The Pressure to Perform: Balancing Resilience and Accommodation with Dr. Leena Khanzode

How do parents support anxious, high-achieving teens without turning childhood into another project? In this episode of The Reframe, host Doug Bodin sits down with Dr. Leena Khanzode to discuss the pressures adolescents face in today’s materialist and high-achieving world. Dr. Khanzode is an adjunct clinical faculty member at Stanford University and the founder and president of Taarika Foundation, where she supports youth mental health through education, awareness, and resilience-building programs. During their conversation, Dr. Khanzode shares her perspective on the intense pressure many adolescents face and how elite college admissions can shape a teen’s sense of identity and self-worth. She delves into how the pressure has shifted over time, the role of cultural expectations, parent-child dynamics, mental health treatment, and the growing reliance on accommodations. They also discuss how parents can move away from fixing and performing, listen more deeply, and support teens in building resilience without ignoring mental health needs. Tune in to learn about achievement culture, parenting, therapy, accommodations, and how families can reframe success in a more balanced and emotionally healthy way with Dr. Leena Khanzode.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Background about Dr. Khanzode and the work she does with adolescents and families.
• Learn what adolescent pressures Dr. Khanzode sees most often in Silicon Valley.
• How pressure has shifted from parents pushing teens to teens pushing themselves.
• Explore why some high-achieving parents can start treating their children like projects.
• Find out how pressure can extend into activities, therapy, and mental health treatment.
• Why there is no quick fix for a struggling teen, and why the parents’ involvement is key.
• Hear how Dr. Khanzode’s background informs her view of education and success.
• Dr. Khanzode shares lessons from parenting her own daughter through high school.
• Understand how college admissions pressure affects both parents and teens.
• Insights into her approach to helping parents realign their expectations with their kids.
• Unpack how mental health awareness can sometimes negatively impact teens. 
• The ways over-accommodation can affect teens’ perseverance, resilience, and coping skills.
• Discover how Taarika Foundation supports youth mental health awareness and resilience.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Dr. Leena Khanzode

Dr. Leena Khanzode on LinkedIn

Stanford University School of Medicine

Taarika Foundation

Mindful, Beautiful, and Thriving Podcast

Supporting the Whole Child on YouTube

Douglas Bodin
The Bodin Group

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So there is all this pressure they are feeling, which is why they are willing to use the card of mental health at times and find the competitions, find a prescriber who's gonna give them that letter. So it's becoming a broken system.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Welcome to the Reframe, where we have real, unfiltered conversations about mental health, parenting, and addiction treatment in a changing world. Hosted by Douglas Bowden, a therapeutic consultant with 35 years of experience, we explore the shifts shaping mental health care, featuring experts pioneering new approaches and offering practical advice. Join us as we challenge old narratives and reframe the way we think about the challenges in mental health treatment. This is the reframe. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

She's an adjunct clinical faculty member at Stanford University. She's done training both in India and the United States and brings a global perspective to youth mental health. She's also president of the Tariqah Foundation, supporting mental health for kids and families through education. Welcome, Lena.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Thank you, Doug. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

We are as well. And maybe just as a point of introduction, say a little bit about what you do, who you work with, and we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

As you mentioned, I'm a child and adolescent and adult psychiatrist. So I do see children as little as three years old, sometimes even two years old, all the way till adult age. My favorite group is to work with teens. I have a lot of teens and young adults that I thoroughly enjoy working with. And like a child psychiatrist, I do work with all kinds of diagnoses: anxiety, depression, ADHD, behavioral issues, and problems related to autism spectrum disorders. And of course, parent coaching and working with the school system. I mean, it it's it's like sometimes I feel like I also put a hat off a case manager working with different people from different kinds of backgrounds. It's because a child doesn't grow in one space. It takes a village to raise a child, they say. And so I'll try to collaborate with all the people in that village.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

As I've gotten to know you over the years, and especially as we were prepping for this podcast, I was really blown away by how many different things you're involved with and bringing your expertise to, like you said, with schools and that you work with family, you do coaching, you do more than many psychiatrists do in terms of that engagement with the individual, the their family, and then the community at large.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Right. Yeah, no, I do like my field even more so because it gives me this kind of variety of experience of interacting with people from different walks of life. I think it can get pretty monotonous to just do one thing, but this really gives us a broad perspective of how we can support the child, the whole child.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

