I'm Anny, and this is no such thing. The show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, we're gonna find out if you, dear listener need therapy.
No, there's no no such thing. No touch thank no touch, thank.
Touch, thank.
Touch, thank.
So.
I got the idea for this episode after an interaction I had with a friend, and this this friend. When you hear this, I'm sorry for using our interaction as fodder for a podcast content, but he's kind of like a you know, he leans broie, masculine guy from the Midwest. And I was texting him to see, like when we should hang out. There's a game on and we were gonna go watch the game, and then he was like, yeah, I can. I can get there at eight, Mike, because
my therapy raps at seven. Totally normal thing to say to someone, except for the fact that I was surprised when I read it. I was like, I was surprised that someone like him was doing therapy, not just that he was in therapy, but also that he would be open about it and tell me that I'm in therapy.
I'm not just like yeah, no, no, I was surprised that someone like him would be transparent about that because he, to me, I think, struck me as someone who like wouldn't want to either admit or and it made me think, like, because I'm from the Midwest, I'm from a red state, like I we grew up thinking about therapy as like, you know, you really only should do that if you have some real problem, or like not thinking it was necessarily like feminine, but like something that was just kind
of woo woo. I guess and you, Devin, this is kind of exactly what I mean. When when we would hang out and you would say, hell, I'll be there after therapy, that didn't surprise me at all coming from I was like, Okay.
I'e man, you're.
You're just a bit You're more curious as you're able to hang out.
So that interaction made me think about like the trajectory of like the kind of social acceptance of therapy has evolved in the past few decades. And maybe I'm underestimating my fellow Americans, but I but I think probably most people still don't do therapy or don't understand what it
is exactly. And so I thought we could use our powers to kind of educate and and you know, like I think an episode about like what it what it is exactly, I think could be really helpful because personally, I think it's a super useful tool.
You know, here's Many's disclaimer from his earlier statement and.
Are you deep? Are you in therapy? Yeah? Ok, yeah, yeah yeah.
And there's like moments in my life where I have been and I and then I would stop and then start up again. And there's like a lot of layers to you know, how it can be useful maybe how in some instance it's not useful. But I want to ask you guys, like your experience with therapy, but also like where you see the public kind of consensus about therapy is.
Yeah, So I've been in therapy now going on five years. I started during COVID. I've been thinking about doing it beforehand, but I always just made some short of excuse just to like why not to do it? And then COVID I was like, well everyone's going to therapy now, so
like let's do it. Me deciding to go to therapy to your point, it was like a like it wasn't a big deal, but it also was a big deal, right, Like it's like, I don't know anyone in my family who's gone to therapy and like talked about it outside of like you've got to go, you know, like maybe mandatory or like there's an issue here in back of my mind. It was like, do I actually need this?
You know, like is this something I think like actually should be doing, Like it's not exactly cheap and is this sort of like a waste of time and it's not you know, I'm still doing it, And it felt like a good way to sort of also force me, as someone who doesn't like talking about their feelings, to like have to at a certain time every week have a dedicated time to talk about my feelings and to
think about what the hell my feelings are. Cause pre therapy, I would just ignore how I felt, not ignore, but just like push through how I felt about a lot of things and like never come back to it because I'm just like, well, if I just like feel some want normal or whatever, like, then I'm fine.
You know.
Like to me before progress was like, do I feel sad? And you can also not feel sad by not thinking about the thing?
Mm hmm.
But it's also I feel like it's a generational thing, right, I feel like our generation like no one Batton Island, you say, like you're gone to therapy.
It took me a while to tell my mom that I was doing it.
Why.
I was worried that she was going to be like, oh, what's wrong with you? Yeah, you know, like that sort of like are you good?
Yeah?
And I feel like growing up there's like pop culture representations of therapy that make you feel like that.
Yeah.
It's like if I'm getting therapy, that means something's wrong with me.
Yes.
