You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 157. Hannah Spier.mp3
Hannah Spier:
Self-esteem is, what is that? It's a nonsense. She feels terrible about herself because she's far away from her goal. And she's always gotten what she wanted. She always got that degree. She got the promotion. She had the fancy boyfriend that looked good on Instagram and he's athletic and he's all these things. But they don't want the same thing because they didn't date with the intention of marriage. Know what you want and know it before you're 35. That's unpleasant to hear. Yes. But would that have prevented you from sitting with that burnout in my room at 34? Also yes. You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: My guest today is Hannah Spier. She is a medical doctor trained in psychiatry and psychotherapy, practicing in Zurich, Switzerland. She's the creator of the Psychobabble sub stack and podcast challenging postmodern influences in the mental health field. Hannah, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me.

Hannah Spier: Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. It's a pleasure.

Stephanie Winn: I'm really glad to be talking with you today. I don't even remember what article of yours I first saw. But the moment I read your work, I said, OK, I need to get her on the podcast. So I've just been reading and getting caught up with your substack, Psychobabble. And I think I want to lead with sort of a challenging question. Why do you call yourself the anti-feminist psychiatrist?

Hannah Spier: I know it sounds offensive to some perhaps at first glance, but I have so much experience treating women, young women and also older. And I came to realize after I became a mother myself, that so much of women's suffering, so much of the mental disorders, if you want to even call them that, so many of their life problems are due to having built their lives on feminist lies, feminist principles, and that they have for so long adopted feminist attitudes that at some point, be it in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, lead to psychopathology. And I tried for years, sometimes with the same women, to help them with the methods, the techniques that I was learning at the time. I was training in cognitive behavioral therapy, and it didn't work. And every weekend, we talked about this earlier, so I would work as a resident Monday to Friday, and then on the weekends, I would go to the university and train in cognitive behavioral therapy. And so I would try all these techniques Monday to Friday, do what I'd been told, and I'd go back to my teachers, and they were supervisors. They were psychologists and psychiatrists with five degrees and all. Really, they were experts in their fields, and they would tell me, trust the process, and basically give me and us, my colleagues, had the same problems. that you're doing it the wrong way. Or that the patients weren't trying hard enough. So we'd go back and we'd do the same thing over and over again. And these people were just stuck in therapy. So that's what Psychobabble is based on, all these people who are stuck in therapy for much longer than they need to. And I don't think they need to be there at all if they built their lives on different attitudes. Like, for example, women in their 20s, they would come in and I'd notice a pattern. In their 20s, young women, they would very often present with panic attacks, anxieties, very often health-related. in their 30s, they would present differently. But in their 20s, they'd very often been pushed into degrees, into the universities, into degrees that they didn't have really the interest in, and they weren't able to finish. So they'd have writer's block, they would really be stuck, they wouldn't be able to finish, and they would have panic attacks. And you know, if you've ever had anxieties, you know that affects everything from the first time those symptoms present, you can't sleep. The next day you're tired. Then that gives you this feedback loop, right? You're tired, more anxieties come. Oh no, why am I feeling this way? Then you really can't sleep, right? Can't concentrate. Then you have poor grades and you get feedback from the poor grades. Oh no, am I lazy? Am I not good enough? Am I not good enough? We women, we tend to think, am I not good enough, right? Am I stupid? Am I really stupid? And then they're just caught in this loop and they can't finish. So that I just saw again and again with that age. And what they were doing was that they were just trying to fill this. They had unmet attachment need, unmet emotional needs that they were taught they could fill with academic achievement and ambition. And it doesn't work. And a very strange thing happened, right? They would come in one week and they'd be super happy. and glowing, and they'd had a successful date. They'd had positive male attention. And then a couple of weeks later, he's nowhere to be found. He's in his 20s. Of course, he doesn't want commitment, and she's devastated. It's just that's what takes precedence for these girls. They were very preoccupied with their dating life and what happened there and their academic achievements. They were secondary, although they'd never admit it. So that was sort of this pattern, so I call that, and I think maybe that was the article you read, that's the archetype, because you see that again and again. And the second was then the woman in her 30s, the one who who are more like Rory Gilmore, right? Just one of these ideals that we grew up with, that this sort of effortlessly achieving, just sort of flew through university degree, no problem, does sports, is athletic, has a boyfriend, not really invested. Then she has a career that goes really well, and she has promotion after promotion, and that gives her that dopamine kick, right? So you think this is really the right way. And then by our 30s, we have a decline in our ovarian reserves and that leads to a hormonal feedback. And that's this cliche of the biological clock. which is a cliche for a reason, then suddenly our priorities shift and we think, because that woman in her 20s thinks that she will always feel like this. It's so easy to believe. Of course, these things will always matter this much. This promotion feels so good, that will always matter this much. And then when she's 32, 33, that's often the age, 34, they would just come in and say that nothing gives me joy anymore. I want to feel as happy as I remember feeling when I was a certain age, so that dopamine kick is no longer happening for them. And what happens then is that they have no energy, they're depleted, and they'll get diagnosed with some fatigue or burnout. So that was more the burnout than the panic attacks, that the things that I was doing no longer works for me. She looks up from her fancy desk. She has a nice office somewhere usually, and it doesn't mean what it used to mean. And then what about her boyfriend? What about this? She hasn't built her life so that when that happens, she can become a mother, because we do have innate maternal desires that will at some point show up. And if we build our life on these feminist lies, that's going to create a motivational conflict in between what is and what should be. Because your goal, you've been walking towards your goal over here, suddenly the goal is over there and you're on the wrong path. Of course that's going to lead to some psychological conflict. And the common denominator, as I see it, is feminism. Feminism is this pathogen of resentment that we believe. We hear it from very small, from the first moment we put on those tight, tight stockings, and we say, why doesn't my brother have to wear these tight clothes? And our mom doesn't tell us, well, you know, look at what he has to wear. This is uncomfortable too. No, she tells us, well, you just have to learn that the world is unfair to women. You just have to get used to it. All these little things we grow up with, and it just grows resentment, and we go into our relationship with this resentment. I remember having a fight with my husband when I was pregnant. I used to believe these feminists lied too. I'm from Norway. I was a feminist. I had a huge fight with him when I was pregnant. And I said, why do I have to take a break from my career? Why don't you have to do this? Why don't you have to do that? Why should it be me? I felt so righteous in my victimhood. And he could just go on and do what he wanted to do, pretend like nothing was happening. I think a lot of women recognize that. That was resentment. Instead of thinking about everything that I got to do, everything I had the chance to, all that bonding with my baby, he had no idea. But that's not what, we are raised with a resentment that also tells us that career is only measured in male terms. Success, I mean, success, we measure success in male terms. Success is that ambition, it's what you achieve in your career. What about success as a mother? What about raising three kids? with no mental disorder. Now, when I've changed my mindset, that's for me success. Then none of my three kids need help sleeping at night. They go to sleep after half an hour. I have no friends where that's the case, right? They're all working moms. Everyone, everyone needs help with some kind of thing, right? So that was never success, what was told to me was success. That's something that I had to learn by myself. And so that's why I think feminism is this pathogen of resentment. And I think as a doctor, I have a duty to point that out.

