Thinking about authoritarianism in the school system, mental health industry, & families. Self-awareness & human potential.
#TroubledTeenIndustry
survivor.
My YouTube channel where I discuss:
- healing from authoritarian mental health institutions, families, and schools
- recovering your potential from the negative effects of conventional schooling
- the nature of rebellion in young people
I firmly believe there are many extremely intelligent kids who are being labeled as unintelligent because they simply don’t want to jump through the worthless hoops they are being ordered to.
The lightbulb went off for me about psychiatry when I remembered that homosexuality was considered a mental illness until the mid 70s. Then it stopped being considered a mental illness because people protested. If you can protest to make something not considered an illness 1/
My experience in youth mental health treatment was that clinicians totally reject the notion that the teen/child’s environment might be pathological. In fact, if the teen tries to assert such views, the clinicians claim this as further evidence of the teen’s individual pathology.
It’s shocking to me that it is acceptable for people to send their kids to therapy to be fixed. Of course it gets a nicer spin: the kid is “learning emotional intelligence” or they need “emotional growth” something. But often, the kid is just suffering in their family system 1/
“It’s important to seek professional help” is probably the worst “mental health” advice I’ve ever gotten. I wish instead someone had said “listen to yourself, trust yourself, think for yourself.”
The assumption driving almost every mental health professional I encountered was that they are the expert of my life and know what’s going on - not me. And when I asserted my own authority over sense-making of my life and inner world, they would undermine it and pathologize me.
People will often gaslight others out of questioning or critiquing the
#school
system by equating the act with criticizing or not appreciating
#teachers
. But the truth is, any cogent pro-teacher position is going to have to involve questioning and critiquing the school system.
I think a lot of what happens in the mental health industry, including therapy, is you’ve got the MH professional who has very little emotional depth, encountering the client with extremely strong, difficult emotions. To the MH professional, this seems pathological. 1/
@NickTaber
A scapegoat of a dysfunctional family will end up as a scapegoat in the mental health system. The power and dysfunction dynamics are the same. This has been my experience sadly.
I think a lot of violent behavior you see in kids is basically reactive abuse. They're being emotionally abused, react to it, then that reaction is used 4 the abusers to make themselves look like the victim of the child.
Sadly mental health professionals often go along with this
It's really shocking that we label kids who don't like to sit still for unnatural amounts of time in ugly buildings as having a brain disorder. This is much more of a political question than a scientific one.
I'm not anti-authority. But when psychiatry comes along and tells me they're the authority over everyone's emotional, psychological, and spiritual life, I wonder, "What IS the basis of your authority?" And since it's not scientific knowledge of these areas, what is it exactly?
The reason most therapy didn’t work for me is because it’s counterproductive to sit with a professional who’s in a position to police your mind, judge your so-called mental health, and fit you into their constructs. 1/
I think people don’t realize what a huge threat the mental health system can be to the so-called mentally ill. Not just the risk of involuntary hospitalization but therapists who mindf*ck you, the damage caused by psychiatric labeling, medication fiascos, etc.
and rather than the parents taking accountability and doing their own healing work which would allow the family system to transform, they hire a therapist to get the kid to adjust to the family system to fit better with the parents’ false selves. 2/
The logic driving much of conventional child-rearing is “if we don’t take away the child’s autonomy and bring them under the total control of external authorities, how will they ever hold a job?”
I’m not surprised that some parents of toxic family systems would seek out mental health professionals to scapegoat their kid and break them down. What I do find STUNNING is that so many mental health professionals are perfectly willing to take their money and do just that. 1/
I wonder how many cases of alleged ADHD can be attributed to toxic home environment. Common sense would indicate that emotional distress makes it harder to concentrate.
It’s been my experience that people tend to assume that the school system looks the way it does because a lot of really smart, technocratic experts have studied how children learn and develop, and created a system that meets those needs.
What I’ve come to understand is that…
Parents should think twice before sending their children to mental health treatment because, through a number of mechanisms, it can turn them into second-class citizens. For life or for years to come.
