WEBVTT
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Hi, I'm Rose Rimler filling in for Wendy Zuckerman. She'll
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be back soon. And you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
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This is the show that pits facts against Freud. On
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today's show, therapy. Does it actually work? And before we
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jump in, talking about therapy means we'll be discussing mental health.
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So if you're feeling depressed or if you just want
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to talk to someone, in the U.S., you can call
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the National Mental Health Helpline. The number is 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.
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That number will be in the show notes along with
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other resources. Okay, on to the show. This past year
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or two has been kind of a nightmare. And for
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many of us, we're having a really hard time dealing
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with it. If you need data to back this up,
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here it is.
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The U.S.
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Government did a survey earlier this year and found that
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more than 40% of people reported symptoms of anxiety or depression.
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More than 40%. That's way more than before the pandemic.
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So what can we do about this? Well, one thing
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a lot of people turn to or think about turning
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to is therapy. There are ads for it all over
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our podcasts and on Facebook. And it made us wonder,
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how good is therapy? Like, how often does it actually
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help people? This has been a big question for Jacqueline Revere.
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She first heard about therapy back in high school. She
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got a scholarship to this fancy LA high school. And
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when she got there, it seemed like all the cool
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kids were doing it.
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And all the kids were like, I'm going to therapy. God,
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I was talking to my therapist and I was like.
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What is this? Like, what is this? Oh my gosh.
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But it kind of got Jacqueline thinking because she actually
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had some real issues that she needed help with.
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At that time, I was battling a eating.
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Disorder.
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And my stutter at that time was like so bad.
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And I.
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Was afraid of talking and communicating. And then on top
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of that, I came from.
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A household that silenced me.
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So she decided to do what the cool kids were
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doing and go to therapy. But it didn't turn out
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the way she wanted.
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It just, it didn't feel.
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The way that I thought that it would. You know,
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we talked through some stuff, but it wasn't the very
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in-depth stuff. Therapy that I needed, what some of it
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felt like was just a lot of, like, blaming my parents.
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We never really went to the core of where the.
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Issues lied.
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She said her therapist just didn't really connect with her,
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which could have been partly because the therapist was white.
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Yeah, I just....
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I just don't think she knew how to relate to
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a 17-year-old.
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Black girl.
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But Jacqueline still thought maybe therapy could work. So she
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gave it another try a couple years later. And again,
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it was pretty unhelpful. She talked to producer Meryl Horne
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about it.
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You know, I was sort of like, okay, like, like,
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I could or could not be here.
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Did you think that those sessions helped you at all?
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No.
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Yeah, no. I don't think so.
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Lots of people have these kinds of experiences with therapy
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where they feel like, is this really helping? And since
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that time, for Jacqueline, things have just gotten harder. Several
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years ago, her mom got dementia and Jacqueline became the
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full-time caregiver for both her mom and her grandmother.
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My life wasn't about me at all.
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I had literally given up everything and I was not
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sure how I could gain it back at all.
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It was all really overwhelming for Jacqueline and she didn't
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know how to turn things around. A lot of us
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have been in a situation where we feel like we're
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at the bottom of a hole and we could really
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use some help getting out of it. And we've heard
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that therapy can be that help. that sitting in a
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room and talking to someone can somehow transform people's lives.
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But it can also be a big investment of time
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and money. So today we're turning the tables. We're putting
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therapy on the couch and probing its secrets to find
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out what's the science behind therapy and how well does
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it actually work? Science versus therapy is coming up after
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the break. Welcome back. Today we're talking about therapy. And
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we're going to start by chatting with Jonathan Shedler. He's
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a psychologist, and he's been practicing for decades. And Jonathan
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figured out that this is what he wanted to do
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back in college. It's this bizarre story that we just
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really want to tell you. Okay, so it all started
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back in the 1970s with a dream that Jonathan's girlfriend had.
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She dreamed that she and I were in a store together,
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a hat shop, and I was trying on hats, one
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hat after another. And then the scene changed, and we
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were in a car, and we were driving over bridges,
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over some kind of body of water.
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Jonathan started telling this odd dream to one of his professors.
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He spoke to Wendy about it.
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He was crusty and larger than life, and he had
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a southern drawl. I mean, yeah, he was really intimidating.
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And the guy, the professor, just interrupted me. I guess
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I was telling a dream. And he said, He said,
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covering the head with a hat means covering the head
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of the penis for the condom. And water represents birth
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and driving over bridges and over the water represents a
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desire to not get pregnant. The dream is about your
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girlfriend's wish to not get pregnant by having you use
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a condom properly. And I died inside because what the
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professor didn't know was we had been having sex with
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a condom and the condom broke. And she had missed
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her period. We were terrified that she was pregnant. He
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didn't know any of this.
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He didn't know any of it?
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He didn't.
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He literally didn't know any of it. And I was,
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you know, I mean, I was blown away. I mean,
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if his words had been accompanied by, you know, celestial
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trumpets from heaven, you know, I couldn't have been more
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moved by it. And I remember deciding then that, If
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there are people in the world who understand this sort
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of thing, I have to be one of them.
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If you're curious, Jonathan's girlfriend at the time was not pregnant.
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So after this, Jonathan went on to study what this
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intriguing type of therapy was, psychoanalysis. This was Sigmund Freud's baby,
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and it really kicked off at the turn of the
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20th century. As Jonathan would find out, Freud basically invented
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a bunch of stuff about our dreams and how lots
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of us secretly want to have sex with our parents.
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But also this really important idea, which is this. Things
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in your past, your childhood, your past relationships, things you
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might not be aware of, below your consciousness. It can
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all influence who you are today. Let's say something traumatic
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happened to you and you've just kind of buried it
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and gone on with your life. A psychoanalyst might be like.
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You've put it out of your mind. but you actually
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can't put things out of your mind, right? This is,
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you know, this is your mind serving up all of
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the things that you're trying to not think about.
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And Freud's basic idea was that you need a psychoanalyst,
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like Jonathan, to help you dig that stuff up, to
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find out what's causing problems below the surface. And that
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whole process will help you.
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So we're asking of somebody in therapy to do something,
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you know, very strange, saying we're going to, we're going
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to meet We're going to talk about anything and everything
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that comes to mind.
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So that's the idea. But the big question is, does
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it actually work to dive into your unconscious with some rando? Well,
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for decades at the start of psychoanalysis, very few studies
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were done to test whether any of this helped anyone.
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And this was partly because Freud and other people running
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the show didn't really feel a need to do formal studies.
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Psychoanalysts of the day really didn't have much interest in research.
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And they were kind of haughty and dismissive of it.
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Jonathan says they didn't think they needed research because they
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could see psychoanalysis working on the couch right in front
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of them. And this has been Jonathan's experience too.
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I know this is going to help because I've seen
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how it helps over and over and over again.
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The problem is, especially in those early days, without proper studies,
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we couldn't answer simple questions like, what are the chances
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that all this talk will work for you? And how
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long will it take? But then the world changed in
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a way that would challenge the Freudians. In 1948, the
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randomized controlled trial came along, which is basically a study
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that pits a treatment against a placebo. And this really
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transformed the way science is done. Meanwhile, antidepressants were shaking
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up the mental health world and drug makers were were
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using these fancy trials to test whether their meds worked.
