Ep. 55 "Taking a Stand Against Transgender Affirmation" - Guest Pamela Garfield-Jaeger (Part 2 of 2)

ANNOUNCER: What happens when we push back against childhood gender-transitioning? Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is well acquainted with the consequences. Today we’re back with part two of our conversation with Pamela, and we’re diving into why Pamela was fired from her therapy job, how to vet a therapist for your child, how to speak up about what’s happening in the mental health industry, and more. 

ADAMS: How do parents find a good therapist today if they need extra help?  

PAMELA: Yeah, the question of the year, right? It takes a lot of work and a lot of vetting, I’ve got to be honest. And that is one of the reasons I wrote this guide, was to give parents — I actually wrote out a list of questions to ask, to screen for a good therapist. 

And it’s not just about this trans thing or about a specific topic, but just asking them how they work, and what their training is and what their ideology is, how they do therapy. And they should be able to answer these kinds of questions. Because if they just answer these questions with these sort of social justice answers, and say there’s systemic “something,” that’s not going to be appropriate therapy. 

So what’s challenging is I actually get a lot of parents who message me and say “I need to find a therapist,” either they ask me and I’m usually not in the same state and I don’t believe in remote therapy. I actually just wrote a substack on that this morning. Especially for kids, I don’t think remote therapy is effective. 

And then, also, they’re looking for me to give them a name. And, of course, I can’t give them a name in some random city they live in, or some other state in the country.  It’s impossible. 

There is a directory for those who are conservative, for conservative therapists. I think it’s called conservativetherapists.com. And it’s growing, but the list, unfortunately, is fairly slim. And there are some agencies out there specific for this “gender critical,” which I can list some of them for you to list after. One of them is called GenSpect. One of them is called Partners For Ethical Care. There’s several others, and they have kind of underground lists of therapists.

But it’s going to be difficult. What you’ve got to do is start making phone calls and start asking direct questions. If they ask you for your pronouns…X! No. If they have something about social justice or racial disparities or something like that…X, no. I mean, you want them to look at you as an individual. Not by the color of your skin. 

So it’s taxing to find — and then you might find someone you like and then…part of my curriculum is actually: how do you stay involved, how do you know they’re still doing appropriate things? Right? So making sure that you’re involved, making sure that they don’t shut you out, that they aren’t keeping secrets — important secrets — from you. And to understand that, of course, especially if they’re working with a teenager, they’re not going to tell you, the parent, every single thing your child says. That’s not appropriate, because then how is the child going to trust you?

But at the same time, not to keep important secrets — for example, the gender. But other things too. And especially anything to do with safety. Or if they make any kind of empty threats and say, “Your kid’s going to kill themself if you change therapists. I actually talked to a parent who said Their child’s therapist said this to them and I encouraged them to switch anyway.

But these are things that are not therapeutic, they are very inappropriate. So it’s a lot of ruling out all of this stuff. But there are good therapists out there. There are plenty of them, they’re just unfortunately…they have to be relatively quiet to stay in practice, to keep their licenses. Especially in the State of California where I live and other states where there are actually laws that are stopping them from being open about these things that we were just talking about.

That'll be considered conversion therapists if they ask questions about their gender and don’t immediately affirm, for example. So they have to be quiet. They can’t advertise. But there are a lot of ethical therapists out there, you just have to do the work and find them, unfortunately.

ADAMS: That’s a shame that we’ve gotten to this place. But I appreciate the work you’re doing to just try to help parents navigate through these things. 

So basically what I’m understanding from hearing you, is when you came back into this working space and you saw all these changes that were going on, you felt that one of the ways that you could bring back value was to actually start writing things and actually doing papers and courses to help equip parents and other leaders on what’s going on in these issues and how they can make good decisions. How they can think through the issue and take appropriate actions. Is that correct?

PAMELA: That’s correct. And to be completely transparent, what happened was I came back from a severe nerve-damage injury that I had. And so I chose not to get the COVID vaccine, and I live in California and I was a health care worker. So they took me out of my job.

And so what that did was, that emboldened me to start  speaking the truth. That’s what led me to this. I realized — I felt like they knocked me into this path by doing that. I was working with teens, I was doing group therapy with teens with mental health issues. I also worked with adults, but mostly the teens. 

And when they told me I couldn’t come back to work because I didn’t get that vaccine, I was devastated. And I felt really displaced once again, after being on disability. And then  I realized that this was my place. I kind of felt like I had this calling. 

There are just very few people who are able to be outspoken about this, because of their situation. I mean, I know people criticize people and will call them cowards for not being outspoken. But that means that they can no longer serve their patients. So  it’s a trade-off, right? You want the ethical people to still be on the inside to be able to serve patients and maybe be able to change some minds from the inside. I wish I could still do that, but I can’t anymore. 

