Latest / State Of Mind Mental Health Podcast / #125 - Are Your Emotions 'Wrong'? Why You Need To Rethink How You Feel with Dr. Jenn Veilleux

Transcript

#125 - Are Your Emotions 'Wrong'? Why You Need To Rethink How You Feel with Dr. Jenn Veilleux · State Of Mind Mental Health Podcast

0:00
Emotions aren't right or wrong.
0:01
They're messages. They're trying to tell us something.
0:03
And so we need to have the skills to be able to open the envelope,
0:09
Be able to see what the message of the emotion is and be able to not
0:14
keep the emotion too close, like not sleep with that envelope under our pillow,
0:18
like ruminating about it and keeping it too close.
0:20
And it also means not treating the emotion as junk mail and trying to throw
0:24
it out and get rid of it before we actually know what the emotion is trying to say.
0:28
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the State of Mind Podcast:
0:31
Tools, Stories, and Truth on Being Human.
0:36
My name is Mike Stroh, and this is a podcast for living with courage,
0:40
clarity, and compassion. On today's episode,
0:45
I'm speaking with Dr. Jenn Veilleux
0:49
Hello, Jen. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom
0:52
and expertise with us. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about
0:57
~ your work and what brings you to this point in your life?
1:01
Yeah, so my name is Dr. Jenn Veilleux I'm a licensed clinical psychologist
1:07
~ in the United States. I live in Arkansas.
1:10
~ and so I am a professor
1:15
of psychological science by day and a therapist,
1:21
not by night, but part-time. I see adults and couples in
1:25
my part-time private practice.
1:27
~ in my research, I study emotion and self-regulation.
1:30
So I wrote a book that came out last summer that's all about kind of how
1:34
do you take the science of emotion and help people apply it to their everyday lives?
1:39
So I use a lot of that in my practice.
1:41
and then I I spend my my day job as a professor in addition to research,
1:46
I train a lot of clinicians. So I do a lot of clinical supervision and
1:51
try to help therapists navigate.
1:55
doing therapy and psychological assessments,
1:57
which can be really tricky for a lot of new clinicians or newer clinicians
2:01
as they encounter types of people and problems and things that they've just never
2:06
encountered before.
2:07
Great, thank you. Wow, it sounds sounds so interesting and busy and and ~
2:13
I love I love all that. ~ where to start?
2:17
maybe can you explain to us a bit about the book and
2:23
the science of emotions and what emotions are and and how they've been understood
2:28
traditionally and and what we're if we are learning anything new in particular,
2:32
yeah.
2:33
Yeah.
2:34
So my book is called Open to Emotion.
2:36
How acknowledging, understanding,
2:40
and regulating emotion can improve your mental health.
2:43
And the whole point of the book
2:46
Kind of came about actually from supervision,
2:48
~ when I was explaining, I don't know,
2:51
something about ~ like a model of emotion regulation with a former student.
2:55
And I was like, you know, the science of emotion would say blah,
2:58
blah, blah. I don't I don't even remember what I said,
3:00
but she said, Wait, there's a science of emotion?
3:03
And I was like, Yes, there's a very rich science of emotion.
3:07
~ and she said, Well, is there something I can read?
3:10
Is there like a book that I can go read about some of the basics of what
3:15
the science of emotion?
3:16
kind of has to say and how it applies to therapy.
3:18
And there isn't. ~ There are books about emotion.
3:22
A lot of like there's, you know,
3:23
books about how emotions operate in the brain.
3:25
There are certainly therapy manuals that like talk about how to work with emotion,
3:31
different therapeutic modalities that talk about how to work with emotion,
3:34
but actually not a lot about how,
3:36
like, what do we know kind of currently about the science of emotion
3:41
and what can everyday people take from that?
3:44
and
3:45
like use that to under to facilitate their own self-understanding.
3:48
So I was like, someone should write that book.
3:50
It's like, wait a sec, that someone might be me.
3:53
So I went ahead and wrote this book and the the kind of shtick or the theme
3:59
of the book is that emotions are messages.
4:02
Right. Emotions aren't right or wrong.
4:04
They're messages. They're trying to tell us something.
4:06
And so we need to have the skills to be able to open the envelope,
4:12
right? Be able to see what the message of the emotion is and be able to like not
4:18
keep the emotion too close, like not sleep with that envelope under our pillow,
4:22
like ruminating about it and keeping it too close.
4:24
And it also means not treating the emotion as junk mail and trying to throw
4:28
it out and get rid of it before we actually know what the emotion is trying to say.
4:32
And so there's a lot of cool science that supports that idea and supports then
4:38
the practical pieces around like,
4:40
okay, if you can get on board with this idea,
4:42
then how do you do those things?
4:44
How do you open the envelope? Like how do you not ruminate?
4:48
How do you not avoid? Like how do you approach emotion with a sort of friendly,
4:53
curious attitude to be able to get the message without getting overwhelmed by it?
4:59
Great, thank you. And it's a good thing you wrote the book ~ to to
5:04
Mm-hmm.
5:04
contribute to to all of this. Can you ~ help me understand
5:10
the ~ if there is an argument
5:14
for evolutionary psychology around emotions and maybe
5:20
how how if we are adapting or evolving in in a sense,
5:25
what has changed for modern humans?
5:29
That's part of your understanding or or ~ research.
5:35
I'm less familiar with the evolutionary approaches,
5:38
other than, you know, it certainly is the case that compared
5:45
to say the the Caitlan days,
5:48
~ I
5:49
Mm-hmm.
5:50
think our social fabric is much more interconnected.
5:54
And because of that our and you know,
5:57
it is not just we
5:58
We have fear, like if there's a buffalo that's charging at you,
6:03
you better get out of the way because you could get trampled,
6:06
right? We don't have as many encounters with buffalo,
6:10
but we have these more like existential threats or like social media
6:17
threats. And so how the brain interprets threats and rewards are,
6:24
I think, different than they used to be.
6:27
I
6:27
think that that matters too to think about how to navigate with people.
