What to Do When Kids Say They’re Trans - Sasha Ayad returns to The Unspeakable

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2023

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Therapist Sasha Ayad was one of the earliest guests on The Unspeakable. Her interview with Meghan in August of 2020 was revelatory for many listeners and she has become a leading figure in the effort to discuss gender through a non-ideological lens. In this wide-ranging conversation, Sasha shares what she’s learned since then, what kind of data has emerged about youth gender medicine, and why medical protocols in Europe have changed even as the U.S. and Canada hold on to the “affirmative care” model.

Sasha gives some background on how highly theoretical concepts like the “gendered soul” got absorbed into medicine, why kids with gender dysphoria are likely to struggle with multiple mental health issues, and how parents can set limits while also supporting their kids.

**GUEST BIO**

Sasha is a Licensed Professional Counselor who works in private practice with teens, young adults, and families impacted by gender issues. Sasha is a well-known advocate for individualized, least-invasive-first approaches to treating gender dysphoria. She has developed a gentle but effective way of working psychologically with rigid beliefs, identity, and social influence.

In her private coaching work, she helps parents to feel better informed and more confident so they can navigate their child’s identity distress with more compassion, discernment and wisdom. Sasha is also the co-host of Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast and played a role in founding several organizations including the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, and The Gender Exploratory Therapy Association.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If somebody is struggling with really complicated social issues, mental health issues, family relationship issues, they're really unstable.
0:12.0	They've got a lot going on in their lives, and they are being given quick and easy access to, like, life-altering, body-altering interventions.
0:25.4	What are the ramifications of that?
0:28.5	Who's to blame? Who's at fault if things go wrong?
0:34.7	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom. This episode has a lot of significance to me. My guest is Sasha Ayyad. Sasha is a licensed professional counselor who focuses on young people and families coping with gender issues. And she was, I think, the fifth guest ever on this podcast.
0:57.5	When I started The Unspeakable back in the summer of 2020, the subject of gender transition and
1:03.6	the enormous increase in people, especially young people announcing trans identities,
1:09.1	was at the top of my list of things to cover. And I thought
1:12.6	really hard about who to bring on to talk about it. And eventually I reached out to Sasha.
1:19.2	It was an amazing conversation. And since then, Sasha has grown her practice and started her own
1:26.1	podcast, Gender a Wider Lens, which she co-hosts
1:29.8	with psychotherapist Stella O'Malley. She had recently co-authored a book called When Kids
1:35.7	Say They're Trans, a Guide for Thoughtful Parents. She co-authored that with Stella O'Malley and Lisa
1:41.8	Marciano. And she is a leading figure now in the world of therapists
1:47.0	and researchers who are taking an honest, non-ideological approach to this very fraught issue.
1:53.8	If you are listening to the sound of my voice right now, that means you are not yet a paying
1:59.1	subscriber. This interview is about an hour and a half
2:02.6	long and this version, the free version, will give you about the first hour. If you want to hear
2:08.3	the entire conversation, you can become a paying subscriber at megandam.substack.com. That's
2:15.5	M-E-G-H-A-N-D-A-U-M. That is pretty much how it's going to be from now on.
2:20.9	I'm going to give you a healthy amount of the conversation in the free version, but to hear the
2:26.7	whole thing, you need to join. That's the only way I'm going to be able to keep doing this
	...

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