Psych With Mike: Recent Episodes
Dr. Michael E. Mahon
Being human is hard work. Let Psych With Mike be your users manual to make it a little easier. Psych With Mike started as a radio show in 2017 and has now evolved into a podcast. The show explores topical events from a psychological perspective and gives insightful, practical and expert information. Psych With Mike is presented by two individuals with more than 60 years of clinical experience between them.
What is the difference between indoctrination and brainwashing? Are they interchangeable terms and what is the agenda of those using this language?
https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/the-differences-between-indoctrination-and-brainwashing-092b8c18ce3e
Setting up a new therapy practice, whether you're just out of school, leaving an agency, or separating from a group, can be nerve-racking and scary. Here are some thoughts on how to navigate these challenges. Brett and I wish great success and prosperity for all the souls on the journey.
Personality are the enduring characteristics and behaviors that we use to adapt to life (this is the clinical psychology definition). Defense mechanisms are then a part of our personality. When defense mechanisms become malignant and maladaptive, this can become a personality disorder. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel 5-TR, personality disorders are grouped into clusters that represent a common pattern of maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. Narcissism is in cluster B on the DSM.
Our society has a significant issue with age and a negative perception about getting older. As you can see by the title, this is so prevalent that there is actually a term for this fear, Gerascophobia. The real problem and even irony of this is that the only solution is to NOT get older which is unrealistic or even impossible. So, we condemn ourselves to a perpetual state of anxiety and dread. But this need not be the case. There is a growing body of research about getting older, maintaining our quality of life, and maybe even being happy.
https://psyche.co/ideas/rather-than-fearing-getting-old-heres-how-to-embrace-it
The therapeutic relationship is intense by definition. Clients have to be courageous enough to make themselves vulnerable by sharing information about themselves that they may not share with any other person. Sometimes this leads to the client developing feelings for the therapist and in some cases, these feelings may be sexualized. In psychology, we call this sexualized transference. Practitioners need to know how to handle such situations with care and professionalism.
It is also important for clients to know that this situation is fairly common. And that they can express such feelings in a way that can be therapeutically helpful. The article below can help clients understand and process these feelings.
https://www.verywellmind.com/help-ive-fallen-in-love-with-my-therapist-2337585#:~:text=What%20Is%20Transference%3F,positive%2C%20negative%2C%20or%20sexualized
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders edition 5 Text Revision (DSM 5-TR) is the current version of the diagnostic manual for mental health professionals in the U.S. The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association. Codes in the DSM 5-TR have been revised to be compliant with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) published by the World Health Organization (WHO). There are over 70 diagnoses in the DSM, however, only 15 are routinely used by mental health professionals. The top ten most frequently diagnosed mental health disorders of 2023 are listed in the Definitive Healthcare article below.
Introduction to the DSM and ICD https://nbcc.org/exams/dsm#:~:text=The%20preface%20to%20the%20DSM,%2D5%2DTR%2C%20pp.
Includes list of the top ten diagnoses in mental health in 2023 https://www.definitivehc.com/blog/most-common-mental-health-diagnoses
The US Surgeon General recognized loneliness as an epidemic in 2023. The report is linked below. Why is this the case? People are more connected through electronic media than ever before, yet they feel more isolated and lonely. Clearly, these online connections cannot take the place of real in-person experiences. This is a lesson that is important for us to understand and accept to be able to work towards a resolution to the epidemic of loneliness.
https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/connection/index.html
Self-esteem is clinically defined as the global perception of self—that is, how one sees oneself. It is difficult to access/change self-esteem itself because it is a global perception. So when therapists work with clients on issues of self-esteem, what we do is work on issues of self-confidence, or as Albert Bandura called it, self-efficacy. Self-confidence/self-efficacy is the domain-specific perception of self. For example, an individual may have played a sport from a very young age. In high school this person may be fairly confident in their ability in the domain of the sport they play but still have low overall self-esteem because in the majority of other domains, the individual operates in, they feel very insecure. When any individual has high confidence in the majority of domains they operate in, their self-esteem will rise significantly.
Brett and I have discussed existential psychology and Viktor Frankl many times. Every time, I say, "We need to do a show about that." Well, today is that day! We will discuss Dr. Frankl and his experiences in the concentration camps. We will also explore how Dr. Frankl's theories help inform us as therapists to help clients deal with/process their pain, trauma, and frustration.
In a recent episode, Brett and I talked about ethics in the practice of counseling. A corollary topic is that of boundaries. Helping clients find their own boundaries is a fundamental task in therapy. However, therapists need good boundaries themselves to create a healthy therapeutic environment as well as model boundaries for the client. In this episode, Brett and I will explore how to help clients find their own boundaries.
How are ethics different from statutes and/or laws? Why do ethics matter? How do you know if your interpretation of ethics is correct? This episode will answer all those questions and more!
Adolescence has only been considered a stage of human development for about 125 years. H Stanley Hall is credited with defining this stage of development in 1904. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most societies viewed individuals as adults when they were able to procreate (were going through puberty. In what ways is the adolescent brain different from that of a child or an adult?
Death and dying is difficult for most people to talk about or even think about, even though it is the only experience other than birth that every human is guaranteed to experience. In this episode, Brett and I share our thoughts about having an empathic conversation about this difficult topic. We also share our views on how to treat/work with those who have experienced loss.
Empathy is defined as the ability to feel the emotions of another as if they were your own. It is a powerful tool for understanding and improving our relationships. It is also an essential quality in the therapist-client relationship.
Emotional Intelligence is a concept in psychology that describes the capability to regulate one's own emotions and to accurately interpret the emotions of others. The four pillars of Emotional Intelligence are:
- Perceiving emotions
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- Reasoning/labeling emotions
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- Understanding emotions
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- Managing emotions
Attachment and bonding are essential to the health of our relationships and play a vital role in the development of emotional regulation. To find out more, check out this episode.
As psychotherapists, Brett and I have had literally thousands of conversations with clients about guilt. It is one of the most common issues that people deal with. But what do you know about guilt and its cousin, remorse? In this episode, Brett and I will break =down the difference between guilt and remorse and common sense ways to cope with both.
It is now universally accepted that trauma (both acute and chronic) has real biological impacts on the brain. Today Brett and I discuss how to treat and even heal trauma.
Rollo May (1909-1994) is one of the true greats in the annals of psychology. Even though he was integral in the evolution of existential and humanistic psychology, he remain a grounded and modest man. This may be why his name is so well known but his achievements may not be. He routinely brushed shoulders with men like Maslow, Rogers, and Frankl, true legends of psychology. His writings, especially the book, "Love and Will" sound like they were written today and not in the mid-1960s. Enjoy.
https://www.rollomay.net/
In therapy, clients often disclose significant/important information just as a session is ending. Today we discuss why this happens and what therapists must know to handle these situations appropriately/therapeutically.
In Kohut's Self Psychology, mirroring is an important concept integral to developing self-esteem and emotional regulation. Mirroring is also important in the therapeutic relationship. Listen to find out more.
Rumination, or feeding thoughts (usually negative) back on themselves in a vicious loop, is something all of us have experienced in our lives. Sometimes, rumination can become a stumbling block, and when that happens, people may need help getting out of that rut.
Because of the way the human brain is designed, it feeds resources to the most basic functions first. This is for survival, so our autonomic functions (breathing, heartbeat) are first. Emotions and survival instincts are second. Finally, last is our cortex and rational thinking.
While writing the book we are working on, Brett and I often use terms familiar to those who work in psychology but may not be familiar to others. The Parental Introject is an example of one such term. In this episode, we discuss the parental introject and provide answers about how to correct/change introjects that may be problematic or harmful.
Big boys don't _____________. Fear is a sign of _______________. If you know the answers to these questions, then you know that the way our culture conditions men and women to process their emotions is different.
What are emotions? Brett and I delve into the biology of how emotions work in the human body.
Do you know what an emotion is? Well listen to the next two Psych with Mike and Brett episodes and see if your definition changes.
According to the Census Bureau, this year (2024) the largest proportion of the baby boomer generation will turn 65. By 2030 all baby boomers will be 65 or older. This means that in 2030 the 65 and older population will comprise 20% of the total population in the US. This is the largest percentage of elderly persons in the US population in the country's history. This has profound implications for the workforce, economy, and every aspect of life in the nation. What are the significant psychological issues this poses for those living longer in the US? https://www.census.gov/library/storie...
This is the most listened-to Psych with Mike that Brett and I did. The episode is all about Transactional Analysis. When reviewing the numbers it was not even close. Enjoy!
This was the first Psych with Mike that Brett and I ever did. The audio is horrible and there was no video but the conversation was great!
With Brett no longer on the show, I am looking for the path forward for the show!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acceptance https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-happiness/202108/how-practice-acceptance https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-closure-in-a-relationship-5224411 https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-of-closure-and-why-some-need-it-more-than-others-104159 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/closure
It is often very difficult to say goodbye. Whether the result of life passing, ending a relationship, or, moving far away, there is a period of our lives that are ending. On the other hand, there is a new period of life that is beginning. As for my friend, Brett Newcomb, I will forever be grateful for the contributions he made to the show and for being my friend!
https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-135
You make the decision to go to therapy. Good on you! Now make sure you are ready to make it a useful and rewarding experience!
https://psychcentral.com/lib/therapists-spill-tips-for-making-the-most-of-therapy
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-to-talk-about-in-therapy
This is a revisit of one of the most downloaded episodes of Psych with Mike. This is a topic close to my heart since I believe that emotional regulation is the central issue is all psychotherapy.
The Surgeon General of the US recently released a report on loneliness. In it, the physiological effects of loneliness were found to be equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. These kinds of physiological findings just affirm what all of us already know, loneliness hurts! It hurts us both psychologically and physically.
Surgeon General's Report
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html#:~:text=Disconnection%20fundamentally%20affects%20our%20mental,levels%20comparable%20to%20smoking%20daily.
Articles of Loneliness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-be-yourself/202001/7-ways-feel-less-lonely-and-more-connected
https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/feeling_connected
Link to Epidemic of Loneliness from Psych with Mike
https://psychwithmike.com/the-epidemic-of-loneliness
Many people find it harder to forgive themselves than they do to forgive others. We may feel like we do not deserve forgiveness or that if we forgive ourselves then we were never truly sorry for the behavior. Whatever the reason, when we do not forgive ourselves we remain in perpetual psychological bondage.
https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-forgive-yourself-and-move-past-a-hurtful-mistake?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f4ecbb6ed5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_03_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-66d1b44a50-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
What is nihilism and what does it have to do with psychology? Most of us have heard of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and some know that he is credited with promoting the ideas of nihilism. But how many actually know what nihilism is and how it plays a role in psychology?
https://psyche.co/ideas/for-nietzsche-nihilism-goes-deeper-than-life-is-pointless?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=639b69be36-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_04_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-0a72083c10-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Does our personality change and evolve over the lifespan? Or does personality remain consistent and static from adolescence?
https://psyche.co/ideas/theres-a-reason-some-of-us-find-it-easier-to-change-than-others?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=8e4e0f2ec4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_03_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b1f49aa884-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
The term "Brain Fog" has been around for a long time but has gained increased significance during the pandemic. What IS brain fog and can we do anything about it?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/31/neuroscientist-how-to-avoid-brain-fog.html
Communication is the most basic way that humans connect. Good knowledgeable skills are the foundation of good interactions!
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/3-things-people-who-are-good-at-conversation-dont-do-according-to-a-research-psychologist.html
Research is building an indisputable record of evidence supporting the belief that the experience of trauma changes the way the brain is wired. Trauma that is low-level over a long period of time (chronic) can be just as transformative as trauma that is intense and sudden (acute)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/trauma-distorts-time-self-new-therapy
The introduction of concepts like "mindfulness" and "positive psychology" is only helpful if they can be defined. In science, this is called operational definition. Is Positive Psychology an actual theoretical orientation or just a new-wave fad?
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-positive-psychology-2794902
As long-time educators, Brett and I have always accepted the concept that different people learn in different ways. A recent article in Aeon magazine challenges this long-held belief.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-is-clear-learning-styles-theory-doesnt-work?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=83087b53bc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_24_05_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-83087b53bc-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Heinz Kohut and Self Psychology establish the foundational understanding of the development of emotional regulation. But perhaps his most impressive contribution to the field was his introduction of empathy into the therapy relationship.
https://www.selfpsychologypsychoanalysis.org/about.html
Clients are often very curious about the private lives of their therapists. But therapists are educated to present themselves as a blank slate. The amount of self-disclosure that a therapist engages in therefore is a balance between what is most therapeutic for the client and the therapist's presentation as genuine and sincere.
https://aeon.co/videos/pondering-the-peculiar-one-sided-intimacy-of-the-client-therapist-relationship?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=974bf7efe0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_01_16_06_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-974bf7efe0-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Breathwork is a core technique in counseling and psychotherapy. It has also been a central tenet of practices as old as Zen meditation. But what are the therapeutic and/or health benefits of breathwork?
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/science-says-use-relaxing-breath-method-to-fall-asleep-faster-starting-tonight.html
Otto Kernberg is one of the most influential theorists responsible for our understanding of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)!
https://www.verywellmind.com/borderline-personality-disorder-meaning-425191
There is a whole vocabulary associated with recovery from alcohol and drugs. For those who are not in the program or do not work professionally with those in recovery, this can be very confusing. Brett recently was talking to a friend about what it means to be a dry drunk and found that even he had many questions.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/what-to-know-dry-drunk-syndrome
Ketamine is the only psychedelic substance that has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of depression, so far. How does this drug help depression and will other psychedelics get approval in the future?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/12/ketamine-therapy-explained/
The Enneagram is a personality classification system based on the work and theories of Carl Gustav Jung.
In early 2023, Brett and I discuss 10 lessons from 2022.
https://www.wellandgood.com/best-advice-from-therapists/
Attachment styles play a huge part in successful and enjoyable relationships. But most of us do not even know what our attachment style is.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/insecure-attachment-5220170
A current buzzword in psychology and also society at large is, entitled child. But before that psychology had a word for those who saw themselves as wonderful and that was narcissism. Are these separate concepts or just opposite sides of the same coin?
https://awarenessact.com/narcissistic-children-are-raised-by-parents-who-do-these-8-things/?fbclid=IwAR1wcd8eu0xHxiY3nW24f3mZ9Dr7zxmg2jo9jwcULvBPhqIt1lcKoDXwJts
Happy New Year to you and your loved ones from us at Psych with Mike. This is a revisit of a conversation that Brett and I had on making resolutions that work. Enjoy and the best of luck in the new year!
It's been a long two years. Over this holiday season, many of us may be re-evaluating our behavior in the hopes of making better choices and improving our physical and mental health in the new year. But to do this effectively we need to know what behaviors we may have fallen into that are not the healthiest for us.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2016/07/26/10-troubling-habits-of-chronically-unhappy-people/?sh=33018b6b70f3
All of us have past trauma that affects us in the present. It is cliche to hear someone say "you have to let it go". But how do you do this?
https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/letting-go.html
https://unfoldingtheuniversewithin.com/the-art-of-letting-go-of-the-past/
Relationships are at the core of being a healthy human being. We develop attachment styles as a result of our experiences early in our lives. One of these attachment styles is avoidant attachment. Today we discuss the characteristics of this attachment style and how it impacts our relationships.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-clarity/202206/what-is-avoidant-self-attachment
As better ways of exploring the way our brains are connected become available, we are mapping these connections with greater precision. Does a better, more comprehensive map of the way areas of the brain operate make psychology more of a "hard" science?
https://neurosciencenews.com/amygdala-emotion-20969/
We all have heard someone accuse someone of being passive-aggressive. But how many of us really know what that means or how to identify the behavior?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/25/the-3-biggest-signs-of-passive-aggressive-and-childish-behavior-harvard-body-language-expert.html
Therapy and mental health are recognized as being in epidemic-like short supply. With the pandemic and political division, people are finding their mental health has taken a big hit over the last couple of years. And yet there is growing dissatisfaction among therapy devotees and unequal availability of therapy services across socioeconomic domains.
https://www.wired.com/story/therapy-broken-mental-health-challenges/
As we move beyond the pandemic we are seeing a significant increase in the number of persons who express that they are feeling lonely. What are the factors that are contributing to this besides the isolation of the pandemic?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-ptsd/202207/how-childhood-trauma-can-lead-adult-loneliness
We could all use a little boost to our self-esteem. You're welcome!
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/18/want-to-sound-and-feel-more-confident-ditch-these-11-phrases-from-your-vocabulary-say-psychologists.html
Studies indicate that the human attention span has significantly shortened since the rise of social media. Why is it getting so hard for us to focus our attention?
https://www.ranieriandco.com/post/changing-attention-span-and-what-it-means-for-content-in-2021
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/16/got-a-minute-global-attention-span-is-narrowing-study-reveals
Enlightenment, self-actualization, and, mindfulness are ideal states of being that we are all striving for. But what is the neuroscience that supports the idea that enlightenment is a real phenomenon that has beneficial effects?
https://bigthink.com/the-well/neuroscience-of-enlightenment/
Should you go or not go to Thanksgiving? Are you the one tearing the family apart when you identify familial dysfunction? Good questions.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brothers-sisters-strangers/202206/how-family-estrangement-echoes-across-generations
Sure your therapist has framed pieces of paper on the wall, but how do you truly know if your therapist is any good?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/202209/how-tell-you-have-good-therapist
Sometimes a child's parent goes beyond the stereotypical defaming of the other parent. When this happens we have to think of this process as similar to the type of programming associated with a cult.