6:29
Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
6:31
And I
6:32
also the there's certainly research that we have the sort of basic emotions
6:36
and then we have more ~ complex or socially constructed emotions.
6:41
So feelings like guilt and shame and pride and those things that don't
6:48
exist in
6:49
as far as we know, in like other animals or in babies or like small people.
6:53
those emotions, because of the social complexity of life nowadays,
7:00
are probably more prominent in people's psychological functioning than maybe they
7:05
used to be. But that's making some educated guesses.
7:08
Okay, yeah.
7:09
as the evolutionary zone is not my my core area of expertise.
7:13
Sure, sure.
7:14
Yeah. I think mine either,
7:18
maybe, which is partly why I asked.
7:20
But I I think you as I've read and come across,
7:24
I think
7:25
Is somewhat similar to what you were describing.
7:28
~ so
7:32
can you how as you describe sort of
7:37
our our modern social networks,
7:39
our self-concepts, our our our perceived threats are not,
7:45
as you say, what they were. How how are those unfolding
7:51
in in modern emotions and just
7:53
From your experience as a clinician,
7:55
also as ~ as a supervisor and trainer and professor,
7:59
how do you see these conversations coming up today?
8:05
Well
8:06
I'd be curious to hear what you think from your clients,
8:08
but I think that, you know, what what I see the most in students,
8:13
especially the undergraduates,
8:15
is that there's a lot of anxiety.
8:19
I think anxiety has gone way up.
8:21
COVID did not help with that when it pushed people away from each other
8:25
and away from in-person interactions towards virtual interactions.
8:28
And there's just a lot more like uncertainty with virtual interactions,
8:33
right? It's harder to read an emoji.
8:35
~
8:36
~ or to read between the lines or to know when you're talking
8:39
on Zoom what somebody's doing with their feet or with their hands on you know,
8:42
like there's just a lot of questions
8:42
Yeah.
8:43
that come up and the purpose of fear and anxiety is to help keep people safe,
8:49
right? That's that's all emotions have a purpose.
8:53
~ I get into
8:55
arguments with some of my emotion friends sometimes on like are there emotions that
8:59
have no function and I think sh shame isn't a contender for an emotion that
9:05
has no function. One of my colleagues last week said regret has no function,
9:09
meaning we have it, but like it doesn't help us.
9:12
Whereas most emotions help us if we can channel them appropriately.
9:17
But fear and anxiety are telling us to ~ you know fear is like there's
9:22
a threat right now.
9:24
And
9:24
anxiety is there is a threat that could be around.
9:27
I gotta figure out where that threat is so that I can like neutralize
9:30
it or avoid it. And so people's natural response to fear and anxiety is
9:35
to pull back and to avoid. And that makes total sense evolutionarily.
9:41
But in practicality, there are a lot of things that people feel anxious about that
9:46
are not actually threats. And when we assume that anxiety is telling us important,
9:52
like you will be unsafe if you do this and you listen to that,
9:55
people's lives become more narrow.
9:57
That's a problem for their psychological functioning.
10:01
So I see that a lot. I I assume you do too.
10:04
You're nodding. So I feel like you probably see
10:06
Yeah.
10:06
that too with your clients, right?
10:09
Definitely.
10:09
And and I can notice that in myself too sometimes if I'm worrying about something
10:15
and not really aware of it until I am.
10:18
~ wow, I'm really confined in my perspective of reality
10:24
and I'm caught in some sort of story and I'm worrying about something and I
10:29
~ I like the I can't remember exactly the word you use,
10:32
but it gets
10:33
Yeah, your life gets more narrow.
10:34
Restricted. Yeah, there
10:35
Yeah.
10:36
that's the word narrow. It's a wonderful.
10:37
Wonderful word. something you were saying that I wanted
10:43
to sh so I'm curious what your thoughts on ~ what your thoughts
10:49
are about pro social shame and that whole idea of
10:53
Yeah. Do you have thoughts on the the notion of pro social shame?
10:57
So shame and guilt are kind of close neighbors,
11:00
right? Guilt says I've done something wrong and shame says I am wrong.
11:05
So theoretically, pro-social shame,
11:08
right? Once people are feeling shame,
11:10
that should provide the motivation to like become a better person,
11:15
right? To change yourself in a way that will help you with your future
11:21
relationships. Is that possible?
11:24
Sure. I mean, this is one of the things about being a clinician is like
11:28
the rules about human behavior.
11:30
I can give you any example of where it breaks because some
11:33
Ha ha
11:34
unique human being.
11:35
violates this sort of rule about how people typically are.
11:39
It's what makes talking about science hard,
11:41
because like people could be like,
11:43
well, that doesn't work for me.
11:44
Like, well, yeah, it doesn't work for you because you're a unique person with your
11:48
own background, personality, like all of that.
11:50
But this is how things tend to work.
11:53
Now let's see where that doesn't doesn't work for you.
11:56
So is it possible that there are people for whom shame puts,
12:01
you know, like gives a motivational spin?
12:04
Possibly.
12:06
I I don't see a lot of good evidence either from the science or from seeing
12:11
it happen, right? I think people think that shame is helping them,
12:16
but really it's causing self-criticism,
12:18
right? Like, you know, I was skulking your website and I see that
12:22
you are have mindful self-compassion as one of your areas and like
12:28
Self-compassion
12:29
is all about trying to help reduce people's self-criticism and reduce their shame
12:34
and help them feel connected to other people.
12:36
And shame does not do that typically.
12:39
So if somebody can approach shame with like a I I really want to change this aspect
12:45
of myself that I don't like ~ and move towards something,
12:50
I think sure it could be helpful,
12:52
but I don't I just don't think that's how most people operate around shame.
12:56
Yes, I love ~ this the mindful self-compassion ~ work.
13:00
I find it tremendously sort of it to me,
13:06
it's like the glue that brings so much of all the other components together
13:11
or that makes addressing difficult aspects of our life a lot easier.
