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A podcast at the intersection of psychology and culture that intimately explores the human experience and critiques the counseling profession. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills wisdom gained from her practice as a family therapist and coach while pivoting towards questions of how to apply a practical understanding of psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century, from political polarization to medical malpractice.
What does ethical mental health care look like in a normless age, as our moral compasses spin in search of true north? How can therapists treat patients under pressure to affirm everything from the notion of "gender identity" to assisted suicide?
Primarily a long-form interview podcast, Stephanie invites unorthodox, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including counselors, social workers, medical professionals, writers, researchers, and people with unique lived experience, such as detransitioners.
Curious about many things, Stephanie’s interdisciplinary psychological lens investigates challenging social issues and inspires transformation in the self, relationships, and society. She is known for bringing calm warmth to painful subjects, and astute perceptiveness to ethically complex issues. Pick up a torch to illuminate the dark night and join us on this journey through the inner wilderness.
You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist ranks in the top 1% globally according to ListenNotes. New episodes are released every Monday. Three and a half years after the show's inception in May of 2022, Stephanie became a Christian, representing the crystallization of moral, spiritual, and existential views she had been openly grappling with along with her audience and guests. Newer episodes (#188 forward) may sometimes reflect a Christian understanding, interwoven with and applied to the same issues the podcast has always addressed. The podcast remains diverse and continues to feature guests from all viewpoints.
212. The Most Dangerous Moment
===
[00:00:00] Stephanie Winn: What you are working toward over many such conversations is a pattern in your child's [00:00:05] nervous system. I opened up to my parent something, okay, happened. I could do that again. You [00:00:10] are not trying to win a single conversation. You are trying to change the long-term relationship [00:00:15] between your child and the experience of vulnerability with you.
[00:00:19] SKot: You [00:00:20] must be some kind of therapist,[00:00:25]
[00:00:25] Stephanie Winn: so I will be reading you my essay. Yes, and the most [00:00:30] dangerous moment in the conversation, what to do and what not to do. When your [00:00:35] child finally opens up, most of the time your child shows you nothing. [00:00:40] She is composed, contained, going about her life with a kind of deliberate [00:00:45] blankness that can feel almost aggressive in its thoroughness.
[00:00:48] Stephanie Winn: You've been watching her for [00:00:50] months, maybe years, waiting for the seams to show because you know they are [00:00:55] there. And then one day out of nowhere they do, she lets something slip. [00:01:00] A flash of urgency, a spike of anxiety, a demand that [00:01:05] seems disproportionate to the surface issue. In that moment, you are looking as [00:01:10] something real.
[00:01:10] Stephanie Winn: The question is what to do with it. These moments appear [00:01:15] in all kinds of forms. A request that seems like a simple logistical [00:01:20] preference turns out to carry an urgency you cannot quite account for. And when you look [00:01:25] closer, you realize it is not about logistics at all. A plan that involves [00:01:30] other people produces a flicker of alarm.
[00:01:33] Stephanie Winn: She needs to know exactly who [00:01:35] will be there, what they know, how she will be referred to an ordinary [00:01:40] social situation that should feel easy instead produces attention. You can feel in [00:01:45] the room. A low grade vigilance that gives itself away only if you know to look [00:01:50] for it. To the untrained eye, these look like small, practical concerns, [00:01:55] the kind of thing any teenager might feel sensitive about, but they are not [00:02:00] small.
[00:02:00] Stephanie Winn: They're fractal windows. Moments in which the entire architecture of the [00:02:05] anxiety that is organizing your child's life becomes briefly visible. What you are [00:02:10] seeing in those moments is the psychological cost of the trans identity playing out in real [00:02:15] time. Living as a gender you are not requires constant impression [00:02:20] management, a permanent vigilance about who knows what, who might [00:02:25] clock you.
[00:02:25] Stephanie Winn: What institutional record might betray you at 15. [00:02:30] This can feel like a manageable project. Your child may genuinely believe that if she [00:02:35] just controls enough variables, she can make it work indefinitely. What you see, [00:02:40] looking at it from the outside is a leaky tire being continuously pumped. [00:02:45] She does not see it that way yet, and that gap between what she believes [00:02:50] is possible and what you understand to be true is what you are working with.
