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You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist intimately explores the human experience while critiquing the state of the counseling profession as it yields to cultural madness. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills years of wisdom gained from her practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist as she pivots away from treating patients, and toward the question of how to apply psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century. 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? Stephanie invites heretical, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including current and former therapists, 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. Pick up a torch to illuminate the dark night and join us on this journey through the inner wilderness.
Swell AI Transcript: 142.Year In Review.mp3
SPEAKER_00:
You must be some kind of therapist. Welcome to my year in review podcast episode. It's a solo episode, which if you're a longtime listener, you know, makes me a little nervous and awkward because I tend to do better when I'm having a conversation with a human being instead of just kind of talking to myself. But I'll do my best to ignore the awkward reality of sitting here talking to a screen by myself, watching an image of myself, And try to take this time to share some reflections, particularly for long-term listeners. Now, if you're new to this podcast, this might not be the best episode for you. I've got lots of great interviews with fascinating people. This episode is more for those who have been with me along the journey. those who maybe feel like they know me or even perhaps do in real life, and are curious about my kind of inner process, both as a person and a podcaster, because this is more of a personal episode reflecting on the year behind me, some of the themes, struggles, challenges, lessons, and so on, as well as what I'm hoping for as we move into the new year. I just love the symbolism of the new year. It tends to be a hard time of year for me in general because I am one of these sensitive people that is prone to seasonal depression and I'm very affected by the weather so when things are gloomy and the days are short I do tend to feel low but celebrating the holiday season is a sort of a cheerful distraction. And in fact, one of the themes of this year, which I'll get into, is sort of the joy and abundance that has put me in a position to have had a really nice Christmas with my family. And then heading into the new year, I like to sort of do this annual ritual. Of course, there are always so many responsibilities and distractions keeping us busy. But when possible, I like to try to carve out some time for myself at the end of the year, not booking appointments, just sort of a staycation to wrap up all the loose ends from things left hanging from the year, think about what I want moving forward, and feel like I'm getting a fresh start moving into the new year. I'm not really big on New Year's resolutions, per se, because of everything I know about sort of the science of habit formation, but I do like the idea of intentions and of creating space in our life for new beginnings. I also like to think about what I want to carry with me as I move forward into New Year and what I'd like to let go of. So with that in mind, I thought I'd start with sort of a timeline giving an overview of the journey of 2024 for me personally and professionally. By the way, in this podcast, I will be sharing personal information about myself, including details like my age, Which I really don't mind being open about with other people. I think there's a lot of stigma in our culture about things like a woman's age and her weight and Sometimes people erroneously guess that they can apply the same logic to me and to all women that we always want to be perceived as younger than we are. I tend to be perceived as younger than I am in the sense that I have I guess what appears to be youthful skin on camera. I don't know how much of that is, you know, my nutrition, the collagen I take or the fact that I've gotten better at makeup for the camera. But I really am not someone who's always wanted to be perceived as younger. In fact, I would say for most of my life, I struggled with wanting to be perceived as older because I felt like kind of an old soul and a precocious child and a parentified child in many ways. I always felt like people underestimated me based on my perceived youthfulness. And one of the things I was looking forward to about getting older was the, I guess, credibility that we tend to ascribe to people when we can see that they've had more life experience. At the same time, I mourn the fact that the culture is changing in a way where that seems to be eroding, where we don't give elders their due respect and listen to the wisdom that comes with age. In any case, I don't mind telling you how old I am. And it might be surprising that I'm older than you thought I was or that I'm younger. But in any case, I'm about to turn 40. And so when I tell the story of the year 2024, I'm telling the story of the year that I was 39. And it was off to such a choppy start. I treated myself and my fiance to a trip to Hawaii at the beginning of the year. Hawaii is my favorite place on earth. I can do some of my favorite things there too, like boogie boarding. And, as I mentioned earlier, I'm vulnerable to seasonal depression, so trying to find time and money for going to the tropics during the winter is a priority for me. So, we had a blast in Hawaii, but the comedown was so rough. There were flight delays, there were ice storms back home. I got sick, all the hotels in the area were full, you couldn't get through the streets, and basically on my 39th birthday, whereas I would have loved to wake up either in Hawaii on an extended trip or in my own bed, safe and warm, I woke up in a crummy hotel, with not enough to eat. I just had to traverse through very difficult conditions to even get home. And then I came down with COVID for the second time. And those of you who know me will know COVID destroys me. Fortunately, I was a little bit more prepared this time, being my second COVID infection after being a long hauler for two years. I had more of the meds and supplements, and I knew how important rest was. But coming down with COVID right around the time I turned 39 and came back from Hawaii was just such a huge letdown. It was like going from a peak to a valley. And even though I was relatively better prepared with meds and supplements, COVID still really, really wiped me out and made my pre-existing long COVID exponentially worse to the point where I hit a really low point In February, about four to six weeks post infection, I had the worst POTS symptoms of my life. So my standing heart rate was about 120 beats per minute. I felt like my heart was going to explode and I was going to pass out just from standing and that led me to make some major changes. So for one, I went to Dallas, Texas to see Dr. Robert Groisman for a stellate ganglion block procedure. I have no financial affiliation in case you're wondering anything like that, but people have asked me about this and I did get this treatment. So a little bit of context here. I initially heard of the stellate ganglion block treatment as a treatment for PTSD from my friend Corey Drayton, who has been a previous guest on this podcast and has experienced personal benefit. He felt like the stellate ganglion block that he received helped reset his nervous system, after a grueling battle with cancer. But then I started hearing about the use of the SGB treatment in these long haul COVID support groups, including one that was run by Dr. Grossman, which had a lot of his patients giving their testimonials about how this procedure essentially sort of reset the nervous system to help potentially get it out of fight flight mode, where it would tend to get stuck in many of us with sort of neurological damage, you could think of it that way, like neurological damage from long COVID. So I tried the treatment. For the longest time afterward, I meant to at some point, like write or speak about my experience. but I didn't until now and so maybe this is the time that I actually stopped to reflect on it. I didn't have miraculous instantaneous results like some people did but I had a pretty unique experience during