Dr. Katie Hurley on the “Manosphere” & Breaking the Boy Code

Debbie:
Katie, welcome back to the podcast.

Katie Hurley:
Thanks so much for having me back.

Debbie:
Yes. Thank you for making time in your very, very busy schedule. But when I found out about your new book, I was super excited because I have been going down my own rabbit hole of the manosphere and all things boys and online and all the things. And so I devoured your book and I was so excited to have you on the show to talk about it. So thank you.

Katie Hurley:
Thank you. I so appreciate it. There’s a lot in there.

Debbie:
There really is. It’s so timely. So you’ve been on the show before. So listeners, I’m gonna encourage you to go back and listen to the other conversations we’ve had with Katie. You’ll find links in the show notes pages. I really wanna dive right into this book that you’ve written and just gotten out into the world. And listeners, it’s called Breaking the Boy Code, the new playbook for raising resilient boys. So timely. And I would love to hear a little bit of the backstory of your why for writing this book.

Katie Hurley:
So there’s a lot of whys for writing this book. I will start with the biggest one, probably in my life, which is a story you know, but your listeners probably don’t, so I’ll just share the cliff notes version of it. So when I was 23 years old, my father died by suicide. And it was nineteen ninety-eight at the time, and we had basically no language for it. It was very at that time, a death by suicide was very, you know, shameful. There was a lot of stigma around it. I grew up in the Catholic Church. That’s no longer my jam, but I grew up in the Catholic Church, so we had a Catholic funeral. It all felt very like we were just trying to get through, right? and I will say that the church we grew up in did a lovely job of helping my mom and the four of us sort of get through this traumatic event. But once the funeral was over, we were just left to sit there. in shame. And so for almost three months, my mom would say that he had a heart attack. It was very difficult for her to find the words. And then I would feel like, Mom, we have to look like that’s not true. You know, we have to figure out how to talk about this. And, you know, when my sister, my little sister was only 17 at the time. So she was graduating high school. I mean, literally within a month of him dying, we had to graduate her from high school and sort of figure out where she was going to go next. And what was happening next for her. And it was all a lot. My two other siblings were older and living in Chicago and LA. So, you know, it was me and my mom sort of picking up the pieces. And as we went through all of his things, you know, as we were cleaning out the room and moving out of the house, there was a lot that had to be done very quickly. And so we moved my mom to a different place. And as she and I were going through all this, we were reading all these cards that the four children had given to him over the years. for birthdays, Father’s Day. And the theme in these cards was always, I’m sorry, this was a hard year. Next year we’ll be better. And so even though we didn’t know, and I would say none of us knew the degree to which he was struggling, we knew something wasn’t right because we kept saying that. And my mom and I sat there in tears, like reading these cards and thinking, well, how did we not know? And the how is because in 1998, Men did not discuss mental health. They didn’t get treatment for mental health. They didn’t discuss it. They didn’t have words for depression, anxiety, any of that. So, you know, I often reflect back on that and think, we’ve got to create a better world for young boys growing up now where they feel that they can come forward for help, where they can say, I’m really struggling. And I have a 17 year old son. His name is Liam, his middle name is James, that named after my father. And sometimes that feels big, you know, having that middle name and and sometimes I think it just feels like it’s part of my personality. But I have really raised him to talk about feelings, which if you have a teenage male identifier in your house, you know that that’s not easy. and he is what is considered, you know, a gifted learner. And so you know, from a neurodevelopmental perspective, he’s different. He thinks differently and learns differently and that’s okay. But I really wanted him. So if you have a child like that in your home, you know that that’s an extra layer of how do you make sure that they are talking about the big stuff. So he has spent his 17 years like with me really checking in on like, but how do you really feel? And like, okay, but tell me more about this. Tell me more about that. And we found our way, you know, and it’s been ups and downs, nothing perfect, but we have found our way for him to come to me when he’s ready to talk about something that’s hard, and for me to check in in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive. But I really and I work with, you know, teens, tweens and young adults. And I work with so many boys, young men, who come to me and say, I just never had this opportunity and I don’t know how to do this. So, you know, we still, as much as stigma is coming down a little bit overall for some populations, not others, we have so much work to do in helping male identifying people be able to just say, I’m hurting. I don’t know what this is, but I am hurting.

