#916 - Freya India - Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever

Speaker 1 Why do you think so many girls are drawn to therapy culture?

Speaker 2 Oh, I think it's a lot of things.

Speaker 2 I do think this is kind of a cliche thing to say now, but I do think therapy culture has replaced religion.

Speaker 2 And that's not a new thing to say. People have been saying that for a long time.
So, Christopher Lash was writing about that in the 70s.

Speaker 2 Frank Farudi writes about it really well now.

Speaker 2 But in recent years, since social media, I would say, therapy culture has just escalated

Speaker 2 to the point where

Speaker 2 I think young women don't see it as a worldview. They just see that as kind of life.
So they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens. So their lives, their relationships, their emotions.

Speaker 2 And I think it has elevated to the level of religion.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion. We just mimic them with therapy culture.
So instead of praying, we just repeat our like positive affirmations.

Speaker 2 Instead of like seeking salvation, you'll go on like a healing journey.

Speaker 2 Instead of like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 2 resisting temptation from the devil, you'll reframe your intrusive thoughts.

Speaker 2 And so I think for young women in particular who are becoming less religious, this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void.

Speaker 1 What does a therapeutic worldview consist of? What does that mean?

Speaker 2 Like seeing problems in your life,

Speaker 2 kind of pathologizing problems and experiences as something medical, rather than I'm just experiencing this emotion or kind of age-old anxiety. Now it's become a medical issue.

Speaker 2 So things like talking in the language of attachment styles

Speaker 2 and trauma and losing the language of just ordinary hurt and disappointment and things like that.

Speaker 1 And And

Speaker 1 for some reason, this is giving some kind of solace or comforts,

Speaker 1 order being brought out of chaos?

Speaker 2 I think it gives the comfort religion gives and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like,

Speaker 2 like they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe and like have faith in that.

Speaker 2 And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts. So the

Speaker 2 any actual demands on you or kind of restrictions on your freedom or anything like that.

Speaker 1 And being held to standards of behavior, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So it has what women are craving in modern life, I think, which is

Speaker 2 belonging and security in something and faith in something. But

Speaker 2 it's a much easier version of religion.

Speaker 1 Slippery religion.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How many of these girls are in therapy, do you think?

Speaker 2 A lot.

Speaker 2 There was a study recently showing 32 of all 12 to 17 year olds in america have either had therapy been on medication or had some kind of treatment in 2023 um in this over a single year one third which is insane and

Speaker 2 i was talking to someone about that statistic and they were like oh that's great that's amazing and i was thinking that's a bleak statistic um

Speaker 2 so yeah i think

Speaker 2 there's the girls that are in therapy which is a lot but then there's also the girls who are just like living living in therapy culture.

Speaker 2 So it's just, they scroll through Instagram and it's all about attachment styles, trauma.

Speaker 2 They go on TikTok and it's like a trauma-informed therapist telling them like red flags they should watch out for and stuff. It's just like

Speaker 2 there's the actual therapy, which I'm sure there is,

Speaker 2 there's useful therapists, but there's also just this culture, which is just the world that they're swimming in.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So you're never able to switch it off.
I think

Speaker 1 Alanda Botton was sat in that same seat as you.

Speaker 1 Big proponent of psychotherapy, I think trained as a psychotherapist himself too, onto School of Life, which isn't just a YouTube channel, but a psychotherapy facility here in London.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 even he,

Speaker 1 like the biggest proponent of it, I think would very much say that there is a time for therapizing and then there is a time to not, in the same way as going to the gym, there is a time to train and then there is a time to recover.

Speaker 1 And I wonder whether

Speaker 1 one of the criticisms that's common that I put to him was lots of people online, more old school people, more sort of typical stiff upper lip type people, would say

Speaker 1 you're not fixing your past's problems, you're dwelling on them. And by dwelling on them, you are ruminating too much.
There is some evidence. I mean, a good bit of evidence.

Speaker 1 Rumination is not particularly fantastic for you.

Speaker 1 And finding this line between, yeah, mate, we don't want to deny that bad things happened and never alchemize them or transcend and include them into our life.

Speaker 1 And then on the other side, we don't want to wallow in them. But I suppose if you

Speaker 1 have the online environment that you exist within permanently using this language, you're permanently having these structures and these thinking patterns reinforced.

Speaker 1 And then it's how you begin to talk to yourself about what happens offline. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then you also have, you know, facilitation or medication or conversations with your friends further embracing all of that. It's, you're just entrenched in this all the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I used to think, and I think a lot of people think therapy culture is particularly bad for men because it

Speaker 2 it kind of has a female approach to problems and it's about, you know, ruminating. And often it's like, if you don't have a female response, there's something wrong with you.

Speaker 2 It's kind of a red flag if you don't go to therapy. But I actually changed my mind on that.
And I actually think therapy culture is worse for women because women ruminate more.

Speaker 1 They co-rumate. It's just playing into the weakness that they already have or the disposition.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you think of an anxious young 14-year-old girl, the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to get relief and to think more about her problems and to kind of search her life for symptoms.

Speaker 2 You know, that if you told me that at 14, it's the worst thing I could have heard.

Speaker 2 So I actually think maybe some men do need to do that a little bit more, but the average young girl needs to kind of cut out.

Speaker 1 I wonder whether

Speaker 1 therapy language and therapy culture for girls is what gym language, gym culture,

Speaker 1 psalms, testosterone, steroids at 17

Speaker 1 is for guys.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's a form of control. So it's like,

Speaker 2 it's our version of control. You know, if we feel uncomfortable or feel an uneasy emotion, we're just like, I'm going to categorize that and diagnose it.

Speaker 2 You know, that's my attachment disorder or that's my depression.

Speaker 2 And I think men do that kind of, they have their own kind of self-optimization trends and the gym stuff where that can become like a form of control to deal with kind of uneasy emotions.

Speaker 2 And I think, yeah, this is the woman's version of that. It's like we can't sit with it or just accept like a painful situation.
So I often think about,

Speaker 2 so if you look at these kind of attachment style forums or girls talking about their attachment styles, Very often they'll describe just a bad relationship and then they'll say, oh, it's my attachment disorder.

Speaker 2 So they'll be like, he cheated on me and I can't get over it because of my anxious attachment.

Speaker 2 And it's like, it's so sad because they're actually losing the language to talk about the actual problem that they're facing because they're trying to get control.

Speaker 2 Because it's a lot easier to be like, oh, you know, I'm anxious or he's avoidant than we have a terrible relationship and I've just wasted four years with someone. You get the control.

Speaker 2 through the therapy culture.

Speaker 2 So that's where I see it becoming a danger to girls and young women.

Speaker 1 What's that stat that you mentioned there about girls from religious families seeming to do differently well? And now 18 to 25 year old girls are religious at different levels and stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think for the first time in history, young women are less religious than young men now.

Speaker 1 Typically women would have been more.

Speaker 2 But among Gen Z, it's men that are going to church way more than women now.

Speaker 2 And Jonathan Haidt did some research on this showing that he like presented, he looked at a survey of statements and they were things like, I have no hope in myself, I don't believe, like really self-disparaging statements.

Speaker 2 And he found that teenagers without religion agreed with them way stronger than teenagers who were religious and especially who were conservative.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. I think

Speaker 2 One is kind of that external locus of control. So conservatives tend to have more

Speaker 2 of an internal locus of control. So they feel more control over things happening in their lives.

Speaker 2 Also, if you're conservative teenager, you're more likely to be living with both parents, which I think protects your mental health.

Speaker 2 And also your parents are more likely to have clearer boundaries with you,

Speaker 2 which I think is actually very useful for anxiety.

Speaker 2 and depression. So there's different explanations for it.
But yeah, it's a worry because young women are becoming less religious and their mental health is also tanking.

Speaker 2 So there has to be some link there.

Speaker 1 And maybe therapy culture, therapy language is stepping into the void and also stopping them from perhaps going back to finding religion.

Speaker 1 I'm hesitant to say that therapy culture is getting in the way of religion. It's like religion is necessarily the answer to this, but that it's whatever

Speaker 1 better alternatives could be, including religion, are being precluded by this much sexier,

Speaker 1 newer,

Speaker 1 more comforting answer to everything that makes no demands on you as a person, that doesn't require you to follow any edicts or refrain from any types of behaviors.

Speaker 2 Well, therapy culture, I think it probably is getting in the way in a sense, because it's, it's kind of the opposite of religion. So if you think of Christianity, it's about

Speaker 2 dying to yourself, like giving up some of yourself

Speaker 2 to be part of something bigger. Therapy culture is all about going more and more into yourself, discovering yourself and like finding your authentic self.
It's the complete opposite.

