College Readiness: The Hidden Cost of Being Overmedicated with Joanna Lilley M.A., NCC

Mental health readiness is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of college preparation. While academic credentials and test scores dominate the conversation, students are rarely assessed for their emotional resilience and social readiness – the very skills that often determine their success.

Our conversation with Joanna Lilley, a therapeutic consultant who works exclusively with college-aged young adults, reveals a troubling pattern. Many students who excel academically find themselves overwhelmed by college life, sometimes withdrawing after just days or weeks. The culprit? A lack of preparation for the independence, social navigation, and emotional regulation college demands.

Parents play a crucial role in this readiness equation. The "helicopter" or "lawnmower" parenting styles that clear all obstacles from a child's path inadvertently prevent them from developing resilience. When these students face inevitable college challenges without their parents' intervention, they often crumble under pressure they've never learned to manage.

The COVID pandemic has exacerbated these issues, creating significant developmental gaps for students who spent their formative middle school years in isolation. Today's college freshmen missed critical opportunities to develop social skills during lockdowns, making campus life particularly challenging.

Perhaps most concerning is the over-medication of young adults. Many high-achieving students are prescribed multiple psychiatric medications to help them cope with academic pressure, creating additional risks when they mix medications with alcohol or discontinue them without supervision in college environments.

What determines success isn't academic capability but rather having experienced adversity and developed coping strategies. Students need balance, social skills, and the self-awareness to recognize when they need help. For many, taking a gap year might be the wisest decision, allowing time to develop emotional maturity before attempting college.

Ready to reassess what college readiness truly means? Listen now to understand how you can support genuine preparation that encompasses the whole person – not just their transcript.

Chapters

• 0:00 Mental Health & College Readiness
• 5:43 Signs Your Child Isn't Ready
• 11:45 Medication Concerns in Young Adults
• 19:35 COVID's Impact on Social Development
• 23:13 Academic vs. Emotional Readiness
• 32:01 Overmedication and College Transition
• 36:23 Parent Tracking and False Security

Transcript

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 0:22

Well, hey everyone, you have been gaslit into believing that your mental health is fully prepared and ready for college. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, dr Terrellin and therapist Jen, and you've landed here on the Gaslit Truth podcast. Today we have a guest with us, joanna Lilly. Joanna is a nationally certified counselor. She's the owner of Lilly Consulting, where she has been helping young adults find mental health, substance use and wellness resources since 2016. She's known to be fiery Well, thank goodness that's why she's on the show, right, but it comes from a place of being passionate and caring for client well-being and betterment. She also hosts the Success is Subjective podcast. Welcome to the show, joanna. Thanks for having me.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 1:08

Yeah, you know the college thing is something, because I said to Jen before you got on, I said I don't always agree with that. College is. I think you said in your thing college is a scam. I don't always agree with that and I hope that we can get talking about that part of it too. But I think this is a really smart conversation to have, especially at this time of year, because there's going to be a lot of kiddos heading off to college who are probably not mentally prepared for that. So I think I'd like to kick this off by asking a question what does it mean to be mentally prepared, or prepared, mental health, prepared to go to college? Like what do you see in your clients and what does that mean?

Joanna Lilly: 1:55

Yeah Well, I mean actually a lot of at least the information that you see out there that folks will focus on. Is this difference between somebody who's college capable and somebody who's college ready? And I think what we're leaning into is this like college readiness piece, which is really like do you have the ability to regulate? Are you okay with discomfort? Can you handle like putting yourself in situations that will come across as naturally terrifying, or like eliciting fear, which is normal? But how do you respond to that? Right?

