#916 - Freya India - Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever

Summary

Podcast Summary: Modern Wisdom #916 - Freya India: Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever

Release Date: March 17, 2025

Introduction

In episode #916 of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson engages in a deep and insightful conversation with Freya India about the pervasive sense of disorientation and loss experienced by modern women. Freya India delves into the rise of therapy culture, its parallels with traditional religion, the impact of social media, and the broader societal shifts contributing to the current mental health landscape for young women.

Therapy Culture Replacing Religion

Freya India begins by exploring the notion that therapy culture has effectively supplanted traditional religious frameworks for many young women.

• Therapy as a New Faith: Freya posits, “therapy culture has replaced religion... for young women in particular who are becoming less religious, this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void” (00:04). She draws parallels between religious practices and therapeutic behaviors, suggesting that modern therapeutic rituals provide similar comfort and structure without the stringent rules of traditional religions.

• Characteristics Mimicking Religion: She elaborates, “Instead of praying, we just repeat our positive affirmations. Instead of seeking salvation, you'll go on a healing journey” (00:24). This comparison underscores how therapeutic practices offer solace akin to religious beliefs but without the associated societal and behavioral constraints.

Impact of Therapy Culture on Mental Health

The discussion shifts to the alarming statistics and the normalization of therapy in everyday life.

• High Prevalence of Therapy: Freya cites a study stating, “32% of all 12 to 17-year-olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023 over a single year, one third, which is insane” (03:54). She interprets this not as a positive trend but as a bleak indicator of widespread mental health struggles.

• Perpetual Therapeutic Environment: She explains how therapy culture permeates daily interactions, with social media platforms inundating young women with terms like “attachment styles” and “trauma,” effectively making the therapeutic lens a constant framework for interpreting their lives (04:56).

Comparison to Male Self-Optimization Trends

Freya draws a parallel between the therapy culture embraced by young women and the self-optimization trends prevalent among young men.

• Men’s Self-Optimization vs. Women’s Therapy Culture: “If you think of the anxious young 14-year-old girl, the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to get relief,” Freya argues (05:55). She contrasts this with men’s focus on physical self-improvement, noting that both can become unhealthy avoidance strategies.

• Control Mechanisms: She remarks, “It's a form of control... we're just like, I'm gonna categorize that and diagnose it” (06:38), highlighting how both genders internalize these cultures as means of exerting control over their emotions and behaviors.

Social Media’s Role in Shaping Relationships and Self-Perception

The conversation delves into how platforms like TikTok and Instagram influence young women's perceptions of relationships and self-worth.

• Red Flags and Toxicity: Freya critiques the vague and overgeneralized “red flags” promoted online, stating, “the message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be a red flag” (13:44). This fosters a pervasive sense of distrust and anxiety in relationships.

• Commodification of Relationships: She discusses the phenomenon of "soft launching" boyfriends on social media, equating relationships to brand collaborations (47:56). This commercialization undermines the authenticity and emotional depth of personal connections.

Family Breakdown and Lack of Adult Guidance

Freya attributes much of the current turmoil to the breakdown of traditional family structures and the absence of proactive adult guidance.

• Statistical Concerns: Highlighting that over half of children in the UK by age 14 do not live with both parents, Freya links this instability to heightened feelings of abandonment and anxiety (08:11; 52:56).

• Shift from Authority to Peer Guidance: With adults stepping back, young women increasingly turn to online communities for guidance, leading to reliance on potentially unqualified influencers rather than trusted family members (52:56; 58:08).

Identity Pathologization and Self-Diagnosis

Freya critiques the trend of self-diagnosing and the overpathologization of normal emotional experiences.

• Misuse of Diagnostic Labels: “It’s like seeing the symptoms as... personality traits,” Freya explains, drawing parallels to how normal behaviors are now quickly labeled as disorders like autism or anxiety (29:12; 32:50).

• Impact on Self-Perception: She warns that this leads to self-obsession, where individuals become blind to genuine self-improvement needs, replacing them with endless excuses for their behaviors (19:58; 33:16).

The Commodification of Identity and Relationships

The episode touches upon how modern culture forces young women to commodify their identities and personal lives.

• Influencer Culture: Freya cites influencers like Tana Mongeau who normalize platforms like OnlyFans, encouraging young girls to monetize their bodies as a misguided form of empowerment (76:09; 77:04).

• Social Media as a Validation Tool: She observes that the need for social media validation turns personal relationships into performance, eroding genuine emotional connections (49:38; 52:38).

Consequences of Excessive Self-Focus

The discussion highlights how excessive inward focus can be detrimental to personal growth and relationships.

• Blocked Self-Development: “You can't see where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses,” Freya asserts, pointing out that while self-reflection is essential, it often devolves into self-obsession without actionable growth (19:58).

• Dependency vs. Independence: She emphasizes the importance of healthy dependency in relationships, countering the societal push for total independence (62:59).

Conclusion: Navigating Modern Women's Feelings of Being Lost

Freya India concludes by emphasizing the need for balanced guidance and authentic community connections to combat the feelings of isolation and confusion among modern women.

• Reinstating Genuine Support Systems: She advocates for the restoration of meaningful adult guidance and local communities to provide the structure and support that have been eroded by modern societal changes (52:56; 58:37).

• Critical Examination of Therapy Culture: Freya calls for a more nuanced understanding of therapy culture, distinguishing between genuine therapeutic practices and the superficial, algorithm-driven trends that often do more harm than good (34:06; 71:57).

Notable Quotes

• “Therapy culture has replaced religion... for young women in particular who are becoming less religious, this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void.” — Freya India (00:04)

• “32% of all 12 to 17-year-olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023 over a single year, one third, which is insane.” — Freya India (03:54)

• “It's a form of control... we're just like, I'm gonna categorize that and diagnose it.” — Freya India (06:38)

• “The message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be a red flag.” — Freya India (13:44)

• “If you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic relationship and really wants to depend on someone now we view you as like weak.” — Freya India (67:03)

Final Thoughts

Episode #916 of Modern Wisdom presents a compelling analysis of the psychological and societal factors contributing to the sense of being lost among modern women. Freya India articulates how therapy culture, exacerbated by social media and the breakdown of traditional support systems, creates an environment where young women are left to navigate their mental health and relationships with insufficient guidance. Her insights call for a reevaluation of how society supports young women, emphasizing the need for authentic community, balanced therapeutic practices, and the restoration of meaningful adult mentorship.

For more insights from Freya India, be sure to visit her Substack at freyaindia.co.uk and stay tuned for her upcoming book announcement.

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

Why do you think so many girls are drawn to therapy culture?

[Freya India]

Oh, I think it's a lot of things. I do think this is kind of a cliche thing to say now, but I do think therapy culture has replaced religion. And that's not a new thing to say. People have been saying that for a long time. So Christopher Lasch was writing about that in the 70s. Frank Ferrudi writes about it really well now. But in recent years, since social media, I would say therapy culture has just escalated to the point where I think young women don't see it as a worldview, they just see that as kind of life. So they interpret everything through this therapeutic lens. So their lives, their relationships, their emotions, and I think it has elevated to the level of religion. So you think of all the kind of characteristics of religion, we just mimic them with therapy culture. So instead of praying, we just repeat our positive affirmations. Instead of seeking salvation, you'll go on a healing journey. Instead of resisting temptation from the devil, you'll reframe your intrusive thoughts. And so I think for young women in particular who are becoming less religious, this kind of therapeutic worldview has completely replaced that void.

[Chris Williamson]

What does a therapeutic worldview consist of? What does that mean?

[Freya India]

Like seeing problems in your life, kind of pathologizing problems and experiences as something medical rather than I'm just experiencing this emotion or kind of age old anxiety. Now it's become a medical issue. So things like talking in the language of attachment styles and trauma and losing the language of just ordinary hurt and disappointment and things like that.

[Chris Williamson]

And for some reason this is giving some kind of solace or comfort, order being brought out of chaos.

[Freya India]

I think it gives the comfort religion gives and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like, like they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe and like have faith in that.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Freya India]

And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts. So the any actual demands on you or kind of restrictions on your freedom.

[Chris Williamson]

Or anything like that, being held to standards of behavior, et cetera.

[Freya India]

So it has what women are craving in modern life, I think, which is belonging and security in something and faith in something. But it's a much easier version of religion.