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All this lit a fire under the ass of therapy
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researchers to start doing more rigorous science themselves.
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They were like, We need to respond to this. We
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need to come up with studies. We need to do
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studies the way they're doing pharmaceutical trials.
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And it was one camp of therapists in particular that
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jumped on this. They were doing a technique that's now
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known as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. And in 1977,
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a group of researchers tested CBT against an antidepressant drug
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in a randomized controlled trial. And in that study, CBT
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actually worked better. Since then, CBT has been getting bigger
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and bigger, all the while billing itself as evidence-based therapy.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy. or CBT, is an evidence-based treatment. That
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means it's been proven to be effective more often than
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most other types of therapy.
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There are now proven treatments for issues like depression, anxiety, insomnia,
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and even relationship problems. These treatments are called evidence-based psychotherapies.
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And best yet, these treatments usually work in a short
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amount of time.
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Yeah, we're being told that CBT can work for a
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lot of conditions and that it can work really fast,
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like in just a few months, which makes it sound
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like some kind of wonder treatment. So to find out
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more about how it works, we called up a pro,
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someone who's been using CBT with his patients for more
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than a decade, Professor Bunmi Olatunji. He's a clinical psychologist
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at Vanderbilt University.
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When did you decide you wanted to become a psychologist
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at all? Was this something... That little Boonmee always wanted
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to do?
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No, little Boonmee wanted to be in the NBA, to
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be honest with you.
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But in college, Boonmee heard about CBT and became fascinated
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with it. While psychoanalysis felt all chatty-chatty and no science-science,
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everything about CBT felt different, right down to the approach.
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It was this radical idea that instead of focusing on
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your past, you would look at your present, problems right
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in front of you. Let's say you have anxiety. If
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you went to a psychoanalyst, they'd probably ask you about
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your childhood. But if you go to boon me, he
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won't focus on that. Instead, he'd probably try to find
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out how that anxiety is affecting your behavior, like what
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you're worried about when you leave the house.
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For a lot of patients who are socially anxious, you know,
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they are already kind of going over the worst case scenario, right?
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People are going to laugh at me, you know, that
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I'm going to trip and fall, that I'm going to
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be mumbling my words.
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Bunmi then picks each of these fears apart in a
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very systematic way. He has the patient fill out worksheets
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where they answer these questions.
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Okay, well, what is the likelihood that something like that
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might happen? And also, if something like that were to happen,
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how bad.
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Would it be?
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So the patient makes these predictions, and then Bunmi has
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them go out into the world and test those predictions.
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Sometimes he goes with them. So, for example, he told
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us about one patient who had a lot of anxiety
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about making a fool of themselves in public. Bumi was like,
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all right, let's go and do something that might make
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you feel that way. Let's go to the mall, buy something,
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and return it right away. Which, for this patient, was
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like a worse nightmare.
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The patient was afraid that, A, they were concerned about
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being embarrassed, and B, they were concerned that the customer
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person is going to ridicule them for returning something so quickly.
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But with Bumi around, the patient went ahead and marched
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up to the return desk and.
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The experience is not as bad as the patients anticipate
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it's going to be.
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Do you remember in that example, if the cashier was
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like giving any attitude about it?
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No, because they're like most cashiers. They have other things
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to be concerned about.
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They're not worried about you.
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Yeah.
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So this is one way CBT can work. It's meant
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to be like its own little science experiment. You actually
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kind of make a hypothesis about what will happen in
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the real world. But then by going out and testing
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whether that's actually true, you might learn a different way
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of seeing things. Bumi says when he saw CBT working
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with that patient, it was awesome. Here's Wendy again.
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Without turning this into a psychoanalysis session, how did that
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make you feel?
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I think that's the thing about CBT that really resonates
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with me. It's really very rewarding to be able to
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deliver an intervention that that you know has a very
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good chance of being successful, right? That the patients will
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be able to, you know, to go back to work
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or to have a better relationship with their family.
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You asked me, how does it make me feel? It
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makes me feel pretty good, right?
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Because you are, in fact, changing people's lives in a
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way that is really quite encouraging.
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How many studies do you think there are out there
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that show CBT works?
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Oh, goodness.
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I would be shocked to come across a study that
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showed that CBT didn't work.
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That would be puzzling to me.
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So after the break, is CBC really as good as
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the boonies of the world say it is? And does
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that mean psychoanalysis is total crap? That's coming up.
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Hey, it's Wendy from Science Versus, and I want.
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To tell you about a podcast that I.
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Love, Science Friday.
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They cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird
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and wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our
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brain to the inner secrets of a snake with a
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spider on its tail. It's a lot of news that
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00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.399
you can use and some that you can't, but you're
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going to love anyway.
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It's hosted by Ira Flato and.
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Flora Lichtman, who is an old friend of the show
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and loves a pun as much as we do. Science
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Friday is on every day, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back. Today, we're diving into the science on therapy.
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Now it's time to put it under the microscope. When
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we left you, CBC had stormed the therapy world. And
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since it first came onto the scene, It's slowly been
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eating up other types of therapy. By 2010, nearly 80%
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of therapists in the U.S. said that CBT was their
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main treatment approach. And many of them say they have
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science on their side, showing that it will help you
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with just about anything.
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And it is true.
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There are tons of studies looking at CBT. You can
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find literally hundreds and hundreds of them. So what do
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they tell us? Well, CBT does seem to be really
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great for some things. The conditions that it can work
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the best for are anxiety, OCD, and acute stress disorder.
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Sometimes the benefit people get is really big. Like in
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one study of OCD, researchers found that CBT cut their
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symptoms in half. And we know that part of this
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is from our old friend, the placebo effect. But even
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when studies control for that, they find big effects from CBT.
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Here's Boonmi again.
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The effect size, that is how well it works. is
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really quite large.
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So that's good news. But there are a couple of
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places where the claims of CBT do seem to be
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a little exaggerated, like that idea that it can help
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pretty fast over just a few months.
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And best yet, these treatments usually work in a short
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amount of time.
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While it's true you can often see a benefit from
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CBT quickly, the problem is this. If you're only going
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to therapy for a few months, there's a pretty big
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00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:46.630
chance your symptoms will come back. So, for example, one
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00:17:46.670 --> 00:17:50.309
review found that after getting CBT for depression, about half
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of the people who get better initially relapse two years later.
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We asked Boonmi about this.
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Some of the criticisms suggest that, like, it doesn't help
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people in the long run. That if you, once the
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studies end and they're published and their patients ultimately need
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to go back to therapy, what's your experience?
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00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:13.039
Well, I think there's some truth to that.
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If I had patients who've had to come back, And
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the answer to that question is yes. I mean, I've
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had patients who've had to come back and we just
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had to kind of, you know, go at it again.
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I've had patients who've called me up and say, hey, doc,
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I just need a couple booster sessions.