Speaker 2 So something like Christianity, I think most young women just view it as really restrictive and limiting.

Speaker 2 And something like therapy culture or just liberal culture in general, tells them that any limit or constraint is a problem. What like?

Speaker 2 Well, just this sense in culture now that any

Speaker 2 obligation is like an obstacle to your life or your mental health.

Speaker 2 I think that's just endemic from everywhere we look.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's, yeah, very much the opposite of what religion tells us, which is that through sacrifice, you find kind of actual fulfillment

Speaker 2 and you kind of break free from yourself. Now we're kind of told whether it's through feminism or therapy culture or whatever girls are scrolling through on TikTok or Instagram, It's like,

Speaker 2 you know, things like you think of therapy culture on TikTok. It will say something like, don't be a people pleaser.
Don't be needy.

Speaker 2 But these things are kind of the opposite of what Christianity is telling you, which is like, you should be someone who puts your needs second.

Speaker 2 It's good to be someone who gives for other people, who depends on people, and they depend on you.

Speaker 2 That's not the message girls are growing up with.

Speaker 1 Is therapy culture less pro-social?

Speaker 2 Yes, I think so. Well, again, you're just going inwards.

Speaker 2 And yeah, also

Speaker 2 I often think of, again, it's a similarity between therapy culture for women and kind of self-optimization stuff for men, because it's like

Speaker 2 for men, if you go too far that way, other people become obstacles to your like ambition and your self-development.

Speaker 2 So people become like distractions and annoyances.

Speaker 2 It's the same with therapy culture because then for a young woman who's really into therapy culture, a man is just like an obstacle to her healing and her mental health.

Speaker 2 So I think if you go too far in it, you can just interpret anyone or anything as a threat to your peace. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's very interesting. Which is, you know, the best kind of relationships are the ones that make both people in them better.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That they enter the relationship and stay in the relationship, hopefully. Or if they leave, they leave

Speaker 1 in an improved situation, individually.

Speaker 2 Yes. But I don't think

Speaker 2 that's really getting across to young women. I think,

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 I think what the problem is, is you go on something like TikTok and you have like a trauma-informed therapist who might be interesting and informative, but she's now competing in a attention economy.

Speaker 2 So she has to create a video which is engaging and extreme. So she has to say five red flags you should avoid in men.
And they're

Speaker 2 they're things that are just so vague. And

Speaker 2 things like, well, I literally saw one that said gifts and trips. It's a red flag because it's love bombing.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 But other things like they'll say, you know, you're in a bad relationship if he makes you feel insecure, for example.

Speaker 2 by making a comment about your looks but it's it's so vague that it's like well anyone's boyfriend could be included in that somehow um but if you add them all together if you're scrolling through this all day every day which a lot of girls are

Speaker 2 the message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be a red flag unsafe yeah and you're unfortunately girls do co-ruminate together and it's really bad for their mental health so co-ruminate yeah so dwelling on their problems with friends um

Speaker 2 which if you think of something like a Reddit Forum, that is just a rumination machine. It's just like it's there for everybody to analyze together.

Speaker 2 TikTok is literally somewhere you can ruminate and then it will start recommending you new disorders and problems.

Speaker 2 So it's like, it's kind of like the inner world of these young girls, but now getting fed more and more to them.

Speaker 1 Other people's inner worlds, which can become a sort of, oh, that's a nice thought pattern. Maybe I'll try that one on.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And And the most risk-averse, neurotic, anxious women on there will get the most traction because they'll be saying everybody else is following along from them.

Speaker 2 So if you spend too much time on there, you will think that like a well-adjusted woman doesn't need anyone, doesn't have any distraction in her life, and

Speaker 2 feels good all the time, that no one ever threatens her or makes her feel anxious. And that's just like a lonely life.

Speaker 1 And any perturbment from feeling the opposite of of that is not because of her it's because of some insult that's occurred in one form or another from the world or from structures or from a partner or from a friend or from

Speaker 2 but the problem with that is you shut down any constructive criticism of you like if your boyfriend has a constructive comment about you if you are being selfish or something um therapy culture does provide endless excuses to kind of twist that into you don't need to hear this yeah he's a toxic person person you're only like that because of your childhood trauma he's just like an asshole but you have like all of these reasons why you behave that way have you contrasted this i don't know whether you've been able to look at it with what young guys see is there an equivalent for young guys i i think the only equivalent i can think of is the productivity stuff so i don't know if you saw that tweet recently of the guy he's like

Speaker 2 uh this morning routine saved me and so he does his morning routine which is like super productive It's like everything, it's the red light therapy and the journaling and everything.

Speaker 2 But it's kind of eerie when you watch it because it's like, this is not a lifestyle you could have with anyone else around. It's so to the absolute like minute.

Speaker 2 And you think, like, this is kind of a similar thing with therapy culture. It's like we're trying to have this perfect control over our lives and like get perfect control before you commit to anybody.

Speaker 2 And then you think of things like young people not wanting to get married and have children.

Speaker 2 And it's like, well, yeah, because there'll be a huge obstacle if we think that we have to have this perfect control over our mental health or our productivity routine.

Speaker 2 Anyone else is going to seem like chaos coming into that. And so I think young men and women can both go to an extreme of those.

Speaker 2 But it's kind of the same thing. It's like an avoidance strategy.
It's like, I have full control in this situation and I'm not vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Have you read any Oliver Berkman?

Speaker 2 Yes, I love Oliver Berkman.

Speaker 1 He's great. He's phenomenal.
Did you get his new one, Meditations for Mortals? Okay, it came out a couple of months ago. One of the best things that I got exposed to this year.

Speaker 1 Just talks about a lot of this. Notes very self-deprecating, very British, some might say.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I relate to him painfully because.

Speaker 1 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 He really sees

Speaker 1 a particular cohort of human nature

Speaker 1 very transparently, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, And I think I have that tendency to see people as distractions because I'm trying to work. So I'm often like, you know, I need to write in perfect silence.
I need to have my perfect routine.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I read a quote, I think it was C.S. Lewis saying something like, eventually you realize that all of these distractions from your life were just your life.

Speaker 2 Like they weren't distractions at all.

Speaker 2 And I think it's really sad to kind of teach young people or just like drill into their heads that they should avoid anyone getting in the way of their self-development and their ambition or their healing because that's life getting in the way.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it's sad to see people kind of

Speaker 2 half-heartedly do relationships or kind of

Speaker 2 put them off in pursuit of that ultimate control. I think that's a really that will backfire eventually.

Speaker 1 What are the problems of excessive self-focus?

Speaker 2 Well, I think that,

Speaker 2 I think it's Jordan Peterson says there's no difference between like self-obsession and mental illness in the sense that it's all focusing too much on yourself.

Speaker 2 Not to say that it's in your control all the time necessarily, but that is what it is. It's focusing too much on your own problems.

Speaker 2 And I think, yeah, as I said, girls are particularly vulnerable to it. And I think it, what it does is it blocks real self-development because you can't see

Speaker 2 where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses of for why you're behaving the way you are.

Speaker 2 So I think a lot of girls think they're doing self-development and self-reflection, but it's actually

Speaker 2 accidentally like self-obsession because they're thinking, oh, you know, I'm analyzing my attachment style and I'm thinking about my trauma and I'm like doing the work,

Speaker 2 but there's not much actual self-development going on. Work being done.
Yeah. And I think it can kind of be a trap where you think, I'm working on myself as a person.

Speaker 2 And the same with the self-optimization stuff.

Speaker 2 Like, I think you can get so obsessed with stuff like maybe the ice baths and the breath work that you're not thinking about trying to be a better person. Like, it just becomes.

Speaker 1 There's a couple of traps for that.

Speaker 1 Alex Homozi. taught me a really, really good lesson as I started to do little bits of investing and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 So sometimes a company will say, Hey, we're this interesting company in a world that you maybe know or like.

Speaker 1 Would you like to put some money in and maybe come on as an advisor or whatever it might be? And I was talking to him and he said, How many of these calls are you taking?

Speaker 1 I said, I don't know, you know, maybe had two last week or something.

Speaker 1 He says, They're the most dangerous calls that you have because they all feel like work, they all feel like business, and almost none of them result in anything. And it's kind of like that

Speaker 1 up front, it feels like you're doing a thing, which is more dangerous than not doing anything at all because it acts as a placeholder. It takes up the parking space

Speaker 1 of what could be work.

Speaker 1 If you're doing nothing, you would have this big vacancy, and you go, I really, I really need to step my game up, do whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, it's one of the problems I think that people have with scam supplements, with training styles that don't actually do anything, that it

Speaker 1 the subtext that they understand is

Speaker 1 this thing is taking the place of something that that would work, and this thing doesn't work, which means that you're getting neither of the benefits.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like the highlighter girls who

Speaker 2 like girls who have like the perfect highlighters and gel pens for their exam, but they get like a D because they're obsessing over having the perfect setup.