the procedure and then some gradual change after. So I guess first I'll explain what the psilate ganglion block is now. This is not medical advice. I'm not a doctor and I could be getting some of this wrong. This is just my experience as a patient and as a lay person who's curious about a lot of things. But essentially, It is a procedure that involves an injection of local anesthetic between certain vertebrae in the cervical spine. I wasn't told very much going into the procedure about how I would feel in the moment. I had, you know, read a lot about how people experienced encouraging results after the procedure, although some people had no change or felt worse afterward. But the actual experience itself was pretty profound because it really, it didn't make me go unconscious or go to sleep, but I felt like it completely shut down the sympathetic branch of the nervous system while keeping the parasympathetic active. So all remaining hypervigilance, fight-flight reactions, like all the traces of that energy that normally are like lingering in the background or animating me to some extent, it just completely shut that off. And I was in this, well, drugged state, but a state of like extreme calm. for a few hours. And in that state, I became very sensitized. It brought me into my body in a new way. I became very sensitized to stimuli as if I'm not enough already. So I needed an eye mask because the lights were bright, and I was asking for certain essential oils to smell. And I wanted certain music in my ears that was very calming and certain feelings on my body just to really help me go inward into a deep state of sort of parasympathetic rest. And in that state, I cried a little bit just to release some tension. I found myself with the support of my fiance who was there with me the whole time. I mean, right after the procedure, he wasn't in the procedure room, but the procedure itself is short and then you go to rest in a different room. So he was by my side and I found myself just like saying over and over like it's okay to I don't remember my exact words was something like, it's okay to release my hypervigilance. I don't need my hypervigilance. So in some ways it was like, I understand why this is a treatment for PTSD. And I understand why it's a treatment for conditions like long COVID, which can injure the nervous system and cause symptoms like POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. I'm not gonna explain it. Look it up if you're curious. But POTS is essentially, while it has many, impacts on the cardiovascular system and things like that. It's fundamentally a neurological problem. So here I am getting this PTSD treatment for my POTS and long COVID. And in the process, I'm releasing all this anxiety from my system and reaffirming that it's okay to be at ease, to be at rest. And then I slowly came to, and I remember once I was ready and cleared to leave, because it's an outpatient thing, you just kind of wait a couple hours until you're a little bit more cognizant. I really wanted milkshakes. which is like not a food that I normally eat. But I think it was my body's way of going really deep into that sort of rest and digest state of like craving comfort food. So I had milkshakes and burgers and fries, which my body wasn't used to. So then it kind of threw a fit about like, what did you just put in me? But I, so I had this to like England block on one side one day and the other side of my neck the next. I will say the actual, process of having a needle injected into your neck, like deep within the cervical vertebra, that part was nerve-wracking before the anesthesia hit my system. And it was hard for me to release the tension in my neck muscles that were making it harder for the doctor to do his job. In the weeks and months following the procedure, I did gradually recover. It's hard to know what was the procedure, what was other things I was doing, what was just time, but I'm thankful that I can say that my standing heart rate is not nearly that high. I do still have POTS and long COVID. I do I have a lot of health challenges associated with that, just a little bit of detail around that. So I have been taking fludrocortisone, which is a medication that essentially raises my blood pressure and makes sure that I have enough blood flowing to my head so I don't feel lightheaded and faint. I discovered like a month or two ago that it can increase my risk of osteoporosis, which I'm already at risk of because my mom has it. And because with my chronic illness, it's hard for me to do strength training, which is important for bone health. And so I'm trying to come off the flugacortisone now. But I am really vulnerable to low blood pressure, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, and tachycardia is just kind of the body's response to that, like speeding up the heart rate to try to get enough blood flowing to the head, if that makes sense. So I do still have these symptoms, but it was nothing like it was right before I had that procedure when my standing heart rate was like I mean, my standing heart rate just, you know, looking in the bathroom mirror trying to do my makeup for five minutes was like higher than my heart rate now when I go for a walk at three miles an hour. So that's the level of difference that we're talking about. I didn't even know I was going to tell this story when I started recording. I prepared a whole outline for what I was going to talk about and this wasn't even part of it. Anyway, so what happened after that? Although I was gradually recovering, I had to accept that I was at a new low point and that I'd been doing too many things. The previous year, 2023, I had the honor and the pleasure of representing the film No Way Back, the reality of gender affirming care, as its media representative. And that kept me busy, so that was one thing. I'd also, for a time, worked with an organization called Do No Harm. But then I had this, you know, my main things were this podcast and I was doing therapy and I was doing consulting. And I've been writing at one point but kind of fell out of the rhythm of that because I was doing so many things and posting on social media. And, you know, plus I have a personal life, health, family, right, house to maintain. So I was doing too many things and I did not have the energy, literally the physical or mental energy to sustain what I was doing. So I made the decision early this year after hitting that really low point that drove me to go to Dallas and get that procedure. I made the decision to stop seeing therapy patients. I had to cut out something. And at this point, I had to sort of look at everything I was doing and what sustains me. I still needed an income, of course, and I'd been doing about maybe half and half mix of therapy and consulting. So I had to sort of lean into the consulting. And the reason I chose to get rid of therapy rather than consulting is thinking about the responsibility and the pressure of each compared to my health. In the role of being a therapist, there's a lot to contain and metabolize emotionally. For one thing, as a therapist, you can never really fully get away from being responsible for people who might be in a suicidal crisis. And I take that responsibility very seriously. As you'll know if you're a longtime listener of this podcast, one of the reasons that I'm so outspoken about the gender madness is because it frustrates me to no end how suicide is being manipulated as a weapon and a tool of controlling people and it's being lied about. I think it's very important to speak about suicide in ways that are honest and truthful and also not dangerous. So, as a therapist, I took that responsibility very seriously. And I was also, I think, dealing with the added pressure as a therapist of managing transference dynamics that would arise from people knowing or discovering my work outside of therapy. Even, you know, theoretically speaking, patients who were familiar with my work outside of therapy such as this podcast and who maybe even sought me out because of my position on particular issues that doesn't mean that transference dynamics are not going to potentially come up, especially if there's some degree of idealization going on. And then there's a projection that as a therapist, if I agree with them on, let's say, gender critical issues, that I must agree with them on, let's say, other issues. And then they discover through