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Boys and Friendship: No Exception To The Need for Human Connection
121 Plays4 years ago
Dr. Niobe Way talks about her research showing the crucial importance of friendship for boys. Friendship is healthy and normal for boys even though they may be taught as they get older to play cool. There are many simple things parents and educators can do to alleviate the problem.
Find more here:
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/niobe-way
https://www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=729990
https://twitter.com/niobe_way
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Transcript
Desire for Connection vs. Masculinity Culture
00:00:02
Speaker
They want the same thing that girls want, which is close intimate connections with other people. And the culture of masculinity that denies that desire gets in the way.
Introduction to 'Doorknob Comments' Podcast
00:00:16
Speaker
Hi, thanks for listening to Doorknob Comments. I'm Farrah White. And I'm Grant Brenner. We are psychiatrists on a mission to educate and advocate for mental health and overall well-being.
00:00:25
Speaker
In addition to the obvious, we focus on the subtle, often unspoken dimensions of human experience, the so-called doorknob comments people often make just as they are leaving their therapist's office. We seek to dispel misconceptions while offering useful perspectives through open and honest conversation. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Please feel free to reach out to us with questions, comments, and requests.
Dr. Naomi Way on Boys' Friendships
00:00:49
Speaker
Today we're welcoming Dr. Naomi Way. She is a professor of developmental psychology at NYU. She is the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity at NYU, and among many other books and papers, the author of Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships, and the Crisis of Connection from Harvard University Press. Really great to be here. Thank you, Grant. Yeah, it's a pleasure to welcome you.
00:01:19
Speaker
I have a lot of questions about sort of what inspired your book about
00:01:25
Speaker
boys friendships, but I think it probably would be helpful for our listeners to hear a little bit more about developmental psychology and what a developmental psychologist does and researches and looks at. Yeah. Yeah. So I am a developmental psychologist, which means I'm interested literally in human development. And my area of focus has always been from about 11, 12 years old, about 18, 19 years old.
00:01:51
Speaker
And specifically my topic is social and emotional development, which is essentially kids, social and psychological well being and how it changes through adolescence.
00:02:02
Speaker
how the sort of context, cultural context shapes boys in particular, social emotional development during adolescence. I got into it because I was interested in being originally back in the late eighties, I was interested in being a high school counselor. So I was in a doctoral program at Harvard and as part of my training, I was being a high school
Boys' Hidden Desires for Friendship
00:02:25
Speaker
counselor.
00:02:25
Speaker
And the boys who were who I was interviewing at the time, I thought they were going to talk about family relationships or school or girlfriends or, you know, violence on the street or I didn't know what they were going to talk about, but I didn't expect them to obsessively talk about friendships.
00:02:42
Speaker
And so they basically came to the counseling sessions talking a lot about their struggle to find close friendships, their other guys betraying them, hurt feelings. I mean, all sorts of things they started talking about. And I was in a doctoral studies program at the time in counseling psychology. And I was fascinated by why I wasn't learning that in my classes. So I wasn't learning that boys even wanted friendships.
00:03:07
Speaker
in the 80s. I mean, I was learning that girls wanted friendships and boys were just activity oriented and girls wanted to have the emotional connection, but boys didn't. And that's not what I heard in the counseling sessions. I heard quite the opposite actually. And I switched actually into the other doctoral program in my school, which I switched into human development and psychology for my doctorate.
00:03:32
Speaker
and tend to be fascinated by actually what's going on during adolescence with boys and their friendships and their relationships and how the culture of masculinity eventually as they grow older begins to stifle and inhibit those connections.
00:03:50
Speaker
and makes it very hard for men to find what they want. So I started doing studies in the early 90s, and I've been studying boys and men, and also girls and women, but I've been focused a lot on boys and men lately. I thought developmental psychologists follow the same kids over time. So I will start interviewing them when they're about 12 or 13, and I'll follow them through adolescence.
00:04:13
Speaker
So the patterns I started to hear is the changes that boys go through the same kid over over many, many years. And the story they told us very simply is an early and middle adolescence. They're very clear about wanting close, emotionally intimate friendships.
00:04:28
Speaker
wanting to share deep secrets, feeling lost without them. If they didn't have these friendships, they were looking for other boys that they would share their vulnerabilities with. This is not something that they would share with their mom, but it is something that they would share with an interviewer, right, where they created a safe space and they could talk about what they really wanted.