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Can I just see you for a couple of weeks?
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And usually when patients come back, it's not as if
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they're starting from scratch, right?
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Because they still have the skills.
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So the fact that therapy isn't always a quick fix,
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it's something to keep in mind. And there's one more
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place where CBT might be a little overhyped. this idea
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that it is the evidence-based therapy. We actually found lots
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00:18:49.799 --> 00:18:52.880
of evidence that other types of therapy work too, sometimes
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just as well as CBT, including one that's partly based
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on the ideas from our old friend Freud. That's called
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psychodynamic therapy. And there are now dozens of studies showing
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that it can work. Here's Jonathan again, our psychologist from
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00:19:06.829 --> 00:19:07.490
earlier in the show.
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So there's no shortage of studies. There's more studies of
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CBT But more studies doesn't mean it's a better therapy.
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So for example, several meta-analyses have found that psychodynamic therapy
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can help people with depression and anxiety just as much
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as CBT can. And these days, the divide has shrunk.
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A lot of therapists do both kinds of therapy or
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other kinds of therapy we haven't talked about here. So
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this idea that you need to do CBT if you
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want a science-backed therapy is CBT-echnically not true. People can
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00:19:38.109 --> 00:19:42.380
have amazing transformative experiences with other kinds of therapy. Like,
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take this patient Jonathan told us about. He came to
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Jonathan because he was being haunted by these horrible mental images.
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of people being tortured, drowned, and waterboarded, which at the
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time was in the news a lot. The man couldn't
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stop picturing these upsetting things, and he'd gone to a
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bunch of doctors who couldn't figure out why this was
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happening to him.
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And I said, you know, when exactly did they start?
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What was going on in your life then? Did something
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change in your life? And he goes, well, it was
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around the time my sister died. And the story was
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that the sister owned a ranch and was walking across
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a frozen pond. And the ice broke and she fell in.
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She got trapped beneath the ice and drowned. And I said,
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what did you make of it? That must have been
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a shock. And he said, well, you know, yeah, it was. But,
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you know, there's no point dwelling on pain. And I said,
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tell me more about the specific images, the waterboarding, people suffocating.
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And I said, you know, a lot of those images
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seem like ideas your mind would have constructed about what
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your sister's last moments must have been like. And the
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00:20:57.299 --> 00:21:00.839
guy just, I mean, his whole expression changed, his face changed,
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his jaw dropped. He goes, he goes, yeah, I never
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thought about that before.
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Damn. Damn.
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And hey, we all want that damn moment of clarity.
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So the final thing we want to talk about is
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this one thing that you can do to up your
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chances that therapy will work for you. It comes down
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to finding a good therapist because there are some real
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clunkers out there.
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There are bad therapists, like there are bad doctors and
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there are bad teachers and there are bad everybody kind of.
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And you may stay a long time with somebody who's
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not doing you any good.
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This is Nancy McWilliams. She's a therapist and visiting professor
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at Rutgers University. And when Nancy says bad, she means bad.
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Like one professor we spoke to followed hundreds of therapists
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00:21:50.779 --> 00:21:54.440
and thousands of patients over three years and found that
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00:21:54.460 --> 00:21:56.900
a few of the therapists didn't manage to help a
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00:21:57.019 --> 00:22:00.640
single person in all that time. Scientists have tried to
401
00:22:00.680 --> 00:22:04.450
pinpoint exactly what makes a crappy therapist. And it seems
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00:22:04.470 --> 00:22:06.349
like a lot of it comes down to their personality.
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00:22:06.369 --> 00:22:09.819
Some people are bad. pretty good therapists just because they
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00:22:09.859 --> 00:22:12.380
care about other people and are curious about them and
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00:22:12.460 --> 00:22:16.339
have a nice way about them. And other people can
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00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:20.420
have a PhD and a postgraduate training and they still just,
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00:22:22.359 --> 00:22:25.400
they don't have the ear for it. They know all
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00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:26.849
the words and none of the music.
409
00:22:28.809 --> 00:22:33.230
Generally, and maybe not surprisingly, a warm and empathetic person
410
00:22:33.309 --> 00:22:35.809
makes for a better therapist than someone who tends to
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00:22:35.829 --> 00:22:38.880
be belittling or patronizing. which Nancy gets.
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00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:42.700
I am allergic to being talked down to by men
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who think they're more powerful than I am.
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00:22:45.539 --> 00:22:47.079
I think that's a very common analogy.
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00:22:47.140 --> 00:22:48.119
I think it's really.
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00:22:48.160 --> 00:22:53.109
Yeah, you've got a mansplain to me, you're toast.
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00:22:54.190 --> 00:22:56.069
I think it's on the rise as well, you know,
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kind of like the gluten thing.
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00:22:59.349 --> 00:23:02.109
And it's not just about getting any old decent therapist.
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00:23:02.269 --> 00:23:04.730
You've got to find someone who's right for you, someone
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00:23:04.750 --> 00:23:08.609
you click with. This may not sound super science-y, but
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00:23:08.710 --> 00:23:11.369
studies back up this idea. If you need a fancy
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00:23:11.410 --> 00:23:15.130
word for it, it's called a therapeutic alliance, which kind
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00:23:15.170 --> 00:23:17.450
of sounds like what might happen if Luke Skywalker and
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00:23:17.549 --> 00:23:20.250
Princess Leia teamed up to fight mental illness together. And
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00:23:21.990 --> 00:23:25.150
as you're searching for your alliance, Nancy says don't focus
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00:23:25.210 --> 00:23:28.470
on credentials or where they went to school, or even
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if the therapy is happening over a screen, like on Zoom.
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00:23:31.529 --> 00:23:34.410
That can totally work. Overall, it might make sense to
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00:23:34.450 --> 00:23:34.990
shop around.
431
00:23:35.009 --> 00:23:37.910
You gotta trust Your gut, you know, go and tell
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00:23:37.930 --> 00:23:41.049
your story to somebody and see if you feel safe
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and if you feel like you can open up to them.
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00:23:43.950 --> 00:23:45.930
And since we know that lots of different types of
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00:23:45.970 --> 00:23:48.869
therapy can work, you also might need to experiment to
436
00:23:48.910 --> 00:23:51.809
figure out which one is right for you. Like Nancy
437
00:23:51.869 --> 00:23:54.670
is a psychoanalyst. She loves talking to patients about their
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00:23:54.710 --> 00:23:58.579
childhoods and helping them dive into their unconscious. But she
439
00:23:58.619 --> 00:24:00.819
told us that some patients are not interested in that
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00:24:00.859 --> 00:24:03.859
at all. And for them, she'll suggest something else like
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00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:08.640
CBT or another type of therapy. Like she told us
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00:24:08.680 --> 00:24:09.619
about this one person.
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00:24:10.339 --> 00:24:12.859
Well, I just talked about it with them when they
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and I both felt that they were not moving forward
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00:24:18.049 --> 00:24:22.029
the way we typically expect. And they were feeling miserable
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00:24:22.089 --> 00:24:26.549
with my just trying to get them to go deeper
447
00:24:26.589 --> 00:24:31.569
into their feelings and say whatever came to mind. We
448
00:24:31.609 --> 00:24:34.609
both started talking about, you know, maybe this isn't the
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00:24:34.630 --> 00:24:35.230
best model.
