Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever - Freya India

why do you think so many girls are drawn to therapy culture oh I think it's a lot of things um I do think this is kind of a cliche thing to say now but I do think therapy culture has replaced religion um and that's not a new thing to say people have been saying that for a long time so Christopher lash was writing about that in the 70s uh Frank fudi writes about it really well now but in recent years since social media I would say therapy culture has just escalated um to the point where

I think young women don't see it as a worldview they just see that as kind of life so they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens so their lives their relationships their emotions um and I think it has elevated to the level of religion um so you think of you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion we just mimic them with therapy culture so instead of praying we just repeat our like positive affirmations um instead of like seeking salvation you'll go on like a healing Journey um instead of like you know resisting temptation from

the devil you'll reframe your intrusive thoughts um and so I think for young women in particular who are becoming less religious this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void what does a therapeutic worldview consist of what what what does that mean um like seeing seeing problems in your life kind of pathologizing problems and experiences as something medical rather than I'm just experiencing this emotion or kind of age-old anxiety now it's become a medical issue um so things like talking in the language of attachment Styles uh and and Trauma and losing the language of

just ordinary hurt and disappointment and things like that and and for some reason this is giving some kind of Solace or Comfort order being brought out of chaos I think it gives the Comfort religion gives and the consolation of like like you see young women on Tik Tok saying things like um like they won't pray to God but they'll give a request to the universe and like have faith in that yeah and so I think it gives all the comfort of religion but it takes away the inconvenient parts so the any actual demands on you

or kind of restrictions on your freedom or anything like that being held to standards of behavior Etc so it has what women are craving in Modern Life I think which is belonging and Security in something and faith in something but it's it's a much easier version of religion slippery religion yeah yeah how many of these girls are in therapy do you think a lot um there was a study recently showing 32% of all 12 to 17 year olds in America have either had therapy been on medication or had some kind of treatment in 2023 um

in over a single year one third which is insane and I was talking to someone about that statistic and they were like oh that's great that's amazing and I was thinking that's a bleak statistic um so yeah I think there's there's the girls that are in therapy which is a lot but then there's also the girls who just like living in therapy culture so it's just they scroll through Instagram and it's all about attachment Styles trauma they go on Tik Tok and it's like a trauma informed therapist telling them like red flags they should watch

out for and stuff it's just like there's the actual therapy which I'm sure there is there's useful therapists but there's also just this culture which is just the world that they're swimming in yeah so you're never able to switch it off I think um alander Boton was sat in that same seat as you mhm big proponent of psychotherapy I think trained as a psychotherapist himself too owns a school of Life which isn't just a YouTube channel but a Psychotherapy uh facility here in London yeah and even he like the biggest proponent of it I think

would very much say that there is a time for therapizing yes and then there is a time to not in the same way as going to the gym there is a time to train and then there is a time to recover and I wonder whether one of the criticisms that common that I put to him was uh lots of people online more old school people more sort of typical stiff up a type people yeah would say uh you're not fixing your past's problems you're dwelling on them and by dwelling on them you are ruminating too

much there is some evidence I mean a good bit of evidence rumination is not particularly fantastic for you and finding this line between yeah mate we don't want to deny that bad things happened and never alchemize them or transcend an include them into our life yeah and then on the other side we don't want to wallow in them uh but I suppose if you have the online environment that you exist within permanently using this language you're permanently having these structures and these thinking patterns reinforced and then it's how you begin to talk to yourself about

what happens offline yes and then you also have you know facilitation or medication or conversations with your friends further embracing all of that it's you're just entrenched in all the time yeah well I used to think and I think a lot of people think therapy cultures particularly bad for men because it it kind of has a female approach to problems and it's about you know ruminating and often it's like if you don't have a female response there's something wrong with you it's kind of a red flag if you don't go to therapy but I actually

changed my mind on that and actually think therapy culture is worse for women because women ruminate more they Co playing into the weakness that they already have or the disposition yeah if you think of an anxious this young 14-year-old girl the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to get relief and to think more about her problems and to kind of search her life for symptoms you know that if you told me that at 14 it's the worst thing I could have heard um so I actually think maybe

some men do need to do that a little bit more but the average young girl uh needs to kind of cut out I wonder whether therapy language and therapy culture for girls is what Jim language gym culture yeah Psalms testosterone steroids at 17 uh is for guys yeah I think it's a form of control so it's like it's our version of control you know if we feel uncomfortable or feel an uneasy emotion we're just like I'm going to categorize that and diagnose it you know that's my attachment disorder or that's uh my depression um and

I think men do that kind they have their own kind of self-optimization Trends and the gym stuff where that can become like a form of control um to deal with kind of uneasy emotions and I think yeah this is the woman's version of that it's like we can't sit with it or just accept like a painful situation so I often think about so if you look at these kind of attachment style forums or girls talking about their attachment Styles very often they'll describe just a bad relationship and then they'll say oh it's my attachment disorder

they'll be like he cheated on me and I can't get over it because of my anxious attachment and it's like it's so sad because they're actually losing the language to talk about the actual problem that they're facing because they're trying to get control because it's a lot easier to be like oh you know I'm anxious or he's avoidant then we have a terrible relationship and I've just wasted four years with someone it you get the control through the therapy culture um so that's where I see it becoming a danger to girls and young women what's

that stat that you mentioned there about girls from religious families seeming to do differently well and now 18 to 25 year old girls are religious at different levels and stuff yeah so I think for the first time in history young women are less religious than young men now typically women would have been more yeah but among gen Z it's men that are going to church way more than women now um and Jonathan he did some research on this showing that he like presented he looked at a survey of statements and they were things like I

have no hope in myself I don't believe like really self-disparaging statements um and he found that teenagers without religion agreed with them way stronger than teenagers who were religious and especially who were conservative um and I think there's a couple of reasons for that I think one is kind of that external locus of control so conservatives tend to have more um of an internal locus of control so they feel more control over things happening in their lives also if you're conservative teenager you're more likely to be living with both parents which I think protects your

mental health um and also your parents are more likely to have clearer boundaries with you um which I think is actually very useful for anxiety um and depression so there's different explanations for it but yeah it's a worry because Young women are becoming less religious and their mental health is also tanking um so there has to be some link there and maybe therapy culture therapy language is stepping into the void yeah and also stopping them from perhaps going back to finding religion hesitant to say therapy culture is getting in the way of religion like religion

is necessarily the answer to this but that it's whatever better Alternatives could be including religion are being precluded by this much sexier uh newer more comforting answer to everything that makes no demands on you as a person that doesn't require you to follow any edicts or or refrain from any types of behaviors well therapy culture I think it probably is getting in the way in a sense because it's it's kind of the opposite of religion so if you think of Christianity it's about dying to yourself like giving up some of yourself um to be part

