Articles from the Week of August 1, 2024

Special Note: This Friday mailing is being sent out on Thursday since we’ll be without access to email for the coming week. There will be no Friday News the week of August 9. Friday News should resume on Friday, August 15. I will try to include the counseling news that comes out between August 1 and August 15 in the August 15 news.

Counseling Articles

Detrans: A Book I Would Encourage Every Counselor to Read

This week I spent several hours reading and digesting the content of a 2024 book, Detrans, by Mary Margaret Olohan. This information is so important that I encourage every counselor (and probably most parents of young children, especially parents of young girls) to read it. Olohan is an investigative journalist, but she demonstrates through her writing that she accurately understands the content of many of the most important books that have been written in the last few years about and critiquing the gender affirmation movement. She documents her statements carefully with nearly 40 pages of endnotes.

Her book is extremely well-written and easy to read, and consists primarily of telling the stories of several young people, most of whom are now young adults, who have gone through some or all of the four stages of the gender-affirmation process (puberty-suppressing hormones, cross-gender hormones, top surgery, and bottom surgery), but whom have now discovered that this did not solve all of their problems (as they had been promised), and how they have decided to detransition and the experiences they have had while detransitioning.

Probably every child experiences some problems with self-concept and identity during their adolescent years, but if these problems are also accompanied by conflicts with parents, a parental divorce, or teasing and rejection by peers, those problems are often exacerbated. Children (some as young as eight) spend a lot of time on the Internet in social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Kik and Tumblr, and their identity is often significantly influenced by chats, articles and misinformation from these sites, e.g., “If you think you’re trans, you’re trans.” Parents often don’t understand how these sites work, or even that their children are spending many hours each week on them. It’s probably important for counselors to make parents of young children aware of these sites. Most children will be resentful if their parents attempt to monitor their Internet interactions. A healthier alternative is to pre-emptively encourage their children to be engaged in real world experiences such as sports, choir or band or church groups rather than spending most of their free time on these social media sites.

If children or teens need counseling, it is important to help them find the right counselor. If they go to a counselor who advertises themselves as a gender specialist they will almost always be encouraged to follow a transgender path as the solution to the struggles they are having.

Gender advocacy counseling differs from what has historically been recognized for many years as typical counseling practices. Normally if a child comes with one particularly problematic behavior but has other identifiable comorbid diagnoses, those other comorbid issues are treated first, and then it is assessed how this treatment has affected the presenting problem. With gender advocacy counseling problems such as depression, anxiety, and autism spectrum disorders are often dismissed by saying that if the gender identity issue is resolved, these other problems will be resolved by doing so.

If the child is underage parents will need to be involved to give consent for medical treatment. Often parents are reluctant to give such consent but they are frequently persuaded by their counselor with questions such as “Would you rather have a son or a dead daughter?” If either the child or the parents are hesitant about giving consent to starting transgender treatments usually a few sessions of being asked these questions are enough to convince them to give consent. A suicide expert in Great Britain was asked to review the results of postponing transgender treatments on suicide after a new law was passed to not allow transgender treatments until the young person was at least 18 years of age. After careful analysis this suicide expert concluded that there was no higher suicide rate among those teens who believed they were transgender but were denied puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and those who had in previous years had access to both. Therefore from a scientific standpoint we should stop trying to persuade parents and teens to start the gender-affirming protocol or risk having the young person commit suicide.

An important part of counseling ethics is to give the parents and child full information about the advantages and disadvantages of trying a particular treatment, something called “informed consent.” Both the young people and the parents said that they were primarily given the positives of going through the gender affirmation procedures, and very little emphasis was given to the downsides. Very little or no information was given on the negatives of receiving the opposite-sex hormones, even though in the book many recounted significant negative emotional experiences when teens took these hormones. A number of teens stopped taking the opposite-sex hormones without consulting their counselor or doctor because of the severity of the emotions they experienced when they were taking them. And several girls mentioned in the book who were now in their early twenties and had detransitioned decided they hoped to have children in the future. They said that they could never have truly understood what it would mean when they consented to have their breasts surgically removed when they were 13 years old. A number of the boys who had artificial breasts implanted during their top surgeries said that they had had their breast implants surgically removed after they entered adulthood and no longer wanted to be considered transgendered.

Only a minority continued down the transgender path to the point of having bottom surgery, but those whose stories were included in the book recounted very tragic experiences related to the residual effects of such surgeries.

There seem to be no detransition protocols to guide counselors or physicians for teens or adults who decide they have made a mistake and wish to detransition. Most young persons do not go back to either their counselor or physician, but the number of people who share experiences on the various detransition or regret sites on the Internet indicate that there are large numbers (many thousands) of people who regret the transgender decisions they made earlier in life. Those who went back to their counselors found that their counselors tried to convince them to continue with their transgender treatments. Those who tried to contact surgeons to see whether their transgender surgeries could be corrected almost always received no response from their surgeons or were refused to have appointments scheduled for them. Several of the children and teens whose stories are recounted in the book are now pursuing lawsuits against their counselors or surgeons.

