EP. 172 — Unpacking Pop Psychology with Seerut K. Chawla

 

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I hope you’re well. And I hope you forgive me for how blunt today’s episode is. This one’s a bit different. I have, over the past two years, been trying to shift this podcast into more of a real talk space, and I think this episode does that the most so far. And we are talking very bluntly in this episode about mental health and whether or not the current state of mental health rhetoric, especially seen on social media, is actually helping people. Now, this is a mental health podcast. It is supposed to be a safe space for people. I am sorry if this blunt chat is something that upsets you, but it is a conversation that I do really want to have because it’s something I’ve been increasingly interested in, especially as I’ve been on such a long mental health journey of my own, and I’ve tried fucking everything, every approach, just to see what sticks, to see what helps, to see [00:01:00] what actually takes me closer to being a bit more fixed. I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly well or, you know, perfectly recovered, but I’m obsessed with getting myself as mentally strong as possible. And yeah, it’s tricky for me because I kind of straddle two generations. The last generation, and this is especially intense if you’re South Asian, but the last generation that told you that you are supposed to be stoical, and you are supposed to not tell anyone about your problems, not bother anyone, and the more shit you can withstand, and the more shit you can eat, the better and the stronger and more admirable you are.

But then I’ve turned into a grown adult during a time of, no, let’s all talk about our mental health all the time. Let’s tell everyone, let’s not have any shame around it, which is fantastic. And let’s draw up boundaries and let’s self preserve. And that’s something I’ve even advocated for in the past. And, and let’s not let anything get in the way of us feeling good and let’s never trigger anyone and let’s never be triggered. And, and let’s allow mental health to be a massive part of our identity, especially [00:02:00] publicly. And while there’s so much that is better about the current state of things compared to how I grew up, I also worry if, as with everything on social media, we might be going too far in a way that is actually leaving people, in the long term, slightly more susceptible to harm. Slightly more susceptible to finding it really difficult to recover. The mental health industry is huge. And there’s a lot of money to be made by pharmaceuticals, by doctors, especially private doctors. And there’s a lot of money to be made on social media by people whose brand is mental health. Hello me. A big part of who I am and why you follow me and why you look at my Instagram and why you look at my podcast is mental health. And so I am glad medicine and doctors and, and public figures talking about mental health really candidly exist, but I also [00:03:00] think we need to be very responsible as to whether or not we’re helping people, not just in the short term, not just feeling better for a day, but if we’re actually giving them the tools, the true tools to understand themselves and to really self regulate, not in a perfect environment where nothing around them is triggering them, but are we giving them the tools to survive the hardships that life will inevitably throw at all of us increasingly as we get older.

There is no way to protect ourselves from all of the bad things in the world. And the current rhetoric on social media and the misuse of terms like gaslighting, or triggered, or boundaries, or intrusive thoughts, all these different things, is running the risk, if misused by people online, or if misunderstood by those who are consuming this stuff, of rendering people really helpless when they will need to be somewhat prepared and somewhat resilient.

[00:04:00] Now this episode is not to shame anyone who feels fragile, it is more an episode to wake people up as to where things are currently going in the mental health discussion. It’s to question, is this definitely what is the most practical and helpful advice that we are seeing everywhere? It is to tell anyone out there who’s maybe a bit, like, concerned that things are becoming too, too over self protective, it’s to reassure those people that you’re not alone in your thinking. That my guest today, Seerut Chawla, and myself even, to a lesser degree, but definitely, you know, I’m definitely interested in this conversation, are with you. And Seerut is a very outspoken, very bold human being. She’s a psychologist and she has a prominent following online for her very no bullshit tough love approach to mental health on Instagram.

I repost her all the [00:05:00] time. I have for years. And she rubs people up the wrong way because she goes against the grain when it comes to the way that we talk about mental health. And she calls out the people who, who are saying things that she believes as an experienced clinician are going to keep people sick for a long time.

And, you know, as I touched on earlier, It’s a big money making industry, mental health now. It’s been fully commodified, and therein lies danger, because then, as with the diet industry, as with every industry, as with big sugar, etc., there is money to be made in people never getting fully better. And so she and I are both a little bit suspicious and she and I have both been through a lot. I mean, she has been through so much. And for the first time ever, I’ve never heard her share this, these things, but she shares her personal story with me, her personal journey, the context through which she come to a lot of her conclusions and, [00:06:00] and why she feels the way that she feels and what she wants for all of us and what she’s trying to do about it. And there just aren’t a lot of people like that in the world right now.

And sometimes when I repost her, some people push back because they don’t like what she says, or they think she’s too harsh, and, and I’m tired of being discouraged from just engaging with people, even people I disagree with. Seerut and I sometimes disagree, we talk about it in the podcast, even in this podcast, I sort of sometimes chase her down, um, you know, for specificity, or I challenge her. But what I love about my relationship with her is that there is space for disagreement. There is a true desire to understand each other. There is a true attempt to give each other the benefit of the doubt. And there is a shared common interest in women, especially, but all people [00:07:00] really getting better and feeling better because if people do, then we will only ever live in a happier and healthier society. So, listen, I want you to know that I am so down for your opinions after this episode. I think you’re going to find it really interesting. I did. I think she’s really fucking interesting. Uh, write your letters to me. If you have any feelings or thoughts, I’d like to hear them. And, you know, maybe I’ll do another follow up episode afterwards to, based on, you know, some of the things that you say. But for now, please enjoy the incredibly refreshing and one of a kind voice and story of Seeret Chawla.

Seerut [00:08:00] Chawla, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Seerut: Thank you for having me. Um, I’m well. And I’m excited to be here and talk to you.

Jameela: I’m thrilled to have you here. And now I came across you first, I think, probably pre pandemic.

Seerut: Okay.

Jameela: And was just sort of struck by your bluntness around the subject of mental health and how people talk online, how they behave online versus offline. And even though I think we occupy quite different spaces in the internet, somewhat different approaches towards mental health, I think there is a correlation in our thinking. And I feel as though you have encouraged resilience in me via following you for the last couple of years and made an impact on me in that way. And that’s why I’ve become increasingly interested in your work, even though sometimes people can feel like your work is way harsher as I think how they would describe it. [00:09:00] I think there’s something very interesting and refreshing about the way that you talk about mental health that doesn’t really fit the mainstream narrative. And I would love to investigate that further today and kind of posit it as an alternative approach to the people who listen to this podcast. Would you talk to me about The Trenches, what it is, why you started it?

Seerut: First of all, I’m thrilled that following my content has had this impact on you of more resilience. That’s literally more than I could ask for, and, um, yeah, I’m thrilled to hear that. And the membership is kind of, it’s sort of an online community and a psychoeducational platform and a place for people who sort of feel disenfranchised from the various internet tribes to gather and to speak without feeling thought policed, shamed, being afraid of being, you know, ostracized or piled on. And so it’s like an amalgam of a few different things [00:10:00] and things that I felt I needed. And I thought, the people that resonate with my content might need these things as well. And the psychoeducational part of it is sort of a response to just really bad information online. And I think there are a lot of people who very sincerely follow certain types of content online and read self help books and they’re looking for, I don’t know, an answer. You know, it’s sort of like self, an exercise into self inquiry, but what they’re getting is information that probably makes things worse for them.

And I thought, okay, well, maybe I can make courses or content that address these things people are interested in, in kind of a no fluff, pretty accurate way, while impressing upon them that this isn’t, you know, knowing this, this information isn’t magic. This isn’t, you know, having one theory or understanding one concept from psychology isn’t going to change your life. It’s a, it’s a much more rounded, holistic thing. I hope you can take this and [00:11:00] weave it into your understanding of yourself without making this the be all end all of everything. So yeah, that’s kind of the point of the membership.

Jameela: It’s so hard to access mental health care for various different reasons depending on where you are in the world. That’s what it is that leads people to seek help online. And I encourage that, but I agree with you that it’s become a kind of buzzword phenomenon in a way that you’re not really allowed to talk about anymore. There’s something very dogmatic around all ideologies, including and increasingly the ideology of mental health care.

