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“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book We are delighted to share news about a new book release from Chris Warren-Dickins, psychotherapist in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and London, the United Kingdom. As Suzy Kassem once explained, “since the earliest days of our youth, we have been conditioned to accept that the direction of the herd, and authority anywhere — is always right.” But what if this herd leads us into greater danger? Coming 1 September 2026.
6/10/2026 Parenting in the face of social coercionFaced with coercive dominance, we must raise our children’s awareness about the mechanics of the pack. Talk openly about the difference between being feared and being liked. Help them understand that the children inside the pack are trapped in an anxious loop of performance, while the parents driving that behavior are modeling deep-seated insecurity. When you name the behavior accurately—shifting the label from “popular” to “scared and aggressive”—you strip away its social currency and protect your child’s developing self-worth. If you would like to work with me to explore this in more detail, please get in contact. Chris Warren-Dickins Psychotherapist in New Jersey and the United Kingdom When a school culture is dominated by social aggression and the surrounding adult community mirrors that behavior, the psychological environment becomes highly confusing for a child. They are forced to navigate a world where bad behavior is rewarded with high social status, and kindness is treated as weakness. This mismatch can create a profound sense of insecurity, leading to anxiety, self-doubt, and the temptation to morph into someone they are not just to survive. From a therapeutic standpoint, the antidote to a toxic social environment is not trying to fix the external world, but strengthening the child's internal locus of control. An internal locus of control means that a person’s sense of self-worth is rooted in their own values, character, and self-assessment, rather than the fickle approval of a peer group. As parents, we cultivate this by creating a home environment that acts as a sanctuary from the school’s hierarchy. In our homes, the arbitrary currency of the school-yard pack must hold zero value. We must praise our children for their integrity, their empathy, and their resilience. These are traits that the pack actively suppresses. We must guide our children through the process of emotional differentiation: learning to separate who they are from how they are treated. Help them understand that a bully's cruelty is actually a confession of the bully's internal pain and insecurity. When a child realizes that a classmate’s mean behavior is about the classmate's own emotional dysfunction, the arrow misses its mark. They no longer take the rejection personally. You are teaching them one of the most vital psychological truths they will ever learn: you do not have to accept a definition of yourself handed to you by an insecure crowd. If you would like to work with me to explore this in more detail, please get in contact. Chris Warren-Dickins Psychotherapist in New Jersey and the United Kingdom As a parent, it can be hard to witness the injustices that flow from pack mentality and toxic popularity. The best support you can offer your kids is to help them learn about these difficult dynamics. After all, knowledge is power. Here is a good starting point: Watch, with them, the Stanley Milgram experiment where regular people inflicted pain on others simply because they blindly obeyed authority. The video is set out below. Secondly, teach your kids about the dangers of blind conformity by showing them this video: The Asch conformity experiment where people defied their own senses in order to fit in. Finally, help your kids to learn about the dangers of group dynamics, so they can become fiercely clear about their own sense of self. A great video to watch is the Zimbardo prison experiment where random people brutalized others simply because they were assigned positions of power and relief from feeling less than. Stay strong. Your kids will thank you in the long run. Chris Warren-Dickins Psychotherapist in New Jersey and the United Kingdom
5/27/2026 "Me First" FamiliesWe’ve all met a Me First family. In such a family, the parents, and ultimately their children, operate under the principle that everyone else (and their children) should be elbowed aside, stepped upon, or excluded, just so the Me First family can grab at any given opportunity, person, or resource. They are insanely jealous of anyone else’s friendship or good fortune, and they often operate from an extreme sense of insecurity or inadequacy, and most bullying children or parents come from Me First families. Faced with a bullying Me First family, some parents claim that they would never let their children know their true feelings about the Me First family. They claim that their children should make their own decision about this family. I think that is a mistake. Your silence can be interpreted as concurrence (or even collusion) with the exclusionary or bullying party. Faced with a bullying Me First family, parents must be explicit when they explain to their children their own values. Here is an example of how this can be clearly explained: “Look at how that family acts. They are morally bankrupt and emotionally desperate. We do not use their lives as a blueprint for ours.” This gives the child a vocabulary to intellectualize and dismiss the pressure, rather than internalizing it. Does any of this resonate with you? If so, and you would like to explore this together, get in contact. Chris Warren-Dickins Psychotherapist in New Jersey and the United Kingdom  |
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Chris Warren-Dickins, EMDR Therapist in Ridgewood, NJ and the UK
Serving New Jersey, the United Kingdom, and beyond. Telephone: (USA) +1-201-779-6917 / (UK) +44 7735 361209 Sessions are online. Mailing address: 235 Orchard Pl, Ridgewood, NJ 07450, USA. © Copyright 2026 Chris Warren-Dickins. All rights reserved. NJ license # 37PC00618700 |
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