New York Times correspondent Matt Richtel has spent the last two years doing a deep dive into the youth mental health crisis that has escalated to the point that in December 2021, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murphy issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory
In 2010 I went through a 90 day intensive residential treatment that focused solely on 24/7 DBT. You lived it, breathed it, and ate it. Out of all the different treatments I have gone through in 35 years since my first suicide attempt at age 11 it was the most successful. Not perfect mind you but infinitely superior to everything else. It’s what helps get me through the days when I want to give up and just do what my daughter wants, to accept her and treat her as my son. It helps me remember that to do so would cause me to spiral down into the depths of the debilitating depression that comes when I have severe cognitive dissonance. I truly believe that what is being called a “mental health crises” is in fact mental illness manufacturing. Psychologists, therapists, counselors, teachers, doctors and parents are creating bipolar and BPD in kids by reinforcing undisciplined thinking and supporting/encouraging the uncontrolled reactions to intense emotions. The more kids are taught to think about and talk about how they are feeling the more intense and overwhelming those feelings become. Then it’s made even worse by teaching them that any and all reactions to their emotions are acceptable no matter how inappropriate. The best thing schools and even daycares could do would be to have DBT be taught and incorporated throughout their day at school. Not classes that teach it specifically but just a regular and normal everyday part of school. Coping skills not taught as “coping skills” but as the logical means of handling difficulties and distresses from a disagreement on the playground to the disappointment of failing a test. Teaching kids, adolescents and young adult how to interact calmly and rationally in the objective reality everyone exists in instead of trying to wrangle some kind of order from the chaos created when everyone exists in their own subjective reality.
AAP, APA, HHS, CDC, FDA, these agencies are all captured. They do not work for Kids, Families, Parents, Americans, People, or Society. They work for Global Multinational Pharmaceutical & Tech Companies. They don’t care if they drive your kid to suicide or if your kid is harmed by hormones, sex change operations, or grotesque medical malfeasance.
DBT is for Borderline PD. It doesn’t really work well enough for the most severe Borderlines who were seriously abused by their parents & ended up in Foster Care as Adolescents because those kids have way too much Dissociation. Whenever these kids get stressed, they have thousands of mini milli-second blackouts a day. You can start any kid with DBT as treatment but many kids are gonna need a lot more; things like Neurofeedback. And they are going to need the parent to understand attachment disruption.
Borderline results from Developmental Trauma/Disorganized Attachment/ Life Threat in Infancy. The infant is forced to use what Selma Fraiberg called, “Infant Pathological Defenses” right from birth. Borderlines have mothers with Borderline. They have aunts, uncles, grandparents with Cluster B Personality Disorders. These are families with High ACE Scores.
If I wanted to help my kid, I would 1. Get every PubMed article by Susan Coates and read them, put them in a File. Share them with your kid’s doctors. 2. Get rid of the hand held Propaganda Box. 3. Read Allan Schore’s “Affect Regulation and Development of Self.” 4. Read Brown and Elliot’s “Attachment Disturbances in Adults” 5. Find a Really good therapist who knows how to do NFB for Borderline/Developmental Trauma/RAD 6. Get Dean Ornis’s Book “Undo It” and follow his lifestyle recs.
That’s where I would start. And I would do as much as I could to stay away from Allopathic Medicine.
"Are doctors and therapists—and the US Department of Health and Human Services—really choosing the best, most effective, most evidence-based path for gender dysphoric teens, or are they choosing the path that doesn’t challenge them with difficult questions?"
The beautiful lie or the painful truth?
Sexual liberation, to include extra-marital sex, contraception, transgenderism and same-sex "sex" are all part of a broader eugenics program.
Bye bye bloodlines!
The chosen ones know exactly what is best for our "transgendered" youth. They will tell us what is best. They will drug our children if that is best for the collective. Isn't this the world you all want? Right?
So, another option to therapy is to go straight to the source and practice meditation & listen to dharma talks. This will strengthen self-control, emotional regulation, and the ability to be calm and loving (even while your child is off-balance).
The tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh is extremely engaging and has numerous online lectures on Youtube.
I hate to hear that DBT is yet another thing being corrupted by this cult, and rendered possibly harmful or at least significantly less benign. I have found the DBT tools and philosophy so very helpful in my life. I base my LGB activism on promoting the DBT concept of "radical acceptance," which I also try to practice in my own life.
If acceptance of anything in life is conditional it is not "radical (to the root) acceptance," and thus is not DBT.