https://www.familylawpleasanton.com/blog/2020/10/the-8-symptoms-of-parental-alienation/
Have you ever wondered what is the most important question in psychotherapy? No spoilers here just check out the conversation!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/202209/the-most-important-question-in-therapy
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with Mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:07 guest go to www.psychwithmike.com follow the show on 0:12 Twitter at psych with Mike or like the Facebook page at psych with Mike now 0:18 here's psych with Mike welcome into the site with Mike Library this is Dr Michael Mahon and I am here with Mr Brett Newcombe hello the uh psych with 0:26 Mike Library window is open that's a new way to start yeah I mean I 0:32 guess people could walk by and ask for ice cream but you can either look in the window or jump out yeah whichever you 0:37 want whichever you feel is how do you feel about that I I feel really good about it I'm the point is that it's it's 0:45 very nice outside and after the summer that we've had in St Louis I am really 0:53 glad that the weather is milder it's been a beautiful week yeah so uh we 1:01 don't even need to get into global warming because that's because that's a crazy kind of divisive 1:07 topic but uh it was really hot this summer yeah and it's hard still hot in 1:14 major sections of the country and the world yeah it and and when you look at what's been going on in India uh in a 1:21 third of the country underwater that's I can't even conceive of what that would 1:27 be like yeah so anyway so I'm glad that we're going to get some milder temperatures I am uh a feared that the 1:37 Farmer's Almanac is predicting a tremendous amount of snow in the St 1:44 Louis area for this winter so we'll see how how that works out yeah 1:50 so how are you today I'm doing well you don't want to talk about anything we were talking about before the before we 1:56 started this do you no okay because there's been lots of stuff going 2:03 on there is always always interesting in doing therapy people come in and it's 2:08 like there's always going on lots of stuff going on yeah so 2:14 um when you were doing therapy I think that 2:19 uh probably each individual person doing 2:26 therapy has their own style obviously yes yeah 2:34 and probably most people would have a different answer to this question but 2:39 what was your favorite or most important question in therapy 2:52 how are you this week and what would you like to talk about so what's hot what's Burning uh in your 3:00 mind your Mentor slash hero um 3:05 blanking on his name yellow yeah Irving yallum uh uh his intro question was what 3:14 hails so in all of his books that's how he would start out all of his therapy 3:20 sessions what what else what else yeah um which I always found pedantic and 3:28 beatnik like yeah but uh but yeah I mean he always wore the black turtleneck and 3:34 I don't know that he wore what is the the cap that the French wear you know we all have our affectations in 3:42 our presentation exactly I used to tell people would call and say yeah I'm thinking about coming to you I've been referred to you uh 3:49 How will I know and I would say you know it is incredibly important that there is 3:55 a sense of safety and connectivity for this to work so come see me come see me 4:00 once or twice and don't pay me but if you come back the third time pay me for 4:06 three sessions and every session after that but I really feel like if you spend some time with me you'll get a sense of 4:13 whether I'm going to be a fit for you whether I'm going to be able to hear you and what you need to talk about right uh 4:21 well you're Jumping the Shark because we we definitely want to talk about what is a good therapist yeah but so when we're 4:29 talking specifically about the questions do you believe 4:34 that the therapists questions 4:41 are important for directing the course of therapy or do you believe that the 4:46 therapist is more of a passenger a passive so I taught in a counseling 4:52 program for 35 years and I would constantly say to my students who wanted 4:58 to become therapists and in addition to having my private practice for all those years but I would say to my students you 5:05 cannot do formula therapy you can't have a formula that you follow for every client that comes in whether that's a 5:13 label that you apply to yourself I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist or I'm a union therapist or whatever 5:21 uh because people don't know that and don't understand that they don't know what it represents what it means what 5:28 you need to say is I am invested in paying attention to you and 5:35 hearing what it is that you need to have heard and then proving to you that I've heard you 5:41 accurately and correctly both both in terms of what you say and in terms of what you're feeling when you say it so 5:47 we will explore that reality for you and if that's a fit then be spending time here will help you 5:54 make progress with whatever concerns that you have I think you'll get better but if if I'm not the fit then go 6:01 somewhere else don't say well therapy doesn't work I went to this guy he was a bozo there are bozos out there but if 6:07 you feel comfortable with me and we can spend time together I believe that we 6:14 can make progress in terms of what hurts you or what you need to address in your life to make your life better but just 6:22 as far as the the who's driving the train yeah do you 6:27 believe that the therapist no drives a trainer do you believe the client right yeah yeah and I'm not bringing it to the 6:35 table you are my job is to ask you what are you bringing to the table right what what's going on and then do reflective 6:41 uh listening to say well this week you said you were bringing to the table an 6:47 argument that you had with your boss but we spent 45 minutes here talking about other things and I'm wondering how to 6:53 understand that if that's what was hot for you when you got here we haven't even approached it and we've nibbled at 6:59 a time or two but we keep going down these other paths about this or that or the other so I'm wondering how to 7:05 understand it I'm wondering how you understand that so the most important question is the question that helps to 7:12 direct the client towards themselves better self-awareness right and they'll 7:19 come out in and they'll throw out red herrings so that they feel like we spent a 7:25 productive hour and you feel like we spend a productive hour because we try to solve this puzzle it's a very seductive thing they'll ask for advice 7:32 what do you think in your experience how does this work uh why and they always 7:37 want to talk about somebody else why is my mother doing this why is my mother this way and the 7:44 to my thinking the point of being there isn't to figure out why your mothers are your boss or your next door right why 7:50 you are enduring this or tolerating this or making these choices 7:56 and we talk about emotional economics you know you're frustrated you're upset you're angry you're hurt you're sad 8:01 whatever how's that costing you what's that costing you in terms of physiological 8:08 issues are you having chest pains or you're having anxiety attacks do you have headaches you're having trouble sleeping you've got TMJ problems what's 8:16 going on with the way that you handle this issue and then in terms of your emotional 8:22 status are you grouchy are you angry are you sad are you numb uh are you 8:28 frustrated I so many times having conversation with parents and they would come in and talk about 8:34 and I said to my child how many times do I have to tell you and I'd start laughing at them and I'd say you know if 8:40 you've heard yourself say that more than twice you've said it too many times yeah so let's let's talk about Plan B if just 8:48 telling them you need to do your homework and they're not or you need to wash the dishes clear the table whatever 8:54 it is you've asked them to do and they haven't done it what's next so I think that 9:01 many therapists we've both been involved in programs teaching in programs that 9:07 educate the next generation of therapists and 9:12 from the therapist that I know and the students that I've taught 9:18 it feels like to me and I could be wrong so I'll ask you what your reflection on 9:23 this is that a lot of their a lot of people who are going to school to be therapists want the formula they want 9:31 some kind of reassurance that you you give me the formula the questions to ask 9:37 I'll ask the questions and then I've discharged my duty that'll make me feel like that I'm doing what is right and 9:45 you know the insurance companies uh support that thought absolutely because they want to pay certain amounts for 9:51 certain things and they claim that the data collection that they have justifies the approval or the expense or the money 9:57 investment at a time uh but I I keep coming back to you know formula therapy 10:02 and agenda therapy I think both are not therapy and I also would say 35 years of 10:11 teaching and counseling program at two different universities um a lot of people who come to try to 10:18 become therapists are so seriously wounded that they're going to hamstring 10:24 themselves right by their issues right uh and their agendas you know you can't be 10:31 proselytizing for your agenda uh whatever it may be 10:36 whatever you're really promoting is the right answer that's not doing therapy yeah and when we were in grad school and 10:44 and you did Role Play Everybody did role play we hate role play okay but but everybody does it and and I did it 10:51 poorly well but we did I mean we had actual groups in in your group therapy 10:57 class we did and but I said we're not role playing what what whether you call that role playing or not but but you 11:05 know I used to say all the time the next time that somebody says to me the reason I got into this because everybody asks 11:11 oh why'd you get into this program you know that's the first that's the Icebreaker for every class that you go to so the next time somebody says oh you 11:18 know I have a dysfunctional family I wanted to understand it but I'm gonna punch him in the throat okay you know no which is a very clinical reaction well 11:25 you're in a Therapy Program well I was in there yeah it wasn't like I was doing therapy uh and and no doctor said oh I 11:32 went to medical school because I knew my appendix was going to go bad at some point and I wanted to be able to take it out I know how to deal with it yeah so 11:39 you know that's a bad bad reason to go I went to to school to be a therapist 11:44 because I couldn't pass calculus is what they're saying it's the answer that they 11:49 give but they're not deep enough there's something under that for what drives you I want to help people I'm on a mission 11:55 from God I believe in doing good in the world whatever it might be or I think uh 12:00 I know I was abused as a child and I know how damaging abuse is and so I want 12:06 to protect all children from being abused but that's a reason to be in therapy not a reason to do therapy 12:12 exactly yeah yeah I agree with that 100 yeah and and so you know that doesn't 12:18 mean that you shouldn't be doing therapy but you shouldn't be if you're using your own dysfunctional past as the 12:25 motivation for why you're doing therapy I think you're going to get caught up in that agenda profile 12:32 well that is uh one of the reasons why for a number of years I refuse to see 12:38 active acting out alcoholics because I came from a violent alcoholic family and 12:44 I had so many of my own personal and that's called counter okay don't feed me lines like 12:50 that you want to say it say it that's called counter transfer yes I know okay uh so you try not to do that you don't 12:58 want to do that as a therapist yeah it disrupts the connection the dynamic the 13:05 orientation of the session they're paying you to listen to you and that's 13:11 not what you're supposed to be doing right and I didn't work with and still don't if I can help it work with sexual 13:18 abusers and people say oh well you should you know work with everybody or what you know I didn't feel like I don't 13:26 work with borderlines I don't feel like that that is my clinical expertise yeah I don't have the expertise or you say 13:32 those those issues are too close to me I can't I can't see clearly I can't hear but it is the therapist's responsibility 13:40 to know what you know the Old Dirty Harry line a man's got to know his limitations yeah you got to know what 13:45 your limitations are and you have to practice within those limitations I don't I don't not see borderlines 13:53 because I don't think I'm clinically able I don't see borderlines because I find that push your buttons yeah I get 13:59 seduced by the borderline presentation seduce or distracted 14:04 yeah because they'll say here chase this rabbit or here chase this rabbit and every once in a while you're so focused 14:11 on a particular kind of rabbit that you're like oh I'm after that and then again they're steering the 14:17 direction of the conversation to reinforce their own circumstances 14:23 right and justify them but it isn't to me it isn't a weakness 14:28 for a therapist to say this isn't my area of special I agree it's a string I 14:34 would agree with that yeah now that at the same time I also don't think that 14:39 new therapists should say I'm exclusively an alcohol substance abuse 14:46 counselor no because I think that makes them feel safe because they are trained or they know the right answer they know 14:53 the theories that they're taught in school or that they've been taught in school slash AAA uh and so they notice 15:00 that you know one day at a time uh let go and let God and never say those 15:05 things automatically in conversations uh they can laugh about things like 13 15:12 stepping uh on a 12-step program the hell does that mean what's going on there uh so they know the inside Works 15:19 they feel safer but individuals are never limited to 15:25 whatever the presenting pathology is and so if you say oh I can only work with 15:31 substance abuse individuals then but but those people have other issues this 15:36 diamond only has one facet right yeah right so I'm my you know 15:42 encouragement my advice to people who are doing therapy or newly thinking about going into therapy is you got to 15:49 find that balance don't try and practice outside your expertise but also don't limit yourself to one specific pathology 15:58 so then that brings me to therapists need to either uh okay hold 16:05 on to that question and or that thought and we'll pick that up after our break I might forget 16:12 hey Brett if you were going to tell somebody to check out something on the 16:19 Internet to help them with their mental health what would you tell them I tell them to listen to sex with Mike why 16:25 would you tell him that because it's probably one of the most easily listenable experiences you can have that 16:32 would give you information that's useful for a whole spectrum of concerns that 16:38 people have I agree and I have actually been told that by at least a dozen 16:44 people several of whom were not married to me and some of them didn't even know 16:50 me that's amazing that is amazing it's when when we get that kind of feedback 16:56 from people it is so incredibly humbling and overwhelming for me it is for both 17:03 of us so we really appreciate it and as always if it's Friday it's Mike 17:09 [Music] all right we're back did you forget I 17:15 don't know like it just comes and goes so quickly now what I was going to say is and again the thing that I used to 17:21 say to people all the time never practice alone if you practice alone it's too easy to get distorted and 17:29 caught up in rhythms that uh if you had supervision or and even collegial not 17:36 hierarchical supervisor yeah working for a boss who can tell you yes or no but uh 17:42 collegial supervision and most therapists I know do have those kind of groups that they meet with and they talk 17:47 to and you say I have this client that's really pushing all my buttons all right this client that's presenting this this 17:53 singing and it makes me so sad or I'm so concerned about them that I am losing my objectivity uh or I have issues with 18:02 keeping boundaries for this particular kind of experience and other therapists 18:08 and clinicians can say well I have that so you're not crazy you're not not rare and this is a way that I work with it 18:15 how do you work with it and we can have those conversations to help keep you professional and focused keep both you 18:22 and your clients safe from contamination and it's really an important issue so do 18:27 you think that therapy so if I'm doing therapy and I'm in therapy does that 18:33 serve that was the same question that we had for 35 years yeah does every therapist need to be in therapy and I 18:40 would not make that as a legalistic qualifier I would say it's probably a good idea but I would say you need to 18:47 have collegial or hierarchical supervision over your cases so okay so 18:53 uh I want to I want to drill down on that a little bit because you know I think that you should be in therapy if 18:59 you're doing therapy because I think it keeps clean the transference counter transference projective identification 19:05 but I'm not sure that it serves the same function as collegial supervision 19:12 I'm not sure anymore okay so if I'm going to therapy and I'm talking about my counter transference that may help me 19:20 be cleaner in being able to identify and deal with the counter transference but 19:25 may not necessarily help me in the area of boundaries so I I went to therapy and 19:34 one of the challenges that I understood going in that I discussed with my 19:39 therapist going in is having done therapy as a provider for 35 19:45 years I feel like I'm at risk to play therapy games and 19:51 head games if you helped me find a live nerve that might 19:56 be painful or frightening for me instead of going with that and 20:02 experiencing whatever that is I'm capable of distracting you with something else 20:07 and I don't want to do that so we both need to help watch me and so that I can 20:15 avoid that because as any other human being when I 20:20 get to the most raw places inside me that I'm trying to get out and put on 20:25 display for the therapist to say how do you understand this uh what does 20:31 that make you think about me am I accurately pulling it out of me or am I 20:38 still guarding it and guiding it and lying about it uh it's a scary proposition so I will avoid 20:44 it and people do that in therapy all the time that's why the presenting problem that they first come to you with is almost never the real issue in their 20:51 lives it is an issue it's a real issue but it's never the issue 20:57 so you have to spend enough time making them safe solving problems not solving 21:02 for them but with them so they can build the trust in the process and in you and 21:10 in themselves to be able to look deeper yeah so do you agree though that therapy 21:16 is not the same as collegial supervision yes I do and and so if you're going to have 21:21 one you should definitely have collegial supervision you can certainly have both 21:27 yeah absolutely okay so that's what we're saying to people is that you got to at 21:32 least have the collegial supervision yeah and and it doesn't have to be formalized like you and I have had a 21:38 relationship since before I was ever a therapist so for as long as I've been a 21:44 a practicing therapist you and I have had that relationship 21:51 okay not not that I'm aware of okay uh but I mean you you have to you're trying 21:57 to blame all that on me I know where this is you have to take that responsibility for yourself but uh so 22:02 sometimes that was more formalized when we were in a group practice together and sometimes it's been less formalized I 22:07 don't think that it needs to be formal I think that you have to oh you're gonna do it over coffee you just need to get 22:14 it on a regular basis right and and all of the knowledgeable or trained or licensed participants need to bring 22:21 something to the table mm-hmm well what have you been seeing because another thing that happens is really that's such 22:27 a great point though is themes or threads go through a community and it's 22:32 like wildfire contagion so you get a half a dozen new clients and they're all 22:39 dealing with depression and you go to collegial therapy and everybody else is saying my god I've had so many people 22:44 coming in with depression in the last couple weeks which it's in the water uh just to by way of an example and it's 22:51 helpful to get that feedback and it's helpful to get everybody else's perspective on how are you dealing with 22:58 that how are you approaching that I remember having a meeting I don't know if you'll remember this but when we were 23:03 in a group practice right and the gal who was the director actually took you 23:09 and I into a room because she wanted to have these Grand uh clinical meetings 23:16 yeah and so we would have these meetings and say okay somebody needs to present a 23:21 case and crickets crickets crickets and she took you and I into a room and said you guys are the seniors here everybody 23:29 looks up to you and you guys need to present because that'll make everybody 23:34 else feel safe and and I don't know that either one of us well 23:39 I wasn't opposed to the presenting I was opposed to the way it was presented to 23:45 me yeah because I quasi staged yeah well I mean it was like you you like we were 23:51 getting dressed down because nobody else would participate but I will say that we started doing those things regularly and 23:58 other people did start to open up and some of those meetings were really 24:04 really good and beneficial I think not just for the individual who was presenting the information but for 24:10 everybody the community that was in that room yeah exactly yeah I mean that can be so powerful absolutely and 24:17 encouraging you know you get reinforced that you're not saying it wrong you're not seeing it 24:22 incorrectly you're handling it well according to the committee opinion and 24:28 that's positive affirmation and we all appreciate positive affirmation so let's Circle back to what the original topic 24:34 was which was the most important question in therapy and this idea of the 24:41 difference between an open-ended and a closed-ended question what's the difference between so a couple things 24:46 occurred to me one is when clients becoming new clients would come in sometime in the first session or two one 24:53 of the questions that I would ask is if our work together is productive and 25:01 positive and on target how will your life be different if what we do together is beneficial for you 25:08 what will be different what are you looking for do you know do you think do you feel 25:15 your relationship your mother be improved your relationship with your mother will be severed you'll get out of 25:20 bankruptcy who knows what it's going to be but you have a concept of that so 25:27 then they start talking and what that does is sets for the 25:33 therapist if not the client what the goals of therapy are so a lot of times people talk about oh you had to have 25:39 goals and you got around but it doesn't have to be that formalized that question right there helps me as the therapist 25:45 understand that may be you know what the client says in in response to that 25:51 question might be what they're looking for but it might not I mean it might just be what they're talking about 25:57 because they haven't they don't feel safe enough to really peel back the layers of the onion yeah yeah right 26:03 right but but those are ways of establishing goals in therapy so if you're a new therapist and you're asking 26:10 that question what you're getting the information you're getting back helps you to understand where the client might 26:17 want to go in the therapy session and so as you listen to a client 26:25 one I mean there are different labels and skill techniques that this discusses 26:31 but you you listen to the phraseology and the verbalisms that they use 26:39 and that helps you learn how they think and how they experience 26:45 neuro-linguistic programming is a term and you listen to what they say and you 26:51 you listen between the lines you hear more and you're watching on verbals and you learn when to say wait a minute I'm 26:59 I'm picking something up here it's not in focus it could be me that's out of focus but 27:06 it could be you and so give me some feedback you're not getting this 27:11 accurately are you struggling with this did you just twitch did you just have a flash of a distraction or a thought and 27:17 you that's called uh I think it was a call it just went blank 27:24 uh silent uh okay uh I'm I lost it okay well but so a 27:34 closed-ending question is in question that can be answered with a single word so if I say did you go to the store 27:40 yesterday yes sir you can say yes or no yeah on which store right but an open-ended question it requires more of 27:48 an elucidation so if I say to you you know what it was your fun this childhood 27:54 memory and you say Saturday well obviously it requires more input than 27:59 that so in therapy we're trying to ask open-ended questions because the answer 28:08 that is provided by the client could give us additional information that's 28:14 more than Justice it gives you a directional approach but but there is one open-ended question that you never 28:20 ever ever ever ever ask you like me everybody always does no why oh yeah 28:26 yeah yeah I lost my temper and punched my questioning us why would you do that 28:31 why do you lose your temper I don't know how they're going to answer that yeah so 28:36 you don't say why so you don't ask open-ended questions that put the client 28:43 in a down position no you don't do that 28:49 you ask them exploratory questions yeah how do you understand that how did you 28:54 experience what did it feel like yeah uh well and then so now you're going back because I asked you originally what was 29:01 your most important question in therapy but I never answered that for me it is 29:06 how do you feel about that because emotional regulation is so much a central part of how I see human 29:15 pathology that that for me is the most important question how do you feel about that I think most people answer that 29:20 with how they think about that and and I point that out yeah because you got to get to the field right and so one of the 29:28 first things that I do is to train clients that if I say how do you feel 29:34 about that you have to answer glad mad sad or scared you can't because if you 29:39 don't use an affective AFF ECT affective word which is the psychological word for 29:47 emotion then you're telling me how you think so if I ask you how do you feel about that and you say I felt 29:54 disrespected well you can't feel disrespected that's not a Feeling you can think that you were disrespected and 30:00 let's assume for the sake of argument that you did think that you were disrespected how do you feel about that 30:05 well I felt angry okay now we're talking about affect and so I train people to 30:11 use that affective language so that and as they start to go through therapy they 30:18 get reinforced with that hopefully they'll take that outside of therapy so when they start talking to other people in their lives they'll actually start 30:25 having those affective conversations rather than just talking about how they think because you're absolutely right 99 30:32 of us 99 of the time when we are asked how we feel we tell people what we think 30:38 well and classically Men answer I don't know yeah how do you feel about that I don't know yeah I I and I'll end with 30:45 this little anecdote but uh when I was working at the hospital there was another guy that worked there and 30:52 I'm not going to say his name but to be honest with you I don't remember what his name was this was a long long time ago uh and he would do groups and his 31:02 response to everything that anybody said in group was anger about that anger 31:09 about that yeah anger about that and I said to him one day you know there are more emotions than 31:17 just anger I I you know I how how much it would have just been so easy to say oh so how did you feel about that how 31:23 did that make you feel but he would just always say anger about that and yes maybe the person was angry but maybe 31:31 they were hurt and they were using anger as a cover-up and that's one of the things and that's what I want to end on 31:37 is that most people in our society at least and I think in the 31:43 world in general use anger as a way to cover up hurt and a part of therapy is 31:50 to go deep enough to help people recognize the way that they might be 31:55 covering their emotions with other emotions camouflage yeah yeah accurate 32:00 reflective listening yes what I couldn't remember so important yeah essential the 32:06 music that appears inside with Mike is written and performed by Mr Benjamin declue what we would love is if you are 32:13 a regular listener to the show or even if you're not even if you this is the first time you've ever heard the show if you're irregular yeah go to Apple 32:20 podcasts and find psych with Mike and rate US and leave a review that is super super beneficial we would really really 32:27 like it if you would go on to the YouTube spine psych with Mike and subscribe to the show there that is very 32:34 very helpful and as always if it's Friday it's psych with me foreign 32:41 [Music]
Sometimes it is important to try and re-focus our perspective. A great deal of anxiety is about the privilege we enjoy because of the place we live. Trying to understand that concept can help us consider how the perspective of the world at large. Refocusing is an essential tool for reducing anxiety.
