The Political Bias of Mental Healthcare | The Gaslit Truth Podcast with Ryan Rogers, Dr Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz

The Gaslit Truth Podcast is hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz, where they examine mental health myths, psychiatric medication harm, therapy culture, informed consent and brain-based healing.

In this episode, Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz sit down with author and clinician Ryan Rogers to discuss political bias within therapy and trace how graduate programs, professional culture, and social media turned “therapy as activism” into a norm—and why that trade-off leaves people in pain without the skills they need.

 From classrooms that replace modality training with slogans, to ethical “safety” claims used as weapons, we examine how politics in the therapy room narrows access, inflates labels like trauma and gaslighting, and distracts from the daily work of recovery.

Ryan shares personal stories of being “gaslit” in school, where neutrality was dismissed and advocacy was framed as the real treatment. We contrast that mindset with the realities of addiction, suicidality, and severe mental illness, where clients need concrete interventions: motivational inter

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🔥 You’ve been harmed. You’ve been dismissed. It’s time to take your brain back—with guidance from people who’ve been there and know their stuff.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stakes: Therapy Vs Politics
• 0:28 Deprescribing And Listener Support
• 1:14 Guest Intro: Ryan Rogers
• 1:49 Gaslit In Grad School
• 3:02 Play-Doh Classes And Lost Rigor
• 3:39 Activism As A “Therapist Objective”
• 4:15 Clients Need Skills, Not Slogans
• 5:31 Neutrality, Fit, And Clinical Boundaries
• 7:02 Defining Social Justice In Practice
• 8:14 Advocacy Over Therapy: The New Mandate
• 9:40 Intersectionality And Unequal Clients
• 11:21 Ethics As Weapon And “Safety” Claims
• 13:51 Trauma Inflation And Buzzword Culture
• 15:02 The Woke Mind: Origins And Effects
• 16:51 Leaving The Echo Chamber
• 18:01 Working With Politics In Session
• 19:07 Personal Responsibility And Curiosity
• 20:24 Closing, CTAs, And Ryan’s Show

Transcript

dr teralyn sell: 0:02

Hey everyone, what happens when mental health, addiction, treatment, and therapy stop being about healing and start being about politics, ideology, and control? Today we are talking about how bias, corruption, and social justice narratives have distorted reality inside the therapy world and why it's costing people their lives. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, Dr. Terlin and therapist Jen, and this is the Gaslet Truth Podcast.

therapist jenn schmitz: 0:28

Before we set this whole conversation literally on fire, uh like, subscribe, and ring that bell. If this show has ever put words to something you felt but you couldn't explain, supporting us matters. Also, I'm gonna flub my way through this whole thing. Jen's like, Do you want to do this whole deprescribing thing? And I'm like, No, I can't even do it. I can't even do it. Do it, Jen. Do it. Okay.

dr teralyn sell: 0:49

So, Dr. Terry and I, we are deprescribers. For those of you that listen to the show, you know this is what we do. All right, we help people get off psychiatric medication safely for the brain and for the body. So if you're hearing this and you know that you're in a space where you're ready to start get off your medications, give us a holler. Um, you can email us at thegaslet truthpodcast at gmail.com and we'll get back to you and we'll help you get off those medications.

therapist jenn schmitz: 1:12

Couldn't have said it better myself. Please welcome Dr. Ryan Rogers. I'm sorry, not doctor, just Ryan Rogers, master's. He's a doctor in mental health area. He's a doctor today. He plays author of the woke mind and host of the reality therapy podcast, which is super cool, and that's how I found you. And I'm like, this guy's got to come on the show, and we're gonna talk about all the things that therapists don't like to talk about, but we're gonna do it today. So, welcome to the show, Ryan.

Ryan rogers: 1:39

Thank you for having me.

therapist jenn schmitz: 1:41

Yes, first, he's like, What did I step into? Yes, uh uh so on your sheet. So we have we have all of our guests fill out a sheet, and the one thing that really stuck out to me, which I think would be a really good place to start, is how you were being gaslit in grad school. Like, I'm I'm feeling like grad school is like the most profound place to start. So, would you mind starting there? Like how you felt like you were gaslit in grad school. I'm guessing grad school to become, you know, a professional counselor is the grad school. Maybe I don't know if you got a different degree, but anyway, that's the one we're thinking of. So I want you to start there. Give us that gaslighting story.

Ryan rogers: 2:19

Yeah, my degree is in master's in clinical mental health counseling. I was inspired to become a therapist, partly because of my own journey. I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict and you know, had a lot of therapy myself. I had uh watched a lot of friends on this recovery journey, many of whom did not make it. A lot of overdoses, suicides, a lot of pain in people who are dealing with severe mental illness and addiction. And I wanted to take this path as a way to fight back. And I got to grad school, I did not see the same sense of urgency that I had myself. You know, in in grad school, uh, you one of the big debates we see in our field is between like psychodynamic, the older, deeper approach versus CBT, the more you know, uh contemporary approach, yes, service level. Yeah. And the thing is, I I've I've literally spent more class time playing with play-doh than dealing with either of those modalities. You know, there's lots of arts and crafts, lots of, you know, kind of the joke about, you know, in in high school or junior high, if the substitute teacher doesn't want to teach, they put on a video. Had a lot of professors doing that, just put on random YouTube videos. Not stuff necessarily about mental health, but just here's a podcast about serial killers that I just feel like is interesting. We'll just spend two hours today watching that. You know, just just lot, I mean, beyond the political stuff, just lots of wasted time, incredibly dumbed down, complete lack of rigor. But you know, it really started my first semester with the the multicultural class, and my kind of my tipping point where it's like, you know, total, we're not in Kansas anymore. My my professor said, you know, one of your primary objectives as a therapist is to become a political activist so that you can, quote, burn it all to the ground. You know, I'm thinking, like, what am I doing here? What is, you know, realizing that a lot of my professors were not qualified to teach me how to become a therapist. And so they kind of kind of reverted back to this, well, I'll just talk about politics because that's what I'm more interested in anyway. And and realizing that the clients that I'm seeing have been working in addiction treatment for a number of years, the clients that I'm seeing are not helped by decentering whiteness or dismantling the patriarchy. Like they need help getting off drugs, they need help dealing with suicidal ideation. And the preparation I'm getting in graduate school is just not adequate to handle those needs.

