How Bad Is Social Media For Your Mental Health? - Seerut Chawla

what's your issue with codling I think um there's there's a few different things and they're all sort of um they're all part of the same sort of sticky web of dysfunction um so there's codling there's social media there's therapy culture um the sort of pop psychology stuff that I that I criticize a lot and they're all they're all very related so codling you could almost look at codling as safety culture for children and which of course children need safety but over protecting children and um too much safety it seems to stunt development it seems to stunt your ability to overcome obstacles to mitigate your emotions your aggression your impulses um to to have any sort of resilience um when you know to the vicissitudes of Life which no one's no one's immune to um and then and and the sort of extension of childhood that coddled that coddled childhood which is now extended you know it used to be that you you were an adult around 15 or or 16 um or 18 and now it seems to go on and on much you know into into the early 20s if not further you have 30-year-olds saying I'm adulting um if you're an adult it's just Behavior it's not adulting um and then I guess safety culture which is which is like codling for adults it's it's like treating adults like infants um incapable infants who who couldn't cope with a different opinion and if they you know have The Misfortune of of coming into contact with an opinion that makes them uncomfortable then they need a safe space with puppies and coloring books yeah what what are the ways that this safety culture codling culture for adults how does that manifest what are the behaviors that we see so you you I mean you would see it everywhere so You' see you see it probably the most obvious um examples I think come from University campuses so you see when anybody who's not um completely dialed into the sort of American flavor of you know social justice leftism when they're um invited onto college campuses to have a talk the huge hu in in North America the huge demonstrations that break out um people accuse them of personally victimizing them um there's you know sometimes they people are scared for their safety they're worried they're going to get attacked um safe spaces are often provided there's trigger warnings um you know within acade within your actual academic work there's trigger warnings and the research shows that trigger warnings don't actually work they make things worse because then there's that anticipatory anxiety about um oh I'm going to get triggered um there's you see it in in this pop psychology stuff where um everybody's traumatized and um we can't say anything that might hurt anyone's feelings ever um you know the greatest crime anybody can the greatest sin is causing offense um so they're all they're all quite closely linked I'd say but this this to me sounds a lot like the concern over um over protectionism strategies especially on college campuses especially in liberal arts colleges and stuff around America and maybe creeping into the UK as well but what does this have to do with adult mental health like how is this not just a culture War topic like because you have expertise you're a a practicing psychotherapist yeah um who also knows a bit of like psychoanalysis he stuff too that's kind of more my area um I'm sort of I would say psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapist um everyone knows what that is it's it's the form of therapy that's derivative of what people think of when they think of you know Freud um but it's um an upd updated modern version of it and the you know sort of basic premise of this form of therapy um is that the mind is divided against itself so there's there's all these different forms of um all these different conflicts or different parts of us that want different things have different needs um and so we're constantly working across purposes with ourselves and that often happens unconsciously um it looks at how the past is alive in the here and now and then you know like a good example would be like the DSM thinking is that any any mental health issue is a disease um sort of akin to akin to the way we think of um physiological diseases and in psychoanalytic and of course there are there are very you know mental illness is very real um but in psychoanalytic thinking you would see something like depression or anxiety as um a sort of sort of a like a fever or like a symptom that's telling you there's an underlying infection that's causing this symp so you'd of course have you know your patient or client um see a psychiatrist or get whatever they need but at the same time you would work on addressing the underlying underlying infection yeah I had uh Jonathan shedler on the show a little while ago and he yeah he's he was phenomenal and that was the first time that I really started to see a bit of the psychoanalytical psychodynamic stuff I'm still largely I'm like an EP boy through and through like I know my Evolution and then all the rest of this stuff is like again outside of my area of expertise but yeah so again just round this out for me you are mental health expert work with clients oneon-one sort of very well qualified but draw this line between what kind of sounds a little bit like what Ben Shapiro might talk about a lot and mental health like how do your expertise give you a an Insight or what is happening in these environments that's impacting your world and the people that enter your world okay well first I just want to say I don't I don't see myself as an expert because I'm I'm barely a about a decade into my career and in in the people all the people I admire um have had like 40 years under their belts and and they're [ __ ] amazing but anyway um the the line I would draw is that when you when you prevent children and it's not always because you know parents are doing the wrong thing it's also the the environment M wherein um everything's on screens you know children younger and younger are getting on social media um there's a level of disconnection there's far less Rough and Tumble play which children need to develop it's you know play isn't um isn't a fun treat it's actually a developmental necessity um and when you look at the codling and the overprotection you think of sort of like colloquially you might call it a helicopter parent so parents always hovering hovering around and um far too closely so you don't give the child one the space to actually develop um and they they're often removing obstacles from a child's path obstacles they need um so if you prevent a child from experiencing anything difficult you stop any form of conflict or difficulty with other children um you don't give them age appropriate responsibility you're essentially stunting their their ability to have those skills as an adult um and you're also stunting their ability to to learn how to um how to go through something difficult and and and manage your emotions around it you know we see these like vast groups of adults that that just can't they just can't manage their emotions when something difficult comes up like they can't take their punches standing up every single time flattened um and you know that would be that would be the line so Jonathan hate who has you know done some incredible work in his his Incredible Book the example he always gives is of the immune system um and which which ties into um Nasim talib's you know um idea of antifragility and the immune system for us to develop immunity we have to come into contact with pathogens we have to come come into contact with things that threaten the immune system and stress it out and it's only by coming into contact with those difficult things that the immune system sort of learns to um fight themel do you see that uh children who live in a household that's got a dishwasher have doubled the rates of uh asthma and children who live in households that have a dog have half the rates of asthma so you fall that makes perfect sense because the the um the N peanut allergies the rate of peanut allergies is also skyrocketed you know this um because there's