How do you navigate conversations with dear friends who are steeped in a therapy-as-worldview mindset? More specifically, when conversation becomes so littered with watered down therapy jargon, overused or inappropriately used, what's the best way to keep the conversation going without endorsing/encouraging this misguided approach, or pausing the conversation to argue about the topic of therapy culture?
And what about when such people start "diagnosing" everyone in your family?! Yes my six-year-old son stood up three times during dinner. No I don't think he needs to be tested for ADHD.
Inviting single people and young couples into the joy of family life is all well and good, but how does that make achieving family life more practical for young people? It is far more difficult for young people to buy houses today than it was decades ago, and as much as we want marriage to be the cornerstone, not capstone of adult life, family life can seem unattainable when buying, not a mansion, but a modest three bedroom two bathroom is out of reach. Although egg freezing is expensive, it’s less expensive than a house
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but the VAST majority of what we see from the Right these days, coming from the very top and permeating the whole movement, is "Libs are gross and evil and we loathe them and want them to suffer." I still know lots of people in the social conservative movement in which I worked for decades, and I see this attitude everywhere. Your goals are commendable, but if your hope is to take that movement and direct it "to credibly present ourselves as rooting for others to find happiness," I'm afraid you've got your work cut out for you.
I don’t disagree descriptively! I think this tendency also exists on the left directed right, but it’s less exuberant/more fringe-y for now.
This is pretty corrosive to politics and persons. I push back where I have a shot. And writing this for commonplace was a good opportunity to reach people who might be persuadable.
I suppose RFK Jr. believes death (instead of intellectual disability) is the good of his opponents, and that Mullin and Miller believe to be tortured or left to rot in prison in a strange country is the good of immigrants’.
About classical schools....After my parents divorced, my mother hovered between two good schools. One was the University of Illinois Lab School, which was hard to get into. That school offered a "subfreshman" year that combined 7th and 8th grade study into one school year. The other was the local Catholic school, which had a superb music program. My mother had taught me to love music, and she also wanted challenging study for me after I had eased through grade school without ever having to work. I was accepted at the lab school, so I went there. It turned out that Girl Scouts and church were not intellectual enough there -- and being around college students wasn't good for me either. If I had a choice now, I'd choose the Catholic school. I had wanted to become Catholic as a child. But who knows how that would have worked out? As Aslan says, "you can never know what would have happened had you made a different choice."
The most "different-from-my-norms" place where I was invited, was to a birthday party for my 4-year-old great-grand-daughter. At the party were her older teenage sisters, one of whom had a new baby and lives with her father and stepmother, her two brothers, an unmarried friend with a one-year-old baby, and other friends. I went with the hope of telling these family members of my own regrets, in the hope of convincing them that marrying a Christian and raising kids in a full-out praying things through family would be better than the choices I had made at their ages. I wisely abandoned this approach at once, and just listened to what they wanted to tell me. So at least, the bonds between us were strengthened.
I really do mean this sincerely, not flippantly, Leah: could you name a national right-wing figure (assuming that is how you now identify yourself) who credibly communicates that they will the good of their opponents? It is hard for me to name one without resorting to the painful thought that no Republican in Congress or the executive branch believes their opponents deserve dignity or flourishing. (I’m disinclined to include mayors or governors; any “national figures” among them are only so because of media attention.)
In other words, it’s hard to play this fair-and-balanced game when one side has discarded the moral rulebook.
Question for Matthew from a fellow former Baltimorean:
Loved your book overall, but would've liked to see psych meds get a more thorough/critical treatment. At one point in the section on the topic (I think around page 75), you called the "chemical imbalance" metaphor simplistic - but my understanding is that it's entirely unfounded, a marketing ploy with no research basis. Considering that as many as 1 in 6 American adults are taking a psych med now, and that the severity and frequency of adverse effects and withdrawal symptoms have been downplayed and understudied until recently... I would have loved to read more from you on all that. Care to poke that bear?
