The therapization of everyone and everything (07-25-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetelendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. I want to thank Matt Harris from our sister station, Mixed one oh seven nine. He sent me a piece that was over at Substack by an English writer. Like she's English, not that she I mean, yes, she writes in English too, but she is from England, okay, and her name is Freya India. And she wrote a piece and I'll give you the headline here, and I'm curious, think about what the headline is first, and then I'm gonna explain her rationale behind it and see if you agree. So here's the headline. Nobody has a personality anymore except Pete Calener. No, I'm kidding. I added that last part. Nobody has a personality anymore. Okay. I think it's a little sweeping. It's a bit of a generalization, okay, but the truth is general. But what she's talking about is the over therapization if that's a word. If it's not, I just made it, okay, trademark, that's mine. The over therapization of predominantly Western society, predominantly among younger people. And here's her explanation. It's a very lengthy piece. I'm gonna give you the highlights of it here. Therapy speak is what she calls it. Therapy speak has taken over our language. And when I read that, well, let me give you the next two sentences. She says, it is ruining how we talk about romance and relationships, narrowing how we think about hurt and suffering, and now we are losing the words for who we are. Nobody has a personality anymore. I blame the Bachelor series, Okay, against my will I have. That's not even true. But I have seen many episodes, too many I would. I'm embarrassed to say how many it would be. I have not counted them, but it's too many. I can say that, but I'm not going to stop, mainly because my wife watches them, and so it's the end of the night, I've finished whatever I'm working on the show prep or whatever I'm doing, and then it's like, okay, I'll sit down and watch some TV with her, And oh my gosh, why do we have to watch this? I say, But deep down I know it's junk food, and because I don't eat junk food anymore, this is my guilty pleasure. And now she's watching because there was there's like all of these different permutations of the show. Right, They've got the Golden Bachelor. Now that's the one that she's got on and and so I see, you know, I see these episodes, and I don't, like, I vaguely remember some of some of the people, because it's like a whole world of Bachelor Bachelorette people that are on the shows and then they get voted off or they get they don't get their roses, and then they go they do their podcasts and like they're all in group chats and they do you know, celebrity events or I guess Reality stars events or or or Bachelor event. I don't know. So they obviously have outside of the show interactions and once you're in what do they call it Bachelor Nation or something like that, And so I say all of that. There are all these different permutations of the show I have seen, whether it's the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, the Golden Bachelor, the Golden Bachelorette, those are the old people. Then you've got Bachelor's or yeah, Bachelor in Paradise where they take like a bunch of the old contestants that didn't get picked and they put them on a beach for like two weeks and then they like swap people out, swap them in, and there's all these machinations going on. Anyway, I'm too far down this rabbit hole. My only point in all of that, I felt like I had to justify my watching it. But the only reason I bring all of that up is because I noticed a while back. But it's getting worse. They all say the same things. There's a language that they're speaking as citizens of Bachelor Nation. They use the same types of words all the time. Thank you for sharing that. Oh that must be very difficult. Oh I'm sorry you experience that trauma. I want to be you know, have open communication. Right, They're they're they're using this these therapy words constantly, and it would drive me nuts if I was talking to somebody like that, if I'm going out on a day with somebody and first off, Christy would kill me, but secondly like I wouldn't even know what you're saying to me. Back to this piece by Freya India, she says, in a therapeutic culture, every personality trait becomes a problem to be solved. Anything too human, every habit, every eccentricity, every feeling too strong. It has to be labeled and explained. And this inevitability, this inevitably expands over time, encompassing more and more of us, until nobody is normal. Some say young people are making their disorders their whole personality. No, it's worse than that. Now they are being taught that their normal personality is the disorder. According to a twenty twenty four survey, seventy two percent of gen Z girls said that quote, mental health challenges are an important part of my identity. Yikes, mental health challenges are an important part of your identity? Do you even know who you are? Twenty seven percent of boomer men said the same thing. She says, this is part of a deeper instinct in modern life. I think to explain everything, or try to explain everything, psychologically, scientifically, evolutionarily, everything about us is caused, categorized, and can be corrected. We talk in theories, frameworks, system structures, drives, motivations, mechanisms, but in exchange for explanation, we have lost mystery, romance and lately ourselves. I'm reminded there was a poem I read a long time ago. I don't remember what it said. I don't remember the title of it, but it was something on the order of like, curse