you know again the safety culture there's so much protectiveness um about some child in this class might have a peanut allergy so there's nothing no nuts allowed we have almost a um there's a mirror scenario going on here between what happens biologically in terms of the immune system and what happens psychologically in terms of our ability to be robust absolutely what do you think you know victimhood victimhood culture being a victim again very popular term that's been thrown around a lot what do you think most of the conversations around victimhood Miss like most things on social media everything turns into a very reductive binary so you have one side that is wallowing in victimhood and it's you know um just ludicrous things and you and you just think good god get a life like you this shouldn't flatten you um and and you know collecting I I call it wound collecting you know all these different things that that add to their you know victimhood Matrix that means they're more special or more important somehow and then on the other side you have people that seem to have absolutely no basic human empathy and um you know just sort of Shame and castigate anybody who's who might be having a hard time or been through difficult things and I think the the the Nuance that gets lost is that there's a big difference between actually having been victimized and identifying as a victim and what I'm criticizing is always the latter so there are people who've been who've been victimized and in my anecdotal experience and in my clinical experience I find that people who've really been through horrible horrific things often do not want to themselves as a victim because that that adds to you know the retraumatization feelings of having the agency taken away from them they're often people who had no choice but to to find the resources to survive who are still suffering the impacts of what they went through and it's more the people who have you know a certain degree of anxiety and neuroticism and um low mood and you know great difficulty Reg ating their affect or their emotions that identify as that really sort of um hone in on this on this victimhood stuff because it gives them a really helpful convenient framework that explains what's going on for them while also giving you social currency and um and you're much less likely to to be demonized and attacked if you're a victim yeah what what's the difference between pain and Trauma pain is but pain is just a a reality of life we all have pain every single one of us has has has pain that's just you know The Human Condition trauma is um well the word trauma as well it's it's it's so flat and is difficult to to sometimes pass it out but traumatic exposure is going through something that like like having lived through war or being um phys physically abused or sexually assaulted um you know any any of those sorts of things that completely overloads Your Capacity to cope to the point that you might not even be able to form memories of what happened to you um or what you went through and then it it leaves an injury and it's an injury that's that's neurobiological so um it actually changes the structure of the brain it changes um and you know it's also psychological injury um and people have symptoms like you know the stereotypical things that you see in films which is flashbacks and um um you know reliving the the what you went through and Nightmares but also things like um insomnia and intrusive thoughts and pervasive overwhelming feelings of shame or that you're a bad person um complete damage to your capacity to attach to other people because your trust has been so badly broken it's it's one of those things that's so alive in your every day that it's almost as though you're always responding to the traumatic thing you went through and there's also difference between going through something like that something traumatic and developing PTSD because not everybody goes through something traumatic and develops PTSD and um the the protective factors there seem to be meaningful relationships and support um if you have that before during and after it can it can help mitigate um the impacts of of of the traumatic experience um and and then people who do develop it often don't have don't have support and also sometimes have a have a history of some form of abuse or mental health difficulties or yeah and temperament individual temperament one of the quotes from you that I love is being impacted by what happened to you isn't victimhood it's human making an identity out of it is victimhood yeah yeah and it's that sort of uh degree of attachment right this uh sort of romanticization of pathologization that's such a good way to put it yeah um there's when you have been victimized you might make an identity out of victimhood or you might always feel like a victim and that's not the same again as what I'm what I'm criticizing but it's something you have to work on you you really do because when your agency's taken away um and when I say your agency is taken away what I mean is that something is done to you against your will and you and and there was nothing you could do to prevent it it's an incredibly powerless paralyzing feeling um and again you know it's part of the injury that's left on you especially if it happens in early life so anything that happens to us when we're developing you know forms the fabric of of who we are so you might then go on to always feel as though you don't have agency because you never you've never felt that you did you might you might you know it's something that you've never really um even occurred to you that you could you could tap into or use um and you might live in the world as somebody who has no agency who things just happen to um and it's directly related to having your agency previously taken away so again those people need help they need help integrating what happened to them forming a cohesive narrative around it um and and learning how to how to take that agency back or or learning how to tap into it um and then the other group and it really frustrates me because it's like you're making a mountain for yourself when you you needn't if if you knew what people suffer when what a living nightmare it is to actually live with the after effects of being traumatized you wouldn't want to claim that for yourself trust me you wouldn't survive a day of it um so you know beating the drum of I'm So victimized I'm so offended um I deserve special treatment I have no agency so everybody has to do things for me um that that would be the difference between the two groups I'd say yeah it's it's interesting I I kind of made an analogous analogous uh point between these Tik toks of girls that had said this guy glanced over three times in 90 seconds while I was videoing myself doing glute bridges in a gym therefore this is toxic male gays and it's the patriarchy and you should be worried because men are predators what that does if it's responded to positively and if the internet says yes you were in the right what happens is many other girls use that as their new bar for what is and is not acceptable behavior from men and the bar continues to just move lower and lower and lower right that what would have previously been innocuous is now uh something that should warrant anxiety inside of yourself it's almost like the concept creep of interpersonal interactions right that it continues to just get more and more and more sensitive I think uh employees at Netflix are only allowed to stare at the opposite sex for no more than 5 Seconds there was um uh posters on the London Underground uh telling men that they weren't supposed to look at women for more than a particular amount of time the toxic male gays again um but going back to something you mentioned earlier on you spoke about uh people might struggle uh attaching they might have intrusive thoughts they might be down and depressed and blah blah blah like everyone has that right everybody has that and there is a there is a a spectrum upon which everyone exists from having absolutely none of it and there's one out of 100 maybe that's there and having it all the