Writes Alice Thompson, in "Gen Z need life lessons more than therapy/A sense of purpose and decent careers advice would help youngsters stressed out by global uncertainty and war" (London Times).
She's reading "Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up," a new book by Abigail Shrier (commission earned).
Yesterday, I blogged an excerpt from that book, and I also listened to the Bari Weiss podcast interview with Shrier and am in the middle of Joe Rogan's new episode with Shrier. Here's a excerpt of that:
Shrier is on the move this week, not exactly trashing therapy, but trying awfully hard to cut it down to size. What is the right size though? How much of a role is appropriate? It's not just a matter of the quality of the therapists, for Shrier. She favors working out your own problems, the old-fashioned way, and only resorting to therapy for substantial mental illness.
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What’s different is the kids identified as ‘the best’ were selected as ‘the best’ using different criteria than in the past. ‘The best’ are now different in a negative way…
You broke it.
I go back and forth on therapy. A good therapist with the right patient can provide immense help in improving that person's life and the lives of the people stuck with that person. But most therapists aren't very good and most people would be better off without them. (Ever listen to 2 therapized people arguing--they just mine each other's history for ammunition and hurle diagnoses at each other.)
Most therapy is built around thinking your way to right action. Reversing that equation--acting your way to right thinking--often provides better results faster. 12-step groups use that approach ("Fake it until you make it"), but CBT also employs a version of it.
Can we reschedule?
That's when you say "No. I've found another provider."
I’m between appointments at the hospital so I’m waiting in the atrium and the class of thirty or so fellows is gathering for a photo. As individuals and a group they are…different.
Bad therapy? Bad? Not from where I'm standing. Looks to me like the therapy is working exactly as planned. Running like a finely tuned watch even.
It’s hard not to see therapy as an indulgence…or more accurately, a vice.
On both sides of my current office (I’m moving), I am surrounded by mental health therapists. Make of it what you will, but 95% of the customers are woman.
Frequently I hear laughs and gossip. Mostly it is complaining about relatives and like, like, like. Like, you know?
stressed out by global uncertainty and war
Generation Z is stressed out at the cost of high cost of rent vs wages, and the real probability they'll never be able to afford a home.
Massive debt to pay the ridiculous cost of a college degree is stressful. Once you have the degree and realize that the woke administrator of the holy shit-billy gave you worthless advice about going to grad school. Now you're in debt $100K making $45K a year, and your rent is $2000, unless you want to live in the hood. That's stressful.
Generation Z is stressed having had their childhood published on social media as competitive bragging rights by their Generation X parents.
Generation Z is vaccine injured from the bullshit cocktail they were given as young children. They were also dosed with anti-depression meds and Ritalin, instead of just being run around the block in grade school.
Generation Z was given homework by the stupid public education system when they were in the 1st grade.
Generation Z is stressed because the liberal education establishment confused them regarding gender and sexuality.
It's not 'global uncertainty and war'. They're not going to fight your dirty little war. But if I were Generation Z, I'd storm the Bastille.
promoting self-care and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. If my "feelings" have been invalidated, maybe thats my sign. Get MY head our of MY ass.
"A sense of purpose and decent careers advice would help youngsters stressed out by
Our daughter entered college and everything she did, was to build here resume. volunteer work, RA, committees, picking profs, not classes, study abroad. She wined to me her senior year all her friends were on a beach doing spring break, but she had class work and other responsibilities. I told her she would be firmly in place at her new job when her friends were still looking. That was prediction come true, and the self esteem only grew.
A life lived well is all the therapy you need. (and a good bartender)
Young people want to be challenged and made tough. It has nothing to do with the young people that has everything to do with the lack of leadership provided by their parents and their schools.
As the pater familias, I have had great influence on the psychological development of my grandchildren. Most of this is accomplished by organizing encouraging and participating in arts crafts Athletics and reading. The overall attitude is to challenge kids by messing with their heads telling them to suck it up when they cry have them run rub dirt into bloody cuts and answer questions with questions.
My daughter is just like that. We've done our best to work against it--take risks, the occasional failure is valuable, enjoyment matters, etc. I've never pushed her on grades.
But it doesn't take. She studies way too hard, is involved in too many activities, won't accept less than perfection, won't quit things she isn't enjoying, and finds making choices extremely stressful. I don't know why.