450
00:24:36.359 --> 00:24:38.960
You'd be so good in a breakup, I feel like.
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00:24:39.400 --> 00:24:41.869
Like if we were dating and we were going through
452
00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:44.829
a breakup. I'd feel so good by the end of
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00:24:44.849 --> 00:24:48.670
that conversation. You'd probably have set me up with someone
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00:24:48.730 --> 00:24:50.369
else as well by the time we were done.
455
00:24:52.509 --> 00:24:52.710
Okay.
456
00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:56.750
So when we pull all this therapy research together, here's
457
00:24:56.769 --> 00:25:00.450
what we make of it all. Therapy can definitely help
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00:25:00.650 --> 00:25:02.920
with a lot of conditions, but it's not like you
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00:25:02.940 --> 00:25:05.220
sign up for any old therapist, go for a few
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00:25:05.259 --> 00:25:08.779
months and and boom, you're guaranteed to feel better. It
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00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:11.859
might take a lot of work and time and money
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00:25:12.140 --> 00:25:14.619
to find the right person and the right treatment for you.
463
00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:17.250
And not all of us can afford to do that.
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00:25:18.829 --> 00:25:23.450
But despite all this, sometimes it can work out. Let's
465
00:25:23.470 --> 00:25:25.430
go back to Jacqueline, who we met at the start
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00:25:25.450 --> 00:25:29.029
of the show. She tried two different therapists, and neither
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00:25:29.049 --> 00:25:31.519
of them helped her. And since then, she had been
468
00:25:31.539 --> 00:25:34.359
thrust into this life as a full-time caregiver for her
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00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:35.480
mom and her grandma.
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00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:38.869
My life wasn't about me at all.
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00:25:40.329 --> 00:25:42.430
I had literally given up everything.
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00:25:44.779 --> 00:25:46.819
It all came to a head after her grandmother died.
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00:25:46.839 --> 00:25:51.400
I was just mourning a lot. And it got to
474
00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:55.160
a point where like, so embarrassing. I would go on
475
00:25:55.220 --> 00:26:05.579
my Insta stories and I would, just sort of like
476
00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:08.460
talk about what's going on.
477
00:26:08.539 --> 00:26:09.920
But there was.
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00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:16.779
About, there was a handful of times where I would
479
00:26:16.819 --> 00:26:19.190
just like start crying and I would just like, just
480
00:26:19.210 --> 00:26:21.650
like be like, I don't know why, what's going on?
481
00:26:21.730 --> 00:26:23.490
Oh my God, oh my God. And so.
482
00:26:24.809 --> 00:26:30.490
Two of my friends had messaged me saying like, hey girl,
483
00:26:31.329 --> 00:26:33.490
we see that stuff is really crazy.
484
00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:36.640
They offered to pay for six months of therapy for her,
485
00:26:37.160 --> 00:26:38.980
and they said they knew a therapist who they thought
486
00:26:39.019 --> 00:26:41.529
would be a really good match. And so after two
487
00:26:41.569 --> 00:26:45.029
therapists where things didn't click, Jacqueline gave it another go.
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This new therapist was a Black woman like Jacqueline, and
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that was just one thing that helped them connect more easily.
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And so.
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The simple fact that I was able to see someone
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that got me, you know, it.
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It's invaluable. It was like a breath of fresh air.
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Overall, this therapist was a really good fit. She made
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Jacqueline feel worthy, validated the intensely difficult position that she
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was put in, and gave her strategies to feel better
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when things were particularly stressful.
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Teaching me how to, while I'm in that moment, like pause,
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reassess what's being said, and then like figure out my
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true self. thoughts on it, just reminding me that the
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situation's not fair and it's not ideal and someone should
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help and it's not me, you know, and to just
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kind of take that with stride. And so learning to
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change that is what helped me move forward.
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During the pandemic, Jacqueline started this TikTok account about taking
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care of her mom.
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It blew up.
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A community has kind of popped up around it. And
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for the first time in a long time, things are
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looking up.
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How do you feel now?
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Oh, my God. I'm the happiest that I've ever been
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so far. And I think that this has all prepared
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me for where I'm at right now.
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That's Science Versus. Hey, Meryl.
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Hey.
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Hey.
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00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:37.099
Meryl Horne, producer at Science Versus, how many citations are
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00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:37.980
in this week's episode?
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00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:40.779
There are 91 citations in this week's episode.
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00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:43.990
And if some total nerd wanted to check them all out,
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how would they find them?
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00:28:45.509 --> 00:28:49.549
They can go to our website or our show notes
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00:28:49.630 --> 00:28:53.140
and follow the links to the transcripts. And then also
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00:28:53.319 --> 00:28:56.859
in the show notes, you'll find links to Jacqueline's TikTok
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00:28:56.900 --> 00:28:57.680
and Instagram.
527
00:28:58.140 --> 00:28:59.380
It's called Mom of.
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My Mom, and it's great. I've been following her on TikTok,
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and I highly recommend it.
530
00:29:05.509 --> 00:29:06.190
You have a TikTok?
531
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Yeah.
532
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Oh, man, I am way addicted to TikTok now.
533
00:29:10.329 --> 00:29:10.849
It's bad.
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00:29:11.470 --> 00:29:14.410
What's your TikTok account? Tell the people.
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00:29:14.750 --> 00:29:15.970
I haven't posted anything.
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00:29:16.990 --> 00:29:19.579
You don't do the dances? Isn't that what TikTok is for?
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00:29:19.839 --> 00:29:24.839
It's not just for dances anymore, Rose. Oh, okay. Okay,
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00:29:24.859 --> 00:29:25.339
see you later.
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Bye.
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00:29:31.579 --> 00:29:34.029
This episode was produced by Meryl Horne with help from
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00:29:34.049 --> 00:29:38.670
Wendy Zuckerman, me, Rose Rimler, Nick Delrose, Michelle Dang, Taylor White,
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00:29:38.950 --> 00:29:43.430
and Aketi Foster-Key. We're edited by Blad Thorell. Fact-checking by
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00:29:43.490 --> 00:29:46.609
Diane Kelly and Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by
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00:29:46.630 --> 00:29:51.130
Abumi Hidaka. Music written by Abumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Marcus Begala,
545
00:29:51.289 --> 00:29:54.349
Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to the researchers we
546
00:29:54.369 --> 00:29:58.250
got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Felicitas Ross, Dr.
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00:29:58.349 --> 00:30:04.440
Bruce Wampold, Dr. David Taylor, Professor Julie Ansis, Professor Stefan Hoffman, Dr.
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00:30:04.579 --> 00:30:09.430
Erlinger Turner, Dr. Janae Steele, Professor Marvin Goldfried, and Professor
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Elizabeth Lundbeck.
