Informed dissent.

The intersection of healthcare and politics with Dr.

Jeff Barkey, board certified primary care physician.

And Dr.

Mark McDonald.

Board certified child adolescent and adult psychiatrist.

All right.

We are rolling.

Mark, we're here together.

Welcome to another episode of Informed Descent.

This is the first time after we've been recording in the same space in your new studio in the Corona Del Mar environ.

It's great.

Well, we finally got it set up after some technical difficulties.

And uh we got a great guest to bring to our audience today.

I'll let you introduce her.

Pamela Garfield is a therapist that I met recently at a conference in Carrollton, Texas, outside of Dallas.

And she has written a few children's books, too, specifically that we're going to speak to her about and um share with our audience her path towards trying to support good ethical therapy and education with her patient community without getting uh canceled, suspended, or assassinated.

Welcome Pamela Garfield to inform the set.

Hi, thank you.

I don't know if I've accomplished that.

I I've been canceled, but happily not assassinated.

Where is your office?

Um I'm in Georgia.

Georgia.

Mm-hmm.

Atlanta area of Georgia.

That's a long way from California.

It is.

I used to be in California.

I used to live in the Bay Area of California, but I add me to the list of people who have escaped from California for all the reasons you're aware of.

And mainly the COVID stuff, which I know you guys talk about a lot.

For sure.

There's a lot of people that are leaving California.

And after our recent election, I think there will be even more people leaving California.

Yeah.

Wow, that's crazy.

So tell us about your clinical practice.

Tell our audience about it.

What kind of things do you do?

And what are you trying to accomplish?

Well, right now, honestly, I do more consultations.

I've kind of moved away from being really clinical.

I do more trainings, I do consultations for parents and a lot of writing, which we'll talk about some of the books that I've written.

Um my past experience really was focused on families and children.

And I did work some with adults who had severe mental illness, like IOP PHP programs.

Um, but yeah, now since I was canceled, and I also previously was working in an IOP program for teens, and they this was in California, they mandated that COVID vaccine on me, and I started to speak the truth.

So I no longer do traditional work in traditional settings.

So that's where I've kind of emerged as this person to help help course correct our field.

Sure.

What's an IOP program?

Okay, so it's individualized outpatient program, and then there's partial hospitalization program.

Those are they're kind of oftentimes come hand in hand.

Um, they're group therapy programs for they have them both for adults and youth, and it's usually done for people who have some kind of mental illness or you know, struggle, and it's like a step down, oftentimes from being an inpatient and then you know, get giving them support systems and so they don't go straight from being hospitalized for a suicide attempt to just being once a week with a therapist.

So it's usually um like a all day or half day type program for people.

Are these mandate are these programs mandated by the state or by the uh court?

No, not usually.

So they're volunteer programs.

They're volunteer programs and usually covered by insurance, although some of them are have some like Medicaid Medical type dollars attached to them.

So you're doing this in California for a while, and then you uh packed up ship and moved to Georgia.

I did, yeah.

It's almost been two years.

I can't believe it.

What was that like transitioning, having a practice here and then starting fresh and having to open up a practice in Georgia?

Well, I didn't have a practice, so yeah, I I'll actually I'll explain a little bit more about my circumstances.

The reason I'm able to be so bold is because I actually came off of a big disability myself.

I had this rare condition called thoracic outlet syndrome.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that.

Yeah.

And the doctors didn't believe me, I went through this whole health odyssey.

I honestly lost my career a lot of it because of that.

And I only got back to work just part-time as per diem in that IOP program that I just talked about.

Um, and then got canceled again, round two.

So I my pra I did actually have a private practice in Palo Alto, California for many years, but that had ended, and I was working both at UCSF and then I was working.

Um, that's actually when I came out, came came down with that disability.

And then I came back uh part-time because I still had chronic pain to Sutter Health, and then they canceled me because I didn't take the COVID vaccine.

So that's so that's where I landed, basically floundering and saying, you know what?

Oh well, I'm you know, I'm gonna be the voice of reason and truth.

So I didn't have a practice, I had a lot less to lose, and I know a lot of other people do, so I felt kind of called to be the voice of so many of people that want to say these things, but that you know, they had a lot more invested, a lot more to lose, but I lost it anyway.

Oh, sure.

I have a physician friend that had thoracic outlet syndrome, and he ended up having uh a portion of a rib removed to try to relieve I had my rib removed.

Did it work?

It did work.

Uh it worked, however, just because I'm that kind of person that always has problems.

I tend to be now I've learned this about myself.

I tend to develop more scar tissue.

