Therapy Culture: Harmful or Helpful?

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome in to think deeper podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Jack Wilkie, joined once again by Will Harib and Joe Wilkie. And we have an episode this week that I don't, I don't know, I don't want to call it controversial upfront or I don't know what word to use for it. So I'll leave that up to you guys. We're talking about the world of therapy, the world of therapy as it has been co opted, the good, the bad and the ugly. I guess how it comes into Christianity, how it comes into personal relationships, really, how it's kind of saturated our way of seeing each other and the world and all that around us. But we're going to get to that in a minute. Speaking first of all, our resident therapist, Joe has launched a new part of his ministry efforts here specifically on that topic. So tell us just a little bit about that first before we get started. Joe. [00:00:58] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, I started a substack, Joe W counseling dot substack.com, which is, yeah, Joe W is easier to spell than Wilkie counseling dot subsect.com. and it is just my therapy thoughts, it's not necessarily going to, it will intersect with God. Absolutely. And a lot of them. And then there's just some where I find it to be interesting tidbits of therapy, trauma work, things like that that you can pick up along the way, some tips, but also some discussions that I hope to start surrounding some of these things because I don't think therapy culture is, we're going to get into this in the episode. I don't think it has been the most positive influence in some ways. And so it's going to be railing against that a little bit and pushing back against some of those things and giving more practical, positive, hopefully helpful advice surrounding things like trauma and attachment and such. So I'm excited about it and yeah, so feel free to join. And I think the first will be going out. We're recording this early. I think it will be going out on Monday. Is the plan Sunday or Monday we'll be dropping the very first part, one of three for my first set of blogs. So anyway, yeah, thanks for letting me push that. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Go check it out. That's the third focus press person on Substack someday. Life slows down. Yeah. Not like he doesn't have enough going on already, but I, yeah, Brad's on there. I'm on there twice actually. And now Joe is. And so, yeah, it's, we just really enjoyed the platform. It's a great way to stay in touch with people. So check out Joe's work. Speaking of, let's get into this week's episode on that very topic. [00:02:35] Speaker B: All right, so as far as it goes with therapy, we see this explosion in the culture. It has very much come into the public consciousness that therapy is no longer the weird guy. You know, the guy going to therapy is no longer the weird one. I'm like, what's he in therapy for? It's like you almost expect to hear that people are in therapy today, and yet, fellas and will, I'm going to tee you off on a question. We seem more miserable than ever. We are more therapized than ever. We have more therapists working than ever. We have more people in therapy than ever. And yet our culture does not necessarily seem better off. We don't necessarily seem at the mentally healthiest state. And I think you could argue we are at the least healthy mentally, mental state that we've ever had in the history of America. Yeah, we're gonna get the comments. Well, people used to abuse their kids a lot more things like that. I'm not saying it's all been bad. There have been some very positive things. However, we also didn't have a ton of transgenderism on the rise. We didn't have the depression and anxiety statistics skyrocketing. And we've talked to some for those reasons of why that may be, but we should be in the healthiest state mentally, and yet we're not. What do you guys make of this? And I guess to kick things off, the question would be, is therapy a positive thing? [00:03:54] Speaker C: You bring up some great points. I mean, you think about, you know, you hear people say a lot that we're in the most connected time in our nation's and really in society's history as far as social media, texting, just being able to get ahold of people very quickly, and yet we're more lonely than ever. There's the parallels there with exactly what you spoke about, Joe, in the sense that more people are in therapy now, there's more self help books, there's more just general therapy advice. Access to therapy is so much easier now than it ever has been. And yet we, to your point, it does not seem to be working. People seem to not be getting out of the depression, anxiety, whatever it is that they're in therapy for. The problem is not solving itself, just as you said. And so with the question of, is therapy a positive thing? I'm going to go ahead and kind of get to the next question, which is, I think an interesting one of is it anti christian and kind of tie those two things together to answer the first one of is it a positive thing? I think it can be. Certainly. Obviously, Joe, you, you work in your, is your line of work. [00:04:58] Speaker B: And so cats out of the bag with my answer. [00:05:01] Speaker C: Yeah. No, it's not a positive thing at all. You know, it's awful. It kind of be an awkward episode. You know, it'll be. But we had a youth ministry episode a few weeks ago that I and I used to be involved in youth ministry, no longer am, and now we're having a therapy episode. And obviously you're heavily into it. No, but I think it most definitely can be a positive thing overall, I think a lot of people have been helped by it. Obviously, guys like you who really pour their heart and soul into it and work really hard in it are able to help people. I think that's great. I'm sure there's a lot of people whose lives are far more stable and in better shape because of therapists like you who are able to work them through problems and so on that end, it's a very positive thing. We're, of course, going to get into the things that are not positive about it. And so overall, I have a question about that that I'm going to ask later. I'm going to go ahead and get to the is it anti Christian? Question and I'll hand it back to Jack. Obviously, I don't think it's anti Christian. Once again, be a pretty awkward episode if I came out and said, hey, this is anti Christiane. What I do struggle with here as I think about the psalms, as I think about David and his crying out. David's solution to a lot of the things that he was going through was not sitting in front of a therapist. David's solution was more prayer time with God, more time spent with him, obviously singing and kind of singing to God as well. When I think about the apostles, when I think about great men of the Bible, obviously it's a little bit different because that's thousands, thousands of years ago. But I don't picture them if, even if it was available, going and sitting in front of a therapist to answer their, to kind of solve a lot of their problems. And so as I looked at this question of is it anti Christian? I think that's just kind of the first thing that came to my head of like, I do have a bit of a hard time seeing guys like that doing that. I mean, you know, Jesus is the ultimate example. But, you know, say Jesus at 22. I don't know that. You know, I don't really see that. Not that Jesus had any problems. Of course, he was sinless, but I don't know. It's not anti Christian, I don't think, in any way. I think there are a lot of things that you can go through in this life that just somebody saying, hey, read the Bible more is not going to solve. Or, hey, you should pray more is not going to solve it. And so, again, guys like you and others are really able to help with that. But I don't know. I guess that's the other angle of it. Jack, what would you say to, I guess, both of these first two questions that we have? [00:07:19] Speaker A: I can't answer either of them as a yes or no, so sorry, that's a bit of a cop out. So is it a good thing? I think it's like college, and that it is a necessary good thing in. In a specific way, but then when it's not, it becomes a solution in search of a problem. And I think for a lot of people, that's what it's become. We're just really kind of buckling down, getting to work, like it kind of. And we might talk about this later, but, like, doing the very basics. And, like, if you go into your physical health doctor, and you're like, well, I'm having this problem, they're like, oh, well, here's just. Here's this pharmaceutical drug that'll kind of stick a band aid on it. That's no good. You got to get down to just ask the basics. Do you sleep? Do you eat healthy food? Do you move at all? Or do you sit on the couch all day? Like, ask those basic things. It's the same thing for mental health, is like, man, before any of those things, check out the basic things. If you're not hitting the baseline, like measures of being alive, okay, take care of that. And again, there might be some serious, actual, real trauma that, as I said, there is a need for it. There is a time and a place, and I think that's something that. Where it's kind of become this. You'll hear people say, everybody needs therapy. I would hope not. I really hope not. I hope that not, like, everyone can benefit in some ways or whatever, but that basically you can't be fixed without a professional kind of working on your mind. No, I think it's like college. There is a very real application for it, but it's not as broad as we've made it. We don't need to have everybody doing it the way we've been with college and therapy. Is it anti christian? I think I'm going back and forth between most or in a lot of cases today, yes. Because they start with anti christian assumptions about sin, about man's nature, about man's purpose in life, about male female distinctions, which we talk about so much on this podcast. I mean, that's one of the first things of like, how would you counsel something through this? I'm not a professional therapist, but the question is, is this a man or a woman? Because they're two totally different things. And yet so many times that doesn't seem to even enter the equation, the lines get blurred. Yeah. Like how do we. We're just handling them differently. In fact, I think most therapy is pointed at women's needs. And, and so that's kind of the tools that you have. And a man comes in and you start trying to help him think in ways that would help a woman get better. That's not helpful. I mean, like, he's a man. He needs that kind of thing. And so is it anti Christian when it really does the undermining christian assumptions? And you look at Freud, I mean, he was incredibly anti Christian, kind of the godfather of so much of this stuff. And so. But does that mean it's anti Christian? No, I mean, obviously we have Joe here who does it in a christian form. And I speak just for a minute. Joe, before you get in on this, the difference, you've made a point to call yourself a, a therapist who's a Christian. Yeah. Explain that. I think that's useful here. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think christian counseling is those who take this test and it'll tell you who, who you're most like in the Bible. And this is an actual therapy thing, you know? Oh, well, I came out like the apostle Paul. Okay, here's how we're going to handle that. Let's open up the Bible to talk about your borderline personality disorder. Let's talk about the Bible. Let's go to the Bible to figure out how to work through sexual abuse. Unfortunately, there's a lot of christian counseling that is very much like that. I'm not trying to dog the christian counselors out there, but there is a difference between that and using models to really work through trauma specific trauma. I think God is underlying. We're going to get to this. At the end of the outline, God is underlining every part of human psychology. And so mental health, of course, is, is a God given thing. But the Bible isn't the DSM. The Bible is not the textbook to walk you through sexual abuse. It is the foundation upon which we build every other model, in my opinion. But it's not intended to be that. [00:11:25] Speaker A: That's what I wanted to get at with, with asking you that question is, it has to be the foundation. Like, if your therapy model goes against those basic biblical foundations, it's kind of that. The same discussion we have with, like, elements of worship, aid versus addition, something that aids what the Bible has already given you is very. It can be useful. Something that adds to or changes what the Bible gives is setting people up for failure. [00:11:50] Speaker B: So you see this in like, okay, we'll talk about. Because I want to come back. I'll come back to the questions and answer myself. But you see this in things like sex addiction, which obviously is what I specialize in. There's a lot of therapists in the world that don't view it as wrong and they don't actually view sex addiction as a thing. Since the, the DSM five doesn't recognize porn addiction specifically as an addiction. And so they look at it and they go, there's nothing wrong with porn use. You're starting from a flawed perspective. You're never going to be able to help somebody through this. I had an atheist guy that came to me for helping it, and every other therapist was basically, what's the problem? He's like, I'm addicted. I need help. It didn't really matter. Right? So. And I don't think he's listening to the podcast. Great guy, overall, great guy. And he's, you know, it's. But that's the help he had been given is they did not take it from a christian perspective. And it's interesting that the atheist comes to the Christian and ends up finding freedom and finding help from it because, yeah, he was doing the work. It's all on him for doing that. But you have to start with a basic premise that there is sin in the world, that some things are wrong, some things are not good, that the love of God is, is the underpinning of so much, but that we can step away from that in our own actions and so not step away from, you know, God will continue to love us, but we can pull away from the things that we actually need, the attachment father. So it's just very interesting that, like I said, I don't want to jump ahead of the outline, but all of this is going to be that God is the underpinning of all of these things. And I think to answer that question of, is it anti christian? You can certainly get anti christian advice if you're not careful. And we're going to speak to this a little bit as well. What's interesting, though, and I guess where I was getting at when I put this on the outline, there's a lot of older folks who feel like you are sinning if you go seek therapy for your depression. Too blessed to be stressed, right. Well, just pray a little bit more. Just read your Bible. There are clinical things that people cannot get through. There are traumas, you know, historical depression and things like that that I think older people can look down on and say, that's anti christian to actually need somebody to walk you through these things. [00:13:47] Speaker C: So, obviously, I agree with that 100%. I'm gonna do something I don't do a lot, which is defend the older people here for just a second. Um, you know, usually not the case with me. I think you've got the next question on here of, like, when does it become negative? I think one of the things that maybe older people see, because I've seen it, is, again, we'll set on the shelf the people you're talking about who, like, have clinical issues that need help a lot of times, therapy very much. I. I see it being used as a crutch, kind of. Of like people who don't want to put in the work, people who don't want to, I don't know, people who, to be just quite honest, can't really handle the real world, just whatever aspects of it are. Again, and I'm not trying to trivialize people who actually do have serious problems, but I think so many people who don't really have those serious problems that you're talking about are still, you know, just sprinting towards therapy. And those are, I'm sure a lot of the older people are looking at going, you don't need therapy. You just need to, like, kind of get over it and actually work hard or whatever, you know, whatever it is this jack was talking about, get better sleep, stay off video games or whatever. And so that would be the thing. The only thing I would bring up here is I do feel like a lot of people can use it just kind of as a crutch, the mental health thing. I need a day off of work for my mental health. All these things just because they don't want to get up and do stuff. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Well, a few things I'd say. First off, you have to define what is clinical and what is not, what's big and what's small. Some of the small things that you see actually open up to bigger when you dig down into it. I'm going to throw it back to old people, though, first off, for two reasons. First off, they've been anti therapy for all the way back, and they had no reason. They didn't know it and they didn't trust. And so for obvious reasons, in some cases, of course, freudian psychology and such, at the same time, they're also a generation that by and large beat their kids and did a lot of traumatic stuff that was not good and had zero attachment with the. [00:15:33] Speaker A: By and large is a bit at big accusation, I should say, by and. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Large, and I mean at significantly higher rates than what we see now, by and large means everybody know, not everybody's beating their kids, but like, there was. [00:15:46] Speaker A: A, well, as the first generation, first generation of abortion, a total shift in. We're thinking of the family. Yeah, right. [00:15:54] Speaker B: So their thoughts on mental health don't really necessarily come in on, you know, well, they see these young kids that don't necessarily need it. The other thing I'll throw back on them is, you know what? Maybe if you taught them how to do some of these things and live life, they wouldn't need to be in therapy. A lot of people are looking more for parents in therapy, in my opinion, than they are for a therapist. But the therapist is a person who can help them, who can hold them accountable on getting out of bed, who can help them learn how to take healthy steps in eating right and things like that. They needed a dad. They needed a mom who's going to step in and say these things. And their parents too often are absent, gone, divorced, whatever it may be, the attachments, super poor. They can't go to their parents. That's one of the biggest issues when we talk about this thing. So is therapy a positive thing? By and large? I think it is. It can be a positive thing. Where does it go? And let me say this as well, where it goes wrong, this is kind of the answer to it, which is therapy culture we've created. When you, but when you have so much information, I think this is what's difficult for people is how much was the average person in the 18 hundreds aware of mental health? They didn't have anything pulling on them. They didn't have any social media. They didn't have any 401k. They had. It's like you get up, it's a simple life. How much mental health problems could you have? I'm sure you had some, but like, for the most part, that wasn't necessarily a thing when you ramp up. We're experiencing a culture that has no concept of how to handle the 10,000 things coming at you every single day. And so I think that's also why we're unhealthy and why we're not happy even in a therapy culture is we're turning to therapists to try to fix the fuzz that is now rattling our brains that we've never really had in human history before. So I see why we would shift to it. The problem is we've created therapy culture. And in therapy culture there's a few hallmarks to this. And again, as a therapist, that sounds weird for me to rail against therapy culture, but therapy culture has a few hallmarks and that's kind of going to be the main point of this outline as we're almost 20 minutes into this episode. But that's what we want to spend again, the majority of the time breaking down the main tenets of therapy culture. And I'm going to start the first, then pass it over to you guys, which is, I think a lot of therapists have hero complexes. That sounds really mean, that sounds very judgmental. But I do think that a lot of therapists kind of