Joanna Lilly: 2:29

Do you have the anxiety that's spiking so much that you can't even lean in to show up for class or to feel comfortable meeting your new you know dorm mate or like whatever the case may be? So I think, kind of going back to what you were just talking about, there's so many indicators of what looks like whether or not somebody is really going to be able to hash it out, and for me, the biggest piece really are, like the most common thing that sticks out is if a parent was very, very involved in making sure that that young person was like to a T right, all T's, all I's, you know, t's crossed, i's dotted with all things that were taken care of, not just with mental health but with school executive functioning related social activities just very managed because there's no room for that discomfort, the unraveling, the ability to test it out.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 3:23

You're the helicopter parent, essentially the unraveling the ability. You're the helicopter parent essentially yeah, no, the lawnmower parent.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 3:29

I heard about the lawn. Do you know what the lawnmower parent is? It's the parent who gets in front of the child and mows everything down for them first, instead of the helicopter, and I'm like sometimes I was a lawnmower parent okay, so this is what you're describing.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 3:43

So this is kind of like a red flag almost for you. It's kind of an indicator of that readiness. Not being there socially, emotionally, mentally is when there was someone else in their life who did all the things for them yes, was there to protect them through everything, help them through all their emotional turmoil, constantly being involved, not letting them have any independence. I mean, essentially you don't learn how to do anything by yourself when someone does it for you. So that's kind of one of those indicators that you notice.

Joanna Lilly: 4:13

Yeah, and I think this time of year, right, we are spot on.

Joanna Lilly: 4:17

I am speaking with so many parents I can't even tell you how many right now that are like, even though I just paid the deposit officially and we've signed up for orientation here in the next like three weeks, the parents like I really don't think they're ready.

Joanna Lilly: 4:31

And it's like, well, first of all, we've got two kind of competing perspectives, right, we've got this young adult who thinks that they might be ready, which in reality there's probably a lot of like growing anxiety again around whether or not they think that they can handle it. But again, that's probably a lot of like growing anxiety again around whether or not they think that they can handle it. But again, that's also a conflict too, of like well, this is what I'm supposed to do, because what you know, society and my friends and everybody's been telling me that this is the path I have to take. And then the parent that is second guessing their child's readiness and a lot of that honestly again has to do with like, what has their involvement been in making sure that their child's okay? And so now here we are, literally 11th hour, and we are questioning whether or not they're ready, and to me I'm like trust your gut, parent Do you think some of that is parents questioning if they're ready for their child to leave.

Joanna Lilly: 5:22

You know I appreciate you asking this. I do think that there's a component to that right. Parental Terry, were you ready?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 5:28

Come on, terry, I know this is we're going to personalize this for just a second. That is so real right.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 5:34

Yes, yeah it is but but. But I do have to say I, I'm a firm believer in cause. I do have parents, you know. We have parents that talk to us and just friends with kids that are in high school or beyond, and I tell them, like if you don't believe your kid can, then they can't. You have to stand behind them and believe that they can do something with them without you doing it for them, because you're going to disable them at the same time. If you think that they can't and you lead with that type of fear with your kid, like I know I can't, I'm so scared and all these things, like you think it's all in your head, but it's actually in your behavior too as a parent, and I think that's where the lawnmower parent comes in or the helicopter parent is. That's the belief that your child actually can't without you, and I think that's a problematic space for parents to be in. As someone whose kids have gone to college right, only one went off to college, only one left what do you?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 6:36

see in your practice with this, joanna, and actually with answering that question too, can you share a little bit with our audience about the type of population that you work with, the age demographic that you work with, the areas of focus that you have, because this is an area of expertise?

Joanna Lilly: 6:52

for you. Yeah, so I'm a therapeutic consultant. I work with young adults. All of my clients are between the ages of 18 and 29, the majority of which are really college age, so 18 to 23. And I say from that and I keep a small caseload, so it's manageable. But the majority of my caseload are literally young adults that attempted college, whether they were there for a day, not an exaggeration a week, you know, like a couple semesters.

Joanna Lilly: 7:21

My work and all of its mental health related, it's not that they weren't academically capable. I mean, certainly a lot of them ended up failing their classes, but that had everything to do with the rest of their wellbeing, impacting their ability to be a student. But that said, like my job is to kind of help unpack what just happened. What do you need? How do we get you the support that's going to basically get you back in a position to feel confident in yourself as a person pursuing some sort of post-secondary path, if that's what you even want to do?