I wonder how many kids the school system has labeled (and is labeling) as unintelligent and incompetent because they were dealing with poverty, abuse, toxic family systems, racial oppression, etc.
“Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals are trained to help people adjust to their environment - not to help people rebel against it.” - Bruce Levine
There’s an obvious truth about therapy that we’ve somehow managed to collectively ignore which is, divulging all the details of your life and vulnerability gives this person, and often the systems they are a part of, the power to manipulate and exploit you in all kinds of ways.
I think many cases of alleged mental illness in children really come down to the kids resisting authoritarian control - resisting having who they are disregarded so that they fit into the systems in which they are trapped.
A similar dynamic happens with children. Where they are dying inside in their family or school, the adults hire a psychiatrist to label them with a mental illness, control them with drugs, then use the diagnosis to discredit and marginalize them.
A lot of dysfunctional family systems redefine health behaviors as unhealthy. Having positions that are your own is being “arrogant”. Not being submissive and fawning is being “abusive”. On and on until you’re fully occupying their deranged alternate reality.
Let me see if I have this right: we exert extreme control over young people’s lives throughout their teen years, then we blame them for being lost and dependent during their young adulthood?
Parents often think that they "try everything" when it comes to their allegedly "troubled" kids. What they probably don't try is facing the truth - of their own traumas, of their family system, of their relationships. When the truth is surfaced, they get reactive and turn away.
Something I’ve noticed is that people who aren’t introspective and lack depth tend to think that people who have a lot of depth and awareness are “weirdos”. I wonder how many children who are naturally of the latter type have been brainwashed into a shame story because of this.
It’s kind of shocking the way our society has obfuscated damage from interpersonal conflict and dysfunction with ideas like chemical imbalances, issues with brain synapses, neurological differences etc.
I was taught to believe that if I was suffering mentally/emotionally, I needed to see a mental health professional for “diagnosis” and “treatment”. Now I know that I learn infinitely more from self-led introspection, which is free and doesn’t risk undermining my sovereignty.
Let's not lose sight of how much learning takes place in the school system. Kids learn that their interests don't count. They learn to not trust themselves. They learn to fear others. They learn to be egocentric.
It’s the other way around. The system was created for other reasons entirely (many are rather unsavory), THEN came the class of experts to study how children learn and develop within that system.
The more I heal, the less faith I have in the mental health system. Because it becomes clearer to me just how far I was led astray, how much I was wronged and harmed by mental health professionals.
I’m not saying it’s all bad. A minority of my experiences were very positive.
So they essentially force the kids to abandon authenticity for attachment.
That therapists are actually able to do this speaks to a certain moral bankruptcy in that profession. 3/
A lot of families are authoritarian and cult-like. Truth and autonomy aren’t tolerated. Often, if you don’t conform to those norms, you get pathologized. So the family can feel like they’re helping you, when they’re really just acting against your own well-being.
I really believe that a big part of what pediatric psychiatry does is medicalize kids' misery so that the parents don't need to feel guilty or deal with truth. Very convenient to see someone's suffering arising in context with other people as a medical problem within them.
I think one of the big dangers of the professionalization of “mental health”, is it convinces people that they are unqualified to develop their own understanding of the human condition (or even their own lives). So it really undermines empowerment and self-reliance in these areas
“It cannot be said too often or too strongly that what is most wrong with (schools) is not technical but moral, not a matter of methods but of purposes, not of means but of ends.”
- John Holt, Instead of Education
It often speaks volumes when parents accept psychiatric diagnoses of their children. It means they don’t understand the emotional damage that this does. Which means they are massively out touch with the emotional reality of their kids. Which in all likelihood is the real problem.
My sense is that the people who think we’ll create a population of snowflakes by attuning to kids’ feelings are really the ones that are creating the mental health and addiction epidemics in the country. If they think the way to strengthen kids is to deny their feelings when…
I remember when I was about 12 and I started to actually stand up for my own perspective - that's when I really started to get labeled as a "bad kid". Interesting how healthy behavior is deemed unhealthy whenever it challenges the egos of whoever has the power in the situation.
