“Not everybody needs therapy. I’m a therapist and I’ll tell you first.” — Amy Morin

Is an epidemic of mental weakness sweeping America? Readers of the Wall Street Journal certainly might think so, given a couple of recent articles. In one, it reports on burnt-out singles who are using spreadsheets to evaluate their dates. In the other, young adults are taking their phones to social events and letting AI do their talking. Sad. So I invited Ms Mental Strength herself, Amy Morin — host of the Mentally Stronger podcast and author of The Mental Strength Playbook — to ask what’s happened to American self-confidence in our AI age.

Morin sees it daily in her own therapy office with patients relying on ChatGPT to set boundaries with their mothers-in-law. In a world of information overload, she argues, we’ve come to believe there must be a medical solution to all our complexities — forgetting that relationships are an art, not a science, and that conflict and awkward silences are features of human life rather than bugs.

So the dinner-party guests who sneak off with their pocket supercomputers to the bathroom to ask ChatGPT for five “interesting” questions come back with canned questions that make them sound even less interesting. In contrast, Morin argues, real social confidence is built by taking risks.

And it’s no longer a risk, she suggests, to go to a therapist. It’s become the equivalent of slinking into the bathroom with your phone to prompt conversation. Yes, this therapist worries we live in an overly therapeutic culture. Anxiety is normal, Morin says. But ADHD diagnoses and even autism have become a kind of moral passport in America. It’s almost as if people should be anxious if they’re not anxious.

Her prescription is free. Not even the cost of a therapy session. Ask yourself, at the end of every day, what did I do today to grow mentally stronger? It’s like going to the gym. Build up your mental strength. Become self-reliant. The standard American fix. That will kick your therapy habit. That will end the epidemic of mental weakness now engulfing the United States.

Five Takeaways

• AI Is Doing Our Talking. Spreadsheet dating, AI-scripted conversations: we’re treating relationships as science. They’re an art — tension included.

• Avoidance Never Builds Confidence. Bathroom ChatGPT at dinner parties produces canned questions and no listening. Skills you don’t practice wither — the app makes you worse.

• Thirteen Things, Fifty Million Readers. Her mother at 23, her husband at 26, a letter to herself — and seven books later, mental strength means getting the most from the ride.

• Not Everybody Needs Therapy. Anxiety is normal. TikTok hands out ADHD — and the worried well clog waiting lists the seriously ill need.

• Your Body Believes What Your Brain Tells It. Power phrases work — spineless worm to go-getter — but only with action. Daily question: what did I do today to grow mentally stronger?

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy The Mental Strength Playbook: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/789708/the-mental-strength-playbook-by-amy-morin

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: spreadsheet dates and AI-scripted conversations
00:02:11 In the therapy office: ChatGPT for mother-in-law boundaries
00:03:50 Information overload: relationships as art, not science
00:04:57 A generational break?
00:05:59 The last landline generation
00:07:11 The loneliness connection
00:08:40 Phones in the bathroom at dinner parties
00:10:03 Why outsourcing never builds confidence
00:11:57 What did awkward people do before the internet?
00:13:25 Online personas vs real selves
00:14:41 The origin: how Amy Morin found mental strength
00:15:52 Two deaths, one letter, fifty million readers
00:19:02 An overly therapeutic culture? She agrees
00:21:11 The Satel question: demedicalizing distress
00:21:51 TikTok quizzes and self-fulfilling prophecies
00:24:04 Autism as passport
00:25:49 Who shouldn’t be in the therapy office
00:27:05 Undercover in online therapy
00:27:56 The worried well and the waiting lists
00:28:58 Cognitive resets: the mental gym
00:29:45 From spineless worm to go-getter
00:30:40 The daily question
00:31:51 Do trolls hate themselves?
00:33:31 Technology as solution
00:34:21 Thanks and goodbye