What do you see as the shifts? And for focusing mainly on the adolescence for a moment, what have you seen in the in the last number of years? There's so many things that have happened. We've spoken about them a little bit, both you and I, as well as on this podcast. We've we've touched on a lot of things. What's your perspective on that? And I think you have a view onto certain communities in Silicon Valley and the pressures and stressors here. But what do you see as being the most impactful pieces for the adolescents in this area?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I would say that I have been, I would say, fortunate to just stay in the Bay Area ever since I immigrated 25 years ago. And so my experience is very much, in some ways, restricted or influenced by what I have come across here in the Bay Area. My experience about how maybe life is a little bit different for teens in other parts of the US, and even for that matter, more globally in India and other places where I have my friends and family, is a little bit, you know, eye-opening because I feel like we have a unique challenge here our kids face. It's understandable that the world's become a more competitive place because of globalization and how we all are all over the world now, and there is much more of a competition that the kids are now facing than we did maybe many years ago. But I also feel like the cultural aspects of Bay Area, in terms of that be an entrepreneur at age 20, you know, being inspired by all your parents who are entrepreneurs and have been these tech giants, you know, in the Silicon Valley, or even just the pressure of wanting to excel and trying to do more than what your parents did, or try to do it at an earlier age or earlier stage of life. I feel like my work has shifted from when I first started my practice 15 years ago, I would see parents actually putting pressure on the kids, wanting them to really excel, do a lot in the high school time frame and apply and get to the best of the college. But in the last five, seven years, it's shifted where now the parents are saying it's okay if you gotta be, it's okay if you, you know, don't go to the Ivy League, you know, elite schools. You just see this different pressure the kids are putting on themselves instead. And it's really disturbing to me because, of course, I mean, I see the worst of it coming to my office, but it is universal. Like I interact with friends and family kids, and it's like everybody in high school, especially once they enter the junior year, they seem to be so stressed out, so worried about where they're going to end up, what their life could be, and how do they actually stand in comparison to others.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

So you think the parents have gotten better about not pressuring their kids as much, but the kids are still putting just as much on themselves and they're getting it. So they they sort of lag behind their parents in the pressure they're putting on themselves. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

I mean, I would say that that's a shift I've certainly seen. It's not that the parents have like all the parents have magically stopped putting pressure. Certainly not. So I think the thing that I see though is it's an interesting, again, professional background that they come from. All of these tech people that mostly are the parents in this area are really, I mean, of course, they are great at what they do. A lot of them are super meticulous and organized in in whatever projects they are doing. And I say this, you know, with with a little bit of like a humor that I feel like they are also treating their kids as a project of another kind of kind. So the goal is to get them to the best of the school. And so, what are the steps and how we can do this, how we plan this journey, how we get it all done, is a kind of like another project that they are very invested in. And it's just like, you know, a little bit of like, I catch myself saying them like, hey, wait a minute, your child is not your project.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

And are they able to hear that? Uh, you because I think there's a lot of implications to that. I I think the project is not just with regard to their academics, but it's also with regard to how they treat their mental health and what they have to do to get better, or what resources or professionals, or whatever else that they expose them to. I think it's in that domain as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Absolutely. I think you know, this is very different than when I was growing up. I had to just excel in academics, get good grades, and then I could go to one of the better schools. The application process here is much more different. They demand you to show excellence in multiple domains, not just academics, but extracurriculars, be it sport, be it music, be it, you know, some kind of additional talent you have. So there is a lot of investment in not just like, okay, study hard or I can get you best of the tutors, to like, you know, yes, I can get you the best athlete coach to go to the best of the music teacher. I mean, name it, like it's pretty broad where parents are trying to make sure the kid is getting all the opportunities to succeed. While that's not bad, but I think comes with that expectation, this whole perfectionism that we are trying to instill in the kids, which is hard for them. There is a lot of stress they experience because of like, okay, now I just don't have to like do this activity, but I also need to excel in that.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Right. And at some level, that detaches from the relational aspects. And if you think about what you're doing professionally, you're having to interact with them. I imagine there's an expectation that kids are having to be perfectionists in therapy as well, and have to do that well. So that can that can be just another area where they're expected to excel, to perform. I think part of what I think has happened, we have other podcasts that touch on this, is that the use of various therapies and the expectation of doing therapy well sort of identifies the child as being the one with problem or needs the fixing and detaches from the relational component with the parents, with the family, with the extended community, because there's there's sort of the expectation that their child just performs at therapy, perform at what's been put in front of them in that regard as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Absolutely. I think you're bringing up a really good point, Doug. What I have been seeing a lot is that by the time they are going to seek mental health help, a lot of the times the relationship between the parent and the teen is really almost severed or damaged. And there is a lot of work that needs to be done to kind of bring that back, bring parents back into the equation. And even though they identify the patient as the identified problem or identified patient, that's really not the case. There is a whole kind of family and the dynamics in the family and how you've parented them, and of course, individual baggage and journeys that people may have. There's a lot that goes in in understanding why the teen is struggling, why the parents need to be part of the process as well. And they, you know, usually walk in with an expectation that, okay, here's the problem, fix my child. He has ACT, SAT coming up. We want this to be all solved by the next couple months. And then, you know, he should be all good to apply and we can pretend nothing happened. And so it's often like that's where we start. And it's like, okay, we need to a lot more education, getting them back to the basics, remind them this is like it just didn't kind of come out from nowhere. This was building, and how we can peel those layers to get to the bottom of the problem.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Having immigrated from India, what are some of the distinctions that you see and how does that inform your work with families here?