The assumption that mental health professionals are these amazing advocates for the vulnerable isn’t always true. They often are instrumental in turning these people into second class citizens.
One could say that the parents need to do therapy rather than send their kids. I think this is certainly closer to the truth. Although I would say that they need to do their own inner work/healing work and I wouldn’t ever want to equate that with therapy. 4/
A lot of the people I experienced who work with children in so-called mental health treatment believe their work is “rewarding” when it’s really that they are just addicted to the power. You could feel it.
The myth that the mental health industry has this enormous body of reliable scientific knowledge is one of the most toxic myths around. It’s false and it’s used to violate the human rights of many, many people.
There are many ways you can bypass trauma and not deal with your deeper issues. One way of doing that is becoming a mental health professional where you get to play this role where you’re the exemplar of a wise, mentally healthy person. 1/
People like to emphasize how socialization with peers is important for development. But is age segregated socialization with peers who are being coerced all day really so wonderful? I think it often shapes kids very negatively, making them confused, lost, and insecure.
I don’t love hearing people talk about a teenagers’ “prefrontal cortex” in the context of allegedly bad behavior. It takes the focus off of things like…a painful family system, a damaging school system, racial oppression, poverty, etc.
The taboo against talking about toxic family dynamics has got to be one of the worst, most damaging social norms out there. I’m ready for that one to go in the garbage. It isn’t “parent blaming” or family betrayal, it’s dealing with reality for the sake of people’s wellbeing.
I think one of the big untruths that the mental health system propagates is the assumption that a licensed mental health professional knows more about people and life than a super evolved, wise person with good vibes.
I wonder how many people have been brainwashed into thinking they are inherently defective when they really just have
#trauma
. The trauma lens opens the possibility of healing and transformation. It means we may not be condemned.
The psychotherapy profession attracts some people who are compassionate and fairly enlightened just as the police attracts some people who want to protect and serve. But we’d be criminally naive to believe that this is the whole story.
When it comes to mental health, actual life circumstances probably matter more than anything. If you’re in a soul-killing authoritarian school like most kids are, in a toxic family system, at an oppressive job, don’t have adequate housing, etc. your mental health won’t be great.
I am convinced that the 8 pillars of Mental & Physical Health are:
1) Sleep
2) (Sun)light
3) Exercise
4) Stress Management
5) Relationships (Incl. To Self)
6) Nutrients (Amt., Timing, Content)
7) Oral Health & Gut Microbiome
8) Spiritual Grounding
Additions? Subtractions?
The way school indoctrinates us to think that real learning can only happen in this institution with the services of this professional class - I think there’s a similar phenomenon with the mental health industry.
I realized this when reflecting on why, for so long, I couldn’t
I really believe that a lot of the "mental health" problems with children arise from the fact that they are treated like property, some of them resist and become outwardly emotionally reactive because of it, then they get diagnosed and drugged.
Changing the curriculum of school to make it more relevant is a giant excercize in missing the point. We don’t need kids in that system to be told to “find their passion” or to learn personal finance. We need to get rid of compulsion and coercion, and allow for self-direction.
A lot of kids learn better when motivated by a desire to cultivate real competence, where they have a meaningful degree of ownership over their learning, rather than other motivators like avoiding being deemed inferior by an impersonal, alienating system 1/
One of the “symptoms” of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) is “Often argues with adults”. I would argue with adults when I disagreed with them. And there’s a lot to disagree with.
A lot of youth “mental health treatment” basically involves mental health professionals causing trauma (and psychologically abusing kids under their “care”), then pathologizing them for it.
Many black sheep become the identified patient - meaning the family constructs a bullsh*t story that the kid is defective.
Unfortunately, many mental health professionals, whether they realize it or not, just collude with the dysfunctional family system against the child.
Emotional intelligence might make you the "black sheep" of your family-- but being the "black sheep" in the families some of us grew up in might actually be the good news.