have the hero complex where you have this, I'm walking through this with you and a little bit of the Brene Brown and people are going to get ticked at that one because they love Brene Brown, but where you get down in the pit with them, like, why don't you keep 1ft on the ground and pull the person out, right? Instead of getting down there walking through it with them. I mean, there's things like that that I think the therapist a lot of times can kind of become the hero in that way and the hero in the person's story of I wouldn't be alive without my therapist. And hey, that's great that people got help from that. How many of those people then end up wanting to become a therapist to go save somebody else? That's where it can become a difficulty, is we turn it into I can't live without my therapist. I certainly hope that's not the case and maybe that is the case for some of my clients and if that is okay, but I certainly am trying to work them out of needing me to be a crutch or anything else in their life. Like my job as a therapist, as I see it, is to work myself out of a job fairly fast, create a very healthy culture and give them the tools to then heal themselves as opposed to me being the superhero who has all of the answers to all of their struggles, I want them to have the answers to their own struggles. So I think that's a big hallmark of therapy culture. And no therapist is going to say it that way, but you can just tell in the way that people are, the way people refer to therapists in this day and age. What are your thoughts on that, fellas? [00:19:37] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that, um, you mentioned earlier that it can be like a parent. I think in some ways, it. The therapist has replaced the parent. In some ways, it has replaced the friend. I mean, we are just lonely people, and so it's a friend that you can talk to, and it's a weird thing that you're paying to talk to a friend, but, like, people just need that kind of connection. And then in other places, it's replacing the minister. We're a very irreligious culture. A minister or an elder, a shepherd who could kind of give you spiritual guidance and counsel and hear out your problems and things like that. That is, again, has been outsourced, especially for non religious people. But sometimes even for religious people, they don't view their preacher in that way. And so, yeah, I mean, it's hard not to have that hero complex when you think, I'm this person's only friend. And without me, where would they be? Or I'm essentially their minister or whatever position of authority, lifesaver. Like you're. Again, you just become hero to a lot of people. And, yeah, I'm not a therapist, and so this is one that you're able to speak to better than us about the. The hero complex. I know you've worked with a lot of them, and you've kind of seen that, and it goes both ways. It goes from the therapist kind of can take that on. But also, the people, like you said themselves, I wouldn't be alive without them. I don't know where I'd be without them. And I think it can almost create, like, a Stockholm syndrome of, like, you keep going to the therapist and they won't check you out, they won't push you forward and kind of cut the apron strings, and the person thinks, man, if they ever let me go, I don't know where I would be. I'd be so lost without them, and they just get stuck. [00:21:17] Speaker C: That's a question I was gonna ask you, Joe, real fast. You got me tied to that, and you've got on here, like, therapy isn't intended to be for life. I know, and I'm sure it, you know, vastly depends on circumstances, what level of trauma, all these things. But for you, as a general rule, to make kind of a just kind of general overarching statement, what amount of time would you look at somebody being in therapy, same therapist, same issues, and go, okay, red flags kinda on this idea of the hero complex, or just kind of sticking around in, you know, in the, in the, in this life therapy, so to speak. [00:21:57] Speaker B: It's really, as you said, it's really difficult to speak to specifics because I always do a timeline of somebody's life and some, some people's timelines, like four pages long. There's just more and more and more and more and more traumas and everything else. And that's going to take a while. That's not going to be a, you know, five week process. But I've had clients that have come out of things in six weeks, and I usually try to say twelve to 20 weeks somewhere in there. So plan on three to five months, probably, for, if we're doing weekly sessions, to process through whatever it may be before you have the tools, with brainspotting and everything else, to go do it yourself. And yet, if people go longer, it's like, I can't fully speak to how long that would get. You know, how long that'd be. The reason why I like keeping it brief, though, is it goes to this entire point. And Jack, you spoke to it. And on top of what I spoke to them, being the parents, a lot of people create or recreate the attachment they need with their therapist. And so the therapist becomes their lifeline. The therapist becomes the person that they're reaching out to at 01:00 a.m. and so they don't. And the therapist, a lot of times, yes, we're supposed to set boundaries. This is why we have transference and counter transference in the therapy world, and we have to be very, very aware of that. But I do think, by and large, what I'm seeing with the people that are coming to me from past therapists and such is we'll get into this more of, you know, there are struggles within the therapy community depending on, there are just crazy amounts of difference. But a lot of times it can be an attachment thing where we become very, and you would, over the course of a year, meeting with somebody, become attached to them, but it can be almost like you have to leave the nest in that, you know, and enter the real world and things like that. And there is part of that process that's very, very legitimate, and there's a part of that that I think we as therapists have to get very, we have to be very careful of this. And people that are listening to this who may be like, where is the God part in all of this? And we're going to very much get to that, but we have to watch out for that. In the therapy culture of making the therapist kind of the heroes and putting them on that level of doctor and whatnot of man, they're just the saviors. Yes and no. We are here to help people. I would view ourselves more as guides than anything else. We're helping you guide yourself through this. But because we box a lot of people in, a lot of people just naturally think that therapist, we kind of hold them up. It seems weird for a therapist to say that, like, but genuinely, I just don't think that our holding up of therapists has been great thing because they should be a temporary stop along the way toward your mental health. They are merely one part of it. You going to the gym, you eating healthy, you fixing relationship with others, things like that are all going to contribute to mental health. Now, we may help you in that area. We may give you the launching point to do some of those things and to work through traumas keeping you from that. But it ought to be a temporary thing. And I think the biggest thing I'd rail against just in the hero complex is that, boy, I just don't think they're ready. I don't think they're ready. Like my job is to get them ready and to help them get back on their feet as fast as possible in whatever way. And sometimes it's going to be a couple years and it's going to be a long time. We're digging through really complex things and other times it's going to be, you know, a lot faster. Kind of varies based off what the client wants because it's client comes first. But those are things. But I want to get to the second one. And I feel bad because I'm kind of leading this and yet I'm the one answering all these questions since they're my questions. [00:25:25] Speaker C: I can't imagine why you'd be leading this discussion. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I know people are, this is not a plug for my personal therapy. Believe it or not, we've had this on the, on the schedule for months thinking about this and talking about it just privately and such. But the other part of therapy culture, there's a couple more that I want to get to, or maybe actually four more I want to get to. And that is not all therapists are created. [00:25:46] Speaker A: We have to. We have to stop at 50 minutes. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Nice. [00:25:49] Speaker C: He's gonna charge me. [00:25:51] Speaker B: If that's knowing me, I go way over. Every person that has ever spent time with me knows I go over. But anyway, not all therapists are created equal, and that's. I can't say it without sounding arrogant in some way. And I don't mean to sound arrogant. There is a difference between somebody who uses a cognitive behavioral therapy for those that are in the therapy world. They'll know CBT for sexual abuse versus, you know, EMdR, something like that. There's a difference in that. And so for those that have no idea what I just said, it's just the concept of, like, sometimes with therapists, every, you know, every. What do they say? Nail to the hammer, right? Like, they have one tool and they're going to continue to use that one tool. That's not healthy for a lot of people, and I think that creates a lot of issues. And there are some where it's just. I can't really speak to it because it's confidential. But, you know, for my clients. But I've had several, several clients with horror stories, absolute horror stories of advice that they were given from therapists that were. Is jaw dropping. The advice that they were given, the things that took place within the therapist room. Not all therapists are created equal. And this is part of the therapy culture, is when we hold people up and when we're pushing people into therapy, you have to be careful with that because they could walk into the LGBTQ pro therapist, and next thing you know, like, their child, who they were just really going to see if they could work through some family issues, is turning out gay. And you just don't know what the therapist aided in, what the therapist helped with or uncovered for the kid or whatever else. Like, these are real stories that take place. [00:27:29] Speaker C: So very quickly I'll ask, and then we can move on to the next one because I think Joe and. Or Jack and I'll probably have a little bit more to say on the next one rather than this one. But just very quickly, Joe, I'll ask you kind of set you up for this question. I'd imagine a good portion of our listeners probably either have gone to therapy or currently in therapy as it is on the rise, as we've talked about what are just quickly, some kind of telltale signs of maybe a not so great therapist, a therapist that they need to move on from, or a sign of a great therapist, like, just, in your opinion, professionally, I think they need. [00:28:02] Speaker B: To have an integrative approach, personally. And what that means is they need to be willing to pivot. They need to be willing to be on the fly, you know, and know more than just two separate models. In my opinion, that's what's going to separate most therapists. And if you do have trauma, seek a trauma informed therapist, somebody who actually knows what they're doing on the trauma end. Solution focused is not going to work you through trauma. You need. [00:28:25] Speaker A: How do you know that up front? I mean, you're looking on psychology today.com. [00:28:28] Speaker B: Would be a good one. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the. [00:28:29] Speaker B: Go to psychologytoday.com. you can look at what all they specialize in. If you do struggle with trauma. I would look up somebody who once again is trauma informed, EMdR, brain spotting, internal family systems, somatic experiencing, things like that. But a lot of people are scared because they want to go to christian therapists. And that's where it gets difficult, is a lot of christian therapy may be more opening the Bible to work through abuse or something like that. And you may find that that's not as effective because in my opinion, I just don't think you're dealing with the underlying wounds as much as you're intellectualizing things. So that's part of the issue with them not being created equal is if a therapist doesn't really understand inner child work, doesn't really understand some of the things that are going to work you through the harder, more difficult things in life, you're just going to spin your wheels and look, therapy is expensive. You're in therapy for a year or two and feel like you're not going anywhere. If you don't get a good feel for your therapist within three sessions, I would consider cutting it off that I tell that to my clients. If we don't. If we. You don't feel it's a good fit, within three sessions, talk to me. See, you know, I'll pivot, I'll change or whatever. In this integrative approach, however, after three sessions, hopefully you kind of understand. But people spend thousands of dollars going deep into therapy only to find out, man, this guy's a bust. He's not really able to get me from a to b. And yeah, so be careful with the horrible advice with the therapists that are saying maybe you should divorce your spouse. I mean, those are the things you want to look for. So finding a christian therapist is good on psychology today, but make sure that they're informed in some of those ways that you need. [00:30:03] Speaker C: That's good stuff. I'm going to go ahead and move us into the next. Yeah, go for kind of these main tenants. And, Jack, I'll tee you up on this one as well. As far as just kind of the. Some significant problems that we see with therapy culture specifically. And this one, Jack, I know you've written on this before as well, is just kind of the idea of weaponizing these therapy terms. And a lot of people, you know, the buzzwords as soon as we say them that are just, you know, that are at the center and that are at the focal point of therapy culture trauma. You hear all, you know, we talk about a lot that there's a very legitimate form of trauma, and then there's also that word that is just overused and abused. You've got toxic is another big one that people use a lot. The concept of boundaries, abuse, narcissists, all these things that are, again, kind of drenched in therapy culture. And there are legitimate instances. There are legitimate examples of each of these things that, of course, I'm sure Joe could speak to far better than we could. But I know all three of us have seen each one of these used in just the most ridiculous types of ways. Especially when we say weaponizing what we mean is like, using it to kind of either defend ourselves and the bad behavior that we have or to launch kind of an unfair attack on somebody else in the sense of like, well, that person is just a narcissist or, you know, that person has inflicted trauma on me, so therefore, I don't have to do XYZ or whatever, be nice to them. Whatever it is. Jack, speak a little bit more to this. And some of the things that you've seen, particularly online, as you are way more involved online than we are. But, man, this stuff gets thrown around all the time, and usually in a negative sense. [00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a couple things I want to highlight. First is there's this very useful term called concept creep, which is that abstract topics like this can have it start off with, like, a very specific, useful meaning. And the longer they go, the more it just comes to mean anything. So trauma, I mean, used to mean, like, sexual abuse or physical abuse or whatever. And now it means, well, one time my mom got mad at me because I didn't clean my room. So I've had trauma, and it's like, you. You should. It is offensive to the person who's gone through real trauma to label. But it's also like, where does it. Where do you draw the line? Where does it stop? And so terms like that same thing with toxic. Well, these people are toxic was like, well, are they just rude? Were they having a bad day, or were they, like, trying to undermine you? [00:32:27] Speaker C: Right. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Were they, like, ripping you behind your back and trying to get the friends group to turn on you? I mean, like, that can just mean anything. And. And so it's very hard. So that's the one side of it. The other side of it is because we live in such a therapy obsessed culture, it gives an air of authority. These people, they watch TikTok videos, they watch Instagram reels, they watch YouTube shorts, whatever it may be, and they're just loaded with all of these terms. Oh, that's a narcissist. That's a gaslighter. That's a. And again, there. There are narcissists. There is such a thing as gaslighting or whatever, but, like, every time somebody was rude to you, and so what happens is you end up not obeying biblical commandments because you're backing your narcissist. So I don't have to. [00:33:11] Speaker C: Right. [00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And so honor your father and mother that goes out the window. I mean, I. Some of the stuff that, like, the Duggar kids have done, like. Yeah, your parents made a lot of really, really bad errors in raising the family and things they did with the oldest son and stuff like that, dragging them for book deals and tv deals and stuff like that, man, honor your father and mother. Kind of. You're not just free from that because they did some bad stuff or bear one another's burdens. The. Yeah, bear one another's burdens or forgive one another. Tolerate one another. Yeah, bear one of those burdens. Well, I got boundaries, and I've got my own stuff, and I can't handle that right now. There's a time and a place to tell somebody. Like, look, because the same verse right there in Galatians six, it also talks about each one should bear his own load. And there are people that need to be told, hey, stop putting all your problems on somebody else. But then there's also people that's like, you can't just say boundaries and not have to do anything for anybody. And, well, I don't have to forgive somebody because they're toxic or I don't have to bear with somebody. And that's where you end up with just fractured relationships everywhere. And what we started off talking about with, of, like, this therapy culture that's led to bad mental health. It's also led to some seriously lonely people who have taken this tick tock, indoctrination and thought, I've got to cut out everybody who ever does anything wrong out of my life. No, that's. You got to find a happy. [00:34:32] Speaker C: There's an element of this, Joe, and I'm sure you want to speak to this and kind of weaponizing the terms here. To me, one of the biggest problems that you have with therapy culture that you don't have on the list here, it is so self focused in so many ways with everything that Jack just described, you know, the people using these terms against other people, it's all self interested. It's all, you know, promoting yourself at the expense of other people. You know, people are lonely. Well, why? Because they're. They're placing themselves above everybody else in the sense of what I want. I'm going to label that person as this so that I can kind of act however I want. Or there's so much self focus, so much navel gazing with. With a lot of therapy culture that I think is a major negative, because, again, you're seeing everything through your own perspective, through your own lens, and refusing to ever see it through anybody else's. To me, that is a huge problem and a huge negative of therapy culture. Again, it can be done well, and you can, the right therapist, somebody like Joe, can kind of steer people out of that type of navel gazing. But, man, so much of this is just so. It's all about me, all about myself, how do I view other people? And the way I see the world is just the way the world is. And that's just not the case in a lot of instances. [00:35:47] Speaker A: That's a great point. And I mean, again, to circle all the way back around, there are legitimate uses of these terms. There are legitimately abusive people. There are legitimately some of these things. And again, that's why it's so bad when the illegitimate use it to have an excuse. But you just think about the verse forgiving one another just as God in Christ forgave you. You know how easily Jesus could label all of us toxic narcissists, whatever. I'm like, he knows more than anything else our hearts and how those terms can apply to any of us. And boy, thank, literally, thank the Lord that he didn't write us off that way, the way we're told to do with each other. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I fully agree with you. There are absolute times to set boundaries with people. There are absolute times where, you know, trauma takes place. I think trauma is really a heavy negative, any moderate to heavy, negatively impacting thing that takes place in your life. But it can be used and thrown around so cheaply that it becomes nothing. And I do blame the therapist in a lot of cases for weaponizing, giving these as weapons to use against people's families, against people. Well, you're just toxic, therefore, like that. But we can point to the therapist. My therapist thinks so. My therapist is causing me to set these boundaries. There are times where that can be very healthy. There are times where I've seen it where that's not healthy in the least, and you end up having lonely people. And I agree with Will's point to a point where I might say is, I think navel gazing needs to take place with a purpose in mind. If you're going to look at yourself, which is a big part of mental health, you can't give others what you can't give yourself is kind of the point, which is I'll give and give and give and give and give and give to other people. I never get it myself. I end up getting burnt out. And the reason you gave to other people ended up being for the wrong reasons. You wanted their love, you wanted their affection, but you didn't realize it because you were doing it for others. There are times where you look inward and go, what is it? Why am I doing what I'm doing? If you have a proper understanding of what you're trying to get out of the navel gazing and the looking itself, I don't think it'll last for all that long. First off, you'll be back to serving others. There's a process through it. And you spoke to this wheel, right? Like there's a process through it. But second off, it is the reason that you try to navel gaze and look at yourself is fully to be or to show up for the other people around you. To be better for the other people, yes, to be better for you, but ultimately, hopefully, to make others around you better. [00:38:05] Speaker C: I think that's the ideal. Do you think that's why most people are in therapy, is for other people, or is it for themselves? [00:38:12] Speaker B: No, I mean, and I don't have a problem with people coming for themselves. I think people are very broken. I think there's a lot of people that are broken and they have not genuinely experienced much happiness in their life, especially those who've been through trauma, like legit trauma. I think that creates a certain level of, you know what? I have broken relationships with others. I don't have attachment with others, I don't trust others. I don't feel like I want anything to do with other people because they're nothing safe. I don't have a problem with them coming for themselves. And a big part of my therapy is actually, you can't do that. I'm contradicting myself to a certain degree. I have, like, sex addiction or sex addicts who come to me and, well, I just really want to do this for my wife. It can't be for your wife because she might leave you, she might hate your guts, she might never come back because of the mistakes. That's part of the consequences. Do you still want out of your sex addiction? Do you still want to fix your relationship with yourself? Yeah. You're gonna try to fix the relationship with your wife. That's a two sided street. You don't know how she's gonna respond. You have to do this for yourself. So that it kind of depends on how you define selfishness, how you define navel gazing is they do need to do it for themselves in that moment. But ultimately, and I've noticed this with sobriety, it does increase or it improves everybody's lives around them, their kids, their spouse, their friends. When they're living a sober life and they're really living the way they're supposed to, other people see this and they pick up on it and it creates this openness and everything. That's amazing. So is it for other people? No. [00:39:34] Speaker A: That be. Could that be reclassified as doing it for God then? [00:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you want to. Specifically when sin is involved. Yeah. You know, you're certainly doing it for God and showing up more for him and being in a better relationship with him. And it's also to figure out, like, what is this peace that passes all understanding? What is the joy found in Christ? We don't know when we are really depressed or when we are addicted to things or when we are struggling with personality disorders or whatever else. We can't experience those things. And so a lot of therapy is going to be initially self focused, but I think it is understanding how, where you fit in the big picture of things. It can't always be about other people because other people might leave you. And if it is for other people and they don't respond the way you want them to, then you're angry about it. Right. It's like, well, that's not for the right reason. You have to do this because it's the right thing to do with God. It's the. The right thing to do for yourself. So that'd be the only thing I'd say. But as far as weaponizing terms, I'm going to move on here. But yeah, there are, once again, legitimate uses, these things. How do we know? Fellas, I'll throw this back to you, though. How do we know? Person may be listening to this. Maybe they're in therapy. When did that go from being a legitimate use to being weaponized? What are your thoughts on that? How would somebody listening know whether they are weaponizing these terms or using it legitimately? [00:40:51] Speaker A: I mean, I think you go back to what we started off talking about, of your obligation to God. First and foremost, figure that out and turn the other cheek from Jesus does not mean just keep letting the person slap you. There is a time to move on there. Shake the dust off your feet. I mean, he didn't say stay in that town until they persecute you and kill you. It's okay to move on sometimes. And in the same sense with personal relationships, there are, you know, the, the wife who's being beaten doesn't have to just stay there and keep on taking it. There is a reason to have a little bit of distance. Now, on the other hand, that doesn't mean she's just free to go out and marry the next person she want. Like you have an obligation to God. And so I think with all of those things, you think, what is my obligation to God? And even if this person really is as bad as all that, there's still, there's no point at which I am free of those things. And so always start with those and then operate within the boundaries that gets. [00:41:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I would just say, to add on to that, what is my obligation to God? And this takes a level of self awareness, but to be able to ask yourself, am I trying to circumvent that obligation? Am I trying to kind of justify not fulfilling that obligation to God through, through whatever it is, would fall into that. But, Joe, go ahead and get us into the next one if you'd like. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Well, just one other thing. I'd add romans 1218 of, if possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Make sure you've done that. As far as it depends on you. Because that's one of the easiest things in the world, is when one person makes a misstep or the spouse does something wrong and, and it's kind of like, there's my tea, my key, there's my ticket out of here. Like they messed up. So now I have the upper hand, or whatever it may be. No, as far as it depends on you. You. That means some forgiveness. That means some tolerating stuff. That means some working through stuff and being patient, and so that, that puts a certain burden on us as well. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't add anything other, other than that, I think that's perfect. Just to say relationship with God is really at the key of the weaponizing and whether that's taking you away from. From the people of God. Right. From the family. Let's get into the next one, though, because, Jack, I'm actually gonna put this one right back on you because you've done, you've written articles on this. I think you have, at least, because I know we've talked about a lot. You've had a lot of ideas on this idea of brokenness culture. This is the. I think I. We're on number four for the therapy culture kind of thing, and it is a subculture to therapy culture, I would say. And it is brokenness culture. What do you mean? Or what do we mean by that? And where are we seeing this in society? [00:43:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And with this one and the last one, we're starting to get into how this affects the church, how it comes out of the pulpit, how it comes from the things church leadership orients itself to, things the christians orient themselves to, and that brokenness, well, we're all broken sinners. We're all broken. Church is not a museum for saints. It's a hospital for sinners and all that. And it's like, as with all of this, there's a truth at the core of that. They can get turned a really bad direction because you got to get to the first corinthians six such were some of you that if we're just always broken, if we're always beaten down, if we're never overcoming, if we're never moving on, kind of to Will's question earlier, you know, how many. How long in therapy, I mean, for people with, like, severe traumas, it's going to take a while for some people where they're on to year 15 of it. No, it's like you're just stuck there. There's a point. There is such a thing as wallowing. And this is one of the things about therapy is it's so emotionally tied that when you start saying these things, it's really mean. It's not very empathetic of you, and it's like, I'm trying to help you. The person who wants to keep you here is not trying to help you. The person trying to help you is the person who loves you. And with brokenness culture, where we don't call people in the christian sense, we don't call