[Chris Williamson]

Slippery religion.

[Freya India]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

How many of these girls are in therapy, do you think?

[Freya India]

A lot. There was a study recently showing 32% of all 12 to 17 year olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023 over a single year, one third, which is insane. And I was talking to someone about that statistic and they were like, oh, that's great, that's amazing. And I was thinking, that's a bleak statistic. So, yeah, I think there's the girls that are in therapy, which is a lot. But then there's also the girls who just like living in therapy culture. So it's just they scroll through Instagram and it's all about attachment styles, trauma. They go on TikTok and it's like a trauma informed therapist telling them like red flags they should watch out for and stuff. It's just like there's the actual therapy, which I'm sure there is, there's useful therapists, but there's also just this culture, which is just the world that they're swimming in.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. So you're never able to switch it off. I think Alanda Baton was sat in that same seat as you. Big proponent of psychotherapy, I think. Trained as a psychotherapist himself too. Owns a school of life which isn't just a YouTube channel, but a psychotherapy facility here in London.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And even he, like the biggest proponent of it, I think, would very much say that there is a time for therapizing.

[Freya India]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

And then there is a time to. Not in the same way as going to the gym. There is a time to train and then there is a time to recover. And I wonder whether one of the criticisms that's common that I put to him was lots of people online, more old school people, more sort of typical stiff upper lip type people would say you're not fixing your past's problems, you're dwelling on them. And by dwelling on them you are ruminating too much. There is some evidence, I mean, a good bit of evidence. Rumination's not particularly fantastic for you. And finding this line between. Yeah, mate, we don't want to deny that bad things happened and never alchemize them or transcend and include them into our life.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And then on the other side, we don't want to wallow in them. Uh, but I suppose if you have the online environment that you exist within, permanently using this language, you're permanently having these structures and these thinking patterns reinforced and then it's how you begin to talk to yourself about what happens offline.

[Freya India]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

And then you also have, you know, facilitation or medication or conversations with your friends, further embracing all of that. You're just entrenched in this all the time.

[Freya India]

Yeah, well, I Used to think, and I think a lot of people think therapy cultures particularly bad for men because kind of has a female approach to problems and it's about, you know, ruminating and often it's like if you don't have a female response, there's something wrong with you. It's kind of a red flag if you don't go to therapy. But I actually changed my mind on that and actually think therapy culture is worse for women because women ruminate more, they co ruminate more.

[Chris Williamson]

It's playing into the weakness that they already have or the disposition.

[Freya India]

Yeah. If you think of an anxious young 14 year old girl, the worst thing you can tell her is to go further into her own head to, to get relief and to think more about her problems and to kind of search her life for symptoms. You know, that if you told me that at 14, it's the worst thing I could have heard. So I actually think maybe some men do need to do that a little bit more. But the average young girl needs to kind of cut out.

[Chris Williamson]

I wonder whether therapy language and therapy culture for girls is what gym language, gym culture, sarms, Testosterone, steroids at 17 is for guys.

[Freya India]

Yeah, I think it's a form of control. So it's like, it's our version of control. You know, if we feel uncomfortable or feel an uneasy emotion, we're just like, I'm gonna categorize that and diagnose it. You know, that's my attachment disorder or that's my depression. And I think men do that kind. They have their own kind of self optimization trends and the gym stuff where that can become like a form of control to deal with kind of uneasy emotions. And I think, yeah, this is the woman's version of that. It's like we can't sit with it or just accept like a painful situation. So I often think about. So if you look at these kind of attachment style forums or girls talking about their attachment styles, very often they'll describe just a bad relationship and then they'll say, oh, it's my attachment disorder. So they'll be like, he cheated on me and I can't get over it because of my anxious attachment. And it's like, it's so sad because they're actually losing the language to talk about the actual problem that they're facing because they're trying to get control because it's a lot easier to be like, oh, you know, I'm anxious or he's avoidant. Then we have a terrible relationship and I've just wasted four years with Someone you get the control through the therapy culture. So that's where I see it becoming a danger to girls and young women.

[Chris Williamson]

What's that stat that you mentioned there about girls from religious families seeming to do differently? Well, and now 18 to 25 year old girls are religious at different levels and stuff.

[Freya India]

Yeah. So I think for the first time in history, young women are less religious than young men.

[Chris Williamson]

Now typically women would have been more.

[Freya India]

But among Gen Z, it's men that are going to church way more than women now. And Jonathan Haidt did some research on this showing that he like presented, he looked at a survey of statements and they were things like I have no hope in myself, I don't believe like really self disparaging statements. And he found that teenagers without religion agreed with them way stronger than teenagers who were religious and especially who were conservative. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. I think one is kind of that external locus of control. So conservatives tend to have more of an internal locus of control so they feel more control over things happening in their lives. Also if you're conservative teenager, you're more likely to be living with both parents, which I think protects your mental health. And also your parents are more likely to have clearer boundaries with you, which I think is actually very useful for anxiety and depression. So there's different explanations for it. But yeah, it's a worry because young women are becoming less religious and their mental health is also tanking. So there has to be some link there.

[Chris Williamson]

And maybe therapy culture, therapy language is stepping into the void and also stopping them from perhaps going back to finding religion. I'm hesitant to say therapy culture is getting in the way of religion isn't like religion is necessarily the answer to this, but that it's whatever better alternatives could be, including religion are being precluded by this much sexier, newer, more comforting answer to everything that makes no demands on you as a person, that doesn't require you to follow any edicts or refrain from any types of behaviors.

[Freya India]

Well, therapy culture, I think it probably is getting in the way in a sense because it's kind of the opposite of religion. So if you think of Christianity, it's about dying to yourself, like giving up some of yourself to be part of something bigger. Therapy culture is all about going more and more into yourself, discovering yourself and like finding your authentic self. It's the complete opposite. So something like Christianity, I think most young women just view it as really restrictive and limiting and something like therapy culture or just liberal culture in general tells them that any limit or constraint is a problem.

[Chris Williamson]

What like.

[Freya India]

Well, just this sense in culture now that any obligation is like an obstacle to your life or your mental health. I think that's just endemic from everywhere we look. And it's, yeah, very much the opposite of what religion tells us, which is that through sacrifice you find kind of actual fulfillment and you kind of break free from yourself. Now we're kind of told whether it's through feminism or therapy culture, whatever girls are scrolling through on TikTok or Instagram, it's like, you know, things like, if you think of therapy culture on TikTok, it will say something like, don't be a people pleaser, don't be needy. But these things are kind of the opposite of what Christianity is telling you, which is like, you should be someone who puts your needs second. It's good to be someone who gives for other people, who depends on people and they depend on you. That's not the message girls are growing up with.

[Chris Williamson]

Is therapy culture less pro social?

[Freya India]

Yes, I think so. Well, again, you're just going inwards and yeah. Also I often think of, again, it's a similarity between therapy culture for women and kind of self optimization stuff for men. Because it's like for men, if you go too far that way, other people become obstacles to your ambition and your self development. So people become distractions and annoyances. It's the same with therapy culture because then for a young woman who's really into therapy culture, a man is just like an obstacle to her healing and her mental health. So I think if you go too far in it, you can just interpret anyone or anything as a threat to your peace.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. Yeah, that's very interesting. Which is, you know, the best kind of relationships are the ones that make both people in them better.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

That they enter the relationship and stay in the relationship. Hopefully. Or if they leave, they leave.

[Freya India]

In.

[Chris Williamson]

An improved situation individually.

[Freya India]

Yes. But I don't think that's really getting across to young women. I think, yeah, I think what the problem is is you go on something like TikTok and you have like a trauma informed therapist who might be interesting and informative, but she's now competing in a attention economy. So she has to create a video which is engaging and extreme. So she has to say five red flags you should avoid in men. And they're, they're things that are just so vague and what like things like. Well, I literally saw one that said gifts and trips. It's a red flag because it's love bombing.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Freya India]

But other things like they'll say, you know, you're in a bad relationship if he makes you feel insecure, for example, by making a comment about your looks. But it's, it's so vague that it's like, well, anyone's boyfriend could be included in that somehow. But if you add them all together, if you're scrolling through this all day, every day, which a lot of girls are, the message is basically like anyone can be toxic and anyone can be a red flag.

[Chris Williamson]

Unsafe.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And you're. Unfortunately, girls do co ruminate together and it's really bad for their mental health.