I hope that counselors reading this summary will read the book Detrans and then consider providing counseling for hurting teens that helps them realize that dysphoria during the teenage years is an almost universal phenomenon but that there are other ways to deal with that dysphoria than by embarking on the transgender treatment protocol. Right now whenever a teen mentions that they are having questions about their gender or their identity the only counselors they are referred to are counselors who are transgender advocates. If we truly believe that counseling should give people choices then I believe that young people should be able to choose a counselor who will explore what is happening in their life and help them choose an option rather than telling them and their parents that there is only one solution, and if they fail to choose that option suicide will likely be the end result.

Accelerated Brain Stimulation Therapy Achieves Large Symptom Reduction in Treatment-Resistant Bipolar Depression Patients

Unfortunately some bipolar patients do not respond to standard available treatments. This new form of brain stimulation, given over a five-day period, appears to reduce bipolar depression in patients who had not responded to other treatment approaches.

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Cause Behind ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ Discovered by Scientists

For many years veterans who participated in the Gulf War have complained of a series of physical symptoms that were unexplained, and in some cases were not believed. Now a likely cause has been identified.

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Why mature Christians rarely experience miracles

You may have a Christian client who has prayed for healing and is upset that God has not healed him or her. This writer makes a good biblically-based point about one reason God may not heal us even though we pray for healing.

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The Online Degradation of Women and Girls That We Meet with a Shrug

This article by Nicholas Kristoff is worth reading if you can get to it at the New York Times. It talks about the fact that teenage boys can easily get access to nudify programs and make deep fake nudes of the girls in their high school classes, often reducing scores of girls in their classes to tears. The same is being done to young and middle-aged women. Something needs to be done to reduce this terrible form of sexual abuse.

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Slow Down if You See These Dating ‘Yellow Flags’

There are certain things that, if people see them while dating, are clearly red flags that say they shouldn’t invest more time or energy in that relationship. But what about “yellow flags.” This article from the New York Times gives some good examples of things a person should consider yellow flags and gives good suggestions about what to do when that person experiences them.

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Eric Liddell’s Legacy: 100 Years Later 

Eric Liddell stood up for his Christian beliefs 100 years ago in a way that was memorialized in the film Chariots of Fire. This article talks about the impact his courageous stand is still having today.

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Avoiding Unfaithful Friendships

Friendships are very important for healthy living, but a recent study of 300 couples where infidelity occurred found that more than 50% of the time, they started in relationships where the persons had a close friendship. This article suggests ways to set healthy boundaries and keep one’s marriage strong.

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How Swimming Saved Michael Phelps: An ADHD Story

When Michael Phelps was nine years old his teacher told his mother he couldn’t focus on anything. She took him to a doctor, who told her he had ADHD. His mother, a teacher, was committed to finding a way to help her son overcome his disability and make something of himself. She persevered, working with his teachers and coaches, and in 2004 he swam his way to eight medals, six of them gold. By 2016 he had become the most decorated Olympic participant ever, having won 28 medals, 23 of them gold. Much of this was due to his mother and her persistence. Learn how she did this.

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Dementia Caregivers Support Groups

Jupiter Medical Center is offering support groups for spouses, all caregivers, and weekly support classes via zoom. If you know someone who would be interested, please tell them about this.

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“Oh, the Places I’ve Been (Fired From)!”

I remember one student in our program, who after graduating, was almost fired from a very good company. They said she was a good counselor, but she just wasn’t getting her progress notes in on time. When she called her parents in discouragement, they told her that when she was a child, she was diagnosed with ADHD, but they never told her because they were afraid it would hurt her self-esteem. As a result of not knowing this information and getting appropriate medication and counseling, she had struggled in high school, then in college and graduate school, and was about to lose her first job. She had some significant anger to work through toward her parents for not telling her about her ADHD and helping her get appropriate medication and counseling help. If you counsel with parents who have a child with ADHD, help them see that the most loving thing to do for their child is tell them about their ADHD and then get them the help they need.

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The Neurology of Grief

This is a short article, but worth the minute it takes you to read it. The four stages we learned from Kubler-Ross have sometimes been applied to grieving also. This article says the process of grieving is more individual and that we all as counselors or loved ones of someone who is grieving should recognize that people grieve in a wide variety of ways.

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5 reasons why men should marry

When I first saw this headline I wondered about it, but after reading the article I think it makes some good biblical arguments, at least for Christian men. If a person has the gift of celibacy and believes that God has called him to a ministry where celibacy could enable him to carry out that ministry more effectively, then that would probably be a legitimate exception, but for most of us males I think the arguments hold. See what you think.

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6-Year-Old Swipes Dad’s Phone – Then the Doorbell Rings and His Parents Can’t Believe Their Eyes

If you need a little humor in your day, read this story. Has nothing to do with counseling other than to tell parents of young children that if you loan your cellphone to your 6-year-old to play video games make sure to put some parameters on what they may do on your phone. Whoever wrote this headline apparently didn’t read the story very carefully—the 6-year-old didn’t swipe his dad’s phone—the dad gave it to him so he could play games on it, and it wasn’t both parents who were surprised—there’s no indication that his mother was home at the time.

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Have a wonderful two weeks and please consider ordering and reading Detrans.

Henry Virkler