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Hi, I'm Rose Rimler filling in for Wendy Zuckerman. She'll
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be back soon. And you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
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This is the show that pits facts against Freud. On
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today's show, therapy. Does it actually work? And before we
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jump in, talking about therapy means we'll be discussing mental health.
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So if you're feeling depressed or if you just want
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to talk to someone, in the U.S., you can call
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the National Mental Health Helpline. The number is 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.
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That number will be in the show notes along with
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other resources. Okay, on to the show. This past year
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or two has been kind of a nightmare. And for
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many of us, we're having a really hard time dealing
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with it. If you need data to back this up,
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here it is.
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The U.S.
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Government did a survey earlier this year and found that
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more than 40% of people reported symptoms of anxiety or depression.
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More than 40%. That's way more than before the pandemic.
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So what can we do about this? Well, one thing
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a lot of people turn to or think about turning
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to is therapy. There are ads for it all over
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our podcasts and on Facebook. And it made us wonder,
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how good is therapy? Like, how often does it actually
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help people? This has been a big question for Jacqueline Revere.
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She first heard about therapy back in high school. She
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got a scholarship to this fancy LA high school. And
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when she got there, it seemed like all the cool
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kids were doing it.
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And all the kids were like, I'm going to therapy. God,
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I was talking to my therapist and I was like.
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What is this? Like, what is this? Oh my gosh.
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But it kind of got Jacqueline thinking because she actually
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had some real issues that she needed help with.
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At that time, I was battling a eating.
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Disorder.
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And my stutter at that time was like so bad.
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And I.
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Was afraid of talking and communicating. And then on top
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of that, I came from.
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A household that silenced me.
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So she decided to do what the cool kids were
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doing and go to therapy. But it didn't turn out
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the way she wanted.
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It just, it didn't feel.
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The way that I thought that it would. You know,
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we talked through some stuff, but it wasn't the very
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in-depth stuff. Therapy that I needed, what some of it
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felt like was just a lot of, like, blaming my parents.
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We never really went to the core of where the.
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Issues lied.
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She said her therapist just didn't really connect with her,
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which could have been partly because the therapist was white.
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Yeah, I just....
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I just don't think she knew how to relate to
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a 17-year-old.
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Black girl.
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But Jacqueline still thought maybe therapy could work. So she
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gave it another try a couple years later. And again,
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it was pretty unhelpful. She talked to producer Meryl Horne
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about it.
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You know, I was sort of like, okay, like, like,
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I could or could not be here.
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Did you think that those sessions helped you at all?
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No.
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Yeah, no. I don't think so.
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Lots of people have these kinds of experiences with therapy
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where they feel like, is this really helping? And since
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that time, for Jacqueline, things have just gotten harder. Several
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years ago, her mom got dementia and Jacqueline became the
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full-time caregiver for both her mom and her grandmother.
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My life wasn't about me at all.
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I had literally given up everything and I was not
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sure how I could gain it back at all.
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It was all really overwhelming for Jacqueline and she didn't
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know how to turn things around. A lot of us
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have been in a situation where we feel like we're
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at the bottom of a hole and we could really
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use some help getting out of it. And we've heard
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that therapy can be that help. that sitting in a
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room and talking to someone can somehow transform people's lives.
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But it can also be a big investment of time
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and money. So today we're turning the tables. We're putting
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therapy on the couch and probing its secrets to find
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out what's the science behind therapy and how well does
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it actually work? Science versus therapy is coming up after
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the break. Welcome back. Today we're talking about therapy. And
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we're going to start by chatting with Jonathan Shedler. He's
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a psychologist, and he's been practicing for decades. And Jonathan
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figured out that this is what he wanted to do
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back in college. It's this bizarre story that we just
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really want to tell you. Okay, so it all started
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back in the 1970s with a dream that Jonathan's girlfriend had.
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She dreamed that she and I were in a store together,
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a hat shop, and I was trying on hats, one
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hat after another. And then the scene changed, and we
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were in a car, and we were driving over bridges,
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over some kind of body of water.
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Jonathan started telling this odd dream to one of his professors.
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He spoke to Wendy about it.
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He was crusty and larger than life, and he had
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a southern drawl. I mean, yeah, he was really intimidating.
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And the guy, the professor, just interrupted me. I guess
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I was telling a dream. And he said, He said,
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covering the head with a hat means covering the head
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of the penis for the condom. And water represents birth
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and driving over bridges and over the water represents a
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desire to not get pregnant. The dream is about your
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girlfriend's wish to not get pregnant by having you use
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a condom properly. And I died inside because what the
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professor didn't know was we had been having sex with
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a condom and the condom broke. And she had missed
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her period. We were terrified that she was pregnant. He
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didn't know any of this.
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He didn't know any of it?
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He didn't.
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He literally didn't know any of it. And I was,
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you know, I mean, I was blown away. I mean,
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if his words had been accompanied by, you know, celestial
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trumpets from heaven, you know, I couldn't have been more
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moved by it. And I remember deciding then that, If
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there are people in the world who understand this sort
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of thing, I have to be one of them.
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If you're curious, Jonathan's girlfriend at the time was not pregnant.
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So after this, Jonathan went on to study what this
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intriguing type of therapy was, psychoanalysis. This was Sigmund Freud's baby,
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and it really kicked off at the turn of the
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20th century. As Jonathan would find out, Freud basically invented
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a bunch of stuff about our dreams and how lots
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of us secretly want to have sex with our parents.
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But also this really important idea, which is this. Things
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in your past, your childhood, your past relationships, things you
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might not be aware of, below your consciousness. It can
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all influence who you are today. Let's say something traumatic
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happened to you and you've just kind of buried it
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and gone on with your life. A psychoanalyst might be like.
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You've put it out of your mind. but you actually
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can't put things out of your mind, right? This is,
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you know, this is your mind serving up all of
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the things that you're trying to not think about.
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And Freud's basic idea was that you need a psychoanalyst,
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like Jonathan, to help you dig that stuff up, to
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find out what's causing problems below the surface. And that
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whole process will help you.
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So we're asking of somebody in therapy to do something,
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you know, very strange, saying we're going to, we're going
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to meet We're going to talk about anything and everything
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that comes to mind.
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So that's the idea. But the big question is, does
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it actually work to dive into your unconscious with some rando? Well,
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for decades at the start of psychoanalysis, very few studies
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were done to test whether any of this helped anyone.
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And this was partly because Freud and other people running
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the show didn't really feel a need to do formal studies.
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Psychoanalysts of the day really didn't have much interest in research.
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And they were kind of haughty and dismissive of it.
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Jonathan says they didn't think they needed research because they
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could see psychoanalysis working on the couch right in front
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of them. And this has been Jonathan's experience too.
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I know this is going to help because I've seen
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how it helps over and over and over again.
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The problem is, especially in those early days, without proper studies,
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we couldn't answer simple questions like, what are the chances
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that all this talk will work for you? And how
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long will it take? But then the world changed in
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a way that would challenge the Freudians. In 1948, the
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randomized controlled trial came along, which is basically a study
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that pits a treatment against a placebo. And this really
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transformed the way science is done. Meanwhile, antidepressants were shaking
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up the mental health world and drug makers were were
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using these fancy trials to test whether their meds worked.