I spent a lot of $ on DBT for my child. It was helpful for coping with moving through depression and difficulty functioning. But I had the same frustrations With the pronoun game I had with another therapist. When I complained I was told DMSO no longer classify gender dysphoria as a mental illness so it’s not treated as such.
Yes! I agree! Great piece. I have a few thoughts to add.
DBT ought to be the "first stop" (though NOT "affirming" DBT -- regular DBT). Pretending the distressing thing (being female) isn't true because "G Identity is male" would be the *opposite* of DBT. "Radical acceptance" is the heart of it. Learning to tolerate upsetting realities.
The DBT program was designed by a therapist, Marcia Linehan, who herself struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder as a young woman and devised this program to address what her incapacities and needs were.
In my area, they offer *Group* DBT. I know it is offered to adults-- and I think also teens-- in the group setting. This could be one way to get DBT to more people. There's a workbook with weekly themes and homework/ practice of new skills. I think it's about a 10 or 12 session course. I know someone w BPD who took it, and she said it made her life much better and gave her effective skills to cope.
DBT is all about "distress tolerance": learning how to modulate one's emotions/ reactivity and have a better capacity to 'hold' distressful feelings or thoughts without going into a panic state, rage state, dissociated shut down, or other overwhelmed state.
There is a developmental period in early life when we normally learn distress tolerance and "emotional self regulation"... 0-3. The way we learn it is (ideally) we have a parent who is able to comfort our distress and calm us down when we get upset; amuse and engage us when bored... etc.
The frequent repetition of these actions, by which we are soothed and co-regulated, teaches us how to intuitively soothe and regulate ourselves. This skill is modeled and absorbed over time.
There's an implication that teens are still not mature, and this is why some teens need DBT. Not exactly. It isn't normal for a teen to have totally missed out on self-regulation learning altogether-- though it IS normal for racing emotions and hormones of teen years to challenge and re-test our ability to self regulate and demand we hone better skills. Teens recapitulate toddlerhood in many ways. Kids who can't self regulate at all MISSED OUT on learning the skill and that has affected subsequent learning because the developmental sequence builds on prior skills. It's a functional deficit.
DBT is a kind of CBT. These methods use the Cognitive (Left/ linguistic-rational) brain. Here, DBT skills and strategies invoked by Left brain ("I can take a hot shower") are used to calm the Right (emotional) brain down.
Of course the EASIEST way to learn emotional self regulation is when it is learned intuitively by our right brains in toddlerhood, the appropriate time frame-- or if we learn it later, learned through right brain experiences (attachment to the therapist, being co-regulated by the therapist, feeling trust and self trust, etc).
Neurofeedback is one RIGHT-brain focused therapy that can greatly improve overall regulation ("Neuroptimal"). Somatic psychotherapy or Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) are other right-brain focused therapeutic approaches. They are mostly wordless, body-and-sensation focused approaches (a bit like babies get when we rock them and say shhhh).
Emotions are felt bodily and these kids need to learn how to tolerate and 'surf' their body's cues and sensations rather than block/avoid/suppress-- or be carried away.
Looking at the co-occurring issues of the trans ID population, it is obviously an early childhood regulation/attachment-challenged group: ASD affects interpersonal/relational skills and learning, so that impairs acquiring self regulation. PTSD, or Trauma history/abuse/bullying, deeply affects acquiring these self calming/ self-accepting skills. Most foster youth are surrendered under age three and have been abused or neglected in this window. Adoptees, with 4x the TG ideation, are another group who have had shock trauma in early babyhood-- even if later experiences were very loved and safe. If a baby has PTSD and is in "freeze," it is hard to learn anything.
Last, what babies would consider traumatic is not what we necessarily think of as "Trauma" and might be accidental on the part of the parent. For a baby, Mom being hospitalized for two weeks (nobody's fault) could be VERY traumatic, like a death or an abandonment. Or a depressed mom, a financially stressed household, lack of mirroring/attention.
There is a thing out in the therapy world too about DBT. I don’t know how many therapists believe it, but they think DBT is harmful. I’m sorry I don’t know more about this--have just run into it in online therapists groups.
What an excellent article! Even though it poses more questions than answers, the questions are thoughtful and extremely important. I am pleased to have a name (DBT) for the type of approach that I favor for beginning to unravel the origin of peoples' gender identity issues. I will eagerly seek more information on this and pray that we get more traction on this without involving politics.