SPEAKER_00 11:27

The beginning, I was thinking, oh, this is, you know, very much coming from the Asian culture that I come from. I'm from India and South Asian culture, and maybe a little bit Southeast Asian. You know, that's where there is a lot of value that is instilled in education and making your education as a gateway for your career, which is a great value that we all have had. I would say that I'm here because of that. All the people who immigrated here and have all these really great careers are because they valued education and put time in kind of investing in that and getting to the place what they deserved. While that is important and while that's something we talk about with our kids, I've done that with my daughter as well. I think we need to bring in the perspective of how the world is a different place right now. While, yes, you know, education is still a gateway for many career pathways. It doesn't need to be you have to have the education from the most elite school, and only that's the way to excel or or succeed. That is the part that I feel like has shifted. And of course, you know, we were talking earlier, it just doesn't even restrict to academics. It's like now we are looking at these are kids who are actually having to do well in multiple domains, and that adds to the pressure, which is very different than what I grew up with. Like I was not expected to, you know, also do well in in my sport, you know, I used to play or or whatever. So I think that has slowly been more understood by a lot of families coming from that cultural expectation. I have had to work on myself when my daughter was going through high school and and take a step back. And I use my personal example when I'm talking to families and say, yes, you know, this comes naturally. This is kind of a belief system that's been instilled into us from the way we were raised. While that is true, it is something we can modulate and we need to modify and adapt it based on who your child is, what their strengths are, what their potential is, and how you can balance their emotional well-being. They are growing in a much more stressful world than we did. So they have a lot of sources of anxiety already. So, how can we also take that into consideration and find that balance where you are giving them all the opportunities and exposure, but we are not giving this message just like there's only one way to get there and kind of remind ourselves there's multiple great institutions, multiple great colleges here, multiple opportunities that you can get. Undergrad is not the end all and be all. Sometimes, like this very tunnel kind of vision around like if my child goes to this great LA school, then they are set for the life. That's not the case anymore. Most kids are now wanting to go to grad school. There are plenty of opportunities that open up later on for you, even if you didn't make it to the best of the undergrad school. First of all, it's not needed, but if you did, you can have various different ways to get to other elite options of education later on in your life. So that's another thing that I find myself reminding parents and saying this is not the end goal, this is just the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