So then I ended up having a big lump of scar tissue in that area, which is the brachial plexus where all those nerves are.

And so I had a round two of complications and doctors who didn't believe me and just thought I said I had chronic regional pain syndrome, and it was all in my head and my brain was misfiring.

So they didn't believe me again.

So this was a long several years of two surgeries, but it did um honestly it was successful, and I'm really grateful to those surgeons that did the right thing.

Uh and I that I found them.

I figured it out by myself.

No help to our traditional health care system.

Yeah, our Mark and I talk about this all the time.

Our traditional healthcare system sucks.

Yes.

I mean, I you know, we I used to think naively growing up that America has the best health best healthcare system in the world.

And in some regards, I guess we still do, especially certain advances that we have.

But for but the day-in, day-out health care for the general population is scary.

I mean, I think I read a statistic, the number three cause of death in the United States is medical error.

Is that true?

Yeah.

And I think my experience is a lot of what informed me or what has motivated me to be outspoken about these issues within the mental health field, something that I have professional experience in, but I have this personal experience of having experts fail me and believing and trusting in experts that in some ways harmed me because it took so long for them to figure out, or it didn't, they didn't figure out honestly.

I did.

It took them so long to listen to me.

And I now have permanent nerve damage.

I honestly can't work a regular job.

I couldn't have a full-time practice.

So that's why I've been able to do this.

I I've worked around it to be a writer, be an educator.

I have online classes, I write books, and I do uh consultations with families.

What is your uh online site if people want to follow you and find you?

Um it's the truthful therapist.org.

I'm known as the truthful therapist online.

That's my tagline.

My husband came out with that.

Are you on Instagram or Facebook?

Mm-hmm.

Um, I'm I'm on Facebook, but not really professionally.

That's more personal.

Um, and I'm not as active there, but you can find me on Instagram.

That's where I kind of got most attention initially, and that's at the dot truthful therapist.

And you get do you get referrals from Instagram as well?

I do.

Yeah, people DM me, and I usually, and then I tell them to mess to email me, and they can set up appointments through my website.

Um, people have found me that way.

It's how I've gotten some media attention.

I started off honestly doing more like funny things uh to cope with the madness that our world was going through, especially during the lockdowns, and then soon after.

I was living in the Bay Area of California, the belly of the beast, and I just uh and I was watching everything um unfold.

I also I call myself sort of Rip Van Therapist, like Rip Van Winkle, because I was I had the disability and and I wasn't really paying attention to how crazy everybody had become.

I came back to the profession and just to our culture, and to me, it was just insane because I wasn't really noticing it because I had been going through that medical crisis, so I I didn't realize that even my own friends and my own family were buying into some of these narratives, like and just also uh all the COVID stuff.

So I was I did funny stuff and then serious stuff and resources, some of that some of that material ended up in my book, the the more serious stuff, but I also like to have humor to get the message across.

Sure.

And when you were in California, you chose not to get the COVID vaccine.

Why did you do that?

Yeah, at the time I wasn't really awake to the problems with it and maybe some of the agenda behind it.

It was simply because what I had just gone through physically.

I had been so disabled, I could barely move.

I had such serious pain.

And um I didn't trust my own body.

I had gone they referred so many different medications to me, a lot of psychotropic medications off label to deal with nerve pain.

None of them helped me, all of them made me worse or crazy or something.

And so I I just went through that odyssey of having every side effect on the planet and said, No, this might help a lot of people, but I'm that one that's gonna have the terrible response.

So just because I had been through such physical hell and had been so uh feeling so vulnerable physically, I didn't trust it just for that reason alone.

It's just very personal.

And then soon I was watching the everything unfold and realized how this was nefarious, and um also my husband actually did get the vaccine, and then we both got COVID at the same time.

So two months later.

So that was that was also a telltale that you know, he was a breakthrough case, supposedly.

Um, but he was he has more symptomatic than I was.

I was really fit at the time.

I I kind of hurt my knee since then, but I was running.

I had I was had really good cardio fitness, and I recovered from COVID quite well.

I also took that, you know, horse medicine.

I connect in and I did I did fine.

So I I had no, I felt there was no need for me to take it.

It was right after I had recovered from COVID, still had the antibodies, even according to their like wonky CDC guidelines that they were trying to put out, but they still were mandating it for me because I was considered a healthcare worker in California.

Sure.

And uh I saw you at a furry friend that just walked behind you.

Now, of course, our podcast is audio only, so people can't see, but most people know that I am a cat person.

I've got two guns at home.

So who is that?

Who is that furry friend that walked behind you?

And no, she just went away.

She's so thickle.

Her name is Kira.