Speaker 1 The system, not the outcome. Yeah, yes, yeah, that is interesting.
Um,

Speaker 1 I suppose

Speaker 1 this

Speaker 1 self-pity thing gets wrapped up as empowerment in a way, Yeah. And that causes girls to suffer.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's funny because there's a lot of emphasis on like

Speaker 2 women walking away from disrespect and not tolerating any bad behavior.

Speaker 2 But there's also kind of this self-pitying stuff going on. So it's like

Speaker 2 real empowerment would be very often,

Speaker 2 I'm not tolerating this. I'm walking away.
But you kind of, you look online now and there's a lot of young women who just ruminate over a problem.

Speaker 2 So like I was saying before, they might be in a bad relationship and they'll be analyzing both of their attachment styles and thinking about how it's toxic and talking to other girls about it rather than just leaving.

Speaker 2 And so I think sometimes young women, like me as well, get caught up in the analyzing and not the actual action.

Speaker 2 And they think all the mental health stuff is actually empowering them. But I often see it like taking, again, taking the language away from actual problems.

Speaker 2 And rather than everybody opening up, it's actually like closing down their ability to see what's going on and

Speaker 2 act upon it.

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Speaker 1 That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. Well, all of this stuff is instrumental.
There are things that you do in order to be able to do a thing.

Speaker 1 The mode is not the end itself.

Speaker 1 And it's the same with the morning routine thing. I hold my hands up.
I would,

Speaker 1 if not for a slightly different life and a different algorithm, that could have been me, the guy that went, that trended on Twitter.

Speaker 1 I've I've said this a couple of times, but I had an absurdly long, very elaborate routine for about probably four years, three or four years.

Speaker 1 And my retrospective justification for it is that I had done so little in the way of self-reflection that I had, you know, from 18 to 30 or whatever, I had over a decade of catching up to do. And

Speaker 1 I could have spaced it out like a normal, sane human, and it might have taken some time. Or I could have done Navy SEAL Hell Week version uh very intensely and uh

Speaker 1 get up on a morning and go for a walk and get back and journal and do breath work and meditate and do yin yoga and then prep my food and and read and then start my day and i'm like how

Speaker 1 fucking opulent and luxurious and ridiculous and inaccessible all of these things i understand uh but

Speaker 1 i had a lot of low-hanging fruit that I needed to get and then higher hanging fruit too.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 one thing that I am happy about is that I never confused the

Speaker 1 mode of improvement for the reason for the improvement.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 very quickly looked at ways to apply that. All right, okay, I

Speaker 1 seem to be able to deal with emotional perturbments a bit better now after a few thousand sessions of meditation.

Speaker 1 Huh, maybe I should use that and start pushing myself into different places emotionally.

Speaker 1 Wow, I've learned some stuff about how human nature works or resilience or whatever. Let's see if I can find some situations that I can stress test that and see if it actually works for me.

Speaker 1 Or I've got new mobility because I've been doing yin yoga for fucking forever.

Speaker 1 Maybe I can start doing CrossFit, which I did, or a different training modality, something else.

Speaker 1 Not confusing instrumental goods for the ends themselves, I think is very important. And it takes the placeholder.

Speaker 1 The therapy culture takes the placeholder of something that could be functional work and very viciously encourages you to not actually go out and even try.

Speaker 1 There is no such thing as a stress test of this. Anytime it gets, it's unfalsifiable.

Speaker 1 Anytime it gets stressed, it's an admission that the very philosophy itself was correct and that you should have never encountered this thing in the first place.

Speaker 2 Well, I think you view it, as you've said, about like the lonely chapter. You view it as like a set time

Speaker 2 that has to come to an end, which is what therapy should be as well well. It's like a set period.

Speaker 2 But the problem is now therapy culture stuff is so tied up with identity stuff. So you get kind of young girls who start reading about social anxiety and they relate to it because they're 14 and shy.

Speaker 2 And everybody.

Speaker 2 And they go on again, these forums in these communities where everyone's saying,

Speaker 2 I have social anxiety disorder and because of that, I can't get public transport or because of that, I can't do this and then they start thinking well I feel it it's really painful for me so why would I put myself in those situations I'm just not built for those situations um

Speaker 2 and so that's the problem with it is there's no end to it because you can just go on there and then it becomes part of who you are and again as you said the second you go out and you feel intense anxiety as you do as a 14 year old in like any situation then you'll think oh yeah this is confirmation that i have social anxiety disorder and shouldn't be here

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I always just think of these things as like me at 13 and the worst things you could say to me. And social anxiety disorder is one of them.
It's like

Speaker 2 I kind of needed people to kind of laugh it off and just say, Well, you have to go anyway.

Speaker 2 That's what I needed. Like, if someone came to me and said, Well,

Speaker 2 some people call it a disorder and they take medication for it and some people need that. I'd be like, Well, I need that.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like the

Speaker 1 mental health, psychological health equivalent of the misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria among young kids.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that it it's

Speaker 2 it's like um

Speaker 2 seeing the symptoms as

Speaker 2 seeing your personality traits as symptoms, which happens with the gender dysphoria stuff as well, which is like

Speaker 2 now just like quirky, edgy things about people become.

Speaker 1 Their personality.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that becomes a diagnosis. So like before

Speaker 2 we'd be like, talk about some guy and be like, he's always late. It's just something about him.
You know, it's kind of lovable and annoying, but it's his personality.

Speaker 2 And now it's like, oh, because of his ADHD, he's always late.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's so funny. That's really interesting to hear, to hear the language.
I mean, even we do it. We do it around here.
You know, there'll be.

Speaker 1 For instance,

Speaker 1 does this can have it on? Yes, it does. Can you punch in on this, dude? Can you punch in? All right, so I'm not sure how tight that lens can get.

Speaker 1 If you look very, very, very carefully here, there's a follow-up.

Speaker 1 For the people listening, I'm pointing to the back of a can of Newtonic. We've produced maybe a million of these, this particular version of the can in America.

Speaker 1 Follow us, there's the three social icons, and then there's Newtonic.com at the bottom. If you look really, really carefully just here, you'll see that the Instagram icon is probably

Speaker 1 one mil to one and a a half mil to the left of the follow us and the left of the Newtonic.com thing. And this little world is maybe two mil in from the us

Speaker 1 after the follow.

Speaker 1 I noticed that because I noticed things

Speaker 1 and sent a photo in and immediately, immediately after sending that photo him, said the tism strikes again.

Speaker 1 Never been diagnosed with autism. Don't think I've got it.
Hold eye contact with most people perfectly well. Even within that, there's something, and it's

Speaker 1 self-deprecating, it's mockery, it's whatever. But even in that, it belies this, like

Speaker 1 somebody made the joke about Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency was less Avengers assemble and more Asperger's assemble.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 like, even on the guy's side of things, you know, OCD, oh, I'm, I'm obsessive about this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 It's, it's my, like, you know.

Speaker 2 I, I mean, I am writing this book at the moment, and one one of the chapters is about these kind of TikToks that girls are looking at about autism.

Speaker 2 And I literally went down a rabbit hole like, I'm autistic. I'm Philly.

Speaker 2 Well, like, all of the symptoms, they're all about shy, nerdy girls. And I'm like, oh, okay, this has been me my whole life.
Just kind of awkward and doesn't fit in and reads a lot and everything.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh, God, reading this, if you're just like slightly different from the mainstream, popular, extroverted girl, you're going to be autistic.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's, but it's such, it's like, it's funny, but it's also like, oh my God, there's like,

Speaker 2 I can't say a serious point because you're laughing at me.

Speaker 1 Why is autism? It's like, it just always makes me laugh. I think it's kind of charming.
It's definitely autism holds like a very unique in the mental pathology library that we can all take.

Speaker 1 It's the one that I think is sort of easiest to throw. I see, maybe it's because the autistic people like aren't registering it, but it's the

Speaker 1 lowest amount of offense seems to be taken by people misdiagnosing that in some way.

Speaker 1 And maybe that's because autism, in many ways, is a disadvantage for people, but also bestows some of what some people would consider as advantages to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I

Speaker 2 autistic people I've met do kind of openly joke about it, I feel.

Speaker 2 Whereas I feel like OCD is more offensive to say, oh, that was me being OCD. I feel like that's become a bit more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's my suicidal ideation. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But yeah, no, it's funny, but it's also like you think of like a 13-year-old girl who really convinces herself she has autism and actually she's just quite unique and quirky.

Speaker 2 That can be like a lifelong sentence of thinking you're different from other people because you're unwell.

