Origins Of Perfectionism & Overachieving with Lindsey Wasserman

As a recovering perfectionist and overachiever who grew up in the 90s, I became a psychotherapist and founded my therapy practice with a mission of helping young adults navigate the many life transitions and challenges that come up in our 20s and 30s. I love talking about the origins of perfectionism and overachieving, why they are so rampant in this generation, What makes these patterns so detrimental, and most importantly how to recover and live a happy, fulfilled life.

Want to be a guest on ABCs of Parenting Adult Children? Send James Moffitt a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/parentingadultchildren

Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:02.85)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today I'm going to have Lindsay, what do you say Wasserman? Is that how you say it? Wasserman. That's a unique name. Lindsay is going to be our guest today and Lindsay, thank you for being here. And I would like for you to, I'd like to ask you to introduce yourself to our listening audience.

Hi, I am Lindsay. I am a clinical social worker and psychotherapist in Washington, DC, and I own a therapy practice called the Sterling Group. And we work specifically with young adults, kind of 18 to 40, to address all sorts of life transitions that come up in early adulthood, as well as sort of internal challenges and struggles that

can kind of get, that can get in our way throughout our lives, but particularly in that kind of moment of early adulthood and kind of defining our identities, who we are, what we want out of life, and what that looks like in a ideally healthy way.

Very good. So kind of, uh, kind of give us a share your, not your testimony, but share, share your coming of age story when you, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21, uh, uh, what it was like for you to, uh, do that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I grew up in the nineties and I kind of in this.

era now of gifted and talented was a very widely used term and how kids in school were kind of categorized. I was considered gifted and talented. When I entered elementary school, they tested me and had me moved up to first grade right away. So I didn't attend kindergarten. And from that,

James Moffitt (02:08.908)
you know, from the age of five or even earlier, I was kind of given that, that label of smart, gifted, talented, and received, course, a lot of praise around that. And it felt really good. And, and it kind of cemented itself as like my identity and that I had to kind of continue through the rest of my childhood, teenage years, college, adulthood, continuing to prove that I am.

I am that gifted, talented kid. now that I'm a therapist and have been through a lot of that training and worked with a lot of clients that grew up like me or who have some of those similar traits and backgrounds of that overachieving perfectionism, I realized how privileged I was and how much those frameworks served me and helped me throughout my childhood, but also

some of the patterns that came from that of perfectionism, burnout, always needing to push myself, push myself and really basing my self-worth and my identity on achieving and being perfect. So, about that. Yeah, your AI note takers was going, hey, tap, tap, I want in.

That's a new system we're using. Yeah, that's fine. I declined it. was like, yeah, get out of here. We don't need AI. No, we don't. Sorry about the technology or the friend. that's, that's the first I haven't had that happen before, but at least it wasn't a barking dog. So, so listening to you talk about this, thinking about, uh,

your being in the gifted and talented or let's say it was a label that was attached to you. she's gifted and talented and so we're going to accelerate her learning track, right? So, I guess from your, from your standpoint as a child, that was probably a good thing in a lot of ways, right? Because you felt special, right? And your teacher teachers probably treated you as special. Your parents probably treated you as special.

James Moffitt (04:34.402)
And I can relate to that because at one point, let's just say I had a, when I was in my teenage years, I was a dumpster fire and I was raised by two authoritative parents and they expected nothing short of perfection. And so I did everything I could to rebel. So they sent me, my mom and dad both worked at Terrell State Hospital and it was

MHMR facility, And so my mother got me tested, I don't know, psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever it was in any way, you know, they did the German ink blot test and they did all these, you know, tests that were supposed to calibrate or to just to determine what my IQ level was. Apparently at whatever age I was 16, 17, I guess

I guess my IQ is like off the charts. And so when they found that out, they were like, well, you're not stupid. You're very intelligent. You're smart, but you're making these stupid decisions. So from here on out, we expect nothing but straight A's, right? And of course I graduated high school with a C plus average, right? Because school was boring to me and I didn't care, you know, and anyway, so.