That was something that came up in the podcast I did. You have a podcast as well, which we'll talk about towards the end. But that was an interesting area of discussion that we had in that as well about the perceived value of the most elite education, that sort of thing. Without turning this into a therapy session for you, can you speak a little bit to how your own process with your daughter, I know you've referenced that a little bit, but without getting too personal, what were your insights going through it for yourself? And then how did that affect the work you do with kids and their parents?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah, I would be happy to talk about that. When I did my child psychiatry training, I thought, like, oh, I'm gonna be with the perfect parent for my daughter. And I had her during my residency. So as I was doing child fellowship, she was a toddler and I was like, I know how to do this right, of course, right? And of course, you know, she taught me more than my training years at Stanford's over the years. Every stage of life is pretty interesting. As a parent, you have your own journey and you kind of learn and you pivot and you adapt. When my daughter was in teen years, high school years, as we are talking about, the Bay Area, stressful high school time, she was definitely the one who I would say is amongst those teens who was putting more pressure on herself than we wanted her to. And I could see where this was coming from. It's like they are breathing this in and out as they are stepping out of the house. Every kid, every person around them is talking about what they are doing to get to the best school. So, as much as we were trying to, of course, not put that pressure, we saw that she had already done that. And I was always finding myself to like calm her down or be there for her. And one lesson that I learned that I think was very helpful, and I absolutely have seen a change since I shifted because of that is not everything your child is sharing with you needs to be solved in that moment. So I would find myself the mama bear in Mamimi would always be like, Okay, oh my daughter is upset about this, or oh, she's stressed about this. How can I find a solution? And what she was looking for was just me to listen and not like find a solution, actually. Maybe there was a solution aspect that maybe she was looking for, but not in that very moment. And so every time I would do that, I realized she would shut down, she would be like, okay, I don't want to talk about this with you anymore. And it was a gradual learning experience to kind of understand, just be there, just listen. And sometimes that's all they want from you, or most of the times that's all they want from you as a teenager because they themselves are figuring out how to do life themselves. So you allow them to take steps, try things, fail, and let it be. So that was something I think I had to work on consciously to take a step back and not be there, you know, jumping into the problem every time. The other thing I think, you know, was also I was conflicted about this, but then I actually thought this is the way to do it, and it has worked, at least for my daughter, was to keep sharing my thoughts about it without actually having her to actually follow them. So I started using more conscious, like, you know, be more aware of what words I was using. So I feel this way, or I think this is how I would do this, this is what worked for me when I was your age, you know, kind of do it in a in a more non-judgmental and little bit more, you know, respecting them as an individual, as they have a thought process and a choice that they can make and they are different than you. So often uh culturally, actually, the way I was raised, it was like if my parents said this is how they did it and this is how I should do it, I would not question about it. Like I would just say, okay, this is what's worked for my mom, I'm gonna do the same thing. But this is the shift I think we all have had to make because times have changed. I'm raising my daughter in a more autonomous, individualistic culture. If I, you know, that's what they are taught from the day one once they start schooling here, that I am an individual, I have my voice, I have my choice, I have my opinions. And so I need to honor and respect that, even though I may disagree with that. So I think that really, those two things really shifted all the conflicts I was having with her and really made my relationship with her much more pleasant and stronger, and I could see the shift, and it was kind of pure magic because I was like, I read about this, I preach this, but if I'm using it and implementing it in my life, this is a game changer for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Well, we'll get her on next and see what she has to say about all that. See how that works.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

You can definitely find out how much of a good job did I actually do in shifting.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

You know, the other thing that goes along with that, though, as you're reflecting on that, I was also struck when each of my kids was going on to apply to colleges and being with other parents and their friends' parents, or just our friends and similarly aged kids, how among many of the parents there was also this entanglement with them about where their kids were applying, how they were doing. This is sort of obvious, but to see it so profoundly and starkly within this one almost universal experience that parents and their kids have at that particular age, there's a lot of chest puffery going on among certain parents and where their kids were applying. Even if those kids had no chances of getting in, you know, it was still their esteem, their sense of self was enhanced or somehow affected by what their kids were doing. And I think we all understand that intuitively and we deal with it in the mental health circles all the time. But to see it play out, it was pretty stunning, actually. I don't know what to make of that, other than this is just what we as a culture, and especially here in Silicon Valley, and I don't think people outside of this area can really comprehend how intense it can be around here. I think they hear about it and whatnot, but it is it is intense. It's in the water, it's in the air around here. And it's a lot of pressure for the kids to know that their parents are also tied into how they're doing emotionally and for their parents' own sense of self, even. That's a lot of existential pressure.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

