My eyes rolled to the back of my head. This seemingly-performative allegiance to Him, the sort of pageantry only natural to the ice-eyed, platinum blonde Erikas of the world, was precisely the reason I’d considered myself agnostic for so long. Admittedly, my reactions have been similar upon any mention of faith during times of strife. Clearly, my understanding of spirituality fell in line with country-artist Jelly Roll’s notion of a “Prison Christian”: adopting faith was only a means to gain privileges, a simple means to an end. They did not want God, but just want God could do for them. God only served me when I got what I wanted, and it’s embarrassing to share so openly this child-like insight.

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When I first heard Jelly Roll’s chart-topping single, “Need A Favor”, the rhythm was not what struck me. The lyrics took a fresh highlighter to my hypocritical beliefs about how we form opinions and live out our value systems:

“I only talk to God when I need a favorAnd I only pray when I ain’t got a prayerSo, who the hell am I, who the hell am ITo expect a Savior?”

I’d nurtured my own resentment toward God for many years, commanding Him to reveal Himself, without hoisting the mirror in my direction: where was I? I had zero evidence for expecting anything from a Lord I’d cursed over and over again without a lick of remorse. Had I used my fixation on crucial conversations, lively debate, and unabashed self-reflection as deterrents, as distractions for all the other shitty parts of myself I refused to see? Indignant, I’d decided, “Nope, God is just not worth the effort, He hasn’t done much for me anyway.”

My shtick has long been that of resilience as the human default, and touting a sort of “anti-trauma-informed” approach to my work and my personal endeavors: do not assume trauma, assume transformation. Assume that any hardship will blossom into what is now referred to as “Post-Traumatic Growth”, which occurs at higher rates than Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Hold yourself and others to increasingly high standards and be amazed at how most will rise to the occasion.

I’ve yet to hear Erika Kirk speak of any post-traumatic stress, nearly a year later, despite widespread attention and even celebration brought to her husband being fatally shot in the neck. Stockpiles of demented people, mocking such brutality with their stupid fucking crumpled signs and giggles--- and Erika repelled. Those who made reality TV of her true love’s murder would eventually meet their maker, for better or for worse, and Erika would take no part in their hatred.

What was I missing about her belief in God? Why could she appear so assured while I sat bitter and dismayed, cursing his name in times of challenge? How can she lose her husband and still croon scripture? It wouldn’t be just then, but I’d reevaluate my understanding of Jesus’ message.

All while dispensing my share of “Goddamnits” throughout the day, I’d embodied a person I claimed to despise. A person who sought refuge in Him only when I’d been rattled and wanted comfort. Only when I’d demanded unearned support for stress I’d brought entirely on myself. I’d reached out for trivial reasons, like aching for a promotion or that my battered car would make it another trip, or that we could survive one more Midwestern summer with a 30-year-old A/C unit.

I only talked to God when I needed a favor.

This recognition did not immediately shift my stance on religion. It took time and exposure to conversations with religious people (namely my mother-in-law, a devout Jehovah’s Witness), listening to guided Scripture, and eventually watching The Passion of the Christ.

The scene of Jesus’ crucifixion, no matter how cliché that may be, is what forced my hand to open the Bible.

Battered, bloodied, his skin peeling off in tattered sheaths of crimson, raised brutally upon the cross to the cackling faces of the Romans, Jesus’ voice rang out: “Forgive them, Father!” This broke a dam in my spirit. All this time and for reasons He’d yet to reveal, I willfully misunderstood the Bible’s ancient wisdoms.

To degrees far distanced from what Jesus sacrificed for us, we can understand the wallop that is social disapproval and humiliation. Having lived through my own experience of being “cancelled”, and having learned from the tragic death of my twin brother, I found I’d had more in common with the Bible’s teachings than I’d thought. Perhaps He had revealed himself during these tests, and I’d balked at His efforts.

One of the clearest threads between my personal value system and Jesus’ teachings is the responsibility toward others: to treat people how you’d like to be treated, and to extend a hand to those damaged, broken, addicted, and afflicted. The patience we provide to others dwarfs the very-human obsession with social standing, outward image, and even rigid rule-following. I hold true to treating people with respect, even those who made voracious efforts to destroy my livelihood.

The most difficult message for me to swallow was how heavily hypocrisy was criticized in the Bible, as my own was showcased through my cries for favors from Him for no good reason other than ego. “Of course You do this to me,” I’d mutter, “You don’t give a shit anyway”; “What sort of God allows torturing of animals and psychotic people to walk freely?” This criticism aligns with Jesus’ insistence that we remain honest in our behavior and in our words, that our beliefs must match what we do should our goal be cohesion with others. My goal has always been that of honesty regarding my beliefs, and such honesty is more important to me than the style in which I fashion it online.

The core principle of the Bible which resonates with me most is meaning-making through suffering. He does not pretend life is simple nor smooth, and does not mislead His followers into such surface-level understanding of what it means to be human. Rather, the Bible grants us opportunity for growth through repeated tests of what we can handle. The Scripture I think I hold closest is James 1:3: “God says, ‘My timing may test your patience, but My plan will never fail you.’”

When my twin brother Conner died and I hovered over his lifeless body at the crematorium, I expected to feel some sort of… sensation. Some sort of experience of his squelched spirit dissipating, his life now floating upward toward the Heavens, leaving his twin sister aglow with the serenity he so often quoted in the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer. I’d practically scripted a transformation I felt I was owed.

I felt angry for years following Conner’s cremation, his official goodbye, wondering why God would choose to retreat in a time I desperately searched for him. He was permitted to vanish with my brother while I was left here. He left me void of closure, to which I assumed He mocked my hope.

I’d felt nothing, no hint of soul or impression that God was standing beside me. Or so I thought.

Maybe God didn’t strand me at all, but I had withdrawn from Him. I see now I likely wasn’t scouring my psyche for evidence of Him for the sake of forgiveness or guidance. I’d waited, cynical and smug, for Him to prove Himself to me. It was me, though, who initiated each flight from Him.

Me.

I was the problem.

Admittedly, I’m not sure I “feel God inside of me” just yet. I’m new to absorbing Jesus’ teachings, and I’m reorienting my many viewpoints to one through the lens of the Bible. I’m learning that the greatest proof of our faith lies in the adversity which convinces us we’re cursed, or that God has chosen some other fortunate bastard to collect His good graces.

I don’t know if I’ve found God yet. But for the first time… I’m not only calling Him when I need a favor.

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Adults passively shushed those of us slinging the sneer before moving back into the day’s lesson: preparing us for the mile-run fitness test. The test, which now only about 25% of the adult American population can complete without stopping, was the ultimate social gauntlet for chubbier minors. Ha! Look at lard-ass run! Kids are cruel.

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As a kid, there were only a handful of classmates that were considered overweight. It’s why terms geared toward their appearance were the “ultimate diss”: so few kids fell under the category that even being “big-boned” made one a target for abuse.

One of the few overweight kids came from an entire family of morbidly obese individuals. In retrospect, it was clearly environmental-and-lifestyle-based choices which resulted in an entire family to balloon to weights we now know contribute heavily to all-cause mortality.

Genetics certainly play a role, and should be weighted heavily in forming opinions about the causes of childhood/adult obesity. But genetics alone do not account for a family of 4, 5, or 6+ people all being obese.

It’s this very reason why allowing children to become overweight and obese should be considered a form of parental neglect.

The strongest version of this argument leans on responsibility and preventable harm.

1. Knowing the Harms But Choosing Harm Regardless

The nutrition information widely shared is, in short, confusing. On one hand, there are high-influence, public-facing individuals claiming not to touch receipts because of toxins infused in the threads, along with stamping everyday carbohydrates as “poisonous.” Others claim carbohydrates are crucial to increasing little athlete’s strength and aerobic capacity. Is protein the silver bullet we’ve made to believe it is? What about fiber?

Despite nutritional information becoming a hot commodity from a marketing perspective, eating “well” is largely common sense. A serving of meat, a serving of vegetables, a serving of home-made carbohydrates with limited sugar is all it takes to promote health in adults and children. Nutrition was easy enough that, up until the late 1970’s, only a small portion of the population was overweight—- let alone obese.

Childhood obesity is dangerous. It is associated with early onset of serious, often deadly diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Obesity is also closely related to sleep problems, orthopedic issues (i.e., it’s very hard on the joints), and social/psychological consequences. From this perspective, knowingly feeding children to the point of excess should be criticized in the same manner as a neglectful parent who exposes their children to the unnecessary danger of, say, riding in a car without a seatbelt, or second-hand smoke exposure. Perhaps it’s the “slow poison” of obesity that keeps families from seeing it as an acute brand of risk.

The information is not what’s missing here. Claim confusion, claim societal constraints. There’s a clear pattern of choice as it relates to well-known, well-documented-and-studied risk.

2. Kids Aren’t the Ones Buying Cheetos

The concept of “kids’ menus” is a marketing scheme. There is zero reason why children should be given an entirely separate meal from what their parents or the rest of the family is eating. Because children don’t control their home food environment, and they’re clearly not responsible for preparing meals and purchasing crap-laden junk, the only culpable party is the parent.

I love junk food. If it didn’t make my ass fat and render my thighs into cottage-cheese-like-corn-dogs, I’d eat it every single day. But I’m a responsible adult who understands the risks, much like the parents of young children who are chronically allowing consumption of ultra-processed, calorie-dense, sugar-rich “foods”, all while modeling highly sedentary lifestyles. This pattern of unmet needs, that is, structure, boundaries, and basic health-promoting routines, is entirely within a family’s control---- it does not matter who is president, how inflation has affected grocery bills, or what RFK Jr. suggests as the food pyramid.

For parents of young children, I’d wonder what your response might be to your child eating Marshmallow Fluff with a side of Mountain Dew for breakfast each morning. I’d imagine (or I’d hope) that the response might fall under disgust, even exasperation. If these feelings do arise--- what is your next action?

If children do not control what’s available, why do we expect them to control the outcome of their weight? If the inputs are adult-controlled... So is the result.

3. Early Habits Track

This speaks to my above point in that, despite some genetic lulls, children who grow up without early exposure to movement, exercise, portion awareness, and basic nutrition are statistically more likely to carry these poor patterns into adulthood. They can easily fall into the camp of adults who claim to “get back on track after their baby goes to kindergarten”, or “once I get promoted I’ll have more time to focus on my health,” or whatever other excuse remains to bolster our esteem.

Failing to intervene early is on-par with a child who regularly misses school, whose teeth are rotting because of untreated dental issues, or who wears soiled clothing multiple days in a row. Framed this way, you’d think families may be more inclined to get their act together?

Your child will not magically “grow out” of the habits you instilled. So it’s in the family’s best interest to choose the good ones.

4. Obesity Is Expensive and is Eating Your Tax Dollars

Obesity is a colossal economic force entirely unrelated to “beauty standards”, social media, and psychological impact. Sure, much of what drives childhood and adolescent behavior now can be attributed to some forces beyond what parents control.

There are clear issues like public school lunches which make controlled portions and healthy eating that much more difficult to manage once children leave their home. But these obstacles do not eliminate the responsibility of us taxpayers: they magnify a caregivers’ role. I’d wonder if we disincentivized shitty eating through monetary measures (i.e., our paychecks), we’d see a change in poor health behavior?

Obesity costs the U.S. healthcare system about $173 billion per year in direct medical spending. Some estimates push that even higher: up to $200+ billion annually depending on how it’s calculated. This is not an estimate of money from billionaire sources, either; a significant portion of these costs are being pulled from your paycheck through public programs.

Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain cancers are expensive, very lucrative conditions. Not only do they require chronic, repeated doctor visits and hospitalizations, many patients undergo surgeries and consume multiple, lifelong medications to “manage” the symptoms.

It’s because of these factors that our healthcare premiums bloat. Higher healthcare spending on obesity-related conditions results in higher employer healthcare and likely-lower wages (in an effort to offset these costs). In terms of workplace behavior and revenue-generation, reduced productivity, disability payouts, and chronic absenteeism are all directly tied to one’s poor health. It all adds up in the form of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Money funneled into simply managing very preventable disease, instead of funding truly useful (but not profitable, unfortunately) programs like preventative education and healthcare, is the resource allocation problem of America.

The private problem of family values is now everyone’s problem, a problem with clear public consequences.

I’m an anorexic 15 years in recovery. I wholly acknowledge that a hyper-focus on children’s weight and eating habits, or embodying the “Almond Mom” meme, carries its own risks. Eating disorders are the most lethal of mental disorders. With this in mind, though, the “kids eat what adults eat” argument is less about the outcome (i.e., the child’s actual body and aesthetics) and more about the inputs---- the inputs that adults control (what is cooked, what is allowed, what boundaries are in place in the home).

If a child’s environment consistently lacks structure around food, movement and exercise, sleep, and basic behavioral limits… is this not neglectful? Would we not call it neglect in any other domain? Why does childhood health, in particular, get a hall pass?

Children cannot reasonably change their own environment and certainly know fuck-all about what is best for “future them”, despite what modern child psychology claims. We grossly underestimate their physical abilities all while burdening them with overestimations of their psychological capacity. They cannot, should not, and do not ever set their environment. Adults do.

Call it whatever you want; neglect, laziness, gentle parenting. But when a child lives in a preventable pattern of impairment they didn’t choose, the label isn’t the problem.

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In Cheyenne’s right hand is a 32-ounce Dunkin’ Donuts cup adorned with a bitten-in-several-places straw. It sweats from the outside, leaving droplets onto the table directly beside her MacBook Air. With each wrist flick, Cheyenne swirls caramel-coated-Oreo-shrapnel through a hurricane of heavily-syruped, watered-down iced coffee. “Ugh, I’m like so anxious this morning,” she says to nobody in particular.

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Nobody responds by suggesting, “You don’t think that mocha-drizzle-Oreo-orgy Caramelicious drink has anything to do with that?”

The modern workplace is more than an adult daycare. It is a sociological experiment in how extremely poor diet and lifestyle habits, paired with chronically unclear expectations and indirect, avoidant communication, impact our ability to derive meaning from our day to day lives.

Even more eerie? We think this is normal. We believe our Paxil prescriptions are benign conversation starters, about as banal as, apparently, our psychiatric diagnoses and the irregularity of our bowel movements. These bodily changes, which directly affect our cognitive functioning without our recognition, become lazy arguments for the 4-day work-week, remote work, and increased “mental health days.”

But what if these issues aren’t motivation problems at all? What if it has less to do with the supposed “burnout epidemic” or our nation’s mental health crisis… but is actually just a training failure?

A large portion of what we call anxiety, burnout, and dysfunction is not just caused by “the system”. It’s amplified by poor physiological health, weak habits, and a lack of training in core behavioral skills (I name them below). Burnout, simply stated, is a state of mind more often than the product of a poorly run-and-managed workplace.

This is not a denial of very clear workplace changes and modern problems: I’m wholly aware that we’re forced to treat our phones like additional limbs, that we’re ensnared with political rage-bait until we go to sleep via Slack notifications and passive-aggressive gentle reminders, and that we can, at any moment, watch someone set themselves on fire on YouTube with little more than a “holy shit” on our part. What have we done?

Constraints and stressors of modern life are legitimate. I actually do think the world being far more psychologically demanding contributes to increasing rates of mental illness. But we are also over-attributing dysfunction to these external systems while under-examining our own capacity to manage them. It’s a simple problem of disproportion!

We can acknowledge that, yes, life is more difficult now (in some ways) than it ever has been, specifically from a financial and emotional standpoint--- but it remains our responsibility to figure out how to contend with these ever-increasing challenges. The government is not your friend or your savior.

If modern environments integrated physiology and behavior science into their operating systems, we’d see far less “burn out”, job-hopping, and workplace dissatisfaction. Instead, we ignore the human brain, we willfully dismiss the role of health in our behavior, and we wedge our thumb into our ass while pathologizing very predictable outcomes of this ignorance. We’re undertrained intellectually and physically!

When I say “undertrained” throughout this piece, I’m pointing directly to the following core behavioral deficits:

1) Distress tolerance

2) Sustained attention

3) Task initiation without reminders or even “motivation”

4) Recovery and repair after failure/mistakes

5) Ability to receive feedback without escalation

6) Ability to deliver clear, respectful feedback

7) Using clear, direct communication with others

8) Following-through on low-reward tasks

While some of these skills come easier to others for reasons largely genetic/temperament-based (i.e., personality traits), the majority are entirely learned. This is good news! It means that, despite a steep learning curve for many of these core skills (we’re not born good communicators or pre-packaged to accept feedback), they’re trainable behaviors. They’re cemented in our day-to-day functioning through repetition and through systems which allow these skills to multiply and mature over time.

So here’s the workplace I propose, one which rests on two pillars:

1. Physiology as the foundation of behavior and functioning

2. Behavior following actual contingencies (i.e., feedback loops” instead of “intentions” and “impacts” and emotional slop)

You cannot think clearly after drinking 32 ounces of refined sugars across the course of 3 hours sitting, slouched over a computer, pushing mindless emails back and forth.

And you also cannot expect consistent, desirable behavior of people around you in a system which is highly inconsistent in how it manages human behavior.

The Physiology-First Workplace

Sedentary but also cognitively demanding environments make for a “nervous system” toggling between two states: extreme under-arousal and overstimulation. Now, I used to scoff at terms like “nervous system” and “overstimulation” in the context of humans, namely children, because they were so overly used in justifying obscene, disgusting, and unacceptable behavior. As it relates to adults, though, these terms hit the mark.

On even a primitive level, our brains need a certain degree of arousal/challenge to stay engaged. This is best illustrated through the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states, in plain language, that too much challenge makes us shut down, but so does too little challenge. Being told to complete monotonous tasks far below our ability level, for example, is what can result in that feeling of “checking out.” It’s boring, and appears completely unrelated to what we will use in everyday life!!! Being told to complete a series of trigonometry equations for math-idiots like me, though? Also leads to checking out.

Your workplace usually keeps you in a low-alertness state at the very beginning of the day and throughout the day, with only spurts of stimulation; these spurts often come in the form of aggravation or some other annoyance. Slouching over your computer to type your 17th email, or submit the 9th revision on a meaningless report? Your brain activity is low, which means your functioning stays “offline”, which looks like procrastination, mental fog, and poor ability to focus. Sound familiar? That was my entire last job! And my boss wondered why, with that dopey look of smug bewilderment on her face, “I wasn’t meeting expectations.”

We cannot demand focus, patience, and emotional control in environments like these. And mental health “awareness” days, or sending emails about the importance of “wellness walks”, are not going to increase cognitive preparation. This is why I propose the mandatory mile.

The mandatory daily mile (a walk or a run) should be considered a non-negotiable form of preparation for the day ahead versus an adorably-optional brand of self-care. Framed this way, exercise can be adopted as a daily practice crucial to everyday performance, a pre-requisite to all the outcomes upper-management wish to see.

Sure, injury and disability would require modified participation. But the mandatory mile is less about the mile or even about improving one’s fitness, and more about participation. Completion becomes the new expectation.

The Daily Shift Proposal

1. The First Hour: The Mandatory Mile

a. Zero tasks, emails, or demands before completion of the mile

b. Purpose: to simply shift arousal and “turn your brain on”

c. Naperville North High School implemented “The Zero Hour” PE class for their students, and saw remarkable results in their reported energy levels, their mental acuity, and, yes--- their grades! See details here:https://physednhealth.com/zero-hour-pe/

2. Shorter Work Blocks: 60-90 Minutes, Then Move

a. Not “if you have time” or “if you need to stretch your legs”---treat this as a required aspect of the work block

b. Designed to sustain blood flow and attention versus constantly recover from emotional/intellectual collapsing behind your computer screen

3. Reduced Expectation of Urgency & Constant Responsiveness

a. This is more the workplace behavioral layer, which we’ll discuss in part two, but it’s crucial for our “nervous system” to remain adaptive

b. Unless you’re an ER nurse or paramedic, there is literally zero reason anything you do on a daily basis at work needs to be an emergency

c. Other peoples’ neuroticism is 100% not your emergency

4. Walking Meetings

a. Getting moving and walking parallel can actually reduce some of the nerves people may feel about sharing their truest feelings.

b. This is a slippery slope, as it’s crucial we teach people to face their fears by taking action… however, the increased attention to physiological performance may be the kickstart people need to say what’s on their mind, free of disclaimers!

The Physiology-First Workplace is not about “optimizing performance” and tracking metrics only relevant to elite athletes. As mentioned, it has very little to do with working our way to the top of a physical performance leaderboard. Its emphasis lies in the mismatch between cognitively and emotionally demanding work completion in people with bodily functions barely prepared and trained.

We begin the day sugared and sedentary and remain sedentary, puzzled as to the outcome: poor performance reviews, increased errors, why nobody has the energy or will to speak face to face to one another.

The Physiology-First workplace rejects the framing which sees very predictable outcomes like above as mysterious conditions. It treats health as the starting point, versus a luxurious act of “self-love” or “self-care” only afforded to those with flexible schedules. The framework refuses to separate the body and the mind.

Sound extreme? That’s only because we’ve “normalized” utter dysfunction as “how things are.”

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Her parents’ response? “She just wants to look at it!”

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When she charged at a 2-year-old at a playground to steal a toy cradled in the child’s hands, her parents’ response? Negotiating with the baby’s parents to convince them she should be allowed to hold the toy “for just 10 minutes.”

My emotional reckoning came after I physically had to wrestle and restrain her from breaking the glass doors of a public school. After deciding she was owed the right to enter any public or private place that wasn’t hers, she proceeded to punch, bite, scratch, charge at, and tackle the one person who was willing to tell her “No” (i.e., me).

And her behavior, this violent and entirely unacceptable behavior, disability or no disability, mental illness or no mental illness, wasn’t even the most tragic detail in this story.

In a follow-up debrief regarding our WWE match, I reminded her parents that behaving this way was entirely unacceptable. And yes, that needed to be said, which itself is such a travesty I can hardly stand it. I urged them to tell their daughter her behavior was unacceptable.

Their response? “I don’t like that wording. She doesn’t do well with charged language. Can we replace it with, like, something more positive?”

Worse yet, my boss’ response, directly in front of the family? “Kayla, I would never say that to my kid

This is the modern work world.

Imagine being tasked with helping people and bearing the burden of “meaningful outcomes” when you’re forced to work with people, and under people, this delusional. While it may seem impossible, I do have some tricks up my sleeve. These would ideally come from administration or upper management, but, let’s be honest: your manager likely lacks common sense and people skills and is generally incompetent at understanding people. With this in mind, you can choose to lead yourself, and allow your environment to rise to your level of audacity.

Obvious Things We’re Pretending Are Complicated

1. Say the thing everyone is avoiding. This is not hard.

a. What people do: Meet about the same problem and then complain that the problem isn’t changing. Offer up “solutions” that require no real work or outcomes beyond continuously meeting to “unpack” the problem.

b. What to do instead: Describe what’s happening in observable terms, free of adorable semantics, and force your team to contact reality.

2. Replace all opinions, “processing”, “unpacking meetings”, and performative empathy with evidence.

a. What people do: Meet and admire problems endlessly. My old boss made morality theater of designing 20+ page plans and doing nothing with them, other than editing them repeatedly to keep herself busy and feeling important.

b. What to do instead: Bring simple data to showcase the consequences of talking-without-action. How many meetings happened without decisions? How many times have we met that led to meaningful, observable change? How many deadlines were missed? How much revenue was lost because of unclear expectations?

3. Stop over-explaining, “unpacking”, and “processing” and set the goddamn contingency.

a. What people do: Explain, meet to re-explain, follow-up with an email to explain why you’re re-explaining, and then soften the process to spare Darla’s hurt feelings.

b. What to do instead: Tie behavior to outcomes. Met your goal? Awesome. When people do what they’re supposed to do, YOU MUST NOTICE IT AND SET FORTH UNREASONABLE HOSPITALITY AND AFFIRMATION FOR THEM BEING AWESOME. Didn’t meet the goal? Consequence. And I don’t mean a verbal warning or threat- a true consequence.

4. Reward what ACTUALLY MATTERS.

a. What people do: Work is an adult daycare rife with neurotic personality contests. Leaders, especially women, love to praise effort and participation from staff they already like, versus setting their sights on outcomes worth monitoring.

b. What to do instead: Reward follow-through, reliability, clarity, and consistency. Shape actual behavior instead of morale theater. Do not shower brown-nosers and busy bodies with your attention simply because they spent excessive time doing something that doesn’t actually result in anything important.

5. Reduce unnecessary friction… not standards.

a. What people do: Lower expectations when people struggle to soften the blows of reality. “Maybe we need to show her a little more empathy,” is what I’ve heard leadership say. As if empathy cannot possibly exist in the same vein as expectations.

b. What to do instead: The expected behavior must be easier versus optional. Simplify the system, reduce the bullshit performative steps, and stop making people jump through hoops to get something done. This usually means leaders have to stop the micromanaging, which is an entirely separate problem for another piece.

Systems who actively avoid reality will always find this sort of very basic, direct, professional behavior offensive. But the key to growth in any business is to grow or die, and risk-takers/innovators must be rewarded in these environments, even if they fall short. I understand the fear in sharing unfiltered thoughts or so much as relaying what was once known as common sense in the modern workplace. Bosses are hyper-insecure because they’re hyper-incompetent, which shows itself as micromanaging and retaliation for broads like me.

It’s still worth it to set a standard of critical thought and diversity of opinion. Anywhere you work, whether self-employed or employed by a narrow-minded shrew, you will be faced with varying degrees of insufferable human behavior. It’s ultimately up to you to decide how you will tolerate it, advocate for your own needs, and lead yourself.

You are the United States of You. Start acting like it!

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One of the options pitched was an objectively legitimate one. In looking solely at the financials, like profit & loss statements and profit margins, the business was a cash cow. I’ve long since imagined there being a metaphorical vehicle to the life I ultimately want to live: living and playing on 5 acres of land in Tennessee with my husband, with an animal rescue for abandoned and abused cats, dogs, horses, and goats. Cash flow would have been nearly guaranteed from day one, all without my having to conduct much of any clinical work. This opportunity was the convenient Delorean, jet-setting to future-Kayla.

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My default reaction to getting fired was, “Well, I guess I need to find a way to make my own money again!” I’m a project and fractional work sort of gal in the sense that I thrive on start-up sweat equity and short stints with strict expiration dates. I do not like being hired for indefinite time periods (i.e., like any and all therapy sort of work) in which the end of services is unclear (are we done in 5 months? 5 years? Ever?) Knowing this about myself, owning and operating full-blown businesses is not in the cards for me.

This seemed like any regular season in my life, to start a random business, because I’ve done it so many times before. I decided to launch a home-service based business for seniors that offers DoorDash-like help for flat rates: tech set-up, garage clear-outs, laundry pick-up and drop-off, etc. Within that same week of My Grand Firing, the offers I received (all related to my degrees) were paying no less than $80 an hour. Opportunity, as it seems, shows up after action… not before.

The autism clinic opportunity, on paper, was airtight. Hardly a breezy 20 minutes from home, the clinic didn’t even have drywall up yet, and was ripe for a woman’s interior touch. I was introduced to construction workers on-site who immediately asked for my vision of the layout. Because I can’t share many details about it and don’t wish to make any statements about the investors, what I’ll say is this: it was a dream, no-brainer opportunity for many die-hard applied behavior analysts I know in the autism world.

Autism clinics (or ABA clinics) are cash cows. Healthcare is a cash cow industry as it is, but ABA, in particular, shits money. Not only is there high demand (1 in 31 kids have an autism diagnosis, and all pediatricians recommend ABA as the frontline treatment), the revenue is highly predictable, recurrent, and long-lasting.

Services on average begin at age 2 and do not stop, at least for most families, until the child “ages out” at age 22. That’s two decades of guaranteed money. Some ABA companies have even instituted policies around 15 hours per week being the minimum commitment required for treatment.

For the owner of the autism business, the passive revenue secured from the technicians running the daily, hours-long sessions is colossal. Sessions typically run from a minimum of 2 hours upwards of 5-6 hours---for one child. We can’t share insurance rates publicly, but I’ll paint a picture like so: technicians bill anywhere from 20 hours a week on the low end to 40 hours a week on the high end. Technicians are the ABA version of a physicians assistant or nurse. Further, Medicaid rates, which are public, pay anywhere from $60-$80 an hour for a technician-run-billable-hour; technicians only need a high school diploma to “practice”. The business owner, then, can sneak away paying techs near-minimum-wage and pocket the remaining, say, $40-$60 per hour from their couch or from a cabana in Tulum.

Rational brain said, “Kayla, are you stupid? You’ve been wanting out of the field for years. This is your ticket. This is your literal voucher to that farm life you’ve been envisioning for so long.” The business meets the criteria for everything new business owners and serial entrepreneurs want: recurrent revenue, predictable revenue, highly scalable operations.

So I said hell fucking no.

I already know the healthcare, insurance-billing path that so many of us hold in the same respect as taxes, as inflation, as meetings that could have been emails. Billable hour systems across all of healthcare reward revenue and profit margin growth, rather than treatment which is creative, innovative, or even beneficial. Cures and preventative measures do not make money, and competence fails to result in increased revenue. Your credential, your pulse, and your Medicaid billing ID will do just fine.

A good opportunity does not guarantee a good outcome, let alone a good life. Something highly profitable means next to nothing if the work itself sucks you dry. I’ve wrangled with this a lot; Do we follow our passions? I think that’s definitely stupid. But I also wonder if going to work solely to make money is equally misguided. Competence paired with mastery of a skill usually develop into passion later on; Would I ever grow passionate about, say, accounting and number figures had my parents forced me to become a CPA? There’s no way of knowing.

These days, I only choose to be exceptional in how I treat people and in domains that actually interest me. I took a Working Genius Assessment that analyzes what my strengths and frustrations are as it relates to work, and found that most jobs I’ve had are built entirely around my frustrations (compliance, procedural execution, documentation… and having to support, motivate, and push people to do things they said they’d do.) If this is of interest to people, I’m happy to share the full report.

Right now I’ve gotten lots of asks about lots of different things. I love all of them:

1. Developing AI integration for financials for a business who is struggling to remain profitable

2. Meal prep service for moms of big families who struggle to come up with meal ideas

3. Continuing CEU development for BCBAs

4. Paid writing gigs (ghostwriting, helping to develop copy for flyers and websites)

Clarity and certainty are not coming to save you. They’re things you create, one test at a time. None of us can optimize for happiness or even fulfillment, so maybe looking at our lives as experiments amenable to some tampering is the better way to go.

So let’s help each other: no more ideas. Just action. One test is all it takes.

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Most people think increasing their income requires one of three things:

• A new degree • A new job• A completely new career

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The above options can increase your income, although two out of three of them take quite a bit of time. Getting a new degree or certification, and applying that to a different career, makes you a beginner at this fresh pivot. If you’re employed as a beginner, expect your salary or hourly rates to reflect that. Should you try to “do your own thing”, gaining credibility and enough clientele to keep the lights on takes many, many months to accomplish. Time is required for anything useful, though, so it may be a solid trade-off if we learn to understand the market demands (future post.)

Consider your abilities (not only your formal education or even formal certifications) as less of a ladder or staircase, but more like a constellation. Each skill is a little burning ember floating amidst a sky of opportunity, and the most interesting opportunities will appear when those stars connect.

Consider your abilities (not only your formal education or even formal certifications) as less of a ladder or staircase, but more like a constellation. Each skill is a little burning ember floating amidst a sky of opportunity, and the most interesting opportunities will appear when those stars connect.

TASK ONE: The Skill Bubble Exercise

The first step is brutally simple: Dump every skill you have onto a page. These are not just your job skills or formal education as I mentioned earlier; it is everything you can do. Professional knowledge, hobbies, things people regularly ask you for help with, obscure topics you know what too much about, random competencies you’ve accumulated over the years… it all counts!

Below is my list (I highly recommend HAND-WRITING this; I make all my students hand-write things, and it just seems to help with thought organization compared to typing):

In this first step, do not concern yourself with categorization, clarity, or even neatness. You’re simply trying to visually lay out all of the usable skills you have that we’ll develop into opportunities in the next step!

TASK TWO: Skill Stacks Beat Single Skills

Single skills rarely create business. But Kayla, what about plumbers? Plumbing and any blue-collar work is killer to get into, but without marketing, sales knowledge, management, and team organization, nobody will know that you’re a rockstar plumber with extreme efficiency. Skill intersections are what create business! Your opportunities will bloom when you combine two or three of your abilities into a cluster more unique. Because let me tell you--- your single skills are a dime a dozen, and it’s nearly impossible to stand out just by competence and skill alone.

To pull from my own examples above, let’s create some skill stacks that may lead to paying opportunities:

Right now, your goal is to create as many clusters and skill stacks as possible. Don’t concern yourself with “one thing” or even what’s most interesting to you/what you’re more passionate about. This is about skill usability, not what’s fun. Fun is a perk, not a job feature.

TASK THREE: The $100 Market Test

This is what has held up at least 10 business ventures of mine in the past: getting stuck in building a website, designing a beautiful course and clever logo, taking too long to “brand” because I was too scared to put my actual service out there.

The next step is validating your idea by asking people to pay for it. Would someone pay $100 for this? That’s it, and that’s the test. Granted, depending on what you’re offering, you can align your price with market rates.

You can ask them directly with a simple question as follows: “I’m experimenting with a workshop about how behavior science explains why employees don’t follow through. Would you pay X dollars to attend?” or even, “I’m testing a 2-hour structured adventure outing for high-energy dogs. Would you pay $50 for an outing?”

Your main goal is not selling your idea, but understanding how curious you can make people. There are three signals you’re onto something special with your venture:

1. People say yes immediately, which usually sounds like “OMG that sounds amazing, I’d totally pay for that”

2. People ask follow-up questions (e.g., “Oh that’s interesting… so where would you go for an adventure hike around here?”)

3. People tell you that you identified their exact problem

You are gathering market data in real time, baby!

Why the $100 Test Works

The test forces three important outcomes to occur, with the first being clarity. You must learn to define a specific problem and audience if you are to stack your skills and learn to monetize them. Competence and excellence mean nothing in business if people have zero clue who you are, or what you’re selling doesn’t directly relate to their pain.

The second outcome comes in the form of a reality check. Instead of hoping an idea is good or believing you’re on the right track because of unbridled excitement, you’re observing in real-time how people respond to what you’re currently holding near and dear. I’ve had a hundred ideas very real to me completely flop or confuse people when I presented them. It hurts, but it’s also very useful.

Lastly, the $100 test works because it is a tiny market test that helps you build the confidence you’ll need to succeed in business. You’re not trading your life savings on a certification that nobody will recognize, and you’re not quitting your 9-5 with no plan like the dimwits on the internet. Entrepreneurship only looks like massive leaps if you trust its portrayal on social media; it’s more like a thousand tiny experiments iterated day after day.

I’ve fallen into the same trap many of you probably have: you think that income comes from finding the perfect idea. The idea that makes you say, “WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!?!!??!”, or some earth-shattering solution to Earth’s greatest problems. Income only comes from testing a thousand imperfect ideas. We can start with the skills we have and combine them in interesting ways, ways which we can test with a simple question like, “Would you pay $100 for this?”

The response, even if it hurts, will teach you more than the months of planning to find a perfect color palette for your logo.

And sometimes, the market will say no. Over and over. That doesn’t necessarily mean the idea is bad or that it demands you pivot again. It might mean you marketed to the wrong audience, the problem you’re solving isn’t urgent or painful enough to the people you’re pitching, or the way you’re presenting it needs work. Or maybe it’s an elixir of all 3.

Next week, I’ll show you how to iterate when the first idea flops. Because, rest assured: every good idea starts as a horrible one.

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Leverage determines which negotiation strategies are available to you. Not effort, not seniority, not even competence. LEVERAGE!

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If you have vivid fantasies of your company’s building burning to the ground (obviously with nobody in it, calm down) and screeching “Fuck You” to your horrid boss as you prance away unscathed with your cat, I have a crucial reframe you must consider.

Your current job is not robbing you of “going all in on yourself” as social media suggests. Yes, it may cut in to your scheduled fun-time because you’re trading time for money. But it’s important you see it your current role as a vehicle to your ideal life versus the pothole or the roadblock that’s blocking your access. I know. I hate playing the game, too, and I hate offering help to bosses who clearly despise us (or, at worst, refuse to recognize any single contribution we’ve made to the company.)

You will not pull from Sandy the Brown-Noser’s playbook by reinventing your role to that of 12 people and “looping in” your supervisor as a wide-mouthed bystander to your awesomeness. All this tends to do is make your colleagues loathe your every fiber while simultaneously pulling back on their own efforts, because, well, Sandy gobbled up the attention and made your job 17 times harder for no reason. We’re going to build leverage through better and smarter communication, good old-fashioned self-reflection, and a bit of research.

There are several options for building internal leverage where you currently work:

• Negotiate higher hourly rate• Shift responsibilities• Reduce hours with proportional pay• Contract instead of W-2• Revenue share• Specialized role premium

These options, I’ll admit, are not sexy. They fail to wow audiences the way “I QUIT MY 9-5 WITH NO BACK-UP PLAN” headlines manage to do. Despite my nagging feeling that using your 9-5 as a runway should be headline-able, it isn’t, because it occurs slowly over time and actually requires you to put forth some strategic effort. That dumb-dumb who earned a promotion and is now your boss after only being with the company for 9 months compared to your 6 years? They negotiated better.

Negotiating is one of the most underrated, underappreciated skills----and, dare I say, particularly for women.

Even with potential for negotiations going sour, the above options are still very low risk compared to starting your own side hustle or your own full-fledged business.

It’s important, though, that we begin with some self-reflection and honesty. Getting paid more (or the sense that we “are entitled to be paid more”) is widely misunderstood as a matter of 1) how long you’re with a company (i.e., “seniority”), and 2) effort. Effort does not equal outcome, and loyalty to an organization is, for better or worse, a workplace feature of times past.

Allow me to illustrate by use of a quick (and sort of cute) example.

I used to teach Clinical Psychology to undergraduates. When I gave some students a B or C on their work because of scoring low on objective criteria, like clarity of their argument, ample evidence to support their statement, etc., at least 5 or 6 kids would respond with, “But I tried so hard!” It’s great that you tried so hard, Daxton, but you still got a C. Why? Because effort doesn’t mean shit. Praising effort is for children and puppies. In the world of business and adults, while we can appreciate sweat equity, we ultimately expect a specific outcome. Outcomes = leverage.

Differently stated: People tend to ask for raises emotionally, while companies only approve raises economically. You have to show people that paying you more makes financial sense for them. In what ways does giving you a monetary bump benefit the organization? If your argument is centered entirely around how it benefits you, “Because you’ve been taking on more responsibility lately” and “Have been here for a while” so “you just feel like it would be fair or that you deserve it”, expect no more than the teeny $1500 tip automatically afforded all employees after they’ve suffered for 365 consecutive days beyond their start date. This is not a raise. It is a participation trophy for surviving another year…

The best negotiators prepare for these sorts of conversations months prior with clear, objective evidence. They track things like:

* Systems they improved (NO ‘VIBES’--- NEVER USE ‘IMPROVED CULTURE’ AS A METRIC, IT’S MESSY AND IMPOSSIBLE TO MEASURE/PROVE)

* Time saved

* Problems prevented

* Processes redesigned

* Revenue supported

* Clients retained

You should be able to provide concrete answers to questions like:

“What measurable value do you produce?”“What problems do you solve?”“What would break or deteriorate if you left?”

Most people approach negotiation the same way regardless of their leverage. That’s the mistake!

If you can clearly answer questions like “What measurable value do I produce?” or “What would break if I left?”, your negotiation should be direct and evidence-based. You’re not asking for a favor — you’re presenting a business case as to your awesomeness and your productivity. I know, I know, productivity is the devil and we want slower lives less prone to unraveling by Satan Himself, otherwise known as Capitalism. But that’s life and that’s work, and we should be thankful we live in a society run on these sorts of standards. It’s why access to convenience and luxury is so high.

Show your organization the systems you improved, the problems you solved, the revenue you supported, or the time you saved the organization. Frame the raise as alignment between your compensation and the value you already deliver. Remember: they don’t give a damn about making you feel better by paying you more, and they certainly will not make salary decisions based on how much they think you “deserve” it. This is a numbers and impact game.

In the situation that you have evidence to support your awesomeness, the conversation becomes simple: “Here’s the impact I’ve created, and I’d like my rate to reflect that contribution.”

But if you can’t answer those questions yet, negotiating for a raise isn’t the first step. The real move is building leverage before the conversation even happens. You must start tracking outcomes. You must volunteer to fix broken systems--- yes, for free. Take ownership of measurable problems without the passive-aggressive email afterward to announce what you’ve done. Make your work more visible by being in the trenches more often.

In other words, design your role so that your absence would actually matter!

Sure, negotiation involves some degree of persuasion and performance. People who are memorable and “impossible to ignore” have mastered the art that is professional give-and-take. But it’s also crucial you position yourself carefully so as not to come across as the entitled dumb-dumb your boss probably is.

If you can prove your value, negotiate with evidence.If you can’t yet, negotiate with strategy. Build the impact that is truly “impossible to ignore”.

As Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Your positioning is up to you.

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Do you know how much you need, AT A MINIMUM PER MONTH, to survive?

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If you don’t, fear not. Many of us millennials have been spared the financial street smarts to understand how money moves. Even more common is the wall-to-wall fear that we’re not making enough, that we’re only “making ends meet”, or that we’re living “paycheck to paycheck” despite not knowing what each paycheck covers. When you don’t know what your bottom line or minimum number is, every money move feels high-stakes, and work feels like a Chinese finger trap.

This calculator will (hopefully) dampen that fear response by turning your month-to-month, year-to-year survival into concrete terms you can more easily control. As the young bucks say, “knowledge is power.”

Minimum Survival Number (MSN)… WTF?

MSN is exactly what it sounds like: it’s the money you need each month to cover your essential life: housing, food, transportation, insurance, and very baseline-level obligations (e.g., electric bill, phone bill.) No lifestyle extras (including eating out or kids’ extracurriculars) or any sort of “growth” spending (i.e., a 401K, a ROTH IRA, any investments you’re making, a savings account) are included in this.

I think of money in terms of monthly increments; it’s easier this way for me to allocate my funds to my biggest expenses, like my mortgage, my student loan, and my car, all of which are automatically withdrawn from my account on the same dates month to month. I also think it’s easier to help others plan on a month by month basis versus trying to convert salaries into hourly rates and bi-weekly paycheck amounts.

Your MSN is not to be mistaken with your ideal life and what a better version of you considers the bare minimum. Your MSN is only your “I am safe, the lights will stay on, I can breathe and eat” number. No wagyu steaks and hair extensions over here.

There is certainly room for dreaming about your ideal life and taking each and every step to get there. That’s actually the purpose of this initial experiment that is your MSN!

I also hope in future pieces I can assist in helping that vision come to fruition. For now, though, focusing solely on your MSN will shield you with a little thing I referred to earlier called knowledge (I prefer the word “leverage”). When you know your exact number figures, you gain negotiating power, career and monetary flexibility, and mental breathing room for that not-so-distant “ideal life”. Your MSN is the vogue new marble flooring beneath your money decisions!

The Impact of Knowing the MSN

Fear-and-rage-based decision-making, namely when it comes to your finances and your career and your side hustles, is understandable. It’s also a very, very bad idea. Take it from someone who has started many fear-and-fury-induced side gigs only to find myself desperate for the structure and stability of a W2-type income.

When you know your full, current income, and cross-reference that with your MSN, you see exactly how much needs replacing. More often than not, people don’t need as much money as they thought. I have friends making high six-figure salaries who wholly believe they cannot survive with even a penny less. They’re wrong. Love you guys!

Remember: Replacing a salary or a slice of your hours isn’t about replacing your entire income overnight and repackaging your entire life. It’s about covering your survival number first and gradually building upward. We start with restrictions and constraint, and then move to freedom with money.

Below is the easiest possible Calculator Walkthrough of your expenses. As I’ve mentioned in prior pieces and on social media, I use the Albert app to show all of my money spent. It categorizes it based on merchant as well as type (i.e., car, insurance, groceries). I’ll show all of my own spending habits in the screenshots below, pulled directly from the app!

Minimum Survival Number WorksheetCalculate the monthly amount you need to keep your life stable, safe, and functional — no extras, just the essentials.

Step 1 — Housing

Rent or Mortgage: __________

Property Taxes (if applicable): __________

Basic Maintenance / HOA: __________

Housing Subtotal: __________

Step 2 — Utilities

Electric / Gas: __________

Water / Trash: __________

Phone: __________

Internet: __________

Utilities Subtotal: __________

Step 3 — Food

Groceries (baseline): __________

Essential dining (workdays / convenience): __________

Food Subtotal: __________

Step 4 — Transportation

Car Payment / Lease: __________

Insurance: __________

Fuel / Transit: __________

Maintenance Buffer: __________

Transportation Subtotal: __________

Step 5 — Insurance & Obligations

Health Insurance: __________

Debt Minimum Payments: __________

Childcare / Dependents: __________

Other Required Payments: __________

Obligations Subtotal: __________

Step 6 — Bare Minimum Cushion

Emergency Buffer (small monthly margin): __________

Your Minimum Survival Number

Add all subtotals:

Housing: __________Utilities: __________Food: __________Transportation: __________Obligations: __________Cushion: __________

Total Monthly Survival Number: __________

* My biggest expense category is: __________________

* The number feels (circle one):Lower Than Expected / About Right / Higher Than Expected

* Knowing this number makes me feel: __________________

* If I had to cover only this amount, one income source I could realistically use is: ___________________________________________________________

I Have My MSN. Now What?

Career Decisions: You know the minimum income you must protect to stay afloat. Maybe your miserable job is paying way above this amount but is suckling your soul in a manner similar to Vecna from Stranger Things. Is it possible to opt for part-time work for the time being? Can you consider other career options that cover your MSN, maybe a bit above, but are far less-stress?

Side Hustle Targets: If your current income covers your MSN, or you find you’re bleeding money each moth by a few hundred bucks, side hustles are a great way to supplement that lean income! And, because you know your numbers, you can calculate exactly how much side hustle money you’d have to earn, and how many hours you’d have to work, to make it each month with a cushion.

Stress Reduction: As mentioned in “Career Decisions”, taking a pay cut depending on the role can pay in soul. I’ve taken pay cuts to work only school hours, be done around 3, not have to work any breaks or summers, never open a computer or email after 3:30, never have to speak to a parent, and basically enjoy my life the second I leave the building. I also genuinely liked being in the setting. If you’re able to find something like this, I cannot recommend it enough. Fuck “optimizing” your paycheck. There’s a time and place for negotiation, but this piece is not it.

You can do this.

You can’t design your work life if you don’t know the financial floor you’re standing on. If you’re overwhelmed or even personally insulted by your MSN number, it’s okay--- I was too, at first. But we must get over that initial sting and the tattered ego that comes with it and find a way to make it happen for ourselves.

You do not have to live at your survival number. That’s basically called living paycheck to paycheck, and there are few greater stressors than that experience. The goal is to know your survival number so you can buy/arrange/negotiate yourself some options. Clarity reduces all of the fear around money problems, particularly those born of uncertainty.

Now let’s get crackin’ on your baseline freedom.

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Should you rely on social media alone for financial advice, you’re faced with two choices: stay miserable as a W2, or start a business. There’s technically a third arm of disillusion that is buying a business (which in theory is legit), which has young people believing they can operate a 6-figure boring business from behind their computer on a beach in Tulum. Psssst: passive income does not exist.

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Most people don’t want to run a business. If I wasn’t totally unemployable and dead-inside as a clinician, and the options available weren’t so royally bleak, I wouldn’t start a business. It’s something I feel like I simply have to do to make ends meet.

I used to believe owning a business was the one true path to freedom, to joy, to financial abundance. It’s the most socially accepted theme across social media platforms and is admittedly quite convincing.

This piece is about a simpler strategy: replace a smidge of your miserable hours with lower-pain, lower-drain W2 or contractor work. No brand building required, unless that’s what you choose to do! Starting a “side hustle” while preserving a safety net of W2 work is also an option I’ve found effective---- that will be for another piece.

Why 10 Hours?

Because it’s the most practical step forward that doesn’t break the bank. Replacing your entire job with your own self-generated income, or by starting over and interviewing for other positions, is too big of a change. In the emotionally raw state you’re in, it’s imperative you make decisions rationally and slowly. Ten hours is enough to:

* · Create a sense of breathing room and reduce feelings of burnout

* · Test alternatives while still making “enough”

* · Begin shifting your income and your time (i.e., gaining more control of your day)

I was scared for many years to let go of my salaried position. Because of my fetish for predictable, sustainable income, I assumed that going part-time and hourly would create too much variability in my week-to-week. In being fired and being in situations where my hand has been forced to pull money from nothing, I can confidently say that less work is the bomb.

The Real Goal: Replace PAIN, Not Just PAY

The purpose of this “exercise” isn’t to replace your current hourly wage or your salary. If that were the goal, you can easily find another job just as miserable as your current one. When I first shared getting fired and shifting into a home-service business from scratch, I got quite a few messages of people encouraging me to find X positions doing Y clinical work. My response was something along the lines of “fuck no.” It is zero issue for me to find clinical work; in just the past 3 days, I’ve been offered three separate positions paying a minimum of $80 an hour. They’re all what I hate most. I am in no way, shape, or form motivated to replace or exceed my previous income unless I absolutely have to (i.e., I’m bleeding money in spending each month and money from my new business can’t support my minimum survival number).

Even if your pay is slightly lower with your “replacement” gig, the net gain in mental clarity, time, and energy can be huge. You’re taking into account both financial decision-making as well as quality-of-life-based decision-making. Now we’re talking!

W2 is the Devil? I Think Not!

This need not be said: any employer-funded position gives you predictable pay, at least some form of administrative support (even if mediocre), built-in clients and demand, less decision fatigue because you’re not owning and operating the day-to-day, and overall lower risk. Because so much of today’s work couldn’t give a damn if you’re exceptional or you’re highly incompetent, being fired is a very distant risk for most people who are employed. You can essentially show up to the office or your computer screen, exist for a few hours, and receive your bi-weekly paycheck.

While you are trading your time for money, which modern culture has demonized as the ultimate form of self-deprecation, most people prefer these cons to entrepreneurship. Yes, entrepreneurship may be the “braver” choice in that you must generate your own income and build/sustain a livelihood from scratch. Below you’ll find a table in which I compare/contrast the risks involved should you go the entrepreneurial path versus the non-entrepreneurial one. There are clear risks to starting a business that no W2 would willingly take on.

The Replacement Framework

Step 1: Identify your Pain Score [5 tasks--- you can find this worksheet in my previous piece here]Step 2: Calculate how much income those 10 hours representStep 3: Decide whether you’re replacing equal pay or equal energyStep 4: Choose a lower-pain income sourceStep 5: Pilot it before making big changes

*IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This table is based on my skillset, my education and experience, my reputation, and my network. If anyone tries to sell you something as a “simple”, “no skills required”, “immediate passive income” gig---- the pay probably sucks, the competition is probably insanely high, and it’s probably a scam.

Hustle Culture vs. Humble Culture?

You don’t have to burn your career down to change your life.You also don’t need a business plan or a rebrand.

Maybe the best path forward isn’t to start a business and break free of America’s rat race. Maybe it’s to find stable work that doesn’t completely gut your insides, pays enough to live a simple but fulfilled life, and is straightforward enough to cut ties not a moment later than 5PM.

Relief is a legit goal. Don’t be fooled by “hustle culture”. I don’t want to spend all of my time with my cats and my shelter babies thinking about money, the business, the next best deal. That’s what entrepreneurs do: while playing catch with their kids, they’re crunching numbers on a contract they have to close. During a romantic dinner with their spouse, they’re scripting their next move to a hedge-fund venture capitalist. They do not ever stop thinking about and acting upon their business.

That’s not me. And maybe it isn’t you either.

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While I tend to scoff at this sort of verbiage, along with phrases like “emotional labor”, there is some room for it in understanding our relationship to money. If we want to relate this to our nervous system, here’s the best I’ve got: some ways of making money are stabilizing. They’re our monetary safety net which signals to “our body’s” calculation that everything is running smoothly. Other ways of making money pull us into low-grade fight-or-flight at the mere ping of an email.

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Not all hours are created equal. I scrape dog shit, deep-clean kennels, run working-breed dogs, and help shelter staff for free every single week (sometimes up to 8 hours a week), and I feel like I’m being paid in soul. I crave physical labor. I like straightforward, honest, non-negotiable work. The outcome is tangible and is not up for interpretation. On top of that, any time spent with any species of animal boosts my spirits like few other things could.

On the flipside, working 8 hours with autistic children or adults getting my hair pulled, getting spit at, and explaining for the thousandth time why aggression shouldn’t result in McDonald’s? This sort of work functions like a leech on my intelligence, not to mention the thanklessness of it all. On top of today’s children having zero consequences and today’s providers falling prey to the latest, progressive trend, it’s unsurprising 97% of us clinicians hate our jobs.

The Great Reframe of Shitty Work

Pain per hour = how much a task drains you relative to what it pays.

This is why it’s crucial readers understand what I’m saying: I’m not one of those Yas Queen coaches who will encourage you to quit. For now, it’s more important that you notice which tasks dampen your drive and which tasks ignite it.

This Week’s Experiment: Your Personal Pain-Per-Hour Audit

For this lab, you will be tracking your top 5 recurring tasks. For the sake of this publication, which is focused on creating autonomy and options with our money and our time, we’ll stick to 5 recurring work tasks. We’ll get to all the “Invisible Load” of at-home nonsense which subtly buries us in another piece.

I suggest using the “worksheet” below to monitor your current state of professional resentment. List 3–5 tasks you do regularly at work, and fill in each question below using the below scale to rate your Pain Score:

TASK 1:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/NTASK 2:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/NTASK 3:Pay per hour:Pain score (1–5):Energy after (↑ ↓ =):Would I do this if money didn’t matter? Y/N

Scoring Guide

* High Pay + High Pain = Leverage Opportunity

You’re being compensated well, which means this is a strategic exit candidate. If you can replace or reduce these hours, you free up serious energy without tanking your income overnight.

* Low Pay + Low Pain = Hobby Energy

This work doesn’t cost you much and might even give you a lift. It’s not urgent to replace — it can stay, evolve, or even grow if it aligns with how you want to spend your time.

* Low Pay + High Pain = Red Alert, Abort Mission

This is the most expensive quadrant emotionally. You’re paying with energy and not getting much back financially — these are the first hours worth questioning, redesigning, or phasing out.

With even this surface-level recognition of the emotional drainage, we can highlight tradeoffs, opportunities for negotiation or “pivot”, and decide what to replace first. Replacing our salary isn’t one giant leap or one fiery ask to your boss. It’s replacing our highest pain hours first, increasing our leverage, and creating some breathing room to make our next move.

Here is a table of my own results and how my other paid tasks/unpaid tasks “convert” to clinic work. Mind you, this is my own, personal metric. I can’t stand clinical work, so even 8 hours of scrubbing doggie doo-doo is more pleasant and fulfilling than 1 hour of home-based BCBA crap.

To replace $100/an hour of clinical work, at a Pain Score of a full 5:

Stacking Strategy: How I Replace One $100 Clinical Hour

When you look at income this way, replacing a clinical hour stops feeling like an all-or-nothing leap. It becomes a mix-and-match equation. Instead of asking, “What pays the same?” the better question becomes, “What combination of lower-pain work gets me there?” That shift alone turns the idea of replacing a salary from overwhelming into mechanical.

What I Want From You

1. Reply with your highest pain task.

2. What would you replace it with first?

Please feel free to reach out to me to troubleshoot this. I love talking to you all about how we can get the hell out of thankless helper jobs and into work that is, at worst, more tolerable.

One liners are for entertainment and amusement. And while I’m not against a solid mantra to get me through immediate discomforts (e.g., David Goggins nagging you for “Being a little bitch!”), long-term financial health and the limping escape from America’s rat race takes a bit more prep.

“Just diversify and increase your revenue streams! I started my own business, and I went from making $80K a year to $20K a month!” Because leaving a stable financial path, rendering your professional identity moot, rearranging your life to adjust for the loss of said stable income, and learning to own, operate, and scale a business is as easy as making blueberry scones. Get the hell out of here.

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“The real path to freedom is owning a business. But you don’t have to start your own- you could just buy one, for zero dollars down! I retired my wife and 7.5 kids before I hit 24 years old!” See my response above.

One one-liner (although, in this case, a simple phrase) that has stuck with many of us comes from the playbook de Mark Cuban: “Fuck You Money.” It is the gleeful middle finger shoved directly between the beady eyes of your asshole boss without a glimmer of fear, because, well, you have money that allows you to tell them to fuck off/fuck you.

Cool, thanks Mark Cuban, I’ll go do that. With what time? What money? What step one? Will you be sponsoring my wallet for the near-future?

In support of the FU Fund, I have decided to assist my audience in creating this elusive cushion without sacrificing too much of your sanity, your matcha oat milk caramel orgy lattes, or your hair extensions. We first must reframe the idea. See below table:

Advice you will never hear from me: “Fuck them, just quit,” “Go all in on yourself, just take a chance,” “Be your own boss, F everyone!” I may believe these things in my heart for those I know have put the work in to adequately prepare for these sorts of F-word-riddled send-offs. And I don’t think any of these gems of wisdom are inherently bad. But they’re misguided and often out of touch for many young professionals, especially those who have zero skills in sales, communicating value, budgeting their money, and basic investing.

Your experiment this week, then, is simple.

Step One: Open a separate account. I like High Yield Savings Accounts (HYSAs) because they keep your money safe, they keep your money liquid, and they pay you interest instead of letting inflation suck your money dry sitting in a regular ass savings account. I use ALLY for my HYSA.

Step Two: Name it something fun. Maybe “FU Fund” doesn’t resonate with you. That’s okay! Freedom Fund, Exit Plan, Mortgage Lifter… get creative. It’s your cushion for the push-in, after all.

Step Three: Automate a small weekly transfer. But Kayla, how much? There isn’t an actual formula. I know, I hate that answer too. So I’ll give you a rock-solid, arbitrary response: $25 a week. It’s low enough that most anyone could save that amount (it’s $100 bucks a month! That’s basically 2 caramel cappuccino orgy coolers and a handful of egg white spinach cups from Starbies!)

Step Four: IGNORE IT. Do not set up notifications that it’s been taken out. Don’t even check on Friday to make sure it was taken out. The more you look at it, the more tempted you’ll be to tinker. Tinkering is no good for finance or fuck-you-funds. Automation also removes willpower, which you’re probably short on.

Why Does This Work?

If you’re reading this, it’s because your identity is in some form of disorder. You’re aching to land softly on something you have prepared mentally and financially for because the thought of spending another underpaid hour at your current gig makes you want to put out a campfire with your own face.

This experiment and reframe will hopefully move you from feeling trapped to choosing an outcome for yourself. With saving your own money and making active efforts to benefit future-you, you’re also building tolerance for risk! You’ve violated the socially-accepted code that a stable W2 job with a shitty 401K is your path to a life of financial peace. And, frankly, maybe that is peace for you. Who am I to tell you it isn’t? The overarching theme here is building financial reps through repeated experiments, all of which I will provide you. In doing so, your FU Fund will grow alongside your cajónes.

Since I love to see solid numbers coming from people preaching these sorts of things, here are a few screenshots of my monthly spending from the past quarter:

Above: This month’s spending; waaaaay down from previous months, when I allowed salary inflation to lead to lifestyle inflation (i.e., spending way more money because I had way more money)

My current FU Fund is in a state of flux because of the loss of one of my main contracts (it was bringing in nearly $4,000 a month for part-time). That sucks. Prior to my getting canned, my monthly FU Figures:

HYSA: $200

Individual Brokerage: $1500

Long-Term FU Roth IRA: Maxing out at $625/a month

Emergency Fund: Varies depending on income (I use the Albert App which analyzes all of my finances in real time, so it pulls money out automatically), although the lowest amount of money it’s pulled out each month was about $300. The highest has been nearly $1000.

How This Will Change Because I’m Basically Unemployed:

HYSA: Still $200

Individual Brokerage: On Hold.

Long-Term FU Roth IRA: Will continue to max out at $625/a month

Emergency Fund: Will continue to work its magic based on income and spending.

Options matter more than your income. I wish I would have realized this sooner!

YOUR JOB, THE READER:

1. Open your HYSA this week if you haven’t already.

2. If you’re so inclined, I would LOVE if you reply with:

A. What you named it

B. Your weekly amount

C. Anything else you’d like me to know.

Just like fear begets fear,

So too does courage.

Kitty corner to the endless opportunity promise is the field’s vow to provide jobs outside of children and even healthcare: Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), health and nutrition, sports coaching, sleep and habit consulting. And yet, you’re still the autistic 2nd graders’ personal punching bag. You tout your adorable Clinical Director title without directing much other than those spare, flying fucks you’ve scrounged up over your clinical career.

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Be not afraid, grasshopper. There are glimmers of hope in this old curmudgeon you’re listening to. Fields like OBM, in particular, are not blocked be a credential gap. And there isn’t a lock on the discipline’s jobs only for those who “came up” as OBMers in the 90’s.

The block is your mindset and absence of business knowledge.

Here are five ways our “clinical hat” prunes our thinking in ways highly unattractive to nearly any career outside of “autism behavior people”--- and what you can do to shake loose our hyper-specialized reputation.

1) You Know Behavior But Not Revenue

Our field tricks its clinicians. Graduate programs and practicums remind us that everything is “behavior”, which means we can address any problem. Wrong! Your immaculate behavior plans and multi-tiered systems of color-coded data monitoring may get a head-nod in the clinic, but they will get you exiled in the business world. If you’re unaware of how a business makes money (i.e., where the profit margins live, bottlenecks in service delivery, revenue versus profit), your data-analytic lens and your gung-ho-behavior-plan language cannot meaningfully improve performance.

What Matters Instead: Learn how revenue flows. What outcomes move the business forward (i.e., boost revenue while preserving healthy margins)?

Experiment For You: Choose any company you know and write down its main revenue stream, biggest cost, and the one behavior that drives profit.

2) You’re Waiting for OBM to Be a Job Title

In your defense, you ipso-facto absorbed this falsity while studying for the exam. Behavior analysts can do anything, well-known people in the field say. We can change the world, keynote speakers coo.

There will never be a role on Indeed or Glassdoor which explicitly lists “OBM Consultant”, “Chief People Officer”, “Chief Motivating Professional”, or even “Behavioral Organizational Consultant”. Adam Grant did not break in to America’s highest-powered corporations by virtue of his PhD in Industrial Psychology. He got “in” by deeply understanding workplace problems and offering the company’s leader a series of solutions. Grant’s ideas are usable because he’s put them into practice over and over again- not just read about them.

OBM is not a credential or a title. I wouldn’t even call it a roaring subdiscipline of our field. It is instead a lens by which you operate under. You must solve operational problems by examining them from the perspective of employees at every level—-from peon to CEO. You’re no longer “BCBA” or “clinician”… you are operator.

What Matters Instead: Identifying workplace systems in place and how they improve upon versus hinder a business’ growth.

Experiment For You: Identify one operational problem in any organization you see this week and write down one change you’d test if you were responsible for fixing it.

3) You’re Still Thinking Like a Service Provider

We measure value mostly by billable hours, nickel-and-diming the time spent with each client on our caseload, and social metrics (e.g., Hanley’s method, ‘trauma-informed care’, etc.). These typically have nothing to do with improved outcomes. We also tend to admire problems for too long (i.e., analyze relentlessly instead of just trying an intervention), which slows decision-making. You cannot be slow in the world of business, the world where speed is more important than competence.

What Matters Instead: Creating leverage within systems versus changing individual behavior.

Experiment For You: Take one task you do regularly and write the outcome it actually improves instead of the time it takes.

4) You’re Fluent in Jargon and Storytelling, Not In Outcomes

Go on Facebook and type in “Organizational Behavior Management” or any ABA/BCBA-run group which claims to provide mentorship in this sector. You will find that every post is rich with not only jargon, but a CEU opportunity or podcast link. These will not “get you in” to OBM--- you’re more likely to hoard them in your collection of information without taking any sort of action. And that’s probably because CEUs and most CEU deliverers won’t tell you that OBM-type-jobs require you to immerse yourself in business by either 1) working in one yourself or 2) starting one yourself.

We like to generate fables in our field. He doesn’t like that because Mom emailed me saying that he had a rough night, which is more likely to increase seizure activity and affect his nervous system and attention… No. Stop it. Business focuses on outcomes.

What Matters Instead: All of the key people in big organizations like Microsoft or Google or Meta are wholly uninterested in your theories. They want proof or productivity (number figures), efficient operating systems (itemized and task-analyzed lists), employee and consumer retention (percentage of churn/turnover), and cost savings (expense reduction).

Experiment For You: Pick one project you’ve worked on and rewrite its impact in a single measurable result (time saved, errors reduced, revenue increased, etc.).

5) You Haven’t Run Any Systems Yet! Get Those Boots On the Ground!

First of all, if your OBM gig consists of training staff on behavioral principles that can help educators, social workers, parents, children, etc., I don’t think you’re “doing OBM”. Unless this is something you find appealing and/or want to break into, then sure, call it anything you’d like. But if you’re truly interested in the business operations pivotal to a legit-OBMer’s role, you must not take advice from people still doing traditional ABA work but calling it “OBM”.

I’ve written about this concept probably a thousand times by now: the unread library effect. Consuming OBM content without ever managing a workflow, generating organization incentives, or analyzing a business’ processes in real time will keep you in the ABA clinic getting spit on until you’re in your 50’s.

What Matters Instead: Much like we cannot master golf just by watching Tiger Woods on YouTube, positioning yourself as the go-to OBM consultant requires you to operate something on your own. This could be a small business or a side gig. I recommend service businesses that have nothing to do with children, ABA, or anything helping-profession-related. You’ll quickly find how disillusioned our field is into thinking we can master real-world problems just by reading about them.

Experiment For You: Create a simple checklist for any repeat task this week and notice how consistency changes immediately.

What All This Means for You

The awesome news which I hope my trusty readers have gleaned is that OBM isn’t hidden behind another certification or CEU. It’s a skillset built through baptism by fire: understanding how organizations function by following around the owner of a dryer vent cleaning business all day. Or analyzing profit and loss statements from an e-commerce boutique and monitoring how money moves. Or how current systems in place for dispatching poop-scoop technicians on 49 routes across 3 separate counties can make or break a company’s profit margins.

The beauty in what we do is that we can see opportunity anywhere. The only snag, then, is combining behavior science with business literacy from the beginning, if that’s the route we hope to go career-wise.

NEXT UP…: I’ll break down how I’m using my small service business(es) as a real-world OBM lab and what it has taught me already. I guarantee you it will be more than any OBM CEU course bundle ever could.

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Listening and learning are crucial until they replace action. Herding a company’s cats to “the same page” through workplace events like “debriefing”, “collaborations”, or “committees”, keeps systems running poorly. Collaboration theater is the act of talking endlessly about a problem to the point of admiring it, which creates the illusion of progress: We met for an hour and a half about a client and got through so much! Every Friday we meet to discuss updates, replete with an agenda!

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This tendency to stall-via-listening also spotlights a bias we have about learning: that awareness of a problem will surely lead to action toward changing it. And that, when given the same information, we’d all agree on the next steps toward identifying root cause and developing some form of intervention or risk-mitigation strategy.

Disagreements actually do not stem exclusively from a lack of information, but from the stories we tell ourselves about that information. It’s plausible, then, that “processing” dilemmas functions only as emotional masturbation (normal people call this “self-soothing”).

Situations to Shut Up Instead of Show Up

Human service jobs are best characterized by the adage “too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.” When an excess of opinions are brought in to address a problem, without any clear chain of command or protocol for decision-making, the final result is often a task done poorly--- or not at all.

Take individuals with special needs as an example, particularly in education settings. A child with autism cannot simply be given differentiated tasks by his teacher or his support staff! He requires an occupational therapist for his sensory regulation challenges, a behavior analyst for his challenging behavior and dearth of language, a speech pathologist to enhance his nonexistent vocal speech, a social worker to “process” his diagnosis with him by way of slime and an iPad, a physical therapist to address some fine motor affliction, an on-site autism specialist to collaborate with the team to best “support the student’s needs”, and a teacher tasked with the opinions of 6+ women clamoring for a sense of importance. Too many cooks with feelings.

Too many cooks muddles responsibility. In the case described above, who is responsible for leading decision-making, and how is that role decided? Do we have evidence that six people working with a single child expedites process any more than, say, one or two individual providers? These practices are widely accepted as “high support” without analyzing the result of such support. I remember asking the Director of Behavioral Services at an agency one day, “Do we know if all this ‘support’ has changed anything?”, to which she said, “Huh? I mean, I have no idea. It’s just so great the client has all this support.” A hundred people listening to one another doesn’t guarantee a problem will be solved--- or even recognized.

Systems built on “collaboration”, like special education teams, most forms of human service, or IEP meetings, reward talking over doing. Is it useful to hear the opinions of others? Of course it is! Much of my shtick is built on teaching people to become more open-minded and to stretch their perspective-taking abilities, as I think doing so enhances our relationships, our careers, and our sense of contentment. But these are practices which require The Work to be done, with clear milestones, objectives, and success criteria for having done The Work. Talking in circles, which is flagrant avoidance, is not The Work. It is only seen as such because so many companies have abandoned the very consequences necessary for talking to become doing.

The principles which make group work successful are all extracted from good old behavior science. When tasks require coordination between a bunch of adults, and the final product is clear at the outset, every group member must modify their behavior in real time. Natural consequences, like being called out publicly, humiliated for dropping the ball, slowing our team down, and/or being disapproved of socially serve as strong motivators for action. Additionally, say what you will about group work (I, too, prefer to work alone); there is wealth of research demonstrating the positive effects of merely being in the presence of other people when it comes to reaching your goals. If you’ve ever gone for a 1-rep-max back squat alone versus recording yourself with the intention of posting it to social media, you understand the dominant force that is “accountability”.

More insight from more voices does not cleanly equate to more solutions. It often times backfires without a strong lead to guide and facilitate the meeting, which generates an entirely fresh cluster of problems to have more useless meetings about.

What to Do Instead: A Framework That Won’t End In A Group Hug

1. The Three Opinions Max Rule: When tasked with making a decision, allow yourself exposure to only three different opinions about what to do. After you’ve collected these insights, make the call.

2. The 10-Minute Talking Purge: When you find yourself tempted to “talk through” or “process” a problem, try spending those 10-15 minutes taking action toward it. This is crucial: actually take action toward it, rather than developing an action plan. Plan development is where initiative takes its forever dirt nap.

3. The Very Important Question: When you’re tempted to seek out research, opinions, or insights, ask yourself if you’re listening to learn something new, or to delay what needs to be done.

Crowd-sourced indecision is born of good intentions, much like many of today’s greatest tragedies are. It’s imperative you remember, then, that listening matters… but so does your own judgment.

