On the Mad in America podcast this week, Brooke Siem, author of May Cause Side Effects, talks with Teralyn Sell and Jenn Schmitz about their journey from working in the prison system to challenging conventional psychiatric narratives in their therapy practice and podcast, The Gaslit Truth.
Dr. Teralyn Sell is a distinguished expert in Psychology and Brain Health, holding a PhD in Psychology and an MS in Counseling Psychology. She bridges the gap between traditional mental health care and integrative brain health solutions with formal training in holistic nutrition and biology. She is the author of Your Best Brain and the co-host of the internationally acclaimed podcast, The Gaslit Truth, where she challenges conventional narratives around mental health and medication. Dr. Teralyn is dedicated to promoting safe medication practices, responsible tapering and a paradigm shift in mental health care, one that prioritizes brain health over symptom management.
Jenn Schmitz is redefining the field of psychology with a unique blend of expertise and lived experience. Holding a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology and having spent over a decade as a traditional therapist, Jenn took a bold step beyond the conventional boundaries of Western education and mental health treatment. Her personal struggle, marked by the challenging process of tapering off psychiatric medication, revealed insights that reshaped her entire approach to mental health. As a holistic, de-prescribing consultant, Jenn integrates psychological and brain health expertise with physical wellness, mindfulness and nutrition to safely guide the brain through the intricate process of medication tapering. Jenn hosts The Gaslit Truth podcast along with Dr. Teralyn and is a writer for the international wellness publication, Live, Love and Eat magazine.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here.
Brooke Siem: How did you two start working together?
Teralyn Sell: We first came across each other in the prison system probably 15-plus years ago. Jenn stayed in, and I broke out. I went into private practice and was in private practice for 10 years or so before I even heard from Jenn. Then a couple of years ago, I got a phone call from Jenn.
Jenn Schmitz: I decided there was more to life than working in the prison system, and that if I stayed there, it wasn’t going to be good for me. Retirement and all the things that look so fantastic within a state system don’t matter when your brain and body are shutting down from the amount of stress and hypervigilance and the acuity of an environment where your job is to keep people alive all day long. I reached out to Terry and said, āHey, you got out. I want outātell me how to do it.ā
Sell: The breakout happened, but I think the bigger story is why both of us left that environment. It was relatively the sameāour mental health was declining, essentially, and that’s why we decided to leave.
Siem: What kind of work were you doing there?
Sell: Mental health therapy for inmates. Jenn and I met while working with the most mentally ill inmates in our state, and thatās where we got our original training. I was in maximum security and then went into this hybrid mediumāmaximum security unit. Thatās where they housed all the seriously mentally ill or those who couldnāt acclimate to the prison environment. Working in an environment was the most extensive training a therapist could get.
Schmitz: We were working with psychopaths and those with extreme personality disorders. We both worked with the borderline personality disorder population. We had a high level of acuity, not just in the environment, but also individually, with the patients we were helping. Our niches came with a lot of mental health baggage for us and a lot of traumatic experiences that we were seeing and reliving with these patients every day.
Sell: Letās just say that some of the things we were witness to were traumatizing. But because you’re doing it all the time, you donāt realize how traumatizing it is. When this becomes your norm, and you see these things over and over again, you act like it doesnāt impact youābut it absolutely does. Neither of us came out of there unscathed.
Siem: What stands out to you about how treatment in prison compares to treatment in the general population?
Sell: The āindividualized treatment plansā that we had in the prison werenāt individualized at all. They were just prescribed treatments we knew how to do. In private practice, I believe therapy is more of an art than a science. Iām really leaning into that these days, because I felt like in prison it was more of a prescribed approach, partly because of liability. You had to do evidence-based practice, which is very manualized and stepwise. Now, I view it more as an art, because you have to move in a way that involves real understanding and knowing what to say or do next. That feels more like art than prescription.
Schmitz: To answer your question about the difference in prescribingāwhether in the community or within prison walls: there isnāt much of a difference. Iām making blanket statements here, so take this as my experience after 13 years in the prison system, not only as a therapist but also as a supervisor overseeing mental health units.
Psychiatry was the bread and butter. It was a huge part of what was considered āmental health treatment.ā We had intricate treatment plans, but they always included the same standard, siloed areas. There was someone from rec therapy, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, an education componentāit was very structured.
