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Psychology Series 6: Alyssa Levy · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of a come together.
• 0:16
  We're back. Just kidding.
• 0:17
  We're not going to actually go to garage.
• 0:19
  I'm panicked. OK.
• 0:22
  OK. So sorry.
• 0:23
  Yeah. So Vermont summer camp.
• 0:25
  Your parents said you at summer camp.
• 0:27
  You like growing up in Vermont? We're going to ish.
• 0:31
  You did not like growing up for a month?
• 0:33
  I was it boring? Is it too boring for you?
• 0:36
  Yeah, I see. At the time, there was a lot of
• 0:39
  goodness there, you know, raising your kids in a place
• 0:42
  that is exceptionally safe. It's cool.
• 0:46
  You know, but I was lucky, I think, to have had parents that
• 0:51
  were career oriented and driven people, which was not the norm,
• 0:58
  let's say of everyone around me. So I went to high school with a
• 1:02
  lot of people that did not feel the same way as I did about
• 1:06
  further education and finding a career.
• 1:08
  What do people that typically do?
• 1:11
  Was it like blue collar kind of stuff or is it?
• 1:13
  Some, some, but I just don't think that there was as much
• 1:18
  importance of going to four year university Graduate School after
• 1:23
  that. People are just comfortable
• 1:26
  either getting jobs or going to getting associates from
• 1:28
  community. College, it was very, it was
• 1:30
  very not driven, I would say. And that's just not how I was
• 1:37
  raised. So I felt like I stood out a
• 1:39
  little bit. I felt like I, I wasn't fitting
• 1:41
  in. And so yeah, it was fine.
• 1:47
  It was fine. And when I go visit, I love to,
• 1:50
  you know, be in my house and see my parents and spend time with
• 1:52
  them. But.
• 1:53
  How often do you go back? Maybe twice a year, couple times
• 1:57
  a year. Guy, you like to go?
• 1:58
  Sorry. I do, man.
• 2:00
  I actually, you know, I've, I've never been to, to Vermont up
• 2:04
  until I met Alyssa. In fact, I couldn't point it in
• 2:07
  the map. I've been there with Alyssa and
• 2:12
  I loved it. I mean, look, every place has
• 2:14
  things to offer, things that you are going to like more, going to
• 2:19
  like less, right? So it's way different from
• 2:21
  Florida just because you have all the open space.
• 2:24
  It's definitely more small town vibes.
• 2:26
  Everybody knows everybody, the nature.
• 2:28
  There is totally different for sure.
• 2:29
  They're rolling, they're rolling mountains.
• 2:31
  And yeah. There's so much open greenery
• 2:34
  and just fields of green and and and mountains and you get the
• 2:38
  seasons and I mean it, it snows and it's beautiful.
• 2:41
  So you got all the winter type of sports which are awesome.
• 2:44
  So it has a lot to offer on that asset.
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  You do winter sports. I did, I did and my life took a
• 2:52
  different direction and I was horseback riding.
• 2:55
  Actually, get out of here. Really.
• 2:57
  Yeah, that's a cool sport. So when I so I did a lot of
• 3:00
  different sports and then I just was.
• 3:03
  How'd you find horseback riding? I I actually started riding when
• 3:06
  I was 3 and I've just riding horses my whole life.
• 3:10
  There's a lot of that here in Florida too, right?
• 3:11
  Yeah. Do you ride a lot here?
• 3:13
  I don't ride anymore, but I do have my horse here.
• 3:16
  I have the horse. OK, I want you to elaborate on
• 3:22
  that because I don't know what that means, but it sounds so
• 3:24
  cool. So I I grew up riding, I had
• 3:27
  horses my whole life. A horse is expensive.
• 3:31
  Very, very, very, very, very expensive.
• 3:34
  So I started riding when I was little, always rode when I was,
• 3:39
  I think I was maybe 8, I started competing.
• 3:43
  Cool what goes into a competition.
• 3:46
  Everything. Like form jumping stunts, stuff
• 3:51
  like that. Yeah, yeah, there's different,
• 3:55
  there's different styles of riding.
• 3:57
  What I was doing was jumping, but there's different that you
• 4:02
  even within jumping there's there's different things that
• 4:04
  you could be judged on. There's timed events.
• 4:07
  There's a lot of variety, OK, Also the different height of the
• 4:11
  jumps. So there's just a lot of
• 4:13
  different things. And so I competed always and
• 4:19
  then I sustained a pretty serious injury.
• 4:24
  I could what was it back? Yeah.
• 4:26
  I could imagine right? That happened a lot.
• 4:29
  I mean, I think some people get lucky, but I was a little bit
• 4:33
  reckless and a little bit of a daredevil, and so I sustained a
• 4:41
  pretty bad injury and never let it heal.
• 4:45
  And then in college, I was right professionally and that kind of
• 4:51
  continued to evolve and. Where'd you go to?
• 4:53
  You went to where? You went to Baltimore.
• 4:55
  Where'd you go to college? Towson University.
• 4:56
  Cool. Yeah.
