Transcript - Busting Mental Health Myths With Joe Nucci

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Busting Mental Health Myths With Joe Nucci

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 539 of Live Happy Now. What if everything you knew about mental health was wrong? Today’s guest is here to bust some myths and share some new truths.

I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I’m talking with Joe Nucci, a psychotherapist whose new book, Psychobabble, dismantles 40 popular misconceptions about mental health. Joe’s here to talk about some of the most commonly believed myths and explain why this misinformation can be so damaging. He’ll also talk about how to navigate the sea of misinformation on social media and take control of your own mental health. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:43] PF: Joe, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now.

[0:00:46] JN: Oh, thanks so much for having me.

[0:00:47] PF: We’re here today to talk about your new book, Psychobabble. I love this book. It really swims against the mainstream flow of a lot of the things that we are hearing about mental health. Before we get into what you’re talking about, let’s talk about the why. What made you want to write this book?

Well, I only have been in the content creation, social media, influencing game for two, two and a half years. A couple of years ago, when I started to take it a little bit more seriously, I started looking at what other people were posting. I was surprised and also concerned, because it wasn’t just that I was seeing posts that lacked nuance, or could easily be taken out of context. It was just, sometimes the information was just wrong. Or if it was taken out of context, or just a little bit oversimplified, because that’s what happens when it’s just a meme, or just a short video. People were using it in a way that I was noticing could actually be harmful to your mental health.

I’m pretty sure that was the opposite of what we all had in mind when we started consuming mental health content and we started destigmatizing it and branding it and investing in it. I’m talking about it so much. What I tell people is I’m like, listen, the spirit of the book and the spirit of my content is not one in which it’s like a finger wagging ivory tower like, “This is not the correct definition of the term you just used.” It’s actually worse than that. They’re being used in ways that I think are antithetical to mental health, that are hurting relationships that are actually causing a lot more chaos and a lot less calm. I mean, you tell me, Paula, does it seem like, we’ve never talked about mental health more. Do we feel collectively, and mentally well?

[0:02:25] PF: Exactly. That’s the thing these mental health discussions have gone so mainstream. There was a time when if you had anxiety, you didn’t talk about it. If you were going through depression, you didn’t talk about it. That wasn’t healthy either. Now it seems, we’ve done a pendulum swing. I hear people very openly talking about mental health in a way that hasn’t been done, and sometimes feels almost like they’re being too vulnerable with too many people.

[0:02:52] JN: Right. Well, I think part of the issue, and this is one of the themes that underscores many of the mental health myths I talk about in Psychobabble, is we can’t pathologize everyday life. There are problems of living that we all deal with, like we all deal with grief and tragedy and disappointment and sadness, that is very different from dealing with a mental illness. What I’ve observed is sometimes, people are patting themselves on the back being like, “Oh, we’re so inclusive. We really destigmatize mental illness.” But then, someone in your life, or someone in the media with a true mental illness will come on and all of a sudden, you actually see the stigma there. I recently watched that Netflix documentary, Unknown Number, and –

[0:03:33] PF: Oh, I just finished that. That’s great.

[0:03:36] JN: Yeah. I’d love to know what you think, but I know that from my view of just the Internet and cultures, everyone seemed really frustrated by the daughter. For those of you who haven’t seen it, or don’t know it, this is a spoiler alert. Just be warned. Basically, this poor teenage girl is cyber bullied by anonymous phone numbers for two years, or something like that. It turns out that it’s the woman’s mom. She still wants to have a relationship with her mom and everyone was like, “Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe what’s wrong with her. What’s wrong with her?” I was like, what’s wrong with her? I’m like, she’s a survivor of emotional abuse.

This is actually the expected reaction for me was this sobering moment that it’s like, it was like, oh, yeah, we think that we’ve destigmatized so much and we popularize so much. One of my theories that I put forward in the book is like, well, maybe we think we’ve destigmatized it because we’re talking about everyday sadness, like it’s depression and people feel they can talk about their status, which they should. People should be able to feel supported by their loved ones talking about their emotions and stuff. That’s very different from clinical depression. Feeling a little quirky, or having some eccentricities is very different from having autism, or dealing with ADHD. These differences, I think, really matter.

