You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 120. Amy Sousa FINAL.mp3
Amy Sousa:
This notion for these girls that cutting off your breasts is somehow going to make you less of your body. You can't be more or less of a woman. A woman can't be closer or further away from being a man. A woman is always 100% a woman. This will not change the percentage of woman that I am. You know, if I lose one breast, I won't be one half less of a woman than I am right now. These girls who are choosing to take testosterone and get double mastectomies, they are still having female experiences.

Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I am once again sitting with my good friend Amy Sousa. Those of you who are long-time listeners might recognize her from way back when I think her first appearance was on episode 9, and then she was also on a pretty recent Roundtable episode. But for those of you who are watching, you might be able to see Amy's got a bald head. And for those of you who are listening, Amy's got a bald head. She's got stage 3 breast cancer. My very good friend a few months ago, it was so bittersweet that our first time meeting in person, because we've been friends online for years, and I feel like Amy and I have gotten about as close as two people can get without ever having met in person, and it was so bittersweet going out to dinner and finally talking, and then, like, two hours into conversation, she was like, by the way, I have something to tell you, and I was like, oh, my goodness. This whole conversation, I had no idea that something so serious was going on, but it's just a testament to her character. that Amy can, you know, carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and still remain so brave and always taking the opportunity to Deepen her intellectual understanding of the meaning of life and this this beautiful gift of human existence So anyway, Amy, I'm glad that you're feeling well enough to join me today to talk about your experience with cancer You know, like I said, you've been on the show before I've only done one other episode on cancer my friend Corey Drayton who had a pretty harrowing journey with cancer and shared what that was like for him after. So this is really something new for this show. It's also new for me. You know, being I think, in this stage of life, I hadn't I haven't actually had a close friend go through cancer before. My mother went through breast cancer many years ago. So I appreciate you Amy bearing with me and the listeners bearing with me as we're Waiting into such vulnerable territory, and I know it's vulnerable for Amy, but also she carries herself with such dignity and grace that I think I'm probably the one who's going to stumble here, figuring out how to talk about something so vulnerable with my friend here. But Amy, I'm really glad that you're feeling well enough to come here and join us today and also just to share about all these different aspects of the cancer journey from your medical decision making to, you know, the significance of breasts for you and what this has brought up as a gender critical activist. So anyway, thank you and welcome.

Amy Sousa: Yay, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. It was kind of a bittersweet meeting, but we had a great time no matter what. I know it's going to be a really great conversation today. I'm really happy to be having this conversation with you. This is something those who already follow me will have seen that I posted about this on my Twitter and did a sub stack essay about my experiences and about a lot of the insights that I have been having through this cancer journey. And this is my, my first interview speaking about it. So I'm, I'm so glad it's with you, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: You know, like one of the first things that comes to mind when we start wading into this territory is that I have spoken with mothers who have hired me as a consultant because they're worried about their daughters pursuing these cross-sex hormones and surgeries. And I've spoke with mothers who themselves are survivors of breast cancer and who had you know, a single or double mastectomy, not by choice. And just hearing what it brought up for them, the anger and the heartbreak and frustration and this chasm of communication and understanding to know that their daughter during a naive, vulnerable, impulsive time in life was, you know, considering doing something voluntarily to herself that for that woman was one of her life's greatest traumas. And I know you're not in that exact position. You're not an ROGD mom. But as a gender critical activist who's been standing up for the privacy and safety and dignity of women and girls, you've fought for protecting women's sports, protecting women's prisons. And I think the essence of a lot of what you stand up for is really our our autonomy as human beings to be able to trust the evidence of our own senses and to name what it is that we see and feel and know. And so as this sort of embodiment activist that you are, I think there's a lot of parallels with the heartache that a lot of women around the world are feeling.

Amy Sousa: Coming to terms with this breast cancer is, you know, it's really giving me a lot of new insights into my embodiment work. And, you know, the cancer is stage three. The tumor that I have, they give these cancers what they call a Trottinger score. which is how fast they're growing and, you know, on a 1 to 10 scale, mine was growing at a rate of 10, which is, you know, the fastest growing. So there's a lot that's really scary here and the fear that I could possibly lose my breasts from this is very real. Now, of course, I'm taking every single step that I can take not to have that happen, But, you know, I have had to go through the emotional process of dealing with that, of looking at the fear that this brings up and just the absolute, you know, like repulsion and rejection of the very notion that I could possibly lose my breast. And so, yeah, it has been, you know, I already had a strong critique of these girls who are being marketed to and sold an idea by social media influencers and fashion idols and celebrities that cutting off your breasts is cool or somehow associated with authenticity or your identity. This, this has all given me a new critique of what is happening and it is very much, like you said about that mother, it is very much a slap in the face. you know, to have girls, you know, you can see these videos on TikTok of girls posing with kind of these gleeful, giddy, almost shit-eating grins on their face as they have tubes out of their chest leaking blood and pus. You know, there is such a dissociative element to what they are choosing and you know, my work is embodiment, my purview in terms of being an activist for women and girls, is that we are fully embodied, whole human beings. You know, our bodies are our bodies. You know, my breast is not just a compartmentalized part of me. It is me. I am my body. And, you know, something else that you'll see on these TikTok trends is they're, you know, they are referring to their bodies as meat suits or meat sleeves. They, they think of their bodies as, as a thing, like a suit that you would wear that you can put on and off. They are not, they are not connected to their bodies. They're not, they are not fully embodied. And this is, this is scary and sad for a lot of different reasons that we can go into, you know, but I think it's, it's sad just on a, you know, human emotional level that they could be so disconnected from themselves. You know, to be disconnected from your body is to be disconnected from yourself. And to hate a certain part of your body is hating yourself. You know, this was a comment that I had. I mostly had amazing comments on my Twitter, by the way, and I was just so, I was really overwhelmed with the support and feedback that I received. It's been, it's really been encouraging. It's really actually, I'm so blessed and grateful to have that kind of support. It's very encouraging. And I had very, very few. I was worried when I decided to speak about this that I would have negative comments from TRAs, but I really didn't, which has been amazing as well. But I did get one comment from a girl who said, you know, something to the effect of like, you know, well, great for you that you love your breasts. I hate mine, you know, and I just said, well, do you think your breasts are something other than you? You know, you know, because if you hate your body, it is hating yourself. That is, that is a sign of self-hatred. And, you know, as someone who has a background in psychology, You know, to me, mental wellness or balance is learning to love and accept yourself, you know, whatever it is, you know, this, this, This journey has been, and it's not that it's easy. It's not easy. This journey itself has been hard for me. I did not want to lose my hair, for example. I didn't want to. I really didn't. I cried when I knew my hair was going to fall out. I had a lot of tears, but this is what is happening to me. This is the reality of who I am right now. It's not going to be forever, but it is true and my reality right now. what the choice is to, I guess, hate it or embrace it. And, you know, I, I think that there is a lot more health involved in embracing rather than rejecting the reality of what is. And I don't think that, you know, for all of these girls and, and we know from listening to detransitioner stories, Plastic surgery is not a mental health care. It is not going to solve the underlying issues that you are going through, whether it is abuse, trauma, simple insecurity, not wanting to be objectified, you know, whatever you think it is that getting your breasts amputated is going to solve, you know, There is no evidence, and we can see from the evidence that exists, these surgeries are not a cure for your mental health.