of something bigger therapy culture is all about going more and more into yourself discovering yourself and like finding your authentic so it's the complete opposite so something like Christianity I think most young women just view it as really restrictive and limiting and something like therapy culture or just liberal culture in general tells them that any limit or constraint is a problem what like well just this sense in culture now that any obligation is like an obstacle to your life or your mental health I think I think that's just endemic from everywhere we look um and

it's yeah very much the opposite of what religion tells us which is that through sacrifice you find kind of actual fulfillment and you kind of break free from yourself now we're kind of told whether it's through feminism or therapy culture whatever girls are scrolling through on Tik Tok Instagram it's like you know things like you think of therapy culture on Tik Tok it will say something like don't be a people pleaser don't be needy um but these things are kind of the opposite of what Christianity is telling you which is like you should be someone

who puts your needs second it's good to be someone who gives for other people who depends on people and they depend on you um that's not the message girls are growing up with is therapy culture less pro-social yes I think so well again you're just going inwards um and yeah also I often think of again it's a similarity between therapy culture for women and kind of self-optimization stuff for men because it's like for men if you go too far that way other people become obstacles to your like ambition and your self-d development um so people

become like distractions and annoyances it's same with therapy culture because then for a young woman who's really into therapy culture a man is just like an obstacle to her healing and her mental health um so I think if you go too far in it you can just interpret anyone or anything as a threat to your peace yes yeah that's very interesting which is you know the best kind of relationships are the ones that make both people in them better yeah that they enter the relationship and stay in the relationship hopefully or if they leave they

leave in an improved situation individually yes but I don't think um that's really getting across to young women I think yeah that I think what the problem is is you go on something like Tik Tok and you have like a traar enformed therapist who might be interesting and informative but she's now competing in a attention economy so she has to create a video which is engaging and extreme so she has to say five red flags you should avoid in men and they're they're things that are just so vague and um what like things like well

I literally saw one that said gifts and trips is a red flag because it's love bombing okay um but other things like they'll say you know you're in a bad relationship if he makes you feel insecure for example by making a comment about your looks but it's it's so vague that it's like well anyone's boyfriend could be included in that somehow um but if you add them all together if you're scrolling through this all day every day which a lot of girls are the message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be

a red flag unsafe yeah and you're unfortunately girls do co- ruminate together and it's really bad for their mental health so whole ruminate yeah so dwelling on their problems with friends um which if you think of something like a Reddit Forum that is just a rumination machine it's just like it's there for everybody to analyze together Tik Tok is literally somewhere you can ruminate and then it will start recommending you new disorders and problems so it's like it's it's kind of like the inner world of these young girls but now getting fed more and more

to them um other people's inner worlds which can become a sort of oh that's a nice thought pattern maybe I'll try that that one on yeah and the most risk averse neurotic anxious women on there will get the most traction because they'll be saying and everybody else is following along from them yeah so if you spend too much time on there you will think that like a well adjusted woman doesn't need anyone doesn't have any distraction in her life and feels good all the time that no one ever threatens her or makes her feel anxious

and and that's just like a lonely life and any perturbant from feeling the opposite of that is not because of her it's because of some insult that's occurred in one form or another from the world or from structures or from a partner or from a friend or from but the problem with that is you shut down any constructive criticism of you like if your boyfriend has a constructive comment about you if you are being selfish or something um therapy culture does provide endless excuses to kind of twist That Into You don't need to hear this

yeah is a toxic person you're only like that because of your childhood trauma he's just like an [ __ ] but you have like all of these reasons why you behave that way have you contrasted this I don't know whether you've been able to look at it with what young guys see is there an equivalent for young guys I I think the only equivalent I can think of is the productivity stuff so I don't know if you saw that tweet recently of the guy he's like uh this morning routine saved me so he does his

morning routine which is like super productive it's like everything it's the red light therapy and the journaling and everything um but it's kind of eerie when you watch it because it's like this is not a lifestyle you could have with anyone else around it's so to the absolute like minute um and you think like this is kind of a similar thing with therapy culture it's like we're trying to have this perfect control over our lives and like get perfect control before you commit to anybody um and then you think of things like young people not

wanting to get married and have children and it's like well yeah because there'll be a huge obstacle if we think that we have to have this perfect control over our mental health or our productivity routine um anyone else is going to seem like chaos coming into that and so I think young men and women can both can both go to an extreme of those but it's kind of the same thing it's like an avoidance strategy it's like I have full control in this situation and I'm not vulnerable have you read any Oliver burkman yes I

love Oliver burkman he's great he's phenomenal did you get his new one meditations for Mortals okay came out a couple of months ago one of the best things that I got exposed to this year just talks about a lot of this you know it's very uh self-deprecating very British some might say yeah uh no I relate to him painfully because yeah me too uh he really sees a particular cohort of human nature very transparent I think yeah and I think I have that tendency to see people as distraction because I'm trying to work so I'm

often like you know I need to write in perfect silence I need to have my perfect routine um and yeah I I read a quote I think it was CS Lewis saying something like eventually you realize that all of these distractions from your life were just your life um like they weren't distractions at all and I think it's really sad to kind of teach young people or just drill into their heads that they should avoid anyone getting in the way of their self-development and their ambition or their healing because that's life getting in the way

um and yeah it's sad to see people kind of half-heartedly do relationships or kind of um put them off in pursuit of that ultimate control I think that's a really that will backfire eventually what are the problems of excessive self- Focus um well I think that I think it's Jordan Peterson says there's no difference between like self-obsession and mental illness in the sense that it's all focusing too much on yourself not to say that it's in your control all the time necessarily but that is what it is it's focusing too much on your own problems

um and I think yeah as I said girls are particularly vulnerable to it and I think it what it does is it blocks real self-development because you can't see where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses for why you're behaving the way you are um so I think a lot of girls think they're doing self-development and self-reflection but it's actually accidentally like self-obsession because they're they're thinking oh you know I'm analyzing my attachment style and I'm thinking about my trauma and I'm like doing the work but there's not much actual self-development going on

work being done yeah and I think it it can kind of be a trap where you think I'm working on myself as a person um and the same with the self-optimization stuff like I think you can get so obsessed with stuff like maybe the ice bars and the breath work that you're not thinking about trying to be a better person like it just becomes there's a couple of traps uh for that Alex hosi taught me a really really good lesson as I started to do like little bits of investing and stuff like that so sometimes

a company will say hey we we're this interesting company in a world that you maybe know or like would you like to put some money in and maybe come on as an adviser or whatever it might be and I was talking to him and he said how many of these calls are you taking so I don't know you know maybe had two last week or something he says they're the most dangerous calls that you have because they all feel like work they all feel like business and almost none of them result in anything and it's

kind of like that upfront it feels like you're doing a thing which is more dangerous than not doing anything at all because it acts as a placeholder it takes up the parking of what could be work yeah if you're doing nothing you would have this big vacancy and you go I really I really need to setep my game up do whatever yeah uh you know it's one of the problems I think that people have with uh scam supplements uh with training styles that don't actually do anything that it the subtext that they understand is this