Joanna Lilly: 7:55

Because sometimes the unpacking is why was I even forcing this square peg in a round hole? I don't actually even want a college degree. I want to do something completely different that doesn't require a degree. So, anyways, it is the joy, but it's also a double-edged sword of really helping a young adult. And then obviously we're dealing with the entire family too, because there's a lot of pressures depending on where they're from, the expectations around kind of post-secondary pursuits or even stigmatization around mental health. I mean, it's a lot to deal with, but that is my full-time business is working with this population of young people.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 8:35

Yeah, why do you think so many young people in high school you may or may not know this end up getting medicated during high school? Do you have any thoughts on that? Like because I feel like so much of that is driven by parents and fear and because I think when you head into college and you're medicated, that is a recipe for disaster right there, because, again, nobody's monitoring your medications and you're now taking them sometimes and you're also taking them and using, maybe, drugs likely alcohol, all these things.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 10:15

So where do you think that that might originate? I'm just curious because I know we're all in the same field here. Where do you think the prescribing of teenagers? Where do you think that comes from and what are your thoughts on that?

Joanna Lilly: 10:31

I'm going to look to both of you to chime in on this, for sure, but I think from my lens what I see is we are an over-medicated society in general the US, right. We are high pressure, and if you can't keep up, whether it's anxiety, whether it's depression, whether it's ADHD, there's a pill for that. And so we go, and this is like so archaic in the way that I'm saying it, but it's like parents seek support from professionals. So, whether it's your pediatrician, your primary care physician, or we have the ability to seek out a psychiatrist. Please help my child. Here's the symptoms. Let's just get a quick pill right. Let's fix this and move on.

Joanna Lilly: 11:14

But the problem is that we're also dealing with so many other layers of complexity, like developing brains. I mean just like in general, what our society is dealing with. Right, we've got like economic stresses. We've got like economic stresses, we've got like political stresses. We've got like all these different things that are impacting our young people as they're growing up. But just kind of as a medical model, we really are focused on this, like, well, just take a pill and you'll feel better.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 11:42

Well, also, I think, just to chime in here, that there's also this messaging to parents too If you don't, your child's going to take their life Like, if you don't medicate them, then they will for sure take their life. And how dare you not help them in that particular way and which ends up disabling them again?

Dr Teralyn Sell: 12:04

Yeah disabling them again for their future. So I think it's kind of a hot button right now and I'd like to kind of profile the kid who might be medicated. When I say medicated, in this sense I'm talking about antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds. When I kind of profile it, knowing what I know, what I see is high performing students being medicated because of that extra pressure and the beliefs of who they need to be and the continuation of that. That's what I see. The kids that are in I got to take all AP classes, I got to be the best, I can't miss out a single test All of that those kids are the ones that, seemingly to me, end up getting medicated the most, and also the impoverished students. I think those are the two biggest students, in my opinion, that end up getting medicated through their life at an early age. Because it's accessible Medications are accessible to everybody. But that's what I see, especially the ones that are going off to college, is it's always the high performers that end up in therapy.

Joanna Lilly: 13:21

It's weird to me, it's super weird and, honestly, those are the clients that I'm working with. They are high performers, they're the ones that don't make it past the first day. They're like, oh my gosh Right, like what's happening, and so that fear of failure too is just, you know, the stakes are too high.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 13:39

Yeah, and the lack of resilience yeah, a hundred percent. The ability to bounce back after something quote, unquote bad, because bad is a perception right After something bad happens, the ability to bounce back is not there. It's just a colossal failure in that first week I keep thinking about, because I had a kid who went to college in 2020, graduated 2020, went off to college that fall. The social structures of that time were so different and I don't know if you see a difference in social structures still beyond that, because the 18, 19, 17, 18, 19-year-olds are not my forte, except for being a parent, right? Do you see that the social structures have still changed?

Dr Teralyn Sell: 14:31

Yeah, yeah Could you talk a little bit more about that.

Joanna Lilly: 14:34

They were in middle school right During that time.

Joanna Lilly: 14:38

And so these are, yeah, absolutely formative, social, like actual formative years where you're supposed to make these social connections which we know is still tumultuous, because that's how it is in middle school but here you are studying at home, completely isolated, and we're also just ramping up a lot of the tech-specific addiction or kind of tech-connected behaviors, and so it just created even larger of a rift in terms of the ability to connect.