listening to my podcast that I actually have a different stance on that other issue. And then they feel like that's going to affect their therapy. There's just a lot to manage in being in multiple roles. And I don't think that I knew what I was getting myself into when I started on this path of going from just being a therapist to being someone who was a therapist and had a podcast. But there's all this sort of emotional stuff that needs to be metabolized inwardly by a therapist in order to hold that role properly. And I got to a point where I was worrying that the responsibilities that I took on in that role were potentially inhibiting my healing process and that I needed to lighten the emotional burden on myself. And also, I feel like in a consulting role, I can be more transparent about my limitations. I don't have a responsibility as anyone's mental health provider as a consultant. So if I need to suddenly be unavailable, As long as I have a cancellation policy, potentially a refund policy if necessary, that's all I need. But as a therapist, you can't just dip in and out of being available. So I felt like the best thing to do for me and for my patients was to close that side of my business, the therapy side, and to make it lighter on myself by just sticking to the consulting, which is, again, it's heavy stuff that we talk about, but I get to be honest in that role in a way that I don't always that isn't always called for in the role of being a therapist. So I feel like it's less for me to manage emotionally, less emotional labor and more protective of my health and more respectful of other people's needs and limitations as well. When I'm clearly defining that my role is more educational or advisory rather than being someone's provider. So I took this leap of faith that by listening to my body and deciding to stop doing therapy and just do consulting and continue the podcast for the time being, just sort of taking it day by day, that it would all work out. And there were moments that it wasn't clear that it was going to work out financially, for instance, like can I sustain seeing this few clients and that sort of thing. But thankfully, it came together in some unexpected ways. So once I'd made the decision to stop seeing patients and only see consulting clients, even if that meant I was only seeing a handful of people in a week, as my health did gradually improve and my energy gradually returned, and again, it's still not back to where I'd like it to be, but it's thankfully not where it was either. As I regained energy, space opened up for me to really hone in on this niche I'd developed, helping parents of trans-identified youth. And that's how my program developed. So in the spring, Probably starting in April, I started building out ROGD repair. And you may be wondering, how did you create that much material in such a short period of time? Well, it was all in here. It was all in my head because I was talking to people about this stuff. most days of the week for the past several years. So it's really putting it into this program ROGD Repair. Most of the work had already been done in sort of a nebulous way. It was all in there somewhere, right? I just needed to create the time and space to articulate these concepts, create the material, upload and format it, and do that part of the work, if that makes sense. So within a relatively short period of time, April through the summer, I was working pretty intensively on ROGD repair whenever I wasn't seeing clients or podcasting or dealing with my health or family. And that's how the program came to be. So I suppose a theme or a life lesson here is that sometimes stepping back and listening to our bodies and trusting the process and trusting the unknown enables us to move forward. And I'm really grateful that I did hone in on this niche because it's so needed. And now I have the most bizarre and unique conversations with people who come to me for help. And, you know, sometimes I'll find myself laughing, even though it's a very dark and heavy subject that we're talking about, because it's like, how did I find myself here, right? Being an expert in this bizarre niche and, you know, having really specialized knowledge about the intricacies of trans-identified youth, their psychology, their culture, how to communicate with them, how not to communicate with them. And the parents I work with are so grateful and so wonderful to work with. And it's just such fulfilling work. So for most of this year, I've been talking to these parents, building the course. And then there was a setback. I struggle with whether to call it an unexpected setback. There's a part of me thinking, I should know better by now. I should know human nature better and the nature of social media and the nature of any sort of tribal group dynamic. I recently spoke with Nina Paley. That episode will be coming out in a few weeks. But we spoke about scapegoating and group dynamics. And we talked about how it was sort of like it's like this force of nature and that she expressed, and I agree, like wishing that there was a quote-unquote side of any cultural conflict that was like the anti-cancel culture side, but cancellation happens everywhere and by far the most painful and difficult part for me socially of being in the public sphere It's been the friendly fire, it's been the hidden enemies, if you will, the unexpected adversaries, the people that I initially perceived as allies who proved me wrong. That has always been the hardest part and it's happened many different times and ways. And it happened a few times and ways this year. The most impactful of those, of course, I'm not going to name names. That's not my style. I don't dox people. I don't cancel people. But it has to do with the series of events leading to episode 110 of my podcast, which was released May 20, 2024. It's called The Nature of the Beast of Gender Ideology plus Grace as the Antidote in a World of Pain. So this was one of those kind of big pivotal moments of my year, this time in May that a bunch of people got angry about something I said on the internet. And I still, to this day, grapple with questions that I'm undecided on with regard to how much responsibility I should take for the offense that other people have taken from my words and actions, when to stand my ground, when to turn the other cheek, how much grace to give others when they are attacking me, how much I owe anyone an explanation or an apology. when they choose to take issue with me in a way that I see as bad faith or impacted by logical fallacies and cognitive distortions, how I should or choose to behave when I'm being scapegoated. These are all things that I see from many different angles. And that episode, episode 110, was how I dealt with it in the moment. And I still stand by a lot of what I said there. Now, one of the main people who was trying to cancel me at the time reached out to me after I released that episode with an email about how it wasn't good enough. This is someone who had already said publicly, I will never forgive Stephanie Nguyen. So for one thing, putting herself in the position of God in some ways, being the ultimate judge, believing that her perspective on me was more important than anyone else's, that's how that lands to me, right? I mean, here's someone who doesn't know me very well. By the way, every time this has happened, it's always someone who doesn't know me very well. And it's like these little things over the internet. And there's just such a stark comparison in my mind, like a sharp contrast between these superficial things where someone I barely know, I've never met in person, maybe talked with on the phone a couple times, or exchanged a couple emails with, or mostly just tweeted at. Someone I barely know decides I'm the enemy, scapegoats, projects all this nastiness onto me, decides I need to be canceled. There's just such a contrast between that and the people who are going deep with me. Some of you listening to this are going deep with me by being regular listeners of this podcast. I meet people who listen to this podcast all the time because it's pretty easy to book a meeting with me. Anyone can hop on my calendar, book a discovery call. So I get discovery calls at least once a week from people who have listened to my podcast. And there's some really wonderful people out there listening to this. And some of you, by the time you meet with me, you