[00:02:54] Stephanie Winn: The temptation in [00:02:55] these moments, especially if you have been carrying this fear and grief for a long time, [00:03:00] is to say everything at once. You have been rehearsing the conversation in your [00:03:05] head for years. You know exactly where this path leads. You want to [00:03:10] describe the whole arc. The increasing difficulty of passing the [00:03:15] medicalization that gets proposed as a solution, the sexual isolation, [00:03:20] the psychological toll, and you want her to see it all.
[00:03:24] Stephanie Winn: I understand [00:03:25] that impulse completely, but that conversation, however accurate and [00:03:30] necessary, is not available to you in this moment. It is too much. [00:03:35] She will shut down, walk away, or escalate. What you will have [00:03:40] accomplished is confirming for her that opening up to you is dangerous. So [00:03:45] instead of the whole tangled ball of rope, we are looking for the outermost knot.
[00:03:49] Stephanie Winn: You [00:03:50] cannot untie it all at once, but you can find the one knot that is [00:03:55] accessible right now. Work it loose, and then see what opens up next. [00:04:00] The fractal quality of these moments is that any one of them handled [00:04:05] well, contains the seed of every conversation you eventually want to [00:04:10] have. You do not need to name all of it today.
[00:04:13] Stephanie Winn: You just need to name what is [00:04:15] right in front of you. The tool I want to put in your hands for these moments is the [00:04:20] empathic guess. An empathic guess is not a question. It is not an [00:04:25] accusation. It is a tentative, careful statement that names what you think [00:04:30] the other person might be feeling. It sounds like, it seems like you're worried that I'm [00:04:35] going to say something that makes you uncomfortable or more simply.
[00:04:39] Stephanie Winn: It seems like [00:04:40] there's a lot of fear here. You are not claiming to know the full story. You are not [00:04:45] diagnosing, you are just reflecting back gently what is showing [00:04:50] itself to you. The key is that you are naming the emotion, not the content. [00:04:55] Not. You are afraid I'll out you, but you seem really afraid right [00:05:00] now.
[00:05:00] Stephanie Winn: You are meeting the emotional reality before you meet the ideological one. [00:05:05] Now I'm going to interrupt my reading of the essay to put a little asterisk. That last [00:05:10] statement was not the best example of what I'm talking about. So here where it says that you [00:05:15] wouldn't say you're afraid I'll out, you. Um, you might [00:05:20] actually say that in the right context because that's still acknowledging the [00:05:25] emotion and what the kid is worried about.
[00:05:27] Stephanie Winn: The reason to stay away from. [00:05:30] Specifically saying, I'll out you in that, it really depends on context, but it's that you're [00:05:35] not trying to get into an argument over outing them or not. But [00:05:40] what I see when parents kind of miss the mark is that they tend to stay more in the logical [00:05:45] rather than the emotional register, especially people who do mental, [00:05:50] uh, labor for work, people who are very intelligent and analytical.
[00:05:54] Stephanie Winn: Or just [00:05:55] depending on their kind of stress response, a lot of parents have a hard time dropping down from the head into the [00:06:00] heart, so they have a hard time just naming and staying with the emotions, or they get [00:06:05] so distracted and bothered by the things that their kid is saying that are logically or factually [00:06:10] untrue or ideologically that pull them into an argument.
[00:06:14] Stephanie Winn: So this [00:06:15] isn't really the best example in this essay. The, um, you're afraid I'll out you part [00:06:20] because it does at least acknowledge what the kid is feeling. What I really wanna encourage [00:06:25] people to stay away from is getting lost in the weeds of the details and missing the emotion [00:06:30] entirely. Alright, so that's my interject.
[00:06:33] Stephanie Winn: I'm going to go back to the essay. [00:06:35] Now, when an empathic guest lands close to the truth, something predictable [00:06:40] happens. The other person opens up, they say yes, or they say something that [00:06:45] functions like yes, and then they keep going. More comes out. [00:06:50] This is almost always experienced by parents as both exciting and immediately [00:06:55] threatening, because what comes out is often painful.
[00:06:58] Stephanie Winn: It may be [00:07:00] blaming, it may contain accusations about you. It may be factually [00:07:05] inaccurate or wildly distorted. It may describe you in ways that feel deeply [00:07:10] unfair and right there. Right in that moment when she has just for [00:07:15] the first time in months actually said something real is the most [00:07:20] dangerous point in the whole process, it is dangerous because every instinct you have [00:07:25] is going to push you to defend yourself.