When I say my daughter is like that, I mean the Abigail Shrier interview. Less so the Thompson description.
I'll agree that they indeed need life lessons, one of which is that you don't make it everyone's business why you need to reschedule anything. "Something came up" is all one ever needs to divulge. Although I must say that the best response I ever heard to someone giving TMI was "Go tell it to a shrink, honey."
She has some excellent points, good for her. I too find that this generation is too fragile, and seems to wallow in its fragility, celebrating it.
Joe is hitting the weed too hard, I think. I've gone probably a couple of years since listening to a podcast (just don't have the hours), but I listened to this segment and it was kind of striking. He's starting to sound like a stoner.
I wonder how people like my parents and grandparents managed to make it through the Great Depression and WWII. Oh, yeah…they knew life was hard, they had their families, extended families, and church families for support. They had each other’s back. Gen Z ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
"They know how to gatekeep their time, creating boundaries and promoting self-care and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated or they aren’t given time to heal from toxic relationships...."
They're so well adjusted that they're "triggered" (we could start by retiring that word) when someone disagrees with them.
Feelings.... wawawawa .... feelings.
The corrupt white fascist left did this.
Climate Change BS causes a lot of underlying grief.
Perhaps we need more learning and meditation on the age of the earth - and the climate change thru the history of 13.7 billion years. Most of which there was no human-kind impacting the crazy ever-changing climate.
My 47-year-old brother just bought an $800K house with his girlfriend who owns a child-psychology business. Has 20+ Mastered Degreed therapists working for her. All female. One location in Mequon, WI and the other in Sheboygan, WI.
All her Generation Alpha patients (born 2010-2024) are referred by the school districts. It's a never ending influx of new clients/business. She can't even take all the referrals. Her business is BOOMING.
These are the kids that got screwed over by the liberal education establishment during COVID lockdowns and bullshit restrictions. If we think Generation Z has problems...just wait.
Remember. For Generation Alpha, their vaccine schedule is more shots than what they pumped in to Generation Z. And NOBODY, knows the effects of the full cocktail, and the CDC has added the mRNA clot shots to the schedule for these poor kids.
Plus the tranny drag shows/story hour, blow job books in the 5th grade library, parents struggling to make ends meet...
It's included in the "medical profession" group of services, even though one does not need to be a doctor or psychologist to practice. Add in the fact that the practitioners vary widely in skill level and almost every diagnoses is subjective, dependent on the therapist's own opinions, and the obvious opportunity for self-perpetuating "care" that never approaches "cure" is apparent. I've seen it happen. Actual psychologists/psychiatrists have been more effective for the people I love, but Therapy is a field growing like crazy. Some studies have shown that untrained and unlicensed therapists-in-training with no more than high school diploma often score better on patient outcome surveys than experienced therapists.
I'm afraid there are a lot of scammers out there just perpetuating their appointment book and income. And laypersons speaking therapy-talk and using new-age jargon interchangeably isn't helping. The old saying "When you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail" applies. When you have trauma figuratively on the brain and "self-care" as a priority so many occasions present as a need for therapy.
Snowflakes.
OTOH, it is difficult to imagine what it is like to grow up in a country so different from the one we grew up in.
Fortunately for them and us we have Howard (See 8 AM) and other Democrats who know what is best for us to show us the way.
Althouse writes. "[Abigail Shrier] favors working out your own problems, the old-fashioned way..."
In other words, Shrier prefers to build her own character rather than have it built for her, weak and homogenized like a run-of-the-mill product of indifferent workmanship. Be your own inexorable self, suffering or triumphant, or be a thing crafted by strangers' hands.
Thank you for pulling out this segment! I couldn't figure out when i could listen to the whole thing.
This fits so well with my perspective that the direction of society has eroded ever since women got Over-empowered, presuming we would be Better Leaders than Men (hint: we are at least as bad as they are). Both The womans movement and the gay movement, essentially a feminization of maleness, expose us to hysterics as a norm, groupthink Mob Mentalities and petty cruelties, like the gays lawfaring the cake baker.
The cultural result is Our boys are being emasculated, our girls are full of inflated self-righteousness, and psychiatrists profit.
very glad for this woman.
g*dspeed, civilization
Phillip Larkin had this covered years ago:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
But hey, we meant well.
In my day we had friends to help us through rocky relationships or unexpected setbacks. Are therapists the new friends?