you science, something like that, I hate you science, science, you stink whatever. It was an older poem, so they obviously didn't use this language, but the theme of the poem was that, you know, science has come along and robbed us of all of these fantasies, these these stories that you know, the ancients had created to explain the world around them, and some of those, you know, taught us things about the human condition, the stories about you know, the stars in the sky and what are and oh there's you know, here's the you know, the different signs up in the sky that you know, Oh there's the Taurus and the you know, here's the hunter and that means this the zodiac signs, all that stuff, and science by explaining things, it robs the beauty and the mystery and the fantasy. And I think that's what she's saying here. She says, we've lost the sentimental ways we used to use to describe people. Now you are always late to things because you're not lovably forgetful. Okay, to be fair, anybody who's late to stuff all the time is not lovable in any way. I would just say, no, I'm kidding. I know. Look, I have a philosophy on this. There are only two kinds of people in life, those who are chronically late and those who are chronically early and the people and no, you're never on time. You're always early. If you're on time, that means you're early. Okay, you're in the early camp. And the early camp people, which I am in. We are usually pretty hacked off at the late camp people, which is why you have to tell them to be someplace a half hour before the actual reservation. Right. Anyway, she's saying, it's not that you're lovably forgetful. It's not because you're scatterbrained and interesting and secretly loved for never arriving on time. Again, that can't happen. But no, no, it's because you have ADHD. You are shy and you stare at your feet when people talk to you. Not because you are your mother's child, Not because you're gentle and sweet and blushed the same way she did. No, no, now, it's autism. You're the way you are, not because you have a soul, but because of your symptoms and diagnoses. You are not an amalgam of your ancestors or curious constellation of traits, but the clinical result of a timeline of childhood events. Every heartfelt, annoying, interesting, piece of you is categorized. The fond ways your family describe you, they get medicalized. The pieces of us, once written into wedding vals, read out in eulogies, remembered with a smile, now live on doctor's notes and mental health assessments and betterhelp applications. We are not people anymore. We have been products for a long time, and these are our labels. What do you think? Is she right? You know? Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos, preserve your stories with Creative Video, started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. The piece that I'm reading from is written by Freya India and that's spelled Frya or maybe it's Freya. I don't know. India is spelled in the traditional way. She's a writer from England and the title of the piece is called Nobody Has a Personality Anymore and she's talking about the therapy speak that we now are incorporating more and more into our daily language, and it is warping the way we see each other and think about ourselves. And let me read a couple of texts from the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick GMC. It's easy to use mental health issues as a crutch for bad behavior, but bad behavior is still bad behavior. That's from Bob Gwynn says, sounds like a great article. What was the author in title and source? Which I just gave you? So there you go. You're welcome stance, as if you've been taught that all you are is a massive cells in essence, another brick in the wall. It's easy to see your normal self as the problem, but if you believe you're something wonderfully designed by God individually for a specific person, you'll see your normal self as beautiful and no one can convince you otherwise. I like it, Stan, she writes. We can't talk about character either, like there are no generous people anymore. People pleasers? Right, Oh, they're a people pleaser, anxiously attached, codependent, traumatized, insecure, overachievers, neurotically ambitious. She goes on and on like undiagnosed, adhd emotionally stunted, all of these different phrases. Right, there are no feelings at all anymore, only dysregulated nervous systems. Every human experience we have as evidence of something, and the purpose of our lives is to piece it all perfectly together. Like if I could just if I could just identify and therapize myself, I can correct this thing. I could be a different person, I can be perfect. Right, this search for perfection through the diagnoses of the things that make us unique. It's just personality. Which, by the way, she doesn't write about any of this in the piece, but there is if I'm going to do like a Kamala Harris inspired ven diagram here, there is some overlap with the transgender issue, right that when you have a kid, a little girl who wants to wear jeans and clime trees, we used to just call, oh, she's a tomboy, not that she's not a girl, right, but now we've got to medicalize that, We got to therapize that. She says, I asked my grandparents. Later in this piece, she says, I asked my grandparents, who have been married for six decades, why they chose each other and I got a clumsy answer. She says, they never really thought about it. They disliked each other. She says, maybe I'm too nostalgic about the past, but there's something there that has been lost that in that moment, I struggled to relate to a simpler way of living and an arrogance to us now