Stephanie Winn: I'm still thinking about that comment that some girl on the internet said to you. And I'm thinking back in September 2023 when I was on a meme making binge and I made all these ridiculous memes drawing analogies to the gender stuff. And one of them was like, do you hate your ugly feet? Well, doctors can cut them off for you. And if you change your mind later, you can always go get some prosthetic feet. It'll be just the same. And her comment is like saying to a person in a wheelchair, oh, you miss your legs? Oh, well, good for you that you enjoyed having legs while you had them, but me, I think my feet are ugly and I hate them. Or would you say that to a homeless person? Would you say, oh, you miss your house? Well, I mean, that's nice that you used to like the house that you live in, but I hate my house. It's just very ironic that the same people who are so concerned with the ideas of privilege can have this massive blind spot with regard to their own Lack of gratitude for the privileges they have including the privileges of a healthy body and and that's part of Part of the nature of the beast of how gender ideology is so predatory is it primarily focuses on? young healthy people who take their health for granted. And I think in the absence of any close personal firsthand experience while growing up of severe injury or illness, I think sort of the default pattern is to take your health for granted when you're young. And most of us have some recollection of what it was like to believe ourselves to be invincible. So the contrast is just so painful for people with the lived experience, to use a term popular amongst the Wokies, the lived experience to have been humbled by life, to be grateful for health and bodily integrity and not take it for granted.

Amy Sousa: Yeah, I think that's, it's so true. I think, I mean, there's a lot of privilege in it, you know, even just you know, having the time, you know, this, there is, you know, I'm facing some financial repercussions. Luckily, I do have some good support systems, but, you know, going through cancer is very expensive. It's not cheap, and I wish I did not have to. This is, again, I have incredible support. My parents are amazing, but, Again, there's a lot, I would not choose this if I didn't have to, and there's a lot of privilege in going through elective surgeries. You know, these are absolutely elective. They are not necessary. And even within the ideology, they're not necessary. I mean, the ideology is, you know, there's no coherent through line to it, but a lot of times you'll, you'll hear them say like, well, you know, trans women don't owe you femininity or trans men don't owe you masculinity or that genitals don't have anything to do with gender. So even within their own dogma, these surgeries are elective and unnecessary. They are not necessary to living a quote new identity and they take time. They have a lot of painful recovery and so there is a lot of privilege in that and you are taking up medical attention that could be going to others. You are taking up medical equipment, testing, scanning personnel that could be put to better use for people who are actually sick and suffering, and you are creating illness in the future. A lot of these young women, you know, there are repercussions to having mastectomies. This puts you in line for certain other different cancers. It puts you in line for early onset menopause and other repercussions. So you are creating health issues and health problems and you are creating an influx into the medical industry that is completely by your choice, that takes away from other patients. And you brought up earlier in our conversation, and maybe now is the time to bring this up, that tweet that you pulled from Prisha.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I was just thinking that. So for those who aren't aware, Prisha Mosley is a public detransitioner, very sweet young woman. She's really been through a lot. She had borderline personality disorder and needed proper treatment for that. And instead, she was moved through the gender-affirming conveyor belt at a young age before even having a chance to grow up and heal and discover who she was. So those who follow me on social media probably know that this is an issue very dear to my heart because You know, people who have signs of borderline personality disorder early in life, yes, personality disorders are hard to treat, but borderline is among the easiest to treat and there are good treatment methods for it. There's a lot of overlap between borderline and complex developmental trauma. And, you know, people who have borderline personality disorder in their teens or 20s with proper treatment can end up going to live, you know, stable, healthy, productive lives. They can form stable, meaningful relationships, which are deep down what they need the most. And of course, people with borderline personality disorder are more likely to get swept up into this cult, because one of the features of borderline personality disorder is an unstable sense of identity. So it's really kind of the perfect storm, these young people who already went through a lot at a young age, who deserve proper treatment so that they can get stable and find a good path for themselves by early adulthood. And instead, their problems are, some of them made permanent and irrevocable by their identity crisis being, you know, mistaken for this magical gendered soul that needs some kind of, you know, fictitious, supposedly medically necessary surgeries. So, Prisha Mosley, anyway, she's a very resilient young woman. She's really been through a lot. She's still struggling, but she has gone on to have a baby. And this is a population that is pretty new in the world. D-trans women whose bodies have been poisoned by testosterone, which has affected their reproductive systems, their vaginal elasticity, their ability to give birth naturally. They've lost their breasts, so they're not able to breastfeed. And yet, their fertility has not been entirely destroyed. This is like the bittersweet beauty of it, right? That even within this sort of desolate place that some of them find themselves, that they do find love, and that they are able to give new life, even with some medical complications. So Prisha is a new mother, and she's been posting a lot on the internet. If you want to follow her on X, it's at detransaqua. She's been posting about her experiences as a detrans mother. And something I learned through following Prisha that I didn't know about before is that when these young women have these elective double mastectomies, not 100% of the mammary gland tissue is removed. So then when they give birth, or in Prisha's case have a cesarean, but they, you know, they have a baby and there's a series of events that unfolds in the the female body because it's a miraculous thing that was designed to give birth, right? So the body starts trying to produce milk. But in Prisha's case, she does have some mammary gland tissue left, but that tissue is not connected to her nipples anymore because of so-called gender-affirming care, a.k.a. sex-denying harm. So she actually has to take a medication to stop her body from producing milk so that it's not painful and swollen. So this is a post from July 15th, 2024. You can find her again at Detrans Aqua. She said, why not share? It's called Cabergoline? I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. It's meant to dry up milk by stopping prolactin production. That's sad, and it seems to have forced my cycle to start. I'm having the most severe and intense period of my life a month after giving birth, medically messing with my hormones again, and it honestly feels unfair. I can't believe how badly this hurts. I almost called 911 this morning. So it's like as these people age and go through different stages of life, like for instance, realizing that you're female and that you love someone and that you want to have a baby, for example, just the complexity of what unfolds as a result of this iatrogenic harm, meaning harm induced by the medical system, there's just no limit to it. Are you looking to launch a podcast, but find yourself overwhelmed by the technical details? Or perhaps you've already gotten started podcasting, but you struggle to keep up with the parts that aren't fun? Well, my very own podcast producer can help. Nick can provide whichever services you need in order to focus on what matters most, your content. 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Amy Sousa: It's a real tragedy and, you know, I think that this notion that, you know, that, you know, taking someone's healthy body and introducing harm is going to help them in any way. You know, there's an insanity in that. you know, why are you introducing dysfunction into a healthy body? And the repercussions, yeah, are sad and painful. And the identity, the notion that we're doing this for the sake of Somehow, for the sake of authenticity or identity, you hear within the marketing for this ideology, meaning whether it's marketing in actual advertisements or whether it's just social media influencers saying this, that this is somehow their authentic self. you know, that changing your body somehow makes you your authentic self. Well, you know, getting my ears pierced did not change me in any way or I had my nose pierced for a little while. It didn't make me more or less authentically me. You know, I know people who have tattoos. It doesn't make you more or less authentically yourself. Altering your external appearance or even altering some of your internal functioning with drug use does not make you more authentically yourself. And, you know, I think that there's a lot to critique within this ideology and certainly, you know, not just myself, but anyone who is going through a specifically sex-based health issue is going to really feel this. You know, I am going to fight not to lose my breast, but if I do have to lose it for my own health, it is not going to make me less authentically myself. It's not going to change anything about my identity or authenticity. It will change something about my experiences. It will influence my perspective in terms of, you know, always, you know, having new experiences are necessarily going to influence our perspective. But, you know, this notion for these girls that cutting off your breasts is somehow going to make you less of your body. You can't be more or less of a woman. A woman can't be closer or further away from being a man. A woman is always 100% a woman. You know, this will not change the percentage of woman that I am. I won't be like, you know, if I lose one breast, I won't be one half less of a woman than I am right now. You know, my developmental path is still my developmental path. And you hear you know, these girls who are choosing to take testosterone and get double mastectomies, you know, it, they are still having female experiences because they experience things like early onset menopause, vaginal atrophy, which is a symptom of early onset menopause. These are very specifically female health issues. These reinforce the fact that, yes, indeed, you are still very much 100% female, and now you have introduced a complication into your system that you may not have experienced until your 60s or something, but you are having a very female-specific experience.