thing is taking the place of something that would work and this thing doesn't work which means that you're you're getting neither of the benefits it's kind of like the highlighter goals who like girls who have like the perfect highlighters and gel pens for their exam but they get like a d because they were obsessing over having the perfect setup the system not the outcome yes yeah that is interesting um I suppose this self-pity thing gets wrapped up as empowerment in a way yeah and that causes girls to suffer yeah and it's funny because there's a

lot of emphasis on like um like women walking away from disrespect and not tolerating any bad behavior um but there's also kind of this self-pitying stuff going on so it's like real empowerment would be very often I'm yeah I'm not tolerating this I'm walking away but you kind of you look look online now and there's a lot of young women who just ruminate over a problem so like I was saying before they might be in a bad relationship and they'll be analyzing both of their attachment Styles and thinking about how it's toxic and talking to

other girls about it rather than just leaving and so I think sometimes young women like and me as well get caught up in the analyzing and not the actual action and they think all the mental health stuff is actually empowering them but I often see it like taking again taking the language away from actual problems and rather than everybody opening up is actually like closing down their ability to see what's going on and act upon it in other news this episode is brought to you by function did you know that your annual physical only screens

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yeah the the the mode is not the end itself yeah and it's the same with the morning routine thing you I hold my hands up I would I if not for a slightly different life and a different algorithm that could have been me the guy that went that trended on Twitter I said this a couple of times but I had an absurdly long very elaborate routine for about probably four years three or four years uh and my retrospective justification for it is that I had done so little in the way of self-reflection yeah that I

had you know from 18 to 30 or whatever I had over a decade of catching up to do and it could have I could have spaced it out like a normal sane human and it might have taken some time or I could have done Navy SEAL hell week version uh very intensely and uh get up on the morning and go for a walk and get back and journal and do breath work and meditate and do yin yoga and then prep my food and and read and then start my day and I'm like how [ __

] opulent and luxurious and ridiculous and inaccessible all of these things I understand uh but I had a lot of low hanging fruit that I needed to get and then higher hanging fruit too uh but one thing that I am happy about is that I never confused the mode of improvement for the reason for the Improvement yes and very quickly looked at ways to apply that right okay I um seem to be able to deal with emotional perturbants a bit better now after a few thousand sessions of meditation huh maybe I should use that and

start pushing myself into different places emotionally uh wow I've learned some stuff about how human nature works or resilience or whatever let's see if I can find some situations that I can stress test that and see if it actually works for me or I've got new Mobility because I've been doing yin yoga for [ __ ] forever uh maybe I can start doing CrossFit which I did or a different training modality or something else um not confusing instrumental Goods for the ends themselves uh I think is very important and it takes the placeholder the therapy

culture takes the placeholder of something that could be functional work and very viciously encourages you to not actually go out and even try that there is no such thing as a stress test of this anytime it gets it's unfalsifiable anytime it gets stressed it's a an admission that the very philosophy itself was correct and that you should have never encountered this thing in the first place well I think you view it as you've said about like the lonely chapter you view it as like a set time that has to come to an end yes which

is what therapy should be as well is like a set period um but the problem is now therapy culture stuff is so tied up with identity stuff so you get kind of young girls who start reading about social anxiety and they relate to it because they're 14 and shy and everybody is yeah and they go on again these forums and these communities where everyone's saying um I have social anxiety disorder and because of that I can't get public transport or because of that I can't do this and then they start thinking well I feel it

it's really painful for me so why would I put myself in those situations I'm just not built for those situations um and so that's the problem with it is there's no end to it because you can just go on there and then it becomes part of who you are and again as you said the second you go out and you feel intense anxiety as you do as a 14-year-old in like any situation then you'll think oh yeah this is confirmation that I have social anxiety disorder and shouldn't be here um so yeah I always just

think of these things as like me at 13 and the worst things you could say to me and social anxiety disorder is one of them it's like I kind of needed people to kind of laugh it off and just say well you have to go anyway that that's what I needed like if someone came to me and said well some people call it a disorder and they take medication for it and some people need that I'd be like well I need that it's kind of like the mental health psychological Health equivalent of the misdiagnosis of

gender dysphoria among young kids yeah yeah that it it's it's like um seeing the symptoms as seeing your personality traits as symptoms which happens with the gender dysphoria stuff as well which is like now just like quirky edgy things about people become their personality yeah that becomes a diagnosis so like before we'd be like talk about some guy and be like he's always late it's just something about him you know it's kind of lovable and annoying but it's his personality and now it's like oh because of his ADHD he's always late yeah that's so funny

that's really interesting to hear to hear the language I mean even even we do it we do it around here you know there'll be for instance does this can have it on yes it does can you punch in on this dude can you punch in all right so I'm not sure how tight that lens can get uh if you look very very very carefully here there's a follow us this I'm for the people listening I'm pointing to the back of a can of newtonic we've produced maybe a million of these this particular version of the

can in America follow us there's the three social icons and then there's new tonic.com at the bottom if you look really really carefully just here you'll see that the Instagram icon is probably one one mil to one and a half mil to the left of the followers and the left of the neonic docomo mil in from the US um on after the follow uh I noticed that because I noticed things and sent a photo and immediately immediately after sending that photo him said the tism strikes again never mean diagnosed with autism don't think I've got

it hold eye contact with most people perfectly well even within that there's something it's self-deprecating it's mockery it's whatever but even in that it belies this like somebody made the joke about uh Elon musk's Department of governmental efficiency was less Avengers Assemble and more Aspergers assemble um yeah so like even on the guy side of things you know OCD oh I'm I'm obsessive yeah about this sort of stuff uh it's it's my like you know I I mean I am writing this book at the moment and one of the chapters is about uh these kind

of Tik toks that girls are looking at about autism and I literally went down a rabbit hole like I'm autistic I'm phly well like all of the symptoms they're all about shy nerdy girls and I'm like oh okay this has been me my whole life just kind of awkward and didn't fit in and reads a lot and everything and and I'm like oh God reading this if you're just like slightly different from the mainstream popular extroverted girl you're going to be autistic and and it but it's such it's like it's funny but it's also like

oh my God there's like I can't say a serious point cuz you're laughing me why is autism it's like it's it just always makes me laugh I think it's kind of charming it's definitely autism holds like a very unique in the mental pathology library that we can all take it's the one that I think is sort of easiest to throw I see maybe it's because the autistic people like aren't registering it but I it's the the lowest amount of offense seems to be taken by people misdiagnosing that in some way and maybe that's because autism

in many ways is a disadvantage for people but also bestows uh some of what some people would consider as advantages to yeah and I I autistic people I've met do kind of openly joke about it I feel um whereas I feel like OCD is more offensive to say oh that was me being OCD I feel like that's become a bit yeah it's my suicidal ideation yeah um but yeah it's funny but it's also like you think of like a 13-year old girl who really convinces herself she has autism and actually she's just quite unique and