And actually, you know, she uh it's interesting that you bring her up, you know, while she came by, but she I actually had another cat who had just died during that time when I was fired from my job, was recovering from COVID.

It was a really really dark time, to be honest.

Yeah, and we got Kira as a kitten right then, and she kind of lit me up and got me going again.

So how did Kira like the transition from California to Georgia?

She well, she's a cat, she didn't like the move, but now that she's here, she's doing okay.

Although she likes to drive, she likes the car.

We put her in a little harness and she does really well.

She looks out the window, it's really cute.

Oh, that's great.

And what about your husband moving from California to Georgia?

Yeah, he's I mean, he's doing well.

Uh, he works from home.

So he actually works.

I don't know if I should say actually, but he works from home.

And so he's able to to you know, keep his, he was able to keep his job.

That's why ended up in Georgia because he was able to transfer it here.

Uh so yeah, we're doing well.

Uh, we have three acres, uh, something that we would have never had in California.

Yeah, for sure.

Often there's cats walking behind Jeff when he does his podcast from cat location.

And uh this often startles the guests.

So it was kind of like looking in the mirror to see female face rather than Jeff's with a cat intruding upon the podcast.

I try to be cool about it, but I'm glad you brought it up.

Yeah, do you have animals on your three acres like chickens or horses or anything?

No, well, no, we just have actually we have this HOA doesn't let us have chickens.

I don't know if we would, but we're not supposed to.

Oh, um, but I will share.

We actually have a lake house.

So see here, listen to us.

We're living large here in Georgia.

We could never have any of this stuff in California.

Right.

And and we have ducks there.

They're not our ducks, but they come to visit.

And they're wild ducks that come and they they're very they're pretty tame.

They let us pet them because they they started coming to our house as little ducklings, little chicks, little chicklets.

And um, so they're now our friends.

So we have duck friends over there.

So you came from Northern California, so that's a very different weather than where we live in Southern California.

But uh, how's the weather been in Georgia living there?

And do you miss California sunshine?

Well, I lived actually by the coast.

I lived, I don't know if you've heard of Pacifica.

Sure, of course.

About 15 minutes south of San Francisco, and it is kind of a more foggy or cool area.

Um, what I really miss the most, honestly, one, I miss the ocean, not near the ocean anymore.

I miss that tremendously.

I also we lived the the views and the landscape where I lived was absolutely breathtaking.

There's nothing like it.

And uh, we were completely spoiled.

So I really miss that.

In terms of the weather, in the summer here in Georgia, it's really, really hot.

I like hot weather, but it gets really hot.

So at a certain point, I miss being able to walk around outside because sometimes at the at certain points of the summer, it just gets brutal and you really can't do that much.

Hot and humid.

Mm-hmm.

And my hair, you know, I'm on the podcast.

This is the problem.

Right.

Exactly.

But no, um, but I like the seasons.

I'm enjoying the autumn weather here.

Yeah.

And uh we, you know, we have more seasons here than we had.

And for the last last winter, we actually got a little snow here in Atlanta, which is not usual.

That was kind of exciting.

And do you work?

Do you root now for uh Georgia sporting team sport teams too?

Not really, but I pretend kind of when I'm around people.

The bulldogs are really popular here.

They are, yes, they are.

Absolutely.

I think they're ranked top 10 in the country right now.

Are they?

Yeah, I see.

I I mean, no, I'm not that into it, but um, I know they're popular because yeah, even when I I go to a church here, and sometimes the bulldogs get mentioned at church.

So that's how important they are.

Oh, I got it.

I know Pacifica really well, actually, because I lived in San Francisco, and uh I had a family member that was in Pacifica for about six to nine months, and she couldn't wait to get out of there.

It was the most depressive place she had ever lived, and it was foggy, there was no sunlight, it was freezing cold, there was wind.

It was it was like something out of a movie uh filmed in like in northern Scotland.

I I you couldn't believe how cold if you haven't been through Pacifica, how cold and wet that neighborhood could be.

They can't adjacent to San Francisco.

There there are so there are microclimates, and so we lived in a sunny pocket or more sunny, it still was colder than a lot of other areas.

Uh, but where I lived was called Valamar, and there was more sunshine there.

Certain parts of Pacifica are foggier and colder than others.

So, as a result of your for lack of a better term, disability in this thoracic outlet syndrome, and you needed surgery to correct it.

You couldn't work full time, and then ultimately you escaped from California.

Good for you.

I've thought about that many many times.

Uh, as a result of all that, then you had an opportunity now to do something different, spend more time online, uh, create classes, and most importantly, write books.