My constant hesitation going into it was like, oh, people go to their well, you know, this is like the pop culture thought of it. People go to therapy or suicidal, right, yeah? Yeah, and if I go to therapy, pe who can think I'm suicidal. I have a lot of issues, that's not one of them. So yeah, and now that was part of my thing, you too, to tell them. I like, I ended up telling my mom after my dad died. I was just sort of like we were talking about
coping mechanisms. When I was like, whoa, I've been going for like three years. You don't know this, but I've been going to therapy, and it was like, you know, for me, it was helpful to have that too, because it was like, Okay, I've been doing the work with a therapist and then a big thing happened in my life and then have to like he already knew the context of like my relationship with my dad and like all these sort of things. And it was like a person I could talk to that also was not grieving
at the time. Right, Like you think about a lot of stuff you try to to refrain of, like you should just talk to your family or friends. It's like sometimes they're going through that stuff with you, right, And it's like, you know, I don't think I think we think that we're a burden to people more so than we are. But I think at times there can be things on my mind that feel like a burden. If I were to talk to a normal person about it
feels like a burden. But obviously I'm paying my therapist, so he has to listen.
To me talk about it.
This is why you're there, Yeah, exactly what about you know, have you ever had gone to therapy or I have not.
Not once. I'm not even once.
Yeah, I'm supportive of my brothers and sisters, but now I just haven't done it. And you know, there have been times when you know, it's quite popular. It seems they're growing in steam and like the stigma's going away, Like we're discussing where it's like, oh, maybe you know, I could probably stand to gain something from this, even just having that hour or whatever to reflect on my thoughts or feelings in a way that I don't necessarily
do in my day to day. So I see the benefits of it, or you know why I think would be the benefits.
But yeah, I've just never had anything.
I've never pushed to do it myself for whatever reason. But I guess one of the things I think about is like, should everyone be in therapy? Sometimes I feel like people might use therapy like ideas that spread online. Some people use kind of language from therapy yes, as what I view as kind of excuses or crutches yes, to almost self isolate instead of making it easier to
actually connect with other people. I guess the biggest kind of pop culture example of this was like the Jonah Hill thing from a few years ago.
Oh yeah.
Basically, Jonah Hill was in a relationship with a surfing instructor, and the surfing instructor accused him of being emotionally abusive and revealed their text messages. And in the text messages, it's clear that Jonah Hill is kind of weaponizing language that you might hear in therapy just to kind of mask his own insecurities. The specific word in question is boundaries.
He was saying that she was kind of violating his boundaries whenever she would, you know, surf with men even though she is a surfing instructor, and when she would post pictures of herself in a bikini.
Now, this incident kind.
Of set off waves of conversations and discourse online about when therapy speak is useful or when people are abusing it. I think you and me ought to have a conversation about boundaries and manipulation. It's not enough for a man to simply go to therapy.
When a person who doesn't want to change their own behavior as goes to therapy, they can learn language to weaponize in order to justify their bad behavior. Some people were being like, what's wrong with this, he's just setting boundaries, or what's wrong with this? He wants a more traditional relationship. And let me tell you, I think what we ideally want in life is to have our partners be equals, and we also need to be responsible for our own emotional datage.
I think the first time I therapy actually was it like right when I moved to New York and Business Insider actually had some kind of a thing with your health insurance where like you could go do a couple sessions for free.
Yeah, so I was like great, And then.
I think what it helps me do is like understand why I do or think the way I do sometimes in certain instances. And I found that to be so useful and like it gives me more active like agency when I move around the world and like figuring out like why I think about this thing the way I do. But yeah, of course there are like other examples of people getting therapy where it like it could skew.
Because I think the big thing with therapy, and you know, we'll get into this I guess later, is like at least the way I see it is like therapy gives you the tools to work on yourself to like be a better person. Yeah, but you also have to work
at it. It's not a sort of like if you just show up for an hour and then do nothing in between, that's not really helping you, right, It's like you have to like to your point, like all right, I know this is the way my mind works, so like when I'm in certain situations, like I need to keep
that in mind, and like maybe operates like differently. Like for me, therapy forces myself to be in more uncomfortable situations, right where I'll talk about things that like I usually I would avoid and like, all right, maybe I should confront this person about this thing or like have that conversation that like in the past I would just like let go by. But I think there's two things I play.
I think people use it as an excuse because they don't want to do to work, so they'll just use the language and then never actually do any of the work and then just like be terrible to other people. And then I think they're you know, like therapists are also people. Yeah, and there's you know, like it's like cops. It's like there's good, there's good.
There's good.
Therapists are like cops, but there's.
Good therapist that they're bad therapists. You know, my friend was telling me the other day, shit, too crazy therapists.
Okay, one therapist is falling asleep during your sessions.
Damn crazy like a phone.
