In the last several months, Matt appeared twice on WNYC’s All Of It with Alison Stewart in order to discuss the complicated feelings parents can experience when sending their young adult kids to college and the increasingly widespread use of therapy speak. He was also quoted in Buzzfeed and Healthline, speaking on the language of boundaries and how parents and adult children can navigate living together.

Most recently, Matt joined All Of It to address the variety of emotions parents encounter when their young adult children leave home for school. In the segment “Working Through Back-to-School Anxiety,” Matt heard from callers, many of whom expressed “ambivalence,” which Matt described as “the appreciation of the fact that these experiences can contain multitudes of feelings.” One experience that typically comes up around young adults returning to college is mourning. Though often thought of in terms of a loss, Matt asserted, “…mourning maybe is better understood as something we experience and work through during periods of change.” While parents grieving a young adult’s increasing independence has become more widely discussed, Matt emphasized that parents should avoid overdetermining both their and their child’s experience. “You can be open to the idea that this thing that maybe lots of people are saying is big and scary and hard maybe won’t be for you,” he said.

In Matt’s earlier appearance on All Of It for a segment entitled “Therapy’s Fingerprints Are Everywhere,” he made a distinction between feeling safe and being safe, which are frequently conflated, whether in therapy, schools, or elsewhere. Often the goal is articulated as “for everyone to feel safe.” However, there are crucial differences between felt and lived unsafety, particularly in terms of dealing with the uncomfortable topics that are the stuff of therapy. Matt revealed, “Growth and development is a disruption…I want and am responsible that patients be safe in my office, but we need to invite feelings that may not feel so safe—things that feel scary.”

Continuing the discussion of therapy language in Buzzfeed’s “We Had Relationship Therapists React to the Alleged Jonah Hill Texts to His Ex-Girlfriend, Sarah Brody,” Matt observed how Hill’s use of the notion of boundaries to justify his positions spoke to a larger issue than simply an impasse between the couple. “As a therapist,” he described, “I’m really intrigued by this question, which is with the language of therapy, and in this particular case, the language of boundaries, what sort of value are we adding?” For Hill, he seemed to be relying on therapy as a moral authority. “[Boundaries] functions as this extra layer of justification, that in reality doesn’t really have much meaning. I think it doesn’t really have much to do with therapy, or at least with good therapy,” Matt offered. 

For Healthline’s “How to Manage When Your Adult Children Are Living at Home,” Matt addressed how parents and adult children who share a home can communicate openly about rules and expectations. These arrangements can be beneficial but need to be navigated with an awareness of old dynamics that can crop up. As Matt said, “Even 10 or 20 years later, old dynamics are going to come back—even if you’re in a different home, even if a lot has changed.” The key, according to Matt, is maintaining clarity and curiosity, which can be aided by written-down rules. “Think about what’s sustainable, what’s realistic, what’s going to feel really good down the line,” he suggested.