Journalist Abigail Shrier on Gen Z's Anxiety Problem and Why Therapy May Not Be the Solution

the jogan experience and one of the hardest most worrisome parts of this generation is that they have the they have the lowest sense of efficacy they have they report an external Locust of control meaning they don't think they can improve their lives see Millennials thought they could do anything right they are the Mark Zuckerberg generation and that's why we had so many Tech Founders in that generation we're not seeing that with these young people they don't want to be in charge they're afraid and they feel they don't feel up to it I I I talk

to uh there's a friend of mine I um I talk I call every year on her birthday and she's a research scientist cell biologist and uh every year she invites kids to her lab for an internship who are top kids Med Premed graduates from college before they go on to med school and she said to me in the last decade when I called her this year for her birthday she said to me I can't believe you're writing about this generation they are so different and I said tell me why she said I'm seeing the smartest

most most prepared kids and they're afraid to run their own experiments they tell me they're getting ready they're working on their skills they're not yet up to up to it and they constantly report to me about their mental health how they're feeling today they can't just take a chance and go with it it's weird because as a parent like you want to hear kids out and when they're having like some sort of anxiety and issue you want to talk with them and you want to talk through it you want to give you don't want to

tell them hey you're going to have to suck it up I never say that and I probably should I mean I don't know if I should but I mean if I had boys I probably would I think I would probably treat him differently but I think that there's there there is there's a there's a fine line like where is the point of diminishing returns like where is where is it valuable to address feelings and anxiety and and thoughts and is it irresponsible to do so without giving them tools to mitigate those things and along with

those tools to explain to them that there's things that they're going to have to do in this life that are very difficult but that there's a great reward in doing these very difficult things so the problem I as I see it is not that you're not saying suck it up it's that no one ever says suck it up no matter how minor the scratch to these kids okay and sometimes being told you'll live remember when when dad used to say you'll live or you know shake it off we never hear Shake It Off anymore no

one says it so they don't know they can overcome even minor injuries and the truth is they can they can but but they recently did these studies on these you know coping techniques they they taught coping techniques to um uh teenagers th over a thousand teenagers in Australia it was called the wise teens program they talked to um uh and that was the point it was just to help them with emotional regulation and it turned out it made kids sadder and more anxious they measured this and the reason was regularly ruminating on your bad feelings

can make you feel worse did you talk to therapists when you did this yeah a lot of therapists yeah how many of them agree with you so there was a huge split the academic research psychologists overwhelmingly agreed they were aware of literature and they said yeah these are bad practices here are things we shouldn't be doing with kids what was interesting is a lot of the clinical therapists were either either minimized the risks of therapy or denied that there were any but isn't that like Jiffy Lube like when you tell them you don't need to

change your oil that much well it's their business to change oil right exactly exactly so like I talked to this one amazing uh you know child psychologist who said to me I start by having my patients sign a waiver in which they acknowledge that there can be risks and the reason I do that is because I don't want them to experience harm so if they see that their worries are getting worse they have to tell me huh but do they would they I mean it seems like the therapist is the one who's in control right

right the therapist is the expert they're they're the the one who has the authority right well I mean you know this one was Camilo Ortiz was one of the you know he was the one I talked to the one that I was referring to there and um first of all he he always starts a therap by setting the number of sessions it's not he doesn't treat a kid like an annuity you're going to you know be my income stream for years right he attacks and and also they come to with an actual problem like chronic

bed wedding like you know various kinds of phobia um you know there are people who treat anorexia they're tackling a problem right and those some of those therapies are extremely necessary and very successful um when this person gets this person that you were just describing if they get someone that comes to them that doesn't have a real problem do they turn them away well you can ask but very often therapists don't turn them away that's the problem right too many therapists I mean you know I saw you know I think back to the first book

and I would ask like was there ever did anyone have a therapist who said you know what you I don't think the trans identity fits you right you know that doesn't seem to make make sense to me in almost no cases did the therapist stop a girl from going down that road no you don't have gender dysphoria listen it's mostly little boys okay it's overwhelmingly little starts with little boys and you see it in men it's overwhelmingly male phenomenon and it always starts ages 2 to 4 so you discovering this at age 12 let me

tell you something with your friends it's so unlikely we don't even need to go there they never said that well I think they they get scared of the blowback as well right what they would hear from their parents you're telling my child they don't have a problem when they have a problem well also the incentive is for therapists to treat the least sick for the longest period of time that's the incentive yeah because you don't want the schizophrenic patient who really needs you right they're really hard to treat almost impossible almost impossible right you don't

want the bipolar patient right some people will refuse to see those patients but a teenager with a little social anxiety parent pays on time they're not getting violent in your session oh boy wow you know I never really considered that until your book till I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it I I never really considered it I never considered that thinking about your problems all the time and talking about your problems all the time lit literally make the problems grow that's right right I mean it's the number one