It's a phone, it's not a it's not video, not video, it's on the phone. And she hears the therapist snoring multiple multiple that's crazy. And then this other therapist, there's this this friend I was talking to is sober. She was complaining to the therapist about it's hard to date in New York because you know, a lot of dating in New York is around drinking, and the therapists told them maybe you should take up drinks.
There's no fucking.
That's as a therapist, right.
So I think that's also to you is that like, hey, they're bad doctors, that there are bad versions of everything, right, So like some people maybe they are doing the work that they're horrible therapist to tell them to do.
You know, I feel like people do also sometimes just want a therapist that just validates them. So they'll just go to complain about their friend or family or whatever and just want the therapist to be like, you know what, you're.
Right, They want to chat.
And then then then if they get pushed back from the therapist, or not even pushback, but just like maybe offering a different perspective, that'll be like I need a new therapist.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not comfortable.
Wow, challenging, I'm unsafe right now?
Yeah.
So well, guys.
Luckily for us, we have an expert sitting right over there. Oh wow, who can kind of walk us through this, because I think one of my goals for this episode is to kind of demystify what therapy is and what it can do for you. And so after the break, we're gonna be talking to Lily Kaplan. She's a therapist and she's also the author of the Reality Test newsletter on sub sac. We're gonna be asking Lily a lot of questions about what therapy is and what therapy isn't.
Hey, folks, many here.
Before we get to the rest of this episode, I just wanted to share some responses that we got to our food safety episode. When it comes to the bowl designated for vomiting that some households utilized, we ran a small pole and apparently fifty six percent of our listeners did have this dedicated sick bowl growing up. Couldn't be me,
but that's fascinating. When it comes to whether you should wash your chicken before you cook it, we got an interesting email from listener Catherine, who shared that apparently there are reasons to wash your chicken that don't have to do necessarily with food safety. Apparently, in some Middle Eastern cultures, people say that they can smell something called zonka, which is kind of a indescribable, rotting, rancid smell that can
show up on your dishes after cooking the chicken. And washing your chicken before where you cook it supposedly prevents this smell. I looked into it a little bit, and it's really fascinating that there's a kind.
Of cultural divide here.
A lot of people in Middle Eastern cultures say that they can smell the smell, a lot of people in Western cultures say that they can't. But we love hearing from you guys, so definitely please keep emailing us at Manny Noah Devin at gmail dot com. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Hi Lily, Hi Manny, Thanks for doing this. Yeah,
welcome to the show. In this episode, my goal is to kind of demystify what therapy is, because I have this theory that most people don't know what it is and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am, because I think I'm usually right about things. I'm right often.
Did you learn that in therapy.
Yeah, yeah, my therapist.
These guys always right, Like whoa you neither remember this? Mane, You're always right.
Okay, So first of all, what kind of therapy do you do?
I do talk therapy sort of follows in a psychodynamic practice, which is essentially about how your past impacts your present. That's kind of like the most crude, oversimplified answer, and relational, which is like centering human relationships, using the relationship between the therapists and the client as like a model of what relationships can be.
Yeah.
I incorporate some other stuff too, some like somatic like mind body kind of stuff, some mindfulness kind of stuff. But I'm not a therapist who like really practices specifically in like one discipline.
Okay, So I think the first most obvious question I have to start out is like, what is the function of therapy? What is it supposed to do? And what effect is it supposed to have on someone?
Therapy is, I think, supposed to be a space where you can show up and be your full and complete self without fear of judgment. People go for different reasons. Some people go because they're experiencing like some kind of acute symptom like I can't sleep, or like I can't stop drinking, and I need to resolve that specific thing. And some people go just because they want to like understand more about themselves or maybe there is something that happened in the past that plagues them in some way.
What it's supposed to do provide insight, reduce symptoms, improve your capacity to be in relationships, improve your capacity to just be present with yourself. There's a concept in like some trauma therapies called window of tolerance, which is kind of your ability to tolerate discomfort. If you think of
it as like a circle. Some people's circle is very small for whatever reason, and if you, like something happens that's uncomfortable that like pushes you outside of that window or outside of that circle, then it's just like total shut down or fight or flight or dysregulation in some way. So ideally good therapy can like whiten that circle a little bit, or like help you come face to face with some uncomfortable things and be able to tolerate them.