Stephanie Winn: So what has this brought up for you about the nature of breasts?

Amy Sousa: I've always had an interesting relationship with my breasts because I developed very early and that did come with a lot of uncomfortability. I do remember you know, in junior high, getting a lot of attention that I was not emotionally equipped for. I didn't understand. I, they had some next-door neighbors. I remember they were, you know, tried to like look in my window when I was changing and I was very upset by that. And, you know, and, and it took a long time for me to really learn to love my body because much like These young girls who are running from that male objectifying gaze, I did too. I did go through phases of wearing baggier things and trying to hide my body. It took time and knowing myself and experience to come to to love myself and my body and it also took having really positive experiences with my breasts and you know this this has all I have been reflecting on all of these things and I think that you know something that a you know a middle-aged woman going through breast cancer has that these girls don't have is you know, I have the time and maturity to have come to a position of, you know, being able to love and accept my body despite, you know, cultural projections and, you know, sexualized projections and unrealistic body images. You know, I have come to a point in my life where I'm old enough and mature enough to have moved past that. I can have a critique of those things. I can critique that external system that projects those things onto women's bodies rather than critiquing my body for not fitting those expectations. So I think that is you know, something that I wish these girls would give themselves the time to mature and be able to critique those unrealistic standards rather than critique themselves and harm themselves. You know, and I've also been reflecting about, you know, this is sort of personal, but I think it's important to say but about the pleasure that I have received from having breasts. I mean, they are a very important part of my sexual experience, and I don't want to be graphic here per se, but, you know, nipples and breasts are very erogenous zones. And one of the things that the surgeon keeps pushing, the surgeon, the oncologist, my particular oncologist, is hopeful that I will have great success with my chemo and potentially, you know, he's not 100% sold, but potentially have a 100% reduction of my tumor. He's more hopeful that I will only have to have a lumpectomy. As I told you earlier, I'm hopeful for more because I'm doing some other treatments with my naturopathic doctor. but the surgeon is still very much pushing for this mastectomy and the surgeon is telling me things like, you know, come look at our book, you know, the reconstructive surgeries are better than you think, you know, the reconstructive surgeries are amazing now and, you know, you can have that, you can get the other breasts worked on at the same time and you can have that breast job that you always wanted, which I never wanted a breast job at all, but the thing is, what they don't tell you is There is a massive lack of sensation. If they have to cut off your nipple, you're not getting nipple sensation back. And the thing is, these amazing surgeries, however good they look, those are for other people. I don't look down and look at my own breasts all day. No, I would not like to be lopsided. I would prefer to be symmetrical when people do happen to look at me. That's my preference. But how I look to other people, that's for them, really. That's not really for me. What is for me is how I feel in my body. you know, my sensation, how much pleasure I receive from my body, how capable my body is, how fit or healthy or able to, you know, go hiking or do the things that I love to do, how I feel physically in my body, that is for me. You know, I don't I don't look at my own face. I look at other people's faces. I don't look at my breasts. Not that I'm looking at other women's breasts, but I see other people. I'm not looking down at myself. you know, when they're telling me how great it's going to look, I mean, that's all fine and good. I mean, but I, for me, I care about sensation and the thought that I would lose my sensation, my access to a lot, something that's very pleasurable for me. You know, that's, it's incredibly sad and upsetting. And, you know, I feel, Yeah, I feel really, it makes me really sad. I, I'm sort of choosing how, how, how personal I want to be. I think I will. I'm going to say it. So, you know, I'm with someone right now who's just a very kind, very, very good, good man. And, you know, there have been some moments where I have been, you know, sitting with the fact that like, You know, maybe this is the last time I'm going to feel this. You know, I don't know how I don't know how much longer I'm going to feel these feelings. I don't know how much longer I'm going to have access to these feelings. And that is That's really sad and it's really scary. It breaks my heart. I'm going to fight as hard as possible not to lose this. It's the juxtaposition of my fighting to cling onto this and to not give it up juxtaposed with you know, the image of the woman that I put in my substack, who's the, her name is Gottmik. She's that RuPaul drag race model. She's someone who identifies, she's a woman who identifies as a trans man who has this picture of herself with, you know, sparkly sequins over scars on her chest and a bag of shiny, bright, red, bloody breasts. And she's, She's posing in a sexy fashion model pose like this with Louis Vuitton shoes being sold. And I forget who the designer of her bag was and so-and-so did her makeup and so-and-so did her hair, you know, selling this image as sexualized, glamorous, associated with celebrity and status and making it look like this enviable, desirable thing that other girls should want for themselves. And I find influencers like her utterly disgusting for what they are selling. And it's utterly sad for herself that, that she would do something so harmful and give up all of that, you know, sensation that I'm fighting for.