Stephanie Winn: On that last note, before we started recording, we were talking about how you have pared way down on the amount of hours you work during this chapter of life where your children are young. You said your youngest is three. And I think I said that that was preventative mental health care, that being present as a mother with your children during these crucial early years. And that's how, as you said, you raise children without mental disorders by being available as a mom. But I want to play devil's advocate and maybe strawman or misrepresent your position a little bit just to give you something to back on. Go ahead. Because I can imagine people sitting here saying, well, that's easy for you to say, Hannah. Look, look at you. You have it all, right? You're beautiful. You're smart. You have the husband and the children. But you also have a career. You can call yourself a doctor. You have an education. You have the ability to return to a high-paying and respectable career. when your children are older? And are you saying that women shouldn't have those things? Are you saying that women shouldn't pursue an education? Or what is it that you mean when you talk about the lies of feminism?

Hannah Spier: That's a very good question. And listen, I wasn't given any of this. I used to weigh 100 kilos. I was always ugly. I used to have teeth outside of my mouth. I think that I made a couple of choices. when I had leverage in my 20s, right? And so that's what I'm trying to say to women, that you have a lot more power than they want you to believe. You are not some victim where the only solution is that you solely focus on your financial independence. I think on the contrary, if we only focus on our financial independence, that's when we really doom ourselves. Right? We have to know a couple of essential things. That is that we have a duty to ourselves to choose the right mate, the best mate that we can have, because as human females, we choose. But we have to do that when we have the most leverage. And that is not in our thirties, when we have financial independence. On the contrary, that is in our twenties. And I chose the best mate that I could find when I was 25. So that was the first thing that I did for myself as a woman. I chose someone who was stable, who fit what I wanted to, right? So I relocated. That was no easy thing. I wanted to stay in Norway with my family. I didn't want to move down to Switzerland. I was like, where's that, right? I wanted a Jewish husband. So I went online, I found the best one that I could possibly find and I moved countries. I did all these hard things. These were not things that were given to me. But, you know, but I think that We have to make good choices and the right time. And with that, we can find ourselves in more powerful positions as women. I'm not talking about powerful position in terms of being a CEO somewhere. But I have these three kids and am in this situation of life because I made good choices and I really hope that I help my daughter to make good choices as well. I want her to date with the right values. I want her to date with the intention of marriage. That's one of these choices. You don't just give yourself up for anything. You have these You have leverage as a woman and they are very different from the leverage you have as a man.

Stephanie Winn: I don't know if that adds. I don't normally do this so much with my guests, but I feel like you are so well representing sort of one end of an argument that if it's all right with you, I want to kind of keep pushing back, not based on what I actually think, but based on how I can imagine people distorting what you're saying.

Hannah Spier: Yeah, but to the education, because you also asked about education, if I could just, so we don't forget, because I think that's such an important point, right? So yeah, I don't think the medical profession is a very good choice for a young woman. And that is also what I tell people who ask. It's a very long education that requires you be there 100%. You can't be preoccupied with dating. It's so hard. And it doesn't just take seven years. I spent six years in residency. It goes on and on and on. I do think that women have to think earlier on the fact that when you do become a mother, you want to do right by your children. You want to be there for your children to create proper attachment. And I do think there are a range of things women can do nowadays that will allow you that flexibility. It's not that I'm arguing for this Hollywood propaganda housewife that we see in Mad Men and she just sits around smoking and staring at her children. That's what we've been told a housewife is. Mothers used to work a lot, they used to also contribute, but now we have to find different types of interruptible work, and I think we just have to think about that earlier on before we choose. doctor, lawyer, consultant, all these things that are super hard to flex around a family in the way that will not give us some form of psychopathology. Because if I treated these women, and there's just no way, they just, all they do is play chess with the hours of the day.

Stephanie Winn: So I think a cynical, mistrustful perspective would hear what you're saying as pulling up the ladder underneath you, right? That here you went and got this fancy degree and you entered this potentially very lucrative field and now you're saying, oh, I did this, but this isn't a good choice for other women. I think a more trusting perspective would hear, here's an intelligent woman honestly reflecting on her choices. and the reality of the fields as she has encountered them, and comparing them to women's wants and women's needs. Again, this sort of cynical twisting of what you would, what you've said, here's what I hear looking at it through that lens. You're saying, OK, you lost a lot of weight, When you were young, you fixed your teeth. Basically, you made yourself not only healthier, but more attractive. And then you said you chose the best mate at 25. Now, I think through the cynical lens, people hear, oh, she's talking about how women hit the wall, right? There's this really sexist notion. I mean, you've probably seen it on social media. These people who are incredibly judgmental about women and our looks as if that's the basis of our worth. saying that women hit the wall when they are 30 or 25 or whatever, right? And that, you know, so I could hear someone, I can imagine someone hearing what you're saying through that lens and saying, well, that's really sexist. Why should you reduce a woman's value or attractiveness as a mate? to her youthfulness, her fertility, her weight, and all these things. Why are you saying that a woman needs to use those things as leverage? Isn't there more to us as human beings?

Hannah Spier: Of course, but you also live in reality. I'm sorry, there's evolutionary reality. And what do men want? They want signs of fertility. What is that? Being slim is one of them. Being symmetrical is another one of them. I think that you're doing yourself a huge disservice if you don't live and if you don't look at biological reality for what it is and use that to your advantage. If you do, you have a lot more power. Don't put yourself in that position. You have to remember, I sat with these women for hours trying to help them. For hours. And then I started Psychobabble because if you're 37, you're unmarried, you don't have a relationship, you have a gleaming career that you no longer want to work at. All you want is to be a mother. That pain, that is so palpable. You know, I talked to Theodore Dalrymple. He worked with criminals. For him, that was the thing that moved him the most. And for me, it was those women at the end of their 30s. Some had had one kid. They desperately wanted that second kid, and they couldn't. And it's just, they didn't believe those biological realities either. when they should have. But they came to, they really came to, when they had to do shots every day for their hormone treatments, they were doing hormone treatments for years, and that is a pain you just don't want. You say, oh, we have all these technologies. Have you spoken to someone who goes through hormone therapy to become fertile? It is hell. It is a strain on your relationship. It'll make your husband never want to have that second kid because all you talk about is, am I fertile today? Have I taken the test? What are my blood values? That is all you think about, right? If you are at the end of your 30s and you want that kid. So that's where I'm coming from. you know, live in reality. We have leverage more in our 20s than in our 30s. You can call that hitting the wall. I've heard about this meme. I haven't seen it, but to me that sounds a lot like burnout, where they come, they can't do anything else, and they just want to lie in bed. they don't see a future, it's completely hopeless to them, and they say, oh, should I go on the dating market? Because a lot of women now, they experience they're 34, their boyfriend doesn't want to commit, they're sitting there, they're waiting for a proposal, sometimes for years, That's not coming. Should I now break up with him and go on the dating market? I'm 34. How does that even work to have to download one of these apps? Like I've sat there with these women talking about that. This is not me pulling a like, I mean, if you go on my sub stack, you will see I will never be hired by a hospital ever again. from what I've said. That is fact. I've taken that. But I'm prepared. It's not my kids are the most important thing for me. I'm not a fancy doctor. I'm a mom. I'm a very proud stay-at-home mom. And I'm not sure that I will ever work a hospital or clinical job again. This is like, I look at Psychobabble as like, housewives used to be involved in local government and charity. This is it for me.