So I’m on the outside, kind of trying to influence people on the inside to talk to people and make some changes that way. 

ADAMS: Before we go to pick up some of your places where people can go to learn more about you…we work a lot with teachers and school board members and so forth. What can people like that, who are in the education system, do?

PAMELA: I think it depends on who you are and your temperament and the position you’re in. Ideally, you can speak out, you can join school boards, you really become an activist and fight against this, full-blown. Right?

But not everyone can do that, and I don’t know if — I think there’s actually a place for some people to do it more quietly. We kind of need quiet insiders. Because people are like, “Don’t worry about being canceled, don’t worry about being comfortable,” and all that. Well, unfortunately, there’s a slew of new social workers being trained everyday and graduating who can just replace us all and be in those institutions.

So to be inside the institution and quietly find other like-minded people to gather and fight against this is actually really valuable. And to be able to change minds face-to-face, day-to-day with people that you trust and people that you can talk to. Talk to your supervisor. Point out some of the really ludicrous discrepancies that are happening, point out some of the new articles that are coming out. I mean, it’s not even that new, but the FDA actually came out with a warning on those puberty blockers.

To quietly bring up some of these issues I think is really valuable. Face-to-face I think is really valuable. I’m online, I’m doing these podcasts, I’m doing this, but I think that face-to face is a really — probably even more effective if more people are talking about these things individually, one-on-one. I think that will go a long way.

And talking to your friends, talking to your family. Showing them a documentary that spoke to you. And not being afraid to talk to people that will listen.

ADAMS: So let’s talk a little bit about some of the resources that you have available. Where can people find those?

PAMELA: So I have a website. It’s called thetruthfultherapist.org. And that’s where all those courses are. It’s five dollars a month. I’ve written ten so far and I have one more coming very soon. It’s actually going to be on social media and the impact of social media and what parents can do.

I have lot’s more topics lined up that I want to write about. Substance abuse, which is another hot topic that isn’t talked about enough and how, in a way, it’s being enabled in our society. So that’s thetruthfultherapist.org.

I’m on Instagram as The dot Truthful Therapist, or @the.truthfultherapist. I’m on Twitter as @redpilledlcsw. I’ve also been writing some articles on Substack, which is Pam The Truthful Therapist. You can get valuable information there too.

ADAMS: Super. Well, we’ll make sure those things are added to the notes with this podcast for those that are maybe having difficulty picking them up because maybe they’re driving or something right now. But we’ll have those added.

And then there was a documentary that you just part of; Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind The Transgender Explosion. For those who are interested in seeing that, where can they find that?

PAMELA: Yeah, I believe the website is dysconnectedmovie.com. The filmmaker — his name is Don Johnson and his company is Don Johnson Media, I believe. And his general website is runawayplanetpicutures.com. So you can find it in some of those ways. I think Dysconneted Movie. Oh, and it’s spelled with a Y. So D-Y-S-C-O-N-N… [unintelligible] I don’t know, dysconnected with a Y. Because, instead of an I, it’s sort of a play on dysphoria and disconnected.

And it interviews me, it really highlights this beautiful story of a transitioner. And for those who don’t know, a detransitioner is somebody who once identified as trans and now longer identifies as trans and identifies as their natal sex. This woman. It’s this beautiful story and I don’t want to give it away, but it has a really hopeful ending.

Her name is Daisy, I actually got to meet her in October at a rally and was able to hang out with her. Her story is beautiful. And it interviews all kinds of people — doctors, me (a therapist), and some people who have been doing a lot of advocacy work on this. And some religious leaders are in it too. It’s a great film.

ADAMS: Well, you know, it’s interesting — maybe we’ll kind of wrap up on this. Right now we hear so much promoting this whole change of the transition into something that people  are not biologically born. And that’s being advocated in such a significant way, all through the culture and the media and movies and education. Every way. 

What we’re not seeing is the stories — and a few of them are getting out. But there’s a massive number of people who have gone through this. Now maybe a few years in and their lives have been destroyed. And now they’re trying to work their way back out.

And just, you know, significant stories that you know, I think…here’s the reality: people need to know the truth. And, you know, before anybody — before any child, especially, or any parent -- signs off on any kind of transgender therapy work — they need to do an equal amount of research into the stories of people who transitioned. And, you know, where are they today? 

I mean, we know that the suicide rate is incredibly high in that popululation. People that have discovered that that really wasn’t their solution. And now they’re trying to find themselves again in a whole new way. As they’re trying to deal with the real root causes of what led them down that path in the first place.

And so I think — look. These are challenging days that we live in. But there’s some tremendous opportunity, and one of those things is: we can talk about these things, there’s a lot of research and data available. People need to prepare themselves, they need to equip themselves thoroughly so that they can not only make good decisions for themselves, but for their children and so forth.

So Pam, thank you so much for joining us today, and we wish you all the best.

PAMELA: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.