In 2010 I went through a 90 day intensive residential treatment that focused solely on 24/7 DBT. You lived it, breathed it, and ate it. Out of all the different treatments I have gone through in 35 years since my first suicide attempt at age 11 it was the most successful. Not perfect mind you but infinitely superior to everything else. It’s what helps get me through the days when I want to give up and just do what my daughter wants, to accept her and treat her as my son. It helps me remember that to do so would cause me to spiral down into the depths of the debilitating depression that comes when I have severe cognitive dissonance. I truly believe that what is being called a “mental health crises” is in fact mental illness manufacturing. Psychologists, therapists, counselors, teachers, doctors and parents are creating bipolar and BPD in kids by reinforcing undisciplined thinking and supporting/encouraging the uncontrolled reactions to intense emotions. The more kids are taught to think about and talk about how they are feeling the more intense and overwhelming those feelings become. Then it’s made even worse by teaching them that any and all reactions to their emotions are acceptable no matter how inappropriate. The best thing schools and even daycares could do would be to have DBT be taught and incorporated throughout their day at school. Not classes that teach it specifically but just a regular and normal everyday part of school. Coping skills not taught as “coping skills” but as the logical means of handling difficulties and distresses from a disagreement on the playground to the disappointment of failing a test. Teaching kids, adolescents and young adult how to interact calmly and rationally in the objective reality everyone exists in instead of trying to wrangle some kind of order from the chaos created when everyone exists in their own subjective reality.
100% agree-- DBT is best evidence-based treatment for BPD / severe emotional dysregulation.
Be aware that it can be given in group settings. They offer group DBT in my community.
"Radical Acceptance" is part of DBT.
AAP, APA, HHS, CDC, FDA, these agencies are all captured. They do not work for Kids, Families, Parents, Americans, People, or Society. They work for Global Multinational Pharmaceutical & Tech Companies. They don’t care if they drive your kid to suicide or if your kid is harmed by hormones, sex change operations, or grotesque medical malfeasance.
DBT is for Borderline PD. It doesn’t really work well enough for the most severe Borderlines who were seriously abused by their parents & ended up in Foster Care as Adolescents because those kids have way too much Dissociation. Whenever these kids get stressed, they have thousands of mini milli-second blackouts a day. You can start any kid with DBT as treatment but many kids are gonna need a lot more; things like Neurofeedback. And they are going to need the parent to understand attachment disruption.
Borderline results from Developmental Trauma/Disorganized Attachment/ Life Threat in Infancy. The infant is forced to use what Selma Fraiberg called, “Infant Pathological Defenses” right from birth. Borderlines have mothers with Borderline. They have aunts, uncles, grandparents with Cluster B Personality Disorders. These are families with High ACE Scores.
If I wanted to help my kid, I would 1. Get every PubMed article by Susan Coates and read them, put them in a File. Share them with your kid’s doctors. 2. Get rid of the hand held Propaganda Box. 3. Read Allan Schore’s “Affect Regulation and Development of Self.” 4. Read Brown and Elliot’s “Attachment Disturbances in Adults” 5. Find a Really good therapist who knows how to do NFB for Borderline/Developmental Trauma/RAD 6. Get Dean Ornis’s Book “Undo It” and follow his lifestyle recs.
That’s where I would start. And I would do as much as I could to stay away from Allopathic Medicine.
"Are doctors and therapists—and the US Department of Health and Human Services—really choosing the best, most effective, most evidence-based path for gender dysphoric teens, or are they choosing the path that doesn’t challenge them with difficult questions?"
The beautiful lie or the painful truth?
Sexual liberation, to include extra-marital sex, contraception, transgenderism and same-sex "sex" are all part of a broader eugenics program.
Bye bye bloodlines!
The chosen ones know exactly what is best for our "transgendered" youth. They will tell us what is best. They will drug our children if that is best for the collective. Isn't this the world you all want? Right?
"It takes a village"...right?
I’ve read DBT is often used with PTSD, and that does seem to be a frequent comorbidity with membership in the gender cult 😕
DBT is derived from Buddhism.
So, another option to therapy is to go straight to the source and practice meditation & listen to dharma talks. This will strengthen self-control, emotional regulation, and the ability to be calm and loving (even while your child is off-balance).
The tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh is extremely engaging and has numerous online lectures on Youtube.
One example among many: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHetqgMB8SM
Great points.
I hate to hear that DBT is yet another thing being corrupted by this cult, and rendered possibly harmful or at least significantly less benign. I have found the DBT tools and philosophy so very helpful in my life. I base my LGB activism on promoting the DBT concept of "radical acceptance," which I also try to practice in my own life.
If acceptance of anything in life is conditional it is not "radical (to the root) acceptance," and thus is not DBT.