time and there's maybe one out of 100 that's there and then there's this sort of lovely lovely little bell curve in the middle of that and this is again something else I learned from you the difference between the worried well and people with genuine mental illness and again it's this romanticization of pathologization or the sort of weaponization of feelings in a way because the victim is what's being pedestalize there is uh a type of odd type of status that comes from being at the bottom of the pile in some way even if you're only at the bottom of the pile because you've identified that you are and you know it's the people who have been through absolute hell that seem to be the most robust and there's a paradox that the ones that are the most privileged are the people who are the most fragile but my point being that because everybody has this everyone has a degree of legitimacy to claiming well I am that you know I do have intrusive thoughts I do get down and S I do have all the rest of it also our inner experience is completely opaque to everybody else so God knows exactly what's going on here but yeah the the this desire this desire from people who don't have a you know a real mental illness issue to use the label because it gives them some sort of um Power and I don't think it's all to do with this uh desired overreach for status by being a victim I think a good chunk of it as well is by pathologizing whatever the problem is it gives you a sense of control over what's happening right that it's not just wow the world is random and and sometimes I end up on the receiving end of of [ __ ] it's oh no this is because of a a it's got a name to it right that helps me to kind of box it into a particular type of of issue and and it gives me some sense of order right outside of the chaos um but yeah this the difference between people who are genuinely mentally ill or have are struggling with with issues uh and then yeah this uh this other concern this the worried well as you call them um well the thing about Netflix is hilarious and what a it sounds like it sounds like something between like a cross between an SNL sketch uh sketch and like the handmaid's tail it just sounds so stupid like you can only look at people for five seconds what happens if you look at someone for six you get fired not good not good there's an alarm is there a quota you have to look for five like if you look at four for only four it's rude um and it reminds me of of when Jordan Peterson was writing his second book and I can't remember which the who the publisher was um and they announced it and all the employees started crying penguin random house and you just it's it's yeah it's just it's ridiculous um that is it's ridiculous and the same with London transport does it does it work the other way or women also only allowed to look at men for 5 seconds or whatever it is um I'm I'm sure it I think that there would be a campaign for men for women to look at them for longer you can only look at me for a minimum of 10 seconds but long longer if you can um but yeah this is you know this really seems to be the worried well and the genuinely the genuinely traumatized or genuinely sort of mentally uh upset they seem to be the you know the two one group is laughing as the other wishing that they could be and this group is looking at that one going why would you wish any of the things that currently struggling with I wish that I could get rid of them yeah or they just go very quiet um I've received a look because because I I make a fair amount of posts distinguishing um actual Trauma from social media trauma and every time I do I get this delu of emails from people with actual PTSD who say thank you for saying that um I don't talk about you know what I've been through anymore because I I live with this that and the other it's like it's like having a disability and my friend who just had a breakup is saying that we we're suffering from the same thing so I just don't talk about it anymore um the worried well I mean really that's just another way of of sort of neuroticism I guess which is being um susceptible to negative feelings and um and I think the level of of information online that's shared under the guise of psychoeduc ation really doesn't help because it's completely decontextualized knowledge you know like in the UK therapists psychotherapists are not allowed to diagnose you have to do quite a lot of additional training and you have to be a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist and it takes time to learn you know how to um how to discern what what something is um it's not there aren't necessarily the same kind of bright lines in uh you know Psychopathology that there are in with physical illnesses and you know like you said think everything will it's called medical students disease so when you're training to be a doctor or therapist or something you everything you read you think oh my God I must have this and it's um and and we're just doing that to everybody we're just doing just unleashing that on the public the difference is that you continue your training and then you understand you understand why it all resonates understand that no I don't I don't have every single you know um diagnosis in the DSM but the lay you know public don't don't have that they they just get the five signs you have anxiety or six signs that you've got OCD and it's all human behavior like you said so things will resonate with you but there's also a difference you know like what one person might call an intrusive thought might be oh just a random thought popped into my head what's somebody with OCD or or PTSD might might well what they what is an intrusive thought for them is suddenly I had this awful flash that I'm going to you know this image in my head of stabbing my mother and I and I'm really scared I'm going to lose control and do it um yeah I suppose the the fact that you need to communicate this and especially when it's done online on Instagram captions or whatever that it's done in a manner that is still largely open to interpretation and maybe is even designed to be done so kind of the same way that a medium or an astrology card is purposefully vague and uses language that's so woolly that it could be interpreted by anyone like the astrology of psychology that we've got going on here where yeah you allow it to be interpreted how oh that's me this post this post is so me or this post is my spirit animal right like that that feeling of being seen you can't say spirit animal that's highly problematic why is spirit animal problematic I believe it it's um problematic because you are culturally appropriating a Native American idea I see so nothing can be a cism anymore if the Native Americans come for me I I I will I will apologize appropriately after they've chopped scalped me and chopped my head off um yeah this this uh almost purposefully Wally language and and there is you know again I don't want it to seem like anybody that's going through I've been through mental health struggles myself throughout all of my 20s like I I really really want people to understand that there is a conversation understand that there is there are resources and there is help and all the rest of the things that you can do so I don't want it to be like us lambasting it but the main reason is that people feel like their emotions are a personal curse on them right I would I'm never no matter how good friends me and you become I'm never going to know the texture of your own mind I'm never going to know what it feels like to be Ser right I'm not going to know when you say Sad do you mean what I mean when I say sad when you say that you couldn't sleep because you had you you were overthinking last night do you are you overthinking at the same sort of pace that I am or just how visceral is the emotion are you sweating am I do you know what I mean and this desire for us to feel seen right in a world that's very atomized and individualized where the self is upheld more highly than everything else and we're obsessed with our own emotions in this world someone that posts something that makes us feel like