therapist jenn schmitz: 4:36

You know, as you're talking, I just had someone who is doing day treatment right now, and that is exactly what you described, is what they're doing. They're coloring and coloring books, they are doing play-doh, they're doing puzzles, they're doing for eight hours a day. And I'm like, maybe your training actually was the right training for an inpatient setting like that where we have to treat people like toddlers, right? It's really interesting because I know Jen and I, we went to the same graduate school, different different programs in this within the same school, but we were talking about how I don't ever remember it being very politically centered in in the training, not at all, right? And but there are some that are very politically motivated and politically centered, and that sounds like what you're talking about. And I've always tried to reconcile this idea. How how does burning the I don't know the societal milieu to the ground change what somebody or thinking that you can do that, change the person sitting in front of you, help help them with their problems of the day? How does that even help somebody is what I'm trying to like reconcile in my mind? Because I can sit there and bitch about stuff about society all day long, and that's not going to help the person in front of me. I can I don't understand. So maybe you can help me understand what what are your thoughts on that? Like, how does that help somebody?

Ryan rogers: 6:07

I mean, uh, I think the biggest thing to me to come back to, I think a lot of these. So, my first two years in grad school, almost every professor I had was right out of grad school themselves. So they had almost zero clinical experience, they had no idea how to deal with clients. And and when you talk to them, they would, it was like pretty evident that they had no idea. I remember a female professor who was a Latina talking about how she was so confused she had a client who was a Latina who supported Donald Trump, but she couldn't, she didn't know how to work with her, you know, and just so many professors just so many professors had had no idea how to actually work with clients, and so they're they would kind of fall back on this. Well, at least I know some kind of slogans I've memorized about social justice, and so I don't know if they have a coherent theory of like once we make society utopia, then it'll fix everybody. It's just this basic idea of sitting with somebody and hashing out what's going on with them, they didn't have any clue how to do that, they had no relevant clinical experience beyond whatever their minimum hours to graduate was. You know, very they're very similar. It was almost like they were in a similar position as to the students they were teaching. And it was frustrating because you're you're paying a lot of money, you you you kind of put your life on hold to go to grad school, and I'm raising my hand. Uh I'm the kind of person who sits on the front row, raises their hand, and I'm realizing my professors have no, they can't answer my questions because they're like in a similar level of experience as I am.

therapist jenn schmitz: 7:34

Yeah. Jen and I have talked about this because I don't know if you know about our background at all, but we met in prison. You know, we met as prison shrinks together. And so I think that our that clinical experience that we had working with men, because it was a male male prison at the time. Jen has done female prison work now. Men of varying cultural backgrounds that were not even close to mine, all these things, their belief systems, not even close to mine, what they've been through in their life, not even close to mine. And I also recall research saying that you don't have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to help them out of the mile that they're walking, essentially. The ability to sit with someone and understand them with differing views is what a therapist does. It's it's not alignment, it's not constant alignment with what you think, feel, and believe, and that's the only way you can be a good therapist. And to me, that that spills over into the political world itself, like we don't have to have the same political beliefs as our clients in order to help them, which I think is social media is making a mockery of that at the moment. So yeah, I I'm I don't know. This is this is a pretty powerful place in my heart. I'm gonna overtake the whole conversation. So please go on.

dr teralyn sell: 8:58

I'm I'm just trying to figure out, okay. I'm curious to know, Ryan, what your definition is of of social justice. Yes, not what you were taught, yeah. Like, yeah, what's yours?

Ryan rogers: 9:11

So I have a kind of a philosophical definition, which is critical theory plus postmodernism applied to identity politics. And that's a mouthful.

therapist jenn schmitz: 9:20

That's a mouthful right there.

Ryan rogers: 9:21

Yeah, yeah, right. That's what this is.

dr teralyn sell: 9:22

Slow down.

Ryan rogers: 9:23

So these are kind of, I guess, like newer iterations of Marxism, basically, this idea that society is unfair and unjust. We need to kind of destroy it and kind of start over, essentially. So you hit you hear the word deconstruction a lot of times. And the point I want to make about deconstruction is there's never any plan to build anything. We have to destroy capitalism, we have to destroy whiteness, we have to destroy the patriarchy, but there's never any coherent thought put into what we're going to replace it with, what we should do instead. And a lot of this, you have to understand what the ideology is and what they present it as. So the ideology is very much like this kind of radical left-wing, let's destroy society and kind of rebuild it and whatever we figure out at the time. But the way they advertise it, it's kind of this like chill, hippie, like postmodern. So uh moral and epistemological relativism would be the terminology. But like you have your truth and I have my truth. Like you say that that's evidence-based therapy, but like that's not my lived experience. So I'm just gonna kind of go kind of like it's kind of creating a smokescreen of uncertainty. All this evidence that you have, like, I what does even evidence mean? You know, just trying to create uncertainty as though I have I'm coming from a neutral perspective. I'm just asking questions, you know. I have I don't have a dog in this fight, but in reality, I'm pushing a very radical agenda. Does that make sense?

dr teralyn sell: 10:49

Yeah. Because I I'm I'm trying to, because when I asked you what your definition is of this, when I think back to how we learned about social justice, it it was very different.

therapist jenn schmitz: 11:03

Like either way, it was mostly driven by social workers, which I'm not a social worker. So how I don't know I think there is a big separation between the city.

dr teralyn sell: 11:13

This is very, very, very true. Yes. Because I'm just trying to wrap my brain around like how it is that how is it that politics and like the the I don't even know how to ask this question. Like, I'm just trying to understand as therapists what we're doing when we believe that like social justice is all formed around our own opinions on politics and how how it is that as therapists, that's okay to allow all of that to be part of the the healing sessions that we're doing.