[0:04:45] PF: I think people have become rapid to self-diagnose.

[0:04:51] JN: Yeah. I have a lot of sympathy for people that gravitate towards self-diagnosis, because listen, it’s just a supply and demand issue. There aren’t enough therapists. If you need to get diagnosed with something complex, like you need a testing psychologist, someone that’s going to bring you through a testing battery and interview your loved ones and really, and figure out the precise label of what’s going on with you, that’s super expensive. It’s super time consuming. I totally get the impulse of wanting to use TikTok, or in a lot of ways, this isn’t new too, right? How many of us have gone on Dr. Google? You know what I mean? It’s like, what’s this little bump for? I totally get it.

I think the danger with mental health on trying to diagnose that mole by yourself is that a lot of these things, they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. They can become performative. If you start telling yourself that you have some disorder, you may start not just training yourself to believe that, but training others to treat you like that. The thing about diagnosis, I write about this in the book, is that diagnosis is not the destination. It’s the start of the journey. It informs a treatment plan, so you then do not meet the criteria anymore. That’s the point of the diagnosis. A lot of people are treating diagnosis like it’s an identity, or it’s like a personality trait or something. I think that there’s some risk in that.

[0:06:13] PF: That was actually something I wanted to ask you about, because I do have people in my life that have built their identity around a diagnosis and in a recent discussion, talking with someone and she was talking about her ADHD and all these other things, I’m like, when did that diagnosis come about? It’s like, well, she had basically found it online and now she was recalibrating her life to accommodate this new identity of ADHD. I’m not a therapist. I don’t play one on TV. I cannot help her with that. But it really struck me that she was altering her life for something that we don’t even know is genuine.

[0:06:56] JN: Right. It’s funny, Paula. Do you remember five or 10 years ago, there was all these documentaries and all these news stories being like, we’re over diagnosing our children with ADHD. We’re putting them on medication. Now it’s like, this bit, this weird shift where it was like, everybody and their mother has ADHD. Everybody needs medication. I think, I have a few things to say about it. I think the first thing is one of the dangers itself diagnosing yourself with something like ADHD is that you may have the symptoms. You may be able to correctly identify the symptoms, but knowing what the criteria is because you looked it up online, or maybe you bought a copy of the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders does not make you a diagnostician.

Two thirds of Americans have disordered sleep, right? I don’t know about you, but as someone with ADHD, when I don’t get my sleep, when I’m not taking care of my body, my vessel, my symptoms are way, way worse. Then I require my medication, just to be functional. I try to stay on top of that lifestyle stuff, because I think it decreases my need for medication. For the everyday person without ADHD, if you’re getting poor sleep on a continuous basis, you’re going to be more distractible, you’re going to be more impulsive, you’re going to be more scattered and disorganized. The danger is people are diagnosing themselves. Maybe they’re even improperly diagnosed and maybe they get a hold of an Adderall prescription, let’s just say in the sake of argument.

What’s really happening is disordered sleep. You haven’t fixed the underlying cause, and now you’re covering the symptoms with what is essentially time-released cocaine. That is what Adderall is. It’s not exactly like it. It’s in a much lower dose and it’s extended release, and it can be hugely beneficial for people with ADHD, and it’ll certainly mask your symptoms, right? It’s like, that’s not helpful in the long run. Other health problems are going to come up if your sleep is disordered, and you probably want to know that in a good therapist, a good diagnostician will be able to rule that out when they’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.

[0:08:51] PF: With so many people leaning into social media, how is that creating and spreading misinformation that is harming our well-being?

[0:09:01] JN: Well, one of the things if you work in social media, or you come to study it and learn it, one of the things you’ll learn about social media is there are certain types of things that go viral, right? Certain things catch on. One of the things, of course, is outrage and there’s plenty of that in today’s society. There’s also something that we would call things that are surprises, things that are new. It’s like, “Oh, I haven’t heard this before.” So, I think one of the dangers is that the things that will get a lot of people talking in the comments and will get a lot of shares, it’s not because it’s right or wrong, or even good or bad, it’s mostly just, oh, you haven’t heard that take before. Because of that, I think social media is slanted towards misinformation, or towards things that are maybe worded in a way that you haven’t quite heard before, but it has this implication that might not totally be true. This is true of any subject. I also think, therapy is a bespoke service. It’s super individualized.

Like I said, you come in because you’re feeling distractible and you have ADHD-like symptoms. I’m sitting here and I’m like, “Is it ADHD? Is it distorted sleep? Is it dietary? Is it lifestyle? Is it bipolar? Is it borderline?” There are so many other diagnoses that share those symptoms that are important to rule out? You just can’t do that on a video, or a meme. Part of it, it isn’t even anyone’s fault. It’s just what this system is.

Now having said that, we all need to remember that when I say it’s become popularized, people are doing it as a personal brand. There was a phenomenon over COVID. Did you catch this, where I believe it was mostly adolescents, but people were pretending to have mental health diagnoses, like Tourette’s, or ADHD, getting huge followings and then being like, “Just kidding. I made it up.”

[0:10:48] PF: How did I miss that? I mean, we all had extra time during COVID. I can’t believe it.

[0:10:52] JN: It’s true. There was a lot going on. I was tracking it, because I’m in this space. But I just, I share that to remind people that this is – stuff like that is happening and it’s not – I’m not saying, it’s like, oh, they get a few thousand followers. I’m saying, they get hundreds of thousands of followers and reach millions of people. I’m not blaming kids. Kids are experimenting and kids are just trying to figure themselves out. It makes sense to me why someone would do that. But there are still consequences to that, culturally.

[0:11:19] PF: What kind of harm has been caused to someone who is taking their advice through social media, and then probably digging a little deeper, going to ChatGPT, or something like that and saying like, “Okay, I have this. Now, what do I do?”

[0:11:34] JN: Well, something I write about in the book is sometimes people believe this myth that getting a diagnosis is the worst thing that can happen to you. I say, that’s not actually true. A worst thing that can happen to you is that there’s not a label, like we can’t actually name what’s going on with you, because no psychologist, or no therapist has ever seen it before. You need to get referred to specialists and stuff like that. I would say that that is worse than having something like depression, or something very standard that people can treat.

The other thing, this brings it back to your point, is that getting the wrong diagnosis means you’re getting the wrong treatment plan, which means you’re actually staying in your suffering, or staying in the disorder behavior for longer. I’m a big fan of this guy. His name is Dr. Allen Frances. He has actually written and edited large chunks of the DSM. He came out with this book in 2013. It’s called Saving Normal. His message is not dissimilar to mine. He was saying, stop pathologizing in everyday life. This is a bad idea. It’s going to lead to social contagion. It’s going to overwhelm mental health resources. This was in 2013.

All these years later, I’m looking at what’s happening and his words feel pretty prophetic. One of the things he says is a mental illness is not something that just gets better with time. It requires professional support, and the longer you go without professional support, the worse it’s going to be. Regular problems of living that we all go through, things that aren’t mental illness are going to get better with time. They’re going to get better with time and just support and patience from your loved ones. Well, you figure life out, because I’m still figuring life out. I’m sure you’re still figuring life out. It’s just part of –

[0:13:15] PF: Working on it.

[0:13:16] JN: Yeah, exactly. It’s part of the journey. The issue with the turning to TikTok, or something like ChatGPT And then attempting to do all of this yourself is that if it’s the incorrect diagnosis, and you are right that you do have something diagnosable, it’s going to get worse with time without that support.

[0:13:36] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

[BREAK]

[0:13:46] PF: Now, let’s hear more from Joe Nucci.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:13:50] JN: Now personally, I think that we all need to remember, there just simply aren’t enough therapists. This is a supply and demand issue. One of the things we’re also seeing, and for me, it’s an issue of social justice, is if everyone needs to go to therapy, because everybody has something wrong with them and everyone has ADHD, and there’s only a few hundred thousand therapists in the United States, what’s going to happen? Well, therapists are going to stop accepting insurance and we’re going to treat the people that want to pay us the most. We’re scarce in terms of supply compared to the demand. That is what’s happening.

I mean, don’t you hear it from everyone? I can’t find anyone good. Everyone has a waiting list. Everyone is so expensive. Listen, for those listening, it’s like, I am part of this problem, but look, I live in Manhattan. It’s expensive. I got to make a living, too. I’m not faulting any therapist. I’m not saying that it’s bad to get paid what you feel like you’re worth. I’m not faulting anybody else. I’m just saying, we’ve branded it so aggressively and we didn’t have the supply to meet the demand. I think that there is a role for coaching for AI that needs to get better. Obviously, it’s a hot mess right now, but I’m hoping that we catch up, because people need treatment. Even if it’s only one in four, and that’s what the statistics say. One in four have a diagnosable mental illness. That’s still tens of millions of people going without treatment every week.

[0:15:07] PF: Right. Right. I do like the idea of coaching. I know there are so many great experts out there who will deal with specific things that are going on in your life.

[0:15:16] JN: Totally.

[0:15:17] PF: Like you say in the book, which I found so interesting, I don’t normally hear someone within the industry saying, not everyone needs therapy. That’s like a pharmacist saying, not everyone needs drugs. But I love that and you present it beautifully. Tell us why not everyone needs therapy, and then also, how you know if you do need therapy, versus a coach, or you just need some time.

[0:15:40] JN: Yeah. Well, I would say, I’ll answer in reverse order. The first thing is if you’re curious about therapy, if you think it might help, go talk to your therapist, or talk to your doctor. The medical doctors are trained in the basics of understanding, is this a mental health concern, or is it not? The consult can’t hurt, and better safe than sorry. Of course. I think that where the problems can start to come up is people think that they’re benefiting from something is the same thing as needing it.

I have treated patients in my practice who came in, we did excellent work. They worked really hard on themselves. They’re better people for it. But they were relatively fine when they came in. They weren’t experiencing overt dysfunction. They were meeting all of their goals. They had good relationships. They had a good job. They were checking a lot of boxes. I’ve also had patients who came in and it’s like, “You know what? If you didn’t come to see me, or another qualified professional, you would not be okay. Like I said, this would not have gotten better with time. This would have gotten much worse.”

We have to think about what it is that we’re working on. If you want to go to therapy and you want to self-actualize and just become more self-aware, I think that’s great. I have patients like that. I think that’s fine. I think as a culture, as a mental health community, we all have to consider what that means if so many people are doing that. Because think about it from my perspective, as a therapist, do I want a bunch of patients that are going through a lot and require a lot of attention and energy and the stakes are really high? Or is it easier to collect the same paycheck, right? Everyone is fine. Again, I’m not faulting any therapist out there who wants to treat one group, or the other. I’m just saying, societally, this is a dynamic that we have to talk about.

[0:17:24] PF: I’m so glad you are bringing these things up. You do it in a delightful way. The book is truly, truly enjoyable to read.

[0:17:31] JN: Thank you.

[0:17:33] PF: In the book, you break down, it’s more than three dozen mental health myths that you –

[0:17:38] JN: There’s about 40, I think.

[0:17:39] PF: Yeah. First, how did you come up with that list of all these mental health myths that needed to be deconstructed?

[0:17:48] JN: Yeah. Well, I think for me, it was I do practice as a psychotherapist. It was like, people are calling me up for consults, or coming in, using these terms incorrectly. I just had that anecdotal experience to draw on. Also, I think the cool thing about writing the book as a social media influencer is that I had this awesome hive mind sounding board that I could talk to at any given time. I was interested in writing a chapter about narcissism, just as an example, I could make some videos about narcissism and I could see, it’s like, do people care about this? News flash on social media, they do. That content –

[0:18:23] PF: That is the word of the year.

[0:18:24] JN: Exactly. That content performed very well, versus other times I would put out a video about, I don’t even remember, because it obviously didn’t perform that well, it didn’t make it into the book. It was like, oh, this is really interesting to me, but this isn’t interesting to the public. I think that in terms of writing non-fiction, I think that this is certainly a way of writing that I’m going to repeat as long as I keep my platform active. Because I think so many people out there, they have interesting ideas and I’m sure that their ideas are interesting, but does that mean that this is the right time for you to go publish this book, or on this topic, etc.?

I think that a lot of the myths were like that. Just being in conversation with my community, talking to them in the comments, seeing what performed really well. But then, also deeper than that, it’s interesting to share. Let’s say, I post a video about a topic and I noticed that people are very sensitive about the subject. That meant that when I went to go writing, I was like, I’m going to be very careful with my words. I’m going to contextualize a lot. Maybe this chapter is a little bit longer. Versus, other people were just stoked about it. It was just, everyone was in general agreement. I could be bolder and let it rip. You know what I mean? That’s how I wrote the book. It was it is both with my audience, but also for them. These are the topics they wanted to read more about.

[0:19:43] PF: I love that. I love that. That probably accounts for the tone where it is so accessible, which you don’t normally expect a book about therapy to be that accessible, but it really is. Now, of all those myths, is there one that you think is doing the most harm as a society?

[0:20:04] JN: I think the one doing the most harm, because it touches so many of the other myths just by the nature of what it is, is myth number 40, which I think the title is something like, Using Therapy Speak Makes You Emotionally Intelligent. Take it from me, everyone. I mean, here’s the thing that I haven’t said yet, Paula, and that I need to. You think I wasn’t the number one offender of using Psychobabble my first year of grad school? Of course, I was. Every therapist was. If they say they’re not, they’re lying to themselves. I feel very, very strongly about that.

The differences, though, is us therapists, we kept on training, we kept on learning. At the beginning of our careers, it’s very common where it’s like, we’re bringing up psychology a little bit too often, where maybe you’re accidentally analyzing someone who didn’t ask for it. The truth is we’re excited and it’s what we do and it’s what we think about all the time. Anyone who has been to therapy and has benefited from therapy knows, God bless all those therapists doing the Lord’s work, helping people work through whatever it is.

It’s easy to, at the beginning, just be so excited and to misapply, or not yet fully understand a term. It seems to me that culture, it’s like we’ve all taken psych 101. Now we’re using these terms, like gaslighting, narcissists, people pleasing, neuro-divergency, whatever it is. My content, what I’m up to with this book, it’s like, okay, here’s psych 102. Here is the skinny on the stuff you need to know, so you don’t embarrass yourself inadvertently. And so, you also don’t actually make decisions that are based on half-truths and falsehoods.

In this chapter, I talk about how people will use therapeutic jargon, but they’ll often use it in a way that’s not emotionally intelligent. Here’s some things that people do. Ready? Number one, people will often use it as an appeal to authority. If you’re talking about your ex and how much you don’t like them, being like, “Oh. Well, my ex was self-centered.” It’s like, okay, some people are self-centered, some people are not as much. Whatever. But being like, “My ex was a narcissist.” It’s like, “Oh, my God. I am so sorry that you went through that.” It adds this punch, and you’re using the field of psychology to elevate the gravity of the situation.

My take is that if someone had a really selfish ex, they deserve your support anyways, even though lots of people are selfish. I don’t think that’s asking a lot. I think that all this jargon and learning this jargon, it’s a little bit like learning to play an instrument. When you first start learning, you want to stay really loyal to the terms, operational definitions, like the rigid proper definitions that you see in the dictionary. The danger is that people are immediately running wild with it, without really taking the time to learn how to play the instrument. As you get better with the different chords and notes, as you get better with these terms and concepts, you can freestyle a little bit. You can apply it to this situation, or that subject, but you have to give yourself time.

When you do that, I don’t think that you have to use the language at all. For example, in my life, if I encounter someone that I in my bones feel to be deeply narcissistic and just a toxic human being, I’m not going to be like, “Hey, everyone. I’m a therapist, and this is who they are.” That would be a great way to get uninvited from a lot of parties, you know what I mean? Instead, I’m going to apply my knowledge and insight and I’m going to be like, “Okay. They’re pretty narcissistic. What am I going to do about that?” Well, number one, I’m not going to build a relationship with them.

[0:23:18] PF: Exactly.

[0:23:20] JN: That’s probably the better way. Number two, when I have to interact with them, what are strategies that I can employ, right? They’re narcissistic. They like themselves. Maybe I’ll give them a compliment or two and just give them what they want and keep them at bay. Maybe I gray rock, which is a method that you teach patients who are living with a narcissist, or who has a narcissistic family member. To me, that’s real emotional intelligence. Learning to navigate and being in the trenches of life every day. It’s not the words that you use to sound smart, or to sound authoritative.

[0:23:50] PF: I love it. That’s so well said. This book is so packed with insights. One thing I love about it is someone can pick it up and go right to the mental health myth that they’re clinging to.

[0:24:02] JN: Oh, totally. You don’t have to read in order.

[0:24:05] PF: Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. That’s great. Something like this. Yeah, it’s perfect. It’s a sense where it’s like, all right, we all know somebody who fits this, or maybe it’s ourselves where it’s like, yeah, I can learn about this mental health myth and be a little bit more empowered in this conversation and this relationship. I think it’s super well done. What is it that you hope people take away from your book?

[0:24:32] JN: In the book, I talk about the difference between grief and trauma. I talk about losing my dad when I was 11 and how I dealt with trauma responses, but I also dealt with grief. My contention is that not everything bad that happens results to trauma. Not everyone develops trauma responses due to the bad things that happened to us in life. But everyone grieves. Everyone still has a hard life. I dedicate the book, it’s in memory of my dad. It’s written in memory of my dad, but I dedicate it to all those who are grieving, or those who are dealing with what I’ve talking about is the problems of living.

A lot of what we’re doing as therapists, when people come in to see us, as people are telling us about their families, their relationships, their work. A lot of what we’re doing is we’re validating and normalizing what it is. We’re saying like, “Oh, my gosh. Someone spoke to you that way? I would also feel angry.” That makes complete sense. What a lot of what is connected to so much mental illness is that when people suppress their emotions too much, it can start to look like something like depression, or anxiety, or they start to control their food. There’s disordered eating, or they start to get really fixated on the gym, or whatever it is, these problematic behaviors. Not always, but are often connected to emotional suppression.

I think that we need to normalize that life is difficult and you’re going to have uncomfortable feelings pretty constantly, even in the best of circumstances. Then the second thing I want people to take away, and this is in a very similar vein to that is that I want people to move away from this sense of learned helplessness that I think bad therapy and bad mental health content can really afford people. Sometimes people are depressed because they’re not feeling their feelings. But sometimes they’re depressed because they don’t feel there’s a way out of their situation. That they’re just stuck to where they are. The promise that I feel is not just to understand yourself and why you are the way you are. It’s to give you a roadmap to where you can be more than what you are.

I believe deeply in human potential. I believe that we transform, if we’d like to, throughout our lifespans. That’s the other thing I want people to take away. I want them to take away that sense of empowerment. Whether it’s on their therapy journey, or otherwise.

[0:26:51] PF: I love it. Joe, I’m going to tell people how to find you. I’m going to tell them how to find the book and get more of you. I really, really appreciate you sitting down with me and talking about all of this.

[0:27:02] JN: Oh, thanks so much. It’s been so fun, Paula.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:27:09] PF: That was Joe Nucci, talking about his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths and Truths to Set You Free. If you’d like to learn more about Joe, sign up for his mental state of the union newsletter, or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why not every tough emotion equals a mental illness — and why that distinction matters.
How social media can distort mental health conversations (and what to watch out for).
The difference between emotional intelligence and just “sounding like a therapist.”

Visit Joe’s website Joe’s website here.

Check out his book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free.

Listen to Joe’s Psychobabble podcast.

Follow along with the transcript.

Follow Joe on Social Media:

Twitter: @joenuccitherapy
Instagram: @joenuccitherapy
Facebook: @joenuccitherapy

Don’t Miss a Minute of Happiness!

If you’re not subscribed to the weekly Live Happy newsletter, you’re missing out! Sign up to discover new articles and research on happiness, the latest podcast, special offers from sponsors, and even a happy song of the week. Subscribe for free today!

Interested in advertising or partnering with us? Complete this quick form.