Latest / Radically Genuine / 97. Dr. Jessica Taylor: Trauma is not an illness
Transcript
- Sean: Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I'm Dr. Roger McFillin and Sean, we have our first returning guest today, and this is a good one. This is a good one. I'm so, so happy to reintroduce to our audience Dr. Jessica Taylor. She's a UK chartered psychologist. Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, researcher, director of Victim Focus, which is an international training research and consultancy organization. working to tackle prejudice and stereotyping of adults and children subjected to crime, violence, abuse, and trauma. Dr. Taylor is one of the preeminent feminist scholars in the world and advocates for depathologizing reactions to trauma. Her two most popular books, Why Women Are Blamed for Everything, Sexy but Psycho, are both internationally lauded and criticized. A lot of people in established Western institutions are very uncomfortable, in particular psychiatry and the Western medical models attempt to medicalize all aspects of the human experience. She's a staunch advocate for women and girls around the globe. And she and her wife, Jamie Shrive, have developed the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual for Professionals, the world's first trauma-informed manual, which is a non-diagnostic alternative conceptualization about a wide range of human responses to trauma and stress, which I hope really to get into today in some depth. Dr. Taylor, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. Dr Jessica Taylor: I don't know how I'm supposed to top that introduction, I think we should just stop now. Sean: It's a lot to live up to. Dr Jessica Taylor: It is, it is. I'll just, everybody, it's now going to be an anti-climax. It'll all go downhill from now, as soon as I open my mouth. Sean: Not at all. Not at all. The first thing I want to actually check in with you is the current culture of the UK in regards to mental health. From an outsider's Dr Jessica Taylor: Where? Sean: perspective here in the United States, it looks like the UK has a little bit more attention and backlash to the harm of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. You have Dr. Joanna Moncrief and Mark Horowitz really outspoken about the pseudoscience of antidepressant drugs. The BBC recently released an entire documentary on the harms of antidepressants and the tactics of the pharmaceutical industry. You have Dr. James Davies, who's been very outspoken, and you have been wildly successful in bringing attention to the medicalization of trauma and the oppressive system of our current mental health conceptualization, the psychiatric system, especially for women and girls. changing. Dr Jessica Taylor: I think it is actually. And I think if you would have asked me this a couple of years ago, I would have been like, no, it's a nightmare. But I'm not saying that the backlash hasn't gone away because it hasn't. And with any system that's this powerful, it's not going to lie down and die overnight, is it? But what I notice is that I have like a quarter of a million followers. And a lot of those are professionals. Lots of them are members of the public. And about two or three years ago, I think that my arguments, because I can only speak really from my experience and what I see how people react to other academics and other activists is that a few years ago, I think a lot of my arguments were going over people's heads. Like I really feel like people were just reading them and thinking, what is she on about? What's she talking about? But now I feel like I put things up and people are going, yes, this is what I think. This is what I've always thought, but I've never seen anybody say it before. So I don't know exactly. how that's happening. I mean, you have just named some very influential people in the UK, and I do notice that we have some very committed journalists as well that want to put these findings and these stories and these criticisms out into the general public. There's quite a lot of those people you just named as well who are very good at using social media. I utilize it very well. There's other people that do that as well. And I think that that... breaks the mold for academia because it's so elitist and insular that obviously if we're going to just go, do you know what, we'll just go straight to the general public and say, hey, listen to our arguments, listen to this evidence. I wonder if that's what's changing it. I know that so through Victim Focus we train thousands and thousands of social workers and police officers and psychologists every year. And we've just finished several large contracts, which probably amounts to about 3000 police officers or so. And we're currently working on some more, maybe another four to 5,000 police officers. And we finished a contract recently and I remember talking to Jamie on the way back and I said, they are so open-minded to anti-pathology trauma informed policing. That I didn't feel like that was difficult. Like we delivered it over a period of about seven or eight weeks. And sometimes when you're delivering that, it can be virtually mind-numbing. Like you go home every night and you're knackered, you've been constantly challenged all day, people are not listening to you, they're not taking it in. But it just feels like recently it's more that you get, you get genuine questions and genuine criticisms and challenges, which is fine, you should get that in a learning environment, but you don't get the sort of blank looking at you, like what are you on about? Like people, it feels like people already are starting to understand that. They're being duped. Like their trauma is valid. They're not mentally ill. Whereas a few years ago when I said that, people would just be like, what the fucking hell are you talking about? Sean: I do think social media is part of it. I also think there's a global awakening that's kind of occurring post COVID, where you realize the control of institutions and the use of media and money, and how they've distorted scientific findings to fit a narrative. People are waking up and say, Whoa, nothing is the way I thought it was. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: And I think there's this, I guess it's an openness to being able to think about things a little bit more critically. Dr Jessica Taylor: I agree with that. I think you're absolutely right. I think those observations, especially around COVID lockdowns and then the vaccine, and then obviously the period past that meant that there are a lot of people that are starting to think, hang on a minute, are these people in power actually doing this in our best interests or not? And that's people that have genuinely thought that, you know, have always felt that way for a long period of time that these people are acting in our best interests and that, you know. If the doctors say, then that must be right. And like, you know, that kind of attitude. And I think I've seen it even in people. Like, as an example, forget a little bit of tangent here, but like this, I've seen people that absolutely, you know, believed everything about Covid, took the vaccines, absolutely wore a mask constantly, did everything they were told to do. And now they're looking back, especially in the UK, where we now know that our government was having parties. They were meeting each other, they were going wherever they wanted, they were doing whatever they wanted. There's WhatsApp messages that have been leaked being like, ha ha, you know, this will scare the shit out of them. Like, can't wait for this press release to come out and stuff like that. And even people that genuinely believed all that stuff are looking at that and thinking, what? You know, like that, it gives them, like you say, like this space to enter into critical thinking that maybe they weren't. ready for yet or whatever it is but I also agree with this like I'm watching this global awakening there is a lot of people waking up to a lot of stuff and I think that ultimately that is going to benefit us but I also think that's where you're now seeing much more like crackdowns around control on social media they're trying to ban things stop things you can't talk about this you can't do this try you know like for example you had your YouTube channel pulled down really quickly I think that we're going to see more and more censorship and we're going to see the deliberate manipulation around what is and what isn't free speech because people are learning now. And I actually think TikTok and YouTube have got a big stake in this. TikTok and YouTube are so pro around like, you know, people connecting and talking about things that they wouldn't normally talk about, like the building of communities around new ideas. Those two platforms in particular are really powerful for that. So I think that we'll probably see more and more control of that, especially around psychiatry, I think, and medicine and stuff, because it's going to make people very uncomfortable. Sean: Russell Brand is the other personality out of the UK. He's very popular in the United States, and he's speaking about these exact issues around oppression and censorship, and really starting to challenge institutions that I think we all agree have to go through a radical transformation in order to be able to advance our society. And so that takes me into kind of... you know, what your work is. But I do want to also mention the UK is the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Like that's Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: another interesting institution. They just recently had their conference. And so Dr Jessica Taylor: They Sean: there's Dr Jessica Taylor: did. Sean: this critical psych movement that certainly comes out of the UK where some people are actually just recording their presentations. And one, you know, some, two things that came out of onto social media and into the United States here in our culture was one, you had a psychiatrist who admitted that he provides antidepressant medication drugs to an elderly population, even Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: though there's no evidence to support it, just to try to, I think, provoke the placebo response. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, Sean: So he admitted Dr Jessica Taylor: yeah. Sean: that, that got caught on video. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: And then they've been trying to defend against the ideas of Mark Horowitz and Joanna Moncrief without actually inviting them and their psychiatrists are in that academic world without even inviting them to have that discussion. And then the third thing, which is really critical to your work, is they're actually trying to defend the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. And Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: they tried to distort this idea of the disorder in comparison to what complex trauma would be. And they ignored that somebody who's been... traumatized, whether it's abuse or neglect or lifelong struggles in relationships that we are relational beings, that somehow if you had the if you experience complex trauma, you wouldn't have problems in relationships around safety or security or fear of abandonment, you know, or identity development problems was just absolutely insanity that they're trying to hold on to some of these horrifically stupid ideas around categorizing people with these disorders. Dr Jessica Taylor: It's a, they're not gonna let go. They're not gonna let go with any grace. That's not gonna happen. They are gonna go down fighting. But that's because for, I think personally, that's a number of things. Like, first of all, we have entire, as you know, we have entire systems built around these so-called diagnosis and disorders. Identities are built around them. People's careers are built around them. University departments are built around them. You know, to then admit that there's probably not a good enough evidence base for any of what we've been doing for many years. And not only has the evidence base never been there, but I think that there's been active deceit. I think there's been lying. I think there's been twisting of information. I think there's been deliberate sort of misuse of data. There's been the misogyny. There's been the racism that's been involved. There's been the homophobia that's always been there. I think that when you talk about radical transformation, For me, I don't know if psychiatry can be radically transformed. I think that it would have to be completely deconstructed. I think it would have to be broken down completely because so much of it lacks an evidence base that I don't know what would be left of it really. We know that there is no genetic basis. The American Psychiatric Association admits that there's no gene been found for a single psychiatric disorder. We know that there's no brain chemical imbalances. We know We've never been able to generate a diagnostic test for a single psychiatric disorder in existence. All we have is psychometrics and self-report questionnaires. We're going around deliberately sharing misinformation. You've got doctors telling their patients, oh, you have a serotonin imbalance, take these pills. It'll make you feel better without ever actually testing whether there is one. There's so much myth. There's so many social sort of lies and messages. I don't know what would be left. of psychiatry, if we actually stripped it of all of that, almost like fiction and all of its fairy tales. If you take everything out of it and go, right, what have you got left? You've got very little. Sean: Yeah, I'm actually concerned that it's an arm of the authoritarian surveillance state and their ability to be able to label somebody as ill and take away freedom and liberty is something that should be at the forefront of the conversation in the Western world internationally. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, it should. Sean: How easy it is to be Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: able to label somebody with that disorder and then be able to take away their rights. Dr Jessica Taylor: Oh, absolutely. I think that, I mean, like, so you've seen like this huge case of that with Britney's conservatorship. So that's like a really big public example of how you can frame somebody as mentally ill, take control of their finances, take control of their life, remove all of their liberties, and then lock them up for over a decade. And then, you know, you can continually frame that person as completely unstable so that everybody else can have total control over them. So that's like this big public example. But on, you know, That's really that sort of issue of being able to sporadically and randomly, and also sometimes covertly, deliberately diagnose somebody with something that you can't prove or disprove, which can then stay on their records. It can then be used against them in court. It can be used against them in proceedings around their children. It could be used against them in education, in the health system and so on. So therefore obviously impacts all of their rights and their liberties. That is really what got me fascinated because I was working with women and girls that have been raped, they've been abused, they've been trafficked, you know, they've been neglected by their families. And of course, one of the quickest ways to shut all of that down is to suggest that they're actually just mentally ill, they've got borderline personality, so they've got bipolar, you know, they're delusional, they're psychotic, you know. And that for me, I agree, it feels like. one of the most powerful and also one of the most unchallenged, legitimized roots to dehumanize somebody and make them completely non-credible so you can take total control of them. It is a form of social control in my opinion, the whole of psychiatry. But if you go back to its origins, that was the point of it in the first place, if you go back to its true origins around controlling enslaved black people. controlling the poor, controlling anybody who was different, getting rid of them, locking them up in asylums, killing them, torturing them. Psychiatry came about because if you were different in any way in society, there had to be a way of getting rid of you. And that was the way. It's not really moved that much. Sean: Yeah, and it's going to be easy to discredit academics or alternative thinkers or anyone who is anti the narrative. I mean, we saw this first as COVID too. Like you're a conspiracy theorist, you're an anti-vaxxer, whatever that word is. I mean, and for a lot of women, it's just, and this goes back to your book, Sexy But Psycho. I mean, it's just very easy to discredit a woman as being hysterical or crazy. And now anything that you have to say now that challenges the ideas are easily discredited as part of your mental illness. Dr Jessica Taylor: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, like you say, I just, I thought it was interesting because if you go back to what you were talking about, about the Royal College for Psychiatry presentation that was videoed, one of the slides says, doesn't it, behind the guy talking, it says that the majority of, I'm trying to think of the word they used, the majority of like critics, critics of psychiatry are, and then it lists them and it says, patients who claim they've been harmed by psychiatry. And then it says conspiracy theorists. And then it says, you know, professionals with a different view. And I thought, right, so I know why you've listed conspiracy theorists there. Sorry. I know why you've listed conspiracy theorists there. You know why you've listed conspiracy theorists there. That is completely deliberate to start framing critiques of psychiatry as being a form. of insanity, of being crazy. And like the irony of that, where it's like a group of high profile psychiatrists standing up on a stage and saying, the people who are against us are crazy. It's like, oh, really? Like, could you not think of anything else? Was there nothing more intelligent than crazy that you could come up with? And somebody spoke to me about it on social media because somebody had sent me a thing saying, oh, did you know that this group of psychiatrists is saying that you're crazy? And I was like, what a shock. Like, of course they do. Like somebody sent me one and it said that I was dangerous and that I was, I borderline, I've obviously got undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. And I thought, are you not proving my point every single time you say something like this about an academic you don't like? So somebody has a different idea