https://forge.medium.com/panic-is-a-luxury-c4330107b80a
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with Mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:07 guest go to www.sitewithmike.com follow the show on 0:12 Twitter at psych with Mike or like the Facebook page at psych with Mike now 0:18 here's psychic welcome in Insight with Mike Library this is Dr Michael Mahon and I'm here 0:24 with my good friend and colleague Mr Brett Newcombe I love it when you say that which part good friend or colleague 0:30 both because it gives me some identity yeah well I I am very aware 0:38 um that there was a period of time where I was an experiment for you 0:44 Oh I thought I kept that better hidden oh no you used to tell me that all the time I don't know how how you thought it 0:51 was hidden when you used to say that you used to say like those words to me well you're just really an experiment well I 0:57 mean if if you were feeling anxiety about that it's exactly what I wanted you to feel because anxiety can be a 1:03 motivator yeah and I was trying to motivate you well I was if you don't turn your sound machine you're going to 1:08 fail I was initially reluctant to believe that you would care enough about 1:14 me to want to be my friend well and I understood that and you said well there were reasons why but I'm in a period of 1:20 my life where I'm trying to be a better person and I'm using that I can bring 1:25 along as an opportunity to try and yeah I promise a turd yeah yeah and I was 1:31 like oh no thanks that's wonderful okay now you're making me anxious yeah so so 1:38 uh do you get anxious a must it's part of the human condition 1:43 yeah but I don't know that anxiety is a part of the human condition and this is why I say that because 1:50 where even if there are other uh psychological conditions that may be 1:58 actually linked to some kind of chemical imbalance or some neural processing I 2:04 don't think things I I've always believed anxiety is a thought disorder and so if you can correct the thought 2:13 disorder then you don't have anxiety so what I mean by that is that anxiety generalized anxiety other than the 2:19 fear-based anxieties I believe we should make a distinction between fear-based non-fear-based anxieties okay say more 2:26 so fear-based anxieties which are like post-traumatic stress disorder things like that those actually are ways in 2:33 which the brain processes information incorrectly so instead of the cortex 2:39 which is the area of your brain where rational thought lives processing information first and then giving 2:45 information to the limbic system which is your emotional Center and then that triggering the 2:52 fight-or-flight response when you have post-traumatic stress disorder that's turned upside down you just immediately 2:57 get into fight or flight and you don't ever process the information but generalized anxieties which are 3:03 situationally based you always process the information first and those are the result of cognitive dissonance so the 3:10 inability for the human mind to hold two conflicting thoughts comfortably so I 3:16 want to ask a girl out but I'm afraid of rejection right that's that's a that's a 3:21 a a a a conflict and the friction of those two ideas rubbing together in our 3:28 brains causes what we consider to be anxiety so if you don't have any cognitive dissonance if you don't live 3:34 with that and you don't fuel that on a regular basis then you could live fairly 3:40 anxiety free my question would be it is The Human Condition such that a person can do that 3:48 um I don't think so yeah because I think things happen I mean uh I recently had I was reflecting on your question about 3:55 anxiety uh I don't think I'm very situationally anxious uh 4:03 I mean it does happen but it's really rare uh if I'm in a dangerous environment and 4:10 I see I'm Jesse Jackson talking about walking down the streets of Chicago being followed by a group of young black 4:16 males I said made him anxious just because they were there because the reputation of the area and the community 4:21 and so on I've had that experience I remember hitchhiking through Hartford 4:27 Connecticut in the Spanish section being followed by a bunch of teenagers because 4:32 I was obviously an outsider didn't belong in that neighborhood and they wondered who I was and what I was doing there I felt some anxiety while they 4:39 followed me to the edge of the boundary and then they went away they didn't do anything they were just there but I felt 4:45 anxiety and and was asking myself questions like how'd you get here stupid well it's not where you should be get 4:51 out of here uh I had a I had a cancer scare earlier this year 4:58 and I had a lot of anxiety about well if I have cancer I'm going to die and do I have cancer am I going to die is it now 5:04 time to make my peace with that and figure out you know how to get from here to there to 5:11 an acceptable death right uh assuming I have anything to do with that at all or do I and so there's a lot of existential 5:18 anxiety uh so I think that may be the two types of 5:24 anxiety that you're talking about one one is a situational existential anxiety a baseline level of anxiety one's one is 5:30 an immediate reaction to a set of circumstances it could be scary causing you to have a reaction so I 5:37 don't think I'm very prone to one but I think I'm prone to both so I don't know 5:44 how to answer your question well I originally answered the question because of all of the people that I know 5:50 you demonstrate what I would consider observable anxiety 5:56 the least good yeah good and and I've always and I've always thought that now I've I've been in situations and I've 6:05 seen times where I have where I know that you were anxious but that's pretty 6:12 rare and so what I wonder is because anxiety is just so ubiquitous now in 6:20 society it's actually overtaken depression as the number one diagnosis 6:26 diagnosed psychological disorder in the United States and so is that a real 6:32 thing has anxiety overtaken it do we see it more and so when we're treating it 6:39 are we treating it in a way that is effective and beneficial 6:47 thank you I don't know yeah and I I don't know the 6:52 answer to the question because I don't have a global map for 6:58 society I try to see clients as individuals when somebody comes in and they're struggling 7:05 to digest something they want to figure out what that is and and try to find a way to help with that problem 7:12 uh now what I'm aware of doing counseling is that we may make progress 7:17 on this problem and when we take it off the table another underlying problem or 7:22 what we call comorbid problem will surface because it's like cards in a 7:28 deck and you play some down but there's still some there and I think life is a statement that there are problems 7:35 and you're going to experience having to encounter them and having to manage them 7:40 and resolve them to the best of your ability all of your life if you're alive there's going to be something out there 7:46 yeah that you need to be dealing with right and 7:51 I'm so so being anxious about it just saying oh my God I'm anxious I'm Frozen with 7:57 anxiety yeah isn't helpful to me no so so then my question becomes well what 8:03 are the things that we can do about the anxiety when I reframe the way you expand define it experience while I was 8:10 listening to you talk what I was thinking about was at what point did 8:17 things like psychological disorders start to become an actual thing like 8:22 when we were hunter-gatherers did we have the ability to experience 8:28 depression anxiety bipolar disorder and my guess would be long enough yeah even 8:34 if we did it didn't matter because environmental factors were such you had to have the survival skills right right 8:40 if they were survival skill enhancing yeah we had them yeah if they weren't no 8:45 and and so for me a lot of what we consider 8:50 mental disorders are really the luxury of our Advanced Society well I agree 8:56 actually okay you do agree with that I do and I also think that a lot of them are artificially created yeah uh by 9:02 advertising you know you watch Saturday morning television Sunday morning television every ad is a medical ad yeah 9:09 and they don't tell you what the product is for they they show glorious happy uh 9:16 sunshiny smiling people because they take this drug and then they and at the 9:21 end of the commercial they give don't take this drug if it can cause bleeding it cause heart attacks it can kill you you can't take it with other drugs be 9:27 sure to talk to your doctor about it oh and by the way if you have trouble forwarding it we can get it to you too yeah uh and then and then so then I sit 9:35 around like do I have that yeah is that do I have that so I don't know just call your doctor and tell them you want the 9:40 medicine ah yeah just in case yeah exactly right well you know that's magical thinking 9:46 everybody's medicine cabinet is full of drugs they didn't take a full dosage yes especially uh I I remember 9:52 20 30 years ago doctors were regularly talking about we don't want to give people penicillin because they're going 9:58 to be superbugs that come along that don't respond to those things and uh sure enough there were then there are 10:05 and so now they've uh I was in hospital one time because I got bitten by a spider a black widow spider yeah I 10:10 remember and I had uh my I think it was a brown recluse yes yes she was I said Black Widow yeah 10:18 yeah that was a different issue uh but we're not going to talk about that the doctor told me you're in the hospital 10:24 and I was there for a week yeah because we have to put you on this drip antibiotic because we can't give you anything strong enough that isn't coming 10:30 through an IV feed in your arm yeah uh to kill this bacteria because it 10:35 it'll kill you yeah so I lead in the hospital for a week waiting on the fight to be resolved while I read books no I 10:43 remember that and that was terrifying ah so if if 10:49 the if a lot of psychological disorders are the result of the luxury we have by 10:58 living in such an advanced Society does that matter in the context of doing 11:03 Psychotherapy can you say to a client you know a lot of what we suffer from is 11:10 the result of how good we have it is that a message that matters doesn't make them feeling better yeah I mean so what 11:17 the point is I have it now I'm worried about it I'm upset about it uh I'm in 11:24 the hospital with something that's probably going to kill me unless this drug works right so what can I do but 11:30 that's now that's an extreme case I mean but I mean that's where you get to well but I mean most of the time we see people in therapy they're not there 11:37 because they got bit by a spider and almost died they're there because you know their teenager is back talking them 11:45 and they don't have the intestinal fortitude to enforce consequences to make stop 11:51 or the societal support system you know I'm a five foot two 35 year old woman 11:58 with no husband and a job uh trying to manage a 13 year old who's starting to 12:04 feel his oats and get in my face and tell me you can't tell me what to do he's bigger than I am and I'm worried 12:10 about okay yeah that that is that is an um yeah that is a situation we I didn't 12:16 see a lot of people in that situation because we live in a fairly affluent part of St Louis I had a number of 12:22 clients that were dealing with that yeah and and that certainly is much more 12:27 problematic than the guy who is just so distracted by work that he's not really 12:32 active in the daily discipline of the children the mom is just furious because 12:38 the dad is checked out I mean that's mostly what I saw in therapy and and uh 12:44 to me those situations are the result of 12:50 I mean too much affluence I mean you're we're lucky that we have the uh the 12:59 luxury of having psychological disorders you whip out a chart of Maslow's 13:04 hierarchy I don't explain to them you have meals I mean this is yeah this is more of an uh a kind of a 13:12 intellectual argument between you and I as as people who did therapy for a long 13:17 time but the goal is to discuss with 13:22 clients what their situation is from their perspective in their reality and 13:29 I'm aware of that and I try and do that but for myself I see a lot of 13:35 psychological disorders as a luxury that we have because of the society that we 13:43 live in and that doesn't make them less real to the person I understand that but 13:48 I do think that if a individual can put that in context it could make it easier 13:55 for them so couple thoughts 14:03 when you address let's identify this let's look at other options 14:09 other considerations one of the things that 14:15 people are regularly told is you uh you can't think your way out of this 14:21 it's not an intellectual problem to solve it's not a data-based resolution you know the old Ben Franklin uh 14:29 conflict resolution thing pros and cons make a list divided up and weigh them 14:35 out I remember when I had a job in sales I used to teach us what they call the Ben Franklin close if you had a client 14:41 Mr Prospect who's considering uh because you've been so forceful your product 14:47 purchasing your product they're thinking yeah and you say well you know Ben Franklin had a solution for that to take 14:53 out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle of it you say yes and no you see make up all the reasons for why 15:00 this is a good decision and then you help them with that he said well look it's cheaper it's affordable and you get 15:06 monthly payments it's guaranteed for five years it comes in multiple colors and whatever and then over on the other 15:12 side Ben Franklin put all the reasons for not buying it and then you don't say 15:17 a damn thing you make them come up with it and so if you're a trained professional you've given them 20 things 15:23 for doing it you give them nothing for not doing it they'll come up with two or three but then you're looking at the 15:30 balance it's like oh my God that's an obvious decision and that closes the sale right okay let's run to our break 15:36 and when we come back we'll pick this up hey everybody Dr Michael Mahon here from 15:41 Psych with Mike and I couldn't be more excited to talk to you about athletic greens which is a new sponsor we have 15:48 here on the show I started taking athletic greens watching some YouTube 15:53 videos and doing my own research I wanted to add something to my daily workout program to give me some energy 16:00 and to support gut health and that was the one thing that kept coming up again 16:05 and again with athletic greens is the guy who started the company did a bunch of research because he was having some 16:11 gut health issues that he couldn't get any resolution for he developed athletic 16:17 greens and it's just exploded from there so it's 75 superfoods vitamins minerals 16:23 probiotics Whole Foods sources that's all in one daily scoop you put it in 8 16:30 or 12 ounces of water you shake it up and you drink it The Taste is very very 16:35 drinkable I actually enjoy it and I have been using and my energy levels have 16:41 just been through the roof I really like athletic greens because of some of the sustainability things that they do so 16:48 they buy carbon credits and you know to help protect the rain forest which is 16:54 something that I really like but if you order athletic Greens in your 16:59 subscription you're going to also get a year's supply of their vitamin D 17:05 supplementation and five free travel packs and that vitamin D is so important 17:11 during those winter months when we're not getting enough sunlight we've talked about how that decreases your mood and 17:18 increases depression and that can be a real deal changer so you go to 17:24 athleticgreens.com emerging that's athletic greens.com 17:32 emerging that's the psych with Mike promo and you're going to get that additional vitamin D support for a year 17:40 and five free travel packs so take control of your own health today and as 17:46 always if it's Friday it's psych with Mike okay so before the break you had 17:53 adroitly refocused us and and on to what we wanted to talk about which was 17:58 anxiety and some of the ways in which people ineffectively try and deal with 18:03 it and so you're talking about this idea that I can think my way out of something which is the message that we get from 18:11 our Protestant upbringing which is hey you know you should be able to think 18:16 your way out of this situation and you had given an example of a way that you did that in business so are you saying 18:24 that that works in therapy or doesn't uh it does not yeah because it's not you're 18:30 dealing with a an affective State not an intellectual problem so it's not a 18:35 weights and measures kind of uh problem can we weigh this amount of anxiety and 18:41 say well I've got two pounds of anxiety today but tomorrow I'll have one pound yeah yeah 18:48 and so but but we are uh conditioned to say we should be able to problem solve 18:55 by thinking our way through it well if I just focus on One credit card payment 19:00 leave the others alone maximize my payment on the one until I get it paid off then I can roll over what I'm paying 19:06 on it into the next one and focus on them one at a time and solve the problem so and then I'll solve all my financial 19:12 anxieties over time typically doesn't work that way because other things intervene right uh most 19:19 people are not able to do that not able to do that for a long enough time that they have success so somebody comes 19:27 along gives them another credit card says I can help you out here there's 500 that you can charge and so they charge 19:32 up to the max they have 12 credit cards they're all charged to the max they're making minimum payments and they're 19:38 screwed so you got to figure how can I resolve this but it's not as much a 19:45 dollars and cents solution as it is an effective solution why do you keep buying stuff you can't afford right 19:51 what's the hunger driving the need to possess right you know what are the feelings involved 19:57 can we identify them and address the feelings that drive you as opposed to 20:03 focusing on the mechanics of operation that are the expression or the outcome 20:10 of being driven by those feelings right you know I need to keep up with the Joneses all my neighbors have a newer 20:15 car we haven't bought a new car my kids need to go to college and everybody in town is going to this college I got to 20:20 at least be able to you know so people get trapped in those binds that 20:25 generate anxiety and in fact affective discomfort right but they can't think 20:31 their way through it but problem solving we oftentimes talk about emotional economics and so I think what we're 20:39 saying is you may not be able to think your way intellectually out of a problem 20:44 but you can consider what is the cost liability 20:49 or the the liability benefits of my emotions of my ethics so when you have 20:56 to feel the feelings first okay you have to feel you have to label you have to externalize them then you can process 21:02 them if you just stay in your head and don't feel any of that stuff you'll come up with logical Solutions right that 21:08 don't solve anything yeah because you aren't dealing with the affect right which is the argument that's made in the 21:14 article that you have listed about thinking your way through anxiety the other thing that people get bound up in 21:21 with regard to anxiety is thinking that they have to find a perfect solution camp and that's Sometimes the best 21:28 solution is to throw a whole bunch of crap on the wall see what sticks and then among the things that stick which one is a more attractive piece and can 21:36 you get there but if you're invested in thinking there is a perfect 21:42 solution I'm going to not take a vacation until I get all my 21:48 bills paid off right I can go and pay cash for my vacation you may work your entire working life and never take a 21:54 vacation so then you say well the alternative is I can go on vacation but then I'll just 22:00 go deeper in debt right well but you know I think that the the 22:06 intellectual exercise oh yeah butt thing is a way of 22:12 restricting yourself to an action yes or from an action because you think oh I'm 22:18 investing all of this energy in trying to think about this problem so I'm doing something when in reality you're not 22:26 doing anything because all you're doing is sitting there thinking about the problem and sometimes all you just have to take in action even if it isn't 22:33 beneficial just to get mobile my father used to say on a regular basis to me son 22:39 you have to do what the fighter pilot does yeah uh that's what I don't know what that means because I'm not a fighter pilot and neither you did uh but 22:46 it would be lead follower get out of the way do something he could have been a fire pilot 22:51 no uh yeah because they say when the plane's 22:57 gonna crash yeah you got to do something even if it's wrong it doesn't at that point it doesn't matter what he was 23:03 riding on the plane right you're gonna die anyway yeah so you might as well do something even if you don't think it's 23:10 gonna help do something don't just sit there immobile so I was raised in an era 23:16 uh where the lesson that I learned is whenever you get in financial trouble 23:22 go get another job yeah get an additional job work a second job work a third job bring in more income 23:29 pay these so that you don't negatively impact your standard living so I became 23:34 a workaholic and I spent most of my adult life being a workaholic working two and three jobs working 70 80 hours a 23:41 week making good money but for much of my life didn't manage my 23:47 money just no matter how much I made it all went out the other end and it wasn't even better 23:53 so that was a real mental adjustment to 23:58 recognize that solution wasn't a solution and that other things had to be 24:04 dealt with that I won't deal with they hurt and going to work didn't hurt right and 24:11 so do you is that an example of trying to think your way out of a problem yeah 24:17 yeah I'll just go get another job yeah absolutely yeah which then actually kind 24:23 of I'll see five more clients this week right that brings in money it kind of feels like that's a solution because 24:29 you're doing something but then it really isn't solving the problem you're 24:34 not changing anything right right and then you kind of touched on the third one which is to think that you have to 24:40 pause everything to and tell you in 2010 right yeah and you were talking about 24:45 not taking a vacation and you know a lot of times that feels like good 24:53 advice stop doing everything else and just focus on this problem right and that I even argue that might be good 25:01 advice if you were actually going to do something about the problem but if you're gonna pause everything else and 25:08 just sit and focus on the problem and not do anything then that's not really helpful so as a 25:13 therapist when you look at suggesting behavioral interventions behavioral changes 25:19 one of the things that you can suggest that your client initially will think you're really stupid I'm paying you 25:25 money for this and you're saying this to me you have to challenge habituated automation 25:32 so an example that I would give to people most of you get up in the morning 25:38 and get dressed in the exact same way right every day if you put your pants on first you put your left leg in first 25:45 then your right leg then you pass your pants then you put your t-shirt on then you put your shirt on you put your socks 25:50 on what order do you do that well I don't know well think about it pay attention just watch yourself because 25:55 you'll do it and you'll do it the same way every day so do it differently what do you mean I said well for instance lay 26:03 your clothes out tonight that you're going to wear tomorrow and when you wake up in the morning go take a shower brush your teeth do whatever you need to do 26:09 without opening your eyes come back in and get dressed without opening your eyes 26:15 you always put your wallet in your left Hip Pocket put your right hip pocket do something different and be aware that 26:23 you're doing something different notice the difference and how uncomfortable it makes you how comforting it is to have 26:30 an automated ritual because we have to break the rhythm of the automated ritual 26:35 and so even stupid little things like put your wallet in a different pocket give you an opportunity to say well I'm 26:42 going to do that differently uh so you challenge them to do little things that are under their control you 26:49 can decide this morning not to have four cups of coffee you can decide to have three glasses of water 26:55 oh that's stupid well no it's really not if you make it as a proactive choice 27:00 and then we can decide and it's really an exercise in being able to get out of 27:07 the comfort zone yes people don't recognize automated if it's anxiety yes 27:13 that's your comfort zone people say well I'm I'm uncomfortable with my anxiety no 27:18 you're not yeah because if you were uncomfortable with an old friend right 27:23 you would not live in the anxiety and so that's something that I think people get 27:28 stuck with is that they assume that because they say to themselves I feel 27:35 uncomfortable with my anxiety that that means that they're out of their comfort zone no that's what you know well and so 27:43 then there are classic defenses resistance as we call them against 27:48 challenging the anxiety provoking situation yeah one is well wait a minute that's not logical I have to think my 27:54 way through it one is I have to find the perfect solution because let lesson that 28:00 will solve the problem so it's got to be perfect and the third one is I can't do anything else until I find this right 28:06 solution right so those mental traps are defenses that preserve the anxiety right 28:14 exactly yeah they stop you from being able to work your way through the 28:19 anxiety to an actual resolution yeah and 28:24 you know that touches on this fifth one which is people believe that if they didn't have 28:33 anxiety their lives would be better and that's just not true because as you 28:38 and I started this discussion just have different anxiety exactly you're going to having having anxiety is an artifact 28:44 of the society that we live in and now if you know the world Goes to Hell and we have a nuclear Holocaust and 28:51 everybody's living in survival mode people are going to have less anxiety that's why millions are going to be 28:56 living in survival would that be better no that wouldn't be better millionaires can never have enough money 29:01 right they have to have a billion and billionaires can never have to have money they have to have more because you've always got to have more because 29:07 enough is Never Enough right even if you have more money than Jesus 29:14 you still have to have more because well if somebody took some away from you right well if somebody used uh control 29:19 of the state to limit what you could do with your money you know like the Jerry Reed song you know uh 29:26 it's a song You country singer I had a song about playing dice in the alley and 29:32 they're going to put him in jail and he said who's going to collect my welfare check who's going to pay for my Cadillac 29:38 if I'm in jail I can't do those things rich people have the same issues you 29:43 know it's not so much I got to pay rent it's like I got to pay fifty thousand dollars in Property 29:50 Maintenance right for all my houses right you know and so I have to make more money 29:55 and that's the Trap of anxiety that those individuals live with right and so the 30:02 question is if you gave all that up yeah and said okay I'm just gonna live on the 30:08 beach and you know not worry about making money well you we did a podcast a 30:15 few weeks back and you spent a considerable amount of time talking about messages from the Buddha about not 30:21 being invested in things owning things having things doing 30:27 things but just being uh as a goal for life 30:34 in which you didn't experience anxiety and so I am not 30:40 capable of citing the references that you decided but you were making the point that your understanding of the 30:46 message of the Buddha was the less invested we are in things attachments 30:52 relationships the less anxiety we will experience the less suffering we will experience the 30:58 more at one with the universe will become and that that was a goal of life 31:04 so so do you agree with that do you think that's no I'm not smart enough to know I 31:11 just we were talking about someone who's negatively and adversely impacted by anxieties to the point that they're 31:17 crippling how do they deal with them one of the ways if you could get the perfect 31:23 Buddhist solution you wouldn't feel them because you wouldn't have right investment in those things those agendas 31:29 those needs those goals those desires but being a normal person 31:34 which is a given uh I got them you got them everybody I know has them how much do they interfere how 31:41 much of a problem are they that's what brings some people to therapy so and 31:46 we'll go out on this question but uh if we're 31:53 correct and what we're saying that anxiety is a part of the human existence there's no 32:01 way to separate that out then control the volume yeah physical can can a can 32:07 an individual monitor their own anxiety or do you think that it is 32:15 necessary for someone to get some outside perspective 32:21 I don't think there's a I don't have a single answer that to me it depends on how much distress are you in do you have 32:28 the resources to moderate it yourself or do you need help yeah yeah it's my old 32:34 adage about no one goes to therapy because they have a problem they go to therapy because a problem they have 32:39 causes them emotional dysregulation right yeah 32:46 so the message is be less anxious 32:51 yeah as as Nancy Reagan used to say just say no just say no just say no but don't 32:57 just say no to contacting us if you have a question or reaction to today's podcast and would like to be involved in 33:05 topics for the future that's so beautiful I'm a professional the music that appears inside with Mike is written 33:11 and performed by Mr Benjamin declue and the thing that we always would appreciate is if you listen to the show 33:18 and you want to 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For most, the goal of therapy is to increase your self-understanding. The only way to truly do this is through honest self-reflection.
