TRIGGERnometry - "Safety Culture is Hurting Us" - Seerut Chawla

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Psychotherapist Seerut K. Chawla (@seerutkchawla) joins us. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode sponsored by Point Me. Want to know the secret to booking flights with points and miles? Let's say you've got 80,000 points, and you're looking at a business class flight to Europe. Cash price? Around $3,000. You check your credit card travel portal, 300,000 points. Way too high. But shh, here's what you should do instead.

Go to point.comme and run that exact same search. In seconds, it shows you better ways to book that same flight across dozens of airline programs. Now, instead of 300,000 points, you're seeing options closer to 65,000. That's because you can move your credit card points into airline programs, where the pricing is usually way lower. Same flight, same seat, for less than half the points. And Point Me doesn't just show you the options. It walks you through exactly how to book it.

If you want to get more value from your points, without becoming a points nerd, visit point. and see what your points are really worth. Get 25% off an annual membership with code points 25. IP vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi. And with no device limits, one account covers everything.

Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our terrific guest today is a therapist and has been quite vocal on the woke stuff,

which is an important part of the conversation. Sirajala, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much, guys. having me. Listen, it's so great to have you. You've been one of my absolute favorite people to listen to and follow on Twitter over the last few weeks and months. But before we get into some of your views and how they've come to be formed, most of our followers won't know who you are. So tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are? What has been the journey that lead you here? Because it's a very interesting one, isn't it? So I grew up in Delhi. I'm sick. I come from the sick community. And it was, yeah, not an easy place to grow up necessarily. There's a lot going on there. There's a, it's a patriarchal country. And I grew up during a rape crisis, which was really, really difficult. And really frightening, actually. It took a really long time even after I came to the UK. to not be frightened all the time and not be frightened around men, I'd say. That was a really big one. That is why we're doing this interview remotely.

Yes. Excellent endorsement of that joke. Yeah. Perfect. So you grew up in this very, you know, in a place where you fell in danger. You come over here. Things are, you know, you're trying to adjust to a new world. And what was that like before we get?

into therapy and woke stuff and everything else. It was, on one hand, I was, I suppose, acclimatized because, like, during the 84 riots, my parents moved here because they were anti-sick riots. My mom is culturally, I'd say British. So I had that influence all the way through growing up, which I think made it even harder to be in India because I had this completely different cultural understanding at home. and then the world around me was much more, I'd say, orthodox, patriarchal, illiberal in some ways.

And coming to the UK felt like a breath of fresh air, felt like you could breathe again, go walk on the street, every man you see is not danger to you, because it definitely can feel like that, sort of navigating the world in India. and it just I think I felt like I ran away to the UK so it's sort of

I'd say my first few years were very much just being here breathing again and just trying to get my bearings more than really accomplishing much I used to I think my first job was ironing I used to work for an events company and iron all that linen that was and it was just a it was such a simple sort of you know you don't you don't you can

completely zone out as you stand there when the steam coming into your face that's probably the hardest bit and just do something really repetitive and and I think I was just trying to regulate to the world around me and just get used to being somewhere safe and sir you touched very sort of lightly touched over the rape crisis in India. For those people who are not aware of that, what actually happened and what does that mean? So it's been named now in the last five to seven to ten years, but it's always been there.

And I think it's, there's an amalgam of factors. Sex is very much taboo. People aren't, you know, you just don't talk about it. of this dirty secret thing. You're dirty if you have sexual desires. So there's a lot of repression. And I think with such a sort of culture of repression, it's metastasized into this strange, perverse thing. It's like people will grow even if you put them into strange contorted shapes, which is what I feel repression does, but you grow in a warped way. And I think that's what's happened. And I think that combined with the way women are seen as less,

fan. I wouldn't say, maybe second-class citizens even, and women are looked very much in this sort of archetypal understanding of mother-maiden crone. And you have a service role. You're not necessarily an individual in your own right and a human being in the world.

You have a function, I think, to perform. To be sexy, to bear children, to be maternal, to be a matriarch. So I think when you look women in that way and combine it with this real sort of pavarse ideas around sex, the power imbalance. And we've ended up with this pretty horrifying epidemic of, you know, even children aren't safe. Children are raped and abducted, women are gangraped, and the new things now that they burn them alive sometimes.

after. And I think the, maybe not the most horrifying, but the one that got the most attention was a few years ago, a girl who was who was gangraped and they disemboweled her. It was just. I remember seeing that story. It was tragic. So you come from that to the UK. And this is kind of we're getting towards the main subject, I suppose, of the conversation. And you keep being told that in this country you live in a patriarchy that's oppressive. How does, how does that feel? I think James Lindsay is named it really well by calling it a pseudo-reality. That's how it feels. I think I finally come to a place where I very much trust my own possession and for a long time, I think, but let me try and understand how it's a patriarchy here

and how do women feel oppressed here. And then I think through listening to this stuff, and then finally giving myself permission to think, actually, I can say what I really think. This is not a fucking patriarchy. It is not. And women are, of course there's violence against women. There's in every culture all over the world. There's also specific kinds of violence against men.