So tell us a little bit about your your first book that you wrote and why you wrote it.

The first book is called A Practical Response to Gender Distress, Tips and Tools for Families.

And uh I do focus a lot on the gender issues.

What is gender distress?

What does that mean?

So and in the DSM, they'll call it gender dysphoria.

These are people that are called transgender.

Um, it's a large umbrella of people because there's so many different manifestations of it, so many different things that I would say are underlying, or even people who have different presentations.

So it's it's a broad umbrella of different types of people.

Um what used to be called transsexual, or say we're the more traditional past people in the past would have.

Um, but now a lot of kids are you know joining in because it's a trend, and they'll call that rap rapid onset gender dysphoria ROGD, and that's more of a teenage phenomenon, people who are online a lot, and it happened really exploded during the lockdowns when kids were on screens and their entire livelihoods were taken away from the this is a kid, a boy or a girl that uh over a brief period of time suddenly starts identifying and feeling as if they're the opposite sex.

Yes, they'll at least say that they feel it.

Sometimes I think they do, and sometimes I don't think they even feel it, but they'll say they do.

Yeah, and this book is designed for the families of those folks to figure out which way is up and what to do about it.

What to do, what's going on.

There's all these different lies that are being touted from the trans activists, and our profession, the mental health profession has been completely captured by this audiology, really.

It's more like a cult like mentality.

So it's it's one thing if we have these just online influences that are doing influencers that are doing it.

But what's happening is our own profession is promoting it as though it's science and it's fact and it's not because a small amount of people have taken over, have silenced people who are just rational and people who have had questions about it over the years to the point where it became really extreme, especially I think it really peaked in the last couple years when everybody was on Zoom and people weren't able to push back.

So um, so my that's I it came out, I guess two years ago now.

And I'm except on the dates.

The advice in your book is not for parents to embrace this and to take them to a doctor and start hormone blocking therapy with the idea of transitioning to the opposite sex.

Yeah, so it's obviously no.

So I believe that um nobody's born in the wrong body and uh Especially children should never be on any type of hormones or puberty blockers or ever be on the pathway to getting surgeries of body parts that are healthy and that would take away their sexual function.

So this book is for the people for parents or people who love uh a loved one uh who's going through this and what do we to understand what they're going through, why they would believe this, why they'd be going through this, what are the influences, and then um what what could they say?

How could they approach it?

What are some ways they could set limits?

You know, just understanding to take them off the internet, um, maybe even think about moving locations, moving schools, and uh a lot of it's about helping parents recognize that they're not crazy for going now that because they don't want to go along with this narrative.

And then it does have very practical tools on how to talk to if you are talking to a mental health professional, how to stand up to one if they threaten a parent because a lot of times they'll threaten the parent and say if you don't affirm your child, your child will kill themselves.

You know, would you rather have a dead daughter or living son is the ultimatum that is given, which again, I was so shocking to me because I hadn't heard that while I was on disability.

I came back and couldn't believe they were doing this.

Yeah.

And so I I talk about why that's so wrong just from a clinical level.

And of course, there is no data either.

So give just giving those types of facts and helping arming parents with the information so that they don't feel you know completely uh confused and you know, ambushed by a professional that they believe should you know has the authority.

So it's a lot about empowering parents to take the reins to stand up to this tyranny and to you know, really take charge of the caretaking of their child of their family, because the the theme that I've noticed working with parents, uh families in general, and this is both conservative and liberal, it's not even a political thing.

Maybe some more liberal uh families have this tendency, but they they instantly go to an expert when there's a problem at home.

They don't try to kind of troubleshoot first.

So they're almost like outsourcing their parenting to a therapist.

Like, oh, you help me, you fix it.

Oh, you'll understand my child better when a lot of my messaging is actually I think it'd be better if you did this if you tried to have this conversation.

Or they outsource it to the schools.

Yeah, and and the schools.

And I I used to work as a school counselor and a supervisor for school counselors.

So that's a lot of also what I warn parents about is how school counselors are not good news these days.

Right.

It wasn't a great model, even in the past, even while I was doing it, but we at least tried to involve the parents.

My struggle back then was trying to get the parents involved, especially in the affluent communities in California that I was working.

I was actually working in Palo Alto, which is the town of Stanford, and it was difficult to get the parents involved and the kid, you know, they just wanted me to just take care of it and my team, my therapist that I was supervising to take care of it.

And now a lot the the trend is these counselors are basically transing kids behind their backs.

Yeah.

And there are a few lawsuits.

There's one that might even go to the Supreme Court in Colorado.