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What if what you value is unimportant to others? And what if your “why” is entirely incongruent with your friend’s “why”? What helps you extract meaning from your relationships may be the very factor which plunders another.

Further, how are we to decide whose values are prioritized, and under what set of conversational “rules” do we govern our own behavior? Ultimately, if we’re of the belief that we must live by our values, we must respect that others should do the same, which may force the hands of our egos to tussle.

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Yes, values are important. They serve as guardrails to guide our behavior, and they typically attract other likeminded people. If truthfulness is important, we will learn to speak honestly despite a greater likelihood of negative response than, say, compelled speech (e.g., political correctness). Our friends may be straight shooters with a particular penchant for offensive comedy (these are my type of people). Those who claim “connection” as a value will invest their energy and time into their relationships over other values, like innovation or self-reliance, values which perhaps interfere with or dilute a person’s need for social bonds.

On a group level, common values help people work in harmony towards a greater goal. At the very least, it keeps every interaction from becoming a debate of personal merit. Ray Dalio has become known for the unfettered, unfiltered environment he created within his investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, requiring all of his employees to speak bluntly regardless of the response. In turn, those wielding such loosened truths are equally responsible for receiving them from others. For example, Ray himself once received a bit of feedback from a junior colleague via email:

“Ray — you deserve a “D-” for your performance today … you rambled for 50 minutes … It was obvious to all of us that you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have been that disorganized at the outset if you had prepared. … We can’t let this happen again.”

Ray’s response? It was not a passive-aggressive email riddled with “journey” or “transparency” lingo, nor did he lecture his colleague about how insulting management is disrespectful. Instead, Ray did the following:

* He forwarded the email to other meeting participants and asked them to rate his performance to confirm whether the feedback was fair.

* The meeting participants agreed with the “D-” rating. The feedback turned out to be supported by the group.

* Dalio then shared the entire email thread and the ratings with the entire organization.

What did Ray prove? That feedback, particularly constructive, often times harsh criticism, is not a top-down process. And if the leader him or herself is incapable of modeling how to both receive and apply it? Your employees will follow suit.

Conversely, while lively debate is essential to innovation and quality of thought, it would be terribly annoying for every interaction to become a negotiation of whose priorities reign supreme. Most people would crumble in environments where every moment is ripe for performance evaluation. To again refer back to the initial question of values, though; do all of your values have to align with the person you work for? Or the person you’re married to, friends with, neighbors with?

Despite widespread adoration, the mantra that is “always be true to yourself” comes with more cost than benefit. Do not be fooled by today’s egomaniacal young bucks that the world and those who occupy it must bend to the will of your truest, most authentic “you”, even if workplaces welcome and accept you “like family” or encourage you to “bring your whole self to the workplace.” These sorts of luxury beliefs are comforting, well-rehearsed lies. Which, ironically, prove the point that is being more strategic with impression management than “your whole self”: blending in and pretending tocomply with bullshit is how we gain traction, both professionally and personally. The twisted role-play that is attracting “authentic” employees, for example, is followed by cries for sameness, policy, and procedure, and punishment for behaving in ways that are unprofessional or deviating to far from “the norm”--- you know, like your actual self. Your actual self and your colleagues bringing their actual selves would ultimately result in what Ray has created with Bridgewater.

There is a middle ground, though, between scripted pettiness and Dalio’s doctrine, and it’s packaged in the word “compromise”.

Compromise is a necessity should we hope to make it through life. This means, much of the time, we must place our own, petty preferences aside in favor of what others like, approve of, or need. Other people matter---particularly their opinions of us. I realize this violates modern dogma which emphasizes the self, and it’s a kernel of reality we hope and pray cannot be true. But I shouldn’t have to pretend to be anybody but me! Another recited fib.

People are too busy focused on themselves, they don’t care what you’re doing and don’t even notice, we tell one another. This is only somewhat true. Yes, we’re self-focused. Perhaps now more than in previous generations. But we’re also neurotically attuned to what others are doing, what they’re wearing, and what they claim to be thinking. It’s become its own form of leisure to collect a stranger’s supposed-beliefs on any matter and track their every move to decide if they’re trustworthy. Not only do we notice when Olivia goes back to platinum blonde, but we zero in on the now-absence of pronouns in her email signature, making us question her political stance and therefore her values. I knew she was a Trump supporter, that’s why she sucks at writing behavior plans!

Other people have always been the yardstick we use in deciding how to behave. And changing what we say or how we behave around other people isn’t a sign we’re people-pleasing, but a blaring emblem of our adaptability and flexibility, two traits far more useful than authenticity.

We need to identify values, but prioritizing them above all else, no matter the context, is misguided. Not only will our values change over time, but they’re (typically) best appreciated via shared experiences with others. Sometimes changing our behavior against our best interest, just to preserve the joy that is a “valuable experience” to another person, is what it means to be an adult. Call it what you want: people-pleasing, “pouring from an empty cup”, altruism; it’s vital to our success and happiness. What good is being authentic if we’re unable to co-exist with anyone?

What if what’s valuable to us isn’t as high on the list as, say, our spouse? What if, over time, our work values shift while our employer’s values remain the same? Do we sever ties at the mere glimpse of difference or “red flags”? Is our belief in the human species that abysmal that we cannot foresee a future if our every need, every thought, every personal preference isn’t met with celebration?

To use a workplace example, my values have drastically shifted from what they once were when I was a newly minted analyst. My inquisitiveness would of course reinvent wheels long since rusted over with outdated policies and procedures! While my blunt nature and lust for friction have landed me some great professional opportunities, I’m not sure they’ve made me value my work anymore than if I’d simply kept my mouth shut. What’s valuable to me is my independence in workplace settings, which requires me to heavily follow the rules so as to keep any form of supervision or oversight to a minimum. I don’t like rules. But I’m also an adult who needs income.

In this respect, my employers and I have made marionettes of our values: I pretend I’m invested in my professional betterment while they pretend they’re invested in my career advancement. We commiserate, then, in this tandem bluffing.

If you’re an owner of a company or perched higher upon the totem pole in your work, I do have unsolicited advice. Nobody actually wants a transparent, “full-self” workplace. We want minimal friction with others and we want to be left alone, all of which require the opposite of transparency: counterfeit attitudes. Sure, parts of our real selves will occupy these avatars. But to assume the workplace is an infantilized play pen housed by how we ought to think about moral issues unrelated to work? That assumes you’re Mommy to all of your employees. And you let me know how that goes for you. Author of “Don’t Be Yourself” explains this far better than I can:

“Contrary to what the authenticity cult predicates, success is rarely attained through radical honesty or by always showing every single side of ourselves. Instead, it’s a function of carefully managing your self-presentation ---- adapting to situations and showcasing qualities that are best appreciated by others--- while making an effort to conceal negative, undesirable, and irrelevant aspects of your personality.”

Successful, self-composed, and truly confident people aren’t those who are unfiltered, brash with their “truth”, or “unapologetically themselves”. They simply know how to read a room and adapt their behavior to that which will be most acceptable in light of the goal. We have to be equally mindful of how we impact and influence others instead of focusing so excessively on others adapting to our quirks.

We can blame the world for not accepting us, or we can become person worth accepting. The choice is yours, as it always has been.

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It was a weeknight when my family wedged ourselves into the car to pick up my brother from jail.

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Conner had served for just under a year for reasons I still don’t quite understand. He’d been caught stealing on multiple occasions, all of which were attempts to supply his then-heroin-and-every-substance-known-to-man addiction. By the time Conner was sent to the pen, he’d already been addicted to heroin for several years, and this involuntary traverse from home would be his first stint in jail.

Cook County Jail occupies what’s known as a dangerous, sketchy section of Chicago, and is notorious for overcrowding and squalor. Up until the day of Conner’s discharge, we had visited him a handful of times, with my Mom being the only one willing to make the weekly trip throughout the course of his term. We’d heard that morning that it was Conner’s “official” day of discharge; we agonized for nearly 12 hours for his paperwork to process and we were given the green light to pick him up.

Our car lurched into the jail’s main entrance, our eyes hopelessly scanning each gate until we found Conner pacing under a streetlight. There was something about his gait, an unease to his steps, that signaled some kind of desperation. And it wasn’t the anticipation of leaving the prison’s walls behind him to re-integrate back into his unsettled, everyday life; it was something… else. It was as if the old Conner had been stretched and strained, and his new place in the world just didn’t fit correctly.

It was obvious when Conner was high on heroin, on his custom cocktail of speed and booze and Walgreens cough medicine; this restless dance under the stoplight was not intoxication. Spotting our car, he picked up a jog, flinging the back door open to load himself beside me. I was scared to look at him, but immediately noticed out of my periphery his hands trembling.

“We need to get out of here, like, right now. There’s people I know around here and I don’t have my knife.”

These were our welcoming words from Conner. Of course they were; nothing could ever be normal with him, with us. As a unit, the Perrys have functioned as each other’s tangled roots: feeding and choking each other at the same time. Dependency and resentment are closely intertwined with our expressions of love and stability- they’re life-giving and constraining, all in a single breath.

Following Conner’s warm greeting, in typical Perry fashion, we obeyed his request to flee Cook County’s staggering gates. By this point, we’d rehearsed our responses to Conner’s fuck-ups. I’m unsure how other families have managed “Welcome Home From Jail!” or “Congrats On Graduating Rehab!” get-togethers, but I’m sure the Perrys have mastered the craft that is compelled indifference, the kind which bypasses the niceties and profound reflections and instead anticipates whatever difficulties lie ahead. Maybe we’re just desensitized to these sorts of challenges.

With the same nonchalance as driving back from Target, we made our way back to the suburbs to endure what would become a completely hellish few years until Conner died. We stopped asking questions, as we frankly had heard enough. Conner earned his 3-month sobriety chip only to celebrate with a handle of vodka and a full syringe of black-tar-heroin. He’d call me and only me, his personal confessional, to atone for his sinful but very predictable behavior, to which I’d listen, wondering when the next fault would kill him.

I couldn’t fathom sharing this with my parents, but a thought tugged at me in the years leading up to Conner’s death: that we’d be better off as a family if he died. The bottomless worry that is caring for an addict, the kind which forms a rust over what once was your beating heart, ends in death more often than not. And Conner wouldn’t even be the victim in it all. He’d have evaded the worst possible outcome the way he always found a way to, leaving my family and I to spend our time mining our own grief.

When does loyalty to our family warp into enabling, when love becomes blindness?

Modern advice reminds us to turn relationships into number figures easily plugged into formulas, as if doing so guarantees frictionless relationships. Cut off “toxic” people, they say, and ghost any exchange which fails to meet the criteria for “vibes”. This advice is especially appealing in pop-psychology and self-help circles, despite typical relationships, particularly familial bonds, failing to fit into the framework. Although my family deviates pretty far from the norm, all families are fucked up--- and few problems are solved by such simple means as severing ties.

Netflix’s Black Rabbit portrays siblings, in particular, as dysfunctional, as flawed and nonsensically enmeshed, forever tied and with an unwritten duty to protect one another, even at great personal cost. This is what it means to love another person, whether that be familial or romantic. You can’t always “protect your peace”, and your problems inevitably weave themselves together.

In Black Rabbit, Jason Bateman’s ‘Vince’ is the Freidken family’s permanent crisis. In and out of the life of Jake, his brother played by Jude Law, Vince has managed to destroy the family restaurant business through gambling, running with local organized criminals, and abandoning his now-grown daughter. When Vince re-enters Jake’s life after what we assume is an extensive time away, he returns with $140,000 in gambling and loan shark debt, forcing Jake and the Black Rabbit to absorb the cost. The Black Rabbit becomes collateral in Vince’s debt. Like many brothers would do, Jake strains to shield Vince from harm, even at continued personal expense--- he deletes incriminating security camera footage of a rape, lies to law enforcement about a faux-burglary Vince orchestrated, and makes crooked deals with Vince’s loan sharks, only to find himself convincing Vince, “You are not a bad person, and I am not leaving you.” Imagine constructing your life around helping another person, only for them to betray you, betray your faith in them, in humanity, even--- but uplifting them regardless.

In a tear-stricken disclosure, after verbally appointing himself as “a cancer”, Vince tells Jake he was the one who killed their father when they were children, to which Jake softly reassures Vince that he’s known all along. He’s known since he was just a young boy that Vince murdered their abusive father, swearing allegiance to their brotherly bond by not telling a single soul what he’d witnessed---Vince dropping a bowling ball onto his father’s skull, crushing him instantly. The brothers are in their 50’s in this series; I can’t imagine what hauling a decades-long secret does to a person. But Jake is good, almost too good, seeing this stain between them not as a truce, but as his sworn duty as Big Brother. I can relate.

In one of the final scenes, Jake and Vince embrace on the rooftop of the restaurant. Vince is somber. Jake is in tears, but preserves his role as Big Brother by reassuring Vince all is not lost. He wants to slow down, he says, he needs to slow down and start fresh, start anew, this is Vinces chance to take back a life on the straight and narrow. Jake, a decent man with “an addiction to his brother,” begins talking about doing time, together--- they both made bad decisions, Jake says, it wasn’t all Vin’s fault. You live life for the both of us out there, Vince says, I told the cops what I did. You live life for the both of us.

Jake mutters repeatedly that he needs a fresh start, a clean slate; “I should’ve stopped pushing, I should’ve… slowed down”. Vince gently says, “You can now.”

He jumps to his death off of the roof.

Even in death Vince leaves Jake to mitigate the damage, to organize the fragments of his heart now askew before him, to again dirty his hands while Vince fades into the easier matter of course. I occasionally feel this way thinking about Conner’s death. Why did he leave us like that? An accidental Fentanyl overdose in his car, seriously, Conner? What do you expect me to do now with Mom and Dad? I don’t have anybody else. It was just me and Conner. And that fact remained when we went to the crematory and hovered over his dead body. Mom leaned on me while she bawled. Dad gripped me tightly. I did not shed a single tear.

The intricacies of family function in a separate moral order than friendships, co-workers, or even romantic relationships. The modern compulsion to cut family off for reasons wide-ranging, from trivial to quite serious, reduces blood-related obligations down to transactions, down to content, down to crowd-work or skits. I was raised to believe that you cannot just give up on family. You cannot just write siblings off if they’ve transgressed, if they’ve brutalized your boundaries, if they’ve proven themselves undeserving of your patience. Jake found himself convincing his brother he was good, just misguided, just a casualty of shitty hands, much like I supported Conner in understanding himself not as a thief, as a junkie, as a moral failing, but as a person equally worthy of belonging.

Yes, boundaries are necessary. And it’s an imperative skill to be able to not only identify what these boundaries are for ourselves, but enforce them in a manner that’s respectful and reasonable. But family bonds sculpt exceptions and excuses, and they force us to make decisions “when our cup is empty”.

The truest wisdom may not be tidy self-preservation, but the messy choice to love someone even when it hurts.

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Dad spends a full work-day on YouTube trying to predict when I should refinance my house using what formula, or researching an engineer’s perspective on what caused our stove to malfunction. Mom and Dad defied the culture’s “hands-off” approach to us maturing and instead opted for the “You’re still some lite form of an idiot who needs my counsel” ethos.

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When my brother and I were kids, Mom defamed us with her quirks.

I don’t blame her for these unintentional displays of her insanity, as I assume they were born of her abusive childhood. But her other declarations of crazy seemed like clear pleas for status, or brands of posturing amongst the younger parents of other children. If you’re a regular reader, you already know Mom and Dad had us when they were 41. They were nearly old enough to be the parents of some of these younger Moms and Pops.

There were barefaced differences in how my parents saw their role as Mom and Dad compared to their younger cohort. And Mom sported a brand of looney the more-youthful-but-dumber parents had no choice but to respect (or, at worst, ignore as merely “A Boomer thing”).

She’s the type that, if the house was ablaze, she’d grow hysterical if the firemen didn’t allow her to straighten up before saving her life. Everyone in the neighborhood will know, after sifting through the ashen debris, that I only vacuumed twice this week.

Mom’s fetish for public image would continue to reveal itself as we aged. In preparation for sleepovers, for instance, she’d pack each set of mine and my brother’s clothes with tissue paper layered in between folds to avoid the clothes wrinkling. Sure, kidnapping was a concern at the time, but can you imagine being the missing kid on the milk carton with a wrinkled polo? Now that’s a tragedy.

Dad had different priorities. He was less concerned with the aesthetics of being a civilized, clean person or with the social branding of Mom’s behavior. Dad’s priority was raising two children that weren’t complete idiots.

I’ve told this story endlessly, but I also have some new readers, so here’s a one-liner to showcase Dad’s disciplinary style: When I stole a limp balloon from a gas station when I was 8, he punished me with manual labor. He made me blacktop the driveway. It took nearly 6 hours for me to finish, to which I received little more acknowledgement than, “You’re done…. Mmk then.” Pats on the head and “words of affirmation” for a job well done? Not Dad’s flavor of kudos. Punishments and the residual effects on our little psyches were not to be treated with the same brine as inspirational, teachable moments. Dad’s expectation was that the sweltering sun would cook my guilt over the course of the day, marinating my 8-year-old conscience, and I’d learn the lesson on my own.

I did. I waited about eight full years before morphing into a colossal bitch in high school.

Mom and Dad didn’t see it as particularly useful to reward my brother and I for doing things we were simply supposed to do. Paying us for chores? Mom and Dad put a roof over our heads as payment. We learned that merely existing as humans didn’t allow us access to bottomless privileges. You want something? Earn it.

It’s this truth I’ve wrestled with most often in my career of choice, working with professionals and parents seemingly hellbent on lowering the standards if the whiniest child who doesn’t consent to boundaries.

I’m eternally grateful Mom and Dad opted out of the Participation-Trophy era of parenting. Although this phrase wasn’t operative at the time, they saw such mediocrity as “the bigotry of low expectations”---- and they would not be seen raising sissies. Or, worse, Democrats. (Ha!!!)

What I’d ache for parents to understand is their power in norm-setting even through our adulthood. Modern culture places excessive focus on the initial reactions to any form of boundary or aversive consequence set. Dogs do not like being shocked when they’re trained much like children prefer not to be grounded when they’re caught smoking much like adult employees cuss the name of the boss who suspended them from work. Punishment reigns supreme in changing behavior; feel free to change my mind.

I can see where these efforts to shape good-hearted people aren’t obvious to the parent. And I’m sure I haven’t told my parents enough how thankful I am for the lessons they’ve instilled. I’m not even certain I have the words or the success to prove it. With Mom being as shifty as she is, I imagine there will be seeds of her folly that will lie dormant in me until years down the line, when I’m suddenly compelled to scrub the kitchen backsplash, mop the floor, and choose a new hairstyle moments before I’m meant to leave my house for an important work meeting I’m already running fashionably, adorably late for.

When your kids are my age, they’ll reflect on their childhood in a hazy sort of nostalgia and will occupy a better self, a more balanced individual better equipped for the challenges of the world because of what you forced them to do, all those decisions that you agonized over and argued over and worried about doing more harm than good. Say it with me, Mom: you will not traumatize your child if you punish them for being a moron. You can even call them a moron and they’ll be none the wiser.

When your adult kid screws up, Mom and Dad, you can do better than to throw your hands in the air and say “Yeah, well, she went off to school and now she’s all into this trans stuff and feminist crap and thinks Brazil is a new iPhone app,”replete with your rueful chuckle and a sigh. This sigh is the raising of the proverbial white flag, an emblem of resignation that your job is done and you’ve failed to launch your children to a mindset more apt for success, too bad, so very sad. Don’t schedule that golf trip just yet, Dad. There’s work to be done. Or I can take the more colorful approach my Dad took with us: “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?”

We’re selfish in young adulthood. We’re selfish even as we age, by most psychological and sociological measures we now have available. Many believe (including myself) that this directly results from “participation-trophy” style parenting. It’s your honorable duty, then, Mom and Pop, to assault your adult children with evidence, as frequently as possible and across varied contexts, that they are not as important as they think. Any check-in, guilt-trip or attempt to mold them into less of a moron will function as a guardrail against the swift slip into narcissism so common of people my age. Cue Frank Sinatra’s, “That’s Life”. No, you are not finding yourself, and if you are, it will not be on my dime. And no, you cannot come to the family Christmas party if you insist on turning our living room into a personal lecture hall for your political beliefs. And mother of God and all that is holy, no, you will not live under my roof as an adult just to admire all of the problems you’ve created.

I’m not a parent, so perhaps my advice is null, void, and out of turn. But I’ll say it anyway, because my parents fostered courage in a daughter unflappable in the face of potential blowback. You are the parent for the rest of their life, not just until they’re legally an adult. You have more power than you think in influencing their decisions and ensuring they’re on the right track to, at the very least, graduating college without becoming a gender-confused communist (Ha!).

It's my Mom who fostered my thoughtfulness and attention to detail. My brother and I used to call her the Stick Nazi, one year, because she was psychotic about there being twigs on our lawn. Yes, a twig, a two-inch long little tree dropping completely invisible to most living things other than ants, grew into the stick she’d lodge up her haunches, as if the Perry family legacy couldn’t survive if not for complete erasure of such despicable objects as tree spurs. We’d later appoint her to Grass Nazi, as she could be seen on a regular Tuesday morning at 6AM snipping all those unruly, misplaced blades of grass with Fiskars.

My Dad would roll his eyes and mutter how fucking crazy she was all while reminding us that we must respect our mother and all of her idiosyncrasies. It’s Dad who forged grit and a thirst for spirited discourse. That, plus my asking “Why?” upwards of a thousand times a day when I’m told anything at all.

Nothing gets past Dad. His neuroticism paired with his intelligence made it impossible to get away with anything, from minor white lies to well-reasoned untruths and escape plans. My parents once put bells on our doorknob when my brother and I began sneaking out as teenagers. After we carefully performed a lobotomy on the bells with tweezers, extracting the ball from the inside, my Dad didn’t even bother fixing the bells. Instead, he sat in a lawn chair in the driveway with a newspaper and a flashlight, waiting for us to walk right into him like the morons he always reminded us we were.

Dad’s doctrine elevated our personal bars for behavior to impossible heights. He still makes nothing of telling me how much better I can perform despite my every shred of effort being put into something. He wastes no time in lecturing me as to precisely what I need to do differently when all I wanted was a compliment. My standards for myself and other people, now, are ever-rising. Sometimes this is a curse. Most of the time it’s what separates me from other women my age, particularly in professional settings. Thanks, Dad!

Parents, here’s the deal. I could understand why you’d feel like your adult kid’s behavior has slipped from your grasp. Short of surveilling their every move and prying the Pabst Blue Ribbon from their hands on a Tuesday night, it makes sense you’d feel you’re out of options when it comes to managing their stupidity. But you must remember: the baseline you’ve shaped for them, the metric they’ll use for making their own decisions amidst the culture’s shifting tides, is how they’ll develop a sense of meaning, or purpose. And this isn’t pretty or linear.

They will make a thousand decisions a day that you’d disapprove of. When forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, they’ll claw for the plainly worse choice. They’ll continue to present themselves as people you’ll be embarrassed to have raised. They’ll speak out of turn in ways that make them sound stupid and uneducated and holy shit, am I actually responsible for the obvious malfunction that occurred in this kid’s synaptic firing. This is part of what it means to be a young adult, though, and is not necessarily proof that this entire human you created was a missed opportunity for greatness. Stay the path.

Kids always come back. We come crawling back to Mom and Pop for life advice, back to Mommy for reassurance, back to Daddy for insight, back to our family values in raising our own children or guiding our own students. Big life decisions and how best to mitigate the inevitable damage we’ve done are best peppered with the advice Mom and Dad are probably now exasperated to give us. Remember when you told us 50,000 times to bring a jacket because we’d get chilly, and we hemmed and hawed and fought you on that seemingly trivial and very-surely wrong logic until we’re shivering outside, cursing your name, wondering how you could’ve possibly known that we’d actually get cold in the winter if we go outside wearing shorts and a hoodie.

Don’t allow our recurrent idiocy change the fact that your lessons are crucial to our understanding of ourselves, and will forever alter the trajectory of our decision-making when you’re long gone.

Is parental over-involvement really worse than complete resignation?

I think I’m living proof that it isn’t.

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I need not provide examples of our culture’s mixed responses to the brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska, or the wicked assassination of Charlie Kirk. Peruse through any social media platform you’re guaranteed a fit of rage, regardless of your political affiliation.

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Every shred of me aches to remind others of how entirely deranged, pathetic, sickening, and appalling the left is as a political party--- a tendency which would make me guilty of exactly what I’ll proceed to explain. I’m human, and, despite my keen awareness of tactics for remaining objective, I still proceed to make judgment calls that are questionable and riddled with personal bias. In that respect, it’s important you, the reader, exercise your tolerance and humanity in reading the remainder of this piece.

I shared my visceral reaction. I am not making the argument that we must alter our visceral reaction, as doing so is impossible. What I do hope to get across is the importance of responding to these impulses. We cannot censor our thoughts, and our thoughts may come about for reasons entirely outside of our control. But our subsequent behavior is our responsibility, and that includes what actions we take in response to how we feel.

My instinctual, internal response to events such as those in the past week tends to demonize the entire left-leaning cohort as a pitiful, abhorrent monolith undeserving of the privileges they so desperately cry for. This is misguided, as I’ve spoken to countless people self-proclaimed as “lefties”, or who claim to be liberal, that I share very much common ground with. I frankly have little experience (at least in person) with a “left-leaning” person that has ended with even a trace of negativity. It’s unimportant for people to understand me as right-leaning; this is admittedly the first time I’ve ever shared so publicly, although my views have left many diagnosing me as a right-wing extremist or Jordan Peterson disciple. This doesn’t matter to me. It’s more important I behave in way that others see me as someone they can talk to regardless of their stance on any problem.

Avoiding conversations entirely with some, though, is a truth not lost on me. Sometimes it really is best to keep your mouth shut, move forward without the thirst for the last word, and go about your day-to-day.

The core of this piece is our nation’s gamification of grief. We consume the representation of grief, trauma, etc. through the lens of social media and our political party more so than the tragedy itself. We minimize the effect on the victim so we can offer up our “hot take” on the discourse. And personalizing such events into confirmations that we’re “on the right side of history,” or as emblematic of our noble character, is a problem which begets only further acts of narcissism-fueled madness. We avert our eyes from what people may be going through and shift our attention toward, “What does this tragedy mean for me?” Don’t get me wrong--- there are public events which can trigger changes in our behavior despite our being completely uninvolved in them. While widespread campaigns for behavior change almost never work (e.g., “Don’t Do Drugs!”, “Have Safe Sex!”, “Be Terrified of HIV!”), there are certainly people either vulnerable or gullible enough to attribute some broadcasted message to their own need for change. Importantly, though, these instances are few and far between, and long-term changes resulting from generalized “Just Say No” type campaigns tend to be trivial. To this point, I’d also be remiss if I didn’t bring to light the occasional-transformative-nature of empires like social media.

There are aspects of social media that are inarguably powerful. It’s a force which has resulted in societal change, some on meaningful levels (I attribute much of the banning of transgender “treatment”, aka puberty blockers and genital surgeries on minors, to social media influence, as well as the removal of biological males from female sports) and others less so (Kellogg’s and other public-facing corporations removing food dyes from cereal, or boycotting Bud Light because of Dylan Mulvaney’s face on a six-pack). On a psychological level, we’re undoubtedly affected by the algorithm itself, even if it’s void of graphic images or disturbing content. I’m looking forward to a book about the etymology of the English language, and how the algorithm has forever changed the literal words we speak (the book is called Algospeak and is not yet published.)

Social media in the past four days is rife with commentary comparing Kirk to Osama Bin Laden, with Stephen King and others claiming Kirk advocated for stoning gays to death, with conservative spearheads highlighting the absence of news coverage for Zarutska’s death, and with theoretical debates as to how this would have played out had Kirk’s murderer not been a White, Christian son of law enforcement. And, even for those statements made which expressed condolences for Erika Kirk and her two young children, or for Zarutska’s family in the wake of her brutal death… I just wonder what we hope to gain with such public pageants that are our beliefs. We’re self-serving humanoids who are motivated by social status; posting our condolences must come with wondering how if it would make us feel better about what occurred (because we’re definitely not trying to get in touch with Erika or Zarutska’s family).

I again refer back to the question we’re compelled to ask ourselves: “What does this mean for me?” Personally, I don’t know what any of this means for me. It’s a tad alarming that I could rewatch Charlie’s carotid spurting the last ounces of his life repeatedly without much other response than, “People are so fucking crazy.” I can’t imagine chronic access to this sort of content is beneficial to any adult or child, to any liberal or conservative.

My admittedly cynical assumption is that, within a week’s time, we’ll have fully re-integrated back into the mundane nature of our everyday lives, widely shielded from most forms of harm, inconvenience, and difficulty. Our pathetic little engagement statistics will quickly rise to first-place importance above the deaths of people we don’t know and have never met, much like our time lamenting the irritants of everyday life will deplete any energy we would’ve otherwise allocated toward national misfortune. Yes, those slain this year represent a vile turn America has taken; but did you hear the way my boss told me I couldn’t take an extra day of PTO?

It's sad. It’s sad that we’re all (yes, this includes me) so spellbound by our stories that true tragedy fades to that of commentary, even mockery. And to make sense of these spoofs of reality, we begin to believe our voice must be what’s missing from the public discussion. The Spotlight Effect forces us to imagine our “takes” as essential to what everyone is talking about, particularly if the conversation is contentious or political in nature. Of course we need to remind people not to follow us if they’re left-leaning or right-leaning or Trump Supporters or Trump Haters--- that clearly positions us as useful in the violence gossip. Of course it’s making some sort of meaningful difference in the lives of people who rely on us for support, guidance, or mentorship if we synchronize our battle cries for or against the left, the right. Of course, of course, of course.

Even if you condemn violence against a person for their beliefs (which, personal bias here again, I think we all should), turning your report into micromanaging who follows you and who doesn’t seems… well… exactly what many of us would agree as textbook narcissism. I’ve seen an expansive handful of comments exactly like this, all demanding others behave in a specific way based on their beliefs. It’s understandable in that it feels important. But it’s a fool’s errand nonetheless.

When confronted with tragedy, us humans tend to white-knuckle representations or symbols of it versus the actual event. George Floyd? Black square. Ukraine? Yellow and blue flag in bio. Autism awareness? Not even sure anymore, but it’s probably something blue.

It’s as if we’re more concerned with our public display and cultural reaction to something like a death (whether a tragic death or one more natural) than with the context behind the person leaving this world, leaving people that love them to hedge against their grief and their sorrow for a lifetime while the rest of us move on, move on to think almost exclusively about ourselves and what all of this havoc means for us and our “mental health”. Social media has dilated upon this compulsion to be “seen” as belonging to X group or Y group--- instead of upholding the virtues of X group or Y group. Being a person of virtue is very difficult. Pretending to be is not.

At Columbine High School in 1999, two students murdered 13 students and a teacher before shooting themselves. Until December 2012’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Columbine was considered the deadliest mass shooting in our country. With our nation’s collective soul tattered, the masses held vigils for the lost students, and teachers proceeded to rehaul their safety protocols. While news coverage was still perverse in its obsession with recounting every detail of those slain, it still remained largely focused on institutional responses (i.e., religious communities, educational policies and protocols, student safety) versus “takes” or political briefs. Outrage remained rightfully within communities most affected by the disaster versus divvied into 140-character write-ups accessible from Colorado to Cameroon. There was no such thing as a “like” or a “hashtag” for the swell of support for Columbine High.

The same can be said about 9/11. Prior to social media, raising American flags and celebrating the greatest country in the world was not labeled as “right wing”. We honored those who made the grave decision to either suffocate from smoke inhalation or plunge to their death from the World Trade Center without mention of them being liberal or conservative--- and definitely without talk of whether or not they deserved it. Because our collective mourning and rebuilding resulted assumedly from our country’s shared values, it was unheard of to label supporters as Nazis, as extremist bigots, as right-wing, or to assign the suicide bombers to categories like “marginalized folx” or “people of color”. Remember when right-wing used to just mean you were a normal person with common sense who respected the basic humanity in all of us? Ah, there goes my bias again.

Below is a short portrayal of how all political parties (Republican, Democrat, Independent), and their attitudes, have changed with the culture.

Columbine, 1999: “What does this mean for our schools and the safety of our students and teachers?”

9/11, 2001: “What does this mean for our country?”

Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska, 2025: “What should I post about this?”

Narratives from all media sources, left and right, personalize hardship into a delicate story as to a person’s political affiliation, their mental diagnoses, their skin color, or any other characteristic which bears little meaning in the broader scheme of nationwide disaster. According to Social Comparison Theory, we’re consumed by others’ perceptions of our goodness versus actually being good. It perfectly explains our fetish for explaining away adversity as an opportunity for healing or teaching, or mental illness as a normal response to “the way the world is right now”, or how we cannot just allow people to be completely fucked up. Writer Freddie DeBoer, one of my absolute favorites, describes this as “a scam with a smiling face” in one of his most recent pieces, where he goes on to explain our blatant intolerance of true mental illness amidst the backdrop of slogans like “mental illness is just a different way of thinking,”, or “end the stigma of mental illness.” This snippet I’ve pulled from the piece, “Sick People Are Sick”, will hopefully function as a reality check:

“We talk about mental illness all the time, but the discourse is so abstract, so mediated by aesthetics and identity politics and social branding, that when it comes into our lives in its actual form we don’t know what to do. Hey! What are you doing, acting like a crazy person? Don’t you know schizophrenics are merely differently-abled? Don’t you know it’s stigmatizing for schizoaffectives to act the way that schizoaffectives have always acted?”- Freddie DeBoer

We’re committed not to aligning our values with our behavior but with others’ gullibility, and their assuredness that we are who we say we are. Why do good when others can just think that we do good? Why expose ourselves to hatred, searing criticism, or even physical harm with our socially unacceptable beliefs when we can piggyback onto those like Charlie Kirk, who did the grueling work for us?

There is nothing brave about posting to “your followers” statements like, “Don’t follow me if [insert conditional statement here that has absolutely nothing to do with death or tragedy or hardship but instead with how you hope to be seen by people].” Such is the culture of visibility; we’re apparently only in mourning if millions of others witness it.

All of this to say, your gut reactions are real and true to you just like mine are to me. It doesn’t make us arbiters of what is real to others or how we’re perceived by others. Our penchant for recognition is understandable, and I must tame the same habit.

I do ask you exercise your patience and your self-control in reading this, as I’ll do mine. I’m certain someone will deliberately misinterpret what I’ve written, as I’ve grown accustomed to with the fantasy world that is online banter. That’s the real hitch that is being a virtuous person of substance: it’s usually not fun, it’s usually not inspiring, and it almost exclusively occurs in private. But even still, your favorite social media outlets will generate some lovely hashtags to distill down all the horror that has struck the American populace in the past week. To again quote Freddie DeBoer… “What else are allies for?”

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Humans are irrational, contradictory, unsound oddballs. And that’s the entire point. Social exchanges aren’t draining because our “social battery is low”, or because people are hyper-sensitive to offense, or even because every person we speak with claims to be a thought leader parroting the doctrine of whatever religion they’ve deified. Conversation is exhausting because it come pre-digested and scripted, making for humorless relationships and predictable exchanges devoid of substance. As I mentioned in my previous piece, nothing can just “suck” anymore; it must be reframed as a teachable moment which imbues our understanding of the world in a positive way, like the individual who must find inspiration in their envy of another, or the woman who is tasked with rising above the supposed-non-tragedy that is her mental illness. It’s a distraction from truth.

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At the core of intriguing conversation is an uncertainty about what will be brought to light--- and in what way that will influence our experience of it all. In the spirit of radical honesty, I have a bit of a kink for debate because of its unpredictability. I do tend to have a bit of a high threshold for “friction” or stimulation, which can make most conversations feel boring or overly routine. Ah yes, it’s great to meet you, too, and wow, you love your job because you feel like you’re making a difference and that’s lovely, how wonderful that you’re supported in your healing journey toward self-improvement; so what’s your stance on euthanizing an unwanted animal versus keeping it in a chaotic, miserable shelter, or if it’s ethical to keep someone alive on machines without their “consent”, or if any of us are hardwired for monogamy?

I somewhat understand the compulsion that is purging all “problematic” behavior. But, as I’ve spoken about tirelessly: resilience, purpose, and safety come not from eliminating risk, but navigating it. And finding dealbreakers in every “red flag”, which are mostly just displays of basic humanity? I can’t imagine the outcome being fruitful.

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.”

Reality can feel hellish should another person violate our version of it. I think my boss is rude and lacks tact, she thinks she’s being straightforward and honest just like I asked, I say yeah but you can be straightforward and honest while also being tactful, she says that’s exactly what I’m doing so what’s the problem. We’re not having an argument of factual reality, but a conflict of judgment. Aside from basic physics and mathematics, which most sane people can agree upon as being “reality”, much of human experience is that of perception versus truth.

We interpret events through Lens A, for example, and take this version not as a personal account, but as The Truth. “Nobody ever helps me”, “This is literally the worst day ever”, “You’re a racist.” These statements are “valid” and even “truthful” only in the sense that they’re internal weather forecasts of the person speaking them. As the human brain would have it, though, our forecast may not align with the “true” events of the external world. Such is the purpose of entities like juries or peer reviewers or boards of editors. I’ll demonstrate these varied interpretations using a little experiment below.

In the following sentences, one word will be italicized. The italicized word will be the one that is emphasized for effect when reading each sentence aloud. After you read the sentence aloud, explain what is being implied.

1. I didn’t hit my boss.

2. I didn’t hit my boss.

3. I didn’t hit my boss.

4. I didn’t hit my boss.

It’s easy to see how tones, cadence of speech, and overall delivery can contort a message.

To continue on with the “Lens A” example, those who identify more with Lens B share common ground with Lens A-ers in that they believe their personal account is truthful. What feels real to them must feel equally real to everyone else, right? Wrong.

Something can feel accurate without actually being accurate. I will allow Christopher Hitchens to remind us, “Anything that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Further, the burden of proof will reliably fall on the person making the claim--- as it should. It unequivocally demands the person with the flapping lips take the higher ground and support their beliefs with something other than, “I just feel like.”.

Radical honesty is a useful hedge against such misunderstanding-induced rage, rage which comes from banter like the scenarios outlined above. “You’re not listening to me” becomes “I feel like I’m not being heard”. “That’s just the way I am” becomes “It’s become a bit of a habit to do X.” Subtle shifts in language recast us from miserable martyr to that of liberated-person-with-the-humility-to-see-themselves-clearly. Understanding that others are not obligated to see our perspectives as we do makes life not only easier, at least in the wrong run--- but richer.

Blindness is a fiction novel by Jose Saramago, one which tells the story of a society suddenly infected with an epidemic of blindness. One by one, civilians lose their sight. All but the main character’s wife are infected by this elusive, unknown pathogen, painting her character as that of a moral voice of reason. Because she can see, her blind counterparts understand her as threatening, similar to the plot of The Allegory of the Cave. Perhaps they’re fearful not of darkness or lapse in vision, but of the uncertainty which grips a person stripped of their senses, of their comforts, of their “green flags”. Her reality is a “red flag” because it deviates too far from what they think they know.

The novel goes on to describe this society rapidly devolving into savagery akin to the boys in Lord of the Flies. When a people are stripped of their vision, they’re apparently stripped of order. When authority and order are absent, it’s scary how easily civilization breaks down to primal instincts, violence, and fractured morality. While vision loss was the plague which contributed to such cruel acts as starving, raping and physically assaulting people, the true pandemic was that of an unwillingness to see what was directly in front of each character. Their lives, at least their perception of it until that point, was a fragile veneer quickly shattered the moment a society is no longer being observed. We’d all be shocked at how quickly we abandon basic kindness and humanity should we feel threatened. And that being so self-absorbed is its own form of blindness.

It resonated so strongly with what I write so often about that I had to find a way to integrate it into my idea of neurotic overinvestment in green-flag hunting.

People and relationships are not checklists. What kind of depth can exist in a partnership if it’s maintained by proof-checking and emotional surveillance? How can we expect to build competence in any skill if we’ve only ever filtered for those environments or pursuits which we’ve labeled as safe?

It’s entirely possible for a person to make a terrible employee but a wonderful friend. A wicked individual can still generate thoughtful ideas. “Good” people, by all societal standards of that which is “good”, can commit atrocious acts of hatred, or demonstrate any of the checklist items that are “red flags”.

It isn’t about spotting every green flag and clinging to it like a life raft. It’s about being a person of virtue who doesn’t need to hoard them in the first place.

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Modern culture is rife with inspiration-porn. I suppose the idea of a “reel”, after all, is to broadcast all evidence of success.

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I stand proudly with my sizable collection of failures.

And yes, I opt to use the word “failures” instead of its gentler synonyms like “fail-forwards”, “hiccups”, “pivots”, or the like, as recasting failure as something worthy of a makeover helps no one. The more effort we put into watering down the labeling and phrasing of “failure”, the less equipped we will be to leverage it when it inevitably occurs.

I derail my own ideas and plans for reasons I struggle to comprehend. Some refer to this as “self-sabotage”. I see it more accurately as, “I’m unafraid of failing and also love the risk of trying something that may end horribly.” By clinical standards, it’s easy to assume I have ADHD or some other brand of mental impairment. By my own standards, it’s just something I’ve come to accept about myself.

The degree to which I’ve managed to over-commit, under-commit, and completely mismanage my time and efforts will surely be of benefit to those who recoil at motivationalizing everything. It’s refreshing to hear someone recount their tragedies as mere tragedies versus “windows of opportunity for personal self-growth and development” or, worse yet, “healing journeys”.

I’d like to first start off by saying it’s acceptable to want a simple life. A simple life where you’re mildly miserable in a job you feel stuck in for reasons either financial or emotional is, contrary to millennial-belief, not an emotional death sentence. You can also have a thousand interests without “niching down” into any of them. You can kickstart projects in a passion-fueled frenzy only to find yourself a week later entirely uninterested by the thought of seeing any of them come to fruition. This usually is not pathological, even if it becomes a nuisance to other people. My husband would be happy to vouch for the 50 different side-gigs, contracts, business ideas, and sales pitches I’ve entertained over the years…

The “Side Hustle” Graveyard

Side Hustle #1: Portrait Commissions

I’ve taken many art commissions across the past 10 years and have made a decent amount of “side money” doing so. Financially, it ‘paid off’; psychologically, it folded me like a lawn chair. Although I had initially committed to university for fine arts, I panicked at the last moment and decided to go forward with clinical psychology instead. Regret occasionally tugs at me and manifests into these sporadic urges to take on commissions. Without fail, every time, I agonize over the product being too far from “perfect”. This tendency taints the entire artistic process to that of spite.

Side Hustle/Primary Business #2: Parent Coaching Business

I started a parent training business that survived for a few years based entirely on referrals. By modern business doctrine, this sounds like a success. And I’m still mildly impressed/proud of myself for the connections that I made which were powerful enough to foster new business. To again speak to the financial gain, what I earned was undeniably ‘good’ and better than any amount of money I could’ve made working for an employer. But, similar to the art gig--- I couldn’t handle the uncertainty and the natural ebb and flow that comes with generating your own income. When referrals eventually fizzled and leads became sparse, I found myself aching for something recurrent and predictable, like a W2 position.

Side Hustle #3: Writing A Book

Somewhat related to my parent coaching business, I wrote a book somewhat informally about protocols parents can implement to raise resilient children. I didn’t publicly try to market the book because I, admittedly, was terrified of how it would be received. I’d already gained some notoriety at this point (unintentionally) for being a straight-shooter whose words “have teeth”, and the fuss kicked up around my attitudes, I feared, would jeopardize my income. The book went essentially nowhere other than a few close colleagues. I’ve since taken to writing Substack pieces, which I far prefer.

Side Hustle #4: Debate-Based CEUs

I’m a Continuing Education Provider for behavior analysts and have spent hundreds of hours developing webinars and live lectures-turned-debates. Regardless of whether or not I’ve decided to charge for them, they’re a source of joy each and every time. They also have filled up pretty quickly and people seem genuinely intrigued by the format, which I have to say is quite unconventional compared to the more traditional trainings provided. Months and months have gone by without my offering a live CE, and I still get requests for their return.

Side Hustle #5: Private CrossFit Coaching

Long before I became a licensed behavior analyst and common sense connoisseur, I had dreams of opening my own health and fitness studio. I became USA Olympic Weightlifting certified, CrossFit certified, USA Powerlifting certified, Strength and Conditioning Assessment and Program Design certified by the time I was 23 years old. I had taken on several private clients by this age, as well as coaching nearly full-time at two CrossFit gyms. While at the time it felt like more money than I’d ever made before, I can’t fathom spending that much “person-contact” time at my ripe old age of 33. Most forms of coaching, at least those in person and on a 1:1 basis, are unsustainable and highly unscalable.

Side Hustle #6: Supervisor & Mentor for Behavior Analysts

In tandem with the webinars, I worked with supervision students in graduate school for behavior analysis, and mentored a small cohort of freshly-minted behavior analysts. This was something I genuinely loved doing and have considered getting back into. I’d meet with students throughout their practicum to troubleshoot clinical problems, role-play scenarios with administrators, management, families, and clients, and plan for what sort of role they’d hope to work in once licensed.

Side Hustle #7: Greeting Cards & E-Commerce

I made snarky greeting cards, stickers, and coloring books in short bursts. My kryptonite was again my unwillingness to get “salesy” and put my work out there more frequently. I still create these for fun.

Side Hustle #8: Health & Fitness Coaching, Again

I frankly can’t remember every form of health and fitness related coaching I’ve done, when exactly I started and stopped, and what the format was, but this was my attempt to move into a more remote type of service. It was far more sustainable than in-person work but was still very difficult to scale.

Side Hustle #9: School SEL, PE, & Health Consulting (Again…)

Lastly, I started a side-company called Mind Your Motion, which is an effort to build physical education and health programs in schools that are geared more towards resilience and critical thinking. While I don’t say this directly to potential clients (which tend to be large educational organizations), I’ll call a spade a spade: it serves to replace any and all SEL frameworks, which only make children (and adults) weak-minded.

As a quick aside--- business-minded people are probably looking at this manifesto of failures and saying to themselves, “it’s because you’re trying to do too many things; you have to pick one and go all in on it.” This may be true. But here’s my overall point. Going “all in” on one thing, and spending all of my time and energy trying to bolster up that one thing… that’s not freedom, at least not to me. And the amount of time, energy, and effort I’d have to put forth to match my current income would drastically cut my weekly free time into pitiful shards. It’s because of my stable, predictable income (which is a damn good income, may I add) that I have the freedom to pick up any side hustle I want--- and ditch it whenever I want.

The Myth of Freedom

I’m realizing I perhaps never wanted freedom from work. Maybe I just wanted freedom from the spinning wheel that is professional ambition, financial “goals” or “benchmarks”, and the stink of bureaucratic bullshit.

What if a cubicle (or an office, or a conference room) is actually freedom? What if you’re making great, sustainable money through the mindless gig our culture demonizes, and you’re able to drop it all come 3:00 PM? So what if it comes with fluorescent lighting and ultra-processed vending machine food and socially awkward colleagues? And, to be blunt, who cares if bored and unfulfilled? It’s a “job”, not a “fun”.

On paper, I’ve profited in every single one of the side-gigs I’ve started. It was never enough to sustain a full-time income, though, as I genuinely despise “the hustle” required to build a successful, thriving business which operates largely outside of the owner’s direct and chronic involvement. I’m not sure I was ever built to develop something like this. While I demand freedom and freewheeling autonomy in any gig I take on, one thing I’ve realized about myself is certain: stability trumps autonomy. And I’m willing to sacrifice some aspects of the reckless abandon I so crave if it means I can expect, every week, to be paid exactly what I worked for.

If you’re like this, jump on in. The water is warm. Do not be swayed by the incessant chatter of ditching your 9-5 so you can “go all in on your business”. It’s courageous to do so. It’s impressive to see people younger and younger starting their own “thing” with minimal education or mentorship as to how to execute. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this is the only path toward liberation, toward a rich life. Conversely, if entrepreneurship sounds inviting, who am I to tell you not to go for it?

People tell me constantly that I should “start my own business”. I’ve been told this nearly every time I show proof of my abilities, whether those be strength-related, art-related, clinical-related, or otherwise. It’s similar to those who tell me I should compete in an event to showcase my athletic skill (which I don’t believe I have much of anymore).

At the end of the day, I gain very little from edging out other people. Competition actually makes me crumble in ways I’m embarrassed to admit. I don’t like sitting around and waiting to see where I rank amongst other people; that’s what I have myself for. I so value my own personal accomplishments, stacked against myself, rather than others, that I will actively avoid most forms of “friendly” contest.

How I Over-Optimize Nothing

I can sleep without checking content statistics at 2AM. I don’t have to show my body to be successful or noticed. My social interactions aren’t plagued by thoughts of profit opportunities. I can adopt 53 hobbies on a Saturday and ditch them all come Thursday, should I so choose. My constellation of interests has zero effect on my income and my ability to provide a rich life for myself and my family.

I am not an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepre-never.

And I’m richer than most in all the ways that matter.

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People-pleasing is a culturally-induced pathogen according to Millennials. I do tend to agree that some brands of people-pleasing, like those in which we inadvertently try to control how others respond, are unbecoming. I wrote an entire piece on people-pleasing many months ago, which you can read here. My thesis is simple: people-pleasing has little to do with appeasing another person, but is motivated by sheltering ourselves from any reaction we believe we cannot handle. Differently stated: it’s both conflict-avoidant and validation-driven.

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My personal version of being a “yes-man”, for the sake of this piece, is thoroughly understanding the motive of the person giving direction and playing directly into their hand---through your body language, your tone, and your choice of language. Mastering the crooked art of understanding human behavior, paired with basic business principles, puts those who have adopted the “Yes, Chef” mentality far above their neurotic, burnt-out co-workers---at least in terms of workplace freedom and compensation.

I suppose this is an argument for, “Work Smarter, Not Harder.” Except most people believe they’re working smarter byworking harder, which can end in the promotion to Company Brown-Noser and further social disapproval. I have a different approach.

To adopt “Yes, Chef” does not assume we tolerate disrespect, excessive irrationality, or utter stupidity. The latter two evils are subjective, and will be entirely up to you to determine what criteria fits those bills. The skills required to analyze and predict human behavior are what will forge a finesse that make you unshakable, unbotherable, and “in-the-know” without the stink of Brown-Noser-Extraordinaire.

To path forward? Be capable and simultaneously not stupid. You will say “yes” to projects, cases, deadlines, or conversations that have been perpetually avoided by your co-workers for reasons largely pertaining to “overwhelm”, “burnout”, or any other emotional trickery.

There’s a subtle but crucial, non-negotiable aspect of taking on your new role of the Fearless ‘Yes, Chef’: you cannot, under any circumstances, demand attention or recognition for it. Remember the validation-seeking “people-pleaser” I described earlier, the type which freakishly complies for reasons almost entirely selfish? The same theory applies to becoming the go-to in your W2.

But Also Learn the Tactical No

People occasionally confuse assertiveness with passive-aggression or flagrant cattiness. Women have long since lamented their “assertiveness” being seen as rude or insensitive in the workplace, while men’s assertiveness being seen as commendable. I do not want to dismiss this as being occasionally legitimate. People who stand up for themselves, whether women or men, are submitting to an invisible target being placed upon their forehead. When women do so, specifically in male-dominated industries, it could mistakenly be taken as snobbery.

But more often than not, behaving like a snob begets being seen as a snob. In other words: you’re perceived as a bitch because maybe you are one. We can reject new projects, cases, or work demands while still being kind and, hell, maybe even apologizing. Here are some examples depending on your mood, who you’re speaking with, and what you hope to gain:

The Professional Straight-Shooter: “I’d really like to give this the quality it needs, and I don’t know that I’m able to do that with what’s on my schedule. Maybe you can help me prioritize what needs to be moved so I can get to it?”

Grateful + Inquisitive: “Thanks for considering me for this! If I do take this on, I’ll be honest, something else will probably slip. Which is most important to you?”

Humor (My Favorite): “If I say yes, you owe me a Xanax. That doesn’t seem sustainable for anybody- can we reschedule this without my refilling a prescription?”

The Deferral: “Oh man, I wish I could! I’m on the cusp of no-can-do. I’ll let you know when I wrap up with [current project], if that works for you?”

Reassuring Boundary: “I can’t do it this week. After X is finished, I’m good to start; so we’re looking at between A-Date and B-Date. How does that sound?”

Competence is the Only “Flex” That Pays

Knowing your audience, learning “crowd work”, and sharpening your skillset is a trifecta I’ve come to refer to as adaptable competence. Your “edge” comes from analyzing information you’re presented with from every angle and only then deciding your stance. There isn’t exactly a formula for how to do this, but I’ve done my best to nail it down into a few steps:

1. Your Boss’s Bottom Line Is Your North Star (TLDR: Get Over Yourself)

2. Be Exceptionally Better Than Everyone Else

3. Explain Boss’s Pain In Their Language

4. Offer Yourself Up As the Only Solution

5. Leverage, Leverage, Leverage

1. Your Boss’ Bottom Line Is Your North Star

a. Forget your own for now. Bosses have their own quirks and “languages,” but strip it down and they’re driven by one thing: reduce pain, maximize profit. Listen for what that is. Memorize their phrasing. Use their words back at them.

2. Be Exceptionally Better Than Everyone Else

a. A downside of hyper-competence is being given more work because your co-workers are probably stupid. I don’t actually mean this the harsh way it sounds; it’s just a fact of working quickly, efficiently, and without turning the workplace into a theater for insecurity. Look to your co-workers’ quality of work and the traits they bring to the workplace; their top-line work ethic is your new beginner-level marker.

3. Explain Boss’ Pain In Their Language

a. You have the skills (professionally and socially) to leverage pain. Now you’re tasked with explaining it back to them by paraphrasing, telling a story, and being careful to use words exactly as they’ve phrased them. It doesn’t matter if you find the phrasing personally repugnant; this isn’t about you, perse. It’s about your boss needing to feel heard so you can move on to step 4, which is one step closer to that freedom you claim to crave.

4. Offer Yourself Up As the Only Solution

a. Because your co-workers are self-centered, stupid, and driven by their own inability to manage their emotions, you’re perhaps now becoming noticeable. You’re spotting inefficiencies and bottlenecks in leadership’s systems, and you’re unknowingly generating ideas to stop the hemorrhaging. Do not share these ideas with your co-workers. Share them with Boss in Boss Language. You are now the only person skilled enough to provide this solution; it’s entirely on you to ensure it stays that way.

5. Leverage, Leverage, Leverage

a. This doesn’t save you from every tyrant boss or office spat, but it ranks you as dependable. Once you’re known for competence and quick wit, you earn trust. Trust = less supervision = more freedom.

Deliver the Results

Because we’re not idiots motivated by emotional reasoning, our work must speak for itself. Delivering results or “making good” on our end of the bargain is a crucial step toward liberation as a W2. Over-committing-and-under-performing, and sheepishly making excuses for biting off more than we can chew because of [insert diagnosis here] is exactly how to become forever micromanaged and watched with hawk-like fervor.

We can deliver results without gloating (see earlier anecdote about “never making a spectacle of your accomplishments”). Delivering the results will depend entirely on what task, project, or demand you’ve taken on, but will include the following factors:

1. Very clear understanding of the problem

a. Example: Instead of saying “The scheduling software is annoying to use”, say “Employees are clocking in late because the software requires multiple log-ins, costing us 40–60 minutes of labor per week across the department.”

2. How the problem is negatively affecting Boss’ bottom line

a. Example: “Because the shipping labels weren’t printing correctly, five orders were delayed last week. That led to two refunds and one negative review, which not only costs money but also affects our ratings--- and most of our referrals come from those ratings.”

3. What you took upon yourself to try to mitigate the damage

a. Example: “I contacted the software vendor directly and tested a workaround that reduces login steps. I trained the morning shift on it so we’re already seeing fewer late punches.”

4. A plan for avoiding these same mistakes in the future

a. Example: “I drafted a quick-start guide with screenshots so future hires don’t waste time on login issues. I also suggested to IT that we set a recurring review of the software to catch these glitches earlier.”

5. Proof

a. Example: “Since we started using the workaround, late punches have dropped from eight per week to zero.”

Be the person who says “yes” more than the average worker, “no” more strategically than the dramatic ones, and always ties your effort to the bottom line. That’s how you optimize a career: by knowing when to kiss ass and when to kick it.

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Dependence breeds resentment. And there is no force as poisonous, as potent, as the apathy born of loathing what you used to love.

Many of you contacted me to share how deeply you resonated with my last piece about buying a laundromat. I figured I’d capitalize on our apathy and perform an autopsy on my personality problem. Below are snippets from the exchanges I’ve had with many of you about your pursuit of a “simpler life”; maybe I’m looking for it, but I’ve found a common thread amongst them all:

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1. People having failed repeatedly at monetizing their hobbies, because they start to hate them, which stifles creativity and motivation to do them at all

2. Feeling insecure about what used to just be a passion project or “for fun”

3. Being pressured to start a business by others (based on their interests/passions) because of their skill

4. Becoming hyper-perfectionistic and neurotic with routines that used to be stress-relieving

5. Obsessing in private how people would like their public persona

David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs, writes an unflinching account of the “spiritual damage” that is doing work which is useless, unnecessary, and functionally pointless. In one portion of his book, he writes, “I am using the term “box tickers” to refer to employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing.”

For much of human history, mostly before the debut of technology and when identity was shaped through religion or community, work functioned as a form of survival rather than self-actualization. “Doing your part” held more weight to the everyday employee than the self-expression so rampant in younger workforces. Abraham Maslow reminds us that survival needs must be met before our brain even begins to consider concepts like “purpose”, “meaning”, or “self-betterment”; you’re unlikely to agonize over your soul’s calling if you can’t afford heat during a Midwestern winter.

Although work was necessary for us humans to live, pre-industrial societies sustained their lives and relationships through these work roles, making for at least subtle changes in an person’s self-concept (i.e., while hard work was not yet seen as a moral obligation, a sense of duty remained at the core of work). It was with these newly-rendered temperaments that the professional focus shifted away from steady, paying gigs to the promise of a “meaningful impact.”

Historian Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism describes the Protestant work ethic as being morally virtuous, even righteous, but not personally fulfilling. I frequently wonder if we’d be better off seeing our professions through the lens of “morally good” versus “I’m passionate about this and it’s my calling, and it’s pivotal to who I am as a person.”Absorbing our work to compose a performative brand has made for young professionals seemingly incapable of understanding themselves outside of how well-liked they are by faceless avatars, avatars entirely uninterested in who they are beyond their Instagram enactments.

Sociologists refer to this Western-specific melodrama as “passion ideology”, or a surly fetish for “loving what we do so we never have to work a day in our lives”, or that we’re lesser-than individuals exiled to a life misaligned with our public-facing values should we confess this unadulterated truth: that we want to do everything but also nothing, that owning a business and snagging the title of “Girl Boss” sounds great, in theory, but so does coasting along getting paid to do next to nothing in a bullshit job.

Feigning open-mouthed fascination with makeshift problems is our way of compensating for Graeber’s understanding of our “bullshit job”. Those hellbent on attaining some fleeting sense of intention in their work (I was for many years) are almost guaranteed a professional life rich with make-believe troubles to “solve” with sham findings. There’s an industry for this brand of imaginary play, and it’s called “consulting”, or any role whose title ends in “coordinator” or “liaison”.

But what if we allow our work to stay soulless, while all of the hours outside of it remain intact, rife with joy, meaning, fun? You be the judge of which ranks as more demoralizing: dancing around with our cellulite-covered ass cheeks on social media in an attempt to market ourselves and our personal lives like products… or getting paid stable income to do nothing? I suppose both scenarios are unnerving, at best. And our willingness to tolerate either is largely dependent upon our personality and, yes, our values.

Aspirational labor, or pretend-work which serves the purpose of emotional wellbeing more so than financial (see above industries, like “consulting”), smudges the lines between our hobbies, our jobs, and our sense-of-selves. In many ways, we don’t have jobs anymore; we are jobs. Performing for the sake of attention has appeared to replace much of a person’s actual personality, eroding trust and leveraging gullibility as financial security. This forces people to either get ridiculously, elite-level good at that hobby they once considered “just for fun”, or to keep up in private with the persona they’ve so gaudily marketed in public. Both are time-consuming and require far more work than we realize.

Maybe, just maybe, coasting and accepting life as an average joe is the most stable path toward FIRE (financially independent/retiring early). I do very much appreciate “influencers” like Codie Sanchez and the Hormozis convincing every day, average employees to reclaim Main Street by owning their own businesses. I also think it’s overly simplified and a tad reductionist to assume that the act of buying or starting a business is, inarguably, hard work, but also mind-numbingly simple. Even the simplest of businesses will more than likely require a person to work double the amount they would had they just stayed in their 9-5. It’s worth it to weigh and measure what gradient of insufferable crap you’re willing to scrub before jumping in the glistening pool that is “entrepreneurship is for everyone, and being an entrepreneur means you’re cooler than the average shmuck.”

Working with my hands has been the central feature of every hobby I find meaningful, a productive use of my time, and a net-positive towards my personal growth. Working at an animal shelter for 6-8 hours a week, much of which is scrubbing dog poop off of the grooves of my shoes, underneath my nails, in the fibers of my clothes, and even from my eyebrows, has become just one task I take pride in more than any behavior plan I’ve ever written. It’s almost like I can visibly witness any professional ambitions I once had swirling down the rust-and-shit-smeared drain along with the fragments of feces, urine, and grime.

I have two Master’s degrees, both of which pertain to the human psyche and why us humans are insistent upon our own extinction via repeated, seemingly unpunishable stupidity. Although I had my reservations about college even during my graduate programs, its rotten motives were only revealed after I’d entered the workforce. With my every basic need met and now two expensive pieces of paper to my name (along with over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans), I’d scrounge every grimy corner of clinical settings, schools, group homes, and research labs for that little ember of purpose other students spoke so frequently of. That ember would never be found in a career, because this entire idea (i.e., that work serves the purpose of brand-and-identity-building) is deceiving as it is clownish.

Do you think plumbers feel like imposters? Do you think electricians spiral about whether they’ve earned the right to install wiring in a corporate office, or farmers are tormented by their values misaligning with having to breed dairy cows?

Do I feel a sense of, “This is so not my vibe” when a shelter dog takes a sprinting dive into diarrhea, turns to lurch towards me, and paints feces across my mouth in steaming streaks? Not in the slightest. It’s actually quite the opposite. Lobotomizing my “work personality”, and removing any pursuit of purpose from any gig which lacks clear mastery criteria, is how I’ve managed to forge peak excitement in that which is mundane.

Overidentifying with abstract, often times made-up roles builds the bones of misery. We need a sense of mastery in a skill to feel accomplished, and roles without clear criteria for this sort of skill-acquisition (i.e., writers, artists, entrepreneurs, therapists) breed a sense of “imposter syndrome”, which is little more than insecurity. What does it mean to be a “good” versus “great” therapist? How does a writer know when they’ve mastered writing? Do artists feel rewarded when they’ve “officially” hit a ceiling on their skillset?

Through university degrees, some of us believe we’ve purchased a future ripe for significance, only to find our purpose in the dirt, down a grimy hallway, in a steaming pile of shit. To reiterate a reality that will never go viral: some of us are perfectly content with our low-6-figure salaries, traveling once a year (maybe a little less), hoarding as much money as possible to retire early doing something completely unsexy, boring, revolutionary, or “rewarding”. Paid pointlessness is, in many ways, a form of freedom.

I once heard Alex Hormozi state that “good friends are busy friends.” I think I understand what he’s getting at with this statement: that people he finds personally valuable and relationships he treasures tend to be with those who share his motivation for work and money. What this statement misses, though, is the entire concept of modern day: that 75% of jobs are functionally meaningless and, while they can make anyone look “busy”, they still produce zero results worthy of a blink.

Anyone can spend 9+ hours a day pretending to work. Even I can do that, and I can’t say with certainty that I’ve ever worked longer than a 10-hour day in my entire life. To be frank, I’m sure there are many a day that I worked out more than I actually worked.

Hard work and productivity are not siblings, but distant cousins. Most “productive” people I’ve met are productive so long as the task is aligned with what’s comfortable and socially acceptable. Most hard-working people I’ve met are complete nobodies to the outside world and have found solace in peace over purpose.

Maybe, just maybe, simplicity will be the new revolution.

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When Self-Control Quietly Quits

I have an impulse problem. It’s a phantom pet I’ve nurtured my entire life despite my understanding that this cuddly pet is feral. It’s a wicked game of cat-and-mouse that is alluring to people like me: the thrill of wanting but not having overrides the actual attainment of whatever it is we’ve fixated on for the day, the week, the year.

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Perhaps this is further evidence that my impulse problem is one of clinical-grade proportion. Regardless, though, my recognition of it is my saving grace and spares me therapy and psychotropic costs.

I’ve found that my impulses act up not in times of peak distress, but in times of peak enjoyment. Some aspect of joy, at least a lion’s share of the time, lacks the potency to register as joyous, as thrilling, as unfettered delight. I’ve struggled to understand this oddity, myself, as I tend to find nearly everything funny, amusing, or worthy of my curiosity.

It’s a cruel affliction to constantly feel like I’m chasing an elusive sensation, only to obtain The Thing and grow immediately bored with it. The fervor with each pursuit is what produces The Thing, rather than The Thing itself. This has held true since my childhood: I treasured practice for sports but hated competition; the throes of learning to draw were more rewarding than completion of the drawing; agonizing over a skill was more fun in retrospect than fluency of it.

My clinical education has taught me that us humans are misguided, highly-inaccurate judges of our own experiences. Despite this knowledge, I’ll proceed to take a stab at what’s going on with my psyche. I’ve come to realize that “good feelings”, or my circumstances largely meeting the criteria for “good” or “stable” or “successful”, tend to trigger my impulses more than pressure, high stakes, or distressing circumstances. Anna Lembke describes this as a baseline homeostasis, or an emotional default, that is permanently tipped toward sensation-seeking for reasons neuroscientists cannot explain. She refers to impulsive people as requiring a “higher level of friction”, and heedlessly seeking that friction in moments of boredom, when experiencing relaxation, and even in times of stability. Sameness, in many ways, is not ideal for us impulsive dimwits.

The problems which interfere most with my life are my obsessive behavior and the apparent amnesia I suffer when a shiny object, event, or opportunity lurches into my periphery. Whether or not these are clinical symptoms or just evidence of a rusty hinge on the scale of my brain chemistry, the onus is on me to decide how to lessen my impulsivity. It is on me, and nobody else, to build a robust skillset during times I’m most prone to behave inappropriately.

Self-awareness is my Swiss army knife, and it’s what has resulted in my decision to more aggressively exit any and all forms of clinical/therapeutic/psychological work... and look to recession-proof, boring-but-effective businesses to buy.

And yes, I’m serious, and yes, I loathe clinical work with the blazing fire of a thousand suns. If you find yourself skeptical that this is yet another seductive plight, I would understand. But I can assure you it’s something I’ve taken seriously, and have deemed fundamental to my long-term sanity and financial success. Why are boring businesses especially crucial for impulsive people? So glad you asked!

1. They provide predictable, external structure: regular hours, repetitive operations, predictable tasks

2. They offer clear problems and clear solutions: little room for abstract or unsolvable or unmeasurable problems of “purpose”

3. The rewards are mechanical instead of emotional: do the work and get paid

4. They provide the friction I need to keep impulses in check: no chasing fancy initiatives, pursuits that make people think more critically, or emotionally-driven goals. You’re locked into mundane systems whether you like it or not

They Tell You To Dream Big. I Say Dream In Quarters.

Cue my faceless confessional: I have not purchased a laundromat (or any small business) yet. I’ve instead researched endlessly how to acquire small businesses, learn what clues and facts to look for in a business’ financials, and quietly sift through my due diligence checklist to avoid that which is at the core of my dysfunction: compulsive decision-making. The mundane nature of business, coupled with my fear of it, are curative for my impulsivity.

When I’m not doing my mindless behavior analytic work, I’ve devoted most moments of free time to physical labor tasks----all of which are unpaid. I was always meant to be working and sweating with my hands, sweltering under the Midwestern sun, completing “real” work with a measurable result. Therapeutic jobs are directly, aggressively antithetical to those character traits I treasure. As an active person built to be moving, with a peculiar bent for mild physical suffering, sitting in a chair listening to trivial problems would never end well.

I’m gradually expanding my blue-collar tool belt, from growing my own vegetables and fruits to tilling land to caring for farm animals. My woodworking, though embarrassingly imprecise, has garnered a tenacity my professional career has repeatedly failed to bring. My childhood and teenage years were largely spent with my family and I working tirelessly in an animal shelter, and I’ve added kennel work to my growing list of pro-bono labor.

In addition to redefining myself as a hard worker (ha!), I have quite a bit of research and hands-on experience to hoard before I decide which businesses I’d like to purchase in the coming years. I’ve narrowed it down to three:

1. Laundromat

2. Vending machines

3. Anything involving animals/pet care

4. Maybe all three!

All three ventures share two core qualities:

Firstly, nobody gives a damn about my credentials, and people do not sit around in their lethargic, Western malaise acting fascinated by problems. There’s work to be done that is straightforward with minimal margin for emotion-driven interpretation.

Secondly, there’s minimal management of irrational human beings. Of course, with staff and clients being of the human brand, moments of frustration and “are you fucking kidding me?” are guaranteed. But to drastically reduce both the opportunity and frequency for such elective discourse makes for the pivot I need.

It took me a few years of being licensed to realize that I may hate managing grown adults, at least as it relates to managing their emotional outbursts. Being a psychotherapist or human service professional carries with these roles a stereotypical glow, the kind which elicits a wetness in the eyes trailed immediately with some statement as to how we’re “doing God’s work.” This is a kind analysis, but it’s highly inexact. People simply do not understand, by no fault of their own, the bureaucratic idiocy which drives nonsensical and meaningless billable hours, the political bent to nearly all of women in management positions, and how much time is spent doing busywork that bears little semblance to our role.

Signs I Outgrew My “Helping “Profession”

1. Chronic frustration with hearing problems, problems which I’d addressed for several consecutive months while clients inched toward abysmal change

2. A perverse impatience with “rapport-building”, the surface-level small talk, and being a sounding post for problems better solved with common sense

3. “Breakthroughs” became about as thrilling as traffic school

All of this to say, I want nothing to do with anything I went to school for. I’m another victim of the idiotic advice to “follow my passion”, which is largely detrimental for a normal person, let alone for an impulsive one with a new passion every month. I am a challenge-glutton, and I must be tamed by logic… not inspiration. Passion makes us betray ourselves again and again.