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All this lit a fire under the ass of therapy
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researchers to start doing more rigorous science themselves.
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They were like, We need to respond to this. We
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need to come up with studies. We need to do
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studies the way they're doing pharmaceutical trials.
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And it was one camp of therapists in particular that
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jumped on this. They were doing a technique that's now
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known as cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. And in 1977,
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a group of researchers tested CBT against an antidepressant drug
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in a randomized controlled trial. And in that study, CBT
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actually worked better. Since then, CBT has been getting bigger
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and bigger, all the while billing itself as evidence-based therapy.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy. or CBT, is an evidence-based treatment. That
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means it's been proven to be effective more often than
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most other types of therapy.
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There are now proven treatments for issues like depression, anxiety, insomnia,
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and even relationship problems. These treatments are called evidence-based psychotherapies.
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And best yet, these treatments usually work in a short
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amount of time.
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Yeah, we're being told that CBT can work for a
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lot of conditions and that it can work really fast,
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like in just a few months, which makes it sound
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like some kind of wonder treatment. So to find out
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more about how it works, we called up a pro,
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someone who's been using CBT with his patients for more
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than a decade, Professor Bunmi Olatunji. He's a clinical psychologist
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at Vanderbilt University.
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When did you decide you wanted to become a psychologist
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at all? Was this something... That little Boonmee always wanted
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to do?
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No, little Boonmee wanted to be in the NBA, to
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be honest with you.
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But in college, Boonmee heard about CBT and became fascinated
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with it. While psychoanalysis felt all chatty-chatty and no science-science,
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everything about CBT felt different, right down to the approach.
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It was this radical idea that instead of focusing on
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your past, you would look at your present, problems right
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in front of you. Let's say you have anxiety. If
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you went to a psychoanalyst, they'd probably ask you about
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your childhood. But if you go to boon me, he
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won't focus on that. Instead, he'd probably try to find
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out how that anxiety is affecting your behavior, like what
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you're worried about when you leave the house.
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For a lot of patients who are socially anxious, you know,
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they are already kind of going over the worst case scenario, right?
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People are going to laugh at me, you know, that
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I'm going to trip and fall, that I'm going to
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be mumbling my words.
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Bunmi then picks each of these fears apart in a
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very systematic way. He has the patient fill out worksheets
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where they answer these questions.
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Okay, well, what is the likelihood that something like that
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might happen? And also, if something like that were to happen,
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how bad.
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Would it be?
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So the patient makes these predictions, and then Bunmi has
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them go out into the world and test those predictions.
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Sometimes he goes with them. So, for example, he told
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us about one patient who had a lot of anxiety
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about making a fool of themselves in public. Bumi was like,
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all right, let's go and do something that might make
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you feel that way. Let's go to the mall, buy something,
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and return it right away. Which, for this patient, was
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like a worse nightmare.
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The patient was afraid that, A, they were concerned about
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being embarrassed, and B, they were concerned that the customer
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person is going to ridicule them for returning something so quickly.
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But with Bumi around, the patient went ahead and marched
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up to the return desk and.
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The experience is not as bad as the patients anticipate
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it's going to be.
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Do you remember in that example, if the cashier was
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like giving any attitude about it?
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No, because they're like most cashiers. They have other things
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to be concerned about.
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They're not worried about you.
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Yeah.
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So this is one way CBT can work. It's meant
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to be like its own little science experiment. You actually
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kind of make a hypothesis about what will happen in
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the real world. But then by going out and testing
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whether that's actually true, you might learn a different way
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of seeing things. Bumi says when he saw CBT working
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with that patient, it was awesome. Here's Wendy again.
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Without turning this into a psychoanalysis session, how did that
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make you feel?
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I think that's the thing about CBT that really resonates
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with me. It's really very rewarding to be able to
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deliver an intervention that that you know has a very
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good chance of being successful, right? That the patients will
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be able to, you know, to go back to work
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or to have a better relationship with their family.
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You asked me, how does it make me feel? It
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makes me feel pretty good, right?
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Because you are, in fact, changing people's lives in a
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way that is really quite encouraging.
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How many studies do you think there are out there
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that show CBT works?
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Oh, goodness.
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I would be shocked to come across a study that
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showed that CBT didn't work.
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That would be puzzling to me.
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So after the break, is CBC really as good as
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the boonies of the world say it is? And does
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that mean psychoanalysis is total crap? That's coming up.
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Hey, it's Wendy from Science Versus, and I want.
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To tell you about a podcast that I.
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Love, Science Friday.
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They cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird
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and wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our
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brain to the inner secrets of a snake with a
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spider on its tail. It's a lot of news that
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you can use and some that you can't, but you're
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going to love anyway.
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It's hosted by Ira Flato and.
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Flora Lichtman, who is an old friend of the show
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and loves a pun as much as we do. Science
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Friday is on every day, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back. Today, we're diving into the science on therapy.
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Now it's time to put it under the microscope. When
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we left you, CBC had stormed the therapy world. And
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since it first came onto the scene, It's slowly been
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eating up other types of therapy. By 2010, nearly 80%
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of therapists in the U.S. said that CBT was their
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main treatment approach. And many of them say they have
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science on their side, showing that it will help you
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with just about anything.
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And it is true.
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There are tons of studies looking at CBT. You can
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find literally hundreds and hundreds of them. So what do
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they tell us? Well, CBT does seem to be really
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great for some things. The conditions that it can work
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the best for are anxiety, OCD, and acute stress disorder.
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Sometimes the benefit people get is really big. Like in
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one study of OCD, researchers found that CBT cut their
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symptoms in half. And we know that part of this
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is from our old friend, the placebo effect. But even
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when studies control for that, they find big effects from CBT.
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Here's Boonmi again.
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The effect size, that is how well it works. is
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really quite large.
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So that's good news. But there are a couple of
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places where the claims of CBT do seem to be
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a little exaggerated, like that idea that it can help
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pretty fast over just a few months.
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And best yet, these treatments usually work in a short
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amount of time.
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While it's true you can often see a benefit from
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CBT quickly, the problem is this. If you're only going
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to therapy for a few months, there's a pretty big
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chance your symptoms will come back. So, for example, one
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review found that after getting CBT for depression, about half
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of the people who get better initially relapse two years later.
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We asked Boonmi about this.
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Some of the criticisms suggest that, like, it doesn't help
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people in the long run. That if you, once the
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studies end and they're published and their patients ultimately need
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to go back to therapy, what's your experience?
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Well, I think there's some truth to that.
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If I had patients who've had to come back, And
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the answer to that question is yes. I mean, I've
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had patients who've had to come back and we just
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had to kind of, you know, go at it again.
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I've had patients who've called me up and say, hey, doc,
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I just need a couple booster sessions.
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Can I just see you for a couple of weeks?
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And usually when patients come back, it's not as if
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they're starting from scratch, right?
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Because they still have the skills.
