You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Hello, we're doing something slightly different on the podcast today. Instead of an interview or a solo episode, I am thankful to be borrowing a portion of Disaffected podcast with Josh Slocum from episode 187, Old Man Yells at Cloud, in which he interviews me for a portion of the show. I'm really grateful to my friend Josh at Disaffected for being the first person to interview me since I released ROGD Repair, which you can find now at ROGDRepair.com. I recently did an episode of my own podcast about this, but it just really feels different to have someone else asking those excellent questions that Josh asked and giving me the opportunity to share more insight into why and how I developed this program, who it's for, what I hope to accomplish with it, and all of that good stuff. Josh is not a therapist, but he is someone with personal experience and a lot of insight into how cluster B personality traits, behaviors, and relational dynamics have in many ways taken over large sectors of society and had a huge influence on human behavior, relationships, and expectations. So I think Josh was a really great person to kick off my sort of podcast rounds with regard to discussing ROGD Repair. Because as far as I'm aware, ROGD Repair is the first and only resource for parents of trans identified youth that takes into account the truth that cluster B personality disorder traits and behaviors are exceedingly common in this population. In fact, as you'll hear more about in this episode, I operate from the assumption that social contagion is not one thing, it's actually three. It's the trifecta of social contagion. Social justice beliefs and narratives, also known as wokeness, combined with cluster B personality traits and behaviors, work in combination with gender identity ideology. And together, the three form the perfect storm, which is designed to take advantage of every psychological vulnerability in the minds of the young people who fall prey to it. So I thought it was perfect to sort of kick off my podcast rounds talking about ROGD repair with Josh, because he really has a lot of passion for this topic of understanding Cluster B. So what you're about to hear is my conversation with him. on Disaffected. He asked some really great questions. He didn't have time to ask me all the questions that we could possibly ask. But if you enjoy this episode and if you like hearing me talk about RGD repair, I would be oh so very appreciative if you would let other podcast hosts know that I might make a great guest to discuss this topic. I would really appreciate that. So without further ado, here is a portion of Disaffected Podcast with Josh Slocum from episode 187, Old Man Yells at Cloud. Thanks again for having me, Josh.

Josh Slocum: I am really glad to bring back a guest that we've had on the show before. She is therapist Stephanie Winn, who has been very involved in what has come to be known as rapid onset gender dysphoria. Welcome back, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: Thanks so much for having me, Josh. Great to be here.

Josh Slocum: And there's a reason we have you here today, because you have a new system. I know that you've been working on this for quite a long time. because you have encountered a lot of people providing your service who have been caught up in gender ideology. You've talked to kids. You've talked to teens. You've talked to parents. You've seen it from the inside. You're also a working therapist who knows that, sadly, the majority of the mental health field is following very unhelpful guidance when it comes to this. So you've got something, a new program called ROGD Repair or Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria Repair. Tell us about this.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I was a therapist for about eight years before I, excuse me, entered the world of podcasting and being part of the public dialogue about societal issues. And then I continued doing therapy alongside podcasting and networking and really developed this specialization around helping the parents. And then I shifted to a consulting model because what I realized was that the parents didn't need therapy. They didn't need that particular type of relationship and container and intention. They needed to understand what was going on with the psychology of their children. And I was unable to work with youth with rapid onset gender dysphoria as soon as I entered the public arena, because unfortunately, these teens and young adults are consuming so much propaganda and they're so indoctrinated into this belief system that they believe that people like me who would want to protect them from lifelong medical harm are actually the ones doing the harm. So as soon as I had any public presence speaking out on this issue, I pretty much gave up my ability to work with these youth directly, which wasn't I had a lot of feelings about that, but the parents kept reaching out to me and I was hearing from parents all over the country. I started working with this consulting model thinking, let me just share what I know from my time working with these youth and from my studying of these issues and just putting two and two together and see what I can do to help these families understand where their kids' heads are at, what's affecting them, why the parents aren't able to get through to them. I basically got really good at that process with the parents. And health crisis about six months ago sort of forced me to narrow down what I was doing. And I decided to stop doing therapy altogether, just focus on that parent consulting. And as my energy started to return, I thought, let me put all the tools I've learned actually help these families into one place. And that's how ROGD Repair evolved. It was really from you know, intensive work, just talking to hundreds of families, troubleshooting what was going wrong in their attempts to reach their indoctrinated kids, and then highlighting, okay, so what are the psychology concepts that these parents need to understand that, you know, I don't blame them for not understanding it. It's just like, oh, this is where you're going wrong, right? Because you're, you're not maybe taking into account sort of the headstrong nature and the fragile ego of a person this age. Also the cluster B component, which you talk about on this show, is this huge under-discussed element of what's going on. So as I started really kind of narrowly focusing on this issue, I developed this model I call the trifecta of social contagion. And it's my belief that we can't really help families help their kids. I mean, obviously, as I said earlier, it's really hard for professionals to help these kids. And so who's in the best position to help them? It's the families. But we can't really help families help their kids if we don't take into account the things that are working along with gender identity ideology, which is cluster B personality traits. and woke beliefs about social justice. So I have this sort of trifecta model that says, hey, it's actually not one thing. It's these three things working together, creating this perfect storm. And let's help you as a parent understand how that perfect storm works, exactly what psychological vulnerabilities it's preying on in your kid, and then how your approach can take those same vulnerabilities into account.