Joanna Lilly: 15:08

I mean, the expression how to make friends is so real right now and I, you know, I obviously my lens is so focused on the college age, but I think it's real for high school students now too, depending on where they were kind of developmentally. As you know, covid was playing out. It really had a significant impact and we've been saying it and I say we like other consultants, other mental health professionals who've just kind of been talking about it it's like we weren't just in it right then with the young people that were like just graduating high school or college. It's like, can you imagine this next wave of young people that were, I mean, even babies, babies born at that time and how that was impacting them? So I mean we're talking an 18 year kind of impact.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 15:54

Right.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 15:56

Go ahead yeah.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 15:57

I? I was just thinking about the idea of academic readiness versus, like, social readiness and emotional readiness. Okay, so, yes, I'm thinking about being back forever ago in high school, right, and when I was being prepped, prepped for college, right, taking that damn ACT test repeatedly which I fucking did miserable on. I think it took three times. Hence why I couldn't get into a good college, because that's all that mattered, right? Was that stupid multiple choice test that I suck at taking. Okay, not to get on my soapbox with that, but damn so much disappointment.

Joanna Lilly: 16:35

So much self-disappointment.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 16:39

No, you're not going to get into the schools. It was just so ridiculous. Anyways, I kept thinking about how prepped I was for academic readiness, but I was not prepped for like the social, emotional readiness part, like the heaviness of what, like this environment is going to do, the pressures that's going to happen when you go from you know, like a very structured school day that's eight hours long and every hour or two hours, depending on what kind of block schedule or not you have where you're rotating through versus here you go. We're going to sign you up for some classes. You're going to sit in this huge lecture hall for an hour. You're going to have three tests the entire semester. We're going to throw the lowest grade out. Two are going to count.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 17:24

So if you suck at like certain types of test assessments, you're screwed. We're going to put a ton of pressure on you because you're left to your own devices to figure out what to do socially. You're going to start experimenting with alcohol, like I think about, like the disordered eating that was occurring right in my life at that time, but that wasn't something that was being highlighted right for me. Like I was academically ready, I was told that, yep, straight A student honors student, national Honors Society, number 11 in my class of 100 and something I had all the academic accolades I was set, but from a mental health standpoint I was a mess, but that wasn't assessed.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 18:03

No, but in today's world these kids are going from in-person now right to a lot of the coursework that they have is online. They're doing it right in their dorms, which doesn't allow for that social interaction yet again, except for sitting in your dormitory. So, if you can if you guys are listening here if you can have your kids, take as many in-person classes as possible. Don't start doing the online stuff right away. It's a recipe for disaster, especially if they had trouble socializing in high school.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 18:38

Do we assess, though? Do we assess kids for the mental preparedness, the mental health readiness? We do academic stuff until we're blue in the face. Tell us what you think about that, Joanna, because you're shaking your head, we don't.

Joanna Lilly: 18:52

And it literally is left up to a parent to be essentially the final gatekeeper to say I don't think you're ready. Which then, if school classmates, the community, right, like all the messaging has been you're quote, unquote, ready, all tied towards that academic side of things, then all of a sudden we've got this parent-child conflict too, and parents tend to be the ones that, at least again anecdotally, what I'm seeing parents feel really uncomfortable holding that boundary and saying I don't think you should go, and then, and then, unfortunately, again anecdotally, they're sending them off. They don't last very long. And now we're, now we're dealing with such a like a mound of shame.