from you and you're framing them as mentally ill. But my argument is that you frame people as mentally ill when you don't like them or want to have control of them. So. surely you're just proving my point over and over again. Sean: Well, I think that's the best publicity that you can get right now is to, you know, when I follow you on Twitter and I read some of the comments and I see some of your detractors, I mean, they are actually proving your point. But let's transition because I had the honor to provide a review of the manual, the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual for Professionals. And I want to spend some time today discussing that review, but I want to just kind of get your thoughts on first, your ultimate goal of this work. What were you hoping to accomplish? Dr Jessica Taylor: So the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual, which I shortened to ITEM just for your listeners. So the point of ITEM really, the goal, is that there has to be the beginning of a true alternative to the DSM. So, and yeah, fair enough, it might be, you know, in its beginnings, it's in its infancy, but there has to be something. And the real goal is to provide a resource a something that gives professionals who are looking for an alternative to the DSM an answer. Because when we're working with those professionals that don't want to use the DSM anymore, they don't want to use psychiatric diagnosis, they sort of write to us or they'll speak to us or they'll come to us in lectures and be like, but what else is there? And I started getting to the point where I was like, they're right. What else is there? And why hasn't anybody attempted to create some sort of dictionary or something different, you know? So I want it to just start something somewhere. And Jamie and I had spoken about that for several years. And then it just became one of those ideas that kept burning away at us and we kept talking about it. And then in the end, we were like, let's just do it and see if it works. And just go from there. Sean: Yeah, and I think that's always the most important thing is to take the first step. And Dr Jessica Taylor: Mm. Sean: so my opinion is that the manual was a very important first step because I think it brings a lot of attention to the range of coping mechanisms that someone might employ after experiencing stressors and that stressors can be from physical illness, it was exhaustive enough to kind of consider that way. to economic problems, all the way to like really significant, painful and traumatic events, that there is a range of coping mechanisms that make sense given the person's experience and context. Almost, I mean, it really does a good job of depathologizing, saying in this context, this is a survival mechanism. At least Dr Jessica Taylor: Absolutely. Sean: in the short term. It might create... Long-term problems, obviously, and I thought you did a very nice job of explaining that so you're not saying people don't need help They don't need support But we're de pathologizing the reaction that this is normal Based on the events of their life Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that sounds so basic, doesn't it? But there wasn't anything out there like that, that could rival the DSM. And already professionals are saying, I use this every single day. I use it with my clients. I give them copies. They flick through it. They, you know, can identify their own trauma responses and coping mechanisms within the item. It's accessible. It's easy, but you're right. It's the, we're not saying. Because this is what happens is your arguments get misconstrued like very often that your people say well What are you saying that they don't want they don't need support these people. They need support They just don't need telling that they've got a mental illness Like that there is a middle ground here where they can get support and also they're not labeled as mentally ill And so the item includes this as you know, huge a to Z of trauma responses and coping mechanisms And I think that we tried really hard to include what would be seen as socially desirable coping mechanisms and socially undesirable coping mechanisms, because of course, all of our responses to trauma are socially constructed. And so you'll very much be celebrated if you're the type of person that uses a coping mechanism, such as going to the gym, overworking, perfectionism, studying, going back to uni as a way of distraction, coping, making yourself feel better. And because they're socially desirable and they suit capitalism for you to behave like that, and they suit, you know, the structures of society, if you are the person on the other side of that maybe that uses, you socially withdraw, you can't go to work, you have loads of health issues, you maybe drink or smoke or do drugs or you've started self-harming or you think about, you know, ending your life all the time, those are seen as undesirable coping mechanisms. And so... those are the groups of people that will then end up being told they're mentally ill, whereas the people working themselves to death because they're so traumatised by something that happened in their life, they'll just be left to work themselves to death and everybody will applaud them and tell them they're doing amazing. So we wanted to actually include that your coping mechanisms and your trauma responses are going to be completely individual to you and I think me and Jay spent a long time trying to hash out. those because there's just thousands and you can't include them all. Sean: So I've spent a significant portion of my career trying to understand the range of human reactions, especially for those who are undergone trauma and the literature around PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. So I feel like I have a pretty good wealth of knowledge on the academic end where they've identified post-traumatic stress as a disorder and developed specific, and I'll use the word treatments for it. coping mechanisms to decrease those symptoms. And one of the things that I've noticed and it speaks to the value of your ideas is that when you depathologize and the individual is validated, that their emotions make sense and the way they're thinking makes sense, that it has a series of events that alters their own experience. in which they begin to start a process of healing. So if I no longer believe what I'm thinking is crazy, if I no longer judge my emotional experience to be wrong, if I no longer fear what I'm feeling and I don't fear that my environment is going to punish me for it, it then allows for a natural process of healing, growth and adaptation because we are resilient. human beings are extremely resilient. We wouldn't be here if we didn't have generations of ancestors who've gone through like horrific and unspeakable events and been able to survive and pass genes on to generation and generation. So I think when you think about our field, if we care most about people creating a life of value and purpose and being able to overcome. a lot of the normal and expected adverse conditions of living and being able to thrive, we have to understand at the individual level, the cultural level, the institutional level, the global level of anything that would impede that progress. So if we just look from a scientific standpoint, everything that you are starting to write about speaks to that importance of acceptance, connection, validation, and understanding your experience in order to recover. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And I also think that you're, I think that you're absolutely right about if you can remove the stigmatized understanding of the trauma responses and the coping mechanism for that person, so they no longer see themselves as mentally ill and as crazy or as losing control or as- not normal in some way, you know, I'm a bit sick in the head or like, oh, you know me, I've got BPD. That's sort of like where they start to almost become the label, they become the identity, and then they start taking on more and more of it. If you can remove that from them and say, well, actually, you know, you don't sleep because you're scared of the dark now since this happened. And so you're sleeping with the light on, it's interrupting your sleep, it's causing sleep feeling like you're going crazy because your memory is impacted by your sleep deprivation, your cognition is changing, you can't focus in the day, it's impacted your job, it's impacted your studies, it's made you feel worthless, that's impacted this, that's impacted that and look now at all these natural reactions to this thing that happened that caused your fear of the dark which means you're not sleeping and now look at this the way it's snowballing for you. Once you can get them to that place where they're like... Oh yeah, those things are all connected, aren't they? You're right, you can then move them on. But whilst they're stuck, which is where psychiatry keeps them, in just like, I'm mentally ill, I've got a personality disorder, that's why I'm like this, and nobody can do anything about it, I'm just like this forever now. How are you supposed to move that human being forward in their processing and their progression in human development if you keep them stuck in one place? Well, of course, for psychiatry and for pharmaceutical companies, you don't