Ryan rogers: 11:49

So I think the the way that they would present that, if I were trying to give the best version of their argument, and this comes from like uh the best versions of this is uh a book uh by Daryl Wing Su called Counseling, the Culture Diverse, eighth edition. And I think they would say, you know, it's nice to challenge cognitive distortions and CBT, it's nice to heal childhood trauma, those are nice, but it's kind of tinkering around the edges, basically, because people's main problem is societal oppression. Your main problem is really capitalism, the patriarchy, white supremacy, cis etternormativity. Those are the real big problems. And by talk therapy in an office, you're at best tinkering around the edges. So, what you need to spend a lot of time on as a therapist is what's called advocacy or political activism because that's where the real healing is going to happen when you fix all of society.

therapist jenn schmitz: 13:20

So, my job as a therapist is to go out into the world and fix what's wrong.

Ryan rogers: 13:27

Yeah, they're they're very clear about that.

therapist jenn schmitz: 13:28

Yes, I quit.

dr teralyn sell: 13:30

That is way too big of a thing. There's no way I ever heard. Like, I still can't wrap my brain around this concept, Ryan. I really can't, and maybe it's because of how we were trained and how we like our our our educational careers, I think, were very different. Like mine and Terry's two versus yours. Like, okay, YouTube wasn't at the forefront of how things were taught.

therapist jenn schmitz: 13:51

Social media wasn't either.

dr teralyn sell: 13:53

This wasn't a thing. Like the the worldwide internet, like shit, Ryan. We were in dial up, okay? Beep, beep, beep, like trying to get out. Okay, so we had books. What was in books is what what we learned, right? Yes, we'd go and to do research for papers.

therapist jenn schmitz: 14:08

Yes, we but that distinction, too, though, between the LPC and the social worker was very different.

dr teralyn sell: 14:13

It was very different.

therapist jenn schmitz: 14:14

Now it's like bleeding into the LPC, who is, I believe, is I believe there are very distinct roles between social workers and LPCs, and maybe even politically, right? So I don't I don't know, but I I do want to say this too. Like, I I think on social media, there's a lot of what are they calling them, social justice warriors, but they are therapists or social workers on there. And I'm like, I'm challenging all of you who are on here with voice boxes saying all this stupid shit about politics and ethical practice and all. I bet you you're not even out there actually doing anything. I bet you're you're doing is just you're using your mouth hole on social media.

Ryan rogers: 14:54

So I I want to say there was one class that I had, I forget which class it was, but the professor gave us a prompt for a group discussion. And the prompt was, How are you going to be a social justice warrior for counseling? And no one seemed to have any problem with this. No one thought this was odd or off in any way.

therapist jenn schmitz: 15:10

I think I my answer would have been like, I'm not, period. Like, I don't know what else to say. I guess I would have gotten an F.

Ryan rogers: 15:17

It's interesting because uh a woman, we kind of broke out into small groups to discuss this question. A woman goes, Well, I'm gonna vote like my clients would want me to vote. And I said, How do you know how your clients I was like, How do you know how your clients are gonna want you to vote? And she like had this like look of shock and horror, and she goes, What if I get a Trump supporter as a client? I'm like, What if there's over 70 million of them? There's a good chance you will.

therapist jenn schmitz: 15:38

Yes, I just can't. I don't get I can't so this is part of the issue for me, is and this comes from training and all the things, and I'm just old. Is the idea that we never talked politics in session? Like that was something that we this was off limits.

dr teralyn sell: 15:56

Like politics is like your political view was off limits. You you we were taught that if you bring that into session, okay, no different than your religious views, no different than your views on society and race, and all the above, that does not come into session because you have crossed an ethical line. You have crossed a line. That's not taught anymore.

therapist jenn schmitz: 16:22

Like self-disclosure, that's part of self-disclosure. I mean, self-disclosure is supposed to be important in the therapeutic alliance, but not like important in persuasion of political voting.

Ryan rogers: 16:37

I think they I think they would say this idea of political neutrality in the therapist office is a concept that was invented by white men and that there's no real possibility that you could be neutral. So if neutrality is off the table, you might as well have the right, correct views, which are extreme social justice views.

dr teralyn sell: 16:55

This is such bullshit. Oh my God. This is the most budget bullshit I've ever heard. So, how okay, what what's the point of us then? Like, if our purpose is to be neutral, not only in politics, but across other areas, right? Like, our job is to lead people to their truth. Our job is to not tell people what to do, not through our truth, not through our truth. We are not we are not coaches where someone is coming to us and we are saying, here's the 19 things you need to change about your life right now. Like, here comes Tony Robbins, right? I'm gonna get you worked up, I'm gonna get you lose 25 pounds, you're gonna quit smoking, right? Like, even when we talk about things that are unhealthy for our clients, right? That's still very subjective. And people get pissed about that, right? Because what is healthy for one is healthy for a different. What one believes is different for someone else. Our job is to fucking be Switzerland. We are neutral, we sit there and we allow people to get to their truth. We do not influence that truth. Okay. Even in the addiction community, I would never sit down with a client and say, Yep, all that, all that methamphetamine that you're using every day, it's gonna ruin your life, it's gonna kill you. You're making the worst decision of your life. Stop using it.

Ryan rogers: 18:15

I I do a lot of act act, and it's all about what are your values?

dr teralyn sell: 18:20

Like acceptance, commitment, where do you sit?