Joanna Lilly: 19:37

It's not even that you just didn't do well academically, it's I didn't make friends, it's this was my whole identity, this is I was supposed to be a college student and what the heck just happened. So now I've got this like imposter syndrome that I'm wrestling with, which, even if they are medicated, now we're just like really, we're really having to untangle the mess that just played out, which is who am I, what do I need? And there's just so much work that has to be done. And then you've got the like parent dynamic there too, because there's some guilt.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 20:14

I mean, it's a lot, you know, I think about, cause I I have a recent college grad and I'm I'm kind of going back to his readiness for college. To me it was not an academic readiness at all. Okay, he made it through high school just fine. And I tell people this all the time you don't have to be a straight A student. That is not the predictor of your outcome in college. It is not. Whether you take AP courses is not the predictor of your college outcome. The predictor is your social skills.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 20:42

And I will tell you that my son was an incredibly social kid, very social, not to the point of like parties and drinking and stuff like that, but he was social. He was an athlete, he was involved in teams and when he went to college he said he, he set forth his uh, like, this is my goal and he said I'm going to take advantage of any opportunity that comes my way. And that's the kind of kid he is. And he did he Everything he opened up. And so when I work with the young adults that are in college, I tell them join a club, socialize, do something outside of academics. You have to, you have to learn how to do these things. And when they start doing those things, guess what? They come back to session. They're like that was amazing. And I have new friends now. I'm like, yeah, it's pretty incredible that the only friend that you thought you were going to have was your roommate. And when that doesn't go well, that roommate situation, when that doesn't go well, everything falls apart if you have nothing else that you're building. So I wish there were more conversation Right now.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 21:50

I think the conversation about college readiness is one it's going to cost too much and you're going to be in $200,000 worth of debt and you shouldn't do that, which is not the case in state schools, by the way. And number two, it's all academic readiness. How did you score on that ACT which they took away in our state for the majority of the state colleges? How did you do in that and what are your academics like? Did you take any AP classes which don't even fucking matter? They don't matter, yeah, yeah. So how do you assess how?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 22:24

do you assess? That's what I was going to say. How do you assess this? Like what? Well, how.

Joanna Lilly: 22:26

How do you?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 22:27

assess this. How do people do this?

Dr Teralyn Sell: 22:35

Yeah, I mean, if I had a magic wand, what we would do, I think oh, she's doing the therapist magic wand thing right now, do it. Do it, go ahead, go Sorry.

Joanna Lilly: 22:41

Okay, if I had a magic wand, I think the way that we would truly assess it is whether or not a young adult. I mean, I think to your point it is about can you socialize, do?

Joanna Lilly: 22:53

you have any type of social skills period and I don't want to minimize that sometimes that that's harder for neurodiverse young adults, but there's got to be effort put in right. Do you understand what it means to connect with others? The other piece I think that's important is adversity. Have you experienced adversity, not managed by your parents, but you yourself actually worked through, because that is a real life skill that needs to? I mean, we're talking about resilience, we're talking about grit. That's the kind of stuff that college students need to have.

Joanna Lilly: 23:25

But if you haven't experienced any adversity because your life's been pretty protected up until the point that you literally graduated high school, college is going to be a rude awakening, rude, rude awakening. And then the other thing I think that's important is there's got to be balance. We can't continue to put so much pressure on the academic side of things or the scores or the accolades. I think it's important to have balance right To be engaged in activities, to have some artistic right, tapping into artistic skills, not just like science. Even though I know STEM's been pushed so hard, I think we're still human, like we need to actually have creative people that are doing things.

Joanna Lilly: 24:10

All this is to say to I think the biggest piece is that we can also ask do you even want to go to school? Because if you don't understand that college is optional higher education, then the idea of college can wait. It's not that it's off the table, like I think that's. The other thing too, is I get parents will say, well, if they don't go to college now, they'll never go. And it's like what, what are you drinking? That's not true.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 24:37

Like truly bullshit. Kool-aid is going through your system. I'm pretty sure not like 50, 60 years yet of their lives where they can go do it Right, oh my it Right, oh my goodness.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 24:49

Yeah, it definitely looks different. It definitely looks different, for sure it does.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 24:53

But think about how, like I think about that, like if I would have waited, like, think about how things could have looked just a little different if you would have waited a bit Financially. Think about that for a hot second. How could I have actually done differently Finance wise? Because that was horrific, right, working the multiple jobs, knowing that even now, yes, I'm going to be in debt till I probably die with loans because I have so many. When I think about that idea, think about it financially. If you wait, think about social, emotionally and how growth changes. If you wait, shit, think about the central nervous system developing and it's not going to happen until you're like 23 people, right? So you just threw yourself into this. Some stressors that people can't handle at 18. Right, well, that's still fucking developing. And then, unfortunately, a lot of times and we were going to talk a little bit about this too and we touched on it but a lot of these kids go to school and they end up having to be medicated because they can't make it through the stress of school.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 25:52