seeing people in the past is somehow incomplete and unsolved when we are this anxious and confused as we are now. I think this is why my generation gets stuck on things like relationships and parenthood. The commitments that we stumble over, the decisions that we endlessly debate, the traditions we find hard to hold on to, and often the ones we can't easily explain. We're trying to explain the inexplicable. It's hard to defend romantic love against staying single because it isn't safe or controllable or particularly rational. Same with having children. Put these things into a pro con list and they stop making logical sense. They cannot be calculated or codified. Ask older generations why'd you start a family? And often they didn't even really think it through. Ask older generations, you know why they picked their mate, like, oh, I just I fell in love with her, And maybe that isn't as crazy as we've been led to believe. Maybe that isn't so reckless. Maybe there is something human to them. She goes on to say later in the piece that the world is becoming more complicated. We want control and certainty. We take comfort in finding out the cause of something, of all things. And yeah, there are people that are helped by diagnoses, no doubt about it. They can't function and find relief in being understood. But she suspects it's fewer than we think that. Actually, not everybody really needs to go through this deep dive therapization. Many more, she said, have been convinced that the point of life is to classify and explain everything. And here's the deal. It's making everyone miserable. It's making everyone miserable, and I suspect it's because it's directing your gaze inward. You're microanalyzing yourself. This is narcissists by the lake looking at his own reflection in the water, falling in love with himself. Right, it's this self centered, this turning inward and focusing every single thing on yourself, She said, I find it strange that we think this is freeing, this brutal knowing, this search for the meaning of everything and the explanation for everything, that this self surveillance is the liberated way to live, that we are somehow less repressed being boxed in by medical labels. I would add to this that once you define what it is that you think is wrong with you, right in using these bachelorette kind of words from the show Bachelor Bachelorette Bachelor Nation words, when you start overanalyzing and therapizing all of this stuff, that once you define these things, then like you have to overcome it, because this is what's wrong with you, right Oh, this trauma, this is what happened to me. And then of course you got the victimization mentality, the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, and then you try to you're going to have to overcome it or you're going to be it forever. And that means there's never an opportunity for you to reinvent yourself. And this ties into the tech component of it as well. I grew up Long Island, New York, I moved eight hundred miles away, and I got to reinvent myself and it just so happened that there was very little that I needed to No, I'm kidding, no, but I got to grow. I got to be a different person. I wasn't around anybody that knew anything about me, right, That's how I was able to con so many wealthy people out of their money. They thought I was a prince, but I wasn't. But this is now lost because you don't get to move someplace else and escape your digital footprint right your Instagram photos, your Facebook reels, and your tweets and stuff. There's no reinvention. To me. I think that's sad because you have to be able to reinvent yourself. And now that's a lot harder. It's a lot harder. She says. This is the cause of so much misery. We taught a generation that the meaning of life is not found outside in the world, but inside their own heads. Because here's the thing. We can't ever explain everything. It's an impossibility. At some point, we have to stop analyzing and seeing through things and accept the unknowable. All we can ever really achieve is faith some humor at ourselves. Too be able to laugh at your it's impossible to heal from being human and this is why the mental health industry has infinite demand. Explain anything long enough and you will find a pathology. Dig deep enough and you will disappear. We keep being told that the bravest thing now is to do the work. But I think it takes courage not to explain everything, to release control, to resist that impulse to turn inwards, and the wisdom too to accept that we will never understand ourselves through anything other than how we act, how we live, and how we treat other people. And I think she's exactly right. I think she is exactly right on that you will understand yourself and how you behave, how you live your life, and how you treat other people. We're thinking about ourselves enough, I would say too much. All right, If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let me get to some messages here, Melissa writes in It's a Pete tweet. She says, I believe society took aim at boys decades ago in the framework of the fraya in Freya India article you're reading. Christina Hoff Summers addressed this with her book The War Against Boys back in two thousand. I remember that book. Rather than letting boys be boys, they were to be labeled as hyperactive and tamed with medication. It's a valuable tool for the mothers of boys who just want to raise good men. And Carolina Bulldog tweets home run Pete, who was that again? I must have it headline nobody has a personality Anymore? Written by Freya India fr e y a Freya or Freya India and it's over on substack. But I'm sure if you type in the