Impact of Masculinity Norms on Friendships
00:04:47
Speaker
And then as boys got older, as they started to go about this age of your son, 15, 16, a little older, they started to basically start what I call go underground with what they want. So they began to say, it doesn't matter whether I have friends, it's all good. Who cares?
00:05:06
Speaker
Um, you know and talk about also the loss of losing their friendships because they had to man up and take care of themselves and they get They shouldn't lean on anybody anymore. They should just do it by themselves and friendships are girly and gay Heard that sort of the impact of culture that our culture of masculinity damaging boys friendships and so the final thing that they really taught me is that were you know that
00:05:30
Speaker
I'll say this with a smile, but I'm saying it a little bit cynically that boys are human too. And that they want the same thing that girls want, which is close intimate connections with other people.
00:05:43
Speaker
And the culture of masculinity that denies that desire gets in the way. And so we oftentimes are raising our boys to go what I call going against their nature. And then we shouldn't be surprised if they grow up and some of them have a hard time because we've raised them to go against their nature and to pretend that they don't want what they want. So in some sense, everything I've learned from them listening to boys talk about their relationships over many years doing adolescence.
00:06:13
Speaker
Right, men stereotypically have trouble with vulnerability and managing feelings of shame and stereotypically express it through anger and counter-dependence, like trying to act overly self-sufficient. I'm thinking of my psychoanalytic training, the psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, talked about the importance of championship for boys. And I thought how close I was to my friends. But with close friends, sometimes I would get teased. They would call us gay.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we were we were just friends, but we were close. Oh, yeah, absolutely. No, I always say Harry Staxel. He was a psychologist who really was speaking relationally and in a context in which oftentimes we weren't. And he brings in the concept of junctures. And it really is when you listen to boys, the 13 and 14, it really is those
00:07:05
Speaker
kind of chumships that Sullivan was talking about, really wanting the vulnerability. And the thing that's become so interesting to me is the ways in which men struggle with vulnerability, what was the big insight is when you listen to 11, 12, 13, and 14-year-old boys and you give them a safe space to talk, they just don't sound like that. But really what I'm saying is they don't sound like girls, they sound like humans.
00:07:30
Speaker
So they talk very clearly, very emotionally, very astutely, emotionally. They say things, you know, I, you know, if I didn't have this friend, I couldn't, you know, I wouldn't be able to carry on with life. I need him. If I don't have him, I would wacko, you know, talking about the emotional nuances of their friends, the sort of complexity of friendships.
00:07:52
Speaker
at 13 and 14 and 15. I mean just incredible detailed stories about you know what their own emotional needs are and to watch that same kid Grant and Farah, the very same kid who spoke so beautifully at 13 and 14 and 15 by 16, 17 and 18, hear that kid start to deny those feelings
00:08:14
Speaker
start to pretend you know that that didn't it doesn't matter my classic one is it doesn't matter i don't care it doesn't matter but then they repeat it so many times that you know it precisely does matter and so that whole sense of defensiveness that comes in the sense of sadness
00:08:29
Speaker
And then this is the most amazing thing it's that age that I heard this loss in their language is the very age that the suicide rates and the homicide rates that boys commit shoots up incredibly high. And if you look at I'm writing a book now called rebels with a cause.
00:08:47
Speaker
reimagining boys ourselves and our culture. I've been looking at the manifestos of the school shooters, and it's the same story but more extreme ways. I mean, just that whole sense that their narratives have this beautiful emotional voice in there looking for connected relationships.
00:09:05
Speaker
And then that angry voice of nobody paying attention and nobody nurturing them and nobody taking them seriously that they want relationships. They want someone to see them, understand them, listen to them. And they want male friendships as well as female friendships. So I just think that young men have been screaming at the top of the mountain for a long time.
00:09:26
Speaker
And I just think we're, we just consistently don't hear them. We assume that their troubles are having to do with, you know, some kind of diagnosis rather than what caused the diagnosis grant, you know what I mean? Like what caused them to have mental health problems rather than it just being a mental health problem? Yeah. I mean, what I hear you describing is like a very significant shift.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you have any theories, is it societal or what are the kinds of things that contribute to that shift? And how can we help keep some of that vulnerability and that connectedness and that intimacy intact for our kids?