https://medium.com/perennial/the-discipline-of-clarity-according-to-jung-630e8434252f
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psycho welcome into the psych 0:19 with mike library this is dr michael mahana i'm here with mr brett newcomb and intern michael 0:25 hello again good morning how are you guys doing great you guys are i guess i guess i should say consummate 0:32 professionals yes i think you could basically say that you can say i've always said the 0:37 shenanigans that were going on before we turned the mics on were 0:43 raucous and and then the mic goes on and you guys are like i'm much more well behaved when the 0:49 camera is on it's the sunday paper rule never put it in writing unless you want it to end up 0:54 in the sunday paper exactly true don't say anything that you don't want somebody to shout with a megaphone 1:01 in the local mall yes dear yeah although now malls are 1:07 empty yeah going out of business it's amazing so how can the economy 1:13 be running so hot and yet have just facilities that sell 1:20 stuff going out of business left and right there's this really cool new invention uh came out in the 90s or 1:25 something called the internet and uh people what's this internets that you speak of well everybody has a box in 1:32 their house and when they get sad or lonely they get on the box for several hours and advertisers show them pictures 1:39 and then they buy things for dopamine hits this is it's it's great it's going to be the next big thing i think al gore 1:45 had something to do with that did he invent it actually all right i think amazon has had a lot 1:51 more to do with al gore mm-hmm with the changes that you're talking about yeah so happy i could support jeff 1:58 bezos riding into space he's flying that phallic symbol all the way to the moon 2:04 oh jealous we're along for the i am jealous because i want to go to space but i'll never have that kind of money 2:11 so i'll miss it by just a couple of of years probably like like 2:18 three years after i die space travel will be affordable that i could have done it but i'll be dead well 2:24 now you've spoken it and manifested that into the world so that's your own fault so yeah i got 2:30 nobody to blame but me so i wish i could be more clear 2:37 i do too but i struggle with that you've been telling this 2:42 story all day well this 2:48 use your words yeah uh uh you've been talking about this phenomenon all day where i will start multiple sentences 2:56 and build this large narrative rather than just answer a simple question 3:02 and i feel like that uh this subject is very apropos for that 3:10 it's a reflection of reality now yeah so i have for the last year 3:16 been really really into reading jung so reading original young 3:22 like not reading things but one of the things that i was kind of like reading the bible yeah you actually read the 3:28 bible or just read stuff people say is in the book exactly yeah right because 3:35 i feel like there's a lot of literature out there in psychology which there obviously is 3:41 but what happens if you go back and you read the original stuff that the original 3:48 person like if i decided that i wanted to be a jungian therapist call myself a union 3:54 therapist then the psychoanalytic community here in st louis would say well you can't be a jungian therapist 3:59 because you haven't gone through our classes and been officially sanctioned 4:04 by us but the truth is how many of them have read jung 4:09 jung's original work probably not very many of them they've read a lot of stuff that people have said about jung just 4:14 like i feel about heinz kohut a lot of people have read a lot of stuff that peop that that people have said about 4:20 heinz kohut but how many people have gone back and actually read heinz kohut's original work so i've really 4:26 been trying to pay a lot of attention to jung's original works 4:31 and one of the things that that i am very aware of is that a lot of the 4:39 a lot of what i think people think they know about jung is not accurate 4:46 say more okay so uh young so the the the types that jung 4:55 came out with and and that now are manifested in the myers-briggs or are 5:01 you know explored through the myers-briggs there's very little of what jung 5:08 originally wrote that actually supports that 5:15 so that doesn't mean that what the myers-briggs tests is necessarily 5:21 wrong but i don't know that jung would have 5:26 necessarily supported the myers-briggs in its current 5:31 iteration i don't know maybe he would have but it didn't exist when he was 5:37 alive and so we don't know what he thinks about it but a lot of people would tell you that 5:43 the myers-briggs represents essentially the principles of jung's type typology and 5:52 maybe it does i don't know i don't know what young would think about that but i do know that he was very specific about what he 5:59 what you're talking about the distinction between the manifestation of his theory yeah 6:05 and the origination of his theory and your argument is if you go back and read what he originally wrote 6:11 then you have a clearer understanding of his thoughts exactly but as i understand it when 6:16 when he wrote this stuff it was coming out of his intellect not scientific experimentation 6:24 um brilliant man conceptualized these things wrote them 6:30 down the myers-briggs is someone else taking that and trying to interpret it or 6:36 develop a mechanism that would evoke it when clients take a test right 6:43 so they're not the same thing but they may be different facets of the same diamond 6:50 yeah that's a political scientist and you hear it's that we're saying that law is the manifestation of philosophy 6:57 but the philosophy is not born to the end of law most of the time yes 7:03 got that so one of the things that jung wrote about 7:09 that i would like to explore is this concept 7:14 of clarity so i sent you guys an article about uh jung's thoughts on clarity and so i 7:21 would just ask you what was your guys's thoughts or reflections about that 7:29 michael you wanna sure um i have always looked at young's clarity 7:36 going back to stoicism right marcus aurelius know thyself um and i think 7:42 there is a lot of wisdom in this and how we interpret this and how we can use 7:47 this uh to better our lives or to to connect with people around us 7:52 um i in my everyday job right as an engineer 7:58 i will get into uh not tiffs but uh confrontations with a teammate of mine 8:05 because he's very wordy right and the more words he uses the less i understand about what he's actually saying 8:13 and i think young's argument here is if you don't know yourself how can 8:18 anybody else know you and to get to the point where you can other people can know you or you can 8:25 enact that get really deep with yourself and understand what your you are what 8:30 your convictions are and what you want them to be um i think there's wisdom in that i also 8:36 think there's always some understanding that you even like knowing them knowing them is different than 8:42 choosing them and you can do both you can do both 8:47 so what would what would you say is the difference between the knowing and the choosing i would say that knowing a 8:54 conviction that you currently hold for for example my father is relatively 8:59 religious yes he knows that conviction of himself but it wasn't until much 9:04 later in his life that he really wrestled with his own faith um that did he choose that 9:11 conviction oh i got you himself so you could be brought up in a family where a conviction were indoctrinated into you 9:17 and it could be something like racism you could have been indoctrinated into a racist 9:22 family and you could have that as a part of you but you hadn't ch chosen it and 9:29 then if you actually look back and and at yourself critically and say is this an aspect of my personality that i want 9:36 to embrace you could choose not to you could choose to change yes i think young falls in that camp as well not only can 9:43 you choose to change but you have a responsibility to make the choice it falls back in that 9:49 stoicism or even back to the aristocracy of i have the responsibility of knowing 9:54 myself of understanding this philosophy in myself because eventually as a human being or a 10:00 member of society i should i need to make the choice 10:06 okay i thought you had something but uh so for me this is 10:11 from the psychodynamic perspective the real distinction between what they call 10:17 catharsis and cathexis so catharsis is the evocation of a strong emotional reaction 10:23 cathexis is like an epiphany understanding into the true nature of a thing and 10:29 i have always believed that cathexis is the goal of therapy at least for me 10:36 if i'm going to go to therapy cathexis is my goal and i try and create cathexis 10:42 for my clients but i've had a lot of people tell me that capexis is could be 10:48 could be a goal but is not a necessary goal of therapy so do you guys think 10:53 that better personal understanding is a required goal of therapy or should 11:01 be an expectation of therapy or do you think that just alleviation of symptomology 11:07 is the goal or the point of therapy 11:16 so i think that depends on if we're talking about therapies and intellectual exercise in this field of study 11:21 or if we're talking about what the client coming to see you is hoping to achieve 11:26 because they're the ones that get to decide so it's really in service to what the client's 11:32 goals are it should be but then there's also a pure intellectual 11:38 description that you can buy into as a therapist but i don't think you can impose it on 11:44 the client i had i had dinner this week with an uh old friend of mine 11:52 who is struggling with some things in her life right now and she was saying i was raised lutheran 11:57 i feel these shoulds about how i should be certain ways 12:04 and i'm discovering at this point in my life i don't want to be that way and so i'm feeling guilt about it she said talk 12:09 to me about guilt and i said my personal belief because i'm not doing 12:15 therapy with her so i'll talk more about what i believe with her 12:22 is that guilt the feeling of guilt is an imposed script 12:27 that was internalized inside you in your early childhood messages that you were given to try to 12:33 control your behaviors your options and your thoughts remorse is something totally different remorse 12:40 is something comes out of my own personal sense of integrity to be the person i 12:46 want to be as i understand it requires me to behave this way think this way feel this way 12:54 so if i'm not behaving in a way if i idealize myself for instance this is a good christian 12:59 how do i understand the message about christianity in christ i said well you should behave this way 13:04 okay so i want to behave this way but then i'm walking through the mall and i see somebody that i immediately just 13:10 want to go slap i have a visceral sense of antagonism to this person i don't 13:16 know where it came from i just feel it that primitive part of me wants to go punch me in the nose when i recognize that the christian part 13:23 of me or the the integrity part of me is saying wait a minute a good christian 13:28 wouldn't have those feelings you wouldn't respond to those people what the hell is wrong with you you're a sick person so then i'm in conflict 13:36 internally between the person i'm now seeing myself to be and the idealized person that i would wish to be 13:43 so what i try to explain to my friend is i make a distinction between feeling remorse if i did or didn't do something 13:50 i drive down the highway and these people are standing on the side of the road with homeless signs and little children a woman a man and a couple 13:57 little children and i think i can't believe that the city hasn't run 14:02 them off they're interrupting traffic it's dangerous they shouldn't be there then i drive half a mile on i think what 14:07 if they're really homeless well if those little kids are hungry you got some money you could have given them what's wrong with you you're not a 14:13 good person so i get caught up in those conflicts so then i ask myself who do you choose to 14:19 be do you choose to be a person who tries to help the downtrodden if so 14:25 how do you do that do you support a food pantry do you 14:31 support a homeless shelter do you physically go down and cook meal i mean what do you do to say well i'm helping 14:38 and then can you discriminate between that and passing somebody on the highway with a 14:44 homeless son as as a matter of personal choice so we get into the shoots and what i told 14:50 my friend is the way i try to distinguish this with clients who are suffering from this 14:55 is can you make a distinction between the have two shoulds and the chooser shoots the behavior may be the same the 15:01 visible behavior i'm going to put twenty dollars in a pot somewhere the have to should 15:07 if i listen to that and i do it i'm go the way the way i'll know i'm going to 15:12 feel resentful and angry the choose to should i'm going to feel good about it because my superhero will 15:18 come in and give me an atta boy oh you did the right thing you did what we wanted to do so i try to make the distinction between 15:24 the have two shoulds and the choose to show but so then the only way that you can know the difference between the have two shoulds and the choose two shoulds 15:31 is to find this clear clarity absolutely which brings us back full circle so i 15:36 want to go back though and ask you a question about why i was listening to this well actually let's go to our break and 15:42 then we'll come back and i'm going to ask you a question hey brett if you were going to 15:48 tell somebody to check out something on the internet to 15:53 help them with their mental health what would you tell them i tell them listen to psych with mike why would you tell 15:58 them that because it's probably one of the most easily listenable experiences you can have that 16:05 will give you information that's useful for a whole spectrum of concerns that 16:10 people have i agree and i have actually been told that 16:16 by at least a dozen people several of whom were not married to me and some of 16:22 them didn't even know me that's amazing that is amazing it's when when we get 16:27 that kind of feedback from people it is so incredibly 16:32 humbling and overwhelming for me it is for both of us yeah so we really 16:38 appreciate it and as always if it's friday it's side with mike [Music] 16:44 okay we're back and and so the question that i wanted to ask you is so do you conceptualize guilt as an 16:53 external message and remorse as an internal message no uh i conceptualize guilt as an 17:00 indoctrinated message okay so but that's what i mean the the the the it's coming from outside the message is coming from 17:06 outside originally yeah but i've internalized sure sure yeah yeah okay yeah but but remorse has to 17:12 come from inside right for my own developed sense of integrity the person that to be the husband that i want to be 17:19 requires me to behave this way and not behave that way so even though 17:25 the primitive me may want to behave that way right the chosen me 17:30 shouldn't it's a should is it a have to should is it coming from my religious training as a child or is 17:37 it a choose to should come into my sense of grown-up integrity i walk this path because i choose to walk this path it 17:43 makes me feel better about me so would you would you say that remorse yes is more a function of clarity yes 17:51 yes okay because i think that's really helpful when thinking about you know 17:56 we've all treated individuals who are sexual abuse surprisers right and we've 18:02 always had and we've had we've talked about this multiple times you come to thanksgiving i got to go to belong to 18:08 you belongs to the perpetrator and but i think that that's a great way to be able to present that to the 18:15 client to say you feel guilty but do you feel remorse so that's what you have to do you have to break up the script that 18:21 they've internalized and offer them the option to write a new one right because if you feel guilty 18:28 then that's pressure that's coming from you from outside from other members well the rest of the family still wants to 18:34 keep the imagery in place and so they're going to be really devastated if you out uncle joe at thanksgiving dinner you 18:41 ruined our thanksgiving right and so if i say to the client let's not focus on your guilt let's 18:48 focus on your remorse where's your remorse comfort my remorse comes from that i couldn't protect that little girl 18:54 my remorse comes from that my other people in my family didn't protect that little girl and so that wouldn't be 19:00 remorse that would be anger oh well i mean it could be yeah i mean if if johnny didn't protect 19:07 susie i don't own any of that it's regret okay it's really rewarding okay okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i 19:13 think is that they're both rooted they both gain power through shame yes both guilt and remorse and 19:20 even regret all three gain their power through an unspoken shame yeah but who's right but where's the shame 19:26 coming from is it coming from an external message or is it coming from an internal message a whole personal integrity so that's the conversation i 19:32 want to have with the client what is your sense of integrity not my 19:38 judgment not my external observation saying good girl bad girl but what do you see when you look in the mirror what 19:43 do you hear in your head and i think that's what jung was suggesting in the 19:48 article about clarity of self-awareness self-perception uh 19:54 self-examination michael you were gonna say something no okay so so uh uh 20:04 have you ever used that terminology though in therapy i would like for you to have more clarity 20:11 no yeah i haven't either no um have you ever conceptualized it that way in a way 20:17 that you were aware of i don't know okay because i think i do 20:24 that i think i do and i don't know that i ever used the word clarity but it is 20:31 i tend to be fairly socratic and you know there's a whole 20:38 controversy in psych how should you be so should you teach in therapy or should you let the 20:44 client come to their own conclusions and i tend to be more socratic and that's 20:50 just how i am and so i know that about myself but i want people to genuinely come to an 20:58 understanding of themselves not one that i've 21:03 given them or projected on to them but one that they internally believe is true because i don't think you can make 21:10 accurate choices about your behavior and how you want to be if you don't understand that so what 21:16 i try to talk about a teaching moment what i try to do is teach a client that 21:21 words matter and that it's really important if we can get to the manifestation of the script that 21:26 they hear in their head what are the words that you hear with my friend what she was saying is i hear should 21:34 and so i said could you work on changing every time you hear [ __ ] in your head 21:39 stop and say will or won't i should take my friend to dinner 21:45 stop and say i will take my friend to dinner this week or i won't take my friend to dinner this week and let that 21:51 go and re-script the words you hear in your head because i believe if the script is 21:58 rewritten the message changes we find that there's a powerful effect 22:03 um this reminds me a lot of uh danny kahneman again right uh danny kahneman and amos tversky have this whole idea of 22:10 framing as a language frame yes right and they would say people are much more effective at quitting smoking if they 22:16 say oh i'm not a person who smokes right right or i'm not smoking today right yeah you 22:23 say you if you pull that into your identity as a person uh it was much more powerful 22:31 so if you okay so then that's a choose to sure so so we're focusing on this idea 22:40 of clarity when we're we're connecting it to those choose to shoulds 22:46 well the clarity comes as young says the clarity comes from self-examination and self-reflection 22:51 so when you can examine this the language of the script 22:57 then you can edit it to your liking right okay so now 23:03 this is kind of blowing my mind but okay so uh one of the things that that we 23:10 struggle with in therapy all the time is the client who is struggling to be able 23:17 to conceptualize themselves as a good person or a bad person so 23:22 using what we're talking about here how how do we apply that to help the 23:29 client with that kind of struggle 23:36 do you understand what i'm saying i think so i think my approach to that would just simply be to ask them for more clarity 23:44 definition of how they experienced them as bad how they experienced themselves as being 23:50 bad and unworthy and so what they will tell you is they've had this behavior that behavior or they'll tell you that 23:57 their church says they should do this that the shoulds from other message points and then you start to take those one at 24:03 a time just examine them where does it come from is that yours do you own that or somebody hand you that well i think 24:09 that coming from you know the the old albert ellis kind of rational emotive therapy 24:14 you know messaging unconscious self-talk uh that a lot of what i see 24:22 as the affliction of our society in in western culture is 24:29 unworthiness unlovableness that people are carrying from those pre-verbal years 24:36 and that we go go back to we were talking in a previous episode about the 24:42 unthought known that we've learned from michael garanzini and that that is one of those 24:48 really profound deeply rooted unthought knowns i am unlovable and that you know 24:57 looking at this idea of clarity what i would say to that client is what makes you 25:03 unlovable is this a message that you've internalized from your environment 25:10 if you really believe that about you what is it about you that you think 25:16 so the way i understand guaranteeing you used that in connection with something called attachment theory 25:24 your ability to have attachments to make relationships to be connected um 25:30 a lot of the pain that people experience and the dysfunction that they experience comes from their feeling of 25:36 not being securely attached not being safely attached 25:43 and so you have to spend enough time to get to that messaging 25:49 what did you hear and learn about your worthiness to be 25:54 attached about your expectation that you will be abandoned right uh cast out 25:59 because you're unacceptable and that didn't come into your head the incident that you 26:05 were born right as a tabula raza blank tablet that was written by someone on the wall 26:12 you know like the biblical message about the finger of god writing a message on the wall somebody wrote that on your wall can we 26:19 examine it can we possibly edit it and if we can 26:24 what does that suggest to you right about relationships about self-acceptance about self-worth 26:31 because if you got a message from your family of origin from your primary so i 26:37 think this is what i believe is that you are born into a family that this family 26:42 demonstrates appropriate emotional regulation to you you internalize that 26:48 if that message of a regulation but the the the effectiveness of that 26:53 internalized process is really based on the extent to which you feel secure and attached and so when you don't have good 27:01 secure attachment in those early years it's going to be really really difficult to develop effective emotional 27:07 regulation later in life and so then now you're an adult coming to my office 27:12 telling me that you don't feel loved and what i'm wanting to say to that person 27:18 is where is that coming from if we look at if we go through a process of 27:24 delineation to try and figure out clearly where that message comes from from 27:30 inside you where do you see yourself being unlovable and and you know clients will 27:36 always have examples well you know this person says the messages they were yeah they're exactly 27:42 i was just going to say i saw this movie once yeah yeah they're they're but they're all messages it's not an actual 27:49 real intrinsically felt kind of thing and so then when we get to the heart of that and and we we 27:56 say okay this sense of unlovableness isn't coming intrinsically from you 28:04 then i think that it comes back to what michael's talking about with this identity internalization if that's not really 28:10 your identity are you willing to now challenge that and reject this idea of 28:16 unlovableness in favor of some identity structure that's more congruent with 28:22 what you truly see about yourself i think for me that is that is the the 28:28 core of this idea of clarity it's the theory is that clarity is the 28:34 groundwork earlier you mentioned is should the goal of should one of the goals of therapy 28:40 be getting a client to know themselves and we said ultimately it depends on what what are 28:46 the goals of this particular client but that has to leave me wondering can you do 28:53 work with a client without that level of clarity i think you do have to reach a certain point of clarity with a client 28:59 either understanding the messages that they're receiving understanding um the dialogue within themselves 29:05 understanding the propensities within themselves um and then additionally finally their convictions right so 29:11 that's a great question michael my experience the presenting problem that brings 29:16 somebody to therapy is almost never the underlying problem that's causing real difficulty in their life 29:22 but if you don't appear to address the presenting problem and make progress with the presenting problem you'll never 29:28 get the opportunity to go beneath that so it is a dance that again the therapist is challenged 29:35 to track at a existential level and at a superficial 29:41 level to keep the client secure 29:46 and uh wanting to come back feel good about 29:51 what they're getting out of coming to therapy and it's a real challenge sometimes and 29:57 you know the the idea of clarity is a spectrum right and so if you're doing 30:02 cognitive behavior therapy somebody comes in and says i'm always late to work so we're going to do cognitive behavior therapy to identify why it is 30:10 that you're always late to work and you know we identify all of these unconscious self-talk messages you know 30:18 like oh i have more time or i you know i i need to eat a good breakfast all these things and then we we you know modify 30:26 those so that you're more on time that really isn't getting to oh i was 30:33 unloved as a child but it is getting to a level of clarity that is dealing with 30:39 that very specific symptomology presentation so yes we always are going 30:44 to be working on clarity because there's just no other way to be able to do therapy you can't 30:51 get change if you don't work on that process of clarity but my question is 30:58 you know are we and i don't want to say disservice because it always does always have to be 31:03 with the client but for me psychotherapy is good really really foundational 31:09 psychotherapy is a deeper process that does get to that point of cathexis at 31:15 least for me that's at least a part of my goal now i'm not going to force that on a client that doesn't want to go 31:21 there but i am always looking for the avenues for 31:27 what helps me to clinically understand that 31:32 individuals process that that that process of catheters more what are you laughing 31:38 about i'm sorry i when you said i'm not going to force that on the client i flashed i remember 31:43 one time working with a family the mother had lost her cool because she had gotten up 31:49 at four o'clock in the morning taking these three kids to six flags and she wanted to ride a particular ride 31:55 that they didn't want to ride and she lost it and went in this whole diatribe about i got up at four o'clock in the 32:02 morning i drove several hours to get here you're going to write every right out here and you're goddamn going to have fun 32:09 so that's where i flashed when he said i'm not going to push that on my client here's your interpretation of reality that i insist you had what you wanted 32:15 was the recognition you wanted yes you did that's awesome yeah did i get that did they ride the ride 32:22 yes and they cried the whole time nobody had fun 32:27 all right that sounds like a good place to uh leave it for today we would really love it if you would go 32:34 to the youtubes and find psych with mike and subscribe to the show there you can also go on to the 32:41 apple podcast site and find psych with mike and leave us a comment and a rating that always helps people find the show 32:47 and we really appreciate that as always the music that appears inside with mike is written and performed by mr benjamin 32:53 the clue and if it's friday it's cycling
How our bodies experience and process stress and anxiety are important considerations when examining situations like police shootings. It is also important for therapists to understand when working with clients who have experienced trauma.
https://www.verywellmind.com/general-adaptation-syndrome-gad-definition-signs-causes-management-5213817
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is recognized as a significant issue that can affect people in everyday life. The sum total of small traumas can have the same biological effect as those experienced in combat. It is important for therapists and clients to understand the biology of this process to best help those dealing with this potentially debilitating issue.
https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/the-science-and-biology-of-ptsd/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-ptsd/202206/the-common-effects-complex-relational-trauma
Adolescence is a time of distance from the family of origin and identification with a peer group. So what are the perils and benefits of attachment during this developmental period?
https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/mental-health/teen-attachment-disorder/
The news seems to get crazier and people are getting more polarized. How is a person supposed to find solace and meaning in life? Perhaps the best way is to learn to appreciate the small things.