Like gangs target men much more than women because, you know, so you can take any one fact and spin a narrative around it, can't you? The point is that we should really try to be tethered to reality and we're not. And I think this whole idea about the West as a patriarchy and as oppressive is what's not true. And you say it's not true. And what has been your experience when you have put forward your point of view and your own lived experience, shall we say? He's quoting scripture there. It's really, really interesting because...

at first it was like you're a woman of color and you're almost fetishized as if you have some secret knowledge that white people can't possibly have access to. And, you know, it's sort of white people shut the fuck up and listen to this woman of color. And then as soon as you go against their dogma, you're scapegoated. And like they switch. It's such a strange thing. And it's interesting because it's very close to what the person's. mythology of narcissism, where, you know, they'll at first perhaps put you on a pedestal and say how wonderful you are, and then they'll devalue you completely. It's a feature of a few

personality disorders. So, yeah, if you go against the dogma and you don't throw the party line, they will, they will do what they can to assassinate your character. And, um, There's even a white lady in, I think she's in Canada, who started insisting that I'm actually secretly white. So, yeah, it's just absurd. Well, the light on your face does make you look quite white at the moment. So maybe she's right. But, you know, the reason we were so curious to have you on is,

I think as a therapist, you're uniquely positioned because, you know, people can resist all this. critical social justice stuff on an ideological level. But I think as someone who works with people who works with mental health, one of the aspects that has been massively under-explored, I think, of teaching people this way of thinking is that if you teach people that they're victims, you are actually damaging their mental health. That's always been my view.

And I haven't heard enough people talk about it. Do you agree with that? Yes, I do. I think the pendulum has swung far too far. And we're now doing people a great disservice and there's sort of vast swathes of people that really, really believe in the world is an awful place. They're traumatized. That their immutable characteristics limit them. And it's really, really unhealthy.

I think coddling, and it's partly a type of codling. It's sheltering people too much. it's treating, instead of treating people like autonomous adults, we're treating everybody like they're a vulnerable adult. You know, that's a very particular class of people. It's, it's strange and not helpful. It feels like if your mental health was a muscle, it atrophies. It's a very, very interesting way of putting it, how if your mental health is a muscle, it atrophies. Because we do seem to want to coddle everybody now. We talk in this language,

like microaggressions. Why do you think this is so particularly unhelpful, this culture of microaggressions, and I've got to be kept safe, and I want to be safe, and words of violence, etc., etc.? Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world,

so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing, and most people have no idea what's actually in it. Avocado green mattress is different.

Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural materials, designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These are mass-produced objects. Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he's sleep.

My dating history will tell you that. I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it fine. But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado green mattress.com slash,

Trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's Avocado, greenmatress.com slash trigger. Avocado, green mattress.com slash trigger. It's, I mean, the genesis of it, I'm sure, you know, people like James Lindsay and Helen Pluckroes probably addressed in their book, but the mental health impacts, I mean, this sort of safetyism, it's not helpful. coddling people and limiting you know, sort of their experiences

because you're worried it's going to damage them somehow and you're conditioning them to think that, you know, if I'm not wrapped in cotton wool, something really awful is going to happen to me, I'm going to fall to peace. It's the opposite of teaching people resilience. It's the exact opposite of teaching people resilience. And you're not the first person to say that on that show.

I think when we had Linda Papadopoulos on the show, she literally said they're doing the opposite of what we do in CBT. And so I suppose the question would be, you know, as a therapist, I imagine you deal with people who have already got some kind of big problem that they're trying to address usually. But what I don't think the question really often gets asked is, what is actually a healthy attitude to challenge and to difficulty and to disagreement and to being uncomfortable and being inconvenient?

and be in question. And like, what would be a template for a healthy behavior when you're faced with all of that stuff? So I do agree when they say don't bypass your feelings. I think that's,

there's some truth to that and that's really important. So if something difficult or stressful happens, it's worth checking in with yourself and not sort of glossing over it and putting it away because seeps out in some other way usually. But also don't,