The way medications were prescribed was very similar to what Iām seeing now in private practice. The amount of time and attention given to the patientāgetting to know them, understanding themāitās the same. You get a 20-minute appointment with your provider once or twice a year if youāre lucky. Thatās it. There really isnāt that much of a difference.
Sell: We’ve come to understand that prescribing isnāt very scientific, nor is it individualizedāand thatās true across both settings. But I do think more people were prescribed medications in prison than what Iām seeing now in private practice. Though that could be because I tend to attract people who either want off meds or want to avoid them.
Jenn and I lived on the units. Our offices were with the inmates, and we spent eight hours a day living and breathing with these men. We monitored them constantly.
One thing I didnāt expect to carry with me was how much I learned about psychiatric medicationāespecially side effects. We were very good stewards of psychiatry. We monitored, we learned the medications. Psychopharmacology was a big deal in prison. We had to know the meds because we were the right arm of psychiatry, and I didnāt think that experience would be as important as it is nowāfor me and Jenn. That foundation has carried over in ways I didnāt expect. I donāt think most people realize how much a therapistās experience can inform their understanding of meds.
Siem: It sounds like you were fully on board with the Western psychiatric model.
Sell: One hundred per cent.
Schmitz: I was deep in that box and twisted myself into it. I slept next to the DSM, literally. When Terry and I first met, I had to memorize everything: the diagnoses, the stats, all of it. I memorized that book. Today, Iād burn it, but back then, it was my Bible.
Siem: What changed? What was the breaking point?
Schmitz: I left for the same reason Terry didāextreme burnout. I knew if I stayed, I wouldnāt make it. Sure, maybe Iād retire, but Iād be one of those statistics. People in corrections, police, EMTsāmany donāt make it long after retirement. I knew I had to get out.
Once I did, I thought, āOkay, Iāll go back to therapy.ā Iād done that for years. But what surprised me was how, outside that environment, it became clear everything Iād learned didnāt work. I already knew my patients werenāt getting better in the prison system. There were a few success stories, but overall, people werenāt improving.
I stepped out and started private practice. One of the beauties [of private practice], as Terry said, is that therapy becomes art. You have freedomāfreedom to get training in whatever you want, not just what the state funnels down as the intervention of the week, handed down by some representative in office. I realized I could learn about things we werenāt even allowed to bring up before. If Terry and I tried to talk about nutrition or omega-3s in prisonā
Sell: I did try, yeah.
Schmitz: That was not a thing. We got laughed at or demeaned terribly. I realized thereās a whole other world. And for me, thereās a personal component. Iām a psych med harm survivor. Iāve been trying to get off Lexaproābeen on meds since I was 18. I’m almost 42 now, and Iāve been tapering for nearly 17 months.
I met Terry, joined her practice, and we just started talking. She asked, āWhy are you still on this med?ā That launched me into a whole world of, āWhy didnāt anyone ever teach me this?ā All the degrees, all the schoolingāand no one talked about this alternative, holistic, functional world.
Terry introduced me to it. It started with a neuro health coach trainingālearning how to support the brain without psychiatric medsāand my mind was blown. I havenāt looked back. Iāve bought every book on functional medicine, amino acids, and integrative nutrition. I probably went a bit farāTerry had to reel me in a little. But it worked.
I applied it to my own taper. I changed my lifestyle and used holistic strategies, and it helped. Then I brought it into my private practiceāand it started helping my patients too. That was my shift.
Sell: My [shift] started a bit earlier, while I was still in the prison. I remember reading a research article about omega-3 fatty acids. There was an inmate who was always getting in troubleāfighting, ending up in segregationāand I started digging. I wasnāt a researcher, but I was Googling like crazy, trying to find answers. I found a study that showed reduced aggression in male inmates who were given high-quality omega-3s.
I thought, holy crap, I need to bring this in. Someone just republished a similar study recently, but this was over 15 years ago. I brought it to a treatment planning session and handed it out. The psychiatrist looked at me and said, āYouāre not a dietitian. You shouldnāt be talking about this.ā I sheepishly gathered the papers back but I told people, āIf you want a copy, come see me later.āĀ That moment stuck with me. I felt shut downābut I also knew I was part of a system designed to do that.