Impulse vs. Intuition

If you’re reading and find yourself nodding along, perhaps you can resonate with this epiphany: my professional career rendered me a martyr for systems designed to be faulty. I was first noticed in the field for my punchy criticisms of nonsensical, leftist rhetoric that I still think all of us should be critical of, but being noticed did little in terms of changing the system or even encouraging diverse thinking. I believed I held the power to modify frameworks from the inside and “make a difference” the way elder clinicians promised. None of it happened and never will happen--- at least for me. I don’t want to make a difference anymore. I want to find a gig that does not demand I make any sort of difference or find any sort of purpose.

If you’re impulsive like me, you need a container rather than a calling. Maybe boring businesses are that container.

And I do hope you follow along as I bouncily waltz away from “mental health”.

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I once worked with a family who lost their beloved father quite suddenly. The family quilt, held tightly together through Pops’ sense of humor and patience, was now tattered, irreparable. The relationships between the others (the two sisters, brother, and Mom) hung only by frayed threads they hadn’t realized as so spindly, so fine. These brands of difficulty, whether mildly insane or truly tragic, soften the veneer of our “perfect life” and reveal our worst tendencies and traits just below. It’s unfortunate that it takes such bad circumstances to fully understand ourselves.

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The family had one adult child with severe Down’s Syndrome. They had been burdened for decades by the highly destructive behavior and cost of therapies and out-of-pocket providers and “sensory equipment”, and it was the late Pops’ primary task to guide the house in managing the unrelenting load. With Pops’ absence in mind, I couldn’t find it within me to share my own experience of my brother sort-of-kind-of tragically passing. I say “sort-of-kind-of” because my family had come to accept his death as imminent by virtue of his heroin addiction; we just couldn’t forecast the timeline of it. I believe it was two or so years ago when I had first written about Conner’s death on Substack, and remember phrasing it something like, “We absorbed his passing while he was still here, as if he had already faded.” It was a live-action role-play that is the idiom, “death by a thousand cuts”.

When I first heard that the daughter with Down’s Syndrome was a twin, my knee-jerk reaction was to respond with, “I am too!” In lockstep with my emotions I was tibia-deep in the bear trap of awkward conversation. My options were straightforward: be honest and stoic and authentic in the same manner I encourage others to be when these situations arise… or lie. I chose the latter. I lied about Conner being dead by claiming he was still alive.

Death and death do not cancel each other out in conversation, as I’d come to conclude. This became my justification. My little mind and its penchant for trickery would see this as an opportunity to deceive even myself into believing that talk of my brother was unimportant. I proceeded to speak as if Conner were only minutes away, enjoying his life as I did mine.

Firstly, this tendency is profoundly selfish, albeit subliminal. My own fear of their reaction was what drove me to not only to lie--- but to justify lying. I sometimes reenact the fake scenario where I ruefully tell my parents I lied about Conner being alive and well, all to their disgust and their torment and their salted weeps. Why do we do this to ourselves? In the same wicked scheme that is paying money to experience sadness watching a movie, I apparently opt for experiencing agony by imagining my parents branding me a callow brute, unfit to sit at the grown-up table of real-life.

Let’s return to my lying to the family--- an event that actually occurred outside of my imagination. Yes, of course I cared about how they were managing to get by in light of the tragedy they’d all been dealt. It was this understanding that resulted in the strange sense that I’d owed them a positive experience, a laugh, a kernel of reassurance that they’d learn to accept this as only a small interruption to the life they’d planned for. They didn’t demand this from me, nor did they imply they needed my consoling. It was undue pressure I’d placed on myself to provide something impossible to materialize: their Dad and all that came with him.

I left many words unsaid because I was unwilling to tolerate their questions, their reaction, their condolences to Conner being gone. Psychologists are probably foaming at the mouth theorizing the many reasons this is only a manifestation of my own intolerance for my own condolences to Conner.

So I tried to control the family instead.

In my own defense, I’ve come to this analysis only in retrospect. This moment captured through my keyboard was an exchange lasting probably 20 seconds or less. In the thick of that space, between her comment and mine, the ping of a subtle impulse convinced me,“It’s not worth the trouble of explaining. You have a twin brother, and that’s the end of the story.”

The words unsaid are those feelings I have about Conner. They’re unsaid around my parents because I am a hypocrite. This discernment has evolved into a question I’m now unable to wrest from the forefront of my mind.

It’s a question of whether or not we could hold a belief with an iron grip despite consistently acting against it. Can we believe something but also take consistent action against its core feature? Can we value our health while regularly indulging in Thin Mints? On perhaps a deeper note: can we treasure the sanctity of marriage but allow our eyes to gaze astray? As I age, many of my beliefs and perspectives have unraveled with new information, information which lurches toward me from the unlikeliest of places.

I’m terrified of my parents’ reactions to any conversation related to my brother. Mom has managed to maintain composure when his name is brought up, a step in her progress that took about three years following his death to achieve. Prior to this milestone reached, she was a puddle at the mere mention of something only tangentially related to Conner in any way. As the English language and human cognition would have it, any single person, place, or thing can find a connection to something else if we torture reality enough. While I’m certain she didn’t try to look for Conner in unrelated places, I imagine her pain was so all-consuming that he trickled into every crack of her conscience--- whether she liked it or not.

My Dad, on the other hand, has always been more reserved in his emotional expressions. There have been three moments in my entire life that I’ve seen him cry. Once was when we were heading into a horrendous Illinois winter with multiple feet of snow, and my brother sold our snowblower for what was equivalent to a teaspoon of heroin. Conner’s addiction had already absolved him of any useful housework or yardwork, leaving the labor to my Dad and I. While I can’t remember exactly how my Dad managed to afford a snowblower, I know my parents’ manufacturing-plant, blue-collar jobs made it a 6-month venture to put money aside to plan for its purchase. Dad’s tears came that night. Conner’s did not.

Perhaps the most horrible few hours of witnessing my Dad crying came when he called to tell me that Conner had died. The police in Florida tried to contact my Mom first but couldn’t get a hold of her. Dad was next on the list.

Dad called me with a crack in his voice I immediately knew was imbued with tragedy. Nothing prepares you for events like death, no matter how many times you’ve neurotically rehearsed your emotional response. When your brother is a heroin addict, you nail your lines; then it only becomes a matter of time before you’re charged with performing them. That matter of time, though, wallops the wind out of your every fiber as if you’d had no idea all these years he was anything other than a healthy, happy kid. Rehearsal is moot in the labyrinth that is grief.

Dad is a veracious reader and writer. I’ve inherited his love for the English language and its ability to invoke both wonder and rage within a single sentence. It’s crazy, really, to think words have that much power. I suppose it’s why the words unsaid are equally damning.

The words unsaid are those feelings I have about Conner. They’re unsaid around my parents because I am a hypocrite. I’m a hypocrite because my entire career and reputation is based on my willingness to talk to anyone about anything, my ability to respect diverse points of view with a warmth and a sense of humor, and demonstrating competence through my openness to conversation. But I can’t have a single conversation about my brother so long as the listeners are my parents.

I’m a hypocrite because the hours I pour into motivating others to resolve conflict, I’m unable to do with my parents. The silent conflict remains, and avoidance begets avoidance. The Conner-sourced tension has since distilled down to that of a simmer, gradually cooled down from the rolling boil it was for years after we’d gotten The Call. But the cauldron still functions as the invisible stew between us. I’m a hypocrite because I don’t want to move it. The cauldron that is guilt, the cauldron that is fear dictates my next course of action. My thoughts about Conner, my disturbing dreams about Conner; they evaporate into the mist which hangs carefully over the stew. Mom, Dad and I… We’ve all trained one another to become avoidant, at least as it relates to his memories.

To answer my own question, maybe we can believe strongly in an idea or a notion while also betraying it. Maybe life is that complex, and that’s the beauty in it. Maybe we see these traits in other people and admire how they demonstrate them better than we’re capable of. Perhaps the very belief we hold, but are inept at embodying, is one better left to people more equipped than we are to pay this belief forward. That, or we can learn to engender it on our own. Either way, our dependence on others remains a constant.

When I see professional track athletes and their work ethic, I’m only minimally inspired to put in more effort in my own exercise routine. Does it mean I do not value hard work, fitness, and perseverance in the name of achieving a goal? Obviously not. My values-gradient is just different from Sha’Carri Richardson.

Conner loved our family despite behaving as if we were disposable. If we were to assign numerical value to how often our habits reflect our truest beliefs… what number would suffice? Who gets to decide what that quotient looks like? With the world moving so quickly toward medicalizing and numerically assigning quotients to every experience, is this something we can get away with just leaving be? Can we understand that the most meaningful aspects of life cannot be plugged into a formula or ChatGPT? Or, that if they are, they almost immediately bleed substance? Maybe the world’s problems seem so herculean that we’re desperate for a more concrete answer, one like a simple formula or a checklist or a flowchart. There is no flowchart to properly quantify the pain and suffering of Conner’s last few years of living.

There’s also no formula for determining how far along I am in my recovery from anorexia. Or how much my parents have healed following the tragic death of a child.

Or when I’ll be less of a hypocrite and share my truest writing with Mom and Dad.

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Optimist: a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something.

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Pessimist: a person who tends to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen.

Perhaps the best place to begin is by examining the great bastardization of optimism, commonly dubbed “toxic positivity” or “fake happiness”.

Counterfeit optimists rely on platitudes and vapid language swaps to trudge through their day. They’re the ones chirping at you to “just be mindful” after your leg has been severed in a horrific lawn-mowing fiasco. They’re present to gently demand you “don’t say that!” when you reference anything brutally honest about your worst traits. And doggone it, counterfeit optimists will be damned if reality gets in the way of their overly-positive reframe on the world. Their pursuit of happiness becomes the very thing which makes happiness an impossibility. From a clinical standpoint, people who are depressed actually have a more accurate perspective on reality than non-depressed people.

With the advent of social media, we’ve tainted the concept of happiness, or even meaning, to that of entertainment. I’m no stranger to entertainment or to its benefits, as I see a general thirst for more joy in our lives, our lives which have become medicalized to the degree of data-tracking breaths, blood, steps, and heart beats via wearable devices and apps. There’s a fine line between self-awareness and self-obsession, I suppose.

George Orwell feared that our existence would be one of oppression; our every decision would be controlled by fear and pain. Aldous Huxley, conversely, argued that it would be our perverse obsession with triviality and distraction that would secure our decay. In looking to modern culture, I ruefully accept the latter as more accurate. To pull from behavioral science, our behavior is largely influenced by our environment. While I hate to rely on external circumstances as being so powerful in our decisions, they play a larger role than we believe in why we almost instinctually thumb toward Instagram or pound on the keyboard like an ape when our computer freezes.

The magical and often times invisible linchpin in our decisions comes down to one word: contingencies. If-then. This then that, or if that then not this. If I drive 58 miles per hour in a 35 past a cop lurking in a Baskin Robbins, then I will get pulled over. If I do not show up to work, then I will not get paid. These more mundane examples run amok in everyday life with little effort in looking. To speed things up, I’ll focus on social contingencies: how quickly we can modify our behavior based on social approval or rejection. Counterfeit optimists? Highly attuned to exactly what you think of them.

Outwardly, counterfeit optimists may appear well-adjusted. They make so many lists! They’re so organized and resourceful! They’re always jumping up and down and squealing in a high-pitched voice! They’re so bubbly and inspirational! With some clinical prowess, and a childhood lead by older parents with an allergy to merriment, allow me to assure you: while there is a rare portion of people who are genuinely excited to seize each day, many who rely on pop-psychology to appear happy are wildly insecure, terribly avoidant, and neurotic. Their fear of negativity, in both experiencing it and responding to it, is repeatedly rewarded through the escapism of inspirational quotes and mantras in times of distress. Who knew not feeling bad was as easy as telling myself that there is no “bad”? If this sounds familiar, rest assured: I’ve been this person countless times throughout my 33 years of being alive. I may have even been one this morning. What’s more important is how we respond to negativity when our behavior is taken as an average across time.

It's with my somber-yet-sarcastic outlook on reality that I’ve come to revel in what may be referred to as “cheerful pessimism”, or the Stoic realization that we should expect everything and be certain of nothing.

In some circles, to expect any event to go awry is textbook pessimism. I, in many ways, disagree. There is something to be said about the negativity bias, which spotlights only those negative events and assigns greater weight and prominence to unpleasant thoughts and feelings. You've experienced this before if 1) you're a human being and/or 2) you've received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and one negative comment, and you proceed to stew in the pungent marinade of criticism for days following the blow, entirely dismissing all of the good. Negativity is a hell of a drug.

I still contest, though, that to be realistically negative bears greater resilience than the air-headed optimism we come across so frequently in younger populations. The determining factor in psychological wellbeing is our response to negativity and positivity, rather than the ratio of total positive-to-negative events. It’s this very reason some experience tragedy but do not go on to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) while others claim their roommate being mad at them is “little t” trauma and cause for calling the campus counseling hotline. It’s a matter of acceptance and action.

Failure to accept what reality is is the carrot frantically guiding so many delusional bunnies toward hopeful happiness. Fixating on a sensation (i.e., happiness), which we’ve long since known is fleeting, should unsurprisingly result in a person always fiending for a high that never quite “hits right” like the first time. This incessant loop of chase-almost-there-why-don’t-I-feel-better is what causes persistent frustration and despair. Existential depression, a low mood characterized by traditional depressive symptoms, arises from a sense meaninglessness and feeling that life lacks purpose. This is a bit of a double-edged sword. Those with depressive symptoms are more realistic judges of reality compared to their bubbly counterparts, as mentioned earlier. They’re philosophical thinkers, hence their somber belief in their existence and what “this” all means. Society has come to value thoughts of philosophers like Socrates or Aristotle, which leaves us in a bit of a pickle: thinking can be good, aside from the times that it’s bad.

Viktor Frankl, well-known author of Man’s Search for Meaning, pulls from his theory that is logotherapy to help us “dereflect”: turn attention away from our problems and toward something of larger importance or meaning. To hyperfocus on a problem and its negative implications is to actively avoid the action necessary to resolve that problem, a cluster of events that often happens subconsciously. One of the best ways to do so, especially for the person who feels that life lacks substance? Shift toward an act that will benefit another person, and expect nothing in return (there it is again--- expect nothing!). Create a hierarchy of events that typically lead to excessive introspection, and commit to calling someone on the phone and only ask about how they’re doing. Make a note of what it felt like to sustain attention toward something/someone outside of yourself.

The more we age and cognitively mature, the greater likelihood our demands for joy increase. Watch a preschool classroom for even 15 minutes and you’re sure to find yourself nostalgic in observing the unfettered glee over things we’ve deemed trivial: an extra-big balloon, someone making a silly face, a new Hot Wheels track. In watching what makes a marionette of their wee, playful hearts, I find myself muttering, “I wish I got that excited about anything anymore.” Pessimist!

Or am I? Because being an adult means much of your everyday life will be rife with pain, frustration, irritability, or downright cynicism. Perhaps disorders or even mild impairment from these depressive symptoms aren’t the problems, but are manifestations of what we’re truly struggling with: accepting the gradient of human experience. The quote I’ve included as the subheading for today’s piece encapsulates this idea. It’s entirely possible to acknowledge the positivity of a situation while closely monitoring and preparing for the negative. And willful ignorance of that which is icky? I’d argue this is a greater demonstration of “believing that bad things will happen” than simply accepting bad news is always a possibility.

I heard a statistic recently which cited a need for 3% of the American populace to have to be licensed therapists to supply the demand for mental health disorders. The estimated population of the United States is currently 335 million people, which implies 10 million needing to become licensed clinicians to supposedly make a dent in our One Nation, Under Therapy. To illustrate the impossibility of this: between mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, social workers, and substance-and-drug-rehab counselors, we have about 811,000 licensed professionals. Now what?

Instead of demanding we license more professionals to meet an ever-increasing need, I propose a radical shift in understanding mental distress. The rise in mental illness, with depression and anxiety reigning supreme across all age brackets, genders, and even socioeconomic status, is born of our intolerance for reality. We recognize that a fetish for optimism is about as equally damaging as simply being a sad sack, but we’re still unsure how to strike a thoughtful balance between accepting the difficulties of life while preserving hope for a better future. My one suggestion is to learn to become “happy” with being unhappy. And It doesn’t even require a professional!

1. Pause more often. To become accepting means we must first become aware, and to become aware, we need to slow the hell down and get in tune with our everyday behavior. This is an argument for some form of continued practice in mindfulness/meditation.

2. Choose a behavior you regularly engage in that you’d like to change. Your task is to first become aware of whenever you’re about to engage in the behavior, and proceed to complete 60 seconds of box breathing every single time you catch yourself. Getting annoying? Good! That’s the point. Change does not feel good. It will never feel good.

3. Expect negativity, discomfort, and distress in your day-to-day life. Instead of desperate attempts to reframe them as “learning opportunities” or “teachable moments” or some brand of grit fetish, just sit still with the gunk. Don’t try to fix it, argue it, ruminate or rehash. Sit there. I find it helpful to say, out loud, “Huh!” when I’m tempted to overreact to something (like this morning when my sourdough bread didn’t rise in the oven.)

4. Understand that feeling “better” does not mean you’re improving--- or that feeling “bad” does not imply you’re doing something wrong. This is why myself and so many others have dropped out of mindfulness practices: it doesn’t “feel right”, we don’t “feel centered”, our “thoughts go all over”, we “can’t relax or find peace.” These are commercial, brilliantly-marketed-but-inaccurate concepts of mindfulness. It does not feel cathartic or calming in the moment, and it is not supposed to. Expect that it will feel wildly uncomfortable (see #3), commit to practicing regardless, and reap the benefits only after consistent practice despite the feelings.

5. If you’re someone who does not know how to respond to someone else’s negative remarks, so usually reverts to saying something like “Don’t say that!” or “Stop it!”… YOU stop it. Maybe you simply respond with “huh!” when someone says something to you. How does that feel?

I’d love to hear your experiences with these experiments, as usual, and please feel free to use some of the free resources I’ve put on the website!

www.mindyourmotion.info

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I take an unconventional approach to treatment. And by “unconventional”, I mean common sense, common sense which is largely condemned in mental health and behavioral health fields. When I first suggested a student with social anxiety be required to take public speaking, her treatment team responded, “Won’t that just make her anxiety like, so much worse?” This was nearly 5 years ago, right as the tide turned toward likening mental illness to Pokémon cards. Our delusion has grown worse since then.

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One feature of academic dialogue is the advent of AI, the general decay of universities, and how technology is destroying young peoples’ personalities and learning. I’m unsure these conversations are constructive in that a profound focus on fear rarely tends to end in solutions. Continuing to talk about how med students are getting through med school via ChatGPT, for example, is a futile endeavor. Is it imperative we understand any problem thoroughly should we hope to develop a solution? Of course. But we must not mistake complaining about a problem for solution-focused action toward resolving the problem. Bitching is the ultimate social enchanter, casting a spell of productivity or catharsis without any proof of outcome that the spell is working its magic.

ChatGPT isn’t being used as a tool to enhance thinking, but to replace it. For those with sense, this is a dilemma which has culminated year after year with each technological advancement. In our understanding of how swiftly technology advances, though, is it realistic to assume that fear-stricken discussions of AI’s command are beneficial? Will they move us closer to healthier alternatives? Have we seen positive changes in literacy skills or academic skill acquisition through slowly-increasing removal of “EdTech”? Can young people make eye contact with another professional and speak clearly and respectfully? While school primarily serves the supposed purpose of acquiring foundational numeracy, literacy, and thinking skills, it also provides valuable social lessons. These fringe benefits, like critical thinking, conflict resolution, and perspective-taking, cannot occur if social exchanges are replaced with screens--- of if their teachers aren’t modeling the skills.

Jonathan Haidt, much of whose work I deeply respect, has gained traction with his plan to ‘Free the Anxious Generation’--- by getting phones out of schools. This is, according to his book and theory, the linchpin in turning around our nation’s “mental health crisis.” While I agree that smart phones have removed countless opportunities for social and intellectual growth, as mentioned earlier, I’m not entirely sold on the notion that their removal will guarantee improved well-being. This lends a hand to a deeper portion of the matter: that people do not seem to know how to teach critical thinking, perspective taking, or conflict resolution, as they’ve opted out of these opportunities in their own lives. Even in the absence of all technological devices, we’re not born with the ability to think clearly, let alone teach this art to a group of wide-eyed whipper snappers with attitude problems and Asperger’s-like social skills.

With this in mind, I propose a stupidly-simple avenue toward combatting the cheaters and the socially inept: require only in-class, written essays and oratory exams. It will certainly take more time on the part of the student and the educator. It may also aggravate or “trigger” the students who have grown accustomed to deciding for themselves what brand of “hard thing” they’re willing to tolerate in their personal, professional, and academic lives. This is expected and certainly not a cue to stop your efforts. No form of mastery arrives devoid of difficulty, and that which does is not mastery, but entertainment.

I’ve taught hundreds of undergraduates using this method and have had only one student across the years drop my class--- and this was before I’d even written this requirement into my syllabus. Must have been a personality mismatch. While some griped about my teaching methods (i.e., I do not follow textbooks, rote schedules for learning, and I do not post predictable notes so the kids can passively ‘learn’), I’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback about my “style”. As educators or people responsible for instilling virtuous behavior in the next generation, it’s imperative we first understand how the human mind works, and how our behavior is largely shaped by arbitrary cultural expectations, norms, and shifts.

First of all, modern culture has taught us that any slight hint of the word “no” is to be immediately honored without question, sans a trace of skepticism. This bold verbal stand is the person’s “choice”. But what if we didn’t take “no” as a sacred permission slip to avoid all that we dislike? And since when did people paying to be educated or mentored or coached become the arbiters of rulings regarding discomfort? If it were the case that young people were competent to make choices for their own self-betterment, we would not need schools, coaches, parents, pediatricians, or child psychologists. People paying to be educated (let’s specifically focus on K-12 students), whether financially or simply through their attendance, should expect that their educator is not at the whim of their insecurities. This entitlement, although sadly normalized, is not lost on me. But do not think for a moment it’s something we, the adults, must submit to.

What if we tell our students, respectfully, “Thanks for sharing, but I wasn’t asking”? There are such things as expected behaviors and standards, and hurt feelings are poor metrics to use in deciding what those standards should be. To behave virtuously is to do so when we least want to and when we feel least prepared to do so; that is what makes it virtuous. We’ve fallen into an emotional trap of asking permission to be authoritative, as if the people relying on us to guide them are equal to us in their pursuit of growth. This is not true and never has been true. I realize it’s a noble idea, that children are “allies” or “partners” or even “friends”. They are not, and you will not help them with this idea in mind. Ever. Their hatred of public speaking, or even your own, is irrelevant. To be an adult of substance is to be an adult that gets over themselves.

I have friends at more progressive universities who are told they must accommodate all of their students’ discomforts and unreasonable requests, including “don’t call on me in class because I get anxious,” or “I get triple the test taking time because I have anxiety” or even “I have a full-time job so I want an extension on my paper.” These students do not need an accommodation--- they need a public speaking requirement and a cognitive kick in the pants. The same goes for most forms of the modern “accommodate and sedate” paradigm: we amplify how good an initiative feels versus understanding how it relates to our goals. Our goals as educators, therapists, coaches, or even parents is not to help the next generation feel good, especially if doing so comes at the expense of any form of personal growth. Our overarching value is, I hope, that of instilling cardinal virtues in the next generation so they behave as aligned, self-composed, self-aware individuals who do not feel entitled to request the world tailor its day-to-day to their irrational fears.

Oratory exams are a wonderful start, specifically for those educators who have reached out to me asking for advice on how to stop their students from using ChatGPT for all of their assignments. I frequently implement Peter Boghossian’s Street Epistemology (SE) to foster back-and-forth conversations about any topic of mine or the students’ choosing. SE is simple: a claim statement is made, such as, “Fast food should come with warning labels”, and participants are required to rate their beliefs on a scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. In the natural divergence of opinions, educators model how to employ Socratic-based, open-ended questions to gain a better understanding of why someone may agree or disagree with the claim statement. In regards to education and learning itself, here is an oral prompt that you can provide to your students or staff:

“Is it more important to teach you all (students) what to think, or how to think?”

Socratic Probes:

· Is it possible to teach information without shaping someone’s beliefs?

· Are facts neutral, in and of themselves?

· How does the current education system reflect your view?

Students are expected to prepare a 3-5 minute opening argument in response to the prompt, a prompt they are not given ahead of time. They are permitted to prepare their argument for 10-15 minutes as soon as it’s delivered at the beginning of class; this is the only instance in which use of technology is permitted. When it’s “go-time”, though… no PowerPoints. No bullet points given to the students listening. Paper to pencil, pencil to speech.

Public speaking and oratory exams are not only beneficial in that they teach us to speak more persuasively, but it builds a person’s belief in their ability to engage people and lead them toward alternative thinking. The more we age, the more difficult it is to sway our beliefs. To motivate divergent thinking, then, is crucial should we hope to reform or revolutionize any institution, theory, or practice. In expected succession comes critical feedback or even hostile skepticism, all to be expected when we present ideas that diverge from the social norm. In repeated practice under these in-situ, potentially high-stress, high-pressure, on-the-spot conflicts, students better learn to manage symptoms of adrenaline or anxiety--- and overcome them with an audience. Want to build confidence in your kid? Make them talk in front of people. Ditch the therapist.

In the same vein as psychological adaptation, oratory exams ultimately desensitize students to rejection and failure, two aspects of being social creatures that forge avoidance far into adulthood, for some. I still receive emails, texts, and calls from professionals who ask for advice as to how best to manage negative reactions or “hate”. It’s become abundantly clear to me throughout the years as a clinician who is out of practice in their oratory and emotional regulation skills. Employers clearly don’t see these as virtues.

To further enhance the benefits of public speaking, I propose a mass revival of the written essay. On a surface, executive functioning level, the slower speed of handwriting versus typing forces us to better organize our thoughts. This dually functions as a buffer against plagiarizing and idea-shopping on the Internet. Further, without apps and computer functions like Grammarly, spell-check, or predictive text, the student is forced to refine these skills as they go along. Repetition rewires the brain, and such repetition builds stronger neural pathways--- for better or for worse. Choose your repetition wisely!

Handwriting, in my clinical opinion, is a complete non-negotiable. It’s both fascinating and baffling that schools still feel compelled to provide Chromebook-and-Wi-Fi-access-only assignments and proceed to complain that their students are passive, fragile, and seemingly unfit to think independently. I’m not a teacher, so perhaps I’m speaking out of turn on this matter. But I am a former college instructor, and my students hand-wrote nearly every single assignment given--- in tandem with debate practice, frequent technology-free class discussions, and final projects which require speaking in front of their peers. Our adult minds must shake off the rust of avoiding opportunities to think clearly. It is our moral obligation to help students understand the urgency in communicating ideas without using their feelings as yardsticks.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. It’s best, then, to go do things worth writing about.

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The semantic shape-shifting can, though, result in a drive to change behavior. People with a cynical disposition may benefit from swapping “I have to” to “I get to”, or even beginning each day with a statement like, “Today will be a good one.” Or, at worst, “Today will not be a bad one.” There’s ample evidence to suggest that behaving “as if” (that is, acting as if you already possess the mindset or trait of the person you want to be), even if we’re not entirely sold on the new identity, can influence the rate of positive thoughts and desirable behaviors. In the words of philosopher William James, “emotions follow behavior”. We cannot think ourselves to an improved life much like watching Tiger Woods golf will always fail to improve our swing. “The work” is in the doing, not the reframing or the talking about the doing. Also imperative to consider is our belief about our abilities. To behave “as if” is not “faking it until you make it” or a psychological sleight of hand. It’s merely accepting the possibility that you can be different. It technically is a form of “reframing”.

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When “positive reframing” goes awry is when it’s used as a substitution for accepting a problem. With reframes hellbent on generating “positive spins”, we end up putting our effort, energy, and attention toward a reality that may not be entirely rational or even accurate---- which most often results in irrational responding. Yes, you did eat that enormous Crumbl cookie and yes, a thousand calories of sugar and butter is bad for you. Yes, there are such things as bad foods, regardless of the frequency or volume, and no, moderation is not an attainable, measurable goal for the large majority who have no awareness as to how much they’re consuming on a day-to-day basis, let alone how to measure “moderation” based on that amount. Failure to accept these truths leads only to repeated, poor outcomes.

And to spend time trying to contort reality to one that stings less not only wastes that precious time we’ve so carefully managed--- but it disincentivizes change. To overly plan for the future so as to cushion the blow of uncertainty is one of the hallmark symptoms of anxiety disorders, although this symptom is masked as “self-reflection”, “self-help”, or “doing the work.” Analysis is good, but like anything else, even too much of a good thing can be… well… bad.

Thoughts influence emotions which influence behaviors, and double-vice-versa. It’s both the beauty and the tragedy of the mind-body connection. Somatic symptoms, like butterflies in our stomach or shaking hands, can trigger thoughts about a possible panic attack, which can cause us to reach for the Xanax or repeatedly call our husband for reassurance. That same pounding heart we accept as normal during a mile-run time trial suddenly becomes problematic when we’re in a supposed state of relaxation. The context in which we experience symptoms certainly plays a role in why they continue to occur, even more so than factors like genetics or our upbringings. Unfortunately and largely because of our culture, we tend to attribute struggles to more profound meanings: childhood, parenting, genetic dispositions to mental illness. In doing so, we actively dismiss the direct environmental factors largely within our control.

While I suppose telling ourselves we’re in a “slower season of life” fares emotionally better off than reminding ourselves we’re a pathetic loser with hypocritical tendencies, at the end of the day, the compassionate reminder still tends not to result in behavior change. We can remind ourselves we’re pathetic losers with hypocritical tendencies, or we can gently remind ourselves we’re simply in a slower season of life… but our behavior suggests that the reframe didn’t do much other than leave us with a fleeting sense of relief. It’s the same reason why people leave motivational speeches feeling inspired only to return to their everyday habits and routines, or relocate across the country for a “fresh start” only to find that their problems have followed them there. Because the issue was never their hometown or their house.

It’s imperative we recognize this: feeling better momentarily or even acutely does not imply any growth has occurred.Individuals with anxiety, for example, rely on their own series of crutches to help relieve discomfort of their symptoms. Relief from uncomfortable symptoms, which sometimes function as compelling evidence that our tactics are “working”, is what reinforces the idea that we’re in danger.

There are a few forms of avoidance that we all engage in from time to time, none of which require professional intervention or even much of a change. For the sake of this piece, though, we’ll focus on those repeated rituals that impair an individual’s quality of life. Below are the most common forms of avoidance I see that are inadvertently taught by professionals, parents, and educators.

1. SITUATIONAL AVOIDANCE

* Definition: Avoiding specific situations or places that trigger anxiety.

* Examples:

* Avoiding social situations, like work gatherings, public speaking events, parties.

* Not going to a certain store or restaurant.

2. COGNITIVE AVOIDANCE

* Definition: Avoiding thoughts or memories that cause distress.

* Examples:

* Rehashing negative events and dwelling on negative thoughts instead of addressing the thoughts.

* Avoiding talking about, reading about, or listening to topics that trigger anxiety.

3. PROTECTIVE AVOIDANCE

* Definition: Using actions to create a sense of safety or security in the environment.

* Examples:

* Excessively cleaning or organizing to feel in control.

* Seeking constant reassurance from others.

* Micromanaging others’ behavior.

4. SOMATIC AVOIDANCE

* Definition:

Avoiding situations that elicit physical sensations associated with anxiety, like a pounding heart, tightening of the chest, or shaking of the hands.

* Examples:

* Avoiding exercise or activities that can increase heart rate.

* Avoiding situations/places that trigger a panic attack.

* Avoiding specific foods or drinks that might cause a physical reaction.

5. SUBSTITUTION AVOIDANCE

* Definition:

Replacing uncomfortable feelings with other, more acceptable feelings or behaviors.

* Examples:

* Substituting anger, sadness, or negative emotions with “positive spins”.

* Using alcohol, drugs, or prescription pills to “numb out” anxiety.

* Engaging in excessive social media use to avoid addressing uncomfortable feelings.

6. SOCIAL AVOIDANCE

* Definition:

Avoiding social situations and interactions out of fear of negative evaluation or rejection.

* Examples:

* Refusing to initiate conversations.

* Only sharing thoughts and ideas publicly if they fall in line with a specific, acceptable narrative.

* Withdrawing from social activities and relationships.

7. SAFETY BEHAVIORS

* Definition: Engaging in specific behaviors to reduce or avoid anxiety in a situation.

* Examples:

* Taking a Xanax before you’re about to go into a potentially nerve-wracking situation.

* Sitting in the back of a classroom so you’re not called on.

* Over-preparing on a task that should take a short amount of time to avoid making a mistake.

* Not asking for feedback because of fear of criticism.

Some of these examples may resonate with you, and it’s possible you find yourself engaging in multiple forms of avoidance. This is acceptable--- you needn’t avoid this truth. We all employ a series of avoidance rituals from time to time, often times without conscious awareness. The key to overcoming such escapism is quite simple: it is to repeatedly expose yourself to that which you’re afraid of. There is literally no other way around it. You will never, and I repeat, never overcome feelings of nervousness or anxiety if you refuse to confront the very symptoms, locations, situations, or thoughts that trigger it in the first place.

Below, I’ve outlined strategies for each form of avoidance that I give as “homework assignments” to all of my students. You don’t need a professional behaviorist or psychologist to stand alongside you during these assignments. You only need to arm yourself with the belief that you’re capable of handling difficulty, and that nobody ever died from having a panic attack.

SITUATIONAL AVOIDANCE

* Definition: Avoiding specific situations or places that trigger anxiety.

* YOUR ANTIDOTE:

* Identify what sort of situation you’re avoiding, and immerse yourself in that situation. Breathe and do not leave: breathe in for 4 counts through your nose, hold for 4 counts, and exhale out of pursed lips for 4. Leave the situation only after your symptoms of anxiety have subsided.

COGNITIVE AVOIDANCE

* Definition: Avoiding thoughts or memories that cause distress.

* YOUR ANTIDOTE:

* Find a topic that interests you, and read an article written by someone whose stance you find repugnant. Yes, repugnant. As you listen, only highlight those points which you find common ground with.

SOMATIC AVOIDANCE

* Definition:

Avoiding situations that elicit physical sensations associated with anxiety, like a pounding heart, tightening of the chest, or shaking of the hands.

* YOUR ANTIDOTE:

* If you’re a current exerciser, run, bike, row, or do burpees for 45 seconds at a vigorous effort. Try to only inhale and exhale through your nose during your recovery. Repeat.

SOCIAL AVOIDANCE

* Definition:

Avoiding social situations and interactions out of fear of negative evaluation or rejection.

* YOUR ANTIDOTE:

* Write down your honest thoughts on a topic or contentious issue, and repeat them out loud in the privacy of your own home. Find one person to share them with, and share them without throat-clearing statements like, “I know you may not agree with this, but…” or “Okay so this may be an unpopular opinion, but…”.

SAFETY BEHAVIORS

* Definition: Engaging in specific behaviors to reduce or avoid anxiety in a situation.

* YOUR ANTIDOTE:

* Ask for constructive criticism from people who will give you objective, honest feedback. Not your best friend or your Mom.

* If you rely on notes because you’re scared of sharing your thoughts publicly, force yourself to give an impromptu speech for 3 minutes on a random topic. No starting over. Record yourself and critique it.

These only serve as a small portion of the interventions I’ve used with myself and with past clients. Exposure therapy via “opposite action” strategies like the ones I’ve outlined are how I weaned myself off of Klonopin without any sort of medical guidance, and how I overcame panic disorder without a psychotherapist, psychiatrist, or psychologist. To be clear, I do not recommend anyone detox or wean themselves from psychiatric medications without professional consult and ongoing supervision. Many of these drugs are prescribed with little to no explanation as to their addictiveness and the danger in weaning, and the taper needs to be painfully gradual.

All in all, it's time we bring back the Bad News Bears. We can simply tell children “no” without redirecting them to 75 different distractors or changing our language so they don’t feel rejection. Life is rife with rejection. We can also stick to our routines despite feeling angry, exhausted, overwhelmed, or stressed. Such is life. And for God’s sake, you can understand that you behave the way you do because Mom and Dad ignored you as a kid, but it is still entirely your responsibility and your moral duty to behave like a self-composed adult. As mentioned earlier, the context in which we behave in the annoying ways we do matters more than the reasons why.

So get out there and put your irrational bullshit to the test.

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While the presence of an audience for any task seems to induce a psychobiological stress response in most any human, it’s important we remember that events in and of themselves are not stressful. Epictetus reminds us, “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us.” This certainly rang true when I began my path toward complete abstinence from benzodiazepines. I misattributed every physiological felt-sense to that of a panic attack, even when the physiological changes were normal and expected ebbs and flows of the human body. The slightest flutter of my heart or even an off-kilter flickering of an overhead light signaled to my brain that a panic attack was festering, and that my only resource to manage this discomfort was a fat dose of Klonopin. It took years (nearly 15, to be exact) to rewire my brain toward a more functional understanding of how “fear of fear” actually works--- and what the human mind can handle if you just allow it to show you, without the crutches.

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We’ve been taught from young ages, through modeling via our own parents or in “social emotional” lessons during school, that stress is a potent entity which warrants robust intervention should we hope to manage it. Pharmaceutical ads reveal man’s greatest weakness: our unwillingness to tolerate discomfort of any variety. It is no wonder, then, that Klonopin and other benzodiazepines (the most common and well-known being Xanax) are quickly rising to the notoriety of opioids, with some even claiming benzos to be the “new opioid epidemic”.

The modern method to “stress management” sends a clear message to consumers: stress is threatening, even damaging, and you must rid yourself of its iron grip. There is little mention of an alternative to this swift elimination of feeling, or that the feeling itself is not, in fact, dangerous. To again cite advertisements and mainstream media, stress is referenced as “the ultimate silent killer” and a leading cause of death, trailing close behind heart disease and cancer.

This messaging, to me, misses the mark. And I’m not only referring to pharmaceutical ads, but to the entire language orbiting the American concept of “stress”. It’s ever more urgent that we reappraise our perceptions to those more adaptive and functional should we hope to reclaim resilience in ourselves and our youth. The victimhood mindset, now widely acknowledged as maladaptive and destructive to personal growth, had its rightful days across headlines, but I fear we’re failing to teach others to actively revalue their own capacities for coping. More important than the situational factors which “stress us out” are our beliefs around our resourcefulness, our strength, and our ability to deal with stress. Sure, the identitarian games that are the victim Olympics are profoundly hurtful to emotional development. But elimination of the games without a strong replacement framework will leave people ripe for another damaging mental health trend. The beliefs have to change, not just the words or the circumstances.

To further bring context to the importance of our beliefs, we revisit the hell that was the TSST. The test was used as a baseline assessment for individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). All participants with SAD were clinically diagnosed as having the disorder based on a psychological evaluation conducted by a trained professional, and they were chosen specifically because of their sharp aversion to social judgement. In the study, as is the case in most psychological studies, there were multiple treatment groups: a control group, and two groups each given their own intervention.

One of the intervention groups was told to ignore their anxiety and behave as if it were not affecting them negatively---or at all. No further explanation was provided after this instruction. The other intervention group was given a “mindset protocol”. The protocol was simple: embrace the stress. Stress, while uncomfortable, researchers informed them, and I’m paraphrasing, is not harmful, and it’s imperative we remember this when we feel the urge to discharge ourselves of it. Not only will it not hurt us or even our performance, but it may enhance our focus and our attention. Participants in the mindset protocol were essentially primed to respond differently to sensations they had long-since considered warning shots.

The researchers proceeded to explain the phenomenon further, and again I’m paraphrasing: “In this sense, any of the physiological sensations that arise from stress are subtle reminders that your body is preparing for peak performance.”To marvel at the human body and its abilities, and to value the spectacle that is the mind-body connection, participants re-committed to completing the TSST, replete with a new attitude and demeanor. Not only did their “fight or flight response” transform into a “challenge” response (analyzed via samples of cortisol in their saliva that was collected throughout the experiment), their performance was graded by outsiders as exuding confidence and self-assuredness. Nobody knew they had Social Anxiety Disorder. They actually showed fewer symptoms of social anxiety than individuals in the control group, who did not report any clinical diagnoses at the outset of the study. This study stands as a powerful counter to those who believe simple interventions are only for those with mild symptoms or problems. Perhaps the complexity of treatment and the medicalization of common sense is just another belief we’ve adopted without thoroughly analyzing its reliability.

Further, what does this study say about our mind’s stupefying power in altering our physiology? If you’re unconvinced, allow me to demonstrate this miracle with a closer-to-home example than the TSST. Imagine you’re in your kitchen cooking dinner for your family. You rifle through a junk drawer of degraded cooking tools and grab a flimsy, overused oven mitt to retrieve the Dutch oven from the stove. In a slurry of obscenities and squeals, you yank your hand back from the handle. It was hot! Hotter than you thought, especially since you’re at least somewhat protected by the oven mitt. Your body detected threat, and your mind quickly informed your brain and, in turn, your hand to recoil. Ouch.

Now imagine you’re carrying this Dutch oven of shredded beef and garlic potatoes about 15 feet to your dining room table, where 12 hungry guests are now fixed upon what you’re carrying toward them. “Oh my god, that smells sooooo good!” they coo, eyes anchored to the bubbling pot of delicious heat. You feel the handles burning your hands through the tattered threads of the mitts, although the context is different; we’ve added the factor that are several sets of anticipatory eyes and stomachs. Similar to the TSST, they serve as the stimulus which induces a set of psychobiological stress. Because people are relying on you, you’re able to dial down the yank-and-scream response to that of moving fast and holding on for dear life despite the burning. How? Context and reappraisal of your beliefs. To reiterate: you’d be surprised what you’re able to tolerate.

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is how to better handle criticism, negative feedback, or any adversarial exchange. I do understand the compulsion to reduce the suffering that comes with hearing about how much you suck, but it’s important we realize this is the wrong question to ask--- and it acts to preserve our insecurities. Any time we make a concerted effort to rid ourselves of suffering, we’re relinquishing our control to that very thing, be it a person, an ideology, an idea. The question is not how to suffer less, it is how to suffer better. And if you’ve been a reader since the beginning, you know I’m a major proponent of “baptism by fire”: get out there and share your ideas. I shared this in my last piece! If a clinically socially anxious person can find it within them to stand convicted despite fear, you can too.

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The movie Fight Club forces its audience to confess the sins of their egos: hyper-consumerism, corporate fervor, and insistence on things being easy. One scene stuck out in particular as I watched the classic for the first time recently: Brad Pitt, who plays a quirky soap salesman named Tyler Durden, holds a convenience store shift worker at gunpoint in the store’s parking lot. We think Durden will demand money from the till or from the man’s wallet, but something profound happens. He asks the man, trembling on his knees, what he always wanted to do for a living. Imagine that! The honesty with which you outline your life’s purpose being a matter of life or death.

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Durden forces a commitment, of sorts, which requires the man to pursue his life-long dream of being a veterinarian instead of eroding from the inside out, working his mindless job that is ringing up cigarettes and managing drunks. Durden provides a strict timeline, requiring the man to begin the schooling required, and to abandon his very stable yet purposeless cashier-gig, within a week’s time.

I tried to picture what I’d do if I was put in a similar situation. How sad is it that our lives being threatened is what it would take for us to achieve Maslow’s concept of self-actualization? The highest peak on our hierarchy of needs is “self-actualization”, that which is only achievable after we’ve secured things like food, water, sex, meaningful relationships, and even social recognition. According to Maslow, self-actualization isn’t achieved in step-like fashion; we do not simply step into enlightenment by virtue of our age or our distress or our traumas. To be fully “actualized” is to unabashedly understand the self, to accept oneself for those traits which cannot be changed but to pursue betterment regardless.

The self-actualized is a journey, rather than an endpoint, of personal development characterized by living truthfully and standing strong in the face of moral (and sometimes physical) danger. As Fight Club demonstrates through Edward Norton’s character, many of us wait far too long to evaluate ourselves, or we grow too defensive to understand the missing link in our personal pursuits. We proceed to sleep through our absurd existence that is mindless, vapid small talk; receiving and sending of emails only to email people back telling them you received their email; holding urgent meetings about the urgency of having meetings; splitting hairs with clients over whether or not an additional 30 minutes will suddenly launch them into their progress which has stalled for a decade.

A mom I work with for my “real job” recently asked me if I enjoy my work. If I’m being frank, I internally recoiled at the question. It put me in a strange position, mostly because I talk publicly so often about the total scam that is behavioral health and most psychotherapy, in tandem with my hatred for insurance-funded work. While I adore the family, the forced work of billing for what is essentially babysitting is in no way, shape, or form fulfilling. I do not like it--- not even a little. But you know what? Building character means committing to that which is dread-worthy and, sometimes, painful. I imagine reframing my perspective on these endless sessions, and maybe even trying to find something new or fresh about them, will result in some form of actualization down the line. While I’ll never be one to “put a positive spin on things” just for the sake of hollow optimism, I do believe this is building my character in ways that’ll only reveal themselves as I mature.

“Oh, I love it.” I responded plainly. Sometimes shit is just not worth the effort to explain. Being an adult means occasionally lying to people if honesty is not worth the effort. Now how many therapists are willing to tell you that?

I care about most other people, and I couldn’t imagine telling this poor woman, “You know, I really hate my job. Sorry if that means I, by proxy, hate you, your daughter, and your husband, but I really get nothing from all this other than a paycheck. Same time next week?” Yup. Love it. So rewarding. Where is a shirtless Brad Pitt when you need him?

Fight Club illustrates in its quirky, roundabout, somewhat tangential manner how desperately we fall into the blind obedience of everyday work life, thinking stability is what drives us forward, that life is meant for hustling and investing and saving and crunching numbers, that spending is both the bane of our existence and as fundamental to our wellbeing as our organs. Do I pursue a passion and hope it doesn’t eventually become a job? Do I remain a miserable employee who at least gets paid a very comfortable, consistent paycheck to do next to nothing? I suppose the answers are different depending on what your values are. They’re also entirely amenable to change as we age and our priorities shift with the times.

Modernity and its luxuries may offer a wider array of choice (i.e., you can choose from over 85 flavors of Oreos alone), but neither have succeeded in helping us live out those values closest to our cores. We cannot have hobbies because we medicalize them through unrelenting tracking of them, optimizing them, comparing them to faceless hobbies of others on Reddit threads and public posting boards discussing the trials and the tribulations of said hobby. Why have no-strings-attached fun when you can optimize fun?

But there is no optimal, because we’re dysfunctional and strange and irrational people whose perceptions change too frequently to try to measure with any sort of accuracy. Maybe life is as simple as Durden claims it to be: "The things you own end up owning you." Our accumulation and supposed ownership of information or material possessions only makes us slaves to them. It’s a tale as old as time, since the era of Epictetus and his insistence on events or things themselves not being problems, but our thoughts which make them so.

Perhaps I’m yet another millennial shmuck yearning for the fairytale that is a cabin on the countryside, detached from the hustle and bustle and worried only about my crops and my cows. But if not for my coveted membership in the warm, infected pool that is the social compost heap of the human race… what would I worry about? Would I become worried that I wasn’t worried about anything? How would my time be occupied if not for the routine I’ve grown so accustomed to; that is, complaining about the stupidity of my job but proceeding to do it to the best of my ability? How else would I complain to people I love about trivial matters until they’re as miserable as I am?

The angst that is dependence on an employer has bred bottomless motivation to start my own business, to “be the change” that elementary school posters remind us to be, to mouth off to authority in a way just tactful enough to keep the paychecks coming. With this endeavor in mind… Am I even capable of living slowly when it hasn’t been something I’ve ever found comfort in? And, alas, I’ve revealed what is man’s learned virtue: comfort. Sure, your day-to-day is riddled with pointless blubbering and analysis and decision-making. But isn’t that still easier than, say, bringing your “dream life” to fruition?

This most recent season of White Lotus was a tad slow for my liking, but entertaining nonetheless. Much like Piper’s realization in the final episode of the show, if you’re a watcher… What if it’s easier for us to dream of disconnection just like we dream about our dream life? Stated differently: what if the comfort in our sub-par existence and keeping our ambitions at arms-length is just another form of avoidance we’ve commodified as goal-setting? By all means, you color-code that calendar and map out precisely every possible wrong-turn you can take for the next 9 years with medical-grade precision, all while reminding people how “busy” you are. But much like rapid consumption of self-help books often results in the same outcome that is zero action toward self-help, we hoard more information than we bother to apply, and our “dreams” and “aspirations” are no different.. Fight Club made me wonder if I’m no different.

Piper, the daughter to very wealthy parents in the series, has inherited a life of fathomless ease, devoid of seemingly any financial worry. Sure, money cannot buy happiness, perse--- but to break free from the stipulations that are financial woes is a glee indescribable unless you’ve experienced it. It is this exact reason that she seeks emotional asylum in Thailand, within the walls of a monk-like retreat at a meditation center which intentionally nixes phones, cars, nice houses, and nearly any permanent product of modernity. After Piper spends only one night in the meditation center at her mother’s urging to “just see how it is,”, she ruefully admits to her parents the following morning that she’s weaker than she thought. Her dream-life only felt dreamy in frenzied glimpses through the glory hole of her mind.

At first, she griped about seemingly trivial details: the food, which “wasn’t organic and vegetarian”; the box-like room with a stained mattress and zero air conditioning. The Buddhist monastery revealed to Piper what she thought she’d outgrown or transcended: a fetish. A fetish for solace, a lust for only those challenges which are still within the realm of comfort and familiarity. As tears well, she states, “I know, I KNOW I shouldn’t become attached to these things… I don’t know… I think I am. I KNOW I am… The idea that I’m this princess that needs things to be a certain way is just… pathetic.” Her mother looks on in smug contentment, knowing full-well (and admitting earlier in the season) that she is unwilling to live an uncomfortable life. She claims she’s “just not cut out for it.”

I wonder if this would be the case for me, or for you. I did not grow up wealthy by any means. We were staunchly middle-class. But we reveled in any and all the American amenities we could afford, those which developing countries like Thailand could only visualize as meditative fables.

Much like it’s easier to wait for others to “be the change” rather than changing circumstances ourselves, filtering our day-to-day for simplicity is another thing that we seem to want others to do, or that we just want to talk about doing versus actually doing. Optimization is not progress, we’re realizing, but neither is talking about how much less we can get by on all while refusing to actually try to get by on less. It’s similar to voyeurism in that peeping through tiny glimpses into slow, country living are just enough for us to drudge through another overly complicated day, longing for the next forbidden glimpse. I’d love to do that one of these days, we say with a nonchalance we know is bullshit. But this is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time (another gem from Fight Club.)

On a large enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero. How’s that for mindful? Choose your minutes wisely.

YOUR THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS TO CONSIDER…

The Mirrorfeed Protocol

Scenario: In the near future, a company releases a wearable device called Mirrorfeed—a mindfulness enhancer that reflects your mental state back to you in real time. It visualizes your thoughts, feelings, and attention patterns via an AR interface—beautiful fractals for clarity, static and glitches for distraction.

Everyone wants to be seen as "present."

But:What begins as a personal feedback tool becomes a social status symbol. People start curating their internal experiences, manipulating their own attention not to be mindful, but to look mindful. Mindfulness becomes performance.

Thought Experiment:If you’re aware of your awareness because you want others to see it, is it still yours? At what point does self-awareness become another mask?

The Delete Key

Scenario: A near-future mindfulness tool allows you to erase distracting or painful thoughts permanently—regret, cravings, anxiety, intrusive memories. You just press a button, and the thought dissolves.

At first, it’s therapeutic. But then you notice:You’ve stopped growing. You’ve become a flat, polished version of yourself. Nothing sticks. No lesson hurts enough to change you.

Thought Experiment:Are unpleasant thoughts distractions—or messages? If you delete them all, are you present—or are you hollow?

Fincher Twist: You eventually meet someone who remembers your original self. You don’t recognize them. You smile politely as security removes them from your curated life.

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Instead of asking, “How can I be happy, me, and only me?” we ask, “What would guarantee my misery?” Instead of asking, “How can we create a sense of purpose and belonging?” we ask, “How do I make people feel unbearably lonely and disconnected from themselves/others/reality?”

Well, the first solution to the above problems would be to convince them that they’re the main character of the entire galaxy. This is about you, your “journey”, your “truth”, your “boundaries”, your needs—you, you, you boo-boo!

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Second, we’d teach them that being needed by other people is a burden, and that people depending on you are little more than energy-depleting losers with an ulterior motive that is derailing your very important “me journey”.

In our Wall-E-esque society, we’ve grossly misunderstood the role of service. We’ve diagnosed others as reliable depleters of our personal resources rather than crucial to our growth. True adulthood isn’t about self-optimization — it’s about self-sacrifice, purpose, and resilience through giving. We cannot allow wellness to become yet another form of commodified self-obsession.

Tragically, young people are taught that prioritizing their own “selfish needs” is imperative to living their coveted “truths”. The analogy that is the empty cup is used to illustrate the supposed moral collapse that is tending to the needs of others before we’ve managed to achieve contentment for ourselves. The empty-cup metaphor implies it’s personally damaging to help others if we’re struggling with our own nonsense, as if barely stumbling through everyday life is a new concept which requires optimal health and wellbeing.

I admittedly used to believe in these faulty frameworks; at its face, it makes sense that servicing others may be futile if we’re miserable. “You can’t make another person happy if you can’t make yourself happy,” pop-psychology gently reminds us. Women with young children tout their color-coded, jam-packed “me times” in their calendars as badges of boss-bitch virtue, proclaiming their liberation from the constraints that are pesky other human beings. I’ve long since resented this idea that others function mostly as obstacles to our personal pursuits, and our stunted social skills as grown adults further proves my point. Perhaps I’m just looking for that evidence which confirms my beliefs that we’re fucked if we continue to downplay the importance of other people in our ‘happiness’ pursuits.

To be courageous is to stand tall in the face of danger. Because our lives are riddled with both ease and safety (at least most of us, specifically those who have access to an iPhone or a computer to read this piece), “danger” is most likely social. Social dangers are those which we’ve witnessed across the past 4-5 years: publicly supporting a stance which is politically incorrect; showing preference for a candidate, idea, or entity that some have diagnosed as guilty of an “ism”; and, in some circles, assertive, direct, and honest face-to-face conversations. In the face of these potential moral injuries we’ve retreated to anonymous Google forms for “feedback” (i.e., professional tattle-taling) and rapid-fire text message exchanges “for those who don’t like confrontation.” Confrontation is not only what it means to be an adult, but it’s what solidifies our relationships. We are nothing without one another, and with one another inevitably comes conversational rifts. Pour me another, baby. Or don’t, because to replenish our resources usually means we’re committed to doing that which is uncomfortable despite feeling depleted. Hashtag adulting!

“Pouring from an empty cup” is the antidote which extracts meaning from our day-to-day lives. How important are we that we cannot spare a moment (or, gasp, several moments) for another person, even if it ends up being a complete inconvenience or waste of time? I’ve been guilty of ducking in my car if I sense my chatty neighbor will rope me into a 20-minute long conversation when I’ve already reached my quota for chit-chat in the first 4 hours of my day. I’ve also abruptly turned around in hallways at work to avoid catching a talkative colleague if I’m feeling particularly drained of the attention these exchanges typically require. The stealth nature of texting versus calling, or emailing versus in-person interaction, has rendered us brittle, somewhat useless social partners. How are we to become better at problem-solving, critical thinking, and connecting with others if we’re only willing to engage with them using methods that are convenient, fast, and effortless?

Perhaps a broader example of how aggressive narcissism reveals itself is our sense of duty to our parents. The talk of shaming our parents for abandoning their health and therefore burdening us as we age? I personally think it’s grotesque. When my parents call, I will bow out of any professional or personal endeavor to receive them. Seven years ago, I was the first person my Dad told over the phone that my brother had died. I was in the staff lounge at my mental health technician job and was laughing with co-workers while greeting him with the usual “Heeeeeey, Dad!” I then proceeded to tell my Mom, as my Dad couldn’t. Although I’ve always tended toward giving to others, the death of my brother reframed any ideas I’d had about what it meant to support others in their sorrow. Even if I was an only child, though, and had never experienced tragedy like my family has: how can we so candidly move our parents aside the moment they begin to suffer?

Our parents birthed us, fed us, allowed us to vomit in their hands. Mom repaired the fissures in my broken, teenage heart with only a hug and an “Oh, honey.” Dad forged a stoicism in me unshakable by most any hiccup through relentless reminders to cut the grass even when I fought him at every turn. Our parents lugged our whiny tushies around to sports practices and friends’ houses, all without Google calendars and adorable schedules, and socially numbed themselves in the presence of other asshole parents to demonstrate their support of our every desire. And we’re suddenly going to sit here and act like it’s not on us to provide for them as they age?

But Kayla!!! Enter the oxygen metaphor of how a mother cannot save her children in a plane plunging towards Earth unless she puts her oxygen mask on first. First of all, an extreme medical situation like this should not be used to justify ourselves and only ourselves. How often are any of us in moral dilemmas like these in which our children or our pets or our spouses must be considered as the sacrificial lambs? I’m yet to speak to a person who has had to make such an impossible decision.

Save the train-track-dilemma (i.e., save one person or save five people, you only get to spare one or the other), we’re left with decisions and everyday tasks of “adulting”: should we cut our workout short so we can get to work early to celebrate a co-worker’s baby? Do we suffer through an endless Sunday of Fantasy Football with our spouse instead of expanding our minds with podcasts of choice, shopping, and wine? On a more serious note: do we leave our parents and family to move to another state, which may offer greater financial gain and free time in our future? Do we stay with a spouse we’re miserable with in order to provide the stability and stability the children need as they age?

Being an adult means making hundreds of decisions from mild nuisances to those truly life-altering. Some are colossal failures people are left trying to repair for the remainder of their lives. Others seem more dramatic than they turn out being. Whether you’re a young adult or a mother of twelve, you will be faced with countless situations in which you must sacrifice your own wants, needs, energy, and time---- when your cup is empty or brimming with muddied shit-water. This is life, and it’s okay that this is life.

Maybe this perspective is an artifact from my upbringing. My Mom definitely tips more towards excessively concerned with how others view her, and my Dad is bordering on Scrooge-like indifference toward others and their perceptions. Together, they almost form a normal person (i.e., me). I’m largely unafraid of social consequences but am still affected by things I hear, things I read, things I see, and some criticisms.

I have gone out of my way to do ridiculous things for other people because I was too afraid to say no. Nothing happened to me other than kicking myself for saying “yes” again, telling myself I’d definitely reject these requests in the future and that I’d swear off anything mildly reeking of the same old shit. I’d go on to do it again and again and again, all of which would result in no greater or worse emotional state. Sure, some of my time was wasted, or I left a situation feeling as if I could’ve been doing something more enjoyable. But once again--- such is life.

Why do we make a mountain of doing things for other people? Is it not one of the great wonders of life to be of service to others? Yes, this can become pathological. I wrote recently about God complexes and how a perverse obsession with fixing others or micromanaging their pain states is more selfish than it is altruistic. But perhaps this also goes to show our pandemic that is narcissism: even helping people becomes a selfish pursuit aimed primarily at filling our own cup.

Be useful and help anyway. “Do it tired”, the gals say.

What I say? Refill the cup by tipping it.

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“You really need to make sure you’re not creating an unsafe environment.”

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These words of advice were given after I’d played Master of Puppets by Metallica on the ward’s PSA system and suggested the patients do laps down their fifty-meter hallway for the full 8 minutes and 36 seconds that was the song’s length. This would be their only form of movement throughout their entire stay. Me being the person I am, I laughed at the suggestion that the psychiatric unit would devolve into a bloody scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’d never again take behavioral health seriously, and this conviction has proven true even after two Master’s degrees in behavioral science and clinical psychology, five years as a licensed professional, and in working with hundreds of people with varying psychiatric illnesses and disabilities.

I need not prove my love for operations like DOGE, as I work in a field that needlessly bills obscene amounts of money to do little more than email back and forth and schedule meetings about meetings. This sounds like hyperbole; it is not. Below are examples of emails I’ve received in the past week (changed slightly in case they’re reading this---ha!):

“The only way that we’re all going to get on the same page is if we up the frequency of meetings. I’m thinking two times a week so we can meet and discuss getting on the same page.” A double-meeting about a meeting. How productive!

“We are going to create a safe space for people to talk about how the dismantling of the Department of Education might affect us.” Not a joke, not a thought experiment.

“Timothy [client named changed] threw out his apple and sandwich at lunch today. I wanted to share with you all at the group home to make sure you were aware he might be hungry when he gets back.” This preceded a thread containing over ten exchanges about possible psychological reasons for throwing out food.

Did I mention that all of the above time is billable?

Money squawks and it talks and it bellows and rumbles, as it always has. To meet a problem with financial capital is a little social sleight of hand as old as our richest institutions. To lob money at a problem is to absorb the role of noble giver, of a humanitarian sugar-daddy whose hard earned cash is laundered through charities and special needs kids and schools and low-income neighborhoods all in the name of what’s beneficial for the greater good. Except that… well… only a microscopic fraction of funding actually goes toward the people who could use it. Below are examples of how much money has been shelled out for endeavors motivated by emotional masturbation (e.g., “trauma-informed teaching for teachers”, “social-emotional learning”, “DEI”, etc.), taken directly from X and doge.gov/savings. Take a look at their website--- it is unbelievable, albeit sickening, what our government spends money on. Squawk squawk!

One of the more recent X Posts:

Over the last 3 days, agencies terminated 121 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $351M and savings of $156M, including a $1.6M DEI contract for “strategies for implementing ‘social emotional’ learning”, and a $143K Dept. of Transportation contract for “social media support services”.

And another X Post:

Great work today by

@USDOL

@SecretaryLCD

@Sonderling47

cancelling $577M in “America Last” grants for $237M in savings, including: - $10M for "gender equity in the Mexican workplace" - $12.2M for "worker empowerment in South America" - $6.25M for "improving respect for Worker's rights in agricultural supply chains" in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador - $5M for "elevating women's participation in the workplace" in West Africa - $4.3M for "assisting foreign migrant workers" in Malaysia - $3M to "enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers" in Bangladesh - $3M for "safe and inclusive work environments" in Lesotho

Today, agencies cancelled 47 contracts with a ceiling value of $185M and savings of $90M, including: -$3.1M for “healthy relationships social media presence” -$3.5M for consultants “to provide professional IT cloud, software, hardware expertise, and expertise in customer experience, data analysis, project mgmt and technical writing”

Astonished yet? Just wait until we begin to unravel the kinked-up knot that is our own sense of self-importance.

Futile, self-indulgent pseudo-efforts toward being recognized as noble helpers is the very reason I’ve decided to respond to work emails, supposed problems, and hedonistic questions (including my own—I’m human, too) with variations of the phrase “who cares.”

This perhaps sounds like yet another neurotic dress rehearsal. But fear not! It is a thought-experiment carried out in real time by yours truly, one I find particularly valuable for those of us digital peasants to our employees and to our clients, whose very existence is grounded in a skewed perception of superiority. Should you need another example beyond the ones provided in above paragraphs, a client called me seven consecutive times, all of which I ignored, only for her to text me with “I need to talk to you right now it’s very important, my Dad won’t let me buy Jordans.”

Allow me to entirely decimate your conception of that which is urgent or dire by means of two simple words: “who cares?” “So what?” will also suffice. I do guarantee, though, that once you’ve managed to move past the sting of disappointment in realizing your problems are not problems, you will find utility in this bid for caring less.

Any time you find yourself ripe for bellyaching, you can respond to your own decadent bullshit with “who cares” or “so what” or, my personal favorite, “who gives a fuck?” I wholly expect that those whose salaries rely on understanding themselves as noble helpers may recoil at the thought of their futility. “But I just want to help people!” they’ll exclaim. To a mild degree, I can attest to the fervor that is altruism. My follow-up series of statements, then, goes like this: in what way would you, as the provider, benefit from your clients being healthier, physically, emotionally, or mentally? Who, exactly, benefits from resilience? The obvious answer is those exact people who are chronically ill and/or emotionally fragile. The people leveraging their political influence and educational expertise, though, the very people promoting resilience via paid courses and consultations (maybe this is you)… how will they benefit, other than financially?

I do realize these questions put clinicians in a bit of a hitch. Our salaries and our livelihoods are dependent upon there being a problem to address, with many of our roles providing little more service than exchanges of emails, documents that won’t be read or even edited, and complaining about how little impact we have because of the systems in place. I implore readers, particularly healthcare providers, to think beyond the scope of that which is insurance-friendly. There are ways to help people that do not require your attention--- at least not the form of attention you’ve been taught is vital to their everyday functioning.

If you haven’t worked your way up to most hated and outspoken employee the way I have, you can simply practice the “so what” technique behind the curtain of your own mind. That is, practice silently, or practice out loud while on mute and with your camera off to protect that precious public perception as compassionate listener. Maybe you even type “who cares?” out in an email response without sending it if you’re feeling especially empowered.

You’ll quickly find, at least I’m assuming, that 90% of your day is comprised of futile decisions whose outcomes are nonexistent and whose absence would result in zero change, despite the sender’s convicted belief that their thoughts or concerns are urgently important and profound. Of course I’ll attend two meetings a week to discuss the importance of meeting twice a week, it’s what my clients need! False. It is what you or your employer or your boss needs to meet the arbitrary criteria for productivity or significance.

“But won’t people get upset?” Yes, and who cares? The purpose of this assignment is not to intentionally hurt someone’s feelings or help reveal to themselves what pathetic losers they are. It’s actually quite the opposite. The goal is to help people understand that the attention they’re giving to complaints, grievances, and reported problems is precious time wasted, time and energy otherwise spent engaged with meaningful activity. I can’t define for you what meaningful activity is- only you can. All I can do is guide you to more of it. I strongly suggest doing one of Sahil Bloom’s assignments from his book, The Five Types of Wealth, in which you must color code your week based on how energizing or how draining scheduled activities are. I did this on my Google calendar and color coded red as particularly draining, yellow as neutral (i.e., busywork that isn’t draining but also doesn’t qualify as inspiring), and green as energizing, inspiring, freeing, and creative. It provides a nice visual representation of how much or how little of our time is allocated toward that which we value.

“I can’t say who cares to my boss!” You probably could. You’re just afraid to, and rightfully so. We’ve been duped by modernity. I am by no means instructing readers to invite their boss to devour feculence (this is a multi-syllabic way of saying “eat shit”, per the last episode of Severance), nor am I writing this piece from a place of abundant financial privilege. I dream of having enough money, enough capital in what Mark Cuban famously named the Fuck You Fund, to leave my career behind and paint my entire life’s schedule with broad hues of green. But I’m just another somewhat miserable employee like you whose comfortable lifestyle requires you to devour the feculence while your boss watches and cackles. With this in mind, it’s ever more important we learn to approach life with a deeper sense of indifference. This has been wildly hard for me to do, so I’m aware of the potential for an existential crisis. Below I’ve provided guidelines for the Who Cares method:

* Do not say “who cares” with even a whiff of condescension, even if the concern or question raised warrants it. This method will not work if your genuine question that is “who cares” rests on superiority.

* “Who cares” cannot be about you. Just because you do not want to hear it or because you find it uninteresting or stupid doesn’t assume that the other person should or should not care about something.

* Genuinely care about who may care. Allow people to complete their full thought, no matter how many winding turns the tangent may whip them around. Only respond with “who cares” and its variations after you’ve thoughtfully listened to their problems.

* You can preface “who cares” with a buffer statement, such as, “What I’m about to say may sound like a joke or an insult, but I genuinely am asking: Who cares? As in, who is actually affected here?”

* If you’re a noob in the art of provoking people to think, dip a semantic toe in by responding only with “Huh…” or even “Can I be frank with you? I’m not fully hearing what the problem is.” Pssssst: they must say “sure” if you’re asking permission to be frank.

* Maybe this point should’ve been first, but ah well (who cares?). Practice this tactic on yourself every time you’re reaching for your phone to complain. Who cares? So what? Maybe in meetings when you’re compelled to share a thought you put a Post-It smack dab in the middle of your screen that says “Who cares?” as a reminder to can it.

Stoic philosophy minimizes self-importance. In doing so, we can more closely align our behaviors with that which we find virtuous and valuable, and our actions are driven by reason over external drivers. Epictetus said it far more succinctly than I did throughout this piece: “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

Go get ‘em. Because, in the end… who cares?

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Anorexia can sometimes be portrayed inaccurately in TV shows and movies. Most mental illness is. Make no mistake: true, clinical mental illness is utter hell. It fractures your most valued social relationships. Fixation becomes the albatross worn proudly around your neck. Every decision, which has been analyzed and rehashed and agonized over, is dictated by your diagnosis. You evolve into a shell of yourself, a lifeless carcass forever indebted to a small clump of neurons in your brain which cannot be seen or explained. Phew! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s briefly discuss the specifics of anorexia.

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Anorexia has very little to do with food, despite the stereotypical belief that it’s merely a desperation for thinness. Food, and our perverse relationship with it, is just a vessel for control and understanding, a vessel similar to alcohol or heroin for those who find everyday life unbearable. Whether because we haven’t developed appropriate coping mechanisms or we’ve inherited some strange compulsion, our bizarre behavior is a means to make reality more suitable to our liking. Stated differently: we customize reality like we’re in a delusional game of the Sims. Oddly enough, the bizarre behavior can become lethal. We disregard this fact the deeper into our diagnosis we spiral.

The “gold standard” for eating disorders is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), which I’ve written about extensively in a good half of essays in this publication. I find such versatile utility in it that I believe only allowing licensed professionals to use it is a wicked form of “gatekeeping”. CBT’s prized technique, and what I believe to be its most useful principle, is cognitive restructuring: becoming aware of distorted, negative, and irrational thinking, and developing more balanced approaches. Within these approaches comes a change in behavior, although I prefer behavior change to thought-dissection for most.

This is where weightlifting and physical fitness entered into focus. Although my brother and I have played sports from elementary school all the way through high school, and recreationally in college, I began taking physical fitness seriously in early high school. I mentioned earlier that I’d once been banned from every gym across the state of Illinois; this was per my psychiatric team when I was in inpatient treatment for anorexia. This portion of my treatment, which has underpinnings in CBT, was grounded in behaving “in spite of” my most delusional and harmful beliefs. My niche mutation of anorexia was called “exercise purging”, in which I was compelled to exercise for hours upon hours each day to compensate for any food I consumed. By withholding access to exercise, I was forced to both tolerate my discomfort as well as develop a new sense of meaning.

Although it pains me to use platitudes like “life-changing journey” or “life-saving treatment”, replacing an obsession with starvation with education of my body altered the entire trajectory of my recovery. Weightlifting, I can say with conviction, saved my life. It refashioned my idea of what my body could do and what its purpose was. My perception of my body shifted gradually from “vessel for starvation” to “vehicle for horsepower”. Learning about how the brain and body were connected from the standpoint of biology and kinesiology entirely removed the emotional component of my behavior.