[Chris Williamson]

So ruminate.

[Freya India]

Yeah. So dwelling on their problems with friends, which, if you think of something like a Reddit forum, that is just a rumination machine. It's just like, it's there for everybody to analyze together. TikTok is literally somewhere you can ruminate and then it will start recommending you new disorders and problems. So it's like, it's kind of like the inner world of these young girls, but now getting fed more and more.

[Chris Williamson]

To them, other people's inner worlds which can become a sort of. Oh, that's a nice thought pattern. Maybe I'll try that one on.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And the most risk averse, neurotic, anxious women on there will get the most traction because they'll be saying everybody else.

[Chris Williamson]

Is following along from that.

[Freya India]

Yeah. So if you spend too much time on there, you will think that like a well adjusted woman doesn't need anyone, doesn't have any distraction in her life and feels good all the time, that no one ever threatens her or makes her feel anxious and that's just like a lonely life.

[Chris Williamson]

And any perturbment from feeling the opposite of that is not because of her, it's because of some insult that's occurred in one form or another from the world or from structures or from a partner or from a friend or from.

[Freya India]

But the problem with that is you shut down any constructive criticism of you. Like if your boyfriend has a constructive comment about you, if you are being selfish or something. Therapy culture does provide endless excuses to kind of twist that into.

[Chris Williamson]

You don't need to hear this.

[Freya India]

Yeah, he's a toxic person. You're only like that because of your childhood trauma. He's just like an asshole. But you have like all of these reasons why you behave that way.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you contrasted this, I don't know whether you've been able to look at it with what young guys see. Is there an equivalent for young guys?

[Freya India]

I think the only equivalent I could think of is the productivity Stuff. So I don't know if you saw that tweet recently of the guy. He's like, this morning routine saved me. So he does his morning routine, which is like super productive. It's like everything. It's the red light therapy and the journaling and everything. But it's kind of eerie when you watch it because it's like, this is not a lifestyle you could have with anyone else around. It's so to the absolute like minute. And you think like, this is kind of a similar thing with therapy culture. It's like we're trying to have this perfect control over our lives and like get perfect control before you commit to anybody. And then you think of things like young people not wanting to get married and have children and it's like, well, yeah, because there'll be a huge obstacle if we think that we have to have this perfect control over our mental health or our productivity routine. Anyone else is gonna seem like chaos coming into that. And so I think young men and women can both go to an extreme of those. But it's kind of the same thing. It's like an avoidance strategy. It's like I have full control in this situation and I'm not vulnerable.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you read any Oliver Berkman?

[Freya India]

Yes, I love Oliver Bergman. He's great.

[Chris Williamson]

He's phenomenal. Did you get his new one, Meditations for Mortals? Okay. It came out a couple of months ago. One of the best things that I got exposed to this year just talks about a lot of this and it's very self deprecating, very British, some might say.

[Freya India]

Yeah, no, I relate to him painfully because.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, me too. He really sees a particular cohort of human nature very transparently, I think.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And I think I have that tendency to see people as distraction because I'm trying to work, so. So I'm often like, you know, I need to write in perfect silence, I need to have my perfect routine. And yeah, I read a quote. I think it was CS Lewis saying something like, eventually you realize that all of these distractions from your life were just your life. Like they weren't distractions at all. And I think it's really sad to kind of teach young people or just like drill into their heads that they should avoid anyone getting in the way of their self development and their ambition or their healing, because that's life getting in the way. And yeah, it's sad to see people kind of half heartedly do relationships or kind of put them off in pursuit of that ultimate control. I think that's a really that will backfire eventually.

[Chris Williamson]

What are the problems of excessive self focus?

[Freya India]

Well, I think that. I think it's. Jordan Peterson says there's no difference between, like, self obsession and mental illness in the sense that it's all focusing too much on yourself. Not to say that it's in your control all the time, necessarily, but that is what it is. It's focusing too much on your own problems. And I think, yeah, as I said, girls are particularly vulnerable to it. And I think what it does is it blocks real self development because you can't see where you're going wrong because you have these endless excuses for why you're behaving the way you are. So I think a lot of girls think they're doing self development and self reflection, but it's actually accidentally, like self obsession because they're thinking, oh, you know, I'm analyzing my attachment style and I'm thinking about my trauma and I'm like, doing the work. But there's not much actual self development going on.

[Chris Williamson]

Work being done.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And I think it can kind of be a trap where you think, I'm working on myself as a person. And the same with the self optimization stuff. Like, I think you can get so obsessed with stuff like maybe the ice baths and the breathwork that you're not thinking about trying to be a better person. Like, it just becomes there's a couple.

[Chris Williamson]

Of traps for that. Alex Hormozy taught me a really, really good lesson as I started to do little bits of investing and stuff like that. So sometimes a company will say, hey, we're this interesting company in a world that you maybe know. Or like, would you like to put some money in and maybe come on as an advisor or whatever it might be? And I was talking to him and he said, how many of these calls are you taking? I said, I don't know, you know, maybe had two last week or something. He says they're the most dangerous calls that you have because they all feel like work, they all feel like business, and almost none of them result in anything. And it's kind of like that upfront, it feels like you're doing a thing, which is more dangerous than not doing anything at all. Because it acts as a placeholder. It takes up the parking space.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Of what could be work.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

If you're doing nothing, you would have this big vacancy and you go, I really, really need to step my game up. Do whatever.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, it's one of the problems I think that people have with scam supplements, with training styles that don't actually do anything that it. The subtext that they understand is this thing is taking the place of something that would work and this thing doesn't work, which means that you're getting neither of the benefits.

[Freya India]

It's kind of like the highlighter girls who.

[Chris Williamson]

What's that?

[Freya India]

Like, girls who have like the perfect highlighters and gel pens for their exam, but they get like a D because they're obsessing over having the perfect setup.

[Chris Williamson]

It's the system, not the outcome. Yes. Yeah, that is interesting. Um, I suppose this self pity thing gets wrapped up as empowerment in a way.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And that causes girls to suffer.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And it's funny because there's a lot of emphasis on like women walking away from disrespect and not tolerating any bad behavior. But there's also kind of this self pitying stuff going on. So it's like real empowerment would be very often. Yeah, I'm not tolerating this. I'm walking away. But you kind of. You look online now and there's a lot of young women who just ruminate over a problem. So like I was saying before, they might be in a bad relationship and they'll be analyzing both of their attachment styles and thinking about how it's toxic and talking to other girls about it. Right. Rather than just leaving. And so I think sometimes young women like me as well get caught up in the analyzing and not the actual action. And they think all the mental health stuff is actually empowering them. But I often see it like taking, again, taking the language away from actual problems. And rather than everybody opening up, it's actually like closing down their ability to see what's going on and act upon it.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Freya India]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

And very quickly looked at ways to apply that. All right. Okay. I seem to be able to deal with emotional perturbment a bit better now after a few thousand sessions of meditation. Huh. Maybe I should use that and start pushing myself into different places emotionally. Wow. I've learned some stuff about how human nature works or resilience or whatever. Let's see if I can find some situations that I can stress test that and see if it actually works for me. Or I've got new mobility because I've been doing yin yoga for fucking forever. Maybe I can start doing CrossFit, which I did. Or a different training modality, something else. Not confusing instrumental goods for the ends themselves I think is very important. And it takes the placeholder. The therapy culture takes the placeholder of something that could be functional work and very viciously encourages you to not actually go out and even try. There is no Such thing as a stress test of this. Anytime it gets, it's unfalsifiable, anytime it gets stressed, it's an admission that the very philosophy itself was correct and that you should have never encountered this thing in the first place.

[Freya India]

Well, I think you view it as you've said about like the lonely chapter. You view it as like a set time that has to come to an end, which is what therapy should be as well. It's like a set period. But the problem is now therapy culture stuff is so tied up with identity stuff. So you get kind of young girls who start reading about social anxiety and they relate to it because they're 14 and shy and everybody.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, yeah.

