Name: Journalist Abigail Shrier on Gen Z's Anxiety Problem and Why Therapy May Not Be the Solution
Uploaded: 2024-02-27T18:06:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Journalist Abigail Shrier on Gen Z's Anxiety Problem and Why Therapy May Not Be the Solution' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Journalist Abigail Shrier on Gen Z's Anxiety Problem and Why Therapy May Not Be the Solution' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-27. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- And one of the hardest, most worrisome parts
of this generation is that they have the lowest sense
of efficacy.
They report an external locus 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 don't feel up to it.
I talked to, there's a friend of mine I talk to,
I call every year on her birthday
and she's a research scientist, cell biologist.
And every year she invites kids to her lab
for an internship who are top kids, pre-med 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 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 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 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 them differently.
But I think that there's, 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, thousand, 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.
Hmm.
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, a psychologist overwhelmingly agreed.
They were aware of the 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
minimize 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 would 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.
Uh, 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 and he was the one that I was referring to there.
And, um, first of all, he, he always starts a therapy by, 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 him with an actual problem like chronic bedwetting,
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, like, 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?
I don't think the trans identity fits you.
Right.
You know, that doesn't seem to make, make sense to me.
On 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 boys, starts with little boys and you see it in men.
It's overwhelmingly male phenomenon and it always starts ages two to four.
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 get scared of the blowback as well.
Yeah, sure.
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.
Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it.
I never really considered it.
I never considered that thinking about your problems all the time and talking
about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow.
That's 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 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 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 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 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 things still happen.
And the amazing story of human history 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 are responsible in their jobs.
They show up for work.
They can be depended 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, 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 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 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.
What do they have, though?
If you are 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 don't think so, like for young people that get treated like shit and told
that they're nothing and useless.
And that sort of, like, 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?
Right.
So when I say, you know, I'm talking about teasing.
I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through.
Okay.
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 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 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.
Yeah.
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 things.
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
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 that you just said about experiencing 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.
Right.
Because they get scared of the anxiety.
But if you talk to, like, one of the best examples is UFC fighters.
UFC fighters, before they fight, they're all nervous.
They're all scared.
Every one of them.
Terrified.
And they don't want to fight if they're not.
Right.
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 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 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 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.
Because 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 medicated.
That will to make a big change often happens after we've been brought low.

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

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- And one of the hardest, most worrisome parts
of this generation is that they have the lowest sense
of efficacy.
They report an external locus 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 don't feel up to it.
I talked to, there's a friend of mine I talk to,
I call every year on her birthday
and she's a research scientist, cell biologist.
And every year she invites kids to her lab
for an internship who are top kids, pre-med 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 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 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 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 them differently.
But I think that there's, 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, thousand, 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.
Hmm.
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, a psychologist overwhelmingly agreed.
They were aware of the 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
minimize 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 would 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.
Uh, 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 and he was the one that I was referring to there.
And, um, first of all, he, he always starts a therapy by, 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 him with an actual problem like chronic bedwetting,
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, like, 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?
I don't think the trans identity fits you.
Right.
You know, that doesn't seem to make, make sense to me.
On 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 boys, starts with little boys and you see it in men.
It's overwhelmingly male phenomenon and it always starts ages two to four.
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 get scared of the blowback as well.
Yeah, sure.
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.
Until I heard the title of your book and I read the synopsis of it.
I never really considered it.
I never considered that thinking about your problems all the time and talking
about your problems all the time literally make the problems grow.
That's 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 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 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 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 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 things still happen.
And the amazing story of human history 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 are responsible in their jobs.
They show up for work.
They can be depended 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, 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 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 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.
What do they have, though?
If you are 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 don't think so, like for young people that get treated like shit and told
that they're nothing and useless.
And that sort of, like, 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?
Right.
So when I say, you know, I'm talking about teasing.
I'm not talking about the horrific abuse that some kids have gone through.
Okay.
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 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 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.
Yeah.
And we're going in with medication, and we're deleting things like anxiety,
depression.
Anxiety helps you make beautiful