https://neurosciencenews.com/meaning-life-small-things-21063/
Emotional regulation is a necessary skill for secure attachment. In other words, people who are a "hot mess" have difficulty feeling secure about themselves or having good relationships with others.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/head-games/202206/how-become-more-secure-person
Narcissism is both necessary and pathological. Every individual needs some narcissism for the Ego to develop, but too much can become a personality disorder. Understanding narcissism can help us recognize the difference and better understand ourselves.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parenting/202205/how-narcissist-manipulates-the-love-language-concept
When I worked in a behavioral health hospital, all the nurses said it was because she was borderline (BPD) when there was a difficult female patient. Obviously, no one can be so easily diagnosed but it is a common belief that individuals with BPD have difficulty in relationships. How true is this and just exactly what is Borderline Personality Disorder?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/toxic-relationships/201909/the-drama-loving-borderline
Psychology jargon goes through a cyclic evolution just like any vocation. Are "new age" concepts like self-love and mindfulness new concepts? If not what were they known as in the before times?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/new-gps-intimate-relationships/202205/the-keys-self-love
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with Mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:07 guest go to www.sitewithmike.com follow the show on 0:12 Twitter at psych with Mike or like the Facebook page at psych with Mike now 0:18 welcome into the site with Mike Library this is Dr Michael Mahon I am here with Mr Brett Newcombe and intern Michael 0:24 hello hello good morning how are you gentlemen Exquisite yeah my uh 0:30 daughter's dog is staying with me for a couple of days and he made some noises 0:36 from the other room to which I said be quiet dog and you guys said that sounded like an old man in the other didn't 0:42 sound like a dog yeah how do you train that dog to make those noises yeah well I don't know he doesn't live with me 0:48 anymore but um yeah yeah that was funny so uh 0:55 I think that there is at least okay let 1:01 me ask a different question Brett you are and without meaning any 1:07 any uh uh negative connotation you're the oldest person in 1:13 the room yes absolutely okay and and the reason that I say that experientially and cosmically 1:18 yes is because you were a teacher born earlier ever yeah yeah and then you also 1:26 were a therapist forever you actually taught me and even though I feel like 1:32 I've done therapy for a long long long long time you've done it even longer than that and so what I would ask is 1:40 it feels to me like this idea of mindfulness this idea of self-love this 1:47 idea of uh aware of all all of these kinds of of new age new age right 1:57 kinds of Concepts that are being baked into psychology feels newer to me but I 2:06 also recognize things are cyclic and so what goes around comes around so what I would ask you is 2:12 are you aware of a a time in Psychology where these Concepts were being promoted 2:20 more than in my experience or do you feel like these things are 2:26 newer age they weren't being framed this way they weren't being this phraseology was not being used 2:32 these are marketing strategies my argument is frequently made that every so often you 2:40 have to change what you call it yeah so that you can charge more money for it right because the insurance companies are in this constant chess game to 2:47 reduce your payments so DSM has to be revised I also think though that people want to continue to 2:55 propose new theories and so you have to repackage things to be able to make it 3:00 fresh so that you can sell it as a new idea uh yeah but they're also 3:08 I mean when you sent this article for us to talk about my first reaction is you know Psychology today is becoming like 3:15 Brides magazine yeah these articles this article you read this article you just won't let that brights thing go well you 3:21 sent me the article that's all I can say all right um it's just fluff it's pablum it's 3:27 verbiage so I was going to say well I'm gonna throw fit and we're not going to do this conversation and then I thought 3:33 you know there is a legitimate conversation to be had around the idea 3:38 of doing therapy with t people and trying to facilitate their ability to be more 3:45 self-honest self-accepting self-actualize another term from the past uh you don't have to 3:51 call it self-love but don't that's why I agreed I would have the conversation that's exactly though the point you're 3:58 trying to make yeah is that that uh I think that these things aren't new I think that they have been in Psychology 4:05 before I think self-actualization which was a meslovian uh idea is exactly this 4:14 same thing it was just so phrased We Come Back to Basics yeah 4:19 my basic concept of doing therapy is that I have to have excellent attending 4:25 skills I have to be able to do reflective listening accurately and 4:31 empathically and I have to create a safe holding environment if I can do those three things and you spend enough time 4:37 with me I will learn Who You Are what's going on with you to the point 4:43 that I can then facilitate your exploration of issues that are causing 4:49 you pain behaviors that are causing you difficulty and I can throw all kinds of words and theories and terminology and 4:55 labeling and all that into the mix but the reality is if I do that I believe I 5:01 can help you improve your quality of life and reduce your level of frustration and pain so by doing so if 5:09 you're improving that individual's quality of life yeah how is that happening do you believe 5:14 that they are internalizing some of the skills that you are demonstrating in 5:21 that therapy session yeah I hope so because that's the microcosm of the universe the two of us are here well and 5:26 you know all the theories say well whatever they're struggling with in life they're going to project onto you and you're having a chance to react to it 5:33 differently and cause them to have to go home yeah what because how many times have you had clients that would come in 5:39 and say are you going to give me homework I said well do you need homework you don't need homework okay I'll give you homework but you won't do 5:45 it and then you'll come in next week and say you're going to be really mad at me I mean why would I be mad at you well I didn't do the homework that's all yeah 5:52 and why did they even ask if you're going to give them because they've been taught exactly and they want to feel 5:57 like they have quality for cost oh you gave me something to do right even if I'm not going to do it right right 6:02 and and for anybody who is very very structurally 6:09 a cognitive behavioralist and you really believe in home homework we're not 6:14 saying homework assignments aren't beneficial what we are saying is that homework assignments should never be 6:20 given because to make sure to hold the client responsible for doing the 6:26 homework it's always about if you give the client this assignment yes if you do 6:31 it we can talk about what the effect was but if you don't do it there's just as much information to be gleaned in 6:38 therapy from a client who doesn't do their homework as a client who does do their homework so years and years ago 6:45 before you were born okay there was an argument about that's hard to believe differential between counseling and 6:52 therapy and the argument was made that counselors provide behavioral 6:57 interventions like I can help you stop having panic attacks or I can help you quit smoking or I can help you lose 7:03 weight we use this cognitive behavioral stuff teach you new language teaching new habits uh and therapy was about 7:10 personality change self-structure change 7:16 I don't know that I could make a distinction or have a horse in that race I believe 7:22 fundamentally if you come to me and I pay attention to you and I see you accurately and empathically reflect that 7:29 back to you that we can dance a dance that offers you an opportunity for 7:34 growth and change I don't know what the outcome is going to be but I believe it's beneficial on 7:40 average and don't help everybody I'm not everybody's cup of tea but if you give me that opportunity I believe I can help 7:47 you and that really is about what we would call re-parenting 7:53 which is the dance which is the danceholding environment and we were recently as you repair it yourself I 8:00 don't parent you I don't say okay that's the point I wanted to get to that's the point I wanted to get to is right who's 8:05 doing the parenting and yes the clients re-parenting themselves by internalizing some of the things that are being 8:12 presented especially in emotional regulations you're getting in your way yeah yeah is it fair is it unfair is it 8:18 sad is that okay it reality is let's deal with reality but what options do you have in one episode recently we were 8:24 talking about personality and I was saying that at my stage now almost 60 years old whereas I felt like the 8:30 personality was immutable I kind of feel like now you do have some uh advocacy or 8:36 or nothing is immutable death in taxes I know yeah it it and and but it's through 8:42 that re-parenting that you have the ability to be able to maybe make some changes so we have the younger smarter 8:48 element here let's ask what do you think well I I think it's interesting I see 8:54 you twitching I just like no Warriors it's interesting that you bring up the idea of self-love and self-care in the 9:01 Zeitgeist I think you're absolutely right I I think about uh shows like queer eye right 9:07 um very popular on Netflix Jonathan Van Ness comes out one of the cast members of query comes out with uh this book 9:14 called Over the Top which is all about his own self-love his own self-reflection um and he really dives into Richard 9:21 Schwartz's Parts Theory right he really starts to talk about that it's really starting to dissect one's own 9:27 personality and finding the aspects of one's personality that serves one right 9:33 um so we talk about if you were press apart uh that part can act out in a 9:38 different way if I repress the depression in me that part eventually will either take over the driver's seat 9:44 because it hasn't got the attention or um or act out in another way I have a 9:50 number of friends who are family systems trained and believe and work and I've 9:55 seen it work I mean it's beautiful work it can really it's another way to speak it's another language but I love to jack 10:02 around with them because I'll say part of me really resists what you're saying yeah and you know they just roll their ass and and part of them wants to slap 10:09 me when that happens you know again I I we've talked about this that that is anything new or is everything always 10:15 repackaged you and I being more psychodynamically focused uh neither one 10:23 of us really use that language of Parts theory that doesn't mean that it isn't real or isn't relevant it's such an echo 10:31 of all that I learned about working with multiple personalities yeah uh which I mean it is an in a fight with it's just 10:38 an echo of how I learned to understand it uh but I don't know that it matters at the 10:44 end of the day I have to hear you accurately and reflect to you what I'm hearing not judgmentally but accurately 10:51 so that it resonates with you I mean he sees me he understands me he accepts me then I can challenge you can you accept 10:57 yourself right the whole thing about guilt I don't accept myself because I'm so guilty I've I'm carrying this burden 11:04 of of angst and regret and so on and we have to find a way to say what 11:11 is that in service how is that impacting your survival and your progress yeah 11:16 could you let it go and if and what would it take for you to be able to let it go what would it be worth I believe 11:23 that all behaviors cost and pain all choices cost and pay we have to do the 11:28 emotional economics can we give you new coin of the realm to play with uh 11:34 that's the challenge of the dance well dance with me the only thing that I can 11:40 or there is something that I am very aware of as we're having this conversation that just recently happened 11:46 and there's no reason for people to know this you guys know this my daughter just graduated from medical school and we had 11:54 graduation last weekend and while we were at graduation my daughter said to 12:00 me I just want to tell you that when we 12:05 were little you were a really big advocate of we have to love ourselves 12:11 and that that has to be the focus of Our Lives because on my email there's a 12:17 Latin phrase that is Nemo debt quad non-habit which means you can't give away something that you don't have and I 12:24 always told my kids you can't really love somebody else if you don't love yourself you can't really trust somebody 12:29 else if you don't trust yourself and I've always believed that that is a foundational psychological principle and 12:36 she said you know I just have to thank you for in ingraining that in us because 12:42 it was not something that was looked unfavorably in my family I remember my daughter said when she was 12:50 still in a pumpkin seat in the back of my mom's car grandma do you love yourself and my mom said well I don't 12:56 know probably not and my daughter would just went off on oh well I want you to love yourself and because my dad says 13:02 that you got to love yourself and you can't and I just want you to be happy grandma and my mom came over that day 13:08 and and confronted me and said what are you teaching your kids you're messing your 13:13 kids up and all this stuff and because that wasn't something that was promoted in my family the idea of 13:20 self-love was not something that was okay your shame is a very powerful language yeah speak it's also a very 13:25 easy language to speak and and I think brene Brown has a quote out that shame derives its power from being unspeakable 13:33 and so if we Revel in that shame and we we exist in that shame we will never 13:38 truly love ourselves um and it's so I'm a member of the queer community and it's really prevalent uh 13:45 Jonathan Van Ness is also in the queer Community um there's a another person uh RuPaul 13:50 um very famous for being a drag queen and ends every episode by saying if you can't love yourself how in the hell are 13:57 you going to love anybody else right and I I it's interesting too I think you got that from me I might have yeah no no I 14:03 think RuPaul was I might have gotten that from you uh possibly um but I really do think it's 14:08 interesting that that has come out of a community where shame tends to be a 14:14 driving motivator a driving uh factor in a lot people's lives there's another 14:20 book called The Velvet rage whose author I can't remember at this moment but all about shame right does shame 14:28 research and says these are the stages that uh that a queer man goes through as he grows into into life um and it's it's 14:35 focused on shame back in the 90s there was got an author Leo buscalia yeah the 14:40 doctor of love love doctor he was on he was huge on Hugh Donahue back when you 14:45 Donahue was still on yeah yeah I think he was replaced by Dr Ruth but I think they had a different Focus Savage has 14:52 his problem yes right Savage Love is no self-love ultimately and it's it's interesting to me that that these ideas 14:58 of self-love really find pillars in in the queer community and in other 15:04 marginalized communities um and it's and then people who tend to 15:09 pillars can be anchors yes they can help stabilize you and ground you if you can buy the same thing religion can do for 15:15 people yes can anchor you in times of turmoil 15:20 I've often said that clients who have a religious anchor to 15:26 hold on have something additional to fight with in times of trouble and crisis then 15:33 clients that don't have that and but you've also said that that can both be a 15:38 benefit but also a liability that religion can give you the illusion 15:45 of having some sense of certainty and maybe I'm maybe I Mis well no I think 15:50 the caution that I would offer is the things that I say personally in my personal life are different than the 15:55 things that I say counseling my job is not to proselytize my beliefs about religion and faith my job is to take 16:03 what you believe and help understand how it anchors you or how it gets in your 16:08 way and then offer to you new ways to think about that not as a as a 16:15 conviction of my premise but as a growth within you that gives you more freedom 16:20 and less okay so if if if religion causes a blockage for growth yeah then 16:29 it's not a positive well what I kind of heard you you picking at there is uh the 16:34 idea that while religion can anchor you say somebody comes that can also come with a risk of an existential crisis yes 16:41 in and of itself if they start to question or doubt their own religion right with that gain comes comes another risk 16:49 yeah but yeah to my question to my answer is what doesn't come with other risks right right that doesn't exist 16:55 okay let's run to our break and we'll pick this up on the other side hey guys Dr Michael Mahon here from 17:02 Psych with Mike and do you think that you have a story to tell I know that 17:09 when we started psych with Mike the things that we really wanted in a 17:15 podcast hosting company was that they knew what they were doing and libsyn has 17:21 been around since the very beginning they're the oldest running consecutive still existing podcast hosting company 17:29 in the entire world I think but certainly in the United States so they've been around since people started 17:36 uploading things to the internet and so they have a lot of experience but we 17:43 also needed a service that was easy to use and libsyn is just so intuitive and 17:50 even though they've got all of this experience they just keep on upgrading so they just recently went through a 17:57 major renovation a major upgrade lips and pride and made the service even more 18:03 intuitive and user friendly than it was before and it was so user friendly before that I was able to figure it out 18:10 and get site with Mike up on the service so we've been using uh Lipson since the 18:16 very beginning of Psych with Mike for over two years now we love them and as a 18:22 friend of the show if you go to libsyn and start a podcast right now you get 18:28 your first month free so you go to libson.com and use the code 18:35 f-r-i-e-n-d so friend of the show friend that's l i b s y n.com and use the code 18:44 f r i e n d and you get your first month free and as always if it's Friday it's 18:52 cycling okay we're back and the one part of the 18:57 article that I actually liked was there's a section where the author is 19:03 talking about you know you can kind of monitor your own sense of self-love by 19:10 are you quicker to self-criticize or are you quicker to self-praise and I think 19:16 that that's a really important concept so I think a lot of that is driven by the scripts that you internalize as a 19:23 child the parenting scripts that your parents used who in the hell do you think you are 19:28 messaging that you internalizing well who do I think I am what makes me better what makes me different I have to be 19:34 this way shame power control pain or levers that many people parent with 19:42 mm-hmm there's a a line in a song that I like where this guy is talking about his 19:50 experience in Catholic school and he says that he got his knuckles bruised by 19:56 a nun dressed in black who told him that fear is the Heart of Love so he never 20:02 went back and I think that that is so true that's my daughter's dog is so true 20:08 in a lot of our experiences that people taught us that fear is the Heart of Love 20:16 and it's not it's not when we love other people and it's not when we love 20:23 ourselves my father specifically said to me I don't care if you love me but you will fear me 20:28 yeah there's a great Michael Scott quote from the office it's would you prefer to be feared or loved and he says is it too 20:35 much to ask for both I want people to be afraid of how much they love me and I 20:40 said yeah that sounds good oh afraid that's a nice thing yeah I didn't think that's where that was going in the 20:46 beginning yeah uh okay so now actually now I'm gonna pose a question uh because 20:53 if you look awe up in the dictionary the definition of awe is Majesty with a 21:02 sense of fear I mean that's that's the that's the definition so is sinners in the hand 21:09 you're an Angry God well but but is fear required as a part of Love reverence and 21:18 respect are different are different okay I think they are different um and I think reverent 21:24 in in religion in particular at least how I have understood um Christian religion as I've grown up 21:29 is that uh God has two parts to him right um grace and mercy whereas Grace is 21:36 receiving something you don't deserve and mercy is not receiving something you did right uh and so I I think love can 21:44 exist without that I don't I I agree love can't exist without fear in some sense because if 21:51 you aren't afraid of either losing it or um what can come as a result of this 21:56 vulnerability right that you're entering into someone with someone else it does it have vulnerability at all so the 22:02 Buddha said that the heart of all despair is attachment and so the 22:07 Buddhist concept is Love without attachment and so there is no fear of 22:12 losing that and that you know Buddha said that the greatest love is love that doesn't have that fear of loss 22:19 associated with it transcendentalism and and so I and and I will be honest uh I 22:28 believe that human beings are ingrained at the level of our DNA to be in committed relationships so to me the 22:35 idea of Love without attachment is something that I feel is alien to Being Human but that 22:43 you know that that caveat put out there you know we do have a concept in uh in 22:50 in our world of love without fear and is that a superior form of love should we 22:59 even have fear associated with love 23:06 I think it's uh I don't know I don't I'm not clear on 23:12 what I want to say um I think the idea of humanity 23:21 is that we try to hold on to things to Anchor ourselves to things and people 23:27 to be safe before we stay in one place instead of wrong motions 23:32 the idea that you're articulating about The Love without fear is a greater love a larger love a more encompassing love 23:40 and as the Buddha is suggesting transcendentalism is suggesting if we can detach ourselves from these fears 23:47 and these inhibiting anchors then we can be more expensive and we can see a larger part 23:55 of the universe I don't know if that's doable or not yeah I think that's my understanding of 24:00 the discussion and it you know this is something that I've really thought about 24:06 a lot in Greek in the Greek language there are six or seven words for love 24:12 depending on which reference choice you look at and we don't have that broad kind of love language in our society and 24:21 I think that we're missing something because of that I think that we should be more focused on that but let's go 24:27 back clinically to this idea of are you quicker to self-criticize or are you quicker to self-praise you know if you 24:34 look at yourself and you answer that question in the negative I am much more 24:40 quick to self-criticize that's actually something that we can help you with in 24:45 therapy we can help you learn compensatory measures where you can 24:52 practice trying to be more self-presentative amazing and in the 24:58 beginning that's going to be really hard to do so one of the ways you approach that 25:04 clinically use a specific example I was talking to somebody the other day was telling me that they get in depressive 25:09 cycles and they stand at the front door they want to go outside and they know they need to go out and walk and be in 25:15 the Sun but they just can't go out they just can't go out and I suggested to 25:21 them that words matter and the language you hear in your head structures reality 25:26 and so you have to learn to recognize that voice that says can't and change it 25:32 to will or won't so it should shouldn't can can't get rid of those and make 25:39 affirmative choices but it's not one trial learning you can't do it today and say I will go outside and go outside but 25:45 you have to change the script that you've internalized from childhood that gives you an opportunity to 25:53 be more free right and less bound to your depression and while that isn't one 25:59 trial learning I do think that that is spotter than for the therapy session so 26:04 you can say I will go outside today and go outside and then the next time you come back and see me we can talk about 26:11 how was that you didn't die was it do you want to get to a place where you can say I will stop therapy 26:18 some people do yes there's a lot of um like reaffirmation in that language yes 26:24 I I've heard the same example with vegetarianism people are really wanting to become vegetarians and they say 26:30 instead of saying oh I can't eat meat they say oh I shouldn't eat I don't yeah exactly tell their friends I don't teach 26:37 me I'm not smoking today yeah I don't smoke yeah right right no I think that words matter the the 26:44 words absolutely matter and that's why it I feel like it's super super 26:50 important to work with people who are overly self-critical to try and even if 26:58 it isn't change that to self-praise at least start by modifying the 27:05 self-critical language you know because it can make a huge difference just like 27:10 you're saying the difference between I don't eat meat and I won't eat meat 27:15 is only one letter but it makes a huge difference in the way 27:21 that you perceive it in yourself well it kind of brings us back to the new age word of empowerment yeah you accept your 27:29 power to act you're not trapped you're not stuck you're not limited you're not bound by these strictures you have the 27:36 power to choose we just did a whole episode on personality I think one becomes a behavior you are exhibiting 27:42 and the other is a choice in your personality trait yeah and and choice 27:48 among personality traits yes you know I I I'm really 27:54 so I am very aware that uh 28:01 there's and and it's always this way but there's a a real 28:07 um sense in our society that we have 28:13 so many more opportunities we have so many more people encouraging people to 28:19 be empowered to express their to be you know body what's it what's it called 28:26 when body uh uh happy when you're happy in your own body body positive 28:32 um you know and and so we reject the old kinds of of 28:38 media driven ideas of what is attractive and just be body positive and so we have 28:44 these messages and then on the other still sell Barbie dolls little girls yeah and but but and and I have I've 28:52 heard from clients that they feel like it's harder today to be able to feel 29:00 loved because the ideas that they see on social media of people promoting their 29:08 lives is is so incredibly difficult to live up to and I tell people all the 29:14 time what you see on social media is a lie I mean nobody's living that life maybe you just don't turn off social 29:19 media well well that I think that's the problem is that they are living that life now previously when we look at at 29:26 advertisements or Hollywood that is separate and that is removed from your pocket but now I think we have children 29:34 and teens in particular have social media and they build lives that portray 29:40 this image they build false identities yes it's not real and that becomes their 29:47 entire existence and that's that's not a job for them that is them now 29:52 well I don't know I disagree because I influencers you mean yes because they're 29:58 promoting that and that may be their social Persona online but they're still 30:04 you know so I see these these you know depictions every year the social media of you know people at Thanksgiving and 30:11 everybody's having a great time and they're cutting the turkey and everybody's happy and laughing but I 30:16 know at that table there's a lot of dissension people are arguing with each other and somebody left and you know was 30:22 angry and somebody else drank too much Rockwell painting no huh but but I think that but I wonder if 30:30 there are more opportunities to be yourself today but that some of the 30:38 straitjackets that we live in are just as real today as they were in the 1960s 30:44 right yeah but you could live in a 50 Cent video today instead of a Norman Rockwell painting sure 30:49 and I so I guess it's picky poison but but in the end that hurt but in the 30:57 end you do have some agency to be able to 31:04 change the language that you use to be able to think about yourself to me the 31:13 language the self-talk is more important than the social media projection is that 31:18 fair yes yes and so what I would be saying to 31:25 individuals is it's more important how you conceptualize yourself than whether 31:31 or not you get 10 million likes on your Facebook feed 31:38 well it's Fame is so microscopic now that it truly is fickle and brene brown 31:45 talks about this idea of scarcity in life and a focus on scarcity uh which eventually 31:51 she she argues leads to a focus in scarcity of oneself uh and you know we 31:57 talk about um the generation between the Boomers and the Gen xers uh really had to uh 32:04 keep up with the Johnsons right or keeping up with the Joneses that was a whole big thing then 32:09 um and I think in some ways is now too but just in a much more microscopic way 32:15 um I mean I get on my social media and I feel as though I can never keep up with 32:21 all of the things that I should do I should be an interior designer and a 32:26 photographer and a musician and uh and uh and uh you can have it all you can't 32:31 have it all um so I wonder how and when we I I'm grateful for some 32:39 of the self-love talk but I I hear your point around there is now a societal 32:44 pressure to say you have to love yourself and if you don't well what's wrong with you yeah like like that's the 32:52 normal the the normal state would be to love yourself when I'm not sure that 32:58 that's ever been the normal state but it is a state that we should aspire to we would like to Aspire to 33:04 yes yes those language matters all right hopefully that is beneficial for people 33:10 as always the music that appears inside with Mike is written and performed by Mr Benjamin de clue uh if you want to do 33:17 something nice for us you can find us on Apple podcasts and give us a comment and 33:23 a review a a rating but if you really really want to be kind go to the 33:30 YouTubes find us on YouTube and subscribe to the show that's super super beneficial and as always if it's Friday 33:37 it's like with Mike [Music]
So upfront I want to apologize for the sound quality (or lack thereof) on this episode. Brett, Michelle, and I just started riffing completely off-topic and unplanned, and wouldn't you know it there was some great content but the sound buggered out on me. I have tried to clean it up the best I can. Enjoy!