I have a question for Matthew:
How do you navigate conversations with dear friends who are steeped in a therapy-as-worldview mindset? More specifically, when conversation becomes so littered with watered down therapy jargon, overused or inappropriately used, what's the best way to keep the conversation going without endorsing/encouraging this misguided approach, or pausing the conversation to argue about the topic of therapy culture?
And what about when such people start "diagnosing" everyone in your family?! Yes my six-year-old son stood up three times during dinner. No I don't think he needs to be tested for ADHD.
Inviting single people and young couples into the joy of family life is all well and good, but how does that make achieving family life more practical for young people? It is far more difficult for young people to buy houses today than it was decades ago, and as much as we want marriage to be the cornerstone, not capstone of adult life, family life can seem unattainable when buying, not a mansion, but a modest three bedroom two bathroom is out of reach. Although egg freezing is expensive, it’s less expensive than a house
I don't mean to rain on your parade, but the VAST majority of what we see from the Right these days, coming from the very top and permeating the whole movement, is "Libs are gross and evil and we loathe them and want them to suffer." I still know lots of people in the social conservative movement in which I worked for decades, and I see this attitude everywhere. Your goals are commendable, but if your hope is to take that movement and direct it "to credibly present ourselves as rooting for others to find happiness," I'm afraid you've got your work cut out for you.
I don’t disagree descriptively! I think this tendency also exists on the left directed right, but it’s less exuberant/more fringe-y for now.
This is pretty corrosive to politics and persons. I push back where I have a shot. And writing this for commonplace was a good opportunity to reach people who might be persuadable.
I suppose RFK Jr. believes death (instead of intellectual disability) is the good of his opponents, and that Mullin and Miller believe to be tortured or left to rot in prison in a strange country is the good of immigrants’.
About classical schools....After my parents divorced, my mother hovered between two good schools. One was the University of Illinois Lab School, which was hard to get into. That school offered a "subfreshman" year that combined 7th and 8th grade study into one school year. The other was the local Catholic school, which had a superb music program. My mother had taught me to love music, and she also wanted challenging study for me after I had eased through grade school without ever having to work. I was accepted at the lab school, so I went there. It turned out that Girl Scouts and church were not intellectual enough there -- and being around college students wasn't good for me either. If I had a choice now, I'd choose the Catholic school. I had wanted to become Catholic as a child. But who knows how that would have worked out? As Aslan says, "you can never know what would have happened had you made a different choice."
The most "different-from-my-norms" place where I was invited, was to a birthday party for my 4-year-old great-grand-daughter. At the party were her older teenage sisters, one of whom had a new baby and lives with her father and stepmother, her two brothers, an unmarried friend with a one-year-old baby, and other friends. I went with the hope of telling these family members of my own regrets, in the hope of convincing them that marrying a Christian and raising kids in a full-out praying things through family would be better than the choices I had made at their ages. I wisely abandoned this approach at once, and just listened to what they wanted to tell me. So at least, the bonds between us were strengthened.
I really do mean this sincerely, not flippantly, Leah: could you name a national right-wing figure (assuming that is how you now identify yourself) who credibly communicates that they will the good of their opponents? It is hard for me to name one without resorting to the painful thought that no Republican in Congress or the executive branch believes their opponents deserve dignity or flourishing. (I’m disinclined to include mayors or governors; any “national figures” among them are only so because of media attention.)
In other words, it’s hard to play this fair-and-balanced game when one side has discarded the moral rulebook.
Long time listener, first time caller 👋
Question for Matthew from a fellow former Baltimorean:
Loved your book overall, but would've liked to see psych meds get a more thorough/critical treatment. At one point in the section on the topic (I think around page 75), you called the "chemical imbalance" metaphor simplistic - but my understanding is that it's entirely unfounded, a marketing ploy with no research basis. Considering that as many as 1 in 6 American adults are taking a psych med now, and that the severity and frequency of adverse effects and withdrawal symptoms have been downplayed and understudied until recently... I would have loved to read more from you on all that. Care to poke that bear?