Stephanie Winn: Well, thank you for sharing all of that so vulnerably, Amy. I want to say some very serious things, but I also had in mind to say something really unserious, just because there's like something you've been in the ballpark of that I feel like deserves to be mocked, which is that, you know, here you are, a real woman, having a real woman's very embodied experience and speaking about this, I mean, this midlife crisis of facing breast cancer. and you're sitting here saying, I don't spend all day staring down at my chest. What came to mind was like, that is the fantasy of 15-year-old boys. You know that like, and it was a trope before the trans thing went crazy, right? Wasn't it? Don't we all remember a time before we were all afraid to speak honestly about the fact that we can tell what a man and woman are? It was a trope. that boys and immature men would fantasize about, oh, well, if I ever had boobs, I'd just play with them all day. Right? Which just shows how little insight they have into the actual female experience. So it was just you were so close to the ballpark of that trope that I felt like I just needed to point out the juxtaposition because here we are talking about what all of this has to do with the gender madness and there are indeed men who now get to play out that fantasy. It's not just a trope anymore. It's men who are You know, many of them steeped in porn, many of them conditioned themselves. They willed themselves to develop autogynephilia, which by the time this episode comes out, will have just been covered in my episode with Mary-Kate Delvey, to give you insight into, you know, what those types of men are thinking. But yeah, and what the surgeon said to you about the boob job you've always wanted, just such an insensitive comment in the absence of you ever having actually expressed to him that that was something that you would have personally wanted. When you talk about sensation, I totally hear that. anticipating of the, you know, potential mourning of the loss of that sensation. And I've heard stories of, you know, detrans women in relationships having a really hard time with that part of their body just feeling so empty, feeling oftentimes numb. Some people have ongoing pain in that area, but the most common thing I hear from women is just numbness and the sense that this piece of them is missing. And so it's absolutely understandable that as an embodied sensitive person that you would anticipate that loss of sensation. And I hope that's not what it is for you if it does become that. And I'm glad you're motivated to do not only the treatments that are being offered that you have to participate in passively, like the chemo and surgery potentially, but also the treatments that you have to do quite actively, which it seems like our medical system really isn't set up, it really seems like you have to have that inner motivation to do it yourself. You'd mentioned you're doing a metabolic approach. Do you want to share about what that is?

Amy Sousa: Yeah, I do. And I just want to respond. I'm glad you brought up, yeah, the men who are, we see them and Mary Kate Delvey does a good job of exposing them, but in a very playful and mocking way. These men who do, this is what they like to do, is to play with their breast jobs or homegrown estrogen-induced nubs.

Stephanie Winn: Estrogen-induced gynecomastia.

Amy Sousa: Yeah, yeah. And I noticed that these men like to role-play a lot of what women have. They role-play having our breasts. They role-play in some very disturbing ways having a period. They role-play a lot of these things, but I never see them role-playing breast cancer. I never see them role-playing endometriosis. I never see them role-playing menopause. You know, I, I think it's, you know, they, they, you know, they, they have a very fetishized version of, of what womanhood is and yeah, it's, it's pretty obvious.

Stephanie Winn: I was going to say something really snarky. But there are parents listening to this who I know will appreciate a laugh. I mean, just like all the girls who think there are boys aren't jumping to be the first to mow the lawn or take out the trash. Nope.

Amy Sousa: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. They really don't know. You know, they really don't know what that actually means because it's an embodied experience. So you just can't experience it. A girl can't be a boy, you know, any more than she can be a frog. You just can't know what it's like to have apparatus that you simply have never experienced. And it's not a role. You can fulfill the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity as much as you want, and it will bring you no closer to understanding what is a woman or what is a man.

Stephanie Winn: Actually, I know you were about to say something, but that also brings up the topic of phantom limb. sensations, which I wanted to talk to you about as well. But what were you about to say?

Amy Sousa: Well, I was going to talk about mage treatment, but maybe let's go into phantom limbs because I think that's a really interesting place to go. And people bring that up a lot about like, well, you can experience a body part that you don't have because phantom limbs. And well, phantom limb people have had that limb. They are responding to nerves in their body that simply don't connect up anymore. But they are responding to their physical body because they still have those nerves. That's what the phantom limb is.

Stephanie Winn: And I apologize for my own distractibility because I just asked you about the metabolic approach and then quickly forgot and got sidetracked in five different directions. We will come back to the metabolic treatment, but just something really interesting, like when you brought up this idea that you can't know what it's like to have an appendage on your body that you've never had, I've actually heard some really bizarre things because of the nature of the work I do as a consultant for ROGD parents. They come to me and they say that, you know, They report that their son describes feeling like there is this missing apparatus on his body, that he feels like he's missing breasts. And my response to that is, well, neuroplasticity is a powerful thing. And you can think yourself into and out of a lot of different things. Look at how OCD works in the brain. Look at how addiction works in the brain. And if you have trained yourself thousands of times over that every time I feel any kind of emotion or any kind of distress, the thing that brings me comfort is the fantasy of transitioning to being the opposite sex as if that's possible. If you think yourself into that, you will eventually become, you know, you will have an experience that's almost hallucinatory after a certain point. And I don't doubt that after that point, after thousands of iterations of certain neurons firing together and wiring together in this hypothetical young man's brain, that indeed, he has really convinced himself that there are breasts missing, although he's never had those nerve endings. It was just something that's come up in conversations with parents.

Amy Sousa: I think I've heard very similar things. And I think it's very important to, very carefully discern what is a think and what is a feel. And the way that this ideology is spoken about is spoken about in terms of feeling. I feel like I'm a boy if I'm a girl, or I feel like a girl if I'm a boy. But the, the, the, The fact is, these are not feelings. To carefully discern what is a think and what is a feel. So, you know, when you say, I feel like a boy or I feel like I should have breasts. Well, feelings are sensations. So a sensation is either an emotion or it's a physical sensation. So a boy can have, you know, emotions are not Emotions are open to everyone. So, to say, I feel like I'm a girl, you know, if you're a boy, that's not an emotion. That's saying that you are feeling some sort of sensation, but you can't feel the sensation of wishing that you had breasts or wanting breasts. You have no access to that physical sensation. So, this is an obsessive thought. It is like an OCD. It's an obsessive thought that you as you said, feed and feed and feed. It's an obsessive compulsion. It is very similar to what an anorexic is saying. I feel that. Well, you can't feel the sensations of being an obese person because you're starving to death. You know, what you actually feel in your body is starvation. That's what you're feeling, but you have become obsessed with an obsessive thought that is telling you, I need to lose weight and I feel fat. So I think that's a really great thing to discern for parents that this, this can be, this can turn very much into OCD. And as you know, there's, there's a lot of correlation between people who have OCD type tendencies or disorders and this ideology, because it absolutely plays into that.