13:17
And ~ is there
13:21
The shame idea, I think I want to linger on it because I it's not I
13:26
I don't know what what my thoughts are on it really.
13:28
I'm trying to go through Bradshaw's work.
13:31
Do you know Bradshaw? He's kind of well known for his work on shame.
13:34
no.
13:35
Mm, not off the top of my head.
13:38
Okay, yeah. in in
13:44
Is there an argument or are you are you aware of it that sort of this notion
13:49
of pro-social shame? And I think I understand it right.
13:53
I hope I'm not communicating these ideas incorrectly,
13:56
that it does help to prevent socially destructive behavior.
14:03
So it's it's a natural instinct or emotion saying,
14:06
ooh, if I do that thing, that is bad.
14:09
And I might be.
14:11
I don't know if it's ~ shunned or I might be ostracized or something like that from
14:16
the tribe or the community or my friend group if I behave that way.
14:20
And so that instinct of shame is,
14:22
ooh, don't do that because or is that a different emotion,
14:25
would you say?
14:26
That sounds like anxiety. Cause again,
14:28
shame is around p typically shame is like I've done a thing.
14:33
Like shame is is
14:34
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
14:35
post action. So emotions
14:37
Mm-hmm.
14:37
get really complicated really fast because people can pr think about anticipating
14:43
emotions that they would feel.
14:45
Right.
14:45
and
14:45
unfortunately we as human beings are very bad at that.
14:48
We think we're gonna know how we feel in a given situation,
14:51
but we don't. We tend to actually over-amplify how bad bad things are gonna be.
14:57
We also over-amplify how good good things are gonna be.
15:00
So things aren't as exciting as we
15:02
as we make them, when we spend a lot of time thinking about how great is this?
15:06
Well, it's not as great as we think,
15:07
but it's also not as bad as we think.
15:09
It tends to live more in the middle.
15:11
So the way that I see shame in the sort of basic emotion science literature
15:17
is more about like, I have done a thing and I am bad because of that
15:20
Yeah.
15:21
thing that
15:21
I did.
15:22
Yeah. Okay. And I think that you described,
15:28
I think, part of my question of
15:31
Yes, I know. ~ and I I wish I was more skillful
15:35
at articulating the shame and guilt can
15:40
be experienced very similarly.
15:42
And I think to help people understand,
15:44
we've divided it into guilt, I did something wrong,
15:48
shame, there's something wrong with me,
15:49
or I am bad. ~ is there any validity
15:54
to the knowing that certain behaviors aren't.
16:00
socially acceptable?
16:02
Sure. I think I have been having an argument with one of my clients about this
16:07
actually, because I've been really
16:07
Yeah.
16:08
interested in working with people who are over controlled.
16:14
So who are on the kind of more perfectionism self-criticism side,
16:18
who like fear being out of control.
16:20
And so one of the things that we've been talking about is like the rules that people
16:26
have for themselves that they not just rules that people have for themselves,
16:30
but rules that people think are true in the world.
16:33
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
16:34
~ and I've been trying to explain to this one client in particular,
16:38
like that she has a lot of rules that she thinks are true of in general.
16:43
And I'm like, but what if other people don't have those rules?
16:46
And she's come down to but like there are some rules that everyone should have.
16:52
~ and every time she gives me one of those,
16:54
I try to poke holes in it. ~ like,
16:58
but not everybody is going to endorse this rule.
17:00
And it comes down to, but they should,
17:02
right? The like, you shouldn't,
17:04
you know, rape people, kill people,
17:07
right? Like, there are some rules that should be universal that people should
17:11
follow. ~ and that might be true.
17:15
So are there expectations that we can have for other people's behavior?
17:19
Like, yes.
17:21
But other people don't share those expectations.
17:23
So you can have those, you could communicate those,
17:27
and you can still be disappointed or annoyed or enraged when people don't
17:32
do them because not everybody has your rules.
17:35
Right.
17:37
And do you is there
17:41
Mind is going very quickly at the moment.
17:44
~
17:45
I does any of your research point to
17:49
call them like universal morals or ~ something like that,
17:56
cross-cultural morals, where something like you were just describing,
18:00
generally speaking, most cultures and et cetera think rape
18:06
is morally wrong or is not okay or murder or or those type of things.
18:13
I don't know that research. ~
18:15
Okay.
18:15
I tend to live more on the value side than on the the like universality
18:22
of rules. There are certainly people who are interested in like understanding
18:27
are there consistent morals across countries and cultures?
18:32
And I think
18:32
Right, right.
18:33
there are pockets of morals that people tend to agree with more or less.
18:37
But for you know.
18:41
I am more interested in the emotional pieces and I'm interested in
18:45
how those play out clinically.
18:47
And so I kind of doesn't it doesn't matter to me.
18:50
It matters to me more what an individual client thinks is true and real
18:55
and cares about because that's what's gonna help me work with them.
18:59
That's what I'm gonna be able to leverage to maybe get them to try things that they
19:04
are scared to try or think that they w wouldn't be helpful to them when
19:09
I think it might.
19:11
Thank you. Okay. ~ this is what's so nice about talking to a professor.
19:15
Your ability to parse through all the kind of lanes of inquiry.
19:22
so thank you for helping make sense of my scattered questions.
19:27
so in that context,
19:31
~ well, one question I had as you were describing that is is there
19:36
a universality to human emotion?
19:38
And then
19:40
Whatever. And then back to your the latter part of your answer to how does this come
19:45
up clinically and how are you or how does your book and how does your work help
19:50
people come into relationship with those emotions so that they can live more like
19:55
the person they want?
19:56
I think there is there are very few absolutes in
20:01
in psychology in particular, right?
20:04
The there's a joke in my department with my students that any student,
20:08
if you raise your hand to answer a question,
20:11
if you just say it depends, you're probably gonna be right.
20:14
Yeah.
20:15
so but I also think,
20:18
you know, that
20:21
I have yet to run into an example of someone who does not have emotion.
20:25
Is it possible? Maybe. But I think un emotions are fairly universal,
20:31
and emotions cut across species too.