And you’re not allowed to suggest any form of, I guess what we would describe it trivially as like tough love. You’re not allowed to even suggest that to people because, uh, that is considered dismissive of their condition or something that could trigger them, et cetera. And even the concept of triggering someone is something that has become like completely not allowed.

And I [00:12:00] understand the thinking and feeling behind all of that, right? Like we are South Asian women and we’re millennials. So we’re raised in the extremity of maybe not the extremity, our parents were probably raised in the extremity, but of like, you know, suck it up, and fucking get on with it. And, you know, don’t have therapy because you don’t want to be one of those people who talks about your fucking feelings all the time and toughen up, etc.

You know, the pendulum has been so far in the other way that it kind of, in order for change to happen, it makes sense that it would swing fully 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: And where we’ve gotten to now is kind of, I don’t really even have a fully formed opinion on where it’s at now, but it just doesn’t instinctively feel like this is going to go well for us where it’s, it’s a very coddling world now about, you know, that everything is damaging to your mental health, everything, your life, your whole life has to be stopped in order to treat these issues with your mental health. It just feels like it’s becoming as kind of like obsessive [00:13:00] taking over your, your life journey that there’s a lot of money to be made from by people who make this the, and obviously, I have a mental health podcast. You are on my mental health podcast right now. You just explained a membership you have to a mental health space. So this is not like without a sense of irony that I’m saying any of this, but you have concerns about some of the ways in which people are encouraged to look after their mental health online. And especially in the last few years, you’ve kind of framed it as pop psychology and and you have concerns about the ways in which people who don’t really have that much expertise are guiding people to quote unquote heal themselves in ways that you think are actually going to make people sicker.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: Can you talk to me about some of those ways?

Seerut: You’ll see this every time you scroll instagram whether or not you follow um any insta therapy accounts you’ll see you are worthy you deserve such and such, don’t, you know, don’t [00:14:00] gaslight yourself into thinking that you’re not amazing or into thinking that you’re lazy or it’s very very very coddling. And coddling essentially is a parenting style where you’re so overprotective that you, um, don’t just protect children from the things that are dangerous to children, you protect them from disappointment and failure and the, you know, building responsibility and developing problem solving skills.

And what you kind of do when you raise a child like that is you make them completely incapacitated and incapable. And often they have massive issues with self regulation. They’re often praised and told how special they are all the time. Anybody, child or not, constant praise without effort, doesn’t cause self esteem. What it causes is a very delusional idea of self. And then they go into the world and they sort of collapse in on themselves because nobody else thinks they’re special and they’re absolutely unprepared for life. And this therapy [00:15:00] information kind of is a very much a parallel process to that parenting strategy. So, you’re worthy. Nothing is your fault. Anything that, you know, quote unquote triggers you is a bad thing and you should demonize it or get away from it. Don’t go to therapy. Don’t take medication. Those are all like bad Big Pharma agenda things. Instead, do deep breathing and, you know, make healing your lifestyle.

Spend all your time thinking about yourself. Anybody that sort of questions you, just cut them off because that’s boundaries. So, all of these things, they’re not helping people. They’re making unwell people more unwell. They’re making well people feel unwell because spending all your time thinking about everything that’s wrong with you, surprisingly, does not make you feel particularly good.

And then there’s the encouragement of looking at healing, which, you know, the term healing, again, like in quotes, is sort of this, um, middle class indulgence, I think, in the West where you make it this [00:16:00] aspirational lifestyle and you buy expensive raggedy looking clothes and you go on like these expensive retreats and do yoga and um, buy a cold plunge tub and I don’t know all the other things they do along with that.

Jameela: One thing I want to quickly touch on is that, you know when some people are like, there are self care methods, like taking time off to fucking go and have some sun or taking a mental health day, which sometimes people really fucking need. And I come from a generation that didn’t do that. And I almost killed myself because I didn’t know that I was allowed to somewhat prioritize my mental health. Some people really love the cold ice bath. I don’t. I think it would only dramatically decrease my mental health, uh, being that fucking cold every day, first thing in the morning. I think I would kill someone and go to jail if I did that. But I come from a country that also kind of, you know, has a holistic approach to certain things in life. I’m not anti all of those things. I think meditation, I’ve watched it really help some of my friends. But I do agree with you that with things [00:17:00] like OCD or, I don’t know, some of the personality disorders, or some of the, you know, psychosis, which is in my family, or paranoid schizophrenia, which is in my family. We have to be very careful about who we are saying needs what. We can’t have it as a kind of catch all treatment for all severe pathologies. It’s totally for anxiety. I think a lot of these things are amazing. Sometimes for depression, they could be amazing, but for the more complicated and complex issues, we have to be careful that people aren’t being preyed upon with a magical cure.

Seerut: Well, you’ve just named the exact problem with collapsing everything or collapsing all discrete categories. Because if there is no category, then everybody has the same cure. And there is no one size fits all cure. So that is the issue with this. And you know, the lifestyle interventions, they do work, they do really help whether it’s cold plunging, which again, I’m not particularly interested in doing, or meditation has a lot of good data behind it, and you [00:18:00] know, just generally eating food that actually nourishes you and gives you the vitamins and whatever that you need to feel well, or exercise. All these things, it’s true, they absolutely do help, but they’re, they will make a massive difference to sort of like the worried well. They don’t make a massive difference to somebody who’s so depressed they haven’t changed their clothes in a month and haven’t gotten out of bed. They can’t hold down a job. Somebody who has OCD and is constantly tormented by their own mind. It has very, very little to do with mental health and actual mental illness is almost never touched on. It’s trauma, which is not actual trauma. It’s like, uh, this, diluted form

Jameela: Wait, wait, wait, just to be clear, some trauma is actual trauma. It’s just that they’re encouraging of like looking at

Seerut: No, I’m talking about the term, the way it’s used on social media. So the way it’s used on social media is just very inaccurate. It’s not actually referring to people who’ve been through traumatic experiences. A lot of things have been collapsed into this term. They don’t know the difference between exposure to traumatic [00:19:00] experience, their development of post traumatic stress disorder. You almost wouldn’t know what somebody else means about trauma on social media unless you really specifically ask them and you’re almost never going to be talking about the same thing.

Jameela: So some people who will hear you say that will, I guess, push back on the fact that who gets to decide what is and what isn’t trauma.

Seerut: Science. The science of psychology.

Jameela: Totally, totally, totally. But everyone has, I guess, based on their upbringing, different reactions, different chemical reactions to certain things. And I sometimes wonder if, because what I experienced as a child was so fucking traumatic and so violent and dangerous and, has like scarred me possibly for the rest of my life and like literally physically violent, not just sort of with words. Um, and I do understand the emotional abuse is also something I experienced and [00:20:00] very damaging, almost more damaging than the physical stuff. But I feel as though it meant that I went through life then looking at lesser things that would still upset a lot of people as nothing because I’d been through more. But that’s because I’ve got a different scale or spectrum to someone else because of what I’ve experienced. So we are kind of products of our environment. And I do sometimes feel like my friends who have a bigger reaction than maybe I would have to something that happens, didn’t experience what I did as a child, so therefore do have a different scale of what freaks them out or scares them or gives them nightmares. I’m not trying to like have a fight. I’m just purely just looking for like, uh, yeah, specificity, I guess, because some people, I don’t want anyone to feel like totally invalidated, given that there’s such a nuanced conversation.

Seerut: There are a few different, you know, points to touch on here. One is that, just because, you know, what you, not you, just a general you, what you went through might not [00:21:00] qualify clinically as trauma doesn’t mean that your pain isn’t important or hasn’t impacted you in a really, really significant way. The second thing is that trauma or PTSD is not the only diagnosis. And of course what you’ve been through contributes to the, you know, etiology of why you develop a particular diagnosis. One of the issues with just labeling everything trauma is that people are less and less clear about 1) what they’re going through and less clear about mental health is more confusion about, you know, mental health in general publicly.

And, you know, the third point is that there are people like yourself who’ve been through an extreme of experience. And yes, that can mean that, you know, what your personal Richter scale is a little bit different to other people’s. And, um, you know, things might not register, but that this is also a group that has been through things that are absolutely horrific and most people can’t even imagine. So taking away the only language that they have for their experience is a massive, massive problem. And [00:22:00] it’s a hill I will die on. You know, those are the few different areas to kind of touch on.