want them to move on. You need to keep them stuck in one place because they're a customer, they're a consumer of your products and services. But the item, for example, and like the approach that we're setting out is that if you can understand why your body and your brain is doing these things, you can stop seeing yourself as mentally ill. Then you can move on. Sean: Yeah, and we're creators of our own reality in a lot of respects. Like we can create an inner world in our own minds, and then we project that in and manifest it into the physical world. So if this idea that you are broken, you are disordered, you are ill, that becomes your reality. The irony of this, and it's the pseudoscience nonsense of the psychiatric field of like as something being a disorder and then treatment is the reduction of symptoms, to actually heal from trauma. We know... quite definitively that we need to actually be exposed to the memory and the emotions Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: around it, right? So almost all effective therapies allow for the emotional processing of the traumatic event. It probably affects us in so many complex ways, physically too, like moving energy through the body or altering our memory structures, right? And that comes through the experience and feeling of the emotion. So anything that would try to blunt that Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, Sean: or actually Dr Jessica Taylor: or block it Sean: view Dr Jessica Taylor: completely. Sean: it as pathological Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: is actually gonna make you worse. And it shocks me how a medical system can grasp that because it's even outside the purview of psychiatry. We see this in general practitioners and the entire medical field viewing it as a symptom reduction when your emotion is something that you actually should be facing and experiencing. and avoidance of the memories, avoidance of the motion are what's implicated in developing impairment that they identify as a disorder. Dr Jessica Taylor: But this is where I think their claim to be evidence-based falls down because what I think has actually happened, and it isn't just psychiatry that's done this, psychology has been awful for it as well because psychology, especially clinical and forensic psychology, has been vastly influenced by psychiatry and medical models, is this obsession with attempting to be medicine, attempting to be a biological science. And what we've done is, in my opinion, over... the last, I would say, at least 60 to 70 years, is that we have desperately wanted to go and like, bat with chemistry, physics and biology. So we've attempted to use their paradigms and their frameworks and their ways of understanding the world and humans using the same methodology, the same types of experiments, the same types of measures. And then... It's like when we haven't actually been able to do that, we've just made it up and pretended that we have, and then we've twisted findings and things like that. And what I mean about all of this and to what you just said is that you've just talked about energy, emotions, having to feel things, having to process things properly, but that doesn't sound very scientific, does it? You know, that doesn't sound hard science-y. That doesn't sound like you're gonna catch, you know, this sort of like medical. that you would get from saying, well, actually, it's a chemical imbalance of dopamine in your brain. And if you take this specific medicine, it will balance it. So like this sounds, that sounds sciencey, it sounds legitimate, it sounds authoritative, but people like me and you who are trying to move that language into completely different space, oftentimes like, you know, the criticism will be, this is just hippie bullshit, you're not talking in scientific terms, you're making this shit up. There's no evidence behind what you're saying. But actually the evidence base for what we're saying, thousands and thousands of years of human development is there. Psychiatry is what, 110 years old and has achieved nothing. There is no evidence base there. Sean: I think the evidence would suggest that their very place in society has worsened the mental health Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, Sean: of Dr Jessica Taylor: it has. Sean: the people they tried to serve. There's Dr Jessica Taylor: It does. Sean: no doubt if you look at outcomes. Dr Jessica Taylor: It does if you look at the countries where psychiatry is influential. You know, if you, I think that's one thing that is a fascinating thing to look at is like, you know, where psychiatry is incredibly influential, like in, you know, let's say in America or in the UK or somewhere like that, you've got higher rates of suicide, you've got higher rates of... self-harm, you've got much higher rates of people self-diagnosing as mentally ill, you've got millions and millions of prescriptions of antidepressants, antipsychotics, stimulant medication, heavy painkillers, and things like that. And then you'll go to other countries where those paradigms and frameworks are not influential and they don't exist, and the same social issues are not there. It's not... because arguably if psychiatry was right what you would find in those countries is millions of dead people who've all killed themselves they're all having mental health crisis nobody can focus nobody's working the whole economy's crashed and everyone's at home rocking in a fucking corner but that isn't happening is it that isn't happening Sean: can't argue with that. No, that's the best argument, that we are in an illusion. No. We're living in an illusion that was created for us. And it's this illusion of evidence-based medicine. It's the illusion of our health care system on a lot of ways. Western societies, which include the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, Dr Jessica Taylor: Yep. Sean: we're sick. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: And we are getting sicker because it is a sick care system. and we rely on the expert authority as if that truth is something we need to adhere to. And see, I don't know about you. So when I was, when I started with social media, guess what? When I didn't have Dr. McPhillan in my name for social media, no one gave a shit. No one followed me. No one cared to what I was saying. So Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: I, so I'm like, Oh wait, this Dr. Jessica Taylor's got a ton of following. Let me just add Dr. McPhillan into my Twitter profile and then boom, you Dr Jessica Taylor: I Sean: know, Dr Jessica Taylor: know. Sean: then I, then, then it starts. then it starts to blow up because now I'm an authority. But like you, like me, we'll put Dr. McPhiland in there, but then they'll try to tear us down. You're not a real doctor. You're Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: not a psychiatrist, so you can't have any opinion. You know, you're a psychologist, even though you speak intelligently about this and the complexity of it. You can't, because you didn't go through that medical education, Dr. Taylor, you shouldn't even use that name, Dr. McPhiland. So they try to discredit you right away. as if there's such an advanced science around prescribing an antidepressant that you'd have to go through years of medical training just to understand its complexity, which is another bullshit lie which people believe. It's Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: not that complex. It's actually very, very simple and you can probably train a monkey to be able to do it and you just follow your guidelines and you just repeat the narrative that's spoken over and over and over again. You repeat it. like you're brainwashed and you know people will follow and they have. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, for sure. That is so interesting because, you know, people often criticise me for using my title as a doctor and a chartered psychologist. And it just makes me laugh. I just think that's really funny because the power ironically comes from the title and then they're all right with that until you say something they don't like and then you're the wrong kind of doctor and you need to shut up. Sean: Hehehehe Dr Jessica Taylor: I just find that really amusing, just in general. I really quite enjoy that. And I love that there has been so many people that have tried to get me struck off just because of the things I'm saying. They're trying to get my position removed. They're trying to stop me from using my PhD. I've had it all, I've had it all for years. And it's like, it won't work because you can't take it off me and you can't remove my knowledge either. But also... You know what you were saying about, like, as if there's some sort of specific, special, secret, very high level training that you would need to understand antidepressants or, you know, understand antipsychotics and that I shouldn't be allowed, you shouldn't be allowed to talk about this because you're not a psychiatrist, you're not a medical doctor. I really don't understand this mentality. So are we suggesting then with professionals and academics in this field that you are only allowed to talk about the one thing that you did your doctor on forever? Is that what we're suggesting here? Because I can tell you now that medical doctors don't do that. Medical