Don't make it so big and magnify it that you are sort of crushed under the weight of it. You know, we need to teach people some sorts of like strategies around stress management. And when something difficult happens, how to mentalize that, that doesn't mean because this difficult thing happened to me today, the rest of my life is going to be marred by this and I'm going to fall into a depression, sort of like, this isn't forever. this hurts, but it's going to pass. It will be okay. Sort of leaning into your own sense of competence

and your own inner resources, your sense of resilience and having a sense of trust that you will be okay. And you've dealt with much, you know, with difficult things before and just like that, you'll deal with this. It's sort of challenging these limiting thoughts that we, which is what most of this safetyism is. it's limiting thoughts on a mass scale and it's challenging them,

it's talking yourself through them, it's using reason while looking after yourself and not making it this your mental health and your feelings, the sort of apex enterprise of your life because other things are more important. You have to look past the end of your nose

and we're teaching people the exact opposite of that. The just navel gaze all day long and nothing else is particularly important. And, Sarah, do you think in a way now, we've used the word or fetishising once, do you think we've started to fetishise mental health? Like people start to see being a depressive or having borderline personality disorder.

It's not only a disorder anymore, it's now become an identity. People put it in their Twitter bios. Yeah. Mental health has been fetishized in a really... I don't want to use the word disgusting. I'd probably say the word worrying way. And it's become yet another, you know, in the intersectionalities of I'm brown and I'm a woman and I'm this and I'm that and I have self-diagnosed autism and I've got something else and I've got borderline and on and on.

And again, it's making these immutable characteristics, these sort of central axes. of your identity and of your being, rather than, you know, it's so limiting. It's shoving yourself in a grubby little box and saying, this is all I am. And in being just these small things, my color, my race, my gender and whatever, that's really important.

And everybody else must see it is really important. It's a very unrealistic and inappropriate way to approach your identity, as opposed to, well, what do you love? What books do you read? What makes your heart sing? What do you passionate about? Why are those not more important questions about identity?

That's a really good point. I suppose we all focus on the negative at the moment so much. And there is quite a lot of negatives to be focused on at the moment. Which as a pessimist is fucking brilliant. Yeah. But actually, I mean, as a therapist, I would imagine that making, from your point of view, I would imagine that making some kind of mental health issue or problem or whatever diagnosis, part of your identity would make it essentially impossible to ever recover from that

because you've brought into the identity so much. Is that fair to say or am I exaggerating? I think it's a double-edged sword because there are people who are quite unwell and will have lifelong struggles with mental health. They're people whose lives are sort of crossed by the shadow of depression and other illnesses and for them it is something that informs who they are but that's not what's being done publicly or in what you described

that's sort of glamorizing and fetishizing a disorder that you might or might not have because they've often self-diagnosed and just talking about that constantly again, what you put, the stuff you focus all your attention on,

which is that the world is an awful place. There's white supremacists around every corner waiting to murder everybody. You know, the West is a patriarchy. I'm oppressed. People don't care about my mental illness. This is very pseudo-realistic understandings because, you know, people don't stop talking about mental illness. There's so many, even the royals are talking about the importance of mental health,

talking of like a stuffy institution, they're talking about it. There's constant campaigns. It's very much mainstream. It's very well understood. But they're behaving like none of that exists. It's really peculiar. They do. It's a great point.

They do behave like none of that exists. Why do you think that is? I don't know whether it's an echo chamber thing. I don't know whether it's, I think there's a lot of people who get really, really a big payoff out of being part of a group that's against something. Because again, they're not necessarily building anything. They're not creating, you know, they're not coming up with strategies or solutions. they're not helping people up,

they're tearing things down. And there's a real, you know, even with some of the footage of the riots, there's a real chilling sort of sense that people are having a really good time doing this. They're singing, they're skipping around, they're smashing things. There's like a pleasure from the sense of destruction.

Oh, I totally get that. I am a mizzenthrop. I hate people, but I would totally, I mean, I can totally see how much fun it would be to be in a group of other people with a common purpose just smashing something up. What a great way to spend a day. It was brilliant. It is. I can totally relate to it,

which is where you need sort of to play to people's better angels and encourage them to be involved in, even in movements for change, if you believe that there's injustice or whatever, but that are constructive. But that doesn't seem to be, what's happening. But, you know, from your point, as someone who works with people and it helps to improve their mental health, what do you think would be a healthy societal approach to

talking about these issues and having these conversations? Because as Francis says, you know, we seem to talk about all the time now. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that if you were to measure people's sense of well-being over the last 50, 60, 70 years, I think all the data shows that we're getting more miserable, aren't we? We're getting more miserable, and there's so many reasons for that. We're not, you know, we sit inside all day. I mean, the last year has been pretty devastating for that. Sit inside all day and you stare at screens.

Most of us aren't moving. We're not eating things that would nourish our body and make us feel better. And, you know, movement is really, I mean, we live incredibly sedentary lives if you look at history. Even if you exercise for an hour or even two a day, it's still kind of nothing compared to how we were living. All those things have an impact because, you know, the world around us might have changed. Our wiring hasn't.