quirky um that can be like a lifelong sentence of thinking you're different from other people because you're unwell um a much more pernicious one maybe would be something which is less serious of a diagnosis and that everybody believes that they have which would be an attachment style thing yes because it's such a it's such a defining characteristic of how you relate to other people the most important things that you do and to be able to write off every time that it comes in Ah that's my avoidant attachment again Ah that's trigger and to kind of

ignore your gut instinct like I feel like you can be in a bad relationship and you have a feeling about someone um and now you interpret that as as my anxiety coming up that's like my attachment disorder triggering rather than oh they've just said something or revealed something about themselves that I should be I'm actually tuning into the worry is like young girls convince themselves they have a disorder and then shut down that instinct I suppose also it denies you the opportunity to it it stops you from having the opportunity to deny yourself from being

at the mercy of that thing yeah that you say that's uh a pattern that keeps coming up in me I don't like it and I want to get rid of it yes well it's a part of me it is me it defines me as a person yeah I I hate this phrase like I'm anxiously attached rather than like I'm feeling anxiety at the moment um and and also you see on like on the internet like anxious attachment quizzes and like t-shirts and like it's become a Jes Christ a thing to identify yeah and it's also

a community like an online community of people who all again co- ruminate over it um but I think it's actually more dangerous than we think if you take it too far because you again you just become blind to what's actually happening in your life and you're kind of living by a theory and also blind to how you can be complicit in causing these things to happen uh how you could have self-authorship over stopping these things from happening yes yeah well if someone's behaving badly and all you're doing is like repeating your positive affirmations in the

mirror it's not going to help you like at some point you need to have the kind of confidence to stand up to people and you're not going to have that if if your like core belief is that you're an anxious damaged person 73% of Boomer males said no matter what psychological challenges I face I will not let them Define me 72% of jenzy females say mental illness is an important part of my identity yeah bit of an arc I mean that's just tragic um but I think I again I can't really blame young girls for

that I just think it's everywhere now and as Constantin says like if the incentives are there it's just going to happen and there are incentives now to do that um it's almost like now you know we were saying before like if you're English and you talk about something good happening in your life um people kind of judge you and think you're weird it's kind of become like if you go around saying actually have really good mental health and I deal with things really well and I don't get anxious people look at you like um that's

kind of a wrong thing to say like you I think if you were a girl saying that in school people would not relate to you as much so you're just in denial yeah or like it's kind of a a braggy way to be now to say oh I handled it fine good for you yeah to well done yeah yeah those of us that have you know grew up with parents that caused us to have anxious attachment try be Autistic or something that's actually a solution I think that more people should be autistic and that would

fix a lot of problems that we're facing uh yeah I'd mentioned to you before L Capaldi um there's a great documentary on Netflix called how I'm feeling now highly recommend you watch it I think it's super pertinent to what you're doing it'd be great for the book too yeah U so you have this guy who L and lots of success and the success causes him to uh develop a he must have had a genetic predisposition for Tourette's I don't know what Tourette can't catch it don't think so he must have had this predisposition in the

pressure that he puts on himself and that's coming from outside too and the story he tells himself and the rumination uh causes his mental health to decline to the point where he's got this sort of tick yeah and his should is sort of he's always doing this it's like whole body is contorting and uh I think maybe it's two years in a row now at least one year at Glastonbury he was he stopped singing he came out on stage began singing and then halfway through the song was unable to continue had to get the audience

to help and that happened at a show at the2 I think uh which is in the documentary and then they tried to bring this documentary into land at the end of 202 or 23 or whatever it's like and he took 6 weeks off and started doing yoga and stopped eating McDonald's and look at him now it's like and then the updates since then are sad that uh a guy under an awful lot of pressure with a beautiful voice with really really wonderful stories to tell uh that make people feel things feeling so much and being

unable to handle it to the point where the very art form that he was built to do he's unable to do on stage so he like backed away from singing as a result I haven't checked in but the last I saw was this summer there was some festival thing I think that he was at that he had some trouble on stage again yeah I mean maybe he had a bug or whatever but it seems unlikely it seems like it was probably the same challenge that he's been dealing with since the documentary and um yeah that

kind of got me thinking about the mental health thing affecting everybody all the way up uh you know there's not really any hiding from it and the way way that he goes about it you know he's very self-deprecating but he does not he's he's relieved when he gets a diagnosis in the documentary you know he finally they say turns out I've got tourettes uh that kind of makes sense uh and that thing I was having um where my heart rate went really high and I kept on breathing it's like that apparently that's called a panic

attack it's like ha that's a person finding a diagnosis not identifying with a diagnosis well that's kind of another problem with the therapy stuff is it's well one it's kind of a offensive to people like that because I mean there are literally young women um mimicking tick ticks from Tourette's tick Tok um and whether that's Tick Tick Tock yeah I think there is actually a tick tock hashtag um but yeah they're they're picking up tourettes and you know whether that's conscious or not um some of them at least are kind of jumping on that identity

um and then you hear someone like Lis Cap's story and it's like the pain of that is actually stopping him doing what he loves um but that conversation is kind of being swallowed up by the conversation of like young girls identifying with Tourette's like people are [ __ ] laughing with this on face to camera videos yeah again it actually takes away the language to talk about people who are actually suffering um because it's just become so big now that everyone's autistic everyone's got trets and I can every time can't not laugh at it uh

is there a new story about why people are so addicted to social media is there any more that you've come to think about yeah well I when I started writing I was writing about addiction to social media and Trends and stuff and kind of um wondering why that was happening and then I've been trying to kind of trace it back to think um what is the actual need that's not being met here so one of them um I was looking at all this attachment Style stuff and like the dating gurus how popular like relationship advice

is on Tik Tok and stuff um and I was thinking is this because young people don't have adults giving them guidance about relationships so now they go and watch an influencer who's in attachment expert um because parents and families aren't getting as involved in giving advice about relationships um so things like that there's a lot of Trends where I think you can trace it back to adults have St Ste away from giving some form of guidance um so you see it with like relationship stuff on Tik Tok and also the desperate search for obviously community

and belonging to something is coming from a real pain of not having any community in real life like I had loads of people when I started writing about social media loads of people would say to me oh but you know young people need social media because it's like a Lifeline like they have their online communities and stuff and I'm like that is not a benefit of social media like that's just an absolute indictment of where we are in Modern Life like why is their Community a Reddit form um so we can talk about social media

addiction but I think you have to kind of strip it back to what why young people are so obsessed with it and what is missing in their actual life what is everyone searching for or missing yeah because when you meet people who aren't on social media or don't have like ridiculously high screed times um they usually have a lot of their needs met in the real world which just sounds like an obvious thing to say but it's true and I think the more you find yourself in a fulfilling relationship or you're happy with your job

