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Below, Joe Nucci shares five key insights from his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free. Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist. As a content creator, he contextualizes mental health misinformation. His videos at @joenuccitherapy reached over 10 million people in the first six months of posting and his writing can be found in his newsletter, Psychobabble. Whats the big idea? Psychobabble replaces mental health misconceptions with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important debates in the mental health field, and better maneuver their own therapy journeys. The problem is not that therapy has gone mainstream, but that some of the assumptions we have absorbed from therapy culture are actually holding us back from healing, growing, and solving our problems. 1. Psychotherapy heals mental illness, not problems of living. Therapy works, but it doesnt work for everything. Somewhere along the way, as mental health got destigmatized, we started to believe we could apply therapy to more than just mental illness. We started to believe it could save us from more than depression, trauma, and addiction. We started to believe that it could make us the ideal partner, the perfect parent, or help us achieve profound psychological comfort in all aspects of life. Unfortunately, there is no pill and no therapeutic intervention that can erase all of lifes struggles. And yet, therapy is often marketed as a cure-all for anything life throws at you. Of course, theres nothing wrong with going to therapy to vent or if youre bored or lonely. Furthermore, therapy can be quite effective in helping you with subclinical or nondiagnostic problems, like dating issues or struggles with a life transition. But there is a big difference between needing therapy and being able to benefit from it. Knowing where that line is can be really helpful in terms of maximizing how to get the most benefit from your therapy journey. It makes you a smarter consumer of therapy services and better at navigating self-help misinformation. Maybe you need to go to therapy, or maybe the answer to your problem can be found elsewhere. If youre not sure, speaking to a qualified therapist can help you figure that out. 2. Mental health is about agency, not identity. One of the dangers of therapy culture going viral is that mental health has become a form of identity and social currency. In certain places, mental health has become popularized. People collect labels like badges, flaunting their self-awareness: I am anxiously attached. I am neurodivergent. I am an empath. In the book, I share a patients story that is all too common. She could articulate every piece of her psychological history. She was practiced at naming her emotions and fluent in therapy-speak. But she wasnt changing. She wasnt healing. She was stuck and suffering from it. She didnt need more self-awareness. While becoming self-aware is often the first step, the magic of therapy isnt about the analysis; its about translating that insight into action. It is about having hard conversations, naming her needs, and making the call shed been avoiding for weeks. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. Mental health shouldnt be about figuring out what you are. Its about being able to transform your attachment style, optimizing your life around your neurodivergency, or harnessing your empathy in an adaptive way. Its about building your capacity to be better. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. A diagnosis is useful in the sense that it informs a treatment plan. Holding onto your diagnosis as an identity without building the capacity for agency is just taking extra steps to stay exactly where you are in life. That is not the promise of the mental health field. The promise is to transform what you can and accept the rest as problems of living. 3. Therapists are not value-neutral. Therapists are taught to be nonjudgmental, but nonjudgmental doesnt mean value-free. Every therapist brings a worldview into the room. They have their own pasts, politics, and values. A bad therapist will pretend that they are perfectly neutral. This kind of therapist is blissfully unaware of how their own personal lives impact the work you are trying to accomplish in the session. A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. They are self-aware enough to consider how they might say something thats more about them than about you or why you are seeking their help. They will withhold sharing when its not clinically appropriate. But a great therapist? A great therapist can be simultaneously aware of how their past or personal values might influence them while honoring that your past and life philosophies may differ. They may even talk about their differences to assist in your healing. A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. The unfortunate truth is that some therapists feel emboldened to let their personal worldview encroach on their patients worldview. Some therapists see themselves as activists advancing a certain agenda. It could be political or philosophical. It might mean encouraging a client to end a relationship, label a parent as toxic, or reframe social dynamics as systemic harm. Sometimes thats warranted. But sometimes its projection. 4. Tragedies dont always result in trauma. Trauma is real, but so is the casual misuse of the term. Not everything bad that happens to you is a trauma. Its inaccurate to say that events are traumatic in themselves because two people can get into the same car accident and one will develop PTSD while the other one will not. A trauma response is not about the past. Its about the present moment and your current relationship to the thing that happened to you. Sometimes, pain metabolizes naturally. Sometimes, people move forward without assigning their suffering a trauma diagnosis. And thats not repressionits capacity. By insisting that everyone has trauma, we risk flattening a wide range of emotional experiences into one narrow framework. We must consider the dynamics of grief, growth, and the full range of negative human experiences that shape our lives. Disappointment, regret, embarrassment, and heartbreak are hard, but they are not necessarily traumatic. Calling them trauma can subtly reinforce the idea that we are fragile and need clinical intervention to process every difficulty. This rebranding is surely good for therapists who want a steady stream of patients, but the idea culturally undermines resilience and turns the lens inward in ways that are often disempowering. 