Josh Slocum: That's okay. You kind of anticipated me very well in talking about what you were seeing. I was going to ask you, what were you seeing in these families and among these parents? What were the missing pieces? What did they not get? What was not being offered to them? But tell us, okay, so you have a trifecta model. So if people imagine a triangle, what are the three points of that triangle?

Stephanie Winn: So we have gender identity ideology, right? So this is the belief that it's possible to be in the wrong body or to, you know, have a male body, but a female mind or spirit, or the idea that you can identify as to whatever you say you are and that people need to respect your pronouns and that it's, you know, that our bodies are these meat Legos that you can cut and paste that, you know, that belief system, gender identity ideology, um, is one, right? Then we have, woke beliefs about social justice. And then the third point is cluster B personality traits. So when I talk about cluster B, I'm not saying that every single parent who signs up for my course, their kid has a cluster B personality disorder. I'm not here to diagnose anyone. I'm just hearing what people are telling me about traits and behaviors. And unfortunately, Josh, the thing is that cluster B personality traits and behaviors are kind of a normal part of adolescent development. Yes. And like what 17 year old doesn't think they're the center of the universe or, you know, have big mood swings and black and white thinking like that is also normal. The problem is the way that the culture is encouraging it because what could be kind of a stage that they grow out of, especially when you utter the magic word trans or gender, you know, the moment that comes in the picture, And you're not allowed to question that person. Now, that young person who could have just been going through a phase of having a rather obnoxious personality like everyone else their age, now they're on a path to actually, you know, become that type of person in the long run.

Josh Slocum: That's one of the most disturbing parts of this to me. You know, we've talked before. Viewers or the listeners of the show know that I think this, but, you know, to a close approximation in a sort of lighthearted way, most teenagers are borderlines, right? You know, you're emotionally unstable. You're hormonal. It's both sexes. A little bit more in girls, I'd say, in certain ways, but boys have their way too. They're confused. They're trying to figure out their ego. They're trying to figure out the limits of where their ego goes, right? Like, how far can I go with this? When am I going too far? They don't have context for that. And the tragedy is, another way of describing somebody who grows up and becomes fully cluster B personality disordered is that they are in a stage of arrested development. They're stuck in either or adolescence slash toddler reactions to things. So as you said, we want to, this is what child rearing is about. You raise them up out of that state. That's part of adulthood. But as you say, culturally, legally, medically, mental health wise, we are looking at what are actually DSM obvious cluster B traits and saying, this is a good thing. And not only is it a good thing, this is the real you. That's the way it looks to me.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And it's scary that young people are being encouraged to build a sense of identity on shifting sands, as it were.

Josh Slocum: Yeah. So So you've talked to so many people. Well, let me ask it this way. How do I describe it? I think of ROG DeRepair as a program or a course program. How do you describe it?

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, so it's a course and community for parents. It's entirely online. It's a subscription-based membership. And so when you join, you get access to a constantly growing course side of things in the community. So the course part right now has give or take about 100 lessons. And I'm always adding more. I have a list of at least 50 or 60 more topics I want to cover. And they're organized into modules. And each of those lessons is a video, an essay, and some questions for reflection. So reflection questions, the best way to do the program is if a parent is in a supportive marriage to go through it with their spouse, because that's the other person who's there to support you, who has similar observations about your child. And I think going through the program together, asking each other those questions, is how parents are really going to make the most of these tools and concepts and apply them to their own family situation. But you can also journal into the program. So there's, you know, those open-ended questions have spaces that you can answer. And then you can also find a partner to go through the, you know, if you're like a single parent, you can find a buddy to go through the program with. And then each lesson also has a discussion section. So you have your sort of private journal space that you can type whatever you want into. Then you can also share whatever you want to share with other parents. So that's the course side of things. And then the community is forums separate from the discussion section on each individual lesson where parents can go. And right now, the forums are, you know, it's pretty new. It's only been launched for a few weeks. Before that, we had our beta testers. So the forums are things like, you know, my new lesson alerts and places for people to report bugs and glitches. But I think as it grows, those forums will be places for people to dialogue about gender specific issues, age specific issues, diagnosis specific issues. and things like that. And so it is a membership because it's sort of like, stay as long as you need. Go through the program in whatever order. I definitely recommend going through it sequentially if you can. But that said, I understand people are going to be drawn in. They're going to see there's so much content. And then they're going to see the titles of certain lessons. And they're going to want to skip ahead because those titles resonate for them. And then I'm always going to keep adding more content, also being kind of responsive to who joins the program and what they want to hear about.

