Social Media Psychology
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Guest: Dr. Blair Steel
Release Date: 3/10/2025
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Steve Washuta : Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta. Co Founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101.
Steve Washuta On today’s podcast I have on Dr Blair Steele, you can find everything about her at D, R, B, l, a, i, r, p, s, y, d, on Instagram, She is a psychologist, a licensed clinical psychologist, an addiction specialist, and today, majority of our conversation is going to surround what I call social media psychology.
Steve Washuta We’re going to be pulling apart trendy terms like narcissists and boundaries, talking about labels into personalities and dark psychology things of this nature. If you haven’t ran past this on your socials. You probably will eventually, but I know it’s all over mine, and I think it’s important for us in the fitness and health industry to understand some of these terms and labels and understand what’s trending on the mental health realm, not just the physical health realm.
Steve Washuta I also want to give a shout out to Raquel Hopkins. We play a clip from her, Raquel, the capacity expert on Instagram, and she is someone who provides mental health services. She’s a coach and a therapist. And you know, we play a quick clip. I will be playing it on this podcast if you’re if you decide to watch the podcast on the YouTube, you will see the clip.
Steve Washuta Otherwise, you’ll hear the clip, so that you have some context as to what Blair and I are talking about. So just want to give her a quick shout out. It was a great conversation. Again. You can find everything about Blair at the DR Blair PsyD on Instagram.
Steve Washuta With no further ado, here’s Blair and I. Dr Blair, welcome to the truly fit podcast for either the third or fourth time. Now for those who have not heard you on the first few times around, why don’t you give a brief bio of who you are and what you do in the medical and health industry.
Blair Steel Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s always fun to come back on these. I’m a licensed psychologist. I started my career in focusing on addiction. I’m an addiction specialist, so I’ve worked for many years in treatment centers, and now I’m evolving as a person, and so is my profession.
Blair Steel So I do a lot of private practice, and I’ll be really starting to build a niche, I think, a bit more on women and women’s challenges. So stay tuned for some of that.
Steve Washuta What do you mean by your profession is evolving?
Blair Steel Well, you know, I feel like it’s a very interesting job in that, like I’m taking this from Alex art, and when our mess becomes our message, right? Or even when whatever era or state that we are in, I feel like we work well within it.
Blair Steel So now, as a mother, I’ll be turning 40 in April, I’ve been just growing and and noticing what’s different things that that’s going on around me. So I really want to keep evolving with within my profession as I continue to grow.
Steve Washuta Yeah, I think that’s tough for people. They maybe this is something we can talk about, but they tie themselves to a particular job, or it’s part of identity and not even a job, but maybe, maybe a niche inside of the profession, and you might find yourself, let’s say you work, you work in the addiction space, or you have for a long time, and maybe that just your energy runs low for that, right?
Steve Washuta You get to a point where you’re like, Hey, I’ve been doing this for seven or eight years. There’s always more to learn. I know I can do more, but it’s just not what gets me out of bed in the morning anymore. And I want to do something different. I think it’s hard, at least in my industry, in the personal training industry, to sometimes say, like, I just don’t want to do this anymore. I want to do something a little bit different. You know, it’s still interconnected, but maybe not exactly.
Blair Steel What I’ve been doing, sure exactly, and even what I’ve been finding in particular is while working in treatment, particularly with alcohol use disorder, that women specifically have a whole nother bag to bring to the table, which is our hormone fluctuations.
Blair Steel And I’ve been noticing these wild trends of relapse happening in substance use disorder, and women around PMS, and like no one talks about it. So now I’m kind of just like taking a field that I’ve been in and then trying to laser in on some of the less talked about, under researched areas within it.
Steve Washuta So it’s fine, yeah, this, it reminds me of a study they did in jails of testosterone levels. Natural men’s testosterone levels in jails are, like, 20 to 40% higher than the average male walking around, and they believe that has a lot to do with the risky decision making processes that drove someone to be in jail in the first place. Interesting.
Blair Steel Yes, that makes a lot of sense, you know. And this is kind of a sidebar, but I found it really interesting how women have been left out of medical research, kind of for the last 40 years. And I think one way to look at that is people would say, Well, you know, men create these studies and they want it to benefit them.
Blair Steel That’s actually not accurate. Part of the a huge reason as to why women have been. Left out is you need a control group. And because we cycle, it’s really hard tocount for the variation within that So men are just easier to study because they don’t have those variations. So they’re a solid control group when you’re trying to study whatever it is that you’re researching and measuring.
Steve Washuta Yeah, that’s interesting. It feels a lot better.
Blair Steel You know, for all my ladies out there, you know, it’s we could step down from our feminist viewpoint for a second and just do really what it is, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to figure out how to work within that.
Steve Washuta Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s, yeah, okay, maybe the science is more difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s less important, so they still need to focus on it at some point.Correct? Yeah. So today, the majority of our conversation is going to be around social media psychology, and I guess we can, you know, maybe you can define that in some way.
Steve Washuta But how I would just briefly throw it out there is it’s just terms used like psychology, terms that are used in the social media landscape, specifically that may be misused in certain instances, and maybe kind of trendy to the average person, because they’re able to, I don’t know, put easy labels on these terms, right?