[Freya India]

And they go on again these forums in these communities where everyone's saying I have social anxiety disorder and because of that I can't get public transport or because of that I can't do this. And then they start thinking, well, I feel it, it's really painful for me, so why would I put myself in those situations? I'm just not built for those situations. And so that's the problem with it is there's no end to it because you can just go on there and then it becomes part of who you are. And again, as you said, the second you go out and you feel intense anxiety as you do as a 14 year old in any situation, then you'll think, oh yeah, this is confirmation that I have social anxiety disorder and shouldn't be here. So yeah, I always just think of these things as like me at 13 and the worst things you could say to me and social anxiety disorder is one of them. It's like I kind of needed people to kind of laugh it off and just say, well, you have to go anyway, that's what I needed. Like if someone came to me and said, well, some people call it a disorder and they take medication for it and some people need that. I'd be like, well, I need that.

[Chris Williamson]

It's kind of like the mental health, psychological health equivalent of the misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria among young kids.

[Freya India]

Yeah, yeah. It's like seeing the symptoms as. Seeing your personality traits as symptoms, which happens with the gender dysphoria stuff as well, which is like now just like quirky, edgy things about people become their personality. Yeah, that becomes a diagnosis. So like before we'd be like, talk about some guy and be like, he's always late. It's just something about him, you know, it's kind of lovable and annoying, but it's his personality and now it's like, oh, because of his adhd, he's always late.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's so funny. That's really interesting to hear the language. I mean, even we do it, we do it around here. You know, there'll be. For instance, does this can have it on? Yes, it does. Can you punch in on this dude? Can you punch in? All right, so I'm not sure how tight that lens can get. If you look very, very, very carefully here, there's a Follow us. This I'm for the people listening. I'm pointing to the back of a can of new tonic. We've produced maybe a million of these. This particular version of the can in America. Follow us. There's the three social icons and then there's newtonic.com at the bottom. If you look really, really carefully just here, you'll see that the Instagram icon is probably 1 mil to 1 and a half mil to the left of the follow us and the left of the newtonic.com thing. And this little world is maybe 2 mil in from the US after the follow. I noticed that because I noticed things and sent a photo in. And immediately, immediately after sending that photo in said the TISM strikes again. Never been diagnosed with autism. Don't think I've got it. Hold eye contact with most people perfectly well. Even within that, there's something. And it's self deprecating, it's mockery, it's whatever. But even in that, it belies this. Like somebody made the joke about Elon Musk's department of governmental efficiency was less Avengers Assemble and more Asperger's Assemble.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So like, even on the guy side of things, you know, ocd. Oh, I'm obsessive about this sort of stuff. It's my like, you know, I mean.

[Freya India]

I am writing this book at the moment and one of the chapters is about these kind of tiktoks that girls are looking at about autism. And I literally went down a rabbit hole. Like, I'm autistic. I'm fully autistic. Well, like all of the symptoms, they're all about shy, nerdy girls. And I'm like, oh, okay, this has been me my whole life. Just kind of awkward and didn't fit in and reads a lot and everything. And I'm like, oh, God, reading this. If you're just like slightly different from the mainstream, popular, extroverted girl, you're going to be autistic and. But it's such. It's funny, but it's also like, oh my God, there's like. I can't say a serious point because you're laughing.

[Chris Williamson]

Why is autism. It's like it just always makes me laugh. I think it's kind of charming. It's definitely. Autism holds like a very unique. In the mental pathology library that we can all take. It's the one that I think is sort of easiest to throw. I see. Maybe it's because the autistic people like aren't registering it, but it's the lowest amount of offence seems to be taken by people misdiagnosing that in some way. And maybe that's because autism in many ways is a disadvantage for people, but also bestows some of what some people would consider as advantages too.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And I don't know, autistic people I've met do kind of openly joke about it, I feel. Whereas I feel like OCD is more offensive to say, oh, that was me being ocd. I feel like that's become a bit more.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's my suicidal ideation.

[Freya India]

Yeah. But, yeah, no, it's funny. But it's also like, you think of like a 13 year old girl who really convinces herself she has autism and actually she's just quite unique and quirky. That can be like a lifelong sentence of thinking you're different from other people because you're unwell.

[Chris Williamson]

A much more pernicious one maybe would be something which is less serious of a diagnosis and that everybody believes that they have. Which would be an attachment style thing. Yes, because it's such a. It's such a defining characteristic of how you relate to other people the most important things that you do and to be able to write off every time that it comes in, ah, that's my avoidant attachment again. Ah, that's triggered.

[Freya India]

And to kind of ignore your gut instinct, like I feel like you can be in a bad relationship and you have a feeling about someone and now you interpret that as my anxiety coming up. That's like my attachment disorder triggering rather than, oh, they've just said something or revealed something about themselves that I should be. I'm actually tuning into the worry is like young girls convince themselves they have a disorder and then shut down that instinct.

[Chris Williamson]

I suppose also it denies you the opportunity to.

[Freya India]

It.

[Chris Williamson]

It stops you from having the opportunity to deny yourself from being at the mercy of that thing. Yeah, that you say, that's a pattern that keeps coming up in me. I don't like it and I want to get rid of it.

[Freya India]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, it's a part of me. It is me. It defines me as A person.

[Freya India]

Yeah, I hate this phrase, like I'm anxiously attached rather than like I'm feeling anxiety at the moment. And also you see on like on the Internet, like anxious attachment quizzes and like T shirts and like it's become Jesus Christ a thing to identify.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And it's also a community, like an online community of people who will again co ruminate over it. But I think it's actually more dangerous than we think if you take it too far because again, you just become blind to what's actually happening in your life and you're kind of living by.

[Chris Williamson]

A theory and also blind to how you can be complicit in causing these things to happen. How you could have self authorship over stopping these things from happening.

[Freya India]

Yes. Yeah. Well, if someone's behaving badly and all you're doing is like repeating your positive affirmations in the mirror, it's not going to help you. Like at some point you need to have the kind of confidence to stand up to people and you're not going to have that if your core belief is that you're an anxious, damaged person.

[Chris Williamson]

73% of boomer males said, no matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me. 72% of Gen Z females say, mental illness is an important part of my identity. Yeah, bit of an arc.

[Freya India]

I mean, that's just tragic. But I think again, I can't really blame young girls for that. I just think it's everywhere now. And as Constantine says, like, if the incentives are there, it's just going to happen. And there are incentives now to do that. It's almost like now, you know, we were saying before, like, if you're English and you talk about something good happening in your life, people kind of judge you and think you're weird. It's kind of become like if you go around saying, actually I have really good mental health and I deal with things really well and I don't get anxious. People look at you like, that's kind of a wrong thing to say. Like you, I think if you were a girl saying that in school, people would not relate to you as much.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, you're just in denial.

[Freya India]

Yeah. Or like it's kind of a braggy way to be now to say, oh, I handled it fine.

[Chris Williamson]

Good for you.

[Freya India]

Yeah. As opposed to well done.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. Those of us that have, you know, grew up with parents that caused us.

[Freya India]

To have anxious attachment, try be autistic.

[Chris Williamson]

Or something, that's actually a solution. I think that more people should be autistic and that would fix a lot of problems that we're facing. Yeah. I'd mentioned to you before, Lewis Capaldi, there's a great documentary on Netflix called How I'm Feeling Now. Highly recommend you watch it. I think it's super pertinent to what you're doing. It'd be great for the book too. So you have this guy who lots and lots of success and the success causes him to develop a. He must have had a genetic predisposition for Tourette's. I don't know what. Tourette's. Can't catch it? I don't think so. He must have had this predisposition and the pressure that he puts on himself and. And that's coming from outside too. And the story he tells himself and the rumination causes his mental health to decline to the point where he's got this sort of tick and his shoulder's sort of. He's always doing this. It's like whole body is contorting. And I think maybe it's two years in a row now, at least one year at Glastonbury. He stopped singing. He came out on stage, began singing and then partway through the song was unable to continue. Had to get the audience to help. And that happened at a show at the O2, I think, which is in the documentary. And then they tried to bring this documentary into land at the end of 22 or 23 or whatever it's like. And he took six weeks off and started doing yoga and stopped eating McDonald's. And look at him now. It's like. And then the updates since then are sad. That a guy under an awful lot of pressure with a beautiful voice, with really, really wonderful stories to tell that make people feel things, feeling so much and being unable to handle it to the point where the very art form that he was built to do, he's unable to do on stage.

[Freya India]

So has he backed away from singing as a result?