Fast forward to private practiceāI had a patient on a benzodiazepine, an SSRI, and a sleep med. Every time she came in, she seemed worse. But she was doing all the ārightā things: meds, psychiatry, therapy. Still, she wasnāt getting better.
You canāt process information if youāre heavily medicated. Youāre not even feeling your emotions. I kept thinking, there has to be something else. I was feverishly Googling ānatural ways to increase dopamineā and similar things. We talk about dopamine in addiction or serotonin in depression, but no one teaches us how to improve it. It just stops there.
Siem: Which isnāt even accurate.
Sell: We know itās not accurate now, but itās still talked about that way. Itās still prescribed that way. I found the Alliance for Addiction and Mental Health Solutionsāthis was probably 12 years agoāand they were using amino acid therapy. I thought, what is this? I started researching. I remember asking a client, āWould you like to try some tyrosine?ā I was so sheepish, like, āHereās where you can get it. I know I sound ridiculous.ā Theyād come back, and Iād ask, āDid you try it?ā And theyād say, āYes, and it actually made me feel better.ā Iād go, āIt did? Are you kidding me?ā I was shocked every time.
I just kept goingākept learning. But it wasnāt until the last few years, with Jenn, that I really started thinking deeply about withdrawal and how bad it is for people. To be fair, Jennās experience has been eye-opening for me. Itās been so long, and she has gone through so much suffering. I really commend her for still showing up every day, doing what she does while in the throes of withdrawal. Thatās been educational for me, too.
I think itās about staying curiousāwanting to learn more and not taking no for an answer. Weāre all individuals. Weāre all suffering. But why? Psychology often stops short at the why. The answer is always trauma. Psychiatryās why is always a chemical imbalance. And Iām like, what universe do we live in where a debunked theory from the ā90s is still being used to guide treatment? That doesnāt happen in any other fieldāexcept ours. Itās fascinating. I donāt get it.
Schmitz: The field is very archaic. Weāre stuck in the ā30s and ā40sāwhen the āfathers of psychologyā laid out the foundations. Thatās still whatās being taught in school today, whether you’re training to be a therapist or psychologist. We entered this field, got into the prison system, and were just grateful to have jobs. But what weād been taught was so siloed. And we stayed siloedāuntil something personal happens. Thatās usually what sparks the shift. For me, it was trying to get off meds. For others, it might be escaping a system thatās killing your adrenal glands. Thereās always a story behind it. Then we change and go, āOh my gosh, thereās this whole other world of things to learnāāespecially in functional medicine.
Amino acids blew my mind. Iāll never forget when Terry trained me. I thought, why does no one know this? Why wasnāt it ever part of treatment to say, āHey Jenn, letās talk about your nutrition because you eat like crap,ā instead of āHowās your antidepressant? Should we up it or lower it?ā That was never part of it.Ā Even as therapists, we donāt get training in nutrition or herbal medicine. Even somatic workāwe barely scratch the surface. Freud didnāt do it, so we donāt teach it.
Sell: When it comes to diagnosing, I learned pretty quicklyāespecially doing diagnostic assessments in the prison systemāthat diagnoses donāt really matter. In private practice, the intervention youāre given isnāt tailored to your diagnosis.
Jenn and I knew this early on. Our supervisor taught us the best therapeutic intervention is rapport. It doesnāt matter if youāre doing CBT or DBTāif the relationship is poor, it wonāt work. The outcomes are worse.
I realized quickly that diagnosing is mostly for payment and insurance. But it can be detrimental. Iāve had clients denied life insurance because of a diagnosis from five years ago. Iāve seen kids denied military enlistment because of something labeled in childhood.
People need to think about how a diagnosis might negatively affect them or their children. Most of the time, itās just for billing. That giant diagnosing bookāit’s full of contradictions, buyouts, and non-truths. The intervention your therapist picks for you isnāt individualized to your diagnosis.Ā Anyone can fight me on that. Iāll see you in the backyard.
If youāre trained in DBT, youāll apply DBT to almost anyone. Same with EMDR or CBT. Therapists lean on what they know and like. Itās rarely about a specific diagnosis. I learned that real quick.
Siem: Teralyn, I know youāve also spent time on psychiatric meds, and thatās informed how you practice today. Can you share a bit of your background with that?