Ryan rogers: 18:23

Yes, like if you tell a person like it is stealing your grandmother's wedding ring to buy crack, is that in line with your values? Like, if it is, like I don't really have much of a say here. But like, if if that's a behavior you'd like to change, then you're inviting me in as well.

therapist jenn schmitz: 18:38

Right.

dr teralyn sell: 18:38

There we go.

therapist jenn schmitz: 18:39

There was a there was a therapist that so this was around the uh voting cycle of last year when uh all these therapists and social workers were just like crazy. There was a therapist on here, big following. And he said, he goes, I can tell who a therapist votes for by the car they drive, I can tell who a therapist votes for by the clothes they're wearing and how their office is decorated. And I was like, What? You mean you can assume who I voted for by these things? Like, yes, I mean it was complete political judgment about everything, and I'm like, this is crazy, or the idea, and this is funny because I went down a rabbit hole on this too. Who a therapist votes for is either unethical or ethical practice. Okay, oh, you haven't heard this one yet? I mean, I where have you been, Ryan? Where have you been? That's why you went off of TikTok, that's why you're no longer there. You're like very smart. Yes, you are either practicing ethically or unethically based on who you vote for, and that is in the ethical guidelines of your profession. And it was super funny to me because I went to the ACA, right? The American Counseling Association, because I was like, Well, what's their position? What is their position that says all therapists need to vote on certain party lines? Like, what is their position? Well, most people should know this, but as a non-political organization, which the ACA is not, they can't tell you who to vote for. They can't, they can only encourage you to vote. And their position is encourage your clients to vote. Like, that's the position, right? And I think even encouraging a client to vote might be against anything because you're still inputting your views on them that you should vote, right? So the ACA. So I I did their like little online chat, and I was like, I was like, is it unethical to vote on certain party lines? And they were engaging me on this for a little bit, and then I said, Well, you still haven't answered the question. And they said, Here's the link to buy your membership, and then we'll answer it. And I was like, okay, like the biggest non-answer of all time.

Ryan rogers: 20:45

They ought to just get rid of all guidelines and ethical standards on their website and just put vote blue. That's the only thing on the website.

therapist jenn schmitz: 20:52

They should. They should. You know, it's it's interesting because along that line with ethics and therapists, like they use ethics, their interpretation of what is ethical as some moral high horse.

dr teralyn sell: 21:06

It is very tied to morality.

therapist jenn schmitz: 21:08

Yes. To to threaten other therapists in practice. And we see this a lot on social media. We see this in Facebook groups for therapists, which is why I'm not, I think I'm on one now. The rest of them are horrific places to be. Like, if you want to be traumatized as a therapist, join them. That's all I'm gonna say. But yeah, so they use the ethical wand as a moral high horse to threaten everything with your job, everything your job, your license, your livelihood, every everything.

dr teralyn sell: 21:36

We've got a toxic environment.

Ryan rogers: 21:38

Some of my therapist friends refer to those therapist Facebook groups as the toddlers because it's just a never-ending temper tantrum over there.

dr teralyn sell: 21:47

Oh, yes, that's true. That's true.

therapist jenn schmitz: 21:49

Yeah, that's very true. It's the same thing like you were talking about, like burn it all to the ground, but let's not figure out how to rebuild it, right? Like, so we're gonna burn every person to the ground, but we're not gonna help them rebuild a practice, or you can only practice the way that I see that you can practice in any other way is an unethical way to practice, right?

dr teralyn sell: 22:07

Okay, so I have to ask a question because I'm I'm old and I've been out of school a long time. So, Ryan, are what you are is what you're saying is therapists that are getting their degrees, okay, in this day and age, are being taught that that neutrality isn't a thing anymore. Because everything that you're saying really is about there not being neutrality. Like we could put the word neutrality, like like political neutrality in a book or in a video and teach it to people, but that's not what the output is that I'm hearing is actually what they're preaching. Like, is there is there do they teach neutrality?

Ryan rogers: 22:46

Uh no. So I guess there's a lot of like left-wing thinkers who have quotes that are similar to this, but I'm thinking of uh, if you know Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States, he has this quote that you can't be neutral on a moving train. And there's this kind of left-wing idea that society is always going 100 miles an hour towards fascism. No matter what it is, it's always towards fascism. And by not doing anything or just focusing on the client's thoughts and feelings and leaving this other stuff out, you are essentially complicit in society moving towards fascism. That's how they would, that's how they would view it. So, you know, instead of just doing like a shallow form of therapy about thoughts and feelings, you really need to focus a lot on advocacy, you know, stopping this train and and getting in the other direction away from fascism. They're just kind of hyper-focused on this. And and to me, it's like whether you're right or wrong, like none of the people in in who run my grad school are qualified to even analyze that. Like these are a bunch of people who did fluff research at various different diploma mills. Well, one of my professors, his research background is studying animated Spider-Man at the University of Phoenix. I mean, these are not the people who are qualified to tell me how to reorganize society.

dr teralyn sell: 23:58

Okay, again, and how does it how does this trans how does this translate to helping clients? How does this translate to helping someone through addiction? How how does this translate to helping somebody who who has schizophrenia and is trying to learn how to live their life? How how how does this I don't I'm trying to understand that? Can you make me understand?

Ryan rogers: 24:24

Yeah, yeah. Uh one thing I think you need to realize is that not all clients are created equal. So you have this kind of intersectional hierarchy. So, like a disabled uh black lesbian is gonna be more valuable than an able-bodied heterosexual white man. The heterosexual white man, you actually don't want to lift him up. You kind of want to knock him down a peg. You want to remind him about his privilege and how he needs to kind of you know recommit to social justice and things like that. And the the disabled black lesbian, you need to remind her what a victim she is, things like that. So you're not viewing all of your clients equally. You know, some of your clients need more help than others. And the the heterosexual white man, society has always been kind of structured to help this guy out. So he really doesn't need a hand at all. Like why he's what he's doing in therapy, I'm not sure. You you need to focus on helping out this disabled black lesbian. And we live in a cis heteronormative, ableist, racist, patriarchal society. And so this client who matters most, her biggest issue is you overthrowing the capitalist system and all this kind of stuff. That's kind of their like mentality here. And they're thinking like you helping a white man get a better job, that's actually, I mean, in some way, it's kind of taking us in the wrong direction. We really don't need to be helping white men any more than we already do, if that makes sense.

dr teralyn sell: 25:43

Okay, okay. That was actually a really helpful description. So the people, the people like you, Ryan, and I I'm not trying to assume whether you're homosexual or heterosexual. I gotta say that because otherwise this will be a big to-do for people, right? Okay. You are a white man. From what I can tell through the screen, this is what I'm seeing.