Jameela: That I do completely agree with. I think that finding another word.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: Or another way of explaining that someone’s been through or seen something upsetting is different from what trauma trauma feels like.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: I do agree that like when we do this with, you know, some people say that we do this with sexual assault or, you know, we’re seeing a kind of rise of within autism people who used to be labeled as having Asperger’s, which is different from autism. Well, not different from autism, but it’s a very different type of autism from people who are nonverbal or unable to classify, I guess it’s like whatever, quote unquote, high functioning. Now everyone’s being called autistic rather than a different form of neurodivergent. Like we’re seeing this just across the board that we find a big word that becomes an umbrella term for so many different things. And because we want to feel validated, which I understand, we forget that there are people at the very far end of that spectrum who are directly [00:23:00] impacted if we dilute the terminology to mean everything.

Seerut: Yeah, and I’ve been contacted by, um, many, many people with actual PTSD who live in hell. And if people really understood what living with PTSD was like, I think they’d stop wishing for it.

Jameela: I don’t know if anyone’s wishing for it, but I think that they do.

Seerut: They want the label to apply to them.

Jameela: Right.

Seerut: And

Jameela: Some people, yeah.

Seerut: You know, they’ll say things like, well, you know, I was raped by my, um, grandfather and I don’t want to use this term. I don’t want to use the term trauma anymore to talk about what I’ve been through because my friend whose parents didn’t give her pocket money is using the same term for what she went through. And they kind of, she said, it’s so difficult now to talk about this without, it just, it feels awful. And there’s so many different examples of that, of people who’ve reached out to say that, you know. And what you mentioned about autism and Asperger’s and, you know, everybody’s given the same diagnosis now that, that is a very real, it’s called [00:24:00] concept creep. So it’s when a term becomes diluted and more and more kind of things creep into that umbrella definition. And what happens then is the collapsing of discrete categories, which colloquially might be okay. But when you’re looking at something clinically, which I do because I’m a therapist, then you really do need discrete categories.

You can’t treat something unless you understand what it is. And the thing that you do in therapy is you take the abstract, which is what everything is on social media, abstract, generalized, and you make it the subjective and the particular and as specific as possible. So there’s, there are so many issues around this that are almost hard to do justice to even in a single podcast. But, um, that’s, that’s one really important issue, the collapsing of discrete categories.

Jameela: Totally. And I feel for people, because I feel as though because of the rise of this kind of very obviously opportunistic [00:25:00] mental health dogma sphere online, everyone who’s saying they have trauma or everyone who’s saying that they’re triggered is being classified as someone who’s just like attention seeking or who wants the label, etc. And a lot of people don’t. A lot of people just think, well, I mean, that’s what they’re being fed everywhere. That’s what they think, and they do have bad feelings and they would like a name for those feelings. And they’re really just looking for some guidance and some community and other people to relate to. And I’m sure a lot of those people might even listen to this podcast. And so I, I hope that no one feels like, demonized in any way, or looked down upon for falling into those categories or feeling that way. And I don’t want you to feel like no one gives a shit about what happened to you if it wasn’t as severe as, like, I don’t know, a war or sexual assault. There is a spectrum of different experiences. But at the same time, this isn’t about saying, you don’t have a right to tell us how upset you are. This is about saying that we [00:26:00] need to appropriately identify exactly what’s really going on so that we have a realistic game plan to get you out of it. And the goal is to get you out of it so that you don’t feel locked in this box anymore.

And I think sometimes because you are blunt online. And you’re talking about what we shouldn’t do, I think sometimes people miss what I can see in your work, which is that I don’t think you’re trying to criticise or ostracise people who feel bad, you’re just saying, I really want you to take a practical approach to getting out of this as fast as possible because staying in it is hell and there is a lot of money to be made by the mental health industry in keeping you sick, right?

Seerut: Not just, yes, and it’s, well 1) I’d like to, I think that’s a, that’s a really fair point and also if you hear frustration in my voice in this podcast, it’s not at the people who feel bad, it’s the people who spread these ideas and they’re not spreading these ideas very often [00:27:00] out of, you know, good intentions. They’re making a shit ton of money out of people believing that they’re traumatized and then, you know, ending up in this lifelong healing journey, so that’s who my frustration’s with. Not at people who feel bad. I see lots of people in my practice who don’t have, again, the social media therapy stuff and actual private practice is like, it’s world’s part. You don’t even, no one’s going in thinking, oh, trauma, whatever. You kind of try and help people define what’s going on for them in their own words without jargon. And a lot of people, profoundly suffer, and no, it’s not because of trauma, it’s because of ways of being that they’ve learned as a child or things that didn’t happen that should have happened or because they have an actual, um, mental health condition that they have to live with every single day, you know, and it just prevents them from engaging meaningfully in their life in any kind of way, of feeling any kind of self worth, or that they have any sort of value. There’s, [00:28:00] you know, never ever the people who feel bad. I’ve dedicated my life to helping them. I think the irritation is at how badly we are

Jameela: Diluting.

Seerut: No, misinforming those people that feel bad. It makes me really, really angry. It makes me really angry. It’s like giving somebody, you know, a bottle that says cure, but actually it’s just like sugar coated poison. And it makes me angry.

Jameela: Now, I understand that not wanting to shame people about decisions or thoughts or intrusive thoughts or this, that and the other. I understand where that psychology comes from, that you don’t want to make people feel bad for the behaviors we make. There’s been an increasing conversation from even people like Sam Harris that we don’t have free will. There’s no such thing as free will. We are all just a product of every single moment in our life, of every experience we had, of our neurological setup, of whatever our parents did, of [00:29:00] our genealogy, like whatever, like it, it goes all the way back. And we are told repeatedly, and I feel as though that concept has now bled into mainstream culture of like, but they can’t help it.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: And I, I understand that there’s like an importance to not like scolding someone for the bad poor decision making they have, maybe because of a mental health issue or a trauma. But at the same time, it’s not very empowering to tell someone, well, you can’t help it, you’re sick or you can’t help it, you’re, you know, you’ve got damage or epigenetic trauma. And so this is what is, you know, this is just who you are and people need to accept that. You know, I got an email from a family member recently who is incredibly rude and incredibly callous and hurts people’s feelings all the fucking time. And he essentially said to me in an email, like, I’m just being authentic. And so if people can’t handle, you know, my authentic self then basically fuck them.

Seerut: Yeah, I can’t handle it. Bye.

Jameela: And I was like, yeah. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have to like, [00:30:00] we have to be very careful here because there’s a big culture of not taking accountability and being like, I’m just being me. And this is just who I am. And this, these are the cards I’ve been dealt. And so I’m just going to play them forever. Whereas a lot of the people I know who have overcome significant horrors have found that like, no, I think I’d actually like to try and slowly exchange my cards incrementally over time. I don’t want to play the cards that I was dealt. I would like to work to shuffle, please.

Seerut: Okay, so, um, I don’t normally disclose this very often, but just to give you some history or some of my background, and I think that will maybe help explain some of my approach and then I’ll like address some of the other things you’ve said. Well, I grew up in India during a rape crisis. Um, I don’t know any girl that didn’t come out of that unscathed that I, that I grew up with. And it wasn’t just one person who, um, I was, I guess, interfered with in that way. It was school bus conductor, a teacher, a parent’s friend at some, you know, [00:31:00] there were so many situations, and it’s just that’s just the water that we swam in. Men are not safe. You’re sexualized as a young girl. You’re frightened all the time. People look at you like they want to eat you up. It’s, it’s, um, often really terrifying.

Jameela: It’s terrifying there.

Seerut: Um, I also experienced pretty, pretty severe violence, um, physical violence. There were multiple things that happened at the same time and it was just, um, a terrifying situation.