I can imagine that you probably felt some undue pressure to perform, right? Everybody, your teachers, your parents, family, they're like, okay, you're gifted and talented. And I mean, I'm looking at you going, well, you're very smart, obviously, for your age, and you're very talented. you know, you've got a lot of wonderful training to help.

people your age to overcome some of this stuff, some of the stigmas and, and,

James Moffitt (06:34.866)
So talking about that, let's talk about some of the internal issues that you had to deal with as you went through school and your self-image, your self-confidence. You know what I'm talking about. Let's talk about some of that stuff. Yeah. So I think, like you said, these are

These are positive labels, they feel good. We get that reinforcement that we're doing well. And in order to keep getting that feedback and that reinforcement of our own self-worth, it's in that external validation, the good grades, the pats on the back, the extracurriculars, the colleges that you get into it. And school is of course a very structured environment. get grades periodically, you have...

conferences with your teacher, parent teacher conferences, then it becomes you go into high school and there's AP classes and which do you take and what do you get? What scores do you get on those tests? And then which colleges do you get into? that, least where I grew up, but in this DC area, it's a very competitive environment for all of those things, for grades, for extracurriculars, for colleges, and what I think happened.

for me and what I see a lot is that, you know, as a kid, I didn't know any different than that my self-worth, like I was a good kid, I was a good person if I was smart and talented and continued achieving. So what happened is that that got kind of ingrained, you know, into my core beliefs, into my self-worth. And so in order to maintain...

self-worth to know to get that external validation that I'm a good person, that I'm a good kid. I had to continue, like you said, that pressure to perform and to achieve. you know, when I talk with my parents now and they said, well, you didn't need any pressure. were so like, you did your homework. No one had to ask. No one had to bother you. Like we always knew that you were, you like you chose to.

James Moffitt (08:56.475)
you know, take these AP classes and you, you know, we're so focused on your grades and your school and like, you didn't need any kind of pressure or support from us. and that's exactly, know, because I had learned, I had taught myself early on that, okay, well, if I just take care of this myself and I, you know, ensure that like the homework is done, the grades are A's then, you know, that I don't need that pressure because I'm on, I'm like ahead of the game. and I'll just keep getting that, that praise and that feedback that I'm good. I'm smart.

And I think what I wasn't able to really nurture was what were my values? What are things that are important to me besides getting praise? It's like, what else feels good to me? What else do I enjoy? Even what subjects in school are particularly interesting or useful to me aside from just the grades? And so, you know what?

what happened as I started college and post college life and what, and I see with a lot of clients is that like once the structure of school and that continuous feedback loop of grades and validation is removed because we don't in the adult world, in the professional world, those sorts of structures aren't there anymore. And so that left me and leaves a lot of young adults with wool.

How do I know that I'm good enough or who am I? I don't wanna just be my job, but if I'm not getting praise from my supervisor, then maybe I'm terrible at what I do. Maybe I'm not good enough. Like what value do I have besides being an employee somewhere? And which certainly in our early adulthood, at more entry level jobs and just starting out. so there's a lot of like reckoning with.

identity and am I good enough? How do I validate myself without like the grades and the structure? And just reinforcing that sort of all or nothing perfectionist thinking. Like if I'm not constantly striving for a promotion, if I'm not, you know, working, working, working, like this hustle culture that's so prevalent, then how will I, you know, then who am I and how do I know that I'm good?

James Moffitt (11:20.721)
and I'm a good person and I'm adult now.

So your self-confidence and your identity as a person was very performance-based.

And so that equated to if you were performing and you were meeting everybody's expectation, then you were a good person. And if you, God forbid, made a B or a C or failed in some way, then you're all of sudden a bad person, right?

So one of the things that as I look back at my childhood, my sister and I were both adopted from an orphanage in Germany. And my parents brought us to America and I'm so very thankful that they provided us with that opportunity. Because life could certainly have been way worse for us, right? We were like, my sister was two, I was one.

But they were very authoritative. They were very highly structured and they were like, kids are not to be seen or they're to be seen but not heard. We go over to the relatives house, you sit on the couch, you don't speak unless spoken to. so because of that, we didn't have much of a childhood, right? And I'm sitting here wondering if your identity was wrapped up in

James Moffitt (12:55.043)
in a performance based metric per se. You probably weren't allowed, really weren't allowed to be a kid or a child like a lot of your kids in school around you, right? Talk about some of the, can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really interesting point. And I think it, the difference for me internally, externally, you know, I did.

I did dance for a long time. did musical theater. I was not an athlete at all. So I dropped that pretty quickly. But I did things that I did really enjoy, again, like dance, musical theater. But the difference is that when I look back on those memories, even though these were activities that I really loved, it was still tied to my performance. Did I make the team? Did I perform well?

in that recital or that class. So, you know, I think that's a really, like, and always in the competition piece, like always comparing myself to others if I wasn't the best in the class. And I wasn't usually the best dancer in the room or on the team. And, you know, I think that that certainly like took away from just the like carefree joy of doing, you know, doing kidlike things or things that I loved.

to do because there was still even in those activities that drive and that pressure to be the best and keep getting better.