Ryan rogers: 26:02

That's correct.

dr teralyn sell: 26:03

A white man who struggled with addiction.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yeah.

dr teralyn sell: 26:05

So you shouldn't have been given that extra that extra assistance and help because that's not who we should be focusing our resources on.

unknown: 26:16

Yeah.

dr teralyn sell: 26:17

What the what the fuck? I can't, I can't wrap my brain around this one. Terry, you could tell. I just can't, I'm still can't. I was not prepared for the time today.

therapist jenn schmitz: 26:25

I'm just not I am exhausted. I'm exhausted by the idea that I'm supposed to be going out in community and fighting the good fight battle and then coming back into therapy and helping people live their day-to-day lives. Like to me, that sounds like the most exhausting place. Jen and I have talked about this. Like, you know, I do I do believe in advocacy, you know, but I also believe that I can I can do advocacy work the way I choose to do it and with the topic that I want. And this podcast is our advocacy work. I've said that a million times. Like, this is our advocacy work, like shining a light on um the problems in the system is our advocacy work. So, and that's about all that I have left as far as fuel to do advocacy work because I'm old and I'm not gonna be out there, you know, fighting the the good fight, if you will, any further than what I'm doing. But it just seems exhausting. And as you were talking about that, I was thinking, yeah, more. This this is gonna come out really shitty, everybody. More, do more, be more for free. For free. Do it on your own time, do it for free. Don't get paid for it because we are martyrs, and we then we need to come back into the therapy session and tell everybody. That seems narcissistic. Tell everybody what a good person I am for doing all of this advocacy work, fighting the good fright fight and the patriarchy. Like, I'm like, what did I sign up for now? This I mean, I graduated what what did we graduate in 2020 2005 is when I graduated. So I we're talking about 21 years ago is when I graduated. 21 years ago, yes.

Ryan rogers: 28:06

You know, it's interesting because I live in Austin, Texas, that's where my school is, and they're always telling us to go weird in Austin. Oh, we we keep it very weird. They're always telling us to go to the Capitol and do advocacy and you know, advocate, and they try to keep the emails like they'll offer extra credit and stuff like that. They try to uh you know keep it neutral of like a CEU. We'll give you a CEU almost like a yeah, they'll offer extra credit and and they'll try to like phrase it as though like just advocate for whatever your values are, but you know what they're pushing for. But sometimes they'll send out an email that said, like, please support this bill, and they'll have to retract it and send another email, like, please support whatever your values are, but like you know exactly what they're they're pushing you to.

dr teralyn sell: 28:46

Well, and this is no this is no different. Like, if we take a step back, the guild that we are all part of, okay, what we all subscribe to within our Western education, like this has existed forever, just in different forms, right? I mean, uh really truly, like when we look back on like the education, even that Terry and I received it. We have so many people that come on the show that have master's degrees, they go on, they get their doctorate, right? And they talk about the the educational guild and what we all subscribed to, what we were taught and how much it influenced our work, right? And and here we're just adding politics and this idea of what social justice is now, and in in today's definition of this, which is still blowing my mind. And and this existed in the past too in other areas, right? It's no different than when Terry and I talk about like we were taught that the standard of treatment must be pairing psychiatric medication with some form of like psychotherapy, cognitive behavior therapy, some other type of therapeutic intervention. That's the gold standard. Without those two things together, right, you're missing a piece of the puzzle. The puzzle's not going to get put together. We were taught that inside and out, and that we walked away with degrees going, we are just a slice of something. We've got to have the medication piece added into here. Like we were taught that we were brainwashed into that. We walked away with that, we walked away with the DSM as something that we must label people through and how that was put on a pedestal of importance. I mean, that's how we were brainwashed. So the idea of educational systems subscribing to some kind of political, religious, like big pharma influence, whatever it is, it's always been there. It's like a different flavor. It's like Baskin Robbins, like, what the fuck is the flavor of the week now that we've got when people are graduating, right? So this is kind of like I view that as like the flavor of things that are happening as you're describing this now. That's that's always been there, some form of it. But this one, I just really crosses the idea of what I was taught ethically. And I I just I don't know, I can't wrap my brain around this.

Ryan rogers: 30:46

It's I I on my podcast, I've interviewed over 120 different mental health professionals, and there's a huge distinction. People who graduated from grad school more than 10 years ago, they saw very little political bias. They tend to have like thank you.

therapist jenn schmitz: 31:00

Now I don't castle it anymore.

Ryan rogers: 31:02

They they tended to have a very rigorous education that prepared them very well to be a therapist. In the past 10 years, especially the last five years, the rigor has been thrown out the window, like almost across the board. And and it's just a huge political thumb on the scale. That's that's replaced a lot of the value that used to be put on training in clinical skills and understanding theories and modalities. All that's just out the window. And it, you know, I think it really with with COVID, with the George Floyd stuff, when that stuff happened, it really just went just so overboard that uh it's almost like therapy grad programs are unrecognizable compared to what they were 10, 20 years ago.

dr teralyn sell: 32:18

Yeah, that would make sense. I mean, we'd probably be lost if we went back and had to do this again. It would be years of just open mouth breathing. I don't know that I would do it. Yeah, I don't know that I would do it. I mean, I probably I I wouldn't, I'd sit there open mouth breathing the whole time going, what the I I don't know.

therapist jenn schmitz: 32:35

Well, because because I would think like, wait, a whole part of my job is political agenda, I don't know, doing stuff like that. That's how I signed up for it. Yeah.

dr teralyn sell: 32:45

So, Ryan, Ryan, are we supposed to not work with clients that have a different political view than us?