feel like you already know me. And I know that feeling. Because I had that with one of my mentors who I listened to on her podcast for a long time before I finally met her and She's met that with so much grace in me. So I I get the feeling of feeling like, you know someone right? So whether you're a longtime listener who feels like you know me that way whether you've actually met with me whether you've hired me as a consultant or become a friend or become a guest on this podcast or invited me onto yours or deepest work of all, whether you've hired me and entrusted me to help you as a guide in some capacity. So those are the people going deep, right? And those are the people who I just I cherish those relationships so much and I'm blessed with many of them. I talk to a lot of people and I great relationships with listeners, with fellow podcasters, with people who've been on my show, with people who've hired me, with people who've taken my course. Just so many wonderful relationships have been forged this way. And if you're one of those people, I thank you so much. It's just such a great source of fulfillment in my life. And then there are these people who barely know me. who decide I'm the scapegoat of the day because of some tweet that they took out of context. And that's what happened that I responded to on episode 110. But back to the sort of story arc of my year, 2024, that was, it was a, it was a hard moment. It, it felt like a setback. I was scared, you know, for a moment there, it was like, there's this person who was really determined to cancel me. Um, and You know like I could see it from such a humorous perspective now because I just see it as like her inner child acting out her wounded inner child acting out being like her it's all her fault everybody on the playground go get her and it's it's actually hilarious like if you get to certain perspective it's absurd. for her to A, view me as that powerful, right? Because in some ways it's flattering. I got to take it that way. Nina Paley helped me see this, and you'll hear that episode in a few weeks. Someone has to see you as very powerful to treat you with such little empathy and to decide that you need to be destroyed. So I'll take the compliment that I'm seen as that powerful, but it's also hilarious because I know what it's like to just be me, just a person, right? It's also hilarious that she was tripping, like ego tripping that much to think that she was that powerful, that she could or should cancel me, that her opinion was, again, more important than the opinions of people who know me better, more relevant, more true, and that her way should go. And she should just get to tell people, Stephanie Wynn is canceled. We don't listen to her anymore. And that that should work. I mean, it's all really funny from a certain perspective. And I worked so hard to get to that place where I can see it as funny. I really value getting to the top of the mountain, getting that higher perspective on life. I need it. I thrive in that fresh air up there where you can kind of see everything from above, sort of like a God's eye view. I feel like I regularly need to commune with a higher perspective on life. And one of the qualities of a higher perspective, I think, is humor. But it took me so much to get to that point, to being able to see it as funny. And another thing along the way that helped me was realizing that I have allies everywhere. For example, this person who was trying to cancel me was in a group chat. And I don't know who all was in that group chat, but I know a few people because they were looking out for me. And they told me what was happening. And they stood up for me. So just to know that you you can't get that far trying to hurt me without running into people who aren't going to agree with that. So if you're one of those people who has stood up for me or who has spoken kindly of me or recommended my podcast or my course or anything, I really thank you so much for seeing me. I don't think it's ever really possible for anyone to see anyone in full. I feel like we're all more like multifaceted crystals in a way and you can you know if you're lucky you feel you see light reflecting off of a few sides um but thank you for seeing the sides of the crystal that you have seen on that note i'm sort of skipping ahead here but one of the themes of 2025 coming ahead is that I'm marrying someone who just sees me in such a positive light and that has been so incredibly healing for me. So more on that later. All right, so back to my 2024 story arc. Those events in May were hurtful and they did feel like a setback at the time. They limited my access to Unfortunately, certain communities of people who could really use my help, people that this program was designed for, there were lies being spread about me that I was harmful to ROGD parents, that I was blaming them for everything that happened to them, for their kids getting involved in the cult. And I feel like I did an adequate job in episode 110 of responding to these allegations. I made clear that, look, I come from a family systems perspective. I'm trained to work with the whole family. in light of the problems of potentially just one person to start, and look at how the family is constellated around that mental illness, and adjust the family dynamics to deal with the root cause of the issue. And when I was going to grad school, we were trained in doing that with presenting problems like anorexia or behavioral problems. We weren't taught about this gender issue. But of course, coming from a background as a family systems therapist, I'm going to see things in a holistic lens. Now, does that mean I think parents are to blame for this? Well, you haven't been listening to anything I've said if that's your interpretation. Because I think there's a unique form of evil on this planet that parents did not create. And I talked about the nature of the beast of gender ideology in that episode, the nature of evil in my mind. is punitive. It's to punish people endlessly for their faults and foibles. It's like this. We watch this Christmas movie called Red One. It's sort of an action and adventure Christmas movie. And in it, there's basically a witch. I forget her name. I think she's from like Germanic folklore or something. But there's this witch who is essentially at war with Santa Claus because she wants to punish everyone on the naughty list. She wants to have this exacting criteria for who belongs on the naughty list. and to punish them rather than rewarding the good and the innocent and giving toys to all the boys and girls because Santa and his helpers see the good in everyone. So there's this like war between good and evil in this film taking place represented by Santa versus the witch. And I think that's actually very revealing about the nature of evil because what does the witch do? She wants to punish. She doesn't view herself as bad, even though she's pretty much evil incarnate. She's looking for the evil in everyone else and then wants to punish it relentlessly. So I think this teaches us an important lesson about evil, about how evil begets evil. Evil doesn't see itself as evil necessarily, but that it has this attitude of punishing. And I think we have to be very careful to watch out for ways that we can become that way ourselves. So that's the problem with gender ideology, right? Is that it's human to make mistakes, especially foolish and embarrassing ones when we're young. I certainly made my own share of them. You probably have too. But it's gender ideology in this uniquely evil way that comes in and says that the price for being mistaken about who you are when you are young is that you should have to live with permanent medical consequences for the rest of your life. That's what makes it evil. So I think it was very unfair to project onto me that I was pinning all that evil on parents. And I really hope that whoever thought that they themselves were justified in treating me that way, in trying to destroy my career, my reputation, my livelihood, you know, I hope that they look inward. I won't hold my breath for an apology, but we have to be careful not to become the thing that we're fighting, right? In any case, all that went down in May. And now as a result, there are certain people who don't know me and formed an opinion of me and my work. That means that they will not be able to benefit from the work that I'm doing. I've