We're sort of a primitive thing in this strange changing world. And I think that gap is ever widening. And we're not learning how to deal with that gap very well. And we're suffering because of it. And it's doing really funny things to people's minds. So even with the last year and the pressure people have been under, not just being stuck indoors all day, which being stuck inside for pretty much an entire year

is going to have a pretty profound impact on your sense of feeling good in the world and good in yourself. But even some of the conspiracy theories that have come out of the last year or some of the sort of analyses people are putting out about this capital, you know, this attack that's just happened. It's how are you making these connections? This has absolutely, you know, looking at the footage of these people, they're a bunch of clowns. There's a bunch of idiots who've gotten, who've broken into this building. But to then call it a targeted insurrection or coup, sort of like, how are you spinning this? Why are we not looking at reality,

naming it very clearly and staying tethered to it instead of spinning these narratives. And everyone is confused. The media has, not just the media, social media, everyone is getting into your head and confusing you further. And then we remove the metanarratives. People don't have a sense of community and meaning based on anything else. and then they lean into stuff like workness

or on the other end of the spectrum QAnon, you know, just wacky ideas that are not based in reality. Francis, did you know that investing is one of the best ways to preserve your wealth over the long term? What's wealth? Something you will never find out

as long as I have control of the chugonometry account. However, if you do have wealth, high commission and clunky products from traditional stock brokers make it very difficult for people like me to start investing. Good. For everyone else, though, free trade has come up with an award-winning app that is currently being used by over 250,000 people. It's FCA approved and FSC-approved, and

FSCS-Protected. It's brilliant. It allows you to trade commission-free. Free Trade has won Best Online Trading Platform at the British Bank Awards two years in a row, 2019 and 2020. They offer no speculative products, no spread betting, no day trading. It's all about, and growing your wealth over long term. No hidden fees, transparent price and structure. Very simple to use. You can sign up for a general investment account or a Stockton shares ISO. Or sign up to Free Trade Plus for more advanced order types and a bigger stock universe. They've also got other new products coming soon. You can get a universe. Go to free trade.org slash trigger, register and fund your account and you'll get a randomly allocated free share worth between three,

and 200 pounds. Could be in a great company like Right Move Apple, even Gregs. Greg's. When you invest your capital is at risk, the value of your investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than you originally invested. He knew that bit off by heart. And we talk about not being based in reality and we talk about the impact that the previous year has had.

Isn't the problem, sir, a large part of it is social media and now we're spending hours and hours on our phone, and essentially having our brains hacked by these social media companies whose only vested interests is keeping us on our phones or on our laptops for ever longer periods of time. Follow us on Twitter at TriggerPod. Absolutely. And all other social media platforms for unvarnished truth. Apps are fucking looting. And at the same time, how'd you get off them? I'm as addicted as anybody else. I go to Wii and I'm looking on Twitter. Like, it's just, you're can't stop. It's like it's almost like the phone is handcuffed to your wrist and and that's how it feels.

It weirdly, it's like the phone is an extension of your mind. And when you leave your phones, none of us would not understand the kind of discomfort you feel if you leave your phone at home by accident. We all know that. It's like you're suffering until you get it back. This is not normal and we're so attached to this device. Yeah. Well, I mean, that is what makes it so empowering too, right? Like we are tapping in literally with our brains into this big network into the cloud. And that's what makes it so powerful.

On the other hand, it's also what makes it so powerful in terms of having an impact on our brain. So I think we've got to the diagnosis very well, Siri. You've talked about all the reasons that we are as messed up as we are. what sort of advice would you give people or do you give people, particularly now where certainly in the UK we're all stuck indoors in other countries. It's, you know, they've got different rules. What are some of the healthy things you can do to protect your body and mind from both, you know, the impact of lockdown, but also the bombardment of social media and all this other stuff?

I think we have to really, there's social media elicits a lot of really big emotional stuff. It's really easy to get high on hate. It's really easy to get self-righteous. It's really easy to go online and just sort of fire off all these horrible impulses that you're carrying around because you're not feeling very happy because life is difficult. And that's a muscle that you have to build. You have to practice not doing that. You know, if someone comes to your, I mean, it's a difficult line to walk and I don't want to be a hypocrite here because if someone comes and is really, really rude, I won't take it. And I don't suffer fools gladly.