Sell: Pretty much anytime I went to the doctor as a middle-aged woman, the result was a psych med. The first time was during pregnancy. The doctor put me on something to avoid postpartum depression. I was 32, it was my last kid, and I didnāt know what I know nowāI wasnāt in grad school yet. I figured, āOkay, I guess thatās what I need to be a good mom.ā But the medication changed my chemistry. I became dependent and stayed on it for five or six years. I couldnāt get off. That was my first experience.
The second was when I was working for the state, in a supervisory role that was not going well. I had extreme anxiety and near-daily panic attacksācrying in the car on the way home. I went to the doctor and got a second prescription. I took it for two days and felt completely out of my mindādizzy and disconnected. I told my husband, āI either try to medicate myself or I quit.ā The last time I drove home in a panic attack, I decided to quit my job and the anxiety disappeared. Gone.
The third time was more telling. I went to an endocrinologist because I was so fatigued. In 20 minutes, she prescribed me an antidepressant, a stimulant, and a sleep aidāall three. This was while I was just getting into brain health work, so I said, āNo, thank you.ā She looked at me and said, āThen why did you come here?ā I told her, āBecause I was hoping youād figure out why Iām so tired.ā
Turned out it was my thyroid. That was the issue. But she still defaulted to meds. That lit a fire in me. I realized I was being targeted as a middle-aged woman and flagged as a psych med client. Iām sure my file says ānon-compliant.ā Needless to say, I never went back. This is how easy it is to be prescribed. Is that science? I donāt think so.
Siem: What Iām seeing now is how often women over 40 are being given psych meds. They come to me years later and say, āI was put on all these drugs, and Iām still miserable. I canāt get off. What do I do?ā We already know thereās an overprescription epidemic, but when we look at where itās concentratedāitās women over 40.
Sell: This is such an important conversation. In the early 2000s, a big research article came out saying estrogen significantly increases breast cancer risk. I think another article came out in 2024 debunking that, but the damage was already done.
Back in 2002, about 90 million women were on hormone therapy. After that study, it dropped to nearly zero. What the graphic shows is that, instead of hormones, doctors started prescribing antidepressants. In 2015, there were 61 million antidepressant prescriptions. Another 25 million for Xanax-type benzodiazepines. Twelve million sleep meds. All of that replaced hormone therapy. And during that time, suicide rates for women in that age group also skyrocketed.
Now, did suicide increase because we stopped giving women hormones? Possibly. But hereās the piece no one talks about: what if it skyrocketed because we started giving them antidepressants? Or both?
So many women are now stuck on these medications, suffering, and a lot of doctors still believe in that original study. They donāt look further. Thatās the problemāwhen you take one study and stop there. Look deeper. Search for the opposite. Ask more questions.
Thatās why I think so many women in that age category are now psychiatric patients. And honestly, historically, we always have been. I used to work in a county-run nursing home that had records going way back. I found old roll calls that listed diagnosesāand so many women were institutionalized for āhysteria due to menopause.ā We havenāt come that far. Now, weāre just psych patients instead of women going through hormonal phases.
We miss the boat on womenās health. We make them sicker. Men have hormonal shifts too, but theyāre not the same. And frankly, theyāre lucky to be left out of this conversation. Women go to the doctor and believe what theyāre told. Not because theyāre naiveābut because we were taught that doctors always know best.
Siem: Jenn, since you and I are closer in age, what are your thoughts on all this?
Schmitz: I was 16 the first time I took a psych med. And I have no memory of a big chunk of my lifeāI have to rely on medical records. Thatās my reality. Our central nervous systems arenāt fully developed until our mid-20s. When you interrupt that development, it stunts everything. And that affects so muchāyour emotional development, brain growth, organ function, hormone regulation. All of it.
Now we look at our hormone levels later in life and we think, how could they be so off when weāre doing all the ārightā things? Well, no one can tell me how my central nervous system was altered when I was a teenager. No one knows how that ripple effect impacted everything else.
And when you try to taper or get off these medications, your body freaks out. Iāve had extreme depression, unexplained rashes, a million things. Our systems were never given a chance to develop normally. And you canāt deny someone that truth. You canāt say it wasnāt caused by early med exposureābecause we donāt know.