It is. I think absolutely right on Doug. I think you've picked up some also contributing factors that the kids are, you know, amongst the many others that are not being consciously instilled or or put on them. There's all these like conversations that they overhear amongst their parents and their friends that, oh, my kid is applying to this, or my kid is on waitlisted for this school, or he got into this school. I think it's sad as it can be, most parents are looking at their kids' kids as their prestige trophy. And some cultures really, you know, look at this as a big prestige issue where they are wanting to kind of tell the world that this is what my child is doing. I'm accomplished and I'm successful, but look at you know what my child is about to do or is doing. I feel it's unfair to the kids. Like a lot of the times these parents also are living their dreams through them, which is not the right way to kind of do this. Maybe they had a desire to go to this LA school or do masters or whatever, or go to all these prestigious places and have that accolade for them. But this is something we all need to like take a step back and think about is this really for me or is this the child who's wanting to do this? The other thing I would just like to also add is that I do see this, and I experienced a bit of this myself, that often a lot of parents have that insight, they have that clear understanding and expectation that they are like, okay, I don't want to do this to my child, I want to make sure I'm supporting what they are wanting to do, what they're capable of, and not put them into more pressure to get into these elite schools. But because everybody around you is doing this so much, because you are hearing that, oh, they are doing this this summer program, they are going to this elite tutoring place or this college counseling service, you start to feel like, oh, if I didn't do this, my child will be left behind.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You're depriving them somehow.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Exactly. It's a real fear that I felt too. Like I was finding myself like, okay, yeah, no, I'm not going to do this when my daughter started high school. But in a couple years, I was like, oh, maybe I have to do this also because that's how the world is running right now. That's how she's going to be competing against all these kids from her school, and that's what they look at. And she needs to really also have all this expanded application accolades that will allow her to get into good school. But really, I mean, this whole process is so random, and there is no rhyme or reason why some people get into some schools, and if only if you did this, it's gonna really work out. There's many different factors that none of us knows what really gets into taking into account for which school your child could go to. But the good news is that there's many, many great schools, there's many great programs, and everybody goes to where they belong. And, you know, I think this is something I have seen over and again in my work with all the teenagers I work every fall and spring, and they are stressed out, and they come back and they say, I got into this school, and a couple months later they are in college and they come back and say, I'm really happy I'm at this school, even though my first choice was XYZ.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

How do you work with the parents? When you do have a patient and you're working with their parents, how do you get them to have this insight, to back away, to take on a different approach? Even in this conversation we're having, we're we're making the presumption that all these kids are going to college. Well, college isn't the right thing for everyone. And I think it's becoming less and less the case that college is an essential part of developing and having career opportunities and whatnot. So even that's shifting. But how do you work specifically with parents to get them to come to the same insights that you have so that they can adapt and set appropriate expectations, not just of their kids, but of themselves working with their kids? What's your approach to that?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

You know, I think it is not a cookie cutter approach, unfortunately. It's it's a little bit different based on where the parents are in this journey, what the kid is actually going through. Unfortunately, a lot of times when they are coming to my office, things are a little bit late in the game. They are already, you know, the kid is depressed or very anxious. And sometimes that becomes my kind of point of entry with them. That, okay, all this has kind of culminated, this whole stress that they were going through has culminated into this episode of anxiety or depression. While, of course, these are treatable and and we can get through this. Let's kind of think through what changes we can make in every aspect. So, I, you know, we of course have been trained and talk about a more holistic approach, what we call as bio-psychosocial interventions. So, if there is a need for medication, obviously I'm going to recommend that. That often happens, that doesn't happen sometimes. But besides that, we are talking about like psychosocially, how can we support this child to come out of this and have this not recur and have this not like become a pattern? And so, you know, it's really joining them where they are, finding out what are the things they can be willing to work on or will be open to working on. Often have a team where the parents are having their own coaching, there's some family therapy aspect sometimes that is needed that they are willing to commit or not. So really trying to take it in steps. I wish it was like quick and easy, but it takes a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

We're in a quick and easy cultural moment for sure. Parents are expecting quick and easy more and more, I think.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Exactly, exactly. And so that's what I'm like, they come and they're like, fix this. And I'm like, uh, you know, it takes time. It's taken time for this to unravel and come to this point. It's going to take that much or even more time for this to actually get better. But if we all come together and and support the child, it really gives us a much more successful outcome. And often I uncover parents may have their own, you know, emotional baggage they may want to now address. And so referring them to their own individual therapists, doing some stress management strategies themselves, so teaching them, you know, mindfulness and other coping skills for them to really come to the reality and accept what it is and readjust and reset their expectations. And a lot of the times it happens quickly, and quite a few times it's a lot of effort that we have to put in to really get them to that stage of insight and this new reality and acceptance.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

There can be a lot of attention to mental health, and that's a good thing. And at the same time, there's a subculture of kids, I think, who have become overly reliant on therapy, therapy speak and therapeutic language, and it's hard to sort of piece that apart. And where does that become unhelpful? Where does that become an easy out for some kids at the same time? So this is the opposite phenomenon that we're now talking about. Can you speak to that at all and what you might be seeing there and any shifts that have occurred over time?