Debbie:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I I also just want to before we move on, mention the article that you co-wrote with your niece. And would you just say something about that briefly? Cause I’d love listeners to check that out. It was so beautiful.

Katie Hurley:
Yes, that was actually Oprah Daily. And we co-wrote an article about suicide loss. So my niece is now I think she’s twenty-five, I’m losing track, twenty-five years old. When she was a s junior at Brown University, her boyfriend died by suicide while they were in college. and it was a wildly traumatic experience for her, of course. And she has really struggled to find her way through this. She has worked really hard. She found an online support group, you know, with other people around her age who lost a loved one to suicide. She, you know, found a therapist that really is helping her work through the trauma and find her way through. But, you know, she felt a similar experience in terms of like once it was time for everyone to go back to class, you know, the funeral’s over, the event is over. People went back with their lives and she’s walking holding hands with this traumatic grief. And so, you know, we lost our loved ones to suicide about twenty I want to say it was twenty-seven years apart or twenty-five years apart, something like that. And we had some parallel experiences, and then some experiences where maybe she was getting a little bit more support, and like his J Mo’s friends are really wrapped around her, and they still are very in close contact with her and check in on her a lot, which gives her some makes her still feel close to him and also gives her some comfort in like these were the people that grew up with him. So she had some better experiences in that way. But we really wanted to highlight where we are right now and that it’s still hard to talk about. It’s still a showstopper. I will tell a quick anecdote that’s not in that story, but you know, years ago I’m married to a musician and you know, so I’m always in like large groups of people and wonderfully diverse humans. And it’s usually always amazing, you know, everybody’s very inclusive in the music family. But one time I was with a group of people in a band that my husband was in at the time and somebody asked something like, you never talk about your father, you only say, my mother lives, blah blah blah. And I said, my father died years ago, blah, blah, blah. How he died by suicide. And the a person in his band looked at me at that time and said, Leave it to Katie to bring down the tone of the room. And I’ll never forget it because it took all the air out of me, right? And I just stood there shocked that someone said that, especially someone in that kind of environment where people are just usually so loving and like everybody’s different, you know? Everybody’s brain is different in music. and so it was really like a wow. And then for Dorrit to be twenty-five years old navigating New York’s life in New York City and she’s like she’s doing it and she’s Kinds of hard and she’s doing all the things and she’s putting herself out there, but she still has experiences where if she talks about JMO’s loss, it’s like the air is sucked out of the room and people just stare. And it’s that we all have to get better at talking about it. And being able to just say, Wow, that sounds really hard. Can you tell me more about JMO? Can you tell me more about your dad? Because that’s really all people are looking for. It’s like, tell me more, tell me about what was great because When suicide is the cause of death, people assume that everything is terrible. And my father was one of the most generous, charming, like loving people on this planet who also struggled with this mental health. And that’s something that we’re still working on as humans, right? Is being able to know that those two things can coexist.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah. And listeners, we’re gonna get to Katie’s book in a moment, but I think this is really important to talk about, and I’ll just say that we recently watched the second season of The Pitt. I don’t know if you’ve watched that show. And I just felt it was such a good representation of a professional, you know, high functioning, high performing man struggling with mental health and suicidality. And I was so grateful for that representation because it is something that we so rarely see.

Katie Hurley:
Absolutely. And not to get stuck on television, but I will also say that Shrinking is such a good representation of men going through hard things from grief to, you know, dementia and and struggling with all kinds of different cognitive decline and different things. And I think that’s just a great example of men being able to be themselves in the moment.