[Chris Williamson]

I haven't checked in, but the last that I saw was this summer. There was some festival thing. I think that he was at. That he had some trouble on stage again. I mean, maybe he had a bug or whatever, but it seems unlikely. It seems like it was probably the same challenge that he's been dealing with since the documentary. And yeah, that kind of got me thinking about the mental health thing affecting everybody all the way up. You know, there's not really any hiding from it. And the way that he goes about it, you know, he's very self deprecating, but he does not. He's relieved when he gets a diagnosis in the documentary, you know, he finally, they say, turns out I've got Tourette's. That kind of makes sense. And that thing I was having where my heart rate went really high and I kept on breathing, it's like that. Apparently that's called a panic attack. It's like, huh, that's a person finding a diagnosis, not identifying with a diagnosis.

[Freya India]

Well, that's kind of another problem with the therapy stuff is it's. Well, one. It's kind of offensive to people like that because, I mean, there are literally young women mimicking tics from Tourette's TikTok and whether that's TikTok. Yeah, I think there is actually a TikTok hashtag. But yeah, they're picking up Tourette's. And, you know, whether that's conscious or not, some of them at least are kind of jumping on that identity. And then you hear someone like Luis Capaldi's story, and it's like the pain of that is actually stopping him doing what he loves. But that conversation is kind of being swallowed up by the conversation of like young girls identifying with Tourette's.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, people are fucking larping with this on face to camera videos.

[Freya India]

Yeah. Again, it actually takes away the language to talk about people who are actually suffering because it's just become so big now that everyone's autistic. Everyone's got Tourette's in it.

[Chris Williamson]

I cannot.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Every time I say I can't not laugh at it. Is there a new story about why people are so addicted to social media? Is there any more that you've come to think about?

[Freya India]

Yeah, well, when I started writing, I was writing about addiction to social media and trends and stuff and kind of wondering why that was happening. And then I've been trying to kind of trace it back to think, what is the actual need that's not being met here? So one of them, I was looking at all this attachment style stuff and like the dating gurus, how popular, like relationship Advice is on TikTok and stuff. And I was thinking, is this because young people don't have adults giving them guidance about relationships? So now they go and watch an influencer who's an attachment expert because parents and families aren't getting as involved in giving advice about relationships. So things like that. There's a lot of trends where I think you can trace it back to adults have stepped away from giving some form of guidance. So you see it with like, relationship stuff on TikTok and also the desperate search for obviously community and belonging to something is coming from a real pain of not having any community in real life. Like, I had loads of people when I started writing about social media. Loads of people would say to me, oh, but you know, young people need social media because it's like a lifeline, like they have their online communities and stuff. And I'm like, that is not a benefit of social media. Like, that's just an absolute indictment of where we are in modern life. Like, why is their community a Reddit forum? So we can talk about social media addiction, but I think you have to kind of strip it back to what, why young people are so obsessed with it and what is missing in their actual life.

[Chris Williamson]

What is everyone searching for or missing?

[Freya India]

Yeah, because when you meet people who aren't on social media or don't have like ridiculously high screen times, they usually have a lot of their needs met in the real world, which just sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's true. And I think the more you find yourself in a fulfilling relationship or you're happy with your job, you don't feel as much as a of a pull to scroll endlessly through TikTok all day. So the fact that young people are spending like six hours a day on their phones is, is not just because social media is addictive, it's because there's nothing more addictive in their life or like a reason to stop scrolling through it. And so I think sometimes I can get caught in the trap of like complaining about social media, whereas social media is just filling the gap of whatever was stripped away before.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's not necessarily that. There's even nothing more addicting, there's nothing more compelling. What else is there that's as fun to do that offers everybody the same. Yeah, I mean, I left my old life of nightlife three years ago. Ish. And that kind of felt a little bit like exiting Bitcoin at 100k or something and being like, well, that was kind of selling at the top. Because there's some crazy stat about how by 2036 there'll be no nightclubs left in the UK. None. Yeah. So I think it's one one a day or one a week or something is closing at the moment across the uk, just that night clubs are not only competing with brunch and with restaurants and with lane seven and with top flight darts and with those ball pit fucking places where people get to take selfies. It's not just competing with other in person events and other community based events or Pickleball or whatever. It's competing with Netflix. Amazon Prime. Is it?

[Freya India]

Cause everyone's autistic and no one's going clubby.

[Chris Williamson]

The answer to every question is either it's only one of two things, too much or too little. Autism. And I vote that it's too little and we need more. But yes, I think you must have seen this trend the other day, this like slug life thing where people just want. I'm not going out. I don't want to do anything. It was a huge substack article that.

[Freya India]

Oh, there was one about. Yeah, like rotting in bed.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, that was it.

[Freya India]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I think it was about being a loser and how it's like an English thing. Again, being a loser has become the way that you introduce yourself and talk about yourself.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, I don't have a life.

[Freya India]

Yeah. I don't go anywhere. I don't have.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't have any interests. Yeah, no, no, I like Netflix.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't. Boyfriend. No. No, no, no, not for me. No.

[Freya India]

Yeah, I want.

[Chris Williamson]

I. I would ruin my 7pm bedtime.

[Freya India]

I don't know where that's come from, but I think, I think it's probably social anxiety. And then people come up with all of these kind of romantic ways to talk about it. So they're like, oh, I'm just an introvert who enjoys my own time. Or I'm like working on this big thing so I can't go out clubbing and stuff. And they build their identity around something which would justify not going out.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Freya India]

Well, have you seen, like, I read an article the other day that made me want to kill myself. It's about it. It was about like soft launching your boyfriend on Instagram.

[Chris Williamson]

Please tell me more.

[Freya India]

So it's about telling girls, like this young woman wondering, how should you announce to your followers? Like not influencers, like I'm talking ordinary young women. How should you announce your boyfriend? Should you do a soft launch where it's just like his arm, or should you do like a full reveal? But it's kind of messed up because it's like this is like introducing a brand deal or something. Like literally viewing our partners, like products.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. How does this play in the optics of public life?

[Freya India]

Someone said to me the other day, oh, they commented on my substack article, like a relationship is now just a brand collaboration, like two personal brands coming together.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow, that's good.

[Freya India]

And then posting it online.

[Chris Williamson]

That's really good.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Soft launching. Well, I've seen people talk about the hard launch, which is just a couple photo that happens out of nowhere.

[Freya India]

Yeah, well, so you have all of that. You have like, how do you manage the relationship on social media? But then you also have how social media affects the relationship. So like the boyfriends of Instagram thing. Like, it's kind of funny that boyfriends, you know when you see like a guy literally on the floor trying to get a good angle of the girl.

[Chris Williamson]

There was a. I went to Gili Tea in Bali. It's one of these little islands about five years ago. And there's a famous beach club that's got a swing sort of out in the water. And it's gorgeous. The sun sets because it's so close to the equator. The sun sets in the summer at 6:30pm and in the winter at 6pm it's like 12 hours of daylight and it just shit wobbles a little bit like that. And this, this girl wanted to get a photo of her on the swing but she wanted to catch the sort of sun bouncing off the top of the water. And I remember thinking, like, watching this guy, and she was saying, no, no, no, you need to get lower. You need to, like, get sort of lower down, closer to the water. And this dude, sort of chest, shoulder to neck to face. And by this time, it's sea. It's a sea. So it's not being gentle with him. So he's, like, trying to take this photo. The phone's out of the water, he's getting splashed. I remember thinking, like, that really better be wifey, because that's a big ask.

[Freya India]

Well, also, I just always think, who is it for? If your boyfriend is like. It does get to the point where you're, like, posing in a bikini and your boyfriend's taking the pictures of you. It's like, is this for Instagram? Because I don't know, it just. It's such a strange thing that's become so normalized.

[Chris Williamson]

It's a little bit of an indicator. I mean, unless this is your new album cover or whatever for your slam poetry or some shit that you do, there is a little bit of like, well, surely the person that you're trying to impress the most is the one that's taking the photo. So what does the photo need to be taken for? Unless it's for his private collection.

[Freya India]

But it's become so normalized that, like, when I wrote about boyfriends of Instagram, people were replying like, oh, but, you know, I'm trying to get memories and stuff. And, like, I had a picture.

[Chris Williamson]

He's not in it.