Speaker 1 A much more pernicious one, maybe, would be something which is less serious of a diagnosis and that everybody believes that they have, which would be an attachment style thing.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Because it's such a

Speaker 1 defining characteristic of how you relate to other people, the most important things that you do.

Speaker 1 And to be able to write off every time that it comes in, ah, that's my avoidant attachment again. Ah, that's triggered.

Speaker 2 To kind of ignore your gut instinct. Like, I feel like you can be in a bad relationship and you have a feeling about someone.

Speaker 2 And now you interpret that as my anxiety coming up.

Speaker 2 That's like my attachment disorder triggering rather than, oh, they've just said something or revealed something about themselves that I should be, I'm actually tuning into.

Speaker 2 The worry is like young girls convince themselves they have a disorder and then shut down that instinct.

Speaker 1 I suppose also it

Speaker 1 denies you

Speaker 1 the opportunity to

Speaker 1 it it stops you from having the opportunity to deny yourself from being at the mercy of that thing. Yeah.
That you say,

Speaker 1 that's a pattern that keeps coming up in me. I don't like it and I want to get rid of it.
Yes. Well, it's a part of me.
It is me. It defines me as a person.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I hate this phrase, like, I'm anxiously attached rather than like

Speaker 2 I'm feeling anxiety at the moment.

Speaker 2 And also, you see on like on the internet, like anxious attachment quizzes and like t-shirts and like it's become

Speaker 2 a thing to identify with.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's also a community like an online community of people who will again co-ruminate over it um but i think it's actually more dangerous than we think if you take it too far because you again you just become blind to what's actually happening in your life and you're kind of living by a theory and also blind to how you can be complicit in causing these things to happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah. How you could have self-authorship over stopping these things from happening.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, if someone's someone's behaving badly and all you're doing is like repeating your positive affirmations in the mirror,

Speaker 2 it's not going to help you. Like at some point, you need to have the kind of

Speaker 2 confidence to stand up to people. And you're not going to have that if your like core belief is that you're an anxious, damaged person.

Speaker 1 73% of Boomer males said, no matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me. 72% of Gen Z females say mental illness is an important part of my identity.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Bit of an arc.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's just tragic.

Speaker 2 But I think, again, I can't really blame young girls for that. I just think it's everywhere now.
And

Speaker 2 as Constantine says, like, if the incentives are there, it's just going to happen. And there are incentives now to do that.

Speaker 2 It's almost like now, you know, we were saying before, like, if you're... English and you talk about something good happening in your life,

Speaker 2 people kind of judge you and think you're weird.

Speaker 2 It's kind of become like if you go around saying, I actually have really good mental health and I deal with things really well and I don't get anxious, people look at you like,

Speaker 2 that's kind of a wrong thing to say. Like

Speaker 2 I think if you were a girl saying that in school, people would not relate to you as much. Oh, you're just in denial.
Yeah, or like, it's kind of a braggy way to be now to say, oh, I handled it fine.

Speaker 1 Good for you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 For some of us. Well done.
Yeah. Yeah.
Those of us that have, you know, grew up with parents that caused us to have anxious attachment.

Speaker 2 Try and be autistic or something.

Speaker 1 That's actually a solution. I think that more people should be autistic, and that would fix a lot of problems that we're facing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd mentioned to you before Louis Capaldi.

Speaker 1 There's a great documentary on Netflix called How I'm Feeling Now.

Speaker 1 Highly recommend you watch it. I think it's super pertinent to what you're doing.
It'd be great for the book, too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you have this guy who has lots and lots of success, and the success causes him to

Speaker 1 develop a.

Speaker 1 He must have had a genetic predisposition for Tourette's. I don't know what Tourette's can't catch it.
I don't think.

Speaker 1 So he must have had this predisposition and the pressure that he puts on himself and that's coming from outside too.

Speaker 1 And the story he tells himself and the rumination causes his mental health to decline to the point where he's got this sort of tick. Yeah.
And his shoulders sort of, he's always doing this.

Speaker 1 It's like your whole body is contorting. And

Speaker 1 I think maybe it's two years in a row now. At least one year at Glastonbury,

Speaker 1 he stopped singing. He came out on stage, began singing, and then partway through the song was unable to continue.
Had to get the audience to help. And that happened at a show at the O2, I think,

Speaker 1 which is in the documentary. And then

Speaker 1 they tried to bring this documentary into land at the end of 2022 or 23 or whatever. And it's like, and he took six weeks off and started doing yoga and stopped eating McDonald's.
And look at him now.

Speaker 1 It's like, and then the updates since then are sad that a guy under an awful lot of pressure with a beautiful voice with really, really wonderful stories to tell that make people feel things

Speaker 1 feeling so much and being unable to handle it to the point where the very art form that he was built to do, he's unable to do on stage.

Speaker 2 So has he like backed away from singing as a result?

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 haven't checked in, but the last that i saw was this summer there was some festival thing i think that he was at that he had some trouble on stage again yeah i mean maybe he had a bug or whatever but it seems unlikely it seems like it was probably the same challenge that he's been dealing with since the documentary and um

Speaker 1 yeah that kind of got me thinking about

Speaker 1 the mental health thing affecting everybody all the way up

Speaker 1 You know, there's not really any hiding from it. And the way that he goes about it, you know, he's very self-deprecating, but he does not,

Speaker 1 he's relieved when he gets a diagnosis in the documentary. You know, he finally, they say, turns out I've got Tourette's.

Speaker 1 That kind of makes sense. And that thing I was having where my heart rate went really high and I kept on breathing, it's like, apparently that's called a panic attack.

Speaker 1 It's like, ha, that's a person finding a diagnosis, not identifying with a diagnosis.

Speaker 2 Well, that's kind of another problem with the therapy stuff is it's well, one, it's kind of offensive to people like that because, I mean, there are literally young women um

Speaker 2 mimicking ticks ticks from Tourette's TikTok um

Speaker 2 and whether that's

Speaker 2 tick tock yeah I think there is actually a tick tock hashtag um

Speaker 2 but yeah they're they're picking up Tourette's and you know whether that's conscious or not

Speaker 2 some of them at least are kind of jumping on that identity

Speaker 2 And then you hear someone like Lewis Capardi's story and it's like the pain of that is actually stopping him doing what he loves.

Speaker 2 But that conversation is kind of being swallowed up by the conversation of like young girls identifying with Tourette's.

Speaker 1 People are fucking LARPing with this on face-to-camera videos.

Speaker 2 Yeah, again, it actually takes away the language to talk about people who are actually suffering

Speaker 2 because it's just become so big now that everyone's autistic, everyone's got Tourette's.

Speaker 1 I can't not every time I can't not laugh at it.

Speaker 1 Is there a new story about why people are so addicted to social media? Is there any more that you've come to think about?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well,

Speaker 2 when I started writing, I was writing about addiction to social media and trends and stuff and kind of

Speaker 2 wondering why that was happening. And then I've been trying to kind of trace it back to think,

Speaker 2 what is the actual need that's not being met here?

Speaker 2 One of them,

Speaker 2 I was looking at all this attachment style stuff and like the dating gurus, how popular like relationship advice is on TikTok and stuff.

Speaker 2 And I was thinking, is this because young people don't have adults giving them guidance about relationships? So now they go and watch an influencer who's an attachment expert.

Speaker 2 Because parents and families aren't getting as involved in giving advice about relationships.

Speaker 2 So things like that, there's a lot of trends where I think you can trace it back to adults have stepped away from giving some form of guidance.

Speaker 2 So you see it with like relationship stuff on TikTok and also the desperate search for obviously community and belonging to something is coming from a real pain of not having any community in real life.

Speaker 2 Like I had loads of people when I started writing about social media loads of people would say to me oh but you know young people need social media because it's like a lifeline like they have their online communities and stuff.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, that is not a benefit of social media. Like that's just an absolute indictment of where we are in modern life like why is their community a Reddit forum

Speaker 2 um so we can talk about social media addiction but I think you have to kind of strip it back to what

Speaker 2 why young people are so obsessed with it and what is missing in their actual life what is everyone searching for or missing yeah because

Speaker 2 When you meet people who aren't on social media or don't have like ridiculously high screen times,

Speaker 2 they usually have a lot of their needs met in the real world, which just sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's true.

Speaker 2 And I think the more you find yourself in a fulfilling relationship or you're happy with your job, you don't feel as much of a pull to scroll endlessly through TikTok all day.

Speaker 2 So the fact that young people are spending like six hours a day on their phones is

Speaker 2 not just because social media is addictive. It's because there's nothing.
more addictive in their life or like a reason to stop scrolling through it.