we're not that this isn't some individual uh like custom drug that's being pumped into our veins to make us suffer oh it's just a part of The Human Experience that's me so that I understand the compulsion to pathologize and put a label on the things that we're feeling because it makes us feel less objectified by our own emotions less of a less of a victim of our own of our own issues it's oh just just it's just you know it's what it's every look at 20,000 likes on this Instagram post like all of those people are too it some of those some of those accounts are very clever about how they do it and they put things in a way that will resonate or will cost the wi widest net possible because um it pro it it benefits them um there's there's a couple of things there so one absolutely when if you're struggling with something and you find out um that that you know this is this is something other people from suff suffer from too there's a name for it it changes your relationship with the thing that you're suffering from so imagine for example having the symptoms of anxiety and your heart races and you've always got you know butterflies in your tummy and and your hands have a Tremor and you're always worried and you know some of those feelings and you don't know what it is and you don't know if anybody else feels that way I think it would be absolutely horrific um and then you find out something called anxiety and then you find out you know why does anxiety form what's the evolutionary purpose of of of having feelings like anxiety and it it can change your relationship to it it can um change the way you regulate and and manage and respond to those feelings of anxiety um and I guess the other side of the coin is taking every normal little human emotion and attempting to um attempting to I guess label it and and pathologize it so you know some of the the definitions of trauma on um online or in amongst insta therapy they're ridiculous it's it's basically just they'll describe the Human Experience and say this is trauma um you know do you ever do you ever breathe have you ever seen the color blue you have trauma um so it's sort of I think what you said was was really insightful because it's true you we don't like uncertainty we don't like feeling um we're not very good at tolerating uncertainty or feeling that we don't have control over something and so if you combine that um you know H having this emotional experience that that is quite difficult and turbulent and you don't have you know a lot of control over it you don't know if it's ever going to end you you're not good at managing it with having been coddled and protected to the point that you don't have the skills to cope or manage and probably led to some of those feelings that you're feeling and then you add to it this pop psychology culture that's telling you oh this is a legitimate diagnosis and nobody should ever make you uncomfortable and no one should ever you know um criticize you or suggest that you have to take responsibility or you have a role to play in learning how to how to deal with this or navigate this um it's it's far more convenient to say I have trauma or I have this diagnosis or that diagnosis or the other and it doesn't always lead to um changing a relationship sometimes it leads to it becoming a bit of a crutch or it becoming your defining characteristic you know um like what my whole personality is having ADHD well that's not is there nothing else interesting about you um is is that it so yeah there's there's a a few different things there what do you mean when you talk about therapy culture is that a culture of people getting therapy no um it's it's a sort of it seems to be this overarching thing that's enveloped society and even you know down to the way we speak so um therapy culture is this you you you hear friends they you know will have a small disagreement and then they start having this whole whole struggle session like a therapy session and you know like you triggered my inner child and when you didn't show up to this thing or people setting boundaries with with each other but they're not really setting boundaries they're sort of um making demands on other people or um you know it's it's the way people speak has shifted and changed um instead of necessarily developing any real understanding of mental health um we've developed this sort of codification of fragility um that's that's I guess become its own its own language um you know I'm triggered uh when often they mean I'm offended um and it's the whole you know I guess pop psychology insta therapy stuff beginning to dominate the mainstream understanding of mental health so yeah what's so talk to me about the difference you've used that a couple of times today pop psychology uh what's the difference between that and mental health and and why is it an issue that it's masquerading is it because it's it's it's not related to psychology or Psychotherapy often um but speaking of psychotherapy something you just said was um suggest maybe you're a natural psychotherapist when you're talking about how I don't know what sad means to you and that's something again in in itic therapy that that you would do so if you said I feel sad well I would ask you what that means to you you take anything that's abstract and you make it a specific as possible but um yeah bit of an aside um the difference is that actual mental health is rarely spoken about in any real way apart from maybe anxiety and depression and you know when they talk about mental health awareness it's almost always it's like Instagram therapists have become modern day clergy or something or like pastoral counselors telling people how to behave so um giving people's scripts for life um watering down important Concepts like trauma and PTSD um lowering the bar like you said for you know like no being someone pinching your bum is not nice if it's unwanted but it's not the same as actually being assaulted and conflating the two things is absurd um so it's it's all of those things kind of creating this this blanket around people this coddling blanket that um ensures that you you you won't necessarily be res I'm sort of really rambling and I think of like you know when you start sentencing you're like I really hope I find my way I hope I can land the plane you're you're making sense to me I've got I've got some of one of my favorite posts from you some ways pop psychology lies to you everyone you dislike is not a narcissist every unpleasant experience is not trauma having needs does not make you codependent disagreement is not gaslighting conflict is not abuse taking offense is not being triggered everything does not need to be normalized and speaking like an HR memo is not self-awareness are these sort of the whatever it is nine Horsemen of pop psychology are these sort of the most common culprits these are these are definitely some of them so so yeah thank you for bringing that up because that um uh helps and um it's it's stuff like the the the dialogue around narcissism um it's creating this strange you know fanfiction version of narcissism that only lives on the internet um and anybody you don't like is a narcissist any form of abuse or or poor treatment is narcissism um again you know words mean things especially when there it's clinical language um and and we've taken this you know therapy speak which is a part of therapy culture and you use it to inflate every little thing so yeah you know you're not just offended or you don't like something or you're uncomfortable you've been triggered when triggered means the involuntary you know immersion into a past traumatic experience you haven't been triggered you don't like this or it's caused cognitive dissonance um anything difficult is trauma it can't be pain it can't be bad luck it can't there can be it's a foro conclusion there's no there's it just closes the door on any any other possibilities any any expl any explanation um that might not be this very convenient um bow to wrap around your experience disagreement is gaslighting any conflict is abuse yeah you know and so someone disagreeing with you what a convenient way