What are the major school of theoretical orientation?
https://counseling.northwestern.edu/blog/five-counseling-theories-and-approaches/
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's cycling welcome to the site 0:19 with my vibrate this is starting did you want to repeat that no did i edit all your best 0:24 no i don't need to people that watch it regularly know that and we are here with mr brett newcomb 0:31 hi miss michelle steg how are you doing michelle good for you it's good to have you here again 0:37 thank you oh okay i thought you had something no i just i'm happy to be here with two clinicians 0:43 that i've trained and mentored through the years to be more like me 0:49 does it make you you know what i actually and this is the first time i've ever 0:55 thought this how does it make you feel to be in a room 1:01 with other individuals that you have trained and to know 1:09 is that exactly what i said 1:16 no you know one of the reasons that i've agreed to do this podcast that we've done over the last couple of years and we get close and flow 1:23 towards me and gold is to make the podcast address itself to 1:28 people that are interested in doing therapy as clinicians or 1:33 in getting understanding what therapy is like without being in therapy from clinicians 1:38 and so we try to have conversations and address those issues so i'm intrigued 1:44 with the three of us talking because we've all had similar clinical training 1:49 and similar clinical experiences but we have different perspectives on how to do it in the room and so i was hoping we 1:56 could kind of talk about some of those differences one of my arguments has always been that 2:01 psychologists rewrite the same articles and put different words and 2:07 call it something new so it sounds like something fresh is out there it's the same old stuff right 2:12 but fundamentally i believe that to be a clinician to do therapy 2:18 you have to have a mind map that helps you 2:23 understand what everything is going on with people and where the pieces that are out of 2:28 focus or that are broken might reside and how to find them and help bring them 2:34 into focus help correct them uh that's a clinical challenge yeah and 2:40 you have to do it with respect you have to do it with passion uh you have to do it 2:45 with consummate attention i i used to for 30 years i taught at university in a 2:50 nighttime program from 5 30 to 9 30 at night and i would regularly say to my students because 2:56 they'd be great at 5 30 6 6 30 quarter 7 then they start checking their money 3:02 they're gone and they'll check their emails and stuff and i would say to them this is what it's like to do there 3:08 you have to this opportunity to learn how to discipline yourself to be in the background and pay attention what's going on what people are bringing to you 3:15 to consider and they will look at each other what the hell was he talking about yeah i hear all your voices once a week 3:22 i swear to that because i on those days where you're tired or you know i was telling you i had an 3:28 insane day with my kid and i mean i lived like four days already and then i had to go to therapy 3:35 and i but i do i remember that and i hear your voice saying these people are paying you you're on the clock right 3:41 you are on the clock their money is worth something and you show up yeah you bring it you bring it you have to worry 3:47 about it put your stuff in a box and bring it right yeah right at least i i do passionate believe that 3:54 i agree completely i always called that a theoretical orientation that a person has to have a theoretical orientation 4:00 and if you don't have a theoretical orientation that you can define then you don't have a theoretical orientation and 4:06 it isn't easy in knowledge that was a collective jeff well then people say eclectic and so what eclectic means is 4:11 that you have i don't have uh kinds of tools to be able to be 4:19 effective in therapy and it's fine to be eclectic as long as you can define it but if you say i'm eclectic and you 4:25 can't define it then you don't why is that really important to you because what brett was talking about he 4:32 uses the concept of mind map and whether it's a mind map or however you think of it if you don't have some 4:39 idea of where you think that human pathology evolves from then you don't 4:45 have an idea of how human pathology evolves and if you don't have an idea then you're just shooting in the dark 4:52 and if you're getting paid to do it i don't believe that that's how you should 4:58 approach i think that you should have a very clear like i can use cognitive 5:03 behavioral interventions but my understanding of how human 5:08 pathology evolves is through the heinz kohut theory of how 5:14 emotional regulation develops through the concepts of idealization twinship 5:20 and mirroring and i can explain in great depth and detail what all of those things mean so i would say that i am 5:28 psychodynamic very specifically object relations and even more specifically 5:34 cohadian within that field of object relations but i use other techniques as well but i 5:41 can define what that means for me and you don't have to understand it that way yeah but i have to understand it that 5:47 way so that i have a frame of reference to approach when i'm working with a client but you don't need to explain 5:53 that to the client well well i think that you're i know getting 5:59 off on it when you do this i know uh you need to know that because you're putting yourself in the room saying i 6:04 think i can help you the client needs to know i'm going to get heard this is going to be a safe place and this person 6:11 can help me they don't need to know your theory and for you to spend i mean to me it's the same conversation as i'm a christian 6:18 therapist yeah i work with christians i work with jews i work with catholics i work with arabs it doesn't matter but i don't 6:25 proselytize my theory of religion or counseling 6:31 and i struggle with that you know i struggle with that because you know my i 6:36 have a a a belief that language matters and that 6:42 agree if you present the language to the client that that gives them them a basis 6:49 to start to use language for themselves they don't have to use the same language that i use but if they don't have a 6:56 language then they need to be able to develop a language to be able to start to think about so it's like 7:02 metacognition thinking about thinking you have to be able to have the language to do that to be able to do that i can 7:08 buy that argument yeah yeah what do you think um i just have here 7:13 comes your part stuff right everybody likes to make the part of me party was so a part of me immediately 7:20 shuts down when we talk about theories but that's that's just like my stuff i think that's my 7:26 system that really um struggled in school to understand the 7:32 context of like um it probably had some learning disabilities that went under diagnosed 7:38 as a kid or undiagnosed as a kid and so when we start using the language um so 7:46 you don't see yourself as an intellectual well and you see this as an intellectual discussion i do and i just 7:51 i just shut down and then i then i get also oppositional but she can't count the question 8:01 so you're obviously much closer to brett i haven't seen you since the last time 8:06 that i had you in class and i was a lot less wrinkled we were trying to we were trying to i was trying to figure out 8:12 when that was uh but my recollection of you was as a superior 8:19 student and so now i'm hearing you say that you didn't feel that way and i'm wondering 8:26 i mean was was my impression because you put a show you know what i'm 8:32 saying say it yeah no i'll explain why but that's a fair question yeah so um i 8:38 i got my first 4.0 when i went to grad school like i i it was it was like i 8:44 found my home but i didn't find i 8:49 at that stage of the game i realized how much of an auditory learner i was so 8:55 realistically i was not reading the books with the theories and 9:01 what i learned to do was sit and master auditory learning and skills of 9:08 observation and was able to retain all the information that way through 9:13 observation so when i was like spitballing in class and making observations it wasn't bs 9:21 it was that i wasn't finding who i was as a therapist through textbooks i was 9:27 finding it through my experiences with you in class with you in class and 9:33 you talking about caseloads or um you know the group therapy class it was 9:39 like that was where i learned to be a therapist when it came 9:44 to the theories it was all lost on youtube gotcha in a sense so you can see the modeling and internalize the 9:50 modeling correct but you couldn't read the books the script it was very much like a 9:55 sensory experience like i could cure the model 10:01 experience it see it play out but i i couldn't read the words and so there's 10:06 always a party that kind of does shut down when we talk about the truth that's fascinating in part because i've always had the 10:13 opinion that good therapists have to be acute observers 10:19 and the subset of that is most of them are survivors of one kind of trauma together 10:26 because that chatter or channel that's going on in all of us all the time as we scan 10:33 uh you have to be able to process and understand and apply yes 10:39 and those are clinical skills and what you're saying is you had those when you came to the program 10:45 and you use them to develop your clinical clinical skills i believe i mastered that now you are 10:51 living i do right right and and i think 10:57 yeah very much so like it's a little embarrassing because i don't want somebody to take my license but like 11:02 i don't remember reading a lot nobody listens to the show right okay all right then we're safe here 11:08 for sure right it was such a sensory experience for me like 11:14 um i was i i just i quit fighting the game of the battle of college like i figured out 11:21 how i was a good learner and it was through like mastering the art of observation and becoming acutely aware 11:28 of subtle shifts and movements and whatever and it shows but but i i hear you 11:35 saying that as if it were a deficit but i hear it as a strength 11:44 where your strong suit was what you're where your wheelhouse was and then you played to that that just seems smart to 11:49 me well i think you know early on when i was early in school like early in my master's it felt like a deficit because 11:56 there were all these like cerebral conversations happening because everybody read the book and i'm sitting there intellectual masturbation exactly 12:02 exactly what it was and so then i remember sitting there being like feeling embarrassed or self-conscious 12:08 like i didn't understand the material and it just clicked one day and i was like stop reading the material and just 12:14 absorb because you'll gather everything you need to know from what brett tells you and when you know mike starts to speak 12:21 on this and it i i feel like i did i turned it into a real positive i was really insecure about it at first and now 12:29 i don't know i think it's kind of my memory skills so then i i feel i'm gonna ask this question 12:35 yeah maybe it's a bad reflection on me i didn't teach you ifs i know that no you 12:40 did not so so uh so how did you how did you find internal family systems from my own 12:47 therapist uh karen grayson so another uh right 12:54 so yeah she um we're very ancestors i was literally about to say that yeah um yeah i was doing my own work with her 13:00 and then she introdu the world's collided at the same time leading education 13:08 and she introduced this to me and my mind exploded because 13:14 probably because i'm a visual learner an auditory and when you learn ifs and you learn about parts white its way it's so 13:21 beautiful for men because men really struggle right we talked about with having these feelings 13:27 they're just these like abstract thoughts that are like floating around and they don't quite know what to do with them and when we talk about parts 13:36 it takes feelings and it grounds them and it makes them very it gives them a place to be it 13:42 makes them visual and men like visuals and it makes it turns feelings tangible 13:49 and it rocked my world it absolutely rocked my world it was 13:56 struggling i'm saying that because you're i wasn't struggling in terms of like 14:02 being able to identify what my theory was like i can tell you what i pull from and whatnot but 14:07 when i found ifs it was like 14:13 you know when you fall in love and you're have you been all my life like it 14:18 solidified i have art in my office from a client that's um that says we are not just one 14:25 we are made up of parts and she drew that for me over 10 years ago 14:30 and then i was introduced to ifs and it gave me the language and i was like holy 14:36 you know holy i've been doing this this entire time and it just gave me the language right 14:42 i did like i am that good i just now have language for it you know yeah so that so yeah i found ifs probably six 14:50 seven years ago maybe um yeah just it you know why i really love it is that 14:56 it's it's not super clinical i am not 15:02 a stuffy like i just i'm not a clinical person um 15:07 in therapy because i don't think my clients really care about the clinical side they just want 15:13 to get better and they just want to i think it's constant does that make sense of course it makes sense you help me you 15:20 know we get better yeah better yeah and so ifs did that for me well i think that that 15:27 there are a lot of people i've always said there are two ways you can do therapy you can just alleviate symptomology and feel 15:34 better and that is one way you can do it or you can dive into a real headlong if you know 15:42 seeking hypnosis and epiphany and genuine self-understanding and i think 15:48 that different people have to do it differently and that's why they're different therapists and i don't think that any way is necessarily superior but 15:57 i do think that there need to be people who do it different ways because it's going to 16:03 reach different people absolutely not every teacher is good for about differently 16:09 every student right and i tell people all the time i i am not 16:14 for everyone exactly i am direct i can be polarizing at times like i i 16:20 but a lot of it comes from the things we learned in class of like 16:25 i'm not going to sit here and waste your time i cost a lot of money so we're going to we're going to move and typically by the time somebody's 16:31 found me they've heard that reputation but absolutely yeah um but people pay a lot 16:38 of money and so let's not waste their time and but a lot of the directness comes from the yelling 16:44 stuff of working in the here and now right right so that's all you really 16:50 have absolutely because our offices sitting in the room what do we feel what do we have what information what 16:56 behaviors here and now are we in touch with not there and then out there somewhere 17:01 we can speculate we can anticipate we can plan but all we really have is what's here and if you think about what 17:08 we talked about last time in terms of how do you help as we were talking specifically about men but creating that 17:14 awareness for men is processing in the here and now and sitting across from a man and going hey i'm holding my breath 17:21 right now that tells me you are yeah why why aren't we breathing here's the projective identification 17:27 yeah yeah so let's take our break and let's pick this up on your site okay 17:33 hey everybody dr michael mahon here from site with mike and i couldn't be more excited to talk to you about athletic 17:39 greens which is a new sponsor we have here on the show i started taking athletic greens watching some youtube 17:46 videos and doing my own research i wanted to add something to my daily workout program to give me some energy 17:53 and to support gut health and that was the one thing that kept coming up again 17:58 and again with athletic greens is the guy who started the company did a bunch of research because he was 18:04 having some gut health issues that he couldn't get any resolution for he developed athletic greens and it's just 18:12 exploded from there so it's 75 superfoods vitamins minerals probiotics 18:18 whole food sources that's all in one daily scoop you put it in eight or 18:23 twelve ounces of water you shake it up and you drink it the taste is very very 18:28 drinkable i actually enjoy it and i have been using it and my energy 18:34 levels have just been through the roof i really like athletic greens because of 18:39 some of the sustainability things that they do so they buy carbon credits and 18:45 you know to help protect the rainforest which is something that i really like but if you order athletic greens in your 18:52 subscription you're going to also get a year's supply of their vitamin d 18:58 supplementation and five free travel packs and that vitamin d is so important 19:04 during those winter months when we're not getting enough sunlight we've talked about how that decreases your mood and 19:12 increases depression and that can be a real deal changer so you go to 19:17 athleticgreens.com emerging that's 19:23 slash athleticgreens.com that's the psych with mike promo and 19:28 you're gonna get that additional vitamin d support for a year and five free 19:34 travel packs so take control of your own health today and as always if it's 19:40 friday it's psych with mike okay we're back so uh that here and now 19:47 focus that comes from mount yavan which is an existential that's that known as an existentialist 19:53 uh is so important 19:58 for really any kind of therapy but when you're saying okay we're not breathing 20:05 why aren't we breathing and that's a here and now focus then 20:10 how where is i where does i at best come into that so it doesn't okay 20:18 it doesn't so um i i mean it can 20:23 but i find myself just oscillating um when appropriate to so you're not 20:29 getting limited by the structure no you are engaged in the process of the 20:35 conversation correct so like remember so i said i i have a tendency i have a part of me right that shuts down when we talk 20:41 about theories so if someone were to label me as an ifs therapist i'm immediately 20:46 going we're not labeling that either that is a very big piece of what i do but if we're 20:54 processing and you're now saying like so i'm not breathing that tells me you're not breathing 21:00 help me help me understand what's happening here i can say if i want to incorporate ifs i can say because it 21:05 happens often i feel like there has been a shift inside of you which tells me a part of 21:11 the stuff then can you be aware of that can you check in with your assistant 21:16 and tell me what part just stepped in because we were guiding and we were we were moving 21:21 and then i said this and there was a shift in your energy which leads me to believe a part again 21:27 it's constant teaching of awareness so we mentioned y'all yalum 21:34 was a leading author and theorist in the field of counseling 21:40 psychology i'm enamored with him in his work one of the things that he talks about 21:48 is that all of us and it drives a lot of dysfunctional behavior especially in men 21:53 uh having anxiety about death and fear of death uh and as we get older or as 22:00 critical events happen in our lives the underlying issue that therapist 22:05 needs to be aware of is this person is fear-dying facing their own immortality whatever 22:11 that means and i remember because i came to you as a therapist 22:18 and i remember getting in touch with that because i turned 74 i retired 22:25 couple of friends that died my age good friend of mine committed suicide 22:30 and i was really struggling with that i but i hadn't put it in purpose right and i'm sitting in the room with you and 22:36 you're inviting me to get in touch with all those feelings and i just started crying 22:43 wrong grief of loss and fear and you just very quietly sit there my 22:50 wife was placed on me and you were sitting there and you just softly said breathe 22:56 just breathe stay here and i couldn't i mean when my chest was frozen my throat was frozen my tears were i mean 23:03 like a blubbering child but in a little while it passed and i 23:09 could breathe so what you're describing about that isn't a technical theory it's not 10 23:17 chapters in a book that you can read and learn how to do right you have to be able to do it on the if somebody walks 23:22 in the room and they get in touch with these emotions you have to be able to be present and catch it and catch it and 23:29 hold them in a safe holding environment whatever it is when we were talking in the previous episode that we did about 23:35 rage yeah same thing a man who's grateful or angry in this moment and you're boiling with 23:42 it inside you as the clinician have to be able to sit and say it's okay stay with it 23:48 you know i hurt yourself you're not gonna punch the ball you gotta hurt me but you could feel his feelings and then this process was talking about but what 23:55 is time right now here now and my 24:00 orientation has always been and you know i say this all the time that 24:05 really everything comes down to the ability or lack thereof to 24:10 emotionally regulate so when i did my dissertation i was doing my dissertation on 24:16 substance abuse as an attachment disorder which there's very little information on but i 24:21 can make an argument for why i believe that uh and i got one third of the way through it and my 24:28 my uh chairperson who did not was not very confrontational uh came to me and 24:34 said oh you have to start over because all of this you know information is 20 years old and we want something that's 24:40 more recent and so i re did it and i did the biological similarities and 24:46 differences of depression and anxiety because i knew that i could get very very current research on that but the 24:52 point being that you know for me i've always said no one ever goes to 24:57 psychotherapy because they have a problem people go to psychotherapy because a problem that they have has 25:03 caused them emotional dysregulation if you can emotionally regulate you don't 25:08 need psychotherapy when you can't emotionally regulate the smallest problem in the world can cause you to 25:15 not be able to function and so for me it's all about trying to find 25:20 where is the dysfunction in the emotional regulation some people have never 25:26 been able to emotionally regulate they don't even know what that means they don't even yeah and and so it's all 25:34 about trump so to me it doesn't really matter like i have a very clearly 25:39 defined process or understanding of how i think 25:44 that emotional regulation develops that i can explain to people at great detail and nobody cares brett tells me all the 25:51 time nobody cares but it doesn't matter to me how people 25:56 come at that but that's the goal is how do i identify 26:01 where your emotional regulation breakdown is and how do i help you be able to emotionally regulate better and 26:09 when you can do that you don't need me anymore how does your theory though 26:14 lead people to the awareness of like needing to um 26:22 towards that emotional regulation like where how does that show up in your work 26:27 so for me the emotional regulation comes from as i said the co-hunting ideas of 26:32 mirroring idealization and twinship so you have a external model when you're 26:38 born you don't know how to emotionally regulate you're just emotion you have all of the biological components you have hormones 26:45 that get released in your body that change your body and you have emotional responses but you don't have any 26:50 self-soothing ability no emotional regulation and so you look to the external examples when the external 26:58 examples are good you learn how to emotionally regulate when they're not good or you don't internalize them 27:04 efficiently then there's a breakdown in that and so then you grow up and that's where to me 27:10 the insecurity comes from so for pj what he said is that that first stage of development is security versus 27:17 you know trust versus mistrust that's where security comes from if you don't 27:22 have grounded securities because in that very very early model 27:28 that wasn't modeled for you and so the process of psychotherapy is about giving 27:34 the client an alternative yes yeah okay 27:40 okay and so if i can come into that situation consistently enough yeah 27:47 and you can do whatever you want you're great it's not me re-parenting you right it's me 27:54 facilitating your ability giving you an example right yeah right and then you internalize a 28:00 different grown-up yes but but the therapist has to be able to 28:06 provide a consistent model for the client to be able to 28:12 see that and then internalize that what i call i say that therapists loan 28:18 their clients a little bit of ego until the client builds that for themselves 28:25 and can carry around with them 28:31 so one of the clinical arguments about that is do you as a clinician encourage 28:38 codependency of the client on you and there is an argument that can be 28:44 made that initially you need them to be dependent on you but you need to teach them how to become 28:50 independent in a healthy way exactly i mean when they are they leave but it's free parenting so i mean you 28:56 know that all goes into it now but but you know the the for me the difference 29:01 is the motivation of the therapist it's all about the counter transference if i feel 29:06 intentionally eliciting the dependence because that i get off 29:16 a part of the process of re-parenting with no 29:23 ego invested in it from my side then it's just a part of the process 29:31 well we were talking about that other way here like that constant awareness for clinicians to have the power 29:37 differentials that are in that space at all times and so yeah i feel like it's my job to be checking in on a regular 29:43 basis and having the uncomfortable conversations and essentially just modeling boundaries and how to 29:50 communicate and saying am i still meeting the needs in which you came here is there are you know is there anything 29:57 that we are doing that just doesn't feel right for you because people will stay because they want to be pleasing 30:02 and you know continue work that's not fulfilling what they need so i think 30:08 i think that's a way to to check those power differentials and not create that codependency or the 30:13 lasting codependency on the relationship but even when you're talking about these 30:19 angry males and so the angry male comes in and they can rage and then you can 30:24 sit with that and not react in a way that is cowering or 30:30 is submissive maybe for the first time yeah maybe for the first time in their experience that that's ever happened 30:36 that's giving them a different dynamic to play off of now i have an alternative 30:42 way of being able to understand this anger now can i allow myself to be 30:48 vulnerable enough to start to explore that that's the process of therapy right absolutely looking across from a man who 30:55 is raging and looking in the eyes and saying i'm not afraid 31:01 and 31:14 um when you to square a man up and say you are 31:20 not afraid of you can be significant yeah 31:26 but i think that that is that's a part of 31:32 the therapy experience and not that so so let me just say this start differently like 31:37 it's never occurred to me that i'm afraid in therapy like i've always said if i if 31:43 i ever went to work and i was afraid i would stop doing it yeah um and so i've never been in a situation where i mean 31:51 i've been in a situation point of situations where men have been rageful it's never occurred to me that i have to 31:57 say i'm not afraid of you because i just that that's not but i understand how that plays 32:04 differently with female therapists and because female therapists are 75 to 80 32:09 of the population of therapists the only way men are going to get therapy 32:15 statistically is a lot of them are going to be in therapy with females and 32:20 you know i so i think that what you are talking about is so salient how is a female going to sit in that and 32:28 be able to absorb that anger because of what what so what 32:33 is the counter transference for that female when the man is raging 32:40 and how do females learn to be able to [Music] 32:45 okay so let me ask you a question so do you do you resist 32:51 your is there something in you that says oh this guy's angry i should be subservient no i can't because i'm doing therapy or 32:58 have you trained yourself not do you understand what i'm saying i think so keep going finish that so do you or do you train yourself to 33:05 not be to not have that reaction uh i think not having the reaction comes 33:11 from my childhood number one and being around a lot of chaos and like knowing how to navigate that 33:17 um but number two um like we said in the last episode like 33:22 when i see that anger in that rage i see wounding and i feel compassionate 33:29 like i i don't know that i've had to train myself to do that as much as it just 33:35 organically is part of who i am i think that 33:40 talking about a marital situation when a couple's situation where the man is raising your ability to 33:47 experience that and reflect back to him i'm not afraid i'm aware that you're angry but i'm sitting with him and i'm 33:54 not afraid he's modeling for him what that's like in his life 33:59 other people and particularly women don't react that way but you're also modeling for the woman 34:04 who may be seeing this for the first time and may discover that's a thing that she can do absolutely 34:10 they both have a learning curve for helping survive his rage well and i'm even was 34:17 thinking as we were processing this that it's one thing for a man to come into therapy with another 34:24 man and to not have that man experience his rage as 34:30 uh yeah but it's a different thing for him to go to therapy with a woman and not 34:36 have the woman experience that rage as intimidating and i think both are beneficial both are 34:43 necessary for good therapy but go ahead as a flip side of that argument 34:48 i've had women say to me you can't know this yeah you can't know this because you're a man yeah and you can't know 34:54 what i'm feeling or you can't know what i'm seeing and yet they were experiencing that i want to snow yeah 35:00 and it wrote right it doesn't matter which sex if your world view is 35:06 people respond to this behavior this emanation from a particular way and you 35:12 have something that doesn't do that it's like well what the else going on here well right now i don't know what to 35:17 do right you change the script on me yeah exactly which is what you're trying to do absolutely it is 35:23 yeah so hopefully that was beneficial for people i think that was another really excellent clinical discussion and 35:29 i know that that is the aim uh for mr brett newcomb so i hope that he is just 35:34 delighted as always 35:39 i'm not gonna go uh as always the music that appears inside with mike is written and performed by mr 35:44 benjamin the clue we would love it if you would find us on the interwebs and uh 35:50 on apple podcast leave us a comment and a rating but most importantly if you go 35:56 to the youtubes and find psych with mike and subscribe to the show that would be fantastic and as always if it's friday 36:04 [Music] 36:12 [Music]