you don't feel as much as a of a pull to scroll endlessly through Tik Tok all day um so the fact that young people are spending like six hours a day on their phones is is not just because social media is addictive it's because there's nothing more addictive in their life or like a reason to stop rolling through it um and so I think sometimes I can get caught in the Trap of like complaining about social media whereas social media is just filling the gap of whatever was stripped away before yeah it's not necessarily that

there's even nothing more addicting there's nothing more compelling yeah what else what else is there that's as fun to do that's that uh offers everybody the same uh yeah I mean you know I left my old Life Of Night Life three years ago is and um that kind of felt a little bit like exiting Bitcoin at 100K or something and being like why that was kind of selling at the top because there's some crazy stat about how by 20 36 there'll be no nightclubs left in the UK n yeah so the I think it's one

a one a day or one a week or something is closing at the moment wow across the UK just that night clubs are not only competing with brunch and with restaurants and with Lane seven and with Top Flight darts and with those ball pit [ __ ] places where people get to take selfies it's not just competing with other inperson events and other community based events pickle ball or whatever it's competing with Netflix Amazon Prime is it because everyone's autistic and no one's going clubing the answer to every question is either it's only one of

two things too much or too little autism and I vote that it's too little and we need more but yes I think um you you must have seen this trend the other day this like uh like slug life thing where people just want they I'm not going out I don't want to do anything uh it was a huge substack article that oh there was one about yeah like rotting in beds yes that was it yeah yeah um yeah like I think it was about being a loser and how it's like an English thing again being

a loser has become the way that you introduce yourself and talk about yourself oh I don't have a life like yeah I don't go anywhere I don't have I don't have any interests no no I like Netflix yeah I don't boyfriend no no no no not for me no yeah I want I would ruin my 7 p.m. bedtime I don't know where that's come from but I think I think it's probably social anxiety and then people come up with all of these kind of romantic ways to talk about it so they're like oh I'm just

an introvert who enjoys my own time or I'm like working on this big thing so I can't go out clubbing and stuff and they build their identity around something which would justify not going out sleep isn't just about how long you rest but also how well your body stays in its optimal temperature zone throughout the night and this is where AID sleep comes in just add their brand new pod for Ultra to your mattress like a fitted sheet and it automatically cools down or warms up each of your bed it's got integrated sensors that track

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have you seen like I read an article the other day maybe I want to kill myself it was about it was about like soft launching your boyfriend on Instagram please tell me more so it's about telling girl so this young woman wondering how should you announce to your followers like not influencers like I'm talking ordinary young women how should you announce your boyfriend should you do a soft launch where it's just like his arm or should you do like a full reveal like but it's kind of messed up because it's like this is like introducing

a brand deal or something um like literally viewing our partners like products like yeah how do we how does this play in the Optics of public life someone said to me the other day or they commented on my subst article like a relationship is now just a brand collaboration like two personal Brands coming together wow that's good and then posting it online that's really good yeah soft launching well I've I've seen people talk about the hard launch which is just a couple photo that happens out of nowhere yeah well so you have all of that

you have like how do you manage the relationship on social media but then you also have how social media affects the relationship so like the boyfriends of Instagram thing like it's kind of funny that boyfriends you know when you see like a guy literally on the floor trying to get a good angle of the girlriend there was a I went to Gilly te in uh Bali it's one of these little Islands about 5 years ago and there's a famous Beach Club that's got a swing sort of out in the water and it's gorgeous the sunsets

because it's so close to the equator the sunsets in the summer at 6:30 p.m. and in the winter at 600 p.m. 12 hours of daylight and it just [ __ ] wobbles a little bit like that MH and this this girl wanted to get a photo of her on the swing but she wanted to catch the sort of sun bouncing off the top of the water and I remember like watching this guy and she was saying no no no you need to get lower you need to like get sort of lower down closer to the

water this dude's sort of chest shoulder to neck to F and by this time it's C it's the C so it's not being gentle with him so he's like trying to take this photo the phone's out of the water he's getting splashed I remember thinking like that really better be wifey because that's a big ask well also I I just always think who is it for if your boyfriend is right there like it it does get to the point where you're like posing in a bikini and your boyfriend's taking the pictures of you it's like

is this for Instagram because I I don't know it just it's it's such a strange thing that's become so normalized it's a little bit of an indicator I mean unless this is your new album cover or whatever for your PO slam poetry or some [ __ ] that you do M there is a little bit of like surely the person that you're trying to impress the most is yeah the one that's taking the photo so what does the photo need to be taken forless it's for private collection but it's it's become so normalized that like

when I wrote about boyfriends of Instagram people were replying like oh but you know I'm trying to get memories and stuff uh and like I had a picture he's not in it yeah there was a picture of like three girls in bikinis and three guys all on the same Beach all taking pictures of their girlfriend and people were defending it like oh they're allowed to have memories like what a memory of you in a bikini like but I actually I don't think they're lying I think that's just how normalized it's become it's like well obviously

if you go to the beach you do a photo shoot um and I always try and express that to people like you think of an influencer and how her income depends on taking pictures and everywhere she goes she has to get content um ordinary women think like that now most people have it in the back of their mind I should be getting a social media picture or this is a good moment or this landscape would get really good clicks like that's how they think um and I I don't think some older people realize that young

girls are behaving and thinking like their influences all the time is that an aspirational thing is that just that the power users of Instagram and Tik Tok behave like that because it's their job which means that the people who are not they they have none of the same obligations feel like they should behave in the same way or is there something more going on is this aspirational is this that people hope maybe I get picked up by a modeling agency I think a part of it is that but I think another part is it they

started doing this when their brains were forming as young girl they started capturing their life as they went and they I don't think they can conceive of just living and existing I really think it's that ingrained of like their entire childhood was having a childh childhood but also performing and marketing and managing it all at the same time um and then like when you try and get out of it like when I deleted Instagram years ago uh that lingering was still in my head of like maybe I share this online or maybe this could be

good photo opportunity and it's it's really hard to not to kind of unwire that and now if I go to an event and I don't take a picture young women I'm friends with will be kind of confused like I say I've been on holiday and I have no evidence of it it's confusing to them because that suspicious about whether or not you actually went on the holiday it's kind of weird um and I think there are genuinely young people who go on holiday to get pictures for photos who even get in relationship ships for the

photos and who are quietly living their life for Instagram in ways that people don't realize has become that intense what do you make of the contribution of family breakdown to this of that you mentioned before about that sort of lack of guidance people looking for a little bit of guidance um maybe filling the void with entertainment that typically would have been taken up by family what what role does family breakdown have here I think it's linked to what I was saying about yeah looking for relationship guidance it's like um well you look at something like

mental health Tik Tok um people are sharing like their really deep trauma and turmoil and problems um and you can't help but look at it and think are you close to your family like this is the kind of thing that you talk about with your family it's what your family is there for and now you're telling strangers on Tik Tok um and then you look at the statistics of the amount of gen Z who aren't living with both their mother and father I think it's I think in the UK it's over half of children by