Cultural Views on Same-Sex Friendships
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, there's two really important questions. So why does it happen? The boys tell me indirectly why it happens, and sometimes directly. And it really is because by 16, they're referring to friendships. If they describe them, oftentimes, even now, this is not an outdated finding. I still hear it in the boys' narratives. The implicit that that's so gay, no homo, when they talk about friendships. But at 13, they didn't do that. They didn't talk about those friendships being gay and girly. They just talked about their need
00:10:35
Speaker
close friendships. So the fact that their language shifts to a more homophobic, you know, language suggests that it really is a culture of masculinity that equates close male friendships with the sexuality, which doesn't make any sense because most of our human history and most cultures around the world do not equate same-sex friendships with the sexuality. In fact, they value same-sex friendships.
00:10:58
Speaker
So the fact that we attribute, we give a sex and a sexuality to, you know, to friendships, which is just human need, is very much of an American late 20th century, early 21st century phenomenon where we have taken something that is human and gendered it and sexualized it. So that's why it happens. The question about what to do about it, I think is a, is a longer conversation. So I just want to, I have a long winded answer Farah.
00:11:23
Speaker
Well I was going to say it's striking to me for example I've traveled in India, and it's not at all unusual to see men holding hands and being very chummy, you know, both adolescents and adult men. Exactly. And from an American Western point of view, it reads as something other than friendship possibly.
00:11:41
Speaker
Though I also wonder if there could be some genetic components in terms of like an evolutionary psychology way where the same age range where men are more likely to commit suicide or homicide is also the same age where people are most in the military.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting insight. I think that the cultural thing is really important to remember, Grant, because I work now with boys in sixth grade, seventh grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. And the fifth graders and the seventh graders know that this anti-vulnerability is not biological because they're willing to name it, say it, speak it, be it. And then the 10th graders are trying to convince me it's biological.
00:12:24
Speaker
And so it's interesting to me because the case against it being biological, I always say to the 10th grade boys, the case against your biological argument is talk to fifth and the seventh grade boys. And then you'll understand it's not biological, but also looking at other cultures. I mean, I lived in China a couple of years when I was a teenager and when I was a couple of years ago with my kids when they were younger.
00:12:51
Speaker
And the difference between, you know, when I was in China in the late 80s, men were not only holding hands, but they were oftentimes with their arms around each other, you know, very, very physical, very, very touchy. Women too, you know, with women, it was very, very touchy. Men also had a much more, what we would call feminine fashion.
00:13:11
Speaker
in terms of what they were wearing, et cetera. All of it hadn't been coded a gender. And then when I went back to Shanghai in 2007, you would never see what I saw in the late 80s in Shanghai. I mean, never.
00:13:26
Speaker
because it's been coded now as girl and gay, that kind of fashion as well as that kind of behavior with other men. So I think once you look at cultural differences and you look at age differences and you look at that in the 19th century, according to social historians, middle and upper class couples oftentimes took best friends on their honeymoon. So it was the idea that best friends were sort of essential to the couple, which I think is fantastic as a concept.
00:13:54
Speaker
And then the other thing is we don't we know that history, you know, Abraham Lincoln slept in the same bed as his roommates. It wasn't gay. It was that that men slept in the same bed, you know, when they were roommates in all those things that we've sexualized weren't sexualized in the 19th century.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder how differences in gender construction will disinhibit men from their stoicism and sort of restore that normal healthy connection, which, you know, also, of course, brotherhood and connection is an important part of how teams work.
Hyper-Masculine Behaviors in Boys
00:14:28
Speaker
So even teams of men, you know, stereotypically, military or sports where there's a lot of stoicism, there's tremendous closeness also. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely, Grant. I get that a lot from men who listen to things I've been on, which is they say sports teams and the military can be places of really deep connection. But they do oftentimes complain, though. It's often coming together around violence or around being aggressive on the field. So they said, I get lots of men saying to me, they would love to have opportunities to have these connections that's not premised on violence or aggression.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. That's what socially sanctioned, right? You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to watch boys, you know, I was in a 10th grade class the other day of 15 year old boys and they were, we were having this incredible conversation about vulnerability and, you know, just they were being openly expressive about their own vulnerability and they were the ones that had previously said it's biological.