Debbie:
Yeah, a thousand percent. We’re watching that now that my kid is home from university for the summer, we’re diving into season three. We watched one last night, a great show. Okay. So let’s talk about your book, Breaking the Boycode. And would you kind of start by giving us a bit of an overview about what exactly the book is and what readers could expect in reading it?

Katie Hurley:
Yeah, so the high level overview is that I have done a lot of work with a lot of boys over the years. And there’s a lot of research out in the world about how boys and young men continue to be socialized. And it’s not just in America, though I could go on a long tangent about what’s happening in America, but we won’t do that. So it’s not because it’s not just in America. Ecumundo. which is an organization that does a lot of studies and work around mental health and particularly male mental health. They did a study on what is called the man box in 2017. The man box is not a new concept and was not a new concept when they were studying it, but it’s essentially like a group of characteristics that men continue to be socialized to adhere to. So stoicism. Right, not talking about feelings and mental health, but being stoic in the face of any sort of upset or distress, being strong, you know, being a provider, being a problem solver / fixer in the family. So taking on sort of all these pressures. So they did a study on that on young men and men to see, and they studied Mexico, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and they wanted to see how were these things holding up in 2017. And what they found was that yes, absolutely, across the board in all three places were young men still socialized to be stoic, to be strong, to be providers, all those pressures that have existed forever, essentially, are continuing to exist. And so that messaging continues to trickle down to young boys. So with an interesting twist was that in Mexico was the one country where men are taking on more of the domestic care with their partners. So, but yeah, but not the United States and the United Kingdom. There’s sort of neck and neck in sort of that area. So that was kind of interesting. And so this got me thinking about, well, what does it mean to be a boy? And is there a code? Is there a code of ethics that boys follow? And so as I was researching, I really dug into what we know about how boys are socialized right now. What do we know about how that’s playing out in live time? And so I read every single, you know, academic study I could get my hands on, as you saw in the book, but I also talked to, you know, hundreds of boys. And what I found was that over and over again, teen and young adult boys were saying the same things. They were saying things like, you know, you have to be, you have to even if you don’t feel strong, you gotta show strong, right? This idea of being very physically strong, whether or not you identify as an athlete, is a way to show your strength outwardly, even if inwardly you feel 0% strength. There they talked a lot about in social circles that there is very much a hierarchy. So people always think about mean girls and the hierarchy that exists for girls out there in the world. But people almost never attribute that same set of conditions to males. And the truth is that in social circles, those hierarchies very much exist. And so to get on top or to work your way up the ladder, you’ve got to do things like, you know, male posturing, being aggressive, you know, verbal aggression, relational aggression is not just a girl thing. You have to be strong and you have to be a little bit stronger than the guy ahead of you. And that’s how you get to the top. In the meantime, you never narc never. If you ever say that you’re being bullied, you’re being aggressed in any way, you’re out. It’s like you’re done, you’re out. You have to be both hypermasculine and heterosexual, but also homophobic and transphobic. All even whether or not you believe in those things, that’s how you stay in the group, that’s how you climb the hierarchy. Now, this of course does not exist in every social group. We know that there are groups of kids who experience, you know, a wide variety of friendships and relationships. So I have said the musical community tends to be very inclusive. That is true. And I find, you know, often in musical settings that hyper masculinity kind of disappears. But it’s not totally gone. Right. theater, you know, you see theater kids that hang out together maybe are engaging a little bit less in some of those social norms. But by and large, for the most part, young boys are still experiencing this social norming. And so they’re growing up in a time where they still can’t say, My life is hard. I’m struggling. This class is too hard. I don’t know what to do about this. And they can’t talk to each other because they can only posture at this sort of level.

Debbie:
So, okay, you just shared so much information and it is a little daunting when you start thinking about all of those pressures and you know, there’s so many layers to it. The hierarchy, the posturing, the homophobia, you know, it’s a lot going on. And I’m wondering if you could talk about it within the context of today, you know, like in this moment of time. To me, it feels like it’s getting more and more complicated in terms of access to information and kind of more and more siloed in the way that people consume content and find their in-groups. So what are some of the unique challenges in this moment that you’re noticing?