Nothing new.
The current situation reminds me of the hordes of idiots who enabled Kellogg's "health" idiocy. There have always been hordes of idiot followers.
Althouse writes, "...and only resorting to therapy for substantial mental illness."
Does therapy heal? Whether against substantial mental illness or the daily daggers of the mind, there is precious little evidence in therapy's favor. Medications only disguise our problems. No chemical reagent has ever refuted a troublesome fantasy or expunged a maddening memory. Nor have the sweet cajolings or harsh commands of an authority figure seated beneath framed academic honors and charging billable hours ever replaced amorphous dread with comfortable surety. In the end, we either master ourselves or we wither.
As my sons grow my wife and I have had many conversations about how we should deal with potential issues they might face at different times in their lives. What would we do if one or both of them experienced severe health issues? Or mental health issues? What would we do if we noticed signs of autism or aspergers? What would we do if we thought something was going at school socially or if there was some kind of abuse? What would we do if we thought one of them was gay or came out as gay as a teenager? Etc etc.
And again and again I tell my wife that the solutions to so many of these problems is taking place right now. We are doing it now, at this very moment. What we do as parents every minute of every day lays the path to the destination they'll end up at.
The number one therapist, friend, doctor, counselor, teacher, and psychologist for our children is us. I cannot imagine and would not entertain the idea of our children speaking to a stranger about their mental health before that conversation occurred in great depth and detail with their father and their mother, or unless there was a very serious problem that logic would demand seeing a highly intelligent, educated and well-referred specialist. Much of what I see posted suggests many parents are 'pawning off' the responsibility of being the things I mentioned to others, at the drop of a hat and for the slightest problem. That strikes me as an abrogation of parental responsibility.
The therapy-industrial complex bears a lot of responsibility for some of the things we're seeing now. It's an established fact that normal kids are sent to therapy or psychologists only to come back after 2 1-hour sessions thinking they're genderqueer pyrofoxes.
Stop sloughing off being a mom and dad and parent your effing kids. Talk to them - at the right times - ABOUT EVERYTHING.
Hmm, is Trump scary to these kids?
When I read, “… triggered when their feelings…,” I get triggered.
Has anyone besides me actually met any of these therapists? As a mathematician by education and developer of computer software by profession I have met scores, perhaps hundreds, of people with Asperger’s syndrome and other individuals classed as high functioning autistic. But none of them were anything like the child therapist to whom I was introduced. Made me wonder how his own kids turned out.
I had to push back my new AA sponsor here in GA because he was expecting me to give him my inventory 2 to 3 times a week. I told him, even though I never had a parole officer, I’d imagine this what it might feel like to have one.
Here is the inventory list he wanted me to fill out, which I agreed to do once a week.
In the area of selfishness:
In the area of dishonesty:
In the area of fear:
in the area of resentment:
Do we owe an apology?
Have i kept something to my self?
Was i kind and loving towards all?
Was i thinking of my self most of the time?
What could I have done better?
What am I working towards?
He threatened to let me go, because he didn’t want to be a sponsor ‘in name only’. So I agreed to do it once a week. Even once a week I think it’s too much. Once a month it’s probably about right.
Question: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: One, but the light bulb has to want to change.
Any questions?
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
If you don’t have kids, who will cry at your funeral?
I posted that 👆🏽to show that maybe the therapising is more widespread than just genz.
What is a "spin instructor"?
"Gen Z ain’t seen nuthin’ yet."
I fear you are correct.
"Have i kept something to my self?"
I think you can give that one a hard "No".
Larkin walked the walk.
I have listened to part of the Rogan podcast, it is outstanding and I would recommend everyone listen to it.
Well they never met a drill sergeant.
An important point Shrier makes is that therapy IN SCHOOL breaks a important principle of therapy--that the therapist working with individual (student) #1 not at the same time work with individuals (students) #2, #3, #4, #5 . . . . Individual patients' privacy is sacrificed, and the therapist can easily fall into the idea that "I can fix this whole situation by helping patient #4 change habits to better conform to the needs of patient #2." That is, instead of helping patient #4 change habits to better meet patient #4's ow needs.
and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated
Fuck their feelings.
Seriously. If you're ready to "validate" everyone else's feelings, including Donald Trump's, then we'll worry about yours.