00:15:34
Speaker
but they were talking about drawn by vulnerability and then we showed a clip of some football player who had done some amazing play and the football player at the end was interviewed by a reporter and he was doing a sort of very macho but also very compelling sort of rage about you know I'm gonna I'm gonna swear for a second because I'm quoting the the football player
00:16:00
Speaker
He said, I'm so fucking pissed off. I'm so fucking pissed off. Nobody cares about you on the field. Nobody cares about you on the field. You know, I'm so funny. You got to kill. It's out there. That's a war out there. It's war out there. You got to kill them or they'll kill you. And it was interesting because the boys heard that. You know how they reacted, Grant? It was incredible to watch.
00:16:18
Speaker
They all reacted that he's the man, he's the man, the man. And I was like, what do you mean he's the man? And they said, well, you know, he's right. You got to kill people out there. And I was like, but he said he's so fucking pissed off. What is he so pissed off about?
00:16:34
Speaker
And then he says, they don't care about you repeatedly. He said, what is he pissed off about? They're like, they looked at me like I was like had two horns in my head. I mean, they said, no, no, that's he's the man. He's, you know, they didn't get what he was saying. These gentle boys that had just a moment ago been able to be vulnerable, all of a sudden got tapped right into that sort of hyper masculine stance.
00:16:57
Speaker
And so to answer Farah's question, which is the question, right? I mean, it's the question, what can we do to change it? Do you have to normalize that boys want this emotional empathy with other boys, with men and with women and with girls? And I mean, that this is a human desire, not a girly desire, a gay desire. It's a human desire. And if we don't get those relationships, we suffer.
00:17:20
Speaker
And we suffer physically, we suffer emotionally, we die younger. There's lots of health based research that shows we die younger when we're not surrounded by close friends. So the idea is if you normalize it, then you get people understanding that you have to take it seriously.
Normalizing Emotional Connections for Boys
00:17:35
Speaker
One quick anecdote is I'm in a classroom of 12-year-old boys, and there are about 26 boys in the classroom. And read a quote from Deep Secrets, which is a mushy quote.
00:17:47
Speaker
So it's like one of those quotes that says, I love him so much. I can't live without him. You know, he's my, you know, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's very mushy. And so we read the quote and I say to the 12 year old boys, they all start giggling. And I said, why are you giggling? What's so funny about the quote?
00:18:05
Speaker
And they won't tell me, but I know about exactly why they're giggling. But they're all, you know, giggling. And I finally say, no, tell me, why are you giggling? Why are you laughing? What's so funny? And so one of the kids says, well, the guy, you know, the dude sounds gay. And I said, well, look, I didn't, you know, I didn't ask people about their sexuality. But this is what I this is what boys sound like. 80 percent of the boys in my sample sound like this at some point during their teenage years.
00:18:31
Speaker
total silence, total silence. And one boy says to me, for real? And I said, oh, yeah, this is what teenage boys sound like. This is what they sound like. Within a second, within, you know, I would say five seconds, the boys were all of a sudden raising their hand wanting to share
00:18:49
Speaker
their own experiences of close friendships and their own sense of vulnerability and their desire for close friendships. And all I did, but you know exactly what I just did, I normalized it by saying 80% of teenage boys sound like this and these are 12 year old boys. And then we have this incredibly intense conversation when only two minutes before they had said it sounds so gay, just saying it's normal. Your feelings are normal.
00:19:14
Speaker
And your desires are normal, and that's what everybody wants. And then you can have amazing conversations. We need to do that far at home to talk about what you learned in this interview and ask them what their opinion is. I mean, just ask them. I mean, really, I mean, I have the feeling you may already do that.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, much to their chagrin. I do that. I pry a lot. But I also think that part of it is what we model as parents. And it makes me a little bit sad to see, and this is coming from an admittedly heteronormative family unit, that
00:19:59
Speaker
friendships, social connections, family connections seem to be coming more from me than from their dad a lot of the time and that I wish that
00:20:12
Speaker
they could see how important friendships are really to men and women make it a priority. I would clarify something when I said talk to your sons I don't mean asking them questions about their friendships I actually mean talk about what you've learned about how all boys want close friendships and even picking out
00:20:31
Speaker
quotes from deep secrets and asking them to tell you what it means. So in some sense, Farah or their dad to do it. If you can get their dad to do it, that's great. But the point is, it doesn't need to be their dad. It can be you, because you can be bringing in the discussion about boys wanting friendships. I mean, the most effective thing, I did this with the 170 boys once in one room, is you just talk, you pull out quotes,
00:20:58
Speaker
You just ask your kids to reflect on what the meaning of the quote is and why they felt that way and what that was about and right and this and because what you're doing is your model that friendships are normal it's for everybody and that boys teenage boys want it and then the other thing I would suggest which I try to do with my kids within reason
00:21:17
Speaker
is I talk about my own friendships and my own struggles with friendships and how friendships can be hard and friends can betray you and friends can say mean things and how you sort of when they when it happens to me I don't talk about their friendships because they don't want to talk about it.