Anorexia robbed from me (or, rather, I voluntarily relinquished to it) any modicum of common sense, at least as it related to basic physiology. To starve was to defy a basic need, and to defy a basic need earned me a coveted spot next to Greek gods and main characters in folk lores. With each grumble of my stomach was a notch upward on the totem pole toward Zeus-level strength. I achieved mildly similar outcomes when I came to realize all that my body was able to do if I just allowed it to grow in the way it was meant to. Weightlifting corrected my illogical beliefs about my body and its purpose without a single licensed professional. It proved my strongly held beliefs wrong with every repetition; I was so wildly wrong about what brand of discomfort I believed I could handle. And it demonstrated for me in real time that action must precede motivation or readiness, that behavior change, and behaving ‘as if’, has far greater and longer-term benefits than waiting around for the ‘a-ha’ moment that is stereotypical of talk therapy.

Allow me to explain. I’ll do so by explaining in layman’s terms how behavior therapy for behavior disorders works, and how weightlifting/mastery of a skill, in general, encompasses these very principles---- save the copay.

Eating disorders are maintained by the maladaptive behaviors we engage in (e.g., restricting food, excessive exercise, vomiting, use of laxatives), as they reinforce the relief we get from discomfort. This discomfort typically stems from fixation on weight and body image, much of which is negative, and these negative symptoms are only then ameliorated by the maladaptive behaviors listed. In nature and in overt behavior, eating disorders operate like substance use disorders: reality bites, so we drink, or shoot up, or starve. Avoidance begets avoidance. This offers immediate relief, and with such relief flows a sense of control over a situation otherwise intolerable. Quite predictably, the sweet, short-lived escape produces heightened sensitivity to future triggers, whether those be environmental and “outside of us”, or entirely internal (i.e., in our own head). The more insufferable reality becomes, the more regularly and automatically we rely on our junk behaviors. This is the “disordered” part. The pattern becomes dysfunctional when it begins to interfere with everyday life.

The key, then, is understanding 1. How our thoughts shape the way we feel and act, 2. How the way we act influences the way we think and feel, and 3. How what we feel shapes how we think and act. Our thinking, our emotions, and our behaviors all become enmeshed in a sort of incestual relationship, the three maniacally twirling in unison to inform distorted thinking and shitty decisions. That is, until we learn to separate this psychological thrupple.

I prefer to separate the three prongs of Misery’s Trident through education and basic strategies in self-monitoring. Education is exactly what is sounds like: it is an outsider taking on the role of teacher by providing objective, scientific, logical information. In this phase, we tend to avoid talk of childhood trauma or repeated references to past behavior. Frankly, it is irrelevant with a behavior problem. The information we choose to teach, then, is under the discretion of the teacher. While sometimes useful to educate people about their own diagnoses, I prefer to educate about more physiological aspects of their brain and their behavior. In doing so, we eliminate further attention and therefore control given to the diagnosis and begin to understand ourselves as beings amenable to change. Knowledge is a psychiatric disorder’s kryptonite.

I was taught to understand my brain as an organ worthy of the same oversight as any other organ. The brain was taught as being closely connected to the mind and the physical being, rather than a separate entity requiring professional, psychological expertise. With such education came experiential, debate-based learning about cognitive distortions and the faulty beliefs we develop through social learning. My belief, at the time? That anorexia served me, and my livelihood was an impossibility if not for its presence.

This is where weightlifting and exercise shone through as powerful aspects of treatment. Modern adults have a tendency to hoard information, believing that doing so is synonymous with learning. Without action, and without intentional application of what we’ve been taught, skill-building or mastery cannot possibly take place. We’ve only managed to entertain ourselves. This is important to recognize as it relates to treatment: our distorted, culturally constructed version of therapy can imply that simply talking about our problems and rehashing old events guarantees improved functioning. It does not work this way. We must act.

Slowly changing everyday behaviors (because, remember, they influence how we feel, think, and act and vice versa) is the most critical component of addressing any challenge--- but particularly compulsive behavior problems. The client does not have to feel “ready” or “primed” or “prepared” to change these behaviors. Parents do not need to wait until they’re “stable” or “better”. They just need to do them. They just need to do something, anything that serves to prove to their mind that they can operate without their mental crutch (i.e., their maladaptive behavior). Becoming fluent in weightlifting, and continuously adding difficulty and demand with each training week, reconditioned the idea of “control”. I felt masterful. Artful, even. And such confidence and awareness naturally transferred over to distorted thoughts that inevitably came up throughout each day.

If you’ve been a reader for a while, you recognize my love of Socratic dialogue. I don’t consider talk therapists the only people capable or even qualified to use such a powerful technique when relating to others and their problems. Socratic dialogue is simple but not easy. The many examples of types of questions are listed below. What this form of dialogue aims to do is build critical thinking through use of open-ended questions, all which glean different types of information based on how the question is framed. Perhaps we probe purpose or assumptions. Maybe we wish to compare and contrast. Prodding at others’ viewpoints and self-reflecting on our own responses is a potent means of understanding what we believe.

Helping control patterns of thinking can happen naturally during intense physical activity. There are moments of self-doubt many of us are plagued by, whether we’re true athletes or just exercise enthusiasts like myself. In moments of strenuous effort, it’s likely we’ve stopped before we actually needed to. We equate peak distress or discomfort with danger or even failure and behave in accordance (i.e., we quit). What if we trained ourselves to behave differently, or to behave “in spite of” what our brain told us? It’s worth this little thought + behavior experiment, then: the next time you’re tempted to quit during a workout, say to yourself, “What if I’m wrong, and can do 20% more?” Follow up this thought with the experiment that is trying it out. When you’re running intervals at a blazing fast pace and wish to stop, force yourself to go at an even higher pace for 20 more seconds. Your mind requires repetition to achieve mastery, and overcoming faulty thinking is no different. You can do this.

My goal for the near-and-distant-future is to bring this education to schools. My hope is to help influence parents toward a more balanced, holistic approach to their child’s distress, one which actively resists the modern tendency toward feelings and avoidance. I also dismiss the concept that only licensed talk professionals are capable of teaching valuable skills in self-management and self-betterment. I see a future in which students are taught to monitor their own thinking and behavior and develop holistic health plans for themselves, ones which act as their own internal pharmacies and preventative healthcare. Perhaps our mental health crisis isn’t a mental health crisis, but a global misunderstanding of the human body. My anorexia wasn’t cured through delicate conversations about my childhood, nor were my symptoms relieved through vapid statements about doing things that are hard. I cured it myself. Through repeated struggle, through continuous effort.

To choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances is our purest freedom. As Viktor Frankl yet again reminds us with his poignant memoir of horror and hope: “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

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Many of us associate Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) with collective Bible-thumping. To be in AA is to become a sobriety Evangelist who walks with the Lord toward abstinence, reminding everyone of their journey as frequently as possible. This soft evangelism can overpower the benefits of group participation.

Now that we’ve throat-cleared the negative aspects of cult-like collusion, we turn to the undeniable positives of such fellowship. On a broad scale, group affiliation helps to forge a sense of identity. This is where comparison and even some constructive shame play a pivotal role in shaping how we behave and what we believe to be true. We require connection with others to not only understand ourselves and our values, but to more thoughtfully (and honestly) assess our abilities. Although comparison has been demonized, it’s critical in determining how our own behavior will come about. An honest sense of self is impossible to develop without the influence of “the other”; how else would we know if we broke a state record? Are we truly exceptional at a skill if we’re not cross-referencing our scores with that of those better? How would we know if we scored in the top percentile on the board exam? Or if we’re superior critical thinkers, or if we’re larger-hearted than our co-workers? While leaning too much into the opinions of others, they are critical in who we are and what we believe to be true.

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Social contagion is a strong force, and our drive to belong is what makes organizations like AA so useful in drawing out adaptive behavior. To maintain relationships with like-minded others is to engage in similar habits. If our group is health-minded, for example, and we wish to preserve these ties, we must also become health-minded.

In our pursuit of individual wellness, which can sometimes come at the expense of other people (e.g., “Be selfish and only focus on you and your needs!”), it’s imperative we see health behavior as a group effort. Of course there are intrapersonal problems that influence our decisions. Individual motivations, an inability to tolerate criticism, ruminating over negative events of the day, family history of illness, genetics--- all of these factors converge to play a role in our habits. But even amidst our internal problems, we function only as a miniscule portion of a colossal, ever-changing, eclectic culture. And our environment plays a larger role than we think. Look at our mental health crisis (which I don’t think is a crisis, as I stated in Part One): in the past 4-5 years, internal problems, like nervousness, “burnout”, “imposter syndrome”, anxiety, and depression, became a collective panic. In turn, we rallied together to mediate the symptoms we thought needed fixing (even if these efforts were distorted, ridiculous, and ass-backwards). Trigger warnings, DEI initiatives, texting-therapy, social-emotional learning, and mental health days--- these were widespread, organizational-level shifts in behavior, shifts that still largely remain in place. Even our nation’s most prestigious universities offered safe rooms and hot chocolate to students in a state of delusional alarm. Affiliation goals (read: social contagion), whether adaptive or criminally loony, are largely ignored in the movement toward wellness. Let’s fix that.

TO RUMINATE IS TO BOND

Alas, we return to the covenant that is alcoholic bonding. AA is the most well-studied “intervention” as it relates to helping alcoholics, with AA being more effective than psychotherapy in nearly 100% of studies. This is profound, as AA is not a clinical or even therapeutic method, requiring zero licensure to operate and provide services. In the grand scheme of our culture, which medicalizes everyday problems and offers up only billable providers as gold-standard treatments, it’s perhaps deflating to the people who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to be licensed only to find a junkie is more convincing in getting people on the wagon. Keith Humphreys, a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, evaluated 35 studies of AA’s efficacy with over 10,000 participants. What he found? Continued participation in AA was not only the most effective in achieving abstinence, but a powerful force in lowering healthcare costs for each member. What other initiative has been successful in lowering healthcare cost? Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), a long-time advocate of AA for his own addiction, is aware of this potential for societal change.

RFK and proponents of the MAHA movement have exposed obscene healthcare costs from our largest and most trusted medical establishments in recent weeks, and I imagine they’re itching to offer alternative solutions to the nation’s constellation of illness. I’m admittedly swell with glee that they haven’t suggested a need for more therapeutic services.

I spoke in parts one through four about the God complexes surrounding healthcare, specifically mental and behavioral healthcare. I can understand why licensed professionals are skeptical about organizations like AA, who are run by everyday people who operate not on clinical or professional philosophies but on anecdotal experience alone. Fields like mine (behavior analysis), stand appalled at most any success story which does not come replete with data or documentation. I can understand this, to a degree. With emotions being unreliable indicators of reality, we must rely on objective information to make sound decisions. But you don’t need to hire a licensed professional to learn to do this.

Early in his career, Dr. Humphreys admitted, “How dare these people do things that I have all these degrees to do?”

I would be remiss if I didn’t emphasize the following: AA will not work for everyone. Even staunch advocates of AA will remind you that their principles, although sacred to them, may not be what certain people need. The same can be said about any single intervention, whether that be educational, medicinal, or therapeutic. This fact, paired with our culture’s insistence on hyper-individualism, seems at least part of the reason why our healthcare system has split into so many specialized silos. Doing so provides the illusion that our problems are special, and that basic strategies like healthy lifestyle habits and community connection couldn’t possibly address such complexity.

A KINK FOR BEHAVIORAL MIMICRY

We must understand and embrace the social theory of behavioral mimicry to see our culture move toward health. Behavioral mimicry, as in, we copy people when we wish to be around them and maintain friendships. A crackhead and a Hyrox competitor, for example, will struggle to preserve any form of a bond. Their lifestyles and values are far too different. The Hyrox athlete who leads a healthy lifestyle will gravitate towards others with similar value systems and habits, while the crackhead will do the same in his own scrappy neck of the hood. Interestingly, though, we’re more inclined to copy the behavior of another person if they exude warmth and engage us in interaction. It’s not enough, then, to be a digital health influencer who wears leggings that resemble assless chaps and remind people to lean into their values. Being “the girl next door” or even “educating” people on the benefits of eating more protein and doing more cardio is unsurprisingly unsuccessful should more global impact be the goal. Transactional and cold exchanges, even if unintentional, are less likely to sway the behavior of another person. Scare tactics, like DARE and other nation-wide school prevention programs, are equally futile. In short, a person is more likely to adopt behavior (whether positive or negative) if it means it’ll protect their social ties and their identity.

In understanding our thirst for belonging, would it be useful to offer more group-and-community-oriented services for those struggling? As opposed to the unsustainable, draining, often times unnecessary one-to-one work of a psychotherapist and a patient, ruminating over problems? Dr. Peter Gray, who speaks frequently about the wellness-and-parenting-culture resulting in narcissism in children, found scathing reviews of individualized-mental-health-therapy for children. In one study out of Australia, teens who attended an 8-week “workshop” on mental health reported poorer quality of life, significantly more depression and anxiety, and poorer relationships with their parents, who were also part of the workshop. In another study, a program involving mindfulness training for children ages 11-13 resulted in poorer social and emotional functioning. Perhaps all of this singular, internal rumination does not actually “normalize emotions” and “better socialize” children. Is the individualized nature, then, the problem? After all, how feasible is it to account for every single person’s emotional experience?

UBUNTU FOR THE FUTURE

Collectivist cultures like those in Africa abide by a standard called “Ubuntu”, which is not present in Western cultures, as it refers to a communal system in which everyone is bound as one, despite being separate beings. According to this value system, “the self is perceived in relation to the group… the problems and demands of one person are the problems and demands of everyone.” Perhaps the modern wisdom that is, “that sounds like a you problem” is reaching its rightful retirement.

While I’m not making the argument that every stressor be handled communally, there are aspects of collective value systems that would benefit people in distress. We cannot argue the facts that public figures like Dr. Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General, have made regarding loneliness. He has escalated an experience of disconnection to that of a public health emergency, with the negative physical effects of social disconnectedness being comparable to smoking and sedentarism. Adults rate their relationships as the most important facet of their lives and as the most abundant sources of meaning and purpose. To guide people towards entanglement in their own problems (i.e., sitting and ruminating over problems alone or with a single therapist) seems entirely counterintuitive when we understand the broader impact of social connectedness on our behavioral, physical, and mental wellbeing. We mentioned earlier ways in which social contagion naturally occurs, for better or for worse, when social dyads begin to form. We must leverage our natural tendency toward kinship should we hope to change wellbeing on a nation-wide scale.

I understand that grouping people together comes with its own flaws. If a skilled lead is not assigned, the session can quickly devolve into a semantic pissing contest. It can also encourage spiraling, problem-focused behavior should a lead fail to direct complaints and grievances toward solution-oriented decisions. But can’t the same be said about any situation we’re in outside of our home? I remain unconvinced that the costs outweigh the immense benefits of group affiliation, particularly in regards to managing our nation’s approach toward physical and mental health. The old adage, “it takes a village” could not ring more true.

Perhaps we revolutionize the referral process in mental and behavioral health clinics to one which requires an individual to show proof of commitment to the basic facets of wellbeing. As can be seen in the above visuals, our wellbeing is comprised of separate parts which all assemble to form a person functioning at their “optimal”. I’d wonder how simply recruiting accountability partners, instead of licensed professionals, would lessen the unnecessary demand on psychological professionals. I’d wonder how psychiatrists prescribing exercise, balanced diets, and social connection would change the mass psychotropic assault on our serotonin receptors. And I’d wonder how this “mental health crisis” would collapse should we give it the middle finger by banding together as we have throughout every single disaster in human history. Holocaust survivors pride themselves on not only their strength in the face of unfathomable adversity and hatred, but their ability to hold positive regard in their future interactions. You will not speak to a Holocaust survivor who harbors contempt, or recommends that your sense of “you” demands a specific chemical balance only achievable through professional service.

Viktor Frankl reminds us that “those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any how.” We have our sense of why. Let’s help others find theirs. And I’m confident we’re equipped to handle all of life’s “hows”.

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Others in my field disagree, and that’s fine. If you’ve been a reader for the past 3 years of this publication, you know I support the right to hold any opinion, no matter how inaccurate or delusional I deem it to be. These same people find my views equally inaccurate and delusional.

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Considering the moot point that my job has become, I’ve been researching the use of AI in K-12 education, in academia, and even in human service fields. I’d hate for this to imply I’m in support of robots standing at the front of classrooms, or hunks of twisted steel consoling our children with their cold, dead, robot hands. It simply means that replacing more impractical jobs (like mine) with features of artificial intelligence may lessen the tax-dollar burden and, more broadly, teach our very-demanding clients skills at rates we cannot. Right now, we’re limited by our inefficiency. Instead of shifting efforts toward prevention and basic psychoeducation, which could reach millions of people through channels like social media or Zoom, we clamor to fix a patient’s problems and play Mom. Inefficient AND irrational.

There are only so many glorified-babysitter-monkeys to go around, after all. Services can be cheap, fast, or high-quality; they cannot be all three. But two of them pay a pretty penny. I believe in your ability to determine which duo grants the greatest payout.

To be clear, I didn’t prance into this field of behavior analysis expecting my job to be that of glorified babysitter or primate aide. None of us did. I also don’t think any of us could have predicted just how powerful AI could be in lessening the administrative side of clinical work, or that it even had a place in industries like behavioral health. Consider this scenario, which is one I’m currently in:

A behavioral provider is given a caseload of 20+ people. They’re tasked with training their staff on best practices for managing behavior, which can often be dangerous (we’re talking regular calls to the police because of clients attacking staff and destroying property). Each client has three separate shifts of people working with them at their group home (overnight, day, and evening), and receive round-the-clock care (because of their disability, they’re unable to live independently, and typically require constant supervision for even basic everyday tasks.) You, as the behavior consultant, are expected to be present and resourceful for every single team, for every single client. And you’re on-call for the several crises that occur week to week, which range from clients throwing rocks at cars, concussing their staff, or taking their clothes off and masturbating in public. Impossible, right? Wait, there’s more!

On top of managing the names and roles of 60+ people, you’re also required to drive to each of their group homes for “visits”. These “visits” are comprised of hurried venting sessions, or loitering in the living room while the clients sit in their own slop, rotting away on their unwashed sheets in their bedroom. If you’re lucky, you can get 5-6 clients in one home so you’re limited to, at most, 4 different places to manage. If you’re unlucky, they’re geographically spread out, across different towns and counties and with varying availability. Your role has been upgraded to that of scheduling coordinator, crisis manager, traveling babysitter, and sounding post for underpaid people. Is this efficient? Is this “support”? Is this even “compassion”? If your head is spinning thinking about how you’d stay sane amidst this lunacy, please consider AI.

For families that need more specific support, it’s worth tinkering with apps like ChatGPT. Below I’ve added a screenshot of both the sample prompt I’ve given and the DIY treatment plan it provides. What I especially love about the use of AI is its speed and its insistence on the client completing the necessary steps before demanding more intensive intervention. One of the greatest missteps of mental and behavioral health services is our urgency in responding to supposed issues. Any time we overreact to a problem a person is widely capable of managing on their own, we convey a singular message: this issue needs professional expertise. Why grapple with critical thinking when you can hire a professional?

Instead of waiting for outsourced guidance, create your own curriculum with the help of AI. Within the prompt you give it (I’d be happy to assist with this!), you can request forms of experiments and homework assignments that you’d like to complete related to what your challenge is. Again, I’ve included samples of this below.

In these prompts, users can provide additional specifics about their challenges: the length of time the problem has occurred, how the intensity has changed over time, environmental factors affecting the problems growth, how long they’d like to commit to a treatment plan, and how many times per week they’ll devote to the given interventions. Yes, I recognize this can feel a tad cold and transactional compared to in-person support. And it’s certainly not without its flaws. But perhaps this leads to a greater issue: what about professional support do we think is superior to engagement with our communities, with our own skill-building, with our friends and family? What do we believe we’re receiving that senior to those basic resources which got us this far in the plight of humanity?

I’m not making the argument that this could work for every psychiatric problem. But it could be, dare I say life-changing, for those whose interventions are based largely on common sense, structure, and habit change. Which is most people, even those mentally ill.

I’d also like to pique your curiosity as it relates to licensure. We fear the outcome of incompetent providers being that of traumatizing clients. A person who sifts through the sandcastles in your mind, who has not been trained to do so, can certainly cause some considerable harm. But consider what your therapy sessions, if you’ve had them, are comprised of. They’re meant to be very acute (3-6 months), the therapist mostly reflects back to you what you’re saying, and provides more balanced and alternative explanations for the irrationality and the theatrics. Frankly, a licensed and supposedly trained staff is still capable of tainting your psyche. Licensure isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, and I profoundly hope people begin realizing that.

I do wholly support the idea of an unbiased person helping us make sense of our learned behaviors and faulty thoughts. I’ve had wonderful experiences with therapists. But my favorite one was a person who ended up in jail for operating as a psychotherapist without a psychotherapist license. I didn’t feel duped, and my family still adored her--- because she was just really great at teaching me how to think. You don’t need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Master’s education to do that.

Aside from a small portion of the population who could use more specialized type of treatment delivered by clinically trained psychologists, many just need to adopt sounder habits, modify their lifestyle, and consistently practice tips and tricks to think differently about their problems. I imagine this is the reason behind James Clear’s continued success with Atomic Habits. It’s this easy to modify how we behave? Yes, it is. Do we need to constrain access to this sort of intervention through bureaucratic licensure requirements? I think not. If you’d like to understand how this looks in a K-12 setting, research Alpha Schools. They utilize a 2-hour learning model in which AI tailors fast-paced instruction for each academic subject to 25 minutes, analyzing a learner’s trend of correct to incorrect responding, their rate of skill development and generalization, and even how long they pause in between test questions. It’s unmatched in terms of individualized education.

Alpha Schools also don’t require teaching licenses, as their staff serve the students in the psychological and motivational sense (since AI is doing the teaching). With this model, any adult highly skilled in niche areas can develop life-skills workshops for the students to attend, and they’re entirely unconstrained by the red tape of teaching licenses and certifications or education laws. Entirely captivated by how to code websites for Fortune 500 companies? You can teach tech-minded students to do so without having to take out a student loan to become a licensed educator. Are you like me and captivated by the intersection of physical fitness and mental wellbeing? Produce a webinar that demonstrates how this method works.

With this model (that is, eliminating the excessive, often pointless licensure requirements), imagine how many more people could be helped on a global scale. Currently, waitlists are crawling up to years-long for many therapeutic services, with psychotherapy, psychiatry, and behavioral intervention bearing the brunt of the delay. Further, more and more families who cannot afford private insurance must depend on Medicaid, which the majority of practices do not take because of very low and very delayed reimbursement.

AI is the common denominator, at least I think, in resolving many of these daunting problems. I asked you guys how you felt about leveraging AI in therapeutic fields, and many people had their doubts and their concerns. I share these same concerns, as I was a person just a couple of years ago that thought using AI in fields like academia, education, and even mental health services was a sign of laziness. My mind has entirely changed after seeing the horribly low quality of in-person service. Consider the below steps in “revolutionizing” mental healthcare.

1. Intake processes are all conducted through AI; prospective clients do not need to schedule appointments 6 months out and do not need to go anywhere

2. Screening tools as part of the intake process can be used to outline what services each client would benefit from (instead of just giving each person the maximum hours)

3. Predictive analytics can be used to determine engagement on the part of the client, and can tailor interventions and support in real-time

4. Highly competent coaches can review the data provided by AI should the person still seek more one-to-one, human-based support (psychology degree not necessary)

5. Use of AI can be leveraged in schools, workplaces, and larger organizations to better support entire groups in learning how to manage their own behavior/mental wellbeing

The best way to fix our nation’s “declining mental health”? Stop trying to fix it.

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A behavior plan attempts to find the “why” behind undesirable behavior. It then provides interventions based on this “why”. I would love to work on more “everyday” and even preventative sorts of concerns instead of only reacting to shit behavior, much of which could’ve been addressed by responsible parenting. But I digress. The reason why plans do not work for anyone over the age of 4 is because they rely too heavily on the world accommodating a client’s symptoms and responding in a very specific way.

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As an example, let’s take a client who is triggered by people greeting him in a particular decibel. He has autism, so it’s a near-guarantee that most people in his life have placated his strange and irrational preferences. His behavior plan insists on this, as a matter of fact:

“Do not make eye contact with Mike, as it triggers him. Ask him kindly if he would like to follow the instruction and give him the option to say “no”. Honor his requests whenever possible.”

If you’re a sane person, you’d probably think this is unreasonable and perhaps neurotic. We can’t look at him? Because he gets mad? And we must honor his requests whenever possible? Why, because he has autism? Zero skills are taught here, other than appeasing Mike’s behavior and therefore rewarding neuroticism on the part of adults. Perhaps the more logical option would just be to keep Mike home, since nobody is obliged to avoid eye contact with him simply because professionals like me said so.

It’s in this God-complex-overreaction that people believe we’re experts on matters of childhood anxiety, oppositional behavior, or autism.

We are not. But you know who, or should I say, what, is an expert? Pain.

Don’t get me wrong. Relieving symptoms just enough to think more clearly and make sense of our options is life-changing in many cases. Drugs that work immediately, like benzodiazepines for panic attacks, can dampen the fear response (i.e., the panic) to a manageable level, which helps the individual actually develop skills to accept the discomfort of panic and move on without medication use. When I had shoulder surgery, I prayed that someone would accidentally punch me in the face with a chair. The enduring pain so close in proximity to my thinking mind made it feel all-encompassing and inescapable. My every conscious moment was at the whim of my symptoms.

I imagine this is what junkies experience when forced into detox, or what people with schizophrenia feel when their delusions of fire ants scuttling across their legs come to life. When we eliminate the urgency of the sensation, there’s space and “bandwidth” to tend to the discomfort in a more appropriate manner. In this respect, pills are awesome.

Psychiatrists are in the game of symptom-management, though, so will typically continue to prescribe without much energy given to root cause or intervention. The chemical compound is the intervention. Sure, we can eliminate the panic attack entirely with the gooey warmth of Xanax. But this same anxiety will persist and manifest in other ways if left to avoidance.

Perhaps this is evidence that we’re not in a crisis of mental health, but of modern psychiatry and psychotherapy. I often wonder what might happen if we moved away from symptom management entirely and instead only offered preventative services.

Our fear of fear, and our fear of stress, has led to widespread prescribing of drugs. It has also convinced non-medical practitioners that medication is the missing facet of treatment, and if only those corrupt psychiatrists would just give kids Ritalin, they wouldn’t be playing The Floor Is Lava with their classmates’ faces. Research efforts are aimed at treating “complex trauma” that doesn’t exist instead of searching for root causes for hellish disorders like Autism, Fragile X, and Prader-Willi Syndrome. It’s this very reason that I wonder what we believe our efforts to be doing, knowing we’ll never keep up with these soaring disability rates.

We can start by shifting away from symptom management and looking instead toward skill building. This may be beneficial for parents, too, who have been told by professionals like me that their kid’s emotional problems require an entourage of therapies and homeopaths and sensory tools and essential oils. They do not. They need a hobby and a parent who does not allow feelings to dictate the course of consequences.

“Independence Therapy” is a newer approach developed by Dr. Camilo Ortiz which nixes symptom management and instead focuses all of treatment on doing things we’re scared to do, every day. There is minimal talk of anxiety, and he has not once utilized the “gold standard” in treating it (i.e., exposure therapy). Ortiz makes a stunning point, one which even I hadn’t considered until attending one of his talks: children are incapable of forecasting how they’ll feel when something difficult is over. It’s primarily for this reason that kids cannot legitimately or even thoughtfully participate in something like exposure therapy. For those of us adults in therapy, we understand that the hard things our therapists suggest we do will help us long-term. Kids lack this cognitive sophistication. With this in mind, then, exposure therapy may not make sense; they’ll only see it as unwarranted punishment, which will be an emotional drain on parents who are already being told they need scripts and classes and drugs and sociologists.

Independence Therapy asks kids what they’ve always wanted to do but have been afraid of. Some kids are terrified of walking to school by themselves. Others are fearful of cooking because of the potential for burning or cutting themselves. The therapy encourages kids to try these “hard things”---- without parental supervision. While they’re committing to conquering the day, their parents are learning about the dangers of accommodating anxiety. They’re being taught that responding to urgency with urgency only reinforces a sense of threat.

Dr. Camilo Ortiz is putting his new “Independence Therapy” approach through current clinical trials and seeing fantastic results. Granted, this is a small sample size. But it does make for a compelling argument. What would happen if we referred families out and didn’t use them to line our wallets? What would happen if we understood that there’s beauty and confidence-building in mastery of a skill? What if anxiety and similar diseases of civilization were seen as lifestyle problems managed with very acute, common-sense “intervention”? And what if frying a goddamn egg lessened our anxiety just by virtue of proving to ourselves we could?

So here’s my proposal with step three. We move toward a preventative model which offers basic strategies and self-management techniques, and continued implementation of these strategies falls entirely on the individual to accomplish. One of the main barriers to improvement is God-complex-riddled therapists taking over the role of Mommy and Daddy and proceeding to treat them for years at a time. This robs the child of countless opportunities for competence, and steals from parents the opportunity to foster resilience in themselves when they’re compelled to “fix” their child’s pain or fear. No more! We remove ourselves from the equation from jump, reminding people they can do this without our help. They’ve come this far, after all.

Maybe instead of Xanax we teach kids to breathe to reset their fear response. We use scientific thinking (which I spoke about in parts one and two) instead of “stress management” in improving emotional wellbeing. We use debate and public speaking skills to crush social anxiety. We teach the power of self-composure by looking at athlete meltdowns and developing healthier alternatives during sports competition. We teach kids to pitch an idea to a venture capitalist instead of directing them to the Calm Down Corner. We help kids monitor their use of “um” and “like” and “uh” when speaking instead of forcing them into useless-but-billable “social skills groups”. Imagine the good that can come from simply withholding attention to grievances!

I’m willing to believe I’m not a slave to how I feel. Are you?

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Unsurprisingly, they were appalled. I did manage to force a chuckle, probably from someone who resonated with the “Who cares” or “we’re not that important” statements but felt uneasy agreeing with such honesty.

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“Girl stop it, you are aaaaaamazing!”

“What do you mean?!?! You’re just saying that because you don’t know your worth!”

[insert other platitudinal statements here about loving thyself and aligning thy chakra with thy menstrual cycle]

The tendency to control how other people feel is godlike and delusional. It’s also highly addictive and easy to fall into, mostly because we don’t see it as an attempt to control them so much as console them. I do it. You do it. Just recently my Mom was crying about my brother (for new readers, my brother died of a Fentanyl overdose 7 years ago), and my immediate reaction was “Mom, it’s okay.” It’s uncomfortable to feel helpless, and the empty reassurance we give is just a way to make that feeling go away.

People who deviate from widely accepted norms, particularly those which are social and verbal norms (think: political correctness or manners), are often met with rebukes and rebuttals. The heretic like me can be aversive simply because of our unpredictability: I will not bow down to mainstream theories, and will challenge faddish methods without a hint of a smile or a giggle. “Right, I hear you repeating what everyone else says about biological males in women’s sports, but what do you actually think? I don’t think you’ve shared your actual opinion yet.”

And you know what? I get it. It’s hard to simply exist next to people when they say something we haven’t been coached to respond to. Especially if it feels like our identity is tied to our beliefs about something and we therefore experience questions as a character ambush. But, I must remind readers: this is our own discomfort we’re trying to manage by controlling how another person behaves. Some try to make this very normal behavior appear more noble through use of terms like “people pleasing”. Whatever we decide to call it, its features are the same. We don’t like when people infringe upon our unwritten rules.

This lovely girl squad was not trying to reassure me. No. They were trying to manage their own experience of “ickiness” that resulted from my statement which likely assaulted their sense of reality. Kayla thinks I’m not interesting or cool or smart or funny? But everyone I hang out with, especially Mom and Dad, tell me that I’m interesting and cool and smart and funny! Off with Kayla’s head! Cognitive dissonance, in these sorts of social snafus, can occur as a result of the “ick”: when our beliefs or something we’ve heard is incongruent with our reality, we change our beliefs or we change our behavior. This usually occurs subconsciously and as a means to “close the gap”.

Or we try to change the evidence by omitting those facts which hurt our little egos (and do not support our fragile sense of self). This is less time-consuming and strenuous than the other options listed above.

This tendency is best illustrated by use of real-world example. A colleague told me that my thoughts on trauma and resilience are evidence of my ignorance as it relates to mental health. My thoughts on trauma and resilience, which she didn’t fully understand but assumed from my two to three statements about how “mental health” fads are futile, were probably far outside the narratives she’d grown accustomed to. This is a perfect example of contorting reality to better fit what we believe to be true, specifically about ourselves. Let’s take a look at this in a more visual format. Below you’ll find what I believe this colleague’s thoughts to be, and why she determined that I’m an unprofessional shmuck:

I am a trauma-informed behavior analyst. I am a good person.

Kayla is a behavior analyst.

Kayla does not believe people are traumatized.

We are both behavior analysts.

Kayla’s idea of people doesn’t fit with mine.

It must be because she’s uneducated and doesn’t know any better. I’ll educate her.

I’m going to correct her inaccurate experience to better fit my sense of good-heartedness.

That’s way better. Now Kayla knows she’s incorrect.

Now Kayla no longer stains the concept of myself and my profession. We are both trauma-informed behavior analysts.

This is not “educating” people for the sake of understanding their perspective, but grandstanding for the sake of our emotional wellbeing. It’s identical to the disaster that is social-emotional learning: feel all of your feelings, kiddos, but only feel them in the way that I teach you and use only those coping skills which I so beautifully laminated and lectured you about. “You’re sad, right? RIGHT?! Breathe in for 4 and out for 8, damnit!!! IF YOU DON’T REGULATE I’LL REGULATE YOU!” Student or adult, we as humans cannot handle when another person’s experience does not align with our own. This is especially evident when our identity is enmeshed with this carefully constructed reality. If, at your core, you believe yourself to be an enlightened person because of the beliefs you hold, any perspective even mildly different will stand to challenge your worth.

My second step in improving well-being relies on replacing mental health initiatives and social-emotional learning with scientific thinking. It uses only objective measures to assess information, and forces our beliefs through the ringer of empirical scrutiny. How much a person likes it or tolerates it is not a requirement or even a consideration. While I hate to be the person that says “data doesn’t care about your feelings”, it’s important we remember our own “truth” is not always THE truth. Because we’re focusing on logical thinking over feelings, I’m confident we can overcome the initial sting of reality and move toward solution-focused conversation.

I posed a question to my social media followers recently asking if they’d be upset with some common reactions to their anxiety. Many people emphasized their feelings over all else. I posed the question, “If you were experiencing intense anxiety and someone encouraged you to act as your non-anxious self, would you be upset?” Several compared this to being punched in the uterus or to being ignored as a living, breathing, alive person. They equated “behave in spite of your symptoms” with “I don’t care how you’re feeling.” Again, this is a natural tendency: we fuse to our feelings. We becomeour experience and refuse to bend to a more objective reality--- or even an alternative reality. It feels impossible, then, to behave as if we’re not anxious. “How dare you!”, is our initial reaction, “I am an anxious person!”. And this is what is taught in schools, too: every time you feel an emotion to any intensity, any and all plans/responsibilities take a backseat. Those fleeting and often irrational thoughts are far more important to tend to than Shakespeare.

But what if they weren’t? What if we were willing to believe that our feelings are usually incorrect and unreliable, especially when we’re distressed? What would be the worst that would happen if we were forced to silently suffer through anxiety so we can get through our day? Would we die if our struggle wasn’t validated or recognized?

Below are some strategies we can use that would, ideally, replace any of the social-emotional learning objectives in classrooms or even professional institutions. They require the individual to detach from their identity as anxious, troubled, stressed, or incapable, and behave as if they’re… well… better than that.

MENTAL MODELS TO REPLACE MENTAL HEALTH:

FINDING HIGH-FIDELITY INFORMATION SOURCES

When learning about a topic of any kind, it’s imperative we research the source--- and keep the information as close to that source as possible. In doing so, we reduce the risk of bias and personal experience (i.e., feelings) exerting influence over the information.

For example, if we wanted information about childhood anxiety, we may not wish to find details from psychotherapists who make money off of these services, from journalists who are paid to report crises, from insurance funders who essentially fund therapy. Ask yourself:

1. Who is the author or organization behind the information?

2. Is the source well-respected in the field?

3. How can we verify the author/organization?

4. Is the source affiliated with some sort of political, ideological, or commercial group?

5. Evaluate the language; does it seem emotionally charged, one-sided, or exaggerated?

6. Does the source itself use logical reasoning and factual evidence to support their opinions?

HANLON’S RAZOR, INVERSION THINKING, AND COMPETENCE

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance or misunderstanding.” When you find yourself offended by another person’s perspective, or you’re tempted to deem them uninformed compared to you, ask yourself:

1. Is this an intentional attack on my beliefs, or is there a more innocent explanation?

2. If this person’s belief or supposed policy (e.g., SEL in schools) were applied at large scale, what might happen in 10 years?

3. If we were to look at how to absolutely destroy the mental wellbeing of children, what would I do if I wanted to achieve that worst possible outcome?

4. Am I forming an opinion outside of my area of knowledge?

Because compelling narratives and initiatives move so quickly, it can be hard to predict the actual outcome. Do supporters of these movements even think about how this may affect students, clients, and themselves in the short-term? The long-term? Try the following “tests” below when you or your students are tempted to correct another person’s viewpoint:

1. Ask yourself after every statement you make, “and then what?” I actually used this tactic with the person who deemed me uneducated, and she couldn’t even formulate a response to one simple “and then what”.

Example: “If we get SEL out of schools, kids won’t learn about how they feel.” And then what? “Then they’ll end up like our parents, who were forced to suppress their feelings.” And then what? “Then…..” This is usually where people start to struggle.

2. Try the “what if everyone did this?” test. Take an action or belief and try to imagine what would happen if everyone followed it.

Example: What if every single one of our decisions were dictated by our mood?

If everyone did this regularly, and it were allowed to occur, it’s unlikely any work would get done, any conflicts would be managed, any constructive criticism or correction would be allowed to take place, or any learning would occur.

I hope you guys find the results of these “tests” insightful, and, as usual, feel free to let me know how they go!

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We’re not in a mental health crisis. We’re also not infected by an absence-of-access-to-mental-health-care plague. Our children are not inherently damaged by virtue of being alive in a world dominated by Silicon Valley. We have a first-world perception problem on the part of fully-developed adult brains. While this may sound reductionist to those invested in the mass-diagnosing of kids, I want to remind readers: it is a good thing that the problem isn’t soaring mental illnesses, but merely our perception of them. A snag in perception is one that can be changed as easily as it was formed.

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I don’t believe our kids are experiencing more anxiety or depression than previous years. Their challenges may be different because they’ve been forcefully spoon-fed ideas about the tragedy that is emotional pain. Our efforts to control how they feel have predictably backfired, which paints the illusion that they’re experiencing symptoms only manageable by professionals, like psychotherapists and psychiatrists. I also believe we’ve inaccurately deemed social media the defenseless fool, but I suppose that’s a problem for an entirely separate series.

But Kayla, if we fail to tend to our kids’ and our clients’ emotional health, aren’t we dismissing their very personhood? Aren’t we being dismissive of how they feel in a manner similar to how Boomers suppressed their every emotion, making them calloused and transactional in relationships? No and no. Because, once again, the problem is not our children’smental health. I have a more important question we’re terrified to answer, one which first requires us to admit that children have not really changed.

What HAS changed? The adults in the room.

Their identity. Their rigidity and their perfectionism (even though we all gently remind one another it’s okay to not be okay and to be imperfect.) The sense of urgency they’ve involuntarily adopted because their administrator or boss or clinical director said it was important and compassionate and trauma-informed. Their insistence that robbing a child’s self-esteem to boost their own is a romantic gesture of “care”. In defense of many of today’s educators and therapists, though…. They’re terrified. They’re terrified because of professionals like me, and a culture who warns them that any wrong statement or a question stated in a voice that sounds like Uncle Dave will squelch a kid’s spirit and ruin them for life. Believe you me: we are all actually quite fine, and will be quite fine--- we just have to believe it. And we have to think for ourselves despite all the theatrics and the “misinformation” regarding trauma and stress.

We’ve known for some time that the rat race toward glee is futile. It’s precisely this reason that I strongly suggest a few changes to how we’re addressing this “mental health crisis”.

1. DITCH THE IDEA THAT WE’RE IN A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

2. GET ‘MENTAL HEALTH’ OUT OF SCHOOLS AND DROP THE GOD COMPLEX

3. SKILL-BUILDING OVER SYMPTOM MANAGEMENT

4. CASH-ONLY, ACUTE SERVICES

5. BRING IT BACK TO THE COMMUNITIES

This piece will be a five-parter in which I’ll delve into each of my five steps in greater depth. This introduction piece, then, will explain the first step: ditching the notion that we’re in crisis.

Firstly, we must radically shift the manner in which we label first-world problems. Our “mental health”, which we tout as if it’s a Gucci purse, is not a brand of social prestige. Like David Bidler’s Physiology First initiative reminds readers, “Mental health isn’t something we have. It’s something we do.” Modern therapy, specifically those initiatives spreading across American schools, demand an emotional investment in our own suffering. It accomplishes this rumination by constant weaving of psychological terms into academic instruction, putting “Calm Down Corners” in classrooms in the case a child is “overwhelmed” or “anxious”, and asking teachers to function as both educator and counselor. My “method”, similar to Bidler’s, requires the erasure of vapid initiatives and a turning of the dial back toward the self. Teachers get to focus on teaching, and students who have a problem with it will be redirected to look inward.

Self-reliance is how we overcome most any problem, whether situational or internal. Our turmoil does not result from our circumstances or an absence of mental health initiatives, but the story we assign to such turmoil. Perhaps learning more thoroughly the evidence of the story, then, is worth trying. We abandon the notion of a “mental health crisis” and all of its fruitless campaigns, and instead teach children about their brain and their physical health. We remind them that our default in the face of crisis, like Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, is resilience. We rely heavily on teaching history, if not for basic intelligence then to emphasize the adaptability of humans across millennia. The brain’s development and its history provide compelling evidence that we’re capable, competent individuals in the face of most any challenge. “You can do hard things” needs to be more than an adorable laptop sticker.

To illustrate how a lesson plan may go, we turn to the truly magical power of placebo effects. Placebo effects occur regularly and in a manner still somewhat mystical to psychology researchers. Our belief in something is powerful enough to change our behavior and even our physiology, despite there being no active ingredient or change agent in the intervention. As a shocking example, we look to an experiment conducted between two groups in a psychology research lab. One group was told they would be rubbed with a leaf of poison ivy, and that their skin may break out in hives because of the poison. The leaf itself was not poison ivy; they were only told it was. The second group was simply told they’d be experiencing textural differences between different types of leaves. Alas, the first group broke out into hives, simply because the information given about potential symptoms of poison ivy (itching skin, which progresses to form hives and spreading rashes, and eventually turns into blisters) was shared at the outset.

The placebo effect shows powerful promise in some of our nation’s most pressing problems, namely its addiction to opioids. The placebo effect luckily does not discriminate between structural or emotional pain, and the outcomes of its use in managing chronic pain are simply profound. Even research participants in chronic pain, who were told at the outset of treatment that they’d be given gelatin placebo pills, saw stark improvements in their perception of pain symptoms. How can this be? For God’s sake, the pill bottle itself had the label “placebo pills” on its face! One word: psychoeducation. Patients found education about the placebo effect so empowering that they were able to harness its benefits in their own mind, realizing their beliefs held enough weight to change their entire experience of pain. And, again--- it’s not only the beliefs that change with the placebo effect. The releasing of dopamine was evident in individuals when taking their placebo pills. We can teach people to craft their own inner pharmacy without any form of medicinal intervention--- and we can give a glaring middle finger to Big Pharma in the process. Self-reliance remains at the core of the “mental health” solution.

I frequently wonder if insisting upon there being a mental health crisis is a placebo effect of its own. What if we told people our mental health was actually improving? Or, at the very least, staying stable? Would we fixate on isolated occurrences of students feeling sad or that one university kid reporting social anxiety? Without such myopic thinking and behavior, would our money and our energy instead go toward building important skills for thriving in adulthood? Like, say, public speaking, conflict resolution, financial planning, self-awareness, physical and nutritional health, breaking and making habits?

When I recommend ditching the idea that we’re in a mental health crisis, I’m met with a lot of support and also some skepticism. “But what about autistic kids?”, “But what about my panic attacks?” The whataboutism is another form of reassurance-seeking that is rewarded with professionals, webinars, pills, and Instagram checklists. I had a parent ask me recently, “I want my kid to be more willing to put away the video games earlier, and not play on them so long. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for how to pitch this idea to my kid?” My response was something like, “Yeah, I’d tell him to stop playing video games or I’m unplugging the Xbox.” This isn’t difficult. It’s only educated, licensed professionals like me who have made it so.

So perhaps we refuse to engage with the whataboutism and instead treat people like they’re competent and capable. What’s the worst that can happen?

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This doesn’t imply you harbored malevolent intent, or that your help was tainted with a wicked motive to destroy the person’s livelihood. In most cases, it’s actually quite the opposite: it’s more likely that your compassion and big heart got the better of you, to the degree that the relationship morphed into that which we clinicians call “co-dependency”. There is such thing, believe it or not, as caring too much, or having too much empathy. Both end poorly in almost every scenario, from professional conflict to special education, from couples to teenage bowling leagues.

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With two people fluent in the art of self-awareness and boundary-enforcing, I’m not entirely convinced co-dependency is inherently negative. Grown adults with the emotional maturity to recognize when “enough is enough” could very much lean on people just enough before they decide to piece together the own mess that is their life. This is what friends are for, right?

As social creatures who very much derive meaning from our relationships, the ability to lean on, and even occasionally depend on others, is what forms strong bonds and bolsters our sense of self. My husband, for example, was clearly placed on planet earth to fish the absolutely disgusting hair slugs from the shower drain for me, even though the slug is comprised entirely of my own hair and that fact in and of itself could be ammunition he should probably use against me. Alas, he doesn’t. We’ve moved beyond the chuckles and the eye rolls to Dylan simply scooping out squirrel-shaped logs and whipping them toward me playfully, as if I do not behave like a toddler being shoved an airplane-spoon of peas. Knowing he’s available for this honest work, and willing to do it for me even though he, too, finds it disgusting, is a faction of our relationship that I most treasure. And laugh at.

Helping people, for me, typically results in a bodily sensation best described as my every fiber aglow or aflame. There is truth to the warm glow that is born of altruism, which I suppose Andrew Huberman has lectured about being related to some brain region entirely unpronounceable but it doesn’t matter because he’s very not ugly. He’s also spoken about the neurochemistry of gratitude, with novel neural pathways developing with every consistent action we take toward servicing another person. Helping also feels, in a perverse way, mildly addicting. Few things in this life garner that sensation of your senses smoldering, of a heightened belief in the self as a wonderful person that can conquer most any feat all because we’ve propped up another clumsy human. This even occurs when we’ve assisted or supported someone undeserving of help, or the asshole who is outwardly unappreciative of it. It’s no wonder the hyper-compassionate feel compelled to volunteer their organs, even if it means their own life is at risk.

One of the most common examples I’ve seen of this phenomenon in recent years is the envy that strikes the former provider in therapy fields. As clinicians, we’re often transferring cases between one another. This occurs for logistical reasons, like geographic location, or simply not seeing progress for an extensive period of time. Some providers will transfer a case to me with thorough anecdotes and delicate warnings, all in hushed tones as if there’s a tacit understanding between them and the client that the client will truly crumble without this person’s presence and service. “How will I ever live without you?!” is what we all subtly yearn to hear, considering the tearful encounters and the late hours spent agonizing over this wildly frustrating person’s progress. In a way, such thoughtful expression of their appreciation would be symbolic of the effort we’ve devoted to the now-positive trajectory of their once-shitty life. But wouldn’t you have it! The client not only responds in a manner far more neutral than expected, but they go on to demonstrate even greater self-awareness, self-control, and independence than we believed was possible without our counsel. A client a few years ago verbatim told me, “Ugh, thank God. I was getting kind of bored of talking to you anyway.”

And then you’re heartbroken, although not in the same manner as an unrequited love or ugly divorce. That identity you hold dear, that which is some form of a hero, is immediately invalidated by your client’s abrupt behavior, behavior which, in the grand scheme of things, denotes real progress. We’re supposed to be happy that our clients pull from their toolbox without our guidance---unless we’ve identified so strongly with this “savior” role that we’re unsure who we are unless we’re desperately clawed at by the client (both metaphorically and literally). As twisted as it may sound, this fear is quite common; that is, the fear that we’re so insignificant we’re good as forgotten. It has happened to me over the course of my career, although far less so in recent years. Such is the power of perception and a strong sense of self outside of what we’re paid to do.

Part of this conundrum is the belief that you’ve invested so much time and energy into this one person that any progress they make must be at least, in part, due to your counsel. You’re 100K in student loan debt, after all--- I’d hope to Christ your expertise is footing the bill at least some of the time. I’ve never been arrogant enough to believe that I’ve changed anyone’s life, or that their journey toward self-betterment would be unattainable if not for me. But I have experienced the sting of being less important than I thought. And, when people come to rely on you for events ranging from trivial to catastrophic, it’s even that much more challenging to determine where your support ranks on their list of significance. “Kayla helps me because she has a nice face” is flimsy testimony of a job well done. Or a job done at all.

We fall into traps of stealing others’ opportunities for competence but believing we’re helping. We get to play the noble martyr. We get to play dress-up as the hero we were never capable of becoming if not for this pathetic loser who has told us for the seventh time that they’ll really go to rehab and this time will be different, all because of us. Even though we outwardly express our exasperation with their shitty decisions, there’s also a part of us that demands they stay sick, disabled, and in need of our expertise. And I’m not even sure this happens consciously- it usually takes an outside party to reveal to us the truth we’ve coyly modified. The reality that is us actually hindering a person’s movement forward for our own selfish reasons. It’s deeper than craving chaos or thriving on theatrics--- it’s a buried desire to feel relevant.

To be clear, I’ve yet to meet a single person who pays umpteen thousand dollars in student loans to obtain a clinical license all for the sake of sabotaging a person’s goals. I haven’t even heard so much as a person state that they feel a sense of joy when their client plateaus week after month after year. It’s something that just happens when two people have been battling for betterment together for too long. The co-dependent tango is a relational corruption that typically takes several months or even years to develop, and the development is slow enough that it’s almost untraceable. It’s a subtle metamorphosis in both the client and the practitioner, where roles change ever so slightly, , but over time amount to a complete reversal of parts. The clinician is now desperately holding on to the relationship, as they believe the person’s entire livelihood is at risk, while the client continues to leech off of this useless help all while reassuring the clinician that they would be dead without them, please stay, please help, this time is different, I promise.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Siggie posted a quote recently that applies here: “Too many parents make life too hard for their children by, overzealously, trying to make life easy for them.” In other words: you’re probably an enabler. I am also an enabler. I enabled my brother Conner, along with my parents, until he eventually died of a Fentanyl overdose that was frankly a long time coming. It happens. It doesn’t make enablers bad people; it means we’re humans who struggle to draw the line between empowerment and permissiveness.

A world chockfull of “help” has managed to obliterate the mental health of children and adults alike. Perhaps it’s always worth it to ask, then, what part we’re playing in a person’s struggles.

Occasionally, it’s the help we forcefully project onto them. So be like Elsa and let it go.

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I suppose the answer to this question also depends on the personality type of the person asked. Although the research points unequivocally to the latter (i.e., most people respond with “less negative thinking”), we also must consider how culture has affected our perceptions of happiness versus contentment, optimism versus pessimism, and, of course, “vibez”.

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First of all, I hate the word “vibe” and any phrase which pertains to people “vibing”, the presence of some elusive but barefaced “vibe”, or collective rejection of a “vibe” that does not meet the criteria for that which is a “good vibe”. Phew! Glad I started this piece on a note of my seething rage for matters which are clearly quite trivial.

This supports the theory that my very nature teeters more towards skeptical in regards to most matters. But especially those which are popular and mainstream. At worst, it has been considered argumentative and even a bit scrappy, which I fully own, even if embarrassingly so. I was raised by people who saw events, life circumstances, and people by filtering out the neutral facts and highlighting the negative or the outrageous. I’m not entirely sure Mom and Dad did this willingly or even consciously; my Dad’s sister has reminded me on numerous occasions that his skittish nature is because of his parents (i.e., my grandparents). As children we’re largely sheltered from the misdoings of our elders, mostly because the time we spend with them is a joyous vacation from Mom and Dad usually rife with gifts or money, and void of any real consequences for behaving like animals. My brother and I were proper, for the most part, and would’ve been shipped to Siberia as orphans had we behaved even mildly close to how today’s children behave.

It’s only as we age and reach supposed maturity that we reflect upon our childhood and all of its teachings. My Dad, when I was a kid and still as a 33-year-old woman, has a tendency to respond in terse, sometimes disproportionately crude ways to things that don’t warrant such theatrics. To illustrate a recent example, I was on the phone with both my Mom and Dad on speaker last week while my Mom was letting their dog out onto their small patio. They live in a condo complex, where backyards of each resident meld into one another with no fencing or barrier to show whose house or property is whose, other than a tiny slab of brick which makes up a tiny deck. Their dog, Teddy, is a flirtatious expeditioner. He occasionally wanders to the decks of neighbors, where he’s known by most everyone by his name and by my Mom, who manages to befriend strangers in parking lots and create lifelong friends with people she meets while waiting in line at Walgreens for her prescription.

In a distant, muffled volume, because remember I was on speaker, I heard Mom say something like, “Ken, Teddy ran off.” My Dad, who could’ve simply said, “Kayla, hold on a sec,”, and shuffled outside to assess the severity of “Teddy ran off”, instead began yelling, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHAT IN GOD’S NAME HAPPENED?! WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS DOG?!??! WHAT DID YOU DO?!!??! FUCKING HELL!” His sundry tones and unnecessary remarks about the apparent alien abduction of the dog trailed off while I waited nosily on the other end of the phone. A couple of minutes later, he returned to me, behaving as if nothing had occurred and his screaming restored order on the brick slab of chaos. My Mom would continue to passive-aggressively whisper to herself about how he was crazy, in a tone just above a whisper to ensure he heard it clearly.

My Dad has been like this my entire life. As a child, I wanted to marry him. He was everything int the world to me, a beacon of grit and masculinity that fostered a chasm of adoration so broad I couldn’t imagine loving another male. For the most part, aside from the incest, this still rings true, despite his temper and his melodrama and the unsocialized manner in which he reacts to things.

There have been moments sprinkled throughout my childhood and my adulthood when I ached for a simple nod of approval or so much as a half-hearted “good try”, and I instead was met with blunt criticism and graceless, albeit honest, feedback. Dad, why did you have to tell me that I could’ve done better on a piece of art I’d agonized over for weeks? Was it entirely necessary to remind me that I fell short, again, after I’d already come to this realization through a series of unchangeable errors? You know I’m a kid that doesn’t have fun with hobbies or sports because I become so immersed in my performance, my strengths, my abilities, at the cost of the joy of it all. You know that since elementary school I’ve harbored a neuroticism that could only be learned rather than inborn, the kind that forces my eyes awake when kids my age remain motionless, asleep, consumed by a blanket of contentment I’ve long envied and yearned for. Many may read this with an “aww, that’s so sad,” or even “ugh, what an asshole”. I don’t see either of these as remotely accurate. I also don’t think Dad’s lack of affection or gentleness in times I could’ve used it affected me in any real way other than the sting of their receipt in the moment. It’s entirely possible to experience a dearth of positive vibez as a kid and still go on to be a somewhat normal person.

Interestingly enough, Dad’s ferocious sensibilities weren’t only applied to those situations that were frustrating and therefore worthy of complaints and criticism. His outlook did not discriminate against even those events and situations which most would agree were positive Before I proceed, I do want to emphasize his caring, supportive, and wise traits, and remind readers that he never once used my brother and I as metaphorical punching bags or obedient prey. Although there was always a clear bias toward poor outcomes or shortcomings or net negatives, he also parented with an arsenal of thoughtful support, using adages that I’d repeat to myself silently in times of peak distress. “Give ‘em hell” became the soundtrack of my elementary subconscious, which later evolved to “gird your loins” in middle school and finally, “your tenacity is what I admire most about you” in my personal turnaround that was college. For better or for worse, Dad helped carve a neurotic daughter into a stoic woman that people rely on for her honesty, courage, and valor.

It was his inherent proclivities, though, his hypervigilance and his impulse for catastrophe, that ultimately tainted many a good moment. I don’t resent him for these, they just function as data points I can use to better think about my own behavior and attitudes.

When I was first accepted into college, which was not difficult because I intentionally applied to one of the worst and cheapest universities in Illinois after barely having graduated high school, he led with, “You’d better take out student loans for that because it’s going to cost a fortune and if you decide that you don’t want to do it anymore then you’re fucked.” Throughout my undergrad, my brother, who was in his third or fourth rehab center for heroin by that point, would arrive home on visits to a similar lecture series on compelled misery my Dad had long since assumed was what it meant to be an adult. The words of wisdom imparted on my brother escape me, but they sounded like phrases from Tony Robbins, if Tony Robbins had been possessed by the Antichrist. Robbins’ suggestions that were “your past does not equal your future” were rewritten by Dad as, “you totally fucked yourself”. There were, though, aspects of Tony’s message that I think, buried beneath Dad’s crusted surface, were itching to live vicariously through us.

Again looking through the clearer lens of hindsight, I wonder if Dad was simply terrified, and he didn’t know how to connect to my brother and me in any way other than to warn us of the troubles and the trials and the tribulations that constituted the past five decades of his own life. This was Dad’s one and only opportunity to stand tall in his parenting role of twins, both of whom suffered from lethal, compulsive behavior disorders that he wasn’t even aware existed when he was our age. His own paranoia and anxious temperament unfurled into a Negative-Nancy, an emotional transformation that I’ve come to realize he perhaps didn’t even consent to. Or maybe he was like this long before we were even a thought. Or, more likely of an explanation, the conception of my brother and I was the vehicle for such nervy transmission.

My brusque sarcasm and somber tones are certainly inherited traits from my Dad. In recent years, I’ve asked myself and my husband countless times: Am I a pessimist? My husband has stated that while he doesn’t believe I’m a pessimist at my core, he’s definitely seen defaults towards negativity in more recent years, kinds that are mildly symbolic of Dad’s uncalled-for mania. Self-development, specifically when done well, is painful. Who wants to come to terms with the person they’ve become, especially if that person is a stranger you’d never befriend, someone so foreign to you you couldn’t possibly trust its instincts? I needed to understand how this came to be, and what about my environment and my own beliefs have contributed to a version of myself I couldn’t stand.

The most difficult part was reconciling my public-and-professional perception and that which I know to be true via direct evidence: to others, I’m extraverted and bubbly, sarcastic and sharp-tongued, perhaps at times inadvertently condescending or too forceful in my opinion. But never have I been framed as a pessimist by those who I’m tasked with helping. Was it just people I’d come to trust, befriend, and love? And if so--- how much has my temperament changed their perception of me? Has it drawn them into a whirl of complaints unfettered by solutions, a world of fury they hadn’t bargained for but felt compelled to partake in because of our relationship? I hate myself for having put people in a position that felt as unfamiliar to them as this grim self does to me. However, not all hope is lost.

I’ve also reframed my definition of “pessimist” entirely after tremendous, involuntary exposure to some people, in recent years, that I’d consider delusionally happy. Perhaps anyone with a realistic view of themselves and their future compared to a “toxic optimist” can be considered bitter. So, again… am I a pessimist? Am I a sometimes-pessimist, sometimes-optimist? Does it matter?

Sometimes I wonder if my attitude and aura, which are clearly genetically endowed as well as reinforced through life experience, are habitual rather than accurate. In looking at most of the people I’ve attracted, I am delighted. While I don’t believe it’s adaptive to dwell or ruminate over how we’re seen by other people, we absolutely need to take others’ opinions into account. Confidence, yes, is built within, but it’s also built by contributing to society and those around us. We cannot ever survive a world in which other people do not factor into the equation; it’s why I so heavily reject the “just do you, the hell with what other people think” mindset. I believe that if I truly were a toxic presence, I’d tend to attract equally fragile people with a penchant for fury, for futile argumentation about things they’re completely unaffected by. I’m somewhat assured, then, that my negativity largely occurs inside my own brain. Is this pessimism? Or am I ruminating and over-analyzing? I have a tendency to do both.

I heard somewhere that we attract the audience we deserve. Perhaps I’ve attracted the “wrong” types here and there, mostly because I lost control of myself and succumbed to the malevolent brands of reinforcement. I’m human, too! But, again, I’m pleased with the opportunities I’ve been offered and the connections I’ve forged. Would this have happened if I were truly cynical? Perhaps I’m only trying to make myself feel better.

This is why I’m captivated by teaching critical thinking, and a “do it yourself” framework. What I just did, an out-loud banter weighing my rank on the asshole-meter, is an example of how we gather evidence for and against an argument, with this particular hypothesis being “I am a pessimist.” In what I’ve discovered about myself, especially in recent years, one fact has stuck: an excess focus on ourselves, and even our thinking, does no good. To fixate on that which needs changing or improving, and making frequent public announcements as to our vulnerability and our goals, is likely more performative than it is indicative of deep self-awareness. Too much good can easily fall into bad. So maybe I just need to better and more consistently embody the opposite of my most “toxic traits”, or, at the very least, cultivate more neutrality, and give up the useless battle that is predicting the future and anticipating how I might feel about it.

People do change despite psychology’s theory that our personality traits are unwavering and somewhat immutable. My family has proven repeatedly that we’re wildly capable of not only changing how we respond in situations, but our beliefs about things we’ve long since despised. Maybe we don’t need to constantly want more, to achieve more, to make more money or get another degree or hire another coach. Maybe we just need to adjust that little space between our ears to reinvent our realities anew.

My Dad invited his brother-in-law over for Christmas this year, which was a shock to all of us. He’d long since written him off as a “jagoff” unworthy of forgiveness because of a series of mistakes Uncle Frank had made, mistakes my parents still shelter us from for reasons unknown. Dad is quick to do this; he’s known for abruptly and unflinchingly abandoning relationships at the first error or perceived wrongdoing, seemingly without a hint of remorse, as if their very identity disintegrates before his eyes and they’re out of his sight and his mind. But this year, at age 74, Dad has made efforts to change. He even invited one of his neighbors, a social step I’m certain was foreign to him. I haven’t seen my Dad socialize with another non-human family member in a long time, and I’m unsure what small talk or pleasantries would even look like. Maybe his newer sense of purpose has been renewed in his later years with the way the world has shifted and his recognition that his years left are numbered. I wonder if he sees parts of himself in me that he’s desperate to change, seeing as most would consider 74 years old a pointless age to want more and want better. Dad’s best bet is vicarious conversion.

Allowing myself back into my interests of psychology, achievement, grit, and human performance have reminded me that I’m entirely capable of finding meaning, even in places I’ve denounced as gurgling cesspools of stupidity. I’m trying as hard as humanly possible, with very strict time parameters, to catch my negative defaults before they’ve bloomed and make the choice to come up with alternatives. This is effortful. It’s exhausting and embarrassing, and I’m a tad unmoored by how often I respond inappropriately. Optimists may try to reframe these as flowery traits that aren’t even that bad; they’re strengths, queen! Do you, boo-boo! I don’t know how helpful this is. I think what I’ll do is honestly assess whythese traits have become so easy for me to revert to, and break the habit in the way I teach hundreds of people to do for my job.

Maybe the outlook isn’t so bad. My track record is pretty great.

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A small portion of me was offended. Mostly because I’d tried my hardest to conceal my impulsivity and trick people into believing I’m a thoughtful, mature woman with the ability to weigh and measure her options carefully. This kind, perfect stranger, who meant no passive-aggressive harm in this statement, accidentally sent a clear message: I’ve got your number. Being identified as our traits we try so desperately to hide, and essentially being caught in a lie, of sorts, is what Tony Soprano refers to as “being had”--- and boy was I had. It certainly hasn’t been the first time my infractions have been snuffed out used as examples; I tend to ask for forgiveness far more than permission, and occasional red-handedness comes with the territory. The result, though, is often the same: a sudden flush of prickly stinging behind my cheeks, the quick uptick in erratic thumps of my heart, an internal pressure building that only wants to lash out, to justify my wrongdoing, to lie to myself. We all sing saccharine BS to ourselves when we’re wrong. Perhaps we’ve tamed this tendency enough to the point that it only happens from time to time, or maybe we’re teetering more on the unhinged end of the spectrum and let that childish streak paint its broad strokes over our image. Either way, it usually does not get easier to be found out.

I’d been found out by someone who had revealed my darkest traits in all of two short house showings.

Was I that bad? Were my proclivities that abundantly obvious to people around me? Maybe I’d mistaken my fervor for extraversion and open-mindedness. I love new things! Novelty doesn’t scare me! I’m entirely open to new perspectives! Same old, same old bores me to tears! All of these things are true, but I do very much have a proneness, a fetish, even, for extremes. I’ve been told by nearly every millennial woman I know that I should be tested for ADHD because of my personality and my preferences. As someone who is in the field of mental and behavioral health, I try to hide my irritation with this suggestion with a chuckle and a redirection. Because, frankly, why does it matter? What would an ADHD diagnosis do for me, other than solidify my attributes, the ones I both love and loathe?

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This is something I still have a hard time understanding as it relates to the power of diagnoses. Or, I should say, the perceived power in a diagnosis. It’s plausible that diagnoses can resolve some doubts about characteristics we’ve struggled to manage. But then what? Let’s assume I do have ADHD, as is evident by my being easily seduced to take unnecessary risks, or my childhood opposition to playdates and social gatherings, or my seemingly bottomless interest in a hundred different things at once. How does knowing I have ADHD change these things? It doesn’t. It only offers a label to something we’re already aware of. When we teach children to become fixated on the semantics or the brands or the captions instead of developing solutions to the problems themselves, we all but groom them into becoming the millennial adult that uses her diagnosis to evade accountability. I just wasn’t raised that way. Oh, you broke your leg? Good thing God gave you two. 

I was somewhat of a shy kid, which is shocking to people who know me as an adult. “YOU?! You didn’t participate in class?!” It was the most common and expected criticism my parents received about me during parent teacher conferences throughout all of elementary through junior high. “She’s such a sweet girl, but she really doesn’t participate”, or “When she does have things to say, it’s always a good idea! Kayla just doesn’t partake much in our group discussions or projects.” I didn’t like a lot of other kids. My Dad is a life-long loner devoid of even mild hunger to socialize with anyone but me and my Mom. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, I have a feeling my parents’ lack of affiliation with most any human was transferred to me via modeling. My habit toward solitude wasn’t because I was a tomboy who generally opted for more “boyish” activities than female-oriented hand games and circle time. Being a tomboy was, at the time of my childhood, just as commonplace a status symbol as it was to remodel your kitchen. My resistance to friendship was largely because mine and my family’s lifestyles were too different for me to find anyone very relatable.

Since I was a child, I’ve been an early-riser. And I don’t mean an early riser like those who wake up at 6 and claim they’re positioned to conquer the day while the world lies motionless in bed until sunrise. No. From kindergarten through high school, between 5:00 AM and 5:30 AM were typical wake times for me and my brother. In college, this would become between 4:30 and 5:00, and, for the past decade or so, my husband and I have been waking up between 3:45 and 4:15 in the stillness of the morning. I’d wake up before any other child at a godforsaken sleepover my parents forced me to attend, bored, wanting to go home, fidgeting to develop an escape route. “I wonder what Rachel’s parents would do if I just… left,” I often mused. Perhaps fortunately, we weren’t 9-year-olds with phones or gadgets or technological devices to fill our time. Kids during my school-age years were forced to develop their own strategies for amusing themselves. And boy did I have ample time to bring forth entertainment.

When Rachel’s Mom would wander past the bedroom upon hearing my rustling, she’d say something like, “What are you doing up?” I typically replied with, “I don’t know”, because I suppose I didn’t know exactly why I was awake. More importantly, I couldn’t understand why everyone else was still asleep. “I mean… do you want to like, read a book or something?” This is probably when my love of reading truly ripened. Maybe this was a wonderful, unforeseen consequence of my parents harassing me into a sleepover I didn’t want to go to with a bunch of annoying girls I didn’t even like. I found something to better occupy my time, my mind, and my budding cognition.

Forcing children to do things they don’t like is essential for growth. We frequently hear adages like that of “Do hard things,” or “Growth happens outside of your comfort zone,” but we seem to have forgotten what constitutes as occurring outside of this “comfort zone”. Mental health and behavioral health practitioners have successfully made a mockery of the outside rings of this safety terrain, as the bar gets lower and lower with each new webinar about childhood trauma. Sleepovers increase the chances your child may be exposed to childhood sex trafficking, and your child shouldn’t be forced to do anything they don’t like! While well-intentioned and I’m sure just another, more extreme version of irrational parent worries, this is wildly misguided. It focuses too heavily on the emotions of a child who doesn’t yet have the maturity to make many important decisions for themselves anyway. The fear of our kids’ reactions seems to be driving the notion that they get to decide when, where, how, and why their day will play out, with parents only available as optional guidance counselors. Make no mistake: this is not compassionate, and there is absolutely zero literature on this approach for disabilities, emotional disorders, ADHD, or behavioral problems. There’s not a trace of me that resents my parents for exercising their manpower and encouraging me to endure non-preferred things with non-preferred people. It was the linchpin in my ability to communicate across opinions, attitudes, personalities, ages, and cultures.

In retrospect, I also wish my parents would have been even more forceful as it related to some of my greatest skillsets. I’ve been gifted in drawing since elementary school despite no formal training. In high school I’d receive a full-ride scholarship to an art school in Colorado, who basically offered to purchase all of my art in exchange for an education. At the last moment, I panicked. Would I become the stereotypical starving artist? I also absolutely loved every aspect of exercise, physical therapy, weightlifting, nutrition, and health, and the potpourri of my interests and "passions” seemed to have skewed my judgment. Not only did I reject a full-ride scholarship, I also decided that my experience in treatment for anorexia would make me a wonderful psychotherapist; at a moment’s notice when declaring a major, I scratched out “kinesiology” and instead put “clinical psychology”. It was a horrible mistake.

I don’t mean to make it sound as if my career has permanently damaged my psyche or that it has funneled me into a path destined for misery. There are moments in my career in which I’m able to fully exercise my other passions and my joys and things I’ve mastered to fluency, which forges a sense of competence that is rewarding no matter what the work itself is. But perhaps that’s my most important point: telling children to follow their passions has a high likelihood of resulting in people working their passions into mundane jobs that they eventually end up hating or resenting. And for what? So we can be inspirational and tell our children that work isn’t work and we’ll never work a day in our life if we love what we do? How many people can honestly say that? My parents bitched until they retired at age 72 that they prayed for the day their workplace burned down and the employees were given severance packages as small vacations from tedium of everyday life in the plant. The concept of burnout did not apply to Baby Boomers. This was just what they called “work”.