So looking back on those memories and those activities and everything, at what point did you realize that you really weren't happy?

James Moffitt (14:49.873)
That's a very good question. don't want to put you on the spot, but. No, it's a good one. think honestly it took me well into my 20s and 30s and a lot of therapy to realize that I wasn't happy. I think I knew from an earlier age,

teens, if not earlier, that I didn't feel good about my, like I didn't like myself. I didn't feel good about who I was. But I attributed it to myself. Like, I'm not good enough or there's something wrong with me, rather than, you know, this is unhappiness or depression. It always still felt like a personal failure until I did a lot of work on myself. Getting like into adulthood, where I started to.

you know, kind of realize like the impacts of these patterns and these internal dynamics and, you know, that they did really have an impact on me. And I think that's common. have two like loving, attentive parents who, like I said, you know, never, the pressure all came from myself. Like they never had to force me or push me or, you know, I was so self-motivated. So,

you know, and I know they and like all parents, I'm a new ish parent myself, like, we're all doing our best and we all want, you know, to have happy, healthy kids. And, you know, so I think it just took a long time for me to kind of put the pieces together and kind of stop blaming myself for looking for faults as to why, you know, I struggled with my mental health when I was younger with perfectionism and, you know, to just take a more

curious and self compassionate approach to kind of see the bigger picture and that it was not a moral failing of any kind, but to understand how these pieces contributed and how I can shift that. Right. So you got me thinking. So I know there are

James Moffitt (17:15.867)
a lot of schools of thought around what happiness is and what happiness isn't. And if you're on social media, which I'm sure you are, I know that there are, I have read several of these schools of thought about what defines happiness in your life. And there's one school of thought, I think, that says that you have to own your happiness and you have to make

your own happiness. you can't, speaking of relationships, you can't get married thinking, or you can't get into a serious relationship thinking, oh, that other person's going to make me happy because they're going to do A, B, and C, right? Or, I really like that person, or I really love that person, but these are things about that person I don't like, and if we get into this relationship, then I can fix that person, right? And we all know that that's a fallacy that's never going to happen, right? And that if you don't

get a grip on that quickly, then you're going to wind up ruining that relationship in some way.

James Moffitt (18:25.839)
We have, let's say we have 20 or, you know, older teenagers or 20 somethings or 30 somethings, what? Jen, Jen Z, Jen X. I'm not up on all the lingo, but, but, those, those groups of P if, if, if they're listening to this podcast, what would you tell them?

I would tell, I would start with values and that I think like you said, happiness is, you know, it's a subjective term. There's a lot of, you know, different opinions and schools of thought on what it means. And I, you know, how I like to think about it is values alignment and fulfillment. So.

you know, really taking a look at, you know, what, what are your values? What are the things that are important to you that do that, that fill your cup, that make you feel, that make you feel good. and that, that line up with the things that are, you know, truly important to you. And are you, are you living those values or are you living in alignment? Is it, when you say values, is that part of your morality?

Like what's your definition of good and bad is or. No, I think, I think it's kind of the opposite. It's that there's no, you know, values aren't good or bad. just are. And if we can be, they just are authentically you. So, you know, like people, like if you ask most people at face value, like what, what's a value that's really important to you, they'll say family. Like automatic and worse, but like, what, like what, what we would do is kind of.

try to dig a little deeper. what, you know, of course we all love our families and we value them, but like, what does that really, like what does the value of family look like in your life? Does it mean a certain, like certain types of relationships? Are we talking about blood family versus our chosen family? You know, what sort of like love and support do you need to feel good and feel connected? And like what, and vice versa, what love and support do you?