[00:07:27] Stephanie Winn: She said something untrue. She blamed you for [00:07:30] something that was not your fault, or she exaggerated or left out the part where she bears [00:07:35] responsibility and the urge to correct that. To set the record straight. [00:07:40] To say, actually that is not what happened. That urge is completely [00:07:45] natural and in this particular moment, almost entirely [00:07:50] counterproductive.
[00:07:50] Stephanie Winn: If you follow it, you have just closed the door, you spent months waiting to [00:07:55] open. There is a second danger that runs alongside the first, and in some [00:08:00] ways it is harder to resist. It is not just that she may blame you [00:08:05] unfairly. It is also that what she says may be genuinely wrong about [00:08:10] reality. Not just exaggerated or one-sided, but factually, [00:08:15] ideologically distorted a version of events that has been filtered through a framework you believe is [00:08:20] harming her.
[00:08:21] Stephanie Winn: She may say something about her identity or about what she [00:08:25] needs or about what you have failed to understand. You know, to be [00:08:30] false in a deep and consequential way. And the poll to correct that [00:08:35] distortion is not petty defensiveness. It feels like an obligation, [00:08:40] like letting it stand. Unchallenged is a form of complicity, but here is [00:08:45] what you need to hold onto in that moment.
[00:08:47] Stephanie Winn: You are not endorsing what she [00:08:50] says by choosing not to argue with it right now. You are simply [00:08:55] recognizing that the emotional opening she has just offered you is more valuable [00:09:00] in this moment than any single point you could win. The correction [00:09:05] will have its time. This opening may not come again for months.[00:09:10]
[00:09:10] Stephanie Winn: Here is what is actually happening when your child starts talking after an empathic [00:09:15] guess. She is having an experience she craves and rarely gets, which is [00:09:20] the experience of being seen and heard without immediately being corrected. We [00:09:25] all crave this. Children crave it acutely. When you make an empathic [00:09:30] guess that lands, you are giving her a taste of something she has probably been [00:09:35] hungry for.
[00:09:36] Stephanie Winn: And her response, the continued talking, the additional [00:09:40] disclosures, even the blaming is evidence that she wants more of it. [00:09:45] That is not a crisis. That is the walls coming down. Your [00:09:50] job is not to let them back up again. So what do you do instead of defending, [00:09:55] you keep listening. You make another empathic guess, or you offer a [00:10:00] reflection.
[00:10:00] Stephanie Winn: So what I'm hearing is that you feel you stay in the emotional [00:10:05] register. You do not switch to the factual one. You treat what she's saying, not as [00:10:10] a set of claims to be evaluated, but as a set of feelings to be understood. The [00:10:15] distortions and inaccuracies are real. You do not have to pretend otherwise [00:10:20] forever, but they're not what this conversation is about right now.
[00:10:24] Stephanie Winn: This [00:10:25] conversation is about whether she can learn to associate opening up to you with [00:10:30] something that feels safe. That is the only thing you are building right now, and it is [00:10:35] not nothing. It is everything. If the conversation takes a turn, you are not prepared to [00:10:40] navigate. Or if she says something that you know needs a response, but you do not yet [00:10:45] know what the response could be, you have permission to buy time.
[00:10:48] Stephanie Winn: You can say, [00:10:50] I'm really glad we're talking. I'm learning so much about how you see this. [00:10:55] I need a little time to sit with what you've shared before I respond. That is not avoidance, that is [00:11:00] maturity. It models exactly the kind of thoughtfulness you would like her to develop, and it [00:11:05] gives you the space to process what happened, bring it to a session with me and come back to it [00:11:10] more prepared.
[00:11:10] Stephanie Winn: What you are working toward over many such conversations is a pattern in [00:11:15] your child's nervous system. I opened up to my parent, something OK [00:11:20] happened. I could do that again. You are not trying to win a single conversation. You [00:11:25] are trying to change the long-term relationship between your child and the experience of [00:11:30] vulnerability with you.