Ryan rogers: 32:55

I don't know exactly what the answer to that would be, but the way they frame a lot of the language, like one, if you're working with like a Trump-supporting white man, you could view that as an opportunity to enrich them and enlighten them to a more correct worldview. But also, there's all this language of like, I can't sit in a therapy office where I would feel unsafe. And if a client says I vote for There is this, yeah, if a client says I voted for Donald Trump, that makes me feel unsafe. And in like the correct therapeutic thing to do is to refer out because I can't work in an unsafe work environment.

therapist jenn schmitz: 33:29

For the the oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, you're talking about you're talking about the clinician. I thought you were talking about the client, the clinician saying this is not this is an unsafe. My god, having worked in maximum security prison, I mean that's that's funny.

dr teralyn sell: 33:48

Do you know?

therapist jenn schmitz: 33:49

I've said that to people. I'm like, really? People who are so superficially talking about this stuff have not gotten any deep clinical training. Like your partner's clients, like with real marginalized people, truly, truly marginalized. Because I thought you're talking about the client, because there is a push on social media. There was this last uh political cycle for this was therapists and social workers saying, like, as a client, you have every right to ask your therapist who they voted for, and if their vote doesn't align with yours, then you need to move on. That was a whole thing, and I'm like, I'm mouth dropped. I was like, What?

dr teralyn sell: 34:33

I would never show it.

therapist jenn schmitz: 34:33

And if they can't answer the question, like if they refuse to answer the question, then you need to move on because they're essentially not a safe person to be with. And I'm like, when has political voting ever been, you know, grist for the mill in a therapy session of how you choose a therapist? Like, and and so then it keeps it keeps going down into this path of like, you know, you want somebody that aligns with everything that you align with, and and you know, again, have been through everything that you have been through. And I'm like, so you want a hot mess express therapist, is what you want. You want a therapist who is still struggling, who who has all the DSM diagnoses in the world, who has struggled with all the addictions, who has been marginalized, and that's the person that you want to work with. If that's who you want to work with, that's fine. But that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous to think that a single therapist will be the one who can align the most closely with you on every topic and every issue that you have. And that's not therapy, that's a friend. That's a good friend.

Ryan rogers: 35:40

Yeah, it's so bizarre this idea that you need to pick a therapist who's just like you because I see so much of the value in therapy of getting a different perspective from someone who's not like you, right? And I hear these stories of people like, yeah, I went and trauma bonded with my therapist. Like that, that's not therapy.

dr teralyn sell: 35:57

No, even it's no bueno.

therapist jenn schmitz: 35:59

Even after this election, a therapist came on and like, all I did today was cry with my clients after they found out who won the election. And I was like, What are you serious? Like, you're crying, you're literally crying with your clients over politics and who won an election. I'm like, I can't, I cannot. And that's the new breed of therapists that's coming in again, right? Thinking that they can do that. But but again, when you look at it, there are more blue clients than red, and this is probably why. Because for someone who voted Republican, if they know that that that most therapists and social workers are blue, they might not feel like they can seek the help that they need, which is why I go back to nobody should fucking know. Like, nobody should know your political beliefs because it is a barrier to entry for people who actually need mental health care.

Ryan rogers: 36:53

That's that's so interesting because I'm thinking even of of my own personal case, you know, I would be afraid to go to the therapist with some of the stuff that I've experienced in grad school. Like, hey, I feel like grad school is an indoctrination. I feel like I'm getting hostility as a white man. Just knowing the therapy profession, I would be afraid that I would share some of this stuff and I would give the responsible. Why don't you check your privilege? You know, is it don't you have a lot of advantage? I mean, yeah.

therapist jenn schmitz: 37:19

What who are you to be here? You're already privileged.

dr teralyn sell: 37:21

Like, so it's not safe for you, actually. You're not in a safe space.

therapist jenn schmitz: 37:26

Yeah, not the therapist.

dr teralyn sell: 37:27

You were you were indoctrinated, you were indoctrinated throughout an entire educational space where you felt you couldn't even speak up. So your entire career was in like educational career was an unsafe space for you.

therapist jenn schmitz: 37:38

Damn.

dr teralyn sell: 37:40

We could do this forever, guys. Like we could go on and on and on about things that aren't safe. Yeah. And and and I I it's it's we could we could do this forever.

Ryan rogers: 37:52

You know, I I've I've been working in addiction treatment for a number of years with drug addicts who've had pretty rough backgrounds. Some of them have come out of prison, some are, you know, murderers, like people with really rough past, people have lots of trauma. I did a podcast last night on veterans' mental health and the stuff that veterans go through. And then I hear people talk about, well, you know, Donald Trump was elected and uh I have trauma because of that. It just makes me want to scream. Like, what are you talking about?

therapist jenn schmitz: 38:19

Right, right. Like, why do we have to be victims of everything? Like, why? And by the way, I you know, when when we were trained millions of years ago, I was so into trauma, right? I was so into PTSD trauma, EMDR, all that stuff, which I still do appreciate and like. But I used to say things like the DSM could just be one page and it was just trauma, like just trauma. When when I meant that was actually traumatic things, right? We've all been through levels of terrible things or just really uncomfortable things, right? But in today's world, we're labeling it all as trauma. Every bad thing that has happened to you, or every bad belief you've had, or you know, you have a political party that wins the election, and suddenly that's trauma for you just because of that. Like the word trauma itself doesn't mean anything anymore, in my opinion. It just means I'm uncomfortable a lot of the times, not to diminish people who have been through actual trauma. But in today's world, it's like it's pop psychology.

dr teralyn sell: 39:24

It's a buzzword. Every single, every single bad person I ever dated was a narcissist. Like we we've just started to like those labels come out, come out part of our vanacy, like like any other word does. It's losing its luster, it has very little meaning behind it. The clinical interpretation is lost. Like that's what we were so trained on, it which is kind of funny because when we really look at it, like it's not like we're we're tapping people's spinal fluid to figure out whether or not your say your serotonin's fucked up, which is why you have major depression. You know, I mean, there's a lot of subjectivity in diagnosing, so I I guess I can't go too far down that train. But but the words are lost, it doesn't mean anything.