Katie Hurley:
Well, I would say technology as a whole. So there’s a big push to talk about social media and to ban phones from school. And we don’t even necessarily need to get into whether or not that’s a good idea. But what I would say is that for boys, it’s more than social media. Yes, there are a lot of rabbit holes on YouTube. They’re more likely to use YouTube and then TikTok for videos if they’re searching for specific topics. But these things also exist in Discord chats, in video game live chats, and video game you know, chats where they’re writing messages to each other. So there’s all kinds of WhatsApp, so there’s all kinds of ways that boys and young men connect. And this messaging is coming through loud and clear in a lot of these ways. And then it’s also even coming in through media still. So like traditional media, right? So yeah, I will tell another story about my son, which I don’t usually do, but he went off to the movies over the weekend with his friends and I typically don’t worry about what he’s doing because he’s very responsible. It’s almost like, could you please make a mistake? He’s that kid. But so we went off to the movies and he said, You know, I’m going to see Obsession. And I was like, Okay, didn’t think twice, didn’t know anything about Obsession. Well then he came home and was like, Mom, that movie was like wow. And so we talked about it, so then I looked it up. To just to know, you know, what it was. And it’s like, it’s very much incel culture. And like, you know, boy meets girl, boy gets girl obsessed with boy, and then there’s a murder. And like, whatever I mean, I don’t know the whole arc of the story. And yes, it’s entertainment, but what I wish entertainment would remember in this moment is that they’re getting all this information, you know, pushed at them through every social media app, through gaming, in live time in classrooms. I mean, teachers are reporting all over the world that this sort of incel culture has come into classrooms, into high school classrooms. And so boys are talking in very misogynistic tones, even to teachers. And so this is everywhere now. And it’s very hard to process and understand. And not every young man or boy has a parent that they can go home to and say, what does this mean? You know, I don’t know how to feel about this. Pornography has never been easier to access. And the pornography that young people are accessing is more violent. It includes, you know, choking and rape. It’s way more violent than it has ever been. And they are seeing it. And when I say easy to access, I’m talking 10 and 11 years old. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t given your kid the phone yet. Someone else has. And that means they have access. So for parents, It’s extraordinarily difficult. It feels impossible at times because even if you feel like you’re trying to do everything, you know, right or in a way that helps your son know what they might encounter, you it feels like an uphill battle because somebody else’s kid has that and they’re gonna show it to your kid without context, and then they’re not gonna know what to do. And you know, I asked my son when TikTok here in America switched over to the American version. You know, they all had to sign a new agreement that they didn’t read. And I said, What changed? Did anything change? And he actually deleted TikTok because he was like, it’s useless and it’s all bad. but I said, what changed? You know, did anything change for the better? And he said, good news, it’s pushing me porn. Bad news, red pill content all the time.

Debbie:
Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna just take a deep breath because that is a lot. And I’m gonna mention for listeners that we’ve had Amy Lang, who is a sex educator on the show before, and we did an episode just about pornography. And I’m gonna include that in the show notes because it’s a good listen. but could we unpack red pill content and incel big because I think People might have an idea of what it is, but may not really understand what it is in the context of this conversation.