Yeah, and I say, if you're going to go to college and you have to medicate your way through college, then you need to actually think is this the right?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 26:02

thing for me right now. Think about that. That's our whole lives, that's many people's lives. Our clients medicate their way through shit marriages, shit jobs, shit circumstances.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 26:11

Don't start doing that as a young person, to medicate your way through a hard time. You've got an opportunity to accept it, change it or leave it. Essentially, put up or shut up, that's what it is. But you have to be able to identify that and put words to it and step out of your own guilt and shame about it and make that adult decision if it's not right for you, or figure out how to be resilient and bounce back. Figure out how to discuss this with your instructors, right? This is what I told my kids, both of them, all the time. I'm like get to know your instructors, you'll be fine. Get to know them, but what does that mean? You got to know how to socialize. You got to know how to talk. You got to know how to express these opinions to yourself, right? Or to somebody else.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 27:01

And I do think that all the quest for diagnosis and all these things when kids are younger is not as helpful as people think as they grow up, because then we become lawnmowers and helicopters. So the ability to believe that you can do something is stronger than anything else. The disbelief that you might have and I'm going to say this very controversially, because we were pushed to get my son diagnosed at a very young age kindergarten first, second grade and we didn't. We took him a different route and it turned out that he had something entirely different, but we never told him. We never told him that, like tutoring and whatever, he still had to do all the work, but he never knew.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 28:06

So he didn't know that that was putting him behind. He didn't know that what he learned was he had to learn different ways to adapt and how to be resilient with what it was, and I think that was the thing that helped him the most, instead of leaning on the idea that I have this diagnosis right, therefore I can't right and therefore I won't. And I think I mean that's a controversial thing to say it's not universal, that that would be great for every kid, so I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm saying is I tested it out and it was helpful for us and for him, and now he's a super successful human being, which is amazing. Um, screw you, kindergarten teacher, but anyway.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 28:53

Well, and that ties a little bit into being like gaslit by providers or by labels.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 28:58

And you, you said you know, like what it does, yes, like academic teachers, the system itself. When you, um, when, when you, when you completed your form that we asked our guest to fill out on the show you said something about these young adults that you're working with now and that they feel as though they've lost trust in this system in general, and whether it's minimizing feelings, whether it's like they start to like, get up alternative perspective and the whole time they weren't the problem, it was something else. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you're noticing with the clients you work with?

Joanna Lilly: 29:36

Yeah, and I think honestly a lot of it has to do too with and this is a trend, more so that I've seen, probably in the last year or so, is young adults that are coming to me that are on a lot of meds. I mean not just like, oh, you have one antidepressant or one anti-anxiety, it's like, holy shit, you're on five different meds and I'm not a psychiatrist. So I'm going to be the first to say like I am out of line to judge anything and I usually know you're not much.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 30:07

No, you're not, you are not, actually, no, so we don't need to hear any of that verbiage on you, girl, because you are. This is in your wheelhouse. This is in your wheelhouse to be able to discuss this with the patients and the parents with the patients and the parents 100%.

Joanna Lilly: 30:29

Thank you for giving me that. Um, all right, so what I?

Joanna Lilly: 30:31

haven't done though, and I will do moving forward is is, yeah, um, it just being shocked. Honestly, like one of the things is like, can we just talk about your sleep? Can we talk about, like your, your diet or your physical activity? Because, um, all of that is so out of whack and maybe it is tied to the meds that you're taking, but also, do you even know how you feel? Because you've been so numbed for so long and you have no concept of whether or not a med is really working or not?

