It’s wild how many supposedly queer-friendly therapists are just clueless. There are genuinely well-intentioned therapists who seem to have never heard of systemic oppression.
this. i haven been to at least 12 therapists in my life, and ive mentioned how capitalism makes me incredibly depressed and anxious all the time, but im constantly dismissed because its out of my control so i should just ignore it... like bitch i cant. its so frustrating having ppl that are supposed to be able to help me confirm my worst fears that im just lazy and not trying hard enough and that i just need to "look on the bright side" and "focus on your breathe" like itll make my life any better..... ik therapy can be helpful and i think it might have helped me to an extent, but honestly i feel more traumatized now than before i was in therapy, and i dont trust any therapists anymore because of shit i wont get into, this comment is already way too long awjknaawn i just wanted to rant abt this because itll never not bother me.... the fact that therapists literally made my mental health worse... like.... i cant even describe how depressing and helpless it makes me feel to not have anyone irl who even understands what im going thru
Same for autism, I have given up on finding a therapist who can help me. I spend hundreds only to have them completely misunderstand me and fail to meet my needs
Yeah, there are Reasons why I've basically sworn off seeing any therapist who isn't both queer and disabled. Because as a queer fat trans blind person, yes I do have a lot of anxiety. But I also live in a society that is Actively, Provably hostile to my existence AND has made it near impossible for me to function in due to the barriers it has erected (extensive car culture, gutting of public transit, obscene price of accessibility aids because it's harder to market the ones intended for blind people, lack of social support). And then you add in the extra pressures of living in late stage capitalism on top of it all, and being anxious and depressed starts seeming like A Reasonable Reaction. And I have better things to do with my time and money than put up with someone trying to tell me about the benefits of positive thinking. Positive thinking will not get me a job or let me buy food, and it's frankly insulting and condescending to pretend it will.
My conversion therapists are adamant that they're 'allies'. They genuinely meant well. They thought the least invasive way of treating gender dysphoria was to help the trans person realize they were just confused/traumatized/influenced, so that they could lead a normal cis life again. They claimed this was their way of adhering to the Hippocratic Oath, because medical transition would amount to 'damage' being done. If the trans person persists, well then maybe they'd allow transition. They were licensed psychologists and psychiatrists working at a reputable gender clinic, publishing peer reviewed articles on how to treat gender dysphoric people. My sister majored in psychobiology and a professor straight up told the class that being trans was a mental illness (probably about 3 years ago, so recent), so I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that conversion therapy was the standard go-to. This all took place in Amsterdam.
I was told to just suck it up when I complained that I struggle with the fact so much of customer service and work interaction as well as interaction with neurotypicals is built on lies. Wishing people well when it's obvious that you don't mean it, and especially the infamous "how are you" question that is not supposed to be responded to truthfully. I was told pleasantries, flattery and white lies are "the glue that keep society from tearing each other's throat out". I guess it's fine if I get crushed by it as long as society doesn't have to change and can continue to make me feel like garbage for struggling to keep up. cool, thanks, great to know.
i'd be really curious to hear ashton's opinions on the topic, but in the meantime you might be interested to know that aaron ansuini (a trans guy) made a video on the topic several years ago. should be easy to find, his youtube channel is just his name.
The therapist that I see has told me that *most* of the afab and transmasc patients she's worked with have struggled with some type of "disordered eating," unhealthy habits even if it doesn't progress to a full-blown disorder :(
For me it was definitely a control thing. I was so dysphoric (but didn't quite realize I was trans yet) that an eating disorder gave me the illusion of having a sense of agency and control over my body. Once I realized I was trans (and got away from a difficult household) and transitioned the ED went away on its own because I no longer needed to feel that kind of ownership over my body, because I finally became comfortable with it.
As a trans person myself a lot of my eating disorder stems from my gender dysphoria. Dropping weight is the only non surgical affirming thing I can do (I’m AFAB and hold my fat on my hips/chest)
saying "ppl SUFFERING FROM autism" is like the most passive aggressivly ableist bs... omgg that stuff really gets to me. its so shitty. like autism is actually p cool??? i really like being autistic most days, im lucky to have ppl that im comfortable around and who accept me and i can just be without having to mask or constantly over anylize everything. what causes me suffering is neurotypical ppl who think they know better than me whats best for me. what causes me suffering is the way my city is built in a way that constantly triggers and overstimulates me. i hate how so many ppl want to point the finger at individuals and act like we "just have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be normal, just fit it, just cope with it. its not like we are living in a dystopia thats slowly killing the planet and everyone on ittt. noo your fucking crazy" /s
The irony is a lot of "autistic suffering" comes as a result of people who refuse to keep our sensory needs in mind and force us to be "normal" My autism is both a gift and a curse, much like how i view my transness and plurality 😅
I suffer but honestly a decent chunk of it is just.. other people lol. Like I have stuff that is inherently difficult/impossible for me but it would be a whole lot easier if I could just wear a massive pair of sunglasses everywhere without being stared at and stuff like that
To provide context, I am a Black queer second-year PsyD student in Clinical Psychology. I also have a dual Bachelor's and Master's degree in Psychology. I love this video. There is a growing radical movement within the field to decolonize our practices to center on marginalized/oppressed communities and the sociopolitical condition and etiology. I would recommend (if you are interested) looking up Liberation Psychology. Liberation psychology is a praxis-based and abolitionist-centered model that addresses many of these concerns, led by LGBTQ+ Black, Indigenous, and Latine psychologists. Liberation psychology prioritizes critical ecology and an interdisciplinary framework when working clinically with communities and conducting research (e.g., incorporating abolitionism, gender theory, anarchism, communism, feminism, philosophy, environmentalism, history, etc). I did an hour-long presentation on this for a class in my doctoral program and a few papers on this topic. Unfortunately, contemporary academia centers on mainstream neoliberal capitalism and colonial psychology, but there are psychologists and other mental health professionals actively resisting this. They are pushing out resources and calling for a revolution. It angers me that this information is suppressed in undergraduate psychology classes, but I am not surprised.
this is awesome to hear about!!! i just made a comment mentioning the lack of organized movements for this in psychology, so it's super cool to hear that there actually are some!!
Listeing to this video, I think that there is a massive misunderstanding ... Studying psychology often means that after university you will be working with people with mental disorders and trying to help them. Studying psychology does NOT mean that you as a student are supposed to have a mental disorder that will be treated in class. Having a mental disorder of their own is, on the contrary, rather problematic for psychology students, because at Uni and in their later career they will often be confronted with very problematic cases that can trigger their disorder even more. As a student or professional in psychology you are not the "center of the world", your (future) patients and clients are, so to say. It will get rather difficult,. too, if a, say, autistic psychologist will have to treat a person with problems in her/his relationship with her/his partner. Because, by the very definition of "autism", the autistic psychologist will have massive problems to understand what the patient feels or how to interpret the difficulties in the relationship.This may cause event more problems for the patient, because she/he is confronted not only with her/his own problems, but also with the problems of the therapist. This is clearly not good.
Damn. That thread about suicide prevention among African slaves makes me wonder if similar attitudes are at the root of why modern suicide prevention techniques feel, in my mind, completely alienating (which has led me to stop sharing suicidal ideations with any professional).
i feel the same way abt self harm reduction. i have never, and will never feel comfortable talking to a therapist abt urges to s/h because if i do im scared ill be put under a 50150 or something like that (being forcibly institutionalized). it doesnt feel like ppl actually care abt me because im either straight up ignored and dismissed, or ppl take it WAYY too seriously and it feels kind dehumanizing? like my voice/thoughts/opinions dont matter, all that matters is getting me to stop being a danger to myself.... but its all forced and so none of it helps. idk what the solution is, esp since its really complicated, literally every single person who struggles with s/h does it differently and for different reasons. but i do think the way we, as a society, deal with s/h is not good enough. the way therapists just dont care why im s/hing they only want me to stop... the way im given no real control over my life or choices, and if anything im stripped of the little control i have because im a "danger to myself".... its insulting idk how else to put it. it feels so dismissive and condescending and not at all helpful..... but yeah sorry for ranting
oh ur so right :( since my first hospital visit i have not shared any suicidal ideation, or even urges to self harm, which i had shared multiple times in the past. not all, but a lot of doctors and officers made me feel as though i had committed a deep crime and had to think about my actions. the energy during some situations where they were attempting to help my state of my mind felt as though they were observing a species they didn't understand. there's definitely a resemblance to how these same ideas affected slaves
Yeah I have found myself not being able to open up about things too like thoughts of suicide because I felt unsure what the result of saying that would b
@@XeLUA-cam this feels very true (Malthusianism) and I thought this way for a very long time, but in fact we have more than enough resources for everyone. it's the way they're (not) distributed that is the issue. if you've ever worked in retail, you know how much perfectly good food you're forced to throw out (in order to maintain artificial scarcity, in order to keep prices as high as possible). even if every suicidal person takes themselves out, if the system isn't changed, the inequality and the damage will continue 🩶 ...you're not wrong about the karens though lol
I originally started college wanting to be a psychology major but now I'm an anthropology major and a lot happier. The reason I switched was because the psych program literally worked against my autistic and adhd brain and I had one professor that made me feel dumb for needing help and they barely acknowledged the issues addressed in this video. And my college literally promotes a course about ABA therapy. While I know that anthropology has its own problematic history my college's program acknowledges and encourages students to acknowledge ethical issues in anthropology and archeology. But yeah studying psychology ironically messed with mental health and made me feel like an outcast. As for peer wise psychology was full of mostly rich white cishet neurotypical girls where as anthropology is pretty neurodiverse in my opinion.
i can relate about being tokenized in academia, it especially sucks when other students, or even professors, carelessly and ignorantly talk about marginalized people, and then you have to choose between staying silent or speaking up, and if you do decide to speak up, you need to stay calm, because if you get -god forbid- even *slightly* heated about something that personally afects you every day of your entire life, then you're seen as too emotional and incapable of having a rational debate. It really sucks to have that added emotional burden in addition to the regular course work. This video was very interestingt, thanks for all the ressources you shared ! i'm also definitely interested in hearing about the work you did about eating disorders and trans people
I feel this so much. I stood up once against a transphobic professor and it was really triggering and emotionally draining. Later in an "apology" I received from her she wrote "I mistook our conversation for an academic debate". She completely missed the fact she was questioning and de-legitimizing my entire existence and experience with her terf rhetoric. She also completely missed the *obvious power dynamics* that were at play - me as a BA student trying to defend my identity, emotions and experience, against her, a senior professor, speaking from the comfort of her cold rationality. It was really dehumanizing.
@@vincentvanglowit's hard to say, but don't quit the study. Prove her wrong and become one of the people who can help trans people one day because you fought the hate and officially are a teacher too. A better one!
This is kinda related to my experiences within learning humanities and social science subjects - I remember hearing transphobic rhetoric being made by both my peers and my law teacher and while I wasn't trans myself and there weren't any trans people around to hear their comments, it did make me mad as no one else in my class seemed to take much issue with the hurtful things that they mentioned. I would've assumed that social science and humanities teachers would be better at having empathy and respect for other minorities and marginalised groups but I guess there's still more work to be done in that area
I hate when people say, that if you get too heated about something you are just emotional and you aren’t capable of proving your point. I grew up with both of my parents being psychologists. Since I was 7 years old I couldn’t be emotional while fighting cause they, mainly my step dad, treated it like a fucking debate. When I found out I was trans I was really hopeul and kind of came out, around when I was 14. I asked them if I could have a binder. They talked to a “professional” who tought I coukdn’t know if I was trans so I couldn’t risk the dangers that come with a binder. Then they took me there and I hated it, my gender didn’t even come up, it was all about trying to blame me being trans on trauma. It was hell. They refused to call me by my chosen name and denied me a binder. And they were psychologists. My step dad is kind of toxic anyways and would usually just pull my mum with him so it wasn’t surprising when they both misgendered and deadnamed me. That was the day when I just lost all respect for these “professional” people. They caused me so much harm and said my friend, who is autistic, has aspergers. Im just…it baffles me to this day.
I had a textbook for an abnormal psych unit that cliamed that Indigenous Australians didnt experince depression or suicidal thoughts and instead "vented their hostilities onto others". They also claimed that intersex people were predisposed to abnormal behaviour. Unsurprisingly they didn't provide a source for either of these claims. It was the most recent edition for a 2022 class. It informed the entire course content and no teacher was crtitical of it. Thankyou for talking about this. Sadly getting my bachelor of psychology in a 'progressive' Australian city was no better than your experince or of those in the comments. It's left me feeling very disillusioned with psych as a discipline. If you ever want to make more videos about psychology I'd love to see that kind of content.
I never went to uni (as a Australian with free uni) because I'm scared that most universities have some sort of agenda. (whether it's political or not) I don't wanna have to sit there and intake propaganda. All of the psych research I've done is from talking to other people and scratching the surface lol . I don't know much but it's better than going to uni
i want to study psychology but as a schizophrenic and hearing horror stories from my schizophrenic peers i dont think i can handle the violent ableism against psychotics in those spaces.
I'm also interested in studying phych, and... yeah. Even just from my first class, I found myself triggered by a lot of it. It sucks, and that's real. However- there was still a lot I got to learn, and genuinely enjoyed. My guy, your experience of the world, and your perspective- I STRONGLY believe that's exactly what the psychology field needs more of. More accurately, what the WORLD needs more of. You already understand the intricacies of psychosis in a way most clinicians will never come close to. If you're interested in helping people? I'm Positive there are others out there who can, and would benefit from learning what you've learned in looking after yourself day-to-day, degree or not. My therapist is autistic, ADHD, queer- a number of things I have in common with them, and... It's genuinely made all the difference for me. I feel like they GET it. They understand. And for that, I feel like I can trust them with more, which, is something I really struggle with usually. I feel like schizophrenia is SORELY misunderstood. Even (in fact, perhaps especially) by those who explicitly study it. Your voice? Your experience? It matters. A lot. No matter how you choose to use it, you've got wisdom, and that's powerful. Don't ever let anyone make you feel less-than for what you experience; especially yourself. You're stronger than most people will ever understand. You deserve a place at any table you choose to join.
oh my gosh i love this video, its worded so well. once i talked with a psychiatrist who didnt view the whole "deviation from whats culturally normal" as a bad thing. he said a lot of the times artists and creatives suffer under capitalism and how our society is structured and basically diagnosed me as just a little too punk lmao. (i wasnt as honest to him as i should have been but i didnt wanna deal with it. my parents made me go) looking back i am SO glad i saw him opposed to someone else because i dont think a diagnosis of anything "scary" would have been good for me in my situation
I also thought that person first language was the best way of talking about autism, until i started hanging out with a bunch of autistic people (and found out im very likely on the spectrum myself)
I get where it's coming from tho. Generally the correct and considered less offensive term for someone on for example a wheelchair or smth is a "person with disability" rather than "disabled person" Because the first one emphasizes that this person is not defined by their disability, it's just a one feature, while the second one is suggesting that the disability is what defines them as a person
I'm also a transgender autistic (+adhd) person who is planning to go into psychology, about to finish up my associates now and transfer to a uni and wow. this touched on a lot of my big concerns, I had been having a lot of doubts lately but I've been so committed to psych forever I barely know what else i would branch into, as I tend to have problems with most of the fields correlating to my interests sadly. You worded a lot of my problems with the field very well, and it meant a lot to hear someone with the same concerns who is similar to me in this regard. great video :D
The tokenization of marginalized students in classes, functionally making them teach, is interesting because it really does just shake the foundation of school as an institution but goes entirely unexamined. Especially funny in psych specifically which is so anti putting patients in positions of power. But then without thinking, professors know and acknowledge that the marginalized student is the expert in their experience.
Honestly, as a VERY confrontational Autistic person, I probably would've lost my mind if someone used the term 'suffering from autism' within a 50km radius of me lol. I've suffered from a LOT of abuse from medical professionals, doctors, therapists, etc. for being trans, it's so frustrating that these so-called 'professionals' are so clueless about anyone even slightly different to them, it's pathetic. They need to actually listen to minorities if they want to work with us. Anyway, I'm starting a degree of biomedical science next year and I'm lowkey kinda worried about how they're gonna approach topics of trans/autistic ppl, I hope they at least TRY to be respectful about it.
What’s the difference between referring to someone as “having autism” vs “being autistic”? Almost all of my friends are autistic but it’s never come up and I was just curious
@@Aconitums_Poisoned_Art We typically prefer the term 'being autistic' because it acknowledges that you cannot seperate a person's autism from themselves- it acknowledges that autism influences everything we do, think and feel, and that's it's a part of ourselves that makes us who we are. Obviously not everybody enjoys autism, it IS a difficult disability, but the term 'person with autism' can be offensive to some of us because it kinda... separates us from our autism? which is impossible, and also kinda frames autism in the same way you'd discuss a disease, or virus, or illness and not an integral part of our lives and who we are as people. In particular, you'll see a lot of those ableist 'autism mommies' talking about their autistic children as if they are diseased, and that they are "someone else entirely normal underneath the autism'" which fails to acknowledge that we cannot be separated from our autism, and that 'autistic' is not an insult, in the same way that the word 'fat' or 'disabled' are not insults. IDK I hope this makes sense, sorry for the long comment.
Agree and actually find the label(s) also regressive to us, when our community also call us "starseeds", but maybe we all are, at different awareness levels, from a more quantum physics and/or mystic perspective and the pathology of autism also came from another dubious doctor, Eugen Bluelar, and calling us "morbidly self obsessed" in the papers, according to a Web MD page?
Perhaps this is a touch petty, but I really dislike how schizoid and schizotypal disorders are categorized as personality disorders when , obviously to anyone who has them, they are neurodevelopmental disorders that go far deeper just acting a bit weird. And denying that its something very deep within a person that is present from birth serves to stop any actual accommodations being made for us in education or society generally. (People on the schizospectrum generally have a low educational level despite having interests in academic subjects) And I think a large part of it is that due to our poor memories and tendency to be creative, creating accomodation for us within education would call into question the entire model or forcing children to uncritically regurgitate other people's theories and ideology. The psychiatric apparatus would rather leave us to freeze on the streets, lock us up or force us full of (often life-shortening) anti psychotic medications then actually give us a place in society.
I'm sorry to hear that. I've been thinking that schizoid disorders would probably be one of the most difficult ones to have. The amount of social stigmatization, isolation and lack of proper health care ON TOP OF the actual struggles from the disorder itself. Also, it's bizarre that schizoid disorders are categorized as personality disorders, what part about them is about "personality"?
My partner considered going into therapy at one point. He decided to become a plumber instead. There are just too many issues in the field, especially given how poor the pay is.
I’m realising how lucky I am to be doing a psychology degree in the U.K. taught by very competent lecturers. My personal tutor and also the lecturer that teaches most autism related weeks helped write a paper on language preference in autistic people across English speaking countries. Also one on one she treats me as a normal human being which is somehow rare when people find out I’m autistic 👀. Sadly all the researchers in the developmental science department are neurotypical, I want to be a researcher in autism just to have someone who actually has lived experience creating beneficial research.
aaaaa this video was so good! i have had so many similar experiences with tokenisation in academia (being a visibly trans nd poc), and i know so many people with similar experiences (one of which was sadly bullied out of a bio degree by their peers in the course for being trans). the inherent issues in psychology as an institution were so thoroughly explained here - i have had so many experiences with clinical psychologists who completely lack knowledge in minority experience, and that is such a massive issue when they're trying to use cbt, a method that classifies thought processes that cause distress as 'illogical', when a lot of my mental health issues come from genuine fears of the safety of me and my friends (we are all minorities, many of us have had traumatic experiences where we have been at risk) - having genuine concern for the safety of you and your family is not irrational. And all of it, as you explained, is to get you back to a point where you are 'functional' and no longer a weak cog in the machine - until systemic change is brought about, your health is only a matter of concern if it gets in the way of you being a good worker. Ashton, your work is eloquent beyond words, thank you so much for your videos :)
your "irrational" point is so good!! i've def seen/heard of similar things in regards to concerns about surveillance, state violence, policing, etc... the way many psychs classify concerns as illogical just bc the psych has no knowledge of oppression is... certainly something
"i have had so many experiences with clinical psychologists who completely lack knowledge in minority experience, and that is such a massive issue when they're trying to use cbt, a method that classifies thought processes that cause distress as 'illogical', when a lot of my mental health issues come from genuine fears of the safety of me and my friends (we are all minorities, many of us have had traumatic experiences where we have been at risk) - having genuine concern for the safety of you and your family is not irrational." This has been so much of my experience. It's extremely frustrating and disheartening. It comes across as and may even be blatantly a blame the victim mentality that only serves to cause further distress and ignore all the issues the person is facing.