14 don't live with their mom and dad um and so they don't have a feeling of belonging at home and then you stretch that out to they don't have any sense of community their Community is a Reddit Forum or Instagram like I growing up had no sense of what a local community is or like neighbors knowing each other it's just is really foreign to me and I think a lot of gen Z they don't have a conception of it Beyond like an online community or like the LGBT community or something that is the limit of

community they know so their family falls apart there's nothing really to catch them there's no neighborhood of adults who are there um then you add that they're becoming less religious they don't feel that they belong to anything bigger than that they have no faith in anything bigger um and so the feeling of loneliness is just so intense um and I was writing recently about how I think that actually one of the biggest drivers of behavior we see among genz is this abandonment fear and feeling um because their families fell apart because they don't have Community

because they don't belong to anything bigger um they feel constantly alone and if you look at the kind of symptoms of Abandonment if you look at like attachment Theory like real attachment Theory not the Tik toks but the like Mary answorth studies and everything um it shows like people who are abandoned they're really hypers sensitive to criticism they have very low body image and self-esteem um all of the kind of caricature of genzi all of the traits are like to do with this feeling of not belonging anywhere um so not not to say that it

explains everything but I think families breaking down and not having a sense of belonging really messes people up and I think a lot of gen are kind of carrying that around and then looking for it in places so they obviously they're going to spend hours on Tik Tok where people are talking to them and talking about their problems because they don't have anything resembling that in real life um and so yeah I think a lot of the things we kind of laugh at young people for as being kind of narcissistic and um I guess selfish

and kind of we cringe at them having these crazy screen times it's like what else is there yeah is there a lack of moral direction or adult guidance or something yeah I think um I think in the modern world like adults they view everything as like imposing on their children so we we kind of became suspicious of anyone who's authoritative so we think they're being controlling or like oldfashioned so adults kind of politely stepped back and kind of allow children just to become themselves and act the way they want and sounds virtuous yeah and you

know there's obviously an element of that that's important in parenting um but I think what happened is parents stepped back so they just became like our best friends um then religion retreated away from public life then communities broke down um neighbors stopped knowing each other and then if you're an anxious young person uh there's no one that there and we got rid of anything that was like more substantial guidance so I think if you think of therapy culture today a lot of people think oh if you're an anxious young person you have more advice than

ever like you have all this guidance but I actually think modern culture has very little to say to anxious young people because we got rid of anything more substantial because we thought it was judgmental so you can't tell someone how to live their life or what to do uh we got rid of anything to do with God or religion because that was superstitious we stopped appealing to moral character and telling them they should improve themselves and be better because that's also judgmental and you know claiming that there's a right and wrong and all that we

have left is like these endless empty like platitudes of be yourself you do you you know best you know adults telling that to young people who I think are craving some Direction like there's no clear Milestones to add hood anymore to follow and so they look to the adults and the adults are saying you know best um and of course you feel anxious the the anxiety gets worse that lack of guidance is I don't know I I the the equivalent for the guys is pick your favorite podcaster or YouTuber or Fitness bodybuilder of choice and

looking up to that okay well it's the missing patriarch that I yeah didn't have or didn't have a long enough or didn't understand this world and I'm going to surrogate the that to this parasocial online relationship but then it becomes someone who doesn't know you so let's say you have a relationship problem like you're a young woman who has met someone um and you're not sure about him the average young woman will now go on YouTube and turn to the dating experts and the attachment style yeah and get the guidance from experts because they don't

have adults in their lives who know them intimately you know because people are different like people need different advice in different situations and I think it's a real shame that adults who kind of intimately know girls and young women and can give them advice in like a community setting have stepped back and now of course they're all on Tik Tok asking each other like oh you know he cheated on me is this a problem because we weren't exclusive is that a red flag is it and it's like we need some adults in Our Lives who

Clearly say I think this person's bad for you um and suppose yeah everything it's great that we have instant frictionless access to all information from experts that maybe even more expert than our parents would be ever and trained and all the rest of it even if they're legitimate and obviously there's a lot of room for illegitimate yes experts to sneak in but it is still self- diagnosis and it is still self- treatment from that you know if you're learning from Tik Tok there is no part of hey why don't we why don't we sit down

why don't we yeah I'll I will give you something as opposed to you will learn from this thing and then go and have to work out what that means and apply it and not be able to ask questions and not be able to regulate with anybody and not have it contextualized even remotely yeah and your mom isn't trying to get views on Tik Tok so she doesn't need to speak for your mom doesn't need to exaggerate and kind of keep you looking at her Channel um you know I I think that's the problem is there

are genuine experts who can help but they are also subject to the kind of pressures of the algorithm a lot of the time and so they're kind of I guess dumbing down what they're saying or make or presenting symptoms of autism as as vague as possible to try and uh so as many girls relate to it as possible you had this breakdown uh one of the main causes of unhappiness in the modern world is a culture that presents other people as obstacles heal faster alone work better alone find Freedom alone it's such a lie loneliness

is not empowerment is loneliness uh pedestalize Tik Tok yeah I think again from all different angles so it's like the mental health stuff obviously you will feel better alone in some ways because someone you don't have someone challenging you you know if you do actually have problems from your childhood um to do with say your parents I don't want to say an attachment problem but it is an attachment problem just the wording has been completely ruined but if you do have that you kind of need to be with someone to work on it because if

you're single you're going to feel great because there's no one kind of triggering you and making you feel anxious and abandoned um so you do need someone in your life in in that scenario um so yeah loneliness then does seem like it's extremely attractive because you feel better when you're alone the same with the productivity stuff I think it's just the message that's missing for both young women and young men is like it's actually okay to depend on someone and to need other people like humans have always needed other people and Define themselves by their

ties and obligations to other people and now we're kind of like no you can you can be self-sufficient enough and driven enough and healed enough that you're okay alone and I think that's really quite a strong message for young young women here which is like the worst thing you can be is needy like do not ever need someone and and the worst situation for you is to end up with a guy that you need like that's just you need to avoid that all costs and it's it's a really sad message because it's like is that

not love to need someone and they need you and it's kind of a beautiful thing um to rely on someone and have someone who's dependent on you and actually a lot of the actual attachment research shows that have you heard of like the dependency Paradox tell me um that couples who are more dependent on each other become more independent in their lives so there was like studies showing that um I think they got couples to do like games or puzzles and then they had to fill out a survey of you know how much do you

respond to your partner's needs um basically how dependent are you on each other and the ones that were more dependent didn't want to hear like I think it was the clues or the answers from their partner they wanted to do it independently and then they followed up and they found that the the couples more dependent on each other had met their independent goals six months down the line why do you think that is what's the proposed mechanism because it's it's like the original Mary answorth experiments where the caregiver leaves and kind of measure how the

child responds you need like a stable secure relationship to feel confident to go and explore the world you need to have like something to hold on to to step off um chaos in both domains is scary yeah you you need like something to fall back on and I think that's a big reason why Chen Z are incredibly uh risk averse and not resilient is because we don't actually have a foundation to fall back on so if your parents are divorced um and you don't feel that sense of belonging you're not going to step off into

the chaos of the world you're going to hold back and you're going to find relationships threatening you're going to find words traumatic you're going to be scared by it because the ground is like crumbling beneath you so you can't step off it um trust really is everything when it comes to supplements a lot of Brands may say they're top quality but few can actually prove it which is why I'm such a massive fan of momentos they make the highest quality supplements on the planet three of the products that I use every day to support my