created a really valuable resource in ROGD Repair. but there are certain people who will never be open to it because it was created by me and they've been told that I am this terrible person who blames parents and that it's like it's so silly because I'm sitting here telling you that I make a living consulting with parents on this issue. Um, like, People trust me, you know, they trust me to deliver wise and compassionate and helpful feedback. to the idea that, you know, that someone who's never met me could just think that they know better than all of the intelligent and good-hearted people who come to me for help to think that they know that I'm actually this vicious person. It's just, it's really silly. But it is sad that, you know, There are certain people who could really use a program like ROGD Repair and whose minds were sort of poisoned against me by gossip, by malicious gossip. And one of the things I am questioning as I head into 2025 is, you know, when to turn the other cheek and when to stand my ground. How to minimize the potential of getting sucked into group dynamics like this in the first place, but also to know that it does and will happen periodically. And at what point do I get a defamation lawyer and send a cease and desist letter? You know, because that's also an option. So, things for me to think about. Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. So although there were setbacks at that point in time, I did persist and completed the course. I had a few dozen wonderful beta testers. These were people who'd come to me for help in various capacities, who made this agreement with me to do the course and give me feedback. So I got a lot of great feedback. I haven't implemented all of the feedback. Course is always a work in progress, even though there's like 130 lessons or something as I'm speaking now. I still have a list of many, many more lessons to create, and I still have suggestions coming in as to how the course can be improved or built upon. But one of the tendencies I have to work on in myself is my own perfectionism, and this course is definitely good enough to be helping lots of people right now. I'm really happy with how the enrollment has gone and the feedback that I've gotten from students. So, despite attempts to cancel me earlier this year, I've not been canceled. My program is out there in the world helping people. I hear from students in the course all the time, and it's just so great to see them applying these tools. And there's something I want to say to anyone who has previously consulted with me. If you have seen results since we've last met, please just at least book a free discovery call using my typical link in bio or my Calendly page. I want to hear from you because I understand. I charge money for my time. And when you're seeing those encouraging results, you feel like you don't need me anymore. That's totally understandable. But I will happily give you 15, 20 minutes of my time to hear how things are going. Or, you know, to read an email if you want to send me an email update. I always prefer synchronous communication versus asynchronous, and that's another values thing. But please send me updates. I love updates on how things are going when people are applying the tools that I teach in the course or through consulting. On that note of synchronous versus asynchronous, this is, again, one of my sort of intentions moving forward. I'd say one of my core values is actually synchronicity or serendipity. And I feel like we're losing touch with that rapidly as we're spending so much time online. And I'm definitely a person who spends a lot of time online. I work online. I play online. I don't get out much. And partly that's health and family responsibilities and laziness and habit. It's all kinds of things. But my fondest memories in life do not take place in the two-dimensional virtual world. They take place with real people in real time and real places. And that's where beauty and magic live. So, you know, one thing I like to do to create a little bit more serendipity is just to have more synchronous versus asynchronous communication. where we're meeting in real time, we're talking as opposed to just back and forth in this sort of timeless void of email and text and DM and all that kind of stuff. So since the course has been successful this year in helping people and in being sort of a I don't want to say a passive income stream because it requires maintenance, but an income stream for me. I do want to thank everyone who has financially supported me in any way, like enrolling in my course or whatever it might be, because my family got to have a really nice Christmas this year and it felt really good to be able to treat people and to be treated. So as we're moving toward the end of the year, I'm recording this episode a few days before the new year to be released right before the new year. I want to maintain my Monday, excuse me, my Monday episode release schedule religiously, but I'm not going to subject any of my guests to having their episode released during the holidays. So hence, here I am doing the year-end review with you. And as we're wrapping up the year, I'm thinking of how do I enter the next year with levity and grace. So as I mentioned earlier, I'm about to turn 40. And I have to say, this feels like a really significant milestone, it feels like sort of a A moment for reflection and celebration. I'm pretty happy with where I'm at in life and who I've become. There are still some unresolved issues in my life. Health-wise, I'm not where I'd like to be, but I'm grateful to have made the progress that I have from some of my lowest points. I'm grateful for where I'm at in my career, my ability to, well, sort of that Japanese concept of ikigai, the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what pays you money. I feel like I found my ikigai, and I'm so, so grateful for that. At the same time, there's a lot of question marks because I don't know when and if I'll return to doing therapy. There are things I miss about it. It's what I always thought I was going to, well, not always, but for most of my adult life, you know, thought was going to be my main thing. And I don't know how to return, when to return to that role, especially given the public presence that I've created and the transference and counter-transference dilemmas that that can bring in, as well as the current state of the mental health field. So I'm just kind of taking it day by day. But I don't like to count my chickens before they've hatched or announce things too early in the process. But one thing I do feel comfortable sharing with my audience as a preview of what I will be getting up to in the coming year is creating continuing education for therapists. That is something that's been on my radar for a while. It's certainly in demand. All therapists need continuing education. And it's just been for me a question of who's the right person to partner with on that, because I don't feel like jumping through the hoops to get the accreditation. But thankfully, I recently met someone, you'll find out who when I'm ready to announce all the details. But I've met someone that I'm comfortable partnering with on creating some continuing education that actually gives you official credits. You know, there are therapists who have done my course, ROG Repair, to try to get insight into how they can help families dealing with this issue. And I'm really grateful for all the therapists who signed up and took the time to learn. But, you know, that course was not designed for the therapists. It was designed for the parents, and the therapists are sort of learning as a byproduct. So I do want to create something more tailored to therapists. So that is one of the things that I will be getting up to in the new year. I will also say as I look towards the themes of 2025 and what are some of the first things that are going to happen in the new year is that I'm going to try to sort of write what went wrong last January. So last January, Like I said, I came home from this high point and had a very low point of being cold and hungry and just everything feeling really bleak on my birthday and then getting sick and being so sick. And this year, I have planned it such that I will be in Hawaii on my birthday. On my birthday, I will wake up in Hawaii with my vacation ahead of me. So I'm really looking forward to that. And if you pray, please