In today’s episode, Whitney expands on her thoughts about how we use therapy in the current era. Are we going to therapy instead of finding meaning in other areas of life? Is this actually a problem or just a new iteration of what therapy can be? Are we expecting therapy to do what it wasn’t designed for, or is it good to “have a space each week” for personal exploration?
We reference Arthur Brooks’ work on happiness. Here’s a representative quote from his email newsletter issue entitled The Meaning-of-life Problem: “The mental health issues we see today are a symptom of a deeper problem, which is a growing inability to define and understand life’s deep meaning. People—especially young people—don’t feel they know the ‘why’ of their lives. Worse, evidence suggests that they’re not even looking for it, nor are we encouraging them to do so. This creates a feeling of emptiness, especially when times are inevitably rough.”
We enjoy some light disagreement and discuss the breakdown of community in different spheres of life, efforts at personal “optimization,” the feeling of mattering to others, social media followers, and more. We give a brief update on A.I. in mental health and some new scary findings about chatbots.
Jargon, Julie. “He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse.” The Wall Street Journal, 20 July 2025, www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-chatbot-psychology-manic-episodes-57452d14.