00:21:33
Speaker
But I do. I will talk about mine and I'll say, you know, John didn't return my text. And that makes me feel really crappy. You know, I've texted her three times. She hasn't responded to me. You know, and then I would say to my teenage kids, how do you think I should respond to John? What do you think I should do? Right. Because the whole idea is to get them engaged, sort of thinking relationally where it's not about where they're not under the microscope, basically.
00:21:59
Speaker
where it's sort of you getting assistance from them, their insights, as well as talking about, you know, that everybody wants these relationships. It's not in fact necessary for you to do well. So anyway, just two ideas. What I often say to people is we need like oxygen, food, water,
00:22:19
Speaker
sleep, relationships, exercise, they're all necessary for life.
Value of Friendships in Psychiatry
00:22:24
Speaker
Exactly. I do think that at least our field and I mean, maybe not developmental psychology, but I do feel that
00:22:34
Speaker
psychiatry in general doesn't place as much importance on the value of friendships, on how they can affect our mood and our well-being as we really should. And I have actually, you know, people come in after a breakup with a romantic partner
00:22:50
Speaker
And they usually eventually get over it, but sometimes people will talk about a friendship that dissolved and one that they really wanted to hang on to, and that it's a very difficult thing to grieve, you know? Yeah, no, and it really relates, I got two things because you're spot on, Farah, you're spot on. So there's a new book that just came out, just came out about six months ago called Friendships.
00:23:18
Speaker
revolutionary biological roots of French or something. And it's fantastic and they make the argument you just said, they said we basically spent centuries and centuries not valuing friendships and privileging romantic relationships and family
00:23:33
Speaker
friendships when the friendship research has been for almost a century showing us the important nature of those relationships, but we still don't value them. So they're starting to act. A group of scientists are trying to start the science of a friendship's field as a field.
00:23:48
Speaker
because they just said nobody's taking this seriously as a core relationship. And the other thing is I was just in a group where a therapist got on who specializes in friendships and I've never heard that. And she said it's an emerging field and she said she is one of the few people she knows in New York that specializes in friendships.
00:24:10
Speaker
And she said it's because it really is a missing conversation, not only, and by the way, not only in psychiatry, but in psychology, in, you know, any kind of social services, any kind of, you know, personal development, personal development notion of what is mental health that's missing from
Men's Challenges in Maintaining Friendships
00:24:30
Speaker
that too.
00:24:30
Speaker
Many male patients and many men talk about how hard it is to make friendships in midlife, especially. It's really not culturally sort of congruent. You know, on average, women find it easier to make friends through school relationships. It feels weird to like ask a guy out on a friendship date. You know, women call each other girlfriends, men, if you call your guy friends, boyfriends, it's kind of funny.
00:24:56
Speaker
But it does always play, right? And then attachment in general is so important. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things we find that you would appreciate, because I'm a big attachment person as well, is that the board who actually are able to hold on to their friendships
00:25:12
Speaker
throughout adolescence and into young adulthood are the boys who have very connected relations with their mothers. And the answer, Grant, you know the answer. It's because they're basically being modeled ways to have relationships that allows for intimacy and they also have that secure attachment.
00:25:29
Speaker
It's a beautiful finding to show that I would argue, Grant, and this might be controversial to your listeners, it's not the gender of the parent that matters. It's what they're communicating to you and what they're nurturing in you. And you can be any gender you want. You could be non-gender binary. It doesn't matter. As long as you're nurturing those beautiful social and emotional skills that help us have friendships.
00:25:54
Speaker
Absolutely. What do you think Farrah? The time has gone by very quickly. It has. I mean, this is so fascinating. I think really, really important, particularly in the context of everything that seems to be changing so fast. I know some would say not fast enough.
00:26:10
Speaker
but about our society and our ideas about masculinity and even, you know, what we learned through this pandemic where people really felt isolated and had things like skin hunger and the need for touch and connection. So I think it sounds like you're doing great work in this area.