Katie Hurley:
Yes. So yes, incel culture sort of started in one place and shifted to another, but always the theme behind it has been not that they’re choosing to be celibate, but that women are choosing for them to be celibate because women are awful and eighty percent of women only are attracted to twenty percent of men, which leaves most men completely unable apparently to find a mate. So that started as sort of like that is a made up statistic. Okay, that is fundamental to the movement, first of all. But it started there in that place. It has become very much a culture of misogyny, of just absolute hate and vitriol. so I always say the manosphere is like this giant idea, right? And it’s been around for decades. It’s not new. It’s new that we know more about it now. And it’s new that it’s absolutely everywhere, but it’s not new because like AOL chats back in the day, they were there. They showed up, you know, the minute they could get online, they did. So this is a you know, these are thoughts and you know, people who have been around for a long time having this sort of feeling about women and about you know how men and women should flow through society. That’s not none of this is new. What’s happened is that at that sort of far extreme arc of the manosphere are where like incel culture lives, this is also called black pill content. So this has very much merged into white nationalism, white Christian nationalism specifically, where there is a lot of rhetoric about you know, both who should be who should be leading in general in the world, how they should be leading, right? And so it’s violence, it’s a very dangerous ideology, homophobia, you know, transphobia, just basically hatred of anyone who’s not a white Christian male. That’s the sort of long and short of it and I’ll you know, somebody will hit back and say, That’s not true, and you know, they’ll prove my point by the way that they will interact with this in the comment section. But I’m used to it. So that’s sort of where that arc has landed. It’s very dangerous, because in that part of the manosphere there’s all kinds of talk about, you know, I I don’t you I don’t want to say it because I don’t want to promote it, but violence. There is a lot of talk about violence as the answer to the so-called problems. So, you know, we hear about red pill content right now and think that that’s the worst of the worst. And it’s honestly it’s entry-level compared to the black pill and the incel culture that’s sort of on the other end of it. And it’s all a pipeline. And so that’s what I caution parents to think about. Most boys are not going to end up down this rabbit hole. I want to say that from the beginning. And most boys are not going to YouTube and TikTok looking to enter these rabbit holes. They’re not. They’re hopping online asking questions that you might actually be happy to hear that they’re asking, like, how many times a week should I shower? Right? How do I do my hair? How do I do curly hair? What’s the trendiest haircut right now? You know, what kinds of, you know, body sprays are popular right now? Like they’re looking for advice, hygiene advice, looks advice, like. How do I do a popular search right now, like, how do I make new friends? How do I talk to a romantic interest, whether that’s a boy or a girl or, you know, non-binary person. Like they’re looking for information on how to do these things that I’m not learning in live time anymore because the problem with all of social media being so pervasive in our lives is that social skills are suffering across the board. In person and even among adults, right? This is not just a childhood problem. This is an everybody problem. And so, you know, they’re so they’re they’re entering with sort of these questions. Therein lie the looksmaxxers, right? And they have all kinds of names. So there’s like looksmaxxers are doing all the looks stuff, but then there’s the people who will teach you about finances, and then there’s the people who will teach you about how to get a girl. And then you know, so they’re all different kinds of maxing out there. I wish maxing in general would just go away because maybe we don’t need to max everything. But looksmaxxers are sort of the entry level to the red pill. So they’re gonna tell you, you know, how to chisel your face. And in some cases it’s gonna mean actually chiseling your face with a hammer. In other cases, it’s going to be bunk science. Hold your tongue to the roof of your mouth, you know, for a certain amount of time per day, and that will chisel your jaw. That is not accurate. This was invented by an orthodontist decades ago. He lost his license. You know, kids don’t know, right? Looksmaxxers in general are always going to say science based when they give you a tip. They’re not going to say evidence based. They’re not going to say according to the research, they use science-based, which is not, you know, let’s just say it’s not a thing, right? None of it is science-based. I challenge you to find it in the research and that it hasn’t been, you know, debunked. But so that’s sort of the entry level. and they end up there by accident. So they ask this question and then TikTok decides, hey, I’m gonna flood you with these videos on how to have that chiseled jaw, how to have the perfect hair. In the process of developing great relationships with boys and young men, these influencers are very charismatic, and they look right into the camera and make you feel like they know you, right? They have all these tactics that they use and they have a very clear playbook, you know. So in the process, they will start telling you that, well, you gotta earn lots of money. And the way that you earn lots of money is by sports gambling or day trading. And then they’ll give you some code, some access code, so that they can make money on the back end of you losing all your money, right? Boys are losing hundreds, thousands of dollars engaging in these things. And then they’ll give you the codes for the coupons and you know, whatever for the perfect shampoo and the perfect deodorant and you know, all the things. And so it’s influencer culture, right? They don’t care about what they’re selling. They don’t care about the person on the other end of the screen. They’re just gonna sell you something because they are making so much money. And that’s the disconnect where parents and boys don’t necessarily understand. These influencers are making so much money off the boys off the backs of boys and young men. And that is all they care about. And if you watch Louis Theroux’s documentary Inside the Manosphere, now he’s talking to the most extreme, the people like Clavicular, who’s been all over the news, you know, first for his tactics and then for being arrested. They’re not telling you that they’re taking steroids around the clock, that they’re doing meth, you know, that they’re doing all kinds of drugs. None of that is being told to the boys who are being told to hammer at their jaws or to take, you know, creatine and take this supplement and let me sell you this supplement and that supplement. They’re poisoning their bodies, you know, with unregulated, unproven supplements that sometimes even counteract each other and don’t work well together. You know, if you go to a holistic practitioner, they’re gonna tell you you know, what kinds of supplements could help you, but they’re also gonna tell you, well, don’t take this with that. You know, you can only take this and this together because they know what they’re talking about, right? Influencer culture, they’re just picking one little piece of information from some ad they saw and they’re making it into their own version of science.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah. And I’ll have a link to the inside the manosphere documentary as well. I thought it was really interesting. And we’re gonna pivot into how we can help boys kind of yeah, ha grow up with a different sensibility here. But I just think this is important stuff to talk about because a lot of us don’t even know these terms. And if this isn’t again, as you said, this isn’t to scare people, but this is just to be aware of it. One of the things that you said in your CNN piece on looks maxing, which was a great article. I will also have a link to that in the show notes page. You said if you identify as a male adolescent, good luck curating your algorithm, people often give you that advice, but it’s completely unrealistic in the teen boy world. You get what they give you. And so it’s really hard. And especially when we’re talking about neurodivergent kids who may be more vulnerable to trying to find connection, to f trying to feel seen and be embraced by part of a community. They may be more susceptible to following influencers who make them feel like they’re a part of something bigger. All right. So in your book, again, it’s called Breaking the Boy Code, you offer the modern boy toolbox, which is what you share are things that we can start and restart many, many times over in our kids’ lives to help our boys thrive. And as I was reading these, and I’m hoping you can explain some of them, it struck me that many of these things that we want to help our boys learn over time about understanding other people’s feelings and expressing their feelings. Rejecting groupthink, all of these things are often skills that maybe parents listening to this are already kind of working on, because we may be explicitly working on social skills and understanding and empathy with our kids. That was a very long-winded way to say it. Would you share some of the things that you want parents to do with their boys so that we can start opening up these conversations?

