As an example, suppose a patient sees his doctor for symptoms of laryngitis, and he asks her for antibiotics. It is up to the doctor to know that laryngitis could be either bacterial or viral in origin, and run tests to determine which it is.

I do not believe it is inherently unjust to state facts about sex and gender. What we do with those facts, how we interpret and apply them, is what has the potential to be unjust.

You get the point: it takes time to get comfortable in one’s skin after puberty hits. Sometimes, it takes years. When today’s youth express their discomfort, they accompany it with their generation’s narrative about what that means. Too often, we go along with it.

Activists of previous generations fought hard to win equal opportunity for all regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. When it comes to sex and gender, we live in a time of tremendous freedom, relative to almost any time and place in history.

Ultimately, regardless of one’s religious views or lack thereof, and regardless of any other relationship with 12-step programs, the classic serenity prayer is good mental hygiene:

Therapists are required to refrain from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and all other protected classes. I aim to bring a respectful, broad-minded curiosity to clients of all walks of life.

In the following series, I aim to lay out my theoretical foundation and approach to social issues as a mental health professional in this era. You might want to grab yourself a cup of coffee, or bookmark this for later, or skip around to the parts that interest you.

Today I googled myself in the process of working with an incredible branding & designer expert I am so excited to have chosen for my upcoming podcast. I discovered that someone who doesn’t personally know me, and certainly isn’t a former client, went to the trouble of leaving me a 1-star rating.

When a woke mob tried to take down Bret Weinstein at Evergreen University in 2017, he was known to a few hundred students. All of his actual students loved Bret and stood up for him, but their peers who had drank the adrenaline-fueled kool-aid were dead set on their witch-hunting mission. Well, their attempts to silence him backfired.

Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is seeking applicants to serve on the Community Leadership Council for the Behavioral Health Workforce Initiative. In June 2021, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2949.

What kind of future does this parent imagine for their child? What kind of future do they want to help mold and shape? The outlook seems grim to me. I can’t even. This is so sad.

Where do you want to find yourself several years from now? This kind of behavior could lead to remorse and humiliation as you realize that in your self-righteous eagerness to point a finger at others for causing alleged "harm," you yourself were participating in a form of witch-hunting groupthink that led to way more harm than you ever thought you could cause.

The flip side of the coin to the "impostor syndrome in overfunctioners" I just wrote about in my last blog post is a person who develops an opposite set of coping mechanisms based on an opposite family dynamics.

If you have impostor syndrome, chances are, you were put in charge of too much responsibility at too young of an age. It's terrifying being a (metaphorical) toddler at the wheel, but you learned to drive haphazardly anyway. The survival instinct is an ancient and powerful force.

I keep my schedule limited to the commitments I make to other people, aiming to show up on time to appointments and social plans. But I don't promise myself I will do Task A during Window of Time B, because that doesn't work.

Don't underestimate the urgency of renewing your faith in yourself. This letter will help you get there.

There is nothing transphobic about examining social and psychological issues carefully. Anyone who has contributed to the experiences of people like Ryan by misrepresenting testosterone as a harmless panacea for all remotely relational psychological woes should be ashamed of themselves.

Don’t be a hypocrite, or a spineless brainwashed sheep. You call yourself liberal? You think you believe in equality, dignity, progress, human rights? You've got a log in your own eye, my friend.

As a child, I scarfed down books like popcorn. I read my first novel, The Secret Garden, independently, at the age of seven. I looked forward to weekend trips to the bookstore, which, as my younger readers may need a reminder, is how everyone attained their literature in the 1990’s.

By presenting mental illness as a badge of honor, we encourage individuals in less than optimal mental health to emphasize their weaknesses over their strengths. We socially disincentivize actions that aid recovery, like pulling yourself off the couch and away from the phone to go for a hike, pick up an instrument, or read a book.