Josh Slocum: It's interesting. So I'm particularly curious. You've spoken to so many sets of parents who have a child who's in this at some stage. And I am going to ask you to generalize a little bit. I recognize there's a lot of variation here. But if you had to boil down the typical parent or present a vignette, a composite of the typical parental concerns, What do you what do you think the typical parent or most parents are missing? What is it that they have not had access to? What is it they don't know before they come in here? And what are they? Let's let me just ask one question at a time. What are the major things that parents don't know that you believe they need to know and that they're going to learn from this?

Stephanie Winn: OK, I got a few of those. So one is that more information does not always help. So one place that parents often go wrong is they try to present their kid with information like you know, statistics, journal articles, detransitioner videos, things like that. And it almost always backfires. And I have said to many parents, look, if that worked, I'd be out of a job. Well, I mean, I'd go back to therapy. I just go back to regular therapy. Because, you know, there there is an abundance of information that these medical interventions, to put it lightly, don't do what they promise to do, and that in fact they do a lot of harm. There is an abundance of information. So if information were enough to convince, if humans were rational actors, as I think everyone from psychologists to economics discovered a long time ago, we're not, right? If humans were rational actors, then we would respond to that. You're looking at some of the least rational actors. You're looking at impulsive, headstrong adolescents and young adults with fragile egos. So one thing is that more information doesn't always help. Sometimes it hurts. Another thing is they forget to take into account that your young person has a sense of moral and intellectual superiority. Whether or not they would consciously articulate that, they think they're smarter than you. They think they're smarter than most people. And they think they're more morally righteous than you and most people. And so if you approach them with something that would have them believe that they have been fooled or duped or believed something stupid, their walls are going to go up, right? So this is where the psychology piece comes in. So more information isn't always helpful. You have to take into account that your young person has these walls up. Also mention of detransitioners, sadly, now that's being branded a right-wing dog whistle. So, you know, this is another one of those things, right? Parents try to say detransitioners and regret and stuff like that. And what it does, again, it triggers that button because what the parents are hoping the kids will do is have a humble and sympathetic reaction of, oh, wow, those poor people, that could happen to me. I'm human and fallible too. Maybe I should give this some pause. You know, what happens is, oh, too bad that happened to them because they were stupid and they mistook themselves for being trans. But you think I don't know who I am? You think I am capable of making a mistake? Well, F you.

Josh Slocum: There's going to be no empathetic identification with with somebody they look at as a failure.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, a lot of parents expect things to make sense that don't make sense. Like, for example, like, I'm not female. I'm just a girl.

Josh Slocum: OK, or OK, I right now in the moment, I'm having a hard time parsing that. So, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: I mean, there's a lot of nonsensical statements that it's like, well, if you haven't, you know, been following them down there like anime porn rabbit holes, then of course you don't understand where they're coming from. True enough. Another another is that you can trust therapists. I've I've had to walk so many people through this where I'm like I'm like, OK, so tell me again. the rationale or the criteria you looked at for what made you determine that this therapist, pediatrician or psychiatrist was a good match for your child. And I hear like them just piecing together wishful thinking. And it's like, well, okay, too bad you just made the situation worse, because now your kid has this other adult authority figure backing them up. And I mean, I know all the worst case scenarios of times that a kid had You know, for example, the suicide thing, right? The passive suicidal ideation. They were not really a threat to themselves. They get taken to the hospital. Then they learn all the staff will affirm them, back their parents into a corner, make the whole hospital visit about, you must affirm. And now this youth just became more ingrained into a cluster B behavior pattern because they learned threatening suicide is a power move I can use at any time. to get other people to back me up and triangulate and drive a wedge between me and my parents so that my temporary outsized ego, my fragile identity that I have at the age of 16, is now the thing running the show. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of ways parents get it wrong. I would say another one is like, A common mistake is that a lot of these youth are very bright. A lot of them are on the autism spectrum, sort of Asperger's type profile, or they have ADHD. And they have what I call a lopsided brain, the idea of the twice exceptional. So they have maybe a really high IQ, but they can't tie their shoelaces. They get frustrated over really simple tasks. And parents get kind of lured in. to seeing how bright their kid is and they forget to see how fragile they are or how naive they are in some ways and to take into account their actual kind of emotional developmental level. And then one more mistake, and I could go on, but one more mistake I'll say for now on the list of things that parents do is they try to chip away at the youth's coping mechanism without supplanting a better coping mechanism. So you have to realize the role that the fantasy of being trans plays for the kid. When I hear the things that the parents report their kids are saying, some of them are in a really, really dark place, and they've pinned all of their hopes of life being better and life being different on this idea of when I'm trans, when I pass. And it's really very fantastical, but if all you're doing is trying to burst that bubble by saying, no, your life won't be better, it'll be worse, here's all the statistics, whether you're doing it with facts and statistics or emotional arguments, doesn't matter, but you're not recognizing the psychological vulnerability and why they're drawn to put up that shell or that alter ego, then it's sort of like trying to take away cigarettes from ex-junkies on a psych ward. It's like that is their last crutch.