As an adult, um, when all my PTSD kind of came to the surface and I became, I guess, incapacitated by it because for a long time I’d just been carrying on until then I couldn’t anymore. And, um, I was very, very poor for quite a long time and pretty much became homeless. Um, and, you know, poor enough that I had to, I didn’t have money for the bus and my shoes were held together by electrical tape and I’d go to the food bank for food. Somehow managed to get the local council to help me, to stop me from [00:32:00] becoming completely homeless. So, you know, I understand what it’s like to not feel good and to be, uh, you know, quote unquote, I was that vulnerable person. And the only thing that helped me was taking responsibility for myself and deciding that this wasn’t going to be what my life turned out like and that there are still things I can control and there were. Um, there are still things that I have influence over and I can still chip away at this over time. So, you know, like to go from where I was to where I am now. It’s not easy, but the, the quality that steered the ship has been responsibility for myself. That’s what it’s been. You know, when you talk about the not being able to help it stuff, there’s a great example of that that makes me laugh every time I tell it but it’s like imagine you’re in your house and you’re having a huge argument with your partner and it’s just one of those two people, you’re both yelling at each other [00:33:00] and whatever and then someone rings the bell and you open the door and you go from you fucking whatever and you open the door like hi and your whole expression and your whole demeanor changes because someone’s at the door so you can help it. It depends on the context but you condition yourself into thinking that I have these out of control emotions that I have no control over. It’s not, it’s not true. You might have self regulation issues, you might have an underlying mental health problem that’s, you know, causing the emotions to be big, either way, that requires either treatment or practice learning to manage those emotions. And this, I can’t help it, has become, you know, like, like most of these things.

Jameela: I think it’s debilitating.

Seerut: It’s a, it’s a double edged sword, isn’t it? Because there are some people who can’t help it. Like where I used to live when I was, it was a really not a great area when I was really poor. And on my street was a lady who clearly had schizophrenia. So she, um, always looked really [00:34:00] unwell, dirty, had dirty clothes on and she would be talking to somebody who wasn’t there. She was never dangerous, she wasn’t scary, she just wasn’t in the same reality that we’re in. And she was often drunk and she had drink with her and sometimes you’d see like a key worker come and try and get her into the house where they lived in. But, um, you know, somebody like that, yeah, they can’t help it. She can’t help it. She is

Jameela: Governed by something.

Seerut: Well, yeah, that’s so that’s that’s one side of it. There’s always truth to most of these things, but they get used as this kind of global excuse versus like if I behave really badly and start calling you names or have a big fight with you because you don’t agree with me on something, and then I say it’s because of my trauma, well that’s become the new trend. I don’t think that’s acceptable. You know, these things, they can be reasons, but the point of it, point of identifying that reason is for you. It’s not to go around telling everybody else so that you can be absolved of taking responsibility of your own behavior.

Jameela: Totally, [00:35:00] totally, totally. I, um, I’ve totally misbehaved in the past because I’m having like a, a reaction that is triggered by a, an old memory, but it’s impacting someone who has nothing to do with that original memory, and when I catch that about myself I have learned, I’ve taught myself to not go like, oh, that’s why I do that, so you should feel sorry for me, or you should let me off. But that’s why I do that. I need to fix that thing so that I don’t keep inflicting this shit on to this other person who’s got nothing to do with the original kind of crime.

A small example of that is that I had a parent who, when I was really young, this went on for like a decade, would say, I’m just going to work. And then, uh, they’d take their suitcase and they’d just be in their office clothes, and then they wouldn’t come back for two years. They’d go to another country and like have another life and maybe another relationship, I guess, and then just come back like nothing happened. And so I became very accustomed to [00:36:00] never knowing if that person was ever coming back from work. And so now, as an adult, whenever anyone leaves the house, including my partner of nine years, I have no idea. And so, and so it doesn’t mean I take anything out on him or anything like that, but I just completely disconnect. I don’t, like, the second he’s gone, he’s out that door. He doesn’t exist anymore and he’s never coming back. And so I’m completely unconsciously, not very responsive to text messages or phone calls while he’s away on tour. And cause I just think, well, goodbye forever. Like, I say goodbye, and then in my, underneath my voice, I go, because that’s like, the voice in my head that has existed since I was, you know, barely verbal.

And so I have recognized that because he’s like, hey, this upsets me that you completely disengage and almost don’t know who I am when I walk back through the door after the tour. Can we work on this together? And I was like, [00:37:00] sure.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: And so I’ve been working on accepting that he is not that parent and it is not cool or ideal for my happiness in a long term relationship. I don’t get to have the long term bond if I continue pushing someone away all the time because of something that happened to me as a child.

Seerut: Equally, something that happens to you that’s that profoundly wounding and damaging while you’re developing is going to become part of your person, right? It’s going to become part of your worldview and it might never go away. There are things from my past that might never go away either.

Jameela: Oh no, the feeling won’t go away but the behavior can change.

Seerut: The behavior can change but I think it’s also one of those places where there’s, again, going back to this healing culture, there’s such an idea of perfectionism when it comes to healing and we’re not perfect creatures or we’re very messy, very wounded, very flawed people. The best we can do is to say, okay, I noticed I was defensive earlier. I’m sorry. And I, I realized now I was defensive. [00:38:00] You know, that is a significant step forward in being healed as opposed to never ever becoming defensive again, or never ever noticing that, you know, when my partner leaves, leaves the house, there’s a part of me that, compartmentalizes that because I’ve learned it’s far too painful to think that he might come back and then he doesn’t, so this is much safer for me. And, and that’s okay. That’s actually okay. And then you, you want to work on the, okay, but I won’t just blank him now for the whole time. There’s no way I’ll attempt to respond to him. But you know, you also want the understanding to go both ways and for him to understand that, um, which I’m sure he does that

Jameela: I mean, he’s still here after nine years. This is a very understanding man.

Seerut: Right. And it makes perfect sense if you look at your context and that’s again, why?

Jameela: But I don’t want the feeling, I don’t want the feeling. I don’t like feeling disconnected, connected, disconnected, connected. Like I have to reintroduce myself to him every time he comes back off of tour. I don’t like it. [00:39:00] And I like the fact that I don’t like it and I want to change it. I like that. It makes me feel like I have a thing I can fucking work at and I might never perfectly fix it or correct it because I think my, you know, if certain, I think your brain rewires when you’re so young and certain things happen, but I feel, I, I, I don’t want to live in, um, pain and I don’t want to live as a disconnected person and I don’t want to be detached. I am a very detached, disconnected person, I understand that certain things will never change, but I’m dying to get out of all of this.

It’s been really interesting to watch the resurgence of, no, no, no, I’m a victim. And actually, that’s a big part of my identity, and I’m going to claim that and own that and hold on to it. Why has that come back around, do you think, regardless of any opinion of whether it’s good or bad? Like what? Why is [00:40:00] so?

Seerut: Okay, so I think some of this is to do with, so there’s multivariate things. There’s these failed parenting strategies, the coddling and the self esteem parenting. And the other thing is there’s, you know, America kind of dominates the world’s culture. And it used to be through media like film and songs and books and television shows, but now it’s through social media and that’s almost more insidious because social media isn’t this separate removed thing like a film is or like a tv show is that you look at as there’s a, there’s a wall there, right? Social media is a part of your life and there’s a lot happening in america that has changed, you know, I mean there’s a lot happening in America in general but in in this context there’s been this huge safety culture issue in university campuses where young people are told things like, if something in a book offends you, it means that you’re triggered and you can essentially have your [00:41:00] teacher in really big trouble, or that you should expect trigger warnings in academia or academic books. And if you feel upset because somebody who you disagree with comes to your campus, we’re going to provide you with like a safe space. And some of these safe spaces have things like It’s like a tent with puppies in them, coloring books, like blowing bubbles, cookies and milk, like it’s very, very infantilizing. So, you know, so there’s that kind of thing going on. And the safety culture stuff is like an adulthood version of coddling. It’s telling people that actually you’re so fragile that if you come across something in a book that offends your sensibilities, you’re going to break apart into pieces. And actually you’re so weak and so unable to cope with disagreement that if you come across someone whose ideas contradict yours or cause you cognitive dissonance or cause you to challenge your own thinking, you’re being harmed in some way. And that person’s a [00:42:00] bigot, and they are, you know, a problematic bad person and whatever you do to retaliate against them, you know, whether it’s an attack on their person or ruin their livelihood is completely justified because they victimized you.