doctors come out with all sorts of stuff that they've got absolutely no experience on, but then they'll lean on the fact that they're an MD. So I don't understand why also you would want a group of academics and professionals with virtually no career development. Like, shouldn't we be reading more? Shouldn't we be expanding? The PhD is just, and even like your training as a doctor. That's your basic level that you need to get to in order to be where you are. You shouldn't stop at that point. You should keep expanding and keep critically challenging the literature. You should stay ahead. You should. And I'm trying to do that all the time and I know that you are, and I know that other people are, we're trying to stay ahead of these trends and these things that are happening, these forms of social control that are getting repackaged as fact evidence. you know, that you can't question it and if you do question it, it's because you're a terrible person. I don't want to live my life like that, I don't want my career to be like that, I'm not stopping learning just because somebody tells me, oh you're not an MD. Well honestly, sometimes, I'm so petty, sometimes I do think about going and doing the fucking MD course and being like, right, now what's your argument, what am I now? Sean: Well, you have to shut up and you need to be a good little citizen. Dr Jessica Taylor: Oh Sean: Take Dr Jessica Taylor: no. Sean: your shot like we tell you. Wear your masks. Do everything. Stay in your lane and do not, I don't want you to think in any way you do what we are telling you to do. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, because even medical doctors have actually been criticized, struck off, challenged, harassed, and so on for criticizing these same systems. So even if you're a medical doctor, you can, you know, we had people that were raising what I thought were completely acceptable questions during COVID, for example, and they were hauled in front of disciplinary panels, you know, I'm talking about medical doctors, GPs. you know, consultants, these are people with medical training that were trying to raise questions and just asking things about the data that the government was putting out or suggesting that wasn't accurate or suggesting that wasn't a good idea. And even then you can see that it's, it's not real that sort of narrative that me and you receive, which is you're not even a medical doctor, so you can't criticize this even when medical doctors criticize it, they get themselves in a lot of trouble. I've got a friend who's a GP. and she's extremely critical of psychiatry. She doesn't tell her patients they've got serotonin imbalances. She doesn't whack them all on antidepressants. And she says that she's known as the problematic doctor. So. Sean: Yeah, speaking out against anything that you're told to believe that you're going to, the first step is always going to be to describe it to you. All right. But now I want us to be critical of the trauma informed movement. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yes. Sean: I have, I have questions that I think requires probably nuance and some critical thinking and to advance the conversation because I think there's going to be multiple additions here. And I know that those who are going to want to discredit the movement are going to want to oversimplify things and make out the theory, the argument, as if it's missing a lot of academic credibility. So I'm just going to, my first concern is this. And this actually happened to me. I was telling Sean, I'm going to change some of the details a little bit to protect the innocence here and the confidential. But in one session, and I'm a treating clinical psychologist, what I do with the majority of my time. I was treating a woman who was sex trafficked, who was beaten, the most unspeakable traumas that you could imagine, right? And she was having all the expected reactions to somebody who's undergone such horrific treatment by people, by men, by human beings, right? So you'd expect that she'd be hypervigilant to potential harm, a lot of distrust, on edge, stress, difficulty sleeping. waking up with nightmares to try to like numb feelings turned to alcohol or other means. So she's coming in to get help, right? And you can very clearly use that word traumatized. You know, she presents as traumatized, it's clear she needs help. And then in another girlfriend or boyfriend and they say they're traumatized and they can't handle it and they have PTSD and they can't go to school and they need a drug or they need something, right? So that's two people using the same exact word. One's a, you know, one would expect it to be something we all have to go through heartbreak. And if we go back to that we're all resilient, you would you know, really be able to believe that person can overcome the end of that relationship, especially when you're 15 years old, and you're going to be fine and not have the residual effects, but the person who went through those unspeakable abuse and trauma and sex traffic that's never really going to leave them. You know, that's part of who they are now they're learning to live even though that happened and we do believe that they can heal and create a life of value. But the impact of those two situations are going to be completely different. And we're using the same word. So I want to get your thoughts on. Dr Jessica Taylor: I think this is a really, this is a really good question because first of all, I think with our younger generations and also with people, I think that just have a lot of access to social media. I do think the term trauma and traumatized is being watered down and is being used in places where it's actually not that useful. But you have to, as you say, some of this is quite nuanced because I think you would accept and I think we both agree that the trauma responses to a particular thing happening in your life, it's so individual that for some people they can have very, very extreme trauma responses to something that someone else would be like, why has that impacted you so much? You know, and you can't, there's no way of categorizing what should traumatize you significantly forever and what shouldn't. there is the heavy use of trauma. Like for example, I heard, I was trying to think of an example that came to my mind while you were talking. I'm sure it was somebody saying that it's like traumatic, it's traumatizing them that they have to go to work every day to make a living and that like they should just, you know, be able to live in the world and everything should be free. I was like, well, I agree, but I'm not sure I would agree that that- that you're traumatized by that in the same way that other people are. However, I would argue that living in capitalist society is traumatic and that generally speaking from the day of birth you're expected to perform, you're expected to conform, you're expected to achieve, you're expected to make money, then you get taxed, then you do that over and over and over again five days a week, sometimes seven days a week and then you die. That is quite a scary way of living for some people. It will... genuinely harm them over a long period of time and they will, and that's where I think you start seeing people that'll say things like, I've got depression and anxiety and I've never been through any trauma. And you're like, well, you live in an environment that's harming you every single day, so there's a chance it's that. But I do think though, yeah, potentially you've got the watering down of language and then you've got... the sort of social media influence of calling everything trauma and everything traumatic and everything traumatizing. And I actually think you can spread this point you're making to other words, you know, like abuse, narcissistic, like you got, what you've got is the word becoming almost buzz-worthy and that is a big danger for a trauma-informed movement. It's a big danger for those of us that need... us to focus on human trauma. I also think there's a potential that in the example you've given, I would describe the 15 year old as distressed and I would describe the woman you're talking about as traumatized, but it gets you into murky waters then around humanistic and person-centered approaches because the language is, then the advice would usually be to meet the person where they're at and use the language they're using about themselves. But then you definitely do have some challenges then, like what happens when, as you say, you're working with a 15 year old that thinks their life is over because they've broken up with their boyfriend or their girlfriend. And right then in that moment, I think they should be allowed and we should give them the space to be utterly gutted about that. But that doesn't mean they're gonna carry it forever. You know? Sean: Yes, so yeah, you're making some good points. And you know, I don't ascribe to the idea that we just have to affirm everything that happens to Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: everybody, right? So you can have a 15 year old who actually is in a lot of pain, they're in distress. And I would intervene differently with the 15 year old versus the traumatized Dr Jessica Taylor: show. Sean: individual. And I've learned a lot around there is science and a robust science that does exist in our field