Blair Steel You know, I think post COVID There’s been a wonderful addition to to the mainstream language and media and talking about mental health and reducing shame and making access greater. And all of these things are really positive things.
Blair Steel But what I’ve noticed in people, I’ve noticed this in society. I mean, we can look around is a lot of corrections tend to be over corrections. And there’s a theme now of people using these terms almost as a way to to stay stuck, or to, you know, reach onto a label which can keep it up here, rather than really feeling what’s going on, and can be used more of a crutch.
Blair Steel So now I’m not saying all of it is, but there’s certainly a thing happening here where I’ve noticed, and I’d even like to bring some humor to some of it today. Not that it’s all funny, but it’s, it’s interesting how we can just take things too far. We do it all the time, yeah.
Steve Washuta It’s innocent. It happens in my industry, Blair, and where it does is somebody will find maybe something they’ve never heard of. It’s intriguing, and they see everything through that lens now. So in my industry, a big, a big thing, the iliotibial band runs from your hip down to, like, the lateral distal femur.
Steve Washuta Basically, it’s a not quite a tendon, not quite a ligament. It. It connects multiple things. I don’t want to get into the science, but people will say that every problem do with your knee to your ankle to your lower back, oh, it’s it. Band, you have it. Band syndrome.
Steve Washuta There’s something wrong with your IT. Band, you used to roll it out. You need to stretch it. You do this because it’s just like the trendy thing, right? It does factor into a lot of injuries and issues that I just mentioned, but a lot of times it’s not that it’s not the culprit, or it’s a secondary characteristic of the injury.
Steve Washuta It’s not the main thing. But people tend to see everything through the one lens when they start to learn about those things, rather than kind of take a bigger picture and step back, that’s
Blair Steel That’s right, that’s right. So, like, my goal today with you would be to look at some of the things and just kind of like put a pin on areas that you know tend to be overused or even misused, which, again, is not to invalidate that a lot of those things are real for what they actually are, but we have kind of over generalized a bit.
Steve Washuta Well, let’s start with the one that’s, you know, been trending everywhere, and that’s narcissist. I’ve seen various definitions of this. Sometimes you could even read the definition of narcissist and think, holy shit, I’m a narcissist. They’re they’re vague, they’re it’s thrown around everywhere, and I feel like people use it as, like, the ultimate pejorative, and they, a lot of times.
Steve Washuta They use it in a very, I’m trying to think of the proper terminology here, but they’re really just trying to fire shots at you, right? They don’t necessarily think you’re one, but they know that it will, it sent, it sends a signal, almost to the extent of, like, You’re a pervert, you know, like, that same sort of feeling that you would get if someone calls you that.
Blair Steel That’s right, it’s kind of a conversation Ender, not a starter. And, and you are that that means I’m a victim to it, yeah. And I think, you know, that’s one of the more compelling places people like to say, you know, sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s true. I mean, if I’m the victim to something, then I don’t have to do anything differently.
Blair Steel I don’t need to look at myself. I can make this your issue and and leave it at that. So that’s it’s a huge one, and we can even talk about the difference between narcissistic traits. Yes, and narcissistic personality disorder, which is pervasive, and a true lack of empathy and a true inability, or even interest in considering the feelings of others, plus grandiosity.
Blair Steel And, I mean, I can go into the diagnostic criteria, but people with NPD, I mean, that’s, that’s a whole nother ball game. And even still, if we’re going to have some compassion, why, if that is really where someone’s at, which would be like, you know, a real mix of harsh, negative life experiences, to put yourself in such a fortress like this, should we make someone else’s disorder about us?
Blair Steel Yes, tricky, but you’re right. I mean, if you looked at some narcissistic trends, anyone could be considered that right. You could say, to go to graduate school, to have a desire to build a career or take anything to the next level, is narcissistic.
Steve Washuta We’ll have a podcast.
Blair Steel I was giggling because now I’m like, staring at myself when I say that. I’m like, Whoa. But Right, exactly, it’s also much more common in men, statistically. And I think that’s like, also added, added something into the dynamics here.
Steve Washuta Yeah, well, maybe we can go through with those you, I think you called the term diagnostics, or, you know, what exactly are the the terms that one would use if they were looking at somebody, and maybe talk to me about the differences between someone having these traits, so to speak.
Steve Washuta And maybe just acting in a way in certain occasions that would also adhere to the traits, if that makes sense, right? You, you may act selfish, let’s say in certain instances. That doesn’t mean you’re always a selfish
Blair Steel person, right? Right circumstances, and we need context, right? I mean, we do. We need the way someone behaves in the workplace may not be the way someone behaves at home. We were just talking about even our children who like have to hold on and in here all day long, you know. And when they get home, they may just want to be messy.
Blair Steel And so it really, truly, truly depends. So sure, well, here’s one dating this comes up a lot in the dating world, and it’s like, uh, maybe someone didn’t call you back and you’re devastated. Maybe he just doesn’t want to date you. You know, he doesn’t narcissist.