Speaker 2 And so I think sometimes I can get caught in the trap of like complaining about social media, whereas social media is just filling the gap of whatever was stripped away before.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not necessarily that

Speaker 1 there's even nothing more addicting, there's nothing more compelling. Yeah, what else, what else is there that's as fun to do, that's that uh offers everybody the same uh

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, you know, I left my old life of nightlife three years ago-ish, and

Speaker 1 that kind of felt a little bit like exiting Bitcoin at 100K or something, and being like, well, that was kind of selling at the top because there's some crazy stat about how by 2036, there'll be no nightclubs left in the UK.

Speaker 1 None. Yeah, so I think it's one

Speaker 1 a day or one a week or something is closing at the moment across the UK. Just that

Speaker 1 night clubs are not only competing with brunch and with restaurants and with lane seven and with top flight darts and with

Speaker 1 those ball pit fucking places where people get to take selfies. It's not just competing with other in-person events and other community-based events, a pickleball or whatever.

Speaker 1 It's competing with Netflix, Amazon Prime.

Speaker 2 Is it because everyone's autistic and no one's going copy?

Speaker 1 The answer to every question is either it's only one of two things, too much or too little autism. And I vote that it's too little and we need more.

Speaker 1 But yes, I think

Speaker 1 you must have seen this trend the other day, this like a slug life thing where people just want, I'm not going out, I don't want to do anything.

Speaker 1 It was a huge Substack article that.

Speaker 2 Oh, there was one about, yeah, like rotting in bed.

Speaker 1 Yes, that was it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like I think it was about being a loser and how it's like an English thing. Again, being a loser has become the way that you introduce yourself and talk about yourself.
Oh, I don't have a life.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't go anywhere. I don't have a life.
I don't have any interests. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I like Netflix.
Yeah. I don't...
Boyfriend? No, no, no, no, not for me.

Speaker 2 No. Yeah, I want, I, I.

Speaker 1 Would ruin my 7pm bedtime.

Speaker 2 I don't know where that's come from, but I think,

Speaker 2 I think it's probably

Speaker 2 social anxiety. And then people come up with all of these kind of romantic ways to talk about it.

Speaker 2 So they're like, oh, I'm just an introvert who enjoys my own time or I'm like working on this big thing. So I can't go out clubbing and stuff.

Speaker 2 And they build their identity around something which would justify not going out.

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I guess even relationships have been infected by social media.

Speaker 1 The boyfriends of Instagram trend has been around for a while,

Speaker 1 but has maybe escalated.

Speaker 2 Well, have you seen like, I read an article the other day that made me want to kill myself. It was about

Speaker 2 like soft launching your boyfriend on Instagram.

Speaker 1 Please tell me more.

Speaker 2 So it's about telling girls, so this young woman wondering, how should you announce to your followers? Like, not influencers, like, I'm talking ordinary young women.

Speaker 2 How should you announce your boyfriend? Should you do a soft launch where it's just like his arm? Or should you do like a full reveal?

Speaker 2 But it's kind of messed up because it's like, this is like introducing a brand deal or something.

Speaker 2 Like literally viewing our partners like products.

Speaker 1 Yeah, how do we, how does this play in the optics of public life?

Speaker 2 Someone said to me the other day, oh, they commented on my Substack article, like a relationship is now just a brand collaboration, like two personal brands coming together. Wow, that's good.

Speaker 2 And then posting it online.

Speaker 1 That's really good.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Soft launching. Well, I've seen people talk about the hard hard launch, which is just a couple photo that happens out of nowhere.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, so you have all of that. You have like, how do you manage the relationship on social media? But then you also have how social media affects the relationship.

Speaker 2 So like the boyfriends of Instagram thing.

Speaker 2 Like, it's kind of funny that boyfriends, you know, when you see like a guy literally on the floor trying to get a good angle of the guy.

Speaker 1 There was a

Speaker 1 I went to Gilly Tea in Bali. It's one of these little islands about five years ago.

Speaker 1 And there's a famous beach club that's got a swing sort of out in the water and it's gorgeous.

Speaker 1 The sun sets, because it's so close to the equator, the sun sets in the summer at six thirty pm and in the winter at six p.m.

Speaker 1 It's like twelve hours of daylight and it just shit wobbles a little bit like that.

Speaker 1 And this

Speaker 1 this girl wanted to get a photo of her on the swing, but she wanted to catch the sort of sun bouncing off the top of the water.

Speaker 1 And I remember thinking, like watching this guy, and she was saying, no, no, no, you need to get lower. you need to like get sort of lower down, closer to the water.

Speaker 1 And this dude's sort of chest to shoulder to neck to fetch. And by this time, it's C, it's the C.
So it's not being gentle with him. So he's like,

Speaker 1 trying to take this photo. The phone's out of the water.
He's getting splashed. I remember thinking, like,

Speaker 1 that really better be wifey because that's a big ask.

Speaker 2 Well, also, I just always think, who is it for if your boyfriend is right there?

Speaker 2 Like, it does get to the point where you're like posing in a bikini and your boyfriend's taking the pictures of you. It's like, is this for Instagram? Because I don't know.

Speaker 2 It just, it's such a strange thing that's become so normalized.

Speaker 1 It's a little bit of an indicator. I mean, unless this is your

Speaker 1 new album cover or whatever for your

Speaker 1 slam poetry or some shit that you do,

Speaker 1 there is a little bit of like,

Speaker 1 well, surely the person that you're trying to impress the most is the one that's taking the photo. So what does the photo need to be taken for? Unless it's for his private collection.

Speaker 2 But it's become so normalized that like when i wrote about boyfriends of instagram people were replying like oh but you know i'm trying to get memories and stuff uh and like i had a picture in it yeah there was a picture of like three girls in bikinis and three guys all on the same beach all taking pictures of their girlfriend and people were defending it like oh they're allowed to have memories like what a memory of you in a bikini like but i actually i don't think they're lying.

Speaker 2 I think that's just how normalized it's become. It's like, well, obviously, if you go to the beach, you do a photo shoot.

Speaker 2 And I always try and express that to people. Like, you think of an influencer and how her income depends on taking pictures and everywhere she goes, she has to get content.

Speaker 2 Ordinary women think like that now.

Speaker 2 Most people

Speaker 2 have it in the back of their mind, I should be getting a social media picture, or this is a good moment, or this landscape would get really good clicks. Like that's how they think.

Speaker 2 And I don't think some older people realize that young girls are behaving and thinking like their their influencers

Speaker 2 all the time.

Speaker 1 Is that an aspirational thing?

Speaker 1 Is that just that the power users of Instagram and TikTok behave like that because it's their job, which means that the people who are not, they have none of the same obligations feel like they should behave in the same way?

Speaker 1 Or is there something more going on? Is this aspirational? Is this that people hope maybe I get picked up by a modeling agency?

Speaker 2 I think a part of it is that, but I think another part is

Speaker 2 they started doing this when their brains were forming as young girls. They started capturing their life as they went.
And

Speaker 2 I don't think they can conceive of just living and existing. I really think it's that ingrained of like

Speaker 2 their entire childhood was having a childhood, but also performing and marketing and managing it all at the same time.

Speaker 2 And then like when you try and get out of it, like when I deleted Instagram years ago,

Speaker 2 that lingering was still in my head of like, maybe I should share this online or maybe this could be a good photo opportunity. And it's, it's really hard to not to kind of unwire that.

Speaker 2 And now if I go to an event and I don't take a picture, young women I'm friends with will be kind of confused. Like I say, I've been on holiday and I have no evidence of it.

Speaker 2 It's confusing to them because that's suspicious about whether or not you actually went on the holiday. It's kind of weird.

Speaker 2 And I think there are genuinely young people who go on holiday to get pictures.

Speaker 1 For the photos.

Speaker 2 who even get in relationships for the photos and who are quietly living living their life for Instagram in ways that people don't realize has become that intense.

Speaker 1 What do you make of the contribution of family breakdown to this? Of that you mentioned before about that sort of lack of guidance, people looking for a little bit of guidance,

Speaker 1 maybe filling the void with entertainment that typically would have been taken up by family.

Speaker 1 What role does family breakdown have here?

Speaker 2 I think it's linked to what I was saying about, yeah, looking for relationship guidance. It's like,

Speaker 2 well, you look at something like mental health TikTok.

Speaker 2 People are sharing like their really deep trauma and turmoil and problems.

Speaker 2 And you can't help but look at it and think, are you close to your family? Like this is the kind of thing that you talk about with your family. It's what your family is there for.

Speaker 2 And now you're telling strangers on TikTok.

Speaker 2 And then you look at the statistics of the amount of Gen Z who aren't living with both their mother and father.