that does assist me in how I'm going to help someone. overcome sex trafficking and sexual abuse and rape versus someone who's dealing with a breakup. So Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: I can validate their emotional pain and know that in all likelihood, if they cope effectively, it's going to be short-lived. And with time, they're actually going to think differently, and they're not going to be scarred by it in a way that impacts their life in a significant way. Now, the person who is traumatized I've learned about exposure, right? So that's another critical aspect I had because I thought some of your current, and you only have so much space, I understand when you're creating a manual, and you didn't get into all the academic background of every single situation. But in cognitive behavioral therapy, that's an umbrella term. And I've learned how to help people traumatize through things like cognitive restructuring and exposure. things Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: that are really, really important. So of course my client has to learn to trust me. Although I, demographically, I am a male and they might have been raped by a male. I am not the person that raped them. And so that learning that happens actually helps modify some of their thinking that allows them to go in the world and be able to develop relationships again. I can work and trust my coworker or I have a neighbor who's kind and... wants to help me that they're not evil, they're not bad, they're not dangerous. Like that learning has to take place in order to recover or you're not going to live, you are going to avoid any contact with anything that provokes that fear because it's all about survival. So we do have to be able to understand the nuances that there are gonna be different presentations and clinically we can intervene. I think the overall overarching value is the same. Like you're not, you're no longer pathologizing the emotional reaction, whether it's a breakup or whether you were raped. The emotion in itself makes sense. You can understand it, you can experience it, and we can learn from it. And now we have to be aware of the reality they are creating in their minds. If the 15-year-old says that I'm traumatized and I'm mentally ill and I'm... unable to go to school because of this and somewhere in their environment, they support that that's going to harm them. But if the person who was raped says I'm impaired by this, I'm can't do this right now. Well, that's true. You know, you probably cannot and you're going to need some form of help to be able to reintegrate safely back into your world after something like that happened. And God forbid, what if the person's not in jail? You know, what if the person is still existing in your community, Dr Jessica Taylor: they Sean: then Dr Jessica Taylor: usually Sean: all those Dr Jessica Taylor: are. Sean: things? All those things we identify as symptoms, they're not symptoms, they're survival mechanisms. You need to feel that, right? There's nothing wrong with feeling that. So I do think in our next editions here, the next editions that you're going to work on or where the field progresses is we get into some of those important details because I want to be able to train people to intervene clinically in an effective way. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah. Sean: And I think... Your starts as like a foundational, almost reads like an encyclopedia, because you have to like, you have to change the way people are thinking Dr Jessica Taylor: Yes, Sean: first. Dr Jessica Taylor: yes. Sean: And so here, if you don't understand, if you don't fundamentally understand this yet, you're not going to be able to effectively work with your class. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, agreed. There's so much there that you say. I, but before I start, I will say, I actually, when people ask me what the item is, I say, think about it as like a dictionary or an A to Z or an encyclopedia. I'm not, that book will not teach you, for example, different, I don't know, therapeutic approaches, because that's not what it's for. It's even more basic than that, because the DSM has done so much harm that we actually need to go much further back before we go forward. So, and I think that- That's what we felt very strongly about whilst we were writing it. And then I wanted to pick up on something you were talking about there about, you know, the emotion and sort of trauma and resilience type argument. And I think one of the problems that we have, if you think back to your example, is that we have almost become scared in society of feeling anything, of letting people feel, you know? So... One of the reasons that we rush to medicalise, rush to diagnose and then medicate is because it's like we're not supposed to feel anything anymore. So people don't want to sit with discomfort anymore. They don't want to process it. They don't want to think about it. You know, and I'm not talking about the really big stuff, although it does kind of apply. I'm talking about the little stuff. Like if we talk about this breakup, yes, the breakup is hurting you. It's probably supposed to. You know, you had a connection with them, that connection's now broken, it's really hurting you to process that, you don't really want it to end, and so you now have to deal with feelings of, you know, loss and grief, maybe even betrayal, maybe feelings of mistrust. These are all learning points for you as a human being, which brings me onto something else I wanted to say, which is that we've somehow got to a point where you're not supposed to say... that you learn through these experiences because it's seen as like, that you don't care that the person's traumatized, but you can do both things at once. You can hold both of those experiences at once. Like you can say, yes, for example, this breakup is hurting you considerably. I can see that you're very distressed and you're obviously experiencing all these different things, but you need to learn through it. You need to process through it. You need to understand why you're behaving like this and why you've reacted in this way. why has it hurt you this much? What does it mean? What's the purpose of this suffering? And how are you gonna look back at this in six months, in five years, in 20 years when you don't even remember this happening because you've had so many other things happen since? You know, that sometimes I think it comes across like, that, oh, I'm trying to think of the best way to explain it that sometimes even I will like write a post or do a video and I'll say something on the lines of, you know. You have to understand your trauma responses. Where did they come from? Why did they develop? How long have they been going on for? Where do they work and where do they extinguish? Where do they pop up and where do they disappear? Are there people that trigger you? Are there people that make you feel safe? Why? What's the difference between those people? All of these things you could be learning about yourself, but you're not learning anything about yourself because you're telling yourself you've got borderline personality disorder. And so what happens is that it's seen as callous. and it's seen as cold and like too analytical. But I actually think that's the way you move forward is by almost finding a way, like what we've done in the item of going, look at all these trauma responses you've had. How many of these have you had? Think about how many of these you've lived through. Now let's look at the coping mechanisms. How many of these are you using? How many of them are actually helping you and how many of them are harming you significantly by using them? How much of these would disappear if you processed what happened and if you were ready to face it at some point and if you're not ready to face it, fine, because you're not always gonna be but at least understand that your coping mechanisms and your trauma responses are because you have these unprocessed unresolved traumas that fair enough you might not be ready for but it doesn't make you mentally ill there's not some underlying mystery disease in your brain it's because you've had these experiences that you've not yet processed, you don't feel comfortable about them, you don't understand them and you're not ready to move on from them. And so they're harming you physiologically, psychologically, socially, all day, every day. And they're going to continue to do that until you are at a place where you can do something about it, even in tiny little incremental steps. But because for some reason, like, the medical model is seen as more favorable than that argument that I just made, you know, like, because in a way it validates them in the short term faster than my approach. So my approach takes a long time. It does, it's a lot of digging. It's not comfortable, it's not fun, but being able to go to a 15 minute appointment where you say to someone, I'm not coping this, and this, and they go, oh, I've got a pill for that. Here you go, take that every day, you'll be all right. That... that solves it for them, doesn't it? There's not a lot of work that has to go into that. And so it's favorable. Sean: That's a brilliant analysis. And that's what I want in the next edition. You know, that is so very, very helpful. You know, I say