Steve Washuta Yeah, um, or has to be the opposite, couldn’t it? Like, couldn’t. A lot of, a lot of the people that I see who are, you know, let’s say habitual daters. It’s not that they’re narcissist they have low self esteem, and they can’t continue on with the relationships because they have nothing else to offer after the first few days, right?
Blair Steel Right? And then here’s another thing. So the point of mental health is to make us stronger. It’s to build resilience. It’s to build our capacity to tolerate adversity and things not going our way, and negative feedback, that is the point, right?
Blair Steel So if we’re using it however, to throw labels and to not reflect, then, then that’s when it just doesn’t, isn’t working the way that it’s intended to work. And I think that’s when we get into an area where these things could be used more as shields, these protective measures, rather than tools or avenues or paths to growth.
Blair Steel So mental health for weird is, is it’s at an all time high, and that is great, but some of these trends, they are making people worse, not better. Let’s talk about it, because I got three that’s top of mind.
Blair Steel The first one is turning labels into identity. Labels were meant to be for understanding, not a personality, but today, people are branding themselves with their diagnosis, and even when you think about like, I have ADHD, so I can’t focus, I have an anxious attachment, so I can’t trust people. Instead of working through things, people are actually using the labels to justify staying the same, and in some cases, like using it to weaponize like some of their relationships.
Blair Steel The second one is, and I’ll keep saying it pathologizing normal life struggles. Not every challenge is trauma, not every difficult person is a narcissist. Not every workplace is toxic. Just because you don’t like your balls. Life is hard, sometimes that doesn’t mean it’s harming you. But when you pathologize normal struggles, you rob yourself of the ability to actually navigate them.
Blair Steel And then the third one is this obsession with feeling seen, heard and validated. At some point, we stopped striving for growth, and we just started chasing external validation, the need to be constantly seen, heard and understood. Saying or understood has become an emotional crutch. Here’s the truth, not everyone will understand you, not everyone will validate you, and that’s not a threat to your well being.
Blair Steel The obsession with external validation is keeping people emotionally fragile, instead of teaching them how to stand firm in who they are, even when no one claps for them, and I know that I said three, but here’s a bonus one, because what the hell is even a safe place life doesn’t come with trigger warnings. Growth requires friction.
Blair Steel If you constantly need environments that cater to your emotions, you’re not building mental strength. You’re building dependence. True safety comes from knowing you can handle yourself in any space, not just the ones that feel good. Mental health should strengthen you, not weaken your ability to handle and or engage with life. Okay.
Steve Washuta Speaking of the labels, what you just said, I will have already played the IG clip that you and I had shared together and talked about, but it seems that the you know, the first instance, and that I will have said her name, the labels and and being put into personalities, yeah, and then weaponized.
Steve Washuta Or is certainly part of that, right? We it’s very easy to pretend you’re holier than now and have and have that particular terminology to throw at people and then put that label on them and sort of, like we just said, like, scare them into being that being a conversation under.
Blair Steel Right? And it’s like even talk about a way to keep it stuck, like, I am this, therefore, right? I have this, therefore, I have an avoid attachment style. Therefore, you know, I’m not going to try to build a healthy relationship, because I tend to dodge or or run when things get scary or challenging, right? And I’m here to report like and we could talk about attachment styles later.
Blair Steel That’s definitely another one that’s that’s pretty trendy, just because we have one that sure will stem from our childhoods, it doesn’t mean we can’t work on that. Okay? It doesn’t mean we can’t change so this is where the over identification with something and just owning it as part of my personality is tricky.
Blair Steel I mean, imagine like when people do it with their with their astrological sign, like, well, I’m an Aries, so I can pour it easily, so on to the next, you know, or whatever it might be. Um, I think it’s very similar to to that, but now we’re doing it with mental health diagnoses, which is just kind of missing the point.
Steve Washuta Yeah, it’s also from, you know, that this gets into more sort of philosophy than psychology, but obviously everything sort of interconnects. But from kind of, like a free will standpoint, you know, a lot of these people who might be dealing with this, it’s not necessarily their fault, if that makes sense, right?
Steve Washuta They’ve, they’ve encountered things in their life where this, these personality traits were adaptations for, I mean survival, in a sense, from psychological survival, and that’s, that’s why they are who they are.
Blair Steel That’s right. That’s actually always right, you know? But so if you can almost picture like a rainbow, everything, even even things like borderline personality disorder, right? All of these are adaptations.
Blair Steel So if the adults in our lives are inconsistent, or they have this kind of, like, hot and cold thing, you don’t really know what you’re going to get, you yourself will develop more of that push and pull attachment style, like, like, you’ll go in, but then like, you can’t totally trust it and for valid reasons, and then you might pull away. Okay?
Blair Steel And all of that is there to protect you as a child, because as a child, we don’t have control over our environments. We don’t have control over who we let in to our lives and have those relationships with it’ll start to plateau.
Blair Steel However, there’s a you kind of start coming down the rainbow, and it’s important to ask ourselves, like, is this still working for me, particularly if our environment has changed and we’ve grown and all of that, is this still working for me? Which is why a personality disorder, for example, can’t even be diagnosed until you’re an adult, because as a kid, it’s just an adaptation.