I would absolutely love a deep dive into your copies of the DSM. CW: somewhat of a rant about systemic pressure, struggling to get accomodations for very obvious neurodivergence, trauma mention . . Also I am a black trans man transitioning in the middle of Germany debating a new self ID law while also dealing with a job that doesn't leave much room to accomodate someone with C-PTSD (recently retraumatised due to my family's response to me coming out as an adult), toxic family and the grief that comes with cutting them off, hormonal turmoil and anxiety and depression. The hamster wheel never stops, your only chance is getting formally diagnosed by a psychiatrist and hoping it is "bad enough" for them to declare you as at least 50% disabled so you gain additional workplace protections and can demand accomodations such as additional vacation days. It took a year to get my therapist, who is otherwise very good, to realise how huge my distress is - because the diagnostics assume that if you can keep a job and somewhat look after yourself you are well enough to not get a diagnosis for anything besides anxiety and depression. I also suspect I might be on the spectrum and/or have ADHD but C-PTSD can present similarly so I really don't know and will have to see what the psychiatrist says. I'm glad to at least live in a country where insurance covers most of it. But still, I am feeling the pressure, and I have felt it all my life. And I know I am not alone. This is why it is so hard to befriend people like me offline - we are all exhausted, burnt out and lonely, hanging out online because it is so much easier to squeeze in a tweet or a youtube comment between a shift and our evening routine than go outside and deal with all the screaming billboards advertising consumption, noisy trains and yet another hateful headline about how my trans sisters shouldn't go to the womens bathroom while I, a man with stubble and a deeper voice than some cis men, should. I just want to finally feel at peace after 33 years of a constant battle for survival, and feeling like a lesser person because I can't keep up with the 40+ hour work week because I wasn't treated right for most of my life.
I've only just started watching this video but I'm reminded of the sheer amount of anti Autistic ableism I've had to deal with from so many people who are supposed to help me. Especially during my process of getting a gender dysphoria diagnosis, which is extra upsetting considering the amount of Autistic people within the trans community .... Also my son has recently got his own Autism diagnosis (I've known for much longer though) and it's been a nightmare to navigate the can of ableism worms that opened. His psychologists keep telling me that they want to look for a therapy that doesn't just force him to not act Autistic, but every suggestion they've made so far is doing exactly what I said I don't want for him. I just want him to learn how to cope with overstimulation and how to prevent meltdowns but it just seems like there is *nothing* that actually does that. Edit to add that the "therapy" they suggested was called "pivotal response treatment" which from what I've read basically consists of withholding things that a child likes, to get the appropriate response from them. As a parent I'm against rewards/ punishment to begin with and it just struck me as an awful thing to do to a child who struggles to communicate with words. It was just ABA without calling it ABA .... Omfg yeah the pfl bothers me so much. It's okay for people to have different preferences but if I call myself and my son Autistic, it should be clear that that's what we prefer, and I hate the fact that so many of the official documents describing our situation say stuff like "parent and child suffer from a disorder in the autism spectrum"
To all doing psychology as a marginalized group; you're strong and you dont have to quit because of the bs. We need more psychologists and doctors likr you to help other trans kids and adults and other marginalized groups. Prove the haters wrong
(warning that this is a lot of me venting and being angry about personal experiences) Psychology has failed us so many times in so many ways. We're a plural DID system with autism, c-ptsd, and a few other things but those are the relevant ones rn. We also have a history with delusions. The amount of bouncing around with psychologists we've done is crazy. We've had multiple therapists not listen to us when we try to explain to them how our system works and how we want to be treated (we don't want to work toward final fusion, we don't want parts language to be used because our headmates are people, we need our separation encouraged because it's healthy for us and decreases dissociation, and we struggle with masking. We want treatment to help lessen dissociation, allow more headmates to front, allow better managing of front, and offer alternate coping mechanisms so we can split less often). We've had our trauma and neglect/abuse from our mother, who we still live with, undermined. We are CONSTANTLY made responsible for our dysfunction when the truth is that we're in an impossible environment. And right when we finally get a therapist that seems better? She demonizes people with npd and psychosis, so now we don't know what to do with her So yeah... the psychiatric system is... broken. Not even broken, broken implies it was ever good in the first place. It was created for bad reasons and it hasn't been fixed, a shitton of band-aids have just been put over it And I could say so much about DID specifically, and how that diagnosis is a mess that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people/systems and how it's conflated with plurality all the fucking time when it shouldn't be because those are two different things that have a large overlap but are not the same thing. And how a lot of therapists, when trying to treat plural DID systems, focus more on making them more singlet-like than actually making the system function better on their own terms. Which, at least in our case, actually makes our health worse Just the general idea that therapists tend to have, where they think they're smarter and better than you and need to assert their shit instead of working with you, fucking sucks We get constantly complimented for how "in tune" we are with ourselves and how "articulate" we are and all that. Everyone is always so impressed by our ability to know exactly what's going on with us. But they only listen to what we have to say when it's something easy for them to agree with We don't go to therapy to teach the therapist shit, or debate about how our identities should be handled. We go to therapy because we have a shitton of trauma that we're trying to process. But I will tell you, our friends have done so much more than any medical professional, and we've been in and out of therapy since we were 12 (now 19). And being in therapy has, for the most part, been a net loss, for us I mean, one of our therapists even tried to tell us venting is bad because it's "retraumatizing yourself", when that is the Main way we process (talking through things and having a friend's support allows us to break the cycle of the trigger and the spiraling thoughts and think about things in new ways). She was trying to have us do EMDR for anything that came up, which we were actually noticing was triggering a mask instead of allowing us to process, and if we continued that mask could have become very dangerous by suppressing our trauma further, while making it look like healing. But we have prior experience with that sort of thing so we could tell the difference pretty quickly ...anyway wow this comment is a mess we just have... Experiences
I do not have DID, but I'm Autistic and I studied psychology for years while being failed over and over by the system and misdiagnosed, mistreated, called a liar, etc. I am privileged that I got an Autism diagnosis and now at least can have access to a community who are recognised in society. But I remember feeling how you felt, pouring your heart out just to be failed or misunderstood or outright mistreated or not listened to. I can't imagine what it must be like to not feel recognised as a system, and to not have care centred around what works for YOU GUYS. I know exactly what you mean about the condescending attitude that psychs can have, as if they (not a system) could possibly know better than you (an actual system and human with mental health issues living the experience!) It was all of this that made me quit and switch to art because I cannot stand how disgustingly patients are treated within the system. The system causes patients more trauma on top of their already vast trauma, and I don't want to be a part of that. I know this must be hard. But yous deserve the right care and support, and yous will get that one day, so try your best to block out every toxic word that's been said to you, and know that you are valid and your struggles are valid. I want you to know that things are shifting within psychology because of people like yous speaking out about how messed up the treatment is. Sending love ❤❤
I'm an autistic trans guy wrapping up my BA in psychology and I can relate so, so much to your experiences! We're also quite similar in our politics and values -- I completely respect your decision to step away from psychology given how carceral and oppressive it is as a discipline. I guess I just wanted to provide an alternative perspective, as someone who is similarly situated to you but is choosing to continue down the path towards becoming a therapist. This is not written with the intention to persuade you to go down this path, but just to provide a different perspective if you're interested in it. In short, I'm approaching it from a harm reduction perspective. I think it's possible to both do revolutionary work to dismantle the systems that hurt us all and tend to the wounds that result from those systems in the meantime. I think both fighters and healers are necessary to win the war, so to speak. And, while I think individual efforts to change systemic problems are inherently limited, I think having clinicians who have a more radical political stance will lessen the harm for people who do need to be bandaged up. Again, this is not to dissuade you from your path or to critique it, but to provide an alternative perspective. I really enjoyed the video, thank you for sharing your experiences. It made me feel a little less alone, struggling to finish my degree.
you got this!! i totally understand & respect that perspective, thank you for sharing :)) if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s another comment on this video from someone in a postbac program about liberation psychology that i think you’d be interested in!!
As someone who did the same, good on you for doing what feels revolutionary to you! Also, just wanna add as someone who has recently gotten their graduate degree,, that if you wanna be a therapist and live in the US, consider getting your graduate degree in social work or counseling (not counseling psych, just counseling). The licensing in psych is a fucking nightmare and there are very few folks (let alone folks with a more critical view of the field in line with what's discussed in the video) willing to provide the supervision you have to have for years. The exam (EPPP) is WAY more expensive than for social workers or counselors and way more difficult... I've only spoken to one person who passed first try (I'm taking mine in a month and terrified). Like... so many people told me to do this and I ignored them all because they didn't give me this info, just said it was more "competitive" which just made me more determined. If you choose to stay with psych, consider a counseling psych program rather than clinical. I had to deal with a lot of bullshit described in the video in my program too but it seems like less than in "traditional" clinical psych programs.
this video actually makes me more determined to become a psychologist, i want to help fight to make changes in the field to help people and people in minority groups im part of a couple myself (gay, FTM, autistic/disabled, mental illnesses) i want to fight with anyone who is going to fight to make changes in the field. i dont wanna speak over groups im not apart of but i want to try to help everyone i can be represented and any disorders or experiences researched equally to others. all the major issues in the field disgust me and i want to work as hard as i can in my life to fix them. i dont know enough about the topics that i want to help fight with people to improve yet. im a couple years behind in school but i should be graduating in the next couple years and moving to post secondary to hopefully study more and hopefully it will be at least a little more advanced so i have a start. but id also listen to the people affected by what im learning about
I've had mental health issues my entire life. And I've bounced between therapists throughout my entire life. And, lately, I've been pressured to go to a therapist again. I do not want to. I've been thinking about some of the same ideas for a long time. Why would I pay to talk to a stranger who can a) fuck up my life if I say the "wrong" thing, and b) will invalidate my anger towards a system I cannot adapt to. Therapists have done nothing for me but consistently make things worse. Why would I want to put myself through dehumanizing procedures that only hurt me? Why would I pay for this lie that is rooted in the exact same system that crushes me daily? Why am I expected to crack my heart open in front of a stranger that is one of the system's judges? I hate how I've been told that I'm the problem my entire life, how I am the problem for breaking under the pressure when I am not the one who put an unbearable pressure on all of us to begin with. Individual change towards conformity will never align with my morality. I hate how that's expected from us.
Do you think humans should never conform some of their unique behavioural patterns to a norm? Or do you just mean therapists shouldn't be forcing you to do certain things or act a certain way? Because if your therapist is doing that you should seek a better therapist that actually abides by the core principles of psychotherapy.
I feel so spoiled with all these Ashton videos 🥰 I found your channel when the hysterectomy video came out and I also just recently came out at that time, so I watched a lot of your old videos and became a big fan while waiting for new ones :3
As a mathematician, it was news to me to learn that statistics was built by eugenicists. And like.. I took a whole ass history of math course and everything. You'd think there might have been some mention of it somewhere. I'm glad you brought it to my attention.
i’m considering going into psychology as a career bc i was one of those people who was lucky to be surrounded during my stint in a psych ward who understood me. depression and anxiety are highly stigmatized in the black community, so things like some philosophies of ABA therapy in CBT sometimes work for black people who were never exposed to mental health resources. it’s common for us to refer to our mental illnesses are merely stigmatized behaviors we are just bad at not doing. for example: depression as “i’m sad and i don’t know why, i keep screwing up,” not fully aware that it worsens the cycle because there is no breakthrough yet in challenging the conditioning of those behaviors. and first it’s best to be aware of them and that they don’t make you a bad person. many black therapists who are great at their jobs know they’re working with black people who were taught to repress their feelings to give into societal standards of how black people should act.
I'm going through undergrad now, originally as a psych major before pivoting to social work. I've honestly known so many people that have gone into psych, become disillusioned with it for the reasons you mentioned, and pivoted to something else entirely, generally social work or a counseling modality that's less tied to the institution of psychology. Even the psych professionals I know are quick to highlight its faults and establish work-arounds for the problematic and impractical facets of the field, the DSM especially. It just feels like most people aren't actually happy with or invested in the field as a whole, but that they take a piecemeal approach that allows them to make the best for others out of a broken system.
heyyyyyyyyy.... I'm autistic, and realizing that sparked a fixation in psychology. Over the past ~6 months I've gone through a lot of self-discovery. Early on after my discovery, l felt more empowered to accommodate myself in my life and relationships, and I finally felt like part of a community. Ableism from my parents and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me now makes it extremely difficult to accept autism as a part of my identity. I was told I barely meet the criteria for diagnosis, that my autism is "mild," and it's so hard to disagree, and to explain how invalidating that wording is (not that I disagree with giving people support needs levels- that's important for getting the right kind of help). And somehow I have to be the one to take the lead with my parents to educate them about the neurodiversity view of autism (my mom does autism diagnosis, by the way). I deal with a lot of imposter syndrome, and small comments from the people who should be supporting me makes it so much worse. Autism is so important to my identity, yet I can't accept it. It feels like I just made it up, like there's no biological basis for it in my brain. Like I'm a neurotypical with a thin layer of autism on top. It's really painful. I hope I can believe my diagnosis soon. I really like the idea of psychology. I love labeling (a result of my autism), and more importantly I love helping. Psychology fails that in many ways; I know that personally, and I've heard plenty of horror stories. But psychology is not going away any time soon, and I think the best way to improve the current system is damage reduction. Do research studies that validate autistic identities and self-expression, research alternatives for ABA or protest for reform. Just keep pushing. I think there's hope, which is why I want to go into psychology. Sometimes you need someone on the inside to help those changes. I hope that makes sense, I'm low on spoons.
heyyyyy !! i'm autistic too, and i totally understand the imposter syndrome. Currently I'm in autistic burnout so i'm rly disabled compared to when I'm healthier but I still experience imposter syndrome, I still get invalidated by people around me. Just wanted to say that no matter how apparent it is, how much you suffer, some people will never believe you, your struggles or your differences. You are autistic, you're your own kind of autistic as everybody else is. I see you and to me you are valid and I hope you will one day be able to think that of yourself as well.
Wow, the essay section was incredible, thank you for sharing that! I had a few hopes for topics you would discuss in the video based on my own research on stuff that's bad about psychology and you really delivered. Especially the topic of mental health under capitalism is one that I have been thinking about in recent months as I try to figure out what I want to do once I graduate since the possibility of becoming a therapist has always seemed like an obvious option. Having you discuss it in the context of radical theories was really helpful as I've not really had a chance to read any such literature outside of psychology. One thing I want to add is about the way that research is conducted in Psychology. Not only was statistics founded and developed by Eugenicists, but there are many other problems with research today. As research is funded through grants etc, certain topics are prioritised over others based on where money is to be made. The value of academic output is linked to its citation index, significant results are prioritised over non-significant results, there have been many cases of unethical research practices including data fabrication and changing one's hypothesis after results are known. All those things push research towards being less rigorous in following good scientific practice & have all contributed to the replication crisis in psychology (particularly social psychology), which describes the phenomenon of sizeable proportions of empirical research not replicating in follow-up studies. Unethical research practices and the replication crisis already undermine my trust in psychological research but another problem is how incredibly Euro-centric (and ultimately White) everything is. The field of psychology we have today was largely developed in the US and Europe, which is why it's so heavily intertwined with Eugenics and racism and white supremacy. But as a result, the entire way the field operates is coloured by that context. Tendencies to make vast generalisations across cultures based on studies done on primarily white people in rich countries. Tendencies to study phenomena with an incredibly individualistic approach while disregarding communities, systems, environments. The exclusion of people from the global majority at every step along the way when it comes to research. I have yet to learn more about the extent of coloniality within psychology today, but suffice to say it feels all-encompassing. I think my disillusionment with psychology began as soon as I started learning more about its bad history and has just gotten worse the more I learn. Similar to what you said, I find statistics really interesting & I'm also quite interested in the psychometrics side of things because I find it fascinating how it's often taken for granted that test instruments measure what they're supposed to, but having gotten some insight into the construction of measurement tools my impression is that many test instruments are so much more flawed than we think. And having done research into intelligence testing and how IQ tests have been (and kinda are still being) used in racist and ableist ways, I can see so many issues with applications of psychological tools within society that work to maintain oppression. I could go on but I'm finding it hard to articulate everything from memory in the comment section. Suffice to say, I have one year left of my degree and still need to write my whole dissertation and I'm so torn between wanting to do good and working to improve what psychology is and can become vs abandoning the field completely after I graduate because all the problems feel unfixable. Since we unfortunately do need jobs to sustain ourselves in this capitalist hellscape we live in, I'd be very interested to hear how you plan on moving forward work-wise now that becoming a psychologist no longer aligns with your values. Thank you again for this video, this is such an important discussion and it's one that I've been missing with peers at my university (in the UK)
Also just on a personal note, having to get diagnosed with gender incongruence (as the clinic I went to follows the ICD-11) in order to access trans healtcare where I live in the UK felt like a real insight into psychiatry as an institution with an inherent power dynamic. The experience of having to divulge quite personal information that gets written up and also shared with my gp (equivalent to primary care physician) at the end, to effectively convince a gender "specialist" that I'm indeed trans and should get access to the care I need... it was uncomfortable, infuriating and overall just felt like a denial of my own agency. Not to mention that I just lied on some accounts and honestly should have lied more to make the experience more comfortable for myself when they asked very personal stuff. Gatekeeping trans healthcare through gender dysphoria/incongruence diagnoses is by far not the only example of how psychiatric institutions are used to control and police people & I feel a lot of solidarity for anyone who's gone through similar experiences in this or other contexts
all of this is so important, thank you for those additions abt research! your reply abt transness is also SO wrapped up in all of this, there's endless stuff to talk abt there. pathologization of transness has such a long history it absolutely sucks. thank you for sharing
‘Certain topics are prioritized over others based on where money is to be made’ this could not be more true. And it really does affect people’s lives. My brother has something called complex motor stereotypies (not sure on the spelling, not good at it) and there’s basically no research on it. He had to go all the way to London to get diagnosed (also uk! Hii!) and all the research I could find online to try to support him was info on autism (which is highly comorbid) people posting videos of their children doing their stereotypies (gross stuff. Stop) and loads of lovely articles assuring me and others that he’d grow out of it eventually. I hate it. His and others masking has caused them anxiety and anger issues. The only support my mum could find is a facebook group for other parents I think. I’ve never seen anyone who has it post online about it. He has a therapist now but all I want is to find some information or lived experience from other people so I can know more of a rare and mostly unknown condition. I KNOW it causes more than just his sterotypies because he has other things like slow processing but does not have autism. But the only symptom is strange repetitive movements that often come with a sort of daydreaming I’m pretty sure. It is a genetic condition and you can have non-complex motor stereotypies that look like normal habits, so thats probably different. I want this to have the same research as other neurodivergencies one day. Imagine how many kids and adults are alone not knowing about this. I want research into complex and non complex but there’s no money in it I guess
as someone who graduated this spring with a degree in social work... this, this, this. the differences between academics in social work and psychology [and really, the way these things are taught regionally] are an important distinction, and i do feel that my social work program at least was more conscious of issues with the systemic incapacity to really address what could improve mental well-being. but especially as you read your essay, i saw a lot of myself in your issues with what's being taught. plus, as someone who now has a degree in social work and is a survivor of psychiatric abuse, it's already a complicated subject for me. i want to add, speaking of your essay, that i am so so glad you took care to mention that the absence of oppressive systems wouldn't just magically erase the behaviors pathologized as mental illness, and especially that it wouldn't eliminate assault and abuse. i find a lot of discussions of this topic super painful and honestly just really demeaning as someone whose mental illness and traumas could absolutely occur in a society free from things like capitalism. anyway, long comment, but that's all to say that i'm beyond grateful to see this video and the discussions it's sparking in the comments here!!