James Moffitt (20:44.977)
Like to give, like what, again, what is that, like a family or my relationship with my family or the family that I value is gonna look different from someone else's. So it's like digging a little bit deeper into, you know, what you really connect with and what.

what makes. What makes you tick? What makes you tick and what makes life feel meaningful? Like I guess someone might for family might mean that if that's their value, it's you know, it's living in the same state, like being able to see them regularly. And that's how I like connect with my family. For some people, it's like, you know what, like I value my family. I love them, but a little distance is good. And I have really meaningful visits with them. Right. Every quarter.

or so. And when those, but if the person who benefits from some distance is his healthiest with some distance and quarterly visits ends up switched, ends up switched and they're, you know, seeing family constantly and more than that, then is healthy for them, then that's going to be out of alignment and that's going to cause, you know, friction and resentment. So it's not that either is good or bad. It's just kind of figuring out, you know, what, what's really important and what makes me

what makes you healthy and aligning those actions. That's good. So you said something that kind of caused me to revisit one of the recurring themes that we visit on our podcast. then we have a private Facebook parenting support group. We started out in 2015 with a

10 members and then we wound up today with like 1.3 thousand members. And so there's a lot of parents out there that are looking for support and help. And one of the recurring themes that keeps coming up is failure to launch and, and, or when is it right to launch or, you know, parents, it's like you said, you know, parents don't get a manual when you get a, when you, when you get that big bouncing baby boy or girl.

James Moffitt (22:56.837)
You know, they pat you on the head and send you out of the hospital or like, okay, go forth and you're in charge. You're like everything right. Yeah. Don't mess it up. my God. What am going to do now? Right. And unless you have a real close knit support system by grandparents or families or cousins or uncles or people that have parented before you, then if you're truly on your own, you know, and you don't have that support system, then it's even more frightening.

But looking at

Looking at that issue from a young adult's viewpoint, what catalyst needs to be in place for them to successfully launch? You talked about the difference between somebody's value having a close-knit relationship with their parents or their siblings or their

You know, some people like that. Some people desire that closeness, right? But you also said that, which is true, time and distance sometimes makes the heart grow a little fonder, right? And so I think it's healthy that a young adult would want to be independent, right? And that's the whole point behind parenting is equipping the child to be successful.

and to be able to stand on their own two feet and be able to go out into the world and be a law-abiding, productive citizen. And so there's a happy balance, I think, between the two. So looking at it from your perspective, what would you...

James Moffitt (24:52.387)
young people are being pressured by their parents to there's the edge of the nest. I'm going to fluff your wings. And at some point I'm going to beat you out of the nest. You're going have to learn how to fly. And there's a little bit of resistance from the, from the kids because they're like, but I don't have to pay rent. getting free food, free room and board, free internet education. I don't want you to kick me out of the nest. Right. I was quite the opposite. I had such a horrible childhood.

I ejected myself from the, I burned the nest on the way out, right? So, looking at from that perspective, what would you say to 20 somethings or, know, 18, 19, 20, 25 year olds with regards to having a healthy transition from going from a parent-child relationship

to where the parent is more of a mentor. Yeah, I think that's so important. And it starts with, I think, just recognizing that every kid, every teenager, every young adult, every human is different and has different needs and is not going to fit into that timeline of like, okay, 18, you go to college for four years.

then you get a job and like that, then you move out and you're independent. You know, that's the sort of structure that society that are the American society culture has set and it doesn't and I'm thinking too, you know, I talked about my experience as someone who's gifted and talented as a kid. But on the flip side of that, like what about the kid who said is getting sees is not performing is not meeting those

you know, expectations of society and of the culture and of their parents. like what, you know, how do they, what messages have they been getting? Have they been told since they were a kid that, you know, they're still, they're still growing up in this, in this culture. So like what sort of messaging are they getting directly or indirectly that about that? They're lazy. They're not that smart. They're not a great student. You know, they're, they're aren't expect, you know, as high of expectations on them.

James Moffitt (27:16.506)
You know, so that has another impact on their self-confidence and self-worth. And, you know, whether or not they say, I'm a good kid or a bad kid, they learn, okay, guess I'm lazy. I guess I'm not that smart. you know, what's the point? This is kind of my destiny. And, you know, so they're still getting that same messaging. It's just hitting in a different...

way when I think what we're starting to realize more and more is that intelligence isn't just standardized testing and traditional college and traditional schooling that just like happiness is subjective and looks like a lot of different things, so does intelligence and smarts and we have different, humans have different strengths and areas of weakness.

you know, my thought for someone who's a failure to launch or struggling with that transition is like, I mean, one, again, what's going on with their self-worth, you know, and how do we connect with that and really start to build on that and also reframe that, lens that we are evaluating young adults through. Again, like, you get all A's? Did you do your AP's? Did you go to college? And did you get that good job right out of school?

you know, that that doesn't like that, that in our culture is success. And I think being able to kind of recognize all adults as being unique and having different needs and strengths that, you know, that that traditional path may not be, it probably isn't, isn't best for many adults. So many young adults. what, you know, what are the things that can boost

and recover that self-worth and again, back to values and interests. you said, school was boring to you, it wasn't your thing. So what does, there, is there a trade? Is there a different sort of path that would give your life some meaning and value? like, yes, we live in America, you have to have it. Unfortunately, we can't be like, oh, school and work isn't for me.