Stephanie Winn: So we haven't really delved in yet to what you mean when you say the lies of feminism, but you've described feminism as an ideology of resentment. And I think resentment is kind of that I guess the difference between the attitude that I hear you recommend and the attitude that seems more prevalent. So the one I hear you recommending is a very pragmatic almost utilitarian view of assessing your options as a woman who wants what's best for you, right? So assessing what do I need to do and when and how in order to, like you said, get the best mate for me, right? And so that involves things like you're saying taking care of your appearance, You're saying doing that without resentment, doing that without an ideology that says, well, why should I have to make myself look more attractive? This is a problem with the patriarchy that teaches men to look at women this way. So you're talking about removing that resentment. And I'm wondering what you think that shift might look like for women who have, let's say, sort of absorbed an ideology that in the end ends up being self-defeating, right? So if there are things, for example, that you could do as a woman who wants a good mate, if there are things you could do to make yourself more attractive to good mates, but resentment and, as you say, certain feminist beliefs are in the way of that because you're saying, well, I shouldn't have to, What is the shift that needs to take place or the change in the logic for women to have that much more pragmatic and in some ways self-serving view of, okay, if I can do it, I will do it?

Hannah Spier: Well, the antidote to resentment is gratitude. and understanding of the other person's situation. And I think a lot of women have been deceived when it comes to what it means being a man, if you really look at men's situations and men's struggles. So that really made a difference for me when I looked at how men struggle. I think there are a lot of things that we don't realize that, for example, we have a legal system that favors us. If you look at the punishments men receive in comparison to women, for example, You look at a few statistics that could help you change your mind as to how men suffer in greater numbers. And yeah, there are so many things with the experience of motherhood, that they can only dream of, but you have to take that experience without resentment. If you go into motherhood feeling resentful, why do I have to do this? Why are my boobs hurt? And all these things that we like to focus on, it can be magical if you don't. and that we at least have the opportunity to feel that magic. They don't. What do they have to do? They have to go and break their back providing for us, because we make sure they do that. whatever. They don't get to do what we get to do. That's the way that you can see it, but very few of us do. It's very comfortable to be in the role of the victim. I mean, I'm doing it anyway. It's our hero story. And I just see that they very often go through hard experiences without ever playing the victim. So that's, I think, a little gratitude at what we get to the opportunity to experience and yeah, understanding for the other side.

Stephanie Winn: As you're speaking, I'm thinking about how At the extremes, you have, let's say, grandiose pathological narcissism. You have someone who grossly overestimates their own contribution and devalues others consistently as a pattern in life. And then scaling it back from that extreme, All of us, I think, face temptations or opportunities at various points in our lives to indulge in that same, what I call narcissist math, that overestimation of my contribution and underestimation of yours. And I think it's that type of accounting that we do mentally that feeds resentment. And I think anyone who's paying close enough attention to their thoughts and feelings and relationships as they go through life will notice that that temptation is there for us. You know, anytime we are feeling tired or overworked or anytime we have to do something that we don't want to do, it's always available to us to indulge in that type of thinking. And you don't have to be a pathological narcissist to engage in it. You can just be sort of an ordinary human. And do you think that this is something that that we need to become more, more circumspect about, more cautious about this temptation in ourselves.

Hannah Spier: To tend to, towards narcissism.

Stephanie Winn: It's, I mean, it's a feature of narcissism at the extreme, but I call it narcissist math. Anytime we're, you know, overestimating our own contribution or our own suffering and underestimating that of others.

Hannah Spier: Yeah, I think there's definitely, definitely some of that, but I don't want to go and diagnose a large group of women. I hear, I'm very careful with the word narcissism, to be honest. I think it's, well, we do have the very interesting research of Jean Twenge. And she says she's done these narcissism surveys on university students. Very, very good research. She's a proper, where she shows that there's an increase in narcissistic traits among college students. I think that's very interesting, but it's a personality trait. So some of it, we can grow into it, but that means it's also genetic, it's also born with.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I think what I meant there is more to point out that in narcissism we have the most extreme and overt examples of this. So, for example, you know, someone who's in a relationship with someone with narcissistic personality disorder might find that they could they could put 10 hours into something out of love for that person and the other person won't give them an hour of their time back. So you have the extremes of, you know, devaluation, right? But I'm saying to a lesser degree, without narcissism, you know, to a lesser degree that, and I think I'm just trying to relate to your ideas about resentment and gratitude and the fact that life is hard and domestic life is challenging, especially when you bring children into the mix. And that I think I mean to say that there's always a part of us that could succumb to that resentment, you know, to to looking at what am I doing and and how can I you know, it's not a conscious thing, right?

Hannah Spier: Not at all, that's why I'm saying, yeah, that we are sowing that seed of resentment, right? In the everything that we tell them, like there was this example of this every day because I caught myself in this pantyhose example that I give, right? And I said, hold on. I was about to say, yeah, I'm just used to it. And I was like, hmm. And then I did this whole thing where I called her brother over and I was like, look at this. The guy has to button it up because we were going to go pray. And so we had to wear our nicest clothes. And then so he was just putting on his tie. I was like, do you want to wear a tie? Does that seem comfortable? We have to practice putting ourselves in men's shoes. It's so easy to say, oh, poor me. It's comfortable under this blanket of self-pity. Of course, it's tempting to all of us. But it's death. Resentment is lethal. It really is. And we have no problem talking about the resentment of insults. That's gotten a lot of attention. They're cuddling with the resentment towards the world, and that's leading them to do all these different things. Correct, correct. But there's the other side of that as well. There's a lot of resentment in women that is leading them to live unhappy lives, right? You can approach motherhood with gratitude, with, okay, I'm gonna do everything that I can to make this the best situation as I can. Okay, it hurts a bit, but you know, look, okay, I'm tired, but I won't always be tired. But you can go into the mom blogs and you can suffer. You'll get plenty of commiseration depending on where you go. You can always, and that's so, I just see all these articles page up and page all the reels about like how difficult women's lives are and how difficult mothers, and I'm just saying, yeah, you know, it's very easy to sink in there. It's no less dangerous than the resentment of the insults.