to shut down the conversation demonize them make yourself the victim and and not have to self-reflect just call them just say they're gaslighting you you don't have to learn how to how to um argue properly or defend your ideas you can just say everyone's a gaslighter how convenient um and this kind of like I get policed a lot on how I speak because I'm quite straightforward and I just I resent um having to put tons of fluff around my words because you know someone can't handle just being spoken to like an adult and I don't I'm not going to do it um and I guess this is what they call Tone policing so I get a lot of a lot of um comments and DMS with from people saying you know your message is good but the way you come across is really harsh and I just think it really isn't if you try and read it neutrally it's just stating a simple fact or opinion most of the time and if you heard me say it in my tone to your face um I don't think you take it the same the same way and um there's this sort of I think a tone people bring to things um and again it's it's the so I similar to what I wrote in that post I I see a lot of that just in in some of the responses I get um even in this last week I've had just this steady stream of abuse to do with um anything I've said about Israel and Palestine and mostly my position has been um don't bomb children like I don't uh you know I don't I don't know what's I'm not I'm not arrogant enough to pretend I know what the answer to the solution is and I think anybody who thinks it's simple is a idiot you know just very very stupid because you know it goes back a very long time there's so many factors to consider here anyway um and I so I don't know what the right answer is but I do know that you don't just indiscriminately kill children just don't um and people read things that you that you haven't written and they attack you for them so you know like you're you're a Jew hater or you're um islamophobic or you're not taking enough of a St or um something else but then the other thing they do is they begin to use this therapy language to analyze you uh and then you get that in some of the DMs I think your insert some diagnosis or your your gaslighting everybody or your um and you know it's it's um again it's weaponizing this language and I think that's that's one of my big problems with it is that it gets used as a a cudel against people um yeah so weaponizing this language Li you know inhibiting any sort of actual self-reflection um finding a way to always land in the victim position abdicate responsibility is there any argument to be made that this normalizes the conversation around mental health which overall is a net benefit we've got people maybe misappropriating language using it inaccurately imprecisely uh but this is a conversation now where people are opening up about the way that they they're in a experience feels uh this is a a move in the right direction what's your how do the scales balance in your world it's really difficult actually because on on because I often don't think we are even talking about mental health when we say we're talking about mental health but I think you're right I think it's it's it's good good that um there's a more receptive atmosphere to people being able to say actually my mental health suffering at the moment and and there's a decent chunk of people who won't turn away or turn against you who'll be understanding and Incredibly empathetic and um that probably is incredibly different to you know our parents generation for example and I think yeah that is a net positive that's that's really good what would a what would an actual conversation around mental health look like I think an actual conversation around mental health would look like discussing actual mental health issues what it what it's like to suffer from them identifying um you know some of the signs that maybe this isn't normal distress or normal hard time there's something a bit deeper going on um helping people you know learn how to manage their mental health um similar to how a diabetic has to watch their sugar intake and take insulin when you have an ongoing mental health issue you you need to you need to manage it you you know right I i' I've kind of got it in my head that there's this um it's kind of like a globalwide concept creep or an Overton window uh of what we've considered uh within the realm of the conversation about mental health yeah as we've identified you know by DSM criteria many people who say or use particular sort of pathological language to identify whatever it is that they got going on might not meet the criteria if they were to be assessed using that but they've got something going on right they are sad or they are depressed or they are down or they feel anxious or they whatever or they they feel depressed like they are not depressed right yeah um so I think that yeah maybe you could say um using the uh sort of psychoanalytic uh treatment style language is is not really helping and it's pathologizing and it's causing issues but all that you do really there is Kick the Can down the road right that okay so we're not going to use that language anymore but we still now need a huge new bucket within which people who are feeling a little bit sad people who who are feeling a little bit agitated a little bit frustrated they're a little bit wistful they're a little bit whatever right there now needs to be an entire new bucket within which we put those people and maybe it's not mental health maybe mental health should be um held for a different an entire different lexicon entire different sort of world but the people who aren't lying about it and aren't completely making it up which is a good chunk of them the people who are genuinely feeling something that isn't meeting the medical criteria but is still doing something that disrupts their quality of life that group of people you know like that's I would guess the the large group of people but if that's not mental health we now need to we need to think about it I think what's happened is it's become conflated right like the acute acute but mild distress has been moved into this much more sort of aggressive medical language but we still need to treat those people and we still need to have a conversation around whatever those feelings are and whatever the name is that we give those things that they're feeling why can't we just say sadness or wistfulness or loneliness or why does it need a whole new set of of words that's that again it's the you know it's The Human Experience and I think this is one of the things that we've lost along the way with the whole like follow your bliss and people thinking Hollywood films are what life is going to be like life is [ __ ] difficult um you know your your feelings sometimes are incredibly hard to manage um things happen all the time you know you never know what's around the corner um life is incredibly un unpredictable and I think there's this idea that that it it should be easy in some way or that you you know if you're not happy all blissfully happy all the time that there's something wrong and there isn't who unless you're a complete blithering idiot who's happy all the time like I don't know anyone everyone has you know um ups and downs and and differences and changes in mood and um their own personal difficulties and I think maybe you know using a word that I've come to loath maybe that's what we need to normalize is that this is what being a person is um and you know you you have to find you can't change that what you can change is making yourself stronger and more resilient and to know how to respond when these things happen you might not be able to control um bouts of of sadness or wistfulness or agitation but you can learn that when you're in a hole to stop digging you can learn that you can learn how to how to climb out um you can learn how to avoid that hole sometimes um where do you go to if let's say that you're going through a bit of a tough time yourself uh for whatever reason where do you go to in your mind what are the things that you rely on you know it seems like people are relying on labels and