If I’d learned to apply the focus of art and weightlifting to my ADHD-like traits, I think I’d have been better positioned to make informed decisions about my future. I need not get into the details of formal schooling, as our world is rightfully possessed by the dismantling of the Department of Education and educational/institutional corruption in general. What I will say, though, is that too heavy of an emphasis on how we feel about something, instead of the sense of competence, control, and autonomy we have related to meaningful work, often pans out as a feeling of being stuck. Passions change over time. Our likes and dislikes tend to evolve with age. Passion also doesn’t guarantee mastery or even fluency in skill. And, if I may be frank: wanting to have a dream job you’re passionate about is millennial woo-woo that is unnecessary as it is smug.

My general advice, then? Your child probably doesn’t need a social skills therapist or an ADHD coach or a specialized bullet journal for neurodivergent kids. They probably need a nudge, much like many of us adults need. As Matt Beaudreau of Apogee Schools says beautifully, “You don’t need more resources. You need to learn to be more resourceful.” Whether I have ADHD or not, my decisions are entirely within my control. It’s my responsibility to exercise these, all while taming my impulses, regardless of what you decide to call it.

And how wonderful is that?

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Impersonating someone else, with the intention of manipulating public perception, is a childhood no-no. ‘Be your truest self’, people say. ‘You are worth it!’; ‘Why be someone else when you are so special just as you are!’ I’m pretty sure I’ve seen such adages stamped on co-workers’ laptops and Stanley cups. It’s surely valuable to practice radical acceptance as it relates to ourselves and our abilities. Radical acceptance might look like writing out a list of the many ways we’ve contributed to a problem. Or it may be a tacit promise to ourselves that we will not complain about things we choose not to address. This everyday practice is utilized everywhere, from patients in psychotherapy to corporate executives struggling to gain respect from the peons that are their employees. It’s a useful strategy if executed in appropriate dosages; to understand thyself without argument or resistance is the surest path to improving upon that which we suck at. But is there such thing as being too accepting?

We can become passively approving of behaviors in ourselves and in others that most would find repugnant simply by virtue of being around them for a considerable period of time. This social phenomenon has been referred to in some circles as “bamboozlement” or by Tony Soprano as “being had”. I’ve seen this reality-warping in special education fields thousands of times, by now: Rules and boundaries, bad! Permissiveness and feelings, good! I once worked on a case with a special needs client who trespassed into a gated community, broke into a stranger’s car, stole the stranger’s belongings, and received zero consequence, zero jailtime, or even so much as a talking-to by local authorities. The response on the part of staff: “Well… what would jail actually do? He has special needs. It would just be traumatizing.” What becomes normal is not necessarily reflect what’s right, what’s sensical, or what’s needed. Being around low standards for long enough, in the name of “helping”, is truly poisonous and contagious. Poor thinking is circulated often enough that we radically accept it as factual. What would have ultimately benefited this client would have been something that probably pissed him off initially. But feeling hurt and progressing forward are not mutually exclusive.

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Alas, our “mental health” still remains truant. But how can this be? How can we have more specialized therapists, more “compassionate care”, more trainings on mental health, and psychiatrists lulling our mismanaged personality problems with drugs… and still see such problems? How can we spend 5 years teaching a client a skill only for them to seemingly suffer amnesia at the hint of one little compulsion, one little environmental trigger? Is this what “helping” is? Well… it shouldn’t be. When skills are only “mastered” in one setting with a safe person, and are not tested under more realistic demands and circumstances, we cannot be surprised when people eventually revert back to their usual kinks. And, because so many millennials have developed our careers asynchronously online, and without any requirement for real-world retesting, we wouldn’t even recognize that our clients are dependent on treatment. Or that we are dependent on whatever digital crutch we’ve fallen prey to. We see them as successful in session because of us, and we exploit these successes as proof of our product. But it’s always found out eventually as faulty.

Enter David Goggins. Goggins has grown increasingly popular over the years, and maybe rightfully so. He’s a militant and comical Navy SEAL with a knack for reminding us that we’re all little bitches who are not working nearly as hard as we’d like to believe. An increasing trend has been the claim that we’re “just like David Goggins, and the world would be a better place if more people were like that.” Firstly, it’s imperative we understand that we are not like David Goggins simply because we like to tell people the blunt truth. An important factor in being brutally honest with people is to be respectful enough to stick around for their reaction, and continue to show them positive regard despite defensiveness or even hostility. How many people do you know can do that? Anyone, literally anyone, can tell someone to “get over it” via email or text message. But can we muster up the courage to tell someone we very much like, face to face, that they’re being irrational and selfish? Can we stick to our guns when they inevitably respond like children? Can we respect a person anyway, despite these traits we may find reprehensible?

To be even remotely David-Goggins-esque, we must admit that we take a liking to projecting this persona onto other people, but we would prefer to only receive compliments or surface-level critique in return. I frankly do not know anybody who claims to be like David Goggins that has demonstrated resilience in the face of crushing feedback. To cower into ourselves, I believe, is human nature. There is no masterclass in the digital world that will serve to dampen the sting of tough criticism and truthful feedback; that is only accomplished through repeated exposure to tough criticism and truthful feedback. If you find yourself wanting to engender the curt candor of Goggins, ask yourself: Have I approached myself with brutal honesty first? Have I been kind to myself by brutally and unabashedly evaluating my faults? What are my faults and defaults when I’m pissed? Can I explain my failures without mentioning other people as contributing factors? Is my thinking actually accurate, or am I pretending to be something or someone else? Is my perspective accurate, or is this thinking more of a habit? When I get irritated by other people, is it because I’m guilty of the same thing? Do I have the experience and expertise to help another person with this? Have I earned the right to treat other people the way I want to? Bluntness is an earned right.

Shane Parrish of Farnam Street states in his book, Clear Thinking, “The person who wants to be seen as great shows the world how to manipulate them.” With so much remote work allowing us to pretend to be great versus actually beinggreat, it’s imperative our younger generations learn to practice discernment when presented with information. Do I believe this because it’s true? How do I know it’s true? Or do I find myself believing it because I like the person saying it?Confidence typically results from what psychologists refer to as “self-efficacy”, or the prevailing belief a person has in their own abilities and skills. Unearned confidence is that which is built by gullibility: skimming an article we find interesting and suddenly feeling like we have expertise in the subject, or attending a 2-hour lecture and deciding we’re knowledgeable enough to make a podcast episode about why everyone else is mistaken about it. True success, and true knowledge, involve an extensive track record of applying what we learn successfully. It’s less about the size of our mental archives but more about how we use the knowledge we do have. There are very obvious, straight forward ways to regain control of our critical thought, and none of them involve sitting behind a computer screen. Get in front of people and let them do the teaching.  

In listening to a podcast episode of “The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Podcast”, I was pleased to hear her articulate some of the issues with gaining digital credibility. I’m paraphrasing, but she stated something quite similar to, “It is easier to bypass the work it takes to be humble when much, if not all, of our ‘work’ takes place from behind a computer screen.” Think about how people “sold themselves” in job interviews or to prospective romantic partners prior to Tinder or Microsoft Teams. Not only were we responsible for wearing real pants, we were expected to demonstrate some degree of professionalism through our body language, our verbal language, our communicative abilities, and our knowledge of the role. Now, with much of our understanding being polluted by the illusion of explanatory depth, anyone can appear competent. The illusion of explanatory depth is quite straightforward: we believe we know more than we actually do. When we surround ourselves with highly approving people who unflinchingly agree with us, our poor thinking is only further reinforced. “OMG, you are like, so right! I don’t know why you’re right, but it sounds right!” It’s why it’s imperative we peel ourselves away from ChatGPT and learn things enough to actually be able to explain them, in depth, to real human beings. It’s sadly an increasingly diminishing skillset which, again, has a very straightforward solution. Stop trying to learn by not trying.

I went to school, preschool through graduate degree, when computers were not permitted in the classroom, slides were not posted and sent out to students, and public speaking was a requirement to pass. Professors did not have to take coursework in conflict resolution or social-emotional communication to foster more compassionate relationships with their students. They simply told their students if they measured up or not, and told them to kick it up a notch had they fallen short. They did not offer affirmative reframes of “falling short” of “failing”; you fell short or you failed, and that was that. That was the learning opportunity.

A professor I respected most in graduate school was the woman who kicked all of us out of class because we showed up unprepared to deliver a speech. Straight from the Goggins playbook? Not quite. It’s just good, old-fashioned accountability. Nobody was a little bitch baby; we just failed. My favorite teacher of all-time, Mr. Panitch, is probably one of the two males I look up to in my life, and a close second only to my Dad. Mr. Panitch couldn’t care any less if you were nervous, you were terrified, your dog just died, or you broke your arm on black ice on the way to class. His standards for excellence taught us not to take our fears and our ignorance so seriously, and to remedy our anxiety with courage. A girl who was terrified of public speaking passed out in front of the class, to which Mr. Panitch responded by calling the nurse, giving her a few minutes and a sip of ice water, and still requiring her to finish her speech.

It was also unheard of, when I was finishing school, to email a professor “asking for the slides for review”. This was the duty of the student to come prepared with a notepad, pen, and a listening ear. Accommodations were unprecedented when I was completing my graduate degree not even 10 years ago. We weren’t given questions ahead of time for job interviews; we were expected to understand the material thoroughly enough to be prepared for any form of a question. ChatGPT didn’t review emails to check for more optimal wording. While I’m certainly not making the argument that resources shouldn’t be shared and PowerPoints or lecture slides should be kept hidden, I haven’t seen much critical thinking develop as a result of such abundant sharing. If anything, it’s been the opposite: a complete decay of critical thought. Naval Ravikant states, “The tools for learning are abundant. It's the desire for learning that is scarce.” Do you need a masterclass or a coach? Or do you just need to try?

Perhaps bringing back messy, hard-to-follow, discussion-based and project-based learning will revive our innate need to connect with other people. I frankly am unconvinced that texting or emailing back and forth are passable stand-ins for legitimate interaction. There is such beauty in unpredictable, dysfunctional human beings, and an insistence on speed or optimization has robbed us of that mystery. What will they say next? I’ve mentally prepared and studied this, I feel confident in learning no matter what this person throws at me! I can always say I’m not sure if I don’t know what the answer is. What do they know that I don’t? In one of my favorite college courses I teach, I make my students sit across from each other in chairs about 3 feet apart and stare at each other for 60 consecutive seconds. No laughing, no smiling, no muttering that they feel so awkward. They’re then asked to debate one another without staring down at their iPhone, and without using a surface-level archive of social media screenshots containing likely inaccurate information. They’re tasked with developing their own opinions on issues based on what they’ve learned thus far, their own personal experience, what they’ve come to learn about all perspectives on a matter, and their understanding of where their partner may be coming from. My response to “but that’s so weird”?: “so what?”

It can be jarring to realize that people we’ve idolized are actually giant assholes, or are shallow and uninformed. Remember when Ellen DeGeneres was exposed as a tyrant? WHAT?! The lovable lesbian show host with spunk and a proclivity for pranks is not only mean, but she doesn’t write any of her own jokes?! I suppose this is the way the world has always been: there are songwriters who gain zero recognition but continue on because of their love of words and music. Hosts of snarky TV specials rarely write their own jokes, but possess a charm and personality that perhaps their writers do not have (or even want). Copy-and-paste comes in many forms. And, make no mistake: it serves solely the purpose of entertainment. The advent of the internet has proven itself, repeatedly, to be one which values drama over logic, and theatrics over legitimate information. This is not a reason to focus our efforts on being entertaining over being informative, at least if we claim to want to help people.

The basics will work time and time again. You do not lack coaches or resources or templates or PowerPoints, you lack effort, discipline, and perseverance. This is okay; we all do, occasionally. You’re not a bad person because of it, you just need to radically accept that the problem isn’t other people. The problem is your attitude.

Build it, and they will come.

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In a psychological experiment whose name and author escapes me, study participants were told they’d be taste-testing brands of wine, both dirt-cheap and upscale. Of course, as psychological experiments would have it, both groups received the exact same wine, in the exact same cups, at the exact same time. The first group was told they’d be privileged enough to experience top-shelf pinot noir, hand-squeezed and strained from the delicate hills of Calabria. The second group was told that their wine was the alcoholic version of sloppy seconds: it was cheap (less than $10 per bottle) and could be purchased at any gas station.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first group perceived their wine as having a magnificent taste. They commented on its subtle aromas and notes of dark cherry and cocoa. Their experience, or so they thought, was elevated simply by nature of the wine’s price and presentation. The second group behaved similarly. Their wine, according to their taste buds, was for poor college kids who wanted a buzz, and the wine’s flat taste and miserable context made for a 1-star review. I’ve written frequently about how our expectations heavily influence our experience, so much so that our perception is prone to bias, inaccuracy, and self-deception. That is, we tend to experience what we expect, for better or for worse. And, with so many people marketing their “product” on social media with a top-shelf-wine-like presentation, it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing we’re addressing a problem we have--- only by distracting ourselves from it.

The obsession with ameliorating discomfort or “optimizing” everyday life can be discouraging to those of us in human service fields, who likely entered the field of our choosing simply because we found joy in helping. While my salary is certainly comfortable, it had zero bearing on why I chose psychology in the first place. Money means next to nothing for those of us who have fully felt the joy in being of service to another person. I’ve theorized it’s the reason why my business skills are horrific, at best, and that I constantly feel a sense of guilt for naming any sort of price for services I provide. I’ve largely resigned to the fact that I’ll never work for myself--- and I think this is how I know I’ve made the “impact” I’ve longed for since my undergraduate degree.

The influence I’ve had on people, so far, has seemed very granular. That is, it has occurred on very individual, microscopic levels that I’m unsure have transferred to a broader scale just yet. For years, and even currently, I wanted to believe I was capable of what widely-known companies were doing: they had large followings and seemed to be spearheading their own reform in their respective fields. How do I do that? Why haven’t I done that yet? What are they doing that I haven’t done? It became that of envy versus wanting to help that haunted my every decision, to the point that clients and being of service weren’t even an afterthought. Was this the impact I wanted to make? Scrambling to build an audience so I’d have faceless people to boast to about my mission of “changing the world”? And, further, the feedback I’d received from people, and their continuously shitty behavior following my “services” for them, proved repeatedly that my so-called mission was a farce, and that the only impact I’d made was being the chick people used as a scapegoat to air their politically incorrect thoughts and feelings. That is not the person I want to be. I’ve recognized that being a public-facing person is not something I’ve ever enjoyed or have ever even been good at, aside from perhaps public speaking and basic crowd work. It’s the people, the reactions, and the conversations that I’ve grown fluent in--- not the stage they may take place on.

Feedback is necessary should we improve. We’re exposed to objective criticism in school by submitting essays and projects for grading, to which our teachers scribbled their corrections in red ink across each page before assigning a final grade. Regardless of how strong a person is mentally, constructive criticism usually stings. It’s less about the constructive criticism itself but more about how we react to it, and what we decide to do with it. Keeping the importance of feedback in mind, we turn to today’s influx of “remote coaching” positions. I’ve spoken with countless clients/athletes/consumers/patients that pay month and month and even year after year for these high-end services about why they believe they need them. Their answer? Usually some rendition of, “It’s entirely individualized to what I need.” I once believed I’d be a remote coach that would finally stick it to my bosses by making my own money. I failed miserably, because my “work” is best executed in person--- the service that business coach after business coach will tell you is “too hard to scale”. It is definitely difficult to make a living driving to client’s homes, their gyms, residential facilities, and psychiatric institutions an hour and a half away. But they’re getting from me what I believe is what I’m made to give people: connection. Individualized, made-for-you service. This is where I’m fully on board with hyper-individualized care.

After working in psychological fields in both clinical and teaching positions, our clients are in desperate need of more individualized, thoughtful care. Their technicians and their practitioners are often bogged down with massive caseloads and useless administrative work to the degree that a cut-and-paste treatment plan written for Sally 3 years ago will just have to suffice for today’s Sandy. This is especially common for those working with children, as the demand for psychological or behavioral services for kids younger and younger has skyrocketed in recent years. This is likely due to the public perception that their child is the fine-wine sourced from Calabria, and that only a hyper-specific program tailored to their “deep feeling kiddo” and their intricate web of needs will help progress them toward some lofty goal of compelled happiness. Okay, I kid. Sort of.

To reiterate, in theory, individualized care is wonderful. Necessary, even. But I frequently wonder if our fetish for feedback isn’t so much about evaluating our performance as it is about reassurance-seeking. I wrote in one of my last pieces about how we’ve outsourced many of our very basic, very simple and natural problems to online coaches, to templates and “resources”, to Google, to ChatGPT. I’ve used and greatly benefited from all of these digital resources, specifically Google maps, because I never have any idea where the hell I’m going. It’s something that has allowed me to get to places with ease but also ensure I never actually have to learn directions.

Perhaps this is my point. Coaching in any industry can feel a lot like it’s giving direction. And, when done well, it does. Coaching, mentoring, teaching, or servicing another person in need of guidance requires the practitioner to enhance a client’s critical thinking and guide them to a destination without offering up a solution. Effective service is typically acute (that is, 3 months or less) and does not require constant feedback. If I’m being entirely honest, there are things I do on a day-to-day basis that I don’t want feedback for, even if I’m not doing them efficiently or correctly. Hobbies, for example, have entered the digital marketplace as routines which warrant a template, an e-book, a resource, a “coach”. My recent obsession with gardening, for example, has coyly seduced me into rabbit hole after rabbit hole, all of which conveniently sell some form of gardening expertise whose authors apparently believe I cannot find on page 1 of Google.

There’s also something to be said about having more fun, taking things less seriously, and doing shit that isn’t evidence-based but is enjoyable. Trust me, I recognize how this sounds. The fields I work in rely almost exclusively on scientific evidence and data to support a person’s claims, which I completely support and utilize for the majority of my work. There are some aspects, though, where I think the “evidence-based only” groups actively dismiss the oh-so-common pleasure principle. Sure, the Chinese detoxification method that is “cupping” has minimal evidence base to support its efficacy in muscle recovery. But it leaves cool, quirky little circles on your body and it feels really pleasant. It distracts you from that knot of fascia under your shoulder blade and puts you into a state of deep relaxation. Is this necessarily a problem? If the person continues to injure themselves and continues to throw money at things like cupping, it certainly can fester into a problem. If the person enjoys it, though, and they’re not hurting anybody else? I suppose we aren’t in a place to tell people how to spend their money. This is my “impact”--- helping people reconnect with common sense.

This is where I believe much of today’s coaching is more a marketing tactic to breed treatment dependence in consumers. Treatment dependence occurs frequently in psychological fields and in therapy. It’s when the practitioner is unable to help the client use their skills independently and when they’re not in the presence of their therapist. In modern day, since we live in the “everyone should see a therapist” epoch, it’s common for people to attend their weekly sessions for 3, 5, and even 10 years.  The sessions have no real agenda or even proposed outcome. They’re in place because they’ve become a part of a person’s routine that they believe is necessary for their functioning but also can’t seem to explain how it’s benefitted them or why they continue to go. It’s the illusion that someone is actively listening to our specialized set of problems and is supporting us in a specialized way--- even if we can’t explain how they’ve supported us or in what way our lives are better as a result of this service.

The basics can take us a long way. They can usually take us far enough to where we don’t need to throw money at coaches and templates and resources. I’ve been the person that believed my problems were above the basics, or that my skillset had advanced beyond the beginner level. Both of these things may be true in some instances. But I hate to break it to you: none of us are that special. And, for some reason, much of today’s “services” demand we see ourselves as special. We’re not spectacularly architected snowflakes rife with unparalleled complexity. Our problems are likely more similar than they are different from the billions of people that populate planet Earth. While this may come as a shock or even a buzzkill, it’s meant to be a positive thing. It means that you’re not fundamentally damaged and that your existence need not be dictated by a coach or a mentor. It means you can experiment on yourself and trust in your common sense. And it also means that you’re not alone in the many struggles that feel exclusive to you and isolate you from other people.

It isn’t that serious. Some are goal-chasers and high achievers and actively seek feedback to improve upon their every misstep. This is crucial should we aim to improve ourselves and understand how our perspectives differ from others. And then there are some like me, a recovering lofty-goal-chaser with a kink for blunt criticism, who no longer wish to aspire to a career goal or even a personal goal. For once, and perhaps for the first time in my life, I want to just “be”. I still want to hear as many perspectives as I can. I still want my clients and students to trust that I will hear them and offer my honest opinion, even if it’s difficult to give and receive. But I’m not all that interested in evaluating my work performance or pursuing a fitness goal that has proven, historically, to have zero impact on my overall sense of purpose.

Perhaps rightfully so, we’re terrified of symptoms. We’ve proven to our symptoms, whether real or imagined, that we cannot handle their presence. Our efforts to discharge these symptoms, through consultations and coaches and evaluations and pills and resources and blogs and social media, put us in a position that offers immediate relief but long-term sensitivity. It’s important to educate ourselves on a broad array of information. It’s also important we recognize that much of what’s marketed is trying to divorce us from reality, from common sense. Do we really need continuing education units or webinars on stress management? Are we that defeated and controlled by our stress that we feel it’s heavy enough to need online course correction? More often than not, we’re inflating our problems more than our problems are truly internally combusting. Literature on chronic pain reminds us of common sense: that the more we fixate on our pain, the greater pain we experience. This does not require a pain coach. It requires an acute phase of self-awareness and understanding that a little hard work and a little less self-analysis goes a long way toward “symptom management”.

I guarantee you, if you stop managing your symptoms and instead look to the root cause of the problem, the solution will be simple. Coaches cannot change your behavior or your trajectory. That has to come from you.

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“Can anyone share a resource on parent training?”

“Who has a script I can use for helping my client be better at conversation?”

“Has anyone ever worked with someone with depression, and if so, can you send some resources my way about intervention ideas?”

In the time it took these individuals to render the above messages, patiently wait for responses via email, politely respond to those responses, and wait even longer for the response they like best, they could’ve taken action toward their perceived problem. That is, their problem of not knowing how to proceed with parent training, or teaching someone how to navigate conflict, or demonstrating their mastery of small talk. They don’t see their perceived problem as one of their own procrastination, but as an absence of understanding. This ultimately (in their eyes) warrants further education, resources, templates, certifications, and webinars.

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The expertization of very basic behavior change, which likely resulted from the pathologization of laziness and lack of effort, has been instrumental in hindering a person’s sense of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a concept in psychology 101: it’s a person’s belief in their capacity to produce specific change and reach specific outcomes. Our decreasing belief in the power of self is how many of today’s mentors, coaches, and therapists make their greatest buck: they convince you that your very straightforward problem, which is mostly the product of poor self-awareness and an unwillingness to address personal barriers, is complicated, deeply entrenched, and psychologically intricate. That it is such a niche conundrum that only people with niche credentials are able to provide you with a direct path to relief and thriving.

“Sign up today to get certified in cycle-syncing for women in their 40’s who are also post-partum moms and former athletes!”

No. You do not need to hire someone to teach you how to exercise on your period. You need to recognize that 1) women menstruate, which is a biological occurrence we’ve known since the beginning of time, 2) there are Olympians who are menstruating and 3) your period probably isn’t limiting you physically so much as you’re mentally allowing it to. It’s your attention to it, because of “certified coaches in cycle-syncing”, that has subtly created the nocebo effect, or the expectation that you’ll feel negative sensations. Stated more simply in the form of a question: prior to seeing advertisements for cycle-syncing, how did you manage to exercise whilst bleeding before social media?

“I’m a parenting expert who specializes in emotional dysregulation in ADHD kids with deep feelings--- purchase my course TODAY for scripts, guidance, and interventions on how to collaborate with your deep-feeler in times of distress!”

No. You do not need a resource or a script as to how to speak to your own child, let alone implement the appropriate form of discipline at your discretion. How did my parents, and their parents, learn to parent in past decades without the expert guidance of a manual written by someone whose oldest child is 6? Children around the world, specifically those in third-world countries, are known for their demonstration of leadership from very young ages. In the book Hunt, Gather, Parentby Michaeleen Doucleff, she describes her experience with children in the Yucatan scaling mountains at age 6 while carrying their 10-month-old baby brother on their back. Young boys not even 12 years old in Africa can be observed sharpening their own spears and hunting their own animals to shlep back to their tribe over 10 miles away--- without adult supervision. Dr. Camilo Ortiz uses ancient cultures, and his no-BS understanding of parenting, to implement what he calls “independence therapy” for anxious kids: he leaves them the hell alone, to their own devices, and trusts that they’ll problem-solve without adult interference. And proving to ourselves that we’re capable of doing so is what builds confidence and diminishes anxiety--- not endlessly talking about it and hiring a SWAT team of therapists to “address” it.

Similar to the obesity epidemic, which has resulted largely from sedentary lifestyles, poor lifestyle choices, and the mass consumption of ultra-processed foods, what I call the “infobesity” epidemic is one of shitty thinking habits and the mass consumption of low-resolution information. Because so many typical reactions to everyday life have been pathologized and medicalized, we’re made to feel that what we need is more “education” or “awareness” to these “new” problems. It’s a never before seen syndrome in children, where they say “no” to literally everything we ask! Let’s call it Pathological Demand Avoidance to really highlight the uniqueness of such a rare issue of childhood! So we glue our fingers and our eyes to our iPhones or our computers instead of actively addressing the problem itself, as we believe the problem is that we “just don’t know enough” and “need to feel more prepared.” The world is changing fast, after all. Ironically, preparation for problem-solving rarely involves any form of education. It involves building proficiency through doing. If you’ve ever been a client in therapy, what I hope is that you realize much of getting “better” has little to do with exchange of education or even information. It’s built on careful identification of all the ways we contribute to our own suffering, and actively producing alternative behaviors that are more adaptive to our functioning.

I’ve seen service-dependent individuals across nearly every industry that either bills by the hour or charges out-of-pocket for exchange of “individualized” service. I was first hit over the head with this realization when I was finishing my practicum for clinical psychology. By use of real and mock clients, my cohort treated people for hundreds upon hundreds of hours--- many of which were duplicate sessions from the last because of how little change was occurring. In reflecting on my own experience with psychiatric treatment, I found myself suddenly skeptical: how was it that I almost died from one of the most serious, untreatable, and lethal psychiatric disorders (i.e., anorexia), but was able to “graduate” from the grips of therapy in less than a year’s time? And here we have patients with relatively far milder, and not in any way critical or dangerous, conditions that are proud to report they’re on year five of their weekly “stress management” sessions? At what point do we evaluate the money we’ve spent, reexamine the minimal progress made, and decide that the service we’re paying for is something we could’ve figured out on YouTube or Reddit?

This is, though, what services want people to feel: confused. They want you to feel like you’re incapable of managing any form of stress or life circumstance by your own instinct and experience, and they do so by divorcing you from common sense. Oh, you think losing weight is as simple as just tracking what you eat for a week and then subtracting some calories from that? HA! Loser! You need to download trainings, webinars, brochures, infographics, and apps should you hope to know what to stuff your face with for your remaining time left on this earth! And even after you do that, there’s specialized courses for Paleolithic gut-healing for people with social anxiety. You can buy my course here.

As I’ve mentioned previously, there are circumstances or pathologies that may require more intensive intervention. A person who wants to lose weight but has struggled to do so for a decade, for example, may need a more comprehensive educational and applied approach to nutrition. But this same person will also only need this degree of mentorship for a short time before they’re able to implement it consistently on their own. That is, if the nutrition coaching is sound and the coach is in it for the service and not for the money.

Ultimately, being highly effective and good at what you do is not profitable and certainly a poor business model. This is rarely discussed, as it would be some form of financial suicide for the businesses and practitioners out there whose primary source of revenue is repeat flyers and people who are treatment dependent. For those individuals, please forgive me: I’m not bringing this to light to drain your finances or even making you doubt your business model. You already know, damn well, that your business functions off of solving people’s problems. Which involves recruiting a hell of a lot of people with a hell of a lot of problems. This isn’t inherently nefarious. It's the continuous poking and prodding at people to make them question their own efficacy that is.

Regarding recipients of service, whether that be psychotherapy or life coaching or professional mentorship, it’s important you conduct your own research to gather as much information on your own prior to outsourcing. This is more of a personal preference than anything else, but there is legitimate science to support how humans learn most efficiently: they learn through repetition, practice, and experience. Bloating our brains with resources and templates and hacks will not be of use, because the problem isn’t a resource, template, or hack deficiency. It’s a deficiency in trusting that you can solve something on your own before giving up and calling in reinforcements.

This is perhaps best exemplified through sport. In professional sport, athletes watch replay footage of their performance in a game. This form of self-evaluation via video analysis is crucial to better understand their weaknesses, and, with the help of their coaches, develop a plan for improving upon them. But what if the athletes stopped only at watching playback footage? What if they were only given lectures on increasing their top end speed instead of training relentless sprint drills to actually build top end speed? Would they trust themselves to perform come gametime, despite only having collected more passive forms of information (i.e., video and lecture)? In more dire circumstances, perhaps using aviation as an example will drive this point home.

Pilots must fly through all weather conditions. They’re expected to maintain smooth sailing despite looming thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and hail occurring quite literally below their nose. In their training, after they’ve mastered the basics to fluency, they’re required to intentionally turn their plane upside down and to “spiral the plane out”, or send it soaring, nose-down, plummeting toward the ground. In this dizzying practice, the pilot is assured that their skills can withstand high-stakes, high panic, and high distress, with zero resources, templates, or scripts as to how to regain control of the aircraft. With enough applied practice, pilots (we assume) feel fairly comfortable flying and securing safe landings of passengers in all conditions--- not only those on sunny days with clear skies.

If pilots demanded more resources and more templates because they felt “unprepared”, would we trust them to fly? And, now that I mention it… would we trust any professional who feels the need to memorize a generic outline prior to executing a skill? Yes, we must learn the rules to break the rules. And learning the rules often means monotonous, rote memorization of basic facts, equations, number figures, and sequences. But for fuck’s sake, what about the ability to think quickly on your feet, and change the course of your plan when the plan inevitably fails? Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of any human service to consider is the high likelihood that your teacher, your coach, or your therapist is operating their entire practice off of recycled templates and resources. It’s commonplace in therapeutic practice for hundreds of emails to ding back and forth between colleagues asking for “some resources on [insert clinical problem here].” In the time they spent emailing, they could’ve just… I don’t know… developed a resource themselves, using what they paid to go to school to master.

Because the disaster that is university education is too deep to touch in this specific piece, what I will say is this: education in the form of memorizing, lecturing, reading-without-comprehending, and writing-with-templates-and-guides is a bullshit, lazy stand-in for true learning. The unread library effect, which I’ve written about frequently, is the feeling that we’re acquiring knowledge by merely searching for the next best book or the next greatest resource on a particular problem. By searching for and even purchasing a resource, without having read it or thoroughly understood it, we are of the belief that we’ve advanced our expertise. This occurs often without our conscious awareness, as I assume, if we were consciously aware that resource-gathering is just another form of procrastination, we’d take action instead.

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With this said… what if the almond mom trend is actually something our country desperately needs? After all, nearly half of our country is obese, and half of our country’s kids have some form of a chronic condition. For the almond moms touting two children, it’s likely that at least one of your kids will suffer from a chronic syndrome, with the most common being obesity, diabetes, or a mental health condition. The rise in children receiving diagnoses like they’re Tootsie Rolls may leave you skeptical regarding our country’s continued initiatives geared toward childhood “health”. How are all of those health and exercise initiatives going? Remember when Michelle Obama did push-ups on Ellen and filled vending machines with apple slices instead of Nutty Bars? Ah, those were the days! Especially considering a child’s “truth” is now regarded as sacrosanct, and if they want to eat chocolate for every meal of every day, that’s their authentic little diabetic self, advocating for their own needs! Is this empowering? That is, for half of today’s children to be riddled with symptoms of eczema, autism, ADHD, asthma, and/or a mental health condition?

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Now, before the authors and advocates of staunch mommy blogs come after me for my “harmful” perception of kids’ development, I must say: there is such thing as an excessive focus on aesthetics and health. My own anorexia quickly developed into orthorexia for many, many years before I found a means of freeing myself from the grips of compulsive counting and obsessing. Orthorexia, for those unfamiliar, is a less-severe and life-threatening mutation of anorexia in which an individual becomes preoccupied with “health food” only. This can look like refusal to eat anything that isn’t “low-fat” or “low-carb”, a highly restrictive allegiance to a specific dieting trend, or cutting out entire food groups if they do not meet the criteria for “health”. Depending on who you ask, it could also look like individuals strictly adhering to a Paleo or Whole-30 diet.

What I can say with certainty, though, is my anorexia-turned-orthorexia had absolutely nothing to do with media messaging, skinny supermodels, or being taught how to cook a healthy meal. Anorexia’s cure also wasn’t through “body positivity” and believing there is no such thing as bad food, though. Because eating disorders have next to nothing to do with food and everything to do with a person managing a compulsive behavior problem and having a very low tolerance for difficulty. A child who is told Oreos have more sugar than strawberries, or that ice cream is an unhealthy breakfast, is highly unlikely to develop a psychiatric eating disorder. These are basic, logical facts that I believe we owe to our children--- no matter how much they may not like to hear it. Do you handle it well when you go to the doctor and see that you’ve gained weight? When you’re wrestling with your jeans in order to fit into them, do you reframe the situation with “body neutrality”? Or do you cuss yourself out in the mirror while swearing off those frickin’ Thin Mints you keep buying despite having no willpower against? This isn’t a problem so much as it’s a rational response to aspects of ourselves that we’ve neglected. While I’m not making the argument that we continuously shame ourselves our obsess over our weight, there isn’t an inherent problem in weighing ourselves, measuring our food periodically, and nutritionally tightening our belts. These aren’t problems. They’re only problems to a society that prioritizes victimhood, shitty lifestyle, and an external locus of control as “brave”.

When we launch into almond moms being children’s most threatening problem, we sorely miss the plot. Almond moms are causing eating disorders! Moms who hate their bodies will teach their daughters to hate their bodies! Call me harsh and perhaps even gauche, but I don’t see eating disorders as being a major problem in our country. Frankly, it’s the opposite: the greatest risk facing our kids appears to be that of obsessive laziness, comfort, and ease in the people who are raising them and educating them.

“Diet culture” is not new, much like a mild fixation with appearance is unsurprising. Have you seen mothers on Instagram? The ones who claim to love their body, and they love their body by posting themselves in provocative positions in what appear to be wrestling singlets online for hundreds upon millions of people to gawk at? By all means, if this is your version of contentment with motherhood, I am not the person to tell you otherwise. But something tells me there’s an underlying insecurity present that forces a woman to believe she’s only as worthy as her online audience ranks her. With this in mind, and this may sound counterintuitive, it’s unlikely that exposure to social media, or even exposure to a “health-nut” of apparent, is the reason for development of a psychiatric condition. Yes, social media has been nothing short of tragic for the psyche of today’s kids and many of their parents. But it likely wasn’t what caused their most pressing issues. The unnatural and addicting, intermittent reinforcement we receive online is likely what exacerbated existing symptoms to the degree that they’re now more noticeable.

I’m certain we’ve all had a classmate in elementary school who was the loser that came to school with celery sticks and home-grown pepper slices as snacks. There wasn’t even such thing, at the time (at least to mine and my family’s understanding), as “organic almond butter”. The almond butter moms and their progeny were perhaps so sparse and detached from my social circle that us normal kids, who sucked down Kool-Aid Jammers and Pixie Stix, were unaffected by their food rules.

And perhaps herein lies my point: we were unaffected because our attention wasn’t stolen. We were unaffected by the apparent “peanut allergy epidemic” because nobody we knew even sneezed in the presence of a peanut. The adults in the room throughout my childhood were intelligent enough to refrain from the moral panic that is so common in today’s parents and today’s educators: you’re not going to die if your table partner eats fake peanut butter, so calm down and do your math homework. The dangers of the almond mom seem to fall under similar pseudo-problems as the mother who still spanks her unruly son or the father who believes that there is such thing as first place, and only those who win will receive a trophy and a high-five. The primary reason for my belief in the almond-mom-threat being overblown is my own experience as an anorexia patient, and my degrees in clinical psychology/behavior analysis that shape my understanding of psychiatric conditions.

Firstly, eating disorders, specifically anorexia, typically do not develop from seeing someone thin or being told that we’re fat. Never in my life have I been told I need to lose weight, go on a diet, or “watch what I eat”. Insecurity, body image issues, and disordered eating habits may result from more frequent exposure to Victoria’s Secret catalogues, specifically if the young woman is entering her teenage years. But we must remember that teenage girls are emotional terrorists by design. The healthiest of teen girls with no history of mental health issues quickly becomes a raging c-word the moment she turns 13, and is unrelenting in this psychological warpath until she smartens up toward the conclusion of her high school years. Our feminine rage can also manifest differently. In high school, most of us began experimenting with drugs and alcohol around our sophomore year, when we got our driver’s licenses and were free to act foolishly wherever and whenever we wanted. My parents were known for making us come home earlier than most all of our friends, much to our dismay. I can guarantee you, though, that my parents’ disciplinary style did not contribute to mine and my brother’s mental problems. Much like basic food rules likely will not contribute to the development of a food complex.

Our problems both were compulsive and addictive in nature. Mine was anorexia, my brother’s heroin (and basically any substance he could get his hands on). I will die before I blame any of this on my parents, as they were authoritative, powerful, supportive, and unbelievably loving. My childhood did not lead to the development of panic disorder and anorexia, much like it didn’t lead to Conner’s hunger for intoxication. Part of me has wondered for many years if we merely inherited some “addiction” gene, as my mother is highly compulsive and my father is overall panicky. But nobody in my blood line on either side has ever struggled with addiction or an eating disorder. How much of our behavior was learned versus genetically endowed, then? And would it ultimately matter? We are responsible for addressing our own behavior. Unfortunate circumstances may not be our fault, but they’re certainly our responsibility.

Many people believe their mothers are the reasons they need to see a therapist. It’s an ongoing joke in therapeutic circles, one I’ve considered for many years. This may partially be true, but it’s more likely that we’ve just failed to address our problems as things we have control over versus cruel afflictions we’re forced to carry for our lives. Does the world have an obsession with thinness and dieting? Honestly, I don’t think so. I just think the human body generally wants to be healthy and is inclined to keep itself alive and thriving at all costs. Staying alive as an obese person with shitty lifestyle habits will put far more stress on the body’s systems than a person who is of healthy weight with a responsible lifestyle. Objectively, it shouldn’t be controversial or harmful to inform your child that they cannot have something with a lot of sugar in it. No, Timmy, you’ve eaten 2 adult-sized Crumbl cookies already. You cannot have another one. This will not give Timmy a food complex or an eating disorder. It may make him cranky and trigger a mild tantrum, but do not mistake dramatic, emotional responding for a psychiatric diagnosis.

If we hadn’t instructed parents to pretend bad foods didn’t exist or that sugar isn’t horrible for humans and animals in high quantities, we may have children who do not suffer from such growing, chronic problems. These are problems unprecedented even one to two decades ago: 1 in 36 children has autism, with over a third of those being in the moderate-to-severe, nonverbal category. Six million children are diagnosed with ADHD as well as anxiety, with nearly 20% of teenagers having contemplated suicide in 2018-2019 alone. All of which again begs the question: Is it the almond moms or idiotic mental health movements we’ve decided are compassionate and caring? How are all those social-emotional learning programs going for our children and young adults riddled with supposed anxiety, depression, PTSD, and ADHD?

The problem is not an absence of compassion, but an over-abundance of it. We’ve invested so heavily into the emotional aspect of things completely detached from our own lives that we generate as many reasons as possible to not behave like adults. We’re “compassionate” to the degree that we accept and even encourage completely inappropriate behavior, as we believe pretending “there are no bad foods!” is less of a risk to our children than stuffing them with ultra-processed junk because we’re too burnt out  or too marginalized or too anxious to cook. Our compassion is not truly compassionate if it’s in place only to quell our own personal problems. Your kids didn’t do anything to you--- so stop bending reality and calling it trauma-informed teaching or gentle parenting. No, sweetheart, you cannot have M&M’s for breakfast. And no, you already ate a bag of chips, so you can’t have another one. You’re probably not anxious, Maya, you just drank 50 grams of sugar and now you’re sitting on your ass on the couch. Have you tried going for a run?

The problem is not the almond mom and her vicious rigidity, but a too-loose approach to parenting that looks more like begging and pleading to be liked. Do your children really need to presented with a choice of 7 different vegetables at different stages of ripeness, or do they need to be told to eat their brussels sprouts, goddamnit, or they’ll be breakfast in the morning? The almond mom can teeter on the edge of neuroticism and inarguably create “complexes” in their children, depending on the language she uses to describe herself and her relationship with meals. But, all in all, she’s more likely to just be a pain in the ass. And I hear a healthy diet is great for hemorrhoids.

Being overweight or obese is a serious problem. Yes, a problem. Not “little hiccups in your health journey” or “resulting from being a victim of weight stigma”. This cannot be overstated: being overweight wrecks absolute havoc on your health. It destroys the body’s functioning in similar ways an overindulgent parents obliterates a child’s sense of self-efficacy. Someone needs to be the adult in the room, and I hope to God it is the literal adult who decides to do it.

And if the kid whines and wonders why all the rules? Tell them it’s because you said so.

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According to Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, shame is “the fear of not being worthy of connection and belonging”. Whether learned or ingrained by virtue of personality, it is a looming fear that our abilities, and what we give to relationships, is not enough, and that we’re damned to rejection by those we care about most. Using this definition, shame certainly sounds miserable. There have been some arguments in recent years that the triggering of or fight-or-flight response is akin to the startle response in those with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I think it’s both ridiculous and a tad insulting to compare a war veteran to a person who may be overly sensitive to rejection, but I also resonate with the discomfort that comes from wanting approval but not receiving it. The physiological responses to distress resulting from shame can also be pretty pronounced: rapid heartbeat, sweating, flushing of the face.

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Shame is largely dictated by social standards, and rightfully so. Shame is what tends to keep people in line, at least socially, in ways that do not require a formal law or regulation. Few people appreciate a sloppy drunk, for example. But sloppy drunks are not arrested and detained because of their inability to handle Natty Light and a few shots. They’re instead scorned by passersby and maybe yelled at by other sauced idiots and wake up the next morning to tell themselves, “I’m never drinking again.” Depending on societal and cultural standards, which tend to change quite rapidly, shame can be inappropriately used and excessively displaced depending on things like social likability or acceptability. While the term “cancel culture” isn’t used as often as it was a few years ago, it goes without saying that this is the epitome of excessive, irrational, and displaced shame.

As an emotion that is considered “self-conscious”, shame can be informative in that it offers insights into our feelings of unworthiness and cues us to do some further digging into our thoughts. Did we commit some form of a moral or social transgression? Public shaming and humiliation have run rampant in recent years and are perhaps better known as DEI initiatives or XYZ Pride Months. With such clear signals about what our culture supposedly values, our unwillingness to conform to these standards could easily trigger a sense of shame. Or, if you’re like me, it makes me roll my eyes to the back of my head while continuing to go about living my day-to-day in spite of stupidity. In my case, then, my failure to meet the current social norm did not trigger this volatile emotion that Brené describes as “shame”. If we did not commit a moral transgression or violate a widely accepted social rule, though, sometimes the shame emanates from a source more… internal.

Our own failure to meet expectations or goals we’ve set for ourselves can trigger shame. If we’re determined to reach a specific athletic goal, like decreasing our mile run time, coming up even slightly short (we’re talking milliseconds) could be enough to induce a shameful self-loathing. Some athletes take months and even years to recover from this feeling, as evidenced by developing a phenomenon known as the yips, or “choking”. Similar to anxiety, when we avoid the very stimulus that induced the discomfort, our hypervigilance to said stimulus grows stronger. You’re not “slowly getting back into the game”, but you’re slowly hindering your performance over time. The athlete who avoids addressing the possible shame that triggered the continuous “choking” is only making themselves more prone to choke in future games. The individual with anxiety who “gives themselves grace” is not engaging in self-care, but securing continued fear responses and growing anxiety. Perhaps it’s useful, then, to split shame into adaptive and maladaptive. Shame that is adaptive is that which may hurt, but changes behavior to that which is more acceptable. In doing so, the person is punished less frequently in social situations and therefore experiences a higher quality of life. Maladaptive shame, which is usually more of the internal, self-loathing kind, can motivate a person to avoid discomfort and/or project their shame onto others in finger-pointing and blame games.

With anxiety being a close cousin to emotions like shame, I believe both can be leveraged to draw out goodness in ourselves and in others. We tend to use our negative feelings, or nearly any negative experience, to justify avoidance of such discomfort. “Well, I’m just an anxious person” has become a universal hall pass, of sorts, that signifies to others: “I’m allowed to avoid things, and you are to comply with this rigid rule I’ve set for myself.” I do understand the pull to use our feelings as conclusions: I’m mad, why should I have to do anything hard the rest of the day? I slept like shit, why should I have to be patient for everyone else around me? I’M AN ANXIOUS PERSON SO HOLD SPACE FOR ME, GODDAMNIT!!! We’ve likely all used these cards depending on how distressing a situation is. With this tendency in mind, though, it’s imperative we recognize how maladaptive and unhelpful these habits are. When we not only adopt negative traits as part of our personality, but use them to avoid any form of criticism or shame we’re incapable of tolerating, we isolate ourselves from the things that matter most. Plus, we become annoying martyrs that people don’t like to be around.

I’ve wondered for years why people are so willing to pay hundreds upon thousands of dollars to go to therapy and boast about it, but are resistant to paying money for their physical health. Part of this, I’ve hypothesized, is because our of our mainstream culture and its mixed messaging. We’ve long since incentivized illness, disease, and sickness in both social and societal ways. Socially, we empathize with those that are struggling and we idolize those who have overcome significant challenges. As the saying goes, “everybody loves an underdog”. Societally, our medical and therapeutic institutions only make money should the client continue to meet the criteria for illness. They only receive “treatment” and subsequent attention, then, if they present as ill. We’ve also demanded that Americans see chronic problems, like obesity, as something that should not be stigmatized or shamed, but accepted as “a different way of being”. I will not even go down the road of neurodivergence, as it’s a concept so utterly stupid it deserves zero attention. All of these examples point to our complete escapism as it relates to feeling shame for things that should, quite frankly, spark feelings of inadequacy. If we’re chronically sick and we’re not taking care of ourselves, in what galaxy is it normal or adaptive to demand people celebrate that?

What if obesity were stigmatized much like homelessness is stigmatized? When we discharge our pride and “sit” with the discomfort of feeling shame, we recognize how powerful it can be in motivating healthier behavior. While I’m not suggesting we treat people poorly because they’re overweight or obese, I do contest that emphasizing the devastating trajectory of life with obesity is imperative should we hope to change society for the better. And I don’t think shaming a complete abandonment of self-care is cruel or mean-spirited--- I think it’s necessary. Meeting people where they’re at in therapy or in any form of a supportive relationship is an important aspect of assessing motivation to change. In my clinical experience, this rarely works. People need to be told to buck the fuck up every once in a while, and they need clinically pull their pants down should they hope to experience any form of meaningful change. In the realm of physical health, I can see why people would be embarrassed to seek out services out of their own pocket. We’re “supposed” to know how to cook for ourselves, put together a meal, write a basic exercise routine, and navigate our day-to-day. It’s understandable that an individual may feel silly spending money to have someone tell them what they need to be eating. I likely do not need to remind readers, though, that wellness industries have been capitalizing on this uncertainty for decades: Jenny Craig, the founder of one of the country’s most popular weight loss programs, is still worth $300 million. Weight Watchers, as of June 2024, is still worth $125 million. Our shame may well be present, but apparently it’s not powerful enough to override our desire to be thinner or healthier. From where I’m sitting, this is highly adaptive shame.

I also believe we need to consider the following question: what if it’s a good thing that we’re a little embarrassed every now and again? After all, we’re adults who are perfectly capable of figuring out, on our own, how to cook for ourselves, how to sleep 7-8 hours, how to exercise, and how to manage our basic needs. If you type into ChatGPT, “Write me a 6-week paleo meal plan” or “Write me a 12-week long periodized strength training plan”, it will do a fairly accurate job concocting a method for you. We claim that “we just don’t know what to do”. I believe a bit of this, and then I don’t. While we are inundated with ridiculous amounts of contradictory information, making it difficult to discern opinion from fact, I also don’t think we’re the damsels in distress we make ourselves out to be. “I just don’t know what to eat!” Yes, you do. You know that a diet consisting of 90% whole foods is necessary, and no, sugar-free Dunkin Frozen Cappucinolattefrappas are probably not “good for you”.

All of this to say… it’s okay to be embarrassed. It can actually be a wonderful thing to feel ashamed that we haven’t taken the time to care for ourselves, considering our body and our health is all we have. What’s wrong with this, aside from perhaps our own ego convincing us it’s rude, cruel, or inaccurate? Why do we try so hard and spend so much money on “reducing stigma” when stigma is probably at the very bottom of everyone’s list of real problems? Not to mention… you know what’s a lot worse than being stigmatized for being obese?

Actually being obese.

Does this mean we’re permitted to be mean or cruel to people who have serious challenges, whether physical or mental? Absolutely not. I see no reason to ever criticize someone’s character or treat them poorly for any reason at all--- but especially not because of the way they look or the manner in which they’ve chosen to manage their problems. But it’s also quite useful to be point-blank in talking to people about their behavior. I love Dr. Nowzaradan from “My 600-Pound Life”--- he’s the bariatric surgeon that works exclusively with morbidly obese individuals who have hundreds upon hundreds of pounds to lose. He’s the epitome of compassion with high standards: while he doesn’t dismiss the reasons people give for not following through, he often responds bluntly with something like, “Well… that’s a problem. You need to do a better job of figuring that out.” The understandable response is often some defensiveness, which I wholly understand. Some even argue and try to formulate nonsensical justifications for their lack of progress. But with each excuse comes Dr. “Now” simply saying, “Uh huh. Okay, well, that’s not good.” The less attention we give to excuses, the more control over ourselves we gain.

I’ll leave readers with this. Take stock of your greatest problems you’re experiencing and ask yourself the reasons why the problems persist. If your first response is that of alluding to you lacking complete control, I want you to reassess the conclusion. When you find yourself attempting to rationalize away something you’ve long since complained about, I’ll pull one of Dr. Phil’s most cited quotes:

“How’s that working out for you?”

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“I’m feeling really anxious and brain fog and overwhelmed.” See a psychiatrist for an SSRI.

“I’m constantly exhausted and can’t lose weight.” See an endocrinologist for metformin.

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“We’re trying to have a baby, but I have PCOS.” See a gynecologist for clomiphene and/or hormonal birth control pills.

“I’m having a really hard time focusing. I wonder if I have misdiagnosed ADHD.” See a neurologist or physician for Adderall.

This is a very, very short list of what has become widely accepted as normal in our Western society: unnecessarily medicating lifestyle problems. The young woman who claims to be constantly tired and overwhelmed is not asked about her poor sleep schedule, which consists of going to sleep at 2AM and staring at her phone in the minutes before putting her head to the pillow. Her PCOS and high body fat percentage isn’t seen as resulting from a highly unhealthy diet consisting primarily of ultra-processed food, minimal protein, antioxidants, or fiber, and sugary coffee drinks instead of water. And her lack of focus can’t possibly be because she fuels her body with junk, she isn’t appropriately managing her stress, and she’s using excuses as to why she’s so sedentary. Your problems are lifestyle problems, so here is a pill to treat those.

I’m unsure why this isn’t spoken about more regularly: the rates of all of these conditions, and all-cause mortality, are sky-rocketing… at the exact same time our spending to “treat them” is. If I weren’t scientifically-minded, I’d think there was an association between pharmaceuticals and sickness…

Should you be a young student or one just starting their career in some form of healthcare, it’s important you reevaluate your purpose. I don’t say this to sound grim or hopeless, but to offer a realistic insight I wish I would’ve been taught in my years in graduate school and practicum. Cash rules everything, specifically the manner in which our country attempts to service people in need. The best way we can arm ourselves with knowledge and the thick spine needed to make it through this field with our sanity is to understand that its entire structure is based on incentivizing illness. This is done by brainwashing staff into basing treatment recommendations on those which earn the company the highest reimbursement rates. When you follow the money, you will set your mind free. You’re not a conspiracy theorist or right-wing extremist, just a person with sense who sees “helping fields” as little more than playing dress-up and billing for it. “Helping people”, at least under our healthcare system, will typically only lead to broken spirits, cynicism, and the making of another miserable cog in a dysfunctional machine. Allow me to explain.

I first went to graduate school for clinical psychology. I envisioned a rewarding career of pulling people out of the depths of their own pain and guiding them to the greener grass that their illness convinced them was little more than a paranoid delusion. My own experience with overcoming anorexia and learning to manage myself independently despite extreme discomfort was something I knew I could give to others, with the right tools and unconditional positive regard for their pain.

They were not the paranoid and mentally poisoned ones. I was the one that was deluded.

I’d find that the field of psychology, specifically that which treats psychiatric patients in hospital settings or clinics, is entirely uninterested in rehabilitation or even care. Their doctrine mirrors America’s prisons: they’re surface-level “interventions” that aim to make a point more than they hope to teach valuable skills to reintegrate stragglers into society. Healthcare agencies incentivize billable hours through use of the codes that offer the highest reimbursement rates: prescribing medicine, lengthy and often unnecessary medical procedures, or repetitive sessions with a psychiatrist. In the field of therapy for children, the highest reimbursement rates come from the use of technicians, as they’re paid like dirt but still contribute to the bulk of a company’s income. The company then profits immensely off of every one of their hours in the trenches; higher-ups don’t even have to be present, they can pay people minimum wage and call it “meaningful work”, and they can make themselves appear to be the noble ones fighting the good fight against autism or anxiety or whatever trendy diagnosis is increasing at an abnormal rate. Disturbingly, and I don’t think many young clinicians of all industries realize this: none of these billable codes require proof of progress. Literally nothing. They actually don’t even look at any form of data to determine if the intervention itself is working. They’re concerned only with the manner in which you can craft a document to make it insurance-ready.

What this means for any billable service is that billable hours can only continue if the person remains a client. I’ll continue to repeat this point until everyone out there with a God complex recognizes how limited they are in their capacity to help. To retain clients is any billable industry’s largest aim, as they’re decades and sometimes life-long patients who pay in droves to see minimal to zero progress but be told they’re receiving quality care. In fact, therapeutic fields have recently begun referring to themselves as “quality assurance providers”. What a steaming pile of horse shit. The providers are young bucks in their 20’s who were taught in graduate school to only offer band-aid solutions to very deep-rooted but also very simple problems.

We’ve begun billing for trainings covering topics like “trauma-informed care”, which essentially is a clan of women projecting their own childhood nuisances onto their young clients and believing they’re teaching them to uncover their buried trauma. This is, according to insurance and the company, “billable”. Important to note, though, is this is not for the client. It is for clinicians who like to hear themselves talk and have an inflated sense of self-importance. These should ideally be people withheld from serving mentally ill and disabled populations. But, to again refer back to billable hours… narcissists and incompetent dimwits can still bill. Why stop them?

I have yet to meet a single clinician in any medical or therapeutic field who legitimately or even remotely finds their job meaningful. I don’t honestly think it can be, so long as it’s constrained by insurance and money-hungry administration. One of the sickest aspects of therapy, specifically, is its insistence on squeezing the juice out of every clinician and client so as to preserve a steady stream of revenue. They do this through use of “making up” for billable hours lost. When clients progress, they require less therapy. It’s similar to a client that is in the ICU and becomes stable enough to be moved to a less intensive suite of the hospital. This should be worth celebrating, right? WRONG! Your agency immediately flags progress as a deficit in revenue and will proceed to demand you “make up” for any lost hours. These requirements are as silly as “making up” for .75 billable hours “missed” in a month (and no, I’m not joking or exaggerating). My best example to compare this to is the idiocy that is the “snow day”. Schools are required to stay in session for a specific amount of days each school year. Which, at this point, is comical, considering we allowed students to stay at home for 2 years because of a virus that minimally affected them and had next to zero risk of imminent harm. But I digress. If enough snow days are utilized during the school year, administration is then required to tack on these days during the summer months, to “make up for” the lost time.

When these snow days are added, do you think they repeat the same lessons that were planned for the snow day? No. If kids miss school because they’re sick, do the teachers all repeat the lesson from the sick day to make sure the recovered kids are all caught up? No. This is not how learning works. I’ve seen similar illogical reasoning in the fitness industry. A woman who was preparing to go on vacation decided to workout twice per day for an entire week, to “make up for” the time she wouldn’t be working out on vacation. Oh sweetheart. That is not remotely how fitness or even common sense works. What occurs instead on a snow day or a hail merry day is something readers have likely all experienced: a bunch of teachers and kids fucking around and complaining that they even need to be there in the first place. It is perhaps the least amount of learning that could possibly take place between school hours. So what purpose did the “make-up day” serve? It allowed the school to check off a box so they don’t get sued or their funding sources don’t get pulled. I can’ reiterate this enough: follow the money.

Similar debauchery occurs in the medical industry. Aside from acute problems, like getting a cast for a broken arm or being revived with Narcan from a drug overdose, I strongly suggest people with “chronic” conditions consider other sources of information as it relates to symptom management and recovery. Medicine and therapy are simply not designed to address the root cause of problems, as doing so runs the risk of actually helping people so they’re no longer patients. And what happens when people are no longer patients? I’d hope you know the answer to this by now.

Some scoff at my seething hatred toward billable industries, citing stories of their own success with medicine and/or therapy. I do not want to discount these experiences, and as I mentioned,  there are more acute cases that billable industries do a fine job in managing. But there are a couple of things I’d like to point out, one more broad in the sense that this logic is faulty and another pertaining to our country’s sickness statistics. Regarding logic, we cannot use our own personal stories and anecdotes as exceptions to general information. For example, should I make a statement about weight-loss drugs being dangerous and not adequately addressing the behavior and psychology of eating, an individual may exclaim “BUT I TOOK WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS AND NOW I’M OFF MY INSULIN AND HEALTHIER THAN EVER!” This is wonderful! But also--- your story of taking weight loss medication does not stand to negate the factual information that was mentioned. It’s also worth investigating whether or not it was the weight loss drugs that helped, or a constellation of other behaviors (exercise, diet, nutrition education in tandem with weight loss pills).

Secondly, our country is ill. Almost disgustingly so. Over 70% of young people between eighteen and twenty-one years old are too unfit to join the military. Are you kidding me?! Being a young adult is supposed to be the age when you can do a Michelle Kwon triple-axle off of the hood of your car, onto a cement curb, and still manage to keep your ligaments intact. It’s also supposed to be an age when you’re physically spry, energetic, and more capable of running a mile without stopping than your grandmother. But for the majority of young people to be this physically unwell? I’m unsure why there is no outrage for that. Yes, let’s continue to talk about eradicating stigma for morbidly obese people.

There’s also the fact that some high-powered individuals find it useful to spend insurance dollars on making drugs like Ozempic accessible for everyone. Or that they believe accessibility is the true problem. I’m sorry, but as Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption stated, “How can you be so obtuse?” In other words, I urge you to pry your head from out of your rectum. We cannot actually believe that the sky-high rates of mental illness and our country’s sickening obesity statistic is because people simply just don’t have access. And the bigger joke is perhaps the “solution”: No, don’t change your lifestyle! Inject yourself with medicine! If this doesn’t describe billable therapeutic fields, I honestly have no idea what does.

So here’s what you can do. I’m not sure you’re ready for it, considering it’s conspicuously simple. But that’s exactly the point: the media and billable institutions rely on your belief that health is complicated, confusing, and unattainable without medicinal or professional intervention. They’ve been quite successful in divorcing people from reality and their basic understandings of themselves to persuade them into a logical stupor. The fact that nutrition and basic health are complex and only available to the elite is an utter farce. The preliminary steps are straightforward and almost too accessible: Walk every day. Eat whole foods that don’t come packaged with an ingredient list and label. Strength train, at a minimum, twice per week. Sleep between 7 and 8 hours a night. That’s literally it.

But Kayla, walking won’t make me less anxious! But Kayla, eating a vegetable won’t make me lose weight! But Kayla, but Kayla, but Kayla. This is our problem: the constant and relentless laundry list of excuses as to why something won’t work even though we’ve never tried it. So perhaps some scientific evidence for the ladies (considering it’s almost exclusively women I hear produce such excuses) will be of use to better bring my point home.

PCOS is one of the most diagnosed issues amongst women, which has led to young women my age and younger having serious issues with fertility. This is unbelievable, as women my age, decades ago, could essentially blink in the direction of a male and get pregnant. One of the key drivers of PCOS and infertility problems is high insulin. PCOS, alone, has gone up 65% in the past decade, with the diagnosis affecting 20% of women worldwide. A fifth of women are struggling with fertility issues!!! This is, frankly, wild. An important aspect of high insulin and PCOS to note is how closely it is tied with being overweight and being obese: the prevalence of obesity in women with PCOS is 80%. What’s encouraging about this, though? Weight loss through lifestyle changes, like eating 800 grams of vegetables and low-glycemic fruits a day, and increasing skeletal muscle mass through strength training, can all improve insulin sensitivity. Is this prescribed by doctors, though? Likely not. Women instead are given birth control pills or metformin, and they become fast vessels for the insane amount of money required for in-vitro fertilization. A big win for insurance.

And what happens when a woman becomes a mother that is overweight, unhealthy, or obese? She may report symptoms of chronic fatigue and muscle aches that she’s given drugs and injections for, despite her highly sedentary lifestyle, mass consumption of ultra-processed food, irregular and deficient sleep, and unstable blood sugar levels. Because these symptoms have become normalized as “adulting” or “hot mess express” or simply just existing as mothers, they’re dismissed as par for the parenting course. Important to note, though, is that an obese mother with diabetes has quadruple the risk of having a child with autism, and double the risk of having a child with ADHD. Developing brains are apparently highly susceptible to irregular sleep patterns and diets laden with shit. Even antibiotics in childhood are being shown to cause issues: antibiotics dispensed in childhood increases the risk of mental health issues as children age. After all, when you’re using these drugs to “heal” by destroying the entire gut microbiome, we have to suspect that the home for serotonin production will be altered.

It's not cute to be in a constant state of exhaustion or distress. It’s not adorable to drink wine every night because we’re incapable of managing day-to-day stress. It’s not admirable to be late because we’re unwilling to better manage our time and it’s certainly not noble or “brave” to be on 10 different pills for issues that are largely diseases of lifestyle. I imagine a world when we incentivize health instead of incentivizing sickness, and we admire perseverance instead of foam at the mouth over a celebrity mentioning their struggles with mental illness. This is not “acceptance”, at least not to me. It is an unhealthy obsession with people who have serious problems, an obsession which gives us tacit permission to be lazy, to be chronically “overwhelmed”, and to assume the position of helpless.

You are not helpless. You are not confused. And you are not overwhelmed. You don’t have “gym anxiety”, you have a lack of experience in the gym and therefore you’re self-conscious about how you move your body. It’s quite similar to a child learning to walk or a person learning a new language. You’re not anxious, you’re a noob. And we all are, at some point or another. Try turning off the news or your Instagram feed for even a day and see how quickly your perception of yourself changes.

You’re not as damaged as you think. And if you are? Try getting off your ass and eating a vegetable. I KNOW you can do it--- do you know that you can?   

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Anxiety and depression have become two of the most common diagnoses amongst young kids and teenagers, despite having access to all of the country’s leading “mental health experts”, “trauma-informed counselors”, and “social emotional learning” programs. When stated out loud, it seems almost too obvious: if mental health is tanking but treatments are soaring, perhaps the treatment is the problem. Our society, though, makes quick work of overcomplicating very straightforward issues and tainting them with makeshift stories and opinions. “It’s because the world is so bad right now!!! Who wouldn’t be depressed?!” says the millennial psychotherapist. “It’s because he’s still exploring how to best communicate his sensory needs to us; of course he’s dysregulated,” says the trauma-responsive teacher. To bring this into context, the assumptions made about increasing rates of psychiatric disorders amongst our youth are made by people with little to no education, knowledge, expertise, or experience working with mentally ill clients.

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I do believe this is an expected result from the tragedy of good intentions. With our inability to handle nearly anything in moderation, including moderation itself, we’ve overcorrected past abuse into a neurotic fantasy. A fantasy which assumes any shred of difficulty, criticism, sadness, bullying, or negativity is enough to squelch a youngster’s spirit, forever damning them to “insecure attachment” or “anxiety”. And I don’t necessarily say that to bash the people doing it--- they’re clearly being reinforced by a culture of adults who find it equal parts adorable and useful to talk incessantly about their own problems. It’s become self-serving but is still believed, by many, to be a revolutionary form of “care”.

When I consulted in schools, I was constantly brought into the principal’s office (as a grown adult employee, mind you) for “taking the kids out of class”, for “letting them get away with too much”, and for “disrupting the learning environment”. I did so by pulling them out for exercise snacks, which were small bursts of movement 5 minutes or less spread throughout their day. My rationale was that, firstly, the lesson was copy-and-pasted from last year and proved to be completely ineffective in teaching the kids much of anything other than how to blindly fill in blanks on a piece of paper. Secondly, sitting in the same spot hour after hour, feigning even neutrality when I wanted to gauge my eyes out from my own boredom, made me wonder how challenging it must be for teenagers to sit still. And lastly, exercise is medicine. One hundred percent of the student body at this school was medicated, some quite heavily for very serious mental illnesses, and I couldn’t think of a worse idea than grouping mentally ill kids together and keeping them inside for 8 consecutive hours.

I’d find myself in similar, hot water at the psych ward I first worked at while I was finishing my clinical psych practicum. I played Metallica over the wing’s speaker system and encouraged the patients to walk as many laps as they can in the hallway until the end of the 8-and-a-half-minute song Master of Puppets. The psych nurses told me I was creating a dangerous environment. Unsurprisingly, I was not asked to return. A decade later, I’d see staff punched, spit at, kicked, scratched, and thrown to the ground on a daily basis--- none of which occurred after listening to metal. They’d also be the very people left completely unsupported in these “clinical” environments, as any form of therapeutic clinic or hospital system finds an extra set of hands just too steep of a price to pay for basic safety and dignity.

In every setting I’ve worked, whether in a psychiatric ward or a school or a university, there are pictures and infographics decorating each and every wall. Nearly all of the decorum points to the same ideas: how to practice breathing when we feel anxious, how it’s perfectly “okay to not be okay”, or directions to the “wellness center” which claims to fix kids up psychologically until they feel “safe”. Perhaps a guide for staff regarding the detrimental, even dangerous effects of essentializing feelings would make a nice mantlepiece.

I have overcome panic disorder after 15 years of being addicted to Klonopin, and I have my education in both clinical psychology and behavior analysis. Let me be the one to tell you (and this is nothing new, nor did I invent this concept): launching into therapeutic mode when you’re anxious, afraid, depressed, or angry are surefire ways to make you more anxious, more afraid, more depressed, and more angry.

Let me explain using the very common example of anxiety. Anxiety thrives off of fear. It is an entirely avoidant-based constellation of symptoms in which the individual actively escapes sensations of fear because they’re uncomfortable, too uncomfortable for a person’s perceived ability to tolerate. The impending doom anxiety imposes upon you is exactly what sustains it, what feeds it, and our recognition that it’s present becomes anxiety’s power-grab. It wants you to not only notice it, but obey it. When we start to feel anxiety, whether through racing, irrational thoughts and/or physiological symptoms, like hyperventilation or our hearts pounding, I believe we’ve taught students to handle it in a manner that reinforces it. We cannot begin a cycle of box-breathing and self-affirmations. The most effective approach to anxiety is to welcome it, dare it to do its worst, and move on as if we’re unaffected. I’m essentially suggesting the exact opposite of today’s “social emotional learning”: do not give power, attention, or even time to your feelings. Ignore them.

Believe it or not, I’m not kidding. When I explain this to classrooms and school staff and practitioners, they chuckle. They respond in a joking intonation to what they believed to be a joke. What I stated above (that is, ignore your feelings), is not an opinion or hunch, but scientific fact. I make it unbelievably clear when I have no evidence to support a conviction or a thought--- and this is not one of those circumstances. Because when we launch into a cycle of box breathing, excessive self-reflection, clawing for a “calm down corner”, and erratically scoping out an escape route, we’re proving to anxiety one thing: “You have made me so uncomfortable that I will do anything to get rid of you.”

This is exactly what anxiety wants: for our time, our energy, and our resources to deplete in its favor. We’re quite literally feeding into it directly when we engage in the behaviors that social-emotional learners or school counselors encourage: talk about it relentlessly, ruminate about its difficulty, and refuse to move on until you “feel ready”. While our feelings and irrational thoughts do tend to enhance the symptoms of anxiety, they, in and of themselves, are not exactly what we need to change--- at least not outright. We need to change our RESPONSE TO and PERCEPTION OF what is happening internally. Anxiety is the petulant child whose sole purpose is that of getting under your skin, who stops at nothing until your seething rage reveals itself in the form of screaming and yelling, to which the petulant child squeals in delight. The petulant child has learned one thing: “If I push enough, you will erupt.” Anxiety is its identical twin.

Something I encourage my clients to do, whether they’re strength and conditioning or psychiatric clients, is to shift their attention toward their language. As they share their issues with me, I mark internal tallies counting how many mentions they make of “my anxiety”, “I’m just so anxious, so I can’t”, or phrases that essentialize their issues. I allow them to air their fears, struggles, and thoughts for about 5 minutes before bringing to their attention what my brain has been charting. Many of them admit they hadn’t even realized they were engaging in this powerfully negative form of language, let alone identifying the connection between their thoughts and their behaviors. Others have proceed to dig their heels in and angrily explain to me that “their anxiety” REALLY IS that powerful.

My response? Then stop giving it power. The only person who can do that is ourselves. Not society, not social emotional teachers, not trauma-informed counselors, not the President. You.

It is a requirement that we stop responding to anxiety as if it deserves our attention or time. Stop indulging it by airing its dirty laundry to anyone with a pulse. Stop behaving as if it’s as permanent as our pancreas or our skin. And for fuck’s sake, stop avoiding things just because you’re anxious. I do not allow any client I work with to tell me, “I just can’t because of my anxiety”. If we allow them to deem anxiety this influential, we’ve lost as a clinician, as a coach, as a teacher, as a friend.

Working with children is no different. I’m unsure why we believe that anxiety and depression are entirely different subspecies simply because they are “suddenly” revealing themselves in kids. This, in my conspiratorial opinion, works to make children into lifelong clients to benefit Big Pharma. A mentally ill child is a lifelong paycheck, as are their highly vulnerable parents who are desperate to take away their pain. Parents, know this: the mechanisms of anxiety are still the exact same, and need to be approached as if they’re the exact same. Your kids would be better off entirely shifting attention away from anxiety symptoms and instead learn the power of their physiology. An individual who exercises regularly, for example, is constantly exposing themselves to symptoms of anxiety (some shakiness, rapid heartbeat, heavy breathing, sweating). In doing so, they learn such symptoms are not always sensations to be feared, or even sensations that make for interesting topics of conversation. A child who learns to regulate their own breathing and learn the physiological thresholds of their body is a child who is unstoppable.  