[00:11:30] Stephanie Winn: That is a project that takes time, but it starts with knowing what to [00:11:35] do and what not to do in the 30 seconds after she says yes. This [00:11:40] article that I've just read you is inspired by my coaching work and it's part of a much larger [00:11:45] curriculum where it originally appears on ROGD repair. The full lesson [00:11:50] includes reflection questions to help you personalize the material.
[00:11:53] Stephanie Winn: Just like the [00:11:55] 120 plus other lessons in my comprehensive program for parents of [00:12:00] trans-identified youth who wanna work smarter, not harder to help their children naturally desist. [00:12:05] If you are a parent navigating this, start getting equipped with the tools you need today. [00:12:10] You don't need to lose sleep.
[00:12:11] Stephanie Winn: Going down dozens of different research rabbit holes, enroll in a [00:12:15] single program that guides you through a comprehensive, systematic approach. Learn to work with [00:12:20] not against your child's psychological makeup. To help the part of them that wants to [00:12:25] make healthier choices. Use code some therapist 2026 to take [00:12:30] half off your first month of ROGD repair@ogdrepair.com.[00:12:35]
[00:12:35] Stephanie Winn: Okay folks, so this was an experiment. Normally on my podcast. As you know, I [00:12:40] do long form interviews, which means I'm creating a lot of different kinds of content and a lot of [00:12:45] different places. So I do interviews for you must be some kind of therapist [00:12:50] podcast, which is on YouTube. On all podcast listening [00:12:55] platforms and also goes out on Substack.
[00:12:58] Stephanie Winn: And then I also have articles [00:13:00] on my substack and those articles are connected oftentimes to [00:13:05] ROGD repair lessons. So this week I didn't have an interview scheduled. I [00:13:10] wanted to use a material I already had and help it reach more people. So for [00:13:15] context, this article was originally an article within ROGD Repair, but it was one that did [00:13:20] not come with a video.
[00:13:21] Stephanie Winn: Whereas most ROGD repair lessons [00:13:25] contain a video, just my face. You can just listen to it and an article. And the [00:13:30] article sometimes just recaps what's in the video. Sometimes there's extra stuff in the article that I added after [00:13:35] the fact. Um, and then of course there's the reflection questions to help you personalize the [00:13:40] material, which is really how you make the most outta the program.
[00:13:43] Stephanie Winn: Help make it most like coaching because [00:13:45] rather than just learning about abstract concepts that might apply to someone else's kid, you're actually looking [00:13:50] at what is going to help me and my family? How would my child relate to this? [00:13:55] Does this work for our personality and our parenting style? Things like that.
[00:13:59] Stephanie Winn: [00:14:00] So this is an example of the kind of material I have in RD repair. Most [00:14:05] of it's paywall 'cause this is how I make my living, helping parents like perhaps you, [00:14:10] uh, the listener. So if you need more content like this and if you want to [00:14:15] really be able to personalize and apply these tools to your life, go to rrg d repair.com [00:14:20] for more of this kind of stuff.
[00:14:21] Stephanie Winn: But I also thought I'd just give you a taste on [00:14:25] my podcast and sort of, uh. Cross pollinate all these [00:14:30] different places where I am creating content. 'cause it's a lot to keep up with. You know, I have a full schedule [00:14:35] of coaching on top of all this content creation. So, um, thanks for bearing with me [00:14:40] this week while we do something a little different where I, while I read to you an essay that I've.
[00:14:44] Stephanie Winn: [00:14:45] Written for RG repair and for my substack. I hope you enjoyed this [00:14:50] and I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to you Must Be Some Kind of [00:14:55] Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode. Kindly take a moment to rate, [00:15:00] review, share or comment on it using your platform of choice. And [00:15:05] of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist.[00:15:10]
[00:15:10] Stephanie Winn: Special thanks to Joey Rero for this awesome theme song, half [00:15:15] Awake and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the [00:15:20] impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for [00:15:25] parents, ROGD, repair. Any resource [00:15:30] you heard mentioned on this show plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and [00:15:35] links below Rain or shine.
[00:15:38] Stephanie Winn: I hope you'll step outside to breathe. [00:15:40] The air today in the words of Max Airman, with all its [00:15:45] sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful [00:15:50] [00:15:55] [00:16:00] [00:16:05] [00:16:10] [00:16:15] [00:16:20] [00:16:25] world.