One of the most obscure concepts in psychology is personality. We all know what that means and at the same time, it would probably be hard to define it in psychological terms.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-personality-2795416
Transcript:
you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psych with mike personality 0:22 i don't know if that got caught welcome into psych with mike library this is dr michael mahon i'm here with 0:27 mr brett newcomb and intern michael hello good morning how are you both of you yeah yeah i'm so used to 0:34 saying extroverted how are you and now when there's more people in the studio then i don't know i don't know what to 0:39 say when you don't know what to say say nothing at all that's what they advise crickets missouri says uh you and all so 0:48 how are you all is how that works out yes yeah colloquialism 0:53 yeah we're gonna all go wash our clothes and get on the way right next to 1:00 illinois where they drink milk you are just too sensitive oh man all 1:07 right we got to stop because that's going down a dark road so uh 1:14 i remember a long long time ago you and i brett 1:19 were playing golf and i don't know why 1:26 but for some reason i was really 1:33 worried about this idea that somehow i was being fake because i 1:40 would act differently when we would go to the golf course than when we were in the office than when i was teaching 1:47 at the university and i remember having this conversation with you 1:52 about is it are you are you being real if you act differently in different 1:58 situations and do you remember what your answer was no but i know what it should have been 2:04 what what do you think it should have been you are different in different situations that's exactly what you said you said not only is that real but if 2:10 you act the same in every situation that's probably pathological yeah yeah okay yes okay okay yeah so yeah we all 2:17 do that i mean i used to teach psychology classes in high school and college and one of the things that i would talk about is we all have 2:23 different vocabularies we use for different settings when i worked my way through college working on a factory 2:29 floor on an assembly line the guys that i worked among were you putting tires on cadillac's 2:35 okay i worked in a bicycle factory the the guys on the factory floor 2:42 all cursed as they breathed so i found myself doing the same thing 2:48 but as a classroom teacher going into a seventh grade classroom i can't talk that way and when i go to church on sunday 2:54 morning i don't want to talk that way so i present myself differently depending on the context cues and the agenda and 3:01 the goal you do too and everyone does so if you recognize that that the trick isn't are 3:07 you consistent the trick is there enough consistency that the people who know you will recognize you in multiple 3:13 environments yeah so i i know who that is right yeah and and i think that that was what the 3:21 crux of my dilemma was that day is that i'd always prided myself i didn't recognize you on the golf course 3:28 i had prided myself on thinking that i was the same person in every situation 3:35 because you know i just i found that to be hysterical yeah and and they're j and they still do it just wasn't true and 3:40 then when i came to realize oh no i'm a different person depending on the context 3:45 i felt like i was betraying myself and then you said no that's just the way that everybody said 3:52 don't be pathological they have drugs for that and shock treatment yeah yeah so then 3:58 you've taught personality theory i've taught personality theory um 4:03 for you what is personality well you know it starts with the birth of an infant baby so i believe some 4:10 babies are born with personality orientation yeah to be more open and 4:16 gregarious or to be more closed and watchful some of them avoid contact and some of them 4:23 seductively embrace content and then as parents how do you interpret 4:29 what your child is doing i mean the whole thing about mother child bonding uh if the mother is not emotionally 4:35 available then the theory is a child panics and feels disconnected and is in dire 4:42 straits if the mother is emotionally available then the child is pulled into that warmth 4:48 those things impact the way the child then evolves from that point but i believe there is a starting point 4:56 of predisposition or orientation so uh it's biologically encoded into the 5:01 individual i think so okay but i i couldn't prove that scientifically that's just no no yeah but i'm just yeah so it's 5:09 interesting from there to say well how does your personality develop and i think a lot of it is fundamental orientation 5:15 impacted by training and experience how do your parents train you to handle 5:22 anger you see a one-year-old who's so frustrated because he can't have a piece of candy that he bites somebody or he 5:28 hits somebody uh how do the parents respond to that i know parents just said well i'll buy 5:34 you back teach them not to bite well i think that's just among the stupider and more abusive things that you've heard 5:40 but that's what they say proudly i teach my child uh i don't know the right answer i just 5:46 know a lot of the wrong answers i wonder if they say oh that's not working if they train their dogs the same way 5:52 probably my dog bites them but i'll just bite him back yeah okay well then the dog's probably gonna bite you 5:59 yeah yeah yeah so for me i would say that in 6:05 my view of psychology that personality 6:10 is really if not equivalent to very much ingrained 6:16 in emotional regulation so i think that those things are somewhat 6:21 synonymous so your personality is the way that people experience your personality is based on your emotional 6:29 regulation capacity does that make sense yeah but so then i wondered is 6:36 stubbornness and oppositionality is that ingrained or learned 6:43 do you learn to be stubborn are you just stubborn think you learn to be stubborn 6:49 i think you respond to your environment for the most part and i think i do i do think you respond to your 6:55 environment in that in that regard so what about resilience 7:00 i think you can change these things okay yes yeah so we are educable yeah i think 7:08 we are we are generally responsive to different things right we talk about um so pavlova stuff disorders right and 7:16 how do you treat a personality disorder when you introduce other tools or you 7:21 introduce other methods to uh lean on instead of whatever that undesirable person otto kernberg 7:28 contends that you can't really modify personality disorders until the personally disordered individual is 7:34 between 40 and 50 and wants to work hard enough to change the only thing that you can do he says and he and masterson the 7:41 two main voices in this field that i studied he says what you have to do is 7:47 supportive expressive psychotherapy you have to give them ways to vent and relieve their emotional cycles 7:55 but try to encourage them to be stable and sometimes that takes medicine sometimes that takes training sometimes 8:02 it takes discipline whether it's exercise diet sleep patterns whatever it may be but you 8:08 teach them over time the crash and burn phenomenon 8:13 is less frequent but the rhythm is still there uh until they hit that age where 8:20 potentially they could change but they can't do it until then yeah and and you i i agree with that and and you and i 8:27 really studied kernberg and and and heinz kohut and all of those guys uh which are not necessarily as 8:36 rigorously today um but i absolutely agree with that and because before i was 55 8:43 i would have said because i think of personality as synonymous with emotional regulation i think emotional regulation 8:49 is seated in the attached or lack of relationship with the primary caregiver 8:55 attachment theory yeah that it's that it's all about the security or insecurity that you learn in the first 9:01 two pre-verbal years of life and i would have said before i was 55 that that was 9:06 immutable you couldn't change that that if you were that way you would be that way you could find compensatory measures 9:14 to be able to be less reactive but you couldn't change the foundation of that 9:19 since i've been 55 and i i have a different view of that i think that i have been working on my own 9:27 intrinsic sense of security but i don't think i could have before then so i 9:32 absolutely agree with kernberg i think that there is something about that and i 9:38 don't know that there's an age range that i would identify but there is a point at which in life 9:45 i think there is somewhat of available to that yeah yeah i wonder if that's 9:50 correlation and not causation right i wonder if it's not so much that you are between 40 and 50 but that the vast 9:57 majority of people who were who cranberry studied and who he was able to successfully 10:04 work with and personality changing um happened to be at a stage in their 10:09 lives when they were 40 or 50. and if that if that is actually shifting right we look at like actualization of 10:15 identity and different identity crises and we found that people 10:21 are starting to have their identity crises earlier in life and i wonder if that 10:26 is a focus on self-improvement i wonder if that's a focus on entering into dialects with 10:33 oneself so what you're in life i think i mean that's a really intriguing question 10:38 um to which i don't have the answer but what i was about to say is i think some 10:45 of it i was having a conversation earlier this week with a friend who has a family member that's diagnosed as 10:50 borderline and this friend was talking about the kind of aggressive anger that happens 10:56 uh when the hypomania occurs and how frustrated she is that this is 11:03 happening again with this individual and you know she this individual will not have 11:10 someone in their life that will put up with that and i just laughed and said yes they will they have a radar that 11:15 lets them find them if this person gives up they'll go find another one that will take that crap and they will find another one that takes crap yeah and so 11:21 they just keep replicating that persona to bounce against but 11:27 the question that you raise is is it possible that they could discover 11:32 earlier a different way to do it and invest themselves in trying to do it differently and i think that's one of 11:38 the goals of doing therapy is to try to create that matrix right but i think it really occurs well so but but for that 11:45 to be salient i think we have to then explore what michael said about it could 11:50 be correlational but is it causal so then we have to say okay well then what is 11:56 causal because you know when i think about my own looking at me 12:01 um i think that part of the reason why there was an opener an open window after 12:08 the age of 55 is i think it's partly biological i think it's hormonal i think it's partly because i had lived through 12:17 the process of industry the the stage of industry according to piaget where i had built a career that i was feeling good 12:23 about and successful which gave me a different understanding of myself than was based 12:30 on my early experience so i think that there are a lot of dynamics that go into 12:35 that i don't know which one of those is the cause or if it 12:40 is a myriad of things or if neither one of them even is impactful and i'm just 12:46 you know whistling across the through the graveyard but but i think that they're 12:52 what what is the causal if we could identify what the causal 12:58 factors are then we could more directly so there are studies that attempt to do exactly that yeah and 13:05 categorize the responses uh character traits right are you agreeable 13:11 are you conscientious are you eager to please are you an extrovert are you an introvert or you're neurotic 13:16 find those clusters uh and that's exactly though you know that part of the article is exactly what i say why i say 13:24 for me personality is equal to emotional regulation because i think all of those things are about how well you're able to 13:31 what we used to call self-soothe yeah 13:37 you brought up an interesting point around an individual with bpd finding others 13:43 who will well dance the same dance the same dance right and what i've always heard i when you said that 13:50 the attachment theory bit clicked for me because i always think anxious avoidant right anxious finds avoidant avoidance 13:56 finds anxiousness and they and they end up in these situations um and that that really draws a parallel 14:02 for me so i think there might be some merit to what you're saying about but the anxious avoidance deal slides into a 14:07 concept called the isolator and the pursuer right and the isolator chases the or it runs from the pursuer until 14:14 they get to the extreme end of the pendulum swing then the pursuer finally says screw it this didn't work and i give up and in that exact instant they 14:21 reverse rolls then the pursuer becomes the isolator starts to go back and and the isolator chases them 14:27 and said wait wait wait they get to the other end of the pendulum so they just their relationship is a cyclical history 14:33 of role reversal so uh harper hendricks is the guy that uh developed that there yeah i know that 14:39 from uh the american whitaker and and judith uh 14:45 i'm blanking on her last name divorced no um uh 14:53 anyway i'll think of it eventually hopefully but but and and they talk about this idea of they call it 14:58 dismissive and preoccupied instead of pursuer and and and yeah and isolator um but exactly that dynamic 15:06 that that and that that it has to do with the way in which that they utilize conflict in the concept in the context 15:12 of the relationship so one person's going to use conflict to try and initiate intimacy the other partner is 15:18 going to use conflict as a way to gain distance and that yes they're going to use that at cross purposes until the 15:26 pursuer yeah then feels frustrated stops and then yeah then they switch roles so 15:31 we do a lot of couples counseling marriage counseling in our career okay before we do that let's go to the break 15:36 and then uh we'll pick that up on the other side no i'm gonna pound okay hey guys dr michael mahan here from cyclic 15:42 night and do you think that you have a story to tell 15:48 i know that when we started psych with mike the things that we really wanted in 15:54 a podcast hosting company was that they knew what they were doing 16:00 and libsyn has been around since the very beginning they're the oldest running consecutive 16:06 still existing podcast hosting company in the entire world i think but certainly in the united states so 16:13 they've been around since people started uploading things to the internet and so they have a lot of 16:20 experience but we also needed a service that was easy to use and 16:26 libsyn is just so intuitive and even though they've got all of this experience they just keep on upgrading 16:33 so they just recently went through a major renovation a major upgrade to 16:39 libsyn5 and made the service even more intuitive and user friendly than it was 16:44 before and it was so user friendly before that i was able to figure it out 16:50 and get site with mike up on the surface so we've been using uh libsyn since the very beginning of 16:57 psych with mike for over two years now we love them and as a friend of the show 17:03 if you go to libsyn and start a podcast right now you get your first month free 17:09 so you go to libsyn.com and use the code 17:14 f-r-i-e-n-d so friend of the show friend that's l i b 17:20 s y n dot com and use the code f r i e n 17:26 d and you get your first month free and as always if it's friday it's cycling 17:33 are you still pouting no okay i'm over it go ahead in doing a lot of couples counseling 17:38 yeah you have to have a way to explain why does this always happen to me why you're like the alcoholic female 17:45 again the females married to an alcoholic male won't statistically divorce him just because 17:51 he's an alcoholic however should that ever happen then she says i've washed my hands of 17:57 that i'm going to go find somebody new right she goes and finds another alcoholic nine times out of ten and she swears 18:03 he was coming that wasn't visible and what you work on this thing it was 18:08 visible you have and we use the radial band theory frequency band theory you have certain 18:15 frequencies of attraction that you both send and receive like a radio 18:20 transmitter if we sent you to the convention center there were ten thousand people there there'd be a thousand people or 500 people 18:27 on your frequency those are the ones you would notice everybody else would just be a blob walking by but your radar says 18:33 target target target and you choose from among those targets and that's an 18:38 unconscious process yeah you're unaware oh yeah but but then you replicate the dance of relationship and get to the 18:44 same place and so if you want two chains one of the things you have to work on is 18:50 learning what your frequency modulators are and change them so that you then go out i mean how many conversations have 18:55 you had with somebody that says i don't find so and so to be attractive and i said well that's exactly i know that way exactly you know and they're like oh 19:02 that would be horrible well that's if you go find what's attractive to you right now it's going to get in the same 19:08 boat you're going to exactly there's a great um very approachable couple sets of books uh by 19:16 catherine woodward thomas uh one is called conscious uncoupling it's really good about how do i 19:22 end a relationship without a whole lot of drama and angst yes yes how what's the 19:29 best way to what's the best way to do a divorce yeah got a lot of attention like glenn paltrow and a few other 19:34 celebrities a while back the other one she has is called calling in the one um and it's talking exactly about what 19:40 you're talking about here setting your frequency dial to what you want in a partner and what you're saying you want 19:46 in the partner not just what you've had and what you say is not necessarily what you want because you gotta learn how to be honest with yourself who am i what am 19:52 i looking for let's say the average what is the the average distance between marriages right 19:57 between divorce and second marriage or next marriage is about nine months right and how much growth and personal 20:04 reflection can you really do in those nine months well there are some patterns there too i mean typically uh 20:10 men won't ask for a divorce unless they've already found a replacement 20:15 women will ask for divorce because they feel unfulfilled violated frustrated empty and they say 20:23 you're not doing it for me so i want you to go away they haven't even begun to look for a replacement at that point but they're 20:29 able to say this is not good for me men typically are not they they're like little kids on the jungle gym they won't 20:35 turn loose to this bar until they have this one in hand 20:40 so i think you have to look at the sex of the person uh as you have those conversations what 20:46 language can you hear which is one of the clinical challenges you face as a therapist how do i hear the language of 20:53 neurolinguistic programming the the usage of the person sitting in the chair 20:58 ops at me as i try to learn who they are and how they reveal themselves to me because when i want to make an 21:04 intervention i'm much more successful if i can intervene with terms that resonate with 21:11 them yeah well and so you know then 21:17 i think let me start a different way based on the conversation that we're having 21:24 i would ask you guys would you agree with this that we started this by talking about is personality 21:30 indelible across the lifespan is it is it is it consistent from the money that you're born until the minute you die and 21:37 i think what we're all saying is that may not be that's what i was taught when i was an undergraduate at st louis university 21:43 back in the 1980s that personality was pretty fixed that there wasn't a whole lot you could do to really 21:50 change that you could learn write different behavior modifiers but the personality was pretty consistent but i 21:57 think what we're saying is maybe that's not as fixed as 22:02 people used to say that it was is that fair yes okay so would you agree i don't i do 22:08 agree i do agree i remember i'm trying to look it up because i don't remember who did the study 22:14 uh but there there was a really controversial study that come out maybe 10 years ago that says you get a new 22:21 personality every five years or so that would be interesting and i i thought about 22:27 my my 10-year high school reunion is supposed to be next year and i thought about how excited i was and like most people 22:33 aren't very excited for their 10-year reunion um well unless they did really well in life and want to go show off 22:39 but how excited i was to meet some of the people again and and meet who they had become 22:46 because i i'm really viewing it through the lens of not catching up with old friends but rather meeting new people 22:52 where they are at now right okay so what i would though my my reaction to that 22:58 would be just because so like all of us are clearly very different than we were in 23:05 high school is that do we have new personalities because of that or 23:10 is that just a function of the developmental process we have more and 23:15 better clothes we have more money we present ourselves with some of the better cosmetic 23:20 presentations right i've been to high school reunions where the high school stars the star athlete 23:27 the cheerleader you know are they never moved beyond those days their best days are behind them and they were behind 23:33 them at 17. they're stuck they're frozen in time 23:38 but i would say that you know and and even before i was almost 60 23:45 you know let's say even 40. at 40 years old i represented every single thing 23:50 that i despised when i was 16. and was my personality different 23:56 i don't know so if you want to you want to make your wife upset say to her that you hear her mother's 24:02 voice coming oh no i would no my god no i would never say that because we all 24:07 say that i don't want to hear my dad's voice come out of my mouth but my children have heard it and he's been 24:13 dead all their lives but they've heard his voice saying his words 24:18 because he never met him so right so infuriates me yeah you know he's dead he's supposed to stay dead 24:24 why is he talking to him well i wonder if the question that you're getting at here is where do we draw the line between personality and environment 24:31 or or just reaction or evolutionary development yeah 24:37 yeah and are those are are they different i mean are they the same thing right because if personality 24:43 is a function of development well then obviously yes it should evolve over the 24:48 course of the lifespan but if personality is different from emotional development if it's a separate thing 24:54 like you said we were talking earlier and we were talking about that a lot of 24:59 people say that as you get older you return to a 25:04 lot of childlike behaviors right and you had said that uh brett you had said that if you were a curmudgeon at in your old 25:11 age you were probably a curmudgeon as a child and i said oh well that's great because i was a delightful child which 25:18 may or may not have been true there are those among us who would disagree yeah but but if you do return to a lot of 25:25 those same characteristics childlike behaviors as you get older that would actually be 25:31 a a plank in the in the in the board or in the the 25:36 platform that says personality is consistent well all i can say to that is people who 25:42 are listening if they have those questions come back next week and see if we were saying see if we're saying the same thing 25:48 yeah well we probably won't be because we'll forget what we said because that's a function of old age yeah right so uh 25:55 you know i don't know if i am after this conversation if i'm more 26:02 on the side of personalities consistent or more on the side of the personality can change but i will say 26:07 that i do have very different ideas about the consistency of that 26:15 at you know 58 than i did when i was 40. certainty is a problem 26:21 and for clinicians you have to understand you live in a land of smoke and mirrors constantly evolving constantly changing 26:28 i wish somebody had told me that when i was starting out somebody did tell you when you were starting out i was there 26:36 but you are so right that that uh everything is an evolution and it you 26:42 know you if you have an opinion that you feel like you are absolutely wed to that 26:49 is the core of your identity that will never change 26:55 i mean i i would not i would not encourage anybody to hold fast to those things 27:01 because you may find yourself at a point in your life where that no longer applies i've gone to the place where i 27:07 don't think donuts are nearly as good as i used to think donuts were amen yeah well i used to say the same thing 27:14 and now that i'm older it's it's changing yeah it's funny we face the same problem in engineering um so i don't know if 27:21 people remember was speaking last time on the show my day job i'm a i'm a software engineer and we talk about 27:29 the level of risk and reward between putting out new features so every time 27:34 you you release a new feature you carry some level of risk with that feature because there's a process going from in 27:42 development to in production and in whenever you run through that process you always run the risk of 27:48 introducing a bug or introducing a problem into the system and so we really hit at the dichotomy between reliability 27:55 engineers and feature engineers who say reliability engineers say i never want 28:00 this thing to change i've got automatic processes that spin it back up if it goes down or if there's a bug and 28:07 feature engineers who say well nobody's ever going to get any value out of this thing if there are no new features 28:14 and so it's one of the challenges for microsoft word yeah they they don't add new features but they change features around right yeah under the illusion 28:21 that there has been change and so then you have to figure out how the hell does this work now mm-hmm so i wonder buy an apple it's so interesting to see to hear 28:28 the parallels between between um psychology and engineering and clinician 28:34 work and all of these things it always my family is diverse my wife is a 28:40 microsoft person and i'm an apple person i hear her cussing her computer much more often than she hears me cussing 28:46 mine i wonder if that's because she cusses more than i do i don't know 28:52 [Laughter] she has more reason that's i know your wife a little bit and i find that 28:57 difficult to believe oh well but uh yeah i know i the the day that i took the job 29:04 running the graduate program at webster there was an apple on the desk and i 29:11 said to myself i'm going to figure out how to use this because the whole campus was was apple um and i and it and it's 29:17 familiar enough if your pc apples are familiar enough that you know you should 29:23 be able to do a thing and that you can do it but it's dissimilar enough that it's hard to figure out how to do it and 29:29 i got so frustrated i called after about 20 minutes called i.t and said look you're not the same person yeah 29:38 i i was going to throw it out the window they came and replaced it with a pc thank god let's end this thing yeah okay 29:44 all right so hopefully uh that was elucidating for somebody out there um 29:50 elizabeth okay yeah what what what's it's elucidative not a lucid dating 29:57 elucidative why one's a process if it's a process it's elucidative 30:05 okay so what is it if it's dating it's uh adverb 30:10 okay i still don't understand the difference it's a verb oh okay then but 30:15 okay fine yeah you can be both okay yeah but elusive 30:28 there you go so uh the music that appears inside with mike is written and performed by mr ben we'll miss you next 30:33 week uh who's going to be not be here 30:40 any of us apparently uh we really would like it if anybody 30:46 would go to uh the websites find us on apple podcasts and uh leave us some 30:52 comment and rate us but if you really really want to help us out the best way to do that is to find us on the youtubes 30:59 search psych with mike and subscribe to the show and as always if it's friday it's psych with mike 31:05 my father used to say to me on a regular basis we'll miss you at the next family reunion
This week we are joined by St. Louis Professional Counselor, Michelle Steeg. Michelle, Brett, and. I discuss men in psychotherapy.
Contact Michelle
https://michellesteeg.com/
What kind of issues do men face?
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/men-issues
The trauma of children is something that I feel very passionate about. But to be good at helping kids process their trauma, you first have to understand how they process information.
https://childmind.org/guide/helping-children-cope-after-a-traumatic-event/
Brett and I are often asked, "what is the most important skill for doing therapy?" While therapy cannot be reduced to a single skill, empathic listening is routinely recognized as the most essential therapeutic skill.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90749446/how-to-become-a-better-listener-according-to-science
Bipolar Disorder can be devastating if not effectively managed. Michael Wellington is one of the most recognizable individuals promoting effective treatment in this country. Michael came to terms with his acceptance of his disease while trying to reach his dream of earning a spot on the PGA Tour. Now his life is devoted to helping others. His work on Bipolar Disorder can be accessed at www.birdiesforbipolar.org
What is happiness and how do we find it?