Blair Steel As an adult, it becomes a maladaptation. In other words, it works against you. It can really have negative impacts on your workplace, relationships, all of it. So yeah, compassion and, you know?
Steve Washuta Staying on that, I think that leads perfectly into like, something else that she was talking about in the video, which is, you go through these trials and tribulations in life. But how does one sort of differentiate, you know, pathologizing normal life struggles with actual life struggles, right?
Steve Washuta Is my workplace? Is my workplace actually toxic, or am I just kind of being, you know, just a picky about my boss, who’s at. Asking me to do things that any other boss would ask them to do.
Blair Steel Yeah, that’s definitely something where I’m not saying we have to have thick skin, but we do have to be resilient. There is a point where we can expect every space we’re in to cater to our needs or to be considered emotionally safe or whatever. Not saying some workplaces are not toxic, because some of them are.
Blair Steel So again, we’re holding space for that to like be a real, real thing, but the overuse of it, it doesn’t feel like a place I would want to live of like my my sense of wholeness or my sense of security is reliant and dependent upon external factors that I actually don’t have any control over, right?
Blair Steel And let you know. And if you’re in a job that has this sort of thing, you’ve got two choices, learn how to work within it, or find another job like you. It’s one or the other.
Steve Washuta Yeah, and people, I mean, that’s a great point. People like to complain about things. Complain about things, and, you know, there’s always other options, you know, and sometimes those options are get away from that, that whatever that issue is.
Steve Washuta Now maybe you need counseling and help in order to get yourself from point A to point B. Maybe that’s harder, you know, it’s not easier said than done. But I do think sometimes people think I’m in a bad position, like in a bad job and in a bad workplace, although I would argue, what about everyone else that works there? Right?
Steve Washuta Because eventually it’s a sort of a common sense standpoint. If there’s 14 people there, no one else is complaining about you. It’s time to be introspective and see maybe you’re the Exactly, exactly.
Blair Steel And I do want to, like, take it back a little bit to what I just said. I know it’s not easy for people to just up and change jobs and maybe options aren’t that plentiful, but there is something to be said about managing our expectations of others and seeing what we could do to to coexist within it.
Blair Steel Whether that’s like having, you know, an ally within the workplace, understanding that this person is who they are and that actually has nothing to do with me. So if they blow past me in the hallway, you know, I don’t need to spiral. My self worth isn’t dependent on them greeting me or whatever.
Blair Steel And we can just, you know, be a little bit more sturdy in in who we are and how we let people impact our moods and our the way just that we view ourselves and the world around us.
Steve Washuta Yeah, and I think that’s sometimes it’s difficult if you don’t have, let’s say, really good friends or a really good partner to be able to say those things too. So they can, they could, you know, reliably tell you if you’re full of shit or if you’re telling the truth, right? You’ll be like, Hey, I’m dealing with the situation this co worker.
Steve Washuta And if you have a really good friend, they could say, Well, you said that in your last three jobs, right? So, like, maybe, you know, is it that you always have a bad coworker, or is it that maybe your expectations of your coworkers are too high, right?
Blair Steel And, and one of the most amazing things these days is you people don’t get away with shit like they used to, okay. Like, ask certain people in the in the media right now, but you really don’t. So, like, if there’s actually a toxic like, or a sexually abuse situation happening, or, you know, really, really not okay, things.
Blair Steel I think people are really more held accountable, and there are proper channels to go through, through HR and whatever, if there’s like discrimination happening, and that’s real, but that’s a positive thing, right? It’s like, just ask Diddy.
Steve Washuta Exactly, yeah, well, well, you know my Well, I was gonna talk about boundaries Next, I will say this is not controversial. I think he crossed some boundaries.
Blair Steel Yeah, but homeboy got away with it for a long time. And you don’t get away with shit like that these days. And I love I really like that. I think we’re all really held accountable. I think this cut from services we provide from anything, you know, if you’re, I think if you’re doing anything that’s not okay, it’s gonna come out. And I, I love that.
Steve Washuta I think that for for better or for worse, it’s really social media that has done it, because what it does is you forget about something like him. Let’s take something that’s even more disturbing. Let’s say there’s like police officers who are doing improper things, right, right? It used, it used to be that you would not want to report that because then, long term, it’s going to hurt you.
Steve Washuta But now it’s actually no, no, you do want to report that because it’s going to go viral. People are going to catch it, they’re going to get in trouble, and then you’re going to be left alone. So social media sort of helped the those, let’s call them, scarier situations become more scary.
Blair Steel That’s a great example where power and retaliatory behaviors can come in. Now, it’s like there’s body cams, and we’re all going to see it so exactly.
Steve Washuta But staying here on sort of the boundaries conversation, and we’re talking about before, sort of like maybe, or at least we were alluding to maybe kids at work. Now. Days, it’s probably different environments than before. I remember a funny story in one of my first jobs.