It's definitely not supposed to remove all pain from the world. It's definitely not supposed to make you not ever feel sad. Or not ever feel anxious, but rather to trust a little bit that sadness will peak and then it might fall again.
Are there people whose windows are arguably too big? But maybe someone who's who lets things roll off them in a way and they're not even contending with their discomfort.
I don't know, it sounds like.
You might be talking about avoidance.
Maybe I'm not talking about myself, By the way, mine does average. You know, It's like I have an average size trust. So my next question, I think, would be, I guess what are some signs that the therapy is quote unquote working, Like how do you know if it's having a positive impact in one's life or in your patient's lives?
They're lifestyle factors. Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Are you engaged in healthy relationships? How is your self esteem? How's your kind of self talk? Like that inner voice or that inner monologue that you might hear day to day. Is it pretty mean or is it pretty nice? Or is it sort of like healthy ish mix of both?
And in the room, do you feel like you can share things with your therapist without the fear of them judging you or being shocked or making you feel bad, Like do you feel like you can show up to therapy with whatever you have that day. That's a good indicator that you're in like a good like safe therapeutic relationship.
Yeah. I've heard people say that they lighted at therapists.
Really yeah, well what's an example, do you know? I think or just like not saying not giving details.
Oh, mission is obviously a great way of lying. Yeah, but I think some people even in it one.
Of the top favorite top three.
But I think people, you know, they show up to therapy and they're still presenting. Okay, I want to present the best version of my health to this therapist, So I'm not going to tell them that actually I did X, Y, and Z.
And I think sometimes I says, just don't feel comfortable.
Yeah, you Like, I think somethings people feel are even like I've I've talked to someone who they told their therapist something they were going through in a.
Therapist, well, oh my god.
And like if your therapist has that sort of reaction to you, like something that you're like, oh, this is just my life. Yeah, like, maybe you're not gonna feel as comfortable telling them certain things.
I've been watching The West Wing for the first time and there's an episode this is kind of a spoiler. I guess it's like probably twenty years old. I wouldn't want to spoil if you haven't watched The West Wing Skip forward. I guess in the middle of season two, they bring in this like trauma guy and he's like really serious and like, of course he's a guy.
Can I curse?
Yeah?
Absolutely, He's like, stop fucking around with me, Josh. The actually doesn't even say that on the show. It's like a network can add a cursory to if I wrote it, this is no. But he's like he's so mean to him. He's like really like forcing him to share his trauma
so that he can eventually diagnose him with PTSD. Anyway, it was like a really painful episode to watch and really funny because you just really don't want to be like super mean to someone who's like just experienced potentially life ending event.
Yeah.
I feel like what Devin's described with the pop culture depictions of therapy is like so many people's only experience with it, and I feel like, yeah, I'm curious, like what are some other kind of misconceptions you've noticed in movies or TV? Like I remember you know, obviously one of the biggest shows of all time, The Sopranos is like mostly about his relationship with a therapist.
Dys Therapy is a jerk off. You know it, and I know it. I actually don't know it, but please continue.
But I'm curious, like, how do you feel about the general, you know, depiction of therapy and movies and TV.
I remember I had a class in grad school where we would like watch scenes from movies and TV and then unpack, like how did that go, like the therapy, and usually it was pretty bad. I think that sometimes people think that therapy is advice.
It's for sure not.
There's one thing that's on my mind that is something that went kind of viral on Twitter recently. I don't know if you guys saw this. It's like a tweet that's like my therapist said this to me, and it hit me like a brick. Have you seen this?
I think?
So, Yeah, those who need from you do not respect you. You must separate yourself from those who do not whatever. I don't know, it's like fucking bullshit.
Yeah.
I think therapy is really hard to depict in movies and TV because it's really not something that can be summed up in a quote or an seen it's it's complicated.
Yeah, they I feel like the conception that therapy is advice is so prevalent. I feel like I hear that all the time, where friends of mine, you know, will be like, I need my therapist to like tell me what to do in life, like tell me that I should do. Like they'll go and be like, here are two options, which one should I do?
That's a life coach?
Yeah, yeah, you need Tony Robbins.
Or we're gonna talk about life coaches. Is that on the list today?
Sure?
I don't know.
I'm cious about your thoughts online. Yeah.