James Moffitt (29:44.378)
You know, there are just certain things that we can't get around, but it doesn't always have to look like that traditional path.

James Moffitt (29:57.582)
So you talk about intelligence, and I think a lot of parents and lot of educators define intelligence by, can you sit in a classroom and can you memorize enough data to regurgitate it back out onto a test form and make a good grade, right? There's a difference between memorization of data versus.

You it's like you probably seen this on social media before. It's like, just because you have a four-year degree in underwater basket weaving doesn't mean you're not an idiot, right? And so, I think that one of the things that is amiss in our, and I'm not an educator. My wife's an educator. She's been teaching for 25 years. She's in special education. You and her could just talk circles around me when it comes to.

psychotherapy and all that stuff, right? I'm just kind of babbling off the top of my head. But I think that one of the things that's missing in the education process, and I experienced this in the 70s and 80s, one of the things that's missing is that there's this intellectual side of a person. There's an intellect that probably needs to be developed at a very early age, right? And when do

When do we as parents and or educators or psychotherapists or whatever, when do we help somebody engage in critical thinking? Right? Just because your parents say thus and so, you know, one of the jobs of a parent is to pass their morality and their value system onto their kids, right? They got to get it from somewhere. And if the parents don't teach them something,

the world's going to teach them something quite opposite, which might or might not be good. So how important do you think it is that we

James Moffitt (32:04.186)
tell people that it's important to have critical thinking. Like you get on social media, and I do a lot of writing, I'm on Medium, and I'm on Substack, and I'm just hearing all kinds of political garbage since the election, right? And it's like the left saying one thing, the right saying another thing, and it's like people are just consuming all this data in their heads and their minds and their hearts, and they're like, it's like, let's...

It's not about partisan politics. It's about finding out what the social issues are and fixing them. Let's get some smart people into the room that are critical thinkers that can identify the problem and figure out what we have as resources to fix those things. And it's like, it's very frustrating to me as somebody that likes to be a critical thinker, which I think is something that you develop until you're dead, right? You just don't grab it all of a sudden and you have it.

It's a, to me, it's a tool that you sharpen over time, right? So how do you, at what point do we steer young people towards that?

James Moffitt (33:23.902)
I, yes, I'm, I'm big off base. Yeah, no, I, I, I think critical thinking is such an important and lacking muscle, often to your point. And I think, you know, I, I love that this topic, because I think it is such a good example of a necessary skill and intelligence, like type of intelligence, you could say that, that, like you said, is not.

know, memorizing long division tables and that, you know, part of what can, you know, what can occur for young adults, whether you're kind of in this gifted and talented side or, you know, feeling like I'm lazy, I'm not good enough side is, you know, there's a lot of well-intentioned like protection and from parents that

you know, to not, know, to keep kids, of course, to keep them safe, to make sure everything's okay, to like keep them in that like perfect environment that they can launch. And I think what can get lost is the adversity and the resilience and the making mistakes and using critical thinking and other, just, you know, that resilience, that flexibility to recover, to learn skills.

that we aren't born with. And I think even speaking for myself, I had a very privileged life where I got lot of, again, lot of praise. had access to everything I needed and everything I needed to be successful was there for me. And I certainly faced adversity in different ways, but that...

a lot of that like protection and even coddling.

James Moffitt (35:24.302)
kind of prevented some of that like critical thinking and just development of resilience in those arguably more important like intelligence skills and muscles than what you're doing in math class potentially. So I think that it's finding that balance of support, guidance, protection within

safety and getting basic needs met, but also allowing for mistakes, for failures, and teaching kids and young adults, or really allowing them to teach themselves how to recover, bounce back, be resilient, and just handle. Part of my issue, I never let myself fail and I had all these

protection. the idea of any sort of failure, whether that was a B on a test or, you know, another mistake was catastrophic because I had not like allowed myself to learn to tolerate that humans make mistakes and that doesn't mean I'm a bad person or I'm not smart. So yeah, giving kids, teens, young adults, you know, the runway to fly and fall and pick themselves.

backup. I I think some parents

have a, they see a failure to launch on one side. And then on the other side, you have what's called helicopter parents that want to hover over the children, no matter what age they are and protect them from every single little mistake and failure, right? And so then we get into this enabling behavior where we're enabling bad behavior, bad mistakes.