5. Therapy-speak can be medicine, or a weapon. One of the best things about therapy is that sometimes, when you name omethingwhen something becomes conscious through languagethat thing no longer has power over you. Ive seen firsthand how being able to name trauma or abuse can provide relief almost instantly. Ive personally experienced the agency Ive gained from being able to articulate a dynamic that was previously ineffable. But if language can heal us, it can also hurt us: A patient once said, Im drawing a boundary, right after cutting off a friend without explanation. Was it a boundary? Or was it a way to avoid a hard conversation? He gaslit me sometimes means He disagreed with me. Im dysregulated becomes shorthand for I dont want to talk about this. We think were speaking the language of healing. Sometimes, were just dressing up our defenses. Sometimes, using psychology jargon is just a logical fallacyan appeal to authority. When we do this in a way that allows us to be more disconnected from ourselves and from each other, that is the opposite of the promise of the field of mental health. Learning these concepts is a little bit like learning a new language. At the beginning, its important to stay rigid with your grammar and pronunciation. Over time, as you become more fluent, its less about the words you use and more about how you use them. Its not about labeling gaslighting correctly or incorrectly. Its about knowing how to handle it when somebody disagrees with you and knowing what to do if somebody is trying to gaslight you. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
The evidence is mounting. There was a time when a college degree all but guaranteed a job. Not anymore. For decades, entry-level roles served as the primary on-ramp into the workforce for college graduates. They offered young professionals a footholdan opportunity to build experience, earn income, and grow into long-term careers. But today, that pathway is rapidly eroding. And its leaving an entire generation of educated workers without a clear way in. Todays college graduates are facing one of the most hostile job markets in recent memory, especially when it comes to entry-level roles. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a 9.3% unemployment rate for bachelor’s degree holders aged 20 to 24 in August 2025, almost double the average unemployment rate for all workers. In the U.S., entry-level hiring is down 23% compared to March 2020, which is more than the 18% decline in overall hiring, according to research from LinkedIn. Additionally, a 2023 study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that fewer than 60% of graduates had a job six months after finishing their degree. The culprit? Its a cocktail of economic uncertainty, cautious corporate spending, and accelerating automation. When capital becomes more expensiveas it has with persistently high interest rates until recentlycompanies rethink where every dollar goes. In this new calculus, entry-level roles are often the first to be cut. These positions dont immediately generate ROI, require onboarding and training, and often take time to ramp up. Instead of hiring junior talent, companies are choosing to redistribute work across existing teams, lean more heavily on AI, or simply delay the hire indefinitely. Weve effectively created a hiring freeze for the next generation of workers. Freelancing as a New Path Forward Danielle Farage, a Gen Z content creator and workplace advocate, saw this play out firsthand. After graduating in the middle of the pandemic, she took a corporate job, only to be laid off shortly after. Instead of waiting for the job market to stabilize, she started her own business. Today, she runs a thriving career built on public speaking, marketing consulting, and digital content creation. I decided it was time to bet on myself, Danielle said. My generation is disillusioned with the old playbook. We want transparency, flexibility, and purpose. If companies cant offer that, well build it ourselves. Thats exactly what thousands of Gen Z workers are doing. The Upwork Future Workforce Index study found that 53% of skilled Gen Z workers are already freelancing, batting above the average of 28% of all skilled workers who are freelancing. Whats more, 53% of Gen Z freelancers are working full-time hours, many on sophisticated, strategic projects across industries like AI, creative design, and business consulting. They arent dabblingtheyre building careers. And counter to what many may think, Gen Z freelancers are nearly twice as likely to have a postgraduate degree as their employed peers. Theyre also using freelancing as a way to learn faster. They pitch clients, negotiate contracts, deliver outcomes, and adapt in real time. These are not the soft-skill-lite roles typically assigned to entry-level employees. This is a crash course in entrepreneurship. Rachel, a freelancer and former political science major, told me she turned to freelancing after a quarter-life crisis. I was burnt out working in law and policy, she shared. Freelancing gave me the flexibility to adventure, find a home, earn what I needed, and take care of myself while building a business that works around my chronic illnesses. The Paradoxical Skills Requirements for Entry-Level Roles The very traits employers claim to seekresilience, creativity, and initiativeare being honed more rigorously in the freelance economy than in traditional workplaces. Freelancing isnt just work. Its self-education. It teaches you how to sell your skills and ideas effectively, because every project starts with a pitch. It builds time management, as theres no manager keeping tabsyour schedule is yours alone to manage. It sharpens self-advocacy, requiring you to confidently price your value, set boundaries, and push back against scope creep. And it turns personal branding into a lived skill, as you become your resume, portfolio, and reputation all at once. As Danielle Farage put it, No ones going to sell you like yourself. And most full-time roles dont teach you that.” This reality is backed by research: Upwork found that Gen Z freelancers report higher levels of intrinsic motivation, self-determination, and creative satisfaction than their full-time peers. Many feel more connected to their work, not less. And while much has been said about AI eliminating jobs, Gen Z freelancers are actually ahead of the curve. They are significantly more likely to train themselves on generative AI tools61% versus 41% of their traditionally employed counterparts. These are the muscles Gen Z needs to buildnot just to survive todays job market, but to thrive in tomorrows economy. The Freelancing Fork in the Road Gen Z doesnt need to freelance for life, but its a smart first step. It offers a way to earn income while the job market remains uncertain, build a portfolio of real-world experience, and develop business, communication, and leadership skills at a much faster pace than many entry-level roles allow. Most importantly, freelancing puts Gen Z back in the drivers seat. No waiting for a recruiter to respond. No agonizing over rejection emails. Freelancing is about building skill, hustle, and forward momentum. And in a world where the entry-level job may not be coming back anytime soon, that kind of self-directed momentum might just be the most important credential of all.