This is where I get skeptical about āevidence-basedā practice. Terry and I talk about this all the time. Itās a blanket gold star that gets slapped on everything. But evidence-based doesnāt mean one-size-fits-all.
Siem: Evidence-based for six weeks in a labānot for 16 years in someoneās life.
Sell: Exactly. And that makes me worriedāfor you and anyone else dealing with early hormonal issues. What happens when youāre in your 50s? If your hormones are this off now, whatās next?
You didnāt test them through your 20s or 30sāyou only check when something feels wrong. Thatās part of it. But what Jenn said about the disconnection from self really resonates with me. One of my biggest regrets from staying on meds so longābecause I couldnāt get off, not because I needed themāis the memory loss.
I lost six years of my kidsā lives. Birthdays, Christmases, the moments youād normally recall, I canāt. Those memories should have emotion tied to themājoy, chaos, whateverābut I was so chemically restrained, I was neutral. To make a memory, you need emotional input. On meds, thereās nothing. Itās all flat.
You donāt realize it when youāre in it. Someone called it āspellbindingāāand thatās exactly what it is. You donāt know until you come out of it. Then you look back and realize how bad it was. I was disconnected from my husband, my kids, my life.
I wish people could get out of that spellbinding earlier. But we live in this weird, fear-based narrative: āBetter this than dead.ā Thatās where weāve landed. Weād rather neutralize a teen with an antidepressant than risk anything else.
How did we get to a place where thatās the only answer? I donāt get it. I think that fearāfear of suicideāis what keeps the prescriptions going. As long as that fear exists, the prescribing wonāt stop. And maybe thatās exactly what Big Pharma wants. Maybe the message is: āBe afraid. Take the drug.ā
But those same drugs are also contributing to the problem. Itās such a big conversationāand hard to have. Especially on social media, where people love to gaslight you. āHow dare you say that? Youāre going to make people not want to take meds.ā
What if I make them think for themselves? What if I give them the informed consent theyāre not getting anywhere else? I wish someone had done that for me.
Siem: Jenn, youāre still tapering. Whatās helped you most?
Schmitz: Staying curious. I constantly look things upāanything someone mentions, Iāll say, āOkay, thatās good to hear,ā and then I research it. I want to see if it makes sense for my life and lifestyle because some things take a lot of time, money, or energyāand those can work against me. So I stay curious, and I do a lot of reading.
Second, the power of nutrition. I had no clue how much what goes in your mouth can affect how you feel. Terry once told me I was one of the healthiest people sheād met because I introduced her to Greek yogurt. But really, I wasnāt eating well. It wasnāt high-protein, high-omega-3, or nutrient-dense. Iāve completely changed that. I pay attention to what works and what doesnāt. What makes me feel good the next day? I track that and adjust.
Third, somatic work. Iām still working on this. I do bodywork and my own touch-based techniques. I try to connect emotions to the body, but itās hard. I still struggle to feel those emotional states. But occasionally, something comes through and I go, āOh my God, thatās what joy feels like.ā Recently, I experienced pride for the first timeāthrough bodywork. I went, āThatās pride. Iāve never felt that.ā So those are the big three for me: curiosity, nutrition, and somatic connection.
Siem: Any specific somatic practices or teachings youāve connected with?
Schmitz: The biggest shift was basic mindfulness. Iāve gotten into yogaātrue yoga, not the Westernized fitness kind. I focus more on the Eastern roots, connecting to breath and body, not just doing poses in Lululemon. I do a lot of breathworkāsometimes between clients. If I have 10 minutes, Iāll spend four just breathing. I also practice mindful eating, and mindful walkingālittle things. The idea is to stay out of the performance mindset and instead just connect inward.
Siem: Given all your experience, where would you most like to see change in the mental health field? Whatās the area you think advocatesāor either of youācould make the biggest impact?
Sell: I think thereās a huge void in therapist education. We have to do CEUs every two years, but there are so few that fall outside the traditional path. I want to see more education for therapists around medication, withdrawal, advocacy, and working collaboratively with prescribers.
If weāre treating whole human beings, we need to meet them where they areāincluding when they want to come off medication. Be the therapist who advocates for them, not the one who keeps them stuck.