but at the same time, there's also lines that I won't cross, and I think you have to figure out what that is for you. And, you know, I know we're allowed to go out and exercise and all that stuff in the UK with the lockdowns, but I think that's a lot of people are even struggling to access that at the moment. I think there's not just the sort of adjustment disorder, or sort of depression, let's say, from the pandemic and all that stress, there's then we have a lot less sunlight at the moment this is typically the time most people are

slightly lower in mode so just look after yourself you know don't don't engage with horrible stuff guard your mind because that's that's the most important thing don't feed your mind horrible miserable toxic things unplug from from some of that stuff and really um there's there's this term in um one of the trauma therapies so you know what what a trigger is, something that, of course, you know what a trigger is. Yeah, I think, I think we know what a trigger is. But in trauma terms, a trigger isn't necessarily the internet form of being triggered, but like an actual trigger where you're involuntarily immersed in something, you know,

something that reminds you of your trauma. And it's sort of quite a horrible thing. So a glimmer is the exact opposite of that. it's something that involuntarily puts you in a really good state. So imagine when you listen to a song that you just fucking love and you haven't heard it in a while. And then it kind of makes your heart sing and you feel it in your body.

That's a glimmer. You know, you have to incorporate more things like that into your life. You'd be really intentional about it because the shitty stuff is a deluge that you can't stop. You know, that dam has been broken. So you have to build like a wall. around yourself and all of these sorts of practices are what look after you. And don't be scared

of discomfort and adversity. That's what makes you grow. Don't, you know, do difficult things. Prove to yourself that you have a sense of competence, that you're strong, that you're capable. You can go through hard things and survive them. You know, if I had it my way, I would completely get rid of safety culture because I think it's making people unwell. But as we can't do that, I guess we do what we can with what we have. And I think that's a good attitude to take into life as well, which is don't be defeatist. Do what you can with what you have. And you'd be surprised at how much more you have than you really think. Have you ever been abroad and felt out of place because you didn't speak the language? No, because I voted Brexit. Brexit means Brexit. I know that sometimes

you're abroad, you don't speak the local language. It's very awkward like Francis talking to a woman. So you have to shout. Do you want to love it? learn another language? I don't for obvious reasons. But if you do, Babel is quite simply one of the finest language learning apps in the business. Babel offers a clear and easy to use interface. They have daily 10 to 15 minute lessons that have been proven effective across many studies showing that you can learn up to 14 languages that they offer. So it doesn't matter if you struggle with language. Maybe you find it difficult to pick up or maybe you're just English. Right now, Babel is offering our fans six-month free on a six-month subscription with Babel using our special code,

which is, of course, trigger. That's Babel, B-A-B-B-B-E-L dot-code.com.uk-U-K slash play and use the promo code trigger. Look at that spelling. He learned English on Babel. I did. But seriously, go to babble.com. Dot-K-F-U-K forward slash play, use our code trigger and enjoy Babel. And do you think part of the problem as well is that, and again, this goes back to social media, we're in a constant state of feeling that actually we're being denied, that people are doing better than us. We've lost our ability to be grateful. I don't feel that way. I'm crushing it.

And not just lost our ability to be grateful. There's active messaging saying you're under no obligation to be grateful. That's toxic positivity. You don't have to find gratitude. Yeah. I haven't heard that one. Is that a thing? Yeah, it's a thing. So what's toxic positivity? There's some truth in it, which is that, you know, there's a lot of like woo-woo spiritual type of people who, you know, I'm in a different reality. And racism is, you know, lower vibration, rubbish. It's just, you know, silly people saying silly things.

And it's evolved into this idea that even when, say, you're mentally ill, or you've had trauma or something, you just try and feel positive and be grateful. Oh, that doesn't work. You have to deal with the issue. Yeah. So that's what, but that toxic positivity has now,

has always been taken too far. And now there's a real rhetoric amongst, so I'm in the Instagram therapy niche. And every day I'll see two or three posts. You don't have to find a lesson in your trauma. You don't have to, of course you don't, but maybe you should try

and maybe you should think about things. Why limit yourself before? You know, you don't have to feel gratitude if you're not feeling Christmas cheer, that's completely fine. It's this constant, you know, what they think is this validating, affirming stuff. But it's subliminally messaging,

the subliminal messaging to people is, positivity is not aspirational. People who are success, people who are functional, people who make something of themselves and build themselves up, that's now a privileged villain. And the virtue and the good stuff comes from people who are sitting and hurting. And there's a lot of the subliminal messaging that's, I think, really damaging and worrying and a horrible idea.

And Sirot, if the people come in with this particular mindset, and they're already thinking like this, thinking in this particular how it constructing them so is this victim narrative. Doesn't it make it incredibly difficult for you to treat them? Very, very difficult. They're the hardest people to work with. You know, in private practice anyway, because you don't take on necessarily people

who are very seriously unwell. Wouldn't be appropriate in this setting. But yes, it's very, very, very difficult. And it's because they have a real investment in staying as they are. because they get a social reward from it. Their in-group rewards them constantly. They get social status from it. They get attention.