Jameela: Sometimes the person is a bigot. And sometimes they do say stuff that is incredibly hurtful.

Seerut: The world is full of bigots.

Jameela: But I do think that, yeah.

Seerut: You can’t make that go away. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, and this is the, this is another point that I think is a big, in this idealistic, you know, collection of ideas. Just like you can never make something like murder go away. There’s always going to be a subset of the population that’s so pathological, they’re going to want to do things like that, like any crime you can think of. Um, and that includes people who are bigoted or, you know, racist or hateful in some way, you know, things that any normal, decent person would, you know, reject or work on in themselves, there will always be a group of people who just are like that. And you have to learn.

Jameela: A lot of whom are dealing with their [00:43:00] own product of their environment or trauma or

Seerut: Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t.

Jameela: Mental illness, yeah, yeah.

Seerut: Sometimes they’re just a shitty person. That also exists. The answer to everything isn’t trauma.

Jameela: So what you’re saying is, we mustn’t breed a generation of people who, if they come across this subset of culture that has always existed, will likely always exist, however much we want it to change, you’re saying it’s harmful for the next generation to, if they are exposed to that in any way, crumble or feel as though they need, like, kind of triage care afterwards. That I definitely agree with. And that’s something that I feel like I’m going to get into trouble for saying that I agree with. But I do agree with that because, It doesn’t serve us to not feel as though we can engage in debate or that we can withstand someone’s opinion, even if we fucking loathe it, even if, God knows, I have, like, huge experiences of racist, like, physical violence, et cetera, but I, I still, I [00:44:00] choose to not, and, and there is a level of choice here, and it takes work, and it takes, you know, practice, but I choose to not allow someone else’s opinion that I disagree with crumble me.

I look at that, I step back and I go, I just fundamentally fucking disagree with that person. I don’t like that person. And their beliefs are their beliefs. They do not have to become my reality. And I’m not talking about on a government level, that’s different. When you know that someone has the power of the pen to legislate against your freedom, it’s a very different thing. And it’s important to maintain that nuance, but when it comes to hearing someone’s opinion that I disagree with, I refuse for them to have the power to send me into hyperventilation. I refuse. I’ve learned to I see them as an individual who is a product of their environment, a product of their own learning, a product of their own self hatred or hatred of others, and I see myself as separate, and I do agree that I feel concerned that we are losing the, not just like the art of debate, I don’t, I don’t just mean that, but I think that we’re losing the [00:45:00] understanding that disagreement is the foundation of democracy, and we have to learn to engage with it without crumbling, otherwise we’re never actually going to be able to take it on, and they are going to win.

Seerut: Um, and that kind of, you can see that in, if we’re talking in terms of politics, you can see that on both sides. Both sides seem to have this like extremist faction of like lemmings who just repeat the same stuff. They have stock phrases and they have equivalents for both kinds on each side and they just repeat them and there’s no critical thinking. There’s just emotional dysregulation and being mean to people. Um, you know, what I’d love for young people to have is to equip them with critical thinking and the ability to refute an argument robustly. That’s empowering. If you hear something, you know, you don’t like, you can also express yourself in a way that doesn’t demean your own dignity or put unnecessary cruelty into the world. That, you know, there’s a way, there’s a middle ground as there is with most things. And there’s also the option to walk away. [00:46:00] You don’t have to respond to everything. And there’s also the option to listen because while you pointed out, yes, there are very real bigots in the world, there are also a lot of people who are branded bigots that aren’t. They just, just have ideas or question what is like the dominant orthodoxy of what we are all meant to think and believe and say. And you want to stay out of any sort of an echo chamber so that you’re able to listen to a wide range of, of ideas and perspectives and worldviews, and then come to your own conclusion by thinking for yourself, not just swallowing whole what some, some compelling argument you’ve heard and then regurgitating it, and then screaming en masse at somebody who contradicts you. So I’d love that. I’d love that if we, if we could equip them with some sort of like rhetoric and critical thought and many of them do have it, but it seems like universities in America are failing in terms of teaching their students [00:47:00] really good critical thinking. Actual critical thinking.

Jameela: And how to come back at something. How to come back at something. Yeah. Increasingly, I find myself wanting to engage in discussion with people that I disagree with because I feel as though I’m growing or learning. I mean, you and I don’t agree on everything, but I feel like we have a very respectful, and like, you know, in our kind of online relationship that we’ve been slowly building over the last couple of years, like, I feel like we have a very respectful engagement with one another in which we are looking for the common ground.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: We’re looking for the similarity in each other. We’re looking for context within which to understand each other and our experiences. I also want to say thank you for sharing what you shared about your past. I didn’t know that. I hadn’t known that up until now. And I appreciate you being so vulnerable on this podcast. And I think it is not your responsibility to have to do it, but it does give context as to why you feel the way that you feel. But I have enjoyed getting to [00:48:00] know people like you or people who, especially publicly, espouse some different beliefs or approaches than I do. And the fact that I’d really, I really like you. I really like you. And I, I want to find the common ground. And I believe we have found that common ground. And with more and more people that I, you know, can disagree with on subjects, not like, people who don’t believe in my right to bodily autonomy necessarily, although I will now engage in conversation with them, because I actually would like to open their mind, because we have to. Otherwise, if we don’t, we don’t take that approach, then they’re not going to open their minds and change their minds. And then they’re going to take away our right to bodily autonomy. But I feel as though I have to almost do it in secret.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: And I’m not doing that anymore. And I’m having the people that I have differences with on the podcast because I, it’s vital to our progress as a, as a public to be able to understand each other and talk to each other and come to some form of a compromise with one another. And [00:49:00] so I don’t mean out and out bigots, but I’m engaging in more of these conversations and learning that actually we are so much more similar than we are different. And we do fundamentally want most of the same things. And actually we are able to change one another’s minds and seriously connect. And that is the first thing that’s, I started to become really hopeless a few years ago when I was only in an echo chamber of other people who were just despairing and telling us all that we had to cut off anyone who we disagreed with, cut off family members, grandparents, people who were raised in a completely different world, system, existence, and ideology.

It made me feel alone and it made me feel like, well, we can never change anyone’s mind because we’re not even allowed to talk to them. And opening that door back up does not make you a bad person. It actually makes you, I think, an emotionally intelligent person who has a plan to be willing to reach across and say like, hey, let’s figure this out together. Dogma doesn’t serve anyone on either side.

Seerut: No, [00:50:00] and I think it’s really, really important to, people to understand that ideas are not threatening. It’s just an idea. It doesn’t have to frighten you or put you into some sort of, like you said, a hyperventilating state or, you know, and there’s a very sort of like, in terms of behavioral reinforcement, there’s a very, there’s a big mechanism of that on, especially on, on social media where you see people kind of egging each other on to be upset. Have you seen this? Can you believe how offensive this is? And then they all sort of have to perform how offended they are, and then they work themselves up and get themselves really upset. And I see that all the time. And you don’t. You don’t. It’s actually possible to see something and think, oh, you fucking idiot, and then keep scrolling and not allow it to, to mess you up emotionally. And here’s the other thing, if you’re constantly emotionally messed up, what are you going to change in the world? What are you going to make better? What are you putting out into the [00:51:00] world? Um, I tweeted a few days ago that constantly seeking offense and, and constantly sort of looking for fault doesn’t change the world. It just makes you a deeply unhappy person, and it’s true.

Jameela: It’s also bad for you hormonally because the stress is real. The stress I see people have when they see something that they disagree with, or they dislike, or that they feel like is threatening. And again, it’s really bad for your cortisol levels to be that stressed all the time. I had to come offline 90 percent I’m online less than I was a few years ago, because I was like, this is actually really bad for my health. it’s bad for my insulin levels, like, it’s bad for my immune system to be this stressed, this constantly, and to presume the absolute worst in everyone. It’s not making me, like, what is the point in activism if we don’t believe in change, if we don’t have hope for human beings? And so, emotionally and physically, I think it’s so dangerous.