Josh Slocum: Good analogy.

Stephanie Winn: Gotta come at it a different way.

Josh Slocum: Good analogy. Well, let's talk about what exactly are the Cluster B concepts, the personality traits that parents really need to understand and know about. And of course, most people who listen to this show are familiar with this, but just to orient anyone who may be new to this, Cluster B personality disorders are called the dramatic and erratic personality disorders. They're a distortion of the way people think and feel. and relate to other people, and they include, I can only generalize here, but there are behaviors that have a high degree of narcissism, a high degree of emotional instability, very back and forth between elation and despair, people looking at other people. One day, your best friend is the most beautiful, fabulous, loving person in the world, and the next day when she disappoints you, she is the worst evil bitch ever. It's very black and white thinking. So it's distorted emotions about your ego and it can lead people into making extremely self-destructive choices. So what are the cluster B, I don't know, greatest hits, if you will, that you think most parents really need to get under their belt to have a good grounding in what they're dealing with in this whole world of things?

Stephanie Winn: One trait I see a lot of in the behaviors and language that parents report, and honestly what their kids post on social media too, is grandiosity. Um, so for example, and looking at that trifecta again, it's, it's the gender identity ideology with the woke beliefs. So let's say, um, you know, right now this idea of queers for Palestine is having its heyday. Um, and so let's say there, there's a kid who sort of identifies with that movement. They might say things like. you know, basically along the lines of my mere existence as a, you know, queer person of color, however they're defining that, you know, it's this identity politics. My mere existence is an act of resistance, right? Like, there's a lot of grandiosity.

Josh Slocum: Yeah, have you, yes, you know what this brings to mind? I'm sure you've seen this, Stephanie. Somebody will post, trans people are sacred. They're sacred, right? And it's literal hagiography. They actually make images that evoke the connotations of the Virgin Mary and the halo behind them. It's quite literal, right? They're literally making saints of, you know, whoever the subject is there. Okay, that's a good one. Got any more?

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, so there's this sort of grandiose false self persona that they use as a crutch for their frailty and their lack of a stable identity. As you mentioned, the emotional instability, and by the way, I will add one of the lessons in the course is for predicting how your daughter will behave depending on where she's at in her menstrual cycle. Okay. Because I think that, you know, for girls who have big mood swings or borderline traits, that a lot of that is the first few years of the hormonal roller coaster and that girls aren't provided good enough education about really how to take care of themselves and manage themselves at different stages of how, um, estrogen and progesterone are fluctuating. So I actually have a lesson on this, like, like, you know, time it during the follicular phase if you can, but here's what to do during her luteal phase to improve your relationship with her. You know, the emotional instability, of course, like you said, the idealization and devaluation and the splitting. So there's kind of this romanticizing of the so-called rainbow family. And a lot of the relationships there are actually quite fragile and not very substantial. But the treatment of the parents is very much you know, sort of villainizing them. There's a lot of splitting and projection. And one of the tricks, tricks, one of the, you know, techniques that I teach in my course is for parents to recognize hidden sound, hidden signs of doubt and ambivalence. Because if you've studied cluster B dynamics, then you know that at the heart of a lot of cluster B behaviors is a psychological defense called splitting. where we split ourselves into parts, we project parts of ourselves on other people, and that's part of the borderline behavior is, I love you one moment, I hate you the next, I don't have an integration between those split off parts of me that have mixed feelings towards you. So this is one thing you do a lot, is split and project. And then the parents end up feeling guilty, the fog of fear, obligation, and guilt, emotional blackmail, I believe that term was coined in that book. So what I do is I teach parents to recognize how the emotions they're having, like guilt, anxiety, and confusion, are often actually indicators that their kid has split off and projected a part of them onto the parents. So for example, the doubt, right? Because normal, healthy, mature, integrated people who are considering any major life decision tend to have doubts about it. you know, moving to a different city, changing career paths, who you're going to marry. These are things that people need to process doubts about. So when we look at these young people who are expressing all this certainty on the surface about who they are and what they want to do with their bodies and all this kind of stuff, I don't believe it for one second. I think there's repressed and split off doubt under the surface. And where parents kind of get themselves into trouble is when they get into these sort of headbutting clashes, where they fully embody that, you know, being the source of all the doubt, and then the kid doubles down on being the source of all the certainty. So my tools are about learning to recognize when you're being projected onto and how to hold up a mirror to your kid's own doubt or how to befriend or usher in their doubt so that they can actually come to terms with the cognitive dissonance within them.