We rarely give attention to the sprinter who speaks of how heavily they’re breathing following a hundred meter sprint. And we certainly wouldn’t bring attention to the person who reports their legs feeling uneasy following completion of a marathon. But when we tie “mental health” to it, it suddenly gains importance. Why? Because we secretly fetishize mental illness. We’re captured by the idea that maybe we don’t have to do anything difficult, because we’re so intricately disordered that we’re just “different”. And for children?! Maybe I’m not a bad parent! Maybe I can be off the hook for disciplining them, because they’re neurodivergent or disordered or sensorily sensitive. No. You are feeding the monster that is anxiety--- your own and your children’s. Should you be skeptical about my straightforwardness regarding anxiety, I challenge you to experiment on yourself. When you begin to feel anxiety, say to yourself, out loud, “Oh great, you’re here!” and move on about your day. No meditation, no breathing, no self-talk. Do not give in.

Our bar is increasingly low for our abilities as human beings. Which is mind-blowing considering all that we’ve overcome: World War II. The Holocaust. Famine. The Great Depression. 9/11. Black Death. AIDS. Slavery. Are we really going to stoop to the degree of “if I go for a walk for 10 minutes today, that’s good enough”? Maybe I should have prefaced this thought with the understanding that 10 minutes of walking may be a tremendous accomplishment for the morbidly obese individual who has not walked in months or even years. It takes such mental toughness to pull ourselves out of a physical and mental rut so deep. But for those of us of generally sound mind and body, I want us to believe we’re capable of more. I want us to believe that our children can handle scraped knees and bruised psyches by reminding themselves of the creed that is sticks and stones.

‘“May the Force Be With You” is charming, but unimportant. What’s important is that you become the force--- for yourself and perhaps for other people.” – Harrison Ford

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Maybe this is our penance for fixating on happiness and comfort above all else, including, but not limited to: common sense, scientific knowledge, research, truth, reality, or others’ perspectives. We’ve convinced millennial parents that the red dye in a fun-size bag of Doritos inevitably manifests into Autism Spectrum Disorder or related disabilities. Or that a failure to buy organic grapes plucked from the sanitary hands of cherubs will guarantee some form of sensory processing disorder or *gasp* childhood anxiety. There is growing research pointing to the correlations between a nutrient-dense diet, regular exercise, and significant decreases in symptoms of depression and anxiety; such evidence makes a marionette of my heart. That which slices its strings? The squawking mobs of people claiming that nutrient-dense food, and encouragement of anything remotely “good for you”, leads to clinical eating disorders or obsessive-compulsive fixations on health. But the sugar-high you’ve compassionately induced so your child won’t become dysregulated by being denied Thin Mints for breakfast? Completely copacetic.

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Americans will do most anything but put forth effort, especially if laziness and lack of action is incentivized. Because we’re a culture of decadence and ease, it should come as no shock that the products with the least amount of effort and promises of dramatic results are those that tend to steal headlines and, in turn, revenue. Ozempic has been an eye-opening trend in the past couple of years. Calley Means refers to the use of Ozempic as being as symptom of America’s not healthcare, but “sick-care”, in which behavior-rooted obesity is not seen as behaviorally manageable, but as an inescapable disease. On a podcast debate in which people argued for or against the use of Ozempic, Means was stoic and concise: the obvious answer in regards to obesity is not to fund Ozempic using tax dollars and insurance programs, but to teach people skills to make healthier food choices and engage in healthier routines. In other words: why put us trillions of dollars into debt for a drug, when we could use that same funding to incentivize better food choices and overall better habits? Well… it’s the people who think being healthy is being mentally sick, and that children in particular must be shielded from health should they hope to avoid a lifetime of therapy.

This demonstrates an overall cynical and frankly pathetic view of humanity. That we’re so fragile and incapable and lazy that we couldn’t possibly handle the demands of exercise and eating well; we’re just screwed, so let’s drug everyone to lull them into a passive, sedentary stupor. In the debate, Means asked a professional with an opposing viewpoint why the answer is “drugging people” instead of just using the money towards better food sources. Her answer? That Americans essentially have no control over their behavior and therefore are lazy, and the best we can do is give them a boost with something like Ozempic. All of this in the name of, what… keeping people from developing disordered thinking?

So I’ll preface the remainder of this piece with this: You are not going to “give your child an eating disorder” by encouraging a healthy lifestyle. This is not an opinion or a hunch. It is a fact. Eating disorders develop primarily out of a need for control and have very little to do with scientific breakdowns of food. While I do understand the delivery being important, as someone who uses words like “good vs. bad foods” or “fattening versus slimming” may instill a disordered concept of food’s purpose, we need to accept that rationality always endures. Irrational responses sound like demonizing health, appreciating “bodies at any size”, deciding for yourself what metrics you’ll use to determine health despite not having a medical degree or thorough understanding of health, and the like. Rational responses and behaviors are those which aim for 80% consistency with health-related behaviors, and encourage younger generations to learn the basic principles of health to better prevent themselves from developing disease and disorder as they age.

Something I’d like for us to consider is how delusional this form of thinking is, even though it’s equal parts understandable. We’re so focused on feelings and preventing “trauma” that we consider any mention of nutrient-dense food to be indicative of a clinical eating disorder. We believe a parent who encourages their child to exercise is a pathetic abuser trying to live vicariously through their little hockey player. When I work with online nutrition clients, specifically those new to lifestyle changes and health education, one of the main concerns aired is, “I want to get healthy but I can’t do anything restrictive.” Firstly, why do we believe health is restrictive? Is it because of the heroin-chic era of Kate Moss or Twiggy whose knees bulge out like doorknobs because they have so little body fat to insulate them? Or is it because “diet culture” has insisted upon juice cleanses and carb detoxes being the only manner by which to achieve top-shelf fitness?

Regardless of the divergent sources, the analytical side of me grows annoyed with this logic. Have we become that ignorant to basic premises of health that we’re unwilling to admit that meals high in protein and vegetables aren’t “diet foods”, but just what we should be eating? Have we succumbed so desperately into convenience and ease that we respond with “Yeah, but I don’t like cooking” to any mention of cooking nutritious, nutrient-dense meals? Perhaps an apology is in order for what I’m about to say… but that is fucking bullshit. We are adults. I wholly resonate with the exhaustion and the stress and the fears of trudging through this tedious ride we call life, but are you kidding me? We need to understand that health isn’t in place as a therapeutic measure. We don’t engage in exercise as reactionary to gaining weight, nor do we go on walks because we’re trying to gain street-cred with the 10K-steps-a-day-crew. We do it because it’s good for us.

When people making more balanced food choices when presented with a buffet, or they eat their own packed, cooked lunch instead of inhaling pizza from the third company-provided lunch that week, co-workers roll their eyes and scorn at their “discipline”. “Ugh, of course you’re being so good. This is why I’m fat!” Why is basic health considered some unattainable form of “discipline” that only the highly self-controlled, militant Type A’s are capable of embodying? Perhaps this is my own compulsive dark soldier talking, but it’s shameful that we’re in a place societally that we scoff at people trying to uphold health for the sake of longevity. And trust me, I would absolutely destroy a pizza, an entire box of Thin Mints, or a Shrek’s-family-size serving of Reese’s Puffs. But I also don’t complain that “it’s just so much easier to eat than cooking my meat and vegetables”, “that I just really want it so I’m going to have it because I’ve had a stressful week”, or “I don’t feel like eating vegetables.” With a lifestyle that aims for consistency as the goal versus extreme ends of the starvation or indulgent spectrum, I don’t find myself particularly irked by basic responsibilities of adulthood. Being an adult means doing things over 50% of the time that are mundane, repetitive, tedious, completely useless and worthless, and an astronomical pain in the ass. I’m unsure why we feel that taking care of ourselves and the only body we have would be any different.

Alas, it’s our fetish for mental health being of greater importance than any other form of health. It’s still a bit astonishing that I see mostly women committing to cold-plunging, intermittent fasting, hot yoga, and/or some form of supplementation despite having an irregular sleep schedule, vaping or smoking weed almost daily, drinking sugary coffees with sweet snacks and deeming them “meals”, or inconsistently exercising because they “don’t have time”. It’s interesting that we expect health and change to occur through a saccharine osmosis, and that our transformation will simultaneously shift our mind into that of fully functional, Zen, and rational.

This is something I speak frequently about with parents of teenagers, as teens are pummeled with Insta-therapy and TikTok pop-psychology on a regular basis: frequently fixating on our mental health makes our mental health worse, much like fixating on our body image or a preoccupation with our appearance will likely result in body image issues. We’ve created a rigid contingency which posits that a pleasant state of emotionality is required should we proceed to take care of ourselves, and if there’s an absence of positive “vibes”, we can simply “give ourselves grace” for as long as we need. We apparently don’t take care of ourselves because we know it’s beneficial for our bones and joints and hearts, but because it “seriously improves our mental health”; if our mental health is already at an acceptable level, do we still exercise? Considering, you know, exercise being “therapeutic” is more important than exercise simply being a linchpin in living longer, healthier lives?

The social-emotional bent and therapizing-everything fervor are the driving forces behind health education only being acceptable if it feels good. Because of an entire generation’s perverse fascination with “complex trauma”, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that parents are at a loss or are paralyzed with where, when, and how to start teaching these things to their kids. One of the most common concerns I hear from today’s parents, specifically younger parents with younger kids (think: older millennial parents), is that they’re “exploring food with their child” or “exposing them to health without forcing health”. This is admirable but, frankly, soft. Which makes sense- our culture demands children be treated as fragile flowers who are incapable of handling reality, logic, scientific fact, and even a modicum of difficulty. Again, let me be the one to tell you: there is zero information told to me about fat, protein, carbs that contributed to my development of an eating disorder. For others my age that were brought up on healthy meals, I can honestly say I’ve never heard ONE person claim that eating healthy growing up made them anorexic later in life. Even saying it out loud sounds a bit silly and reductionist.

Empathy is not blindly supporting a person’s idea of what they think is best for themselves. While I am a proponent, in several ways, that people know themselves best, we’re also historically very poor judges of our own behavior and decision-making. For individuals continuously defeated and frustrated with yo-yo dieting and hot Pilates or whatever the hell new trend is made available, we have to assume that their judgment is impaired regarding what is best for them. Not because we’re taking a cynical view similar to the one mentioned earlier, in which the argument was made that Americans are lazy. Not at all. We just have to be realistic with ourselves that when we’re in states of distress or frustration, our ability to think clearly is not operating on all cylinders. We typically are not receptive to hearing the truth and will therefore seek out only that which soothes our bruised ego. But we’ve tried the compassion thing, as well as body positivity and neurodivergent-everything… and where has that landed us?

Perfect bait for insurance companies and big Pharma. If you’re not going to do it for yourself, at least do it so you can kick those money hungry assholes in the shins.

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“I’m just an anxious person” is not a burning confession or even much of a personality quirk anymore, but a thought-terminating belief. Thought-terminating beliefs are lazy, simplistic phrases that aim to stifle any further conversation. “It can always be worse” is maybe one we’ve heard before. These beliefs function as emotional cease-and-desist letters: they allow those who tolerate us to know that we’re somehow activated by what we’ve heard, that our beliefs or general behavior appears to be under attack, and we will retreat into conversation-termination should the questioning continue. For example, the individual who is told by his professor he must present a thoughtful presentation for his final may proceed to whine that he has “performance anxiety” or “public speaking anxiety”. With this, he’s not requesting extra support or even the chance to learn skills to better tolerate the impending final. He’s pissing over the territory that is his ego by masking a demand as a comment: “It’s too hard for me, so you cannot make me do it.”

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This avoidance behavior is evident amongst practitioners as well as clients. Hell, it’s evident in the entire human species. And I can’t say I blame people; I’ve certainly tried to use my own ailments or circumstances as permission slips, as excuses, or as hall passes. But there’s a deeper connection to our negative symptoms in modern culture, one in which we surrender to the identity we and others dislike, perhaps because we’re too afraid of what the outcome might be should we simply behave like a normal person.

In a recent email thread, professionals squawked in unison about those pesky social norms that we all abide by but are apparently still oppressive to certain populations. “There is no normal!” “Normal is restrictive!” “Only people who aren’t compassionate force norms on others!” I’ve written about this in previous pieces, so I won’t go into depth as to how this is as delusional as it is narcissistic. What I will say, though, is such self-serving thinking shines a light on how the manner in which we address mental health is completely ineffective. Yes, there needs to be a norm. And yes, we’re all thankful for norms and we benefit from such norms, and denial of such does not change the reality that some people are, unfortunately, abnormal. Anyone with a legitimate mental illness will respond with an emphatic “Fuck yes” when asked, “Do you ever wish you didn’t have a diagnosis and were… normal?”

Similar contortions and creative spins occur in the realm of treating psychiatric disorders. In many clients, when their behavior escalates to the degree of dangerous, that of a health risk, or just plain disgusting, the field is quick to write these off as symptoms of a systemic medicinal issue. “It’s not behavioral. It’s psychiatric. Which means it’s not our fault it isn’t changing; it’s the psychiatrist’s fault for not getting the dose right!” The psychiatrist then becomes a swift scapegoat and easy “fall guy” when treatment plans inevitably fail to work. Treatment plans written to coddle and validate a person’s unhealthy sense of self cannot, and will not, ever work: they only appear this way because of incompetent practitioners whose greater aim is to “be seen as a compassionate person” than to actually behave like one. It’s quite similar to the entire idea of “acceptance” or “world X days” for various disabilities and mental illnesses--- the individuals with such ailments are not given the tools to better navigate the grueling reality that is life, but are told their ailment is the most interesting and sacred thing about them, and that anyone who fails to recognize it as such holds private ideals about able-bodied people being superior. I frankly cannot think of a better way to set a person up for failure than to tell them that “you’re just depressed, and once that stupid normie psychiatrist gives you your meds, you’ll be all better”. We can choose to address our problems as problems, not as quirky ornaments your kids made you in preschool that you’re compelled to like.

It's a brave step toward self-betterment to understand the ways in which our problems contribute to our suffering. And to take such awareness a step further toward action steps and gradual change? It’s something I wish more people learned at earlier ages rather than a decade into their careers or their marriages. But the act of awareness is not enough--- it does not operate as a universal hall pass when the going gets tough. “Well I just did that because it was a trauma response!” That might be true. My next statement is, “yes, and?” Yes, you are behaving in a certain manner because something terrible happened to you as a child, and for that, I do empathize. But it also doesn’t mean you’re entirely off the hook for the array of horrendous decisions you make and immature responses you produce in the face of adversity. The more we convince these individuals that a pill or a therapist or a self-help book is where they’re allowed to end their “journey”, the greater we’ll suffer when they inevitably become our bosses, our teachers, our co-workers, or our neighbors. Nobody likes a martyr.

We’re not exempt from consequences or accountability by virtue of being ill and recognizing ourselves as ill. And, to reiterate, being aware of our problems is crucial should we take any meaningful action toward improving upon them--- but it doesn’t magically occur through some divine intervention or hope. The “self-work” that is required to change our perspectives and shift our expectations is grueling: we’re faced with illogical and irrational rules we’ve created and a set of memorized behaviors we’ve accepted because they’re familiar. This is a concept called path dependence, in which past events constrain later decisions: an example is the QWERTY keyboard configuration. There are other keyboard designs far faster and more efficient than the placement of QWERTY on the keyboard, but we’ve grown so used to it that we don’t necessarily see a need to change it. Psychiatric labels have suffered similar complacence: we incentivize the unnecessary until it grows familiar enough that people see no reason to modify it. In a recent episode on Dr. Gabrielle Lyon’s podcast, and a veteran psychologist discussed the occurrence of PTSD in the general population, combat veterans, and veterans receiving services from Veterans Affairs. In the general population, about 8% of people are diagnosed with PTSD. In combat veterans? About 6%. For the men over at the VA? Over 50%. 50%?! Why is this?

Well, the answer is simple: we incentivize illness. The VA awards veterans a disability check, every month, for the rest of their life, so long as they continue to meet the criteria for having PTSD. Individuals who qualify for disability receive similar funding, so long as they can continuously prove their level of functioning is that which is “disabled”. Quite similar to the stimulus check we all received for doing quite literally nothing except whining, any person with even a single brain cell could understand the tragedy in this sort of messaging: if you’re damaged goods, you’re on the payroll. And the only way you can stay on the payroll is if you stay damaged goods. Don’t bother changing anything about it---we’re dependent on this system because it’s what we’ve done in the past, and our reliance on history has made people even more resistant to future change. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us, then, when our system inevitably fails to keep up with the never-ending demand for free lunch.

This is further evidence as to why modern therapy, specificslly, is so detrimental: instead of taking beneficial clinical action and making attempts to separate the person from the diagnosis, we’re suggesting the opposite. You’re no longer a person with interests and passions and capabilities, but you’re a bipolar individual with social anxiety whose social battery is low and who struggles to tolerate adversity as a POC. To categorize people inaccurately and unnecessarily is to intentionally dismiss the very things that make them interesting and that make them… “them”. When we conclude for a person who they are based on superficial details and a will to end a conversation rather than open it, we’ve reached a verdict without actually, as author David Brooks puts it, “seeing someone”.

Identifying with our negative traits makes it that much less motivating to improve upon or eliminate them. In James Clear’s continuous best seller Atomic Habits, he outlines our tendency to use wishy-washy language as we transition into becoming our ideal selves. The individual who wishes to stop smoking, for example, is better off telling people “I don’t smoke” instead of “I’m trying really hard to stop smoking.” While the change is subtle and maybe even unnoticeable, the impact is immense: one statement exudes an ideal that we’re confident we’ll become, while the other is unsure of one’s ability to change. In a practical sense, the person who firmly states, ‘I don’t smoke’ is far less likely to receive further pleas to “just have one” or “you can start that tomorrow”  than the person who “is just trying really hard to quit”. As the kids say: don’t talk about it, be about it.

Our mental health and the person we choose to be can be handled in a similar manner. Should we determine we’d like to improve upon our “social anxiety”, our first step is deciding that we do not have social anxiety. No, you are not “anxious in social situations”, nor are you “just an anxious person”. You’re a person who prefers to spend time in small groups versus large gatherings. You’re the one more comfortable observing than leading. And you’re capable of handling any distress that will inevitably arise when in the presence of multiple personalities, genders, histories, and temperaments. The internal nervousness you’re experiencing is not indicative of a disorder, but of you being just another human being that isn’t really that special.

I told myself for years, “I get panic attacks in the car.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened, then, every time I got in the car: I’d get a panic attack. The self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation about ourselves that is powerful enough to influence our behavior, thus “forcing” the belief to come true. What if I told myself I didn’t get panic attacks in the car? In this way, if the panic attack did arise, I still wouldn’t be “the person that got panic attacks in the car”. I’d be someone who happened to get a panic attack, and I’d also remind myself I was a person who had the tools to appropriately manage it. The fact that it happened in the car is essentially moot. Subtle changes in how we see ourselves and our problems are truly all that’s needed for much of today’s supposed suffering.

We author the story we tell ourselves. As Henry Ford reminds us, “whether you think you can or you think you can’t… you’re right.”

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* How we can better understand what people mean when they say something “works” for them

* Lifestyle habits can cause psychiatric symptoms, but we’re given pills before trying to change our lifestyle??!?!

* Your antidepressants won’t do anything if you’re drinking an extra large Cinnamon Churro Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Coffee Macchiato for breakfast

* “Not having enough time” and “just being stressed” are not compelling reasons to abandon basic health routines

* Basic health should be a requirement for all people before immediately resorting to prescribing medication

* Upper middle class white girls love therapy because it’s a more professional way of addressing first world problems

Our current culture relies on the violation of social norms for digital attention. With this said, today’s activists do not seem to have the capacity to move on from their complaints, nor do they show any interest in doing so. For the same reason they’re campaigning, they’re also succeeding; without a problem, their identity would be null and void. Fight the patriarchy! But don’t fight it too much, because then we won’t have anything to pride ourselves on. Make mental illness normal! But not too normal, because then I won’t be noticed as being mentally ill. It’s similar to stories I’ve written about regarding the demand for therapeutic services: revenue is entirely dependent upon the presence of a problem. No illness equals no revenue.  

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Youngsters are advised to “dare to be different” and to “be our authentic selves” and “do you boo-boo”. Quite honestly, I can appreciate the premise of these claims, even if I’d use entirely different language to convey the message. What confuses and mildly infuriates me about such platitudes, though, is that they their intention isn’t to encourage uniqueness. Their aim is to be different, but to be different in a manner that is fashionable and socially acceptable. The movements’ loyal constituents oppose only certain narratives so offenders can conform to a set of others. They want you to fight injustice by substituting it with more injustice. They want you to fight stereotyping by proceeding to stereotype. Such tendencies are evident in most any societal issue since 2020: the best way to fight past racism of Black people is to discriminate against White people; disability activists scorn the use of “compliance” as torture yet demand their dissenters comply with their perception of society; women hate to be characterized as damsels in distress who belong in the kitchen yet stereotype men as aggressive, toxic, and inherently destructive “takers”. Ah yes, that’s sure to help.

Individuals whose identities rest on the permanence of a problem are uninterested in true change. They require conformity. Knowing there will likely never be 100% consensus on any nuanced societal issue, they are chronically ripe for the next pandemic, the next moral dilemma, the next world war. Any one of us could find a problem if we look hard enough for it. And today’s culture has refashioned most everything into a problem.

The Neurodiversity Movement, for example, relies on 1) negatively stereotyping “neurotypicals”, as “neurodiverse” can only exist if compared to some basic understanding and acknowledgement of norms, and 2) would be a moot point if true and thorough acceptance of differences were attained. We’ve long since accepted mental illness and disability, as we have for quite some time. Side-eyeing an grown adult who drops to the floor in public is not emblematic of “neurotypical supremacy”, but is a normal reaction to behavior we’d consider inappropriate. Glancing at a person arguing with themselves under the subway while carrying an open bottle of their own urine is not a public display of bigotry, but another normal reaction to behavior we don’t see as common.

While I do understand that some individuals continuously face harassment, unfair treatment, and discrimination because of their differences, we cannot continue to use isolated instances or our own experiences as exceptions to general rules. This logical tendency is used quite commonly in conversation: should I claim that stigma no longer exists as it relates to mental illness, the “normalization” advocate might claim “Well I wasn’t hired because I’m bipolar.” There’s not only several explanations for someone not being hired because of mental illness, but this one instance alone does not speak for the millions of mentally ill individuals who have secured employment (myself included). Additionally, there are unfortunately some mental illnesses that reach a severity in which sustained employment, or even day-to-day functioning, is not possible. This does not imply they’re being discriminated against. It means they’re people who do not demonstrate the ability to handle the demands of work or everyday life independently.

I’ve had a few students with disabilities in the past with varying views on society’s conception of able-bodied versus disabled. Does being deaf in a society that largely uses verbal speech as its primary form of communication make life more challenging? I’m assuming so. Does it mean that we pander to the very small population of deaf individuals, while completely dismissing the needs of verbally-speaking people? For a more common example, think about the TV show “Little People, Big World.” Individuals with dwarfism cannot possibly expect that grocery stores, schools, restaurants, cars, busses, houses, and skyscrapers would entirely refashion their structure to accommodate the 2.5% of the population with dwarfism; they can reach a compromise by building their house to their preferences and their height and their comfort, and perhaps find environments in which physical mobility is easier.

Although my views are quite strong as it relates to normalization, I do try to understand the “accept me and don’t criticize my quirks or judge my actions in accordance with arbitrary social rules” through personal experience with being ousted. Professionally, I tend to share views that many women find offensive, brusque, or largely difficult to digest. One can imagine, then, that working in fields almost entirely dominated by women (i.e., education or therapy) can feel isolating in that it’s hard for me to find others with similar worldviews or even compatible demeanors. While I actively try to prove my ideas incorrect or faulty, I’m also afflicted with the very human tendency to find people with similar but not identical perspectives. Doing so tends to make conversations more smooth, and everyday life more tolerable. I love a lively debate, but not 100% of the time. My assumption is that such constant deliberation would exhaust even the most mentally acute of debaters.

With my general worldview and beliefs being the minority opinion in some circles, especially in recent years, there have been moments when I fantasize about shaking people and furiously demanding to know how they can be so delusional in their thinking. What helps to quell this desire is the recognition that they likely feel similarly about my ideas. With this in mind, and with the world moving towards a doctrine that most sane people consider completely divorced from reality, maybe I do empathize with those who scorn social norms.

Some norms are challenging to keep up with: do I stare at a person’s eyebrows when we’re speaking, or do I lock into the left pupil of their left eye? How frequently do I avert my eyes before returning them to the other person’s gaze? Others are arbitrarily stupid and unnecessarily complex: Do I take the last piece of cake, even though I’ve already had a slice? If everyone else has had a slice and claims to be full, would it be rude to snag what’s left? An episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm uses shared appetizers as an example: there’s a tacit agreement that everyone eats their “ratio” of the dip, even though such rules aren’t written or even discussed. While we’re largely in charge of which norms we abide by and which ones we choose to rebel against, there is some degree of human decency and normalcy that I believe many of us generally agree with and are appreciative of. If you eat 2/3 of the hummus and four others are seated at the table with you, you’re an asshole.

I had a student a few years ago who self-identified as “woke”. We’ll call her Mia. Mia came replete with fashionable pronouns, rainbow shirts flashing “Love Is Love”, a clunky septum piercing, and faded streaks of blue hair. In sum, she perfectly fit what the mainstream media has crafted as the “activist archetype”. In talking with her, though, she still aligned her behavior with very common and accepted social norms while also pledging allegiance to the woke doctrine. As an example, she has stated the following beliefs (and I’m paraphrasing): ‘Yes, we need to show more compassion and care for people who are  “harmed”, but no, not everybody that has been harmed is traumatized.’ ‘Yes, we live in a patriarchy and the White dudes in my business class are gross alpha males hard for innocent women, and also yes, women in America are nowhere near as discriminated against as the hijab-wearing and beaten women in Afghanistan’. Unsurprisingly, Mia received side glances and glares quite frequently, likely because of her flamboyant outfits and outspoken views during class discussion in a largely Conservative university setting. But never once did she demand that others bend to her will simply because she believed so strongly in it. I admire Mia.  

She’s also the epitome of my general views on acceptance and norms. I am a firm believer in “live and let live”; I could give a damn in you’re a man wearing a dress with prosthetic boobs, or if you’re a throuple who all rotate playing adult-baby in bed. That is entirely the preference and business of the individual, and I am in no place to determine how others choose to live their own lives. What I take particular issue with is the concept that because these individuals accept themselves, the world must also accept them. Sure, in the privacy of your own home or on your own time, flash your plastic hard nipples to whoever you’d like. But presenting in this way to teach high school students, for example? This is inappropriate, as most sane people would agree. And while we’re on the topic of “gender norms”, more specifically the “burning down” of them… have you noticed that all of the male-to-female trans “activists” transform into only the most bimbo-esque version of women? How often might we see male-to-female individuals wear oversized sweatpants, a grungy trucker hat, and a T-Shirt, all without makeup? They’re secretly and perhaps subconsciously abiding by the widely known and accepted concept of gender norms, all while simultaneously believing they’re dismantling them. J.K. Rowling said it best: “The emperor may be wearing lipstick, but his balls are swinging in plain sight.” If a penis or a vagina doesn’t define gender, what makes people think a purse, lipstick, a weave, and a miniskirt will? Just some food for thought. And, again… do you. Just don’t be surprised when you get some looks.

Similar hypocrisy is obvious in the realm of mental health and “normalization”. Individuals who have grown insta-famous for their views on “normalization” must recognize that, should all mental illness be normalized, they would no longer be seen as an exclusive group suffering a hyper-special illness that makes them more enlightened than stupid normies. If everyone is a normie, the plausibility of “neurodivergence” ceases to exist. If everyone is special, nobody can be special. In that regard, what sort of ideal would such groups endorse if they lost the ability to complain about how the world doesn’t accept them? It’s perhaps that the world does accept them that they take issue with; an individual who only sees themselves as important because of their victimhood will of course denounce those who don’t see them as such. Such blatant hypocrisy doesn’t put them in a position of “enlightened” so much as it does monotonously common; we’ve all fallen “victim” to wanting to be seen as the victim. But it’s this annoyingly-habitual tendency that has resulted in our population rolling our eyes when we hear someone speak of their “traumas” or their “issues with anxiety and depression”. Oh, so you’re a person with feelings? How fascinating.

Sadly, being a person with feelings isn’t an upscale badge of chic. It’s just the norm. And it’s because of the norm that the screechy fringe is even capable of gaining any form of recognition, affirmation, or notoriety. Perhaps we can reflect on the statement-turned-advice, “any publicity is good publicity”. This could easily be applied to individuals hellbent on the “dismantling” of norms. I’d wonder if, just for shits and giggles considering our society can’t decide on what a woman is or if we should assign a “little b” or “Big B” to “brown people”, we told everyone “Sure, babe! Do you!” By simply turning the cheek and refusing to give attention to such idiocy, the activists and insecure advocates would be stunned by their audience’s complete nonchalance in regard to their issues. In other words, giving them the normalization they claim to be robbed of may be the antidote to the hypocrisy of it all.

With this sentiment comes the understanding that planned ignoring is not possible or even beneficial as it relates to issues causing legitimate harm to others. I’m certainly not making the argument that we ignore every problem and take the “live and let live” approach to society’s most dangerous issues. But we do need to decide what problems are truly worth addressing. Arguing on national TV about what a woman is, which pronoun is which, and whether or not to use “disabled” or “differently abled” seems to be a stand-in for actual problem-solving, or merely admitting we’re unsure where to start.

“Choose your battles wisely— because if you fight them all, you’ll be too tired to win the really important ones.”

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The advice given to me above was from a patient that, in retrospect, must have been quite a few years older than me; because she had signed herself in and out, she was at least of legal adult age. Known as the Eating Disorder (ED) Wing Bully, Emily was Beth Dutton reincarnate. I despise Beth Dutton from popular TV Series Yellowstone: not only is her pompous savagery a direct manifestation of insecurity, it’s perceived as an admirable personality by which young women should aspire to. Emily was the early 2000’s version of Beth, although perhaps less obvious in her mood swings. Most all victims of Emily’s were met with an eyeroll, a scorn, and an unnecessarily condescending comment, and group therapy sessions tended to focus solely on her myopic perception of how society functioned. In retrospect, I’m thankful that there were exactly zero conversations about the patriarchy, oppression, White men, or gender. We were a mentally ill group of women wrestling with one of the most lethal psychiatric diagnoses a person can develop, which put us in a unique, albeit unfortunate position, to understand true pain.

Emily was a customary bitch. She made the first 4 weeks of treatment miserable before she signed herself out, by use of abrupt interruptions to focus on herself, disrespectful slurs aimed at immigrant staff, and her general delusion of perceived importance. Emily’s entire aura appeared to be inspired by the DSM diagnosis for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. To be completely honest, she reminded me of many of today’s young therapists; a vicious proclivity for reprisal but at the same time quite weak. At 15 years old, I was terrified, not of Emily’s cattiness but of letting go of the disorder I’d conditioned myself to protect with a Gollum-like determination. Even as a teenager, I felt much more comfortable in the presence of men with impossibly high standards in athletic environments. Being forced into a whining knitting circle of competitive mental illness, then, was a personal brand of misery.

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But it was far more than a petulant knitting circle. I would have given most anything to be surrounded by petulant tweenagers instead of the group of women I was with in treatment. Before my feminist readers grow worried: it had nothing to do with their character or their demeanor; it was the fact that young women infected with a cluster of psychiatric symptoms, all placed together for 8 hours a day, every single day, was bound to result in warfare. In my clinical opinion, one of the worst things you can do for a girl with anorexia is shove her into a group of 20 other women suffering from the same issue. Because I’ve written about rumination endlessly, I’ll only offer a quick recap as it relates to the dynamics of group therapy: rehashing negativity, only to be validated by other equally miserable people, is guaranteed to make an individual feel worse.

Meal times in the hospital where treatment took place were organized with militant precision. Every meal, which we were forced to eat (yes, forced--- I’ll get to this later), was under close surveillance by our team of psychologists as well as ED Wing ‘Guards’. Guards sat on either side of every patient to ensure they weren’t spitting out food into a napkin while pretending to cough or sneeze, “accidentally” dropping food on to the floor as a desperate attempt to not eat it, or dropping crumbs of food down our sleeves to later shake into the toilet we weren’t allowed to flush because of the bulimics. I hated every moment of it. Every moment of therapy, which started at 8:00 AM and ended at 5:00 PM, was hell. It’s difficult to explain how defeated you become when you’re forced to face your every neurotic judgment with such rigor.

Abigail Shrier, in her new book Bad Therapy, begins her first chapter with a concept called “iatrogenesis”. Iatrogenesis in Greek means “originating from the healer” and is, according to Google, “the unintentional causation of disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence.” We’ve heard of surgeons accidentally leaving a scalpel inside of a patient’s large intestine and proceeding to sew their skin shut. We sat aghast after watching ‘Dr. Death’, a show based on a real surgeon who maimed the intricate spinal cavities of his patients while under the influence of cocaine and sadistic thirst. And we’ve undoubtedly noted the clinicians who amputate the wrong limb or completely misdiagnose a fatal disease as a generic cold. But we rarely discuss iatrogenesis in therapeutic fields, as it’s a problem that goes largely unseen because of its gradual and relatively invisible effects.

Iatrogenesis in therapy may look like gender-affirming care or feverish passion for happy moods at all cost. While the initial moment may present as being useful, as it heeds to the ego of the patient and therefore makes them “happy”, it results in a wide array of emotional problems as they develop. The child that is coddled by a mother who refuses to place any form of a boundary becomes the teenager who punches a teacher in the face for not allowing him to play Xbox during a calculus test. A young adult whose university allows her to take part in firing a professor will mature into a clinician who humiliates her patients and attempts to poorly “educate” any practitioner who does not share her diluted worldview. When we coddle, we handicap. And if the outgrowth of this isn’t evident in the entirely unhinged and emotionally unstable clinicians who advocate for an 11-year-old removing healthy breast tissue, I’m unsure what is.

Any and all interventions, whether that be simple reinforcement or a complex course of psychoanalysis, carry risk. I’ve heard several practitioners make comments such as, “literally nothing can happen if we’re all more aware of trauma through trauma-informed care”, or “there are no side effects of compassion.” Both are clearly untrue. We’ve become a bit lazy in our thinking, appearing to believe that only the “bad” or “abusive” practices of clinicians are those which carry imminent risk or any possibility or harm. The positivity or negativity of the outcome should have nothing to do with the fact that the intervention itself always has side effects. Side effects are guaranteed collateral, regardless of whether those turn out to be beneficial or injurious. When researchers study placebo effects and give their research participants a sugar pill, for example, they are exposing these people to chance. Dr. Camilo Ortiz, a psychologist who recognizes this peril, developed a portion of his consent forms to address what’s largely undiscussed: “Because I likely will be asking you to undertake difficult tasks, such as thinking about uncomfortable memories, it is common to feel distressed during and after therapy sessions. Research also suggests that a small percentage of psychotherapy clients experience a worsening of symptoms. Therefore, there are real risks in undertaking psychotherapy. We will monitor your progress closely and discuss any lack of progress or worsening of symptoms.”

Today’s therapists, likely with minimal awareness and with good intentions, are without question imposing varying degrees of emotional harm on their clients, through obsessive and toxic compassion, externalization of personal responsibility, and adoption of politically correct “treatment”. As has been stated by so many female practitioners in slightly various ways, “I’m going to be so much better than her last therapist, because I care.” Caring is noble, but caring is not synonymous with helping.

You see, wanting to help is not the same as actually helping. Appearing to care or appearing to be compassionate are not the same as being of service. My therapists in treatment for anorexia, while they did occasionally exude warmth, were largely unconcerned with our irrational tantrums. Their job was not to indulge or validate our feelings as well as keep us “relaxed” or “engaged”, as affirming an anorexic’s delusional concept of justified starvation would inevitably kill her. Their honorable duty was to help us tolerate the agonizing discomfort of eating, to challenge our irrational beliefs around rigid food rules, and slowly transition us into using these skills in the real world in a therapist’s absence. The bluntness and stick-to-itiveness required to succeed as a clinician, in this regard, would never have survived much of today’s therapeutic mantras; I’m confident we all would have been dead had we been treated by today’s young, “compassionate” clinicians with their bullshit jargon and perverse fixation on “connection over compliance” or “avoidance of harm”.

When we were caught hiding food or engaging in some sort of sleight of hand to avoid eating it, we were accosted in front of the entire group. This, of course, violently triggered the patients who were actually making efforts to overcome their eating disorder. Dramatic bouts of wailing and yelling would then ensue, until eventually the food magician was taken into a separate room by guards and threatened with a forced choice: eat the food by chewing and swallowing, or submit to having it fed through a tube. Many girls who had completely submitted to their anorexia preferred the tube, as it still allowed them to profess allegiance to their eating disorder by not technically ingesting food by mouth. Eating disorders are funny like that; they ruin your life but make you dependent on them, empty without them, at the same time.

My first day of residential treatment was met with forced merriment by staff and a meek welcome from gaunt, starving patients. All but one patient was female, ranging in age from 9 years old to 54 years old; each patient was at different points in their recovery from anorexia or bulimia, with many of the patients being self-identified “frequent fliers”. Frequent fliers were those who had “worked the program” anywhere from 2 to 5+ times, liberating themselves from its locked double doors only to find themselves back behind them after realizing their compulsions couldn’t be tamed in the real world. This is unfortunate but unsurprising; with anorexia being unbelievably hard to treat, many women find themselves in chronically transient states of intensive treatment, one on one therapy, or competitive group circles aimed at “healing”. I’m thankful I was not one--- and I believe it was due in large part to the tenacity and protective factors my family helped to instill.

Protective factors are “characteristics at the biological, psychological, family, or community level that are associated with a lower likelihood of problem outcomes, or that reduce the negative impact of risk factor on problem outcomes.” In plain language, they’re buffers against the development of mental illness or psychiatric symptoms. One of the prime factors, specifically for young girls, is authoritative, respectful parenting.  Parents who demonstrate resilience through their ability to cope with the stresses of everyday life are imperative should young, mentally unstable tweenagers stand a chance to do the same. My parents, who I’ve written about endlessly, were “late bloomers” in parenting: they had me when they were 41. While I don’t believe their age is the only factor in their perseverance which I so admire, I do believe I had an edge on the others born to parents in their late 20’s. We didn’t eat together at the dining room table, nor did we attend church as a loving clan only to later discuss the integration of religion into our psyche. But my parents were disciplinary, no-bullshit, reliable people; there was no question about the wrath my brother and I were in for after we’d been caught being idiots. I don’t respect and adore my parents because they were “compassionate” and gave us “tons of choice”. I respect and adore them because they loved us fiercely enough to stick to their guns when it felt impossible to do so. They didn’t lower the standard or even their emotional threshold when I was in treatment for anorexia or when my brother was in rehab for heroin. In the parallel universe where I’d ever become a parent, my Mom and Dad are people I would aspire to be.

This is what’s so sorely misguided with so much of today’s therapy. We find it more important to appear nice, gentle, and loving than to actually instill any valuable lesson about how to treat other people. We eagerly place stupid bumper stickers reading “Connection over Compliance” or “Happy, Relaxed, Engaged” on our MacBooks and iPads, as doing so is the laziest and fastest means by which to earn respect in a largely liberal, white, female field hellbent on playing God to a child’s nonexistent psychiatric fever. Quite frankly, I think it’s repugnant. My disgust may be different if these women continuously plugged these ideals yet went on to provide legitimate therapy; in that regard, live and let live. But this isn’t what’s occurring. Not only are mostly-female therapists more concerned with their digital reputation as Stand-In Permissive Mommy, they’re treating clients as fragile beings incapable of tolerating even a moment of discomfort or adversity. We seem to forget that our childhoods were rife with name-calling, wrestling, roughhousing on the ABC mat for morning circle, and sometimes diabolical bullying. We’ve also drawn a blank as it relates to life’s most important and sometimes life-saving interventions being those that, in the moment, are inescapably painful. Therapy isn’t in place to ensure the burden falls on everybody else to accept us and our unique problems. The purpose of therapy is to teach us how to accept ourselves so we’re not so reliant on validation from other people.

Agencies that have, whether intentionally or passively, adopted such policies as “gentle therapy” or “DEI-focused outreach” should be ashamed of themselves. Truly. An educated individual who is expected to understand child and adult development, and develop treatment that assists their clients in learning more adaptive skills and bettering their lives, cannot truly believe that teaching victimhood is useful. Any sane person, therapist or not, recognizes that coddling ends horribly, and that babying or spoiling children transforms them into adults who become activists and are hellbent on blaming the world around them for their misery. I haven’t spoken to any of my treatment team from the hospital since I was discharged, and I occasionally wonder if they’re still offering services or if they’re retired. More often, though, I wonder how they’d respond to today’s budding clinicians. They’d probably be fired by cowardly administrators too afraid to admit that therapy is inherently hard.

“We can do hard things” has to be an adage that we put into practice versus print in a curly font for a classroom poster or Instagram post. It’s sad that it’s a platitude more than it is a golden rule. Put the goddamn spoons away and recognize that you are the only person who can change your life for the better. Behavior analysts, specifically, like to believe they can change behavior in other people. This is a hopeful delusion.

It's best to start with yourself. You’re the only person you can change for the better.

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* The Holy Billable Hour

* Minimal incentive to do “good work” because of the billable hour

* Poor services delivered because the incentive is insurance, not therapy

* What I initially wanted to do

* Why I can’t seem to figure out business

* Why do people go to therapy for their whole life?

* What now?

For those who have experienced the thrashing ballet that is me telling a story, you’ve likely chuckled at my excessive use of gestures and spastic voice inflection. My arms and hands flail as if I’m a seizing orangutan, all of which occurs mostly without my awareness or even consent. Maybe it’s my Italian roots at play, or just my being fully entrenched in the looming punchline. The way I write and the way I speak, unsurprisingly, are received quite differently. I’ve been told, especially by women, that reading my writing feels like getting repeatedly punched in the gut. Ouch! When I started narrating my writing, though, these same criticisms began moving more toward my being “softer” and “nicer” than the person initially thought or expected. I suppose this is a downfall of being a sharply blunt, sarcastic extravert: it typically doesn’t translate well into written word. This is also entirely my own fault, as I’m guilty of reducing the full context of my thoughts down to squares suitable for social media consumption. Don’t blame me, blame the messenger…

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With this in mind, it’s probably expected that I’ve been dragged--- a lot. My writing has been legitimately misunderstood as well as heedlessly misrepresented, the former lending a hand to critical self-evaluation and the latter an irritated but mild rage. “Content creators” must anticipate their work being bastardized, as its available for such wide and accessible misuse. This expectation in mind and in soul still does not relieve the sting of harsh criticism, especially when delivered by faceless avatars you’re unable to defend yourself against. Perhaps this is the worst aspect of social media: it not only flattens your personality and your meaning down to its dullest fragments, but it renders you a resentful martyr. I heard someone recently criticizing Jordan Peterson, offering relatively respectful feedback, to which I’ll paraphrase: “some very public figures are broken down so much that they cannot ever recover, no matter how brilliant or well-liked. I think that happened with Jordan Peterson; he had so many interesting psychological findings but just got beat down to the point that he, I don’t think, could ever be the same person the world was captivated by.” This resonated with me, as I’ve already felt microscopic hints of burning resentment which results from continued harassment, unsolicited advice, and nameless assessment.

Between losing my brother to a Fentanyl overdose and recovering from anorexia following residential treatment, I’m proud of my capacity for tolerating discomfort. Do I possess a greater capacity to handle discomfort than the average person? I honestly have no idea. The common ground we likely can all share is that we’ve suffered in at least some degree, and that we’ve managed to overcome such suffering in different ways. I do know I can handle a hell of a lot of personal, social, and professional hardship, which makes me awfully difficult to offend. Worth noting is that I’m also a human being. My feelings get hurt. I lash out. I respond angrily. I take myopic views on things produced entirely by ego and resentment. I’ve taken excessive measures to counterbalance these logical and emotional errors with critical evaluations of myself and my beliefs, and I’d like to believe such efforts have benefited me across every domain of life.

In reference to my first sentence in which I compare myself to an oozing puddle, maybe I should clarify: I do not fold in the sense that I passively comply with the demands or requests of others. It’s quite challenging to force me to do just about anything, as I’m not only stubborn, but I don’t scare easily. What I am is heavily affected (in ways I believe to be positive) by my soft spot for the humanity I see in all of us, even those whose behavior I find most appalling. It’s both cathartic and tempting to demonize people we’ve had digital altercations with, specifically if those exchanges were laden with character assassinations and willful misrepresentations. In my constant and consistent efforts to evaluate the ways my beliefs have shifted, along with the manners in which I could’ve handled myself more appropriately, I’m pleased to discover my softness persists. A perfect example of this feminine proclivity of mine was inviting a guest onto my podcast after he’d left a nasty review, stating that I was a right-wing transphobe. As soon as I saw his flowing beard and heard his rustic, raspy voice, I folded like a lawn chair. There’s a humanizing, beautiful element of face-to-face communication. Within it lies an appreciation for human error, and a passion that even permeates the digital barrier of Zoom or FaceTime. I believe I’ve found what it is: it’s the power of forgiveness.

I’ve been accused on several occasions of allowing podcast guests “to get off too easy”, as some are of the belief that “obliterating” or “destroying” a person’s every statement is an emblem of dominance and stature. I disagree. This may prove one person to be intellectually superior in some circles, but it also tends to cast such an arrogant shadow that people show even more unwillingness to discuss contentious topics. While such YouTube clips are admittedly entertaining, specifically when we’re stroking our innate egos by cheering on those criticizing groups we’ve “othered”, it’s rare that this form of dialogue will truly motivate a person to reevaluate their beliefs. Think of the last time you were thrown under the bus in a meeting or humiliated in front of your family or friends; did this incite a curiosity in you that made you want to change? If it did, that’s worth celebrating--- it’s difficult to extract a silver lining in situations so socially punishing. If you didn’t, you’re probably much like many of us: we dig our heels in in piss-poor attempts to save face, as being attacked by another person, let alone a howling group, signals evolutionary threat. And when animals feel threatened? They flee, they flare their drooling jowls to reveal razor-like teeth, or they sacrifice their own limbs to permit escape. Being ambushed is a nearly impossible task for all species.

When the cancel campaign has hit peak stupidity and its constituents have grown bored following the deterioration of another person’s livelihood, some eventually come around to recognize the residual wake of their fury. They may take to their group to signify their departure. They may reach out to others with differing opinions in an attempt to “re-calibrate” themselves to reality, as is done with those exiting cults. They may even apologize to those they’ve brutalized.

In regards to apologies, we humans can’t help but do our insufferably humany thing: we botch our amends by trying too hard to justify our cruelty, or we fail to stop ourselves from adding disclaimers and blame to the beginning and end of our confession. For those who have been wronged, we’re again seduced to tender our childish, immature streak by snapping back with a sarcastic comment. This was evident when the truth about COVID vaccines began to break our truth-avoidant culture. Anti-vaxxers belligerently demanded that mask-wearers apologize for calling them Grandma-killers. Not only did they demand an apology, but they seemed to suggest that publicly groveling and fawning was the only means by which to call it even.

These rattling walks of shame or contrived perp walks are both mean and unnecessary. “We’ve been telling you all this time about COVID, and you still haven’t apologized! NOW YOU PRETEND?! FUCK YOU, LIBERALS!” I do tend to agree that sincere apologies, when done in private, are powerful. But demanding very public apologies to a frothing-at-the-mouth audience itching to pounce, I’m unsure this is anything more than a cruel trap which closely resembles the cancel campaigns these individuals claimed to despise. These public rituals, then, really only serve to quell another person’s anger and perhaps indulge their hunger for one upmanship. Quite similar to social tarring and feathering we see frequently online, this is unlikely to be effective in preserving humanity and allowing for minds to change. It’s performative, it’s manipulative, and it delegitimizes a very intentional bid for amends; as far as I’m concerned, with our culture being as polarized and divided as it is, I’ll take anybody I can get that has begun to see the light.

There’s also an aspect of these appeals I call “compelled martyrdom”. A martyr is someone who sacrifices something of great value for the sake of the principle. In modern day, it primarily points to those who cannot seem to help but remind people of their tragedies. They’re self-righteous because of their experiences but also bitter, which often results in seething guilt trips  and unreasonable demands for recognition. Sacrifice and vulnerability are appetizing, robust tools to control, and are experiences often used too easily when justifying cruel behavior. “Well I’m an XYZ person who is disadvantaged, which renders me exempt from any sort of cruelty.” “White people are in power so can’t possibly be racist.” “Autistic people have always been silenced so it’s impossible for anything they say to be considered mean or even inappropriate.” The overcorrections we’ve seen are merely misguided attempts at overcompensation, with the reductionist belief that correcting current wrongs will absolve behaviors of the past. This is not how life works. Current racism towards Whites does not change that horrific history of slavery. People who live in poverty are not given money simply because we recognize that they live in poverty. Autistic people are not all silenced, and even if they were, screeching and howling does nothing to address their past of being discriminated against. If rewriting history were so easy, it may be easier to forgive one another, which is perhaps why forgiveness is so difficult.

Forgiveness is far more complicated that accepting what happened or allowing our feelings to dissipate. While both of these are crucial for forgiveness to occur, they’re only the beginning of the transformative process of emotional amnesty. In order to detach from the resentment such anger holds over us, we need to undergo a mental transformation as it relates to our appraisal of the event, our perceptions of our overall attitudes and beliefs, and our willingness to express compassion toward the person we’ve been wronged by. This also applies to people who believe they’ve been wronged, despite an absence of evidence to support this conception. To deliberately and willfully place our hurt feelings aside, and see the good in others, is unbelievably painful. It can feel like we’re betraying ourselves and our sense of fairness. “They need to be held accountable for what they’ve done! What if my forgiving them only results in them continuing to behave this way toward others? How can I trust a person who has treated me so poorly?” These are legitimate concerns that tend to manifest as grudge-holding, rehashing of past events, and getting ‘stuck’ on the event that occurred. As I’ve written about previously, these behaviors all fall under what we refer to clinically as “rumination”, which is one of the hallmark symptoms of depression and anxiety. Rumination is continued, repetitive dwelling on negative feelings and distress, along with their causes and consequences. With this in mind--- is biding our time and waiting for a public apology the best course forward? What would we hope to gain by putting another person through something very similar that happened to us, something that we believe to be irrevocably wrong?

As a general rule of thumb, when crossing ideological lines and engaging in conversation, it’s imperative we mention mistakes on both sides—starting with our own. We hear quite frequently individuals who refuse to address mistakes of Conservatives if they themselves are Conservative, or of Liberals/the President if they themselves are Liberals. Because I’ve never publicly expressed where I stand politically, as I don’t believe it’s useful or even relevant to much of what I discuss, I will use another example from a recent conversation I had. I’ve been vocal, opinionated, and very blunt in my criticism of the Neurodiversity Movement. In understanding that the movement was borne of very poor treatment of individuals, which is unfortunately still evident in current practices, I acknowledge that there are many power-tripping staff who continue to use unnecessary force (both physically and verbally) with the clients they serve. Both ideas can exist simultaneously: that I believe the Neurodiversity Movement is sickening in its dismissal of people severely impaired, andthat I fully oppose the use of unnecessary force, cruel behavioral modification tactics, and verbally or physically abusive practices with human beings.

While I somewhat hate to use a very public figure, I believe it offers great insight into how forgiveness may be the ultimate antidote to “cancel culture” and increased hostility between groups. J.K. Rowling has been brutalized, for years, because of allegedly “transphobic” comments made on social media. In consistent attacks, J.K. Rowling has stood her ground, offering similar statements as the examples I gave above: that she completely supports the rights and dignity of trans individuals, and also believes that trans women are different from biological women. That she, too, cares about the welfare and dignity of children, and also strongly opposes today’s “gender-affirming care”. Recently, she was yet again the target of an X-Storm when she publicly stated that India Willoughby, a trans-woman, is in fact a biological man. One podcast host eagerly joined the pile-on, only to later apologize to J.K. Rowling via tweet, claiming he was struggling mentally and had hit some form of a breaking point, which resulted in his lashing out against her. J.K. Rowling’s response? “I accept your apology, and I’d ask any supporters of mine giving Caolan grief to please stop now. I didn’t ask for this apology, it was made spontaneously, and a good faith gesture deserves equal good faith from the other side.”

Imagine how drastically different today’s heated discourse could be if we adopted similar patience and stoicism as J.K. Rowling, or the goodhearted humility of Caolan. Many will criticize this as it relates to other, more recent statements she’s made, specifically one in which she pokes fun at inclusive language in a Mother’s Day Post: “Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilized resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses.” When we dismiss sincere statements and apologies because of the person saying them, we’re adopting similar cruelty. We’re adopting a pigheadedness that doesn’t allow for self-growth or even new relationships to grow, but instead fosters an infected, relentless resentment very hard to shake loose. It’s the type of resentment that keeps a person miserable, that keeps a person up at night, that convinces a person their anger is, in and of itself, a meaningful purpose. These people may truly believe this, as righteousness and correcting of past injustices seems to be the only way to forge a better path forward. But it’s also engaging in the exact same behavior we’ve so heavily criticized others for.

We humans are programmed to detect danger. When we craft our reality as hyper-similar to our beliefs, as many of us inadvertently do via technology, we become less equipped to handle inevitable tension and friction. Too much conflict is obviously not beneficial for the psyche, while too much severity in punishment tends to have reverse effects on future behavior. But we also thrive emotionally and intellectually when we’re challenged and taken to task with our beliefs. It’s the only way to stay sharp in our understanding of ourselves and the world at large. We cannot accurately assess where we may have made mistakes if we exclusively seek out cheerleaders and supporters. We can criticize ideas while still supporting people. We can vehemently disagree with a statement while respecting the individual saying it. And we can forgive a person who we find personally repugnant and even undeserving of our forgiveness.

Two ideas can exist. I believe all of us know this. To reiterate this has proven to be ineffective. It’s less about the fact that we can hold both ideas, but more about our willingness to bear the weight.

What are you willing to do?

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI initiatives, have swept corporations, universities, K-12 schools, and media. DEI strives to embody three linked values, all of which converge to support the “fair treatment and full participation of all people”, particularly groups who “have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination” on the basis of identity or disability. As the activists love to moan, “let’s unpack this”.

Diversity is the value which aims to represent everyone equally in the workforce. This is interesting coming from activists who actively aim to shout down, fire, berate, punish, and silence those with opinions that diverge from their own perception. With diversity being a supposed value in organizations, we have to ask ourselves: if we’re only willing to value a highly specific form of diversity, while dismissing and even condemning other forms, how are we aligning our behavior with what we claim to treasure? This is further exemplified by “neurodivergent affirming clinicians”, who spout off quite frequently about neurodivergence being something worth celebrating. We are all different and unique, and our uniqueness is an entity, in and of itself, worthy of our awareness and acceptance! With this said, though, how is it possible for neurodiversity-affirming clinicians to also call for the firing and denouncing of people who are simply sharing divergent views? Commonly stated by disability activists to researchers, when they disagree with a claim, is, “You should have had neurodivergent authors or autistic authors represent a more balanced view. Or they should have written the entire paper.” So the very people endlessly whining about differences in others, and being fair to others, are also assuming others’ pathologies? And requesting to be considered superior to others with differing ailments? To be accepting of diversity means we tolerate all forms of it, whether that be gender, race, political affiliation, disability… and viewpoint.

Equity, which refers to fair treatment of all people, is a value demonstrating similar hypocrisy: if norms, policies, and procedures are in place to ensure identity is not predictive of outcome, why do disability activists insist that their outcomes be most favorable based on an identity characteristic? One of the most common and perhaps contentious topics brought to light in recent years has been that of “awareness versus acceptance”, with our culture demanding acceptance be the default. Quite frankly, this is narcissistic beyond belief, which, by default, negates any action toward equity. To fixate on our own personal shortcomings, and demand that others accept our existence, is a textbook example of self-aggrandizement--- an antonym that flies directly in the face of seeing society functioning as an egalitarian structure. After all, how can one truly be in support of equal opportunity if they’re hellbent on ensuring their own personal comfort be prioritized? Should you be at a loss for an example of such, you can peruse social media for countless ones: one activist claims that workplaces should ONLY hire autistic individuals to work with those with autism. Others state that research conducted on disabilities should ONLY be written by individuals with that specific disability. If any of these clinicians were to get cancer, would they refuse treatment unless the oncologist themselves had cancer? I assume not.

Lastly, inclusion refers to how the workplace embraces all employees regardless of characteristics like gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, or disability. Ahhh, this is perhaps most hysterical: disability activists actively, and quite selectively, choose who is included in their structure and who is exiled--- based almost entirely on immutable characteristics and superficial features. One cannot truly believe they’re being inclusive if they’re simultaneously calling for their faceless, digital “friends” to eliminate an entire group of people based on the fact that they’re White, they’re Trump supporters, or they find the neurodiversity movement repugnant. In a cute blog post, which outlines ways in which to support inclusion in the classroom and/or workplace, the author claims the first step is that of allowing students to share individual perspectives. That’s interesting, considering behavior analysts have become so depraved and self-obsessed in their pursuit of “compassion” that their primary tactic for dealing with any perspective they dislike is to demand it be silenced or removed or erased. Another common-sense way to embrace inclusion? Respect people with diverse viewpoints and learning histories! How can we do this? Well, it may be useful to refrain from calling everyone a Nazi.  

“Everyone I Dislike Is Hitler” Culture

If anyone was a master at the craft of manipulating public opinion, it was Hitler. Hitler is perhaps the most detestable, sickening, disgusting, and despicable human beings to walk the Earth. I think most of us would (hopefully) agree to this conclusion. To compare someone to Hitler, then, is intended to equate their character as being equally monstrous and as inciting irreparable harm.  But when everyone is called Hitler… how do we discriminate between the truly abusive and harmful and those that are simply tactless? Quite similar to the activist argument, that everyone be permitted to consider themselves special, mentally ill, or disabled, when EVERYONE is special, nobody can be special. If everyone is autistic, nobody is autistic. And if everyone is Hitler--- nobody can possibly be considered more or less abusive.

Hitler knew that information was a powerful force to drive public consensus, specifically when aimed at those with limited exposure to differing opinions and/or in positions of particular vulnerability. Similar to the Bamboozle Effect, Hitler was aware of the human tendency to accept ideology as fact, so long as it was repeated again and again. When catchphrases and slogans are repeated enough, and recycled through higher-end institutions, like public media and universities, it’s unsurprising that so many would uphold it as unfettered truth.  As it relates to therapeutic fields, there are few things more Hitlerian than screeching the same catchphrases over and over, igniting prejudice against individuals and groups based on an overgeneralization, and attempting to control the types of information others consume. The same examples from the DEI portion can essentially be used throughout this entire piece, including “everyone I hate is Hitler” culture; activists simply copy and paste similar phrases across all societal issues because they’re too dense to develop their own thoughts on important matters.

Hitler also wanted to control every aspect of existence, with modern examples including what media sources the public tunes in to, what information is read and digested, what is written in blogs or on Substack, what people like, share, and post on social media, and what political phrases to abide by. Sound familiar? If it does, it’s because it is! The Nazi doctrine, the very doctrine disability activists claim to oppose, is the same doctrine by which they unite. Because they’re more concerned with immutable characteristic and shared hatred of stereotyped groups (not an ism at all, huh?), they likely know minimal about one another on a personal level. Without an understanding of how the world works, or at least an unwillingness to accept reality, their only shred of common ground is that of their own, childlike misery. And nothing angers people like Hitler or activists more than realizing they’ve lost control over what others believe, and that their little philosophy continuously fails to ameliorate their insecurities.

A final Nazi tactic was to publicly denigrate, humiliate, and condemn people for sharing certain opinions. This was done through name-calling, euphemistic language, and social contagion or pressure. Disability activists have become quite fluent in using scare tactics and idiotic language, with the most common attacks being, “If you do not stand with neurodivergent people, you are admitting to child abuse” or “the fact that you won’t support us means you support harm”. But everyone else is the Nazi? Okay then.

Luxury Beliefs and Privilege

If you are a therapist or behavior analyst, a Master’s degree was required to obtain your credential. With this said, you are undoubtedly amongst the upper middle class. With such privilege and minimal understanding of true oppression, abuse, adversity, racism, sexism, or the like, I find it hysterically disgusting that individuals are narcissistic enough to believe their luxury beliefs represent the underrepresented. Luxury beliefs, coined by Rob Henderson, refers to those beliefs which confer status on the upper classes but inflict cost or harm on the underprivileged. An example of this is “defund the police”: people who live in gated communities with next to zero crime, who are wealthy enough to hire extra security, and/or whose kids attend the most expensive, prestigious, and safe schools, can easily gain social status by reposting “defund the police”. But what would this do for truly underprivileged people, like those who live in the Southside of Chicago? Would people who regularly lose family members to drive-by shootings agree that a social worker could protect them more than a police officer can?

Disability activists publicly exercise their privilege on a sickening and continual basis. Their obsession with “connection” or “compassion” over compliance, for example, is one of their tricks of the trade. To demand that any child or young adult with a disability be allowed to do anything they so choose, as they’re simply remaining true to their authentic self or attempting to normalize abnormal behavior, is self-indulgent as it is dangerous. For the high-functioning person with autism, who has a clinical degree, works full-time, has children and a family, and speaks at conferences--- are you really trying to speak for those who have an IQ of 50, are nonverbal, cannot feed themselves or bathe themselves, let alone screech about how they’re “stigmatized” online? To believe that stigma is the greatest threat to people who cannot take care of themselves is emblematic of an individual so privileged, and so self-obsessed, that their licensing board should probably reconsider renewing their license.

Free Speech

The Behavior Analysis Certification Board (BACB) came out with a statement recently about free speech, which states, in short, “please stop fucking reporting people just because your feelings are hurt, everyone is allowed to say anything they choose because we live in a free country. If you disagree with free speech, consider moving to North Korea.” Okay, I’m kidding, it didn’t quite say that. Unsurprisingly, the free speech statement triggered disability activist after activist, with many taking to their social media platforms and making comments such as, “Don’t be discouraged, continue to fight against White supremacy and right-wing rhetoric in behavior analysis!” Coincidentally, when they name-call, slander, and publicly humiliate others? Their response is, “It’s my free speech.” Oh, activists, how utterly insecure such thought-provoking dogma is: ‘when other people say things I dislike, it’s oppressive, racist, sexist, ableist, and harmful. When I do the exact same thing to others, it’s free speech’. How can an individual who holds such contradictory, nonsensical, and self-serving beliefs possibly support individuals with diverse needs? How can a person who despises free speech work with individuals whose families would do anything in their power to hear their children verbally communicate?

Capitalist, Oppressive, and Supremacist Society

According to disability activists, cancelling people and attempting to rid them of their title is indicative of our field moving towards “necessary” social justice. My question, then, is this: if you’re robbing families of services, that could tremendously impact their quality of life, how are you upholding equitable outcomes? How are you supporting underprivileged or vulnerable populations? How are you demonstrating that you care about people who need greater support than you? In despicable and expected fashion, activists only aim to propagate their own viewpoints and assist their own chattering classes in moving up a rung on a social ladder. To deliberately withhold clinically necessary services, in the name of one’s own hurt feelings being superior to all else, including science and logic--- is that not the literal definition of supremacy? And for an individual in a clinical field, which rests on science, common sense, and compassion for others… how can we trust these clinicians will make room for the perspectives, rights, or needs of anyone but themselves?

Many behavior analysts have also adopted the idea that capitalism and meritocracy are “bad”, all while demanding they be compensated for their “emotional labor”. Everyone seems to love the idea of equity of outcome, until they run out of another person’s money and resources; then, all of a sudden, they are pro-capitalism. “I don’t have time to educate you”, or “These people have not even considered the cost of my emotional labor.” This is even funnier when you look at individuals claiming to be slaves of capitalism but also working in environments that pay them based on their performance, years of experience, and credential--- and yet they still demand a raise. So, disability activist and analyst, it is time to make up your mind: Do you want everyone to make the same amount of money? Or do you only want to make what Jeff Bezos makes? And if that’s the case--- how does that serve your community at large? What about equity?

“Platforming” Harm

Another assertion for a lack of common sense often includes some statement like “I don’t platform people like you”. First of all, this is discrimination. “People like you”? I imagine if someone said the same to them, they’d spiral into convulsive tantrumming about how racist or ableist or discriminatory they are. Secondly, by endlessly complaining about people publicly — this is, in essence, platforming them. Celebrating them, even. And how embarrassing for behavior analysts, many of whom claim to be “experts” in behavior: the more attention you give to attention-seeking behavior, the more likely that behavior is to occur. Perhaps this is another terrifying reason why these individuals shouldn’t be trusted to work with clients. Additionally, for people so concerned with “harm”: aren’t you spreading harm by incessantly talking about it, sharing it constantly, centering every conversation around it, and fixating on it? How harmful can it be if it’s at the forefront of your mind, your every waking moment? In some circles, this would be considered stalking or even harassment. I imagine the activists would just consider it another form of self-expression.

What Now?

First of all, block nonsense. It’s imperative we stop giving attention to lunacy by continuing to share it amongst one another and gossip about it. A narcissist’s kryptonite is feeling irrelevant, and feeling as if they’ve failed to be noticed by those whose attention they thrive off of. To try to reason with people who conduct themselves as if they’re in a preschool gym class is a waste of time and resources, which could otherwise be used toward, I don’t know, actually helping people who are desperate for our time and resources.

On a broader level, companies may benefit from refusing to allow hyper-progressive, social justice activists to become administrators, directors, or supervisors. An individual that fixated on finding something wrong with everyone but themselves will cause irreparable harm to individuals we promised to inflict no harm upon. While some activists are more subtle than others, it may be worth it to ask prospective employees simple questions about collaborating with other people: If someone held a different perspective than you on an intervention, how would you handle it? What course of action might you take if you felt offended by something someone said in a meeting? How might you supervise a graduate student whose views you strongly disagree with? What is something you’ve learned from a person you disagree with? Should the individual respond with parroted talking points similar to those listed above--- that is, “people who use XYZ intervention are causing harm to XYZ folx”, “blah blah blah hate speech”, “I don’t platform supervision students who are Trump supporters or right-wing”, “I learn from people who are allies to my cause”--- do not hire them.

To wrap up, I found one of George Orwell’s many gems to perfectly encapsulate the muddy water our field has found itself in: “in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

And nobody is more deceitful than an activist with a personality problem.

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Today’s episode reviews the following:

* Have services for mental illnesses ever been “good”? What does the ideal service model even look like?

* If we have access to endless therapies and psychotropics in individualized, wealthy countries like America… why are we the most miserable, clinically?

* What might your version of “good” mental health services look like, and why can’t we seem to get there?

Then we shifted into a topic I’ve been asked to discuss multiple times: being more comfortable being blunt in the workplace. I lay out 8 steps that I believe put a person in a good place to begin practicing.

Enjoy, and as always— would love to hear your thoughts.

For individuals with disabilities, specifically those with severe deficits in language, I’ve thought frequently about their experience of anxiety. To illustrate my skepticism, we look to the case of a 55-year-old nonverbal male we’ll refer to as Frank. Frank, who has lived in residential settings away from his family since age 5 because of highly destructive and dangerous behavior, meets the criteria for a severe to profound intellectual disability. Without vocal or verbal speech and challenges across decades in teaching even basic sign language, his most effective means of communicating tends to wax and wane. When calm, he relies on gesturing, smiling, and clapping. When provoked, he pulls hair, rips doors off of hinges, throws rocks at staff, and flips them over by tackling them below the knees. But yes, disability activists, please go on about how Frank’s mode of communication is a superpower that affords him an enlightened understanding of this place we call Earth.

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One of Frank’s reports was one that more than 10 times referred to his behavior being symptomatic of “anxiety”; “Giving Frank a schedule to plan his day will help him be more proactive in managing his anxiety”, “Whenever possible, let Frank know when the schedule is about the change, as he gets fixated on dates which further increases his anxiety”, “Frank experiences a lot of anxiety around plans and calendars”. I want to make one thing crystal clear: I am not making the argument, in any stretch of the imagination, that people with disabilities do not experience anxiety. Humans, regardless of condition, disability, or disorder, are hardwired to experience symptoms of anxiousness. We evolved from the well-known fight-or-flight response, which protected us in situations when we were cavemen being chased down by a tiger or even approaching an unfamiliar berry on a tree that we were unsure was poisonous. Skepticism and even impending dread has served us for more centuries than are documented in history textbooks. With this said, we have to consider modern society’s understanding of anxiety, as well as our threshold for tolerating potentially anxiety-provoking situations.

Our use of such labels has bastardized the true experiences of psychiatric problems, as well as resulted in clinical recommendations no better than socially-influenced guesswork or contagion. In the case of Frank, who does not have a concept of time, does not recognize what day or month it is, requires maximal physical assistance to feed himself, clean himself, use the bathroom, get dressed and undressed, and conduct basic hygiene routines, I’m not entirely sold on the notion that clinical symptoms of anxiety have plagued his existence. His behavior is more than likely habitual and conditioned, at this point; for nearly 6 decades, Frank has found a means of getting his way through destruction and physical attacks. If you had minimal other means of communication and linebacker-tackling people got you what you wanted, you would likely sustain a similar routine as Frank’s. With this, then, is his hair-pulling a coping mechanism for the persistent worry of being alive? Or is it because the basketball court was closed and he was denied immediate, gratifying access to a basketball? In ripping a door off its hinges, was this to channel chronic tension, or because the staff member withholding reinforcement hid behind the door for her own safety and he couldn’t reach her? Sure, it is plausible that both can occur: he could be angry about basketball and anxious as to the reasons for the rejection. But for my developmentally-minded people, perhaps child therapists and teachers: feelings of more vague, complex emotions like “rejection” do not form, in typically developing children, until at least school-age. For the adult with the functioning level of an infant… how much more likely is an angered tantrum than guilt, shame, or the sadness of rejection? 