Stephanie Winn: Now I'm going to try to stay focused and I'm going to ask you again about the metabolic approach to treatment.

Amy Sousa: So I am working with a naturopathic doctor and there is a lot of research that cancer is a metabolic disease and there is a wonderful woman called, oh, I'm going to forget her first name, but she's Dr. Walls and she has written a book and she was a regular doctor and now she is doing more what is called functional medicine, but she herself developed multiple sclerosis and went down because she was faithful to the allopathic traditions, went down the normal procedural path for MS and found herself in a wheelchair, which is is natural. That's the natural course for someone with MS. That wasn't an unheard of outcome. However, she began to question that outcome and look into alternative sources and she started studying cells at the mitochondrial level. and what it takes to have cellular regeneration and cellular breakdown, and started noting that when cells were in a state of inflammation, they were discompromised their ability to have immunity properties. So she looked at all kinds of different autoimmune diseases and disorders and started looking at them as, you know, at immune dysfunction as largely due to an overly inflamed system, which created, which is what created basically a petri dish for potential, you know, immune disorders. And cancer itself is ultimately and immunity dysregulation. Our bodies are being inundated with free radicals all the time. Little cancers are coming up all the time. And in healthy, functioning bodies, our bodies are able to battle these off and fight them. So Her approach, her kind of strongest case approach, if you are in an extreme dysregulation, is to put your body in a state of ketosis. And this isn't really, it's not exactly the ketosis of like, I'm going to eat like a bucket of eggs and bacon. This is a much more healthful and regulated approach, but it is using diet to starve the cells. Cancer cells feed on sugar, glucose, so anything that is starchy, you know, I've basically cut out all grain, all gluten, sugar, alcohol, dairy, anything that basically creates glucose in your system and I'm basically in a state of starving my cancer from being able to grow. You know, I can eat, you know, meat. I eat a ton of, you know, green leafy greens, berries, seeds, some nuts, some other kinds of vegetables, but just not starchy vegetables. And this is putting my body in a state of ketosis and also what they call a thrombosis. I'm doing some intermittent fasting as well, which also basically, it just heightens your body's ability to, to yeah, starve, starve that cancer cells' ability to grow because those fast-growing multiplying cancer cells need the glucose to be able to survive. So since I've been doing this alongside the chemo, My personal estimation, I haven't had a new MRI, but just from touch alone, I feel that my tumor has decreased at least by half. It was quite large, so I could really feel it. It was protruding from my breast originally, which was not great. That was very scary to see, but now it has retracted back. you know, I can see the difference that this approach is taking already and then, you know, I'm doing a ton of, you know, all kinds of supplements that, you know, support my platelet regeneration, my metabolism, my ability to create iron in my body. You know, I'm doing a ton of supplemental things and then, you know, other things, you know, exercise, sweating is like sweating, you know, just working out into a sweat or being in a sauna are also really good for shrinking the tumor. There's a number of of other littler things that I'm doing alongside all, you know, under, you know, the supervision of my naturopath, who is also an MD, but these things are, you know, I, I feel they're having a great impact. I know other women who have taken similar approaches to me and have had great success and have had, you know, the kind of success where their doctors in the end say, you know, we've never seen results like this. So I think there's a lot to be said that nutrition can do to help us. It's a very simple thing. I'm pretty much just eating really clean and healthy, so there's really nothing about this. A lot of fish and salmon, shellfish, and healthy fruits and vegetables, so there's really nothing about this that can harm me and it can only help. you know, even my oncologist, you know, they don't take nutrition as seriously. I mean, I don't think they would necessarily want you to eat poorly per se, but like, you know, they told me like, no, no, no, like when I was so proud of myself when I went in and I was like, I'm, you know, I'm also doing this, you know, metabolic approach to like, help, you know, help the chemo work. And they just kind of looked at me and the oncology nurse was like, no, if you want cheese and crackers, you should just eat cheese and crackers. And I just was like, well, I don't want them. I'm not going to eat them right now. I'm not going to put any of that into me until Well, I don't know if ever, maybe, who knows, but at least not until I am, you know, 100% cancer free, I will keep up this approach that seems to be being successful for me. And I think, you know, ultimately this way of eating right now is, it's a very organ supporting diet as well. There's a lot of coconut oil and avocado and just really healthy fats that are, fats are what we need to support our organs. That's really good for me right now as well. And I think it's just, you know, the cleaner you eat, the less your body has to do to fight off other things. You know, my body doesn't have to, you know, process refined sugar right now. I think that's probably something good to take off my plate, you know, whether or not you believe that it's going to shrink the tumor or not. I think it's just one thing my body doesn't have to do the work for. My body is already doing a lot of work to process the chemo drugs.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I'm really proud of you, Aimee. And it is shocking and disturbing that people who work with cancer patients wouldn't be aware of or advocate for things that, I don't know, almost anyone interested in holistic health has learned about how sugar feeds cancer and that there are things that help your body fight cancer. And yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you want to take advantage of that? Why wouldn't you want to give it everything you've got? But it seems like it's this whole model of health care based on treating the patient like an infantile, passive recipient of services. And I think there's this parallel in the gender affirmation model, right? It's not that the patient needs to do any work to change their own deeply ingrained habits in order to help them get better, as we would with a patient engaging well in effective psychotherapy. It's that the patient has mental habits that justify maintaining their distress, and then they suck at the metaphorical breast of the healthcare system, please mommy give me, give me gender-affirming care, tell me I am what I say I am, and all will be well. So it's this very passive model of the patient, whereas that I think flies in the face of everything we know about healing really, both physically and psychologically.