Seerut: It is. And like you said, that kind of hope for change, like, I don’t believe, you know, apart from, like, the Ted Bundys of the world, [00:52:00] um, in general, I don’t think anybody’s beyond redemption. I don’t think, I’ve worked with people who’ve been through horrific things and even some people who’ve done horrific things. You know, the more you listen to different people’s stories over the years, you hear, you hear, you start to hear themes in the, in the different stories.

And we’re all so much more similar than we think we are, whatever beliefs you have. We all feel the same fear and pain and have similar aspirations and hopes. And people make mistakes, and people do change, and I’ve seen it time and time and time again. So judging people too quickly and based on whatever, you know, the snapshot of their life that you see on social media, it’s a mistake. People are capable of change. People are reservoirs of incredible, incredible potential. And just because somebody doesn’t fit your worldview, like, like I said, I don’t disclose this very often, what some of my history has [00:53:00] been, and I gave you some of the, I guess, highlights, but you, unless you understand someone’s context, you don’t understand why they are the way they are.

It’s very easy to say, okay, you’re, you’re mean and you don’t have empathy. It’s much harder to, when you know somebody’s context, to say, oh shit, you’ve really been through something. And you’re saying things because, you know, there’s a reason behind why you’re saying the things that you are. And we throw that all out, don’t we? We kind of view people as these two dimensional, good or bad, you code them very quickly and then you base your treatment of them off that coding. And we need to slow down, things happen way too quickly on the internet, everything is so fast, there’s nothing to mitigate, just sending somebody a nasty response or putting out a comment, I’ve said things I’ve regretted, um. And there’s nothing to stop you, there’s nothing to make you take a breath or rethink it or to even say maybe you want to sleep on this and calm down and not say this [00:54:00] later. So the medium is a part of the problem, the safety culture stuff, the overall like, just the level of, of polarization and the requirement for moral perfection, which is never going to happen with human beings.

Jameela: Apart from me, because I’m perfect.

Seerut: I’m sorry, yes.

Jameela: Famously.

Seerut: I was going to ask you, like, how, how similar are you to Tahani in real life?

Jameela: Not very similar, unfortunately.

Seerut: Apart from?

Jameela: No, in fact, she was a great warning for me, not to become a people pleaser, not to continue being a people pleaser, because it got her into hell. So sadly, not a lot. And I have a devastating lack of, I want to say, craving for other people’s approval which now leads to, you know, getting into a lot of trouble sometimes where I, I could slow my roll a little bit with how little I give a shit. And I need to learn to be a bit more careful and a bit more thoughtful and a bit more educated sometimes when I speak, um, as I have learned. I think I am [00:55:00] growing in real time. And so, no, I don’t, I don’t think I share too many qualities apart from a very rigidly stuck to haircut, which she and I both have, and a love of a good strapless dress. But no, I, yeah, there’s a part of me that feels like this conversation is going to rub people up the wrong way, but I also think that that’s okay, and important to allow yourself to be somewhat rubbed up the wrong way and allows it to like change and challenging is hard to withstand and you don’t want to be made to feel wrong or foolish, but it is important to, you know, I think it is, I think it is vital. And I think that again, what we’re both interested in what I’m interested in and what you are actually advocating for is how we become as resilient as possible because the world is only, obviously in some ways it’s getting better, but in some ways it’s becoming a really terrifying place.

Depending on where you live in the world, we’re seeing, you know, people’s rights revoked, basic human [00:56:00] rights revoked, uh, their safety, there’s less access to healthcare, mental healthcare, a rise in homelessness, like a very serious economic crash coming, like the global pandemic, what that did to people’s mental health. A lot of people lost people very fast in the last couple of years. Like, shit, is intolerable sometimes and so you need to be as built for resilience as possible because life is hard and as you get older I find in some ways it gets easier but in some ways it gets far more complicated and I’m experiencing loss at greater like speeds than I, you know, did when I was younger and all kinds of different hardships and health issues and things aren’t working anymore that used to work. Like it’s a fucking stressful time for, for people my age and older. And, and you can be just about okay if you arm yourself with the tools to get through this and know that you can’t, you cannot be broken.

Seerut: You [00:57:00] might be, you might be broken.

Jameela: But you can repair.

Seerut: Yeah. You really don’t have to stay broken or you don’t have to stay entirely broken. You know, part of you might always be a little bit broken because of, you what, you know, you’ve been through, like you mentioned people lost, I lost my mum very suddenly and very unexpectedly during the pandemic and you live with that, I live with that, live with that grief and that part of me does feel kind of broken but I’m not broken and you don’t, you don’t have to be. You know, a couple of things come to mind, one is that In the West, more and more we’re just leaning on this kind of, woe is me, everything is awful. And it doesn’t matter what you believe in or what, you know, tribe you’re a part of. And, but when you look at some of the global sort of metrics for things getting better, they are, like poverty is lower than it’s ever been, for example.

Jameela: Yeah, there’s a whole book on the fact that statistically things are better.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: The problem is that we have social media. That a lot of people, [00:58:00] not the whole world, but a lot of people are on, that involves mostly division, outrage, and doom scrolling. So therefore, regardless of what the world may or may not be, it feels fucking terrible if you’re online because all you’re being shown 24 hours a day, depending on what the algorithm is sending you, is like, horror, fear, horror, fear. That’s deliberate. That is to deliberately make you feel powerless and afraid, and to make you feel addicted.

Seerut: You know from the media, how, um, like for profit media is just a joke now. Because it’s for profit, they have clickbaity headlines. They often exaggerate things. There’s a very few credible news, news sources left and, you know, like I’m sure you’ve been misrepresented and, um, yeah, so it’s a similar mechanism on, on social media. It’s free because we’re the product and you kind of have to understand, and again, this is where the personal responsibility part comes in. [00:59:00] Like, I can’t be trusted with social media, so I have to put an app blocker on my phone because I will just keep opening it almost mindlessly. Like, I’ll close Instagram, and then my thumb will just open it again. So I have to put like, um, I’ve put app blockers on there to keep me out of it and it’s really difficult to bypass that blocker.

Jameela: I’ve had neurologists on this podcast before who’ve told me that the brain is built to predict and protect, right? So it’s always scanning for like possible danger. And so it makes sense that if so much of social media is, that’s why I post so many happy dog videos, is to try and like give people a respite from that. But so much of social media is like, look out, this is happening on both sides. It’s like, look out, bigotries on the rise or look out, drag performers are going to groom your children. Like, it’s just, it’s all, hey, watch out. Hey, you better be warned about this thing. So of course our brains, which are built to scan for possible dangers, are going to be like, you know, when you’re craning your [01:00:00] neck to kind of see the car accident that’s going to be absolutely horrific and traumatizing to see, but you kind of want to look at the scary thing. I think that’s what we, oh, rubbernecking. My producer has just kindly informed me that’s the terminology for it. But we are so drawn to be like, well, wait, wait, what is it? What dangerous things happening? What’s coming?

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: So I need to look at it, and so they play on that. It’s like these apps were all lit, I mean, I’ve watched the birth of some of these apps that have gone on to become huge and they had actual neuroscientists helping to develop it. And those people know what works and know what keeps you sad and what keeps you depressed. And the more sad and depressed you are, the more likely you are to engage in the very same shit that helps social media thrive.

Seerut: We also have a, have a negative bias because evolutionarily we wouldn’t have survived if we were always looking on the bright side because they’re very real threats like, you know, the saber toothed tiger might come and eat you and, you know, like there might be famine or drought or lack of crops. You’re [01:01:00] always looking for what can go wrong and what’s bad. That’s just how our brains are. They’re not wired to be happy. So you look at these, um, these apps and you’re looking at everything that can go wrong and slowly, you know, depressing yourself. Also another element of it that ties back into the insta therapy stuff really well, which is that we love the illusion of control and we love feeling like we understand, we have a handle on it. And you know, if I can predict, I know everything that’s going to go wrong. I know what these, their agenda is and what they’re going to try and do to me, I can somehow protect myself. With InstaTherapy, um, people don’t like not knowing or a lack of certainty. And, you know, the brain is an energy expensive organ, so we don’t want to put too much effort into anything. And we have resistance towards putting a lot of effort into something because it’s going to cost us energy. So what’s often much more appealing to people is a short, sweet, a very simplistic answer that you’re slightly sad [01:02:00] or you’re struggling with something. The answer is trauma. Cool. There’s no further thinking required, no examination required. I don’t have to go to therapy. I can just listen to what this guru says and just, you know, do her or his protocols. Because actual therapy is work. And actual self inquiry, even outside of therapy, is work. It’s not easy. It’s difficult. It means looking at yourself in a really honest way. And you can’t just, just say, right, I’m a poor victim. Everyone else is against me. Any conflict I’ve had with anybody else, it’s their fault and I’ve been victimized. And, you know, it’s okay however I behave because I have trauma. You know, things are tough and I’m going to now cut off everybody because of boundaries. You can’t do that. It’s actually looking at, right, this is how I contribute to the dysfunction in my life.