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah, no, I I would absolutely agree with you, Doug. I think there has been a kind of like the pendulum has kind of swung to a little bit more on this side with that. I was feeling really happy and excited to see a lot of the teens, especially in this last decade, come in with a lot more awareness and often telling their parents, hey, I'm struggling, I need help, normalizing the talk about mental health. So there's been such a nice kind of shift with this generation where they are talking openly about mental health struggles and wanting help and sharing that with friends. But I also feel like somewhere along the way, it became almost like this is a new fad or this is the new trend of finding your place within your friends or kind of a new almost identity you can take on, so to speak, to feel like, oh, if you are seeing a therapist, guess what? I'm seeing a therapist too. And it's interesting. And I think the social media definitely has a role in this to kind of spread this. And while there is an aspect of like, yes, normalize it, let's keep it open, let's bring it to the public, and let's talk about it openly. I think it's shifted to how many diagnoses I have and who am I seeing and what kind of meds I'm taking. So I've certainly had some subset of patients who are who were or have struggled with that, and we had to do some work to get them back on track. And that's where I think you know the parents also are unable to really figure out where is this in the range of normal team behavior, to where is this shifted, and in and is this kind of constant cry of help really happening because they are actually struggling, or they are trying to get attention, or they are trying to get something out of it. And you're right, the level of accommodations that we are trying to get to these kids has certainly risen a lot. Like I think there was an article in New York Times recently where they talked about I think there was a good 60, 70% of kids at Stanford have accommodations now.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Right. It's an arms race of accommodation because if you're if all your peers are getting accommodations for some legitimate, some not so much. So you're kind of left behind if you don't also seek those accommodations. It's an arms race of sorts.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Exactly. It's exactly the same thing. Like if I don't take as many APs as my peer, then I'm going to be left behind and not looked at by the colleges. So I'm going to take more APs. So now that shifted as okay, we keep increasing the pressure, and then it's tapping into my resilience. So I talk about the stress is equal to pressure by resilience as a favorite kind of model to help understand what stress and where it comes from. And if I am trying to get accommodation to, okay, I need extended time to submit work, I need extended time to do well on my test. So all these accommodations are going to allow me to sustain that pressure. And so, how about we just reduce the pressure so we don't have to look at these resilience-added kind of factors to bring into the equation? But that's not. We are all going after this, like the success is measured in terms of which college you went to, how successful you are in your career, what kind of promotions you got, what kind of stock options you have, what kind of cars you drive, what kind of latest iPhone gadget you carry. I mean, this is the world we are living in, which is so materialistically driven. And that's what's driving these kids to feel like if I didn't do this, and and they were like in this case, you know, for the Gen Zs and Alphas and now the betas, they were born at a higher base level of all these luxuries. So they can't imagine themselves doing anything less to sustain this lifestyle. They want only more. And so there is all this kind of pressure they are feeling, which is why they are willing to use the card of mental health at times and find the accommodations, find a prescriber who's going to give them that letter. So it's it's become a broken system.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, is this the currency or status of accommodations?

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

And I think this is where that identification as pathologized comes in that one must adopt. I saw somewhere that 84% of Gen Z women identify with their mental health diagnoses. 84%. And I think the other art I didn't see the one in the New York Times about the accommodations at Stanford, but there was one a couple of issues back in the Atlantic that went through this phenomenon. It referenced Stanford, but then the other supposedly elite universities that we've all heard of. So it's pervasive. It's part of that status seeking. It's, you know, the Range Rover of accommodations.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Exactly. Even parents are now, like I said, when they are looking at their child as this project that they want to get to the finish line of being successful by going to this school or this elite kind of college, they are finding ways to get their children tested. So if they don't have an overt like anxiety, depression, clinical diagnosis, now they are spending thousands of dollars to get the neuropsychological testing done. And if you actually test anybody, everybody will have some executive function challenges identified, like whether it's this little bit of auditory processing versus visual processing disorder or some discrepancy between how bright you are versus how you comprehend and process things. And so they are finding all these loopholes where, like, oh, my child has executive function dysfunction. I have, you know, my learning stuff that my child qualifies for accommodation. So I'm going to use that and get that so they can get twice amount of time on the SAT and ACT, so they can crack it, and they can get extended time on the AP tests and whatnot. I mean, this is the level of the rat race where we've gotten into.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

So it becomes hard when that arms race is going on to then also talk about perseverance, resilience, overcoming those challenges when they're seeking sort of the markers to account for it and enable them to not have the same resilience or perseverance. So that becomes really muddy. How do you deal with that phenomenon?