Amy Sousa: Absolutely. Well, think of any other, even with all of the varied kinds of approaches that you might have to being in therapy, whether it's some version of talk therapy, whether it's some version of a somatic therapy, They are always ultimately about giving the patient tools. They are about skill building. They are about learning to better process your emotions, learning how to better feel. your emotions, making better choices, being discerning, understanding, differentiating between parental ingrained scripts and what is your own thoughts or cultural scripts and your own thoughts. in any other kind of therapy, there is a skill-building process. So that ultimately, when you come out of that therapy, you can say, oh, now I have the tools I need. So if this comes up again, or if I have another crisis, I have the tools to approach it. And I think that's why we see such poor mental outcomes for those who have had, quote unquote, gender-affirming care, because there is no skill building process. You don't come out of surgery with a new set of skills. You don't come out of surgery being like, now I know how to handle my depression. You come out of surgery with an empty chest and the depression is still there. And now what? Because you didn't learn. You didn't get a new tool. You didn't get a new skill. You still have the same brain.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And you have a brain that you've convinced yourself, like I was saying about neuroplasticity earlier. You've convinced yourself of all these things and you've been practicing the habits associated with anxiety, depression, avoidance, procrastination, learned helplessness. You've been practicing those patterns. thousands of times. And then you wake up from surgery, you still have the same brain. And I hear these stories from parents about momentary glimpses of the so-called euphoria in their children, like their son gets called ma'am at a restaurant and suddenly he appears to be glowing. It's like, okay, the power of neuroplasticity strikes again. How many times has he practiced in his brain telling himself that this is the thing that'll make him happy, right? So then it happens And there's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's a placebo effect. And the moral of the story, I think, ideally should be, wow, I am capable of feeling pleasure, hope, optimism. Maybe I'm in charge of that feeling. Maybe I can cultivate that feeling. But instead, no. What's the take-home message? It's, wow, that felt really good when the server called me ma'am. I need to keep doing things that make people call me ma'am because that's the source of my happiness.

Amy Sousa: Yeah, and that's why we see the meltdowns when they get misgendered. We see an absolute meltdown. They require that external validation, and when they don't get the external validation, It's an absolute breakdown. We see so many of these TikTok videos of these influencers in tears over getting, you know, referred to as the opposite sex. And this shows their absolute fragility. You know, they are not in a healthy, balanced mental state or else that would not be so it wouldn't be so devastating to them. And it, you know, it reminds me of a friend of mine when she was in her early 20s, was going through some depression and just, she wasn't sure what she was doing with her life. And, you know, I mean, this happens a lot at this age. This is normal for these, you know, little 20-nothings. But she had a friend who lived in Maui and decided, you know, she loved it there and she was going to move to Maui and, and, and she was going to live in paradise and she was going to have this beautiful life. And, you know, for the first like week or so that she was there, it was, it was a beautiful vacation paradise. And then her depression started acting up and she realized like, oh my God, my depression is here in Hawaii with me. It's in Maui with me.

Stephanie Winn: It's so uncanny that you bring up that story, Amy, because I have a really similar story where I I was a wild child and I had had a pretty rough life up until 18. And by the time I was approaching my 18th birthday, I'd heard all these things about life in Hawaii, specifically the big island where there's all these permaculture farms and where you can just spend months camping on beaches, right? I actually went to Hawaii two days after my 18th birthday with a little bit of money I'd come into by some luck. I had a few thousand dollars, which at that time I knew how to make a few thousand dollars last forever, and I got to paradise. I got off the plane. and I went and sat under a tree and cried because I realized that I had brought my sadness with me. I ended up staying in Hawaii for a year and a half and having a transformational experience. I actually do believe that going to Hawaii is a great choice if you can manage it while you're young and while you have an inexpensive lifestyle. If you have the health and mobility to go and work on a farm in Hawaii, I highly recommend it, actually. because I believe in the healing power of nature and the aloha spirit is real. It's not to say that there's no dark side, but I had that similar moment. And for me, it was such a striking, memorable experience. Again, two days after my 18th birthday, I will remember that day for the rest of my life. And that was when I learned the lesson, wherever you go, there you are. And I think that lesson comes up for me when I think about these young people with their desire for so-called gender-affirming care, because at least me, I had pinned all my hopes on something that the worst thing that could happen when you go to Hawaii is you get sucked into a cult, and that is indeed what happened. I got sucked into a hippie New Age cult. That's the worst thing that could happen in Hawaii, okay? But you don't get sucked into a cult that's gonna have you remove body parts. Not in Hawaii. Maybe now, I don't know. It's the 21st century after all, but it wasn't when I was that age. Whereas, mostly you go to Hawaii, you might end up lost, you might end up broke, you might end up getting stolen from by the natives that hate Howleys. And you might end up losing track of who you are and what your life purpose is and getting sucked into the illusion of, oh, we're in paradise, and let's just forget that anything else exists. And there is plenty of that in Hawaii. But none of that compares to the risk of pinning all your hopes on Hawaii being a transformational experience versus the risk of pinning all your hopes on a surgery of that being a transformational experience.

Amy Sousa: Well, and the thing is, I mean, yeah, one, you're right. Wherever you go, there you are. And two, your experience in Hawaii did not rely on how other people participated with your experience in Hawaii. Again, like, this, you know, these gender surgeries and identity changes, they require other people's participation. And, you know, again, going back to what we were saying about the original goals of therapy being to skill build. Well, one of those skills or tools that you're hopefully building in any kind of therapy is the ability to internally validate, you know, to validate myself. So whatever someone else says to me, you know, maybe people are going to call me baldy now, you know. So if people are going to call me baldy, I need to have the internal validation to be like, no, I'm, you know, I'm good with who I am. I'm good in myself. Like whatever they call me, whatever they want to say to me, you know, I'm okay. You know, it may hurt my feelings for a minute, but I'm going to bounce back because I

Stephanie Winn: Well, I kind of called you Baldy at the beginning. I was like, Amy's bald.

Amy Sousa: Well, yeah, you didn't call me Baldy. That's just to notice that I'm bald is different than a name call.

Stephanie Winn: I can call you Baldy now, though. Yeah, you can, you can. We're going to take all the sting, all the poison out of that phrase. It's going to be my loving term of endearment for you, Baldy. Now, if anybody calls you baldy, you're going to be like, oh, my dear friend Stephanie calls me that.

Amy Sousa: Just to say that to have a true mental balance is to be able to be resilient, to these kinds of things and not to require anyone else's external participation in your identity. You know, who I am, I mean, I want to have friends, of course, who I relate to as friends in a, you know, in an equal way, but it doesn't require, I don't require my friends to you know, not notice reality, you know, I don't have my friends don't have to participate in any of the beliefs that I hold about myself, you know, they maybe you don't require your friends to call you blondie just because you're feeling bad about feeling like a baldy.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Amy Sousa: What's up, blondie? Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie Winn: I'm being ridiculous right now. I'm so glad our friendship can tolerate my bumbling. There's something you said though earlier about internalizing versus externalizing, and girls, at least that's how I wrote it down. I'm not sure what language you used, but you were talking about critiquing beauty standards, like why girls take it out on them. I consider that as a matter of Internalizing versus externalizing, and anyone who's in the field of psychology knows the sort of cliche that females tend to internalize more, males tend to externalize more, meaning what do you do with your distress? Do you direct it at yourself? Do you engage in self-harm, cutting, anxiety, depression, all, you know, internalizing, anorexia too? Or externalizing would be like acting out, you know, criminal behavior, violence, things like that. And there can certainly be a mixture of those things, but it's interesting to me that as much as there are girls claiming to be boys and boys claiming to be girls, so much of their behavior is so typical for their sex, right? The girls continuing to internalize the way girls have always done, sort of abandoning their female solidarity. If they're upset about ways in which women are treated unfairly, beauty standards that we're held to or what have you, instead of standing with other women and standing up to what they perceive as unfair or what harm has been done to them. There's this sort of like opting out of femininity, which sort of begs the question of these girls and something I sometimes wish I could ask them. And I think there are situations where someone might actually want to ask a girl. So do you think that girls and women deserve to be treated that way? Because when you opt out as if That's the solution to this type of mistreatment? It sort of implies that you think only males and so-called trans men, or whatever you call yourself, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Because otherwise, why would you feel the need to opt out and abandon us? Well, do you think that we deserve that? Do you think we want that? Sorry, go ahead.