Katie Hurley:
Absolutely. So we know from research that boys and young men prefer actually what they call male normative coping, but prefer problem focused coping. So like, what are the… identify the problem, here’s the solution, which a lot of people don’t prefer, right? So there’s a lot of people that want to really process. And what we find right now is that boys and young men want to know the solutions. So if I’m feeling stressed out because I don’t know how to deal with this social situation right now. I don’t know how to enter this group. What is the solution to that? And so practicing the solution. So the solution might be you know, so first you walk up to the group and you stand and you listen and you look around and you make eye contact with one person, right? And then you kind of maintain with that one person and then you say or you look near them if making eye contact is hard, you know, and so you sort of make your presence known quietly, right? Then you say, hey, I’m, you know, I just wanted to come up and see what y’all are talking about. Or something. Like you give them language, you ask them to practice language they would actually use. This is huge with Gen Z and Alpha, by the way. Like we talk so differently than young people right now. And not even just the phrases, but just in terms of like casual talk versus like for me to try to give a kid you know, a very specific language on how to enter a group. I always sound like an old lady and I can hear it coming out of my mouth. So then I’m like, okay, you say it like you, right? So actually doing that with them, going back and forth and like, well, how would a kid say that? Like, hey, I saw you hanging out and wanted to stop by. Like, what would that be in kids speak right now? Write it down, right? They keep a journal of what they say their kids speak so that you can get good at it. and then practicing. So giving them opportunities to practice. I know you all know this, but giving them those very specific opportunities. You know, if what they’re feeling is angry about something, whatever it is, right? They’re just feeling anger bubbling up inside. What is the problem-focused solution? Well, is it progressive muscle relaxation, which you can do anywhere, anytime, or you’re, you know, tensing and relaxing the muscles until the tension comes out of your body? Yes, it could probably be that. is it, you know. finding your own space where you can go do like 10 jumping jacks and then reframe your thoughts out loud like I’m feeling angry because I gotta see on this test. I don’t think it’s a fair grade. Deep breath, I’m gonna talk to my teacher and try to figure out what went wrong. You know, giving them these very specific coping skills to get through hard moments. Often what we tell young people is practice deep breathing, you know, do mindfulness. That does not, I mean, listen, that works for a lot of people. And as a clinician, I will say there is a very good evidence base behind mindfulness. But for young people in the heat of the moment of, you know, whether it’s stress, anger, you know, just distress of any kind, that doesn’t feel actionable. That feels like out here, like I have to go and get into this mindful space and think about my brain. And I’m mad right now, so I can’t do that. So giving them sort of physical coping skills, like things that they can do, keeping a stress ball in your pocket. You know, I recommend that to kids across the gender spectrum all the time. Just keep a small stress ball in your pocket so that when you need it, you can pull it out and you can help yourself to you know, stress and release the tension and get that physical tension out of your body. We know that boys and young men feel that tension very strongly inside their bodies. So helping them do something physical to get it out is important.