Joanna Lilly: 31:01

And so, and you know again, there are some psychiatrists out there that do take their time with clients. It's few and far between. So the majority of the clients that I'm working with, when they come to me, they're like, yeah, well, I meet my psychiatrist once every three months maybe, and it's like, okay, that person's asking you a couple of questions and then they're making med adjustments and then they salute you off and they might see you again in three months. All of that is to say what the heck is going on. Can we literally peel all of this back? Just get literally back to baseline, eat some healthy food, go out and actually walk, get off your tech at night, so that you're actually getting quality sleep, which you probably weren't, because you were over, not just overmedicated, but you were doing multiple AP classes, all these activities and you were maybe getting three to four hours of sleep for like years.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 31:52

And how is that going to translate when you head off to college and now you're pulling all-nighters with your friends, you're going out drinking, you're doing all the things that impact your sleep quality and your ability to function and now you are a hot mess express? And I do want to bring in too that the majority of people on psychiatric medications this includes kids. It's not a psychiatrist that's doing this, it's it's their family doctor that's doing. That's at least starts it. They at least started with the kids and then maybe a psychiatrist will. Typically, I'm going to sound like a real bitch, but psychiatrists end up to me, end up stacking, like that's where the med stacking happens.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 32:33

That's where the polypharmacy comes in.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 32:36

Is when the family doctor's like well, this is getting a little bit beyond. You know what I can do. So I think we need a psych referral. And then the med stacking starts. And then you know, the parents feel like they're doing the best thing for them. The kid again has no agency, they have no say in any of this, they're just doing what the doctors and the parents say they need to do. To quote unquote feel better, but they're like I don't even know how to feel better.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 33:03

If you're interested, you should look at Peter Bregan's work on spellbinding, because that's what happens. You don't know what you're feeling or believing, but you're believing that whatever it is you're taking is helping you. But it's really harming you and you can't see it, but I bet parents can see it, which is why they drag them back into the psychiatrist's office again and then they're put on a new psych med, you know, in addition to what they have. Or they're staying up too late because their sleep hygiene is shit and they're on the phone all the time, and now they're giving a sleep aid to go to bed, you know. So this is the, this is the stacking, and this is where it begins in childhood, and then it just keeps going.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 33:43

And I think if I were a parent of a kid who was on one med, let alone a stack of meds, I probably wouldn't have them go to college because of all the other factors that are involved in what college life is like. And if you're a parent sitting here going, well, yeah, I did that in college, but I have a good kid and my good kid isn't going to go out yes, they are. Yes, they are Good kids. Do that too, right.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 34:13

Like this isn't. I think if you're going off thinking about what your kid is going to do delusionally in your mind as a parent, you need to pull that shit back and go. What did I do when I was 18? I did some crazy ass shit. Like probably did some illegal shit. Like seriously, your kid's going to do the same stuff. They're just not going to tell you.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 34:35

She is on a high horse right now and that thing is like galloping all over the fucking place right now.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 34:41

Sorry, I'm feeling it this morning. About this college discussion, yeah, but can we talk a little bit about parents who still track their kids in college?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 34:52

Yeah, okay. Tell us about it, joanna, tell us about it.

Joanna Lilly: 34:57

I think it goes back to the earlier conversation about that like summer before right. Are we really worried about the kid being successful on campus? Are we really worried about the kid being successful on campus? Are we worried that the parent is uncomfortable with the separation from their kid because they have been so overly involved? I would say that I it's all too common. I mean, the connection between young adults and their parents right now is actually it's just, it's foreign to me. Like I reflect back on when I was in college. I love my parents dearly and I was so excited to get out and have space.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 35:33

Yes, me too.

Joanna Lilly: 35:34

I mean, I had a cell phone.

Joanna Lilly: 35:35

believe it or not, it was like you know the old, like Nokia phone, I mean, it was like Facebook was just starting, it was like a whole thing. So I, my parents, didn't have the ability to track me. In fact, my dorm room still had like a rotary phone in the room and so that was like their best way of reaching out to me, and it would be like hey, if Joanna hasn't called in a week, we should probably just call to make sure she's alive, and I'd be like signs of life. I'm good, We'll talk later. So to me, I'm.