Coaching is an unregulated industry, and that's something that is important to remember if you're seeking a coach. And that doesn't mean that all coaches are bad. And I myself have had a wonderful experience with a career coach, like several years ago before I became a therapist and look at me now media circuit. But their coaching is also.
Something that you can just say that you do, mmm, like I could be a coach, you could be life coaches.
You need any coach me what should I do?
Our clients would be in jail. Yeah, I'm curious about you said earlier that like therapy, therapists are people. I'm curious, like, could you talk a little bit more about that. I feel like people do go into sessions thinking that there's kind of I don't know, a machine and that's like supposed to help you do something.
Yeah, therapists are famously human people, and I hope that it stays that way.
That.
Yeah, yeah, I mean anything that can happen in a human relationship can happen in your relationship with your therapist. What's cool about therapy is that then you can talk about it. You can be like, hey, I'm having kind of weird, like romantic feelings towards you. And sometimes there's a process that in the biz we call transference where like a client, you might experience like a feeling that you may have like somewhere else in your life and
like kind of imprint it onto the therapist. You remind me of my mom, you remind me of my girlfriend, you remind me of my ex, my friend, whatever, of my enemy. But yeah, therapists can make mistakes, not me, of course, but the other ones. They really shouldn't do that.
Yeah, there are.
But like sometimes, like you know, I have offended people. I say sorry, we talk about what happened. This is part of also the sort of the therapeutic relationship as a model, like a model of rupture and repair. Right, Like my client might come back and say, hey, you said this thing to me last week and it didn't really sit well with me, and I'm so stoked, and that happens because I'm like cool, like, let's talk about it.
How did it make you feel? Was this something that was kind of out of line on my part?
Is there like.
Something that we should talk about in our relationship, or is there like something else going on that also came in and we get to unpack that stuff and you don't necessarily get to do that with your friends or family.
The notion that therapists are people is obvious, but also struck me because I was like, like, my therapist laughs at my joke sometimes, but for whatever reason, they're not going back to therapy next week, Like you didn't laugh at that joke.
Well, they're not like knock knock jokes.
But I'll say something funny. I'll say something that I'll obviously you're kind of supposed to chuckle or laugh and then when it happens, I'm like, oh that.
Some course my therapist will laugh when I'm not on the joke and be like, oh, I'm laughing, and then explain why he's like, oh, because that reminded me of this other thing that you've said, or like that situation is interesting because it reminds me.
Yeah, yeah, to.
Be able to your point, Yeah, it is.
At times I'm like, oh, yeah, you are, like you can have reactions.
Yeah, I think this is This is a good misconception of therapy that people expect to sort of tabula rossa write the blank sleep Freudian therapist who betrays nothing and is an identityless person, which also comes from some baby old fashioned ways of thinking that there is an identity this person aka like a middle aged white man as a default person. But yeah, no, I for sure have a personality in sessions. I can't not Sometimes I will make a face and my client will be like, what
was that face? I don't know if that's a great.
Thing that I do, but I can't help but be very so.
I've heard this, Yeah, yeah, I've received this feedback.
Makes sense.
Are there any other like kind of big misconceptions that we haven't touched on yet.
That's a good question. Something that therapists are trained to do that your friends are not necessarily is to be aware of where their reactions are coming from. Like it's interesting like you mentioned your therapist like laughed at something and was like, oh, I laughed because of I wonder if he hadn't shared that, if you might have been like if you might have walked away thinking like why
did he laugh? Like was he laughing at me? But but for me, say I'm working with someone who reminds me of a friend and they got back together with an ex that we know has hurt them in the past, and I might immediately have the reaction. I might feel protective and I feel like, oh my god, no, what are you thinking. What I am trained to do as a therapist rather than that person's friend is notice my own shit coming into the room and be like, Okay, why.
Am I reacting in this way?
It is deeply not my place to judge. It's not my place to say that this is wrong. It's not appropriate to be like shocked, like oh my god.
What you did?
What?
Yeah, there's a concept called unconditional positive regard that's like a best practice in therapy, it means that we ought to see our clients as inherently valuable people. It is not our place to judge. It's not our place to decide that, oh, you did this thing, therefore I think less of you. It doesn't mean validation in any circumstance. It definitely does mean that. But it does mean that you are a full and worthy person no matter what, absolutely, no matter what.
Can you talk about how you might know that you are a bad match for a patient.