And these hard things I went through, this is why, um, how they’re baked into how I behave in the world and what my responses are and the lens through which [01:03:00] I view interactions with other people. None of this is easy. It takes time. It takes grieving. Um, there’s no magical resolution. You can tie up with a bow and say, look, you’re stamped healed. The idea is that you want people to be well, present, engaged with their lives, happy, productive.

Jameela: You had this one post that kind of, you know, touches on some of these things. It was the pop psychology is not psychology and in it you say everyone you dislike is not a narcissist, which is something again that we see everywhere where we have taken narcissism, which is a severe, like, it’s a spectrum, but it’s a pronounced psychological disorder.

Every unpleasant experience is not trauma. That’s something that we started off this podcast about and I think that that’s important is that we don’t hyperbolize something that can even feel shit because it’s not the same as something that’s like marked and sometime’s changed your brain, uh, for your own sake, because trauma is incredibly difficult to crawl out [01:04:00] of, uh. I can say that from experience, so it would be better for it to be less, um, dramatic.

Seerut: But that doesn’t mean that it’s, it’s less important or that you don’t deserve empathy or care or treatment. What, you know, whatever it is, whatever, whether it’s a different diagnosis, um, because trauma is not the only diagnosis or whether it’s what you’ve been through or whether it’s how you’ve been treated or things that didn’t happen, either way, it’s, it’s still important. It’s not less than, you know.

Jameela: Yeah. Having needs does not make you codependent.

Seerut: Because we see all these constant, constant posts on people pleasing and neediness. You see them from both sides. So one side just says things like, it’s the same slogan everybody has, you’re only as needy as your unmet needs. Now that might be true for some people, but others have just found themselves in a sort of behavioral feedback loop of dependence or expecting other people to feed the, you know, to meet their needs or [01:05:00] fulfill their needs or found themselves in a place of learned helplessness in this area.

Um, so you have one side that absolves it and says, just be needy as possible and it’s not going to have any consequences and the other side loves to talk about codependency and we’re literally wired to be codependent, we’re wired to be, to live in sort of cooperation in groups.

Jameela: And you’re saying that they’re saying codependency is a bad thing?

Seerut: Yeah. And it’s not, it’s just like, and then they love to get into semantic like, oh, you, you’re talking about interdependence, not codependence and it’s like, that’s really a semantic at this point. You’re going to need other people and that’s okay. You know, you’re not an island.

Jameela: As in within reason.

Seerut: Yeah, within reason.

Jameela: Someone who just needs, needs you a bit, who doesn’t need you for everything.

Seerut: Yeah. And even in times in life, like, you will be more needy with your friends when you’re going through a breakup, for example. That doesn’t mean that you’re a needy person always. It means that you’re just hot and looking for some, some comfort.

Jameela: Yeah. It’s the rise of [01:06:00] individualism, I guess, that’s contributed to demonizing all codependency.

Seerut: Yeah. And like healthy individualism is really important because you need to be able to stand on your own two feet and look after yourself. And the collective is only as healthy as the individuals are. So every single person in the collective is very needy, coddled into not, you know, being completely incapacitated, very emotionally dysregulated, and can’t manage their own emotions. What’s the collective going to look like? Versus a collective where each individual has some sort of, you know, personal responsibility, does their best to, you know, manage their own stuff. When you need to, you ask for help. You help people as well when you have the power to, and, you know, you’re able to stand on your own two feet and essentially behave like a, like a grown adult.

Jameela: An outsource when you just really need it.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: You also say disagreement is not gaslighting, which is, I think, the thing you say quite often that has a growing resonance with more and more people I know. Like a lot of people [01:07:00] share it when you talk about that. A lot of people that I know or follow or see, but unexpected people, people who used to use the terminology of gaslighting all the time. I’m sure I’ve misused it before, especially when it first kind of rose, but we, we do have a skewed understanding of what gaslighting is and someone just saying that’s not true isn’t the same as them saying you’re crazy and don’t have a grip on reality. And gaslighting is real and something that exists and something that’s very, very dangerous and coercive and scary and it’s important to not, again, dilute the terminology of what that is and misuse it.

Seerut: It’s not a clinical term. It’s a, it’s a colloquial term.

Jameela: That comes from a movie.

Seerut: A film. Yeah. If anyone doesn’t know, the, the, the origin of the term gaslighting comes from a movie where this guy

Jameela: A film called Gaslight.

Seerut: And he keeps turning on these gas lamps and his wife can see them and then he, he makes her feel as though she’s seeing things and that the gas lamps haven’t been turned on [01:08:00] and um, that she’s, you know, imagining things and kind of losing her, her grip on reality and her sanity. And that’s where the term gaslighting comes from. And yeah, there are people who, um, in very extreme circumstances might attempt to do that, but it really doesn’t happen in normal everyday conversation. Um, actual gaslighting, that’s a very personality disordered way to interact with somebody, you know, disagreement or, um, so actually I don’t agree with that, or this isn’t the correct fact, this is what, what it, what it actually is, or, um, I just don’t share your worldview. I have my own, actually. That gets called gaslighting. And it’s one more way that these terms have been weaponized to use against people in service of keeping your blinders on, never having to, you know, experience cognitive dissonance and, and look at yourself and open your mind a bit.

Jameela: And lastly, you talk about [01:09:00] speaking like an HR memo is not self awareness. And I feel like that one’s a bit more to dig into that slightly more, which is that there has been like an increased culture in people reading out text messages they’ve sent to a friend in need, and it’s a very cold, self preservational, very clinically, uh, worded thing about how I do not have space, and I cannot hold space for your feelings right now, and I have to set my own boundary. And it’s like lots of like, space, boundary, uh, a lot of kind of big buzzwords on Instagram. And it’s, it’s interesting to do the very mixed reaction in the comment section where some people are like, yes, I’m going to take note of this and I’m going to use the same terminology. And I’m going to tell people that I can’t help anyone because I’m dedicated to this like obsessive pursuit of my own wellness. And then other people saying like, this is cold. It’s okay to not have space, not to not be able to have space for someone. You might have your own shit going on and you can’t, but we don’t need to talk to each other [01:10:00] using all of these like, there’s been a very famous celebrity case in the last week that uses lots of terms about like boundaries incorrectly towards his girlfriend where her behavior crosses his boundary somehow, which it’s a complex misuse of the concept of boundaries.

It has been quite dehumanizing and scary to watch the rise of very dehumanizing ways to tell people that you love and who love you that, like, your cup is just full. There’s a nicer way to say it.

Seerut: It’s, for me, it’s a big cultural difference because, like, when I came to England and I found, like, you go out to eat with your friends and then, like, everyone will count every single penny and like, oh you owe two pence more or you owe me one pound from last week and it was a big cultural shock because in India it’s like you have money you pay, I have money I pay, and it’s like no one’s really keeping track in the same kind of way.

And it’s the same when it comes to being there for people, like my friend’s not okay, okay, it’s four in the morning or it’s two and it doesn’t matter. [01:11:00] If somebody in your life that you have a relationship with needs your help, you just go. It’s just how it is.

Jameela: Again, within reason. Again, within reason. I’m sorry I keep driving you mad with like, you know, my obsession with nuance, but it’s just, there are people who overextend.

Seerut: Those scripts might be useful if you ever have somebody in your life who’s an absolute, like, arsehole, I think is the term. Um, and they, you know, they’re just an endless black hole of neediness.