Ryan rogers: 40:07

I I have uh so much problem with like therapy culture that takes these concepts from psychology and therapy and weaponizes them. So you talked about, oh, my ex is a narcissist, I think he was a psychopath. The word gaslit, gaslighting, like you're gaslighting me is one of the most why we picked it. It's one of the most misused words, and you you you have these people either they go to therapy or they spend time on therapy tick tock and they pick up some of this language and then they they use it as a weapon against you. It's it's it's just so terrible.

therapist jenn schmitz: 40:39

Yes. Well, because therapists do the same thing, you know. You you're being gaslit, you're being, I'm like these these words to me weren't even around until a couple years ago. I mean, that I've heard them, which is why Jen and I picked it for the podcast, duh. Like the gaslit truth, because the word gaslit was actually trending, it was a trending word in in conversation. So, kind of like your book, The Woke Mind. I need you to talk about your book. So I have not seen it or read it, so I don't know what it's about. So if you could just tell us what that book is about that's behind you, I would love to know.

Ryan rogers: 41:16

So the book was inspired by my experiences in in academia and understanding, like, what am I looking at here? Because if you're not familiar with this, you know, you might see someone with purple hair and a septimering screaming that you know it's cultural appropriation that the college cafeteria serve sushi. And you're like, I don't understand any of this. None of this is making any sense to me. So kind of tracing back the origin is where these ideas come from. And it kind of comes from, you know, Marxism was kind of discredited around mid-20th century when like the Soviet Union and Maoist China kind of failed. And so they had to kind of rebrand. And they realized like America was making people rich. It's lifting, you know, poor working class people out of poverty. They've got their own home, their own car, their own color television. So you've got to figure out a message other than we're going to make your life better. And the the what what what the critical theorists coming out of Germany and the postmodernists coming out of France, what they settled on is we're just going to try to breed as much discontent as possible. So Karl Marx called this the ruthless criticism of all that exists. And Herbert Marcusa called it the power of negative thinking. Let's just pick at something and see if we can find as much negative as possible. Let's call it problematic. This is problematic. That's problematic. You just pick at issues until we can create problems. When this was kind of applied to identity politics, that's when, because for a long time there's just kind of trickling in academia and not really going anywhere. When it hit identity politics, you know, not only can I call you bourgeoisie or whatever, I can call you a racist. I can call you a sexist, misogynist, homophobe, whatever. This type of language really took off and it became really powerful. It became really weaponized. And so when it kind of entered the public consciousness, it resulted in a lot of emotional instability, these kind of swings that we see in like borderline personality disorder, paranoid delusions, like we would see in schizophrenia. The whiteness is out to get me, the white supremacist society is out to get me, the patriarchy is out to get me, as though you're talking about like the CIA is tapping my thoughts, this type of paranoid delusion, but apply to identity politics. And then it leads from that type of psychology that you've created artificially from the ideas, it leads to irrational behavior. So you look at summer of 2020, cities burning down, you know, based on this narrative that America is hunting black people for sport, which was just not true. But the the the effect of that belief, the cities burning down, that was true. This idea that people are born in the wrong body has led to the mutilation of thousands of people in America and across the world. But the harm that's caused by adopting that belief is very real. Uh, I hope that made a little bit of sense.

dr teralyn sell: 43:58

Yeah, yeah, it does. So, in your in your book that you wrote, how do you break this down? How do you talk about this? What what is the like what type do is there advice you give people within this or how to navigate this or what to watch out for?

Ryan rogers: 44:13

So I I kind of use myself as a little bit of a guinea pig to uh talk about because I was a very far left-wing socialist, woke in a lot of ways, super pro-Black Lives Matter, pro-transgender movement. I was on board with all of it. And you know, kind of coming out of it, a big thing that uh allowed me to come out of it was just to get off of social media for a while because you're constantly getting bombarded with these ideas and not just the intellectual ideas, but there's a sense of urgency. There's a genocide going on against transgender people, there's a genocide against people of color, and like you have to be active. White silences violence. You know, you're kind of bombarded by these messages, and there's you're like in this constant state of panic and activation, putting that aside, like you know, Donald Trump is probably not going to put me in a concentration camp if I if I get off social media for 30 days. Like, it's okay, leave this alone, let my mind heal a little bit. That's what worked for me, and and I think that works for a lot of people. I think so much of this is fueled by staying in these echo chambers where it encourages panic, it encourages this sense of urgency that they are out to get us, kind of reinforcing that message over and over and over again.

therapist jenn schmitz: 45:21

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting that you were very much involved in all of that because of messaging around it, essentially, is what I'm hearing. Even though so, was that before or after grad school then for you?

Ryan rogers: 45:33

So that was before. I really grad school was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of ending my my left-wing ideology. You know, I had a little bit of an experience in in undergrad with just it was my first real experience up close with with wokeness, and I'm like, what am I seeing? And then I got to grad school and it was like that on steroids. And I thought, A, I sure hope that I don't sound like this, which I probably did. And and B, like whatever this is, I want to be the opposite of this, you know. And I think kind of seeing myself reflected in other people was a big wake-up call for me.

dr teralyn sell: 46:05

Okay, like okay. So so when you have clients now that you're working with that are bringing in a lot of their own political beliefs, okay, and they're bringing they're bringing it in, they're asking you the questions. I don't know if you've ever had clients that have said to you, like, Well, I chose to work with you because I could tell you're a Democrat, or I'm not gonna work with you anymore. I've had clients say that to me many times. They have gone on my website, they have gone on like my psychology today profile, and they have said to me, I reached out to you because I can tell where you where you swing. And they've said that to me, which is so weird.

therapist jenn schmitz: 46:42

It's like saying, I know who you voted for by what you drive. Like that's so weird.

dr teralyn sell: 46:47

Pretty funny, my response to them. I've had a few of them say this to me, and I said, actually, no, you don't, and it doesn't matter. And if that matters to you, then I'm not the therapist for you. Because if that matters to you, then I'm not the person that you want to be working with. Okay. Because I I it starts off with a ridiculous judgment. And I've had people, and you know, that's it's a slippery slope with what I just said. We we don't have time for that today, but that's what I've said to people. I might not be a good fit for you, you might not be a good fit for me. And clinicians don't do that enough. We don't put that that break on and go, you're actually not a good fit for me, because we can do that, guys. Like your clin the clients say they don't feel safe with the clinician. Uh, guess what? We can do the same exact thing.