Until then? Grow the fuck up
All of my students are GenZ, and so is my daughter, so I am of course biased in favor of them, but even trying to take that bias into account, I can't understand the endless flood of stories about how horrible GenZ's are. I think they are smart and sarcastic and brave and just a pleasure to be around. Can my experience as their professor be SO different than the experience others have of them in the workforce?
It seems to me that GenZ have just expanded upon the lessons that their GenX parents learned, painfully, about not trusting in the benevolence or even the basic decency of institutions. Are they wrong? Haven't they watched the Powers that Be abandon not just honesty and fairness, but even logical consistency? Why should they show loyalty to or self-sacrifice for the benefit of some organization that will show no loyalty to them? Why should they care about making a good impression on a supervisor when that supervisor very easily could be operating under a directive that says "If you want a bonus and promotion yourself, only promote people with X demographic characteristics"? If the system is openly dishonest and corrupt, isn't the logical course of action to get as much as you can out of it in whatever ways you can?
The "my therapist told me to _____" is just this particular person taking advantage of the system through claimed--and probably experienced--illness, the same way millions of other people have taken advantage over real or imagined health reasons over the past 4 years (and longer).
For God's sake, the teachers' unions kept their workers home for months or years over fake health concerns so they could stay home, be lazy, and 'work' in their pajamas. College students were forced to wear masks and stay in their rooms and not gather with friends for completely and obviously bogus 'health' concerns. Everybody has multiple stories about people who used physical- or mental-health claims to take their dogs into restaurants, or board planes earlier, or "work" from home, or get some special treatment somewhere. Why NOT get a day or two off from work if everyone higher than you on the ladder has already done much worse, sometimes for years at a time?
If everybody else gets things for bogus reasons, you might as well be bogus, too.
Generally, to the old man:
Smartphones make you inward.
Sports & outdoors make you outgoing.
Democratic chaos and ethnic Springs with social diversity models and redistributive change (e.g. progressive prices).
Shrier favors the evolutionary model over a dictatorial therapeutic regime. People should rediscover the roots in Nature. #HateLovesAbortion
MadisonMan said...
"Can we reschedule?
That's when you say "No. I've found another provider."
Exactly!
If you're teaching a class and need a mental health day, it's up to you to find a substitute. Making it your student's problem is evading your responsibility.
They know how to gatekeep their time, creating boundaries and promoting self-care and are triggered when their feelings have been invalidated or they aren’t given time to heal from toxic relationships
"Rub some dirt on it." -- My old coach
Jupiter writes, What is a "spin instructor"?
Spinning is hipster-speak for riding a stationary bike (assuming riding a stationary object is even a logical construct, ride applies to horses but not couches). That there is even a paid job called "spin instructor" is interesting. I don't know but I suspect this is one of those occupations created entirely by liability insurance providers. Perhaps the risk of an unsupervised spinner triggering a coronary crisis by pedaling too fast for too long while ignoring the increasing angina pectoralis is too excessive for snowflake actuaries who get the vapors at the mere thought. And so if you operate a commercial fitness establishment and want liability coverage you must hire a spin instructor -- a total deadhead with one and only one duty, to placate a requirement for insurance coverage.
I was well into my 40's and had a boss that was a huge prick. HE worked his ass off. Detail mattered, service was mandatory+. I could never meet the level of service he expected me (every one) to provide to customers. Hated him. But. I ALWAYS know exactly what to expect from him, and he NEVER stabbed me in the back. Just for that aspect, I would work from him again.
My point is, These kids would not have lasted a week with this guy. Let alone working 12-16 hours a day, 7 to 10 days at a time. But I never thought to take a wellness day. Because I was tired, not ill.
Spinning is a bit different than just riding a stationary bike, it's more of a group exercise class that usually has music and an instructor that sets the pacing (fast, slow, heavy or light resistance, etc.). Some people like those group things. The bikes are also somewhat different.
I tried it a couple times, but I'm a lone wolf at the gym and don't like doing what someone is telling me to do.
OH BTW
I have know 100's of people that would have called me a whiner for my post. Explain I don't have a clue about stress.
They were WWII vets. A couple were POW's
Point is. Life is relative. create a gratitude list often.
I took a job 35 years ago and even after 20 years there, most of the people I worked with had been there longer than me. Nobody took days off unless it was for surgery or something like that. In the last 5 years or so, as some of the old-timers retired and were replaced by younger workers, it seemed like the new guys were taking time off nearly every month. Personal days? Recharging their energies? Who knows?