20:34
Many species have emotion. You see them in your pets.
20:39
I certainly see I'm a cat person,
20:41
but you can see emotions in dogs.
20:43
There's great videos on the internet of laughing rats.
20:46
If you've ever wanna see a rat on like get tickled,
20:48
Yeah. Yeah.
20:49
it's super cute.
20:51
So I think
20:51
people have emotions. And so lots of research has been put into what
20:57
are the universal aspects of emotion?
20:59
Are there
20:59
Mm.
21:00
basic emotions that everyone has?
21:02
Some people say yes, other people say no.
21:05
What's basic isn't specific emotions,
21:08
but is a general tendency to experience the world as like to experience
21:12
a moment as pleasant or unpleasant,
21:14
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
21:14
and then
21:15
kind of physiologically activating versus kind of more calm.
21:20
And the the specific feelings we have are kind of layered onto that
21:25
~ pleasantness and activation ~ dimensions,
21:29
and then we put a name onto it.
21:31
So there's different perspectives there.
21:33
To me, those distinctions clinically don't matter a whole lot.
21:37
What I wanna know going and working with a client is like.
21:41
what are the feelings that the client has regularly that they experience often?
21:46
What are the feelings they don't have either because they're
21:50
not sparked by something happening in their life or they're actively pushing them
21:55
away or they used to actively push them away so much that they don't they're
22:01
not even on the the client's radar.
22:03
Anymore. So those are the things that I'm interested in emotionally.
22:07
Like when I'm starting to work with a client,
22:09
because I my my practice is called emotion-centered psychological services because
22:15
emotion focus was taken by other people.
22:17
So I couldn't use that one. But
22:17
Right. Right.
22:20
the way that I conceptualize a person and the way that I conceptualize
22:23
the case is very much around like trying to understand their emotional functioning.
22:27
Like, are they aware of their feelings?
22:29
Do they know how to label or kind of put
22:33
Words onto their emotions? Do they ~ are they sort of sensitive to threat or reward?
22:39
And my book has chapters on all of these things,
22:42
right? Well, how sensitive
22:43
Awesome.
22:43
is this person? How good are they or bad are they at awareness?
22:48
what is their labeling? What are their human values?
22:51
Because there is some really cool science,
22:53
for example, on like people who value.
22:56
safety and like health and security tend to value wanting
23:03
to feel calm and as a
23:04
Hmm.
23:05
result tend to feel more anxious.
23:07
~ that's
23:09
People who value things
23:10
like power and authority feel more comfortable with anger.
23:14
So they tend to experience more anger and use more anger.
23:18
Like emotions can be harnessed and used for ends,
23:24
right? Anger can help people, can help people confront,
23:28
it can help people kind of anger's about a goal that was blocked or
23:31
a sense of injustice. So anger can help people right or wrong.
23:35
~ so people who are able and willing to use that anger tend to do it more.
23:40
So there's cool research on the value side,
23:42
the way that values attach to emotions too.
23:44
So I'm like really looking at all of those things when I'm interacting with
23:48
a person for the first time to try to get an understanding or for the first
23:52
two or three sessions to try to get a sense of their emotional life.
23:56
And then what do they do in response to their emotions?
23:59
Do they give in to them? Do they push them away?
24:02
Do they try to think them away?
24:04
Like what are they doing?
24:05
And can you maybe walk us through a little bit of how you may so for
24:11
the person who is more say disconnected from their emotions
24:19
versus the person who is quote unquote feeling too much of their emotions?
24:24
~ can you kind of take those two sides of it and and how you may help somebody
24:30
on those ~ angles or ends?
24:34
Yeah, I actually think that mindfulness is really useful for both
24:37
for different reasons. So mindfulness is a I think of it
24:44
as a brain training activity, right?
24:46
So mindfulness brings people's attention to their current moment,
24:50
right?
24:52
And so for people who are unaware,
24:54
they actually need to kind of connect typically their head and their body.
24:58
So that means what's happening.
25:01
~ so if I have a client who's maybe not aware of what they're feeling,
25:05
which I can pick up because they're using like vague words,
25:09
I felt stressed, I felt bad, I felt overwhelmed,
25:12
like, well, what specifically emotion was that?
25:15
They are generally not aware.
25:18
of what's happening in their bodies when they're having these sort
25:21
of stress overwhelmed sorts of thoughts.
25:23
So I help people mindfully kind of recognize what is happening in their body,
25:29
what are their motives, what are their urges to do,
25:32
because different emotions kind of pull us in different directions.
25:38
And then help them kind of figure out a name and help increase their their fluency,
25:42
right? Like emotion's a language,
25:44
you have to learn it. Like you might learn Spanish,
25:47
but it's it's you don't have to use it to communicate with everyone,
25:50
but you need it to communicate with yourself.
25:52
So we need the words to be kind of come at the ready to be more aware,
25:56
and we need to situate it in the body.
25:58
So mindfulness is really critical for people who are unaware of their feelings
26:03
to try to help increase awareness.
26:05
Mindfulness is also helpful on the other side for people who tend to feel a lot,
26:10
~ to have really strong emotions and who tend to act on them quickly.
26:15
Because for those people, the distance between some kind
26:20
of trigger and their acting on it is like instantaneous.
26:25
It feels that way to them, even though there's actually lots of things happening
26:30
in their body and in their mind in between.
26:33
It's just happening really fast.
26:35
And so mindfulness can help people slow down and realize where their choice points
26:40
are. Right. So when an emotion starts to come around,
26:44
what's happening in the body? What are the urges?
26:47
what can I do behaviorally to try
26:53
to shift the trajectory of the emotion so that it doesn't like cause
26:58
a relationship disruption or something like that?
27:01
And so mindfulness is an awareness kind of piece that I think helps people
27:06
on both sides. And there's a whole chapter in my book about
27:09
Hmm, nice.
27:12
Do
27:12
you agree?
27:13
I do. Yeah. I was gonna put my hand up for I'm kind
27:16
Mm.