Therapists being ignorant makes me afraid to get therapy even though I need it. It's heartbreaking to hear what your professor said in class. I hope you gave lots of feedback.
The last therapy practice I attempted to see a counselor at required you to fill out a form online and wouldn't allow you to set up an appointment with a therapist until you submitted it. On the form they listed "transgender" in the same category as sexual orientation, which also only gave the options of heterosexual, homosexual, transgender or bisexual. I found it quite problematic that this was required because it wouldn't allow you to submit the form without listing your sexual orientation; not giving you an option to choose not to disclose as well as not allowing a place to write in your own answer (while simultaneously erasing aro-ace, demisexual people, pansexuality, etc.) not to mention listing trans as a sexual orientation, as well as using the more medicalized, pathologizing terms like homosexual. It also forced you to answer yes or no on a question about whether you were questioning your gender identity. While these questions might be helpful for some people, to me, forcing every potential client to answer these is not only forcing people to out themselves before even beginning a therapeutic relationship, but is stripping away a person's autonomy to make the choice about what they want to disclose or not. It's already setting up an asymmetrical power imbalance from the get-go and you haven't even been to the office or talked to anyone face to face yet. Needless to say, I noped-the-fuck-out and didn't submit the form. I also find it problematic that on sites like Psychology Today where therapists have profiles, so many have 20-40 areas of "expertise" that they list as well as 15-20 therapies they practice. I'm sorry, but if you have an area of expertise, you're not going to have 30 different areas you can treat. It seems like so many of them just list everything under the sun because they think they're qualified to treat any issue a person may have. I also see too many therapists listing themselves as Trans-Allied, LGBT-allied, affirming, etc. But when I search for more information about this, there's nothing to be found. Or when I ask them what their specific training, education, experience or knowledge they have about LGBTQ issues, history, struggles, or how to treat clients that are minorities, they can never provide an answer other than, "I have experience", or "I've worked with LGBTQ people before". Like, seriously? That would be like me claiming I'm allied to the black community because I know a few black people so therefore I know how and am able to help black folks who deal with things like racism, discrimination, etc. Being LGBTQ allied or affirming is literally a baseline pre-requisite that ALL therapists should have before they even begin practicing. They need to learn how to help LGBTQ folk with things like minority stress, intersectionality, identity, discrimination, etc. LGBTQ people are not here to be your guinea pigs so we can help prop up your arrogant hubris because you think you know how to help us, which we almost always wind up having to educate YOU for FREE, meanwhile our mental health deteriorates, and we pay you for this! I also can't state how many therapists have pushed specific questionable therapies on me after I have politely declined repeatedly, or have made hyperbolic, exaggerated claims for how effective a therapy is. It's always fun as well when a therapist literally questions and victim-blames you and straight up tells you that you don't want to change or get better and that if you had a magic wand and could use it to eliminate your mental health issues you wouldn't do it. Ironically, or maybe unironically, therapists are some of the most self-deluded, self-aggrandizing, unaware, oblivious, walking versions of the Dunning-Kruger effect I have seen. BE CAREFUL when you seek them out. Vet them, ask them as many questions as possible, research their credentials, watch out for ones who practice pseudoscientific, unproven, or even harmful therapies. Be wary of ones who claim to be able to treat anything and everything, ones who claim to know more than they do, ones who make unrealistic promises for what they are able to do. You're paying their exorbitant fees. You're employing them. You don't have to stay or put up with their bullshit. 26:30 I have asked and brought these exact issues/questions up to therapists I've seen and they would all literally pull out CBT-based retorts, where essentially it was my fault or my own "irrational" thinking that was causing my problems. When I'd tell them that I've experienced trauma and abuse from a young age for never fitting in and growing up as a queer/trans person and living in this toxic, abusive, bigoted society, I would be told that I'm "thinking in black and white", or "focusing on the negatives", etc. Ok, well, trust me, I've considered all of the aspects of my life and situation probably millions of times and it still doesn't help me when I am verbally abused, or have to worry about my physical safety just for existing, or worry about myriad forms of discrimination against me for being who I am. Telling me to love and accept myself doesn't help when people are stripping away our rights and trying to attack us. Self-love isn't going to change that. Or when I express my anger at all of the injustices I've faced and that others face, I'm told that I shouldn't think about that or that I need a hobby. They never address the fundamental systemic causes of the issues that perpetuate the suffering or the problems so many minorities face. It feels like they blame the victim because if they had to admit that there are so many injustices that we're up against they would then be forced to say that they don't have solutions or answers outside of their therapeutic models. I can tell myself all day long that I'm using black and white thinking when I say that as a queer person existing in this world I face a lot of obstacles and pain, but that doesn't change the simple fact that we can't think our way out of these oppressive systems whose main objectives are to marginalize, erase, and destroy us.
Yes! It's so bizarre when therapists essentially want you to close your eyes and pretend that the evil and injustice in the world don't exist because thinking about them would be "bad for your mental health". And while that might be true, thinking about it makes me feel hatred and sorrow, pretending that the problem doesn't exist doesn't incite any action to fix it. Maybe the therapists themselves want to stay in denial and continue to believe in a good, moral and just society that they've been told they live in...
I’ve felt for a long time that “happy” and “mentally healthy” people are simply those for whom existing in our depressing society is the least difficult. Which ironically, seems to actually be a minority of people. Our social structures aren’t working for most people, but for some, it’s even worse than for the majority.
The definition of "disorder" itself is not neutral and is influenced by neuro-normative culture. For example, spending a lot of time at work being a workaholic (e.g ≥60 hours/week) or hoarding wealth (e.g ≥$50 billion and more), are not seen as mental disorders that need to be corrected in a capitalist culture. However, the same behaviour applied to a non-business situation, such as spending a lot of time on hobbies/games/special interests or hoarding vintage obscure items, are seen disorders that need the intervention of a professional.
Hi! I'm new. I just found your channel yesterday and I'm happy I did. I am a fat autistic seahorse dad, and I'm just now starting on my degree in psychology. It's been really interesting to hear what you have to say about it. Thanks for being cool.
As a social work student I LOVE this video and I'm so excited to be discovering your account!! There are so many things I want to say that I wish I could have a full conversation with you about this TBH but here are the big ones... 1. The problems you note with psychology are one of the reasons I love studying social work. Admittedly there's major problems with the history of social work (for example, the history of racially-motivated separation of children from their families in child welfare) but I love that social work has its roots in grassroots activism and community organizing (when you mentioned community care I literally started snapping like I was listening to slam poetry) and considers the whole system's role in keeping people well. We need more people with these radical perspectives in the field and I'm proud to be able to bring that to my practice. If you don't mind my saying I bet you would make an AMAZING social worker as well!! 2. A third alternative perspective I would point to is mad studies, which overlaps with both the psychiatric survivors and critical psychiatry movements but is more (IMO) intersectional with feminism, disability activism, etc. One thing I really love about it is that it calls for a more contextual understanding of mental illness and addresses the problem that what we consider "mental illness" is culturally defined. It also centers people who identify as Mad or having mental illness at the center of the conversation which is very important to me as someone in recovery from multiple mental health conditions. 3. Lastly something I would add to your notes about eating disorders (as someone in anorexia recovery) is that I think the incidence of eating disorders would drastically decrease in a post-capitalistic society because of the abolition of the diet industry. There are so many people and corporations profiting off our self-hatred and if we eliminated these forces from our society -- the ones peddling Ozempic and diet foods and Weight Watchers programs and whatnot -- I think we would feel much less pressure to conform to a particular standard of thinness.
As someone who follows a lot of disabled activisits, leans towards anarchy and communism, and is queer, this perfectly encapsulates my feeling of why im so reluctant to go to a therapist. I have a lot of issues, and often they dont feel appropriately addressed, and often sessions have felt unproductive because i want someone to understand my views and let me speak on my experiences. Another reason is that im really scared to be offered essentially conversion therapy, because im aro and that happens more frequently for us, especially when i want to try to figure out if it is trauma related or if im just aro. Its really frustrating and basically just further radicalizes me.
just got flashbacks to my a level psychology school trip where i remember asking a question about personality disorders to a psychologist working in prison (she didn’t know i suspect i have one) and basically she said some ableist shit. i apologise for not being more specific because i also have memory issues u know how it is but ye that just really made me go hm. esp bc one of the people we were going to meet on that trip was a guy with aspd who had been in prison for a while. actually that whole trip made me feel like we were treating ex-convicts like zoo animals which was really un-fun and uncomfortable!
also the worst time i ever had was in my gender classes lmaooo it felt like talking to pre-schoolers about gender bc they were always so weirdly clinical about gender and especially trans people and bc im also autistic i wouldn’t know how to say hey the way you’re talking abt gender is weird as hell. also i was definitely the only trans person in that class so that was fun
It's weird how common it is for people to treat people with personality disorders like the villains of a fictional story and not think twice about it. People love to preach about unstigmatizing mental illnesses/disorders only to turn around and say the most vile shit about people with mental problems that aren't socially acceptable (so, most of them)
Thanks a lot for this. You expressed points and supported your arguments geeatly you made me understand that my general reservations towards psychology actually have great reasons to be there. Thanks a ton. Kudos
Mainly due to having a close family member with bipolar disorder, I've spent a lot of time reading books about mental illness. None of them dig really deep into the origins of things like therapy or the study of psychology as a whole so this was a really great and informative video. It's interesting to look at mental illness as being somewhat a product of the capitalism - makes sense to me. I'd read about how urbanization has a correlation with increased incidences of mental illness and I always chalked it up to density of humans and cities are not really ideal to be living as humans, but never thought about how that also relates back to capitalism and our roles as 'productive' members of society and how lack of community care plays a role. As always, a more complex thing that I originally thought - but like also expands my understanding greatly. I also recently read The Body Keeps the Score and the discussion about mis-diagnosed mental illness being related to trauma was touched upon in that book and I think it's soooo fascinating - because it highlights how we've been misunderstanding the roots of mental illness (or rather mentaly ill behaviours or something - I'm very much not sure how to phrase this) in cases where people have experienced trauma.
there's so much terror when the mental health professionals that are detaining you are working with the abuser that made you so sick you were eligible for detainment.
It's good to know that certain people prefer identity-first language to person-first language in the autistic community. I serve autistic people and the agency I work for typically says something to the effect of "people within the [autism] spectrum." I've never had personal reason to question it, given that I have a long negative history with identity first language as someone with CP, considering a lot of identity language from the ill-informed come as slurs. Thanks for the alternative perspective.
Thanks! The section on statistics helped me better understand the worst part of the neuropsych evaluation that got me my AuDHD diagnosis - that being the personality test that, had I to do it again, I would have declined to take. I became aware, when I got the results, that it was poorly structured for the way someone on the spectrum interpreted and answered questions. Some of the parts returned results I do not dispute, but certain flagged answers, and the coefficients of fit were startling, discordant, and a pretty serious misreading of who I am. The “sorting people” aspect was something I sensed, but what you outlined fleshes it out more clearly, and also makes more apparent why it felt so abhorrent and pathologizing.
What you said about statistics is interesting. I could see how someone just seeing it as a tool and who isn't aware of marginalization would think that it is not necessary to mention because they wouldn't be able to tell that there are still things that are related to that, because those people don't necessarily see the tension, while a person who is personally affected might be much more aware how there are still bits and pieces that hurt them and not understand why and would really need that information to make sense of it.
i'm so glad you made this video! i'm in a very similar boat, i'm autistic and about to go into my senior year of college and i came in as a psych major (still am), and later added a phi major. i've been lucky enough to be at a private college on a pretty good scholarship and my favorite psych professor (and now advisor, that's a whole mess of a story) is absolutely wonderful, she's autistic and adhd herself and does a lot of advocacy work as a professional eyewitness. like i said, i know i'm extremely lucky to have found a professor so accepting and openminded, especially being in psychology. but as much as i love her and the work she does and is encouraging me to do, i also worry about going into psychology myself because it has that issue where there's not an organized effort of people* within the industry trying to make it better. there are people making wonderful strides individually, but unfortunately that's not enough to change the industry as a whole. (not to mention my previous advisor was... incredibly ableist, and my experiences with even her alone significantly added to my distaste for the system because i know she holds some very widely-held beliefs.) i wish psychology was, as a whole, more focused on actually helping rather than pathologizing and "solving". *edit: just read another comment mentioning liberation psychology, which i hadn't heard about!!
also in case anyone is interested, my professor works with an organization called the deskovich foundation which was started by jeffery deskovich after he was released from a wrongful incarceration, and basically he's been using the majority (if not all) of the money he was awarded from the release to help other people that have been wrongfully incarcerated go through the processes to have evidence retested and such so they can be released! i thought that might be worth mentioning, and i know that other than those funds the foundation runs on donations so they don't have to charge the victims or their families anything, so i like to share when i can :)
This video is such an amazing resource. It's so difficult to access educational material outside of academia, so thank you so much for your references and links.
Our biggest issue is how little the field focuses on trauma. We belive that most personality disorders, cluster Bs in particular, should be viewed as different presentations of CPTSD (just how P-DID and OSDD type one should be viewed as different presentations of DID). There should be more focus on dissociation too. Even though we don't like the theory of structural dissociation, we do agree that cluster Bs are dissociative in nature and a lot seem to share a scary amount of similarities with OSDD-1/1a in the more complex cases. Affecive disorders have a very deep root in trauma, even if the basis of them is purely genetic or physical. Same with anxiety, eating, and some psyhotic disorders
Listening to you talk about your experience in college helped me realize I dodged a bullet. My first major was psychology and I switched majors to gen ed halfway through my first semester, then dropped out after my second semester and went to community college for Animal Management because I had NO CLUE what I was supposed to study after I realized psychology wasn't it. I had a glimpse of what was happening that first semester in a 201 psych class (I took 101 in hs too) and a sociology 101 class, and I just could see well enough that I wasn't going to be helping people. I could see clearly how everyone was sick because society made them sick in so many infectious ways and I had no clue where to start. I've even witnessed it on the patient side of things, being a person fed up with capitalism and I have multiple comorbid mental illnesses to prove it. I've had therapists admit they know they're not really helping, they're just nursing our wounds. You really summed it up, in a rather thorough way if that makes any sense. Thanks Ashton.
People with neurotypicalism can't really help being narrow minded. Neurotypicalism is extremely disabling. The things they are generally good at is: adapting to majorities and fitting into the society. The things that they generally lack is autonomy and basically anything off the script of society. When they hear something that isn't part of their small scripted world, they will reply with fear, judgement, or simply filter it out fom registering in their minds. As an autistic person myself I feel like it might be useful to view neurotypical people less like able people who have it all and should not have anything to complain, and more like people who have a disability and struggle to be a unique person and think for themselves, to form their own opinions. They seem to be followers who need instructions to follow, someone who tells them what to do. It works for them to function in the society as it is now, but if we were to take over the world and design a completely autistic society, they will probably need a label and support.
Im glad to see someone else talk about the issue and share their perspective. As for my perspective with the topic. I been on kind of both sides of it. Sorry long text. Im autistic, i have cPTSD and OSDD, and i have dealt with trauma throughout my life. I have invested a lot of my personal time to make psychology my special interest, with a primary focus on things like self growth, meditation, self regulation, etc. Im talking about a lot of introspection, self analysis and stuff like this. I didnt understand why i was different because i have not gotten the autistic diagnosis until like a year ago as an adult, and i never understood why i reacted so differently to stimuli - a trauma reaction in many of those "weird" cases. I wanted to be "normal" and "fit in" and deal with my suffering. I think that i achieved A LOT by working on these things on my own, reading books on my own, looking at online forums, and things like that. Admittedly, back in a time where it was a bit easier to access correct unbiased information. Still from what i heard in therapy and from people around me, i think i have a good understanding of at least some concepts. This lead to me being interested in psychology classes. To be fair i have to say that i have degrees in molecularbiology so i am NOT by any means a pro in psychology. I love to learn that is all. So i have attended a lot of extra classes simply for fun, many of which were in the medical field, and i some were in psychology. My idea back then was that humans are animals, im attending medical classes because the animal anatomy sparked my curiousity about this particular species; and if im learning about behavioural science (for animal models) i should also attend psychology. I was quickly bored, annoyed and uncomfortable. I felt like every person in that class was being ableist and rude, making snarky comments while we were discussing rather heavy topics. I also did not like how downplayed, one sideded and narrow minded complex concepts were introduced. Everything was painted in the light of "well an old white man said this ages ago, and we have a study with 10 participants so clearly this is true". Excuse me this is now how science works? It infuriated me that someone *just* claims something is true, but cannot back it up, and then we all have to believe him and act on it like we are sheep. I have attended a variety of course - i never took any tests and i never gotten any credits (because i had zero interest in getting a degree) but i can tell you that those tests were an absolute mockery to the concepts that we discussed. At least at the university i attended. As mentioned i came from biology and medicine, and i was just horrified how talking about a very complex organ - the brain, no one seemed to really be as curious or willing to really understand whats going on. People were categorized into labels and boxes, and how to deal with certain issues was not based on facts at all. If anything i felt like the psychological courses in medical school were dramatically different to those in psychology, and there were disagreements between them. I left psychology, focused on medicine instead, because i felt like psychology classes were a waste of my time. And the people were not on the same wavelength intellectually or spiritually, so i didnt had any other reason to hang out with anyone. Eventually, i hit burnout and i went to therapy. I admit i should have known better after my experience in college. But yet somehow i entered therapy with the mindset of "thank god, finally someone who knows everything about everything is going to tell me how my mind works". And i was of course let down. I wish i could say that i just been unlucky, but i switched therapists after giving each minimum 1 year time to prove their expertese to me. And everytime i was extremely let down. I realized that all the therapists were spitting one liners that they have been taught, and often when you questioned what exactly those empty sentences meant they didnt know. When challenged they were clearly uncomfortable and they didnt like their authority questioned - something in my opinion is a sign of insecurity. They not only mislabeled and misdiagnosed everything i presented, purely to fit me into a box, but they were absolutely not helpful. Most if not all of my therapy sessions were my therapists holding monologs about a person X who experienced something and now feels a certain way - but this person was not me, not them, and it was not related to me either. I absolutely learnt to despite certain phrases like "sometimes we feel sad when...." and "sometimes when we..." ... No, sometimes when YOU a NT person does a thing, you feel a certain way. If YOU feel this way, this does not mean that I feel a certain way. I felt this deeply insulting, together with "everyone experiences this". I got diagnosed with all kinds of anxieties and fears, that i never had. For example, i was diagnosed with social anxiety. Me? Someone who has been on stages performing without issue for years at this point. Im not saying its impossible, im saying i never said anything of the sort and never agreed to such a diagnosis. I was also temporarily labelled with depression, which caused me to get in "trouble" with my insurance company. When i was clearly not depressed but burned out. And im not even in a minority otherwise than im a female and autistic. I did have to face the "you re high functioning why are you so whiny" many times though. As if a degree, a job, a marriage, and a happy life otherwise is something a struggling person cannot have. I also had my trauma being belittled many times. Which included a lot of ABA kind of things my parents did trying to make me act the way they wanted. I also additionally, have had now a few friends who went into therapy. And i see the same issues that i had. For example a friend of mine keeps feeling very bad and guilty because everytime she tries to discuss an issue with her therapist, her therapist says "and what fault do you carry? what did you do wrong here? What do you learn from this situation?" And she has therefore decided not to share situations anymore, where she fels like she has done something "wrong". And instead rather talks to me. Which i think is such a bad sign. Therapists judge way too harshly and offer no help at all to people who really struggle.
comment #2: TW for s/h and a friend's (unsuccessful) su1c1de attempt early in my first semester of college, one of my friends tried to k1ll herself. and i'll frame it as i wasn't told about this by a mutual friend after the event. this was obviously not a good time, but it was made so, so much worse by the fact i couldn't take the time to process. the rest of the semester, i was overwhelmed all the time, i started s/h'ing again after over a year clean, i finished assignments late, i barely did any of the readings, i tried to go to class the day after because unexcused absences could impact my grade. it angers me so deeply that after such a traumatic event, i was expected to pick myself back up and get back to work, and that's not even mentioning how it must have been for my friend after she came back to school. this culture of productivity and individuality is harmful enough on its own, and it additionally makes it near impossible to slow down to process and heal and support each other. sorry, this may have been trauma dumping. either way, i can say that this experienced certainly served to radicalize me against productivity as a measure of worth and hyper individualism (and the education system under this culture)
Im going into psych bc i know how fucked up the system is from personal experiences. I believe in if I have to change the system, I'll have to work within the system to change it. I recently became an RBT and I've seen how some of the ways they treat kids r horrifying. I try my best not to do that. My dream career is to work in hospitals with kids since that's my very first experience of how dark and broken the system is. Ive taken psych courses and see how they talk about mentally ill ppl, how they talk about ppl who have the same mental illnesses as mine, its unfortunate, so I decided to do my own study as well what I am being taught by professors. I form my own idea by taking account experiences and data from both professionals and patients' side. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to take my study to help others and not cause harm.