it, I don't know about you, but my experience, you know, in working with people who've really gone through some shit in life, you know, who've really gone through hell, they're the most wise people I've ever met because they've had to figure it out, you know? And that's what resiliency is. I learn more from them that allow me to also serve others. because they had to figure it out. And there's so much brilliant wisdom that is generated from being able to take that perspective that yes, it could be painful and at the same time you can grow, you can learn. I've seen people develop more compassion for others based on what they've gone through. I've seen people, I mean, I think your story speaks to it. I think people have been able then to say, fuck fear. I'm going to face it. I've got nothing else to lose. My life purpose is this. I'm going to help protect, or I'm going to serve my community, or I'm going to serve this person. And when I think about everything that leads to people living a really meaningful life, it tends to often be about directing your attention outward to serve and to actually improve our communities or even improve humanity. You know, I think, I think history, Dr. Taylor is going to reflect very well on you. as being ahead of your time in being able to combat intelligently an oppressive system in order to take the necessary steps to actually heal. And so at certain points in there, I know you're a target and you become a target of people trying to maintain a system and there's a lot of ad hominem attacks against you. And I can only imagine that it can be challenging for even for you emotionally. on certain times to have to deal with some of the abuse that you get publicly and through social media and trying to discredit your ideas. I just want to kind of conclude on this. I want to get a sense of how you cope and how you keep moving forward and pushing your ideas even in some of the negative reactions from people globally around your ideas. Dr Jessica Taylor: I have so many different ways of coping. I just, I'm just, I'm laughing because I don't know if you'll be able to keep this in the podcast. You probably will. We'll see. But I've actually just Sean: It's Dr Jessica Taylor: finished Sean: radically Dr Jessica Taylor: writing. Sean: genuine. Dr Jessica Taylor: Yeah, I've just, well, I was going to say, well, it's more about what I'm allowed to say and what I'm not allowed to say, but I've just Sean: Yeah. Dr Jessica Taylor: finished writing my, I'm just allowed, I've just finished writing my new book and it got submitted to my publishers literally on Friday. Sean: Congrats. Dr Jessica Taylor: a few days ago and it has dragged everything out of me like I oh my god it's been so hard to write and I'm so glad it's over and I just yeah anyway so like I've been reflecting a lot on how I've coped about everything and like so many different things and the way that I'm perceived the way that I'm portrayed the lies about me the attacks and things like that how I've coped, I've had to cycle through loads of different coping mechanisms. Like at first I was trying to, for example, defend myself and then I realized that wasn't working. And then I was like, well, um, I was getting really angry about it all the time and then I, that wasn't working. I thought that was harming me. And then I decided to completely stop looking or engaging as soon as I knew that somebody... was harming me, deliberately trying to harm me, I completely shut off. I don't care what they're saying, they're not engaging in a genuine way, and so I have nothing to say to them, and I'm not gonna read it. I ended up, as soon as I see something, or somebody else sees something that helps run my accounts, that is remotely abusive, block, leave, I'm not engaging, because I don't have to deal with violence, abuse, harm, especially not... from academics, professionals, and people that are supposedly working in psychology and psychiatry, in between seeing clients, sending abuse to a woman on Twitter, makes no sense to me. How they live with that level of cognitive dissonance is for them to sort out. So I don't want any part of that. So partly I cope by actually I don't look at this stuff and I think people think that I see it and I just don't. It's been about... I would say about a year since I actually looked at anything negative about myself, even if I'm tagged in it, I just don't look, I just get someone else to flick through it. I don't look, which means I'm a lot healthier for that, it means I've been able to put all my energy into work and into my ideas and into developing things, because I'm not spending wasted energy on reading some horrible comment from some person with 112 followers. who is like laying into me, who doesn't know a thing about me and doesn't want to know anything about me. So I don't really look. And then I think from a psychological perspective and a much more personal place, I have incredible support. You know, like my wife is incredibly supportive and is incredibly smart, which means I get a lot of support from her, but also she's... incredibly intelligent and means I can have these like very in-depth conversations, you know, with somebody really close to me, I don't have to seek that elsewhere. I've got friends around me that are super smart and understand this stuff and thankfully have been able to hold me up when stuff's got really bad. And then I think the other thing for me has been having to do soul searching about why the hell I'm even doing this. Like I've genuinely had to like take a step back and be like, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I doing this? Like I get harmed every single day. I'm deliberately mocked. I'm discredited. I'm abused. I'm lied about relentlessly. There is so much information on the internet about me that is total bollocks that I've just, I can't even keep up anymore. Like this, it's just like almost like they've created a monster of me that now everybody hates the monster, but like it's not me so I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. So I've had to like really think about what's the purpose, why are you doing this, why are you exposing yourself to this level of harm over and over and over and over again, what are you attempting to do here? And I spent several months thinking about completely stepping out of public life, closing my company down, never writing anything again, coming out of my book contracts, so this book that I've just finished... basically telling them that I'm not doing it and that I would just give them the fucking money back. I was like that close. I was really low last year and I will genuinely say that I thought about ending my life several times because of the abuse online. I thought about whether it would just be easier if I wasn't here anymore and that it'd be easier for my family, it'd be easier for my kids, it'd be easier for my friends. Like I genuinely went to that place and like the only way that I managed to get out of it was because I know so much about trauma and my own coping mechanisms. that I was able to catch myself in that place and be like, right, you need to fucking do something. And I was, you know, seeking support. I was using reading, which is a good coping mechanism for me. So I read books every time I started to feel like I was losing control of spiraling. I was reading books because it was a way of mentally like detaching. I was like getting more sleep because I recognized that the sleep deprivation was causing, you know, through stress and worry was actually making me feel worse. I was trying to do things that made me feel healthier when I was starting to feel unhealthy because of the stress, you know, because everything collapses in on you if you're not careful and it'll do that really quickly. So you have to try and catch it. And then I came to the conclusion that, like, why am I doing this? I'm doing this because it's a worthy cause. Like we need to see change. There are millions of people being harmed by this. And... It's worth it, it's worth it and the change is happening. I am seeing change, I am seeing progress. Humans are more developed than this. We are more sophisticated than this. I believe that we can do better than this and unfortunately that means that some of us have to be the first people to speak out that get shot with all the bullets, don't they? I'm sorry but like... That's just the way it is. And one day it won't be like that because there'll be more and more people talking about it that eventually they won't be able to do that anymore. And it won't be, let's just discredit this handful of people and make them all look like idiots because then nobody will talk about them or talk to them. Eventually, it's going to be too widespread. And I actually think we're on the cusp of that. And it gave me a lot of confidence and it's given me a lot more power. I just think it's a life well lived and I think I've had to reflect on my own stance as an atheist as well. I am atheist, I'm like openly, I don't believe in God, I don't follow a religion. But in that sort of complete, what's the word I'm looking for, like void of no spiritual leaning, no religion, no... higher purpose, no meaning, no nothing. You can sometimes find yourself in a position where you're like, what's the fucking point in any of this? This is a complete waste of