Steve Washuta I was an intern, and I was just overloaded Blair with the amount of work they were sending me, and I couldn’t get anything done because all I was doing was opening up emails, opening up emails, opening up emails, there’s a new task, new task, new task.
Steve Washuta So I eventually just sent like a message up the ladder and said, I’m only opening emails at nine, one and four, and they sent me an email back, basically saying, like,Go, screw off. You’re an intern. You open your emails all day long, right? So just but now I sort of see it’s like I was so low level.
Steve Washuta I should have probably actually had to sit down with someone instead of just sending an email about that situation, right? And said, Hey, this is what I’m thinking. Is there anything else, if we can’t do this, can we do something else similar?
Steve Washuta But I do feel like the younger generation are now sort of drawing those boundaries that I tried to quicker, rather than having sort of conversations. They feel offended and they draw a boundary.
Blair Steel Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s important to talk about what boundaries are, but it’s also important to talk about what boundaries are not, and boundaries are not an expectation of anyone else doing anything differently. It’s like, I’m gonna basically, it’s saying,
Blair Steel This is what I’m gonna do. Okay? I’m going to walk away when you know certain things, like, let’s say there’s a hot topic. Let’s say my mother in law wants to talk about parenting styles, you know, and I’m just like, I’m not, I’m going to walk away when that, if that were to come up, for example, or, or if.
Steve Washuta You’re like, and they’re talking politics, if you’re at work and they’re talking politics, or, if you’re Yes, you know, if you’re in casual situations, and they’re talking about things you’d rather not get into, you’re not worried that they’re going to continue, but you’re saying you need to be worried about your actions,
Blair Steel Right? And that’s, I feel like, the essence of it, like when I speak to people about boundaries, it’s, let’s talk about you. What are your preferences? What are your deal breakers? It’s there’s great examples of just like, even with parenting, like, I’m going to just move my body in between my daughters if they want to start hitting each other.
Blair Steel Okay, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s not like me saying, if you do this, then I do that, and this, like this expectation of anyone else to do anything differently. So it’s very much your side of the street. I think boundaries on social media or whatever could, could just keep people like, well, if, if you don’t respect my boundaries, I’m cutting you off.
Blair Steel And it’s, I don’t know that doesn’t feel right to me, particularly, like if someone’s suggesting to cut off your family members, your parents, your, you know that’s you gotta be really careful and delicate around that.
Steve Washuta I think we can, well, I think it happens a lot now, yeah, but imagine being.
Blair Steel More sophisticated around it. Um, you know what I mean? So, like, I’m gonna draw you a little, a little image here, which I like to use with people, which I think is, like, it just helps put it into perspective. I’m drawing three different stick figures here. Okay, and I’m gonna do one. The first one I’m going to have a rigid boundary. You’re like in a box.
Blair Steel And I think this is where social media has taken it, that it’s very much like this. Okay, I don’t know it sounds like a lonely space to me. We’re interconnected, whether we like it or not. We need relationships, okay? So then let’s say the person in the middle has no boundaries, and it’s just, you know, saying yes to all things, finding ourselves overwhelmed, resentful, right?
Blair Steel And your example with the workplace, imagine if you met with your, you know, manager or whoever was like this doesn’t seem efficient. How can we work together to make this work? It probably would have landed a little bit differently, right? Yeah. Um, so really, the goal here, however, is to have kind of, like this perforation, right? Where, you know, these, here are your boundaries.
Blair Steel They’re like, this is where I stand on X, Y and Z. And if a new person or whatever is coming in, they’re going to be met with a little bit of like, you know, because I value myself and have self worth, I do want to make sure this is a good situation for me, but there’s definitely a path in, and I think that’s the goal, right? So an over correction, particularly with women.
Blair Steel You know, we were programmed to kind of be everything for everyone to take care of everyone else. If you had needs. I think it was kind of frame more as complaining you don’t want to do that. So that certainly did not bode well for people for many, many years. You know that. We if we want to over correct, that doesn’t help either. So finding the balance in between is, I think, the sweet spot.
Steve Washuta Do you believe it’s wrong? Or how would you deal with the situation if you yourself set those boundaries differently for different people. So you have, I’m just gonna make up a hypothetical scenario. Here, you have a good friend, and her name is Diana, and Diana lives across the street.
Steve Washuta And then you have somebody else who’s maybe not as good of a friend, and her name is Sally, and Sally also lives down the street. And you’re okay with Diana stopping it at any time, but you’re not okay with Sally knocking on the door and stopping it at any time. How do you How does one, I don’t know, frame that in their mind and feel okay with that, or is maybe that not okay?
Blair Steel Yeah, I think that’s okay. I don’t think we have to explain ourselves as much as we think we do. You know, if we say, like, this is what works for me, and if that then gets violated.
Blair Steel So let’s say you tell the one friend of you asked to just please, like, call or text ahead of time, and let me give you the green light for whatever reason, you know, and they don’t do that, then that’s like, that kind of says something about the dynamic of the relationship.
Blair Steel Like, maybe this relationship was, was born in my self abandonment and my people pleasing, right? If they think that they could, you know, just overstep what I clearly stated. And that’s another thing, is you can state a boundary very much like that, like, Hey, this is, actually did that recently with a neighbor.