Thank you for this. It is the best written article I have read on the subject, and I appreciate your perspective.
I spent a lot of $ on DBT for my child. It was helpful for coping with moving through depression and difficulty functioning. But I had the same frustrations With the pronoun game I had with another therapist. When I complained I was told DMSO no longer classify gender dysphoria as a mental illness so it’s not treated as such.
🔥🔥🔥
Yes! I agree! Great piece. I have a few thoughts to add.
DBT ought to be the "first stop" (though NOT "affirming" DBT -- regular DBT). Pretending the distressing thing (being female) isn't true because "G Identity is male" would be the *opposite* of DBT. "Radical acceptance" is the heart of it. Learning to tolerate upsetting realities.
The DBT program was designed by a therapist, Marcia Linehan, who herself struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder as a young woman and devised this program to address what her incapacities and needs were.
In my area, they offer *Group* DBT. I know it is offered to adults-- and I think also teens-- in the group setting. This could be one way to get DBT to more people. There's a workbook with weekly themes and homework/ practice of new skills. I think it's about a 10 or 12 session course. I know someone w BPD who took it, and she said it made her life much better and gave her effective skills to cope.
DBT is all about "distress tolerance": learning how to modulate one's emotions/ reactivity and have a better capacity to 'hold' distressful feelings or thoughts without going into a panic state, rage state, dissociated shut down, or other overwhelmed state.
There is a developmental period in early life when we normally learn distress tolerance and "emotional self regulation"... 0-3. The way we learn it is (ideally) we have a parent who is able to comfort our distress and calm us down when we get upset; amuse and engage us when bored... etc.
The frequent repetition of these actions, by which we are soothed and co-regulated, teaches us how to intuitively soothe and regulate ourselves. This skill is modeled and absorbed over time.
There's an implication that teens are still not mature, and this is why some teens need DBT. Not exactly. It isn't normal for a teen to have totally missed out on self-regulation learning altogether-- though it IS normal for racing emotions and hormones of teen years to challenge and re-test our ability to self regulate and demand we hone better skills. Teens recapitulate toddlerhood in many ways. Kids who can't self regulate at all MISSED OUT on learning the skill and that has affected subsequent learning because the developmental sequence builds on prior skills. It's a functional deficit.
DBT is a kind of CBT. These methods use the Cognitive (Left/ linguistic-rational) brain. Here, DBT skills and strategies invoked by Left brain ("I can take a hot shower") are used to calm the Right (emotional) brain down.
Of course the EASIEST way to learn emotional self regulation is when it is learned intuitively by our right brains in toddlerhood, the appropriate time frame-- or if we learn it later, learned through right brain experiences (attachment to the therapist, being co-regulated by the therapist, feeling trust and self trust, etc).
Neurofeedback is one RIGHT-brain focused therapy that can greatly improve overall regulation ("Neuroptimal"). Somatic psychotherapy or Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) are other right-brain focused therapeutic approaches. They are mostly wordless, body-and-sensation focused approaches (a bit like babies get when we rock them and say shhhh).
Emotions are felt bodily and these kids need to learn how to tolerate and 'surf' their body's cues and sensations rather than block/avoid/suppress-- or be carried away.
Looking at the co-occurring issues of the trans ID population, it is obviously an early childhood regulation/attachment-challenged group: ASD affects interpersonal/relational skills and learning, so that impairs acquiring self regulation. PTSD, or Trauma history/abuse/bullying, deeply affects acquiring these self calming/ self-accepting skills. Most foster youth are surrendered under age three and have been abused or neglected in this window. Adoptees, with 4x the TG ideation, are another group who have had shock trauma in early babyhood-- even if later experiences were very loved and safe. If a baby has PTSD and is in "freeze," it is hard to learn anything.
Last, what babies would consider traumatic is not what we necessarily think of as "Trauma" and might be accidental on the part of the parent. For a baby, Mom being hospitalized for two weeks (nobody's fault) could be VERY traumatic, like a death or an abandonment. Or a depressed mom, a financially stressed household, lack of mirroring/attention.
There is a thing out in the therapy world too about DBT. I don’t know how many therapists believe it, but they think DBT is harmful. I’m sorry I don’t know more about this--have just run into it in online therapists groups.
What an excellent article! Even though it poses more questions than answers, the questions are thoughtful and extremely important. I am pleased to have a name (DBT) for the type of approach that I favor for beginning to unravel the origin of peoples' gender identity issues. I will eagerly seek more information on this and pray that we get more traction on this without involving politics.