Amy Sousa: Well, it is part of the ideology, you know. This is, you know, if you read Andrea Long Chu, who wrote the book Females, if you read Grace Laverly articles or Tobias Wolfe, you know, they talk about this, you know, Andrea Longchiu says, you know, to be female is to be effed. Grace Laverly talks about, you know, his dreams of being sexually objectified. So within the ideology, yeah, this is what women are and what they're for, you know, and any girl indoctrinated into this ideology, yeah, she is saying, you're right, she is saying that women deserve that, and that is what the ideology itself says. And I, you know, I was talking about this internalization, but also talking about it in terms of not just male-female internalization-externalization, but the ability to have agency and to be, to basically have political agency, you know, to say, you know, I see what's happening in the culture and I critique it and I critique the culture as having a problem and the problem is not within me. You know, that's not like to externalize in terms of acting out, but that is to have, you know, political agency to say, you know, this is a poor system. This system needs to change. This system has a lot of sexism in it that is making me deeply uncomfortable. And for me, when a girl is hating herself so much that because she doesn't conform to a hyper-feminized stereotype, well, if society has put out little narrow boxes for you, it's very uncomfortable to be smushed into a box. That's it. that's naturally uncomfortable. So, you know, in a lot of ways, some of these reactions are actually natural and potentially useful reactions to a toxic culture. But instead of being able to have any kind of political awareness or agency to critique that culture, it's totally internalized. And once you start identifying With this diagnosis, then you have lost all access to that agency to make a critique.

Stephanie Winn: 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. That's a really helpful reminder about the difference like, the different definitions of internalizing and externalizing, right? There's sort of the psychiatric classification, but there's also, there's times in which it is helpful to externalize not as in acting out behaviors, but where one is locating the source of the problem, right? And what this has to do with agency and locus of control. It's fully possible to be someone with a pretty healthy healthy internal locus of control and sense of personal agency, who at the same time does not wrongly place blame on yourself for situations that are maybe impacting you, but ultimately have very little to do with you. And in fact, sometimes that's the most selfless thing to do because in recognizing how something is impacting you, you're also recognizing how it's probably impacting lots of other people too, and so you're standing up for everyone.

Amy Sousa: A friend of mine once was telling me this story of a time when she was depressed. That's what she said. She said, I went through a depression once. I was prescribed antidepressants and then she described this situation. And the situation is that she worked for a boss who verbally degraded her every day and no one else in the office said anything to the point that she became, you know, went from being a very confident person to being very diminished. and then she went to see a therapist and I just I don't know what this therapist was and I don't know why the therapist didn't ask her these questions if she told the therapist the story but the therapist was like oh yeah well we'll give you you know some some antidepressants to you know so you can go back and work in this environment and I just listened to her story And this doesn't have to do with other people who do have depression, but I just listened to the story and I was like, you didn't have a depression. You had an abusive boss. You were in an abusive situation. And instead of getting out of that abusive situation, whoever you went to see, and I don't know who it was, but they gave you antidepressants so you could go back into an abusive situation. you know, I don't, some people do have depression, but I don't think you did. You had a very natural reaction to an abusive situation, but your problem wasn't some, you know, internal, you know, it's not like you are a person who has a proclivity to have a depression. You became depressed because you were being abused and no one stopped it for you.

Stephanie Winn: I've definitely seen a lot of that in therapy.

Amy Sousa: Yeah. And I think that it's, it's really important to be able to assess your situation. You know, what, what is my situation and is, are these feelings coming from inside of me? You know, are the feelings being generated within me or am I having a very normal reaction to a toxic environment?

Stephanie Winn: And there's so many ways to get that assessment wrong. Like there's this popularization now of therapy speak and everyone's a narcissist and all this kind of stuff. And it drives me nuts because there are tools that are actually really valuable for dealing with actual narcissists and actual emotional abuse and actual toxic relationships and things like this. But now it's like, It's become so popular to point the finger so quickly and the trans cult has taken advantage of that by telling young people that their parents are these terrible people and that they should go no contact and basically the whole toolkit that you use for dealing with an abusive narcissist is now being used to deal with the most ordinary of problems. Plus, there's social media call-out culture stuff around that stuff too, where there's this lady on social media who posts a lot about narcissists and psychopaths and predators and says things like, well, they you know, they hate being called out. And I find myself thinking, well, yes, this is true, absolutely, of narcissists and predators. You know who else it's true of? It's true of people who are wrongly accused of being narcissists, psychopaths, and predators. Like, they also hate being called that. So I feel like we've entered this, like, hall of mirrors where it's, like, so hard for people to figure out what's true and what is emotionally abusive behavior and what is just like human beings acting like flawed human beings and now we've gotten way off track.