Blair Steel Like, hey, this is just, please give me a text ahead of time. And it was really more so like to play with my kids. My kids are chilling, and they come over with a bunch of kids, and I wasn’t in the mood, or whatever, or, you know, we have homework to do, then that doesn’t work for me. And it went fine, um, but I think it it makes people squirm.
Steve Washuta Yeah, it probably takes practice to get comfortable.
Blair Steel It does, not only does it take practice, but typically, when you first start doing it, especially if you were like, a yes man, or more of the people pleasing type, it’s not always received well, like you could start saying no and and maybe it does come out sideways at first, if you’re not like, you know, if you’re just kind of getting used to it, I think it’s like a muscle, and the more you do it, the stronger you get.
Blair Steel But then like to finally muster up the courage to say no, you know, or decline the invitation, whatever it may be. And sometimes the people in your lives would be like, what’s gotten into you. So there’s really a hump to get over. You know, it’s it’s hard to make change at baseline. I think we resist change. We really have to feel tension in order to motivate for change.
Blair Steel And then, if you’re taking a behavior that has always gotten you positive reinforcement, like people pleasing. You’re a great employee. You’re a great you know, you get a lot of accolades where, oh, you just you do the most, you know, and trying to change something that’s received positive reinforcement is really hard, and then you start to do it, and then you get negative reinforcement for the change. Now it’s really, you really have to push through that.
Steve Washuta Yeah, yeah. Not to mention, I feel like it might feel at first, I’m just trying to put myself in these situations, like it might feel almost inauthentic, or you’re trying to find your voice for that statement, because you’ve never done it before, right?
Steve Washuta So like, if you’re trying to do something like, maybe it’s be, like, a little bit forceful, like you said with that neighbor, and you’ve never done that before. You’re searching for that like, that the proper tone. And it almost seems like, is this, is this me? Is this even me, who’s saying this?
Blair Steel Or you can even approach it like, Oh, I’m so sorry. Like, Oh, I hate to say this, you know, um, with kind of more of a nervous energy. But then what’s what’s really beautiful? I feel like once you start doing these sorts of things, you really are more like the most seen you’ll ever be.
Blair Steel Your relationships really improve. People with poor boundaries tend to, at the end of the day, hold a lot of resentment and and loneliness, and at the end of the day, can also be like, dishonest, um, in way, right? Because if you’re saying yes, when you mean no, so it’s a beautiful journey to go on for, like.
Blair Steel When it’s real and authentic, if it’s used, however, as a shield, as a way that I’m gonna make no changes, and I’m expecting you to do something differently. That’s when we’ve missed the mark, and that’s what gets shot around, I think, a lot on social media, and could be misconstrued.
Steve Washuta Yeah. Well, said the term dark psychology. Have you heard it before? It was a Tiktok trendy term. I think it’s you. Something to the extent of its communication tactics that are sort of psychology based, but that they’re used for negative reasons.
Blair Steel I hadn’t heard of it. Um, actually, and I’m also not on tick tock, but whatever I’m sure it’s around, doesn’t surprise me. The Dark Web is a is a murky, murky little reservoir. But, yeah, I mean, it doesn’t surprise me, there’s a lot of manipulation out there.
Steve Washuta Yeah, one of the things she talked about was, like, telling a secret to someone to, like, get them to trust you, but it’s like, not a real secret, and it’s just like, it’s like, it’s almost like a it all comes off to me as, like, sales tactics, almost right, like tactics that like a bad sales movement use, not necessarily like some evil, conniving person in like a relationship or a friend. It’s almost like very salesy to me.
Blair Steel Yeah, I mean, yuck. It sounds it sounds crappy. You know, it almost when I think of growing and developmentally like I remember in my teens and 20s, like it was so easy for me to shoot out, like a Yeah, mom going here, but I was really going there, like without any care at all.
Blair Steel And as I grow, and maybe it’s the development of my prefrontal like, the the burden of holding a secret or a lie just sounds awful. It sounds like a lot of work. So I certainly don’t encourage whatever is going on. I’m sure these, you know, these teens have a lot of information these days, but not a lot of wisdom. It’s a very interesting place to be.
Blair Steel Even the vocabulary. Think that’s a lot of what we’re talking about is taking, taking terms and making them what you think they are with that really delving into or just catching on to the the way it’s being used, right? It’s like vernacular that’s just, I don’t know if it’s I don’t know if it should be brought into the psychology realm.
Steve Washuta Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great statement to say there’s a lot of information to take in, but when the wisdom is not there to, you know, put put that information forth, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work, right? There’s, there’s no compatibility there you need, you need both of those things to work in conjunction and concert, and that doesn’t, seem to be the case.
Steve Washuta What are some other maybe trendy terms or conversations that you see going around in your industry, specifically that are online that you think this is, this is gross. I hope it stops.
Blair Steel Yeah, I love the attachment styles. I wanted to bring that up, you know, I think I see it a lot with dating, and I think people feel hurt a lot and disappointed and and really seek to find a way to make it about the other person, right? So, like, a big one is, is the avoidant attachment style.