Um, but we are, you know, we're trying the parents are basically fighting back for their rights, and I'm trying to, you know, empower them to do so.

For sure.

Pam, we're gonna take a quick break.

And when we come back, I want to hear if you've received any hate mail, any threats, name-calling, like being transphobic or anti-trans.

So we'll be back after a short break.

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Okay, we are back with uh Pam Garfield, a very brave therapist uh who is standing up against her own community and trying to help families and kids in particular that have had gender issues uh from going down a horribly destructive path.

So tell us again the name of your first book.

Yes, it's called A Practical Response to Gender Distress Tips and Tools for Families.

Is that available on Amazon?

It is available on Amazon, yes.

It there is a link to it on my website too, truthful therapist.org.

But you can just find it on Amazon.

You could probably just Google my name, and I think that it comes up pretty quickly because I should have done a catchier title.

I've learned that lesson.

I'm a rookie.

That's okay.

Your third, your third book, you'll get it right.

Yeah, right.

And so back to the question have you received threats and hate mail and stuff?

And have you been called names like you know, anti-trans or transphobic or whatever other, you know, fun names that they use?

Oh, sure.

Yeah, of tons of names.

Of course, I'm racist, you know, everyone's racist, first of all.

Um, but once you get past the races, yes.

Um certainly transphobic.

Um, I'll get a lot of I I think the most common message I get is I shouldn't be practicing that I'm hurting people and I should lose my license.

Sure, of course.

I get that.

I get that message a lot.

Although honestly, they they got tired.

They stopped sending me these messages.

I've had some threats to my license.

I've had people say they're reporting me.

I've never heard anything from the board.

Um my license is totally fine and intact.

So I've I've not had any problems.

Georgia and California.

I'm actually not licensed in Georgia.

I never got that.

So I should follow up with that though.

Does your license in California allow you to do uh therapy, online therapy, whatever around the country?

Yeah, I believe so.

But I'm not really doing therapy, so it doesn't really matter.

You know, I'm just doing a lot of things.

More coaching coaching and consultations.

Yeah, got it.

Um, and then you came out with a second book.

What was your second book?

Yeah, so my second book, I'm holding it up just so you could see it, but it's because it's cute.

It's uh it's called Froggy Girl, and uh it's a children's book.

And it's a paperback, very cute uh illustrations on the front.

And uh, yeah, it's it's uh it you didn't know better, you'd think it'd be something you'd see at the library to read your little kid.

Yes, and it comes in hardcover too.

I just happen to have the paperback here with me.

Okay.

Um, so it has both, and it's on this actually I was able to put on all the online platforms.

It's on Amazon, but you can get it anywhere.

So you can get it more into the Amazon does international, but there are a few countries like Australia where it's a little tough.

So even Australians can order froggy girl um, you know, all across the globe.

So what's Froggy Girl about?

It's it's a cute little rhyming tale, and you most people uh it's a little more covert.

Most people don't know that I'm quote unquote anti-trans.

It's not doesn't say anything about that, and that's intentional uh for lots of reasons.

One for the adults that might be clue into that.

Um, but also I don't want kids to know or think about those ideas, uh, even on our side.

I don't I don't want them to learn all this lingo before they need to learn it.

So it's it's a tale of a little girl um who wishes she was a frog.

She kind of thinks she's a frog.

Um, she knows how to hop, so it had to be true.

What else could she do?

And so she she uh gets affirmed by her parents and her friends and her teacher.

She gets a special flag, and she's so glad.

And she thinks she's happy, she has a little fun with the frogs, but it doesn't really work out so well because she can't really do the froggy things.

So she then feels very sad and alone, and she feels like she, you know, she doesn't know what to do, and she feels lost.

She goes for a little walk and she meets this wise turtle.

He's uh that's the cute turtle on the cover here.

And the turtle helps her learn to appreciate that she's a beautiful little girl.

She can sing and dance and even do a twirl.

I love that.

Yeah.

In the end, the last line is the little girl learned to love the way God made her, beautiful and smart and full of fervor.

So there is mention of God in the book, which most people like and some people don't.

Uh, but it's pretty general.

And the uh illustrator is a detransitioner.

It's actually drawn by a man who used to believe that he was a woman trapped in a man's body.

Well, so he's it's not actually a coincidence that these people who believe they're trans, they tend to be the more artistic type.

So I there's a lot of talent here that I was able to tap into to do this beautiful book.

And he he described the process of a drawing for my writing, very therapeutic for him.

And he felt like it was really helpful for him to know that he was doing a project that was going to help little children learn to accept the body that they're born in, embrace themselves.

So your book about a little girl who thinks she's a frog.