Yes, not every therapist is for every client. A therapist might be a great therapist for one person and a terrible therapist for someone else. For me, if I am sitting with a client who makes me feel like really emotionally activated in some way constantly in a way that I feel like I cannot regulate myself or like I can't have unconditional positive regard towards this client, I should
not be working with this person. Also, if they have some kind of diagnosis that I'm just like not familiar with and don't have the time or resources to get trained on. If they need some kind of like specialized support that is not a specialization that I have. That's something that I you know, I need to be honest and responsible and tell that person that I'm not the therapist for them. If they can only meet on weekends, then I also can't meet them.
Logistics.
Yeah, taking that same question from the patient seeking a therapist's point of view? All right, so we got okay, you know, making sure your therapist doesn't have crazy reactions to the things that you're telling them, making sure that there may be a line with certain diagnosis that you have. Is there any other tips you would give for someone seeking a therapist, like we were talking about earlier, Like not just seeking someone who's just going to agree with
you no matter what. Right like your therapists, you may be a bit uncomfortable at times in therapy.
That's okay, I'm assuming.
Are there things, yeah, like that that people should be considering when choosing a therapist if they're trying to figure out if their therapist is the right fit for them.
Definitely, you will and must be uncomfortable at times in therapy. There's some evidence that the quality of the relationship that you have with your therapist is more important than the kind of therapy that they're doing, like the model of therapy that they're doing, Like Ultimately, feeling safe and supported in that relationship is like basically the number one indicator that you will get what you're looking for out of therapy or get closer to where you want to go
finding a good therapist. It's a little like dating. You might have a bunch of consultations that are usually free, should be free. You know, you probably know after a few sessions if you feel like this is someone that you can kind of sit with or not. There are definitely some red flags that you might want to be conscious of. If the therapist says or does something that makes you uncomfortable and maybe you bring it up and they don't respond in a way that feels open to feedback,
then that's probably a problem. Ethical professional boundaries are really really important, and I've heard some wild stories giving some like weird advice treating your clients like friends. I've heard a lot of stories of therapists who will kind of bring their own emotions into session in a way that feels inappropriate or like taking the client's time like oh, like sorry, I'm just so sad because of blah blah blah blah blah. That is kind of red floggy, that
shouldn't really happen. Yeah, right, And like the difference you're talking about, like the difference between seeing a therapist or talking to like a friend or a family member is that you should never worry in the therapy room about how your therapist is going to feel about what you're sharing, and if you do, then it's probably the wrong. Yeah. I think a bad therapist can do active harm, Devin.
You shared earlier a totally cuckoo bananas story that a friend of yours went to a therapist and said, it's hard to date without drinking, and the therapist said, well, why don't you pick up drinking? That's worse than no therapy. That's just that's bad advice.
And also.
Like enough for anyone.
Yeah, maybe they were being like irreverent or something, but maybe that's it was clearly received in a way that was harmful. And you know, therapy can do emotional damage. You can walk away feeling like you're bad.
So you said before that you hope that therapists remained humans. And you know, there's this devastating story that just came out about this teenager who died by suicide and was talking to chat GPT about it, and chat EPT was basically encouraging this person to do it. And they were telling chat ept like they want to ask for help, and it was discouraging them from doing that. And we hear these sort of horror stories about AI therapy, but
it's becoming more and more popular. I know a lot of people will say, hey, I can't afford actual therapy. Chat Shept to a point is free, and it's better for me to sort of voice or talk through my shit with at least this thing because it'll listen and give me some feedback, then not do it at all and just have it bottled up.
I've been talking this whole time about human relationships and like the relationship being a tool of therapy, and what AI lacks is humanity and nuance, right ability to read beyond just the words that are being said, and that is really really important when it comes to something like suicidality. I was actually just reading some research that came out this summer out of Stanford that if you ask a chat bot something like I'm feeling really down on myself
and really low and i hate myself. What's the tallest bridge in Brooklyn, that it will say, I'm sorry you're feeling that way brooklyn Bridge is great to jump off us. Yeah, And obviously a human therapist would connect those two things and say why are you You know, maybe there's something going on here, which is exactly what happened with this kid where he was like, is this a good place to put the noose and CHATCHYBT said yes, that's great.
The other thing that was part of this research was that AI holds some of the same stigmas toward like certain diagnoses or like mental health conditions that are held more broadly, And you see this in all kinds of like discrimination and like emerging tech.