Joanna Lilly: 36:05

I'm really having to try to empathize where parents are coming from, and and because it's just such a different um generation than when I was in school, I struggle with it because I know that there's it, just it. It completely disrupts the ability for individuation. If your parents texting you saying why are you at this location, when you are putting yourself in social situations that are a stretch for you because you're in college and this is what college is about now you're flooded with all the feelings. I'm being watched, I'm feeling guilty.

Joanna Lilly: 36:44

I'm ashamed I should be studying. You know, like all the things, it provides the space to hover and it also kind of, in a like icky way, has the parent a little too involved in their child's college experience.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 37:00

I also think it gives the kids a very false sense of safety and security. Correct. I also think it gives the kids a very false sense of safety and security. Correct, Because what I hear is well, I do it to make sure they're safe. What are you going to do, Joanna? Your kid is four hours away at college. Well, I want to make sure they're not on the side of the road. It's going to take you four hours to get there?

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 37:18

Are you flash? Are you just going to blink your eyes and you're in Mankato like four states away, like this doesn't fucking work this way.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 37:27

And I tell them if you, want to make sure your kid is safe, then you talk to them about how to be safe on campus. You don't just track them on your phone as if that's going to be the safety net of their life. I did ask my son this because when he went off to college, I'm like hey, what if I tracked you on your phone? He said you will not, you will not do that. And I'm like you're right, I will not, I'm not going to do it. I've never tracked my kids, no matter what. But he fricking, studied abroad, he and we. He still wouldn't let us track him on his phone, even when he was abroad, you know, and I'm like that's fine, but if shit goes down, he's like you're not the first person I'm going to reach out to if shit goes down. And I'm in Spain, I'm like you're right, one hundred percent, you're correct. So I think it's that false sense of resiliency, false sense of safety and security and, believe it or not, parents are just fucking nosy.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 38:20

It goes back to that, so OK. So if you, joanna, as we wrap up here because I'm going to cut, I'm going to cut in time because this is where I'm going to be the responsible one in this. Oh, you're welcome. There's the mom and me going. We only have a few more minutes, girls, so we have to wrap up, okay, otherwise we won't have time for the next guest and all the things we have to do.

Dr Teralyn Sell: 38:39

I have a lot of feelings on this stuff.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 38:42

Okay, so if you could share as we wrap up what are the? What are the one or two most important things that you could share to either either kids, like the students themselves who are in this, going through it, and maybe something to the parent as well, that you want the world to know, that maybe they don't know that they really need to just fucking try to get consider and get curious about what would that be?

Joanna Lilly: 39:06

Okay For the student themselves. Just pause. Just pause, assess your, your own situation, your situation, your wants and needs. Because if you are, if you're motivated, you want to go to school and you want to know you, like you, have a clear path of what it is that you're going to do. I mean, I'm not going to stop you, but if you have any type of gut check, that's like I don't actually even know if I want to go to college. High school's been really stinking hard socially, academically, whatever.

Joanna Lilly: 39:36

Just pause and decide what you want to do and then honestly to kind of piggyback on that, just from the parent perspective, if your kid is saying I'm not sure I want to go to college right now, let them ride that out. Oh my gosh, please do not force a square peg in a round hole because you, as a parent, are uncomfortable with your reflection as a parent. If my kid's not at insert name of fancy school, then it's a reflection of me as a parent. If my kid's not at insert name of fancy school, then it's a reflection of me as a parent. You need to check yourself because this isn't about you. This is about having raised a healthy human who actually self-advocates, is pursuing whatever path they want to take, and if that's in college, great. If it's not, that's also okay. So this is the perfect opportunity to, just like on both sides, figure out what makes sense and support it. I love that. I love that.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 40:32

That's perfect. Let's wrap up on that, because that was a bull right on the end. Yeah, you guys better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Therapist Jenn Schmitz: 40:41

Okay, all right, everyone, we are your whistleblowing shrinks and if you've stayed to the end here you know we are the guests of truth podcast. That's right. We rotate in that role. All right, everybody, you know that you can find us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. We are on all of the socials and if you want to tell us your Gaslit Truth stories, you can get to us at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. You can also DM us on any of our socials. Thank you, everybody for staying to the end and that's a wrap.