They've now, they've constructed an identity around being a person who is hard done by suffering not okay. And I think there's a real sense of fear around being okay, being successful and being functional, because for one, you're going to get kicked out of your social group if you do. And I think we don't kind of think about that. That's a big thing, especially if you're young in your late teens and early 20s. That's a massive loss. So I have a few clients like that, and all of them have said some version of, I'm scared to be well, I'm scared to be better. That doesn't surprise me at all. I think the group instinct and group status and approval is such a big thing.

It's quite similar in substance abuse, isn't it? Like someone who wants to stop taking certain substances or drinking alcohol with friends or whatever, they will often have to let go of that group, and that can be quite a big obstacle. But let's talk about you a little bit because you're a therapist, you're in private practice. I would not have thought that coming out publicly and having strong views on cultural issues would necessarily be the most helpful thing for you from a sort of business. point of view. Why have you chosen to be as vocal as you are about these issues? It felt irresponsible not to. And why is that? Because it feels like, well, for one, I think

it's ruining my field. I think now we have much less actual psychotherapists that are doing actual psychotherapy as opposed to either guidance counselors who want to validate everyone for everything or activists who are just labeled therapists. It's like all the grievance study scholars, they are all activists with different labels. One is a teacher, one is a scholar, one's a social worker, one's a therapist. But their primary function is activism. And it just can't infiltrate therapy. It's sort of against any form of proper work. And it's sort of also against most of my personal things I believe in. I believe in stoicism. And in not being a defeatist and being, you know, striving and moving forward and

doing difficult things and not blaming everybody else and taking responsibility for the stuff you can control. And it's the pretty much polar opposite messaging to being given to people and being called therapeutic. No, I was going to say, it seems to me that what they're doing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is politicising therapy, which it's just insane. Can you explain why politics and therapy should be,

I can't believe I'm asking this question, but it needs to be asked. Why should they be completely separate? Well, it's like saying, well, why should spaghetti and spaceships be separate? Well, it's just two things that have nothing to do with each other. It shouldn't have been together. It's just absolutely, like I'm so angry about this. And you have these people talking about how the personal is political. Well, if you question them, you scratch, you know, on the veneer a little bit.

Well, there's nothing under there. They have no responses for that, what that really means. Therapy is political. Why? because, you know, there's white supremacy and patriarchy and all these different oppressions and therapists, you know, it impacts clients, so therapists have to be really involved and advocate for this. It's like, well, you're not a fireman and you're not a social worker and you're not a police, but, you know, you're a therapist, do your actual job and let other people do their jobs.

and the point of therapy is that you provide somebody a safe unbiased container in which that they can start to become who they are, deal with their stuff, like make quite deep, in-depth exploration of really difficult things. You don't need biases and the therapies. I mean, that's completely contrary to anything that would create useful therapy. The therapist's bias. The therapist politics, the therapist's lived experience. Why is the therapist all of a sudden this, why are they the star of the therapy? They shouldn't be. It should always be about the client. And I suppose one thing we haven't actually asked you about is what is the therapy industry or the field like at the moment? So I've been in private practice for a little while,

so I'm not necessarily around a lot of therapists all the time, but based on the Instagram niche, which is you've got hundreds of therapists in it, it's increasingly woke. Even therapists in this country, you know, some of the ones that I know, they, I think people just go along with it.

They're told, this is the right thing, this is the PC thing. You just have to go along with it, and it's a slow creep. You know, it's like boiling a frog. and slowly, before you know it, you're talking about you're lecturing your white clients on their privilege in a session. A guy comes in and says, I'm depressed, and you go, that's because you're a white man.

That sounds great. The best bit is they're paying for it. That'll be 50 quid. Thank you very much. It's awful. And for how, I mean, this obviously, you've talked about the boiling frog metaphor. This didn't obviously happen.

overnight. For how long has this been coming? I mean, I think this has been coming for a really long time, but the infiltration into therapy seems to be a more, you know, I'm not sure. But for me, I've seen it in the last couple of years and where it's become really prominent and really difficult to ignore. And I started being quite vocal about it because it got to the point where I thought you're going to, you're not doing therapy, you're not helping people. You're doing something really unethical and awful in calling it good. And I couldn't be quiet about that. It felt really strongly about it.

It's, you know, you have therapists constantly talking about their own privilege. You have a lot of infighting. You know, therapists behaving like crabs in a bucket over just this hierarchy of I'm the most woke. I'm the most anti-oppressive. I'm the least privileged. Look at my, you know, 35 different intersectionalities. It's just become this weird narcissistic performance. And again, it just has nothing to do with therapy. There's nothing to do with the psyche and helping people. It's a good example, though, of what their psyche or a good illustration of what their psychees might be like. Beyond that, no, not really.

isn't this just an example of society becoming more and more narcissistic? Yeah. That's all we're doing, aren't we? Just focusing on ourselves. Yeah. It's great. It's great, and it's also a nightmare. And it's, you know, just this naval gazing.