I’m certain I’ll receive messages essentially saying, “tomato, tomato… who cares?” The clinical outcomes of guesswork are the reasons why I consider this a crucial issue to address. Nervousness is not necessarily anxiety, as mentioned. It’s an inborn mechanism impossible to rid ourselves of. Feeling “anxious” also doesn’t guarantee a clinical anxiety diagnosis. Today’s “anxiety” is a symptom of a disease of civilization, one in which we’re so dependent on limitless access and luxury that we instead tie ourselves into knots over things less-privileged countries--- or severely impaired individuals--- might find laughable. For the individual with disabilities, the one who knows their own name but requires maximal assistance with most everything else like feeding, toileting, showering, and dressing--- is it possible to experience the ruminative, almost trivial anxiety, that many of today’s millennials and Gen-Z claim to experience? I’m interested in different perspectives on this, as the research available is quite limited and tends to cluster around more popular diagnoses like autism or ADHD.

Anxiety is characterized by dwelling and ruminating over the past, as well as discontentment and brewing uncertainty about upcoming events. It is a looming feeling of fear and unpredictability that often results in maladaptive avoidance behavior, such as excessive use of Klonopin or Xanax, avoiding stimuli that trigger panic, and evading circumstances that we believe may increase anxiety symptoms. Considering dwelling on the past and attempts to predict how we’ll feel rely almost exclusively on language, and the ability to recount experience, we have to ask ourselves: are we assigning a pathology to this individual because of observed or reported symptoms, or because it’s popular and easy? Severely disabled or even severely mentally ill individuals are usually made to manage problems more relevant to their current level of functioning. That is, they’re unconcerned with being “stigmatized” if they’re unable to even feed themselves and keep themselves alive. For Frank, who is unsure about what day it is or what time it is or how much money it costs for a Mint Chip Frappuccino from Starbucks, I do not believe that he is “anxious” about his “schedule”. I think he’s bored out of his mind but also highly deficient in effective communication, resulting from his dangerous behavior being rewarded more often than not for many, many decades.

It’s imperative we address the various issues in assuming pathologies. Firstly, the assumption leads to faulty treatment planning and potential writing of interventions that fail to address the true problem. A highly contentious example is that of “trauma-informed practice”: it assumes everyone is traumatized, and therefore proceeds to treat people under the assumption that they’re internally damaged and require a unique approach. These individuals would have otherwise fared just fine had they been treated based on observable and socially significant problems, versus the TikTok-diagnosis offered by a 25-year-old therapist who recently learned about trauma-responsive practice from an autistic advocate. The resulting therapy now looks quite similar to how a mother would coddle a newborn baby, in that most every instance of crying immediately contacts Mommy and a nap. I’ve seen such depraved interventions proposed primarily by activists and clout-chasing behavior analysts, such as those claiming eye contact to be painfully uncomfortable to the degree of causing post-traumatic symptoms, or an individual being allowed to streak naked through Walmart, as it’s his own form of “authenticity”. God forbid anyone feel uncomfortable!  

Let’s indulge the theory that our clientele are a conglomerate of traumatized, anxious people. If we assumed such behaviors were all symptoms of anxiety, the intervention would look exactly nothing like what our field suggests. The gold standard in treating anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is exposure. Exposure, as in continually facing the stimuli that trigger symptoms of anxiety. It is addressing the problem at its root, a clinical baptism by fire. It is unbelievably difficult, as I’ve independently weaned myself off of Klonopin following a 10-year physical and psychological dependence and managed to completely eliminate panic attacks that used to occur 4-5 times per day for consecutive months at a time. For a decade I relied on the powerful pull of avoidance, as the effects of facing my panic attack symptoms were excruciating. Klonopin melted them entirely, and the warm tingle that washed over following an episode was truly incomparable to any non-medical intervention I’d already attempted. This only expanded and heightened my fear, making every waking moment that of anticipating when another panic attack would arise and if I’d be capable of tolerating it. Believe me when I say: I understand the treatment is grueling, it is long, and it is soul-crushing.

With that, though, I’m no longer stricken by fear in my car or in public places where panic attacks would typically strike. My attention isn’t arrested by a slight physiological change that my mind has registered as a threat. And my quality of life has substantially improved as a result of the work I put in toward improving upon my clinical symptoms and diagnoses. To assume disabled individuals cannot handle similar challenges is stigmatization in and of itself; it is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Try telling that to the next activist who claims to be marginalized by an ableist society.

I would, but they’ve all systematically avoided me.

Perhaps it’s their anxiety, or simply not getting their way.

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A self-diagnosed autistic adult with Reddit-inspired social anxiety, for example, may consider their chronic need for reassurance as critical to their being. With this in mind and in spirit, there become minimal incentive to improve upon what most would consider a negative attribute. To essentialize something means to treat it as crucial, as if the functioning of a whole cannot continue if not for a single, basic portion. On a biological level, the human body cannot function without a working heart. On an emotional level, a new mother may come to find being “Mom” is the portion of her character she cherishes and resonates with most. And for today’s self-diagnosed online influencer, their carefully curated online identity will simply combust should their audience fail to accommodate it. Even if it rapidly changes, even if it contradicts its alter ego.  

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As The Coddling of the American Mind puts it, today’s younger generations appear to be operating off of the following premises:

1.     What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; that is, adversity does not build resilience but garners emotional fragility

2.     Always trust your feelings; that is, the emotions you experience, regardless of how disproportionate or inappropriate, are tantamount to logical fact

3.     Life is a battle between good and evil people; that is, anything you dislike is “right wing rhetoric”, liberals are apparently the saints fighting the good fight against isms, and we all must choose between being for or against someone or something

In therapy aimed at children, we’ve seen similar, self-serving ideology. The child who throws a vicious tantrum because he’s given a PB & J with the crust on couldn’t possibly just be an annoying kindergartener with questionable rationalization skills. No, no! He’s a morally injured kid acting out of his repressed trauma. Essentializing inappropriate, maladaptive, and even dangerous behavior, as if it’s the most pivotal aspect of the child’s existence, is crooked. While I’m certainly not making the argument that children cannot be traumatized, as children across the globe face immense difficulty grown adults could not fathom, the manner in which they “process” difficulty is quite different from the mainstream narrative. The mainstream narrative claims that any instance of negative behavior, resulting from the experiencing of a negative emotion, is too much for children to tolerate. Normal and expected reactions to earth-shattering realities, like ice cream eventually running out and Six Flags eventually closing for the night, are now recast as “trauma responses” instead of “a kid being an annoying kid”. For those not well-versed in the basics of human behavior science, it is essentially common sense. I’ll explain anyway.

When we reward shitty behavior, shitty behavior continues. This is common sense, as I mentioned. A kid who receives a snappy high five every time they raise their hand in class is likely to continue raising their hand. Conversely, when we avoid something continuously, we become even more fearful of that “something”. It’s the reason why individuals with phobias of needles seem to pass out at any slightest sight of a needle---they’ve conditioned it as highly aversive, and something they cannot tolerate. Again, none of this should come as particularly surprising. For children still budding in their ability to rationalize emotions like fear, adults are crucial in terms of teaching appropriate responding. The power of the neutral, calm, and collected adult is evident in situations where a kid falls and quickly glances to their parents before screaming bloody murder. Should the parent (most typically the mother) lurch into tiger mother mode in a neurotic ensemble, squawking on about, “OH MY GOD, YOU COULD HAVE BROKEN YOUR NECK!”, the child will probably proceed to wail. For the git-r-done parents like mine, who respond with a monotone “you’ll be fine”, the child quickly learns not to ascribe such hysterics to a bump or a scrape.

The case of Joyce Brown is one which perfectly illustrates the dangers in prioritizing appearance and negative traits over personal ethics. Joyce Brown was a schizophrenic woman in the 80’s who was essentially celebrated for her “individual, unique expression”; this wasn’t creative expression so much as it was a cluster of psychiatric symptoms. Jonathan Rosen, journalist and author of The Best Minds, describes the situation as follows: “…though she slept on a sidewalk grate, ran into traffic, covered herself with her own excrement, screamed racial epithets at Black men (though she was Black herself), and tore up dollar bills, set them on fire, and urinated on them, a judge ordered her released, agreeing with her lawyers at the New York branch of the ACLU that her behavior was the result of homelessness, rather than its cause, and writing in his opinion that although burning money “may not satisfy a society increasingly oriented to profit-making and bottom-line pragmatism,” Joyce’s behavior was nevertheless “consistent with the independence and pride she vehemently insists on asserting.” Consistent with independence? The woman was homeless because the clinical, psychiatric symptoms of her schizophrenia became so horrendous that she was unable to manage day to day life. And attempts to see mentally ill or disabled people as romantic emblems of hope is, at best, a cruel delusion.  

Joyce Brown’s siblings, as one may guess, did not find her behavior to be particularly bursting with “pride”, as they cared for her for many years and struggled to financially support her and her various treatments. This is eerily similar to the activist doctrine: since we don’t have to deal with it, it doesn’t matter to us. As long as we post on social media that we believe children should be allowed to run the roost, the rest is up to the Nazis and the racists and the ableists to parse out. Activists don’t have to deal with the downstream effects of allowing children to do whatever the hell they want… you know, when they become aggressive adults who cannot be managed and have to be physically or chemically restrained while they’re in group homes or psych wards. Where is the outrage for those populations? Or should we vocally cheer them on while wiping their adult diapers, as they’re just hygienically divergent?

Piaget’s stages of development in children largely encapsulate the childlike behavior in many of today’s therapists. As a quick prelude, logical reasoning refers to the ability to understand and incorporate the basic rules of logical inference in everyday activities. On a basic, clinical level, many behavior analysts working with children have likely targeted “inferencing” as a skill in session by use of a few generic questions: What is he feeling? What might she be thinking? What happens next? Our own life experience, and repeated exposure to others’ experiences, helps us better understand what other people may be thinking and feeling in any given situation. Diverse consumption of viewpoints, cultures, and perspectives helps to soften our inborn, rigid rules, the kind that force us to believe adults can read our minds and adults function as personal servants so long as we cry and pound our fists. In the preoperational stage of development, according to Piaget, children use words and images to represent objects but still fail to reason logically. Perhaps of most importance to this piece is the fact that children during this stage, between 2-6 years old, are egocentric; that is, they operate under the assumption that other people exist specifically for them. They also cannot fathom that others, regardless of gender, age, or color, think differently than they do. For children, this stage of development is moderately annoying. For adults… it’s potentially catastrophic, specifically regarding therapeutic outcomes.

An example of a child in the preoperational stage is talking to an imaginary friend. The equivalent Gen-Z or millennial counterpart would be that of talking to minions online despite never speaking with them in real life. Children during this stage also symbolize objects not in the room using readily available objects; a dowel rod could serve as a pretend sword, or a broom as an imaginary horse. For the brainwashed therapist hellbent on burning down the patriarchy and insisting only deeply traumatized children cry, a symbol like a black square, the blue and yellow of the Ukraine flag, an Instagram story about “letting kids lead”, or a copy-and-pasted set of pronouns could represent a more abstract concept like nobility, bravery, or social justice. For my audience, who I consider largely reasonable and intelligent, we know this is quackery. Much like symbols only represent surface-level understandings of concepts in children, today’s behavior analysts are more concerned with appearing good than actually being good.

When we fixate on appearance alone, we succumb to our teenage-minded insecurities: what others think of us versus what we think of us. In much of Jonathan Haidt’s work, which focuses heavily on teenage girls, one correlation is quite clear: the advent of social media has resulted in teen girls’ mental health plummeting. I’d be interested, though, how older generations are affected by such mainstream use and consumption of social media. For likely the first time, practitioners of all industries are taking to platforms like Twitter or Instagram to share their expertise. Because it’s so readily accessible and costs nothing, it can be a wonderful means by which to obtain information. As was shared recently in an article about autism information on TikTok, though, more than half of the information shared on such platforms was fabricated, an overgeneralization, or completely inaccurate. So we have a population who can only comprehend themselves and their surroundings by use of symbols, and a platform riddled with cryptic, politically influenced symbols. What could go wrong?

Today’s kids are grandfathered into an aggressive mediocrity. They’re informed that their most maladjusted tendencies are just slight deviances from the norm of experience, and that most every conversation should be centered around this deviance. Should these children continue to be accommodated in the same manner as Joyce Brown, it’s plausible they may end up in similar situations: unable to manage their day-to-day lives, as they’ve been coddled; incapable of sustaining any form of employment, as they’re wickedly entitled; and remarkably lonely, as few want to befriend a person who believes their life is above that of everyone else’s. It’s interesting, too, that training children to essentially fear their surroundings and scorn everything they dislike is a theory propagated by clinicians screeching at their colleagues to be “compassionate”. What exactly is compassionate about conditioning youngsters into victimhood? What is particularly altruistic about informing children they’re incapable of success unless they’re heavily supported, assisted, and babied?

While it’s unlikely participation trophies alone contribute to a victimhood mindset, there are traces of real life in elementary athletics: we live in a world largely based on merit. Imagine the individual who has been told, until age 18, that others recognizing their autism as a superpower is the only avenue by which to attain happiness in life. Should people regularly side-eye the hand-flapping autistic adult, as it’s human nature to glance at behavior we’d consider odd, the individual may be inclined to believe they should feel sad--- after all, if people are not throwing a block party for “autism awareness”, they are akin to eugenicists. Remember the shallow representations of symbols and objects discussed earlier, and The Coddling’s third premise (i.e., “life is a battle between good people and evil people”)? People instructed to hyperfocus on their feelings and external validation will spend much of their time categorizing people into those who affirm their identity… and those who hate them. How will this person develop meaningful relationships if they feel chronically deprived of validation? How will this person work in any sort of setting for employers, employees, and customers that don’t consider autism worthy of celebration? And in what way will this person be an empowering voice to families and others with similar disabilities, who clutch to any trace of hope that their life will become of something other than challenging behavior and therapy sessions?

I wrote a piece very similar to this one over a year ago, titled “Prepare Your Children For the Road, Not the Road For Your Children”, and I outlined nearly identical issues. My thoughts surrounding this issue remain largely unchanged: we cannot teach children that others exist for them. We cannot encourage narcissism and repackage it as “self-love”. And we cannot appreciate their most maladaptive traits as if they’re adorable personality quirks. People will not always accept us, and yes, it is sometimes shitty when they don’t. But we’re also human beings who cannot control what another person is willing to live with or tolerate. Our best bet is to accept ourselves, with our strengths and our deficits, and be open to letting go of the idealism of childhood.

Maybe we’re not all that special. And, as Dr. Seuss says, “adults are just obsolete children, and the hell with them.”

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The employee shout-out is the compelled elementary school birthday invitation. Decent parents swiftly form alliances with other couples in shared hatred for the Smith’s spoiled kid. Because they were likely raised to be normal, they at least still possess the decorum to invite the Smith kid anyway. They’ve resigned to their passive resentments about the Smith’s expensive purchases and kitchen remodels in order to make their asshole kid feel included in the school birthday party. It’s forced merriment, really--- little more than contrived politeness that is self-serving more than it is altruistic. This is what comes to mind when colleagues describe the “shout-out” to me: while it initially comes across as thoughtful recognition of employees’ work, it is arbitrary and generic. One of the most common “rules” of the shout-out, for example, is not being allowed to “call out” the same person more than once. With an increasingly dwindling list of people to choose from, then, you’re only crafting insincere and generic compliments out of scarcity more than you’re appreciating a job well done. “We’re down to the K’s this week… hmmm… Kaitlyn already got, like, 9 shout-outs for showing up to work late only 3 and a half times last week. Maybe we can remind Kinsley or Kennedy that their hair smells good. Two snaps for self-care, girlfriend!”

I’m unsurprised by my budding interest in talking about the dysfunctional dynamics of the modern-day workplace. While psychology and psychology-adjacent topics comprise the bulk of my wheelhouse, there’s a sadistic appeal in identifying the stinking rot causing friction between a company’s staff. The counterfeit compliment that is the shout-out is a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s one in which people have lost the ability to show appreciation with words, and instead resort to AI-constructed emails or three-times-edited text messages to give thanks. In defense of such conversational cowardice, if I had hired self-obsessed 24-year-olds who screech about the word “no” being a full sentence, in a tone similar to the bellowing “SAY THEIR NAMES” or “FRESH POPCORN”, I’d probably be more trusting of the AI-generated email, too.

As detrimental as entitled behavior in the workplace is, I’m afraid I find the gutlessness of administration and higher-ups to take the cake for incompetence. We do find ourselves in a culture entirely run by a very loud, very microscopic percentage of people who sport their mental instability as if it’s a Gucci purse. As Jonathan Haidt and Peter Boghossian eloquently state, “the past decade of American life has been uniquely stupid.” With this said, there are parts of me that sympathize with the apprehension on the part of bosses. But fully surrendering to a 24-year-old’s unreasonable requirements for the upkeep of their ego? That is not compassion, that is selfish indulgence. In the same manner that therapists have taken to the “gentle parenting” approach, which begs a child to comply with their boundaries, CEOs have devolved into the permissive mothers of the work world. They’ve suspended their own judgment in pursuit of appeasing the whiners. They reinforce incessant, baseless complaining in lieu of effectively managing it. Yes, shoving the iPad in the sticky hands of a screeching toddler temporarily relieves an adult of their irritation. But it’s just not adorbs when that toddler becomes a 17-year-old who drops to the floor of a Walmart and renders every adult around them their bitch.

Industries and disciplines vary, I’m sure, in how they both hire and fire entitled twats. I can say with certainty that the trades and any laborious job which requires strenuous effort probably weeds out laziness by virtue of its job title. Bricklayers will not attract entitled women, much like construction, landscaping, plumbing, or industrial cleaning adequately stave off the apathetic or the work-from-homers. Because I must have been in a delusional stupor to have chosen psychology as a career path, I’ve found myself surrounded, for years, by emotionally unstable women somehow tasked with helping emotionally unstable kids. It’s similar to Hitler running a MasterClass on tolerating differences, or Michael Vick running the ASPCA.

One of the most warped workplace dynamics I’ve seen recently was the 20-something who told their direct supervisor, with barely a blink, “by the way, I’m having a hard week. I’m going to be operating at like 40%.” I wonder how she would’ve responded if her boss told her that that was fine, but to expect 40% of her paycheck. Most troubling about this exchange was her tone of voice and demeanor in making the claim, stated as if it were a legally binding statement agreed upon in writing by both parties. Call me “old school”, but this “bosses-as-friends-and-confidants” attitude is remarkably inappropriate and unprofessional. Higher-ups aren’t our friends, and they’re not meant to be people we rely on for income as well as emotional support. The CEO who has unknowingly wedged themselves into this role is likely one who has relaxed the boundaries to the point that employees see them as optional. The administrator who spent too much time trying to build rapport by forgoing any sort of line between manager and employee may find it difficult to suddenly enforce rules. Believe you me: the notion that we must like a person before we decide to listen to them is a farce.

Should a CEO decide to sprout a pair of cajones, though, I’ve decided that perhaps I am the best person you can turn to to learn the ropes of herding cats, aka, dealing with belligerent, emotionally unstable employees. While I’m certainly a poor reference as it relates to femininity, I can vouch for the unreasonable and nonsensical rhetoric espoused by mostly women who are triggered, or at least women who claim that the slightest inconvenience is worthy of their employer footing the bill for their Xanax prescription and a nap. I’ve outlined what to expect below.

1.     Expect A Tantrum When You Start Telling the Truth

Our culture is that of validating how one feels and thinks, even if their thinking is irrational, stupid, illogical, or delusional. We’ve lost trust in the ability for adults to endure their existence should they be dismissed or ignored, which has evolved into workplaces instituting “DEI Initiatives” so everyone feels “included”. If you are a CEO, I beg of you: it’s just you and me talking. This is not a pageant, and you’re not required to craft a counterfeit diversity statement telling me why POCs are especially damaged by Daylight Saving Time or why lesbian patients are more at risk for psychic harm than straight ones. Identifying what YOU believe, and what YOU value as a CEO, is perhaps the pre-requisite to toleration of tantrums.

Tolerating a tantrum means preparing yourself for listening to stupidity, and a lot of it. The schizophrenic with paranoid delusions isn’t mentally ill, he’s just creatively divergent and has a unique perspective on what reality is! The severely autistic nonverbal adolescent isn’t disabled, he’s just different in how he fancies his ability to communicate. In order to combat this brand of depravity, it’s imperative you identify with what they may be feeling/getting at. While I’m certainly one for a  tough love approach, I also find it crucial to be respectful and even compassionate in delivering your subsequent doses of reality. A person can be straightforward, stern, and blunt while also preserving the other’s dignity. There’s not a single purpose, in anything I’d ever suggest, in humiliating, shaming, or punishing people for how they feel. Even if what they feel is utterly insane.

When you become a truth-teller following a stint of being an enabler, the disproportionate responses of your staff may make you wonder if you’re attacking them. If done correctly and with love, this is largely possible to avoid, or at least diffuse. Stick strictly to the facts, remove the judgment from your statements, and attempt to instill seeds of doubt in their thinking. It’s imperative the conversation be steered consistently away from emotions, how one’s feelings have dictated their actions, and how a person has been emotionally impacted by a logical statement. Indulging this sort of ruminative behavior only furthers the problem you aim to reduce (i.e., entitlement). At the core of entitlement is wanting but not having--- do not give in.

Any effort toward pointing out reality as that being a sum of what is real in our universe may be followed closely with emotional outbursts to the person who has been conditioned not to tolerate it. It’s your job as the boss, then, to anticipate tears and defensive resistance. This is not a reflection of you; as stated in the next step, you can control only one person’s feelings. And that is your own.

2.     You Cannot Control Their Feelings, So Control Your Own

As stated earlier, a refusal to co-ruminate with employees is a requirement for successful leadership. Parents often explain their difficulty in tolerating their toddlers’ tantrums, as they claim the screaming, thrashing, and crying is something they can’t take. As someone who isn’t a parent but empathizes with them, I can understand why caving seems to be the path of least resistance. But, much like people pleasing, our attempts at peace are crafty covers for our own inability to regulate ourselves when under distress. Those who fear confrontation aren’t fearful of the confrontation itself, but of the uncertainty that comes with what another person says, and, in turn, an inability to control the responding on both sides. While we can show empathy for a person truly in a state of emotional distress, there’s an aspect of leadership I find absolutely necessary should management aim to restructure their work culture: stop apologizing for someone being triggered. Responding to bellyaching staff with, “I’m sorry, maybe I should have said that differently” or “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said anything, I’ll take care of XYZ” is indulging avoidant behavior and serving your own insecurity around confrontation. Emotional reactions are hard to deal with--- this is an unfortunate give-in of being a social creature. With this in mind, though, you can more closely focus on managing yourself in volatile situations versus trying to inaccurately predict how another person will “take it”.

When we demonstrate ownership of our own feelings, we encourage others to do the same. A leader who frenetically apologizes or aims to be everyone’s “friend”, so proceeds to appease employee preferences over their own, is a person that cannot be trusted to make important decisions. Clout cannot come before resolve, much like feelings cannot come before logical fact.

3.     Kick It Old School  

Get in the habit of face-to-face communication with your staff. Millennials claim, with gusto, “of course I’m going to text you instead of call you, I hate phone calls!” With texting, emailing, and G-chatting being omnipresent forces in the workplace, we’ve lost the ability to talk to one another, to gauge another person’s facial and gestural reactions, and allow for conversational lulls to occur. This is further pronounced when “directors” being hired are those in their mid-20’s who themselves cannot muster up the courage to approach people unless both parties are veiled behind a screen. With this said, approaching people in the office and initiating conversation of any and all sorts is a great place to start. Hell, instead of that copy-and-pasted shout out, why not pull someone aside to provide performance-specific praise? And no, it doesn’t matter if they don’t like compliments. We all need to hear every now and again that our work has not gone unnoticed.

When you’re tempted to text someone a question, try walking into their office and asking them using voice-to-voice dialogue. Should an employee email you a manifesto about their rickety emotional state, invite them into your office to share their thoughts without their phone or their computer. Rid yourself of anonymous surveys, as they reward adult tattle-taling and make everyone feel as if they’re under constant surveillance. An employee that claims to fear confrontation? “I recognize it’s uncomfortable. It’s hard for me, too. But that’s how we learn to deal with it.” There cannot, and should not, be options for people who prefer digital communication because their supposed anxiety won’t allow for face to face communication. People don’t need as many accommodations as we’ve been sold to believe.

4.     What’s Important To You?

In my field, one of the most common excuses for a refusal to fire idiots is that “we just need an extra set of hands” or “we’re short staffed”. High rates of turnover will always be a problem in human service fields--- with this said, perhaps taking on an abundance of clients without the staff to sufficiently manage them is a direct path toward martyrdom. While I do recognize some administrators as being big-hearted and therefore wanting to help as many people as they can, let’s be honest with ourselves: the driving force is insurance billing. So long as the billable hour is upheld as sacrosanct, and it’s communicated that the billable hour takes precedence over all else, you are begging for incompetent laziness. Do you want money, or do you want progress? Sure, you can have both. But again, quite similar to the emotional awareness required for points one and two, radical candor is a necessary-pre-requisite to leadership. And an unwillingness to be honest with yourself about what your “why” is as a leader is the tacit acceptance of mediocrity. Should you find your aim to be that of helping people and creating a workplace where people feel free, independent, creative, and productive, proceed to guideline 5.

5.     Weed Out the Lazies By Refraining From Hiring Them In the First Place

Job interviews in the field of behavior analysis, on average, are less than 20 minutes long. So long as you meet the basic and most minimal requirement for billing insurance, you can sign your employee paperwork and begin billing the day you’re hired. If you’re a CEO that recognizes this fast-food chain, factory-style scheme as counterproductive and causing issues, perhaps adjusting your hiring practices will operate as a filter. Manny Rodriguez, a behavior analyst and organizational behavior extraordinaire, recently presented a CEU about stopping entitlement in the workplace. At one point in his presentation, he provides possible scripts and questions for screening for entitlement: the questions allude to mistakes the individual has made in previous jobs, what they were grateful for about their past employer or experiences, and what they’ve gained from working amongst previous teams. While the lazy employee can probably put on a good show for the 12-minute phone call, more rigorous hoops must be made to jump through should an employer better understand who they’re hiring. I do love these questions, and I think they can be tacked on to another professional whose idea I absolutely adore for job interviews. While his name escapes me, I’ll paraphrase what he said:

“People don’t know how to talk to one another. Especially these younger kids. That’s why, for job interviews, I engage them in reciprocal conversation. I don’t come with a teleprompter script of generic questions about what their greatest weaknesses are, which always seem to be answered with something like perfectionism. I analyze how they relate to me. How they respond to differing ideals. And then I tell them, for the next interview, that I want them to determine the course of the next conversation based on what was talked about today. That way, they’re forced to understand the person who will essentially be giving them orders. It helps me recognize if they’re capable of empathy, and if they’re able to humanize those around them.”

While these guidelines require quite a bit of effort up front, I believe they’re capable of drastically shifting the framework by which companies operate. Managing personalities and perspectives and learning histories is one of the most difficult things to learn how to do, and it’s no wonder so many cower to their iPhones at even the slightest conflict. But we must remember: leadership is the ability to uplift and empower others. We cannot empower people if we train them to be fragile.

As Max DePree states, “the first responsibility of the leader is to define reality.”

I once had a conversation with a co-worker similar to Larry and his wife’s. In discussing the most expensive restaurants opening up in our area, we arrived at the topic of French food, and it’s microscopic size but gargantuan cost.

“And of course my brother ordered the most unnecessarily complex dessert on the menu, like the suffocated peaches atop crisp show horse’s hay sourced from the foothills of the hair-raising Scottish Highlands”, I’d say.

“Well you can probably save some money next time you eat French, since like, your brother’s dead,” a co-worker said, in a tone suggesting it was a question versus a statement.

Her reaction to her own gag wasn’t that of the mortal fear you’d see in an unlucky deer caught in headlights. While I can’t say for certain, as I didn’t have the luxury of watching my own expression, I’d like to believe it communicated a tepid irritation. If I’m proud of most anything about myself and my personality, it’s my stoicism in situations like these. Because I’d subjected myself to a garden variety of assholes and extremists over the years, a crude punchline just wasn’t enough to siphon the spirit out of me.  Sure, it seemed divorced from any normal person’s understanding of basic, social etiquette with people you don’t know very well. But it also didn’t come across as malicious or calculated. Just… ignorant.

The entire shtick reminded me of the time my parents caught me “making sex” between a Barbie and a Ken doll as an eight-year-old.

“… What are you doing?” My Mom’s face crumpled when she saw Barbie contorted into a topless but arthritic pretzel, holding up the weight of a pantsless Ken.

“Ummm, I, uhhh, nothing…? Nothing! They’re not having sex! … they’re really tired, Mom. I think they… need a nap.” While we’re on the topic of sarcasm, adult Kayla probably would have  suggested they precede the slumber with a cigarette.

My attempts toward feigning some sort of disorientation were useless. Mom never knew me to be a confused, dimwitted child, at least not any more dense than the stereotypical 8-year-old. For each instance of my fumbling with a flimsy explanation about how they weren’t having sex, but just playing topless wrestle-tag, my Mom grew more paranoid. Apparently the decapitated Polly Pockets and the heads forcefully ripped off of the two remaining Barbies went unnoticed, along with the ritual sacrifice my brother and I attempted in the backyard, which we’d hoped would spiritually morph Barbie into Chucky. Hasbro witchcraft, under Mom’s doctrine, was copacetic, as was slicing open every squish-toy with the knife Dad used for his leather-textured steak. But Barbie and Ken consummating a marriage? That’s where she drew the line.

“Where did you learn that, Kayla? Huh? Who taught you that?”

My brain resigned to my flailing gestures, which crafted a confession without my saying a word. I was guilty of something I felt I hadn’t even participated in because of my minimal understanding of its depth or meaning.

This is the look I saw in the eyes of the person who joked about my dead brother. Let me be abundantly clear: I didn’t find the joke itself offensive or hurtful. If anything, I was irked by her assumption that we were buddy-buddy enough for her to feel comfortable saying anything comical as it related to Conner. Maybe that was my own fault, as my extraversion tends to convey the illusion of friendship. Had this joke been delivered by someone I like and trust, it would’ve guaranteed a chuckle out of me. Hell, if Conner was alive, he’d have received it with his roaring laughter, the kind that his audience couldn’t help but be a party to because it appeared that fun. Maybe that’s what was most irritating about the entire delivery- this person was one that hardly registered as an acquaintance, and, if I’m being frank, her personality generally annoyed me. I wonder if it was just a misguided attempt toward compensating for awkward nerdiness in her earlier years.

With that said, I felt a sort of taunting violation of an unwritten boundary between us. It was a poking and prodding, the kind which desperately seeks connection or affiliation following years of loneliness. One where it seemed she was trying too hard to move our barely-there acquaintanceship to that of chummy, but was too obvious in doing so. This social habit is adjacent to the awkwardness that comes with a timid person trying to be snarky but concludes every sentence with “I’m just kidding! Just kidding just kidding! You know I’m kidding right?”

If anything makes me cringe, it’s the “I’m not a regular Mom, I’m a cool Mom” brand of desperation in social situations. Not in the manner of pulling rank, as I’m certainly no conversational conservator— but in that I feel bad that I don’t have the patience or desire to deal with it.

In one of my favorite Comedy Central Roasts, comedian and actor Pete Davidson was being blasted for his Dad dying on 9/11. The jokes delivered were those that elicit a giggling remorse, the kind that force a head-shake and a muttered “that’s terrible” but laughing uncontrollably regardless. David Spade as the host was no-holds barred: “Pete, I actually thought you were black, but I guess you just have your Dad’s ashy skin.” British comedian Jimmy Carr subsequently chimed in: “I’m appalled that people would come here and make jokes about the sacrifice Pete’s heroic father made on 9/11. This is not the roast of Pete Davidson’s father. That was in 2001.” Savage. Terrible. And, admittedly, clever. Imagine Spade or Carr securing their punchlines and immediately apologizing to Pete, begging for his approval coupled with his forgiveness: “You know that was just a joke, right Pete?!?!? RIGHT?!?!” This sort of behavior tends to discredit the joke-teller almost instantly--- at least to me.

I characterize the dead-brother-joke-teller about the same. It’s as if she were trying a specific personality on for size and then immediately begging me to tell her she doesn’t look fat in it, defeating the purpose of the neurotic tryout in the first place. My brain had archived her very specific social mannerisms from prior interactions, and this forced-wisecrack was entirely misaligned with anything she’d typically say. Now, this isn’t to say we’re prohibited from behaving differently or taking on character traits we admire. But doing so to indulge what we believe another person will like is usually found out quite quickly, and is perhaps a gawky social misstep whose consequences only get worse with age.

In retrospect, it’s an interesting portal into my conception of friendship versus friendly, and closeness versus mere tolerance. The absence of any sort of relationship between us, aside from being forced to work alongside one another, assumed this sort risqué joke-telling to be ill-advised — at least to me. While there is something to be said for the balls it takes to even formulate such a quip, her personal pre-requisite, at least according to my algorithm, wasn’t met.

The pre-requisite being a friendship, or least fragments of one. And the chance that I’d consider friendship with this sort of person, especially after this occurrence, was practically nil.

But I didn’t condemn her existence, much like I didn’t find it useful or even necessary to discuss the issue further. Big deal: a joke was told that the recipient didn’t find funny. Referred to as what I call “yes, and?” situations, it is a scenario that society has largely recast as qualifying for some sort of emotional re-education, but is just as easily diffused with a “yes, and?” response. Had I adopted such self-righteousness as today’s young women in the workplace, I would hope a responsible and even-keeled administrator would meet my baseless complaint with that of “yes, and?” or even “Who gives a fuck?”

This is maybe what I’m most offended by— people narcissistic enough to believe their own offense makes them correct. That being slighted automatically assumes the other person is in the wrong, and that feelings override logic and truth because the person “just feels like”. That because you’re hurt, it must be true that everyone else feels the same. The argument of incredulity is a logical fallacy which asserts that anything against someone’s personal morals or beliefs must be incorrect. This sort of fallacious thinking is exemplified in those who believe the Moon landing never happened, as their own distrust in our ability to do so, paired with their general disbelief about space travel, renders any theory about Moon landing incorrect. It’s about as elementary as a child covering their eyes from an adult and believing they’ve effectively vanished from existence, or a kindergartener plugging their ears and screaming when they hear something they dislike. It’s as intellectually dense as much of what we see in today’s young clinicians: “Because I don’t like it, you also can’t like it” or “I identify as a Pomeranian… so hear me endlessly yap.”

It's imperative we remind ourselves that the world is not responsible for accommodating our personal preferences. Other people do not exist for us, and they certainly aren’t vessels for the validation we’re incapable of fostering within ourselves. Your every preference wasn’t “represented” in a TV ad, the celebrity on the Cookie Crisp cereal box, or the generic mass-email your boss sent? So fuckin’ what? Are you an adult capable of understanding you’re just one will and one opinion of many? Or are you the entirely dependent baby who believes life is as easy as covering their eyes and reappearing whenever they feel like?

Choose wisely.

Us adults are scorched by the heat of our misguided passions, emotional baggage, and dysfunctional childhoods. According to Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, post-conventional wisdom develops following a stage largely dictated by external rules and expectations. That is, we move from only behaving appropriately to avoid punishment to constructing our own personal ethics and value statements.

The child who sneaks into the kitchen while Daddy sleeps off his 14th can of Busch Light has strategically chosen a time frame in which consequences can’t be doled out--- he has evaded punishment while still doing something he knows he isn’t supposed to. The child wouldn’t consider such cookie-snatching to be a betrayal of his self-appointed values; he sees it as a means to an end. Timmy wants dessert, and the means by which to get there are to make sure Dad is down for the count and therefore unable to slam him with a veto. The adult perspective may be that of discussing controversy openly. This happened last semester when I initiated a conversation about Black Lives Matter. When I posed the question, “If everyone’s lives matter, why not name every single racial group?”, the class disintegrated into a radio silence. Only the black students volunteered their opinions, to which their classmates passively nodded. When the class was dismissed and only a couple were left behind, they admitted to nodding because they “just didn’t want to get into it”. We behave differently depending on the circumstances, particularly if those circumstances take the form of other people.

Children don’t hold themselves hostage to such convoluted social opinions, specifically those of the chattering class. While all humans have an evolutionary inclination towards grouped thinking, children’s worldview isn’t polluted in the same manner as adults. A denied Oreo is a denied Oreo. It isn’t indicative of systemic inequality amongst the machine-processed goods of Nabisco. Their greatest rival may be the husky vato who kicked their scrawny ass in a game of four square during recess. A young girl’s frenemy could be the one who successfully landed a paper fortune teller in the hands of 6th grade heartthrob Neil Lichtenberger. The inner workings of a child’s social status are grounded in largely surface-level influences, like clothing preferences and Pokémon rank. You’d be hard-pressed to find a middle schooler who has ousted a peer because their parents are Trump Supporters. That level of depravity is reserved for us millennials.

Personal values, when compared to socially-constructed behavior, are broader principles we use to guide our choices. Our choices and behaviors, when consistent, tend to further influence our beliefs and self-appraisal. If a millennial went for a walk but didn’t bring her iPhone and Apple Watch to publicly announce her total steps for the day, did the walk count? The value in taking a walk, should it be truly important to the individual, should be devoid of an audience or celebration of a step count. Unlike goals, our morals or “values” are never actually met--- they’re constant revisions versus rules. As development would have it, children and adults see themselves and their behavior quite differently. In a recent conversation with a little girl, who I’ll call N, I was reminded why children can sometimes function as the best sources of untainted intelligence.

“Miss Kayla, why are you nervous?”

“I don’t know, actually. Maybe because I haven’t done this before so I don’t know what to expect. Does that happen to you?”

“Well, I mean… what do you think your Mom or Dad might say?”

In psychology, we often use third-person perspective-taking as a way to get out of our own head. For the depressed individual who makes judgmental and often critical statements about herself, it may be useful for her to offer guidance as if she were giving such guidance to a friend. Doing so distances us from our feelings just enough to gain clarity about their meaning, which in turn shapes our advice into that which is more neutral, more helpful, and more adaptive than berating our psyche. To be on the receiving end of such sound counsel, especially from a girl so young, was the awakening I believe us adults are mostly stripped of. The advice we receive is usually a perverse version of an old adage that bears minimal association to the problem we presented, leaving us even more frustrated had we confronted the problem on our own dime.

Seeking advice from other adults, particularly those close to us, has benefits: we’re afforded a new perspective, alongside validation for our complex blend of guilt, shame, laziness, and entitlement. As seen primarily online and in politics, aligning too closely with those who share our point of view fosters a diabolical groupthink, one characterized by ad hominem attacks, pathetic character assassinations, and nonsensical accusations taken as gospel by others within the clan. Kids? Sure, they can be little dicks. But their alliances are often disassembled as quickly as they’re built, making for screaming little people quick to forgive and swift in moving the hell on. They’re too young to harbor grudges. Life remains simple enough for them to kiss Ethan Drower in the ball pit at the McDonald’s Play Palace and hours later propose to his twin sister. To perhaps perfectly encapsulate my yearning for such virginal simplicity, I’ll toss in the heading from Bob Seger’s Against the Wind: “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”.

To demonstrate through use of a story, we turn to a little girl who I’ll refer to as B. As a 10-year-old, her uncomprehending little face would fall into the developmental category of “Good Boy Attitude”: good behavior is good, so long as it lives up to social rules. As a child with a litany of emotional and behavioral diagnoses, as characterized by never-ending, thrashing tantrums, hurricane-like destructive tendencies, and a vicious mean streak, one may assume her concept of “good” was different from what most would consider normal. Not so.

B, in a flogging frenzy after being told she couldn’t walk the family chickens in the hallway, let alone bring them to school at all, landed a roundhouse fist to the right eye of a young professional—one we’ll call Cora. To be entirely honest, Cora, with her unnecessarily high-pitched, sing-songy voice and bouncy demeanor, was kind of asking for it---perhaps B merely absorbed a lewd fantasy us more crusty team members kept mostly hidden. B’s knuckles managed to shake loose Cora’s right contact lens, which popped out of her eye and onto the carpeted floor, quickly disappearing into its fibers. Because it had seemingly evaporated into thin air, at least from B’s childlike vantage point, B thought the contact lens was her actual eyeball, which resulted in a series of frenzied “I’m thorry, I’m thoooo tho thorry!” and panic-stricken hands, clawing at the floor in search of that illusory oculus. Following the mass assault on Cora’s face, B proceeded to treat her desk as a workshop for fake eyeballs crafted out of playdough, Styrofoam, wadded up spit and paper, and rubber cement, offering each one up as a replacement for Cora’s now-vacant gaping hole. Cora was fine, but the gaping hole was what was communicated to B, as Cora wore an eyepatch the rest of the day to leverage the inevitable life lesson weaved in to this whole scenario: don’t punch people in the face unless they deserve it.

In what Kohlberg refers to as the Heinz Dilemma, a man called Heinz has a wife who is suffering from cancer. Doctors claim a new drug might save her, but the drug is far outside of Heinz’ financial means. Desperate to save his wife and stave off heartbreak, Heinz breaks in to the chemists’ lab and steals the drug. If you ask children to decide if this was right or wrong, the answer varies depending on their age and, in turn, their stage in Kohlberg’s moral development. For preschool-age kids, their moral reasoning is based solely on direct consequences; that is, stealing is bad, stealing is illegal, stealing should be punished. Should you ask B, though, who is slightly above the Good Boy Attitude phase explained earlier, her response may be something like, “Heinz shouldn’t steal and break the law because that might make him a bad citizen” or even “Heinz maybe could steal the drug and still be okay because he’s just trying to be a good husband.” Ask a millennial? “Chemists are White males and are gatekeeping access to drugs so as long as the wife is a POC, she should be allowed free and equitable access to anything she wants.” Okay, this may admittedly be an oafish exaggeration influenced by the media. In seriousness, though, the answer given by adults will likely vary far more greatly depending on life experience, personal values, and our understanding of our role in society.

These are referred to, interchangeably, as “morals”, “ethics”, or “values”---that is, those invisible, unwritten rules we often unknowingly abide by. Society and culture play important roles in how we come to understand the problems of ourselves and others. A perverse interpretation of this can be seen online, where anyone who disagrees with you is plausibly a Nazi or a Klansman. This putrid narcissism is a learned, shaped behavior, one younger children are largely immune to by virtue of their cognitive development. Not only does their surface-level understanding of punishment and reinforcement result in no-brainer resolutions to problems, it also fosters greater forgiveness for slip-ups. This said, I truly believe there is no such thing as a “bad” kid. This makes for possibly the only intellectually celibate tribe capable of original thought versus those caricatured, those parroted, and those plagiarized---like adults. Dr. Becky Kennedy has done pretty stellar work in this arena, developing a consulting business called “Good Inside” which is much what it sounds like: all children, despite inappropriate and assumed-to-be sociopathic behavior, are sincerely good inside. Bad behavior is not synonymous with bad kid. This unfortunately changes in adulthood, though, when enough instances of poor decisions and ample opportunities to showcase one’s arrogance and self-centeredness do plausibly make for a bad person. That, or you said the politically incorrect thing on Instagram. Again--- this brand of debasement is one kids are incapable of, as they’re too pure and too good.

Although we’ve heard endlessly that technological advances are royally fucking up the mental health of our kids, I’m still of the belief that they remain better people because of their immaturity and clean-handed intuitions. To refer back to B, who graciously made enough battered, forged eyeballs to plug the sockets of a small village in eyeless Greece, her aggression and her “mean streaks” weren’t necessarily calculated mean streaks at all, but a mere means to an end. For kids this age, I’m wary about theories like “trauma-responsive practice”, and its efforts to better guard kids against the inevitable anxiety of being alive. While nervousness and even tragedy does not discriminate between adults and children, the development of post-traumatic symptoms rest almost entirely on robust cognition and thorough understanding of emotion. For the 10-year-old demanding a chicken coop next to their desk, concluding she’s doing so for “emotional support” for her ”social anxiety” is an assumption as dangerous as it is smug. Instead of using kids as vessels to fuel our perverse obsessions about their imagined problems, why not leverage their simplemindedness to counterbalance our own projections and judgments?

In a recent exchange with a fifth grader:

Me: “I don’t really like Uno.”

Her: “Oh. Hmm. I mean that’s okay, I still love playing games with you.”

With a shake of her coiled little bangs and a half-smile, N showed me a positive regard I honestly don’t think I’d seen in adults in quite some time. How easy it was for her to acknowledge my preferences, which contradicted her own, but still maintained emotional composure and human decency. Imagine if we’d taken N’s approach to political differences, controversial stances, and any dividing issue: “It’s okay if you don’t like it or disagree. I still would like to hear what you have to say.” Yes, there is (I would assume) a basic understanding that such open-mindedness is more difficult in adulthood because of our cognition. Our language, our upbringing, our socioeconomic status, and our religious affiliations can all bear weight in how our innermost beliefs are expressed, particularly to those who may find them repugnant. The hatred we’ve harbored towards ourselves or our childhoods or our parents becomes intolerable, so we externalize it and make it somebody else’s or something else’s problem. Our intellect is our most versatile tool but also the most destructive weapon in that sophisticated reasoning can quickly become sophisticated lying. We fumble with metaphors in ways that kids can’t, yet still manage to entirely miss the plot… despite the plot being painfully obvious.

Children are unencumbered by such willful misunderstanding. I saw a personal trainer and postpartum nutritionist make a blog post recently stating “If your child can accompany you to a 30-minute trip to Target, they can tolerate you doing a 30-minute workout.” In other words, she’s urging mothers to stop making excuses such as “I don’t have time” in reference to things they simply do not like or have not prioritized. In expected sequence, a slew of furious mothers showcasing their resentful, self-hating projection chimed in: “SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS I SHOULD WORK OUT INSTEAD OF FEED MY HUNGRY CHILDREN?!”, “HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO EAT IF I’M BUSY EXERCISING?! SHAME ON YOU!”. Children may have the attention span of goldfish on narcotics, but they do not so shamelessly and so cruelly distort the meaning of what was very clearly stated. They do not have enough years under their teeny belts to foster such insecurity, such pronounced self-doubt. If we remember Kohlberg’s stages of development from earlier on, this behavior is characteristic of blind egoism, or the first stage: if I can’t have it, then you shouldn’t be allowed to either.

We should rely on kids more often than we do, and we should also rebuild our trust in them. They’re not fragile snowflakes with brittle psyches that will crumble should they hear a voice tone that isn’t the same octave as Cora’s. While they face issues more complex than we ever did before the advent of the smartphone, they’re still more resilient than we ever give them credit for. I’m wondering why tough love is now interpreted as a twisted, unrequited love, as if the discipline required to build them into strong beings is biased or immoral. Like I mentioned earlier, the more you know and greater your maturity, the easier it becomes to lie to ourselves about what reality is. As sixth grader Ricky puts it, “As you get older, things seem more lame than before. Nothing will change but you, I promise.”

* On Tuesdays, we don’t complain. (If you haven’t read Tuesday’s with Morrie, it is an absolutely stellar, insightful, and feel-good read.)

* We want to increase conversation. Face to face. Please email either or both of us should you hear something you find interesting and want to indulge us with your thoughts!!!!

theangrybehavioranalyst@gmail.com or dylanh72@gmail.com

Should our aim be encouraging open dialogue amongst adults, despite disagreement and diversity of viewpoint, we cannot truly believe that hiding behind a screen will suffice. I do recognize an inborn, immature streak many of us possess, the kind which seeks retaliation when we’ve been criticized or publicly humiliated. In this regard, anonymity could be useful in offering social or professional protection. What I don’t necessarily agree with is the reasoning behind such widespread use of the anonymous survey. Let’s use the first factor of psychological safety Google has provided. Interpersonal risk, although a vague concept, is the recognition and acceptance of the fair amount of risk that comes with every action we take, whether that action be social or professional. Interpersonal risks can include statements that may be misconstrued, beliefs that may be socially condemned, or suggestions that are likely to induce defensiveness. As I’ve written about on several occasions, an understanding that we cannot control another person’s reactions, understanding, personality, or general behavior should act to lubricate the discomfort of uncertainty. In continuous pursuits of quelling awkwardness by taking ownership out of criticism, we’re undermining trust--- and only increasing upon psychological insecurity.

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Sane people would likely agree that continuous efforts to quell disagreement have made us both fragile and bad-tempered. A conditioned fear of confrontation is not best addressed by reinforcing avoidance through anonymous Google forms--- it is best managed through gradual and repeated exposure. Criticism, at its heart, will always be difficult to give and receive. This uneasiness does not stand as reason to avoid it altogether or to lubricate it by removing our name from it. If anything, affording employees the luxury of remaining incognito when providing criticism teaches them that we don’t trust them to handle heightened emotions. This form of “feedback” has shaped two-way anxiety: the giver is worried about upsetting the recipient, so they rely on anonymous ranking systems to curb these feelings. The recipient is afraid of hearing any form of criticism face-to-face, as they can’t rely on their ability to maintain composure, so they relentlessly read nameless criticism while trying to identify which asshole might have said it.  

Invisibility, at least in the realm of performance evaluation, effectively breeds resentment and paranoia. I experienced this quite recently in an end-of-year performance evaluation, which I admittedly waited for with a bit of stage fright. Knowing I’d experienced quite a bit more sensitivity this semester than in semesters previous, I had a feeling the positive feedback would be tainted with sideswiping critique. And, I was correct! This is not celebratory, though, as I’m about to explain.

The feedback I’d received was largely centered around feelings instead of any legitimate appraisal of my professional performance. Perhaps even worse, I knew exactly who the individuals were who left such trite feedback, but I was expected to operate under the pretense that I was completely unaware. Because, with anonymous complaining, we’re not advised to approach the person we believed to have given the feedback, as they didn’t include their name and it therefore isn’t a guarantee they committed such fallacious logic in the first place. With this, then, we are to bob our heads as if we’re obtusely ignorant, burying our frustration because upper management has reminded us “even if you know who it is, you can’t know who it is, so you didn’t hear it from me”. Further, when we indulge a whiny individual by continuing to listen to baseless complaints, and proceed to play middle man by then running to the complained-about person as if they’re surely in the wrong, we reward gossip while calling it “transparency”. Why suggest mediation and face-to-face communication when we could snuggle behind the veil of tattle-taling? This is, as humor essayist David Sedaris calls it, “the golden era of tattle tales”.

The best means by which to build trust within a team is to treat them as if they’re competent individuals capable of behaving like adults who can, as the life coaches so eloquently preach, “do hard things”. I’ve seen several op-eds published related to this challenge, specifically in working with Gen-Z-aged staff: they’re in desperate need of recognition, of “check-ins”, of reassurance, and of mental health days for their increased-but-not-clinical-anxiety. There are parts of me that question the validity of anxiety-related concerns, as it’s a term as ubiquitous as “trauma” or “triggered”. We’ve undoubtedly grown more anxious more quickly, a growing theory difficult to deny when faced with mental-health related statistics. But should we succumb to today’s idiocy and call it a different form of butterflies altogether, which only encourages people to change their identity to better suit themselves socially?

With this, I’m still unsure as to why managerial staff feel compelled to indulge such emotional infancy with fully remote positions for the socially anxious, with entirely anonymous criticism for the psychologically fragile, and with a great purging of dialogue for the morally juvenile. Perhaps shifting to possible interventions, then, would be of benefit.

Modeling active listening and constructive criticism is a useful first step in promoting these skills in others. A boss highly fearful of negative reactions, as evident by G-Chatting instead of speaking and mass-emailing instead of individual consultation, is a person who condones avoidance in their own staff. Those in leadership roles must consistently learn to ask better questions and provide more thoughtful answers should they increase their staff’s willingness to do the same. Luckily, the workplace is chockfull of opportune moments for teaching: most professional circle jerks are bred on gossip and he-said, she-said.

I wrote a piece recently about how debate should replace meaningless onboarding “icebreaker” activities, as it both builds tolerance to viewpoint diversity as well as increases our ability to form clear arguments. This rings even more true for what I am alluding to with this piece. While I do believe anonymous reporting could be useful as it relates to lighthearted topics, such as deciding where the team should order lunch from or jokingly determine which staff is most likely to call in sick, I strongly contest that any form of feedback must come replete with the individual’s identity. Completely rid anonymous evaluations from your organization, as they only stand to render your employees assholes incarnate. This helps to promote ownership of our beliefs as well as fostering future conversations amongst people who have concerns with one another, which can only dampen any residual fear we have in bringing problems to light in a fair, constructive manner.

For those grandfathered into invisibility, it may be useful to start small and work up to larger, more high-stakes conversations. For the person who has only ever given and received criticism digitally, perhaps beginning a face-to-face dialogue with one person, about a fairly benign topic, is a perfect means by which to gain momentum. Clinically, this is a form of conversational systematic desensitization: our aim is to gradually dampen a heightened fear response by repeatedly exposing ourselves to the very thing which causes feelings of fear. In doing so, we habituate, or become accustomed to the sensation, which counteracts its novelty and its intensity.

Lastly, learn to radically accept that criticism is not supposed to feel good. It is built to make each of us better people, and this does not imply that we must experience positivity for positive change to occur. When the expectation is that zeal is the only accepted emotion following criticism, we cannot be surprised when staff perpetually avoid speaking with one another. In Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation, proponents of almost exclusively-digital communication are interviewed about their preferences for online versus offline chitchat. One mother in her late forties believes that, since she’s unable to control herself emotionally when setting boundaries with her son, she feels more effective doing so through nagging and repeated copy-and-pasted text messages. Really? This is what parenting has become?

Turkle states as follows, in response to the above scenario: “Certainly this tool opens new channels of family communication. But to say to a child, partner, or spouse, ‘I choose to absent myself from you in order to talk to you,’ suggests many things that may do their own damage. It suggests that in real time, it is too hard for you to put yourself in their place and listen with some equanimity to what they are thinking and feeling. Being able to be enough in control of our feelings to listen to another person is a requirement for empathy. If a parent doesn’t model this--- if you go directly to a text or email--- a child isn’t going to learn it, or see it as a value.”

Unfortunately, digital communication isn’t only damaging to what Jonathan Haidt calls “The Anxious Generation”, or Gen-Z. It’s leaked into the conversation of everyone with a smart phone, whether that be a mother preparing to send her kids to college or a preschooler who recently learned about emojis. We cannot continue in this manner, unless our ultimate goal is to eliminate compassion or intimacy altogether. Collectively, we must argue like we’re correct and listen like we’re wrong. In doing so, we learn to support our strongest-held beliefs with legitimate evidence, and we demonstrate humility when the recipient happens to disagree. This can only enrich our current dialogue and elevate our relationships, and it can only lead to the effective collaboration workplaces are so desperate to forge.

After all, “much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”

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Men are, by proxy, easier than women. What my husband considers characteristic of “Neanderthals”, men tend to align themselves with knowledge and logic over emotional outbursts and “lived experience”. This very much parallels how I conduct myself in relationships: I prefer conversation of ideas over affections, and of resolution over warmth. While I’m certain men and women have nearly-equal tendencies to react disproportionately and misinterpret a series of interactions, women have always struck me as unnecessarily dramatic in their responses to any given situation. This occurs when the situation is as hackneyed as a Starbucks barista forgetting a third pump of Pumpkin Spice or as complex as a corporate rival being offered the promotion one was promised by another two-faced female. Regardless of the scenario, it’s a guarantee that I’ll respond with a strategic line of Socratic questioning versus emotional harmony. This hasn’t gone over well with most women. Then again, I am not most women.

subscribe or you’re, like, a terrible friend

I’ve struggled for years, now, to parse out my conflicting feelings related to my own femininity and concept of female friendships. Because I don’t resonate with the theatrics, the excessive reassurance or “check-ins”, and the general aura of forced cheerfulness, it’s been hard for me to relate to the majority of my kind. This is especially apparent in human service fields, which are dominated by women who claim to be feminists. While I do somewhat acknowledge the freedom in unleashing our inner Spice Girl, I’m at a loss as to why anyone, in almost-2024, feels the need to be a feminist. I repeatedly, despite my greatest efforts, cannot relate to this.

One of the most important facets of femininity, in modern day, seems to be that of relatability: we’re hellbent on understanding each other only through excessive displays of vulnerability and emotional eruptions. We connect with one another by means of offering support for problems-that-don’t-qualify-as-problems, which is little more than intermittent use of platitudes and overgeneralizations. I do believe such counterfeit “support” may be sufficient in terms of providing a sense of relief, or even the experience of loyalty. But it’s a brand of support I personally don’t understand or want.

In my quest to tease apart the inner workings of women, I’ve stumbled upon a few female-centric behaviors that make me cringe. What I’ve come to learn about myself, very recently, is my discomfort in receiving compliments. Aside from my husband, who generates compliments sparingly, my friendships with men don’t seem as preoccupied with reciprocal appreciation as female friendships are. Men nestle into their element by focusing on facts and the accomplishment itself versus, what I’d consider, an excessive focus on the emotional experience of accomplishment. Intermittent complimenting is socially traditional, and is therefore a tradition I’ve come to confirm as an overall net-positive. We’d be hard-pressed to find a creature as social as a human whose brain doesn’t bathe in dopamine the moment we’re acknowledged for a job well done. It is with conviction I believe I, too, fall into this category of attention-seeking in more ways than one. Women in general, though… they gush. They endlessly remind one another how “inspiring”, “cool”, and “amazing” their “healing journey is", and how they are “trusting the process”, as if the person they’re speaking with is entirely incapable of producing another breath should their female counterpart fail to validate their existence. Please just do what men do and give me a high five and proceed to pester me about the next task I need to complete.

Excessive reassurance-seeking is a largely female trait that exasperates me more than most any other human behavior. Again, this social tendency isn’t exclusive to women; there certainly are men who could qualify as stage-five clingers. It’s far more common to our sex, though, as we’re hardwired toward both social behavior and elevated neuroticism. With such delicate propensity for negative moods inevitably comes a series of misinterpretations, which often result in irritating statements of, “Are you mad at me?”, “Did I make you mad? I hope I didn’t make you mad”, or “Omg please don’t hate me lol”. Such phrases may be considered cute when the recipient is a smitten male, but they register as irritating pleas for attention when pitched by another woman. Some women, I’m sure, have probably grown accustomed to this type of exchange. Maybe they even seek it out amongst one another, as it’s “proof” that you’re bearing a friend’s feelings in mind. To each their own, man. Or… wo-man.

Friendships have also been challenging for me because of my very low tolerance for check-ins, reassurance, and female attention. I don’t like being constantly attuned to what people are doing. I don’t particularly enjoy unbroken, revolving conversation that has no beginning or end. And I certainly don’t appreciate being micromanaged as to when and how I should respond, and what may occur should I fail to do so on the tight schedule offered up by the woman demanding my attention. In my friendships with men, never once has the topic of “checking in” come up. Someone I’ve grown to love speaking with, whose name is Kait and has appeared on my podcast several times, with good reason, is one female that also fits into this category. Her version of support is often fashioned as an “Oof, that blows” form of text, along with swift conversational nudges toward normalcy and the regular grind of real life. We don’t dwell on hardship so much as we make fun of it, and for this, I appreciate her candor. This is my kind of broad. Not to mention she’s witty, intelligent, and tough as nails. She also uses phrases like “titty bar”, which is fucking hilarious.

Phases in healing journeys or constant cries for check-ins haven’t found their way into my most treasured conversations because there’s a mutual respect for one another’s interests, lives, and daily engagements. The concept that speed of responses to text messages or DMs being somehow representative of our affinity for another person seems to be a womanly hallucination, one teetering on co-dependence versus legitimate friendship. I do not do well when people seem obsessive about befriending me or remaining in constant communication; I’m broadly antisocial, my patience for girly attitudes is minimal, and I’d like to uphold my solitude as sacrosanct. I recognize that this may come across as harsh, and honestly, so be it: much like others are entitled to check-in however frequently their hearts desire, I am entitled to find it avoidably annoying. 

Women use fluffy words like “overwhelm”, “triggered”, “burnout” and “empowered”. As much as I hate to argue semantics, as those debates tend to end exactly nowhere, these phrases are irritating to me. I find them annoying and overly concerned with controlling another person’s perception of our “truth” versus what we believe ourselves to truly be. Have you ever spoken to a man who frequently refers to themselves as being in a chronic state of “overwhelm”? What about a male who is a self-proclaimed burnout crusader? And so help me God if I witness a male posting pictures of themselves in a Speedo and captioning such exploitation with “hashtag empowered”. Again, maybe I’m just a crusty old soul whose impatience has matured into a cynical sarcasm. Or maybe I’m a woman who has finally grown comfortable with themselves and what they find important, which does not include surface-level communication with other women vying for a very specific form of attention.

Suzy Weiss, Bari Weiss’ little sister and journalist, perfectly describes the female dynamic in her recounting of sorority life, which I’ll paraphrase: it is endless validation, no matter how correct or incorrect you are. For example, should you feel compelled to whine about your C grade on an algebra exam you didn’t study for, a slurry of likeminded women will band together to offer you support sounding like, “Well that teacher is just, like, so sexist and dickish. Fuck him, you deserve an A anyway.” My support for friends looks like “man, that blows” as well as mirroring and paraphrasing their challenges. This is a glimmer of my innate femininity at work: I consider myself a stellar listener, and I do tend to melt into a puddle when I see another person in distress. With this, I don’t feel drawn to solving another person’s problems or offering up solutions; my preference is a change in perspective. This, as one may imagine, is typically not well-received. Women very much like to vent and become enmeshed in each other’s misery until it’s unrecognizable as one or the other’s, a psychological inbreeding I personally find odd. Again, though, this is only my personal desire that does not stand to represent “all women”. I couldn’t make the argument that this form of female connection is wrong, as there’s a dearth of evidence to prove such a belief. It’s just not my cup of tea.

On the topic of not being everyone’s cup of tea, my general aura has been tagged “condescending”, “rude”, and “insensitive”, along with the things I say as hurtful as “a punch in the gut”. I will admit, my typed words can come across as quite prickly if you’re unfamiliar with my personality or my communicative flair. To again reference Kait, she has never once responded to any of my statements with something like “I just feel like that was super insensitive to X community”, or “Wow, you are so brave for posting something like that”, or even “You go girl”. God love her, she simply acknowledges the way I’m sure she acknowledges most things: with a chuckle and a grain or two of salt. These are the kind of women I’ve aligned myself with for my entire life, and it’s no wonder they’re growing so sparse: they’re completely cemented, they’re emotionally secure and mature, and they are, for lack of a better word, badass.

I may understand women the way men understand women, which is at the most minimal level possible (at least according to chicks). I may not resonate with such quotes as, “I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness”, or “keep showing up for yourself, girl”, but I still am proud of the woman my age has rendered. The immature, cold individual I’ve left behind still lives somewhere beneath my skin, and she is unfortunately here to stay. Perhaps it’s her presence that’s changed me into a wife, a daughter, and a friend worthy of quality consideration.

 To that, I end with a quote that is more fitting to my personality by Margaret Thatcher: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

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Be fair on your opponent. Avoid one of the most common logical fallacies, The Strawman, in which an individual sets up and disputes an argument that is not even being made. Using the Strawman Fallacy, a person distills the opponent’s argument down in order to make it easier to defeat. Strawman statements often follow the now-famous phrase, “So what you’re saying is”. The Strawman at work is illustrated below:

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Person 1: I really love bananas.

Person 2: So what you’re saying is you hate mangoes?

Person 1: I didn’t mention mangoes.

Person 2: But your silence implied it, which means your love for bananas means you obviously hate mangoes.

With threats to survival generally far behind us, the main safety hazard becomes that of our own thinking. Debate teaches invaluable skills related to emotional regulation and means by which to maintain our composure when faced with information as equally alarming as, say, a velociraptor. While much of the American populace has grown perfectly shameless in their very public, emotional reactions to perceived threats, I’d like to believe the majority of us bear social etiquette and our own reputation in mind. Mature people may consider a lapse in composure to be embarrassing or even discrediting; today’s younger populations may consider it brave. Pick your poison. But I highly recommend setting your sights on the former.

Contrary to popular belief, debating is not mastering the masturbatory art of the mic-drop. While moments as they appear on YouTube may give off this impression, it’s crucial to differentiate between debating and squabbling. Debating prioritizes empathic, fine-tuned listening and oratory skills in a structured format which explores affirmative and negative positions. Each side, that is, for or against, constructs an argument based on factual data and logical evidence, intentionally omitting mention of how they feel. For the debater that attempts to pull at the heart strings through emotional reasoning tactics, they are often quickly torn down by the opposing team which gladly, yet respectfully, illuminates their argument as faulty. The individual who tries to reason their way out of verbally berating their partner by saying, “Well, I was just mad, so that’s why I yelled”, is a lackluster example of such fallacious logic, as is today’s obsession with rendering all feelings “valid” simply because they feel real to us.

By use of a lighter example, we turn to a true Western delicacy: pizza. A longstanding debate has been that of deciding upon which crust makes for the most orgasmic pie, a contentious argument I myself feel conflicted about because of where I live. Chicagoans are known for deep dish pizza, a form of pizza I personally find superfluous, at best. If I were on the affirmative side of this very important debate, that is, the argument for deep dish being superior to its thin-crusted counterpart, I would be forced to identify with perspectives that differ from my own, while strategically placing my own disgust aside. With a topic as lighthearted and thin-crusted as pizza, it’s arguably (haha… see what I did there?) easier to set aside our personal taste preferences than if the topic required both “teams” to justify their stance on something like affirmative action or gun control.

Artful debating teaches its students to understand the opponent’s argument in the most charitable, well-rounded, and fair manner. Had these skills been made accessible in childhood, we may have prevented the rampant, moral toddlerhood we see in today’s grown-ups; that is, our conversations may have grown richer and more nuanced compared to the tantrum-riddled barrage of whining that’s portrayed in the media. To teach debate to any age, it’s useful to begin by breaking it down into its simplest components. For the sake of this piece, I’ve included only one aspect of preliminary discovery that I consider critical in balanced dialogue: defining terms, and seeking to understand how our explanations and interpretations differ.

Defining terms can be a bit of a double-edged sword; spending too much time outlining terms means the conversation itself is no longer discussion of an issue, but bantering about semantics. This has occurred in several personal examples of my own, as young women have a tendency to distort the issue I present and instead lurch to such thoughtful critique as, “Well… the way you worded it was triggering. I didn’t know what you were talking about, but I just don’t like the way you said it.”

If the way something is worded is jarring, it is the responsibility of the listener to seek clarification. There are several ways to do so, all of which include a thoughtfully-posed question that is careful not to steer or trap the individual you’re speaking with. When we steer questions, we often begin statements with “Well don’t you…?” or “Doesn't that must mean that…” or even “Why would you even …”. Questions framed in this manner are abrasive and can even come across as accusatory, likely provoking defenses in the other person. To forge open-minded dialogue, we must learn to ask better questions. I’ve spoken to hundreds of individuals who manage to carry on an entire conversation only making statements about themselves or only expressing ideas that relate to their own personal ventures. Questions which help others think about their thinking are those which guide thoughtful discussion, such as, “How does this relate to what we’ve discussed?”, “Can you restate that question?”, “What do you think we already know about this topic?”, “How else could this question be answered?”

In the examples stated below, I implore the reader to find the communicative errors:

* “So when did you decide that it was okay to harm an entire community of my people?”

* “After being dismissed and undervalued for so long, it’s our turn to be centered. We have earned the right to be loud and do whatever it takes to be heard.”

In the first example, the pseudo-individual has committed a fallacy referred to as “Leading the Witness”. This tactic was flagrantly put to use in Netflix’s popular docuseries, “Making A Murderer”, in which cops effectively convinced a young man to admit guilt to a crime he did not commit. In reference to the quote above, the speaker is assuming the truth of the conclusion before they’ve even allowed the other person to speak. They’re assuming, then, that the individual is motivated to “harm” an entire group of people. And, you know what they say about assuming… it makes a complete and utter ass out of you and you alone. Not only is the assumption the problem in the above statement, but there’s the now-popular mention of words like “harm”, which have quite clearly been exposed to a serious bout of concept creep. Concept creep occurs when the definition of something is broadened and relaxed over time, essentially allowing for anything to be included. “Harm” is a quintessential vessel for concept creep: what began as physical altercation and signs of physical wounds quickly morphed into hurt feelings, triggering words and images, Republicans, Trump Supporters, and anything we mildly dislike.

The second statement commits a conversational crime referred to as moral licensing. With moral licensing, the individual believes that because of their consistently good behavior and extreme suffering or sacrifice, they have earned the right to behave inappropriately and cruelly, free of repercussions. While I hate to bring up the phrase “Cancel Culture”, it’s the most relevant example: so long as you hurt the feelings of a fragile person, their attempts to shame you, slander you, destroy your livelihood, and even physically assault you are copacetic.

Our “triggered” feelings do not fall under the jurisdiction of the speaker, and they certainly aren’t always correct simply because we strongly identify with them. For conversations about more vague terms, like “neurodiversity”, “trauma”, “trauma-informed care”, or even “harm” as examples, it’s imperative the definition be delineated at the outset of the conversation. As mentioned earlier, much of our English language has been debased, as we’ve prioritized emotional experiences over, you know, reality. While I do understand the importance in hearing, understanding, and even validating expressed feelings, we cannot fall into the trap of believing our “lived experience” provides a compelling argument simply because it’s near and dear to our hearts. My cat is also near and dear to me, but he’d make a shitty raconteur.

 A single group of strategies that are easily taught fall under an umbrella referred to as “side-switching” drills. As implied by the title, side-switch exercises require each person to develop as many reasons as they can against their own argument and for the opposing argument. They see their perspective through the eyes of someone holding a conflicting idea and proceed to develop an entire case against themselves. In doing so, we avoid the confirmation bias, or our tendency to only seek out information that is aligned with our perspective, and we humanize the opponent. It’s quite natural to feel attacked when we’re proven wrong, as the sting of correction is one central to any and all sides of an argument. In embracing this truth and understanding that there are multiple sides to every discussion, though, we develop a more nuanced viewpoint that speaks to both sides’ main concerns. Bear this in mind: you will not change anybody’s mind if you fail to connect your argument to their concerns.

Side-Switch Exercise 1: The Devil’s Advocate

Construct an entire argument for a viewpoint you personally find repugnant. Yes, you read that correctly: repugnant. The entire purpose of playing Devil’s Advocate is to absorb perceptions or attitudes you feel you couldn’t possibly understand in good faith. Again, it’s human nature to align ourselves with those who share similar, if not identical, views as ourselves. From the vantage point of our fragile egos, it certainly serves us to be affirmed and validated versus challenged.

To play Devil’s Advocate, choose 3-5 topics that you’d consider contentious. Identify where you stand on these issues, such as if you strongly agree, strongly disagree, or somewhere in between, and develop 3-5 reasons why the repugnant view may be the more favorable view.

Side-Switch Exercise 2: What Have I Done?

While this is geared more toward those who have experienced formal debates, it can easily be adapted to organic, day-to-day conversation. The “What Have I Done?” strategy in the realm of formal debating asks the individual to identify the reasons why they lost a debate. Did they spend too much time on definitions, leaving too little time to thoroughly describe their evidence? Were they distracted by a comment the opponent made and therefore unable to refocus their attention toward the discussion? Devise as many reasons as you’re able to. None of the reasons can be related to something you believe your opponent is guilty of.

