from Daniel Mackler: “I became a psychotherapist and became deeply involved in the field of mental health. I started reading the literature… but what I realized… most of it wasn't science at all, it was bullshit, full of holes… I thought it was better than the people writing these papers… I realized that I also have great curiosity…stay curious, keep asking questions, and read what I've been told is true, especially when I listen to other mental health professionals. As I continued to doubt myself, I became more and more interested in the field of mental health.When I was working in a mental health facility, especially listening to big-name psychiatrists and psychologists, I became more and more interested in the field of mental health. , I realized that what they were saying often didn't make sense, and when I asked critical questions, I didn't mean it in a nasty or argumentative way. It's not a question that I was asking, I was just letting my curiosity run wild and trying to figure out if there were any blind spots in their argument. Basically I was practicing good science — what I'm saying is What I saw again and again was that they didn't like it. They felt threatened and attacked by it. And I found that they suffered from a lack of curiosity. I realized that they had been able to see through their lies.
. . . I rarely made friends with therapists in the mental health field because they didn't like the way I asked questions. But in my work as a therapist, I've found that my ability to ask questions, to be truly curious, to ask questions based on curiosity, and to follow through on my questions endears me to many of my clients. They really appreciated it. The idea here is to model self-reflection and look at them and understand where they're coming from and why they're the way they are, rather than saying, “Take a pill, do this, the science supports it.” There were people who were seriously trying to understand what had happened. Or, “Because you have a genetic problem, you also have a problem with your brain. Therefore, you need to take medicine and accept this diagnosis.” — I'm not saying this, but that Because I didn't see the evidence. That wasn't proven to me. But what I've seen over and over again is people looking at themselves and trying to figure out who they are, trying to figure out their story, and thinking about what their relationship with their parents was once like. Try to understand what was, be really curious, create your own, and embrace your own story instead of accepting the story that has been told over and over again along the way. What I discovered is that people can really change and find power in completely different ways.
Not all of my clients liked it. Because I noticed that some of the people I worked with when I was a therapist were: . . I really didn't want to be asked questions, I wanted to be told what to do, I wanted the pain to go away, I didn't want people to look inside me — because what I realized was that people really didn't want to be asked questions. Because when you do, it's not rare. When I started looking within myself, especially in the early days, it was incredibly painful. And this brings me back to my parents again. I really think the reason I wasn't interested in it was because it was too painful. There are consequences to being curious, and there are consequences to asking questions. The real conclusions are sometimes difficult to accept. Sometimes it's easy and comfortable to get angry about shit in the science field, shit in the mental health field, shit in biology. It's comfortable to draw the same conclusions that everyone came up with along the way. Or you can tweak that conclusion a bit to make it seem like you have a unique perspective on life. It's easy to follow the rules. Sometimes it's easy to close your eyes and try not to think about anything. . . I often think that curiosity is dangerous. Galileo was dangerous. Copernicus was dangerous. These people are dangerous to the system. And most fundamentally, I think a truly curious child is a danger to the establishment of the family system, the lie of the family system. ”
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