feel free to pray for me that I maintain good health on the way back. You know, I don't think I don't want to stop myself from having life experiences out of fear of getting sick, but it is a really heavy price to pay for getting on an airplane or, you know, going and pursuing your interests to get as rocked as I have been every time I've caught this nasty virus. So, pray for my health, if you will, because I'd really like to celebrate my 40th birthday in Hawaii with my fiancé in the best health that I can. And then after that, hopefully there will be some kind of launch of Continuing Education, my CE program, while I'm continuing to build ROGD Repair. We have new people joining all the time and people wrapping up the program, and I'm always trying to add new modules and respond to questions and things like that. And then I just have more wedding planning to do. And I'm getting married, God willing, June 2025, surrounded by friends and family in a beautiful location. We decided to do it in a way that we would really have time to connect and relax with our loved ones. That felt really important to us because it's not often we get to see these people. And if we're asking people to come all this way, we really want to have time to spend with them. So I'm looking forward to that celebration. And so those are a couple of the major things that I'm looking forward to in 2025. There are a few unknowns and I want to leave that space for new things to emerge. But something I think I was starting to say earlier and got derailed but that is an important theme for me to explore is The significance of stepping into my 40s and that as an aging milestone. As I said earlier, I understand that for some women, they are at war with the aging process. And look, I understand new wrinkles and gray hairs and metabolism changing. I get all that kind of stuff. I have it too. And yes, we have our vanity and our self-consciousness. I've been praying for the last several years to meet the aging process with grace. I even remember before meeting my fiance going on a solo retreat to this peaceful lake that I really cherish. And that being one of my intentions, like allow me to sort of gracefully let go of things that are from the past and step into new chapters. And one thing about aging, though, is that we can get bogged down with resentments and grudges and just the pain of the past and the heaviness and drudgery of life and regrets and all that kind of stuff. We can get weighed down. And When I say I don't want that, I don't mean that in a way that sort of rejects the inevitability of the aging process, because again, I embrace it. But I think it's important to make a conscious effort to cleanse and renew ourselves so that we don't get bogged down. Just like it's important to periodically declutter, to remove things from our closets and cabinets and, you know, throw them away or donate them to charity, I think it's also important to go through a similar process emotionally and spiritually. Speaking of the physical level of decluttering, some of my intentions lately have had to do with with living, I guess you could say like a non-toxic lifestyle. So switching to natural fabrics, so then I'm not like covered in polyester and forever chemicals, but more like wearing organic cotton and things like that. And then in terms of the products that I use on my body, another one of my health conditions is I have pretty severe chronic dry eye, meibomian gland dysfunction, ocular surface disorder, and I have a brilliant doctor who's recommending some cutting edge treatments for this, but one of the things that I am supposed to do is be aware of the ingredients and the products that I put on my face. So that's another thing that I'm working on. And so I feel like having some guiding principles can be really clarifying for any area of our life. Like with my closet, when I decided I'm looking for certain materials in my clothing and not others, It made it really easy to kind of go through my closet and pull things that are made of fabrics that I don't need touching my skin anymore. And just to be grateful for the role that those clothes served, but to not necessarily need them to be a part of my everyday wardrobe anymore. It felt very clarifying to be like, ah, this is the defining principle that guides how I make decisions about what stays and what goes in this area of my life. Similar thing with cosmetics. I've actually been doing a deep dive using Claude AI. sending it all kinds of information to process and send back to me to help me determine what products to put on my face so that I don't make my eyes get more dry and inflamed. So I think it helps to have, you know, a particular guiding system for any given area of our life. It's very clarifying. And so mentally and emotionally, you know, one thing I know is that it's important to me not to get bogged down in things like resentments and grudges. And to be aware of the role of entropy that sort of left to our own devices without some circumspection towards our human nature, we will get pulled into These sort of facets of our lower nature, I guess you could call it sin in a religious context, but you know, what are the sins, right? It's sloth, envy, avarice, I don't need to list them all, but these are statements about human nature. And we all have some that we fall prey to more than others. I can fall prey to pride, like my pride being wounded and feeling like I have something to prove, which is just ridiculous because there's one judge, there's one ultimate judge of me and it's not you, listener. Sorry to let you know it's not you. I feel myself periodically bombarded with the impacts of others' human nature. Envy is one that I think it's like it sounds narcissistic whenever you start to talk about envy especially in the context of imagining other people are envious about you because that is a thing that narcissists do, right? They like see the world through their own envious lens and project onto others that they're envious of them. But I've actually had to train myself to see this because it's not something that comes naturally to me. I'm not naturally a very envious person. I can be jealous in the context of romantic relationships if I don't feel secure, but I'm not naturally an envy-prone person. And it doesn't always occur to me that others could be envious of me because there's so much they'd have to miss about who I am and what my life experience is in order to be envious of me. So I've actually had to train myself to see envy where it does exist. But, you know, once I've learned to see it, it can be a pretty big driver of human behavior. So in any case, As I age, I think it's important to me, you know, in terms of mentally, emotionally, spiritually, to let go of things that feel foreign to my sense of self. On that note, what I'm talking about here is things that feel ego-dystonic. One of the smaller but still significant highlights of my year, actually, come to think of it, was when Mia Hughes reached out to interview me privately for some journalistic thing she was working on about the concept of ego syntonic versus ego dystonic. Because I think this is actually a really crucial psychology concept that is pretty much limited to academics and clinicians, whereas a lot of other psychology concepts have made their way into the pop culture. And I've explained this on my podcast. I particularly explained it in my conversation with Nicholas Blooms. And I even made a clip, which I don't always do anymore, of the seven or eight minutes where we really dive into this concept and apply it to his experience of transition and detransition. And it just went over people's heads. That video did not get attention. I've tried to say, if there's one thing I can raise everyone's awareness about, let it be this issue. people don't notice, okay, but I love Mia. She's a gorgeous human being, and I've interviewed her on this show, and you should definitely listen to her, and someone commented I could listen to Mia read the phone book, and I agree. She has that kind of voice. But anyway, after I'd already interviewed Mia, she like followed up at one point. She's like, I was, you know, looking into this concept of ego-syntonic versus dystonic and I found this video that you made and let me interview you about that. So that was really great to know that my work was reaching someone so thoughtful. So on that note of ego-dystonic