Uh I love it.

Um, you know, makes me think about there's a movement.

I don't know about a movement, but there are folks that are called furries.

Yes that think that they're animals, uh, to the point that some businesses and with pressure are putting litter boxes in restrooms for these folks to use.

Have you ever counseled or discussed with families, kids or adults that think that they're animals?

I have not personally, but I have heard that this is a thing.

Generally, though, the people that are doing that, it's a fetish.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Mark, have you ever dealt with that?

No, I haven't.

I haven't actually had any patients come to my practice to express concern and interest in receiving treatment for fetishes.

Because you know, as Pamela just said, there is a difference between a mental illness, which I believe transgenderism is a mental illness in the case where it actually affects and creates dysfunction, as opposed to, like you were saying, Pamela, earlier, some kids are just jumping on the bandwagon, even though they don't believe that they're part of this movement just to gain attention, which is not a mental illness, that's just a behavioral issue.

There's a difference between that and an a fetish, which isn't necessarily a mental illness unless it causes problems in that person's life.

You could have a fetish for high-heeled shoes and be a very functional husband, father, and uh businessman.

Um there's there's fetishes which can cross over into dysfunction, and there's fetishes which are just simply personal preference, uh, taken to an extreme.

So there is a difference, I think, in an important distinction between the gen transgenderism, which is inherently a mental illness and fetishes, which are just more of a sexual preference.

Pam, do you agree that uh transgenderism?

People that believe or want to be a different sex is a mental illness.

I mean, for the most part, I think what's what's difficult about answering yes directly is what are we even defining as a mental illness these days?

That gets really messy.

Uh, but I believe it's like there's a problem, and it's pathological, and it's something that needs to be addressed, and it certainly shouldn't be normalized.

Yeah.

So however you want to define that.

Um, and there are so many different flavors uh or types, like I said, so um, it's really a manifestation of another mental illness in many cases.

So, I mean, I've heard of and I've met people who have some kind of thought disorder, schizophrenia type symptoms that are led to believe that they're transgender uh uh.

It's a lot of times it's a trauma response.

So people who have real trauma.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who say they have trauma, but they don't because they've watched too many TikTok videos.

So we're talking about the people who have real trauma.

Um a lot of times they're rejecting their body, they're dissociating from their bodies, and it would make sense that they would want to get rid of these parts that have caused so much pain for them.

Uh there's a whole cohort of especially young people who are autistic that are marketed to that fall into this because of their more black and white thinking, their struggles with social interactions, being more online and having that rigid thinking would uh lead them to being transgender.

That people who say they're transgender almost universally have a comorbid diagnosis of some other form of mental illness.

And I'm including autism in that, it's like you noted uh some kind of uh traumatic experience, which is still prominent in their life, which is creating issues, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and that's not necessarily true with something like say a gay person who has a sexual preference who may have mental illness, but uh in general, there are lots of gays that are not mentally ill, and we all know that we take that for granted.

But I think with the transgenderism, it's important to note that this is not a sexual preference, this is a consequence of some other issue which is not being dealt with and is being covered up and then turned and normalized in order to achieve some kind of social status or virtue signaling, which is really um incredibly harmful to the child and is is really, I think I would say an evil action on the part of adults, uh, which is I mean, that's essentially it's abusive, I think.

So autism is more prevalent in the trans community.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

And even you'll even you can look it up, like even NPR and other mainstream sources will acknowledge that, but for some reason they'll just say it's a mystery on why there's this high prevalence of autism within the trans community.

Are they just more susceptible to nonsense to be influenced?

I think they're marketed too, but yes, they're also susceptible.

They're also it's more difficult to pull them out once they get the idea, they get that rigid thinking, they know that it's hard to once they're locked in to an idea, it's hard to pull them out of it.

It's pretty nefarious.

So if uh if vaccines cause autism and autism increases the risk of transgenderism, then vaccines cause transgenderism.

Yeah, that's yep.

Sometimes I'm going with that.

I'm just that is well, that's honestly not that's been that's been mentioned.

Yes, I think they're an indirect there.

I had uh I had an argument a while back, uh, just a few months ago with a physician who told me that he thought vaccines cause uh have provoked the rise in transgenderism.

I said, I don't understand the logic there.

I mean, I don't think vaccines do anything really good, but I I couldn't figure out what the pathway was that he was talking about.

Maybe he was referring to this pathway that you I think he was he probably was because it's that is chatter on that is that's been mentioned.

That must be it, yeah.

That's interesting.

Well, it is logical, it is logical.