As someone who went into psych for the same reasons, just wanna give ya a big "fuck yeah!". We need more folks in the field who are willing to fight all this bullshit and have "lived experience". I wish you success with your goals.
Im only 16 mins into your video, but knew i had a new channel to subscribe to by the title alone. Just taking a moment to say as an AuDHDer in their 30s who has done broad and extensive research as my basically lifelong special interest (with hopefully less of an inflated ego than some of these professionals), it's quite validating to hear this from someone with insititional experience because ive been very leery now that ive figured out on my own that much of my PTSD is from iatrogenic treatment and not just inaccessibility. Im grateful i actually have a psychiatrist who agreed my agitated depression was adhd, though meandered on autism for the typical reasons, but i cant afford an assessment, and im leery of my therapist even though shes also a minority. Ive done my best to draw what help i can from services, but i just cant help but feel they have a certain impression of me, im getting mixed signals, and i know how transference works and have spent years compensating for "double empathy," yet I still feel this way. I just dont think they understand what autism really is, but i know how my brain works from my cognitive experience AND a decent enough self-education. I feel as though ive had to "walk on ice" the whole time around preconceived notions and not coming off as whatever modern iteration of "hysteria" they would rather toss on my charts just to get treatment at least for my adhd. Its made me almost paranoid of myself keeping my gaurds up but knowing, not just feeling, it's necessary to do so for the reasons im still going. So thanks for this, im about to catch up your content on a binge-listen while cleaning.
I don’t ever leave comments usually but I just have to say you have a BEAUTIFUL mind and heart. Not only did you have the critical thinking to question what you were being taught, but you had the heart and empathy (as someone who is a marginalized person) but of what OTHER people experience well and it’s nice to hear you validate all sides. I think this is such a good conversation starter bc we do need to start dismantling the system and rebuilding it off the needs and concerns of people who are actually being crushed by said system. I loved this and you got yourself an new subscriber. Thank you for teaching me new stuff today 🖤
Awesome video! Very glad it was in my recommended, really spoke to me. These issues are what I have been thinking about when I've been told I'd be a good psychologist. I've found my place in peer support and feel like it's a nice alternative to "regular therapy", because of the real life shared experience which most psychologist or therapists lack.
honestly i’m going into my first year of college soon and while my major isn’t declared i’ve been intending on psychology for a while but as an autistic person it has always worried me to be in a field actively against me in a lot of ways (ie aba). but at the same time psychology is something i’m really passionate abt and can’t imagine myself in another career path so it’s just really stressful. i do appreciate this video bc it’s helping me reflect more but at the end of the day ig im just going to take psych classes before i have to declare my major and see if i actually think it’s feasible for me LMAO.
I just want to say THANK YOU for making this video because this is something that EVERYONE needs to know. Everyone needs to become aware of this. And you only just scratched the surface of it too there’s so much more that goes into it and no one seems to realize this or care or even believe that these problems exist. No one even knows how deep the problems that we face to this day are rooted in the way the system runs. Wow I really wish everyone would be able to see things this way.
As a Psychology student, I studied social work along side it with my associates. I preferred social work much more than Psychology, I couldn't put my finger on it but I just had the feeling the the empowerment approach was much better than the medical model and something about Psychology feels cold. Anyway, this is a great, thought provoking video for me.
ashton!! this video was awesome. i learned a lot and feel very validated. as a fellow autistic(+adhd) trans person, my experience with psychological professionals has also been largely awful, as well as an awful time attempting to study psychology at university. all of my psych professors would refuse my accommodations, and i only got through 3 courses before realizing how ableist and overall f*cked up the field is bc my profs with phd's couldn't even bother to accommodate my disabled ass. then i switched my minor to diversity and advocacy, both bc ive always been passionate ab it and bc i figured how could a program called that deny accommodations? well, they did. and for the past year i've been really upset, just trying to get my main degree in art and figure out what to do now, but after hearing your bit about how the people on the ground doing the work and not the folks in academia are often the most well versed in the subject matter at hand, i feel a lot less discouraged with myself/ guilty for opting out of further pursuing this in an academic way and realize it doesn't mean i can't still do meaningful work. thank you!!!
i wish you could still reply w a video on youtube omg i have so much to say but the part about the origins of su*c*de prevention makes so much sense.. the way psych professionals respond is by restraining folks, using other forceful methods of "calming" like dr*gging, telling the person to calm down in threatening ways that further upset them, and generally acting like cops. my experience in psych wards was traumatic not because of any particular incident but bc i realized the field of psychology is not in a place to help people dealing with minority stress/abuse etc.
i have so many thoughts on this topic. i'll probably leave a couple different comments to separate them out. first, about therapy. i am trans and i have discussed dysphoria and the social stress that comes with being a trans person with my therapist, and she usually would immediately interpret those as personal mindset problems. for example, i talked about how it took 10 minutes for me to work up the courage to go to the men's restroom because i knew that people in the social context had previously and were actively perceiving me as a woman. that's not a me problem; my anger and discomfort with that is completely justified. i can't "self care" away trans oppression, whether that's the large scale trans genocide or smaller scale ways my family treats my transness, especially in regards to medical and legal transition. it's irresponsible of my therapist to come so close to telling me to "accept my body" when i say that going to the gym makes me dysphoric. i mean, i am also autistic, so it already makes sense that CBT wouldn't work for me, but the more i've come to understand many of my mental health issues as stemming from capitalism and systemic oppression, the more disillusioned with therapy i become
This has been my experience in therapy too and it feels like this is something basic that therapists should have education on, but obviously they would have to admit they're powerless to really change the oppressive structures that are harming us so instead they blame us or our supposedly irrational thinking and try to CBT us to death.
Agree with the part about being disappointed with therapy. As a late-identified & late-diagnosed autistic, I'm tired of constantly having my real discomfort minimised & downplayed, and being made to feel guilty for thinking & feeling the way I do.
Thank you for making this video. It was really interesting, informative and definitely got me thinking. I don’t have much to add so I’ll just say your cat is really cute!
This is an amazing video! I’m majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. I have realized that I don’t want to be a therapist and most of my beliefs wouldn’t really work in a practice setting. Like I have been focusing on the fact that psychology is a cultural thing so it the labels and diagnostic criteria differ around the world. But there are more local cultural practices around me that differ from mine. So I feel like there would be a lot of times where I wouldn’t want to pathologize someone based off of my own cultural standards. I wouldn’t want to diagnose them and I would want to listen to how they feel most comfortable working through issues. But because of capitalism and the health care system I would have no choice but to diagnose them or not they wouldn’t be able to seek help at all.
Hi, I am from India and a psychology student pursuing a master's degree. I also have a bachelor's degree in zoology, botany and chemistry. This video was so fascinating and interesting. The information I got in the video was so shocking . So my main interest is in eastern psychology which includes spiritual philosophy like Vedanta, Sufism, Buddhism, Jainism, Integral yoga, etc. Only recently eastern psychology has gained some recognition in India which was lost due to colonisation. I am new in the field so I feel I don't know what to else to add and say but thank you so much for the informative video. Discrimination and mental health stigma in India are important issues in general that need to be addressed. Your video has motivated and inspired me to be more introspective and conscious. As an animal I would strive to BE human ( a conscious being).
I’ve recently been thinking about these topics within the context of mentally decolonizing. The systems are the issues that uphold the mental health that many people face. Systemic discrimination is real and effects us as much or more than everyday discrimination.
I felt this. I majored in psychology but after 4 years i switched and minored instead because I saw a lot of flaws and i went in for languages and education. I later got my masters in a field unrelated to psychology. I am autistic as well.
I changed to have a minor in psychology but I’m worried about the inevitable ableism they’ll try to teach 💀. I’ve written essays about how most psychiatry doesn’t actually solve the root problems that cause mental illness,, I’m thinking maybe if I get a PHD in psych and write books about that stuff people may be more inclined to listen lol
Thank you thank you thank you for making this video! I currently study counselling in Australia, and whilst there are pockets of critical discourse, decolonised ways of approaching, etc, there is just so much wrong with it. I learn better ways to do things from people sharing their lived experience. I also have mental illness and have found going to psychologists sometimes very useful, but more often just more traumatising. I definitely want to be a part of changing this whole game.
I'm definitely gonna finish this video because this resonates with me so much but before I do I want to talk about some of my experiences because I don't think I can wait. I am a black, autistic, trans, very mentally disabled and a bit physically disabled, intersex person. Yes I know it's a lot. There's much more but those are the main things that affect me atp. I was severely abused in many ways and emotionally neglected as a very very young autistic child up to an even older minor through all types of means (physical,sexual,emotional,potentially cult, religious) so that's the main reason for my other severe issues. My years as a early teenager at this point were largely my struggles with mental health. And while people going through things like depression and anxiety and the like are valid and can have really severe issues, mine were very extreme. I'm likely suffering with at least BPD with narcissistic traits, C-PTSD and a dissociative disorder involved dissociated parts or "alters" as you'd hear them in terms of the most difficult things I struggle with mentally. As you probably know, people with BPD still and always have had hard times with mental health professionals. Ive had periods of time in my life were I was berated and dismissed by almost everyone me for the things I was struggling with. I was yelled at and told to do better by my mother after my first attempt on my life. I like her generally but she shows signs of BPD too so my attachment to her is unstable at best and she can be very unpredictable, even now but especially as a young child who'd need consistency. Psychiatrists and therapists would try to play down my experiences likely so I seemed easy to deal with but I just dropped them when I realized they couldn't help me and would often continue to spiral. I've been admitted to the hospital twice for attempts at severely harming myself and tried to take my life several times after the time I just mentioned. Psychiatrists I had would insist it was just depression and anxiety, one of the therapists I'd happen to see was the only one who saw it was more than that at the time and diagnosed me with PTSD. A lot of the time they're misinformed on the things they're supposed to diagnose so they can't be expected to do the already fairly arbitrary science accurately. I see so many people putting such importance on diagnosis and the like when I and people like me cannot get the same privileges being diagnosed without bias from medical professionals. Especially because of the way psychiatry just IS. I am the pinnacle of intersectionality and it shows. I've heard and seen it all already, literally had a psychiatrist laugh in my face because she thought a disorder I was considering being checked for wasn't real (DID). My experiences having those symptoms have been the worst of all when it came to trying to seek help for them. It made people like these who I will mention were always white and only once queer, think I'm making everything up and trying to force a diagnosis for attention or internet points (I did not have a platform nor even had TikTok at this time) or something. At this point my irritability has gone up so much I'd yell at someone who tried this again. Hope I won't have to considering I'm seeing a new psychiatrist very soon. People would put words in my mouth, ignored my symptoms such as time blindness, blackouts and hallucinations to try to force me towards an easily treatable disorder like ADHD which I was almost immediately diagnosed with and prescribed Adderall for after an hour with a psychiatrist. I know that's normal but it shouldn't be. I do not have ADHD. I even myself started having biases against people who self diagnosed themselves with the things I have or shared uncommon experiences with them on platforms like TikTok because I assumed that was the reason I was never taken seriously. It partially was but it's not any of their faults, a lot of the people I was blaming were literal children. I should not have been driven to this thinking though. Thankfully now I'm very supportive of self diagnosis especially after having been through such a horrific and frankly traumatizing experience in the mental healthcare space. Wouldn't force anyone to go through that. I was admitted to the hospital one time because I was looking for a professional to finally pay attention to me and take me seriously and I thought i wasn't being perceived "ill" enough so I started trying to severely hurt myself. It's ridiculous that I even got there. I was almost admitted to a ward. There are so many reasons I have had a fucked up experience with these doctors, almost every one I can say I have had some problem with. I can't fit all my experiences here but I will say my god it was hell. My partner was the only thing to help me through it. Anyone ever wanna talk to me about my crappy but frankly unique experiences? Reply and I'll tell you, would even talk one on one, just think it's nice to get this out there especially considering how much this has affected me so personally.
...not gonna lie, i'm kinda glad i didn't change my degree in college when i discovered psychology was one of my fixations. Wish i would've seen youtube historian as a career path, though XD i'd be pissing a lot more people off than i am right now.
I haven't watched the video yet but thank you so so so much for speaking up about this. I always struggled so much in psychotherapy and just never seemed to find common ground. I think there is just some systemic...something that makes me not fit into the framework of psychology. I've had some thoughts about how the whole structure of psychology and help feels a bit "saviour-y" which makes me think of a colonizer's mindset, how hypocritical it seems to me that psychologists tell us to not judge ourselves, but will judge whether we are "sick" and put us into these illness boxes. For me this whole structure due with health insurance and diagnoses feels dehumanizing, where is the understanding that people just go through shit and need support? And also just not realistic, because we don't all perfectly fit these boxes. For context: I am a white (probably, and I prefer to call myself neurodivergent because I don't neatly fit the little boxes) auDHD non-binary trans person who experienced childhood emotional neglect.
My grandma has a degree in psychology and after college she went to work for CPS, I think she said she quit after 6 months and went back to college for accounting. most jobs that utilize a phyc degree are very very very emotionally taxing, it takes a lot of energy see people at their lowest point every day
My psych professor said that anyone who was smart enough to complain about aba shouldn’t have been in it in the first place - essentially, any critique is misapplied…ugh
I’ve been feeling very, disillusioned, idk if I’m using that word correctly, with therapy for a while now. I need support I have a lot going on, multiple mental illnesses, grief, fucked up family dynamics, I don’t feel like therapy is helping me. I don’t know where to go from here but this video feels like I’m not so alone in feeling this frustration. So thank you
i want to teach psychology in the future at a university level in the future, and i will take this video with me for the rest of my life, and keep it in mind. last thing i want is to continue a system that hurts others, i just am fascinated with human behavior and i like learning about it. i think we should be using it to understand on how to interact with others and so we are not insensitive to people's struggles. i ramble, but i loved the video
work for many topic, keepign the flock in church, keeping missinforming animal cruelty for unessential nutriment behind close windowless door anti sound wall, people getting overweight, eat junk, dont exercise.. industry to exploit people weakness everywhere. missinformation everywhere, no intelectual honesty, no moral consistancy, no cross examination.. born consume die early from obesity and animal corpse devourment, then cry respect me
As a psychology major and a leftist who believes the political and personal are intertwined, thank you for this video. I have a hard time conceptualizing myself being a therapist when the field of psychology is still so behind, and the concerns that I have are considered unprofessional or irrelevant in mental health analysis. Another problem is how difficult it would be to navigate, as a therapist, the appropriate balance between my beliefs and my work. The Upstream podcast did an good episode on Liberation Psychology that I think you might find relevant. The background of psychology is truly horrifying and it has for a long time been in the hands of oppressive people, but I do believe that this can change. I think liberation psychology is needed so much right now, especially with how much bigotry and hatred children are being exposed to on the internet. Psychology as a whole is catching up, but I do feel hopeless sometimes. Then I remember that for all of history we have only seen one side of psychology... I try to imagine psychology in a post-capitalism world, as a tool to help people unlearn and discover themselves, to discover community, to love humanity, to confront any barriers they may have about being a socially conscious and kind community member. As opposed to psychology being used as a tool to cover up deeper issues, issues that may bring about the very consciousness we need to restructure society and interpersonal relationships to their full potential. And then I remember, that psychology can be the former right now, even if the world is still so broken. (p.s.a. loved your makeup in this video!)
this is… disquieting to say the least. Even as someone who hates capitalism and IDs as an anarchist myself, I havent considered how mental “pathologies” really come from the unjust systems that our society is created from. this is insane, thank you
This makes me really glad I didn't decide to do a psych degree, I did a class in grade 11 and 12 on it and that was honestly enough. Morally I didn't want to go into it because I feel that a lot of therapy/psychology is deeply exploitative (speaking as someone who had to pay over $1000 for an adhd diagnosis which was a single 2 hour appointment) and probably thousands more on therapy in my lifetime.
It’s wild how many supposedly queer-friendly therapists are just clueless. There are genuinely well-intentioned therapists who seem to have never heard of systemic oppression.
this. i haven been to at least 12 therapists in my life, and ive mentioned how capitalism makes me incredibly depressed and anxious all the time, but im constantly dismissed because its out of my control so i should just ignore it... like bitch i cant. its so frustrating having ppl that are supposed to be able to help me confirm my worst fears that im just lazy and not trying hard enough and that i just need to "look on the bright side" and "focus on your breathe" like itll make my life any better..... ik therapy can be helpful and i think it might have helped me to an extent, but honestly i feel more traumatized now than before i was in therapy, and i dont trust any therapists anymore because of shit i wont get into, this comment is already way too long awjknaawn i just wanted to rant abt this because itll never not bother me.... the fact that therapists literally made my mental health worse... like.... i cant even describe how depressing and helpless it makes me feel to not have anyone irl who even understands what im going thru
Same for autism, I have given up on finding a therapist who can help me. I spend hundreds only to have them completely misunderstand me and fail to meet my needs
Yeah, there are Reasons why I've basically sworn off seeing any therapist who isn't both queer and disabled. Because as a queer fat trans blind person, yes I do have a lot of anxiety. But I also live in a society that is Actively, Provably hostile to my existence AND has made it near impossible for me to function in due to the barriers it has erected (extensive car culture, gutting of public transit, obscene price of accessibility aids because it's harder to market the ones intended for blind people, lack of social support). And then you add in the extra pressures of living in late stage capitalism on top of it all, and being anxious and depressed starts seeming like A Reasonable Reaction.
And I have better things to do with my time and money than put up with someone trying to tell me about the benefits of positive thinking. Positive thinking will not get me a job or let me buy food, and it's frankly insulting and condescending to pretend it will.
My conversion therapists are adamant that they're 'allies'. They genuinely meant well. They thought the least invasive way of treating gender dysphoria was to help the trans person realize they were just confused/traumatized/influenced, so that they could lead a normal cis life again. They claimed this was their way of adhering to the Hippocratic Oath, because medical transition would amount to 'damage' being done. If the trans person persists, well then maybe they'd allow transition.
They were licensed psychologists and psychiatrists working at a reputable gender clinic, publishing peer reviewed articles on how to treat gender dysphoric people.