James Moffitt (37:23.822)
You know, I don't care how old I get or how much I learn. Relationships are just complicated. They are very complicated and there's a lot to it. so I look back at my childhood and I was like, you know, I told my parents I wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy trainer. My dad got me hooked on the Dallas Cowboys when I was eight years old. And to this very day, despite their

being a pathetic team, I can't help but from year to year, every year goes by, going, I am not going to watch their game anymore. I'm a Kansas city fan. Not, you know, and, I told them I wanted to do that and they were like, ah, good luck with that. If you're going to do that, you're going to pay for it yourself. We're not going to, we're not, there's no money there for you to do that. You know, cause I had to go to Southern Southern.

Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and all there was a whole, you know, training track that you have to go through, obviously. And, and I mean, and I was, I was a kid when I told him that, you know, that was my dream. That was my vision. And they were like, nah, no. My dad wanted me be the TV man, right? Cause that's what he did after five o'clock. He got off from work and ate dinner and then went out to his TV, this building that he built in the backyard.

worked on TVs until midnight. And I know looking back on that, he was doing that to pay the bills, right, and to provide his family with what they needed. I kind of wished, as I look back at my childhood, I kind of wished they would have been a little more supportive and that they would have, you know, when they found out that I was off the charts with my IQ and I knew that they never even told me what my IQ was. And honestly, I could really care less what my IQ was. But, but if I was really that smart,

you know, I wish they would have provided me with the environment that I needed to excel in, right? And, but they didn't, right? And we all have regrets. And sometimes I think about that, you know, I'm in the last quarter of my life, you know, I look back at that and I think, geez, what, you know, what could I have really been had they provided me that support and that encouragement instead of

James Moffitt (39:50.508)
Raising me with an iron fist and going, you'll do thus and so, or else, you know, so I think it's important that parents.

provide their children, their young adults, with an environment that, not necessarily coddle them, not necessarily being a helicopter parent, but within your means, provide them with an environment that is best of environment as possible for them to succeed, right? Because that's what we want. We want them to succeed. that success doesn't necessarily, it's like you said, all kids are different, all adults are different.

And, and not, not all round pegs are going to fit in a square hole. Right. Yep. So it makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think that, you know, as you were, as you were sharing, you know, and, even talking about this idea of success that, you know, I, we, I work with a lot of, of clients that, you know, they, they've reached success there, you know,

They're a partner at the law firm. They're all the way up the food chain. They're making a ton of money and they're not, you know, so by all the checklists and their parents expectations and their own, they're successful, but they're not happy or they're not feeling fulfilled. And now they've gone so far down this, you know, path career or otherwise that, you know, they feel really stuck. And again, that's their whole identity. So if I change course, what does that, what does that mean about me? So I think.

know, exactly to your point that, you know, redefining what success is and like what success really means. Is it career success or is success finding that fulfillment and happiness and exactly what does that look like for each person? Because it's not, you know, it's not a square peg that we all, that has a square hole all the time. And being able to

James Moffitt (41:57.754)
you know, allow like to show that openness and allow for that exploration with your child, with your young adult, which kind of, give them feeling that permission within themselves to try a different path or really see what is valuable and meaningful to them to create that environment. You know, we create the support structure, the environment with the hopes that

you know, with those with the values and that sort of alignment in place that that creates.

you know, creates the foundation to launch whatever that that looks like.

Very good. So in the seventies and eighties, there was no such thing as social media. I mean, the personal computer hadn't had barely launched. Right. And I, you know, I think, I think looking back to the eighties, I remember people saying, yeah, I got a, you know, an IBM blah, blah, blah, you know, and it was like five grand. Right. And so the only people that could really afford those were business people that could write it off on their taxes at the end of the year. Right.

And so, so we really didn't, we really didn't have social media. And so, but I know today, like, like people your age, forgive me for saying that, but people your age and younger, it's like you're born with a computer in your hand, you know, and it's like, you know, who, who teaches mom and dad how to fix the problems on their computer or how to get on Facebook or how to, how to change their passwords or all that stuff. The kids do.