[Freya India]

Yeah, there was a picture of, like, three girls in bikinis and three guys, all on the same beach, all taking pictures of their girlfriend. And people were defending it, like, oh, they're allowed to have memories. Like, what a memory of you in a bikini? But I actually. I don't think they're lying. I think that's just how normalized it's become. It's like, well, obviously, if you go to the beach, you do a photo shoot. And I always try and express that to people. Like, you think of an influencer and how her income depends on taking pictures, and everywhere she goes, she has to get content. Ordinary women think like that now. Most people have it in the back of their mind, I should be getting a social media picture, or, this is a good moment, or this landscape would get really good clicks. Like, that's how they think. And I don't think some older people realize that young girls are behaving and thinking, like, they're influencers all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that an aspirational thing? Is that just that the power users of Instagram and TikTok behave like that because it's their job, which means that the people who are not. They have none of the same obligations feel like they should behave in the same way? Or is there something more going on? Is this aspirational? Is this that people hope maybe I get picked up by a modeling agency?

[Freya India]

I think a part of it is that, but I think another part is they started doing this when their brains were forming as young girls. They started capturing their life as they went and they. I don't think they can conceive of just living and existing. I really think it's that ingrained of like their entire childhood was having a childhood childhood, but also performing and marketing and managing it all at the same time. And then like when you try and get out of it, like when I deleted Instagram years ago, that lingering was still in my head of like, maybe I should share this online or maybe this could be a good photo opportunity. And it's. It's really hard to not to kind of unwire that. And now if I go to an event and I don't take a picture, young women I'm friends with will be kind of confused. Like I said, I've been on holiday and I have no evidence of it. It's confusing to them because that's.

[Chris Williamson]

You're suspicious about whether or not you actually went on the holiday.

[Freya India]

It's kind of weird. And I think there are genuinely young people who go on holiday to get pictures for the photos, who even get in relationships for the photos, and who are quietly living their life for Instagram in ways that people don't realize has become that intense.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you make of the contribution of family breakdown to this? Of that you mentioned before about that sort of lack of guidance, people looking for a little bit of guidance, maybe filling the void with entertainment that typically would have been taken up by family. What role does family breakdown have here?

[Freya India]

I think it's linked to what I was saying about. Yeah, looking for relationship guidance. It's like, well, you look at something like mental health. TikTok people are sharing, like, their really deep trauma and turmoil and problems. And you can't help but look at it and think, are you close to your family? Like, this is the kind of thing that you talk about with your family. It's what your family is there for. And now you're telling strangers on TikTok and then you look at the statistics of the Amount of Gen Z who aren't living with both their mother and father, I think it's. I think in the UK it's over half of children by 14 don't live with their mum and dad. And so they don't have a feeling of belonging at home. And then you stretch that out to they don't have any sense of community. A community is a Reddit forum or Instagram. Like I, growing up had no sense of what a local community is or like neighbors knowing each other, it's just. It's really foreign to me. And I think a lot of Gen Z, they don't have a conception of it beyond like an online community or like the LGBT community or something that is the limit of community. They know. So their family falls apart. There's nothing really to catch them. There's no neighborhood of adults who are there. Then you add that they're becoming less religious. They don't feel that they belong to anything bigger than that. They have no faith in anything bigger. And so the feeling of loneliness is just so intense. And I was writing recently about how I think that actually one of the biggest drivers of behavior we see among Gen Z is this abandonment, fear and feeling because their families fell apart, because they don't have community, because they don't belong to anything bigger, they feel constantly alone. And if you look at the kind of symptoms of abandonment, if you look at attachment theory, like real attachment theory, not the TikToks but the Mary Ainsworth studies and everything, it shows people who are abandoned, they're really hypersensitive to criticism, they have very low body image and self esteem, all of the kind of caricature of Gen Z, all of the traits alike to do with this feeling of not belonging anywhere. So not, not to say that it explains everything, but I think families breaking down and not having a sense of belonging really messes people up. And I think a lot of Gen Z are kind of carrying that around and then looking for it in places so that obviously they're going to spend hours on TikTok where people are talking to them and talking about their problems because they don't have anything resembling that in real life. And so, yeah, I think a lot of the things we kind of laugh at young people for as being kind of narcissistic and I guess, selfish and kind of. We cringe at them having these crazy screen times. It's like, what else is there?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Is there a lack of moral direction or adult guidance or something?

[Freya India]

Yeah, I think, I think in the modern world, like Adults, they view everything as, like, imposing on their children. So we, we kind of became suspicious of anyone who's authoritative. So we think they're being controlling or like, old fashioned. So adults kind of politely stepped back and kind of allow children just to become themselves and act the way they want and sounds virtuous. Yeah. And, you know, there's obviously an element of that that's important in parenting, but I think what happened is parents stepped back, so they just became like our best friends. Then religion retreated away from public life, then communities broke down, neighbors stopped knowing each other. And then if you're an anxious young person, there's no one there. And we got rid of anything that was like more substantial guidance. So I think if you think of therapy culture today, a lot of people think, oh, if you're an anxious young person, you have more advice than ever. Like, you have all this guidance. But I actually think modern culture has very little to say to anxious young people because we got rid of anything more substantial because we thought it was judgmental. So you can't tell someone how to live their life or what to do. We got rid of anything to do with God or religion because that was superstitious. We stopped appealing to moral character and telling them they should improve themselves and be better because that's also judgmental. And, you know, claiming that there's a right and wrong and all that we have left is like these endless, empty, like, platitudes of be yourself, you, do, you, you know best. You know, adults telling that to young people who I think are craving some direction, like there's no clear milestones to adulthood anymore to follow. And so they look to the adults and the adults are saying, you know best. And of course you feel anxious. The anxiety gets worse.

[Chris Williamson]

That lack of guidance is, I don't know, the equivalent for the guys is pick your favorite podcaster or YouTuber or fitness bodybuilder of choice and looking up to that. Okay, well, it's the missing patriarch that I didn't have or didn't have long enough or didn't understand this world, and I'm going to surrogate that to this parasocial online relationship.

[Freya India]

But then it becomes someone who doesn't know you. So say you have a relationship problem. Like you're a young woman who has met someone and you're not sure about him. The average young woman will now go on YouTube and turn to the dating experts in the attachment style. Yeah. And get the guidance from experts because they don't have adults in their lives who know them. Intimately, you know, because people are different. Like people need different advice in different situations. And I think it's a real shame that adults who kind of intimately know girls and young women and can give them advice in like a community setting have stepped back. And now, of course, they're all on TikTok asking each other like, oh, you know, he cheated on me. Is this a problem because we weren't exclusive? Is that a red flag? Is it? And it's like we need some adults in our lives who clearly say, I think this person's bad for you.

[Chris Williamson]

I suppose. Yeah. Everything. It's great that we have instant, frictionless access to all information from experts that maybe even more expert than our parents would be ever and trained and all the rest of it, even if they're legitimate. And obviously there's a lot of room for illegitimate experts to sneak in. But it is still self diagnosis and it is still self treatment from that. You know, if you're learning from TikTok, there is no part of, hey, why don't we, why don't we sit down? Why don't we.

[Freya India]

Yeah, I'll.

[Chris Williamson]

I will give you something as opposed to you will learn from this thing and then go and have to work out what that means and apply it and not be able to ask questions and not be able to regulate with anybody and not have it contextualized even remotely.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And your mom isn't trying to get views on TikTok, so she doesn't need.

[Chris Williamson]

To speak for your mom.

[Freya India]

She doesn't need to exaggerate and kind of keep you looking at her channel. You know, I think that's the problem is there are genuine experts who can help, but they are also subject to the kind of pressures of the algorithm a lot of the time. And so they're kind of, I guess, dumbing down what they're saying or make or presenting symptoms of autism as. As vague as possible to try and so as many girls relate to it as possible.

[Chris Williamson]

You had this breakdown. One of the main causes of unhappiness in the modern world is a culture that presents other people as obstacles, heal faster alone, work better alone, find freedom alone. It's such a lie. Loneliness is not empowerment. Is loneliness pedestalized by Gen Z TikTok?