27:17
of both, I think, as you were talking,
27:19
like, that's me. ~ so I do agree
27:23
and mindfulness personally has been tremendously helpful over the years.
27:28
~ I spent almost a decade sort of training and and meditation,
27:33
which ~ I'm wanna ask you, I'm curious.
27:37
And I don't know how to articulate this,
27:38
which is again why it's wonderful having people like yourself in the world.
27:42
~ the Buddhists really figured so much of this out a long time ago.
27:49
And maybe it's a knowledge translation thing,
27:53
or ~ and I'm not a ~ religious or Buddhist scholar really.
27:58
so the the notion of of training ourselves to recognize what's happening while it's
28:03
happening and and choose different behaviors is not new per se.
28:09
I I'm curious how or if what you think about
28:14
how quote unquote Western psychology or psychiatry,
28:19
our understanding of human behavior and emotions,
28:22
~ if what are the similarities,
28:26
what are the differences?
28:28
Do you think about that much?
28:30
It's something that I I'm also not a religious scholar.
28:34
I have not read some of the kind of original kind of Buddhist sort
28:38
of thinking on that. I mean, there's there's all kinds of philosophy from
28:42
way back in the day from different areas of the world,
28:45
whether that's sort of Buddhism,
28:47
whether it's like the ancient Greeks talking about the passions,
28:50
right? There's lots of s like lots of thoughts about these things over time.
28:55
I don't know them a whole lot.
28:56
I
28:58
What I've heard from friends is that the Western world has definitely appropriated
29:03
~ mindfulness meditation away from its original roots.
29:08
So it's one of my like, if I have a list of things I would like to read more
29:14
and think more about when I have time,
29:16
it's on there. I just never seem to find the time.
29:19
So I don't,
29:21
Okay. Yeah.
29:22
I don't know. It's a good question.
29:24
Yeah, no, thank you. I and I it's helpful to hear people think out loud about
29:30
it who who are kind of connected to that world.
29:32
It's helpful to hear. okay,
29:37
and maybe we can anything else sort of about emotions clients that you
29:45
And helping people heal and and live the life they wanna live that you wanna add.
29:49
And I do wanna spend a bit of time ~ picking your brain and expertise
29:54
on what makes good therapy and and how therapists are trained and those kind
29:58
of things.
29:59
I
29:59
mean, they're not unrelated for me.
30:01
I mean,
30:01
Okay, great. Okay, let's hear.
30:03
so I think what makes good therapy I don't think that knowing
30:10
how emotions work is a prerequisite to being a good therapist.
30:16
I sure think it helps.
30:18
Right. Knowing some things about the science of emotion,
30:20
because I don't know about you,
30:22
but I have yet, not only have I not encountered a person
30:25
who doesn't experience emotion,
30:27
I also haven't encountered a client who difficulties with emotion weren't
30:32
at the heart of why they were seeing me.
30:34
Right. Whether it's their annoying,
30:36
like they don't like their own emotions or they don't like somebody else's.
30:40
You see that one in couples a lot.
30:41
Yeah. Yeah.
30:43
or even people who are coming to their I've done supervision at like a domestic
30:48
Violence shelter. And like sometimes the clients are actually pretty well adjusted,
30:53
but they're in these, like we're in or trying to extricate themselves from these
30:58
abusive relationships. And so they're having to navigate these wild emotions
31:02
of the this abusive partner. And so emotions are at the core of everything that
31:08
I do as a therapist, and then also as a as a teacher of therapy.
31:14
So I
31:16
Is it possible to be a good therapist without either without knowing something about
31:20
emotion? Sure. Is it possible to be a good therapist without instinctively
31:25
or kind of knowing how to handle emotions in yourself and your clients?
31:29
I don't know. I don't know, man.
31:31
Hmm.
31:32
Like I think that's pretty important.
31:34
Yeah, I think so too. The okay,
31:38
so what what what does make a good therapist and what
31:44
are some of the key outcomes in a therapist client relationship
31:52
that really matter?
31:54
Well,
31:54
I think the ability to connect to another human being is I I love reading Carl
32:01
Rogers ~ on becoming a person,
32:05
right? Like the relationship with a client's important.
32:10
And to be a good therapist
32:13
you have to realize that you as a human being are gonna interact with different
32:16
people in different ways. So I think being a good therapist,
32:21
it doesn't mean changing who you are.
32:23
I agree that genuineness and empathy are both actually really important.
32:28
But they you have to kind of be able to connect to different people and
32:31
you can do that in different ways.
32:33
So there's a flexibility piece that I think is important in in as
32:39
in being a therapist of like, can you
32:43
Connect to another human being?
32:45
Do you have the skills and the curiosity to like be genuinely interested
32:50
in this other person? Because therapy is a collaboration.
32:56
I might know some things about how behavior change works and techniques and skills,
33:02
but like I haven't lived my clients' life.
33:04
And so I have to have curiosity about how they came to be the way that they came
33:10
to be.
33:11
~ and like have some compassion for the things that they have done that maybe have
33:16
gotten them into trouble, like the they've gotten stuck or they've built habits that
33:22
like ultimately aren't working for them right now,
33:24
but they built them for a reason.
33:25
They probably worked for something,
33:28
even if it was something narrow that doesn't work anymore.
33:30
So I like to think, you know, I think I don't I I don't like every session I've ever
33:36
had. I don't like every client I've ever worked with.
33:40
But when I don't like a client,
33:42
my goal is always, what can I find?
33:44
Like I can find one thing to like about this person in this session.
33:48
And if I can't do that, I'm I'm failing them.
33:51
~ because I think being able to connect is like and and and have some compassion
33:57
and understanding for the person is like the bare necessity.
34:02
Do you think that a pre prerequisite to that is to
34:08
be well connected to oneself?
34:11
I don't know. I think that's a good question.