My sister majored in psychobiology and a professor straight up told the class that being trans was a mental illness (probably about 3 years ago, so recent), so I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that conversion therapy was the standard go-to.
This all took place in Amsterdam.
I was told to just suck it up when I complained that I struggle with the fact so much of customer service and work interaction as well as interaction with neurotypicals is built on lies. Wishing people well when it's obvious that you don't mean it, and especially the infamous "how are you" question that is not supposed to be responded to truthfully. I was told pleasantries, flattery and white lies are "the glue that keep society from tearing each other's throat out". I guess it's fine if I get crushed by it as long as society doesn't have to change and can continue to make me feel like garbage for struggling to keep up. cool, thanks, great to know.
I am absolutely interested in the connection between transgender people and the risk of eating disorders.
i'd be really curious to hear ashton's opinions on the topic, but in the meantime you might be interested to know that aaron ansuini (a trans guy) made a video on the topic several years ago. should be easy to find, his youtube channel is just his name.
The therapist that I see has told me that *most* of the afab and transmasc patients she's worked with have struggled with some type of "disordered eating," unhealthy habits even if it doesn't progress to a full-blown disorder :(
For me it was definitely a control thing. I was so dysphoric (but didn't quite realize I was trans yet) that an eating disorder gave me the illusion of having a sense of agency and control over my body. Once I realized I was trans (and got away from a difficult household) and transitioned the ED went away on its own because I no longer needed to feel that kind of ownership over my body, because I finally became comfortable with it.
seconding this!
As a trans person myself a lot of my eating disorder stems from my gender dysphoria. Dropping weight is the only non surgical affirming thing I can do (I’m AFAB and hold my fat on my hips/chest)
saying "ppl SUFFERING FROM autism" is like the most passive aggressivly ableist bs... omgg that stuff really gets to me. its so shitty. like autism is actually p cool??? i really like being autistic most days, im lucky to have ppl that im comfortable around and who accept me and i can just be without having to mask or constantly over anylize everything. what causes me suffering is neurotypical ppl who think they know better than me whats best for me. what causes me suffering is the way my city is built in a way that constantly triggers and overstimulates me.
i hate how so many ppl want to point the finger at individuals and act like we "just have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be normal, just fit it, just cope with it. its not like we are living in a dystopia thats slowly killing the planet and everyone on ittt. noo your fucking crazy" /s
real real real!!! the most suffering i do bc of autism is when i have to listen to ppl talk about "suffering from autism" lmao
i am not suffering from autism i'm actually quite good at it
The irony is a lot of "autistic suffering" comes as a result of people who refuse to keep our sensory needs in mind and force us to be "normal"
My autism is both a gift and a curse, much like how i view my transness and plurality 😅
Like everyone has a form of autism. Not everyone with autism has to suffer lol
I suffer but honestly a decent chunk of it is just.. other people lol. Like I have stuff that is inherently difficult/impossible for me but it would be a whole lot easier if I could just wear a massive pair of sunglasses everywhere without being stared at and stuff like that
To provide context, I am a Black queer second-year PsyD student in Clinical Psychology. I also have a dual Bachelor's and Master's degree in Psychology. I love this video.
There is a growing radical movement within the field to decolonize our practices to center on marginalized/oppressed communities and the sociopolitical condition and etiology. I would recommend (if you are interested) looking up Liberation Psychology. Liberation psychology is a praxis-based and abolitionist-centered model that addresses many of these concerns, led by LGBTQ+ Black, Indigenous, and Latine psychologists. Liberation psychology prioritizes critical ecology and an interdisciplinary framework when working clinically with communities and conducting research (e.g., incorporating abolitionism, gender theory, anarchism, communism, feminism, philosophy, environmentalism, history, etc). I did an hour-long presentation on this for a class in my doctoral program and a few papers on this topic. Unfortunately, contemporary academia centers on mainstream neoliberal capitalism and colonial psychology, but there are psychologists and other mental health professionals actively resisting this. They are pushing out resources and calling for a revolution. It angers me that this information is suppressed in undergraduate psychology classes, but I am not surprised.
i appreciate this so much!! that sounds super up my alley, thank you for this knowledge :)
this is awesome to hear about!!! i just made a comment mentioning the lack of organized movements for this in psychology, so it's super cool to hear that there actually are some!!
oooo I need to look into that!! thank you for sharing!
Where can I read more about Liberation Psychology? BA student here :)
Listeing to this video, I think that there is a massive misunderstanding ... Studying psychology often means that after university you will be working with people with mental disorders and trying to help them. Studying psychology does NOT mean that you as a student are supposed to have a mental disorder that will be treated in class.
Having a mental disorder of their own is, on the contrary, rather problematic for psychology students, because at Uni and in their later career they will often be confronted with very problematic cases that can trigger their disorder even more. As a student or professional in psychology you are not the "center of the world", your (future) patients and clients are, so to say. It will get rather difficult,. too, if a, say, autistic psychologist will have to treat a person with problems in her/his relationship with her/his partner. Because, by the very definition of "autism", the autistic psychologist will have massive problems to understand what the patient feels or how to interpret the difficulties in the relationship.This may cause event more problems for the patient, because she/he is confronted not only with her/his own problems, but also with the problems of the therapist. This is clearly not good.
Damn. That thread about suicide prevention among African slaves makes me wonder if similar attitudes are at the root of why modern suicide prevention techniques feel, in my mind, completely alienating (which has led me to stop sharing suicidal ideations with any professional).
i feel the same way abt self harm reduction. i have never, and will never feel comfortable talking to a therapist abt urges to s/h because if i do im scared ill be put under a 50150 or something like that (being forcibly institutionalized). it doesnt feel like ppl actually care abt me because im either straight up ignored and dismissed, or ppl take it WAYY too seriously and it feels kind dehumanizing? like my voice/thoughts/opinions dont matter, all that matters is getting me to stop being a danger to myself.... but its all forced and so none of it helps. idk what the solution is, esp since its really complicated, literally every single person who struggles with s/h does it differently and for different reasons. but i do think the way we, as a society, deal with s/h is not good enough. the way therapists just dont care why im s/hing they only want me to stop... the way im given no real control over my life or choices, and if anything im stripped of the little control i have because im a "danger to myself".... its insulting idk how else to put it. it feels so dismissive and condescending and not at all helpful..... but yeah sorry for ranting
oh ur so right :( since my first hospital visit i have not shared any suicidal ideation, or even urges to self harm, which i had shared multiple times in the past. not all, but a lot of doctors and officers made me feel as though i had committed a deep crime and had to think about my actions. the energy during some situations where they were attempting to help my state of my mind felt as though they were observing a species they didn't understand. there's definitely a resemblance to how these same ideas affected slaves
Yeah I have found myself not being able to open up about things too like thoughts of suicide because I felt unsure what the result of saying that would b
good part is we help consume less limited ressource and overpopulate this narcisistic world of entitled karen and kevin
@@XeLUA-cam this feels very true (Malthusianism) and I thought this way for a very long time, but in fact we have more than enough resources for everyone. it's the way they're (not) distributed that is the issue. if you've ever worked in retail, you know how much perfectly good food you're forced to throw out (in order to maintain artificial scarcity, in order to keep prices as high as possible). even if every suicidal person takes themselves out, if the system isn't changed, the inequality and the damage will continue 🩶 ...you're not wrong about the karens though lol
I originally started college wanting to be a psychology major but now I'm an anthropology major and a lot happier. The reason I switched was because the psych program literally worked against my autistic and adhd brain and I had one professor that made me feel dumb for needing help and they barely acknowledged the issues addressed in this video. And my college literally promotes a course about ABA therapy. While I know that anthropology has its own problematic history my college's program acknowledges and encourages students to acknowledge ethical issues in anthropology and archeology. But yeah studying psychology ironically messed with mental health and made me feel like an outcast. As for peer wise psychology was full of mostly rich white cishet neurotypical girls where as anthropology is pretty neurodiverse in my opinion.
I also heard more about autistic people from my cultural anthropology professor than the psych department at my college.
Had a similar experience jumping from psych to sociology at our college.
um no offense but what will you actually do with anthropology?
Same! I also quit psychology and instead decided to go into anthropology/psychology and it was such a huge difference!
@@kellharris2491 if unlucky, probably will flip burgers sadly.
i can relate about being tokenized in academia, it especially sucks when other students, or even professors, carelessly and ignorantly talk about marginalized people, and then you have to choose between staying silent or speaking up, and if you do decide to speak up, you need to stay calm, because if you get -god forbid- even *slightly* heated about something that personally afects you every day of your entire life, then you're seen as too emotional and incapable of having a rational debate. It really sucks to have that added emotional burden in addition to the regular course work. This video was very interestingt, thanks for all the ressources you shared ! i'm also definitely interested in hearing about the work you did about eating disorders and trans people
absolutely this!! you describe it so well. the fact that the prof always has more authority than you certainly doesn't help either!
I feel this so much. I stood up once against a transphobic professor and it was really triggering and emotionally draining. Later in an "apology" I received from her she wrote "I mistook our conversation for an academic debate". She completely missed the fact she was questioning and de-legitimizing my entire existence and experience with her terf rhetoric. She also completely missed the *obvious power dynamics* that were at play - me as a BA student trying to defend my identity, emotions and experience, against her, a senior professor, speaking from the comfort of her cold rationality.
It was really dehumanizing.
@@vincentvanglowit's hard to say, but don't quit the study. Prove her wrong and become one of the people who can help trans people one day because you fought the hate and officially are a teacher too. A better one!
This is kinda related to my experiences within learning humanities and social science subjects - I remember hearing transphobic rhetoric being made by both my peers and my law teacher and while I wasn't trans myself and there weren't any trans people around to hear their comments, it did make me mad as no one else in my class seemed to take much issue with the hurtful things that they mentioned.
I would've assumed that social science and humanities teachers would be better at having empathy and respect for other minorities and marginalised groups but I guess there's still more work to be done in that area
I hate when people say, that if you get too heated about something you are just emotional and you aren’t capable of proving your point. I grew up with both of my parents being psychologists. Since I was 7 years old I couldn’t be emotional while fighting cause they, mainly my step dad, treated it like a fucking debate. When I found out I was trans I was really hopeul and kind of came out, around when I was 14. I asked them if I could have a binder. They talked to a “professional” who tought I coukdn’t know if I was trans so I couldn’t risk the dangers that come with a binder. Then they took me there and I hated it, my gender didn’t even come up, it was all about trying to blame me being trans on trauma. It was hell. They refused to call me by my chosen name and denied me a binder. And they were psychologists. My step dad is kind of toxic anyways and would usually just pull my mum with him so it wasn’t surprising when they both misgendered and deadnamed me. That was the day when I just lost all respect for these “professional” people. They caused me so much harm and said my friend, who is autistic, has aspergers. Im just…it baffles me to this day.
I had a textbook for an abnormal psych unit that cliamed that Indigenous Australians didnt experince depression or suicidal thoughts and instead "vented their hostilities onto others". They also claimed that intersex people were predisposed to abnormal behaviour. Unsurprisingly they didn't provide a source for either of these claims. It was the most recent edition for a 2022 class. It informed the entire course content and no teacher was crtitical of it. Thankyou for talking about this. Sadly getting my bachelor of psychology in a 'progressive' Australian city was no better than your experince or of those in the comments. It's left me feeling very disillusioned with psych as a discipline. If you ever want to make more videos about psychology I'd love to see that kind of content.
Omg wtf that textbook is awful!!
Do you remember which textbook it was?
I never went to uni (as a Australian with free uni) because I'm scared that most universities have some sort of agenda. (whether it's political or not) I don't wanna have to sit there and intake propaganda.
All of the psych research I've done is from talking to other people and scratching the surface lol . I don't know much but it's better than going to uni
@@glowinggrenade I believe it was Abnormal Psychology by Hooley, Butcher, Nock & Mineka
i want to study psychology but as a schizophrenic and hearing horror stories from my schizophrenic peers i dont think i can handle the violent ableism against psychotics in those spaces.
I hope u r well, have u had good therapy? I've had quite a bit of good therapy experiences as the client
I'm also interested in studying phych, and... yeah. Even just from my first class, I found myself triggered by a lot of it. It sucks, and that's real. However- there was still a lot I got to learn, and genuinely enjoyed. My guy, your experience of the world, and your perspective- I STRONGLY believe that's exactly what the psychology field needs more of. More accurately, what the WORLD needs more of. You already understand the intricacies of psychosis in a way most clinicians will never come close to. If you're interested in helping people? I'm Positive there are others out there who can, and would benefit from learning what you've learned in looking after yourself day-to-day, degree or not.
My therapist is autistic, ADHD, queer- a number of things I have in common with them, and... It's genuinely made all the difference for me. I feel like they GET it. They understand. And for that, I feel like I can trust them with more, which, is something I really struggle with usually. I feel like schizophrenia is SORELY misunderstood. Even (in fact, perhaps especially) by those who explicitly study it. Your voice? Your experience? It matters. A lot. No matter how you choose to use it, you've got wisdom, and that's powerful. Don't ever let anyone make you feel less-than for what you experience; especially yourself. You're stronger than most people will ever understand. You deserve a place at any table you choose to join.
ABA therapy has been shown to correlate with WAYYY higher PTSD rates for ABA therapy survivors too
It's insane that it would b ignored. It's a very upsetting state of affairs, "madame is outraged" Futurama
oh my gosh i love this video, its worded so well. once i talked with a psychiatrist who didnt view the whole "deviation from whats culturally normal" as a bad thing. he said a lot of the times artists and creatives suffer under capitalism and how our society is structured and basically diagnosed me as just a little too punk lmao. (i wasnt as honest to him as i should have been but i didnt wanna deal with it. my parents made me go) looking back i am SO glad i saw him opposed to someone else because i dont think a diagnosis of anything "scary" would have been good for me in my situation
Best way that probably could have gone; I'm jealous
I was unaware that many Autistic people prefer identity-first language...unlike that professor, I'm going to take this information to heart :)
I also thought that person first language was the best way of talking about autism, until i started hanging out with a bunch of autistic people (and found out im very likely on the spectrum myself)
I get where it's coming from tho. Generally the correct and considered less offensive term for someone on for example a wheelchair or smth is a "person with disability" rather than "disabled person" Because the first one emphasizes that this person is not defined by their disability, it's just a one feature, while the second one is suggesting that the disability is what defines them as a person
I'm also a transgender autistic (+adhd) person who is planning to go into psychology, about to finish up my associates now and transfer to a uni and wow. this touched on a lot of my big concerns, I had been having a lot of doubts lately but I've been so committed to psych forever I barely know what else i would branch into, as I tend to have problems with most of the fields correlating to my interests sadly. You worded a lot of my problems with the field very well, and it meant a lot to hear someone with the same concerns who is similar to me in this regard. great video :D
i totally get it! i hope you end up happy with whatever you end up pursuing, i believe in you :)
I say your and concerns will make you a better therapist
The tokenization of marginalized students in classes, functionally making them teach, is interesting because it really does just shake the foundation of school as an institution but goes entirely unexamined. Especially funny in psych specifically which is so anti putting patients in positions of power. But then without thinking, professors know and acknowledge that the marginalized student is the expert in their experience.
Honestly, as a VERY confrontational Autistic person, I probably would've lost my mind if someone used the term 'suffering from autism' within a 50km radius of me lol. I've suffered from a LOT of abuse from medical professionals, doctors, therapists, etc. for being trans, it's so frustrating that these so-called 'professionals' are so clueless about anyone even slightly different to them, it's pathetic. They need to actually listen to minorities if they want to work with us. Anyway, I'm starting a degree of biomedical science next year and I'm lowkey kinda worried about how they're gonna approach topics of trans/autistic ppl, I hope they at least TRY to be respectful about it.
What’s the difference between referring to someone as “having autism” vs “being autistic”? Almost all of my friends are autistic but it’s never come up and I was just curious
@@Aconitums_Poisoned_Art We typically prefer the term 'being autistic' because it acknowledges that you cannot seperate a person's autism from themselves- it acknowledges that autism influences everything we do, think and feel, and that's it's a part of ourselves that makes us who we are. Obviously not everybody enjoys autism, it IS a difficult disability, but the term 'person with autism' can be offensive to some of us because it kinda... separates us from our autism? which is impossible, and also kinda frames autism in the same way you'd discuss a disease, or virus, or illness and not an integral part of our lives and who we are as people. In particular, you'll see a lot of those ableist 'autism mommies' talking about their autistic children as if they are diseased, and that they are "someone else entirely normal underneath the autism'" which fails to acknowledge that we cannot be separated from our autism, and that 'autistic' is not an insult, in the same way that the word 'fat' or 'disabled' are not insults. IDK I hope this makes sense, sorry for the long comment.
@@obamasfoot7223 thank you so much for explaining :>
Agree and actually find the label(s) also regressive to us, when our community also call us "starseeds", but maybe we all are, at different awareness levels, from a more quantum physics and/or mystic perspective and the pathology of autism also came from another dubious doctor, Eugen Bluelar, and calling us "morbidly self obsessed" in the papers, according to a Web MD page?
Look up different dimensions and their associated consciousness traits? 13 in a linear sense, besides parallel universes?
Perhaps this is a touch petty, but I really dislike how schizoid and schizotypal disorders are categorized as personality disorders when , obviously to anyone who has them, they are neurodevelopmental disorders that go far deeper just acting a bit weird.
And denying that its something very deep within a person that is present from birth serves to stop any actual accommodations being made for us in education or society generally. (People on the schizospectrum generally have a low educational level despite having interests in academic subjects)
And I think a large part of it is that due to our poor memories and tendency to be creative, creating accomodation for us within education would call into question the entire model or forcing children to uncritically regurgitate other people's theories and ideology.
The psychiatric apparatus would rather leave us to freeze on the streets, lock us up or force us full of (often life-shortening) anti psychotic medications then actually give us a place in society.
That's really messed up. I hope u r well
I'm sorry to hear that. I've been thinking that schizoid disorders would probably be one of the most difficult ones to have. The amount of social stigmatization, isolation and lack of proper health care ON TOP OF the actual struggles from the disorder itself.
Also, it's bizarre that schizoid disorders are categorized as personality disorders, what part about them is about "personality"?
I completely agree! It's so ridiculous that those are labeled as personality disorders! It makes no sense.
My partner considered going into therapy at one point. He decided to become a plumber instead. There are just too many issues in the field, especially given how poor the pay is.
then they wonder why plumber is one of the most wanted job.. go play with toilet tube while people want to make money doing nothing online
I’m realising how lucky I am to be doing a psychology degree in the U.K. taught by very competent lecturers. My personal tutor and also the lecturer that teaches most autism related weeks helped write a paper on language preference in autistic people across English speaking countries. Also one on one she treats me as a normal human being which is somehow rare when people find out I’m autistic 👀. Sadly all the researchers in the developmental science department are neurotypical, I want to be a researcher in autism just to have someone who actually has lived experience creating beneficial research.
rooting for you!
I haven't had an experience of being treated differently after telling someone, also I've told hardly anyone tho. It sounds unpleasant
Thank you very much for putting subtitles on your videos :)
you’re so welcome!! as a subtitle enjoyer i wouldn’t wanna publish a video without em and it only takes an extra hour or two :)
aaaaa this video was so good! i have had so many similar experiences with tokenisation in academia (being a visibly trans nd poc), and i know so many people with similar experiences (one of which was sadly bullied out of a bio degree by their peers in the course for being trans).
the inherent issues in psychology as an institution were so thoroughly explained here - i have had so many experiences with clinical psychologists who completely lack knowledge in minority experience, and that is such a massive issue when they're trying to use cbt, a method that classifies thought processes that cause distress as 'illogical', when a lot of my mental health issues come from genuine fears of the safety of me and my friends (we are all minorities, many of us have had traumatic experiences where we have been at risk) - having genuine concern for the safety of you and your family is not irrational.