Also, another big correlation we'll say is people who are on like SSRIs and other psychotropic medications that would cause you to lose your sex drive or have issues with your sexuality or be you know dissociated because young people are being put on medication so young that they don't they're so out of touch with their sexuality, and then they're told that oh, it means they're asexual, it means this, it means that.

And so they they go into this label, and then they don't have that that insight because they never they don't have a frame of reference.

So a lot of kids who have ADHD have been on the put on these meds really young.

Um if you talk to a lot of the people who are currently still trans or detransitioners, just people who have gone down these this track, a lot of them have been on some kind of medication more than one type.

Sure, but is you know, it's not necessarily the SSRI that has caused this, it's the underlying mentality.

It could be both.

It's I mean, yeah, we can you know, we could have a long discussion about you know what is the cause, what is the effect.

Yeah, for sure.

Uh absolute, absolutely.

So what what's next for Pam Garfield?

Hmm.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm I'm okay.

I'm trying to work on an actual book deal where I actually get a book deal and I'm not doing it all myself.

So that's something that might be in the cards.

Um, but I'm I'm also building, I just just built another training for therapists.

So there are actually two trainings for therapists out there, and I'm building another one, and um it's on actually my friend's website because she has the CEU credential so that it can people can actually get continuing education credits for my work, and you know, we we have a partnership, and so her name is Lisa Mustard, it's on her website, LisaMuster.com.

So there are two trainings.

I just I haven't even pushed it forward.

I just put it out there.

She just uh loaded it onto her website like yesterday, um, which is uh for working with adults, uh families of adults who are transgender and who don't want to affirm, who don't believe in affirming and what to do because it's a little trickier when they're no longer minors and you can't tell them what to do, you can't tell them to get off their phones, and they but they might not even be living with the families.

Then what do you do?

How do you handle that?

So it's it's a training about that.

It makes some um comparisons to working with an addict, you know, how you would talk to an addict, um, a little bit of that motivational interviewing type um mentality where you know how would you approach them.

And uh, so yeah, I'm doing just um yeah, I have all kinds of different little projects going on.

And yeah, I still work with families.

I'm actually doing a workshop this coming Saturday for families on how to handle the holidays.

Uh uh if they have a trans person, either kid or adult, and how to handle that comment.

What's your advice?

My advice.

Well, the yeah, it's one, it's not easy.

So a lot of it's about the camaraderie, you know, the other people coming together to recognize that this is a very difficult time.

There's a lot of grief involved here, and um, but the advice is really looking at uh like what like not confronting, not being confrontational, but also holding a boundary, recognize it, remembering that you're still the adult.

Because a lot of times I've noticed the the dynamic in the family is the parents have really kind of let the child lead in some ways, and they're pushing back, you know, it's sort of like a way a really bizarre way to rebel or separate, but that because they were like kind of going along with it, they didn't get a chance to have that little rebellion that teenagers go through, and so there's this weird uh dynamic there.

So it's it's about like kind of holding your ground, remembering your your own strength that you're not transphobic, but also not kind of giving them the ammunition to come, you know come at them as the the evil enemy, which is what they're already conditioned to do.

It can really separate families, huh?

It's that is the goal, yeah.

Yeah.

That is the that is one of the saddest parts about all of this.

Um, a lot of people recognize that, oh yeah, it's harmful to the health, it's harmful to the body, even might even recognize the harms psychologically, but they don't realize all the harms within the family dynamics and how this is intentionally dividing families, families that exist now, like I was just talking about these families I'll be talking to on Saturday, but also you know, uh stopping their ability to have future families.

So on both ends, this is really the destruction of society, pretty pretty dark.

Are there any happy transgender people?

Um it depends on how you define happy.

I would say that you know, there are people who are functioning addicts out there and they might be having fun, but they probably but they're not making healthy choices.

So there are people that do things that aren't healthy that they're still okay, and they can function for a while.

But I don't believe that they are making healthy choices because when you are taking hormones, you are inducing an endocrine disorder, and you are eventually, if you continue creating a multitude of health issues, and then of course you're denying your reality, so that has psychological consequences.

So most people who are transgender and they'll say they're happy, perhaps they are to a degree, but I don't think that they're really living like healthy, thriving lives because they are still denying their reality, and people around them really most of the time are still not really genuine.

There are catering to them.

They're they're either just flat out lying, or they'll say, I know you're not whatever you're you know, you're new gender, but they're they're just sort of tiptoeing.

There's this distance that they will always have to have because people are just not they don't know what to do.

It's uncomfortable.

So how do Yeah, sometimes they enable them to continue the delusion.

That's it.

Yeah.

So I don't think it's a healthy choice.