Speaker 2 I think in the UK, it's over half of children by 14 don't live with their mum and dad.

Speaker 2 And so they don't have a feeling of belonging at home.

Speaker 2 And then you stretch that out to they don't have any sense of community. Their community is a Reddit forum or Instagram.
Like

Speaker 2 I, growing up, had no sense of what a local community is or like neighbours knowing each other. It's just, it's really foreign to me.
And I think a lot of Gen Z,

Speaker 2 they don't have a conception of it beyond like an online community or like the LGBT community or something. That is the limit of community they know.
So their family falls apart.

Speaker 2 There's nothing really to catch them. There's no neighborhood of adults who are there.

Speaker 2 Then you add that they're becoming less religious. They don't feel that they belong to anything bigger than that.
They have no faith in anything bigger.

Speaker 2 And so the feeling of loneliness is just so intense.

Speaker 2 And I was writing recently about how I think that

Speaker 2 actually

Speaker 2 one of the biggest drivers of behavior we see among Gen Z is this abandonment fear and feeling.

Speaker 2 Because their families fell apart, because they don't have community, because they don't belong to anything bigger,

Speaker 2 they feel constantly alone. And if you look at the...

Speaker 2 kind of symptoms of abandonment, if you look at like attachment theory, like real attachment theory, not the TikToks, but the like Mary Ainsworth studies and everything,

Speaker 2 It shows like people who are abandoned, they're really hypersensitive to criticism. They have very low body image and self-esteem.

Speaker 2 All of the kind of caricature of Gen Z, all of the traits are like to do with this feeling of not belonging anywhere.

Speaker 2 So not to say that it explains everything, but I think families breaking down and not having a sense of belonging really messes people up.

Speaker 2 And I think a lot of Gen Z are kind of carrying that around and then looking for it in places.

Speaker 2 So that obviously they're going to spend hours on TikTok where people are talking to them and talking about their problems because they don't have anything resembling that in real life.

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, I think a lot of the things we kind of laugh at young people for as being kind of narcissistic and,

Speaker 2 I guess, selfish and kind of we cringe at them having these crazy screen times. It's like, what else is there?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is there a lack of moral direction or adult guidance or something?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think in the modern world, like adults, they view everything as like imposing on their children.

Speaker 2 So we kind of became suspicious of anyone who's authoritative. So we think they're being controlling or like old-fashioned.

Speaker 2 So adults kind of politely stepped back and

Speaker 2 kind of allow children just to become themselves and act the way they want.

Speaker 2 Sounds virtuous. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there's obviously an element of that that's important in parenting.

Speaker 2 But I think what happened is parents stepped back. So they just became like our best friends.

Speaker 2 Then religion retreated away from public life. Then communities broke down.

Speaker 2 Neighbors stopped knowing each other. And then if you're an anxious young person,

Speaker 2 there's no one there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we got rid of anything that was like more substantial guidance.

Speaker 2 So I think if you think of therapy culture today, a lot of people think, oh, if you're an anxious young person, you have more advice than ever. Like you have all this guidance.

Speaker 2 But I actually think modern culture has very little to say to anxious young people because

Speaker 2 we got rid of anything more substantial because we thought it was judgmental. So you can't tell someone how to live their life or what to do.

Speaker 2 We got rid of anything to do with God or religion because that was superstitious.

Speaker 2 We stopped appealing to moral character and telling them they should improve themselves and be better because that's also judgmental and, you know, claiming that there's a right and wrong.

Speaker 2 And all that we have left is like these endless, empty platitudes of be yourself, you do you, you know best. You know, adults telling that to young people who

Speaker 2 I think are craving some direction. Like there's no clear milestones to adulthood anymore to follow.
And so they look to the adults and the adults are saying, you know, best.

Speaker 2 And of course you feel anxious.

Speaker 2 The anxiety gets worse.

Speaker 1 That lack of guidance is, I don't know.

Speaker 1 The equivalent for the guys is

Speaker 1 pick your favorite podcaster or YouTuber or fitness bodybuilder of choice.

Speaker 1 And looking up to that, okay, well, it's the missing patriarch that I didn't have, I didn't have long enough, or didn't understand this world. And I'm going to surrogate

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 to this parasocial online relationship.

Speaker 2 But then it becomes someone who doesn't know you. So let's say you have a relationship problem, like you're a young woman who has met someone and you're not sure about him.

Speaker 2 The average young woman will now go on YouTube and turn to the dating experts on the attachment style. Yeah.

Speaker 2 and get the guidance from experts because they don't have adults in their lives who know them intimately.

Speaker 2 You know, because people are different, like people need different advice in different situations. And I think it's a real shame that

Speaker 2 adults who kind of intimately know girls and young women and can give them advice in like a community setting have stepped back.

Speaker 2 And now, of course, they're all on TikTok asking each other, like, oh, you know, he cheated on me. Is this a problem? Because we weren't exclusive.
Is that a red flag? Is it?

Speaker 2 And it's like, we need some adults in our lives who clearly say, I think this person's bad bad for you.

Speaker 1 I suppose

Speaker 1 everything,

Speaker 1 it's great that we have instant, frictionless access to all information from experts that maybe are even more expert than our parents would be ever and trained and all the rest of it, even if they're legitimate.

Speaker 1 And obviously there's a lot of room for illegitimate experts to sneak in.

Speaker 1 But it is still self-diagnosis. And it is still self-treatment from that.
You know, if you're learning from TikTok, there is no part of, hey, why don't we, why don't we sit down? Why don't we,

Speaker 1 I will give you something as opposed to you will learn from this thing and then go and have to work out what that means and apply it and not be able to ask questions and not be able to regulate with anybody

Speaker 1 and not have it contextualized even remotely.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And your mum isn't trying to get views on TikTok.
So she doesn't need to

Speaker 2 exaggerate and kind of

Speaker 2 keep you looking at her channel.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 2 think that's the problem is there are genuine experts who can help, but they are also subject to the kind of pressures of the algorithm a lot of the time. And so they're kind of

Speaker 2 I guess dumbing down what they're saying or make or presenting symptoms of autism as vague as possible

Speaker 2 to try and

Speaker 2 so as many girls relate to it as possible.

Speaker 1 You had this breakdown. One of the main causes of unhappiness in the modern world is a culture that presents other people as obstacles.
Heal faster alone, work better alone, find freedom alone.

Speaker 1 It's such a lie. Loneliness is not empowerment.
Is loneliness

Speaker 1 pedestalized

Speaker 1 by Gen Z TikTok?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think, again, from all different angles. So it's like the mental health stuff, obviously

Speaker 2 you will feel better alone in some ways because someone, you don't have someone challenging you.

Speaker 2 You know, if you do actually have problems from your childhood to do with, say, your parents, I don't want to say an attachment problem but it is an attachment problem just the wording has been completely ruined but if you do have that you kind of need to be with someone to work on it because if you're single you're going to feel great because there's no one kind of triggering you and making you feel anxious and abandoned

Speaker 2 so you do need someone in your life in in that scenario

Speaker 2 So yeah, loneliness then does seem like it's extremely attractive because you feel better when you're alone. The same with the productivity stuff.
I think it's just

Speaker 2 the message that's missing for both young women and young men is like, it's actually okay to depend on someone and to need other people.

Speaker 2 Like humans have always needed other people and defined themselves by

Speaker 2 their ties and obligations to other people. And now we're kind of like...

Speaker 2 No, you can you can be self-sufficient enough and driven enough and healed enough that you're okay alone.

Speaker 2 and i think that's really quite a strong message for young young women here which is like the worst thing you can be is needy like do not ever need someone and and the worst situation for you is to end up with a guy that you need like that's just you need to avoid that at all costs and it's it's a really sad message because it's like is that not love to need someone and they need you And it's kind of a beautiful thing

Speaker 2 to rely on someone and have someone who's dependent on you. And actually, a lot of the actual attachment research shows that, have you heard of like the dependency paradox?

Speaker 1 Tell me.

Speaker 2 That couples who are more dependent on each other become more independent in their lives. So there was like studies showing that

Speaker 2 I think they got couples to do

Speaker 2 like games or puzzles and then they had to fill out a survey of you know, how much do you respond to your partner's needs?

Speaker 2 Basically, how dependent are you on each other? And the ones that were more dependent didn't want to hear, like, I think it was the clues or the answers from their partner.

Speaker 2 They wanted to do it independently.

Speaker 2 And then they followed up and they found that the couples more dependent on each other had met their independent goals six months down the line.

Speaker 1 Why do you think that is? What's the proposed mechanism?

Speaker 2 Because it's... It's like the original Mary Ainsworth experiments where the caregiver leaves and they kind of measure how the child responds.