James Moffitt (43:40.644)
Because it's natural, comes natural to them. An AI, God forbid AI, right? it's just taking off and invading every corner of our universe. And I'm an IT specialist, so I've been doing IT for 30 years. So I'm very, very in tune with all of that. But as a parent, can you talk a little bit about the effects of

the good and the negative effects of social media on young adults? Yeah, absolutely. I think the benefits of social media are it can be a sense of community and connection and just seeing, know, being exposed to other people that are similar to you or that you relate to, particularly, you know, for

kids or young adults that don't that maybe don't have that naturally in their lives to be able to connect with or see others that they relate to or that experience similar things as them can be very powerful and even you know to.

to communicate that way and can create a sense of community, a virtual community in social media. There's also a lot of information. That's a double-edged sword, there can be education and knowledge that is shared more widely on social media than it would be in the past. And there's a lot of downsides to that as well.

But it can be, when used correctly, it be a useful tool. The downsides are...

James Moffitt (45:35.886)
the comparison, the reality that social media is a highlight reel. No, most people are not posting their lows. They're posting their vacations, their good Successes. Their successes. And we're not seeing the whole... So it can feel like you know a person that you follow on social media, but it doesn't feel like you're only seeing a...

portion of their life, but that's the reality. And so it really intensifies that the comparison game and measuring, you know, their another person's success or achievements are comparing yourself, comparing to that. And of course, I mean, just the bullying and the negativity that can occur into young adulthood. That's a

you know, has been shown that since social media that, you know, depression and suicide rates in teenagers is skyrocketing for both, both that the comparison and just the access to so much information as well as cyber bullying and that sort of negativity. And I think again, the flip side of, you know, the information and

you spoke about this a bit earlier is, you know, it's information, it's not verified, it's not, know, anyone can say anything and, you know, whether it's critical thinking, whether it's being able to, you know, filter through or just the constant barrage of news, of media.

you know, certainly since the election, but I think this is at least it really intensified in 2020 with COVID. Just a constant barrage of news and different tragedies and people's opinions and pick a side and you know that.

James Moffitt (47:51.039)
is draining and it, you know, really it activates your nervous system every time. to get that sort of stimulation. The dopamine. Yep. The dopamine hit as well as the other side of just the dysregulation of that to sort of like anxiety or stress that comes when we're reading bad news, like scrolling, doom scrolling, as they say. Doom scrolling.

I've never heard of that. That's the newer. Okay. And coined. Yeah. So I think a healthy social media use requires that critical thinking that we talked about as well as a lot of boundaries and self-awareness.

You know, to do so in a healthy way. And that is tough because the dopamine hit the kind of addiction and the like numbing that can occur just from scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, can be hard to, to break that cycle. Cause it's such an easy way to, to both dial in to like the news in the world and what's happening, also to learn how to shut it off and avoid. Yeah. Right. Very good. Well, Lindsay, I have to say, I really enjoyed talking with you.

And I enjoyed our, you know, when I, when we first got into this episode, I was thinking, Lord, I don't know what we're going to talk about. And it turned out to be quite the opposite. And I, I really enjoyed digging into some of this stuff with you and I appreciate your feedback and your, expertise. And I think that any, any young adult and hopefully even some parents will listen to this and they'll be able to take, there'll be some takeaways from, for them.

that they can make notes on and go, okay, well, I haven't really thought about that. you know, so hopefully it'll be helpful to both the parent and the young adults. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear that. And I really enjoyed it too. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. All right. So to the listening audience, I'll say thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Amazon music, iHeartRadio, public radio.

James Moffitt (50:05.167)
And Apple podcasts. you're on Spotify, you can actually watch the video version of this podcast episode. Otherwise, think a lot, think about 60 % of my listening, listening audiences on Apple podcasts because of the prevalence of all the iPhones out there. And a lot of people like to listen to podcasts while they're driving from point A to point B. And so yeah, we don't want you watching video while you're driving. Just listen.

If you're on Spotify, you can go to my about page about the podcast and there's a website that I've created. Go to that website, sign up for a free membership. you'll get an email every time I do a blog post or whatever. You can also do a review on any podcast episode that you listen to. And I'd really appreciate it if you would do that. on the, on the website, you'll see contact information. can click a link, send me an email. You can send me a voicemail. I'll respond to anything that you send me.

within reason. Anyway, thank you for listening. Lindsay, thank you for being here. I had a wonderful time and I'll say everybody have a blessed day. Bye-bye.