Josh Slocum: That by itself, that specific lesson, that specific topic, that's of such practical utility to so many people. well outside of of this specific topic area uh… rapid onset gender dysphoria need that alone is isn't is i think under discussed I certainly haven't heard it put to me that way, but it makes perfect sense. You know, what do you do when you are being projected on? Is this a situation where the problem that is stopping the communication is you both don't understand what's going on here with this splitting and this denial that there is doubt and how to get around that? That sounds incredibly useful. Let's, we got just a couple more minutes here. I think I want to ask, I want to ask a hard thing. It's probably not fair because we probably should have had an hour and a half for this. But I would like to know, what do you think, what happens with the families who want to make use of your program, but the parents themselves may be mired in this distorted relational thinking, whether it's full cluster B or traits of or any of that. What happens when, because it's often the case, the problems the child is having are a reflection of the problems that parents have had in the home.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, you know, it's funny, I was talking to a friend who does good work in the gender critical community, who looked at my course, and she said her only complaint is like, she only glanced at it briefly, but she saw something that because she was raised by a narcissistic mother, she has this filter, where anything she sees she sort of interprets, how would someone like my mother see this as an opportunity to point the finger at someone else and excuse themselves from all the blame. So, so my friend basically saw the section on cluster B and, you know, mention of antisocial traits and was like, you know, seeing through that filter of the parent who's just looking for someone to tell them it's not your fault. And, you know, I feel like the vast majority of the people who have come to me for help and, and partly my perspective is skewed because I charge for my time and not inherently weeds out people who were ambivalent or acting in bad faith. You know, it's people who really are invested, I think, um, that I've mostly been working with and like very good people and they, they want to hear anything I think they could be doing differently. Um, but I've seen quite a large split though, between. the types of people who come to me for help earnestly, sincerely, that, you know, they want to know anything they can do differently. And we have great rapport. And I do tell them what they can do differently. And they don't take that as an attack on their character. But I see a split between sort of that side of the ROGD parent community, so to speak, And some of the online activism around RDD parents where I've been castigated by people who took one thing I said in the most negative way possible. And it's like, well, is that how you always act? Because that could be contributing to the problem. When it comes to people doing my course, again, I think the fact that my course requires a commitment up front, it's not just the money, it's your time, it's your investment, the fact that there's so much about what, I mean, the whole course is basically what you can do differently, right? Because I work with a lot of parents with really limited leverage, a lot of parents whose kids are over 18, and that's where my program is different from some of the programs designed for parents who have more authority and leverage. Yeah, I think on some level that the very nature of the program will weed out people who are just looking for someone to tell them, it's not your fault, there's nothing you can do. But, you know, we'll see. I don't know.

Josh Slocum: Well, let's let's let people know where they can get this, Stephanie. Yeah. And I'll make sure to put this linked in the show notes as well. People who are interested in your work and want to take a look at your program, where do they go? Where's the best place to go?

Stephanie Winn: It's at ROGDRepair.com.

Josh Slocum: Well, that couldn't be easier. Let me repeat that. ROGDRepair.com. That's fantastic. Stephanie, we got to close up here. But thank you very much. I'm really delighted. I knew that something was coming down the pike. And I have been looking forward to hearing about it. I'm really glad to, to talk about it with you. Thanks for sharing it with our audience. Hopefully this is going to get I know this is going to get out in front of some people who could actually use it because I know that Some people in the audience who've come to me for coaching and consulting have absolutely wanted something like this. I'm so glad it's out there.

Stephanie Winn: Thanks so much for having me, Josh. 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.