Everyone's an expert

Hello everyone,

How’s your January been?

My favourite rock star, Robert Smith of The Cure, said January passes like a dream, one he doesn’t wake up from ‘til February. I think that captures the mood of the first month, when many things haven’t yet returned after a break. There’s a slower pace.

I experience a stronger connection to nature when there’s a bit more time to breathe. January weather’s often extreme - burning hot or freezing, cyclonic or wracked with fires. Here it’s been hot, but thankfully safe.

This month, I've had more time to potter, browse and notice stuff I don’t usually look at. Yesterday, it struck me how many more ‘experts’ there are now, particularly in my field - psychology. Online, it’s like everyone’s an expert, am I right? I’m constantly being coached and advised by bossy videos. I particularly enjoy when they tell me, “psychologists say…blah blah blah…”

Not only is it incredibly boring, but it’s depressing. When everyone’s an expert, it’s like nobody’s believable anymore. I mean, it’s brilliant that we have platforms that give us all a voice, but it’s fraught to have so many people offering ‘the best advice’. Putting aside the blatant sales pitches, I suspect many content creators who adopt an ‘expert voice’ are really spouting what they themselves need to learn, while of course, also trying to make a buck.

I’ve been a psychologist for close to 30 years, so I’m bold enough to call myself an actual expert in the field in which I work, and hold a PhD. However, it’s become a field where half the internet are experts, teaching ‘life-altering’ courses, coaching you how to mimic their rags to riches personal mega-success stories, identifying ‘narcissists’ to your left, right and centre, and diagnosing your ADHD in a 3 minute quiz.

It would be a dangerous way to chase the buck if the people who get sucked in had any actual recourse, but I guess they don’t, so long as the ‘expert’ didn’t call themselves a psychologist or another title they haven’t earned.

There’s all sorts of reasons why vehemently advising people, even if you believe you’re clever and of course, right, can be a really bad idea, the main one being, other people are not you. Another person’s history with its zillion unique moments leading to who they are today, is not going to be the same as yours.

Besides, deep change and growth happen from being heard, ultimately by every part of yourself, not by being told by an expert, or anyone else, how you should live. Good therapy can be many things, but it only rarely contains direct advice.

I heard a discussion on the radio recently about AI replacing some of the work of therapists. And sure, anyone or anything can reel off a list of some breathing techniques, basic skills or even philosophies that can indeed help the right person at the right time. The idea’s not without any merit.

That being said, the way I work with patients is highly eclectic, patient-led and rarely the same across different individuals. I don’t operate from algorithms that are easily mimicked or learned. My major therapeutic tool is who I am and how I am, how I speak and interact with each individual, while implementing what I’m trained to offer.

What’s not said, is often more important than what is said by a patient, and it can take a lot of trust-building and time to get to the sources of a person’s distress, especially when they themselves don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re in pain, and they need to be heard by another human with the courage to listen, help shine a torch, and ask good questions in moments of possibility.

Bad psychology is more dangerous than no psychology, and there’s a proliferation of it around. You’d be surprised how many people tell me they, or someone they know, have narcissistic traits/depression/PTSD/ASD/BPD/or the most popular of all ADHD, which turns out to be a ‘misdiagnosis’ by some pop quiz on Meta, probably written by an AI in Russia, and designed to harvest email addresses.

It can take a long time to undo that kind of hurtful misinformation. Sigh.

Anyway, happier things…

I’ve been continuing to work on my thriller through January, pushing myself to be the best writer I can be. I’m also looking at trying some period fiction, based in as much historical truth as I can discover, Like most of us, my ancestors had some very cool immigrant stories, and I want to tell them as authentically as I can.

I’ve been listening to Songs of a Lost World, the new album by The Cure, and plenty of hits of 1992 because that’s when my thriller’s set. It puts me in the right head space for writing, until it distracts me…

I’m working on bringing you snippets of therapy in future posts, stories you’ve told me, as well as musings like today’s that I’d love to engage with you on further.

Talk soon.

Love to you,