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t o W ./ wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout what have you learned it seems like you've done a good bit of work on the attachment stuff at least in terms of research what have you learned about what's uh real and what's bunk from that well I think I think it's real that obviously your childhood impacts your adult life I think that's just plain to see um and I think it's real that you can kind of play out in relationships that aren't to you know so you however your parents responded to you you'll then take

that into an adult relationship that seems very obvious but I think where people go wrong now is they forget that like in the original um attachment uh experiments and and the book attached it's quite clear that it's it's not a bad thing to depend on someone and it's it's not a bad thing to be attached like we are wired to be that way whereas I think now where it's going online is like um you have a problem if you're attached like if you if you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic

relationship and really wants to depend on someone now we view you as like weak that there's something wrong with you if that's your ultimate goal because we've had it drilled in so much that dependence is a problem um and so you see all these people online saying things like oh you know I'm anxiously attached because when my partner feels sad I also feel sad it's like isn't that just like loving someone you know you are affected by their emotions or they'll say things again like oh um I always put their needs first so can you

train me out of being like a people pleaser and it's like we used to just call that love and you know that was a trait that we treasured in people people who put their partner's needs first and obviously that can go too far but I think the problem is now we only pathologize dependence and we glamorize Independence and we never say yeah that being dependent on someone having a long-term relationship doesn't mean that you lose yourself you can actually find yourself through that um but I think girls in particular young women in particular have just

been told yeah the worst thing in your life is to need someone to jenz have a lot of abandonment issues in that way yeah I think I think that's where it comes from and that's why it's especially tragic because you have a lot of young women for example whose families fell apart and then they grew up thinking well I just want to have that myself I want to have a loving relationship and a family and then they kind of get told whether it's through therapy culture or some of the feminist stuff online you kind of

implicitly get told um that's a problem like if you again if your dream is to depend on someone you should work on yourself you need to work on your self-love you need to believe in yourself more you need to be healed alone and um you think of like a normal thinking feeling young girl of course she wants to be in a romantic relationship and of course she wants to depend on someone in some way it's completely natural um but I think you have young women thinking oh I need to get to a position where I'm

confident completely confident alone I'm Healed alone I don't have any anxiety um then I can allow a partner in but I don't see that as the way that people operate um and I think there's a lot of girls now punishing themselves for being emotional and sensitive and wanting a partner and and wanting to depend on someone because now the the image of a strong independent woman is is someone who doesn't depend on anyone and who doesn't get emotional doesn't get jealous doesn't care and so you you also have two contradictory messages because you have therapy

culture saying to girls open up more and more about your problems you know be more emotional um tell everyone how you feel but then you also have strong independent women don't care you know they never get emotional and if they do get an emotional it's trauma or an attachment issue and it's like that's a really cruel thing to teach emotional young girls and confusing because it's like of course they feel that way because they're human but now they're being told that that's yeah a medical issue or something that they should heal I saw you tweet

kids as young as nine are addicted to porn girls as young as 13 are using fake IDs to post explicit content on only fans a third of those selling Nudes on Twitter are under the age of 18 yeah can you unpack that please well I think that's again a lack of adults um stepping in um I have this Theory I've been thinking about of like everyone just accepts now that that parents are overprotective so there's like the helicopter parenting and the coddling of but I think like parents are weirdly they're not protective enough but they're

also codling so they're like coddle their children but not put up proper boundaries or guard there's like no rules um but they're over involved overbearing in all the wrong areas and totally absent in all of the wrong ones as well so now it's like the only danger is like physical Danger it's injury so parents protect from injury but they don't protect from something like their daughters being online and posting try trying to get on only fans I mean Jonathan height talks about it when he says kids are overprotective in the real world and internalize this

messaging of I shouldn't get involved you know it's not my place you know you think of dads now I think dads are less protective than they've ever been because they they can't care about what their daughter wears or where she goes or who she dates because that would be backward you know it's her right to do that but then you look around and you see girls doing that you see um girls like selling themselves online to strangers and I think what accidentally happened is feminism pushed this idea of like girls and boys are just as

strong as each other and then that led to people thinking Al so they don't need girls don't need extra protection which killed chivalry but also killed fathers actually protecting girls um because the problem is not like women are weak it's that girls are vulnerable but now we think oh we should all step back let girls do what they want um a lot of baby went out with B Ward yeah and now you see lot of chivalry went out with patriarchy yeah well we we killed good authority we just killed all authority and so now you

have young women like demanding that their universities protect them and demanding that the government step in and like staring at someone becomes a harassment on the tube because they don't have we degraded the authority of men they trust like good men and hopefully like their fathers and brothers um we just said oh all kind of protection is patronizing and we don't need it but then you leave girls completely vulnerable and looking coddled and loved but actually completely unprotected there was a great tweet I saw about um telling men telling all men to stop being so

pushy doesn't work because the men who don't need to hear it will take it to heart and the ones who do need to hear it aren't going to listen yeah yeah I mean I I can't remember where it was but there was this like scheme um some young women ran on a train where they had these cards I don't know if you saw it where it said like it said like I'm being harassed right now where you hand it to someone and so you could go into I think it was like the tube station you

could go in and ask for the cards and yeah it's like someone ising me yeah there was all different ones I can't remember what they were but it's like in that situation what is that going to do and it's that is actually the patronizing thing um and to expect that to protect girls but we find it offensive if a man steps forward and tries to help a girl out I think it's we've yeah we've just thrown it all out and forgotten that the part of the feminist message is right that girls are vulnerable um but

unfortunately it's just led to a situation where we're like oh vulnerability means weakness so they don't need protecting why are girls under as young as 13 using fake IDs to they do people want money is there a status thing associated with this yeah I think it's the status thing I think girls are now growing up with influencers being their aspirational figures as we said um I think it's something like 70% of genz girls aspire to be influencers or just genen Z in general thought you're going to say only fans no okay um but if you

look at influences over the years they've evolved dramatically so like when I was 13 I would be watching like Zoella or someone who's really wholesome and didn't really have the same incentives of the algorithms back in the day didn't really have the same competition certainly didn't have like monetization of her content um so she wasn't kind of exposing herself or talking about these weird therapy friends or anything like that you can just gradually see over the years how it's escalated who are some of the more extreme Zoella equivalents now or if you don't want to