Amy Sousa: Well, I think there's, you know, there's a lot of this within this ideology because ultimately there is a problem in our culture of self-diagnosis. There's two problems, I think. One is a problem of self-diagnosis. Everyone is you know, diagnosing themselves with all kinds of things, not just mental health, you know, diagnoses, but all kinds of issues. And two, oh wait, what was my second thought? It was like self-diagnosis and I can't remember the second point, but you were saying that, you were saying that, you know, people are calling each other, they're diagnosing others as narcissists. Oh, the second thing is identifying as your diagnosis. So to accept your diagnosis as an identity. rather than, you know, like… hopefully like heal from your issue. Like if someone is diagnosed with anorexia, you hopefully want to see them grow through that and have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies and not remain in that diagnosis. Like I don't want to remain in my diagnosis of cancer. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be like, you know, I, you know, I identify as having cancer. I have cancer, you know, that's not going to become my new identity and I don't want to identify with my diagnosis. And I think that in the mental health field, people are self-diagnosing and they are identifying as their diagnosis rather than looking at their maybe differing issues as something to either grapple with or grow out of. And I think this is a real problem. Even this term that gets thrown around right now, neurodivergent, as if these issues are brain chemistry issues rather than… Most often, a lot of what we see are just normal human emotions that can be grappled with.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I really struggle with that. The concept of neurodivergent or neurodiverse, part of me thinks it's a useful concept that definitely applies to some people, and part of me thinks it's way overused and it begs the question, what's a normal person? You see yourself as like, okay, you're part of this special class of freaks that deserves all these special exemptions. The rest of us, see, I don't know if I'm in that category or not. Am I neurodivergent? Maybe, arguably, but do the rules apply to me? Do they not apply? The rest of us are all just normies. How does it work in a normie brain? I think the problem I'm picking up on in this is that it shows a failure of empathy, a lack of theory of mind, amongst oftentimes people who already don't have very great empathy or very great theory of mind, right? People who are so-called neurodivergent, let's say the autistic kind, they already struggle with perspective taking. And that's something that ideally they should be working on. just like we all have something that we should be working on. And then you just tell them, well, you're in the special category of people. Everyone else has a normal brain. They don't struggle in the same way. So then there's a lack of theory of mind as to how a normal brain works. And I think there's some probably overly simplistic thinking about non-neurodivergent people that assumes that they have an easy time motivating themselves to do boring, or difficult tasks. And I mean, I do think that there are people who have an easier time than I do motivating themselves to do boring or difficult tasks. Otherwise, there would not be any accountants in the world if there weren't people who found it easier than I do to do boring and difficult tasks, or dentists, for that matter. There's a lot of professions, really. But at the same time, all of us find certain tasks more enjoyable and rewarding than others. And it's up to all of us, you know, autism or not, ADHD or not, to work with what we got in terms of our brain and somehow find it in ourselves to develop systems where we can motivate ourselves to do what we need to do to pull it together.

Amy Sousa: This is way off topic, I'm sorry. Well, I mean, this is, this is about, I mean, I think it does go back to, to skill building and tool building, you know, that, that we, you know, just not as a profession, but as a culture, you know, not just as a mental health profession, but as a culture, we used to look at you know, anyone with issues, whether they were physical issues or mental health issues, as you know, this was something that you needed to, you know, develop tools around. And I think there's a lot of, you know, within the culture and specifically within the gender ideology of Yeah, of, of, of wanting the world to adapt to their circumstances, rather than adapting to the world. And I just recently saw like some TikTok where a girl was saying that she was time blind. Time blind is the term that she used. She has time blindness and she could not believe that her job fired her for having time blindness. And I was like, yeah, I can be late too. I have a problem with timeliness, but I have systems that make me be on time because I know that the world is not going to adapt to me, that I have to adapt to the world.

Stephanie Winn: I have a little something to say on time blindness and then we got to wrap up. Our time blindness is, yes, maybe a function of our relatively weaker executive functioning skills and those of us who are a little so-called neurodivergent, if that's even a thing, but it's also a function of our environments because in a natural setting, I don't know, let's say you worked on a farm in the 1700s before electricity. Things like the temperature of the air, and the light in the sky would regulate your circadian rhythms. You would wake up to the cawing of the rooster. You would need to go milk the cow, okay? You would have things to do in the morning that got you up in the brisk air with that morning light hitting your eyes. And there are natural rhythms built in to an environment in which multiple human beings, animals, and plants all live together you know when you're affected by the Sun and the moon and the stars and the seasons and the position of the earth and You know relative to other celestial bodies like all of these things have a regulating effect on our sense of time and if you are time-blind it is probably because You live in a temperature controlled environment with lights. You can turn off and on and you're staring at screens all the time that are emitting blue light and tricking your brain into thinking it's constantly daytime, and there's no beginning or end to anything. Also, there aren't these collective holidays and rituals around weddings and funerals and births where the whole town drops what they're doing to come together like we did in the 1700s, okay? So, like, there's a lot of ways that, compared to our ancestral past, We are just not living in time in any real meaningful sense the way we did when life had just this built-in rhythm to it. So time blindness, you want to make it into some fancy psychological concept, OK. But really, it's just kind of a function of our hyper-modern environments. And if you want to work on your time blindness, try regulating your environment so you're a little bit more in touch with nature.

Amy Sousa: I was just gonna say, I don't know, to bring it in or to bring it all back, I do think we have a disconnection from nature, a disconnection from our instincts, and our intuitions. And, you know, for me, this is what I do hope to highlight. I think highlighting, you know, there's, it's just as good, time blindness is just as good an excuse to highlight being in touch with our instinctual selves as my breast cancer is. And I think this is what we need. You know, the the dissociative effect of our culture, whether it's, you know, doom scrolling on social media or being inside some kind of cubicle type office space or, you know, cutting off your body parts because you're indoctrinated by gender ideology, you know, all of these things are, you know, a dissociation from our instinctual selves, which are, our instincts are the most useful tools that we have for keeping ourselves safeguarded. And this is safeguarding not just from a potential predator, like a potential physical predator, but keeping us safeguarded in general, keeping our mental health safeguarded, keeping our daily healthy well-being safeguarded, being in alignment with what is a healthy diet or what is a healthy sleep schedule. Our instincts keep us in alignment with that which is nurturing and good for us, rather than that which is going to cause us pain and disease. And for me, right now, going through a disease, I have to examine, how did I get to this place? And I don't think it's any one thing. Even though there are things that I might have changed about my diet, I don't think I can say, you know, that bag of Doritos and that caused cancer. But being in a state of high inflammation certainly created an environment where that could grow and, you know, I think it's given me some insight into that and anxiety, you know, some anxiety that I have dealt with. also added to that inflammatory state. So I've had to, in this cancer, not just, you know, fight the cancer, but reflect on the circumstances that created an opportunity for this cancer to grow in me. And as well, it's given me an opportunity to develop insights about what I see out in the culture and what is happening to those young girls who have not come to maturity and do not have the skills and the background that I have to critique their external environment for what might be toxic and what they are being influenced by unduly.

Stephanie Winn: Dang, way to bring it all home, Amy. That was perfect. Where can people find you?

Amy Sousa: Please come to my sub stack which is theknownheretic.com. I would love more subscribers and if you want to read more about my cancer journey, you can go there, www.thenownheretic.com on sub stack. Also, my Twitter is where a lot of people also follow me. That's probably my biggest following and I am at Known heretic on Twitter and I have been I am going to be a little more forthcoming there I have I have I had recently taken a little step back But I'm back on there making tweets and comments and I'm gonna continue talking about my cancer journey I'm gonna continue making insights about how I see this as related to the gender industry. So if you want to follow me there, you can. And I do also have an amazing masterclass. It's, it's my pinned tweet on Twitter that I did with Isabella Maulbin of Whose Body Is It? It's a masterclass on safeguarding instincts, intuition, and how to build resiliency through embodied tools.

Stephanie Winn: Awesome, thanks so much for joining me today, Amy. Thank you, Stephanie, for having me. 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 Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks 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.