I think there are people that can be functional in society as transgender, if you however you want to define functional.

I mean, people that can hold jobs, people that can have friendships, and they're not lunatics, you know, like we see on the internet.

Um, but but at the same time, I don't think they're making the best choice.

And I think that they'd be better off if they went through the probably very, very difficult task of coming back to their own biology and accepting that.

What you're focused on in your, I mean, even in the name of your business and your Instagram is truth, and addiction is founded on lies.

The way that people deal with addictions is that they they lie, they they lie to themselves and then they lie to others.

And I think transgenderism is fundamentally a lie to the self and a lie to others as well, because it's uh in a sense an addiction to a fantasy that uh doesn't exist.

And my my personal and clinical opinion, having worked with patients now for 12, 15 years, uh, who have various addictions and various obfuscations towards reality and truth is that the closer that you get to truth, the healthier you are emotionally and mentally.

It doesn't mean you're necessarily happy, uh, because often what we see with happy people is it's not really happiness, it's more mania, uh, which is just uh a flight from reality.

Her cat just returned.

And and and yet people who face reality, they may not be happy, but they're they're content and they're healthy and they're growing.

I guess for me, personal growth is also really important.

And when you're living in a in a state of denial, you're living in a lie, uh, and you're in a state of addiction, it's not possible to grow.

You can't grow.

And anything that impedes growth, in my view, is uh is a problem.

And anyone who um is growing is most likely um moving towards truth.

So that's kind of my axis that I think of on a on a higher level and that helps to organize what I categorize as healthy and unhealthy.

Yeah.

Um I've met I met enough people who uh but when I was still in the naive headspace, I thought there was a such thing as happy or healthy trans person, you know, that exception to the rule.

And then those people that I thought were doing just fine, I got to know them better, and they weren't.

And some of them really physically crashed too.

There's one um who's public, it's a woman, but still goes by the name Matt Ray because she's still struggling with the name, but she went through all kinds of neurological issues, and she was just fine for like nine years plus.

I mean, this isn't like the ROGT kind.

This is the this is you know, more deep and still not doing well.

And we're actually going to be doing a documentary on her story.

I love it.

Are there organizations of let's just say conservative therapists or psychiatrists that exist where you don't feel so lonely doing this work on your own?

Yeah, there are two.

I'll I'll say for your audience who are looking for a conservative therapist out there.

There are two that I'll recommend.

Uh one website is called the con called conservative counselors.com.

And you met so at she was at that conference that we were just at in Texas.

She she runs that.

And then there's another one called um open therapy institute or OTI.

And they're based out of New York.

I think it's opentherapy institute.org.

I'm not sure if that's their website, but that's the name of their organization.

And they they push back on all of the kind of clinical uh what do you call it, the critical theories out there and you know, on a broad in a broad sense, because really it's not gender is like a bigger picture thing.

It's you know, about breaking down reality and and all that.

My cat keeps coming back and forth.

Um brush the microphone and and kind of made an auditory arrival.

Uh but not with cat butt.

Yeah, the cat that was whatever brushing against the microphone.

Cat butt on yeah, you got a very cute cat.

Yeah, she's so cute.

Um, I know I'm a crazy cat lady, which is I'm a crazy cat man, so I'm right there with you.

Although I love all animals, but I just where I live right now, I can't really have a dog because I'm at work all day and so forth.

And the cats do fine on their own.

Pam, tell us again where people can reach you and learn more about what the work you're doing.

Yeah, so I'm active on Instagram as at the dot truthful therapist.

I'm on Twitter X is truth therapist, although I really need to change that handle because it really says truth the rapist.

That's funny.

You shouldn't change that.

Yeah.

I'm always wrestling with it.

Like, should I move?

Should I change it, or is it funny?

I don't sure.

Uh, it's a little it's funny.

Well, the haters sometimes will come back me at that.

I'm like, yeah, I know it's funny.

Yeah, yeah, get over it, whatever.

And then um, I my website, like I said, is the truthful therapist.org.

And you can email me through there.

I have a YouTube that I'm not like daily active on, but you can see lots of videos that I've done, which is also the truthful therapist.

Oh, and I have a substack, which is Pam the Truthful Therapist.

Oh, wonderful.

That's awesome.

Well, listen, thank you for joining us on informed dissent.

I can't wait to read your next book and to follow you on Instagram with all the work you do.

You're awfully brave.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you.

All right, take care.

All right, you too.

You've been listening to informed dissent with Dr.

Jeff Barkey, board certified primary care physician, and Dr.

Mark McDonald.

Board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.

Informed dissent, the intersection of healthcare and politics.