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-happiness-4869755
Athletic Greens
https://athleticgreens.com/partner/d35ctoffer-nutrition/en?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=emerging_d35ct__a3878__o27&utm_term=cac__a3878__o27&utm_content=sport__a3878__o27
As a professor of psychology, I have to make accommodations for individuals with diagnosed disabilities regularly. Yet, I did not take a class on disabilities in graduate school and no one I know did either. All the information I have about disabilities I learned for myself. The CDC reports that 26% of Americans have some form of disabilities we need to have better education to support these individuals and their psychological needs.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/disability-is-diversity/202204/we-need-talk-about-disability-in-psychology-classes
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html#:~:text=26%20percent%20(one%20in%204,is%20highest%20in%20the%20South.
Athletic Greens
https://athleticgreens.com/partner/d35ctoffer-nutrition/en?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=emerging_d35ct__a3878__o27&utm_term=cac__a3878__o27&utm_content=sport__a3878__o27
Does communicating over a screen impair our ability to interpret non-verbal behavior? And if so what impact will it have?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01747/full
We got an intern and a sponsor!
Please check out our new sponsor, Athletic Greens!
https://athleticgreens.com/emerging
Adoption is a complex family dynamic that affects more than just one life or even one family.
https://www.mnnonline.org/news/living-both-sides-of-the-adoption-spectrum/
https://www.adoptionchoices.org/adoptions-positive-impacts/
We have all heard about the negatives associated with growing up in dysfunctional families. Trauma that is inflicted on individuals in these families can last a lifetime. But is there anything that can be learned from growing up in these situations? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/invisible-bruises/202204/5-lessons-learned-growing-in-dysfunctional-environments
All of us at Psych with Mike would like to thank everyone who listens for helping us reach such an incredible milestone! 100,000 downloads! Thank you we appreciate your support!
https://brandastic.com/blog/why-are-podcasts-so-popular/
The biases that are inherent in mental diagnosis are not well identified or taught. It is important for the mental health industry to examine this issue to better serve the needs of our whole society.
https://psyche.co/ideas/bias-in-mental-health-diagnosis-gets-in-the-way-of-treatment
All of us have experienced the pain that is associated with what we call a "broken heart". But new science is showing that heartbreak has real physical impacts on our bodies and our minds.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/this_is_your_brain_on_heartbreak
During the pandemic, people left their jobs in droves! Now as restrictions begin to be relaxed we have millions of jobs and record low unemployment. So how has the approach that individuals take to selecting a job changed?
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-unfulfilled-psychological-needs-responsible-for-the-great-resignation-320387c0f10c
Inflammation has been associated with so many negative processes in the human body. Pretty much getting old is an inflammatory process. So it's no surprise that it can have a direct influence on depression.
https://www.psypost.org/2022/03/new-psychology-research-uncovers-an-interesting-link-between-inflammatory-responses-and-depression-62688
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. As adults, we often have a more difficult time making friends than we did as children, or at least it can seem that way. As we emerge from pandemic isolation, making friends and reconnecting with existing friends has never been more important.
https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-make-new-friends-when-youre-busy-with-adulthood
Friends are not only great things to have, they are essential to healthy living. As the pandemic wains and we all begin to emerge from our pandemic cacoons a good deal of anxiety and depression are going to surface. It is important to consider how talking to a therapist is different than talking to a friend.
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/why-working-with-a-therapist-is-different-than-talking-to-a-friend/
The Freshman 15, the pandemic 20, we have all kinds of euphemisms for emotional eating. Most of us can relate to overeating because of stress and/or depression. The good news is that this type of eating can be stopped and/or avoided.
https://www.verywellmind.com/stress-and-emotional-eating-how-to-stop-3144528 https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/struggling-with-emotional-eating https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection
In Greece, there was comedy and tragedy or does the protagonist have more or fewer choices by the end of the play. Today we think of comedy as what is "funny", but what is humor and why does it matter?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-science-of-humor-is-no-laughing-matter
It is one of the most unfortunate paradoxies that we often hurt the ones we love. But it is also true that we tend to stay in relationships even after they become toxic. How do we know when it is time to leave a relationship and how do we know?
https://psychcentral.com/blog/why-do-we-help-those-who-hurt-us#1
https://psychcentral.com/blog/why-do-we-help-those-who-hurt-us#1
In St. Louis, where the Psych with Mike library is, we just had our first big snowstorm of the winter. And since it seems to be snowing around most of the country we thought it would be apropos to do a snow day episode! https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychology-behind-a-snow-day-0127165
The seduction theory is one of Freud's most controversial ideas. But was it? Or was Freud's theory a threat to the stability of the status quo of the day?
As we discuss in the episode these are very dense articles but very elucidating of a new and radical view of Freud and his theories!
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1984/02/freud-and-the-seduction-theory/376313/
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800.2066&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Dealing with anger is one of the most common reasons people seek psychotherapy! Brett and I break down how to more quickly become aware of your anger and how to cope with it. https://au.reachout.com/articles/8-ways-to-deal-with-anger
Anger Worksheet
https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/coping-skills-anger.pdf
There are plenty of articles in popular magazines that promote themselves as psychologically sound. I say they have a psychologyness to them. It sounds like common sense. The problem is they aren't psychology.
https://www.brides.com/one-sided-relationship-5112496
Abraham Maslow is viewed as the person in psychology who brought the perspective of positive psychology to our consciousness. This is in addition to the contribution of his hierarchy of needs.
https://positivepsychology.com/abraham-maslow/
Happy New Year!!! In the New Year if I told you that you could have anything you want, would that be a good thing? According to psychology probably not. What we find is that the more choices you have the harder it is to make a choice and feel good about it.
https://procrastination.com/blog/9/decision-paralysis-overthinking-choices
Trauma can be handed down from one generation to the next. How does this process occur and what are the consequences?
https://oie.duke.edu/inter-generational-trauma-6-ways-it-affects-families
Brett always says that we are members of a family which are members of a tribe which are members of a nation etc..The point is that we are all nested in a spider web of interconnected systems. In psychology, this is called ecological psychology. How this view affects our development is the conversation today.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/Bronfenbrenner.html
Worrying about what other people think is something we all know is not healthy and yet difficult to put aside.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/how-stop-caring-what-other-people-think-you/620670/
A lot of us (me included) will say "I don't really remember much before the age of 4 or 5". Some say they don't have many memories before the age of 7 or 8. Then there are those who say they have memories of being n their cribs as infants. What do biology and social development tell us about our earliest memories?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/childhood-amnesia
Many of us grew up in what are known as dysfunctional families. What we don't always realize is how that results in trauma or how that trauma may impact the rest of our lives.
A Thanksgiving Day treat from Psych with Mike to you! A project from one of Psych with Mike's students, Jaden Satenstein. Enjoy!
Understanding how new beliefs are formed is so important to really take more control over our own internal self-talk.
Buy The Book
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Surprise-Secretly-Changes-Beliefs/dp/153815241X/ref=nav_signin?dchild=1&keywords=power+of+surprise&qid=1626534257&sr=8-1&returnFromLogin=1&
One of my relatives recently introduced me to my family tree. In many families especially those with substance abuse in them, secrets are the rule. In my family, this included the family history.
https://selecthealth.org/blog/2019/08/5-benefits-of-knowing-your-family-history
Grief is one of the most difficult issues facing us as humans. Loss creates holes in our lives and the subsequent emotional consequences can linger for months or even years. Understanding grief can help us approach our grief and that of others with sympathy and grace.
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss.htm#
According to the great existential psychologist Viktor Frankl, the capacity to be psychologically resilient is directly related to our willingness to take responsibility for our actions.
Exercises for resilience:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/31/do-these-exercises-every-day-to-build-resilience-and-mental-strength-says-neuroscientist.html
Viktor Frankl:
https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/
Self-esteem is so important and yet not really understood by most of us. Brett and I are here to lay the path for you to improve your self-esteem.
If you argue about facts, then you are arguing about lies. Every persons' reality (their facts) is from their perspective. Even if that perspective is different from yours. They believe theirs over yours. Even science has come to the conclusion that there may be no objective reality!
https://interestingengineering.com/new-physics-experiment-indicates-no-objective-reality
It is something that most of us parents have to do most days...schlep the kids to school. Of course, we love our children and mostly we do this with joy in our hearts and a song on our lips. But sometimes...sometimes things go wrong. If you have even wondered if you are a bad parent because you pulled a gun on another parent in the drop-off line... let me state that irrevocably... YES, YOU ARE.
https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/hazelwood-parents-bring-gun-school/63-858a7bac-0311-4c92-8471-c2770c2c7716
After war has ravaged a country, what is left is the indigenous population. Most of them didn't want the war and may not have even been on one side or the other, but they are left to try and pick up the pieces of their lives. The physical devastation to their environment is a major hurdle but so too is the psychological trauma. The article linked here is long but really paints the picture of the hardship and struggle that is life in the aftermath of war.
https://www.apa.org/international/united-nations/un-matters/rathi-war.pdf
Alfred Adler was a part of Freud's inner circle along with Carl Jung until the three began to form very divergent ideas and split. Adler formed a theory of psychology based on the concepts of advantage/disadvantage and superiority/inferiority. As with all psychodynamically influenced theories, this is an example of motivational-based psychology. The concept of birth order being an important influencer of an individual's personality development also comes from Adler.
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/adlerian-psychology
Brett and I discuss the nature of wisdom as well as new evidence from the neuroscience of depression.
https://cathywild.com/understanding-depression-a-woe-that-is-wisdom/
https://www.psypost.org/2021/08/family-history-of-depression-associated-with-altered-brain-connectivity-during-a-social-cognition-task-61726
Systems theory is a belief that we cannot separate the individual from the system because we all influence and are influenced by the system we operate in. From family to peers to the community, the country to the world, we all operate in an ever-expanding web of systems that can impact us.
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/family-systems-therapy
We may have all thought that the pandemic was over at the end of May/June. But now in August, it seems like things are worse than ever. It's hard to keep up mentally with all the vacillations. So it may be time for each of us as individuals to start thinking about what we want our own worlds to look like post-pandemic!
https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2021/july/how-to-create-the-life-you-want-post-pandemic
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/our-post-pandemic-world-and-whats-likely-to-hang-round/
According to the DSM 5, the prevalence of ADHD in society is expected to be 3.55% reported by the National Institute of Health (NIH). But way more than 3.5 percent of the population is diagnosed with ADHD. So understanding what ADHD is and what it isn't is super important!
NIH report on ADHD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301194/
Resource for Parents
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/adhd/Pages/Understanding-ADHD.aspx
Brett and I got into a conversation that was not planned but ended up being pretty fascinating. Please let us know if you have any thoughts on our discussion!
Cognitive Restructuring really just means changing how you think about a thing. It is a powerful tool in psychotherapy.
https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-guide/cognitive-restructuring
Dreaming may seem to be the best part or the worst part of an individual's day. Some people don't even think they dream at all. The truth is there are both psychological and physiological reasons for dreams.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_your_brain_needs_to_dream
https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/the-importance-of-dreams-what-they-can-represent
Stress and anxiety are thought of as being the same thing but really they aren't. Understanding the difference can help to manage both better.
What is stress
https://www.verywellmind.com/stress-and-health-3145086
General Adaptation Syndrome
https://www.healthline.com/health/general-adaptation-syndrome#stages
In 2004 Brett and I had the opportunity to make several Parent Presentations on substance abuse and parenting of adolescents. I recently found an old recording of one of these presentations and thought I would share it. If you would like to see what Brett and I looked like 20 years ago, you can go to YouTube and search Psych with Mike to find this episode.
This is a revisit to an episode where my son stopped by to discuss the psychology of collecting. This is the most-watched episode of Psych with Mike on YouTube.
A psychological diagnosis can be an essential part of the therapeutic relationship. But how do therapists determine which diagnosis is correct and why is it important in the first place?
Rational Emotive Therapy, created by Albert Ellis, was the first psychotherapy to explore the link between how we think and what we feel.
https://www.healthline.com/health/rational-emotive-behavior-therapy
Brett and I revisit the subject of psychedelics in the treatment of psychological disorders.
https://maps.org/news/media/9154-the-new-york-times-the-psychedelic-revolution-is-coming-psychiatry-may-never-be-the-same
Living in a sustainably congruent way is the definition of integrity (in other words being able to look at yourself in the mirror and liking the person you see). Self-esteem is your global perception of self. These are important aspects of living.
https://www.mentalhealthforyouth.com/articles/the-psychology-of-self-image-theory
Life can be busy and hectic and we don't always have the time we would like for indulgences like binge-watching a TV show. It may seem like a good idea to sacrifice sleep time for personal time. But is this a good practice to fall into?
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/revenge-bedtime-procrastination
Anxiety has become the most diagnosed psychiatric disorder. Many people live with a constant state of anxiety which they are unaware of or believe helps them function at a higher level. But this persistent state of anxiety has significant negative effects.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-high-functioning-anxiety-4140198
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319289
Gestalt means "whole". Gestalt Psychology looks at the person as a "whole" and the goal is to help the person to integrate and move forward with less distress.
Most of us are familiar with the idea of dogs going to hospitals and nursing homes to lift the spirits. Service animals with their work vests identify themselves as an integral part of their owner's lives. The use of animals in therapy is a growing part of the helping professions.
Feeling like a victim is a familiar feeling to many of us. Of course, there are actual victims in the world but for the most part, we play a significant role in the creation of our own victimhood.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Response) is one of the therapies currently believed to help clients to reprocess traumatic experiences. In this episode, we explain what EMDR is and a little of what to expect from this brand of therapy.
Keitt Stathem
(636) 498-0700
riverbirchcounseling.com
In this very special episode, Molly Dwyer interviews Dr. Bonnie Zucker. They discuss the parenting of an adolescent and when behavior may be concerning.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most commonly practiced psychotherapy in the U.S. CBT is used to help individuals change irrational beliefs and negative self-talk into more rational and healthy thinking.
In therapy, we often talk about getting closure. But what does it mean to get closure and why is it important?
It is generally difficult for individuals to understand and appreciate that others actually "think" differently than they do. However, differences in the structure of the brain actually results in differences in the way that children, adolescents, and adults think. Understanding this can help us understand each other better and improve communication.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2019/08/09/how-do-social-and-emotional-skills-develop-in-youth/
https://parentandteen.com/adolescent-cognitive-development/
There is a tremendous amount of social conditioning to be less in touch with our emotions. Especially for men, the message is that "Big boys don't cry" and "fear is a sign of weakness. When in reality we can not be fully human until we can embrace the totality of the human emotional spectrum.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201609/passionate-surrender
The world is upsidedown and there may never have been a time when levels of stress have been so high. Learning how to cope has never been more important.
That's right. There has been a significant amount of research that actually concludes that there are indeed measurable positive benefits to playing video games. This has become so accepted that there are now e-sport leagues on most University campuses that fall under the NCAA.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201502/cognitive-benefits-playing-video-games
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is one of the diagnoses in psychology that has become mythical. Contrary to what is promoted by the media and armchair psychologists BPD is fairly rare and is absolutely treatable.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20370237
You've been told that your child is gifted. Should you be happy? What does it even mean? Here is the information you need to know.
https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources/what-giftedness#:~:text=Students%20with%20gifts%20and%20talents,learn%20and%20realize%20their%20potential.
Transactional Analysis is a very helpful theory in psychology for evaluation and improving communication.
https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/transactional-analysis
Touching and being touched has both physiological and psychological benefits.
https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-power-of-touch#1
We were all shocked by the images of what happened on 6 Jan 2021. How could something like this happen? Today Brett and I explore the psychology of an insurrection.
Brett and I discuss the future following the storming of the Capitol Building on 6 Jan 2021.
Most of us make resolutions at the turn of the year. We might even feel like we are obligated to do so. Few of these resolutions really stick, though. In today's show, we discuss ways to help you keep your resolutions this year!
Most of us may be feeling pretty down right now. With the pandemic and political division, it is hard to feel optimistic about much. But with 2021 coming soon and a new administration change is coming no matter if we want it or not. What the world could use right about now is some HOPE!
Often we can overlook the impact that events are having on our children.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208193405.htm
Food issues during the pandemic can go underappreciated.
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/articles/how-to-help-someone-who-is-struggling-with-an-eating-disorder-right-now
Many people are feeling their relationships strained or even broken over partisan divides.
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-11-02/you-are-no-longer-my-mother-a-divided-america-will-struggle-to-heal-after-trump-era
These are a handful of obscure theories in psychology that even Brett and I were not completely versed in.
https://buffer.com/resources/3-psychological-theories-communication-insight/
It is cliche to say: "Just think positive" but there is an entire branch of psychology dedicated to the idea.
https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-positive-psychology-definition/
Anxiety and depression are commonly experienced and diagnosed psychological disorders, but what makes them different from each other?
https://www.verywellmind.com/am-i-anxious-4045683
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Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify and understand the emotions of others. It is closely linked to the individual's ability to regulate their own emotions. Fostering this skill in children is vitally important to their social success as well as their own emotional regulation.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dealing-emotions/202006/why-you-need-emotional-intelligence-succeed-school
In therapy, people often say "I need to understand where my need to be perfect comes from". Let's dissect that.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-emotional-meter/201801/how-let-go-the-need-be-perfect
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-costs-perfectionism/202007/if-i-am-perfect-will-i-matter
With pandemic and civil unrest, the world can feel like a pretty scary place right now. As positive covid results increase more communities are going back to stricter forms of quarantine. In the midst of all this, we are still in relationships. It is important for all of us to attend to our relationships; to nurture them even though it may feel like the entire world is on fire.
https://www.gottman.com/blog/rescuing-relationship-stress/
There is a new drug based on the chemical esketamine approved for the treatment of resistant depression. Some researchers on the frontier of treating psychological disorders predict that over the next 5 to 10 years we may see several new drugs based on psychedelic molecules. Let us know what you think about this issue. Are you in favor of this line of research or against it? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
https://massivesci.com/articles/pollan-lsd-psychedelics-review/
https://www.psychcongress.com/article/research-psychedelics-mental-health-promising-limited
Human beings can literally make themselves sick because of what we think/believe. When how or what we think causes real physical symptoms it is called a psychosomatic disorder. Today we will discuss this topic and some ways to combat it.
https://www.verywellmind.com/depression-can-be-a-real-pain-1065455
Psych with Mike is celebrating its 100th episode talking about the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths. Enjoy the show, share it, like videos, and give us a rating in iTunes
https://psychcentral.com/blog/differences-between-a-psychopath-vs-sociopath/#:~:text=Psychopaths%20tend%20to%20be%20more,much%20of%20a%20normal%20life.
Exposure therapy is a specific kind of cognitive-behavioral intervention designed to reduce anxiety. Exposure therapies work well for many types of anxiety disorders. Today on Psych with Mike we discuss this kind of intervention and how it helps.
https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-exposure-therapy/
It is clique to ask "why men can't show their feelings" but the fact is that men often have difficulty even identifying their emotions much less talking about them. But it does not have to be this way. Men are absolutely capable of labeling and appropriately expressing their emotions with the right education/training. Accurate and appropriate emotional expression is good for both psychological and physical health.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/putting-psyche-back-psychotherapy/201903/man-and-his-feelings
Dr. Nima Rahmany shares his view on how we can overcome troubled histories and negative thinking. His Overview Method is designed to help individuals reach their full potential. Dr. Nima presents his program to people though high energy interactive groups. Check out his website at the link below.
https://drnima.com/
It is going to take leadership and personal responsibility to resolve our national issues on inequality. Today we are having that conversation with thought leader Eric Kaufmann.
https://sagatica.com/
Parental Modelling is significantly more important for childhood development than most people realize. While psychology has promoted the importance of parental modeling since before Sigmund Freud, recent advances in brain sciences are showing how true this is.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shouldstorm/202005/nurturing-parents-may-lower-the-risk-depression-in-kids
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871979/
There are just as many changes that take place physiologically as a result of the aging process. It is known as menopause in women and andropause in men. The changes in hormone balance are just as drastic as during puberty. Today we are going to discuss this issue with a noted expert in this field, Dr. Becky Lynn the director of Evora.
Evora and Dr. Becky Lynn
https://www.evorabydrbeckylynn.com/
There are twice as many suicides every year than homicides. Suicide is the leading cause of death for young adults year over year. The two most influential factors associated with suicide are economic downturn and social isolation, both of which are widespread right now. This is a difficult subject but vitally important.
Suicide Prevention Lifeline:
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
During the time of pandemic, it is important for all of us to be mindful of our own anxieties. Left unchecked these can lead to obsessive-compulsive disorder or a host of other psychosomatic problems.
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/134/4/1244/340497
While many people use words like guilt, remorse, regret, and resentment interchangeably, they are different psychological processes. Understanding the difference between guilt and remorse can be very psychologically freeing.
https://feverinsidethestorm.com/2008/07/05/guilt-vs-remorse/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/guilt-vs-remorse_b_59db68c7e4b0705dc79aa99d
Self-Actualization is something that people talk about but do we really understand what is meant by the term. How does one know if they are self--actualized? How does one know if they aren't? Is this concept the same for every individual? Let's get some answers.
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/self-actualization-characteristics
As the early stages of reopening the economy begin around the world, some call for the process to be sped up while others say it is premature.
Tele or distance therapy/medicine has become a central focus during the coronavirus pandemic. But what is teletherapy and what are it's benefits and it's limitations?
Good article about today's topic:
https://www.verywellmind.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-online-therapy-2795225
As individuals, a community, a nation, and even a world, it is up to us to decide the kind of leadership we want post coronavirus. There is a unique opportunity for us as a species to be different and possibly better after this crisis than we were before. But to make that happen we need the kind of conscientious leadership that Eric Kaufmann describes in his upcoming book, Leadership Breakdown.
Each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to embody the change we want to see happen in the world!
https://instituteofcoaching.org/eric-kaufmann
https://sagatica.com/
Many people may be struggling with the isolation they are feeling as a result of physical distancing measures in response to the coronavirus. But can isolation ever be a positive experience and if so, how?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/the-virtues-of-isolation/521100/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-brain-and-value/202003/can-social-isolation-be-positive
With the beginning of protests against the continuation of social distancing protocols, it appears that tolerance for such measures may be waining. If we are looking at possibly another month of quarantine this sentiment is likely to gain momentum. As some areas start to open back up for business what will happen in areas that remain shutdown?
Issues over the frequency and quality of sex are common in marital/couples therapy. But the reasons that are attributed as to why are very different for men and women.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/myths-desire/202003/why-didnt-we-have-sex-last-night