As it relates to more organic conversation, reflect upon a heated discussion that didn’t end as you’d hoped. Perhaps it escalated into a screaming match where both parties felt the other was to blame for their seething rage. Similar to above, ask yourself: What role did I play in this conversation ending so poorly? How did I contribute to the anger, frustration, sadness, etcetera? What about this do I take the blame for? Again, devise as many reasons as you’re able to.

The Justify-It Game

In this drill, which can be a silly game to get kids thinking, the first person must claim that the statement they’re about to make is true. For the sake of the drill, they do not have to believe, in their heart of hearts, the statement is true. The child may say something like, “Rattlesnakes would make great house pets.” The next person must provide an affirmative statement supporting this claim. The second child may say, “That’s totally true! Rattlesnakes eat every 2 weeks, so they’re way more cost-effective than something like a dog, who eats multiple times a day.”

Not much has to change if this drill is conducted with adults. This is similar to the Devil’s Advocate drill in that the adult must develop an affirmative statement for something they may disagree with; it’s slightly different in that any topic can be chosen, and only one statement of affirmation is required. This said, it’s important the statement be developed as quickly as possible--- thinking on one’s feet is how we avoid platitudes, overgeneralizations, and teleprompter-sounding dialogue.

The Headliner Game

Choose a grabby headline from any physical or digital media outlet and skim its contents. Following a quick scan of the article, summarize it out loud in 1 minute or less without any preparation. This again speaks to the ability to think quickly on our feet: while thorough preparation and evidence-based material are essential for forging conversations of substance, we must also pull from our current knowledge base and develop versatility in how we communicate. This is where so much of today’s discourse goes awry: when people run out of their very short list of one-liners, statistics, and number figures, they’re unable to think critically-yet-swiftly to sustain the conversation.

This is a wonderful game for children and adults, alike, who have a habit of rambling and getting sidetracked while explaining an idea. It can be easy to get caught up in trivial details that are largely meaningless to the overall heart of discussion, which lends a hand to the rigid 60-second time frame for this exercise.

The greatest pillars of conversation rest on our ability to listen effectively and communicate productively. With the rise in AI and social media platforms only growing more powerful, our conversational capabilities are continuously under threat. Our only chance at regaining connection and fostering meaning in our relationships is to keep the conversations occurring, face to face, voice to voice.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place…

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A silly, pop-psychology term referred to as “Good Girl Syndrome” perfectly encapsulates this self-indulgence parading as bigheartedness. Good Girl Syndrome occurs when women internalize cultural or mainstream messages about how they “should” behave and, in turn, shift their behavior to mimic the desires of other people. In other words, it’s the people-pleasing disease that apparently only affects women. While people-pleasing is definitely a term almost entirely adopted by female populations, at its core, it’s something we all experience in varying degrees. With this in mind, it’s important we refrain from essentializing people-pleasing as if it’s an emblem of selflessness or even virtue; fragments of the behavior itself can be truly humanitarian, but its purpose is not that of nobility. In all honesty, much of a strong desire to appease other people has nothing to do with actually pleasing them than it does micromanaging their responses. It’s our own sense of satisfaction, and successful evasion of discomfort, that we aim to appease.

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Perhaps I should have prefaced the above statement by reminding readers that all human beings manipulate, attempt to control, and coyly maneuver their way through social interactions. We innately gain a sense of stability when we quell our desires if it means avoiding conflict, as conflict could have easily led to bloodshed before we allegedly became more civilized and fought with our thumbs instead of our crossbows. It’s human nature, and this inborn duplicity usually occurs outside of our direct awareness. This said, I certainly am not making the argument that people pleasers are nurturing a massive chip on their shoulder only fixable through deceiving others. I also whole-heartedly believe that the majority are good people who have learned a specific set of behaviors that many find insufferably annoying. Where the literature falls short in disseminating these behaviors is understanding them as symptoms of a larger issue versus describing them as notable for their philanthropy.  

In the quote below, Brene Brown explains, “When we’re busy pleasing, perfecting, and performing, we end up saying yes a lot when we mean no.” Brown’s words are held as sacred to most millennial women for a reason; they carry a saccharine undertone that effectively speaks to the negative effects on the people-pleaser, all while offering gentle affirmation for one’s insecure behavior. Regarding this quote specifically, I see kernels of legitimacy sprinkled with misleading fluff that’s become so widely palatable.

While saying “no” more often is of use, specifically if we’re someone who chronically avoids confrontation, it isn’t as important as learning to tolerate conversational distress in the first place. The argument can be made that there is a performative nature behind committing to things we desperately wanted to reject; taking on more responsibility in the workplace, for example, is typically a characteristic employers find attractive. The other and perhaps greater impetus for changing our behavior is that of avoiding confrontation or any form of negativity. The negativity we fear in rejecting another person’s question or proposal must be examined as a reason for our people-pleasing, not a symptom of it; this is quite different from emphasizing the mere act of barking vetoes in and of itself. Without understanding what it is we’re avoiding, handing out “no is a full sentence” laptop stickers will likely still leave the people-pleasing individual in a state of codependence, desperately wondering how they can secure another’s approval.

Believing that people pleasers and Good Samaritans are all blessed with a tragic desire to “help” everyone is what I’d consider a cognitive distortion, or a faulty belief. This belief then tends to guide us into Brene-like narratives, those storylines depicting us as overly-compassionate, over-performers who just want the best for all parties, and oh how exhausted we must be constantly tending to the needs of others. There is minimal mention of two critical components: 1) the people-pleasing person chooses to tend to needs that aren’t their own and 2) they’re likely doing so to avoid tending to their own needs because their needs are complex and ingrained. It should come as minimal surprise that couples seeking couples counseling often do so in an attempt to change their spouse versus admit that their own behavior equally contributes to a fissure in a relationship.  

What pop psychology says may very well be true: we may be people who undermine our own needs in pursuit of accommodating others, which depletes our emotional reserves and occasionally gains us social recognition. Again, though… why? It probably isn’t because these individuals have a big heart or because they’re selfless to a fault. It's more likely that they’re submissive, externalize their problems to the hands of others, and feel largely incapable of managing themselves and their emotions without another person’s corroboration. I do understand why these aspects of people-pleasing aren’t shared more readily and more widely: they frame the individual as being responsible for their own sadness and loneliness. This is a painful experience, one most of us would gladly dismiss in light of pop-psychology monologues which gently caution us to “feel our feelings” and “give ourselves grace”. I prefer a more succinct narrative from neighborhood pal Dr. Phil: “Well, I’m not sure what pop psychology is, but I don’t like it.”

In making breakfast with a client recently, who we’ll call Mitch, I had informed him I’d be bringing my newest milk frother and favorite coffee. Being the kind man he is, he smiled coyly and told me how much he’s looking forward to our breakfast. When I arrived at the group home and unleashed the amateur barista lurking inside me, I couldn’t have felt more excited about handing over a steaming cup of peppermint coffee replete with my very own foam adornment. Clearly unenthused but fiercely polite, my client let out a chuckle and said “thanks”. Intermittently but also excessively, I found myself asking him, “So what do you think of the coffee? Do you like it? It smells so good, right? The foam is just so fun, isn’t it?” I may as well have instructed him, “YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE THIS COFFEE, GODDAMNIT!” After the fourth or fifth time bringing up the coffee, he requested with a joking intonation: “Leave me alone!” I had effectively made a breakfast for Mitch about me. Still unsure as to why I allowed myself to be consumed with Mitch’s response to my coffee, my motivation had little to do with whether or not he actually enjoyed it, but if he liked what I had made. Do you see the difference? It's subtle and apparently subconscious, but the nuances tend to show themselves when our recipient doesn’t react in accordance with our expectations. I was guilty of seeking his approval for reasons still outside of my understanding, and I was painfully annoying in the process.  

Much of our focus remains on the people-pleaser themselves, with minimal regard for the effect it has on others. I can empathize with the angst of feeling unloved, or as if we don’t belong, and I imagine it’s a cumbersome feeling to carry for those who are self-proclaimed people-pleasers. Also worth mentioning is a people pleaser’s inadvertent potential for damaging relationships; a person whose beliefs are dictated by what they assume others will approve of is a person who cannot be trusted beyond small talk. A dependent personality type is difficult to place in a relationship, as much of what is shared will likely be questioned as genuine or as conceding to insecurity. Some degree of insecurity is natural and even adaptive, as small shreds of doubt can incite more thorough self-evaluation and perspective taking. Beginning each sentence with a disclaimer and tacking a hollow apology at the end for good measure, though? I’m unsure excessive warnings are effective in placating the listener.

To reiterate, I empathize with people who are insecure about their own thoughts to the point of bastardizing them with trigger warnings and amendments. I wonder if they’re aware of how frequently they apologize for breathing, or if they consider their constant use of conversational clauses and retractions to be anything other than unnecessary. The first few times are usually acceptable and even quite endearing; I certainly can be quoted beginning a thought with statements like, “This may sound a bit off, so bear with me…” or “What I’m about to say may be hard to hear…” or even “I’m afraid to say it but I’m going to say it anyway.” When this becomes excessive, it may sound more like, “Okay so you’re probably going to judge me, and I wouldn’t even blame you if you did, because I probably deserve to be judged, but I did something that you probably can’t understand and I don’t even understand because it maybe was kind of bad, so think what you will of it, it’s fine if you think differently of me, etc. etc.” Why the need to excessively “check-in” with what another person believes of your shared opinion? Has this person experienced so much rejection or abandonment in their life that they feel the need to add fourteen self-deprecating statements to even the most benign of comments?

People genuinely big-hearted are those whose charitable behavior is not regularly announced to an audience. They recognize what they value and what brings purpose and meaning to their lives, a recognition completely detached from what they assume others will like or what others will resonate with. Their emotional needs are fulfilled by careful critique of their values, unlike the “bighearted” “people-pleaser”, who only attain the illusion of value through the controlling of another person’s behavior. Believe it or not, this is common, especially in serious relationships: it’s far less daunting to want to change another person than recognize it’s us who needs changing. To reference another meaningful quote I’ve stumbled upon: “Many will come to find that the only common denominator in our failed relationships… is us.”

If we are the common denominator, this can be great news: it implies that we can change our ways to increase more desirable outcomes in the future! To conclude with actionable strategies, I suggest taking careful stock of what drives your desire to please, along with very deliberate language swaps. In changing the way we refer to our behavior, we deter the risk in adopting people-pleasing as factoring into our personality versus something that can be changed with consistent and diligent effort. Essentializing people pleasing, or claiming that it’s “just who we are”, or it’s “just who we’ve always been”, lets an individual off the hook. Reframing very treatable behavior as threaded into our genetics nearly guarantees that we’ll see minimal reason to put the work in to change it; after all, it’s “a part of us”. It may benefit us to first begin with renaming people-pleasing as something we’re entirely responsible for and capable of changing.  

The Initial Assessment

Ask yourself the following questions…

Who is this for? Is it for me, or for them? Both? Explain.

Am I tying my happiness or self-worth to another person’s performance? How or how not?

What would it mean for me if the other person did not change?

What would it mean for me if I did not change?

What might I be expecting in return from another person through my behavior?

Deliteralizing Language

“I’m a people pleaser” = “I find myself concerned with how other people will react.”

“I know, it’s just because I’m a people pleaser” = “I have a habit of worrying too much about how other people will respond when I say no or disagree with them.”

“I’m just such a people pleaser…” = “I’m more interested in changing another person’s behavior than my own.”

“I’m a people pleaser” = “I’m not willing to tolerate another person’s negative reaction.”

At the end of this exercise, ask yourself: for someone so concerned with pleasing others, do I really believe my behavior is something people would be pleased with?

The Delay

In my work with a separate client from “Mitch”, he struggled to say “no”, mostly because he assumed his girlfriend would stop giving him blowjobs unless he conceded to her point of view. With this said, though, he found himself passively agreeing even with name-calling and completely inaccurate and hurtful statements, something he believed was not worth the foreplay. To practice saying “no”, all we initially did was insert a delay in responding. We called his behavior the “yes habit”, something that became so ingrained that he often skipped over any form of thinking period and defaulted to agreement.

The first phase involved telling him to become aware of when he was about to say “yes”, and to insert a 5-to-10-second delay. After the delay, he chose whatever he wanted to say--- even if that was a statement of agreement or passivity. The goal wasn’t necessarily to never say yes--- it was to draw awareness to how often it occurred, as well as to build tolerance to the discomfort of delay.

After we grew more comfortable with the delay, we began shifting his language from anything other than “yes” or “I agree”. It didn’t have to be a statement of disagreement or even a full-blown rejection; it could have been as simple as “hmm, I don’t know” or as banal as “beats me”. This provided similar benefits as pausing: building tolerance to discomfort is the linchpin in sticking to our guns conversationally, as it will arm us against the tendency to avoid conflict through remaining passive.

Best of luck to readers in their introspective endeavors, and do not forget: worry less about if people like you are not. They’re probably struggling to even like themselves.

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Ah yes, the emotional alibi, the slick cover we employ when we recognize our typical mechanisms have failed us. In understanding how rationalizing escape or justifying avoidance is detrimental to our psyche, we must also see it for what it is: widely useful and entirely innate. As I’ve written in several previous pieces, our ancient brains are biologically incapable of differentiating between the year 2023 and the year 10,000 BC. Bearing this overgeneralization in mind, our physiology can respond the same to a sabretooth tiger as it would, say, a rude text message from someone who maintains a prime position on our last nerve. In the same manner our throats constrict to keep us from choking on saliva while hurdling away from threat, our heart pounds when reading idiotic rhetoric in an effort to warn our brain that trouble is ahead.

Frankly, I’ve read stupidity online that makes a grand mauling by a sabretooth tiger seem erotic. The power in social validation and flagrant attention has a magnetic quality, one in close competition with the allure of escaping discomfort and avoiding pain. Evolutionarily, we are geared toward escapism and find more motivation in evading unfortunate circumstances than contacting something we’ve been yearning for. Yes, our phones have proven to be viciously addicting slot machines because of their genius ability in indulging social rewards through likes and comments. This said, using the same hellscape that is an Instagram comments section, imagine you’ve received 98 comments affirming your creativity, with 2 comments attacking your perspective. Do you find yourself blushing at the 98% positivity rate, or infuriated by the angry fraction? Which carries more weight?

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We create emotional alibis for ourselves thinking we’re only protecting our ego and our wellbeing. Perhaps our anxiety is debilitating to the degree that isolation feels ideal, or our supposed coping skills have failed us so repetitiously that we’ve lost all hope in learning more. We allow our symptoms to clutch onto us with such a tight grip that they overpower us, dictating the decisions we make and even our appraisal of such decisions, convincing us we’re in the right despite feeling miserable. While I do hold empathy for these forms of emotional suffering, as I certainly am no stranger to them, I would be remiss if I didn’t reiterate this point for the umpteenth time: shitty events and circumstances may not be our fault, but they’re our responsibility. It is not the world’s role to accommodate our constantly shifting mood, much like it isn’t our place to demand that others mold to our rigidity simply because we cannot tolerate an existence without such structured “rules”.

I used to believe these issues lived primarily on social media. The more people I connect with, though, the more I’m convinced my theory was incorrect. The media representations of certain groups are definitely overrepresentations curated solely for dramatic effect, but I have to say: the on-edge helplessness is rampant, both behind screens and face-to-face. The conversational awkwardness is actually quite painful, and I find myself chronically surprised as to how difficult communication and emotional regulation is for grown adults across various life domains (i.e., marriage, friendships, work, leisure). As much as it may feel initially cathartic to rage on about these deficits, as I’ve been guilty of hundreds of times in the past, I instead will utilize this piece to outline very basic therapeutic principles that are widely studied as not only effective, but as highly actionable.

BUILDING DISTRESS TOLERANCE

An inability to cope with life’s inevitable stream of steaming shit is a skill not automatically given when we reach adulthood. Unfortunately, resilience isn’t afforded to people once they reach a certain age or once they’ve survived some form of a rite of passage. This could be seen as a negative thing, as being grandfathered in to effectively tolerating difficulty could be the antidote to entitlement. Again, as easy as it may be to rehash the negative qualities of many people we work with or are surrounded with, there’s hope in the realization that resilience can be learned in a similar way typing on a keyboard is learned. While arguably more nuanced and definitely more stressful, building grit becomes the gift that continues to give regardless of the circumstances, similar to how the ability to type only makes life easier, more meaningful, and more enjoyable.

One technique to build distress tolerance is called Urge Surfing. In times of distress, we often cave to our vices and emotional alibis, as they’ve offered powerful senses of relief in the past. Knowing this techniques actually make us more sensitive in the future is an important piece of information in developing better strategies when emotions are running high. To Urge Surf, we must first develop a list of safety behaviors we engage in. Safety behaviors, or emotional crutches, are those things we rely on that we pretend protect us from threat but instead function as escape tactics. You can use a table similar to the one below:

Our safety behaviors hinder us in that they validate fear around specific situations. The dentist pumps our fragile gums with Novocain in anticipation that a procedure would be extremely painful without it; this is an adaptive safety behavior I’m grateful for and don’t consider a hinderance. Unnecessary pain that we’d never otherwise experience outside of a few circumstances isn’t something that necessarily builds strength. What is quite empowering, though, is hopping into my car without my Klonopin and without my phone, saying out loud to pounding heart, “I am not afraid of you.” This belief is further cemented in continuous efforts toward proving the fear wrong.

After creating a list of safety behaviors we use, we must become aware of what occurs mentally and even physically when the urge to engage in such behavior arises. What sorts of situations set these urges off? Are there times when intensity is higher than others? If so, is there a pattern between these higher-intensity moments? Who is around, and what is being demanded of me in these situations? These situations are not only ones we can expose ourselves to gradually and continually, with a similar end goal: to dampen our knee-jerk reactions and prove to ourselves the strength of our coping abilities in the face of distress.

With The Great Urge Surf, we can benefit from delaying and distracting. When the urge arises, how can we distract ourselves from engaging in a safety behavior for a long enough period of time for the intensity in the emotion to drop? This may involve developing a competing response, or a behavior that directly contradicts or is incompatible with the urge itself. For example, if our urge is typically to grab our phone and call someone to talk, our competing response may be a brisk walk or high-intensity, fast burst of exercise that leaves us too out or breath to carry on conversation. If our urge is to take Klonopin when we’re fearful we may have a panic attack, perhaps we leave Klonopin in the trunk of our car and park the car away from our home, so a walk and a good distance is required to obtain it. Make a note of whether or not the intensity of your urges changed as a result of this technique. How did they change? Did your thoughts and emotions change, as well? How or how not?

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE

These multisyllabic words sound hokey. I realize this whenever I say them, which is why I often interchange them with things like resilience or, the more popular, “figure that shit out”. While more nuanced than simply rubbing dirt in it, radical acceptance requires us to almost become confidently passive in our recognition that many things are outside of our control. It relies heavily on some aspects of Buddhism or the straightforward realities of being alive: much of what we experience is outside of our control, and thrashing to dig our heels in often exacerbates our stress around an inability to manage our emotions. Gaining control over aspects of our lives, particularly for those prone to helplessness and hyper-dependence on others, is a critical piece of developing emotional regulation and self-management. In tandem with identifying what we can control, it’s worth it to create another column emphasizing the many things entirely foreign to our controlling efforts: we cannot control the weather, traffic, how other people respond, or what people will do. To build fortitude gradually in the face of uncontrollable circumstances, I suggest the following, easy-to-implement strategies:

1.     Listen to a webinar, a YouTube video, or podcast episode from someone whose views you disagree with. When listening, catch yourself every time you’re tempted to be critical of the person or the material. Make a tally, but do not respond to it. Remain as neutral as you can, and nip judgments in the bud.

2.     When stuck in traffic, instead of aiming to call everyone a motherfucker and honk at those we believe to be responsible for our increasingly sour mood, simply sit. Say nothing. Similar to above, catch yourself when you’re recognizing an urge to yell or ask someone why the hell they’re on the road, but don’t follow through with it.

3.     Read an article with a view you strongly disagree with and try to not only remain neutral, but aim to find common ground. Again, you cannot change the nature of the article, the words written, or even another person’s viewpoint… but you can change how you respond.

To cement these forms of acceptance is a more active form of cognitive restructuring: changing critical or judgmental statements into those more balanced. It can become our knee-jerk reaction to find problems in most everything others do, specifically if we’ve targeted certain individuals as bearing the primary brunt of our emotional wrath. This activity, provided below, forces you to not only provide your initial reaction and urge, but develop a kinder, more nuanced explanation or statement as an alternative. In doing so, we humanize the other person we claim to despise, hopefully creating a habit out of acceptance and patience.

ACTIVE LISTENING

Nonverbal behavior and analyzing body language have become amateur side hobbies for the millennial chick. This includes myself, as my fascination with crime dovetails nicely with how detectives identify who is lying, who is hiding pertinent information, and who sliced their girlfriend to bits in the dilapidated shed in the backyard. Hostage negotiations are similar: we’re enthralled with the idea of negotiating with a terrorist and hopefully guiding them into a more peaceful resolve. As it relates to real life, many of us will unfortunately never find ourselves in these situations, but only benign renditions of them.

Any hostage negotiator will inform you that the most crucial aspect of hostage negotiation is empathic and active listening. We often expect that there’s a specific art to negotiating and managing conversation with someone like Osama Bin Laden, and there certainly is… but it’s not the magic formula we may expect. There’s a heavy emphasis on building connection with an individual even if we find them repugnant, as well as demonstrating our listening abilities by paraphrasing their words in the most charitable way. For example, should we be sitting across from a terrorist at a picnic table, it may not be in our best interest to respond to most every statement with, “So what you’re saying is you’re a terrorist, and you’re a terrible person, and what makes you think you deserve anything at all because of how cruel you are?” This is a form of active destructive listening: we not only deliberately derail a conversation with our verbal behavior, but we are motivated to dismiss and even denigrate our conversational partner. This, while it may feel like a “mic-drop-moment” worthy of virality on social media, closes collaboration and guarantees close-mindedness.

Active Constructive Responding, or ACR, involves asking thoughtful follow-up questions as well as sharing the excitement of the individual speaking. Used primarily in reference to someone sharing positive aspects of themselves or their lives, it’s a wildly effective technique in letting others know we’re available to listen and we’re also relishing in their joy. Using the table below, let’s compare the different types of conversational styles and how they’re either hijacking connection or building it.

It's worth it, then, to identify what type of responding you engage in and modify your behavior appropriately. It’s quite easy to alter our behavior to something more adaptive when we’re engaging with people we know or with people we like. The real challenge becomes that of applying these same tactics to individuals we’ve clashed with previously, or to individuals endorsing ideas we cannot possibly imagining ourselves finding common ground with. Despite our standing on various issues, whether they’re related to politics, work, or sports, it is both the speaker and the listener’s responsibility to hold the other person in the highest regard. We can disagree with someone’s ideas while respecting them, and we can respect a person’s ideas if we dislike their character.

MOST GENEROUS INTERPRETATION (MGI)

MGI is analogous to the benefit of the doubt. We’ve largely lost the ability to not only allow people to save face, but to assume they had the best intention despite hurt feelings or offense. Conditioned into hyper-alertness because of, perhaps, our own inability to tolerate disappointment or discomfort, we are given a litany of reasons as to why others are the problem and we are the ones preserved as vulnerable victims. Not only does this sort of resentment destroy relationships and shut down any communicative efforts, it lessens our confidence in managing issues and only places us in greater need of outside events to regulate our emotions. Emotions requiring others behaving in a certain manner? This is narcissism to a T. While this isn’t to say we cannot assert our needs, as this is equally vital to our social relationships, it’s important to recognize that our most polite, goodhearted efforts can still be met with rejection.

This said, assume the best. When you’re tempted to assume a specific statement was geared towards you with the hope of making you angry, what other alternatives can you come up with that may better explain the issue? A spouse forgetting to text you at an agreed-upon time doesn’t have to mean they’ve devised a calculated plan to passive-aggressively test your patience only to prove your emotional outbursts: it could simply mean they got caught up during the day and forgot. It’s arguably more difficult to defend others, especially if we’ve contacted negative consequences with these others in the past. But I challenge you to promote tolerance and open mindedness by demonstrating it yourself.

If we find ourselves chronically irritated by how sensitive people are, it’s worth analyzing: are we the problem?

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A biblical verse may sound hypocritical coming from me, as I’ve written quite frequently about how I am a half-ass Atheist. Unsure of where I stand in my relation to any sort of God or religion, my husband prefers to categorize my uncertainty as “agnostic”: a person who simply claims neither faith nor belief in God. Admittedly, I’ve utilized the phrase “Goddamnit” more times than I can count or am proud to confess, despite simultaneously believing God is a questionable entity. Regardless of my religiosity or lack thereof, the phrase “Be in the world, but not of it” resonates with the heart of this piece, a piece I’ve written and deleted over five different times in the past month. When I asked my Jehovah’s-Witness-Dropout-Husband the meaning of the phrase, he described it quite eloquently: that it essentially aligns with John 2:15-17, stating that people who inhabit Earth should not indulge their carnal tendencies to behave like degenerates. We must live amongst our temptations while not feeding them.

A Digital Rumspringa

 I’m certain many readers have binged the show Breaking Amish, in which members of an Amish community are granted their version of a Hail Merry: the “Rumspringa”. Rumspringa is a Pennsylvania-German tradition literally translating to, “running around”. It is a time in which Amish youth are given permission to separate themselves from their community to live amongst “The English” in “The World”. They get to experience modern technology, spend money on materialistic-but-unnecessary things, and essentially contact an exclusive brand of freedom. They’re no longer bound by the rigid and strict guidelines of their parents or of their Amish communities and, because the Rumspringa occurs before baptism, they’re technically not under any church or religious authority to behave any differently than a college kid on their first Spring Break.

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Interestingly, after the Rumspringa, many youth do not wander away from their family to officiate their liberated life in modern-day America. Between 85-90% ultimately choose to rejoin their families and their associated church. The Amish live lives far simpler than ours and therefore experience our trivial stresses at far lesser rates. With this, it’s understandable, and even expected, that young adults may consider their close ties within their church to be more valuable than digital ties on social media. While not all relationships are borne of comment sections and incessant reposting of banal infographics, much of America’s “conversation” has been distilled down to that of digital formats, making for in-person communication that is painfully awkward, often times dull and superficial, and wildly immature considering the ages of the adults speaking.

In my own departure from social media, which I still have yet to decide is permanent or not, I’d like to think I’m on my own digital Rumspringa. Not only a detoxifying distance, but a hiatus characterized by self-experimentation versus excessive rumination about myself, my problems, and everything I despise about being on Instagram. I’ve gladly tumbled down that rabbit hole in previous months, and, I could advise you clinically: it makes anger worse, it makes life miserable, and it poisons relationships. Further, much of this behavior, that is, unreasonably blubbering on about the thousands of ways we’ve been wronged, is what comprises much of the “self-care movement”.

The Self-Obsession Movement

One of the most counterintuitive aspects of the “self-care” movement is its excessive focus on, yes, the self. While introspection is important in understanding our deficits, as doing so provides a framework for improving upon them to reach self-appointed goals, excessively reflecting inward is a habit symptomatic of anxious and depressed people. The anxious individual, for example, will engage in what clinical psychologists refer to as “rumination”: the repetitive, almost ritualistic dwelling on negative feelings and distressing thoughts. Any average joe with routine stress resulting from our harrowing existence as godforsaken humans will readily contest that negative thinking is inevitable. We’re all not only flagrant hypocrites, but we’re wired to arrange elaborate pity parties for ourselves when the going gets tough. This being said, there’s a liberating nature to venting, specifically if we co-vent with someone who shares our fury equally. While initially cathartic, venting actually tends to have an adverse effect; that is, it creates a co-ruminative effect, where both individuals’ complaining becomes circular, they report even greater depressive, anxious, or angry moods, and they are left miserable without any action toward a solution.

Our tendency to dodge problems in favor of whining about them is especially apparent in times of moderate to severe distress. Our go-to mechanisms fail us, and we can easily revert to more childlike type of behavior (i.e., whining, “woe is me”, lashing out). With this, it’s perfectly acceptable, and even expected, that humans will find themselves in ruts of negativity, deriving more fleeting joy and even therapeutic excitement from complaining versus taking action.

It's when we admire our problems, though, that our thinking may meet the criteria for Pathological Complainer Syndrome or, as I like to phrase it, “Being A Little Bitch Baby”. I say this with a saccharine tone and snarky grin, as I’ve taken immense joy in inhabiting the Bitch Baby role for far too long and with far too much frequency in my 32 years of living. One of the most valuable skills we can teach from young ages is that of tolerating adverse decisions and outcomes, and learning how to deal with not getting our way despite frustration. There’s a quote stated by someone whose name escapes me, but it goes something like, “It is a parent’s job to frustrate their children daily”. Because I know the modern day tendency is to contort these types of quotes into insidious statements of child abuse, I will clarify the underlying meaning.

Exposure to endless frustration and minimal reinforcement is a surefire means of developing learned helplessness, or the belief that an individual has no control over their lives. Frustration intermittently spread throughout a child or an adult’s day, though, gives them an emotional and intellectual immunity to future conflict. It’s liberating to be challenged on your beliefs, even despite the initial sting of feeling wronged or even unjustly treated. To be frank, a bit of injustice is not necessarily a problem to be eliminated, as doing so would create a pathetic utopia where people protest words that “harm” them and refuse to walk into settings where they’re not offered a safe space. Sound familiar?

Instead of “self-help”, humans may indulge their innate need for connectedness by adopting “other-help”. In doing so, we forcefully avert our focus from our own trivial concerns and instead fix our attention toward bringing meaning and purpose to a community of others. This can be done, firstly, by recognizing our own self-perceived tragedies are simply one of many, and our distress is not as special, nor as psychologically complicated, as Instagram informs us it is. While a diagnosis can offer a relief, of sorts, as it brings clarity to prolonged suffering, it has also become a trophy-like crutch that we use when our coping abilities reach their limit. This is only further fortified through social media platforms, where personality disorders become professional, paying careers.

Perhaps to the dismay of the online narcissist, we are capable of choosing our attitude and approach to life’s guaranteed problems. I used to believe gratitude exercises and even positive psychology were far too fluffy and therefore meaningless. In my maturity, I’ve found the reframing and shifting of focus from constant problem-talk to that of thriving has been invaluable to my overall sanity. It was actually through changing my perspective and my overall attitude toward things I believed I loathed that inspired my bouncy departure from social media. Instagram poisoned my conscience, turning me into a digital archaeologist on a vicious hunt for even a pebble of information worthy of a Substack piece or a podcast episode. This is not only an embarrassing confession, but an eye-opening reminder as to how quickly and how clumsily I tumbled from both my values and what I find to be truly important. I fully understand the sadness that comes with grieving the person you used to be, or grieving the person that did things you now cannot because of age, health concerns, or circumstances. I’ve also been guilty of ruminating the loss in a similar, repetitive manner that is considered pathological. Still unsure of why I allowed myself to be taken in and what I believed my mission was, I can proudly contest that distancing myself from my own thinking has provided a sense of vitality I believe is only afforded in retrospect and experience.

“Just accept that you’re a crazy, fucked up person, and life gets better! I have, and I’m great!”-Dad

Recognize the Difference Between Reflecting and Rumination

With plenty of overlap between behaviors, rumination and self-reflection are entirely different in both their appearance and their intention. Rumination, as mentioned throughout this piece, is the repetitive rehashing of our problems and the negative impact they’ve had on our psyche. Self-reflection, while it does come to acknowledge and even accept negativity, is solution-focused. It aims to analyze thoughts, feelings, and their influence on behavior, making for an internal blueprint of how our weaknesses may hinder our progress and a map for gaining forward, positive momentum. Examples of self-reflection include feedback seeking, which is as simple as asking colleagues or peers for input on our behavior or our performance. This is different from co-ruminating, in which the complaining Negative Nancy seeks out others to further gratify their need to obsess over negativity. The contagious aspect of rumination is just that: an individual who infects an interaction with ruminative spiraling will influence a generally positive person to also focus on more negative experiences in future conversations. Although it is yet another social contagion quite similar to “wokeness” or the other retrogressive movements we’ve witnessed, we have the authority to change our approach.

HERE ARE WAYS TO DITCH THE SELF-OBSESSION… AND START THE SELF-DETACHMENT:

1.     AUTONOMY. Seek to find areas of your life where you can make your own choices, independent of social influence. For the person who claims they do not have any autonomy: you do. You just have to be willing to carve it out and look for it. Have you considered that perhaps you have it, but you’re not ready to accept it?

2.     CONNECTEDNESS. Interact with colleagues, family, co-workers, mentors, students, or strangers to gain a perspective that you haven’t heard before. It’s important to focus on others and “giving back” when you’re in a negative spiral of self-loathing.

3.     COMPETENCE. Identify activities that allow you to achieve a sense of mastery, purpose, and meaning. Make a list of pleasurable activities versus those you’d consider yourself having expertise in. Schedule both throughout your week, specifically focusing on the “Mastery” category.

4.     RIGID RULES & COMPENSATORY BEHAVIOR. Create two columns. In the first, write down, “RIGID RULES”. This column looks at unrealistic expectations or demands you’ve placed on yourself or other people. In the second column, write “COMPENSATORY BEHAVIOR”, or the things you do in response to breaking of rigid rules.

5.     BEHAVIORAL ACTIVATION. Our thoughts and feelings influence our behavior. Instead of allowing negative thoughts to influence us, try behaving in ways directly opposite to what your typical response may be. For example, if you are infuriated by something a colleague said, your typical response may be a passive-aggressive text. In behavioral activation, your response may be a compliment, a solution-focused question, or simply letting the comment go. You are what you do.

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The adult version of the main character in The Giving Tree seems to fall into the latter category. There will unfortunately always be people like this who inhabit our lives, many of whom we are forced to associate with in some capacity (i.e., professional relationships, neighbors, or forced acquaintanceship). If I’m being perfectly honest, the characterization of the young boy in the book is the reason why I get minimal joy out of working with children with autism. Now, before my hypersensitive internet stalkers deliberately knot their undies into a bunch with this statement, I don’t necessarily believe that autistic children possess calculated selfishness. They do, though, show a general disinterest in other people; this is one of the hallmark symptoms which proves autism to be such an isolating disorder. Not only did I never have any intention of working with children, as I’ve lived most of my life finding them insufferably annoying, any profession working with disabled people failed to pique even my lowest levels of interest.  

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My background is in Clinical Psychology, a discipline I had decided upon following my first hospitalization with my eating disorder. Idealistically blind to how the system is only built to keep people ill, I was convinced my personal experience with battling anorexia, in tandem with a sharp clinical eye, would help swaths of starved women craving both hunger and purpose. My interests would then expand into any and all forms of compulsive behavior disorders, from substance abuse to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to treating decades-old phobias. It should come as minimal surprise, then, that I find working with nonverbal children to be unfulfilling and, frankly, painfully boring. The small shred of motivation I’d garner for this population would come only in the recognition that education systems and clinics are steep in ideology, and I saw room for possible change. Administrators seem determined, whether deliberately or subconsciously, to craft children into fearful, resentful, anxious, and highly dependent beings incapable of tolerating life’s inconveniences; Greg Lukianoff and Johnathan Haidt, in The Coddling of the American Mind, consider modern education to be a breeding ground for teaching habits of anxious and depressed people. I tend to agree. Perhaps this was my reason for finding this sort of school-based work repugnant; only few seemed to wholeheartedly believe these kids would become of anything other than the boy in The Giving Tree.

I’ve written frequently about not wanting children, ever. The reasons remain widely unknown to me, but I’m certain they are rooted in deeper explanations than just that of a mild irritation with children’s behavior. Despite my conscious awareness that I’m simply uninterested in being a mother, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my entertainment with typically developing kids in microscopic doses. Although I frequently have to pretend to find babies cute, as I legitimately look at pictures of squirmy little bags of water and feel a whole lot of vapid nothingness, my innate, feminine brain configuration appreciates their innocence and relentless desire to be of service. So naturally innocent with a nascent desire to help, these innocuous creatures are capable of teaching life’s most valuable lessons--- despite an utter misunderstanding of the meaning of life and minimal experience with it. Their wide-eyed, virginal kindness is as endearing as it is depressing; endearing in the sense that they’re completely untainted by life’s experiences and residual troubles, depressing because such chastity can never be “re-learned” as an adult.

As Bob Seger sings it best, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”

I’ve consulted with elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, public and private, therapeutic and charter. They’ve all equally succumbed to the intellectual drainage that is America’s education system, particularly in the last 2-3 years. This being said, those schools with a bent for creativity and mastering of critical life skills were those who could afford to teach in unconventional, “free range” manners, such as the Montessori method. The Montessori school I collaborated with was by far my favorite setting, which may be surprising, to some, considering the very young ages of their teeniest members. Unlike my brief run-in with the autistic preschooler, these children craved reciprocal action. Their warm and buzzing little bodies, exuding what felt like a visible halo of giggling warmth, reminded me of my own childhood, a simpler time when my brother and I were limitless in our capacity for joy. We’d only later come to embrace the sadness that life experience brings, a peculiar mourning for the life we once lived as free-thinking youngsters devoid of inevitable guilt and shame. It brings with it a grim understanding that things will never be this simple, that unbridled happiness completely detached from responsibility or resentment is only possible in spurts, in intervals. Such is life. Anyway, I digress.

Because my extraverted personality and conversational quirks have carried through most miserable aspects of my life, my ability to connect with these little people, untamed in their perceptions, was as eye-opening as it was jarring. When I began working with autistic children, I absolutely hated it. To be frank, I don’t feel much differently as of writing this piece, despite the popular narrative relating to a “higher calling” or “desire to help the kiddos”. Before moving into the heart of this piece, I have a confession to make: I hate the word “kiddo”. I have never muttered it in my life, as it gives me a sensation of my teeth itching along with a safety pin being dragged across a stinging sunburn. Once again, I’ve digressed into a meaningless dispute that has minimal importance beyond slight amusement. To reiterate, though, my background is in clinical psychology, with treatment relying almost entirely on my clients verbally recounting their experiences. A robust language ability, then, is required for my specific approach to therapy to be even remotely successful. This affinity for deep and profound conversation is, as many in the field know, mostly deficient in autistic clients. “Kiddos”, by proxy, are unequipped to both initiate and sustain conversations relating to what they’ve learned from their most difficult circumstances; this skill is even more stunted for those with autism and related disorders.

This incongruence between my interests, my education, and the clients I was forced to work with would conjure up a scalding resentment I still struggle to describe. The amount of money I’d paid, and the voluntary student loan debt I’d cried uncle to, resulted in THIS? Being instructed to teach children how to do things that are not at all my job? I couldn’t understand (and still don’t understand or accept) why Masters-educated clinicians are tasked with teaching skills not only detached from the science of human behavior, but that which are the responsibility of a child’s parents. For example, it has become common to teach children how to use the bathroom, as well as change their diapers throughout the day if need be. Seriously? In what world does this seem like it could be of any long-term benefit? Not only does it morph a therapeutic relationship into that of a parent and a child, it allows parents to successfully evade what may arguably be the most tedious of parenting tasks. In all honesty, it is unacceptable for a child over the age of four to not be successfully potty trained. But Kayla, their sensory needs are different and they feel discomfort more intensely than regular kids! Yes, I tend to agree that these pose unique barriers to a lesson most would consider fairly benign. This has become the excuse, though, and accepting this completely-avoidable trap has reinforced perpetual laziness. Ahhh yes, another rabbit hole better suited for another day.

My judgmental awe of what our field was reduced down to was further pronounced by the clients I was given in a traditional clinic setting. The vast majority of my clients would fall into the moderate to severe autism range, making for two people highly uncomfortable around each other but unable to admit to it. Or, frankly, unafforded the power to do anything about it except concede to our raging chagrin. In addition, their strange mannerisms and utter absence of self-awareness made me, dare I say, cringe. I am grossed out easily, a deep-seated belief I’ve stated out loud only to be met with clinicians rightfully cackling and sneering, “Good luck with this career choice, then!”. Well, fuck me. Boogers, spit, messy eaters, drool, urine, feces, vomit, sticky hands--- they induce a similar feeling to that of saying the word “kiddo”, but at a greater intensity. The kids’ lingering aromas, and the sickening sights witnessed in school cafeterias and bathrooms, haunted me for days; I see them in my food, in my toothbrush, in my showerhead. Everything becomes an acid-trip-gone-awry, where my brain’s associative properties malfunction and begin to connect every conscious moment into a memory of how gross children are. I vividly remember my first school position working with children with severe autism; I lost ten pounds in 2 weeks because I couldn’t eat anything after what I’d witnessed. Maybe they felt the same about me.

Perhaps the purpose in this piece is to help practitioners recognize that their lack of interest in autism or children or severe disabilities means nothing about their character. Your good faith and your values are entirely separate from your clinical passions, and it’s imperative this be accepted should you stand your ground against highly sensitive, trolling idiots. While I roll my eyes and recoil at the fact that this even needs to be stated, you can care deeply about the wellbeing of another person and still find their behaviors repugnant. A disinterest or hatred of working with particular groups also does not reflect a defective, diseased part of you that requires purification. Because, let’s turn the tables: would a behavior analyst, who has only ever worked with nonverbal preschoolers, be willing, capable, or thrilled to work with a heroin addict in detox? Likely not. We’re all entitled to our interests and our dislikes, and autistic children are not exempt from falling into the latter category. Sure, we may not “dislike” them, perse, but we can certainly dislike what the work entails.

There are plenty of good-hearted people whose primary fixes are these sorts of children, along with those who pride themselves on their ability to tolerate things most normal people would find vile. I remember Greg Hanley recounting a story of a client vomiting into a fan, causing a ricochet of chunks to lurch directly into his mouth. He was able to find humor in it and continue about his career serving such profoundly impaired people, likely reaping tremendous emotional and financial profit. Me? Fuck no. I’d prefer to make half the money landscaping than ever be in a situation like Greg’s. In my ceaseless bellyaching and recoiling of the experience, I’d ostensibly be met by other clinicians passive aggressively stating, “Well, this is what you signed up for.”  

This is misleading and flat-out inaccurate. No, a degree that was once an experimental branch of psychology does not “sign one up” for playing Mom. Such thinking reminds me of conversations I’ve heard behavior analysts have with others that I don’t particularly agree with in terms of the logic employed. Some behavior analysts contest that individuals unwilling to work on toilet training with autistic children, or copy-and-pasting the same old behavior plans for the highly aggressive autistic child with zero language, “shouldn’t be clinicians at all”. I wholeheartedly disagree. This sentiment operates on a faulty premise in that it assumes all budding professionals who enter the field do so for identical reasons. It concludes that we are all motivated by the same desires, that we all hope to work with the same types of cases, and that we’ll all correspondingly reap the same sense of reward. Remember earlier on, with the example of The Giving Tree, in which I mentioned children are inherently selfish because of their emotional development? In terms of childhood and adolescent development, this thinking, that is, that any analyst uninterested in children is not an analyst at all, would be considered logic along the maturity level of a two-year-old. It is highly egocentric and fails to account for others’ wills, others’ perspectives, and others’ experiences. It’s acceptable when children behave this way; it’s terrifying when clinicians follow suit.

Yes, I do believe practitioners are compelled to “pay their dues”, which may take the form of working with populations they dislike or being tasked with addressing skillsets they’ve historically struggled with. This conveniently comes with the recognition that, if the only jobs available are those serving autistic children, the hopeful practitioner may need to buck up and learn to make it tolerable should they hope to become licensed. It’s worth mentioning, though, that trench work with autistic kids, like wiping their ass when they’re 12 and spoon-feeding them when they’re 20, doesn’t necessarily imply you’re clinically prepared to be an efficient clinician. Again, we’ve stumbled upon yet another insufficient idea, something increasingly common amongst practitioners. The arbitrary rule stating, “You’re not a real clinician unless you’ve wiped an ass” seems to assume that the more difficult and disgusting the task, the smarter a therapist becomes. Obviously, this is false. Doing things we never thought we could can be rewarding, as well as teach invaluable lessons as to our resiliency and perseverance. This also being said, using the rules of this statement, should we begin killing and eating our own livestock, without any seasoning or so much as a quick flash in a pan? You know, for learning purposes? Because more is better, and better is also sickening? It’s silly and contributes zero to one’s clinical propensity. In retrospect, my forceful submission in consulting with school after school, chock-full of severely impaired kids, built a side of my character I’ve only recently come to enjoy. This doesn’t automatically occur for everyone, though. It often doesn’t occur at all. And you know what? That’s okay. You’re not a Nazi, a eugenicist, or a child abuser. You’re a person with your own self-proclaimed interests.

To reiterate, my perception of children is that of being both inspiring and intolerable. In my work with kids, my thinking often spirals into that of wondering how me, a woman, could be so uninterested in being a mother. Hints of me have sometimes wanted to want kids, but the true, unfettered longing never came. It’s more likely my feminine twinges were gas or withdrawal symptoms from weaning off of Klonopin.

The Giving Tree concludes with the boy-turned adult taking the tree’s apples and selling them, along with removing its branches to build a home and hacking her trunk to construct a boat and literally sail away into the sunset. What an asshole. Ultimately, the tree has nothing left to give and is reduced down to a lonely stump, both physically subverted and emotionally naked.

In working with autistic children, I feel similarly to the tree. While I don’t necessarily believe that these children are manipulative and selfish in the same manner as the main character in the story, their disability often hinders any ability to develop rich, reciprocal relationships with their peers or their family. This is especially pronounced in those with severe to profound impairments. Their parents can positively inform most any idealistic practitioner who believes otherwise: their child’s autism is not a strength, a superpower, or a gift. Some readers have deduced (what I believe to be correctly) that The Giving Tree encourages parents to give until it pains them, until their physicality and spirituality aches. That the ultimate proof of unconditional love is to have nothing left to give and no remaining sense of self. This is bullshit and cruel. It may be one of the litany of reasons why parents of severely disabled kids are more anxious, more depressed, and more isolated than parents of typically developing children; 50% of mothers reported elevated levels of depressive symptoms, compared to 6%-13% of mothers of typical children. What about fathers? The data, unsurprisingly, is sparse and unclear.

Further, the poor education given to those in the field of behavior analysis leaves practitioners intellectually defenseless in the face of distraught families. We become animus-possessed by graphing and instructing parents to take data on their own children, believing our only shot at being of service is to rely solely on meaningless dots. While it’s imperative to measure our own behavior and encourage others to do the same should they choose to commit to change, we must also accept that there is no metric to account for the entirety of the human experience. Shoving an excel sheet into the hands of a crying and lonely mother? That should be reportable to the board. Rattling on about behavioral jargon to a family gripped by the wrath of their disabled, adult son they’re terrified of? Equally cruel. I don’t mean to sound as if these methods of education or therapy are intentionally dismissive, as I understand this is how many are taught to compose themselves with clients. But these are human beings, people who feel things, and are desperate for a connection that doesn’t involve talk of their child’s endless complexities and needs.

Maybe we’ve inadvertently become the boy in The Giving Tree. So reliant on comfort and correctness but also arrogant in our own conceptions of meaning or purpose. I don’t believe we’re eternally fucked, but I also am not optimistic we’re motivating any form of long-term change with our current cohort of practitioners. All of this to say, many therapeutic fields relying on insurance billing as their primary source of income are, sadly, a lost cause. This is further compounded by individuals who “motivate” others by outlining everything a behavior analytic license can do, yet proceed to berate people should they not work with autistic children. Perhaps these biased clinicians are those who are due for some self-reflection and time spent engaging in hobbies, as an emotionally driven clinician is a dangerous one.

You can be compassionate, kind, and good-hearted… and still find children annoying as all shit.

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1.     Please, keep the letters coming! If you want to be a part of our pen pal club, in which we write holiday letters to those in group homes and residential treatment centers, email me at theangrybehavioranalyst@gmail.com. The more the merrier! Ideally, this can continue throughout the entire year. No holidays necessary.

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2.     If you work with children or are a parent, we’d love to hear your experience in testing the Triple 20: for 20 minutes, at a distance of at least 20 feet, we suggest the adult engage in 20 minutes of silence. Kids need boredom and time to themselves to figure out how to use their time, free of parents/therapists scheduling every moment to “stimulate” them. Kids don’t need any more stimulation.

3.     Tell us all of the wild things you’ve spent money on in an effort to entertain your kids or your clients, only to find they were completely uninterested in it. We’d love to connect and share your pain. Email us using the email above!

The movie WALL-E could not be more eerily similar to how we operate currently, specifically in its opening scenes depicting filth hanging in the air and a sickening landscape strewn with waste. With a bouncy tune singing lyrics of adventure as a backdrop, the tongue-and-cheek premise appears to be that of our beloved earth suffering yet another incidence of grotesque human consumerism and selfishness. This is made evident in how we treat our planet and perversely control our impulses. The music then morphs into haunting echoes, leaving cute-as-a-button robot WALL-E strolling through an abandoned junkyard only to stumble upon the one living thing trash-laden earth has managed to preserve: a cockroach.

The screen then pans to overweight and likely diabetic adults floating around in bubbles of their own contamination. Because of an existence requiring minimal movement, or lifting so much as a sausage finger, the adults in the film seem intentionally portrayed as morbidly obese but also unbelievably stupid and selfish. Audiences can assume, then, that living in the 29th century (i.e., floating-bubble-utopia) is the projected consequence of excessive consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect. This utopian dream, the delusion that earthlings in the film believe to be a planet, serves only the purpose of housing people consumed entirely by their own cravings and avoidance of life’s discomfort, creating an environment akin to our own in the 21st century. With physicality becoming less of a requirement for survival and free thought being not only ignored, but frequently punished, Americans have degenerated into diabetic slobs, largely incapable of moving or thinking, both unwilling and unequipped to handle even the most minor of tasks. In a recent statistic through cms.gov, our healthcare costs in 2022 alone were enough to wipe out the entire country’s student loan debt. We are, by a long shot, the highest spending country worldwide when it comes to healthcare. And, alas, still the sickest.

Almost depressing with the film’s similarity to modern day is the conception of robots as maids to lazy grownups. These clunky cyborgs are forever indebted to the slobs’ every beck and call, nearly identical to Americans requiring iPhones and devices for what should be routine responsibilities. Incapable of completing their day-to-day without the soothing comfort of glowing rectangles of various sizes and functions, we have grown dependent on technology while believing we’re advancing. I should have prefaced this by saying: technological and medicinal advances are undeniable, offering what many would consider to be life-changing services. It is because of these services we in the first-world have the ability to reach wider swaths of individuals in need. For reasons likely related to my career choice and interests, I can’t help but compare WALL-E’s plot to the storyline many of our clients with disabilities resonate with. Treated more like convenience chains with endless supplies of revenue, they’ve become no different than the sluggish population in WALL-E: slaves to the shallow whims and insatiable thirst of larger systems. These larger systems house clinicians who, unknowingly, are being taught only to play into the grubby hands of those who don’t see people as people, but as dollar signs and social currency tags. One child receiving Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for 30 hours a week, for example, makes an agency a cool six figures for what closely resembles babysitting.

The elites in the film, the ones drowning in a petri dish of their own plump sludge, generally seem happy, relaxed, and engaged. Yes, I said it: good ‘ole “HRE”. The notion of “happy, relaxed, and engaged” as a universal truth or social metric implies that learning cannot and should not take place unless the learner reaches their quota for happiness, relaxation, and engagement. This quota is apparently only determined by the adult, who in turn must believe they’re the arbiter of human contentment. Not only is this a wildly privileged view to take, as only the Western white parent and/or practitioner would find any of these concepts to be a priority, but it flies in the face of decades of research demonstrating our innate need for challenge and exploration. A child perfectly content and deliberately shielded from “heightened emotions”, the premise much of which of HRE rests on, will find themselves in similar destitution to the degenerates in Wall-E: buoyant in a pool of their own lethargy, with a sheer misconstruction of what true purpose is. To illustrate the potentially dangerous outcomes of teaching such a concept as HRE, we turn to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its evidence-based treatment. Because I’ve spoken about this so frequently, I’ll simply recap my multiple pieces in short: when we avoid a feared stimulus, the feared stimulus becomes more powerful as we become more sensitive. When we inevitably face our fears, then, we are shaped to crumble. Hammering people to be happy and relaxed, then, by virtue of dodging difficulty and anything that could lead to a feeling above mild irritation, is guaranteeing a lifetime of avoidant behavior. This keeps people miserable and gradually victimized by their own faulty rules, teaching zero skills other than, “what doesn’t kill me makes me weaker”.

Further, an individual’s purpose, operating off of HRE’s logic, becomes only that of communicating with others when something is needed or wanted. While communicating needs is a vital skill in various personal and professional contexts, the ability to do so does not only serve the purpose of getting what we want. This is about as shallow and infantile a perception as the baby who only understands human communication as screaming when they’re due for another jaunt at the titty bar. Communication, along with contacting our needs, is what builds communities, offers rich sharing of nostalgic memories, and shapes our perceptions of ourselves in a broader context. It offers language for us to define ourselves and our purpose and if our current behavior is aligned with our internal morals and guiding principles. It contours conversations into those of deep connection and indescribable belonging, a need arguably as important as food, water, and shelter. While I can understand a heightened need for comfort and belonging in times of particular distress, like the effects of pandemic lockdowns, I do contest that we continue to reteach ourselves basic social skills following a hefty 2-year period of makeshift interaction. Lastly, communication is crucial should we learn to recognize and express our emotions. Yes, those pesky little mental disturbances largely responsible for our changes in mood and overall quality of life… those are our responsibility and nobody else’s.

Prioritizing feelings, though, which HRE essentially is a conglomerate of, is broadly useless. Not to mention it has been studied for decades as being conducive to stunted mental health, towering anxiety, and consistent splintering in one’s ability to self-regulate. I’ll demonstrate through use of a treatment example for people with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). While introspection and challenging of faulty beliefs is paramount in therapeutic approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), excessive rumination of our feelings only tends to heighten current suffering. When we admire our symptoms as problems that cannot be fixed or, worse yet, essentialize them as a fundamental part of who we are, we see minimal hope or incentive to change our thinking and behavior. The depressed individual who centers entire conversations around their depressive symptoms, unfortunate circumstances, and chronically negative mood will be more apt to focus on these traits in future periods of distress, rather than opting for therapeutic intervention or solutions. Such intrusive thoughts, which can otherwise be categorized as “overthinking”, tend to become their own self-fulfilling prophecies; a person hellbent on thinking of themselves as failures unworthy of love will behave in ways that serve this albeit destructive illusion; they will avoid events in fear of failure, they will sabotage current relationships in anticipation of being hurt, and will generally be quite unpleasant to spend any time with.

If we view the prioritization of HRE as possessing similar qualities to those of anxious and depressed people, we see a reverse CBT, of sorts. Instead of challenging faulty thinking, we embrace it; after all, anything that occurs outside of happiness, relaxation, and engagement is to be avoided for fear of “precursor behaviors”. What does this teach, exactly? This is, in essence, my point: HRE is not for the client, but to serve a “televisable” purpose of contrived utopia, similar to corporate honchos in WALL-E capitalizing on our propensity for laziness. It is for practitioners’ social benefit, as there are few professional decisions easier than those of printing an HRE sticker for your laptop and immediately being granted access to a community of “compassionate thinkers” who are “trauma-informed”.

And, unfortunately, these practitioners will know next to nothing as it relates to others because their time is largely spent focusing inward. Further, the pushing of HRE-ALL-DAY robs children and adults of the opportunity to experience any form of uncomfortable effort. This kind of uncomfortable effort, the kind we only come to appreciate in retrospect, may be considered “too triggering” for those aligned with HRE, as any “precursor” sign of distress is apparently to be immediately reinforced by means of allowing avoidance. Yes, it is imperative we allow choice and even escape depending on the circumstances. But what occurs when escape is not possible, and we are forced to comply with a macabre series of demands we find repugnant, useless, or *gasp* triggering? HRE is known for taking the painfully “slow” route to tolerance training, spending upwards of 2 months for some children just to teach them to respond to the word “no”. While certain cases certainly call for such painstaking pace, these are skills that could likely be taught in a fraction of the time should practitioners focus more on progress versus their own feelings. Ahhh, feelings… there’s that word again. Are we catching my drift, yet?

If not, let me sum this up as succinctly as possible. Clinicians who have been taught to believe that comfort is of utmost importance will inadvertently prioritize their own comfort over all else. This is evident in mainly all of HRE application; the clinician who is fearful of a child’s negative reaction will arrange the environment so as not to trigger so much as a whine, engineering a sanitized world identical to WALL-E’s utopia; its population is sluggish, fragile, devoid of motivation or meaning, and whose greatest thrills come from a vibrant rectangle attached to their hand. Sound familiar, yet?

There is an important step forward, though, despite us being in a cesspool of our own whining and viscous decadence. It is the concept that tribes in the Yucatan refer to as “acomedido”, or the joy that comes with helping other people voluntarily and for our own moral reasons. Acomedido teaches many of the skills child therapists aim to teach, but does so in a truly natural environment that sees “giving back” as the thread holding together a community’s fabric. Expensive toys and stimulating environments, decorated floor to ceiling in “teachable moments”, are replaced with opportunities for children to cook, scavenge their own food, assist their parents after a long day’s work, and create their own magic in extensive periods of boredom. Parents are not tasked with being project or entertainment coordinators, but are instead relied upon to teach functional skills that shape children into contributing members of family and society. Yes, Mom and Dad, allow this to serve as your hall pass; scheduling endless activities at museums and carnivals and therapies is unnecessary.

When we teach the beauty in altruism, and to help individuals understand themselves amongst a greater community, we offer the ultimate, “generalizable”, teachable moment: that of finding greater joy in service than in self-indulgence. We adopt perspective-taking, but not through silly role-plays and use of pseudo-functional communication that rarely occurs in real-life situations. Instead of lining rooms with number games and artificial stimulation, families in the Yucatan help children learn to recognize the needs of others. They direct their attention towards an adult visibly exhausted from the day’s work, or they instruct an elder sibling to console a hurt child. Children eagerly stand by, watching with eyes wide as Mom and Dad go about their typical day, versus Mom and Dad attending activities they otherwise wouldn’t have gone to if not for having children. Instead of arranging life and schedules around children, these families arrange their children around their way of life. In doing so, they leverage their child’s interests and natural motivations, in tandem with refining a keen sense of awareness of the self, the self’s emotions, and how these converge with the needs of those in their surroundings. One would be hard-pressed to find a token board or stash of Goldfish as “reinforcers” in nearly any community outside of the West. Is this not the eventual goal of therapy? Or are we so inclined to teach people with disabilities that their existence rests on shallow phrases like “safe hands”, “more please”, or “quiet mouth”?

The premise of acomedido could provide a much-needed pragmatic approach to people with autism, considering many generally lack the ability to take the perspective of others. What if, instead of drilling the same question about “hOw Do ThEy fEeL iN tHiS piCtuRe?” or using primary colors as yardsticks for emotions (i.e., “The Zones of Regulation”), we teach them to identify glaring signs and symptoms of people struggling? What if we exposed them to opportunities to wheel others in their wheelchairs, to help people carry groceries in, or to give their items away if they no longer use them? Call me old-fashioned, but I believe this carries with it far more meaning than a child who is taught to be chronically relaxed.

Mayans believe that a child who misbehaves is a child who needs more responsibilities, and I couldn’t agree more. Our culture and style of parenting in the West draws from recurrent schedules of activities perfectly calibrated to a child’s delicate emotions, concluding that any negativity felt must be the fault of the adult who provoked the child versus the child being a little shit. With so little expected of children and with adults proclaiming to be their “allies” instead of their authorities, it should come as no surprise that anxiety-related disorders, emotional disturbances, and behavioral problems continue to increase. For the most part, behavior analysis is common sense. This is an opinion I receive the most flack for, particularly by young and idealistic behavior analysts who believe the application of our science is remotely scientific. In raw honesty, 95% of cases of children with behavior problems, whether with or without disabilities, do not require behavior services. They require good parenting. And perhaps this is where our field has gone haywire in better understanding long-term goals: we believe we know more than the parent, all while claiming that discipline is traumatic and tears are indicative of severe emotional upset. If this doesn’t scream incompetence, I’m unsure what it will take.

Children and adults with disabilities often do not require elegant behavior plans and binders chock-full of programs that only aim to mutter phrases of rote memorization. Flow charts, visuals, and obscene money spent on lamination and Velcro and printer ink are not necessities, much like a sing-songy voice and an adorable schedule is not a pre-requisite for learning. We have to ask ourselves: how did children for the last 200 years manage to learn anything of value without a rotating menu of iPads and Chromebooks? Conversely, how did their parents manage to straighten their unruly behavior without token boards, timers, and schedules packed to the gills with useless, time-wasting activities? And, in all of this, what can we claim the children have actually learned? Our modern society may actually benefit from contrived opportunities to feel the ache of boredom, the type that forces an individual to make chalk out of rocks and fortresses in the sky only visible to our own mind. This not only promotes creativity and collaboration with peers, but helps our children remain aware of their surroundings--- and the people in it. Should a child complain of boredom, I’d suggest either ignoring it or offering chores that contribute to the household. They do not need another game for their Nintendo Switch, and they certainly don’t require participation in another form of therapy. They need to acknowledge something greater than their own damn happiness.

While the ending of WALL-E is ostensibly uplifting, there is the recognition that there’s a long way to go in not only restoring Earth, but bettering it. The “fitless humans”, who have lived for decades not moving a muscle, suddenly see vitality in things like planting, farming, and exercising what their bodies were built for. We are, in essence, built to move.

Can therapeutic fields contact a similar, daunting hope?

Only if we take a step away from it long enough to recognize how we’ve bastardized it.

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First World Problems are as minor as they are trivial. In the developing world, its populations are either starving, thirsty, or infected, and are primarily concerned with their survival. In America, we deliberately twist our emotional undies into knots over problems related to wanting to be our “authentic selves”, one hundred percent of the time, or finding an “ism” in most everything we disagree with or refuse to accept. In Michael Easter’s book “The Comfort Crisis”, he explains a concept called “Prevalence-Induced Concept Change”, which can otherwise be known as “problem creep”. Problem creep refers to our tendency to create more problems for ourselves when there’s a general absence of them, which requires us to lower the threshold of what’s considered “problematic”. To illustrate through use of an example, a legitimate instance may be that of taking on too many clients knowingly lacking the appropriate staff to effectively treat them. A pseudo-problem quite relevant to behavior analysis is demanding that every clinician be certified in “Neurodiversity Affirming Practices”, thereby creating a shortage simply because we’re excluding a large group based on a makeshift concept that carries minimal clinical weight or efficacy. Yes, queen. Slay.

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Behavior analysts seem possessed by their hankering for turning most every interaction into some perverse rendition of Mario 64. Our effectiveness and compassion as therapists are no longer governed by adherence to an ethical code and positive outcomes, but to the counterfeit competence we attempt to flaunt on social media. While each subdiscipline is different in terms of the toxicity of its modern-day culture (i.e., psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, behavior analysis, social work), there is one common thread amongst the fabric of today’s clinicians: they are both lazy and dumb, and they adopt a series of backwards approaches based on guesswork. Further, they are successfully able to play their incompetence off as eccentricity or “paradigm shifting”. Allow me to explain. One of the most successful therapeutic approaches is that of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT rests on the premise that much of our emotional suffering is due to faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking. Treatment, then, requires the individual to readily confront their own thinking patterns and challenge any thoughts that may be contradictory, counterproductive, or completely irrational. Uh oh, I said it: irrational.

Today’s clinicians widely seem to believe that no behavior or thought is irrational so long as it is aligned with “someone’s truth”. That behaving as if you’re in a twisted version of Grand Theft Auto, except more panicky and cowardly, is indicative of “standing in your truth”, something only the brave queens are capable of doing as they live in a society rigged by crusty white men. Gamification refers to the application of typical elements of game-playing into real-life scenarios, a highly effective technique used in online marketing and social media networks. Let’s return to Mario 64. Imagine your bouncy Italian plumber reaching for his coins, replete with an adorable sound effect and your overall score visible on the screen. Gaining of points advances your European laborer to the next level, conditioning you to continue erratic efforts toward gaining points… all while having a blast. These elements are clear in real life: social media posting is heavily influenced by how many “likes” a user gains, much like a reel only goes “viral” if it reaches a pre-determined level of “views”. Many have spoken about audience capture, or the manner in which our behavior becomes entirely governed by what our followers want to see. This is unfortunate and a social burden for the layperson, let alone for the clinician whose clinical decisions are guided by online groupies versus critical thought.

Critical to CBT is embracing accountability and radical transparency as to our faults. This requires both maturity and a thick skin, two variables I fear behavior analysts and clinicians are encouraged to shed themselves of. In a tragic reversal of CBT’s most critical principles, we’ve seemingly taken to instructing people to pathologize most everything difficult as symptomatic of “trauma” or a “narcissistic employer”, to diagnose any person we disagree with as a “Nazi”, and to thoroughly absorb the conception that we are delicate beings who require delicate treatment. The shallow information spread like a stinging contagion on social media, for example? Almost all of it relates to “set those boundaries with your employer, achieve that work-life balance, boo-boo!” while providing exactly zero skills related to building rapport, developing a repertoire of respectful self-advocacy, and being flexible when our proposals are rejected. I’m certain behavior analysts touting these adorable, platitudinal nuggets of advice do not exercise any of them in real life, as they’d undeniably recognize life is far more layered and complex than the elementary scripts they peddle as guidance. Frankly, I think this stems from immaturity as well as laziness. The flagrant use of comparing people to Nazis and Hitler, for example? This is likely due to the fact that the only history they recall is that of the Holocaust, so their “brave” “insults” hurled whenever possible at least play the part of being historically accurate. Hook, line, sinker, queen! Now, tell me this: do you know who fought in World War II? The Battle of Gettysburg? Oh, oh, oh, is Vietnam a country or a state?

Graduate programs are equally to blame for generating swaths of therapists more concerned with their online “influence” versus their effect on clientele. While I believe the concept of therapists lecturing their clients about racism and sexism is overblown by the media, I do contest that we’re in a common sense poverty, of sorts. We’re sweating through an intellectual drought in which we’re convinced our thirst is quenched only by people who agree with us and our hollow clinical approaches on platforms like Twitter or Instagram. To use myself as an example, I was labeled a Nazi, White Supremacist, and Eugenicist by hundreds of people within my field of behavior analysis, all for bringing up what should be basic history about Nazism and eugenics. Not only did this illuminate the utter stupidity and entitlement of today’s clinicians, it further cemented my notion of a common sense scarcity: how wildly pathetic is it that professionals need to be told to regulate their emotions before taking action? That things they recoil at are not necessarily bad, or that people they don’t like aren’t unethical, narcissistic, or “harmful”? Instead of focusing on their own clients and attempting to solve larger systemic problems within the field (which, trust me, are abundant), they thought their best course of action would be an online howling mob. And these are people the public is trusting to work with their children. Oh, queen, bless your heart. I’ve been told that’s a Southern translation for, “you fucking moron”.

There is no hope left for clinical fields other than starting from the ground up. I wholly believe that even a radical reform of behavior analysis would not be enough to unravel the series of illogical knots its therapists have reinforced. We are not trusted for our intellect and our expertise but for our opinions, many of which are adopted without thought and propagated without a hint of analysis. That’s funny, too, considering we are supposed to be behavior “analysts”. This weekend’s Unpopular Conference sadly highlighted much of our deranged priorities: topics included talk of equity in institutions and essentially condemning management for being in positions of “power”, a luxury belief if there ever was one. While I do understand that some manners in which people attain leadership are unfair and even discriminatory, I still find it mildly irritating that this is what we choose to pour our minimal brain cells into. What do our clients matter, anyway?

Another conversation that arose during the conference was between myself and another speaker, in which I addressed her concerns about my bringing up Daryl Davis. Davis, a black jazz musician, has become well-known for his candor and stoicism in personally attending Klan meetings and conversing personally with high-ranking members of the KKK. In understanding their perspective and respectfully questioning their stances on racism, over 200 KKK members turned in their robes to Davis, which he now proudly keeps in large piles in his closet. This is a profound example of not only what bravery and courage look like in the face of danger, both literal danger and immense emotional hatred, but how fragile we’ve become in our own approaches to clinicians we disagree with. The speaker confronted my mentioning of Daryl by essentially stating that this was “his story to tell”, that I “didn’t provide context” about why Daryl took this communicative approach, and how I “borrowed” his style and imposed it upon others to use for themselves. This struck me as odd for a few reasons, the main one pertaining to the fact that this argument made minimal sense.

Prior to outlining Daryl’s conversation tactics, I provided context and examples of various logical fallacies and manipulative language tactics in conversation, which this speaker used herself in addressing me (I’m certain she didn’t realize it). One that was continuously used was the red herring fallacy, in which the individual continuously detracts from the topic and attempts to steer the conversation in another direction when they’re essentially “caught” stating something inaccurate or false. In this speaker’s case, most any question I asked resulted in her stating, “Well I just won’t answer that”, or “I don’t want to take away from you time”, or, the best one, “I’m not emotionally invested enough in this conversation”. I’ve heard this last excuse before from several behavior analyst “influencers”, in which they attempt to attack some portion of myself or my argument and, when called out, suddenly seem “uninterested” in the very conversation they started. Again, I want to believe that these instances of verbal sleight of hand are mere defense mechanisms that go largely unnoticed until someone else brings our attention to them. This being said, I find it incredibly sad that our field sees a back-and-forth like this, which was essentially discussing semantics, to be a revolutionary example of communication. It was not revolutionary, it certainly wasn’t profound, and I can’t believe people would consider this to be something anxiety-provoking. I’ve felt my heart rate rise more rapidly in an undergraduate algebra class.

Believe it or not, behavior analysts, the most strategic way to reach an ever-increasing demand is not to focus on race, gender, and disability status. My clients have unbelievably challenging roads ahead of them, and will likely struggle for the remainder of their lives, as will many of the clients of practitioners reading this piece. To focus on semantics and our luxury beliefs, like in the above example of getting upset over what I assume to be a White-looking individual talking about a Black man as a prolific exemplar, does not progress our clients towards independence. The silent majority who trembles at the sight of most any conversation that isn’t fluffed and decorated with buzzwords are also not advancing our field towards scientific, objective reality, or even away from proposed interventions about as legitimate as psychic readings and horoscopes. We so often engage in activities that make us feel productive versus actually being productive, playing a hopeless trick on our mind and forever trapping us into a loop of our own demise. Yes, it happens to everyone… including me. But I also recognize where my faults lie and develop measurable plans for how to improve upon these shortcomings--- I do not demand that society and my entire field bend to meet my personal emotional needs. That is infantile, self-absorbed, and selfish, and any behavior analyst who informs us otherwise is one that cannot and should not be trusted with the valuable lives of the people we serve.

Can behavior analysis save the world? Only if we start over. Now if only those chicks who want to burn down the patriarchy could smarten up and help us burn down stupidity…

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