Blair Steel And it’s like, you know, just because he or she didn’t return your call or text, we don’t need to pathologize their ability to form a healthy relationship, right? I mean, if you want a quick of what actual attachment styles are like, and just like a 101, they’re secure, which is basically like your parents, you know, we’re there.
Blair Steel They provided safety, but let you, like, go off and do your thing, and then you were like, you know, back there, and always there for comfort within New experiences, right? So it’s like, there’s a lot of trust there. I can trust myself and I can trust my parent.
Blair Steel So that’s like, ideal, okay, with anxious, it could be a little bit more if your parents did everything for you and kind of put you like, wrapped you in the emotional bubble. You might be a little anxious and need a lot of reassurance. Need a lot of validation.
Blair Steel Okay, I think back in the day, we used to maybe, like, if we’re using it, and I have to say, like, I’m kind of cracking jokes here, because and and I’m sensitive, I don’t want to come off as callous to all of the real parts of this. But if it’s misused, maybe this person, we used to call that person just annoying.
Blair Steel Yeah, we’re not talking about attachment styles. I think, you know, some people are just annoying. So if it’s flipped, then the avoidant, you know, is calling the other person anxious attachment.
Blair Steel Then that could also be spun in a way that’s, that’s not accurate at all. I think it’s important, particularly if we’re attracting the same type of person, and then it’s not working, and then we go for the same type again and it’s not working in the same type, that’s such a wonderful window. Into us.
Blair Steel So if we can get to a place rather than pointing the finger, which is, I think, the problematic aspect of it, of asking ourselves and reflecting like, what is it about me that attracts this type of person, or is attracted to this type of person who repeatedly, it doesn’t end well, I think that’s the purpose of understanding some of these things, rather than hiding behind them.
Steve Washuta And one would think, if the pain is, you know, strong enough, for lack of a better term, then you then you make the correction like anything else, that’s right.
Blair Steel That’s like sitting in the tension is when we make change. So when, like, another term that you hear a lot is enabling, they’re an enabler. What that actually means is you kind of cross over into someone else’s lane and remove some of the tension of their own consequences.
Blair Steel So that could be like bailing someone out or making excuses for someone’s behavior or whatever, so you kind of bail them out. So if you, on the one hand, really want someone else to change by going on and cleaning up their mess, they won’t feel the tension and therefore won’t have the motivation to do so.
Steve Washuta Do you see this? These attachment styles, labels equally, being put on both genders, I would assume that that’s not the case.
Blair Steel I see it more often. Standard of women labeling men. Is that where your head went?
Steve Washuta Yeah, I just assume that, you know, if the labels were being thrown around again, maybe they’re online specifically, rather than in like, let’s say your profession, looking at something from an actual mental health standpoint.
Steve Washuta If the labels were being thrown around, then it was probably more pejorative, and it’s probably more women to men, but, but from, from actually, from your standpoint, from looking at these attachment styles and like, maybe, you know, sitting down with clients, let’s say patients, do you feel like there are attachment styles that are more gender specific?
Steve Washuta Or do you even put would you use these attachment styles for both males and females?
Blair Steel I would when working clinically with someone, sure it’s it could be helpful to notice someone’s patterns. But as a clinician working privately with a person or a couple, I’m really motivated to go beyond the label and see what we can do today.
Blair Steel We are all adults who can actively work towards making changes within ourselves, within the way this that we communicate, within The way that we approach people that can totally disarm a pattern, or, really an attachment pattern or relationship style.
Blair Steel So like, let’s say, you know, even with, let’s say there’s two people in relationship, and one person’s trying to make change and the other person isn’t okay, that’s what I want to talk about, not necessarily. Well, you’re this because of that, and you’re this because of that. So you could pay me now, that’s really not productive whatsoever.
Steve Washuta Right? Yeah, I feel like you could do that through, like, evolutionary psychology or something. Be like, nope. This is what you want, and this is what you want. This is just, you know, millions of years of adaptation. We’re not going to analyze anything and go fix it, as opposed to looking at the individual.
Blair Steel And it’s just another way for us to intellectualize, to stay kind of numb to it, to, you know, I’ve written about this before, how the therapy fallacy, I think, is like, once I figure this out, I’m going to heal from it. And I wish that were true, you know that once we once we map out, you know, the paths prior and where I want to go then, then I’m going to heal.
Blair Steel And I think that’s a really important step. But truly, the healing comes from taking it beyond the intellectualization and actually bringing it below the neck and and feeling, feeling the discomfort and sitting within it. I think that’s where the healing actually comes from. Is is not avoiding our feelings or not trying to just constantly feel better. It’s like to be better as
Steve Washuta someone who has a focus in the space of addiction, or at least you did for a period of time. Do you think social media is helpful maybe in that space, or do you think it could exacerbate the issue? How does one navigate those waters? If, if they feel, whether it’s a counselor or themselves, personally, if they feel that, that this could be, you know, either hurting or helping their addiction issue.