[Freya India]

Yep. I think again from all different angles. So it's like the mental health stuff. Obviously you will feel better alone in some ways because someone. You don't have someone challenging you. You know, if you do actually have problems from your childhood to do with, say, your parents, I don't want to say an attachment problem, but it is an attachment problem. Just the wording has been completely ruined. But if you do have that, you kind of need to be with someone to work on it. Because if you're single, you're going to feel great because there's no one kind of triggering you and making you feel anxious and abandoned. So you do need someone in your life in that scenario. So yeah, loneliness then does seem like it's extremely attractive because you feel better when you're alone. The same with the productivity stuff. I think it's just the message that's missing for both young women and young men is like, it's actually okay to depend on someone and to need other people. Like humans have always needed other people and define themselves by their ties and obligations to other people. And now we're kind of like, no, you can be self sufficient enough and driven enough and healed enough that you're okay alone. And I think that's really quite a strong message for young, young women here, which is like the worst thing you can be is needy. Like do not ever need someone. And the worst situation for you is to end up with a guy that you need. Like that's just, you need to avoid that at all costs. And it's, it's a really sad message because it's like, is that not love to need someone and they need you? And it's kind of a beautiful thing to rely on someone and have someone who's dependent on you. And actually a lot of the actual attachment research shows that. Have you heard of like the dependency paradox? Tell me that couples who are more dependent on each other become more independent in their lives. So there was studies showing that, I think they got couples to do games or puzzles and then they had to fill out a survey of how much do you respond to your partner's needs. Basically how dependent are you on each other? And the ones that were more dependent didn't want to hear. I think it was the clues or the answers from their partner. They wanted to do it independently. And then they followed up and they found that the couples more dependent on each other had met their independent goals six months down the line.

[Chris Williamson]

Why do you think that is? What's the proposed mechanism?

[Freya India]

Because it's like the original Mary Ainsworth experiments where the caregiver leaves and they kind of measure how the child responds. You need like a stable, secure relationship to feel confident, to go and explore the world. You need to have something to hold onto, to step off.

[Chris Williamson]

Chaos in both domains is scary.

[Freya India]

Yeah, you need something to fall back on. And I think that's a big reason why Gen Z are incredibly risk averse and not resilient is because we don't actually have a foundation to fall back on. So if your parents are divorced and you don't feel that sense of belonging, you're not going to step off into the chaos of the world. You're going to hold back and you're going to find relationships threatening, you're going to find words traumatic, you're going to be scared by it because the ground is like crumbling beneath you so you can't step off it.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Freya India]

Well, I think it's real that obviously your childhood impacts your adult life. I think that's just plain to see and I think it's real that you can Kind of play that out in relationships that aren't, you know, so you, however your parents responded to you, you'll then take that into an adult relationship. That seems very obvious. But I think where people go wrong now is they forget that like in the original attachment experiments and the book attached, it's quite clear that it's not a bad thing to depend on someone and it's not a bad thing to be attached, that we are wired to be that way. Whereas I think now where it's going online is like, you have a problem if you're attached. Like if you're a young woman who kind of dreams of having a romantic relationship and really wants to depend on someone now we view you as like weak. There's something wrong with you if that's your ultimate goal. Because we've had it drilled in so much that dependence is a problem. And so you see all these people online saying things like, oh, you know, I'm anxiously attached because when my partner feels sad, I also feel sad. It's like, isn't that just like loving someone? You are affected by their emotions. Or they'll say things again like, oh, I always put their needs first. So can you train me out of being like a people pleaser? And it's like we used to just call that love. And you know, that was a trait that we treasured in people, people who put their partner's needs first. And obviously that can go too far. But I think the problem is now we only pathologize dependence and we glamorize independence and we never say, yeah, that being dependent on someone having a long term relationship doesn't mean that you lose yourself. You can actually find yourself through that. But I think girls in particular, young women in particular have just been told, yeah, the worst thing in your life is to need someone.

[Chris Williamson]

Did Gen Z have a lot of abandonment issues in that way?

[Freya India]

Yeah, I think, I think that's where it comes from. And that's why it's especially tragic because you have a lot of young women, for example, whose families fell apart and then they grew up thinking, well, I just want to have that myself. I want to have a loving relationship and a family. And then they kind of get told, whether it's through therapy, culture or some of the feminist stuff online, you kind of implicitly get told that's a problem. Like if you, again, if your dream is to depend on someone, you should work on yourself. You need to work on your self love, you need to believe in yourself more, you need to be healed alone and you think of like a normal, thinking, feeling young girl. Of course she wants to be in a romantic relationship and of course she wants to depend on someone in some way. It's completely natural. But I think you have young women thinking, oh, I need to get to a position where I'm confident, completely confident, alone, I'm healed, alone, I don't have any anxiety, then I can allow a partner in. But I don't see that as the way that people operate. And I think there's a lot of girls now punishing themselves for being emotional and sensitive and wanting a partner and wanting to depend on someone. Because now the image of a strong, independent woman is someone who doesn't depend on anyone and who doesn't get emotional, doesn't get jealous, doesn't care. And so you also have two contradictory messages because you have therapy culture saying to girls, open up more and more about your problems, be more emotional, tell everyone how you feel. But then you also have strong, independent women don't care. You know, they never get emotional. And if they do get an emotional, it's trauma or an attachment issue. And it's like, that's a really cruel thing to teach emotional young girls and confusing because it's like, of course they feel that way because they're human, but now they're being told that that's, yeah, a medical issue or something, that they should heal.

[Chris Williamson]

I saw you tweet. Kids as young as nine are addicted to porn. Girls as young as 13 are using fake IDs to post explicit content on OnlyFans. A third of those selling nudes on Twitter are under the age of 18.

[Freya India]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

Can you unpack that, please?

[Freya India]

Well, I think that's again, a lack of adults stepping in. I have this theory I've been thinking about of like, everyone just accepts now that parents are overprotective. So there's like the helicopter parenting and the coddling of Gen Z. But I think like parents are weirdly, they're not protective enough, but they're also coddling. So they're like coddle their children but not put up proper boundaries or guardrail. There's like no rules, but they're over.

[Chris Williamson]

Involved, over andbearing in all the wrong areas and totally absent in all of the wrong ones as well.

[Freya India]

So now it's like the only danger is like physical danger. It's injury. So parents protect from injury, but they don't protect from something like their daughters being online and posting, trying to get on OnlyFans. I mean, Jonathan Haidt talks about it when he says Kids are overprotective in the real world and underprotected online. But I think it's slightly more than that because I don't think parents are totally protective the real world because they, again, they've also, I think, kind of internalized this messaging of I shouldn't get involved. You know, it's not my place. You know, you think of dads now. I think dads are less protective than they've ever been because they. They can't care about what their daughter wears or where she goes or who she dates, because that would be backward. You know, it's her right to do that. But then you look around and you see girls doing that. You see girls, like, selling themselves online to strangers. And I think what has accidentally happened is feminism pushed this idea of, like, girls and boys are just as strong as each other. And then that led to people thinking, oh, so they don't need. Girls don't need extra protection. Which killed chivalry, but also killed fathers actually protecting girls. Because the problem is not like, women are weak, it's that girls are vulnerable. But now we think, oh, we should all step back, let girls do what they want.

[Chris Williamson]

A lot of baby went out with bathwater.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And now you see a lot of.

[Chris Williamson]

Chivalry went out with patriarchy.

[Freya India]

Yeah, well, we killed good authority. We just killed all authority. And so now you have young women, like, demanding that their universities protect them and demanding that the government step in and, like, staring at someone becomes a. Harassment on the tube because they don't have. We degraded the authority of men they trust, like good men, and hopefully like their fathers and brothers. We just said, oh, all kind of protection is patronizing and we don't need it. But then you leave girls completely vulnerable and looking coddled and loved, but actually completely unprotected.

[Chris Williamson]

There was a great tweet I saw about telling men, telling all men to stop being so pushy. Doesn't work because the men who don't need to hear it will take it to heart. And the ones who do need to hear it aren't going to listen.

[Freya India]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't remember where it was, but there was this, like, scheme some young women ran on a train where they had these cards. I don't know if you saw it where it said, like. It said, like, I'm being harassed right now. Or you hand it to someone and so you could go into. I think it was like the tube station. You could go in and ask for the cards and. Yeah, it's like someone harassing me? Yeah, there was all different ones. I can't remember what they were. But it's like, in that situation, what is that going to do? And it's. That is actually the patronizing thing. And to expect that to protect girls. But we find it offensive if a man steps forward and tries to help a girl out. I think it's. We've. Yeah, we've just thrown it all out and forgotten that part of the feminist message is right, that girls are vulnerable. But unfortunately, it just led to a situation where we're like, oh, vulnerability means weakness, so they don't need protecting.