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So the fact that therapy isn't always a quick fix,
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it's something to keep in mind. And there's one more
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place where CBT might be a little overhyped. this idea
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that it is the evidence-based therapy. We actually found lots
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of evidence that other types of therapy work too, sometimes
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just as well as CBT, including one that's partly based
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on the ideas from our old friend Freud. That's called
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psychodynamic therapy. And there are now dozens of studies showing
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that it can work. Here's Jonathan again, our psychologist from
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earlier in the show.
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So there's no shortage of studies. There's more studies of
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CBT But more studies doesn't mean it's a better therapy.
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So for example, several meta-analyses have found that psychodynamic therapy
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can help people with depression and anxiety just as much
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as CBT can. And these days, the divide has shrunk.
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A lot of therapists do both kinds of therapy or
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other kinds of therapy we haven't talked about here. So
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this idea that you need to do CBT if you
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want a science-backed therapy is CBT-echnically not true. People can
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have amazing transformative experiences with other kinds of therapy. Like,
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take this patient Jonathan told us about. He came to
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Jonathan because he was being haunted by these horrible mental images.
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of people being tortured, drowned, and waterboarded, which at the
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time was in the news a lot. The man couldn't
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stop picturing these upsetting things, and he'd gone to a
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bunch of doctors who couldn't figure out why this was
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happening to him.
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And I said, you know, when exactly did they start?
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What was going on in your life then? Did something
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change in your life? And he goes, well, it was
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around the time my sister died. And the story was
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that the sister owned a ranch and was walking across
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a frozen pond. And the ice broke and she fell in.
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She got trapped beneath the ice and drowned. And I said,
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what did you make of it? That must have been
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a shock. And he said, well, you know, yeah, it was. But,
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you know, there's no point dwelling on pain. And I said,
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tell me more about the specific images, the waterboarding, people suffocating.
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And I said, you know, a lot of those images
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seem like ideas your mind would have constructed about what
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your sister's last moments must have been like. And the
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guy just, I mean, his whole expression changed, his face changed,
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his jaw dropped. He goes, he goes, yeah, I never
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thought about that before.
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Damn. Damn.
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And hey, we all want that damn moment of clarity.
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So the final thing we want to talk about is
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this one thing that you can do to up your
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chances that therapy will work for you. It comes down
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to finding a good therapist because there are some real
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clunkers out there.
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There are bad therapists, like there are bad doctors and
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there are bad teachers and there are bad everybody kind of.
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And you may stay a long time with somebody who's
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not doing you any good.
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This is Nancy McWilliams. She's a therapist and visiting professor
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at Rutgers University. And when Nancy says bad, she means bad.
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Like one professor we spoke to followed hundreds of therapists
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and thousands of patients over three years and found that
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a few of the therapists didn't manage to help a
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single person in all that time. Scientists have tried to
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pinpoint exactly what makes a crappy therapist. And it seems
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like a lot of it comes down to their personality.
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Some people are bad. pretty good therapists just because they
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care about other people and are curious about them and
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have a nice way about them. And other people can
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have a PhD and a postgraduate training and they still just,
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they don't have the ear for it. They know all
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the words and none of the music.
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Generally, and maybe not surprisingly, a warm and empathetic person
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makes for a better therapist than someone who tends to
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be belittling or patronizing. which Nancy gets.
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I am allergic to being talked down to by men
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who think they're more powerful than I am.
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I think that's a very common analogy.
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I think it's really.
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Yeah, you've got a mansplain to me, you're toast.
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I think it's on the rise as well, you know,
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kind of like the gluten thing.
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And it's not just about getting any old decent therapist.
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You've got to find someone who's right for you, someone
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you click with. This may not sound super science-y, but
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studies back up this idea. If you need a fancy
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word for it, it's called a therapeutic alliance, which kind
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of sounds like what might happen if Luke Skywalker and
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Princess Leia teamed up to fight mental illness together. And
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as you're searching for your alliance, Nancy says don't focus
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on credentials or where they went to school, or even
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if the therapy is happening over a screen, like on Zoom.
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That can totally work. Overall, it might make sense to
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00:23:34.450 --> 00:23:34.990
shop around.
431
00:23:35.009 --> 00:23:37.910
You gotta trust Your gut, you know, go and tell
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your story to somebody and see if you feel safe
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and if you feel like you can open up to them.
434
00:23:43.950 --> 00:23:45.930
And since we know that lots of different types of
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00:23:45.970 --> 00:23:48.869
therapy can work, you also might need to experiment to
436
00:23:48.910 --> 00:23:51.809
figure out which one is right for you. Like Nancy
437
00:23:51.869 --> 00:23:54.670
is a psychoanalyst. She loves talking to patients about their
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00:23:54.710 --> 00:23:58.579
childhoods and helping them dive into their unconscious. But she
439
00:23:58.619 --> 00:24:00.819
told us that some patients are not interested in that
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00:24:00.859 --> 00:24:03.859
at all. And for them, she'll suggest something else like
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00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:08.640
CBT or another type of therapy. Like she told us
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00:24:08.680 --> 00:24:09.619
about this one person.
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00:24:10.339 --> 00:24:12.859
Well, I just talked about it with them when they
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00:24:12.900 --> 00:24:18.029
and I both felt that they were not moving forward
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00:24:18.049 --> 00:24:22.029
the way we typically expect. And they were feeling miserable
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00:24:22.089 --> 00:24:26.549
with my just trying to get them to go deeper
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00:24:26.589 --> 00:24:31.569
into their feelings and say whatever came to mind. We
448
00:24:31.609 --> 00:24:34.609
both started talking about, you know, maybe this isn't the
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00:24:34.630 --> 00:24:35.230
best model.
450
00:24:36.359 --> 00:24:38.960
You'd be so good in a breakup, I feel like.
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00:24:39.400 --> 00:24:41.869
Like if we were dating and we were going through
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00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:44.829
a breakup. I'd feel so good by the end of
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00:24:44.849 --> 00:24:48.670
that conversation. You'd probably have set me up with someone
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00:24:48.730 --> 00:24:50.369
else as well by the time we were done.
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00:24:52.509 --> 00:24:52.710
Okay.
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00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:56.750
So when we pull all this therapy research together, here's
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00:24:56.769 --> 00:25:00.450
what we make of it all. Therapy can definitely help
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00:25:00.650 --> 00:25:02.920
with a lot of conditions, but it's not like you
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00:25:02.940 --> 00:25:05.220
sign up for any old therapist, go for a few
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00:25:05.259 --> 00:25:08.779
months and and boom, you're guaranteed to feel better. It
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00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:11.859
might take a lot of work and time and money
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00:25:12.140 --> 00:25:14.619
to find the right person and the right treatment for you.
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00:25:15.480 --> 00:25:17.250
And not all of us can afford to do that.
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00:25:18.829 --> 00:25:23.450
But despite all this, sometimes it can work out. Let's
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00:25:23.470 --> 00:25:25.430
go back to Jacqueline, who we met at the start
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00:25:25.450 --> 00:25:29.029
of the show. She tried two different therapists, and neither
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00:25:29.049 --> 00:25:31.519
of them helped her. And since then, she had been
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00:25:31.539 --> 00:25:34.359
thrust into this life as a full-time caregiver for her
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00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:35.480
mom and her grandma.