versus syntonic, for me, holding grudges is very ego-dystonic. I do not see myself as someone with grudges and resentments. Same with feelings like envy and competitiveness or vindictiveness. These are things that just feel foreign to my sense of self. When they do crop up as part of my shadow of you know being a human being Coexisting with other faulty human beings. I Have a really hard time with it because it's like grating on me. It feels like a foreign invader and But as I say that, I'm thinking about the metaphor of the pearl, the pearl entering the oyster, right? The pearl is an irritant. It's this external invasive thing that doesn't belong in the oyster. And what does the oyster do? It creates a coating to protect itself from the irritant, and then you end up with a beautiful pearl. So I guess I'm in my own pearl making process, if you will. of what do I do when I feel something foreign invading me, something like envy or a grudge, a resentment. And I'm not going to deny that I feel some of those things, because I do. Because there are people who have tried to hurt me and have even succeeded, who have spread malicious lies about me, or at least distorted interpretations of my character and actions and motives. And I struggle with what to do with that. And one reason I struggle, again, is foreign to my sense of self. And I want to eject it. And the fact that I can't just so easily wish it away and get rid of it irritates me. But I think I'm in a pearl-making process, if you will. And I'm just discovering that as I'm saying it right now. So maybe that's the metaphors, making pearls. What to do so that I don't get bogged down as I age, so that I just become a more and more beautiful and refined version of myself, one still capable of experiencing levity, joy, humor, spontaneity, play. Even though, and perhaps especially because, I spend time in such dark and heavy places. And I think that's partly what this podcast is about, at least I hope. I hope that my life's work, whether it be this podcast or the other ways that I touch and affect people, is that I can go to some really dark, heavy places with people, but still see the light and still know how to come up for air. And that's a gift that I wanna give you. It's a gift that I try to give through my program, ROGD Repair, because that program is, so much of it is about helping people find balance and find their values and their virtues. when they've been destabilized by something as terrifying as your child's threatening and pursuing bodily harm, which is just about the most upsetting thing that could happen to anyone short of losing a child. And for many parents, it does feel like a prolonged sense of loss. And yet, sometimes the thing that needs healing in the family system requires room for growth, room for levity, for coming up for air, for naturalness and spontaneity and authenticity to return to the family system. Because the families that are affected by, as I say in the course, the trifecta of social contagion, gender identity ideology, working in combination with cluster B personality traits and behaviors, and woke beliefs about social justice. Families affected by that trifecta lose their humor, their naturalness, spontaneity, and joy. You know, I look for glimmers of hope, and those are some of the things I look for is those, those natural things returning to the family system. This is one thing I will say about my work when I'm doing the consulting process with families, especially the ones who really commit to working with me who like buy a package because I do offer a little discount if you prepay for five or 10 appointments. Because I really enjoy working with people in greater depth. That's what I did as a therapist and I'm, you know, sort of translating those skills into my consulting and advisory role. So when I'm in that process, and I really get to know the people who are coming to me for help. One of the things I do is I look for signs. Well, I look for hidden signs of ambivalence and doubt in their kids with regard to the identity issues and the path that they seem to be on. And I look for sort of hidden signs of desistance or things moving in a healthier direction. And these are some of those signs, right? The naturalness, lightness play. Because life can be so very heavy, but sometimes it's like, It's like a chicken and egg dilemma where the family like feels like they can't heal or move on or be happy until this problem is resolved, you know, until they've saved their kid. But sometimes the thing the thing that's actually going to save their kid is to to move in that healthier direction, regardless of where the kid is at, if that makes sense. So it creates this sort of catch-22. But that's why I'm here, right, is to help people with these things that are much easier said than done. Now circling back to the theme around my eye health issues, I mentioned in the context earlier of being mindful of what cosmetics I use and researching ingredients and things like that, The other thing I will say is that there is a symbolism here. As I was preparing to do this recording today, I was using Claude AI to help me prepare an outline. And I was basically just asking it to ask me questions about what's behind and what's ahead so that I could put my thoughts together. And I will say, Claude is very helpful. Claude is trained, I could tell, to demonstrate the behaviors of a very emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence. And that is not therapy. That's not a therapist. That's not a human relationship. But it sure is helpful for someone like me who really appreciates a good reflective listener, because Claude will positively reframe everything I say and help me flesh out my thoughts. And it's great. But as I was dialoguing with Claude to prepare my outline to kind of get my thoughts in order for today, One of the themes that Claude summarized my input as was clear-eyed compassion. And at first that phrase kind of irked me. I was like, oh, that feels hokey. But then I thought I hadn't even told it yet about my eye issues. So there's a literal thing here as well as the symbolic clear-eyed compassion. There's a literal thing I'm going through with my eye health issues. And I'm going to be doing some treatments and some lifestyle adjustments in order to help my eyes see more clearly further into the future and function and have literally the moistness and hydration that my eyes need, the lubrication that my eyes need in order to work well. And when you think about moistness, hydration, lubrication, you can think of it as sort of the water element, the feminine. And think of the element of love, right? Like love greases the wheels. Love allows things to flow like water, like family, like blood that ties us together. As I am going through some eye treatments this year, may I say with clear eyed compassion. But really it's like I think the symbolism here is understanding our human nature and finding peace. through having a clear-eyed understanding of our human nature. And then also, bridging the literal and the metaphorical, something that's important to me is getting outside for a walk every day as much as possible. Sometimes it's a very short walk, sometimes it's around the block. It depends on how much energy I have, what the weather's like. time and all that kind of stuff. And thankfully, I was given a treadmill for Christmas, which I'm so grateful for, because I had a treadmill for the longest time that I got for like 100 bucks on Craigslist or something. And, and it served me very, very well. That old used treadmill until it finally saw the end of its days. And so then I had a good long several months this year where I had no treadmill. So I'm very grateful for the treadmill I was given for Christmas. And I look forward to walking many miles on that treadmill at home when I can't get outside. That being said, it's so important for me to get outside for a number of reasons. There's the fresh air, the natural light, and there's also the act of seeing into the distance. Um, which we don't do enough. I know I don't do it enough. Um, I think I heard on Huberman lab, cause he's an eye expert that you need like two hours a day at least of seeing into the distance for optimal eye health. And I know I am not getting that cause I am not getting outside every day for a two hour walk where I'm looking miles ahead. In fact, most of the time I spend staring