people to a higher standard. We don't call them to grow out of their sin. We don't call them to put things behind them. It's not helping them. And in the therapy culture, if we're not calling them to, hey, move on, like kind of the have you made your bed and cleaned your room? Thing. Well, if we're on year three of this and you still haven't managed to do that once, you're not trying. And you need to be confronted for not trying. The love of the person brings you to that. And I think I'm going to put side by side with his broken culture is weakness culture. And there's just so much stuff of it's okay to be weak and it's like, there has to be that. You know, it's. It's in our weakness that Christ's strength is shown, but not because he keeps us weak, but because he is sufficient, because he's our strength and a weakness culture that just wallows and is content to stay weak forever. There's part of it where it's like, look, if you're being chased by wolves and you've got a sprained ankle, that ankle probably hurts really bad. It's not time to sit down. You've got to keep moving forward. And if you just stay there and go, well, I've got a broken spray in my ankle and we're just supposed to sit around and pat you on the back and go, oh, man, that's a bummer. It's like, no, you do have to keep moving and it's going to hurt. And in the hurt, maybe we'll get to a better place. And I'm with you through all this, but I think there is really this glorification of weakness and not in a biblical way, in a stagnation, complacency, unhealthy. [00:45:46] Speaker C: And what it does is it keeps the bar consistently lowered for everybody. You know, if you say we're all broken sinners and we're all broken, then guess what? You haven't raised the bar for anybody. Everybody can just kind of stay at the level that they. That they are, and nobody's ever going to be called to anything, anything more. This is how you get a lot of times where, you know, folks are just going to stay in their sin for however long. We're just all broken. We're just all broken people. And I think that's the. That's a lot of where my frustration lies with the question I asked way back at the start of the episode. Joe, about people kind of using therapy as an. As. Kind of a crutch or as an excuse to just not really do anything to me that's tied directly to this aspect of brokenness culture, in the sense of, like, I don't ever want to get better. I don't ever want to be called anything more, to work harder or to. To get to the next level, to be called for anything to be expected of me that's more. Because it's just so much more comfortable and so much easier wallowing, as Jack said, or just to look around and say, okay, good. Thank goodness that all of us are broken so that I don't ever have to not be broken. You know? I don't know. I think this one is tied to therapy culture, but, man, you sure see this in the church so much as well, with the stuff people post on Facebook, the refusal to call out sin because of the, oh, we're all broken, so you better not, you know, say that about that person because that's gonna offend them. The. Just that whole concept of not really saying hard truths. Not really. Not expecting anything of any church member. Because, you know, I think brokenness culture is at the. Is at the heart of a lot of that, of just not calling anybody anything more, not stepping on any toes, not ever saying anything difficult. It's because we've adopted this brokenness culture in so many ways. It's frustrating on so many levels. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Well, you called it a crush. It's such an effective crutch because, man, if you point it out, you're the meanest person in the world. Like, you're. You're. You're just a monster. I mean, there's talk probably monsters percent. Yeah, we're. Yeah, we're gaslighting, whatever it may be. People listening might be thinking that. It's like. But again, who's actually trying to help you get better and that the person who wants to keep you on that crutch is not that person. [00:47:56] Speaker B: So I think 95% of our issues actually come back to attachment issues. And I think brokenness culture comes out of that. I think it comes out of poor attachment. I think a lot of times when people are on the wallowing end of things and, well, we're broken, and they just kind of want to talk about the problems. They really want someone to validate and to hear and to affirm their issues that they do have issues that they are hurting. That's what a parent was supposed to do growing up of, like, hey, I'm really sorry that that's the case. The mom should be doing that. And this is where the dad steps in and goes, I definitely understand it. And here's the cure, right? Dads fix things. Mom or moms are the ones that are there. When you have broken homes, you end up having one or the other a lot of the time, or neither in a lot of cases. And so once again, you're going to run to the therapist to fix some of those things and you're going to end up wallowing in some because you want somebody to pay attention to you. You want somebody to know that you're broke and that you're hurting. But the problem is that becomes the identity. My identity is that I'm broken and to get out of it. I've railed on this before, like, I like 21 pilots and I listen to their stuff, but look, it's a cash cow. To have mental health issues and to sing about them, that sounds horrible, but truly like, what incentive. And luckily in this album, it seems like he's got out of whatever else. Like, yeah, I listen to the music, I just like the music. But from the mental health perspective, a lot of times that is kind of the, well, we're all broken and that becomes the identity and there's incentivize to stay in it. [00:49:16] Speaker C: You're saying correct. [00:49:18] Speaker B: We know in Christ. Yeah, we come as broken sinners. He is the one that justifies and sanctifies and we're in this process of. He's made us holy, he's made us righteous. He has fixed what has been broken. And so it's really important to bring the gospel into this discussion of brokenness culture and realize we cannot over identify with the brokenness. We need to validate people in that and go, man, I know you're hurting. I'm going to. I'm going to get down there, I'm going to love you, I'm going to help you. I will reach the hand down, but then we're going to move, you know, I'm going to validate the emotions and then we got to go somewhere with it because we can't stay here. And that's how we break through the brokenness culture. I'm actually going to push one of the, the last part to the deep end. So stay tuned for the deep end, which is my thoughts on the Enneagram and the Myers briggs and DSM diagnoses and everything else like that. Because I do think one of the main tenets of therapy culture is putting people in a box, putting ourselves in a box. People really like to do that. I do have some thoughts on that, but we'll go for it. Yeah. [00:50:17] Speaker C: So, I've got a question on all this. Before we kind of get to this last section, the last, last few questions I should say, that you have on here, because we just took 30, 35 minutes of the podcast to kind of rail on therapy culture and rail on all of the negative aspects of it, the problems that can come from it, the serious issues that people can have because of it. And so my question, I'm assuming I already know Joe's answer, but I'm curious what Jack thinks here when you consider everything negative surrounding it, when you consider just how, quite frankly, unhelpful it's been overall. Obviously, individually, not so much, but overall, for us as a society, if you had to choose one option, option a, being all therapy is completely eradicated, that concept does not exist anymore. Or option b, it continues as it is. What option are you choosing to me, that's a very interesting question, because we just spent 35 minutes talking about all these negative problems with it and why it's bad here, why it's awful here. And Joe, you know, you as a therapist, we're adding right along in with that. At the same time. I certainly value what you do, Joe. I know Jack does as well. Obviously, you value what you do. Doesn't sound like, well, hey, you created the outline, man, not me. Um, so I guess with this question of, like, once again, like, if you had to choose one or the other option a, being all therapy talk, all therapy in general, as a, as a, as an industry, is completely eradicated, and we just go back to the way it was before. Would you choose that, or would you just choose. Would you choose continuing as it is now? Because obviously the ideal is like, well, let's just keep the good aspects of therapy, but I don't think that's realistic. So, what would your option a or be like? And again, I think I'll let you. [00:52:03] Speaker B: Answer, because then I'll go, because I do have a point to make on that. [00:52:08] Speaker A: Okay. [00:52:09] Speaker C: Definitely put you on the spot. [00:52:11] Speaker A: I it's so tied into so many other things that it's very hard to. To answer. [00:52:18] Speaker C: Kind of like, in 200 years, would we be better off as a society if it was eradicated? [00:52:27] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. I mean, because to Joe's point, and he was kind of sound like the Unabomber manifesto there for a bit, which is a lot better read than it sounds like it is. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [00:52:40] Speaker A: About people being for that. No, I mean, it really is in that like people being, no, it is not really ready for the world. And you talked about the buzz, the noise every single day and all of the stresses of everyday modern life and technology and all that stuff, like we really weren't, have not adapted well to it. And so that creates this whole thing. And so therapy has kind of risen to meet that. And so it's very hard to say, well, if we got rid of that, it's like, well, if we went back and got rid of more and more things. But as far as like if I could press a button and we not have it and do have it, I think it is the result of a lot of enlightenment stuff of through science we can perfect man and it's like, well, we can't. And that was what I was saying early on about like things that assume the therapy, that's basic assumptions are built on anti God ideas. And I think most of it is that way. And so when I say do away with it, I think probably 90 plus percent of the therapy that people are getting is built on anti God foundations. And so that if you believe the numbers like that, like I do, I think we are better off without it. Now, again, that's very sad for the people who really do need it and, and for those that do it. Well, sorry, Joe, I just, just put you out of a job. But definitely not my answer me. You and me will go move Amazon boxes together or something. But yeah, no, I better not get depressed. [00:53:59] Speaker B: Well. [00:54:03] Speaker C: I guess. [00:54:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:54:06] Speaker A: So. Okay, now, Joe, you do have a longer answer, so will you have to answer if you could? [00:54:10] Speaker C: Oh, come on. Okay. [00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. [00:54:12] Speaker C: No, Joe, you go ahead. [00:54:13] Speaker B: I go for it. Okay. [00:54:14] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, I just kind of like to stir the pot. That's why I asked it. And I was, you know, hoping you guys wouldn't make me answer it and. [00:54:22] Speaker A: Thought you'd get away. [00:54:23] Speaker C: I definitely. [00:54:23] Speaker B: See, he wanted to create another ten minutes of us going back. [00:54:26] Speaker C: No, I did not want to create that. If you're curious what he's talking about, listen to two episodes ago to our 2nd, 2nd preacher episode. Anyway, it is really hard for me to not answer in line with what Jack said simply because of, once again, just, just all the negative connotations that are associated with it, just because of all the selfishness that's fueled by it. Again. And it sounds bad because what Joe does and what a lot of therapists do is such great work. There's a lot it's needed in a lot of ways. I'm, I'm not 100%, but I would say I'm kind of 60, 65% on the. We'd be better off if it was just completely eradicated. And 30 to 35% to 40% on the, no, it would be good if we still had it train. I think the way things are heading is once again, just. I don't see a lot of, a lot of positive momentum in that direction, I guess. So I will. I will side with Jack, but not near as staunchly as I have before on other things. So, Joe, you can convince me you can sway those numbers depending on your answer. [00:55:41] Speaker B: Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. I'll do my best. So a couple points to make. First off, Jack's right in the vacuum. If you could get rid of social media, if you could get rid of all those things, then maybe you could get rid of therapy. Those aren't going anywhere. So therapy won't, and I don't think it should per se, because it has risen to meet the need in some ways. Do I think it's meeting it well, right now? No. Do I think it could potentially. I do think there's been positives to the therapy world, obviously. Are they in the minority? Maybe. Perhaps. At the same time, as I'm looking down my list of kind of railing against therapy culture, we would naturally raise up heroes. Like man is naturally selfish, man would naturally raise up heroes to seek advice from, especially in a social media age. We will always have gurus. This is the manosphere. This is a lot of different things. The feminism, like, we always raise up heroes to tell us what we need to know because man is broken. And because, specifically, again, I'm really going off on attachment here, but our attachment is terrible because we don't have parents to really help us learn how to live life. We will always seek the advice of somebody else. So even if you got rid of therapy, we'd have it back shortly, in my opinion, because people look at that, then when you look at not all therapists being created equal, the horrible advice you're given, there's a lot of horrible advice out there that are not, that's not given from therapy. People would end up going to their druid priests and their pagan priests and things like, you know, like Satan. People are going to turn against God in their own ways. Therapy, I don't think is helping right now. The therapy culture is helping in a lot of ways. But as I'm looking at this, people are going to gravitate toward these things anyway. They're going to gravitate toward intersectionality and toward brokenness culture regardless, I think therapy has accelerated that quite a bit. I think in some ways it's created some of these things. In other ways it's accelerated it. However, there is a case, in my opinion, for therapy has also kept a lot of people from committing suicide. Therapy has also gotten a lot of people out of depression. And even if it's shallow or even if it's just for a time in their life before they go back to it, maybe that was the time they needed to be able to make some decision that ended up keeping things going, keeping things afloat. Maybe therapy is the thing that got the person who was going to get an abortion to keep the baby. In rare cases, sure. But I mean, I don't know if it's rare. Maybe that happens a lot of. But I think there are positives to it, and the negatives were going to happen regardless because man is flawed and broken. In my opinion, therapy is not helping in the way that it should, which is my issue with therapy culture. But I also don't think it is the sole thing perpetuating this. I think all of it comes together. I think social media is one of the biggest harms to mankind in all of history. [00:58:16] Speaker C: I think social media, until that goes somewhere, feed off of each other in one of the worst ways. [00:58:19] Speaker B: I think they do, too. I think if you got rid of both, I think you could probably do it. You could go back to the 18 hundreds where we lived a simpler time. And, yeah, people had issues, but in the past, people had community. This is how you spoke to David, you know, going back to that point, David and Jesus and Paul. David knew how to express his emotions. David did not. He was singing and leaping for joy. He was crying out to God, he's on the lyre and or the harp, right? Like, he knew how to express emotion, which is what we go to therapy to learn how to do, because they're suppressed emotions. Paul is able to work through anything, and God is obviously the central point to all of those characters. But they in the past had people. He has epaphroditus. You go through Philippians, Epaphroditus and Timothy and people like that. That and the Philippians themselves, that were his joy that he could rely on. We don't have that. We're a fractured culture because of social media and because of just the age of the Internet, to the point that this is where therapy tries to bridge a gap. And it's a poor bridge, but the church has done a very poor job as well on bridging the gap for some of these things for people. And because we suppress emotion and because we have zero connection to the person next door. That's Oprah wrote a book on this. How did they get through trauma in the past? That was their conclusion is people had a community. They lived in homes where their uncles and aunts and grandparents and everybody was there to help them through grief and everything else. We don't have that. People are lonelier than ever. They will always gravitate towards somebody who will help. And without therapy, it doesn't necessarily mean they're just naturally going to find friends. People who don't know how to have friends and people who have poor attachment. It doesn't mean that you remove therapy and all of a sudden they know how to do it. So it's a necessary evil in some ways, and that sounds weird from a therapist. I think it's a good thing in some ways. It's been a really bad thing in other ways. But removing it without removing several other pieces of the culture would be futile, in my opinion. [01:00:12] Speaker A: There is the question that comes up with things like this, though, of is its perpetuation keeping us from hitting the rock bottom that would get people back on track with the solutions they need? Is it like prolonging the collapse? And that's just hypothetical. It's hard to say. You pushed it back to social media and you're not wrong, but you got to go back further than that. This is all darwinian. When you tell people they don't matter, when you tell people they came out of goo and just evolved into an. [01:00:41] Speaker C: Accident, they'll constantly be searching for that instance. [01:00:44] Speaker A: Well, and it's no coincidence that Freud boomed 50 years after the origin of species. You know, like, that was. One of the next things to follow was Freud and Jung and the creation of this modern thing that had not existed in Christendom. It had not existed for all that time of the reformation, the catholic church, and all those things that were there. And it's kind of like, well, now, like I said earlier, enlightenment ideals, we don't need God. The individual is at the center of everything. Man is perfectible. Like all of those. Yeah. Things you're throwing out from biblical basic genesis one and two kind of stuff. Yeah, like, of course. And so you throw all that stuff out, everything collapses. People's mental health is garbage. I think part of it is the church is not the family it's supposed to be. The family is not the family it's supposed to be. I think part of it is the church can't provide people something when they're trying to go to the world, like have a leg in both so much. And so then you end up with, again, all of these philosophies that create a world where you've ripped people so far away from God, and it's like, well, now that we're so far away from God and the love of the family and the love of the church and keeping the church closely connected, well, now that we're over here, let's hire a doctor for our little colony that's gonna help us out. And it's like, it does help. I'm not gonna deny that. But it would also if we just abandoned the, the experiment of the colony and went back to what worked. But again, we're talking about rolling back hundreds of years of stuff. This is not. [01:02:12] Speaker B: We do have. [01:02:13] Speaker C: Sure, because the family aspect of this is so important as well. When you talk, Jack, about you're, you know, pulling