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00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:38.869
My life wasn't about me at all.
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00:25:40.329 --> 00:25:42.430
I had literally given up everything.
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00:25:44.779 --> 00:25:46.819
It all came to a head after her grandmother died.
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00:25:46.839 --> 00:25:51.400
I was just mourning a lot. And it got to
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00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:55.160
a point where like, so embarrassing. I would go on
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00:25:55.220 --> 00:26:05.579
my Insta stories and I would, just sort of like
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00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:08.460
talk about what's going on.
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00:26:08.539 --> 00:26:09.920
But there was.
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00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:16.779
About, there was a handful of times where I would
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00:26:16.819 --> 00:26:19.190
just like start crying and I would just like, just
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00:26:19.210 --> 00:26:21.650
like be like, I don't know why, what's going on?
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00:26:21.730 --> 00:26:23.490
Oh my God, oh my God. And so.
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00:26:24.809 --> 00:26:30.490
Two of my friends had messaged me saying like, hey girl,
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00:26:31.329 --> 00:26:33.490
we see that stuff is really crazy.
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00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:36.640
They offered to pay for six months of therapy for her,
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00:26:37.160 --> 00:26:38.980
and they said they knew a therapist who they thought
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00:26:39.019 --> 00:26:41.529
would be a really good match. And so after two
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00:26:41.569 --> 00:26:45.029
therapists where things didn't click, Jacqueline gave it another go.
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00:26:45.849 --> 00:26:49.009
This new therapist was a Black woman like Jacqueline, and
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00:26:49.069 --> 00:26:51.089
that was just one thing that helped them connect more easily.
490
00:26:51.690 --> 00:26:52.630
And so.
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00:26:54.049 --> 00:26:57.569
The simple fact that I was able to see someone
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00:26:57.630 --> 00:27:01.029
that got me, you know, it.
493
00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:12.160
It's invaluable. It was like a breath of fresh air.
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00:27:14.009 --> 00:27:16.670
Overall, this therapist was a really good fit. She made
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00:27:16.710 --> 00:27:20.690
Jacqueline feel worthy, validated the intensely difficult position that she
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00:27:20.710 --> 00:27:23.269
was put in, and gave her strategies to feel better
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00:27:23.329 --> 00:27:24.970
when things were particularly stressful.
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00:27:25.710 --> 00:27:29.750
Teaching me how to, while I'm in that moment, like pause,
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00:27:30.349 --> 00:27:34.990
reassess what's being said, and then like figure out my
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00:27:35.089 --> 00:27:43.910
true self. thoughts on it, just reminding me that the
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00:27:43.950 --> 00:27:47.750
situation's not fair and it's not ideal and someone should
502
00:27:47.809 --> 00:27:50.670
help and it's not me, you know, and to just
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00:27:50.759 --> 00:27:54.039
kind of take that with stride. And so learning to
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00:27:54.119 --> 00:28:00.920
change that is what helped me move forward.
505
00:28:01.839 --> 00:28:05.019
During the pandemic, Jacqueline started this TikTok account about taking
506
00:28:05.039 --> 00:28:05.500
care of her mom.
507
00:28:06.460 --> 00:28:06.880
It blew up.
508
00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:10.140
A community has kind of popped up around it. And
509
00:28:10.180 --> 00:28:12.440
for the first time in a long time, things are
510
00:28:12.460 --> 00:28:12.819
looking up.
511
00:28:13.559 --> 00:28:14.420
How do you feel now?
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00:28:15.019 --> 00:28:17.269
Oh, my God. I'm the happiest that I've ever been
513
00:28:17.349 --> 00:28:22.789
so far. And I think that this has all prepared
514
00:28:22.849 --> 00:28:24.490
me for where I'm at right now.
515
00:28:25.769 --> 00:28:32.180
That's Science Versus. Hey, Meryl.
516
00:28:32.779 --> 00:28:33.000
Hey.
517
00:28:33.019 --> 00:28:33.089
Hey.
518
00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:37.099
Meryl Horne, producer at Science Versus, how many citations are
519
00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:37.980
in this week's episode?
520
00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:40.779
There are 91 citations in this week's episode.
521
00:28:41.480 --> 00:28:43.990
And if some total nerd wanted to check them all out,
522
00:28:44.109 --> 00:28:45.089
how would they find them?
523
00:28:45.509 --> 00:28:49.549
They can go to our website or our show notes
524
00:28:49.630 --> 00:28:53.140
and follow the links to the transcripts. And then also
525
00:28:53.319 --> 00:28:56.859
in the show notes, you'll find links to Jacqueline's TikTok
526
00:28:56.900 --> 00:28:57.680
and Instagram.
527
00:28:58.140 --> 00:28:59.380
It's called Mom of.
528
00:28:59.380 --> 00:29:03.690
My Mom, and it's great. I've been following her on TikTok,
529
00:29:04.049 --> 00:29:05.160
and I highly recommend it.
530
00:29:05.509 --> 00:29:06.190
You have a TikTok?
531
00:29:06.549 --> 00:29:07.049
Yeah.
532
00:29:07.269 --> 00:29:09.490
Oh, man, I am way addicted to TikTok now.
533
00:29:10.329 --> 00:29:10.849
It's bad.
534
00:29:11.470 --> 00:29:14.410
What's your TikTok account? Tell the people.
535
00:29:14.750 --> 00:29:15.970
I haven't posted anything.
536
00:29:16.990 --> 00:29:19.579
You don't do the dances? Isn't that what TikTok is for?
537
00:29:19.839 --> 00:29:24.839
It's not just for dances anymore, Rose. Oh, okay. Okay,
538
00:29:24.859 --> 00:29:25.339
see you later.
539
00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:26.099
Bye.
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00:29:31.579 --> 00:29:34.029
This episode was produced by Meryl Horne with help from
541
00:29:34.049 --> 00:29:38.670
Wendy Zuckerman, me, Rose Rimler, Nick Delrose, Michelle Dang, Taylor White,
542
00:29:38.950 --> 00:29:43.430
and Aketi Foster-Key. We're edited by Blad Thorell. Fact-checking by
543
00:29:43.490 --> 00:29:46.609
Diane Kelly and Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by
544
00:29:46.630 --> 00:29:51.130
Abumi Hidaka. Music written by Abumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Marcus Begala,
545
00:29:51.289 --> 00:29:54.349
Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. Thanks to the researchers we
546
00:29:54.369 --> 00:29:58.250
got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Felicitas Ross, Dr.
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00:29:58.349 --> 00:30:04.440
Bruce Wampold, Dr. David Taylor, Professor Julie Ansis, Professor Stefan Hoffman, Dr.
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00:30:04.579 --> 00:30:09.430
Erlinger Turner, Dr. Janae Steele, Professor Marvin Goldfried, and Professor
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00:30:09.569 --> 00:30:10.369
Elizabeth Lundbeck.