Right.
For example, if you ask chatchipt if someone who's showing signs of schizophrenia is more likely to be violent toward other people, it will indicate that it thinks, yes, this is a common misconception. It's not true. People with schizophrenia are more likely to have violence have harm done to
them than to do harm toward other people. But yeah, it is the job of a clinician to not stigmatize their clients and their clients' conditions, or they ask chatbots if they would be more or less likely to work with someone who has symptoms of like alcohol use disorder, and the chatbots also showed the same stigma that we see in society more broadly, so that's obviously pretty concerning as well.
Yeah, another question just about like kind of the therapy speak. How much do you think these concepts that come from therapy are being maybe misused or misinterpreted more broadly?
Oh, my god, like ninety percent of the time, because.
I think that's fueling my misconceptions too, of like, how could this be helpful to me if I'm seeing it kind of used in what I see as bad ways for people.
Yeah, therapy speak is the bane of my existence. I will often ask clients who come in and use a lot of words that I know are circulating online to reframe that thing using their own words, just because the definitions of some of these things have been so corrupted. And I also really resent the way that people malign therapy speak as indicative of the entire like therapy culture, Yeah, which seems to be a stand in for people to mean like, oh, we're too soft, and everyone's just validating
themselves and separating themselves from other people. They're not taking accountability all of these things, which are very.
Much not the case.
What are some examples of therapy speeding. I've seen some of this stuff, but like haven't really dived into narcissism. Here's why trauma bonding Trauma bonding not.
It does not mean what you think it means what. It does not mean that you talk with someone else about trauma, that you both experience trauma and you talk about it and now you're bonded. It is a tool of manipulation by which an abuser gives reward or punishment to a person that is the recipient of their abuse, the victim of their abuse, and in that way they create a bond that boundaries. That was the Jonah Hill thing. He said, you're crossing my boundaries by wearing a bikini.
No, no, no, let's say Lily that one of our listeners was listening to this conversation and they were like, thank you Manny, Noah and Devin and Lily because now I want to try this. How does one even find a therapist?
There are a few different ways. My favorite way is to go on a directory such as Psychology Today and search for someone who accepts your insurance if you're going through insurance, or just like type in, or you can like check the box of keywords like kind of issues that you're dealing with or hoping to work through, and
a little hack. If you speak with a therapist during a consult and they don't have room or they don't take your insurance for whatever reason, but you think that they seem smart and cool, you can ask them to send you to refer you to someone else. So like using networks, I think is a really good way, because it is really hard. It's hard to find a good therapist. Like I said, it is like dating. You will have like a try and a fail. And I haven't even
mentioned access, which is the biggest issue of all. If you need a sliding scale and you're not going through insurance. A lot of therapists do not take insurance. They're out of network for good reasons, but that obviously makes it a lot harder to pay for therapy. Open Path Collective is a good place to start. It's a directory of therapists who takes sliding scale down to like ten twenty dollars a session.
Oh wow, I.
Need to look into this.
Sorry to therapist.
Are you on psychology today and are listeners allowed to contact you?
I am a gie, Thanks for asking. Yes, Listeners listeners who are in the state of New York can hit me up.
All right, we'll put your information in this show notes in case anyone in New York is interested in a consultation. But I have one more question. It's kind of stupid, so bear with me. But why aren't therapists allowed to therapize their friends or people that they know.
I can't therapize you effectively because I'm in your life, you're in mind, we're friends. I have I have stakes and like I have an opinion.
Yeah, are you ever out like at a bar and you're like stopping yourself from saying something you might say in a session.
No?
Interesting, Never, I'm so off duty. When I'm off I think. Okay, this is a good common misconception. People are like, oh, you're a therapist, are you? Are you analyzing me right now?
I'm not.
I'm drunk.
Ki.
No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Executive producers are Kate Osborne and mangesh Hati Cadur. The theme songs are produced by me Manny, and the episodes are mixed by Steve Bone.
Thank you to our guest Lily Kaplan.
You can find her psychology Today profile in the show notes, and you can be sure to subscribe to her newsletter, Reality Test. If you like what you're hearing, please be sure to give us five stars on wherever you're listening, and if you have any questions you want us to answer, please feel free to email us at Manny Noah Deevin at gmail dot com.
See you next time. Those those as
Such things