and and medical language what about you given that you're a a practitioner of this and have been at the front lines for a decade what are the things that you rely on to help improve your mood or to give you some perspective when you're kind of caught in the whirpool that is the minations of the human mind um so I I okay so I've I've had a kind of eventful life and been through some really really tough stuff um becoming basically homeless um assault just you know I won't go into all of it but difficult things so sometimes there are things that I think would be really difficult for some of you didn't have those experiences that don't always even register with me um because I guess that threshold has been expanded to the point where it's it's it's it's different and I'm sure other people who've got that kind of History can can relate but then I also I think because I've had that and I've been in the complete depth like drowning um and had to had to find a way the hard way to deal with those emotions that I'm not scared of them and not only am I not scared of them um not scared of other people's either so if something happens like anxiety which sometimes you know anxiety feelings of depression I lost my mom two years ago so it's been a lot of grief um even rage jealousy all the feelings that people feel I let myself feel them I let them exist I don't necessarily even have to you know you don't necessarily even have to participate you know you just have you just let them be let them exist let them run their course um not not panic about it not necessarily think that it's a problem to solve it's like there's a feeling um if you're so inclined you could figure out and with practice you can get very good at this figure out where what caused it where is it coming from oh I had that thought oh [ __ ] that's what that's what just deflated my mood or um that lady I ran into in the supermarket today she reminded me of the way my mom belittled me and that's why I've been so sad and anxious ever since so you can trace it back you can figure you can figure that out um and also just just knowing that like you've survived every single tough thing bad day bad mood up to this point you're going to survive this one too why is this any different um and the thing about not being scared of it is like anxiety can be incredibly frightening and I've been through the the um you know been through been through the experience of being very frightened by Panic and thinking you know something something really awful was going to happen and then my dad taught me this because he struggles with some anxiety too and he said when when the anx I think I remember 17 or 18 and a panic attack and my dad said just the anxiety can't do anything to you um and when it comes up look it right in the eye and tell it do your worst you can't do anything to me and I think that's kind of my attitude to to love a lot of things that seems based on what I know about you that seems on brand yeah um but it it can help and knowing that knowing that that um metacognition watching your thoughts thinking about your thoughts knowing that right now I'm panicking and I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die but I know that's the anxiety and the Panic it's not going to happen and I said wait this out WIP up a l if you have to um and then the other thing is with anxiety and panic especially um move metabolize that chemistry like burn it off quicker just run down the street like a crazy person it'll it'll go away um and yeah and so so it does depend but you also have to develop some form of mental health hygiene around it um just made a course for i' I have this little online community and I make courses for them just made a course on Mental Health hygiene and and you know how to actually look after your mental health and the factors that contribute to you being well where should people go if they want to check that out um there's a link in my bio on Instagram and on Twitter or you can connect to it through my website um what's the website it's my name.com cava.com fantastic and um and you know for for looking after yourself and for for feeling well you need certain things and they're non-negotiable um like purpose if you don't have a reason to wake up in the morning of course you're going to become depressed and anxious if you don't go outside ever um which I struggle with sometimes the work from home and sometimes they ABS you can get everything delivered um so you know you have to force yourself you have to have meaningful social interactions internet doesn't count um you know social media has made us so connected and yet so isolated from actual real human beings um you need to you know we evolved in nature we didn't evolve in these in these concrete boxes um you have to you know once in a while go and look at a tree for God's sakes if you live in the city or whatever but there's certain things you need um and the way that our environment is now of course everybody is struggling with something and it's not only the codling and the you know safety culture and whatever else it's it's you're stuck on on devices you're looking at social media which is you know we know that's um a threat to mental health we know that it's it's a contributing factor to depression and anxiety we know the impact that it has on young people and teenagers sometimes to a really tragic um conclusion and then you're indoors all day and your sedentary which is going to make you incredibly depressed if you're not moving where we weren't designed to just sit on our Bombs all day we were designed to move um and found that like I've gotten really into working out since last December and um it's gotten to the point now where it it you know so I finish work and as soon as I finish I just get on the treadmill and sometimes I finish quite late so I just that's just my my transition and um it's almost even if I'm tired even if I don't want to do it as soon as I start it's that feeling of like you know when you sink into a warm bath and it's that that kind of whole body like like oh that's better that's the feeling and you know there's I'm sure a really good reason for that for why it feels that good for why you you know um there's there's so much that we need to be well that isn't um part a natural part of our environment anymore even even staying up late and looking it the blue light in our phones and there's so much that actively contributes to us being disconnected sedentary eating food that that doesn't give us the nutrition that we actually need the synthesize some of those you know some of that neurochemistry um you're dealing with this onslaught of the most horrific devastating things happening all around the world all the time which we're not wired to handle you know we can't cope with that like before you know we I think the the figure is something like you would only know the bad news of your area and only maximum in your whole life know about 150 people um in the kind of radius of the The Village or town or wherever you live and you know to hear the bad news from this happened to the neighbor this happened to the next town and that's kind of it now we're hearing everything that happens everywhere all the time at the same time and you and you can't you can't cope with it um yeah given that there's so much there that you've gone through which is you know outside of the um the way that we move the things that we eat the amount of sunlight we're exposed to the friends that we have the purpose that we uh use to propel us through life why do you think we've spent so much time obsessing about the self and our emotions in the west because life's too easy um you know like where nobody human beings aren't wired to just sit back on their Laurels and enjoy the [ __ ] Sunshine like that's not what we were wired to do we're wired to to overcome obstacles and challenges and keep moving forward in some way and when when you remove all the challenges and make life too comfortable it's like people starting malfunctioning and you know when there's there's and I think there there'll be a lot of people who'll absolutely bulk at this