symptom of depression is what they call rumination this pathological obsessing over your pain yeah that's why stuff like exercise that's one of the reasons aside from chemical reasons one of the reasons that doing anything you know that running errands is good for your mental health getting out of your house and accomplishing anything yeah is good for you but sitting around talking and thinking about your problems that's a bad habit and the best cognitive behavioral therapists and others you know the dialectical behavioral therapists the ones who do really well with depression the first thing they do

is try to break that un that that bad pattern but a lot of therapists just indulge it it's also it's a luxury that's provided to you by A Life That's fairly safe you know people that live in war torn countries and have very difficult lives they they don't have that luxury of just sitting around all day and doing nothing and oh I go outside and run errands that's going to make me feel better you're dealing with like real stress that's right and I think that there's an expression that someone told me once and I say

it all the time the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you if it's you got a dent in your car or it's your parents get killed in a car accident either one of those things is the worst thing depending upon the level of whatever stress or anxiety or horrible things that you've experienced in your life that sort of measure that's your watermark for what you can and can't tolerate that's right and what we should be telling kids is that the Amazing Story of of human history is

of resilience it used to be the case that people lost a sibling that was common people lost a parent that still happens right these these things still happen and the Amazing Story of human history is that doesn't mean it's not painful but of resilience they get on they aren't permanently suffering with mental illness or mental problem they form families they they are responsible in their jobs they show up for work they can be dependent on by their friends that's the story of human survival and resilience and unfortunately we're telling kids no you've had trauma yeah

yeah you've had trauma and you need to work through that trauma right it's not just this is just a part of life and you know what you need to do is just go out there and live your life and you'll get over it and you know the thing is the truth Tru is that most kids and most people did in other words that didn't mean that Dad didn't lose his job and they were forced out of the you know they had to lose their house or these things happen they've happened in every family and I

think one of the many reasons that kids don't know this today is we've cut them off from extended family the story of their grandparents is a story of resilience in almost every case right you think you hear about your family history and you're going to hear a story of pain and survival and resilience and overcoming but today you've got teenagers who say oh I can't drive past my middle school where I was bullied because of my PTSD they don't have PTSD but they think they do and what what do they have though if you weree

bullied that does have a significant psychological effect on kids and it can lead to lifelong depression I don't know that it can I mean think so like for young people that like get treated like and and told that they're nothing and useless and that sort of like when I I I didn't really get bullied in high school but I remember going back towards my high school when I was like 19 and I'd get anxiety I'd get weirded out by it you know right so let me just say yeah you start feeling like you used to

feel when you went there absolutely but that's not a PTSD flashback right what is that that's a bad memory and we have them and by the way when I say you can't have you know bullying can mean anything right so when I say you you know I I'm talking about teasing I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through but do you have anxiety yeah anxiety exists for a reason it's actually adaptive and so there are benefits to anxiety and there are negative parts of anxiety now I'm not talking about anxiety

disorder we don't want anyone to have suffer with an anxiety disorder that interferes with daily life but a little anxiety feeling bad and a bad memory that's not only part of life but it can have positive effects so some of the positive effects of anxiety is it helps with performance if I weren't nervous for this this right now I wouldn't have prepared so much to make sure I remembered what I was going to talk about right and we don't want someone with no anxiety crossing a street because he's not going to look for cars right

and we're going in with medication and we're deleting things like anxiety depression anxiety helps you make beautiful memories you remember Christmas morning because of all the nerves about it ahead of time or you remember your first kiss partially because of the anx that's why the memories are so clear right and when we go in and we give kids a pill for that not only are they not de developing an emotional musculature they're going to need as adults but we're actually they're losing a really important part of The Human Experience like feeling low because you were

dumped and then seeing you can get over it right that's a very important thing what you just said about experience anxiety it actually helps you be sharper it does it really does you have to be nervous before you do things that's right that are difficult it's just that uncomfortable feeling people avoid because they get scared of the anxiety but if you talk to like like one of the best examples is UFC fighters UFC fighters before they they're all nervous they're all scared every one of them terrified and they don't want to fight if they're not

if you if you're too calm and too relaxed you actually have bad performances and I'll tell you something else same is true with depression now I'm not talking about major depressive disorder that's chronic and needs treatment of course right but but a little if you have something bad happen to you you go through a divorce you go through something hard okay that doesn't mean you should never try you know use meds or or or therapy if you absolutely need it but there can be good and here's what can be good okay depression is adaptive okay

and the purpose I learned this from talking to interviewing a lot of evolutionary psychologists and one of the good things about depression is it shuts us down so we don't do anything rash and we think about what change we might want to make in our life because some sometimes we need to make a change and if we just medicate away the bad feelings the worst feelings might be dampened but we also might be locked into that low State and never make the change we need to make right H cuz we'll lose the motivation that's the

thing we won't say you know what he treated me badly I'm tired of this I'm not getting back together with him right we might just accept it and keep on right especially if you're medicated especially if you're medic that will to make a big change often happens after we've been brought low