people, more therapists will come forward. I think so many people just don't want to go near it right now. But boy, do we need help.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And in that recent episode with Bob and Leighton and Nicholas, we talked about therapy, but also alternatives to therapy. And Nicholas shared that for him, having a coach or a mentor who he had a really close personal relationship with, that was the healing relationship that he needed. I've heard a lot of detransitioners talk about the importance of embodiment and taking their health into their own hands and finding community around health, community around spirituality. Psychotherapy has to admit that we really messed up, and there is now a whole emerging clinical population that is traumatized by us. needs help if anybody ever needed help, but has less trust in therapists than ever before. So I think it's, yes, it's important for therapists to become detranscompetent, but it's also important for people with other skills to offer, or just compassion and love and a listening ear to offer, to think about ways that they can be mentors, friends, healers, and just other supportive roles.

Joe Burgo: Psychotherapy isn't the answer to everything, and it's not for everybody. It's probably not for most people. But, you know, for those people who actually are interested in really wanting psychological help when they de-transition. Yeah. The hard, you know, one of the hard parts is these kids. are usually in a financially vulnerable place by that time. They can't, you know, they probably don't have good health insurance that has mental health coverage. So how do they afford it? You know, that's why, that's why Stella O'Malley put together that Beyond Trans program, because she saw this need to subsidize therapy and why this group of therapists came together who are most of them willing to work at greatly reduced fees. It's a great service.

Stephanie Winn: There needs to be a lot more of that, as well as progress legally ensuring that these patients aren't just abandoned. And there's so many people who just, doctors know what to do as long as they're on the trans train, but the moment they say, I don't want to keep taking this, it's like they're on their own and they have all these complications nobody knows what to do with.

Joe Burgo: One of the things I learned recently, I don't know, a few months ago, do you know Carrie Mendoza? Do you know Carrie? Yeah. She's an ER doc, and she says that there are no ICD procedure codes for detransition, so doctors can't bill for them. I mean, that was just like, wow. So how are the doctors going to get paid if there are no codes they can use?

Stephanie Winn: It's the next, yeah, I think one of the next legal goals for those who are working on these issues. I've spoken with Julia Mason about that, not on this podcast. And my opinion on that is that it needs to be I would think a lot more than one code. I mean, that there should be code for history of testosterone use, code for history of Lupron use, code for history of this procedure or that procedure. Because detransition is, it's a label. It's not a medical condition. But people have a variety of medical conditions. And there's a lot of people who are just somewhere in between. And there's going to be a lot more people who You know, however they think about it ideologically, there's some degree of complication that needs to be accounted for and treated. And the patient's wishes need to be supported if it's not just continuing down this one trajectory. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I feel like we covered a lot of ground. We did. Thank you so much for coming on my show. It was worth the wait. I feel like it was actually good timing just thinking about some of the other conversations I've had recently and what's been on my mind. So now's the time when you tell people where they can find you.

Joe Burgo: Well, my website is afterpsychotherapy.com, but I was blogging regularly on that many years ago. I'm pretty inactive there. I'm at joeburgo at gmail.com. That's my email. I write. I have a substack, which I don't do a lot with. I write mostly for reality's last stand, Colin Wright's substack. I'm there if you need a consultation or you want to talk to me about what you're going through, feel free.

Stephanie Winn: And you are, you're a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of California.

Joe Burgo: Right. But I do, I work with people in other states and countries.

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 Pair, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, 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.