Stephanie Winn: Wow. So in your articles, you give some, what's the word, like vignettes. of certain characters that represent perhaps an amalgamation of different sort of profiles of people who've come to you for help. And you look at the women's side and the men's side and the relationships. And I wanna talk about Patrick. So Patrick is the guy in his 30s who doesn't wanna settle.

Hannah Spier: And his- Exactly, I think I mentioned him before. I mentioned the girlfriend.

Stephanie Winn: So his girlfriend Penelope is really suffering because she wants to settle down. She has this instinct and everything that you describe in your blogs, everything you're talking about now, I saw it too in not only my practice as a therapist a lot there, but also in my personal life too. But it's no secret that women's self-esteem suffers when they are in relationships with non-committal men, and that when men act as though the things women want When men act as if women are ridiculous for wanting those things, like Patrick and Penelope, for instance, like, you know, as if she has all the time in the world, as if, you know, five years without a ring on her finger, you know, what's five more? When men behave that way, men that women have opened their hearts, minds, and bodies to and invested in, it has a real impact on a woman's ability to find her center, to believe in herself, to be clear-headed about where she's going, what she's looking for, what she deserves, what she has to offer. Given all the Patrick's of the world, who have no problem essentially wasting women's time for all their fertile years. Obviously, we can't just pin these problems on women or beliefs that women have perpetuated because it's things everyone is doing. given how many women do have these urges and inclinations, as you describe, right? There's a part of them that's looking for that attachment security, as you say, and they're trying to head in that direction, but the dating scene just isn't – the dating scene is making them feel crazy for wanting those things. What would you say to those women, or what needs to shift in the men, in the society, to make it more possible for women to pursue their actual goals?

Hannah Spier: Yeah. Yeah. So I mentioned Penelope before, like 34 comes in with burnout. Uh, she's smart. She's done everything right. You know, good degree. And she raced through that and she started a career. And then she probably then has this boyfriend, and that's Patrick. And when they got together, she was the 20-year-old who thought she would never want kids. And because she thought, I'm always going to feel like this every time I get a promotion. And her goal was set over here. And like I said, then she had 30 something and the goal suddenly shifted, shifts without her. consciously doing anything about it, and then suddenly she finds herself miles away from the goal, and then it's very difficult to get that dopamine kick that makes us happy and makes us keep going forward, gives us hope, right? Gives us, every time we're Going the right way towards a goal gives us that good feeling right and So imagine Patrick thinking that she's oh, you know, she's career-driven She's always she says she doesn't want kids that fits, you know, I just want to travel I just want to do my sports or whatever but we know from We know from the dating app data now that 90% of women go for the top 10% of the men, right? So we have to also be real about our criteria and our expectations in dating. And, you know, you have to date with the intention of marriage and Penelope doesn't do that. She lets the years pass because she thinks I'm never going to want to have kids. So that's what I'm saying. Patrick then suddenly. after I don't know how many years of relationship, that well, you know, I thought we agreed that we weren't gonna have a family. I thought we agreed that we were always gonna travel, so he feels betrayed. Like, why are you turning on me? Why do I now have to be worried that we're going to have a fight every time I come into the living room? So he withdraws, you know, turtle, that he doesn't want, you know, he's terrified. And then, you know, they're stuck in this impasse because he knows what she wants and she knows what he wants. So it's not that they don't, they have some unspoken, they're not communicating properly. They know exactly where they're at. But it's just, is she more afraid to sit and wait for him? Maybe a proposal is just around the corner that I haven't wasted any time. Or is she more afraid of staying with him and not having a family? Because her fear is also to enter the dating market and be single. So in therapy, she has to balance those fears, right? That's how you… Am I more afraid that I'm going to stay stuck in this relationship? Or am I more afraid of entering the dating market? Which fear can I manage? That's good therapy. You know, not… focusing on building her self-esteem. Self-esteem, by the way, is founded on nothing. It's Nathaniel Brandon came up with this self-esteem nonsense that we still, for some reason, teach. Self-esteem is, what is that? It's a nonsense. She feels terrible about herself because she's far away from her goal. And then she's always gotten what she wanted. She always got that degree. She got the promotion. She had the fancy boyfriend that looked good on Instagram and he's athletic and he's all these things. But they don't want the same thing because they didn't date with the intention of marriage. Know what you want and know it before you're 35. Is that unpleasant to hear? Yes. But would that have prevented you from sitting with that burnout in my room at 34? Also, yes.

Stephanie Winn: So Patrick, he's in that top 10% of guys. He is tall, dark, and handsome. He's athletic, successful, and popular. He's got all the traits when it comes to attractiveness and status. And your reckoning with this hypothetical Penelope in this situation is reassess where you're at in life. Yes, it's nice to have this really hot boyfriend. But if he's not satisfying your heart's desires, is it really so nice? Could you date a guy a few inches shorter? Could you date a guy who's maybe… We don't like to.

Hannah Spier: They're always a head taller than us. three and a half years older with a better education. That's what we like. That's what we like to date. But no, I'm not. So here we come with this whole, should I settle? That was this whole Megyn Kelly thing, right? Where she told me, well, how dare she tell women to settle? That is not what I'm saying. But if you're every guy that you're dating, you feel, I have to settle. Here, you have to investigate your own situation. Perhaps you do have some narcissistic tendencies. Are you really as great as you think you are? Is that really the case that every date you go to, you think, oh, he isn't good enough for me? I'm sorry, you have to think, is this a man that I want to father my children? That's the right question as a woman. Is this a stable man? You have to have the right values. It's also what I tell men. because I had this exact conversation with someone in my audience on Substack after this. And then he said, well, women, you should never marry a woman. A lot of men now are going a little bit on this Magdal thing. Why should you marry women at all? The legal system is against you. You can never fulfill the expectations, et cetera, et cetera. And then I just tell them, you will fare no better if you don't build a family, right? Men in their 50s, they aren't cool anymore. You don't want to be the guy in the club when you're 50, is what I tell them. You're not charming anymore. It's not good for men to be without a family. They need that purpose. We are all better when we have a purpose and that purpose for tens of thousands of years have been family. If you are the outlier, if you have a very particular personality structure that doesn't, you know, motherhood doesn't call to you or that's just not for you, but that is very, very rare. I've met maybe a handful of women that fit that, but even they, even they will be the first ones to say, I wish I wasn't like this. This is not a life I want for anyone.

