No, Not Everybody Needs a Therapist: Amy Morin on America's Epidemic of Mental Weakness

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. It's not exactly news that we live in strange times, they're always odd stories. And today, I was really struck by a couple of recent pieces in The Wall Street Journal. One about how singles are so burnt out, they're letting spreadsheets evaluate their dates, which is rather odd. And an even other piece about young adults are letting AI do their talking for them, even in person. In other words, they're taking their phones with them and using clored or open AI to prompt what they're saying. It suggests, I think, a lack of confidence in who or what we are and what we have to say. So I thought it'd be a good opportunity to talk to someone whose career as a psychotherapist is built on rebuilding or building confidence on mental strength. Amy Morin is the author of a whole series of books on how to be mentally strong, including the most recent, The Mental Strength Playbook. She's also the author, if that's the right word, or the creator of an incredibly popular TED speech on how to become mentally strong, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, which has garnered over 25 million views. And she's the host of the Mentally Strong podcast, and I'm thrilled that she's joining us from Maine. She normally lives in the Florida Keys, but she seems to be traveling a lot. Amy, welcome to Keen On America.

**Amy Morin** (2:08)
Thank you so much for having me.

**Andrew Keen** (2:10)
So I'm not sure if you saw either of these pieces in the journal on about singles using spreadsheets to evaluate their dates or taking their phones with them to speak for them on dates. But I'm guessing that it's not exactly news to you that people are lacking so much self-confidence that they rely on technology.

**Amy Morin** (2:32)
It's not. As a therapist, that's exactly what I'm seeing in my therapy office. People are saying things like, you know, I need to set boundaries with my mother-in-law, but I don't know how to do it. So I turned to ChatGPT to say, how do I ask her to not give the kids too much sugar? How do I have this conversation with my friend who borrowed something and didn't return it? And they feel like by going to AI, they're somehow going to get the perfect thing to say to somebody. And if they don't have that perfect thing to say, then somehow they're going to fall short or they're going to mess it up.
Or they just want to save some of their mental energy. They think if I outsource these decisions to AI, then I'll have more energy leftover to do the things that are important. But like what's really more important than managing your own relationships?

**Andrew Keen** (3:17)
Yeah, you said it. I don't want to turn this into another bashing AI or tech conversation. Because if it wasn't the AI and tech, it would be something else.
So my question is, and I know you deal with this all the time and you address it in your podcasts and your speeches and in your books. What is happening? Why is this generation younger generation, it seems, although maybe it's more universal, why are we lacking so much self-confidence? Or is this something that's just in the news now, but has always been the case?

**Amy Morin** (3:48)
I think because we live in this world of information overload, we then believe that there's a scientific way to do everything. Like, well, there must be this scientific process of how I say no to somebody and reject them, yet maintain the relationship or there's some scientific way to manage this struggle I'm having with my friends. And we think that if we just look it up, we'll find the right answer. And that's true with a lot of things in life, right? In the digital age, if I don't know how to fix my sink, I can look that up and probably find a video that walks me through it. And we forget that a lot of our relationships, that there's a nuance to it, that it's more of an art than it is a science. And there are all these factors that you can't just plug into a machine and have it spit back out at you.
And that there's supposed to be some tension in relationships. Conflict isn't horrible, that having questions and uncertainty and real human conversations are essential. I think we just forget all of that because we live in this world where we're able to look up information for so many practical daily tasks, that we just start applying it to all these other areas of our lives, too.