00:26:31
Speaker
I rely on the two of you to get the word out and to normalize that friendships are critical for our well-being. Number one, we need our friends. We need them throughout life, not just when we're children. We need them until we die. And secondly, that it has nothing to do, friendships and intimacy has nothing to do with gender and sexuality.
00:26:52
Speaker
It has to do fundamentally with the human desire that we need and we have to get beyond this weird stereotype. And the final thing I have to say, because it's so important to all you parents,
00:27:06
Speaker
It's shocking to me that we still define matured exclusively as self sufficiency autonomy independence, you know, you can do things on your own. We do not include in our definitions of maturity, right, the ability to have high quality mutually supportive relationships.
00:27:25
Speaker
that it's not part of our definition of maturity. That should shock us all since that's at the root of all good thriving, right? It's the root of all thriving. Why is maturity not linked with having the ability to have high quality, mutually supportive relationships? It should be fundamental to our notions of maturity.
00:27:44
Speaker
It certainly is in the work that I've done with relationships. Healthy interdependence is very clear that healthy mutuality is necessary to thrive for the majority of human beings.
Addressing the Crisis of Connection
00:27:57
Speaker
Could you tell us a little bit about the project for the advancement of our common humanity, again, at PACH.org?
00:28:05
Speaker
I'll tell you very, very quickly. So basically, I realized after I listened to boys for about 35 years in my research, about 30 years at the time, about 30 years in my research, listening to their stories and learning from them about their social emotional development, I realized they were telling me a five part story about who we are as human, you know, what gets in the way of our humanity, the consequences, which is oftentimes violence, of the clash between nature and culture.
00:28:33
Speaker
and the solutions to try to reconnect to our common humanity. I learned a story from boys and about 2010 when I wrote Deep Secrets, I realized the story was actually evident in the larger body of the sciences too, and I'm calling the larger body the science of human connection.
00:28:49
Speaker
And I realized we got to get the science out there. So I started a think and do tank and what you call the project for the advancement of our common humanity in order to bring people together that are doing adding, you know, both practitioners and researchers that are adding to understanding this five part story about who we are, what gets in the way and what we can do to
00:29:10
Speaker
address our crisis of connection and bringing together the practice and the science. So it really is a collective thinking tank to bring work together so that we're not working in such isolation and we're sharing ideas with the goal of really addressing the radical prices of connection we're experiencing around the world
00:29:30
Speaker
of increased alienation, depression, anxiety, all the things that you work with Grant, and trying to figure out how do we address that crisis of connection by reconnecting to ourselves and each other. All these methods that you read about on my website it's we do something called the listening project, lots of people are doing interventions that address the crisis of connection.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, we need to start we need to start telling a different story about ourselves and each other. So one that's actually a connected story, a healing story, a ways to see you know to actually see our common humanity. If we're going to, you know, if we're not going to implode the end.
00:30:07
Speaker
Naobi, one of the things I think about with all the work you're doing about friendship, and particularly among boys and men, is the difference between the Western perspective of individuality and the Eastern or African ideas about collectivism. In the West, we work on Descartes' model. I think, therefore, I am. But there's a well-known, often quoted African proverb
00:30:34
Speaker
of the philosophy of ubuntu which translates as I think because we are or a person is a person through other persons or
00:30:47
Speaker
I am human because I belong. And where can people find work? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, essentially, it's shifting the story, right? And it's just a story we live by. We live by our story of ourselves and each other. And we need to shift the story that the focus is on the I and the we, not the I to the exclusion of the we. So it's not a replacement of the I with the we, because that's dangerous.
00:31:14
Speaker
But it's an occlusion of the I and the we, not the only the I above the we. Where can we find you? You can reach me. I'm at NYU, you can connect with me through niob.way at nyu.edu. Then also my Hindu tank is pach.org. I welcome questions and comments from your listeners. Thank you so much.
00:31:40
Speaker
Grant and Farah, that was fantastic. Thank you for being here and for sharing about all the important work that you do. We really loved hearing it. I know our listeners will too. Thank you, Farah. Thank you for great questions. Thanks for listening to Dornop Comments. We're committed to bringing you new episodes with great guests. Please take a moment to share your thoughts. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find us on Instagram at Dornop Comments.
00:32:09
Speaker
Remember this podcast is for general information purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any other type of medicine. This is not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment. Thank you for listening.