And all of it, as you explained, is to get you back to a point where you are 'functional' and no longer a weak cog in the machine - until systemic change is brought about, your health is only a matter of concern if it gets in the way of you being a good worker. Ashton, your work is eloquent beyond words, thank you so much for your videos :)
your "irrational" point is so good!! i've def seen/heard of similar things in regards to concerns about surveillance, state violence, policing, etc... the way many psychs classify concerns as illogical just bc the psych has no knowledge of oppression is... certainly something
"i have had so many experiences with clinical psychologists who completely lack knowledge in minority experience, and that is such a massive issue when they're trying to use cbt, a method that classifies thought processes that cause distress as 'illogical', when a lot of my mental health issues come from genuine fears of the safety of me and my friends (we are all minorities, many of us have had traumatic experiences where we have been at risk) - having genuine concern for the safety of you and your family is not irrational."
This has been so much of my experience. It's extremely frustrating and disheartening. It comes across as and may even be blatantly a blame the victim mentality that only serves to cause further distress and ignore all the issues the person is facing.
I would absolutely love a deep dive into your copies of the DSM.
CW: somewhat of a rant about systemic pressure, struggling to get accomodations for very obvious neurodivergence, trauma mention
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Also I am a black trans man transitioning in the middle of Germany debating a new self ID law while also dealing with a job that doesn't leave much room to accomodate someone with C-PTSD (recently retraumatised due to my family's response to me coming out as an adult), toxic family and the grief that comes with cutting them off, hormonal turmoil and anxiety and depression. The hamster wheel never stops, your only chance is getting formally diagnosed by a psychiatrist and hoping it is "bad enough" for them to declare you as at least 50% disabled so you gain additional workplace protections and can demand accomodations such as additional vacation days. It took a year to get my therapist, who is otherwise very good, to realise how huge my distress is - because the diagnostics assume that if you can keep a job and somewhat look after yourself you are well enough to not get a diagnosis for anything besides anxiety and depression. I also suspect I might be on the spectrum and/or have ADHD but C-PTSD can present similarly so I really don't know and will have to see what the psychiatrist says. I'm glad to at least live in a country where insurance covers most of it. But still, I am feeling the pressure, and I have felt it all my life. And I know I am not alone. This is why it is so hard to befriend people like me offline - we are all exhausted, burnt out and lonely, hanging out online because it is so much easier to squeeze in a tweet or a youtube comment between a shift and our evening routine than go outside and deal with all the screaming billboards advertising consumption, noisy trains and yet another hateful headline about how my trans sisters shouldn't go to the womens bathroom while I, a man with stubble and a deeper voice than some cis men, should. I just want to finally feel at peace after 33 years of a constant battle for survival, and feeling like a lesser person because I can't keep up with the 40+ hour work week because I wasn't treated right for most of my life.
Sorry you had to cut your family off, it's so hard to know you have to give up on them ever coming around.
@@phoebegee54 It's gonna be alright one day, I just gotta be there for myself and put my healing first.
I've only just started watching this video but I'm reminded of the sheer amount of anti Autistic ableism I've had to deal with from so many people who are supposed to help me. Especially during my process of getting a gender dysphoria diagnosis, which is extra upsetting considering the amount of Autistic people within the trans community ....
Also my son has recently got his own Autism diagnosis (I've known for much longer though) and it's been a nightmare to navigate the can of ableism worms that opened. His psychologists keep telling me that they want to look for a therapy that doesn't just force him to not act Autistic, but every suggestion they've made so far is doing exactly what I said I don't want for him. I just want him to learn how to cope with overstimulation and how to prevent meltdowns but it just seems like there is *nothing* that actually does that.
Edit to add that the "therapy" they suggested was called "pivotal response treatment" which from what I've read basically consists of withholding things that a child likes, to get the appropriate response from them. As a parent I'm against rewards/ punishment to begin with and it just struck me as an awful thing to do to a child who struggles to communicate with words. It was just ABA without calling it ABA ....
Omfg yeah the pfl bothers me so much. It's okay for people to have different preferences but if I call myself and my son Autistic, it should be clear that that's what we prefer, and I hate the fact that so many of the official documents describing our situation say stuff like "parent and child suffer from a disorder in the autism spectrum"
To all doing psychology as a marginalized group; you're strong and you dont have to quit because of the bs. We need more psychologists and doctors likr you to help other trans kids and adults and other marginalized groups. Prove the haters wrong
(warning that this is a lot of me venting and being angry about personal experiences)
Psychology has failed us so many times in so many ways. We're a plural DID system with autism, c-ptsd, and a few other things but those are the relevant ones rn. We also have a history with delusions. The amount of bouncing around with psychologists we've done is crazy. We've had multiple therapists not listen to us when we try to explain to them how our system works and how we want to be treated (we don't want to work toward final fusion, we don't want parts language to be used because our headmates are people, we need our separation encouraged because it's healthy for us and decreases dissociation, and we struggle with masking. We want treatment to help lessen dissociation, allow more headmates to front, allow better managing of front, and offer alternate coping mechanisms so we can split less often). We've had our trauma and neglect/abuse from our mother, who we still live with, undermined. We are CONSTANTLY made responsible for our dysfunction when the truth is that we're in an impossible environment. And right when we finally get a therapist that seems better? She demonizes people with npd and psychosis, so now we don't know what to do with her
So yeah... the psychiatric system is... broken. Not even broken, broken implies it was ever good in the first place. It was created for bad reasons and it hasn't been fixed, a shitton of band-aids have just been put over it
And I could say so much about DID specifically, and how that diagnosis is a mess that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people/systems and how it's conflated with plurality all the fucking time when it shouldn't be because those are two different things that have a large overlap but are not the same thing. And how a lot of therapists, when trying to treat plural DID systems, focus more on making them more singlet-like than actually making the system function better on their own terms. Which, at least in our case, actually makes our health worse
Just the general idea that therapists tend to have, where they think they're smarter and better than you and need to assert their shit instead of working with you, fucking sucks
We get constantly complimented for how "in tune" we are with ourselves and how "articulate" we are and all that. Everyone is always so impressed by our ability to know exactly what's going on with us. But they only listen to what we have to say when it's something easy for them to agree with
We don't go to therapy to teach the therapist shit, or debate about how our identities should be handled. We go to therapy because we have a shitton of trauma that we're trying to process. But I will tell you, our friends have done so much more than any medical professional, and we've been in and out of therapy since we were 12 (now 19). And being in therapy has, for the most part, been a net loss, for us
I mean, one of our therapists even tried to tell us venting is bad because it's "retraumatizing yourself", when that is the Main way we process (talking through things and having a friend's support allows us to break the cycle of the trigger and the spiraling thoughts and think about things in new ways). She was trying to have us do EMDR for anything that came up, which we were actually noticing was triggering a mask instead of allowing us to process, and if we continued that mask could have become very dangerous by suppressing our trauma further, while making it look like healing. But we have prior experience with that sort of thing so we could tell the difference pretty quickly
...anyway
wow this comment is a mess
we just have... Experiences
I do not have DID, but I'm Autistic and I studied psychology for years while being failed over and over by the system and misdiagnosed, mistreated, called a liar, etc. I am privileged that I got an Autism diagnosis and now at least can have access to a community who are recognised in society.
But I remember feeling how you felt, pouring your heart out just to be failed or misunderstood or outright mistreated or not listened to. I can't imagine what it must be like to not feel recognised as a system, and to not have care centred around what works for YOU GUYS. I know exactly what you mean about the condescending attitude that psychs can have, as if they (not a system) could possibly know better than you (an actual system and human with mental health issues living the experience!)
It was all of this that made me quit and switch to art because I cannot stand how disgustingly patients are treated within the system. The system causes patients more trauma on top of their already vast trauma, and I don't want to be a part of that.
I know this must be hard. But yous deserve the right care and support, and yous will get that one day, so try your best to block out every toxic word that's been said to you, and know that you are valid and your struggles are valid.
I want you to know that things are shifting within psychology because of people like yous speaking out about how messed up the treatment is.
Sending love ❤❤
I'm an autistic trans guy wrapping up my BA in psychology and I can relate so, so much to your experiences! We're also quite similar in our politics and values -- I completely respect your decision to step away from psychology given how carceral and oppressive it is as a discipline. I guess I just wanted to provide an alternative perspective, as someone who is similarly situated to you but is choosing to continue down the path towards becoming a therapist. This is not written with the intention to persuade you to go down this path, but just to provide a different perspective if you're interested in it.
In short, I'm approaching it from a harm reduction perspective. I think it's possible to both do revolutionary work to dismantle the systems that hurt us all and tend to the wounds that result from those systems in the meantime. I think both fighters and healers are necessary to win the war, so to speak. And, while I think individual efforts to change systemic problems are inherently limited, I think having clinicians who have a more radical political stance will lessen the harm for people who do need to be bandaged up.
Again, this is not to dissuade you from your path or to critique it, but to provide an alternative perspective. I really enjoyed the video, thank you for sharing your experiences. It made me feel a little less alone, struggling to finish my degree.
you got this!! i totally understand & respect that perspective, thank you for sharing :)) if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s another comment on this video from someone in a postbac program about liberation psychology that i think you’d be interested in!!
As someone who did the same, good on you for doing what feels revolutionary to you!
Also, just wanna add as someone who has recently gotten their graduate degree,, that if you wanna be a therapist and live in the US, consider getting your graduate degree in social work or counseling (not counseling psych, just counseling). The licensing in psych is a fucking nightmare and there are very few folks (let alone folks with a more critical view of the field in line with what's discussed in the video) willing to provide the supervision you have to have for years. The exam (EPPP) is WAY more expensive than for social workers or counselors and way more difficult... I've only spoken to one person who passed first try (I'm taking mine in a month and terrified). Like... so many people told me to do this and I ignored them all because they didn't give me this info, just said it was more "competitive" which just made me more determined. If you choose to stay with psych, consider a counseling psych program rather than clinical. I had to deal with a lot of bullshit described in the video in my program too but it seems like less than in "traditional" clinical psych programs.
this video actually makes me more determined to become a psychologist, i want to help fight to make changes in the field to help people and people in minority groups im part of a couple myself (gay, FTM, autistic/disabled, mental illnesses) i want to fight with anyone who is going to fight to make changes in the field. i dont wanna speak over groups im not apart of but i want to try to help everyone i can be represented and any disorders or experiences researched equally to others. all the major issues in the field disgust me and i want to work as hard as i can in my life to fix them. i dont know enough about the topics that i want to help fight with people to improve yet. im a couple years behind in school but i should be graduating in the next couple years and moving to post secondary to hopefully study more and hopefully it will be at least a little more advanced so i have a start. but id also listen to the people affected by what im learning about
I've had mental health issues my entire life. And I've bounced between therapists throughout my entire life. And, lately, I've been pressured to go to a therapist again. I do not want to.
I've been thinking about some of the same ideas for a long time. Why would I pay to talk to a stranger who can a) fuck up my life if I say the "wrong" thing, and b) will invalidate my anger towards a system I cannot adapt to.
Therapists have done nothing for me but consistently make things worse.
Why would I want to put myself through dehumanizing procedures that only hurt me? Why would I pay for this lie that is rooted in the exact same system that crushes me daily? Why am I expected to crack my heart open in front of a stranger that is one of the system's judges?
I hate how I've been told that I'm the problem my entire life, how I am the problem for breaking under the pressure when I am not the one who put an unbearable pressure on all of us to begin with.
Individual change towards conformity will never align with my morality.
I hate how that's expected from us.
Do you think humans should never conform some of their unique behavioural patterns to a norm? Or do you just mean therapists shouldn't be forcing you to do certain things or act a certain way? Because if your therapist is doing that you should seek a better therapist that actually abides by the core principles of psychotherapy.
@@meesgrimm7757 Yeah. 14th's the charm, right? I'm done with therapists. And no stranger's comment on the internet is changing that.
@@nebaidossarkans3306 fair enough
I feel so spoiled with all these Ashton videos 🥰 I found your channel when the hysterectomy video came out and I also just recently came out at that time, so I watched a lot of your old videos and became a big fan while waiting for new ones :3
As a mathematician, it was news to me to learn that statistics was built by eugenicists. And like.. I took a whole ass history of math course and everything. You'd think there might have been some mention of it somewhere. I'm glad you brought it to my attention.
i’m considering going into psychology as a career bc i was one of those people who was lucky to be surrounded during my stint in a psych ward who understood me. depression and anxiety are highly stigmatized in the black community, so things like some philosophies of ABA therapy in CBT sometimes work for black people who were never exposed to mental health resources. it’s common for us to refer to our mental illnesses are merely stigmatized behaviors we are just bad at not doing. for example: depression as “i’m sad and i don’t know why, i keep screwing up,” not fully aware that it worsens the cycle because there is no breakthrough yet in challenging the conditioning of those behaviors. and first it’s best to be aware of them and that they don’t make you a bad person. many black therapists who are great at their jobs know they’re working with black people who were taught to repress their feelings to give into societal standards of how black people should act.
I'm going through undergrad now, originally as a psych major before pivoting to social work. I've honestly known so many people that have gone into psych, become disillusioned with it for the reasons you mentioned, and pivoted to something else entirely, generally social work or a counseling modality that's less tied to the institution of psychology. Even the psych professionals I know are quick to highlight its faults and establish work-arounds for the problematic and impractical facets of the field, the DSM especially. It just feels like most people aren't actually happy with or invested in the field as a whole, but that they take a piecemeal approach that allows them to make the best for others out of a broken system.
heyyyyyyyyy.... I'm autistic, and realizing that sparked a fixation in psychology. Over the past ~6 months I've gone through a lot of self-discovery. Early on after my discovery, l felt more empowered to accommodate myself in my life and relationships, and I finally felt like part of a community. Ableism from my parents and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me now makes it extremely difficult to accept autism as a part of my identity. I was told I barely meet the criteria for diagnosis, that my autism is "mild," and it's so hard to disagree, and to explain how invalidating that wording is (not that I disagree with giving people support needs levels- that's important for getting the right kind of help). And somehow I have to be the one to take the lead with my parents to educate them about the neurodiversity view of autism (my mom does autism diagnosis, by the way). I deal with a lot of imposter syndrome, and small comments from the people who should be supporting me makes it so much worse. Autism is so important to my identity, yet I can't accept it. It feels like I just made it up, like there's no biological basis for it in my brain. Like I'm a neurotypical with a thin layer of autism on top. It's really painful. I hope I can believe my diagnosis soon.
I really like the idea of psychology. I love labeling (a result of my autism), and more importantly I love helping. Psychology fails that in many ways; I know that personally, and I've heard plenty of horror stories. But psychology is not going away any time soon, and I think the best way to improve the current system is damage reduction. Do research studies that validate autistic identities and self-expression, research alternatives for ABA or protest for reform. Just keep pushing. I think there's hope, which is why I want to go into psychology. Sometimes you need someone on the inside to help those changes.
I hope that makes sense, I'm low on spoons.
heyyyyy !! i'm autistic too, and i totally understand the imposter syndrome. Currently I'm in autistic burnout so i'm rly disabled compared to when I'm healthier but I still experience imposter syndrome, I still get invalidated by people around me. Just wanted to say that no matter how apparent it is, how much you suffer, some people will never believe you, your struggles or your differences. You are autistic, you're your own kind of autistic as everybody else is. I see you and to me you are valid and I hope you will one day be able to think that of yourself as well.
Wow, the essay section was incredible, thank you for sharing that! I had a few hopes for topics you would discuss in the video based on my own research on stuff that's bad about psychology and you really delivered. Especially the topic of mental health under capitalism is one that I have been thinking about in recent months as I try to figure out what I want to do once I graduate since the possibility of becoming a therapist has always seemed like an obvious option. Having you discuss it in the context of radical theories was really helpful as I've not really had a chance to read any such literature outside of psychology.
One thing I want to add is about the way that research is conducted in Psychology. Not only was statistics founded and developed by Eugenicists, but there are many other problems with research today. As research is funded through grants etc, certain topics are prioritised over others based on where money is to be made. The value of academic output is linked to its citation index, significant results are prioritised over non-significant results, there have been many cases of unethical research practices including data fabrication and changing one's hypothesis after results are known. All those things push research towards being less rigorous in following good scientific practice & have all contributed to the replication crisis in psychology (particularly social psychology), which describes the phenomenon of sizeable proportions of empirical research not replicating in follow-up studies.
Unethical research practices and the replication crisis already undermine my trust in psychological research but another problem is how incredibly Euro-centric (and ultimately White) everything is. The field of psychology we have today was largely developed in the US and Europe, which is why it's so heavily intertwined with Eugenics and racism and white supremacy. But as a result, the entire way the field operates is coloured by that context. Tendencies to make vast generalisations across cultures based on studies done on primarily white people in rich countries. Tendencies to study phenomena with an incredibly individualistic approach while disregarding communities, systems, environments. The exclusion of people from the global majority at every step along the way when it comes to research. I have yet to learn more about the extent of coloniality within psychology today, but suffice to say it feels all-encompassing.
I think my disillusionment with psychology began as soon as I started learning more about its bad history and has just gotten worse the more I learn. Similar to what you said, I find statistics really interesting & I'm also quite interested in the psychometrics side of things because I find it fascinating how it's often taken for granted that test instruments measure what they're supposed to, but having gotten some insight into the construction of measurement tools my impression is that many test instruments are so much more flawed than we think. And having done research into intelligence testing and how IQ tests have been (and kinda are still being) used in racist and ableist ways, I can see so many issues with applications of psychological tools within society that work to maintain oppression.
I could go on but I'm finding it hard to articulate everything from memory in the comment section. Suffice to say, I have one year left of my degree and still need to write my whole dissertation and I'm so torn between wanting to do good and working to improve what psychology is and can become vs abandoning the field completely after I graduate because all the problems feel unfixable. Since we unfortunately do need jobs to sustain ourselves in this capitalist hellscape we live in, I'd be very interested to hear how you plan on moving forward work-wise now that becoming a psychologist no longer aligns with your values.
Thank you again for this video, this is such an important discussion and it's one that I've been missing with peers at my university (in the UK)
Also just on a personal note, having to get diagnosed with gender incongruence (as the clinic I went to follows the ICD-11) in order to access trans healtcare where I live in the UK felt like a real insight into psychiatry as an institution with an inherent power dynamic. The experience of having to divulge quite personal information that gets written up and also shared with my gp (equivalent to primary care physician) at the end, to effectively convince a gender "specialist" that I'm indeed trans and should get access to the care I need... it was uncomfortable, infuriating and overall just felt like a denial of my own agency. Not to mention that I just lied on some accounts and honestly should have lied more to make the experience more comfortable for myself when they asked very personal stuff. Gatekeeping trans healthcare through gender dysphoria/incongruence diagnoses is by far not the only example of how psychiatric institutions are used to control and police people & I feel a lot of solidarity for anyone who's gone through similar experiences in this or other contexts
all of this is so important, thank you for those additions abt research! your reply abt transness is also SO wrapped up in all of this, there's endless stuff to talk abt there. pathologization of transness has such a long history it absolutely sucks. thank you for sharing
‘Certain topics are prioritized over others based on where money is to be made’ this could not be more true. And it really does affect people’s lives. My brother has something called complex motor stereotypies (not sure on the spelling, not good at it) and there’s basically no research on it. He had to go all the way to London to get diagnosed (also uk! Hii!) and all the research I could find online to try to support him was info on autism (which is highly comorbid) people posting videos of their children doing their stereotypies (gross stuff. Stop) and loads of lovely articles assuring me and others that he’d grow out of it eventually. I hate it. His and others masking has caused them anxiety and anger issues. The only support my mum could find is a facebook group for other parents I think. I’ve never seen anyone who has it post online about it. He has a therapist now but all I want is to find some information or lived experience from other people so I can know more of a rare and mostly unknown condition. I KNOW it causes more than just his sterotypies because he has other things like slow processing but does not have autism. But the only symptom is strange repetitive movements that often come with a sort of daydreaming I’m pretty sure. It is a genetic condition and you can have non-complex motor stereotypies that look like normal habits, so thats probably different. I want this to have the same research as other neurodivergencies one day. Imagine how many kids and adults are alone not knowing about this. I want research into complex and non complex but there’s no money in it I guess
Sorry for the whole dump here you just made a bunch of thoughts go in my head 😅
as someone who graduated this spring with a degree in social work... this, this, this. the differences between academics in social work and psychology [and really, the way these things are taught regionally] are an important distinction, and i do feel that my social work program at least was more conscious of issues with the systemic incapacity to really address what could improve mental well-being. but especially as you read your essay, i saw a lot of myself in your issues with what's being taught.
plus, as someone who now has a degree in social work and is a survivor of psychiatric abuse, it's already a complicated subject for me. i want to add, speaking of your essay, that i am so so glad you took care to mention that the absence of oppressive systems wouldn't just magically erase the behaviors pathologized as mental illness, and especially that it wouldn't eliminate assault and abuse. i find a lot of discussions of this topic super painful and honestly just really demeaning as someone whose mental illness and traumas could absolutely occur in a society free from things like capitalism.
anyway, long comment, but that's all to say that i'm beyond grateful to see this video and the discussions it's sparking in the comments here!!