therapist jenn schmitz: 47:31

Yeah, but he just said that about politics being political. And I'm like, I don't know, to say that you're not safe for me because we're of different political beliefs, you know?

dr teralyn sell: 47:41

Right. But if a client wants to think that, if they think that because we're of different political beliefs, I can't work with you anymore. Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm in a therapist.

therapist jenn schmitz: 47:48

I'm in a therapist.

dr teralyn sell: 47:49

Yeah, right. And I don't even want, I don't, I I really am not in a not in a space to want to accept every everybody that will only want to work with me because of my your academia, your years of experience, your credentials, all your lettered therapies, all that shit, none of that matters. Your specializations, like none of it matters. All your specializations, all the shit you've worked with, all the populations, the 16 years you've been doing. No, I just if you voted right, if you voted blue, guess what? I'm out. Like that's asinine to me. Okay, get back to the question I was asking you, Ryan. Do you encounter this with clients and they will say these things to you? Have you encountered this yet? And what do you do with that as a clinician?

Ryan rogers: 48:33

So I predominantly I work in an inpatient treatment setting and a little bit of outpatient for uh people who have like severe drug use. So these are not the people who are like watching the news a ton. So these are not your most compulsive political people, but it does come up sometimes. And like the number one thing, if they're outpatient, they they turn their phones in if they're inpatient. But the number one thing for outpatient is limit your time on social media. That's what's distorting your thinking the most. And number two is like trying to bring it to the here and now. How is this affecting you? Like, it's possible that climate change could kill us someday, but did you yelling at your coworker, did that lower the US's carbon emissions? Like, how is this actually impacting the world? How is this actually impacting yourself? Because obsessing about these things generally has zero effect on the world and a huge negative impact on you personally. So, just like like look at just from a very pragmatic perspective, like what what effect is this causing?

dr teralyn sell: 49:26

Yeah, yeah. How's it serving you?

therapist jenn schmitz: 49:28

Well, that's uh we talk about this all the time. Like, know what's in your control, uh, control the controllables, but no, you have to know what is in your control or what outcomes you might even have a smidge of influence over, and it's not very much. And I wish people would understand that that the one thing that isn't in your that is in your control is how you cast your vote. What happens after that is not, or ultimately. So I there was this guy on TikTok and he was from China, and he was talking about why I don't know much about China, but why the Chinese community is is deemed happier than Americans. Okay, and so he was talking, so I was listening to him, and he said, in part because we really don't care about politics, we let the politicians manage the political stuff, and we manage our families and our lives, and we look at the things that matter to us the most. And I thought, you know what? He's not wrong, he is not wrong because those things, unless you have political aspiration, right? If you really want to run for office or do those things, then go do those things. But other than that, you you sitting at home being crying and sad and just ruminating and watching social media, and the algorithm is doing the algorithm thing, is not helping your mental well-being one iota. It's not happening helping you at all. So I appreciate the comments to get off of social media, stop listening to the thing that is making you sick because it is making everybody sick when you the alg the algorithm's algorithm makes us sick. So, yeah, anyway, that's my thoughts. Thanks.

dr teralyn sell: 51:16

Like, is there anything that you haven't said that you think is really important for people to hear or that you haven't been able to say it uh in this kind of platform? What do you want people to know?

Ryan rogers: 51:25

I think the biggest thing is like it's like you're speaking different languages because you know, I mean, I'm I think one example, I was in grad school and I was like, uh, this was in American Family Therapy class, and three out of the four books that we read for that class had zero citations. And I'm like, why is this the case in a grad school classroom? And one of the fellow students looked at me, he looked at me like I was an idiot. He was like, Well, yeah, it has their lived experience, like as if that was better than citations. And I guess where I'm going with that is understanding that people are speaking a different language than you, and understanding that, you know, whether it's left to right or right to left, understanding where people are coming from. And I think so often in academia and the therapy world, because we speak this language that has certain coded words, I understand people who speak a different language or who might might see things differently, you must be less intelligent than me. You must lack compassion and understanding these people have you know a way of life or a way of doing things that often works for them, sometimes better than the way you're doing things. And they've they've said things differently. So if you say something like personal responsibility, that doesn't mean you hate people and want them to die. It means from my frame of view, seeing people take ownership of their lives leads to better outcomes than being coddled, right? That's instead of instead of interpreting that as this person hates people, say this person loves people differently than me. If we can kind of explain that in a way that people understand, I think they would have a lot of benefit.

dr teralyn sell: 53:03

Yeah, I think this kind of ties into something Terry and I often say is what you learn or what's given to you, it's a thing, but it's not the thing. So when you stop losing internal curiosity about what's in front of you, you take it face value in those books, what's there, and then you just adopt that instead of actually trying to figure out whether or not it fits your perspective, whether or not you actually believe it to be true or not, and then getting curious about that, like inquisitive, right? Like what's in front of you is a thing, it's not the thing, which is kind of exactly what you're saying. If we lose inquisition and internal curiosity, then we are exactly what those books gave us. And we just take that and that's it. There's no other view.

therapist jenn schmitz: 53:43

And if you're a therapist listening to the show, we shouldn't be the ones dividing our own profession. We should be the ones acting upon curiosity, and we should be the ones being able to sit with viewpoints that are not our own. And that's the beauty of being a therapist. That's what we're supposed to be in the first place, guys. So I think we have a we have a bigger role to play in the division than we're giving ourselves credit for. And we also have a bigger role to play in the reunification, in my opinion. So if we're if we're willing to do it. So if you've hung out with us this far, this is the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Please make sure you like, follow, share, subscribe, and send us your gaslit truth stories at thegaslit truth podcast at gmail.com. And don't forget, Ryan, what is your show called?

Ryan rogers: 54:31

Uh, the reality therapy podcast.

therapist jenn schmitz: 54:34

It's really good. Check it out, really good. Check it out and throw him some love too. So thanks for being on the show. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan rogers: 54:41

Thanks for having me.