Stephanie Winn: Right? In that category. So I, for most of my life felt like I was not meant to have children. And then I met my soon-to-be husband in my mid-30s. It took a while. It's taking a while for us to get married. But by the time I met him, I was feeling this void of that stable partner, but also the void of the lack of children in my life. And so for me, it ended up being really suitable to fall in love with a man who had children and to become a stepmom. But I think for me, it took years of the benefits that I've received of having that really loyal, stable, loving partner to get in touch with that instinct. But I'm also an outlier among women in many ways and, you know, intellectually and in terms of some of my drives and things like that. So I'm definitely in that category of women that's like I can talk about these issues. And I see exactly what you're saying and I see like the degree to which they still apply to me and the degree to which I'm an outlier and sort of, you know, found this compromise. But even for women, you know, who are like me, right, very intellectually driven, take a long time to settle down, things like that. It can, I think some of the popular culture stuff can get in the way of getting in touch with those drives and what they mean for us, where they're trying to point us to go. And that's sort of a theme I notice in your writing is that you pick up on the instincts in women and the feelings that emerge when these instincts aren't sort of nurtured and honed and yeah.

Hannah Spier: Yeah, when we don't take them at face value when we think because we somehow think that we can just erase all we know from evolutionary psychology with 50 years of social theory. Only we can believe something like that, right? And we have all this good knowledge. That's why it's better in societies where We just do. Why do we do it? That's what we've always done, a tradition, for a reason. It's because men need this especially. Why should they do it? They do it because their parents taught them to, because their friends start getting married. And you'll notice, if you're sitting there waiting for a proposal from your man, who is this Patrick, perhaps, In the cases where it does happen, that he comes around and proposes, it's because all his friends start to like Domino's. Then they start doing it as well. It's like we need a community around us to guide us. We do what they do. And now we have too long to think about it. We sit for 10, 15, sometimes 20 years and just do mental gymnastics. Who am I? What am I supposed to be? Is this the right thing? This is the sex. What is success for me? What if it's my self-esteem? What do I think about myself? And it's not good for us. It's obviously not good for us. We have too long to think about ourselves and we don't think about what do myself want in 10 and 20 years. As I said, you don't want, it's not cool to be the 40 year old guy in the club. It's not charming anymore.

Stephanie Winn: And part of what I'm getting from that is that part of what makes it so easy for the Patricks of the world to behave well into their 40s as if they will always have their pick of women is women being in denial about their wants and needs. Whereas if we were more collectively open and honest about women's true wants and needs, then even the handsome, tall, athletic, successful Patricks of the world would still exist in a culture where the beautiful women available to date them are dating without intention as you described.

Hannah Spier: I'm just saying the Patricks are Phew, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Stop dating the Patricks altogether. I never gave them a time of day because I always dated with intention. I would bring up how many kids I wanted way too early. Everyone around me said, aren't you going to be single for a year, Hannah? Don't you want to just be single for a year? Just a year? And I was like, no. Nope, breakup, date, breakup, date, right? It's just, I wanted what I wanted. And I would do things that all the blogs and all of my friends said was just outrageous for a woman to do, being so open about that. But yeah, I never touched the Patricks. Who is it? They were too cool for me. They're too cool for me. And there aren't that many of them. It's just that we always want them because of social media or whatever. But now we have good data on that from the dating apps. And I think if women came down from their high horse, they would find it slightly easier to be on the dating market.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. So Hannah, you talked about dating with intention in your 20s, finding your husband when you were 25. What advice would you give to women in that chapter of life and maybe potentially as well to the therapists who are treating them with regard to what their wants and needs are?

Hannah Spier: Yeah, I would say find someone who is completely honest with you. Who is not just trying to stroke your ego. I don't think anyone is furthered with that. And I do see that we tend to, women, we tend to affirm each other. So for a lot of women, we do struggle with our weight. And I've seen therapists, and I also write about this, I've seen therapists advise things like standing naked in front of the mirror and doing positive self-talk. And women will spend a lot of time doing that, and it'll be wasted time. It rarely works. Because we, like we said, we have instincts. We know when we're unhealthy. We don't feel good. Being overweight doesn't make us feel good. And I use that as an example because it's a very common problem. And I'm obviously not talking about those who suffer from anorexia, those who are normal weight and they just wanna, it's an aesthetic thing. I'm talking about clinical overweight. So that's a BMI over 25. And that's, for therapists, the quicker you can get to work on that actual behavioral work, the better. You need to establish a relationship. You need to be that they take it from you, that they also are able to be honest with themselves and what they what they can do better. But I think for women, a lot of self-improvement is lost. Because to start with self-improvement, we're going to talk about that later, but because of the postmodernist influence in psychology and psychiatry, we We don't really like to talk about self-improvement because that would imply that there's a better and a worse. And postmodernism, they want to do away with that. They don't want to talk about hierarchies. And if you say that you're working towards a better you tomorrow, that means that there's a worse you today, obviously. And that's a hierarchy. That's not a good thing. So they want to break that down. They want to say, you know, there's no everything is equal. You today is just as good as you tomorrow. And then you're going to end up standing in front of that mirror naked. Saying to yourself that you're beautiful no matter what. 10 minutes later, you're feeling awful again. So that's, and that helped me a lot as, you know, when I was in my 20s to be honest about my habits and what I could do better and my husband helped me with that. he helped me with that a lot.

Stephanie Winn: So there's the health at every size is a popular notion these days. And, you know, a few years ago, I remember, you know, a prospective client asking if I practiced health at every size and really having to kind of grapple with how do I feel about this? Well, I don't know exactly what they say. I haven't done a health at every size training. I haven't read a health at every size book, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong. So you critique the postmodern influence in psychotherapy and you know, before we started recording, I was telling you a little bit about my backstory, how trans rights activists tried to take away my license. I'm curious in Norway, where you're from, and Switzerland, where you live, if the political climate for therapists is such that you know, a therapist who dares to say, no, I don't believe in health at every size. I actually believe you will be healthier and happier if you lose weight and that there is a right and a wrong way to eat. You know, if you start saying things like that, obviously, you know, a good psychotherapist is going to be relational and establish that rapport and that trust, as you're saying, with their patient. But there's only so much we can control. So does it feel like sort of an oppressive political climate in those countries these days? Does it feel like people like therapists can take the risk of being more honest about these issues.