Jameela: Who withdraws but doesn’t deposit. But then that’s also like, that’s someone you shouldn’t really be friends with. That’s a friendship you should then, maybe.

Seerut: It depends, like what if it’s a family member, what if it’s somebody that, it’s more complex than that, or somebody that you really care about and you don’t want to turn your back on, but you also don’t want to, don’t want to completely perish in the process. And then you need actual boundaries, not the celebrity boundaries.

But overall, like, it’s like self sacrifice has become this dirty term, this dirty word that nobody should ever, [01:12:00] you know, always look after number one first. But like, say you rang me crying and I was eating my dinner. Of course I would say, what happened? Why are you crying? And then speak, not, excuse me, I’m eating, I have to set a boundary because I’m right now eating my soup and you have to wait till you stop, you know, you can cry when I’m finished and then I can have a chat with you. I don’t, I don’t want to live in a world where you treat people that coldly. Like if my, if people in my life need me, I’ll be there for them. It’s for me, it’s that, that simple and straightforward and I’m, that’s how I want to live. And, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to live in a world where we, we speak to people that we are really close to or that love us, and you speak to them in this sterile, alienating way of, um, it’s basically like saying fuck off in quite a lot of words.

Jameela: In a lot of insta therapy buzzwords. Um, okay, so, fundamentally, with The Trenches, with your work, with the incredibly no bullshit way that you conduct yourself [01:13:00] online.

Seerut: I have to say one thing.

Jameela: Go one.

Seerut: Which is that there’s a disclaimer for The Trenches. It’s not a substitute for therapy.

Jameela: Yes.

Seerut: And if you need therapy, please don’t join. This is not, this is not therapy. It’s not any kind of psychological care. It’s for people, you can do it alongside therapy, but it’s for, um, it’s not a one to one relationship. It’s just, it’s not therapy. You’ll have great knowledge. You’re going to meet some cool people, talk to them. We have hangouts, so on, but it’s not mental health treatment, so if you need that, this is not the place.

Jameela: No, it’s just more somewhere to exchange different ideas where you’re not going to experience some of the coddling, I guess, like dialogue that you see online where you’re going to be given. You’re going to be encouraged towards finding tools to get out of whatever it is that you’re in that led you there in the first place.

Seerut: And also encouraged to look at yourself as human, who doesn’t have to be perfectly healed, and it’s [01:14:00] okay if you struggle with things, and the thing that really counts is you get up every day and you try again. That’s what matters.

Jameela: What do you most hope for? Like, what do you, you know, with all the work you do, what do you hope for? Why are you doing this? Why are you putting yourself out there? Like you, like me, receive backlash sometimes and, uh, people being frustrated with you or it’s, it’s not an easy, um, path to walk the one that is against the current dogma. And mental health, as we kind of touched on earlier, has become a dogmatic space. What do you hope to achieve? Why are you doing this?

Seerut: I think there’s just a weird chip in my brain that doesn’t allow me to not say what I really think. So I think that’s part of it. It’s not noble or anything, it’s just how I’m wired.

And another part of it is, I think there should be a pushback against what is, um, a deluge of healing journey, you are worthy, nothing is your fault. I think if there’s one voice that’s against it, [01:15:00] you don’t have to listen to me. You know, you can tune me out or mute me or block me. And there’s 50, 000 other accounts you can listen to, but if by some chance you have the same feeling that I do about those accounts, then I’m here for you. And you can, you know, probably come across like minded people in the comments. And I think a lot of people have given the same feedback I’ve had for a few years now that I’ve been, you know, talking about these ideas is, you’ve made me feel sane. I realized I have, I wasn’t losing my mind. Um, thank you for putting into words what I was too scared to say. And I think that that’s sort of a service in itself. Um, I don’t talk about therapy very often on social media because it’s almost too complex to boil down into a soundbite, so it’s more some of these more, these, these ideas, I guess.

But I think they’re important and they have great value to me and things like resilience and post traumatic growth [01:16:00] and personal responsibility and being considerate of other human beings, not just thinking of yourself and cutting off everyone. Um, you know, being a little bit relational, all those things, I don’t want them to be lost in this, in this cultural climate. And I want to advocate for them because I think they’re really important.

Jameela: Yeah, I feel the same way. I think I, I miss people. I’m starting to miss people. I’m watching us like drift further and further away from each other. And even though I’m an introvert, I’m not really a spiritual person, but there’s a growing feeling of just kind of cultural loneliness. And I want us to come together and I want us to find ourselves again and find each other again. And we can’t really do that till we find ourselves. And so I think that’s why your work resonates with me even when I respectfully disagree. Uh, I think you’re on the right side here. I see your heart and your intention. And now I know your [01:17:00] story, which like further, as always contextualizes why you speak the way you do and why you feel the way that you do. And, um, I hope that people can at least find more of a middle ground because I think that’s, you know, I was talking about the pendulum swinging from our fucked up generation of don’t say anything, grin and bear it to now everything is trauma. Everything is bad. Nothing is my fault. I don’t have to take personal responsibility for anything. I’m sure that pendulum will swing back to the middle. It always swings the extreme first. And I think we’re just letting people know when they start to find that middle that we’ll be there. I hope we’re already figuring out our way there.

Seerut: Yeah. And it, you know, that the middle way, it’s a, it’s a Buddhist idea and it really, really resonates with me. And I think that it has application in every area in terms of like political division.

Jameela: Yeah, I don’t think the way that we were raised works either. You know, I think it’s just finding, I think it’s just finding that middle ground and, and finding the nuance [01:18:00] and maybe expanding the terminology rather than sweeping everything into just one category. I think these are the ways out of this kind of like clusterfuck that we kinda keep word salading our way into.

Seerut: Yeah.

Jameela: Seerut, thank you so much for coming on today and for being so thorough in, um, and honest. Uh, I really appreciate it, and please come back another time. And I rec, I highly recommend even if you disagree with her following, uh, Seerut, because I think the ideas are interesting. And I think I’ve, you know, some friends of mine who at first had quite a prickly reaction to some of the things I was reposting of yours have grown to change their mind because they’ve investigated why they felt like their porcupine kind of prickles come out so much, why they had such a big reaction. And that in and of itself is interesting. It’s interesting to, within reason, challenge yourself. I’m a big advocate of protecting yourself and going like, fucking, I can’t see all this [01:19:00] shit. I need to step back, but occasionally I like to veer out into the danger, into the swamp, uh, you know, of the internet and see things that might, you know, rattle me in some way and figure out why, why did it rattle me?

And so I think people should follow you and, and investigate that in themselves and then choose whether or not to stay. I think you have interesting ideas and I’m glad that you’re saying them and thank you because that’s brave as a, especially as a brown woman.

Seerut: Thank you. I really appreciate that. And I was genuinely, when you first started following me, I was genuinely really surprised because I think I had a certain view of you. And I thought, Oh my God, she’s following me. Is she going to cancel me? I was so worried because I had this kind of like social, social justice kind of view. And then we started speaking, and I was like, oh shit, she’s actually really cool. And that was a good way for me to see, you know, challenge my bias and that you shouldn’t judge people off their social media reputation or whatever it is. And then we’ve spoken and, [01:20:00] and we have, yeah, there were areas of disagreement, but there are also areas of very real commonality. And I think this is the way forward, exactly this dynamic, but on a wider scale where you, you look for the common ground and you humanize other people and you don’t make it a big crisis if you don’t agree on everything.

Jameela: Thank you for coming on and I appreciate you.

Seerut: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Jameela: Same.

Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh With Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson and the beautiful music you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake.

If you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher Premium by going to stitcher.com/premium and [01:21:00] using the promo code iweigh.

Lastly over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 1-818-660-5543 or email us what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners.

Listener: I weigh the connection I have with myself and the work it’s taken to get where I am today. I weigh my queerness and the deep love and connections I have with my friends. I weigh standing up and speaking up when I am witness or am victim to injustice. I weigh having the humility to be wrong in order to evolve and learn. I weigh my connection to nature and the deep fire I have inside to create positive change in this world. Thank you.