Debbie:
Mm-hmm. So really it sounds like supporting our kids in developing our boys specifically, you know, in the context of this conversation, developing kind of their social and emotional intelligence is really kind of the most protective factor so that they are less vulnerable to getting kind of swept up in what might seem like easy solutions.

Katie Hurley:
Yeah, absolutely. and also, you know, a big thing is I call it support mapping. So helping boys, you know, we do this with girls intuitively. Well, who can you talk to if you’re upset, you know? But we don’t do this with boys. So support mapping. If they are at school, who is the person that they actually trust inside of that building to talk to about something hard? It could be anybody. It could be someone working in the cafeteria, it could be the crossing guard. All kinds of folks work in schools and kids choose all kinds of people to be their people. So help map out. Here’s someone you can talk to if you are feeling the feelings, any feelings, and you don’t know what to do with those feelings. Like who’s your adult that supports you? Who’s another peer that you feel like you can just at least sit next to and like to vent to or just sit with and like to be together while you’re feeling distressed? What can you do? What you know, what are you allowed to do? I mean, that’s the other thing. It’s like, what will schools actually let you do? But then helping them negotiate with a teacher, like, can they get a hall pass and go take a lap around the school and come back? can they get a hall pass, go to the front office, check in with that person, come back? Like, what are the strategies that the school will actually allow them to use so that they are, you know, getting that opportunity to connect with their trusted person? and then also just like get their bodies moving so that they can think and not have like these big giant reactions silently and and alone. And that also encourages help seeking. So really, you know, can they pass a note to the teacher? Can they send a note on whatever they’re using, Schoology? Can they send a note through there that says, I’m really struggling right now, I need extra help. That’s a great silent strategy where a kid can connect with a teacher. and get the help that they need. And so we have to really innovate in our brains and think about how they can make themselves known and their needs known.

Debbie:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. I’m going to ask you one more question, then we’ll wrap up because I realize we’re going a little long, but I could talk with you for hours and you have a very busy life. So you have a chapter in the book called Rebranding Sensitivity, where you talk about the unique reality of raising boys who are highly sensitive or who might struggle with rejection sensitive dysphoria. And those are two profiles that I know a lot of listeners are identifying with. Can you just talk a little bit about what makes this a little more complicated since these are particularly tricky things to navigate if our kids already have this heightened sense of being criticized or not seen for who they are?