Blair Steel Well, it completely depends, you know, um, the social media itself is, is designed to addict us, right? In the sense, if you get these really quick bursts of dopamine that quickly drop off. So just the nature of it is. Like, worthy of of addiction. Um, so I pros and cons, right? I think the pros of a community is awesome, yeah, you know, it’s a really lonely space. It can be very isolating.
Blair Steel So when you can see, like, millions of people that have gone through this thing and and have gotten better, or, you know, or whatever, or maybe you’re just sitting in it, but and struggling within it, and you could be like, wow, like me too, and I’m not alone in this. I think that’s beautiful. It’s also great for tips, you know, of self care. I’ve seen that.
Blair Steel Then, if we want to go into the cons, I’ve seen that, like, taken way too far, you know, where I’ve like, I need to do 18 things in the morning between my cold plunge and my peptides and my this and that, before I can, like, be human in the world. Well, then you know that that might just become a little excessive.
Steve Washuta Yeah.
Blair Steel Because we’re doing here, we’re taking something outside of us to make ourselves feel better. So now it’s almost like, you know, we were just doing it over here, and sure, don’t get me wrong, like fitness and all that, I would it’s certainly a healthier route.
Blair Steel But if we’re still avoiding, if we’re still find ourselves in the same place that we don’t really want to be, and we’re not actively working to again, not just feel better, but to be better. You know, in a state that like doesn’t require, um, external validation, that I’m not looking for the pat on the back.
Blair Steel You know that I don’t necessarily need anyone to even notice my change, that my change is sacred to me because it feels more aligned with how I want to be, you know, than that, it’s kind of another version of the same animal.
Steve Washuta Yeah, and I think you know what you said before, just alluding back to the community. I do think it’s really important, obviously, in that space, and a lot of spaces for people who have, you know, any sort of addiction and depression, whatever, community is very important.
Steve Washuta I do feel like the online space has opened up in a very positive way for that, like you said, not only to hear other people’s stories, but to maybe connect even virtually, like we are now, in a way that other people couldn’t possibly connect before.
Steve Washuta So I do think, you know, looking at it, I think it’s a net positive for that community. I actually think it’s a net negative, maybe for just the average person, meaning like somebody who, if you you’re not looking for community, you’re going you’re going online, you’re you’re now, maybe you didn’t have any issues or qualms about your life and how things were going right.
Steve Washuta You considered yourself happy and successful, but now you’re Doom scrolling and think that everybody else has it better than you.
Blair Steel Yeah, I would, I would agree to that. I would absolutely agree to that.
Steve Washuta Yeah, I see that. I see that a lot as a problem, and obviously in the fitness industry, it’s huge because there’s a guy, of course, his name evades me, but he he has a whole IG account where he calls out people who Doctor their photos, and he is very good at it, right?
Steve Washuta He’s a professional photographer, so he knows like these things where basically, like, he can look at not just like the actual image through an art way, but through the background, sort of inspection of the digitized numbers associated with it, if that picture was original or not. So he’s he’s basically saying, like, I’m not going to allow this, like fitness industry model fake bullshit anymore.
Steve Washuta I’m going to call you out. And doesn’t matter if you have 4 million followers and you’re, you know, Kim Kardashian, or if you’re somebody who has 40,000 followers or four or 400 followers, if you’re faking your photos, this guy named goob go B, he’s coming after you. Wow, that’s awesome.
Steve Washuta Now you could apologize. You could say, Yes, I do fake my photos, but if you lie, then he’s going to sort of double on here, and he just in. The message is like, hey, let’s keep this real here, right?
Steve Washuta And some of these people are, like, in amazing shape, where they have like, 7% body fat in their bodybuilders, but they still have to, like, tuck their waist or make their biceps bigger, or make their you know, it’s like, this is not like.
Steve Washuta I’m this is not helpful for the average person to think that you know that you you, that you’re doing this, and you look like this, and he comes after them. And I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s good, it’s good that you have the people on the other side
Blair Steel fighting back. Yeah. Talk about holding people accountable. I really feel like we, a lot of industries, are really held accountable in a way that we never were before. And I like that bubble bursting?
Steve Washuta Yeah, and it could go the wrong way, just like we talked about things. I think the term you use is like overcorrection. You don’t want people over correcting like that now they’re seeking their validation by trying to call other people out, and that’s all they do, is call other people out, and that just makes you sort of an angry. A jaded person, yeah.
Blair Steel I think it’s a hard way to make friends, that’s for sure.
Steve Washuta Yeah? Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Blair, why don’t you let everyone know where they can find more about you and what you do if they want to reach out to you personally or professionally?
Blair Steel Yeah. So I’m on Instagram, so you can find me at Dr Blair sidey, so that’s D, R, B, l, a, i, r, p, s, y, d, and that’s also my website. So www, Dr Blair psyd.com, and thank you so much for having me. This is always a blast. I’ll
Steve Washuta put the IG handle and the website in the description. Dr Blair Steele, thanks for joining the truly fit podcast.
Blair Steel Thank you for having me.
Thanks for joining us on The truly fit podcast. Please subscribe, rate and review on your listening platform, and feel free to email us. We’d love to hear from you social at truly fit dot app. Thanks again. You.
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