people away from God, whether it's social media, whether it's, you know, therapy, whether it's whatever, the community aspect is huge, but I think just the restoring of the family is huge. And Joe, I'm curious, your thoughts on how much therapy can perpetuate kind of fragmenting families in a way of, obviously, there's the worst case scenarios of where the therapist pits you against your family, and, you know, that's bad, of course, but, you know, what I really would want to see the culture get back to is for people, for individuals to rely more on their family and to, you know, get closer to their family and for their kind of the restoration of the family, whereas our families nowadays are so fragmented. And obviously, a lot of that is social media. A lot of that is just the culture we live in, the kind of the active agenda that, you know, the government and, you know, society in general has in fragmenting the family. But I also do think therapy might play some kind of role in that. So I'm curious your thoughts. But so I do see your point in the sense that, yeah, just cutting therapy out does not fix that problem of restoring the family or restoring people back to God. I think it does perpetuate a little bit, though. I was curious, your thoughts on the family aspect of that and how much therapy can, therapy culture, I should say, can perpetuate that issue of people not really relying on or wanting to be close to their family. [01:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that is very much the case in that it depends on what the client's looking for. Some people are looking to have, you know, to make peace with the family and to figure that out and to navigate internal family conflicts and things like that. And there's others that want to cut them out. People come with their own agendas into therapy. Therapists that are good aren't driving their own agenda. But this is the issue with, you know, christian therapy is there are things that God says are good that the other person may not think is good. Do you go along with it? This is walking the line and why it's, as I talk about therapy is so difficult in finding a therapist who's willing to do this, who's willing to bring that back around. My, my agenda is not necessarily the, the key to therapy. It's going to be more what they're looking for. But yeah, I mean, I think people are once again broken and they're hurting from their families. And this is why, yes, I do have more of a beef with the older generation. A lot of people are in therapy because of the way the older generation has treated them. You go, well, they just need to get over it. They just need to push through it. That's what everybody else has done. And that has led to what the pushing through and pushing through and pushing through. It's one thing if you have family to push through it with. This is going back to the old times, this is going back to the 18 hundreds. And pre is the majority of people had tight knit communities. You didn't have towns of 10 million people where you're all alone living the dream in LA like that didn't happen. So you're going to live close to home and you're going to honor your parents and such. Well, now we're fragmented to the point that therapy has become, yes, your stand in parent going back to that point, if that's what you're looking for out of therapy, which a lot of people are, some of this is not the therapist's fault. Some of this is, we are hamstrung by the rules, by those who create the rules, by HIpAA, by all of that, of like we can't really tell people those things. So I know that's a bit of a tangent, but it is relevant just to say, yeah, I think it has not necessarily helped the family in a lot of ways, but some therapists are very good at keeping families together and really pushing for it depends on the therapist, it depends on the client, depends on what they're looking for. So I know that's kind of a dodging of the question, but yeah, the brokenness of the family, the fracturing of that. And the no fault divorce is, has crippled like that's, that's what's caused therapy to boom is now, like I said, people are going to the therapist instead of going to their dad, going to their uncle, going to their grandpa, whatever it is, to get these answers now, it's where do I turn here? And they turn to somebody who maybe doesn't have their best interests at heart. So, fellas, we're over time already. [01:06:15] Speaker C: We didn't have 30 minutes worth of content left. [01:06:17] Speaker B: I was going to say, I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it more. I don't know what we want to push into. Let me just say this, because this goes off of brokenness culture and a little bit of what we're talking through, just to talk about the pushing through, I mentioned that briefly. That is a problem. I'll throw this out as a therapy tidbit, but one of the problems with pushing through is you do never really process. [01:06:40] Speaker C: Can you define what you mean real quick for anybody who's listening of what you mean by push it through? [01:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, you're, it's one thing if you're having a bad day. Yeah, you push through if you're depressed. One of the best things you can do is surround yourself with people. It's rooted in loneliness. So don't be lonely. And the learned helplessness. Get busy doing something. You're not going to feel good today or tomorrow or the next day or probably next week, but you will push through and eventually get there. When the proper structure is in place, that's fine. When you have, you know, you were beat by your parent or whatever else. Well, you know, I just push through. I just don't really think about it. I just kind of push to the side. That does create issues and it creates this, you know, where we have all of these internal emotions, we don't know what to deal with. And so people with serious anger issues and things like that, but they push through and then they're miserable in life and they wonder why there are therapy reasons for this. You know, from a, from an inner child perspective, you just told the inner child who was beat, who's kind of taking place on the same timeline here, that, well, they don't really matter. And I forgave the parent. They forgive him immediately. Well, I just forgave my parents. No, you didn't. The eight year old hasn't forgiven the parents. Maybe you did. Your eight year old self hasn't. And that creates this internal dissonance that ends up showing in various ways anger and problems in the marriage and things like that. So pushing through is a dangerous thing to tell people unless it is on something like that. We need to understand where therapy can help in some of those areas and helping with that stuff. So I'm looking at the outline, fellas, like there's a lot more I wanted to get into. I don't know if we want to just push the rest of the deep end. This may make for very interesting deep, and I don't think I want to go two weeks on this. We didn't really get into where God and therapy intersect, but as we're talking about it, you know, God being the foundation of all mental health, his love, his righteousness, justice being our arrow or, you know, our compass going forward. But obviously, love and his grace being the foundation upon which we can build positive attachment is a big thing. But I would say, yeah, there's a lot more we get into. [01:08:44] Speaker C: I would say let's use this as a. If you are not a focus plus subscriber, we're going to hit a lot of this stuff in the extended episode that we do every week called the deep end. So I'm sure we'll have a lot of questions and comments. Well, I should say I hope we will. But yeah, Joe's got a lot of really good points on this outline still that we were not able to hit. That probably is not going to be enough to make another full episode out of. And I know this is probably, this is stuff that a lot of people are very curious about. And so just that's the little plug to say, you know, $10 a month, you get an extra episode of Think deeper every week, essentially. And so we'd love to, love to see you over there. [01:09:19] Speaker B: I will give this little plug. It is internal family systems. If you've heard ifs or internal family systems, this is making the rounds. And there are a lot of christians walking away from Christianity because of it. What do we do with internal family systems? Is man essentially good or evil? We know from the Bible that's the case, but a lot of therapy culture pushes us toward man is essentially good. That's an interesting discussion. Should we use therapy to overcome sin and pushing more into why do God or where do God and therapy intersect? And in what ways is therapy good and positive? Kind of coming to the positive end of it. I wish we got more into it on this one, but we are way over time. So, yeah, I'm excited. I think that's going to be a long one. We'll figure this out because if we have a lot of comments, that could be a second episode altogether. So I don't know, but with the comments and such. But yeah. Fellas, anything else? Jack, you've been quiet for a little while. Any of the things you'd add? [01:10:09] Speaker A: No. We got to get out of here. Go read the Unabomber manifesto. [01:10:14] Speaker B: And Jack needs to find himself a therapist and work through all his trauma with therapy and everything else, apparently. Yeah, that's what it is. [01:10:21] Speaker A: Build a cabin in the woods and send people packages, therapists packages. [01:10:26] Speaker B: I'll probably be getting one. That's great. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I am not advocating anything funny by that. No, it, it is a really good read for everything that you had to say about the modern world, but that's a whole other. I'm just. [01:10:39] Speaker B: Deep end. We'll push that to the deep end, to the unibar. [01:10:41] Speaker A: No, no, we won't. We will not. That'll be a special other feature of me reading that and commenting. No, I'm just kidding. No, we will talk to you guys again. Check out patreon.com Focuspress, Inc. Focus plus. Sign up for that or focus plus focuspress.org plus check that out. Join us there for that and many other things. And if not there, then we will see you next Monday.