"BREXIT" is a great example of what happens when people get emotionally manipulated: they make irrational decisions based on fiction rather than fact.
Numbers have been thrown around by both sides, some of which were made up completely.
And this is how it works, thanks to confirmation bias: we choose and interpret whatever "facts" we're given so they confirm our existing beliefs.
The consequences are rather dire on a political level, as this is basically how propaganda has worked in history; let's repeat falsehoods, aloud, lots of times, with conviction, until they become "true".
The past is full of examples - Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR - who relied on only the radio, newspapers and television to indoctrinate.
Today, there are more channels, to which we are exposed for more hours a day. One of the most insidious ways our confirmation bias is reinforced is through Google and Facebook: they study which searches we do, which articles we click on, or like, and the next time the results/newsfeed will offer us more of what they know we like.
And there we go - we do not receive neutral information anymore, we get what Google and Facebook have algorithmically decided we "want" to see.
I feel like I'm living in Orwell's 1984.
How does this relate to my work as a therapist? Well, we all have confirmation bias in our personal lives too. It becomes especially visible when working with addiction or domestic abuse, how the "bad bits" get glossed over, and the rare good thing gets highlighted.
My work involves helping my client see the whole extent of their life - from an outside perspective.
I can hear you ask - but don't my clients get that outside perspective from all the other people in their lives, telling them what is good or bad, or what they should change?
Indeed my clients - everyone actually - do get an enormous amount of outside feedback, well-meaning advice etc.
Which is exactly what I do not do. I will not tell them what is good, or bad, or how they "should" change.
Because giving advice is not my job. My job is to hold up a mirror, in which they can see themselves, from an outside perspective, and to support them while they work out what they want to do differently.
And it is the most difficult bit of my work as a therapist: to not jump in, to not push or pull, to not rescue, but to instead to support my clients so they can find their own truth, their own way, in their own time.
So maybe the British people too would have benefited from more time looking at the reality, and checking facts, rather than letting the media tell them what and how to think...