It's a different world.
I'm a late Boomer. Just yesterday I was remembering when I was 12 or 13 at camp on the big "trip" a canoe trip down a river for a 5-days. Just about 10 boys, a counselor who was maybe 19 or 20 and a junior counselor of 16 or so. I was probably 1975.
A couple days in a canoe went broadside against two rocks. The guy in the middle got out upstream sinking the gunwale below the current filling the canoe with rushing water pinned to the rocks. Well, during the extrication operations, I got my leg pinned between the canoe and one of the rocks. In the middle of a river, nothing around, but I suspect a farmhouse was only a mile or so away.
Well, so you have 10 13-yr olds and a couple of "adults" with a situation. They got me out after a time, the canoe flipped so it wasn't taking the current and could be righted and patched up. And along we went.
I occurred to me, that even after getting back to the camp, no one ever mentioned my being trapped.
It was just boys developing teamwork, problem solving skills to get by in life.
Can you imagine the counselors, investigators, mobs of parents if that happened today?
iowan2 said: "Our daughter entered college and everything she did, was to build here resume. volunteer work, RA, committees, picking profs, not classes..."
I suppose picking profs, not classes might be a good tactic in college majors that only require 36 credits for the major, but an engineering major typically has at least 75% of their courses as requirements. Also, if you want to go to medical school, there is a long list of courses that you have to take. I'd be very interested to hear more about this. My own time in college is long past but my children's time is approaching.
To quote Linda: "A lot of men went to a lot of colleges for a lot of years to turn a big waste of time into the science of psychology."
My only quibble is with the word "science".
Quaestor:
... ride applies to horses but not couches).
I must disagree. There have been many, many starlets who have ridden couches.
Blogger tim maguire said...
(Ever listen to 2 therapized people arguing--they just mine each other's history for ammunition and hurle diagnoses at each other.)
Just like Chekhov's gun, every memory, life-event, and feeling is important. And also much like Chekhov's gun they wind up meaning whatever the therapist or the therapized emotionally wanted them to mean.
I can't understand the endless flood of stories about how horrible GenZ's are. I think they are smart and sarcastic and brave and just a pleasure to be around
Coddling pablum. In a classroom environment I can see how you can identify a group as generally smart and generally sarcastic. Brave is ridiculous. About the only brave thing I can think of happening in a classroom is overcoming anxiety to speaking in front of groups. Pardon me while I golfclap.
Not saying they are bad people, but to use the word brave in the context you are using it here greatly devalues the word. They are not special, nor are they unique. Their opinions are not worth any more than anyone else's. Some individuals may stand out over the coming decades, most will find a comfortable place in the world and remain anonymous to those outside their circle. Some will deserve to be called brave by their actions, most will not.
The way they handled having college transformed into a couple of years living in a constantly surveilled minimum security prison; how they managed to bring each other along despite the soul-killing circumstances; their complete rebuilding of campus life after almost all continuity was broken with zero help or even consideration from the Powers that Be--Yes, I'll say that they are "brave."
They are brave because despite being constantly indoctrinated with a disgusting ideology that tells them the world is about to end and that it is mostly their fault because of where they were born, they keep on keeping on and have somehow managed not to become bitter and entitled like their millennial predecessors. They are brave because in utterly demoralizing circumstances, and despite being betrayed and exploited by every single institution and non-parental authority figure they have encountered, they are still trying to learn something and move forward and be decent people.
When, previously, has a society decided to sacrifice the happiness and freedom and education and just the LIVES of the young solely for the (notional) benefit of the old? To soldier on when that is your inheritance seems pretty brave, and "remaining anonymous outside [someone's] circle" is no demonstration of a lack of bravery--unless the only brave people are the famous ones.
I suspect that the primary job of a spin instructor is to shout out inane words of encouragement. Sort of a Richard Simmons on a stationary bike.
@Prof. M. Drout - A nice, massive paragraph of hyperbole presented as fact.
"...youngsters stressed out by global uncertainty and war..." "by... war"? Very few people are actually affected by war today. That is, in danger from military violence, or working extra hours or paying extra taxes, or having immediate relatives called away for service. Israel, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria
A lot of people claim to be affected by reading about war somewhere else, but that's self-induced stress.
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