and say how dare you say life is easy in the west and then I I just think go and live somewhere else for a little bit and and then you'll understand how good you actually have it like from every little thing like um you know you're not going to have a power cut every day you can rely on the electricity um all the sort of Public Services you might find them too Bure bureaucratic or annoying but they work like Swiss watch compared to some of the other places in the world um you're relatively safe you've got free education and free healthcare in this country you know like the dogs in this country that have better lives than people in other places and um and when there's no nothing external to to necessarily struggle against and then you have had these you know coddling helicopter overprotective parents removing any obstacle from your path what's that phrase you know prepared the the the child for the road not the road for the child um and and you end up with um sorry I looked away for a second and I completely lost my train of thought well I've got something I've got I've got what I like something really interesting just came there which is it seems like victimhood culture has arisen because the human systems demand for challenges yeah in life has outstripped the modern world's ability to supply them yeah I think that's one factor and that really well said but I think the other factor is also that because things have been so good people have an unrealistic idea of what life should be like so there should never be anything difficult no one should ever be offended you should be protected from your feelings ever being hurt um and this sort of very unrealistic Camelot like idea for how a person should feel you should you know you see some of some of these posts on Instagram like you deserve this and you are worthy and and I don't know about you but I didn't get that messaging as a kid and I'm really grateful um and the messaging I got was yeah you can do anything you want but get off your butt and earn it um and then you know I'm glad and if you're good enough it wasn't you deserve it because you you think you do who are you none of us none of us um go through your schooling system and uni if you go to UNI then you're just going to meet someone your soulmate fall in love um then you're going to find your perfect career which is going to be rewarding and pay you what you want and you know then you somehow magically have a really nice house in a car and kids if you want them and then they actually you know reach adulthood and they're in for such a rude shock because um it doesn't necessarily go that way um instead you kind of you struggle and you realize no there's no dream job and soulmate that's going to fall in your lap um there's you know you have to make things happen you have to take responsibility and you know combined with this self-esteem parenting that tells children constantly how special they are how clever they are how talented they are and then they grow up and find out that the world doesn't reflect that back to them because maybe they aren't that talented and amazing um and become incredibly depressed and nihilistic what do you think it seems like selfworth or the interpretation of our own selfworth is kind of an important element here what do you think people get wrong about self-worth and where it comes from I think what they get wrong about it is that self-worth does not come from other people inflating you or you know blowing smoke up your ass that doesn't do anything that doesn't like that doesn't hit the core of you it's it's this whole like validation you know how it's so important you have you invalidated me like so [ __ ] what like you're an adult um and I think it doesn't it doesn't touch the sides and the thing it does is make people constantly dependent on more from from those around them which is why it's so crucial to have everybody validate your feelings and your Viewpoint and tell you how wonderful you are but actual selfworth is hard one and it's earned through surviving things and um you know set setting a challenge for yourself and actually accomplishing it um keeping your word to yourself do you know how [ __ ] difficult that is and how few people can do it um and I I struggle with it all the time it's a constant battle but don't stop ever trying um keeping your word to yourself will change your relationship with your sense of of selfworth develop competence in something you know um have a purpose that makes you excited to be alive all those things will not only take your focus off you know this idea that having self-esteem selfworth and you know warm and fuzzy feelings inside is you know the be all and end all of life but it'll give you that grounded sense of self assur self assuredness assess I don't know um that that changes how you feel in the world I think you've just described probably the large the big changes that I made over the last decade yeah you know yeah absolutely keeping my word to myself uh being able to build up trust that if I said I was going to do a thing that I was going to do a thing um creating a competency in something that I genuinely felt proud of myself myself about uh having a purpose that gave me a reason to get up in the morning you know the these have been the big movers for me um and you know that's wrapped in better sleep and wake and more of a focus on like holistic health and fitness and not just looking jacked and having people around me that seem to care about me and integrating not just on the internet and all the rest of those things right but like the big movers the big movers largely have been my scent of self which was born out of making promises to myself and keeping them and I remember the first episode that I did with Jordan Peterson three years ago now maybe more um was he's got this little line people can go back and listen to it and he just like throws it away toward the end of the episode and he says if you want a true adventure in life if if you want an exciting Adventure in life tell the truth like tell the truth and see how big of an adventure that is he's like boy that's an adventure and it's true like if if you want to one of the most difficult scary terrifying things to do is to regularly just keep telling the truth over and over again to not people please uh to not be bitter or resentful posture to uh try and inflate what it is that you've achieved or downplay it to just say what it is which is really the path of least resistance because you don't need to create this big [ __ ] Mirage of of stuff that's All Hiding what's actually going on uh and yet for some reason that seems to be just is very very difficult to do it's very difficult yeah and telling the truth to yourself I think that can't be stated enough because the ways in which we pull the wool over our own eyes is um brilliant but you know there's I completely agree and like the truth is one of my you know like it's it's a really important value to me um and a lot of people really hate Sam Harris but I I I like him for this is because he doesn't try to Pander to any tribe especially the sort of like a woke and anti-woke binary and he just says what he actually thinks and feels about things so everybody seems to hate him but he's he's um I'm sure his mind is organized in a in a different way um in I I agree I mean I had him on the show got a lot of stick for having him on the show 3 months ago and it was Sam Harris's World embarrassment tour people were commenting and I thought to myself like I I had so much fun I did three and a half hours with him and I had so much fun sat down opposite and talking and I understand that people don't like him because of his view on this or you know this just shows that you're not going to hold someone's feet to the fire about this that or the other I was like dude there are people out there that I know for a fine fact are way less trustworthy but just said the right things they made the right mouth noises at the time when you wanted to about the issue that you care about and you would much sooner have a lying but complicit Ally as opposed to a honest but