Hannah Spier: So we don't have the extremes that you have in the US. But those trends are also coming here, it's usually with the delay and they're more insidious. So it's a very, luckily Switzerland is the most conservative country in Western Europe. So it's slower here, it's not so pronounced. We also have a trans lobby and trans clinics. And that just started when I left, like the last week I was doing clinical work at the hospital, I got that pamphlet in my mailbox and I just thought, thank God I'm out of here. It just said trance in big letters. So I just saw that coming in and I just thought, you have to ride the train or you're going to be. I just had an interview on Psychobabble with a German psychologist, and that's kind of funny. He's being hunted now by the mob, by the woke mob and the trans mob, because he wrote a book about these issues. pointing out very well the same things that I'm saying as well. He gave an interview to the biggest newspapers here in Germany and Switzerland called Left-Leaning Women Suffer More from Mental Disorders. which was his finding and it was very well argued. And he has had to, yeah, he's really under threat. So it shows, so I think, yes, it's also, what was your question? That it's…

Stephanie Winn: Here you also feel this. Well, so the trans rights activists lobby is the most extreme and egregious example of the pressure in our field to affirm that which is not healthy or even sane. We see that to a lesser degree with things like, to bring it back to your points about resentment and how certain feminist narratives fuel resentment. Right, being pressured, feeling the pressure to affirm people's ideas, even ideas that are harming them. And I hear this from my therapist friends all the time. It's not just the trans stuff. It's the expectations that patients are bringing into therapy. about the therapist being there to coddle and affirm and so within that vein, the pressure to affirm one's lifestyle choices and You know, in my opinion, if we're looking at a dysfunctional pattern of eating and movement, if we're looking at someone who's relying on food as a comfort blanket, then that's, you know, more getting into the realm of addiction, more getting into the realm of what are they emotionally avoiding here. So the idea that a therapist should just affirm that coping mechanism rather than explore it is pretty ridiculous to me. But I'm just saying with the whole health at every size and all of that, How free do you feel and how free do your colleagues feel in Switzerland to be honest about the fact that humans are not equally healthy at every size, for instance?

Hannah Spier: I think that sadly, there are very few therapists who see it that way. They gladly affirm, I see it coming from them mainly. These kids that come in, where do you think they get it from? Where these blogs review, have you been to psychology today, for example? These are psychology PhDs who write these these nonsense things like affirming this and having too high expectations from yourself. I use that as an example because that was what I heard the most from women coming in the first therapy session. I don't know if you do this, but I would always establish certain goals. What do we want to achieve with this round of therapy? and that would just always be echoed. I want to lower the expectations I have for myself. So I would just want to have help affirming that everything I do is correct and I don't have to change anything, right? That's translated. Instead of saying, which areas of my life am I not doing my best at the moment? Where can I have help in motivating, inspiring me to improve, be it at work, be it in my relationship, be it with my own self, with my own body? Because the opposite of that, the alternative, the only alternative to that is to sit and stroke, stroke the ego. Of course, you're fine just the way you are. You're doing everything right. The problem is that you're just expecting too much of yourself. And that's also one of the reasons people are stuck in therapy for years. It doesn't work. It's a postmodernist fantasy.

Stephanie Winn: Do you think sometimes that people have this idea, I need to expect less of myself, and the reality is that they need to expect more?

Hannah Spier: Exactly. I think that they can do a lot more. People's potentials are limitless. When we put our minds to it, and especially when we have so, I mean, look at everything we have available. We like to talk about, this is difficult in social media, this is difficult, but look at what we have at our fingertips. And if that doesn't work, you can go to a therapist and have them help you. with everything we have access to. It's amazing. You don't have to ask anyone for help. You just put on, every app you go into has a something something assistant. So yeah.

Stephanie Winn: So where do you think that psychiatry and psychotherapy get it wrong with regard to women's issues and men's issues?

Hannah Spier: With women's issues, like I said, that they waste women's fertile years. I think that they are very much responsible for this whole, you're still young, we've so much technology to help you, people get pregnant at 40. I think that a lot of that would be solved by making them liable. To me, it's absurd that the documentation required for therapists differs. But I don't know of anywhere where you're required to tape every session with confidentiality. What's the difference between taping a session and doing x-rays or what we're obligated to do now, document the session. So after the session, a therapist will sit and write up, what happened? He said, she said, right? That's how we document the session. I've read, because as a psychiatrist, I had to sort of supervise a ward, so I would have to read through the documentation of other therapists or psychologists and nurses with degrees, et cetera, because I had the medical responsibility, the oversight. So I had to sift through every morning the documentation of the sessions. And that's when my eyes started to open. because it was all the same sentence after sentence in German, it's called Selbstfürsorge, which is self-care. We talked about self-care. Today, self-care was the topic. We worked more on self-care, this literally. We packed a suitcase of self-care. Blanket, so a virtual suitcase of self-care that they would take with them everywhere as a help for their anxieties. And in there would be my medication, my water bottle, the phone number of my therapist, my squishy ball, my anti-stress ball, my list of self-talk. I'm not joking. And that is the opposite of what you should be doing for anxieties, right? For anxieties, you have to teach yourself that you can be braver. Right? That is, it's, and it just, it's not as fancy as they would like it to be. Right? So they do all this mental gymnastics because they don't, you know, what is the treatment for it? It's actually quite simple. Expose yourself to what you're afraid of and prove to yourself that you are braver than you think. So, what was I talking about? Right, the future of psychiatry. They are taught this, then that's my problem. That I would go in there and say, guys, it doesn't work. And they said, trust the process. You're just not as good at it yet as we all are. And I was like, have you seen the queue of patients? Are you sure you're as good at it as you think you are? Right? We can't treat all these patients. Something, somewhere is going on every year. So we do these rotations, right? So we'd be at lectures, at everyone else's lecture, the ADHD department, then the trauma department, and this department, and that department, and they'll say the same thing. This is such a big problem. This is where so many patients, so many sufferers from this, whether it be ADHD, trauma, whatever. And then, our treatments are so good, and they're so fantastic, and they're so this, and we're good. And every expert would say, every professor would just say the same thing. I'm like, somewhere, I mean, something's gotta be wrong. Treatment is wrong, or culture is wrong. So I see there's a big flaw in the system. a big flaw in the system. We're teaching therapists the wrong thing.

Stephanie Winn: I want to play devil's advocate for a moment because what you described with the self-care suitcase, it sounds very gimmicky. But I found as a therapist going from grad school to the job field that what I was trained in was not gimmicky at all. But then when I went and worked in the field, I was expected to document gimmicky techniques. And I felt like I was often kind of reconciling that difference between what I was trained to do, which was not so easily summarized in these notes, and then things that make sense in the notes to people who aren't therapists, who are reading them for, you know, insurance companies or quality management or legal purposes or things like that. And I always hated doing notes for that reason. I felt like sometimes I would, and I hear a lot of therapists say that they're phoning it in, but I do believe that that is a real problem. And it points out sort of the contrast between comfort and challenge. I have a lesson on this in my course for parents, ROGD Repair, because I noticed this problem with the youth, where the youth are always turning towards, I need more comfort, more comfort, more comfort, when the reality is, no, the opposite. You need to learn how to face challenges. It's sort of like, The way that a shower feels when you've been lounging around in your pajamas all day versus the way a shower feels when you've been out camping for three days. You know, that we can receive comfort better after we've pushed ourselves to a challenge. Sorry, there was one more thing I was gonna say about that. Sort of the idea of- We're talking about documentation. Oh, I think, you know what I think where I wanna sort of bring this back around is do you think that it's sort of a misdirected maternal instinct? Because when I think of this comfort blanket, the self-care suitcase and oh, my bottle and my this and that, it feels very much like what you would do as a mother for a small child. And do you think that this sort of collective denial that we're in about women's maternal instincts and how they show up in our lives, even if we're unaware of them, do you think that compels women in therapy to sort of need to baby themselves or need to baby their boyfriends or baby their pets, or in my case, baby my houseplants, when we're not aware that the instinct to comfort something is a maternal instinct.

Hannah Spier: Of course, we have hormones that make us want to nest and nurture. That's also something that we're not taught, that we're not aware of. And that causes us severe distress when those needs aren't met. So that's why working mothers suffer so much. right? And they turn that anger on, that it's because my husband doesn't do this, because he doesn't help, and because I have the mental load. No, it's because you have unmet nesting and nurturing needs. You want to be more at home. And so an interesting thing that I saw was that These women in their 40s would come in and they were, as you would call it, burnt out. I hate this term, this diagnosis, but it's there. But they would come in with that and be on their way towards depression and everything was just… And I'd given them sick leave for a month, they'd go back home and they would feel instantly better in a week or so. And then they would come back and they would try to hide their symptoms because they knew that I wouldn't be legally permitted. to extend the sick leave if they were showing improvements like they were. But I recognize sleeplessness. I recognize certain physical signs. So I could sort of tell, and it would get into the sort of, are you sure that these things aren't better? Are you sure? So they would get better. And they were allowed to have that extra time at home to fulfill those needs. That is really something that we're not, and I think on the other point, I didn't, about just quickly about the documentation, I think a lot would be solved if we held therapists accountable, if they were liable, if it was better documented. Yes, it's very different, the notes you make for yourself and the notes you have to write up for insurance companies, they are very different. But if you knew, for example, if you were telling a woman of 34 that you have all the time in the world, you're still young, you'd feel different if you knew that you'd be liable. She could sue you three years later and she went into early menopause. It happens a lot now that women go into early menopause. You don't want to be the therapist who's caught on tape saying you're still young three years earlier, right? But you don't have to write that in your notes. It's very difficult to prove then. Yeah, but my therapist told me, and I think we would behave very differently because we also know I think even if you were told something in school, I think you'd be a little bit more careful.

Stephanie Winn: What is it you were saying, Hannah, about therapist recording sessions?

Hannah Spier: Yeah, I haven't seen that being done routinely, and it would obviously be confidential, but how is that different? You record it, it's kept confidentially, and it would only be brought up at the behest of the patient. How is that different than other types of documentation? The problem in psychiatry is that we don't have pictures, we don't have MRIs, we only have the written word of the therapist after the patient has gone home.

Stephanie Winn: And there's also the question of who's responsible, ultimately, for what takes place in therapy. How much responsibility does the therapist have? How much responsibility does the patient have? You know, how much responsibility does the patient have for interpreting what the therapist meant correctly? Because we know there are stories of things being distorted, but I think as much as it's definitely disturbing to think of a therapist telling a woman in her mid-30s you have all the time in the world because that's just not true. If she wants children, that's just not true, right? But I think probably what's a lot more widespread and subtle is just therapists and client being sort of in mutual collusion in denial of what these instincts are telling her, right? Because the various ways in which women manifest neuroses, we don't always consciously connect the dots, right? Because we're telling ourselves, and maybe this is where I wanna circle back to what you said at the beginning, when you said the lies of feminism, like, what do you mean by that? What are the lies of feminism?

Hannah Spier: There are so many where to start. Secure your financial independence, first and foremost. We have surveys of parents. The parents will tell this on Pew. It was 86% of parents, if I'm not mistaken, said that is what they tell their kids to prioritize, first and foremost. And only, it was less than 10%, and you could obviously cross out more, it was around 10% who said family. So it's really, that's what, first and foremost, secure your financial independence. But I just think, you know, feminism, they were always out to destroy the family. They were always pinning the sexes against each other, when in reality we have to be taught that it's only together, when we work together in symbiosis, that that we can really grow and unlock our human potential, not to sound like that, but to really become who we're supposed to be, to really have good mental health, right? We need. We need intimate relationships. We need family. We need to know that we're leaving something behind to feel that that's our purpose. We need to have friends, social bonds. We need to have some hobby, some self-interest. We need to have those things. And then we're in deep trouble. And so feminists, they worked hard from the 1800s on talking about it. Already then, they painted men as pathological, pathologizing masculinity, already then, and talking about how how houses were free of slavery, how women were always oppressed by men. We still believe a lot of the lies that feminism showed. And this lie that unless we secure our financial independence, we are at risk. That is not true. It is, we are at risk if we don't learn to let go, if we don't learn to take risks, if we don't learn to live with our vulnerability. Why? Because we, our husband needs that from us. He needs to, that we let him, take the space of being a provider, of being something for us, right? Because it used to be women were vulnerable. We knew that someday we're going to be in labor. We're going to need someone to guard us because it would be at least a couple of weeks where we would not be able to move, right? We needed protection. We are vulnerable. And so his role was to stand there with the bat, and he had his baton and he had his role. And now we're saying, we can do this, I can take the bat as well. What about this man, right? What has become of men? And so we're already going into our marriages with this, you know, with this attitude, right, of we can do everything and as long as we ensure that we can be independent, that we can be our own person, then everything will be okay, I'm not exposed. When in fact it's that exact attitude that leaves us exposed for ruining our marriages, ruining our relationships, making men not want to commit to us.

Stephanie Winn: What about the women who would say, but women have been abused by men. Men are stronger. They are more prone to violence. And throughout history, I mean, this is what compelled much of the positive gains of feminism for women's rights, rights to financial independence. What about the women who end up trapped in abusive relationships because they don't have that financial independence or because they didn't have the rights that feminism secured for them?

Hannah Spier: Absolutely, that happens. That happens. There are women who are abused. There are also an equal number of men who are abused. We don't talk about it. That's for another time. But of course, women are vulnerable. We do have a legal system, right? We do have people who will help us. And back to what I said in the beginning, this is why it's so important to choose correctly when you have the leverage and make sure that you have the best leverage possible. That is our power as women. You don't have to let anyone into your home. And whenever I talk to women who've been abused, and I have done, this is not something that's new to me, there's, oh, what about abusive women? I had no idea that there were women who've been abused. That is not the case. I have sat with them. They come to me, they write to me. And very interestingly, some say, this happened to me now, but I've always been an anti-feminist. How do I square this? with what I believe, right? Now I'm one of these abused women. And they will always find some moment where I should have done something differently here. I left myself exposed. Why didn't I see that he was this and this and that, right? Why didn't I see? So we have to take much more care in the selective process in what women have lost. It is this, now we think that, Because we confuse, we don't know what love is anymore. We confuse passion with love. Oh look, and so a lot of women who end up being abused, some of them will say something like, well you know, if he didn't care so much, he wouldn't hit me. He hit me because he cares so much. But we confuse this passion for love, for caring. That's one thing. So we don't know what love is anymore. Love is about giving. It's about sacrifice. And you know who's excellent, who's absolutely excellent at recognizing narcissistic and psychopathic traits in other men? our brothers and our fathers and our family members. We've lost that. We think that only we can know if someone loves us, if this is the right person for all the feelings, right? We've lost that. We were part of a community. We're supposed to have help. We're supposed to have help in guiding us through the selection process. And now we're, as in everything, completely isolated, right? Every woman, every man, and every family for himself. You don't ask anything unless it's from an AI. So very interestingly, just on this accountability, I do think it's important. I don't want anyone to misunderstand me here. I did an interview on Gibraltar. Gibraltar is very interesting. It's a British colony, so it's a part of Western Europe. It's part of the UK. And they still have a very conservative, very traditional society. And until very late, they held men accountable. And I heard a story there about a man who got a second family, and the men, they showed up, they took care of him. She never had to see him again. They rallied around this woman and her kids. He wasn't allowed there anymore, he had to move. that to leave his business, like he was ruined, and they rallied around her. That's what the community used to hold men accountable, right? Because they also cared about their place in the community. So there are so many of these elements that have left women feeling more exposed and vulnerable than they should be. And I think that allowing for guidance in that selection process, right? Also our mothers, they know, right? How do you treat your mother? How does he treat your mother? When he comes into my house, does he treat my dad with respect? And when I chose my husband, I had references, right? I found someone I knew, my brother knew a roommate of his, and so we called around, is this guy, like, what do we know about this guy? It was like, I feel the love. We're so passionate, we're so great together. I don't like to listen to any one of you. You're just gonna relocate. I'm just gonna put myself in this position, go to a different country, because I feel the love. No, I've got bloody references. Who could it be here? So you see what I mean? We have more power than they let us believe.

Stephanie Winn: You make a very compelling case. I do think you're right that men recognize predatory and aggressive tactics in other men, just like women. I mean, we are the more emotionally, verbally, socially aggressive of the sexes, and we have tricks up our sleeve that a lot of men don't. women are better able to recognize manipulation tactics used by other women than men sometimes are, you know, unless they've been through it. And even then, sometimes you bring several good points up. And what I will say, you know, I rarely share this about myself as, well, in terms of my podcast or anything like that, because I don't like to let it define my identity. But I am a survivor of domestic violence. And while I was in that situation, I routinely appealed to the community of my abuser, to his friends, asking them for help because I was isolated from my own community. He, of course, as abusers do, found ways to isolate me from my supports, to break down my friendships, to humiliate me in front of my friends and things like that. So all I had left was his friends. And with his friends, I would try to get their help. And these were all very, you know, so-called progressive open-minded people. And I was routinely shocked by how much they were able to dismiss and equivocate and rationalize their friend's behavior. The person who helped me the most was my most macho friend. It was my guy friend who was the most traditionally masculine alpha guy, not open-minded, airy-fairy, progressive, or anything like that, very much manly man who stepped in and helped make sure that I got out of that situation. Um, so I think that that raises an important point to your point that it, you know, the people who would claim to espouse some of these more progressive ideas were not a support for me when I was a survivor. It was someone with more, you know, um, traditionally masculine personality and conservative values that actually helped me in that situation.

Hannah Spier: Yeah, I'm sorry you went through that. It must've been tough.

Stephanie Winn: Oh yeah, it was terrible. Very tough. I'm in a much, much, much better place now, as I think should be clear, just from what I'm able to do with my life, thanks to having a supportive partner.

Hannah Spier: But the isolation is really key, that we don't look at, oh my God, I'm going into this relationship now in order to build a family where I will be a part of a community. That should be your goal, not do I feel the love and the passion right now and how would I feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel. It's like, is this a good, kind man who will be a good father, and will he have a role in the community? Will he feel fulfilled? Will he have a purpose? To really think about all the different parts that needs to come together so that you will have all the pillars that I talked about before in order to keep that mental health, not just right now, But in 10 years, when you're not as attractive anymore, when all the kids come, you're sick all the time. You're not going to want to be intimate because you're feeling disgusting. Sex is important and feeling attraction is important, but you're going to come a time where you're going to want the other things more.

Stephanie Winn: And you know what, to your point, now, I certainly don't claim to speak for other survivors when I say this. I will just say what was true in my case, and I think in various ways has been true in the cases of other women I've helped, is that if I had been doing as you say, and dating with the intention to find someone who's going to make a good husband, a good father, and be part of a community together, if I had been dating with that intention, I would not have ended up in a relationship with that abuser. You know, I think it was one of the things that he was able to capitalize on was my misdirected maternal instinct because I spent a lot of time mothering him in that relationship. So I think you raise important questions about, you know, women who are not just going along with getting a higher education because it's what society tells them to do. As you mentioned on your blog, some women who their intellectual capacity might be average. They may not be particularly driven or curious. They're just kind of achieving because they're told to achieve. But for those of us women who are gifted and talented, we have really intense intellectual interests. And we're sort of on that different path. It's I think, you know, somehow we need to find a way without. without being perceived as being controlling or limiting or telling people what to do with their life, to be honest with even those young women about these maternal instincts, right? And that, yes, you do have the freedom, absolutely, to choose not to settle down if that's not what you want. But those instincts will still be there. And they will come out towards, as I was saying earlier, pets, plants, childish boyfriends and your own neuroses. So choose very carefully where you direct that nurturing energy because it's meant for someone who absolutely deserves it. It's meant for a vulnerable child. And if you don't have a vulnerable child that absolutely deserves that level of attention from you, you know, you might want to question where that energy is going and if the person who's receiving it truly deserves it. So Hannah, thank you so much for joining me. It's really been a pleasure. Where can people find you?

Hannah Spier: Please come and join me on Substack Psychobabble. So I'm always at Psychobabble with Spear. You can find me on YouTube and on X and on Substack. So I'm making, I think, very good content there. You can also communicate with me directly and tell me what you want to hear more of. So come and find me there.

Stephanie Winn: All right. It's been a pleasure.

Hannah Spier: Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.