Speaker 2 You need like

Speaker 2 a stable, secure relationship to feel confident to go and explore the world. You need to have like something to hold on to to step off.

Speaker 1 Chaos in both domains is scary.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you need like something to fall back on.

Speaker 2 And I think that's a big reason why Gen Z are incredibly

Speaker 2 risk averse and not resilient is because we don't actually have a foundation to fall back on. So if your parents are divorced

Speaker 2 and you don't feel that sense of belonging, you're not going to step off into the chaos of the world. You're going to hold back and you're going to find relationships threatening.

Speaker 2 You're going to find words traumatic. You're going to be scared by it because

Speaker 2 the ground is like crumbling beneath you. So, you can't step off it.

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Speaker 1 That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What have you learned?

Speaker 1 It seems like you've done a good bit of work on the attachment stuff, at least in terms of research. What have you learned about what's

Speaker 1 real and what's bunk from that?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I think it's real that obviously your childhood impacts your adult life. I think that's just plain to see.

Speaker 2 And I think it's real that

Speaker 2 you can kind of play that out in relationships that aren't, you know, so you however your parents responded to you, you'll then take that into an adult relationship. That seems very obvious.

Speaker 2 But I think where people go wrong now is they forget that, like in the original

Speaker 2 attachment experiments and the book attached, it's quite clear that it's, it's not a bad thing to depend on someone and it's, it's not a bad thing to be attached. Like we are wired to be that way.

Speaker 2 Whereas I think now where it's going online is like, um, you have a problem if you're attached.

Speaker 2 Like if you if you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic relationship and really wants to depend on someone, now we view you as like weak.

Speaker 2 There's something wrong with you if that's your ultimate goal. Because we've had it drilled in so much that dependence is a problem.

Speaker 2 And so you see all these people online saying things like, oh, you know, I'm anxiously attached because when my partner feels sad, I also feel sad. It's like, isn't that just like loving someone?

Speaker 2 You know, you are affected by their emotions. Or they'll say things, again, like, oh,

Speaker 2 I always put their needs first. So, can you train me out of being like a people pleaser? And it's like, we used to just call that love.

Speaker 2 And, you know, that was a trait that we treasured in people, people who put their partner's needs first.

Speaker 2 And obviously, that can go too far. But I think the problem is now we only pathologize

Speaker 2 dependence and we glamorize independence.

Speaker 2 And we never say yeah that being dependent on someone having a long-term relationship doesn't mean that you lose yourself you can actually find yourself through that um but i think girls in particular young women in particular have just been told yeah

Speaker 2 the worst thing in your life is to need someone do gen z have a lot of abandonment issues in that way yeah i think

Speaker 2 I think that's where it comes from. And that's why it's especially tragic, because you have a lot of young women, for example, whose families fell apart.

Speaker 2 And then they grew up thinking, well, I just want to have that myself. I want to have a loving relationship in a family.

Speaker 2 And then they kind of get told, whether it's through therapy culture or some of the feminist stuff online, you kind of implicitly get told

Speaker 2 that's a problem. Like if you,

Speaker 2 again, if your dream is to depend on someone, you should work on yourself. You need to work on your self-love.
You need to believe in yourself more. You need to be healed alone.
And

Speaker 2 you think of like a normal thinking, feeling young girl. Of course she wants to be in a romantic relationship.
And of course she wants to depend on someone in some way. It's completely natural.

Speaker 2 But I think you have young women thinking, oh, I need to get to a position where I'm confident, completely confident alone. I'm healed alone.
I don't have any anxiety.

Speaker 2 Then I can allow a partner in. But I don't see that as the way that people operate.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a lot of girls now punishing themselves for being emotional and sensitive and wanting a partner and wanting to depend on someone.

Speaker 2 Because now the image of a strong, independent woman is someone who doesn't depend on anyone and who doesn't get emotional, doesn't get jealous, doesn't care. And so you also have two contradictory.

Speaker 2 messages because you have therapy culture saying to girls, open up more and more about your problems, you know, be more emotional, tell tell everyone how you feel.

Speaker 2 But then you also have strong, independent women don't care. You know, they never get emotional.
And if they do get emotional, it's trauma or an attachment issue.

Speaker 2 And it's like, that's a really cruel thing to teach

Speaker 2 emotional young girls and confusing because it's like,

Speaker 2 of course, they feel that way because they're human, but now they're being told that that's a medical issue or something that they should heal.

Speaker 1 I saw you tweet: kids as young as nine are addicted to porn. Girls as young as 13 are using fake IDs to post explicit content on OnlyFans.

Speaker 1 A third of those selling nudes on Twitter are under the age of 18. Yep.
Can you unpack that, please?

Speaker 2 Well, I think that's again a lack of adults

Speaker 1 stepping in.

Speaker 2 I have this theory I've been thinking about of like everyone just accepts now that parents are overprotective. So there's like the helicopter parenting and the coddling of Gen Z.

Speaker 2 But I think like parents are weirdly

Speaker 2 they're not protective enough, but they're also coddling. So they're like

Speaker 2 coddle their children, but not put up proper boundaries or guard rights. There's like no rules,

Speaker 2 but they're over involved.

Speaker 1 Over-imbearing in all the wrong areas and totally absent in all of the wrong ones as well.

Speaker 2 So now it's like the only danger is like physical danger. It's injury.
So parents protect from injury, but they don't protect from something like

Speaker 2 their daughters being online and posting, trying to get on OnlyFans. I mean, Jonathan Haidt talks about it when he says kids are overprotective in the real world and underprotected online.

Speaker 2 But I think it's slightly more than that because I don't think parents are totally protective in the real world because they, again, they've also, I think,

Speaker 2 kind of internalized this messaging of I shouldn't get involved. You know, it's not my place.

Speaker 2 You know, you think of dads now.

Speaker 2 I think dads are less protective than they've ever been because they, they can't care about what their daughter wears or where she goes or who she dates because that would be backward.

Speaker 2 You know, it's her right to do that.

Speaker 2 But then you look around and you see girls doing that. You see

Speaker 2 girls like selling themselves online to strangers.

Speaker 2 And I think what has accidentally happened is feminism pushed this idea of like girls and boys are just as strong as each other.

Speaker 2 And then that led to people thinking, oh, so they don't need, girls don't need extra protection,

Speaker 2 which killed chivalry, but also killed fathers actually protecting girls.

Speaker 2 Because the problem is not like women are weak, it's that girls are vulnerable.

Speaker 2 But now we think, oh, we should all step back, let girls do what they want.

Speaker 1 A lot of baby went out with bathwater.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And now you see.

Speaker 1 A lot of chivalry went out with patriarchy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, we killed good authority.
We just killed all authority.

Speaker 2 And so now you have young women like demanding that their universities protect them and demanding that the government step in and like staring at someone becomes a harassment on the tube because they don't have we degraded the authority of men they trust.

Speaker 2 like good men and hopefully like their fathers and brothers.

Speaker 2 We just said, oh, all kind of protection is patronizing and we don't need it.

Speaker 2 But then you leave girls completely vulnerable and looking coddled and loved, but actually completely unprotected.

Speaker 1 There was a great tweet I saw about

Speaker 1 telling men, telling all men to stop being so pushy doesn't work because the men who don't need to hear it will take it to heart and the ones who do need to hear it aren't going to listen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 2 I can't remember where it was, but there was this like scheme

Speaker 2 some young women ran on a train where they had these cards. I don't know if you saw it where it said like, it said, like, I'm being harassed right now.
Or you hand it to someone.

Speaker 2 And so you could go into, I think it was like the tube station, you could go in and ask for the cards.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's like, someone is harassing me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there were all different ones. I can't remember what they were.
But it's like, in that situation, what is that going to do?

Speaker 2 And it's that is actually the patronizing thing.

Speaker 2 And to expect that to protect girls, but we find it offensive if a man steps forward and tries to help a girl out. I think it's we've, yeah, we've just thrown it all out and forgotten that

Speaker 2 part of the feminist message is right, that girls are vulnerable.

Speaker 2 But unfortunately, it's just led to a situation where we're like, oh, vulnerability means weakness, so they don't need protecting.

Speaker 1 Why are girls under

Speaker 1 as young as 13 using fake IDs to but are they do people want money? Is there a status thing associated with this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's the status thing. I think

Speaker 2 girls are now growing up with influencers being their aspirational figures, as we said.

Speaker 2 I think it's something like 70% of Gen Z girls aspire to be influencers, or just Gen Z in general.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to say only fans.

Speaker 2 No. Okay.

Speaker 2 But if you look at influencers over the years,

Speaker 2 they've evolved dramatically. So like when I was 13, I would be watching like Zoella or someone who's really wholesome and

Speaker 2 didn't really have the same incentives of the algorithms back in the day, didn't really have the same competition, certainly didn't have like monetization of her content.