like a couple feet in front of my face. So super close up, really not good for eye health or brain health. And I think that our vision, what we see and what we connect our senses to, affects our perception of the world. It affects our proprioception, our ability to locate our body in space and to feel our feelings, and the way our brain processes information. I think we can become very myopic, literally and metaphorically, short-sighted. I am myopic. I am short-sighted. I wear contacts to see into the distance. But symbolically, we can become very short-sighted as well when we're always just looking so close to our face. And we're looking into this two-dimensional world on the screens, which I'm as guilty of as the next person. But I think there's something so important about being able to see into the distance and to see from a higher perspective and to get that fresh air So I think I've explored plenty of themes in this episode about the year behind and the year ahead and just what this chapter of growth is all about for me. I really want to thank those of you who have been on the journey with me, those more devoted listeners of this podcast who feel like you know me. Thanks for being along for the ride. Now, I don't often remember to ask people to leave comments. And I recently interviewed Wildfire Whispers, who was like such a cheerleader during our episode. She was like, smash that like button. Remember to subscribe to Stephanie's channel. So great, great of her. But I would like to ask for certain types of comments for this one. So I'd love to know your thoughts on anything I shared, as well as what were your favorite episodes this year. I know one of my favorites, this is the availability heuristic right here. It's my most recent interview. Jaco Fonsell said, Jaco Fonsell. I think that's how you pronounce it. On the podcast, I said van sale. No, it's Jaco Fonsell. Anyway, that was the December 16th episode. I thought it was awesome. Yeah, but what were your favorite episodes this year? What do you think about the things I talked about? And also, do you have any wedding advice for me? Because I just love getting, well, no, don't, hold on. Let me put some caveats around that. I don't love all the advice. I don't love the advice, don't get married. Screw you. You guys can go. be miserable and lonely somewhere else, I'm actually very happy. Or to not have a big wedding because guess what? You only live once. We're having a big wedding. It's happening. And it's going to be a celebration of all my favorite things because you know, I'm getting married once. By the way, check out my cool ring. I don't know how good the resolution is going to be on here, but if you're watching on video, you can see my gorgeous custom made moss agate and opal and rose gold ring. Um, so yeah, don't just give me any kind of wedding advice, but any, any marriage advice, any blessings you'd like to give on our marriage. Um, I would welcome that any potential honeymoon destinations to consider or gifts to add to our registry. um anything you'd like to see me do in 2025 and you know that reminds me i didn't circle back to the things i did want to say about getting married this coming year so um what would i like to say about that it's been a long road to get here i certainly didn't Didn't imagine it would take me until 40 to get married. But a lot of people have been married and divorced by my age. And that includes the man I'm marrying. And I guess here's a message to anyone out there who's still looking for your person, looking for love, is that I was praying pretty hard for him in that last year or so before I met him. I was really like, where's my person? What do I need to understand to find him? And one of the sort of premonitions I got was, just hang on a little bit longer. He's just recovering from a divorce. He's almost ready. So if that's any consolation to anyone out there, So yeah, I didn't imagine it would take me this long. And in many ways, we're living like we're already married. We've been raising as kids together. We've been living together for a while. It just so happened to be that with the particular circumstances we were given in life, this is the order that we did things in. And it is what it is, but I'm grateful to be able to finally get married in a situation in life in which we can afford to have a big wedding bringing all our friends and family together, where we know who we are, we feel so solid in our relationship, and we can really make this uniquely about us and our love. Earlier, I was sharing my, I guess, hard one ability to get to a place where I can laugh about some of the painful attacks on my reputation that have occurred this year and in other times past. But having someone who just consistently sees me in the most positive light has been so healing to my heart and soul as someone with a history of being scapegoated and having my self-image really affected by that. You know, there's just not much anyone can really do to cancel my self-esteem when I'm with someone who loves me so much and just relentlessly sees the good in me. I mean, to the point where almost at times it feels a little delusional, but you know what? I'll take it. I will take it. Thank you. Thank you so much for seeing me in such a warm, soft light. And I wish that on everyone, that you find someone who sees you the way you need to be seen in order to bring out the very best qualities in you. That is something that I strongly believe, is that the way we see and treat each other shapes our character development, it shapes what qualities are magnified in us. And I think one of the greatest gifts that you can give someone is to see the parts of them that want to be seen, that want to be watered so that they can grow, watered with your attention. Another thing I wanted to make sure to do before wrapping up this episode is mention a few of the conversations you can look forward to hearing in 2025. If you've made it this far into my solo episode, this is your reward. Thank you so much for following along. You get a sneak peek at who's coming down the pipeline. So in the new year, we have wildfire whispers. We have Nina Paley. Harrison Tinsley. And I have a lot of great guests scheduled, but those are the only three I have already interviewed as of this recording date. So I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch. But I just consulted my list of all the people I'm going to interview in the next few weeks. And it's a really great lineup. So let's look forward to there. Alright, I think I've finally covered enough of everything I intended to cover and I can go ahead and wrap up now. Oops! Nope, I lied. One more thing. I'm closing out the Locals community. I'm just sort of letting it fade away. I know I already mentioned this in a previous episode, but Locals just never really took off and I don't know when I'm going to make my X-profile public again. I've had it locked for a while for personal reasons. X can just, it's such a mixed bag of blessings and curses. It's like Pandora's box. ROGD Repair has been really successful for the people who need it. So I transferred all the benefits of locals membership over to ROGD Repair. And so for instance, one of the perks is that you get to know who my future guests will be, post any questions you might have for them, you get early access to new episodes. And feel free to suggest guests or ask me questions. So all of that is now available to members of the ROGD Repair community. If you were in Locals, I'm happy to give you a discount code to join ROGD Repair if that's something that you want to do that applies to you. And I already had a parent that's a member of the ROGD Repair community request me to interview a guest who I just met the other day and is fabulous and I'm looking forward to interviewing. So that's working out well. Okay. I think that's it. I think we're done. Okay, so I will close with one of my favorite poems, Desiderata by Max Ehrman from 1927, almost a century old. Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant. They too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons. They are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter. For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is. Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself, especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share, or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.