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E-Commerce
Across all sectors of the economy, there is a lot of churn in leadership right now going all the way to the top. The C-suite and its equivalent in many organizations has become a merry-go-round. When a new leader is hired into a key role, they must quickly get adapted to how things work in order to make positive changes while breaking as few things as possible. Great leaders have strategies to enable them to engage their new team quickly and institute change effectively. Here are four strategies that are critical. 1. Meet your team In a leadership role, you are likely to have many teams in your portfolio. In order to do anything successfully, you need to know who you have working for you, how their teams function, and which groups can be relied on to carry out their work. No matter how much intel you get from others before starting the role, there is no substitute for sitting down with the teams and getting to know them. This can take a while, so it may seem like a waste of time. But, talking strategically and tactically with the leaders who work for you can give you a sense of their capacity to understand, collaborate, and implement your vision moving forward. High-level leaders can never understand every detail of what every team is doing, of course. But, it is important for leaders to know the portfolios of the people who report to them, the strengths and weaknesses of those portfolios, and the pros and cons to the structure of the organization as it is. 2. Listen first Too often, leaders come in wanting to prove that they deserve to be in their role. So, they start by issuing orders. The assumption is that good leadership involves information flowing from the leader down to the team. Great leadership is collaborative. A leader must understand the situation in the organization, where the problems are, and what goals are just about ready to be achieved. That can only be done by asking good questions and listening to the answers. You want to find out the concerns of your direct reports so that you can develop plans to address them. You also want to understand the ways that the capacities of your teams can help you to achieve goals that are important to you. Youll only find that out by hearing what people are trying to tell you. Listening also helps to develop trust. People are more apt to want to follow your strategic recommendations when they are tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of their team. When the teams reporting to you feel understood, they are much more likely to engage and to adopt your goals as their own. Ultimately, great leaders get teams to work with them and not just for them. 3. Find a quick win Much of high-level leadership involves significant strategic plans that can take quarters or even years to implement fully. In order to get teams to follow you on that longer journey, it is valuable to demonstrate that you can achieve a goal. Through the conversations you have and the listening you have done to understand your teams, find a short-term goal that would lead to a meaningful step toward one of the major strategic pillars you would like to pursue. Then, engage with the teams that can help to achieve that goal and work with them to help make it happen. Provide the resources and guidance to move the project forward. The key for these quick wins to succeed is to use your growing knowledge of the organization to merge your strategic vision with the tactical strengths of your teams. That way, the success of the venture feels like something that could not have been done prior to your engagement with the team. That success helps to provide additional trust that longer-term projects will also succeed. 4. Transitions are better than purges Of course, no organization is perfect, and it is often necessary to move people and positions around. There may be great people playing the wrong roles. And sometimes, there are people on the team who are not contributing enough to warrant keeping around. There is often an urge to cut people immediately to make a clean break and move forward. And when a team is bloated and has a lot of redundancy, that is often necessary. But, the management and leadership members of the team are also are likely to have a lot of institutional knowledge that will help you to better understand how to achieve your aims. That is where slowing things down can be helpful. After all, the new people you put in place may be aligned with your vision for the future, but they may not know which processes in the organization were put in place to keep other demons at bay. Creating an overlapping period of transition can help new people to get up to speed on how to be effective in their new roles while also providing a humane exit ramp to those who will be moving on.
Category:
E-Commerce
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