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I have to be honest. I don't have a great answer for that. I'm finding myself more and more in those situations. And it's a hard position to be. I know what to say if I had not to worry about, okay, how do I say this and package it in a way that it's more palatable versus I can just be blunt and frank and say, why did you do this? Why are you doing this? Right? Like, so it is a challenge to help parents understand, help the kids understand how far are you going to take these supports? Like, okay, today you got the support till your college level. Tomorrow you are going to be employed. Maybe you will have your own business or whatever. How far are you going to seek accommodations? And what's this really teaching you to be resilient in life? What is it teaching you in terms of encountering failures down the life and how to handle them? And I have had a couple cases where the parents kept accommodating this kid until the college time and they came into the job world, and that's where they started to crumble. So it's really important for all of us to take a step back and reflect and see if this long-term gain worth it, or the short-term gain worth it when there is a long-term problem that we are going to encounter, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

That's an excellent point. There is no easy answer to how to get someone to have that perspective when it's the challenges are so immediate for them. And those other things are more conceptual and philosophical and down the road. So yeah, that's that's a big challenge. I would like to spend some time on the other things that you're doing in the community. Maybe speak to the work you're doing with the schools, your own projects, the Tarika Foundation, and how you're bringing the sensibility to those domains too.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

No, I would love to. This is a total passion project of mine. So if I keep talking too much, you can interrupt me and tell me to stop. So I formed Tariqa in 2017. It was really after a lot of like distress I was personally feeling because of all the mental health issues I was seeing rising, you know, in the teens in our community. A lot of kids and teens were coming to my office with cuts on their arms, and it was very disturbing. We've had a lot of suicide clusters prior to that. And so all of this was like really affecting me. And I was thinking, what can I do more beyond just the few people that come to my office? What I saw was there was a lot of lack of awareness and education about identifying youth mental health issues. That was one prong to it because you know, if we can catch this early, we can really make a difference in the outcome and treat it early and be done with. The second thing was like these kids are definitely having more challenges and they are growing in a different stressful world. So I am seeing their resilience tipping down. And so, what can we do to bolster that resilience? So those were the two kind of points that we focused on in our mission through Tariq Foundation. So we do a lot of parent education and teen education kind of educational talks, workshops in schools. We have a very educational podcast. It's called Mindful, Beautiful, and Thriving, which has two series to it. There is a parent series and there is a youth series. So there is appropriate content for the appropriate age group. We have a YouTube channel supporting the whole child. So we went, of course, digital with the pandemic and then how the world is now more digitally savvy, and you can get that content at the time you want, and not necessarily you have to be at some place at some time to get it. So that's one thing we've been doing. The second piece of resilience building, I started to develop a lot more interest in mindfulness because of my own spiritual kind of journey and meditation. But I was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to teach the spiritual orientation to meditation to kids, but there has to be a fun way to be taught this. And so I did a certified course to like teach mindfulness in a fun way for kids and teens. I did that in the community. We did workshops, we did parent teen, parent-tween, different kinds of ways to do it. But the turnout was a little bit not to the expectation. And then we had to pivot and we came with this idea of using mindfulness through art concept to teach mindfulness. So that's our five senses art program that we are now bringing into schools. We are now going into Title I schools in East San Jose, the Franklin McKinley School District, and doing this mindfulness through art or five census art program where we bring in the art supplies for free for about 100 plus students and their parents, do it after school. So when parents are there to pick their kids, so they can also kind of join. There's an art teacher who's guiding them through the art project. And when there is a time when the art is drying, or there's a segue where I can walk in, I teach a mindfulness exercise related to the art project. So we are doing that. I'm doing this series also at Mountain View High School right now, where I go to their wellness center every Friday, and we've been getting some teens to get the taste of this.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Fantastic. You've got so many things going on. I knew this would be a fun podcast to do with you. I'm so grateful for you having come on today. Dr. Lina Conzode, thank you very much for being on the Reframe.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Thank you, Douglas. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

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