34:14
I've
34:15
I I mean, from my own perspective,
34:18
I certainly can think about my trajectory over the last like 20 years since
34:23
I was in grad school, you know,
34:24
to now. There are certainly things that I have not always understood about myself
34:30
until later on. I don't think those things always got in the way of my ability
34:35
to to be interested in other people.
34:37
Though I do think
34:40
I learn a lot as a therapist because sometimes I'll hear myself talking,
34:44
I'll be like explaining some skill,
34:46
or like, you know, we could reframe,
34:48
we could look at it this way, and then I'll be in my own life and I'll be like,
34:51
~ shit. I just told this client to reframe and like I am not doing
34:52
Yeah.
34:56
that. Okay, all right, let's take a step back and see if I can apply this to myself.
35:01
Like clients teach me different ways of thinking about things,
35:04
of metaphors. So I like I learn a lot about myself from doing therapy.
35:10
And I think if I didn't let myself learn things,
35:13
that might be a problem. But I don't know that it's a problem that I didn't know
35:16
all those things about myself on the front end.
35:19
Right, right, right. And I'm curious,
35:23
what are your thoughts on, and if you know much of the history about this,
35:27
I I I don't.
35:28
~ on therapist disclosure,
35:34
or I heard a lovely description of developing close relationshipslash
35:41
intimacy with this idea of reciprocal opening.
35:46
And I think a lot of people
35:48
And maybe this is unfair, have the notion that the therapist is sort
35:54
of a a blank, not a blank wall,
35:57
but kind of a I don't say anything about myself,
35:59
don't share much about myself because that's the right way to do therapy.
36:03
And I think maybe in recent times that's changing.
36:07
~ I'm curious kind of what you understand in.
36:12
The effectiveness of therapist disclosure to whatever extent that is,
36:16
or openness about their own experience and how that
36:19
Yeah.
36:20
helps the client. Yeah.
36:22
I've
36:22
done a fair a decent number of reading in this area because ~ students
36:27
ask me this question. So when I teach supervision,
36:29
we talk about this. There's a lot of research that's disclosure in supervision,
36:33
like when working with a trainee is useful because trainees
36:37
Mm-hmm.
36:37
about they get a lot out of hearing,
36:39
like, I made that mistake too.
36:41
Like, here's what I did. Or I've been through that too.
36:43
I've experienced that too. With clients,
36:46
there's also
36:49
like science on on disclosure.
36:51
And I also think if we take a step back,
36:53
like you could say nothing about yourself in session,
36:57
but you're still disclosing. Because like I show up where I mean,
37:02
I normally have pink hair or like some crazy colored hair,
37:06
right? I wear like t-shirts with emotion sayings.
37:10
I'm not wearing one today, but I often do that I make.
37:12
~ and like, you know, I have a quirky style of both
37:19
dressing and talking. Like that's gonna come out.
37:22
Like some of me is gonna be present in the room whether I'm sharing
37:25
any details about my life or not.
37:27
So I don't think it's impossible to be blank.
37:31
I also think, well it's the some of the science suggests that there's
37:36
a difference between what they call self-involved self-disclosure and like,
37:40
Mm-hmm.
37:41
I don't know what the opposite is like more factual self-disclosure.
37:44
So the I
37:48
Therapies for the client. So it's possible to overdo self-disclosure,
37:53
to like spend all the time telling a story about myself where I'm taking
37:57
up the time that they are paying for.
37:59
I'm not sure that that is a good thing.
38:03
But I do think that putting myself and having a real relationship with
38:07
the person matters. So self-involved self-disclosure would be more things like,
38:11
wow, like when you said that, I really,
38:14
I really felt alongside you, or ma'am,
38:16
I feel myself tearing up right now in response to that,
38:20
or like, hold it, like, ooh, I I do this with couples a fair amount.
38:23
Like, all right, I'm feeling
38:25
I'm feeling some tension in this room right now.
38:28
Like my stomach is clenched. Like I am feeling like I want to cover the silence.
38:33
Like, are you guys feeling that too?
38:34
and so that more kind of here's what's happening,
38:39
here's what's going on with me in the moment,
38:41
that type of self-disclosure can feel a little bit risky,
38:45
super valuable because you're modeling how to talk about emotion,
38:48
you're modeling having kind of like real but honest and respectful.
38:55
interpersonal communication, so there's a ton of value for that.
38:59
I also think that self-disclosure on the like life side,
39:02
right? Clients vary there. So I try to take the client's lead.
39:09
So there are some clients who will ask me questions about myself.
39:12
I don't have a problem answering.
39:14
Like I'm going on vacation soon.
39:15
One of my couples last week was like,
39:17
~ where are you going? is it is it a can I can I ask that?
39:20
Like, yeah, you can ask that and I will answer.
39:23
~ there are questions clients might ask,
39:25
and I'm like, I'll be like, you know what?
39:27
I wanna know why you wanna know that.
39:29
I'm
39:29
not sure that that is information that like is gonna help you,
39:32
right? People asking me about my religion or my politics,
39:36
like that could blow up our relationship in ways I generally I don't I don't know
39:41
if I need to do that. But I've also had clients who like,
39:45
~ I have two kids, and when I was pregnant with my first kid,
39:50
I was seeing a client who ~ I got the sense that she did not want
39:56
to know anything about me.
39:58
Mm-hmm.
39:59
~ and so I remember at one point,
40:02
but I I wasn't sure because normally like I'm the kind of person
40:05
who will chit-chat between the waiting room and my office about like,
40:09
hey, I'm watching Game of Thrones.
40:12
Like, what are you watching? Sort of just like casual pop culture stuff that
40:16
if nobody if anybody overheard,
40:17
it would be totally fine.
40:20
And ~ but with her there was there was basically like I wanted to disclose
40:25
a a story about kind of like I don't even remember what it was,
40:28
maybe like how we were deciding around naming our kids,
40:31
something that was actually very relevant to the conversation that she
40:34
and I were having in session. And I was like,
40:35
Is it okay if I share something with you from my life?
40:38
And she was like, Mm, no. And I was like,
40:41
Okay.
40:42
And I just like I let it go and I never brought it up again.
