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

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Why do you think so many girls are drawn to therapy culture?

**Freya India** (0:04)
Oh, I think it's a lot of things. I do think this is kind of a cliché 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 Lash 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 world view. 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 world view has completely replaced that void.

**Chris Williamson** (1:24)
What does a therapeutic world view consist of? What does that mean?

**Freya India** (1:29)
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** (2:01)
For some reason, this is giving some kind of solace or comfort, or order being brought out of chaos.

**Freya India** (2:10)
I think it gives the comfort religion gives, and the consolation of like, you see young women on TikTok saying things like, they won't pray to God, but they'll give a request to the universe, and have faith in that. And so I think it gives all the comfort of religion, but it takes away the inconvenient parts. So any actual demands on you, or kind of restrictions on your freedom or anything like that.

**Chris Williamson** (2:36)
Being held to standards of behavior, et cetera.

**Freya India** (2:38)
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** (2:51)
Slippery religion.

**Freya India** (2:52)
Yeah, yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:53)
How many of these girls are in therapy, do you think?

**Freya India** (2:56)
A lot. There was a study recently showing 32 percent of all 12 to 17-year-olds in America have either had therapy, been on medication, or had some kind of treatment in 2023

**Chris Williamson** (3:11)
Over a single year, one-third.

**Freya India** (3:12)
Which is insane.
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 are just 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** (3:54)
Yeah, so you're never able to switch it off. I think Alain de Botton was sat in that same seat as you. Big proponent of psychotherapy, I think trained as a psychotherapist himself too, runs a school of life, which isn't just a YouTube channel, but a psychotherapy facility here in London.

**Freya India** (4:10)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (4:11)
And even he, like, the biggest proponent of it, I think would very much say that there is a time for therapizing 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-up-a-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 is 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. And then on the other side, we don't want to wallow in them. 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.