Therapists being ignorant makes me afraid to get therapy even though I need it. It's heartbreaking to hear what your professor said in class. I hope you gave lots of feedback.
I'd love to hear about the history of the pathologization of sexuality, that sounds so interesting!
im sapiosexual and 99,9% of planet starve me
Yippie new ashton video
The last therapy practice I attempted to see a counselor at required you to fill out a form online and wouldn't allow you to set up an appointment with a therapist until you submitted it. On the form they listed "transgender" in the same category as sexual orientation, which also only gave the options of heterosexual, homosexual, transgender or bisexual.
I found it quite problematic that this was required because it wouldn't allow you to submit the form without listing your sexual orientation; not giving you an option to choose not to disclose as well as not allowing a place to write in your own answer (while simultaneously erasing aro-ace, demisexual people, pansexuality, etc.) not to mention listing trans as a sexual orientation, as well as using the more medicalized, pathologizing terms like homosexual. It also forced you to answer yes or no on a question about whether you were questioning your gender identity. While these questions might be helpful for some people, to me, forcing every potential client to answer these is not only forcing people to out themselves before even beginning a therapeutic relationship, but is stripping away a person's autonomy to make the choice about what they want to disclose or not. It's already setting up an asymmetrical power imbalance from the get-go and you haven't even been to the office or talked to anyone face to face yet. Needless to say, I noped-the-fuck-out and didn't submit the form.
I also find it problematic that on sites like Psychology Today where therapists have profiles, so many have 20-40 areas of "expertise" that they list as well as 15-20 therapies they practice. I'm sorry, but if you have an area of expertise, you're not going to have 30 different areas you can treat. It seems like so many of them just list everything under the sun because they think they're qualified to treat any issue a person may have. I also see too many therapists listing themselves as Trans-Allied, LGBT-allied, affirming, etc. But when I search for more information about this, there's nothing to be found. Or when I ask them what their specific training, education, experience or knowledge they have about LGBTQ issues, history, struggles, or how to treat clients that are minorities, they can never provide an answer other than, "I have experience", or "I've worked with LGBTQ people before". Like, seriously? That would be like me claiming I'm allied to the black community because I know a few black people so therefore I know how and am able to help black folks who deal with things like racism, discrimination, etc. Being LGBTQ allied or affirming is literally a baseline pre-requisite that ALL therapists should have before they even begin practicing. They need to learn how to help LGBTQ folk with things like minority stress, intersectionality, identity, discrimination, etc. LGBTQ people are not here to be your guinea pigs so we can help prop up your arrogant hubris because you think you know how to help us, which we almost always wind up having to educate YOU for FREE, meanwhile our mental health deteriorates, and we pay you for this!
I also can't state how many therapists have pushed specific questionable therapies on me after I have politely declined repeatedly, or have made hyperbolic, exaggerated claims for how effective a therapy is. It's always fun as well when a therapist literally questions and victim-blames you and straight up tells you that you don't want to change or get better and that if you had a magic wand and could use it to eliminate your mental health issues you wouldn't do it. Ironically, or maybe unironically, therapists are some of the most self-deluded, self-aggrandizing, unaware, oblivious, walking versions of the Dunning-Kruger effect I have seen. BE CAREFUL when you seek them out. Vet them, ask them as many questions as possible, research their credentials, watch out for ones who practice pseudoscientific, unproven, or even harmful therapies. Be wary of ones who claim to be able to treat anything and everything, ones who claim to know more than they do, ones who make unrealistic promises for what they are able to do. You're paying their exorbitant fees. You're employing them. You don't have to stay or put up with their bullshit.
26:30 I have asked and brought these exact issues/questions up to therapists I've seen and they would all literally pull out CBT-based retorts, where essentially it was my fault or my own "irrational" thinking that was causing my problems. When I'd tell them that I've experienced trauma and abuse from a young age for never fitting in and growing up as a queer/trans person and living in this toxic, abusive, bigoted society, I would be told that I'm "thinking in black and white", or "focusing on the negatives", etc. Ok, well, trust me, I've considered all of the aspects of my life and situation probably millions of times and it still doesn't help me when I am verbally abused, or have to worry about my physical safety just for existing, or worry about myriad forms of discrimination against me for being who I am. Telling me to love and accept myself doesn't help when people are stripping away our rights and trying to attack us. Self-love isn't going to change that. Or when I express my anger at all of the injustices I've faced and that others face, I'm told that I shouldn't think about that or that I need a hobby. They never address the fundamental systemic causes of the issues that perpetuate the suffering or the problems so many minorities face. It feels like they blame the victim because if they had to admit that there are so many injustices that we're up against they would then be forced to say that they don't have solutions or answers outside of their therapeutic models. I can tell myself all day long that I'm using black and white thinking when I say that as a queer person existing in this world I face a lot of obstacles and pain, but that doesn't change the simple fact that we can't think our way out of these oppressive systems whose main objectives are to marginalize, erase, and destroy us.
Yes! It's so bizarre when therapists essentially want you to close your eyes and pretend that the evil and injustice in the world don't exist because thinking about them would be "bad for your mental health". And while that might be true, thinking about it makes me feel hatred and sorrow, pretending that the problem doesn't exist doesn't incite any action to fix it. Maybe the therapists themselves want to stay in denial and continue to believe in a good, moral and just society that they've been told they live in...
I’ve felt for a long time that “happy” and “mentally healthy” people are simply those for whom existing in our depressing society is the least difficult. Which ironically, seems to actually be a minority of people. Our social structures aren’t working for most people, but for some, it’s even worse than for the majority.
Your videos always open up my mind to why many things don’t sit right with me. You are so intelligent and I love hearing your perspectives.
The definition of "disorder" itself is not neutral and is influenced by neuro-normative culture. For example, spending a lot of time at work being a workaholic (e.g ≥60 hours/week) or hoarding wealth (e.g ≥$50 billion and more), are not seen as mental disorders that need to be corrected in a capitalist culture. However, the same behaviour applied to a non-business situation, such as spending a lot of time on hobbies/games/special interests or hoarding vintage obscure items, are seen disorders that need the intervention of a professional.
Hi! I'm new. I just found your channel yesterday and I'm happy I did.
I am a fat autistic seahorse dad, and I'm just now starting on my degree in psychology. It's been really interesting to hear what you have to say about it. Thanks for being cool.
As a social work student I LOVE this video and I'm so excited to be discovering your account!! There are so many things I want to say that I wish I could have a full conversation with you about this TBH but here are the big ones...
1. The problems you note with psychology are one of the reasons I love studying social work. Admittedly there's major problems with the history of social work (for example, the history of racially-motivated separation of children from their families in child welfare) but I love that social work has its roots in grassroots activism and community organizing (when you mentioned community care I literally started snapping like I was listening to slam poetry) and considers the whole system's role in keeping people well. We need more people with these radical perspectives in the field and I'm proud to be able to bring that to my practice. If you don't mind my saying I bet you would make an AMAZING social worker as well!!
2. A third alternative perspective I would point to is mad studies, which overlaps with both the psychiatric survivors and critical psychiatry movements but is more (IMO) intersectional with feminism, disability activism, etc. One thing I really love about it is that it calls for a more contextual understanding of mental illness and addresses the problem that what we consider "mental illness" is culturally defined. It also centers people who identify as Mad or having mental illness at the center of the conversation which is very important to me as someone in recovery from multiple mental health conditions.
3. Lastly something I would add to your notes about eating disorders (as someone in anorexia recovery) is that I think the incidence of eating disorders would drastically decrease in a post-capitalistic society because of the abolition of the diet industry. There are so many people and corporations profiting off our self-hatred and if we eliminated these forces from our society -- the ones peddling Ozempic and diet foods and Weight Watchers programs and whatnot -- I think we would feel much less pressure to conform to a particular standard of thinness.
As someone who follows a lot of disabled activisits, leans towards anarchy and communism, and is queer, this perfectly encapsulates my feeling of why im so reluctant to go to a therapist.
I have a lot of issues, and often they dont feel appropriately addressed, and often sessions have felt unproductive because i want someone to understand my views and let me speak on my experiences.
Another reason is that im really scared to be offered essentially conversion therapy, because im aro and that happens more frequently for us, especially when i want to try to figure out if it is trauma related or if im just aro.
Its really frustrating and basically just further radicalizes me.
just got flashbacks to my a level psychology school trip where i remember asking a question about personality disorders to a psychologist working in prison (she didn’t know i suspect i have one) and basically she said some ableist shit. i apologise for not being more specific because i also have memory issues u know how it is but ye that just really made me go hm. esp bc one of the people we were going to meet on that trip was a guy with aspd who had been in prison for a while. actually that whole trip made me feel like we were treating ex-convicts like zoo animals which was really un-fun and uncomfortable!
also the worst time i ever had was in my gender classes lmaooo it felt like talking to pre-schoolers about gender bc they were always so weirdly clinical about gender and especially trans people and bc im also autistic i wouldn’t know how to say hey the way you’re talking abt gender is weird as hell. also i was definitely the only trans person in that class so that was fun
It's weird how common it is for people to treat people with personality disorders like the villains of a fictional story and not think twice about it. People love to preach about unstigmatizing mental illnesses/disorders only to turn around and say the most vile shit about people with mental problems that aren't socially acceptable (so, most of them)
Thanks a lot for this. You expressed points and supported your arguments geeatly you made me understand that my general reservations towards psychology actually have great reasons to be there. Thanks a ton. Kudos
Mainly due to having a close family member with bipolar disorder, I've spent a lot of time reading books about mental illness. None of them dig really deep into the origins of things like therapy or the study of psychology as a whole so this was a really great and informative video. It's interesting to look at mental illness as being somewhat a product of the capitalism - makes sense to me. I'd read about how urbanization has a correlation with increased incidences of mental illness and I always chalked it up to density of humans and cities are not really ideal to be living as humans, but never thought about how that also relates back to capitalism and our roles as 'productive' members of society and how lack of community care plays a role. As always, a more complex thing that I originally thought - but like also expands my understanding greatly.
I also recently read The Body Keeps the Score and the discussion about mis-diagnosed mental illness being related to trauma was touched upon in that book and I think it's soooo fascinating - because it highlights how we've been misunderstanding the roots of mental illness (or rather mentaly ill behaviours or something - I'm very much not sure how to phrase this) in cases where people have experienced trauma.
there's so much terror when the mental health professionals that are detaining you are working with the abuser that made you so sick you were eligible for detainment.
It's good to know that certain people prefer identity-first language to person-first language in the autistic community. I serve autistic people and the agency I work for typically says something to the effect of "people within the [autism] spectrum." I've never had personal reason to question it, given that I have a long negative history with identity first language as someone with CP, considering a lot of identity language from the ill-informed come as slurs. Thanks for the alternative perspective.
Thanks! The section on statistics helped me better understand the worst part of the neuropsych evaluation that got me my AuDHD diagnosis - that being the personality test that, had I to do it again, I would have declined to take. I became aware, when I got the results, that it was poorly structured for the way someone on the spectrum interpreted and answered questions. Some of the parts returned results I do not dispute, but certain flagged answers, and the coefficients of fit were startling, discordant, and a pretty serious misreading of who I am. The “sorting people” aspect was something I sensed, but what you outlined fleshes it out more clearly, and also makes more apparent why it felt so abhorrent and pathologizing.
What you said about statistics is interesting. I could see how someone just seeing it as a tool and who isn't aware of marginalization would think that it is not necessary to mention because they wouldn't be able to tell that there are still things that are related to that, because those people don't necessarily see the tension, while a person who is personally affected might be much more aware how there are still bits and pieces that hurt them and not understand why and would really need that information to make sense of it.
i'm so glad you made this video! i'm in a very similar boat, i'm autistic and about to go into my senior year of college and i came in as a psych major (still am), and later added a phi major. i've been lucky enough to be at a private college on a pretty good scholarship and my favorite psych professor (and now advisor, that's a whole mess of a story) is absolutely wonderful, she's autistic and adhd herself and does a lot of advocacy work as a professional eyewitness. like i said, i know i'm extremely lucky to have found a professor so accepting and openminded, especially being in psychology. but as much as i love her and the work she does and is encouraging me to do, i also worry about going into psychology myself because it has that issue where there's not an organized effort of people* within the industry trying to make it better. there are people making wonderful strides individually, but unfortunately that's not enough to change the industry as a whole. (not to mention my previous advisor was... incredibly ableist, and my experiences with even her alone significantly added to my distaste for the system because i know she holds some very widely-held beliefs.) i wish psychology was, as a whole, more focused on actually helping rather than pathologizing and "solving".
*edit: just read another comment mentioning liberation psychology, which i hadn't heard about!!
also in case anyone is interested, my professor works with an organization called the deskovich foundation which was started by jeffery deskovich after he was released from a wrongful incarceration, and basically he's been using the majority (if not all) of the money he was awarded from the release to help other people that have been wrongfully incarcerated go through the processes to have evidence retested and such so they can be released! i thought that might be worth mentioning, and i know that other than those funds the foundation runs on donations so they don't have to charge the victims or their families anything, so i like to share when i can :)
This video is such an amazing resource. It's so difficult to access educational material outside of academia, so thank you so much for your references and links.
AHSTON!! You have no idea how exited I am to see your new videos!! its amazing that you're posting again!!
Our biggest issue is how little the field focuses on trauma. We belive that most personality disorders, cluster Bs in particular, should be viewed as different presentations of CPTSD (just how P-DID and OSDD type one should be viewed as different presentations of DID). There should be more focus on dissociation too. Even though we don't like the theory of structural dissociation, we do agree that cluster Bs are dissociative in nature and a lot seem to share a scary amount of similarities with OSDD-1/1a in the more complex cases.
Affecive disorders have a very deep root in trauma, even if the basis of them is purely genetic or physical.
Same with anxiety, eating, and some psyhotic disorders
Listening to you talk about your experience in college helped me realize I dodged a bullet. My first major was psychology and I switched majors to gen ed halfway through my first semester, then dropped out after my second semester and went to community college for Animal Management because I had NO CLUE what I was supposed to study after I realized psychology wasn't it. I had a glimpse of what was happening that first semester in a 201 psych class (I took 101 in hs too) and a sociology 101 class, and I just could see well enough that I wasn't going to be helping people. I could see clearly how everyone was sick because society made them sick in so many infectious ways and I had no clue where to start. I've even witnessed it on the patient side of things, being a person fed up with capitalism and I have multiple comorbid mental illnesses to prove it. I've had therapists admit they know they're not really helping, they're just nursing our wounds. You really summed it up, in a rather thorough way if that makes any sense. Thanks Ashton.
People with neurotypicalism can't really help being narrow minded. Neurotypicalism is extremely disabling. The things they are generally good at is: adapting to majorities and fitting into the society. The things that they generally lack is autonomy and basically anything off the script of society. When they hear something that isn't part of their small scripted world, they will reply with fear, judgement, or simply filter it out fom registering in their minds. As an autistic person myself I feel like it might be useful to view neurotypical people less like able people who have it all and should not have anything to complain, and more like people who have a disability and struggle to be a unique person and think for themselves, to form their own opinions. They seem to be followers who need instructions to follow, someone who tells them what to do. It works for them to function in the society as it is now, but if we were to take over the world and design a completely autistic society, they will probably need a label and support.
Im glad to see someone else talk about the issue and share their perspective.
As for my perspective with the topic. I been on kind of both sides of it. Sorry long text.
Im autistic, i have cPTSD and OSDD, and i have dealt with trauma throughout my life. I have invested a lot of my personal time to make psychology my special interest, with a primary focus on things like self growth, meditation, self regulation, etc. Im talking about a lot of introspection, self analysis and stuff like this.
I didnt understand why i was different because i have not gotten the autistic diagnosis until like a year ago as an adult, and i never understood why i reacted so differently to stimuli - a trauma reaction in many of those "weird" cases. I wanted to be "normal" and "fit in" and deal with my suffering.
I think that i achieved A LOT by working on these things on my own, reading books on my own, looking at online forums, and things like that. Admittedly, back in a time where it was a bit easier to access correct unbiased information. Still from what i heard in therapy and from people around me, i think i have a good understanding of at least some concepts.
This lead to me being interested in psychology classes. To be fair i have to say that i have degrees in molecularbiology so i am NOT by any means a pro in psychology. I love to learn that is all. So i have attended a lot of extra classes simply for fun, many of which were in the medical field, and i some were in psychology.
My idea back then was that humans are animals, im attending medical classes because the animal anatomy sparked my curiousity about this particular species; and if im learning about behavioural science (for animal models) i should also attend psychology.
I was quickly bored, annoyed and uncomfortable. I felt like every person in that class was being ableist and rude, making snarky comments while we were discussing rather heavy topics. I also did not like how downplayed, one sideded and narrow minded complex concepts were introduced. Everything was painted in the light of "well an old white man said this ages ago, and we have a study with 10 participants so clearly this is true".
Excuse me this is now how science works? It infuriated me that someone *just* claims something is true, but cannot back it up, and then we all have to believe him and act on it like we are sheep.
I have attended a variety of course - i never took any tests and i never gotten any credits (because i had zero interest in getting a degree) but i can tell you that those tests were an absolute mockery to the concepts that we discussed. At least at the university i attended. As mentioned i came from biology and medicine, and i was just horrified how talking about a very complex organ - the brain, no one seemed to really be as curious or willing to really understand whats going on. People were categorized into labels and boxes, and how to deal with certain issues was not based on facts at all. If anything i felt like the psychological courses in medical school were dramatically different to those in psychology, and there were disagreements between them.
I left psychology, focused on medicine instead, because i felt like psychology classes were a waste of my time. And the people were not on the same wavelength intellectually or spiritually, so i didnt had any other reason to hang out with anyone.
Eventually, i hit burnout and i went to therapy. I admit i should have known better after my experience in college. But yet somehow i entered therapy with the mindset of "thank god, finally someone who knows everything about everything is going to tell me how my mind works".
And i was of course let down. I wish i could say that i just been unlucky, but i switched therapists after giving each minimum 1 year time to prove their expertese to me. And everytime i was extremely let down.
I realized that all the therapists were spitting one liners that they have been taught, and often when you questioned what exactly those empty sentences meant they didnt know. When challenged they were clearly uncomfortable and they didnt like their authority questioned - something in my opinion is a sign of insecurity. They not only mislabeled and misdiagnosed everything i presented, purely to fit me into a box, but they were absolutely not helpful. Most if not all of my therapy sessions were my therapists holding monologs about a person X who experienced something and now feels a certain way - but this person was not me, not them, and it was not related to me either.