40:45
And because I asked for permission,
40:47
I found out the answer was no.
40:49
She did not want to know anything about me.
40:51
I think for her, if she knew things about me,
40:53
that would mean she would have to cater to my to cater to me.
40:57
And she really
40:58
Mm.
40:58
needed therapy to be a place where she didn't have to worry about like thinking
41:02
about what other people were gonna say.
41:04
And if she knew more about me,
41:05
she would do that.
41:06
Other people can't connect. Like if they're talking to a blank wall,
41:10
like they need to know you. They need to know something about you outside
41:13
of session because otherwise it's too scary.
41:16
They need you to know you're a human.
41:17
And like, I think being a good therapist means having some flexibility
41:22
and being able to kind of pivot there for what the client wants and what they need,
41:29
recognizing that those are not always the same thing.
41:33
Yeah, great. That was that was very helpful.
41:37
Thank you. No, that was
41:37
That was a long answer, sorry.
41:39
great. Well, it was kind of a long question too.
41:41
It was wonderful. Thank you. ~
41:44
Can I ask you a bit about maybe it's an extension of that is
41:51
Sometimes I I
41:53
I guess how how do you know if the therapy is helping?
41:56
And in our pre interview qu ~ communication,
42:02
I mentioned to you I I'm very interested in feedback informed treatment
42:05
and effective therapy, those kind of things.
42:08
And I'm curious ~ what your understanding of all that is and and how it does
42:14
or does not relate to good outcomes in therapy and some form of maybe it's important
42:19
to describe what.
42:21
measurement based care or feedback informed treatment is,
42:24
but that was also a lot.
42:26
Yeah. I
42:27
Yeah.
42:28
think that could mean a lot of different things.
42:30
So, you know, in in kind of the training of therapists from
42:35
an empirically supported perspective,
42:37
routine outcome monitoring is pretty important,
42:39
right? We try to instill that in our in our students,
42:42
like, let's assess symptoms, let's assess them again.
42:46
And like repeatedly. I am not someone who thinks you need to give someone
42:50
a battery every single week. That could be overkill.
42:52
Some clients might like it. I don't have a problem with that,
42:55
but some might it like feels like a lot.
42:57
So again, there's a flexibility here about kind of spacing out some
43:01
of those measurements. ~ I also think that.
43:07
feedback for me personally as a therapist,
43:11
feedback is a conversation, not like a list of measures.
43:15
And so checking in with a client and sort of being like,
43:19
how do you think things are going?
43:23
There are people who might not want to your face to tell you that they don't think
43:27
things are working. If I get a sense I'm working with one of those clients,
43:31
I will go to more of a measurement base because I think they're more likely to
43:33
Right, right.
43:34
be honest on it to a piece of paper.
43:36
Even if they know I'm gonna read it,
43:37
there's some like psychological leap there.
43:39
Yeah, definitely.
43:40
Yeah. Yeah.
43:41
But I'd rather be able to have a conversation about it again.
43:44
I think knowing how to talk to people and having difficult conversations
43:49
is like so important for human beings.
43:51
And we're not all very good at it,
43:53
including me, right? Like I need to call the airline and try to get try
43:57
to get my flight moved. I don't want to do it because I I don't like that kind
44:01
of difficult conversation. But a therapy difficult conversation,
44:05
I'm much more willing to embark on,
44:07
especially if it's not for me.
44:09
It's like for the sake of the client.
44:11
Mm-hmm.
44:12
so I'd like I want to be able to talk about like,
44:14
do you think that this is working and how do you know?
44:18
Right. I think those are useful conversations to have when you're setting goals.
44:23
Like, how will we know when things are better?
44:26
How will we know when therapy is done?
44:29
The goal is not to keep you here forever.
44:31
My goal is to work myself out of a job so that you can do this on your own.
44:35
And like, how what are the markers that we are looking for to know when that's been
44:40
achieved?
44:40
And to be able to have those conversations,
44:43
I think, is important.
44:45
Right. Are you familiar with research
44:51
on I think I heard years of experience,
44:56
training, degrees, et cetera,
44:59
do not necessarily correlate to being a good clinician.
45:05
Are you familiar with
45:05
Well
45:06
any of that?
45:07
it d yeah, it doesn't correlate to client outcomes.
45:10
That's true. Whether that's being
45:11
Okay, that's what it is. Okay.
45:12
Got it.
45:13
a good therapist or not, that's a like I don't necessarily know that
45:20
I I think measuring therapy is really complicated,
45:23
right? Because
45:23
Right. Yeah.
45:24
client client symptom reduction is only one piece,
45:27
right? If I if my client doesn't
45:32
improve in their symptoms. Let's say they're in therapy for two months.
45:36
They don't improve in their symptoms,
45:38
but they do have a greater sense of well-being and they know like,
45:44
I know what I need to do to reduce my symptoms and now's not the time.
45:48
And they walk away from therapy feeling like they got some skills that they're gonna
45:52
be able to employ when they're ready.
45:54
They think they they they are not burned out from the idea of therapy.
45:58
They think that therapy was useful.
46:01
But things haven't on paper changed.
46:03
I still think that's a success.
46:05
We just don't know. Like their symptoms haven't improved.
46:09
But if they've learned the things that they can do to apply it on their
46:12
own when they have like the time or energy,
46:14
maybe they'll come back later.
46:16
Like I think that's okay for some people.
46:19
So
46:21
W I did a study with a student a couple of years ago where she was we were trying
46:25
to look at like, do beliefs about emotion change over the course of therapy?
46:29
And like do people who've
46:30
Mm.
46:30
been had successful therapy,
46:33
do those people have different beliefs than people who've been to therapy
46:36
but would consider it unsuccessful?
46:38
And
46:40
We spent a year trying to figure out how to measure from people's perspectives,
46:46
right? Like very subjective. Like,
46:49
was therapy successful? It was so hard because there are
46:53
so many different parameters of what means,
46:56
what success means. and I think that if therapy
47:02
reduces somebody's symptoms, but they're like,
47:05
that may have worked, but I hate that.