Speaker 2 So she wasn't kind of exposing herself or talking about these weird therapy trends or anything like that. But you can just gradually see over the years how it's escalated.

Speaker 1 Who are some of the more extreme Zoella equivalents now?

Speaker 1 Or if you don't want to throw names out, you can come up with

Speaker 2 the woman Tana Monjo.

Speaker 1 Tana Monjo.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so she's like a really popular influencer who

Speaker 2 talks about OnlyFans like it's

Speaker 2 like there's nothing dangerous about it for young girls or nothing to be worried about and she'll she has an audience of very young teens probably preteens and she'll just post with all the things she's earned from only fans so all of like the designer bags and stuff and on her podcast she'll talk about being on only fans and

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 i think talking about commodifying yourself like it's completely normal

Speaker 2 that is what girls are growing up with so they're seeing influencers commodify themselves in general but then commodifying their body

Speaker 2 And also having the nerve to call that empowering.

Speaker 1 You don't think it's empowering?

Speaker 2 No. Well,

Speaker 2 how can it be empowering to, even on Instagram, offer your body for judgment and then put your self-worth into the ranks and reviews that strangers give you?

Speaker 2 Turning yourself into a product, effectively.

Speaker 2 This talk of objectifying young women, you know, that is turning yourself into an object on display

Speaker 2 um which i think is quite clear to anyone who's not grown up with it but i i don't judge the ordinary young woman for thinking that's attractive because

Speaker 2 that has been her role models throughout growing up and it's escalated slowly so it went from zoella to now only fans versus bonnie blue zoella to bonnie blue yeah

Speaker 1 the arc

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Speaker 1 Why is it that

Speaker 1 pretty much all of the examples of toxic masculinity from the past,

Speaker 1 promiscuity, sexual entitlement, hyperindependence, are all traits that are now regarded as

Speaker 1 boss girl

Speaker 1 feminist power?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I think it might be like a revenge thing.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 I think young women react to the very worst traits of some men by thinking, I'll just do it back, and that will give me the power. So they're like,

Speaker 2 maybe they've had a string of relationships where the guy has kind of slept with them and then left or something.

Speaker 2 And then they think, yeah, I'll just do that to the next guy. Or,

Speaker 2 you know, they look at the men doing that and think, well, they seem very confident and happy.

Speaker 1 So that's the way to go.

Speaker 2 I think it's like a defense mechanism of some kind. And also,

Speaker 2 I think they're probably also the traits that get you popularity online so if you look at Tana Monjo or some of these influencers

Speaker 2 they are promiscuous they're quite masculine they're quite aggressive in their speech because people who talk assertively and in extreme ways will just suit the algorithm you know if you're like a reserved timid young girl you're not going to be the top influencer on Instagram

Speaker 2 so I think those traits get rewarded and then they're what girls are scrolling through all day every day and they're like oh my favorite influencer is really really like vulgar and promiscuous and she's super assertive and pastor success yeah and that's again that's the model of like the healed confident woman who's not held back by negative emotion or worry or jealousy or any of these things

Speaker 1 assertiveness is confused for self-assuredness or wholeness completeness fixedness well also promiscuity is like

Speaker 2 well i often think now if you're like a reserved young woman who's modest,

Speaker 2 you're now shamed. Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, people will think there's something wrong with you because they'll be like, oh, no, you are beautiful.
You shouldn't be so like shy about guys.

Speaker 2 You know, you shouldn't worry about sex. You know, it's fine.
Like, people will reassure her now

Speaker 2 as to like,

Speaker 2 look at her as if she has a problem that needs healing rather than she just is modest.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what tends to happen is you look at promiscuity becomes so popular and normalized.

Speaker 2 And then we stigmatise the girls that aren't interested in that or aren't that way.

Speaker 2 So yeah, I think if you are a young woman now who's

Speaker 2 who holds back in that way, it's kind of like if you're introverted and people come up to you and say, what's wrong? You should speak more. And it's just like, sometimes it's just who you are.

Speaker 2 So I think it's the incentives again. You're almost punished socially if you're modest and shy and

Speaker 2 not super assertive and masculine because people think

Speaker 2 you've got your like healing work to do. You need to become more confident and like sexual and like get rid of all your reservations and like repression.

Speaker 2 People think you're just like a repressed person rather than everybody should be Tana Mongeau, whatever she's called. Like she's she's like released herself of all her kind of traumas and burdens.

Speaker 1 Everybody is Tanna at zero.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And you just need to try and get back there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is there a wistfulness for times of the past? This sort of nostalgia for a better time? I don't know when it was,

Speaker 1 maybe before you were born, maybe when your parents were around or something. Yeah.
Or, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Slightly older generations would have that kind of wistfulness, American dream, etc. Yeah.
What did Gen Z think of the current moment? Do they think that it's liberating?

Speaker 1 Because it seems like there's two things going on at once: that life is horrible and terrible, and I have anxious attachment and maybe autism.

Speaker 1 And also,

Speaker 1 I'm fully liberated to be myself. I can be whatever I want to be.
I can girl boss my way through promiscuity and sell my body on OnlyFans and make loads of money, and I don't need no man.

Speaker 1 So, which one is it?

Speaker 2 I know, there's like crippling anxiety among young women, but also this really loud, I don't care, message.

Speaker 2 I think young people in general are very nostalgic for a time.

Speaker 2 They haven't known, which is a time before smartphones and social media.

Speaker 2 So if you look at like Jonathan Haidt, again, he did a survey recently and found that a lot of Gen Z wish things like TikTok and Instagram never existed, which is kind of unusual.

Speaker 2 You don't really get that with any other inventions. Like he was talking about the bike and like the hairdryer.
Like it's really not that level of,

Speaker 2 I'm, I use this all the time and wish that I didn't.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a lot of that ambient feeling among Gen Z of like

Speaker 2 longing for a time, for example, when love wasn't like reacting to someone's Instagram story or swiping on Tinder.

Speaker 2 You know, some young women have never experienced love before it became that.

Speaker 2 Like the mystery of having a crush on someone and falling in love. Like now you just

Speaker 2 you can't wonder what they're up to. You just kind of skip through their Instagram story or look at their Facebook profile and it's all listed out there.

Speaker 2 So I think there's a real feeling of like disenchantment with the modern world where it's like

Speaker 2 everything has become so commodified and cheap. And there's like a nostalgia for a time.
Maybe that didn't exist, but everyone tells me the 90s were way better.

Speaker 2 So I'm just going to assume they're telling the truth. But a time before phones and the internet and the commodification of everything became so extreme

Speaker 2 because now everything I try and explain to people like

Speaker 2 the very concept of things has changed. So friendship for my generation versus friendship for my parents' generation.

Speaker 2 Friendship now is like your friends online. You maybe have a snapstreak that you keep up.
you pose for each other's Instagram, you don't really necessarily hang out as much as you used to.

Speaker 2 There's not really,

Speaker 2 again, friends don't give each other guidance or tell each other what to do because that would be rude and toxic.

Speaker 2 And so the definition of friendship has changed in this era. The definition of love has changed, of flirting, everything.

Speaker 2 Which is why, like, you can talk about kids being on screens and it's kind of sad, but like the actual truth of what's changed is insane and the fact that young people are anxious and can't cope with it is not because they have a disorder it's because they're the first to try and feel their way through a completely different world

Speaker 1 yeah with no rules or strategies or archetypes or stories with a generation that can't relate, doesn't relate. You've just taught them how to use the iPad.

Speaker 1 What are they going to be able to teach you about how to handle this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's kind of why you can't blame them for not giving guidance because the world moves so fast, there's no such, there's no wisdom anymore. You can't pass anything down.

Speaker 2 So now you just have to keep up with the kids.

Speaker 1 It's irrelevant as soon as it leaves your lips. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so now you have adults like

Speaker 2 talking like teenagers and using the same social media platforms, being informed of the new trends, which has always been a thing.

Speaker 2 But now it feels like adults go to young people to get guidance about the world.

Speaker 2 And that makes young people anxious because they're like, where are the adults telling me what to do?

Speaker 1 That's a very good question. Freya India, ladies and gentlemen, Freya, I love everything that you're writing.
It's really great to see you go from strength to strength.

Speaker 1 I think it's really important stuff. Where should people go? They want to check out everything that you do.

Speaker 2 My sub stack is just freyaindia.co.uk. It's called girls.
And yeah, that's just where I write about. girls and young women.
And hopefully I'll have a book announcement soon.

Speaker 1 Exciting. Cool.
I look forward to it. Thank you.
Until next time. Bye.

Speaker 2 Thank you.