throw names out you can come up with I can throw a name yeah the woman Tana monjo mjo yeah so she's like a really popular influencer who talks about only fans like it's like like there's nothing dangerous about it for young girls or nothing to be worried about and she'll she has an audience of very young teens probably pre-teens and she'll just post with all the things she's earned from only fans so all of like the designer bags and stuff um on her podast she'll talk about being on only fans and um I think talking

about commodifying yourself like it's completely normal that is what girls are growing up with so they're seeing influencers commodify themselves in general but then commodifying their body um and also having the nerve to call that empowering um you don't think it's empowering no well how can it be empowering to even on Instagram offer your body for judgment and then put your self worth into the ranks and reviews that Stranges give you you're turning yourself into a product effectively so this talk of objectifying young women you know that is turning yourself into an object on display

um which I think is quite clear to anyone who's not grown up with it but I I don't judge the ordinary young woman for thinking that's attractive because that has been her Role Models throughout growing up and it's escalated slowly so it went from Zoella to now only fans versus Bonnie Blue Zoella to Bonnie Blue yeah the Mark in other news this episode is brought to you by element element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium pottassium and magnesium with no sugar no coloring no artificial ingredients or any other BS it plays a critical role

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return the box that's how confident they are that you love it right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom to get all of this that's drink LM nt.com SL modern wisdom why is it that pretty much all of the examples of toxic masculinity from the past uh promiscuity sexual entitlement hyper Independence are all traits that are now regarded as boss girl yeah feminist power I don't know I think it might

be like a Revenge thing um I I think I think young women react to the very worst traits of some men by thinking I'll just do it back and that will give me the power so they're like uh maybe they've had a string of relationships where the guy has kind of slept with them and then left or something and then they think yeah I'll just do that to the next guy or um you know they look at the men doing that and think well they seem very confident and happy so that's that's the way to

go um I think it's like a defense mechanism of some kind and also I think they're probably also the traits that get you popularity online so if you look at tanjo or some of these influencers uh they are promiscuous they're quite masculine they're quite aggressive in their speech because people who talk assertively and in Extreme Ways will just suit the algorithm you know if you're like a reserved timid young girl you're not going to be the top influencer on Instagram so I think those traits get rewarded and then they're what girls are scrolling through all

day every day and they're like oh my favorite influencer is really like vulgar and promiscuous and she's super assertive path to success yeah and that's again that's the model of like the healed confident woman who's not held back by negative emotion or worry or jealousy or any of these things assertiveness is confused for self assuredness or wholeness completeness fixedness well also promiscuity is like well I often think now if you're like a reserved young woman who's modest you're now shamed maybe not explicitly but implicitly people will think there's something wrong with you because they'll be

like oh no you are beautiful you shouldn't be so like shy about guys you know you shouldn't worry about sex you know it's fine like people will reassure her now as to like that look at her as if she has a problem that needs healing rather than she just is modest um and I think that's what tends to happen is you look at promiscuity becomes so popular and normalized and then we stigmatize the girls that aren't interested in that or aren't that way um so yeah I think if I think if you are a young

woman now who's who holds back in that way it's kind of like if you're introverted and people come up to you and say what's wrong you should speak more and it's just like sometimes it's just who you are um so I think it's the incentives again you're almost punished socially if you're modest and shy and and not super assertive and masculine because people think you've got your like healing work to do you need to become more confident and like sexual and like get rid of all your reservations and like repression people think you're just like

a repressed person rather than everybody should be tanim Mojo whatever she called like she's she's like released herself of all her kind of traumas and burdens everybody is Tanner at zero yes and you just need to try and get back there yeah is there a wistfulness for times of the past there sort of nostalgia for a better time I don't know when it was maybe before you were born maybe when your parents were around or something yeah or I don't know slightly older generation would have that kind of wistfulness American Dream Etc yeah what do

jenzi think of the current moment do they think that it's liberating because it seems like there's two things going on at once that life is horrible and terrible and I have anxious attachment and maybe autism yeah and also I'm fully liberated to be myself I can be whatever I want to be I can go boss my way through promiscuity and sell my body on only fans and make loads of money and I don't need no man yeah so which one is it I know there's like in anxxiety among young women but also this really loud

I don't care message um I think I think young people in general are very nostalgic for a time they they haven't known which is a time before smartphones and social media so if you look at like Jonathan height again he did a survey recently and found that a lot of jenzy wish things like Tik Tok and Instagram never existed which is kind of unusual you don't really get that with any other ventions like he was talking about the bike and like um the hair dryer like it's really not that level of I'm I use this

all the time and wish that I didn't um and I think there's a lot of that ambient feeling among j z of like longing for a time for example When Love wasn't like reacting to someone's Instagram story or swiping on Tinder um you know some young women have never experienced love before it became that uh like the mystery of having a crush on someone and falling in love like now you just you can't wonder what they're up to you just kind of skip through their Instagram story or look at their Facebook profile and it's all

listed out there so I think there's a real feeling of like disenchantment with the modern world where it's like everything has become so commodified and cheap and there's like a Nostalgia for a time maybe that didn't exist but everyone tells me the '90s were way better so I'm just going to assume they're telling the truth but a time before phones and the internet and the commodification of everything became so extreme um because now everything I I try and explain to people like the very concept of things has changed so friendship for my generation versus friendship

for my parents generation friendship now is like your friends online you maybe have a snap streak that you keep up you pose for each other's Instagram uh you don't really necessarily hang out as much as you used to there's not really again friends don't give each other guidance or tell each other what to do because that would be rude and toxic um and so the the definition of friendship has changed in this herea the definition of Love Has Changed of flirting everything um which is why like you can talk about kids being on screens and

it's kind of sad but like the actual truth of what's changed is insane and the fact that young people are anxious and can't cope with it is not because they have a disorder it's because they're the first to try and feel their way through a completely different world yeah with no rules or strategies or archetypes or stories with a generation that can't relate doesn't relate you've just them how to use the iPad yeah what are they going to be able to teach you about how to handle this yeah and that's kind of why you can't

blame them for not giving guidance because the world moves so fast there's no such there's no wisdom anymore you you can't pass anything down so now you just have to keep up with the kids it's irrelevant as soon as it leaves your Labs yeah and I know you have adults like talking like teenagers and using the same social media platforms being informed of the new trends which has always been a thing but now now it feels like adults go to young people to get guidance about the world um and that makes young people anxious because

they're like where are the adults telling you what to do that's a very good question Freya India ladies and gentlemen Freya I love everything that you're writing it's really great to see you go from strength to strength I think it's really important stuff where should people go they want to check out everything that you do my substack is just fre india. co.uk uh it's called girls and yeah that's just where about girls and young women and hopefully I'll have a book announcement soon exciting cool I look forward to it thank you until next time bye

thank you thank you very much for tuning in M tasty interesting conversation with Freya there how about Lise Perry also here also very tasty also very interesting dig in come on