Katie Hurley:
Absolutely. And this is a huge, huge issue that’s close to my heart because I’ve worked so for so long with so many kids that go through this. And so what I would say is this our good friend Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is fond of saying, name it to tame it. And you’ve heard that phrase. I know you all have heard that phrase. And I like to take that phrase and think about sensitivity in that way. Helping kids understand who they are. and how they operate and flow through the world is really important because when they know, you know what, I do take in the feelings around me. And part of rejection sensitivity dysphoria is not just like, I’m being criticized and that feels awful. I’m being criticized. The tone in this room is very negative. I’m that’s seeping into me because I actually have a really high level of empathy. Other people are being criticized around me. I’m taking that in as well. And so it’s very complicated because these kids They’re like sponges and they soak up all of the negative or all of the positive. It doesn’t matter. And so they feel all of this in a huge way inside of their bodies and inside of their brains. And so helping them understand that that’s how they operate. and that they can learn to develop their own scripts inside of their minds. And it’s not just reframing, right? And it’s definitely not positive thinking, it’s neutral thinking. This person has said this and it made me feel awful, like they hate me. They don’t hate me. They’re having a hard time right now. It’s just neutral thinking. There’s a huge power in neutral thinking. And nobody talks about that. It’s never like it’s talked about in therapy offices, but that’s a thing that hasn’t made it, right? Onto the big world wide web yet. So, you know, really helping them embrace like. I’m feeling this because I know that I’m sensitive to this kind of feedback. And also I know that person doesn’t hate me. And also I know I’m good. Like I’m a good person. I’m a nice person. And right now I’m feeling it because all these things are happening. So helping them with their inner dialogue because kids who are highly sensitive and kids who have, you know, who experience rejection sensitivity have this chatter in their brains. They’ll say it. There’s this ch It’s like my brain is always talking to itself and it’s saying all these things. They’ll literally describe it that way. And so helping them, I always say to personify it. So, you know, no matter what age, right? Draw a picture of it. Who is it? Name it. Because you can talk back to it when you name it. So I’ll say, like, I call my guy Bob. Like if Bob is acting up and, you know, super criticizing, because I experienced this as a kid, you know, then I I can talk back to him and go, knock it off, Bob. This is not about me. This is about that person. Now I’m 51 years old, so I can say it that way. you know, a 15-year-old can’t. They can’t likely access that level of assertiveness inside their brains yet, but they can start to say, like, hey, that’s not fair. I don’t like that kind of thinking. So learning to converse with it, not try and stop it, you know, thought-stopping is not a good thing. It’s working through the thoughts. And so personify it, draw it if you can, name it. Give it the personality that it has, which is cranky and not very kind, you know, and then learn to deal with it.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. Thank you for that. Yeah, we can’t, we can’t ban thoughts. They’re always going to be there. So I love that idea. Okay, so there’s so much more we could go into, but we are gonna wrap it up. So I wanna name the book again. It’s called Breaking the Boy Code, the new playbook for raising resilient boys. It’s good to be aware of the world that our boys are growing up in, just so we can just be tuned in, not and not be necessarily hypervigilant, but be really just aware and notice, pay attention to our boys and keep the conversations going. So Katie, where would you like people to check out your work and connect with you?

Katie Hurley:
I think in terms of connecting, I love Instagram the most. So I probably spend the most of my time there. at Dr. Katie Hurley LCSW is my handle on Instagram. And you can go to my website, practicalkatie.com All of my books and work are kind of listed there. And yeah, find me wherever. I just love to hear from people.

Debbie:
That’s great. Thank you. And listeners, I will have a very extensive show notes page for this episode with all those resources as well. So congratulations on the book. I’m so grateful for you putting this work out there and supporting families and parents the way that you do. And thank you so much for everything you shared today.

Katie Hurley:
Thank you for supporting me.