Google machine nobody has a person Anymore, it'll probably pop up. I post all of the show links over at thepetpod dot com and they're free, so you can go and see them, and I'll have it linked up there after the show, as I always do, although I do have to go to the store on the way home, so it'll probably be like four o'clock or so. But anyway, I always post my show prep over there, but I do it after the programs. This way, you can't read ahead, okay, I don't want you reading everything ahead, and then you're like, I have to listen to Pete now because I already read all of his links. Also, I have a whole stack of stuff that I never get to, so I don't post it up there, and then people are like, oh, Pete didn't get to twenty articles today, so all right, let me finish the piece here, she says. She concludes the piece by saying, be brave enough to be normal. Leave yourself unsolved. Who knows? It's a mystery written in the stars from somewhere unknown. Holding onto your personality is a declaration that you are human. You're a person, not a product. No other explanation is needed from the text line. This is a fantastic article to share, Pete. Thank you. I wish more would share articles like that. Well, I got it from Matt Harris. Credit where it's due. He works down the hall at our sister station, and he sent me this link the other day saying, hey, I thought you might be interested in this content, and I am. I was. He knows me so well. I've known him for twenty five years, so he knows me very well. That was from Deborah Kim, says Pete. So many comments. I am going to go find her article. Oh my aching elbow. She is spot on. Thank you for sharing this. I don't know what the elbow, I guess from typing, John says Pete. Outstanding segment. I was a psychology major at University of Maryland back in the early nineties. What I am seeing today in the mental health field, and what my teenage children are going through, and what I see our society going through is an incredible misalignment. Your segment, I would say this article nailed it on the head. Thank you for spreading the word. Well, I'm happy to do with John. Is it true that everybody who goes into the psychology major coursework? Is it true that they're all crazy? They're trying to fix themselves? First, That's what I heard. Sorry, suffering from mental health issues, not crazy. Can't use that word anymore. That's what I just remember hearing that at some point from buddy of mine, who is a psych maic. That's what he said. So, if you know, blame blame the psych majors, because that's what he told me. Hashtag not all psych majors obviously. Look, I've always been sort of fascinated in this, in this stuff. You know, why do people? Because this is why I ended up being drawn more to the philosophy coursework. In college. I had a so I've said this before, I've I had a major in mass communication broadcast and hopefully like that shows, but the minor that I had was in political science but I had also taken enough coursework for a minor in philosophy, but my university did not grant double minors, and I am still bitter. Okay, That's why I keep mentioning it, you know, thirty years later, is because I had enough for the philosophy minor. I was always drawn to the question of why you hear it? When I do interviews with people, I always I try to figure out the why. And that's why like psychology as it stands over sort of on this other plane, if you will, from philosophy, where philosophy examines, you know, theories and it looks, you know, asks the question of why, what does it mean? And that sort of stuff, But the psychology says, you know, why did you think that way? Well, let's find the answer, right, and here's the answer, and you construct a vocabulary around that and then you can pinpoint the thing. This is why you're thinking the way you're thinking. This is why you behaved badly, this is the why. Like they're seeking the explanation for the why. But it's all turned inward, right, Whereas I think philosophy is more outward looking, and I think that's why I'm kind of interested in some of these psychology related topics, but they didn't capture my attention like philosophy did because I look more outward. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm a little I feel like I'm looking too much inward right now? I do? I feel like I'm talking too much about myself. That's the middle child syndrome for you. What can I say? Oh my gosh, I just therapized myself. There you go. See that. See how difficult it is to break out of this? Ah John replied, It is true that people get into the psych majors because they're crazy and they want to try to fix themselves first. It is true. All right, So now I've gotten this from multiple sources, so now it's true. Okay, that's why he says. I'm in technology in the banking industry. Now that's fair. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three six seven in seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Aashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. Brett Winterbow from three to six here on WBT weekdays. As always, he joins us on Friday for the final segment of the program, for a little segment we call pregaming. Welcome Brett, it's great to be here. We usually also follow it up. I appear on his show for the first segment on Fridays for a little segment he likes to call the hangover. Yes sir, but today, yes sir, there will be no hangover. I will not be hanging over. So today we're just pregaming with no hangover. And it's my fault. But that's okay, pregaming with no hangover. Like, isn't that the dream? It is the dream. So but you know what, can I just say one thing. I'll make a deal with you next next Friday, I'll do two segments with you to make it up. Well, no, I would have to do two segments with you, because every time I'm not on your show or you're not on mine for pregame or the hangover. We there are problems. Staticky they're no, not staticky. We got that all over the place today. No, we get we get abused. I mentioned this last week, which was it was our return after a brief hiatus, because we had the temerity to go on vacation we did, and then you did some station event out on the scene someplace. So anyway, we went like three or four straight weeks with no pregame, no no hangover, and so like it was sort of like a it was like a dry July, right, So so anyway, but yeah, we started getting abused by your friend John, John John John Stewart. Yes, he was very angry at the lack of like he was writing tersely worded attorney like letters or okay texts on the text line driven by liberty buick GMC that that like, how dare you rob us of these segments? We demand more segments now in compensation, like very legallyes kind of stuff. You know what we're gonna do from now one. So I just want to point out for John if he's listening, and he probably is always, John, you created this monster because you're the one that introduced Brett to Michael Wattley, and Michael Wattley is going to be on with Brett, yes at three o'clock thereby bumping me. So you don't get a hangover today, John, because of your own actions. Wow, there you go. That's my ru I feel bad, I feel badly Is it bad? Or badly. I think it's badly. So I got a question for you. Yes, have you heard this story that more singles are getting romantic with AI bots in DC than in most big cities. It's according to match data. Not surprised robot Bay's you know Bay? You like that term? Bay? I hate it? Just another example of how Washington's loneliness crisis is playing out. Why not just go to the park? Which one? Any of them? Not Rock Creek. The nationwide Singles in America study surveyed over five thousand people ages eighteen to ninety eight. Single DC men and gen zers were more likely to have flirted with a bot. No, come on, that's the end of That's the end of it all. So here's the thing. So bad. It is bad, no doubt about it. But I did have a thought, because you know me, I try to find yes, I try to find the positive in things. This is what people always say about me. You're a giver that too, So I thought, Okay, is there another explanation for why this would be the case other than the obvious that you just articulated? And I immediately felt the same when I read it too. However, there's another potential what if they're practicing. No, you don't know that. Maybe they are practicing. Maybe they're like like a putting will. This yes, like maybe this is maybe these pickup lines will work. I don't even know. Do the kids use them? They don't. They don't even use the just they don't even they put no effort in. Hey, hey, they don't even do that. They stare. It's the whole stare, the gen Z stare, right, Yeah, because we asked about you, asked Isaac, who is the the official representative of the gen Z generation on staff, and uh, and he said, it doesn't mean anything, right, They just it's like a short circuit. It does, it just stops. It Isn't that all? It's just so sad. Yeah, it's just terrible. What have we done to them? We didn't do anything. We were not enough involved with them. We should have forced. That's a classic gen X response. Man, And I'm gen X. I can say this, of course, but like there's a lot of gen z s like they were raised by their parents or exers, but they're not. They're not. That group of gen xers are not as cool as the current the prior crop of gen X. Now you're bifurcating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because like once you hit like nineteen eighty, that still counts born in eighties. Seventy nine eighty. Like, that's a different, that's a different. I call those tweeners tweakers. Tweeners. Oh, tweeners rhymes with Anthony Weener, right, tweener. So you're it's like you're he was dating those You're like, right, you're on the cusp. You can also call them cuspers if you if you prefer, that is so great, right. So it's like people who are there like right at the edge of either like where the generations, you know, blend together. Because it's not a hard line. It's not like January one. Okay, now everybody's different. Okay, but hold on a second. The dating, the robot thing or whatever. That is, it's just flirting. They say, once upon a time, flirted with a bot once upon a time. And I knew nobody in my circle that did this. People would get on those phone call numbers and would uh oh yeah, have really body conversations. Were they the nine nine nine numbers or whatever those things? I don't I don't even know because I was so I was so popular and hanging out with people. I didn't need to even know what the number was. You never saw any of those I remember seeing like the business card for one of them on a sidewalk city. I just knew that they existed. Oh yeah, yeah, they were like nine nine nine that it was whatever it was. I don't know, but you know, you got to put the work in. But maybe they maybe people called those lines to learn how to talk dirty. Really, you know what? Okay, how about if I how about if I if I cut the baby in half? Can I do that? Okay, here we go, votainer. It's on the wall. The rule must use votaining. Votainer. Votainer. Those kids could be using that artificial device as a date tainer. I like it. If that gets hold before votainer does, though, I'm going to be angry. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you, so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.