I also think nutrition should be part of our training. Brain health, nutrition, basic physiological understandingāthat should be part of the therapistās toolbox. Therapy isnāt stigmatized anymore; people are going. The opportunity is there. Weāre just missing it. And thatās where I think we could make the biggest difference.
Schmitz: When you were talking about educating therapists, I kept thinking about educating prescribers. Thatās where my brain goes immediately. If it were up to me, there would be another level of education specifically for them.
Now, I have a biasāIām a de-prescriber. I help people get off psych meds. Prescribers are taught how to put people on meds, the basics of what can be done. But thereās not a ton of science behind how to prescribe wellāand thereās even less around de-prescribing. They donāt know how to talk about coming off. Theyāre not trained to ask, āAre you ready? What does tapering look like?ā
Theyāre not curious about what it takes to come off safely. And I think thatās because they werenāt taught. My dream would be to create more education in psychiatry around this, so prescribers understand how to both start and stop these meds responsibly.
Sell: If thereās one training Jenn and I should create, itās this: how to recognize and avoid manipulative language in psychology and psychiatry. What is gaslighting in this space, and how do you not do it?
Weāve talked about this a lot. Weāve both used a lot of manipulative language around psych medsātelling people itās the right thing to do, that they have to stay on. We did it for years.
Schmitz: We perpetuated it.
Sell: We did a whole podcast episode on that. We kept people on meds because we thought it was best. But now, I think a CEU course on this would be powerfulālike trauma-informed care, but for communication. How do you avoid manipulating your clients into compliance? That might be the training I actually create this year.
Siem: Thank you both so much for being here. I know the audience got a lot out of this.
Sell: Absolutely.
Schmitz: Thanks, Brooke. Thanks for having us.
**
āPretty much anytime I went to the doctor as a middle-aged woman, the result was a psych med.ā
Approaching 70, now. I had a hormonal migraine for 12 years, every day, until I passed through āthe changeā (now nearly 20 years ago – just as mom had).
I thought I was being treated for headache prevention, so I could work. The bipolar diagnosis remains today. I have taken no meds for 8 years. It finally dawned on me that I was being treated like a caricature of a crazy menopausal woman. Which hasnāt been true for decades.
Two comments to add to general knowledge:
1) those idiots have now created something called ālate onset bipolarā .. garbage!
2) way back when, I had been working 24/7 high intensity on call – I had a severe sleep deficit ⦠it is unknown the ramifications of living on adrenaline and fluctuating hormones and lack of sleep, but I would think that much more will be known about this 100 years from now.
Eat healthy. Go outside and get some exercise. And of course – sleep.
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Yes, the psych professions do target middle aged women. I went into a hospital due to a pulled muscle over my heart, it was caused by exercising with weights that were too heavy – which had nothing to do with depression.
I wasn’t allowed to leave that ER without some doctor coming up to me and asking, “Are you depressed?” I told him, “No, and I’m allergic to the anticholinergic drugs.” I sat there and watched him trying to comprehend what I had just said, it took him a minute. Then he just walked away, and I was allowed to leave.
I did a portrait of the last psychologist who medically unnecessarily approached me, in a church, not a medical setting. I call the painting, “Portrait of a Doctorate in Gaslighting.” He spent two years harassing (trying to gaslight) me into signing a thievery contract. You can see it in the art section of this website.
I’m glad some psychologists are finally starting to wake up, and starting to clean up the deplorable mess, the psych professions created.
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Wow. This interview was well worth my time as it directly addresses how out-of-touch the psychiatry/psychology/therapy field is with the real world and the people who actually live in it. And it all starts with seeing psych drugs and DSM diagnoses for what they truly are—a huge pile of steaming shit.
Hope their work catches on big time.
FWIW: electro-acupuncture helped calm down my nervous system.
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Maybe a lot of scientific posturing would disappear if psychology stopped calling itself a science.
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Good point, Birdsong! Seems obvious in hindsight.
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Thanks, Hope!
If the psychology field had any integrity, it would stop calling itself a science — but that’s a tall order for fields (and individuals) that have a perpetual identity crisis.
Science is for bean counters. Intuition is for people.
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This is one of the best articles on this site. “See you in the backyard”! That’s the kind of energy and confidence that’s needed to stand up to providers who refuse to think and actually consider the human in front of them. I hope you both continue this excellent work.
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