[Chris Williamson]

Why are girls under as young as 13 using fake IDs to do people want money? Is there a status thing associated with this?

[Freya India]

Yeah, I think it's a status thing. I think girls are now growing up with influencers being their aspirational figures. As we said, I think it's something like 70% of Gen Z girls aspire to be influencers or just Gen Z in general.

[Chris Williamson]

Thought you were going to say OnlyFans.

[Freya India]

No, but if you look at influencers, over the years, they've evolved dramatically. So, like, when I was 13, I would be watching, like, Zoella or someone who's really wholesome and didn't really have the same incentives of the algorithms back in the day, didn't really have the same competition, certainly didn't have, like, monetization of her content. So she wasn't kind of exposing herself or talking about these weird therapy trends or anything like that. But you can just gradually see over the years how it's escalated.

[Chris Williamson]

Who are some of the more extreme Zoella equivalents now? Or if you don't want to throw names out, you can come up with.

[Freya India]

I can throw her names.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, throw them out.

[Freya India]

The woman, Tana Monjo.

[Chris Williamson]

Tana Mongeau.

[Freya India]

Yeah. So she's like a really popular influencer who talks about OnlyFans like, it's like, there's nothing dangerous about it for young girls or nothing to be worried about. And she has an audience of very young teens, probably preteens, and she'll just post with all the things she's earned from OnlyFans. So all of, like, the designer bags and stuff. On her podcast, she'll talk about being on OnlyFans and I think talking about commodifying yourself like it's completely normal. That is what girls are growing up with. So they're seeing influences, commodify themselves in general, but then commodifying their body and also having the nerve to call that empowering.

[Chris Williamson]

You don't think it's empowering?

[Freya India]

No. Well, how can it be empowering to, even on Instagram, offer your body for judgment and then put your self worth into the ranks and reviews that strangers give you? You're turning yourself into a product effectively. So this talk of objectifying young women, you know, that is turning yourself into an object on display, which I think is quite clear to anyone who's not grown up with it. But I don't judge the ordinary young woman for thinking that's attractive because that has been her role models throughout growing up and it's escalated slowly. So it went from Zoella to now onlyfans influences.

[Chris Williamson]

Bonnie Blue. Zoella to Bonnie Blue.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Freya India]

I don't know, I think it might be like a revenge thing. I think young women react to the very worst traits of some men by thinking, I'll just do it back and that will give me the power. So they're like, maybe they've had a string of relationships where the guy has kind of slept with them and then left or something and then they think, yeah, I'll just do that to the next guy. Or, you know, they look at the men doing that and think, well, they seem very confident and happy, so that's the way to go. I think it's like a defense mechanism of some kind. And also, I think they're probably also the traits that get you popularity online. So if you look at Tana Monjo or some of these influences, they are promiscuous, they're quite masculine, they're quite aggressive in their speech because people who talk assertively and in extreme ways will just suit the algorithm. You know, if you're like a reserved, timid young girl, you're not going to be the top influencer on Instagram. So I think those traits get rewarded. And then they're what girls are scrolling through all day, every day, and they're like, oh, my favorite influencer is really like vulgar and promiscuous and she's super assertive.

[Chris Williamson]

That's the path to success.

[Freya India]

Yeah, and that's again, that's the model of like the healed, confident woman who's not held back by negative emotion or worry or jealousy or any of these things.

[Chris Williamson]

Assertiveness is confused for self assuredness or wholeness, completeness, fixedness.

[Freya India]

Well, also promiscuity is like, well, I often think now if you're like a reserved young woman who's modest, you're now shamed. Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly. People will think there's something wrong with you because they'll be like, oh, no, you are beautiful. You shouldn't be so like shy about guys. You know, you shouldn't worry about sex. You know, it's fine. Like, people will reassure her now as to like, look at her as if she has a problem that needs healing rather than she just is modest. And I think that's what tends to happen is you look at promiscuity becomes so popular and normalized and then we stigmatize the girls that aren't interested in that or aren't that way. So yeah, I think if, I think if you are a young woman now who's, who holds back in that way. It's kind of like if you're introverted and people come up to you and say, what's wrong? You should speak more. And it's just like sometimes it's just who you are. So I think it's the incentives again, you're almost punished socially if you're modest and shy and, and not super assertive and masculine because people think you've got your like, healing work to do. You need to become more confident and like sexual and like, get rid of all your reservations and like, repression People think you're just like, a repressed person rather than everybody should be.

[Chris Williamson]

Tana Mongeau, whatever she's called, like, she's.

[Freya India]

She's like, released herself of all her kind of traumas and burdens.

[Chris Williamson]

Everybody is Tanner at zero.

[Freya India]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

And you just need to try and get back there.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Is there a wistfulness for times of the past? This sort of nostalgia for a better time? I don't know when it was. Maybe before you were born, Maybe when your parents were around or something.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Or, I don't know, slightly older generations would have that kind of wistfulness. American dream, etc.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

What do Gen Z think of the current moment? Do they think that it's liberating? Because it seems like there's two things going on at once. That life is horrible and terrible, and I have anxious attachment and maybe autism.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And also I'm fully liberated to be myself. I can be whatever I want to be. I can girl boss my way through promiscuity and sell my body on OnlyFans and make loads of money and I don't need no man.

[Freya India]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So which one is it?

[Freya India]

I know there's, like, crippling anxiety among young women, but also this really loud I don't care message. I think young people in general are very nostalgic for a time they haven't known, which is a time before smartphones and social media. So if you look at, like, Jonathan Haidt again, he did a survey recently and found that a lot of Gen Z wish things like TikTok and Instagram never existed, which is kind of unusual. You don't really get that with any other inventions. Like, he was talking about the bike and, like, the hair dryer. Like, it's really not that level of I'm. I use this all the time and wish that I didn't. And I think there's a lot of that ambient feeling among Gen Z of, like, longing for a time, for example, when love wasn't, like, reacting to someone's Instagram story or swiping on Tinder. You know, some young women have never experienced love before. It became that, like, the mystery of having a crush on someone and falling in love. Like, now you just. You can't wonder what they're up to. You just kind of skip through their Instagram story or look at their Facebook profile and it's all listed out there. So I think there's a real feeling of, like, disenchantment with the modern world, where it's like everything has become so commodified and cheap. And there's like a nostalgia for a time maybe that didn't exist, but everyone tells me the 90s were way better, so I'm just gonna assume they're telling the truth. But a time before phones and the Internet and the commodification of everything became so extreme, because now everything I try and explain to people, the very concept of things has changed. So friendship for my generation versus friendship for my parents. Generation friendship now is like your friends online. You maybe have a snap streak that you keep up. You pose for each other's Instagram. You don't really necessarily hang out as much as you used to. There's not really. Again, friends don't give each other guidance or tell each other what to do because that would be rude and toxic. And so the definition of friendship has changed in this era. The definition of love has changed, of flirting, everything. Which is why you can talk about kids being on screens. And it's kind of sad, but, like, the actual truth of what's changed is insane. And the fact that young people are anxious and can't cope with it is not because they have a disorder. It's because they're the first to try and feel their way through a completely different world.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. With no rules or strategies or archetypes or stories. With a generation that can't relate, doesn't relate. You've just taught them how to use the iPad. What are they going to be able to teach you about how to handle this?

[Freya India]

Yeah. And that's kind of why you can't blame them for not giving guidance. Because the world moves so fast, there's no wisdom anymore. You can't pass anything down. So now you just have to keep up with the kids.

[Chris Williamson]

It's irrelevant as soon as it leaves your labs.

[Freya India]

Yeah. And so now you have adults, like, talking like teenagers and using the same social media platforms, being informed of the new trends, which has always been a thing. But now it feels like adults go to young people to get guidance about the world. And that makes young people anxious because they're like, where are the adults telling me what to do?

[Chris Williamson]

That's a very good question. Freya India, ladies and gentlemen. Freya, I love everything that you're writing. It's really great to see you go from strength to strength. I think it's really important stuff. Where should people go? They want to check out everything that you do.

[Freya India]

My substack is just freyaindia.co.uk. it's called Girls and yeah, that's just where I write about girls and young women and hopefully I'll have a book announcement soon.

[Chris Williamson]

Exciting. Cool. I look forward to it.

[Freya India]

Thank you.

[Chris Williamson]

Until next time. Bye.

[Freya India]

Thank you.

[Chris Williamson]

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