antagonistic adversary and for me like I'm not saying that I'm going to like I don't agree with tons of the stuff that Sam said but I [ __ ] believe that he believes it and the fact that I believe that he believes it gives me a lot of faith that in the future when he says a thing that I can believe it too and given the fact that truth and being able to actually have faith in someone's word is really important and maybe there's stuff that he said that contradicts I'm sure that there is all the rest of it caveat caveat caveat for the internet but yeah like I I believe that he believes the things that he says and I don't I don't think that that can be said for an awful lot of people so that was why I was super excited to sit down with him uh and I will do it again and you know like [ __ ] the internet for like I I I had I had so much fun talking to him I thought it was really really interesting I learned a lot and you know if if if if people have got an issue with the way that he comes across with things then you know I guess he's not for you anymore and the felt sense one of the things I've reflected on this a lot one of the things I think people have an issue with is they thought Sam was their guy and Sam was their guy for a little while yeah and now Sam feels like he's not their guy and one of the big emotions that seems to be driving this is kind of like a betrayal you know yeah yeah um it's like group thing tribalism thing and people try and pretend they're above it none of us are really you kind of have to mitigate your impulses and I think I think that's what it is like these very tribal groups online that dominate you know discourse of everything um that they're far more punishing of Heretics and dissident than they are of like actual adversaries I think um if you if you change your mind mind and you you speak out against the group and you absolutely should um you absolutely should you shouldn't you shouldn't because there's a real price it it's not nice and i' I've had a lot of it like I said this last week a lot of attacks and um losing followers and all that like fun stuff but but I I think there's a bigger price to pay to just assimilate with the group and and sacrifice what do you actually think go against your conscience and not tell the truth um which is why I respect Sam Harris I don't agree with anything or not with everything he says I don't agree with everything anyone says um but what I can respect about him is that he seems to have integrity he has the courage to tell the truth as best as he can see it um and he tries to think things through um and I you know like you said I don't think there's that many people like that out there instead you have this like Legion of parrots with huge platforms that just you know all say the same thing um worded slightly differently um or they say things that you know on purpose to inflame um you know inflame their own audience against another group of people I mean this is this is like my rule of whether a Creator is or is not acting in good faith is is Their audience mostly bound together over the mutual hatred of an outg group or the mutual of an in group that's one of the easiest rubrics to use okay like do they do they bond together by identifying the other and then saying we are not that or is it this is a community of people because shared hatreds are much more powerful than shared loves right way more powerful wartime [ __ ] patriotism versus peacetime patriotism you kidding me um but one of your other posts that I really loved was uh sometimes we are the top toxic ones and no one wants to admit that no one wants to actually point the finger at themselves you know whether it's fundamental attribution error or you know whatever type of motivated reasoning to wiggle your way out of being culpable for the things like everybody is a prick lots of the time right yeah me me included and you know just accepting the fact that we can be like that and and to kind of round out that Sam thing I've been feeling it a bit recently uh we're deep into the episode now which means that all of the people who don't actually usually listen to this aren't listening anymore so I can I can talk more openly I've been feeling it a bit recently because the Channel's grown so much it's like tripled this year I think maybe more by the end of this year it'll have more than tripled uh and and an awful lot of like increasing levels of scrutiny and then you kind of become you become a thing you're no longer a person you're a representation of ideas and there's expectations and there's um um not judgment but there's a a a rhythm to how people expect you to show up and you're kind of put into this particular box you like Chris used to be X or Chris is a part of Y uh and I feel in myself these Dynamics moving below the surface and this kind of engine begin to tune up which is precisely the one that Sam is kind of feeling the other side of at the moment which is like we thought that you were on our side with X or Y or Zed and if you seem to be an unreliable Ally if you seem to do something that goes against what the main group was supposed to do I made some I had an interesting conversation with Constantin kiss and I know you've been on trigonometry I had this conversation with him about how um people on the right say you shouldn't judge people by one interaction but you know Bud Light had had a pretty stellar career of making like watery beer for Americans and then they did the dill milany thing and now the entire company was thrown under the bus and I was like that's I it's just a thought experiment like it's an interesting should this maybe you know maybe it could be a different perspective and we could think about it in this kind of a way but people are so incapable of seeing any idea or any uh any discussion as anything shy of a hill that someone's prepared to die on that they immediately come back with that same sort of energy and I'm like whoa whoa whoa this is this channel is evidently not for [ __ ] you right if I can't play about with ideas on here uh but again you know I see this Dynamic the one that we're talking about with Sam and and maybe the one that he is on the other end of where you go well it's way easier for me to just not play about with those ideas anymore you know this month like 20 million people have seen the channel and it's way easier for me to not ever say to just feed red meat to the Mob to not say anything that's like interesting or adventurous or playing around with ideas or exploratory because I know that if I do do that and I'm imprecise or I'm off that day or it's just a [ __ ] [ __ ] idea which I have all the time like I know that ultimately that's going to come back to bite me in the ass so why should I do that and again like that Dynamic is one of the reasons why I think the people that are deciding like yeah I'm going to even if it's unpopular even if it's and the same goes for you you know like you could continue to sort of spout cotton candy for the Soul at people but to say something which is going to get you as many haters as it do does lovers is a more difficult path yeah I I I love it I I really appreciate your your contrarian uh slightly uh prickly but very very honest uh approach to all of this stuff I think that it's a very important redress to the sort of cod psychology stuff that we do see on the internet and it validates people in a much more honest way like it is still validation it's just not the kind of sort of cotton candy for the soul validation that everyone's looking for so let's say that someone's loved what they've heard today where should they go to find out more of the posts that you've got and everything else that you do um you can find me on Instagram and on Twitter and my handle in both places is my full name c k Chava um my website is the same my name.com and that links to this online community that I run with courses and so on if that interests people um so yeah that's where you can find me online don't try and find me in person please hell yeah I really appreciate you thank you thank you so much if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe