October 6, 2021 • 19 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy that comes out every Wednesday where Kat (@kat.defatta) answers questions that listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapy.com. This week, however, Kat has a special guest on with her to ask his question directly. Houston Tilley (@houstontilley), who is the producer behind You Need Therapy, brings up an experience he recently had while scrolling on social media. Together they talk about the difference between calling someone out and calling someone in, how to manage expectations when you offer feedback, and the power of speaking up when you notice a friend struggling.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
All right, guys, welcome back to Couch Talks on You
Need Therapy. My name is Kat and if you're new,
couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy
where I answer questions that you guys sent to me
and if you have a question, you can send it
to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com and
(00:29):
then maybe one day it'll pop up on here. Now,
before we get into the question, today, we are doing
things a little differently, a quick reminder that even though
I am a therapist and I'm answering questions, this does
not serve or substitute as therapy for anybody just having
conversations on here rather than actually doing what therapy is.
(00:51):
But you never know, listening to something on here could
encourage you to go to therapy, and I'm all for that.
So today we have a very special episode of Couch Shocks,
because one that has been the works for about twenty years. Um.
But we have our producer Houston on with a question.
(01:15):
I don't know when this question popped up. It was
it after you listen to an episode or is it
just in your life this came up? It's just when
I was scrolling through Instagram. But this is probably so
to three months. I'm every day I'm like, when can
you record? And then Houston tells me, and then I'm
don't answer him, and then I just asked, well, it's
(01:39):
also not fair that you're two hours ahead of me,
which I forget. I do forget, so sneak peek for
all the all the listeners. I do not live in Nashville. Yeah,
where do you live? Tell the people where you live.
I live in Spokane, Washington, so pretty much the opposite
side of very far away. If you don't know where
that is, just say I live in Seattle, which is
(02:02):
how far away? Five hours? That's very Whenever he says
spoke in Washington, they're like, where's that is that close
to Seattle? Yes, but people know that city. Though I've
heard of that city, I just don't. I don't know
anything about it. Well, there's not much to know. Okay,
it's pretty that's what. There's a note. It's prettier than Nahville.
(02:22):
So anyway, So Houston sent me this question, and I
thought it was really really good and really important and
I want to talk about it. So thank you for
even thinking of this question, having this question, and thank
you for taking time out of your day, which you
do a lot, so this means a lot and it's important. Well,
thank you for having me, of course, So let's just
get into it. Tell the people what you are wondering. Okay.
(02:46):
So I was scrolling through Instagram and I follow a
YouTuber and his wife on Instagram, they have about twenty
million subscribers. It's the account them together. It's not like
you follow his wife and then you also follow the YouTuber.
Their account is separate. Is him and her separate accounts.
(03:07):
But then on YouTube, there one one thing, and so
I was scrolling through her account, and she normally promotes
fitness and stuff and that she's working out and whatever.
Nothing bad there. But then I was scrolling one night
and then I see that she is bragging about how
she is now on this very fancy diet and going
(03:27):
to lose all this weight and his heart already lost
a lot of weight because she is only drinking bone broth.
And it raised a concern to me because the people
that subscribe to them are mostly little kids are or
teens or something like that, so the most vulnerable, and
they are looked up to like they are they're full
(03:48):
on celebrities, and so anybody who looks up to people
normally is like, oh, they're using that product. I'll try
that out. And I started scrolling through the comments and
there are a few other people saying you probably shouldn't
be promoting this, And so my question is should I
make a comment be like you probably shouldn't be doing this,
like think of your fan base and you might be
(04:10):
influencing people more than you think you are. Or do
I just leave it and let it go? But then
if I should say something, how would I say that?
What do you even say? So such a good question.
I want to talk about like this specific situation, and
then I want to broaden that out to like even
if that was like one of your friends, what would
you do? And should you say something? So this seems
(04:32):
bigger since they have such an influence, right. I am
a big fan of using the term calling somebody in
versus calling somebody out, So a lot of times when
you see stuff like this, I mean, I'll use like
Gwyneth Paltrow put some I'll use the word dumb book
out about intuitive fasting or something. And if you read
(04:55):
the comments, they were like ruthless and I don't think
she cared about them. I don't know her, but I
don't think she really cared about them. And part of that,
I think is when you are being like called out
like that is a very icky feeling, and it then
elicits somebody to feel immediately defensive and then defend their
(05:16):
behavior rather than hear what you're saying. I don't even
want to have a conversation. I'm going to try to
convince you that, like, I'm not a bad person, I'm
not doing anything wrong. That's the call out culture, where
it's like you suck, you're canceled. I can't believe you're
doing this. You shouldn't do this, Like do you even
know what's blah blah blah. It can sound a million
different ways versus like call in, which is where you
(05:38):
kindly in in a caring way, in a non threatening way,
offer information, like offer somebody a different perspective. Because I
believe that most people are good. Most people are good.
I don't think that this person probably put this out
there negligent wanting to harm people. She probably thinks it's
(05:59):
working for her, right, Yeah, you didn't think that either.
She probably it sounds like it feels like it's working
for her, she's excited about it, she wants to share it,
she thinks it's cool. Okay, So what you're doing is
by calling somebody in it's hey, I want to offer
you another perspective of how I saw this post or
how I experienced your post, or what your post brought
(06:20):
up for me. So the question about should I say something,
I think yes, if you feel like if you want to, yes,
there's no reason that you should not say something, especially
on a public platform where people are like, that's she's
posting this, so she's welcoming feedback, whether or not she
actually thinks that or not. So if you want to,
if it feels like something that you think is right,
(06:43):
then yes, do it. The encouragement would be how would
you do it? Calling in versus calling out? And then
the other part is when it's somebody like that, like
a public figure, you're also doing that with kind of
the mindset of like they really might not care, right
and they might or they might not see it, so
which is more probably the case? Right? And So the
question I would ask you or whoever is experiencing this
(07:06):
is what's the why behind saying something? Why would you
want to say something. It could be a million different
reasons if you would ask yourself that, like why would
you if you're like, okay, I understand this call out
first call in, I can do that. I want to
call her in why because I want to change your mind?
Because I want to why to let her know that
(07:26):
maybe her influence is more powerful than she realizes. Yeah,
so to give her another perspective with the expectation of
what what would be your expectation thinking more about posting
that kind of stuff in the future and maybe maybe not. Yeah, so,
which is a fine expectation because you're maybe maybe think
(07:47):
about it, but maybe not. You are going to think
about what's What's a fine expectation. But I always caution
people because we can get really wrapped up and this stuff.
And I used to get so wrapped up in this
where I'm like, I have to tell everybody that's doing
these things and I need to change the world that Okay,
I need to make sure that my expectations are realistic.
Where if this person has first of all, with anybody,
(08:10):
I don't have the power to change anybody's mind, So
my why can be it would be really nice if
they would really hear this and think about it. Also,
it's because of my integrity, like to stay inside my integrity.
It's when I see something and I see where I
can maybe offer some insight that feels right and good
for me to do, versus ignore the problem. So I
(08:31):
think going into it with realistic expectations is very important.
Now that's a little different. If it's like your friend. Yes, right,
let's say your friend. You know they're gonna read it,
like you know they're going to see it. So how
might you approach that if you because this I'm sure
happens to I mean, it happens to me. I see
people and I'm like, oh, I really don't want you
(08:53):
to do that. I think then you would wanna not
put them on blast on social media and make the comment.
Right you you want to call them or do it
in person or something right, depending on the level of relationship, right,
that matches. So if it's just like an acquaintance, I
might d M them. If it is my best friend,
I'm going to drive to her house. If it's a
(09:13):
friend that lives across the country, I might call. But
that is going to look a little different. But it's
the same thing of calling in versus calling out, because
when we call out, then they're going to get defensive
and then that's not going to really go well. But
when I'm calling in, it's like, Hey, I saw this thing,
this is what it brought up for me. I wonder
if you've ever thought about it this way. And I
also want to know more about like your intentions, because
(09:36):
I don't want to make assumptions either. So can we
just have a conversation about you post let's say there
posting bone broth if you have a conversation about this
bone broth thing, because I've been learning a lot about
it in in in diet culture in general, and it
just kind of scared me and I care about you.
There's a conversation. Again, there's space for us to be
(09:57):
very aware of our expectations because they still might be like,
you don't know what you're talking about. My doctor told
me that I can do that, Like there might still
be that, But again it goes back to like my
integrity as a friend. It's very kind and caring for
me to speak when I see something rather than just
see it, get annoyed and then talk about it with
somebody else. So does that answer your question fully? I
(10:20):
think so going back to like the celebrities and the
influencers doing this, I do think that is a really
important that specifically. I don't think I've talked about that.
I've talked about how to approach like friends and family members,
(10:41):
but how do I approach these Instagram influencers specifically or
YouTube or whatever who. On the episode with Nabiha, we
talked about how influencers work and how like the fact
that they make a living off of kind of being
like normal people and kind of being relatable kind of
messes with us and that's like a huge responsibility to
(11:03):
have as an influencer. And I'm sure, well, I don't
know what it's like, but like, I'm sure there's some
essence of like, oh, I can't say anything, right There's
always going to be something that somebody has a comment about,
right when when you have that much power. But at
the same time, like we can only know what we know,
so it's not like you're telling them your outfit sucks.
(11:27):
I just want you to know that your outfit sucks.
I don't like that or like I want you to
like you're saying, hey, this is scary, this feels harmful.
I know, You're probably not feeling or expecting this to
be a harmful because I assume that you're a good person,
But this is how it felt to me. Boom, So
are you gonna go comment? Are you gonna go send
(11:48):
this person a message? This was a long time ago.
Well so I did. I did comment, okay at that time,
but I was trying to find it while you were talking,
and I think she might have hold it stop. Do
you know are there other comments that are saying stuff
about it on there? When I commented, I saw two
(12:09):
other comments of people being like, this is kind of
like disordered eating. They were Mine was a little longer,
and there's were pretty just like a one sentence kind
of thing. I wish I could find it. I'm kind
of mad. So she has two point seven million followers
just on Instagram, so you know there was more than
just three comments. I think. You know what is um
(12:31):
an interesting perspective that a friend of mine gave me.
When I had posted something and I got like feedback
that I didn't like, I was like so upset and
I was like I'm just turning the comments off, and
my friend was like, you don't get to do that.
He was like if you are going to put a
opinion or perspective, if you're going to put information out
(12:54):
somewhere for people to see, that isn't like always factual.
It might be your your bective. You have got to
be willing to take in both sides of it. And
I'm like, yeah, I know, I know, I say that
all the time. It feels different me, but yeah, but
(13:14):
I I took that to heart, and I'm like, yeah,
you're right if somebody says something, unless it's like just
really mean, Like if somebody says something really mean, like
take it down. But if somebody's just like, hey, I
noticed this or I saw this, or I want you
to I don't get to only take in the like affirmations.
I think that's fair. Now, not everybody is going to
(13:36):
adhere to that because it's I mean, it's their Instagram.
They can do what they want. But that's scary to
take that. See she saw that, and she said, I'm
not willing to have this conversation just I mean, they're prerogative.
She's not willing to have the conversation. This is kind
of a side note, but on the same kind of topic.
When I was in college, I became really good friends.
(13:57):
And still I am really good friends with a guy
and he had a really bad drinking problem and are
kind of little friend group. Tried helping him and everything,
and he wouldn't you want to go to because I mean,
the campus has all sorts of resources. I went to
therapy on the campus because somebody drugged me there. In
the end, it was very thankful that she did that.
(14:18):
But he just wouldn't accept anything that we were saying
or what we wanted him to do. And so I
eventually said, I'm going to call you out on Instagram,
so like your parents don't know about what this is happening.
I'm friends with your parents on here, and you're going
to be tagged in this, so obviously they're going to
see it. And he didn't believe me, and so I
ended up posting, and so then what happened. I think
(14:40):
it's still on my on my feed. It got him
to stop. It worked, and then I said, I'll give
you if you can now not drink for six months,
I'll buy you tickets to this concert that we really
want to both go to, and there's there's your reward
at the end. And ever since, this has been years
and now he's still perfect. Okay, Okay, so that I'm
glad you said that, because what you're also talking about
(15:03):
is sometimes when we offer information or feedback or perspective,
that's one thing, but if the behavior or whatever is
working for them, there's no point for them to stop.
So if this woman is like my bone broth life
is just helping me live my best life, I don't
need this, right, there's no consequence, and she doesn't see
the harm she's doing, right, So it's like I can
delete these and and just ignore that. So there's no consequence.
(15:26):
So there's no reason for me to stop. As human beings,
if something's working for us, we're going to keep doing it.
So for you, for your friend, it's like, well, what
are you gonna do? There's no consequence, Like, there's no consequence.
That actually matters to me. They might have consequences, but
you're like, yeah, look, I'm gonna give you a consequence.
And I think that's important to talk about because I
(15:48):
think a lot of times. Now here's the other thing.
We can't We can't make people do things if they
don't want to do them. We can't make people change
if they don't want to change. Like, that's one of
the hardest parts of being a therapist is I can
want you to change so much, but if you don't
want to do it, you're not going to do it.
So there's there's that part that is very important to acknowledge.
But I think a lot of times when we do
(16:10):
have friends that we see are struggling, we're afraid to
upset them. We're afraid to hurt their feelings or piss
them off across a boundary. But when it comes to
this kind of stuff, I'm like, screw the boundaries. Like
if I see my friend continuously engaging an abusive relationship,
or continuously engaging and eating disorder behaviors, or continuously using
(16:32):
drugs or alcohol in a way that is really harmful,
like I'm I can't make you stop, but I'm I'm
going to have to sit as a good friend, sit
with a discomfort of maybe making or doing something that
elicits ikey feelings in you. And it's so hard. It's
so because that wasn't like fun to post that. No,
I didn't want to do that right and I didn't
(16:52):
know it would work. Yeah, that's the craziest one. Like
that was a shot in the dark, Yeah, which is
I think is so cool. I had a friend who
had an eating disorder in college, and it's like one
of those things where I don't know if this is
like your friend, but like everybody's talking about it, We're
all talking about it, but nobody's doing anything. And I did.
I finally did something, and it wasn't met with kindness,
(17:16):
like it was met with like a cold shoulder of
like mind your business, I'm fine, and never spoke of
it again. We went to different schools, so I didn't
see her that often, but years later she reached out
to me and was like, one, I want to say
sorry and to thank you. You're the only person that
said anything to me. And sometimes all it takes is
(17:38):
one person. And I think that's this like space of
like this goes into the whole conversation of having the
courage to do the thing that you would want somebody
to do for you. Right if I was posting something
really like harmful on Instagram, like please tell me now
you can DM me or text me. You don't have
to comment, but like do the thing that you would
(17:59):
want something some need to do for you, because I
don't want to harm anybody or if I was acting
out in my eating disorder and my best friends saw it,
I would want her to tell me. I might be
like pissed, I might be like mind your business, but
I also want them to tell me, like I want
my people to show up. And so having the courage
(18:19):
to do the uncomfortable thing, I think is is really important.
Not everybody's willing to do that. So look at you
commenting and posting, changing the world asking the question, yeah,
all we need? So I think that that was. Yeah.
I loved answering this question. And if anybody has like specifics,
(18:43):
I wonder, like things that they've seen where they felt
like they didn't have the space to say something on
Instagram or something along those lines, send that to us,
because I would. I'm assuming that we're all seeing stuff
like this, and especially these days. Yeah, and what Instagram
does is it gives us a lot of information action,
but it also gives us power to use our voice
in a different way. So there's something cool in that.
(19:06):
I think. Anything else on that final words, anything you
just want to say to the people, Uh, hi people,
No I got nothing. They probably appreciate that. Um okay,
Well that wraps up this episode. Of couch Talks again
if you have questions, or again if you have experiences
(19:26):
like Houston Hat and you want to share it, you
can send it to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com And uh yeah, thanks for being here. Have
the day, the week, the hour you need to have
and I will talk to you guys on Monday
All right, guys, welcome back to Couch Talks on You
Need Therapy. My name is Kat and if you're new,
couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy
where I answer questions that you guys sent to me
and if you have a question, you can send it
to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast dot com and
(00:29):
then maybe one day it'll pop up on here. Now,
before we get into the question, today, we are doing
things a little differently, a quick reminder that even though
I am a therapist and I'm answering questions, this does
not serve or substitute as therapy for anybody just having
conversations on here rather than actually doing what therapy is.
(00:51):
But you never know, listening to something on here could
encourage you to go to therapy, and I'm all for that.
So today we have a very special episode of Couch Shocks,
because one that has been the works for about twenty years. Um.
But we have our producer Houston on with a question.
(01:15):
I don't know when this question popped up. It was
it after you listen to an episode or is it
just in your life this came up? It's just when
I was scrolling through Instagram. But this is probably so
to three months. I'm every day I'm like, when can
you record? And then Houston tells me, and then I'm
don't answer him, and then I just asked, well, it's
(01:39):
also not fair that you're two hours ahead of me,
which I forget. I do forget, so sneak peek for
all the all the listeners. I do not live in Nashville. Yeah,
where do you live? Tell the people where you live.
I live in Spokane, Washington, so pretty much the opposite
side of very far away. If you don't know where
that is, just say I live in Seattle, which is
(02:02):
how far away? Five hours? That's very Whenever he says
spoke in Washington, they're like, where's that is that close
to Seattle? Yes, but people know that city. Though I've
heard of that city, I just don't. I don't know
anything about it. Well, there's not much to know. Okay,
it's pretty that's what. There's a note. It's prettier than Nahville.
(02:22):
So anyway, So Houston sent me this question, and I
thought it was really really good and really important and
I want to talk about it. So thank you for
even thinking of this question, having this question, and thank
you for taking time out of your day, which you
do a lot, so this means a lot and it's important. Well,
thank you for having me, of course, So let's just
get into it. Tell the people what you are wondering. Okay.
(02:46):
So I was scrolling through Instagram and I follow a
YouTuber and his wife on Instagram, they have about twenty
million subscribers. It's the account them together. It's not like
you follow his wife and then you also follow the YouTuber.
Their account is separate. Is him and her separate accounts.
(03:07):
But then on YouTube, there one one thing, and so
I was scrolling through her account, and she normally promotes
fitness and stuff and that she's working out and whatever.
Nothing bad there. But then I was scrolling one night
and then I see that she is bragging about how
she is now on this very fancy diet and going
(03:27):
to lose all this weight and his heart already lost
a lot of weight because she is only drinking bone broth.
And it raised a concern to me because the people
that subscribe to them are mostly little kids are or
teens or something like that, so the most vulnerable, and
they are looked up to like they are they're full
(03:48):
on celebrities, and so anybody who looks up to people
normally is like, oh, they're using that product. I'll try
that out. And I started scrolling through the comments and
there are a few other people saying you probably shouldn't
be promoting this, And so my question is should I
make a comment be like you probably shouldn't be doing this,
like think of your fan base and you might be
(04:10):
influencing people more than you think you are. Or do
I just leave it and let it go? But then
if I should say something, how would I say that?
What do you even say? So such a good question.
I want to talk about like this specific situation, and
then I want to broaden that out to like even
if that was like one of your friends, what would
you do? And should you say something? So this seems
(04:32):
bigger since they have such an influence, right. I am
a big fan of using the term calling somebody in
versus calling somebody out, So a lot of times when
you see stuff like this, I mean, I'll use like
Gwyneth Paltrow put some I'll use the word dumb book
out about intuitive fasting or something. And if you read
(04:55):
the comments, they were like ruthless and I don't think
she cared about them. I don't know her, but I
don't think she really cared about them. And part of that,
I think is when you are being like called out
like that is a very icky feeling, and it then
elicits somebody to feel immediately defensive and then defend their
(05:16):
behavior rather than hear what you're saying. I don't even
want to have a conversation. I'm going to try to
convince you that, like, I'm not a bad person, I'm
not doing anything wrong. That's the call out culture, where
it's like you suck, you're canceled. I can't believe you're
doing this. You shouldn't do this, Like do you even
know what's blah blah blah. It can sound a million
different ways versus like call in, which is where you
(05:38):
kindly in in a caring way, in a non threatening way,
offer information, like offer somebody a different perspective. Because I
believe that most people are good. Most people are good.
I don't think that this person probably put this out
there negligent wanting to harm people. She probably thinks it's
(05:59):
working for her, right, Yeah, you didn't think that either.
She probably it sounds like it feels like it's working
for her, she's excited about it, she wants to share it,
she thinks it's cool. Okay, So what you're doing is
by calling somebody in it's hey, I want to offer
you another perspective of how I saw this post or
how I experienced your post, or what your post brought
(06:20):
up for me. So the question about should I say something,
I think yes, if you feel like if you want to, yes,
there's no reason that you should not say something, especially
on a public platform where people are like, that's she's
posting this, so she's welcoming feedback, whether or not she
actually thinks that or not. So if you want to,
if it feels like something that you think is right,
(06:43):
then yes, do it. The encouragement would be how would
you do it? Calling in versus calling out? And then
the other part is when it's somebody like that, like
a public figure, you're also doing that with kind of
the mindset of like they really might not care, right
and they might or they might not see it, so
which is more probably the case? Right? And So the
question I would ask you or whoever is experiencing this
(07:06):
is what's the why behind saying something? Why would you
want to say something. It could be a million different
reasons if you would ask yourself that, like why would
you if you're like, okay, I understand this call out
first call in, I can do that. I want to
call her in why because I want to change your mind?
Because I want to why to let her know that
(07:26):
maybe her influence is more powerful than she realizes. Yeah,
so to give her another perspective with the expectation of
what what would be your expectation thinking more about posting
that kind of stuff in the future and maybe maybe not. Yeah, so,
which is a fine expectation because you're maybe maybe think
(07:47):
about it, but maybe not. You are going to think
about what's What's a fine expectation. But I always caution
people because we can get really wrapped up and this stuff.
And I used to get so wrapped up in this
where I'm like, I have to tell everybody that's doing
these things and I need to change the world that Okay,
I need to make sure that my expectations are realistic.
Where if this person has first of all, with anybody,
(08:10):
I don't have the power to change anybody's mind, So
my why can be it would be really nice if
they would really hear this and think about it. Also,
it's because of my integrity, like to stay inside my integrity.
It's when I see something and I see where I
can maybe offer some insight that feels right and good
for me to do, versus ignore the problem. So I
(08:31):
think going into it with realistic expectations is very important.
Now that's a little different. If it's like your friend. Yes, right,
let's say your friend. You know they're gonna read it,
like you know they're going to see it. So how
might you approach that if you because this I'm sure
happens to I mean, it happens to me. I see
people and I'm like, oh, I really don't want you
(08:53):
to do that. I think then you would wanna not
put them on blast on social media and make the comment.
Right you you want to call them or do it
in person or something right, depending on the level of relationship, right,
that matches. So if it's just like an acquaintance, I
might d M them. If it is my best friend,
I'm going to drive to her house. If it's a
(09:13):
friend that lives across the country, I might call. But
that is going to look a little different. But it's
the same thing of calling in versus calling out, because
when we call out, then they're going to get defensive
and then that's not going to really go well. But
when I'm calling in, it's like, Hey, I saw this thing,
this is what it brought up for me. I wonder
if you've ever thought about it this way. And I
also want to know more about like your intentions, because
(09:36):
I don't want to make assumptions either. So can we
just have a conversation about you post let's say there
posting bone broth if you have a conversation about this
bone broth thing, because I've been learning a lot about
it in in in diet culture in general, and it
just kind of scared me and I care about you.
There's a conversation. Again, there's space for us to be
(09:57):
very aware of our expectations because they still might be like,
you don't know what you're talking about. My doctor told
me that I can do that, Like there might still
be that, But again it goes back to like my
integrity as a friend. It's very kind and caring for
me to speak when I see something rather than just
see it, get annoyed and then talk about it with
somebody else. So does that answer your question fully? I
(10:20):
think so going back to like the celebrities and the
influencers doing this, I do think that is a really
important that specifically. I don't think I've talked about that.
I've talked about how to approach like friends and family members,
(10:41):
but how do I approach these Instagram influencers specifically or
YouTube or whatever who. On the episode with Nabiha, we
talked about how influencers work and how like the fact
that they make a living off of kind of being
like normal people and kind of being relatable kind of
messes with us and that's like a huge responsibility to
(11:03):
have as an influencer. And I'm sure, well, I don't
know what it's like, but like, I'm sure there's some
essence of like, oh, I can't say anything, right There's
always going to be something that somebody has a comment about,
right when when you have that much power. But at
the same time, like we can only know what we know,
so it's not like you're telling them your outfit sucks.
(11:27):
I just want you to know that your outfit sucks.
I don't like that or like I want you to
like you're saying, hey, this is scary, this feels harmful.
I know, You're probably not feeling or expecting this to
be a harmful because I assume that you're a good person,
But this is how it felt to me. Boom, So
are you gonna go comment? Are you gonna go send
(11:48):
this person a message? This was a long time ago.
Well so I did. I did comment, okay at that time,
but I was trying to find it while you were talking,
and I think she might have hold it stop. Do
you know are there other comments that are saying stuff
about it on there? When I commented, I saw two
(12:09):
other comments of people being like, this is kind of
like disordered eating. They were Mine was a little longer,
and there's were pretty just like a one sentence kind
of thing. I wish I could find it. I'm kind
of mad. So she has two point seven million followers
just on Instagram, so you know there was more than
just three comments. I think. You know what is um
(12:31):
an interesting perspective that a friend of mine gave me.
When I had posted something and I got like feedback
that I didn't like, I was like so upset and
I was like I'm just turning the comments off, and
my friend was like, you don't get to do that.
He was like if you are going to put a
opinion or perspective, if you're going to put information out
(12:54):
somewhere for people to see, that isn't like always factual.
It might be your your bective. You have got to
be willing to take in both sides of it. And
I'm like, yeah, I know, I know, I say that
all the time. It feels different me, but yeah, but
(13:14):
I I took that to heart, and I'm like, yeah,
you're right if somebody says something, unless it's like just
really mean, Like if somebody says something really mean, like
take it down. But if somebody's just like, hey, I
noticed this or I saw this, or I want you
to I don't get to only take in the like affirmations.
I think that's fair. Now, not everybody is going to
(13:36):
adhere to that because it's I mean, it's their Instagram.
They can do what they want. But that's scary to
take that. See she saw that, and she said, I'm
not willing to have this conversation just I mean, they're prerogative.
She's not willing to have the conversation. This is kind
of a side note, but on the same kind of topic.
When I was in college, I became really good friends.
(13:57):
And still I am really good friends with a guy
and he had a really bad drinking problem and are
kind of little friend group. Tried helping him and everything,
and he wouldn't you want to go to because I mean,
the campus has all sorts of resources. I went to
therapy on the campus because somebody drugged me there. In
the end, it was very thankful that she did that.
(14:18):
But he just wouldn't accept anything that we were saying
or what we wanted him to do. And so I
eventually said, I'm going to call you out on Instagram,
so like your parents don't know about what this is happening.
I'm friends with your parents on here, and you're going
to be tagged in this, so obviously they're going to
see it. And he didn't believe me, and so I
ended up posting, and so then what happened. I think
(14:40):
it's still on my on my feed. It got him
to stop. It worked, and then I said, I'll give
you if you can now not drink for six months,
I'll buy you tickets to this concert that we really
want to both go to, and there's there's your reward
at the end. And ever since, this has been years
and now he's still perfect. Okay, Okay, so that I'm
glad you said that, because what you're also talking about
(15:03):
is sometimes when we offer information or feedback or perspective,
that's one thing, but if the behavior or whatever is
working for them, there's no point for them to stop.
So if this woman is like my bone broth life
is just helping me live my best life, I don't
need this, right, there's no consequence, and she doesn't see
the harm she's doing, right, So it's like I can
delete these and and just ignore that. So there's no consequence.
(15:26):
So there's no reason for me to stop. As human beings,
if something's working for us, we're going to keep doing it.
So for you, for your friend, it's like, well, what
are you gonna do? There's no consequence, Like, there's no consequence.
That actually matters to me. They might have consequences, but
you're like, yeah, look, I'm gonna give you a consequence.
And I think that's important to talk about because I
(15:48):
think a lot of times. Now here's the other thing.
We can't We can't make people do things if they
don't want to do them. We can't make people change
if they don't want to change. Like, that's one of
the hardest parts of being a therapist is I can
want you to change so much, but if you don't
want to do it, you're not going to do it.
So there's there's that part that is very important to acknowledge.
But I think a lot of times when we do
(16:10):
have friends that we see are struggling, we're afraid to
upset them. We're afraid to hurt their feelings or piss
them off across a boundary. But when it comes to
this kind of stuff, I'm like, screw the boundaries. Like
if I see my friend continuously engaging an abusive relationship,
or continuously engaging and eating disorder behaviors, or continuously using
(16:32):
drugs or alcohol in a way that is really harmful,
like I'm I can't make you stop, but I'm I'm
going to have to sit as a good friend, sit
with a discomfort of maybe making or doing something that
elicits ikey feelings in you. And it's so hard. It's
so because that wasn't like fun to post that. No,
I didn't want to do that right and I didn't
(16:52):
know it would work. Yeah, that's the craziest one. Like
that was a shot in the dark, Yeah, which is
I think is so cool. I had a friend who
had an eating disorder in college, and it's like one
of those things where I don't know if this is
like your friend, but like everybody's talking about it, We're
all talking about it, but nobody's doing anything. And I did.
I finally did something, and it wasn't met with kindness,
(17:16):
like it was met with like a cold shoulder of
like mind your business, I'm fine, and never spoke of
it again. We went to different schools, so I didn't
see her that often, but years later she reached out
to me and was like, one, I want to say
sorry and to thank you. You're the only person that
said anything to me. And sometimes all it takes is
(17:38):
one person. And I think that's this like space of
like this goes into the whole conversation of having the
courage to do the thing that you would want somebody
to do for you. Right if I was posting something
really like harmful on Instagram, like please tell me now
you can DM me or text me. You don't have
to comment, but like do the thing that you would
(17:59):
want something some need to do for you, because I
don't want to harm anybody or if I was acting
out in my eating disorder and my best friends saw it,
I would want her to tell me. I might be
like pissed, I might be like mind your business, but
I also want them to tell me, like I want
my people to show up. And so having the courage
(18:19):
to do the uncomfortable thing, I think is is really important.
Not everybody's willing to do that. So look at you
commenting and posting, changing the world asking the question, yeah,
all we need? So I think that that was. Yeah.
I loved answering this question. And if anybody has like specifics,
(18:43):
I wonder, like things that they've seen where they felt
like they didn't have the space to say something on
Instagram or something along those lines, send that to us,
because I would. I'm assuming that we're all seeing stuff
like this, and especially these days. Yeah, and what Instagram
does is it gives us a lot of information action,
but it also gives us power to use our voice
in a different way. So there's something cool in that.
(19:06):
I think. Anything else on that final words, anything you
just want to say to the people, Uh, hi people,
No I got nothing. They probably appreciate that. Um okay,
Well that wraps up this episode. Of couch Talks again
if you have questions, or again if you have experiences
(19:26):
like Houston Hat and you want to share it, you
can send it to Catherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com And uh yeah, thanks for being here. Have
the day, the week, the hour you need to have
and I will talk to you guys on Monday
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