Like, what has happened to everybody? I don't know. Maybe I'm really old-fashioned in this way, and maybe I've got it wrong. But I think sitting around thinking about your feelings all day, is just a horrendous idea and you're going to make yourself upset. You're not going to be a good partner, employee, parent, any of those things.

And... IP vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi.

And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPvanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IP vanish. I just don't even know. I know words sometimes evade all of us on this issue. But let me ask you about this. You mentioned intersections. And here you are, pseudo-brown, foreign-born, woman, oppressed in every way, religious minority, you know, all the rest of it. Woman's spelled with an X, of course. Obviously, and a woman. Yeah, as we call it on trigonometry.

So do you have any sympathy for the idea that, you know, if you come from a mixture of these groups that are not traditionally speaking advantaged in society, that you are more disadvantaged than others, automatically? do you have any sympathy with that or do you just think that that's wrong? I think all these ideas have a kind of truth to them. Yeah. But they're misapplied. Like intersectionality, isn't it supposed to be for, to make sure the legal system

doesn't miss out ways in which people are discriminated against or how to make sure you're deploying proper resources and not missing anything out by looking at all different intersections of ways in which, you know, I don't like using this word, but oppressed. But it's not applied that way anymore. Now it's sort of like a blue-haired university student who has, you know, got 30 different things and 50 different emojis in their bio about how oppressed they are while they scapegoat actual people of color online. This is, it's really been my my experience since I've been speaking about this. I find a lot of woke white people will

you, they talk about don't use your, don't weaponize your identity as a person of color or whatever. So they use this term, don't weaponize your identity. But then they use theirs at every available opportunity. And they use it to basically hammer out dissent. So intersectionality is yet another thing to use their term that's been weaponized and been used as an exercise in narcissism instead of being applied for what it was, which was a tool, not a weapon. And Syracial, why do you think it is that more people, especially people in the field of mental health, can see what is happening, can see that these practices and behaviors are deeply unhelpful and unhealthy? Why is it that more people haven't stood up and said, this is.

is lunacy. It's, I mean, I'm at a loss for that as well. I don't understand how you can be exposed to this to this for a while and not start to say, hang on, this isn't right? Something's really wrong here. And there's very few people, I mean, I could probably think of 300 therapists in that Instagram niche and maybe three of us talk about it. So it's really odd. There's a few therapists on Twitter that talk about it. I don't know. I don't know whether it's to do with personality traits and it's that kind of agreeableness needing to be needed, being cooperative, staying in the group.

I think a lot of therapists have that trait, the need to be needed, which again, you know, sort of indicates other traits of needing to be accepted and be in the group. And I don't know whether that is a part of it. I don't know whether it's because, you know, universities are indoctrinating people into this theory. And they're coming out into the world with this preconceived blueprint and they superimpose it onto the world and then demand that everybody else sees, you know, looks through their rose-tinted glasses, whatever.

Or maybe not rose-tinted, whatever, the opposite of that. I don't know. I'm really confused about that myself. Like these are people who are supposed to understand human behavior and people who are supposed to, you think have quite good ethics. And they're watching people cancel each other. They're getting involved in it. They're doing just weird, anti-social, horrible things.

And I'm very confused by it. I think the whole world is very confused by it. But we haven't really talked about politics and we don't need to get too much into it. But I just wanted to ask, do you think now that the evil orange man has left the building, people will calm down a bit? Do you think a lot of this was a sort of visceral response to, you know, Donald Trump was a divisive figure? The way he spoke made people very uncomfortable.

The way he didn't play by certain traditional rules when it came to being present or being a candidate. it made people uneasy. Like, you know, you want, most people want the leader of the free world, so-called, to be this grounding, stable figure who can always be relied on to deliver calm and sort of measured tone. Donald Trump, you know, whether you like him or not, was not that. I think everyone who's rational would agree on that. Do you think that now that he's no longer going to be president, people will sort of feel

all right, we don't need to fight so hard. We can relax a little bit. We can ease off. Or am I just being very toxicly positive about this? I don't know. It's hard. I mean, because it's a group of people that have sort of built their identities and their life purpose about railing against something,

whether it's there or not. You know, Donald Trump definitely gave them something, someone to hate. He gave them someone to, you know, complain about. But I think they might settle down slightly, but they are also going to get a lot of institutional power behind them. So I don't know. I think it's going to be a really, I think we should watch with caution. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hear you. I mean, I was saying to the boys here at the studio this morning, like, what is CNN going to talk about now? You know. What are all these woke people going to do?