47:06
I would never send someone to therapy.
47:08
I never want to do that again.
47:10
Like, is that a success? I don't know.
47:14
Yeah, thank you. It it it really is complicated,
47:17
isn't it? And I think that's I guess that's just the reality of it.
47:22
And I think there is a part of me that yearns for it
47:26
to be less complicated. Yeah,
47:29
Less messy, yeah.
47:30
yeah, yeah. Definitely.
47:32
I wanna know. I wanna know.
47:35
I
47:35
also, I mean, one of the things we haven't said yet that I also think
47:38
is important is that
47:39
Mm-hmm.
47:39
like I had a client who spent the first two months of therapy basically like
47:46
yelling not at me, but kind of like,
47:49
this isn't working, nothing's changing.
47:52
And I was like, You were too focused on this.
47:54
Like, if only thing you're focused on is like
47:59
Is movement like or the outcome,
48:01
you're not actually like letting the process do its thing.
48:04
So for that client, I was like,
48:06
we're not gonna talk about whether this is working.
48:09
We're gonna give it two months,
48:10
we're gonna check in after two months.
48:12
Because the you constantly being like,
48:14
is this working? Is this working?
48:15
This like constant monitoring,
48:16
that's actually undermining your ability to live your life.
48:20
So that's not working. The other thing is that I I teach our classes about ~
48:27
Personality pathology. So assessing personality disorders on that sort
48:31
of a specialty area of mine. One of the things that's difficult about kind
48:36
of working with people who kind of meet criteria for personality pathology
48:40
is that sometimes I think that discrepancy between what they want
48:45
and what they actually need is like pretty big.
48:49
And so I've worked with clients.
48:51
So for example,
48:53
like this over controlled like obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
48:56
What people want when they come into treatment is typically more control.
49:00
What they need is less.
49:03
And so their ability to know that things are working and they're like,
49:07
I feel out of control. And I in my head,
49:08
I'm like, yes, I know, that's good.
49:10
You just need to like let go of control and then be okay with being out of control.
49:16
Sometimes we're not to that second stage yet,
49:18
but like I can see that things are moving,
49:20
but they are not in the direction that the client is happy with.
49:23
Cause like sometimes I like to say,
49:27
You know, sometimes therapy is like taking everything out of your closet
49:30
to like reorganize it. And there's a stage where it's gonna look real messy
49:34
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
49:34
and things might feel worse,
49:36
right? Trauma's like that too.
49:37
You bring out trauma. Sometimes people feel worse for a short period
49:42
of time and then they get better because they start to their narratives start
49:47
to make more sense. They put things back in ways that feel more organized
49:50
and more stable, but like
49:52
there are these phases of worse in the middle.
49:56
And so that makes therapy assessing tr outcomes also really hard.
50:00
Somebody s quits right there, they don't make it to the other side.
50:05
Yeah, that's well, thank you so much for that.
50:08
That maybe isn't as spoken about as often
50:14
in these conversations, I think,
50:15
is and when I remember when I did my training,
50:19
the clinic I did it at had a clause in the informed consent about that exactly.
50:24
Sometimes things get worse before they get better.
50:27
And we just want you to know that.
50:29
So something
50:31
Yeah, if you're used to
50:31
not feeling your feelings, feeling them all of a sudden sh it sucks.
50:36
And then you need some
50:36
Yeah.
50:37
skills and you need to realize that the feelings can be helping
50:40
you and that sometimes they're okay.
50:42
And they also suck and you need to regulate and like you want this richer life.
50:46
This is what's gonna happen along the way.
50:50
Well, somehow the time has all evaporated.
50:53
anything else that you want to add or that we didn't talk about?
50:58
And also to mention your book will be the information on your book,
51:02
et cetera, will be and your work will be in the show notes so people
51:06
can check it out there. ~
51:07
Awesome.
51:08
but yeah, any other last ~ comments or or things we didn't discuss that
51:13
you want to share?
51:14
I mean I'm sure we could talk for another two hours.
51:16
We could, we could, yes.
51:17
~ yeah. I mean, not
51:20
really, I think
51:21
Emotions are important ~ in therapy for clients and for clinicians.
51:26
So I'm actually working on a another book right now or will be soon if we
51:31
get a book contract on kind of trying to teach this stuff to therapists,
51:35
including how to feel your own feelings,
51:37
like when to feel them, when to share them,
51:39
when to keep them to yourself,
51:41
right? The that's the part of sir therapist self-disclosure that we didn't get to.
51:45
But that piece is important. Like you you do need to be able to
51:50
figure out like it's okay to be a human being and respond like have
51:55
an emotion in response to your client.
51:56
Sometimes it's useful to share that.
51:59
Like this is what I tell my own clients too.
52:00
Like sometimes you gotta have your feelings,
52:03
share them. Sometimes they're unhelpful and you wanna regulate them.
52:07
And figuring out when is which time,
52:10
that's the trick of life.
52:12
I think that's true in therapy and it's true for our clients.
52:15
And like there's not a clear recipe to follow,
52:17
which is what makes it hard. You have to pay attention to the moment
52:20
and make some quick decisions.
52:22
And it is hard. It's hard to be a human.
52:25
Well, hopefully i if that book comes to fruition we can meet again and and
52:29
I can ask you questions about that.
52:31
So
52:32
Yeah.
52:33
yeah, Jen, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and I wish
52:37
you all the very best.
52:38
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
52:41
Thanks for listening to this episode of the State of Mind Podcast.
52:44
Before you go, pick one idea from today's episode and practice it this week.
52:49
Remember, live with courage,
52:52
clarity, and compassion.
52:54
Practice inner strength and develop within.
52:57
If you enjoyed this, please follow us,
53:00
subscribe to the podcast, and leave a quick five-star rating
53:06
and wonderfully positive review.
53:08
Share this episode if you think it might be helpful for someone else.
53:13
We wish you all the very best.
53:15
Take it easy. Peace out.