This is exactly why people should think twice before having their children labeled with a mental health diagnosis and why people should be super cautious about working with a mental health professional. Because many people will see you as a second-class citizen if you get a label
Alot of the "bad behavior" you see in kids/teens, I would characterize as reactive abuse. The kid might be experiencing emotional abuse in their family of origin, then they engage in bad behavior, then are scapegoated for it. They express the problem and become "the problem".
My sense is that the bullying children experience at the hands of adults is far worse than what they experience by peers. Being victimized by, what to you is a basically a god is very different than by a near peer.
Coercive mental health treatment institutions allow mental health professionals to have more power over others than any human being should ever have over any other human being. That they tend to see no issue with it speaks to a certain moral bankruptcy.
It's interesting how adults that talk the most about "respect" are typically the most disrespectful to children. If respect is a one-way street, can we really call it respect at all?
It would stand to reason that coercive mental health treatment would inherently attract unsavory and/or emotionally unhealthy people. Healthy, conscious, self aware people would empathize with the experience of being coerced and wouldn’t feel comfortable participating in it. 1/
WATCH:
@ParisHilton
opening statement on Child Welfare Programs: "I am here to be the voice for the children whose voices can't be heard...The treatment these kids have had to endure is criminal...I will not stop until America's youth is safe."
@codybaldwin
Thanks for sharing this. It’s like people refuse to see the obvious: the problem is not the behavior. The problem is that we’re trying to jam people into a horrible system that doesn’t serve their interest.
I saw an online therapy ad where a woman said she’s been in therapy since she was a kid because her parents wanted her to be “emotionally intelligent”.
When kids are in therapy, there is a risk that the therapist, perhaps unknowingly, is molding them into a lifelong customer 1/
In youth mental health treatment, a lot of clinical language and psychobabble is used to obscure what, so often, they are really trying to do which is break down the teen/child to fit into their environment. They're forcing them to abandon authenticity for attachment.
One of the really horrifying things about the school system is when teachers and other authority figures see kids’ genuine interests and passions as less important than school.
Both because of their training, probably, and because they don’t know their own emotional depths - they are dissociated and are maintaining distance from their real selves to avoid spinning into psychological crisis. 2/
Many adults struggle with boundaries in large part because of how they’re treated as children. What is conventional school if not a torrent of constant boundary violations?
I think the diagnosing of millions of kids with ADHD and other disorders is probably better understood as a political issue rather than a medical one. All too often, we’ve decided we want to keep school and family life the way it is, so we make the kids wrong for not adapting.
There’s this unfortunate assumption that one can both attune to children AND manipulate them into being reflexively obedient. You can’t do both. The reason is because the authority figure won’t be able to mirror the inner experience of being on the receiving end of coercion…
People will joke that therapists tend to be “screwed up in the head”. But I think this is actually a very significant issue that isn’t taken seriously enough. Should people share their vulnerability with such a person? In a massively power unbalanced relationship, no less.
Because I think it’s safe to say therapy is neither necessary nor sufficient for this. That’s not to say that it can’t be of great value for some people, some of the time. 5/
Best books for alienated teenagers:
1. Dumbing us Down by
@realjohngatto
. This validates many young people's hatred of the school system, in contrast to the shaming, pathologizing, and punishment they often receive for their very sane, healthy reaction to the school system.
In my experience, a lot of mental health professionals who work with children believe they can both eliminate their non-compliance and rebellion while also being a source of support. I don't think you can have it both ways. You can't be both a prison guard and source of support.
The people I’ve experienced who work in youth mental health treatment believed that they can both help kids deal with their real problems AND force them to be compliant and adjust to their environment. You can’t do both when the environment is the source of their problems.
It's considered good parenting to leverage a child's powerlessness to elicit compliance.
People won't admit this, of course. They'll call it "love". But it's really not.
It’s socially acceptable to be controlling and judgmental with children yet not with other adults. Then we blame them for responding in a healthy way to this and say that they have “behavior problems” and “ADHD”.