And it sounds like what you're really saying is they've banded together around an identity and they're going to have to direct their energy somewhere and now they're going to be in power, now they're controlling all the big tech. Yeah, 2021 is going to be a great year. Started out well, isn't it? Go on.

No, I was just, no, I was just so, yeah, it really didn't start. out very, very well. Is there any optimism for the future, Syriott? There's always optimism. I think you have to hold on to that, don't you? Yes, I think there is, and I think the optimism is that more and more people, perhaps not therapists, but everyone else, are kind of, you know, waking up to this and people are getting fed up of it. And luckily, not everyone is a reactive or not everyone wants to be a counterforce. There are a lot of people are waking up to this and saying, actually, this isn't okay.

I'm not going to be involved in it. I'm not going to bend a knee. And I'm also not going to bully you back. Like I'm not having this, like strong, straight-spined people that are standing up to this. And I think that's something to be really optimistic about. It is. And you talk about these, you know, the people standing up to it.

I think a lot of people now are in a quandary because people like us are coming out and talking and saying this is unacceptable, whatever it may be, but you get people who for one reason or another are uncomfortable but don't feel that they can speak up. What would your advice be to people like them who may be aren't as inclined or don't have the personality types to confront these bullies? Well, even if you don't want to speak up about it, you don't have to encourage it, go along with it, and I think what I recommend to those people is to do what I did, which is to set up something like a Twitter account. You don't have to say anything.

You just start listening to people and see what's being said and, you know, start to, I tweeted because one of the things that I get out of tweeting is working out my own ideas and then you get instant feedback and it's one way to figure out how you feel about things. but you can also do that just by listening to people, not inflammatory nightmare people, but listen to reasoned rational people and a variety of voices. Don't be in an echo chamber.

I think people that are stuck in that woke echo chamber, wherever it is, they think everyone thinks like that and they're terrified of having that angry mob turn on them. As soon as you leave it, you realize they're a tiny little, very loud minority. And there's a lot, this big world, it's full of a lot of different people. And it's, it's okay, you'll be okay.

Listen to what other people are saying as well. Why didn't your focus would be my advice. It's good advice, Sarah. And listen, it's been great chatting to you. I think one of the reasons we wanted to speak with you is that there are so many fields that are being affected in this way. And, you know, whether it's comedy, whether it's therapy, whether it's journalism, and whether it's spore, you know, all acting, all of these, all of these fields.

And we're going to, as the year goes on, to speak to more and more people from these different fields. But as you know, when we finish the show, we always finish with the same question, which is, what is the one thing that no one is talking about that we really should be? I think we should be talking about not reacting to things. We should be talking about grounding yourself and finding a centre. We're talking about how your hot take isn't needed in the world. It's much more important to look after yourself. You know, we need to start having conversations around calming the fuck down.

Everyone has no chill. And just work on yourself. you grow those muscles, modulate your behavior, regulate your emotions, stop just reacting to things, stop, you know, you see someone broken to the capital so you decide that's white supremacy. When you don't have all the facts, so without the facts, you don't have an accurate assessment. So you start thinking like that. We need more reason. We need, you know, people to be more circumspect and to start building bridges because everyone on the left, isn't woke and everyone on the right has been sadly tarred as a bigot. And we need to stop all of that, all that division and find a way to actually see each other as human beings and be okay with the fact that people who are not you will have thoughts that you wouldn't have. And that's not something to flip out about. If it's not a thought in your head, it's not your business. Let other people think what they like, you know, just get calm.

Yeah, I'm sure that will definitely happen this year. Syrah, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. I really, as I said at the very top of the interview, you're one of my Twitter faves at the moment. Where can people find you online? So I'm on Twitter at Syrit K Chowler and same handle on Instagram. And maybe you can put that in your caption somewhere because we absolutely will and equally there may be people who want to get your help in terms of therapy what's the best way for them to find you for that at the moment i'm not taking on too many people but um i'm building a website which will be up soon which will also be chtar vla so that's being built and it will yeah all right perfect

thank you so much for coming on and thank you guys for watching we will see you very soon with another episode or a live stream And they always go out at 7pm UK time. Take care, guys, and see you soon. This episode sponsored by Maximus Tribe. You train, you track, you eat right. But if you're over 40, you've felt it. The results don't match the effort anymore.

That's not willpower, it's biology. Hormones drop, metabolism slows, your body stops responding the way it used to. Maximus is the online clinic that reverses your decline with prescription performance medicines, GLP ones, testosterone, and peptides that reduce belly fat, restore energy, and boost recovery. Over 50,000 high performers have already broken through their plateaus. If you're ready to turn your hard work into measurable results, go to maximus tribe.com.

That's maximus tribe.com.