everybody's time. Why do any of this work? We're only gonna die anyway, sort of like you can get yourself to that level. And I've had to like bring myself back from the edge of that where I'm like, no, there has to be a meaning of life. There has to be a purpose. And we're all fulfilling it in our own ways. We're meaning makers. You know, we have our own internal lives, we create energy ourselves, and then we put it out somehow into the world. And it's made me reflect on my own behaviours and my own, like, approaches to things in the coping with all of this type of abuse and like harmful attacks. I've had to like question, why do I never go back at people? Why am I not like them? What makes me so different? Like, it'd be so easy to go back at these people and like... verbally destroy them. I'm smart, I'm quick. It's not hard to do these people, a lot of them, I would be very easy to mock back, but I just don't get any joy from that. I don't get any development from that. There's no human progress for me from doing that. And so I don't engage in anything like that. And that's just natural for me. And I've had to really look at myself, actually. It's been, that's a very long answer, but like I've had to really look at myself during all of this. and I've learned a lot, but I think that ultimately, I've had to come to the conclusion that some of these people aren't ready to hear this stuff. They're not ready for it triggering them. It makes them feel unsafe. And if you think about it from a trauma perspective and from a distress perspective, these are people that have built their lives, their entire identities, their livelihoods, their cultures, their friendship groups, their academia, everything they've ever known around stuff that, you know, I'm going. excuse me, I don't think that's right. I'm pissing people off and I'm not doing it on purpose. It's not personal, but it's obviously getting at them in a very personal way. And I've just had to sort of let them be, that's their journey, it's not mine. That's their path, it's not mine. If them getting that wound up and that angry about the fact that there's potentially a different theory of mental health, if that's their path and that's what they need to tread, that's for them, it's not for me. Sean: That was so brilliantly said. First of all, I just want to say that you have admirers over here. And as soon as I get older, I become, I think, even more spiritual. So for me, there is such a beautiful and courageous soul. You're such a beautiful and courageous soul and everything that you do and what you talk about is out of a higher energy force, which to me is courage and love. Everything you do comes from compassion, empathy, and I've learned a lot. from reading your work, from today's podcast, because there's so much depth to the way that you think about the human experience. Even as an atheist who questions whether anything really has meaning beyond what we're gonna ascribe to it in a particular moment, it's very clear to me that the meaning of your life is to assist others, to challenge ideas that hurt people. And it's way that you have decided approach your career. And that gives you a strength that I can feel when you're talking. Right. And so we're trying to promote the idea of being radically genuine, because part of that means that you have to step outside because fear is what controls people. Right. And the reason why people won't speak out or actually share what they're actually thinking and feeling is they're afraid of the consequences. And that could be rejection. That could be removal from everything that you have that has supported you in this life financially and interpersonally. If you step outside, you are subjected and you are vulnerable to abuse. And so you did what you did is you just modeled brilliantly how to react to those types of events. So as you were speaking, a quote popped into my head. And I was I was waiting for the opportunity to say it and Roger, you just use like the keywords and it's courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. That's what that is. So many times people try and knock you down to stop you from what you're doing. And just you know, pushing through it is where real courage comes through. So keep it up. Dr Jessica Taylor: Thank Sean: I Dr Jessica Taylor: you. Sean: opened this I opened this podcast kind of talking about maybe some of the cultural advancements that are happening in the UK in comparison to the United States. And so I do think the UK scholars like Dr. Taylor are a little bit ahead of the United States scholars and academics in being able to challenge the system. And now they have media and a number of other forces that are critical psychiatry and critical to the movement. Part of it also I think has to do with their healthcare system, which is government funded. It allows for them maybe to be a little bit more advanced in these ideas. I'm hopeful. because I still think like over 70% of our listeners are in the United States, that you can become aware of Dr. Taylor's work. And a lot of the things that she's promoting online and some of the work that she's doing internationally. Listen, she is raw and she is going to tell you exactly what she thinks and feels. She is not a polished academic. Right? I can tell she comes from a working class background, and she's lived a life. And with that comes a raw intellectual honesty that you are not going to get in the elitist academic worlds that are still kind of like, I think, maintaining some systems that are really To be alive is to be uncomfortable. If these ideas make you feel uncomfortable, sit back, ask yourself some of the critical questions that she asked herself. Begin to question your prevailing ideas and narratives because most of them have been shaped for you. It's an illusion that's been created for us, that's been communicated through generations that are serving some and harming others. And... We're only going to be able to advance if we are courageous and we think critically. They don't want us to think critically. We know that now that's part of the global awakening. They don't want critical analysis. And that's why they, that's why a lot of the, these positions in the, in the media or positions of power that are kind of a lot of ways, protecting billionaires and ideas that serve certain industries is. They're just going to attack the person. These ad hominem attacks are not even willing to get into the critical analysis and debate because you can't win the argument. You're not gonna be able to win the argument, but I think that love does prevail and courage does prevail. And that's part of the awakening is because if you care for each other, and that is a much better way of living. If you care for each other and you advance it through creativity, through compassion, through kindness, through service, everything begins to get better. So Dr. Taylor, especially from the listeners in the United States, how can people get in touch with you and see the work that you're doing and how can they just be exposed to your efforts right now? Dr Jessica Taylor: Um, I would say stay off Twitter because it's vile. Um, Sean: I'm sorry. Dr Jessica Taylor: but, um, Twitter is where professionals and academics go to have a go at people because they don't hit somebody in a pub. Um, so Sean: All right. Dr Jessica Taylor: don't, don't go there. Um, I would say, um, my Instagram. Um, everything is under at Dr. Jess Taylor. So you'll find me on Tik TOK and Insta and Facebook and the communities that I have over there are really quite, you know, vocal, intelligent. They're very engaged. I've really big conversations on my Facebook. I do Insta lives and Q and A's and all sorts of stuff. And same with my stuff on Tik TOK. Um, and like Jamie is also on a Tik TOK and on Instagram. She's the coauthor of the item. And you can also go to victimfocus.com, which is our company that we run. And we have tons of free trauma-informed resources on there. You can just download them and use them. There's also free courses to process your own sexual trauma and trauma from abuse. That's for anybody at all. I would say aged like 15 plus. About 60,000 people have taken those and they're really, really useful. So they're all free. You can get them anywhere in the world. There's also translations. I think we've had it translated into about five or six languages now. So have a look for that in case that's useful. You're always welcome to send me messages and questions and stuff. I'm always interested in conversations with people. We're just about to fly out to go and work in Australia and New Zealand for two months around ITEM. So we're doing a tour around delivering lectures and speeches around trauma informed revolution and ITEM in New Zealand and then all around Australia. And then next year, we're going to be coming to America. So we'd really love to. And we're definitely going to come and see you. You're not getting away with it. I'm definitely coming to your place. But yeah, it'd be great to. you know, get stuff booked in and catch up with people. I would love to meet like-minded people while we're over in the US. Sean: Great news. Barbecue at the McFillen house. Got it. Dr Jessica Taylor: Woo! Sean: Dr. Jessica Taylor, we so appreciate a radically genuine conversation. Dr Jessica Taylor: Thank you so much for having me.