I absolutely learnt to despite certain phrases like "sometimes we feel sad when...." and "sometimes when we..." ... No, sometimes when YOU a NT person does a thing, you feel a certain way. If YOU feel this way, this does not mean that I feel a certain way. I felt this deeply insulting, together with "everyone experiences this".
I got diagnosed with all kinds of anxieties and fears, that i never had. For example, i was diagnosed with social anxiety. Me? Someone who has been on stages performing without issue for years at this point. Im not saying its impossible, im saying i never said anything of the sort and never agreed to such a diagnosis. I was also temporarily labelled with depression, which caused me to get in "trouble" with my insurance company. When i was clearly not depressed but burned out. And im not even in a minority otherwise than im a female and autistic.
I did have to face the "you re high functioning why are you so whiny" many times though. As if a degree, a job, a marriage, and a happy life otherwise is something a struggling person cannot have. I also had my trauma being belittled many times. Which included a lot of ABA kind of things my parents did trying to make me act the way they wanted.
I also additionally, have had now a few friends who went into therapy. And i see the same issues that i had.
For example a friend of mine keeps feeling very bad and guilty because everytime she tries to discuss an issue with her therapist, her therapist says "and what fault do you carry? what did you do wrong here? What do you learn from this situation?"
And she has therefore decided not to share situations anymore, where she fels like she has done something "wrong". And instead rather talks to me. Which i think is such a bad sign. Therapists judge way too harshly and offer no help at all to people who really struggle.
comment #2:
TW for s/h and a friend's (unsuccessful) su1c1de attempt
early in my first semester of college, one of my friends tried to k1ll herself. and i'll frame it as i wasn't told about this by a mutual friend after the event. this was obviously not a good time, but it was made so, so much worse by the fact i couldn't take the time to process. the rest of the semester, i was overwhelmed all the time, i started s/h'ing again after over a year clean, i finished assignments late, i barely did any of the readings, i tried to go to class the day after because unexcused absences could impact my grade. it angers me so deeply that after such a traumatic event, i was expected to pick myself back up and get back to work, and that's not even mentioning how it must have been for my friend after she came back to school.
this culture of productivity and individuality is harmful enough on its own, and it additionally makes it near impossible to slow down to process and heal and support each other.
sorry, this may have been trauma dumping. either way, i can say that this experienced certainly served to radicalize me against productivity as a measure of worth and hyper individualism (and the education system under this culture)
Im going into psych bc i know how fucked up the system is from personal experiences. I believe in if I have to change the system, I'll have to work within the system to change it. I recently became an RBT and I've seen how some of the ways they treat kids r horrifying. I try my best not to do that. My dream career is to work in hospitals with kids since that's my very first experience of how dark and broken the system is. Ive taken psych courses and see how they talk about mentally ill ppl, how they talk about ppl who have the same mental illnesses as mine, its unfortunate, so I decided to do my own study as well what I am being taught by professors. I form my own idea by taking account experiences and data from both professionals and patients' side. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to take my study to help others and not cause harm.
As someone who went into psych for the same reasons, just wanna give ya a big "fuck yeah!". We need more folks in the field who are willing to fight all this bullshit and have "lived experience". I wish you success with your goals.
Alright you got this your future patients are lucky to have you
Nice to see Twitchyspoonie get a shout out. I used to watch them on youtube when they posted videos.
Im only 16 mins into your video, but knew i had a new channel to subscribe to by the title alone. Just taking a moment to say as an AuDHDer in their 30s who has done broad and extensive research as my basically lifelong special interest (with hopefully less of an inflated ego than some of these professionals), it's quite validating to hear this from someone with insititional experience because ive been very leery now that ive figured out on my own that much of my PTSD is from iatrogenic treatment and not just inaccessibility. Im grateful i actually have a psychiatrist who agreed my agitated depression was adhd, though meandered on autism for the typical reasons, but i cant afford an assessment, and im leery of my therapist even though shes also a minority. Ive done my best to draw what help i can from services, but i just cant help but feel they have a certain impression of me, im getting mixed signals, and i know how transference works and have spent years compensating for "double empathy," yet I still feel this way. I just dont think they understand what autism really is, but i know how my brain works from my cognitive experience AND a decent enough self-education. I feel as though ive had to "walk on ice" the whole time around preconceived notions and not coming off as whatever modern iteration of "hysteria" they would rather toss on my charts just to get treatment at least for my adhd. Its made me almost paranoid of myself keeping my gaurds up but knowing, not just feeling, it's necessary to do so for the reasons im still going. So thanks for this, im about to catch up your content on a binge-listen while cleaning.
I don’t ever leave comments usually but I just have to say you have a BEAUTIFUL mind and heart. Not only did you have the critical thinking to question what you were being taught, but you had the heart and empathy (as someone who is a marginalized person) but of what OTHER people experience well and it’s nice to hear you validate all sides. I think this is such a good conversation starter bc we do need to start dismantling the system and rebuilding it off the needs and concerns of people who are actually being crushed by said system. I loved this and you got yourself an new subscriber. Thank you for teaching me new stuff today 🖤
Awesome video! Very glad it was in my recommended, really spoke to me. These issues are what I have been thinking about when I've been told I'd be a good psychologist. I've found my place in peer support and feel like it's a nice alternative to "regular therapy", because of the real life shared experience which most psychologist or therapists lack.
incredible video. i hope others think this way as well because it feels useful to understand everything. all context matters.
honestly i’m going into my first year of college soon and while my major isn’t declared i’ve been intending on psychology for a while but as an autistic person it has always worried me to be in a field actively against me in a lot of ways (ie aba). but at the same time psychology is something i’m really passionate abt and can’t imagine myself in another career path so it’s just really stressful. i do appreciate this video bc it’s helping me reflect more but at the end of the day ig im just going to take psych classes before i have to declare my major and see if i actually think it’s feasible for me LMAO.
I feel so seen and understood. Exactly what I needed right now, thank you sm
I just want to say THANK YOU for making this video because this is something that EVERYONE needs to know. Everyone needs to become aware of this. And you only just scratched the surface of it too there’s so much more that goes into it and no one seems to realize this or care or even believe that these problems exist. No one even knows how deep the problems that we face to this day are rooted in the way the system runs. Wow I really wish everyone would be able to see things this way.
As a Psychology student, I studied social work along side it with my associates. I preferred social work much more than Psychology, I couldn't put my finger on it but I just had the feeling the the empowerment approach was much better than the medical model and something about Psychology feels cold. Anyway, this is a great, thought provoking video for me.
ashton!! this video was awesome. i learned a lot and feel very validated. as a fellow autistic(+adhd) trans person, my experience with psychological professionals has also been largely awful, as well as an awful time attempting to study psychology at university. all of my psych professors would refuse my accommodations, and i only got through 3 courses before realizing how ableist and overall f*cked up the field is bc my profs with phd's couldn't even bother to accommodate my disabled ass. then i switched my minor to diversity and advocacy, both bc ive always been passionate ab it and bc i figured how could a program called that deny accommodations? well, they did. and for the past year i've been really upset, just trying to get my main degree in art and figure out what to do now, but after hearing your bit about how the people on the ground doing the work and not the folks in academia are often the most well versed in the subject matter at hand, i feel a lot less discouraged with myself/ guilty for opting out of further pursuing this in an academic way and realize it doesn't mean i can't still do meaningful work. thank you!!!
i wish you could still reply w a video on youtube omg i have so much to say but the part about the origins of su*c*de prevention makes so much sense.. the way psych professionals respond is by restraining folks, using other forceful methods of "calming" like dr*gging, telling the person to calm down in threatening ways that further upset them, and generally acting like cops. my experience in psych wards was traumatic not because of any particular incident but bc i realized the field of psychology is not in a place to help people dealing with minority stress/abuse etc.
i have so many thoughts on this topic. i'll probably leave a couple different comments to separate them out.
first, about therapy. i am trans and i have discussed dysphoria and the social stress that comes with being a trans person with my therapist, and she usually would immediately interpret those as personal mindset problems. for example, i talked about how it took 10 minutes for me to work up the courage to go to the men's restroom because i knew that people in the social context had previously and were actively perceiving me as a woman. that's not a me problem; my anger and discomfort with that is completely justified.
i can't "self care" away trans oppression, whether that's the large scale trans genocide or smaller scale ways my family treats my transness, especially in regards to medical and legal transition. it's irresponsible of my therapist to come so close to telling me to "accept my body" when i say that going to the gym makes me dysphoric.
i mean, i am also autistic, so it already makes sense that CBT wouldn't work for me, but the more i've come to understand many of my mental health issues as stemming from capitalism and systemic oppression, the more disillusioned with therapy i become
This has been my experience in therapy too and it feels like this is something basic that therapists should have education on, but obviously they would have to admit they're powerless to really change the oppressive structures that are harming us so instead they blame us or our supposedly irrational thinking and try to CBT us to death.
Agree with the part about being disappointed with therapy. As a late-identified & late-diagnosed autistic, I'm tired of constantly having my real discomfort minimised & downplayed, and being made to feel guilty for thinking & feeling the way I do.
This makes me think of the time I expressed by anxiety around the problems of capitalism to my therapist and she suggested I start a business
Thank you for making this video. It was really interesting, informative and definitely got me thinking. I don’t have much to add so I’ll just say your cat is really cute!
This is an amazing video! I’m majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. I have realized that I don’t want to be a therapist and most of my beliefs wouldn’t really work in a practice setting. Like I have been focusing on the fact that psychology is a cultural thing so it the labels and diagnostic criteria differ around the world. But there are more local cultural practices around me that differ from mine. So I feel like there would be a lot of times where I wouldn’t want to pathologize someone based off of my own cultural standards. I wouldn’t want to diagnose them and I would want to listen to how they feel most comfortable working through issues. But because of capitalism and the health care system I would have no choice but to diagnose them or not they wouldn’t be able to seek help at all.
Hi, I am from India and a psychology student pursuing a master's degree. I also have a bachelor's degree in zoology, botany and chemistry. This video was so fascinating and interesting. The information I got in the video was so shocking . So my main interest is in eastern psychology which includes spiritual philosophy like Vedanta, Sufism, Buddhism, Jainism, Integral yoga, etc. Only recently eastern psychology has gained some recognition in India which was lost due to colonisation. I am new in the field so I feel I don't know what to else to add and say but thank you so much for the informative video. Discrimination and mental health stigma in India are important issues in general that need to be addressed.
Your video has motivated and inspired me to be more introspective and conscious. As an animal I would strive to BE human ( a conscious being).
My therapist is neurodivergent and it’s fucking awesome having someone who can keep up with my adhd speak
I’ve recently been thinking about these topics within the context of mentally decolonizing. The systems are the issues that uphold the mental health that many people face. Systemic discrimination is real and effects us as much or more than everyday discrimination.
Thank you for sharing all of this, subbed :)
I felt this. I majored in psychology but after 4 years i switched and minored instead because I saw a lot of flaws and i went in for languages and education. I later got my masters in a field unrelated to psychology.
I am autistic as well.
props to you for enduring courses in psychology, i'd be too chronically disgusted to function lol
I changed to have a minor in psychology but I’m worried about the inevitable ableism they’ll try to teach 💀. I’ve written essays about how most psychiatry doesn’t actually solve the root problems that cause mental illness,, I’m thinking maybe if I get a PHD in psych and write books about that stuff people may be more inclined to listen lol
Thank you thank you thank you for making this video! I currently study counselling in Australia, and whilst there are pockets of critical discourse, decolonised ways of approaching, etc, there is just so much wrong with it. I learn better ways to do things from people sharing their lived experience. I also have mental illness and have found going to psychologists sometimes very useful, but more often just more traumatising. I definitely want to be a part of changing this whole game.
I'm definitely gonna finish this video because this resonates with me so much but before I do I want to talk about some of my experiences because I don't think I can wait.
I am a black, autistic, trans, very mentally disabled and a bit physically disabled, intersex person. Yes I know it's a lot.
There's much more but those are the main things that affect me atp. I was severely abused in many ways and emotionally neglected as a very very young autistic child up to an even older minor through all types of means (physical,sexual,emotional,potentially cult, religious) so that's the main reason for my other severe issues. My years as a early teenager at this point were largely my struggles with mental health. And while people going through things like depression and anxiety and the like are valid and can have really severe issues, mine were very extreme.
I'm likely suffering with at least BPD with narcissistic traits, C-PTSD and a dissociative disorder involved dissociated parts or "alters" as you'd hear them in terms of the most difficult things I struggle with mentally. As you probably know, people with BPD still and always have had hard times with mental health professionals. Ive had periods of time in my life were I was berated and dismissed by almost everyone me for the things I was struggling with. I was yelled at and told to do better by my mother after my first attempt on my life. I like her generally but she shows signs of BPD too so my attachment to her is unstable at best and she can be very unpredictable, even now but especially as a young child who'd need consistency.
Psychiatrists and therapists would try to play down my experiences likely so I seemed easy to deal with but I just dropped them when I realized they couldn't help me and would often continue to spiral. I've been admitted to the hospital twice for attempts at severely harming myself and tried to take my life several times after the time I just mentioned. Psychiatrists I had would insist it was just depression and anxiety, one of the therapists I'd happen to see was the only one who saw it was more than that at the time and diagnosed me with PTSD. A lot of the time they're misinformed on the things they're supposed to diagnose so they can't be expected to do the already fairly arbitrary science accurately. I see so many people putting such importance on diagnosis and the like when I and people like me cannot get the same privileges being diagnosed without bias from medical professionals. Especially because of the way psychiatry just IS. I am the pinnacle of intersectionality and it shows. I've heard and seen it all already, literally had a psychiatrist laugh in my face because she thought a disorder I was considering being checked for wasn't real (DID). My experiences having those symptoms have been the worst of all when it came to trying to seek help for them. It made people like these who I will mention were always white and only once queer, think I'm making everything up and trying to force a diagnosis for attention or internet points (I did not have a platform nor even had TikTok at this time) or something. At this point my irritability has gone up so much I'd yell at someone who tried this again. Hope I won't have to considering I'm seeing a new psychiatrist very soon. People would put words in my mouth, ignored my symptoms such as time blindness, blackouts and hallucinations to try to force me towards an easily treatable disorder like ADHD which I was almost immediately diagnosed with and prescribed Adderall for after an hour with a psychiatrist. I know that's normal but it shouldn't be. I do not have ADHD. I even myself started having biases against people who self diagnosed themselves with the things I have or shared uncommon experiences with them on platforms like TikTok because I assumed that was the reason I was never taken seriously. It partially was but it's not any of their faults, a lot of the people I was blaming were literal children. I should not have been driven to this thinking though. Thankfully now I'm very supportive of self diagnosis especially after having been through such a horrific and frankly traumatizing experience in the mental healthcare space. Wouldn't force anyone to go through that. I was admitted to the hospital one time because I was looking for a professional to finally pay attention to me and take me seriously and I thought i wasn't being perceived "ill" enough so I started trying to severely hurt myself. It's ridiculous that I even got there. I was almost admitted to a ward. There are so many reasons I have had a fucked up experience with these doctors, almost every one I can say I have had some problem with. I can't fit all my experiences here but I will say my god it was hell. My partner was the only thing to help me through it.
Anyone ever wanna talk to me about my crappy but frankly unique experiences? Reply and I'll tell you, would even talk one on one, just think it's nice to get this out there especially considering how much this has affected me so personally.
...not gonna lie, i'm kinda glad i didn't change my degree in college when i discovered psychology was one of my fixations.
Wish i would've seen youtube historian as a career path, though XD i'd be pissing a lot more people off than i am right now.
I haven't watched the video yet but thank you so so so much for speaking up about this. I always struggled so much in psychotherapy and just never seemed to find common ground. I think there is just some systemic...something that makes me not fit into the framework of psychology. I've had some thoughts about how the whole structure of psychology and help feels a bit "saviour-y" which makes me think of a colonizer's mindset, how hypocritical it seems to me that psychologists tell us to not judge ourselves, but will judge whether we are "sick" and put us into these illness boxes. For me this whole structure due with health insurance and diagnoses feels dehumanizing, where is the understanding that people just go through shit and need support? And also just not realistic, because we don't all perfectly fit these boxes.
For context: I am a white (probably, and I prefer to call myself neurodivergent because I don't neatly fit the little boxes) auDHD non-binary trans person who experienced childhood emotional neglect.
My grandma has a degree in psychology and after college she went to work for CPS, I think she said she quit after 6 months and went back to college for accounting. most jobs that utilize a phyc degree are very very very emotionally taxing, it takes a lot of energy see people at their lowest point every day
My psych professor said that anyone who was smart enough to complain about aba shouldn’t have been in it in the first place - essentially, any critique is misapplied…ugh
that feels INCREDIBLY ableist as well jfc. i’m sorry you had to hear that!
This video was so informative! Thanks so much for making this
Even just doing a cursory search of ABA therapy there is ableist language in the first page, first result, EEK
I’ve been feeling very, disillusioned, idk if I’m using that word correctly, with therapy for a while now. I need support I have a lot going on, multiple mental illnesses, grief, fucked up family dynamics, I don’t feel like therapy is helping me. I don’t know where to go from here but this video feels like I’m not so alone in feeling this frustration. So thank you
Great video, it has me thinking alot. I really enjoyed hearing your essay!! /gen
Thank you for existing!
i want to teach psychology in the future at a university level in the future, and i will take this video with me for the rest of my life, and keep it in mind. last thing i want is to continue a system that hurts others, i just am fascinated with human behavior and i like learning about it.
i think we should be using it to understand on how to interact with others and so we are not insensitive to people's struggles.
i ramble, but i loved the video
this video is great. as a schizo, mental health professionals care much more about normalizing u and getting u to work than anything else.
In connection with psychiatric survivors group, there’s also the troubled teen industry survivors
work for many topic, keepign the flock in church, keeping missinforming animal cruelty for unessential nutriment behind close windowless door anti sound wall, people getting overweight, eat junk, dont exercise.. industry to exploit people weakness everywhere.
missinformation everywhere, no intelectual honesty, no moral consistancy, no cross examination..
born consume die early from obesity and animal corpse devourment, then cry respect me
As a psychology major and a leftist who believes the political and personal are intertwined, thank you for this video. I have a hard time conceptualizing myself being a therapist when the field of psychology is still so behind, and the concerns that I have are considered unprofessional or irrelevant in mental health analysis. Another problem is how difficult it would be to navigate, as a therapist, the appropriate balance between my beliefs and my work. The Upstream podcast did an good episode on Liberation Psychology that I think you might find relevant. The background of psychology is truly horrifying and it has for a long time been in the hands of oppressive people, but I do believe that this can change. I think liberation psychology is needed so much right now, especially with how much bigotry and hatred children are being exposed to on the internet. Psychology as a whole is catching up, but I do feel hopeless sometimes. Then I remember that for all of history we have only seen one side of psychology... I try to imagine psychology in a post-capitalism world, as a tool to help people unlearn and discover themselves, to discover community, to love humanity, to confront any barriers they may have about being a socially conscious and kind community member. As opposed to psychology being used as a tool to cover up deeper issues, issues that may bring about the very consciousness we need to restructure society and interpersonal relationships to their full potential. And then I remember, that psychology can be the former right now, even if the world is still so broken. (p.s.a. loved your makeup in this video!)
interesting video, watched it all - thanks for this x
Love the Gloss shirt
this is… disquieting to say the least. Even as someone who hates capitalism and IDs as an anarchist myself, I havent considered how mental “pathologies” really come from the unjust systems that our society is created from. this is insane, thank you
This makes me really glad I didn't decide to do a psych degree, I did a class in grade 11 and 12 on it and that was honestly enough. Morally I didn't want to go into it because I feel that a lot of therapy/psychology is deeply exploitative (speaking as someone who had to pay over $1000 for an adhd diagnosis which was a single 2 hour appointment) and probably thousands more on therapy in my lifetime.