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  And they have a horse. They have they have a riding
• 4:59
  team. No, I didn't ride for the
• 5:00
  school. OK.
• 5:02
  I kept my horse at a local barn and I rode for them.
• 5:04
  Wow, cool. Which was cool, and then I moved
• 5:07
  down here after school. And why'd you move here?
• 5:12
  Grad school. Grad school?
• 5:13
  Yeah. You want to go to grad school?
• 5:15
  Yeah, yeah. How different was it here than
• 5:18
  than Baltimore and. Very different.
• 5:21
  Very different. Huge culture shock I feel.
• 5:22
  Like, yes. And it was culture shock getting
• 5:25
  to Baltimore, another culture shock coming down here, Totally
• 5:27
  different culture shocks. So, yeah, but I really loved it
• 5:32
  down here. I have family down here also.
• 5:34
  OK. And then when I got here, my
• 5:37
  back pain got a little bit more out of control and so I stopped
• 5:43
  driving and I had to have multiple procedures on my back.
• 5:47
  Those are the worst. Yeah, and I have pretty
• 5:50
  significant nerve damage in my back and a lot soft tissue
• 5:54
  damage. So I was out of Commission for a
• 5:58
  long time. I was on bed rest for six
• 6:00
  months. Wow.
• 6:01
  And how? Old are you?
• 6:04
  I started when I was 2223. And that's when you're on bed
• 6:10
  rest. Yeah, it's a long time.
• 6:12
  Six months is a long time. Yeah.
• 6:14
  What do you do for six months? You know, in bed rest?
• 6:16
  I at the time. Invisible.
• 6:18
  Yes, yes, I was miserable. Watched a lot of New Girl.
• 6:22
  I watched a lot of random shows. What did you watch?
• 6:26
  What did you watch? It's here.
• 6:26
  A New Girl. What else?
• 6:28
  I watched New Girl. Says a lot of who you are, by
• 6:30
  the way. Yeah, that's yeah.
• 6:33
  At one point I watched a show that I don't even remember
• 6:36
  because at the time I had to be on some meds and my father was
• 6:41
  staying with me. It was Pretty Little Liars.
• 6:44
  Oh, nice. That's that Kevin de Graw.
• 6:45
  He. Does.
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  I couldn't tell you. I don't remember any of it
• 6:49
  really. So my father essentially had to
• 6:52
  watch Pretty Little Liars. I knew him.
• 6:55
  You would know that. He's not the type.
• 6:56
  To watch what did, what did your parents as chiropractors tell
• 7:02
  you while you're going through this?
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  And were they not, were they telling you not to do this, but
• 7:08
  like it was up to you anyway and so they just let you do what
• 7:10
  you're going to do or. I think that, I mean, I, I'm a
• 7:15
  competitive person. I come from competitive people
• 7:17
  and. So they want to be competing.
• 7:19
  I mean, I think that that they listened to me and I said I'm
• 7:23
  fine and I downplayed it. I also didn't know at the time
• 7:26
  what the damage looked like and I think if I had known what it
• 7:30
  looked like I probably would have stopped.
• 7:33
  But also there wasn't regenerative type medicine.
• 7:37
  Right. When I had this injury, right?
• 7:39
  Are you doing that now? So when I started having the
• 7:42
  procedures, that's that's what I ended up doing was regenerative
• 7:45
  procedures. Gotcha.
• 7:46
  So like electroshock? No, I did PRP.
• 7:50
  Nice. Yeah, I just, I just heard about
• 7:52
  that. It's a podcast actually with the
• 7:54
  doctor that does that in Coral Gables.
• 7:57
  Yeah, yeah, he was telling me how that works.
• 7:59
  Yeah, it's really cool. So I had a very complex injury
• 8:05
  right next to my spine. And the pain, the cause of the
• 8:09
  pain was inflammation. That's what PRP would have
• 8:11
  helped with. Yes, and also instability.
• 8:14
  I mean I had a six inch muscle tear along my spine.
• 8:19
  Yeah. How does?
• 8:21
  And I I sure. Does that does that happen at
• 8:23
  one go or does that happen like a little tear and then like it
• 8:26
  gets worse and worse as time goes?
• 8:27
  To be told, I don't know because I didn't do imaging on it for 10
• 8:30
  years. So I don't know, right.
• 8:32
  But I I know when it happened definitely.
• 8:35
  We did an image. You did.
• 8:36
  You did. AI had an MRIMRI done it.
• 8:38
  I had multiple Mris I had I did that's crazy ultrasound also you
• 8:44
  could see the the tear, but I also had three of my ribs pop
• 8:49
  out of my back and that's what tore the muscle was.
• 8:52
  And you were walking around with popped out ribs and you didn't.
• 8:54
  Know Yeah. So that's where my parents came
• 8:56
  in as they would reset the ribs and push them back in and I
• 8:59
  could take a deep breath and push them back out.
• 9:02
  Wow. Because I shredded the joint
• 9:04
  capsules so. This is legit, yeah.
• 9:07
  Yeah. Wow, that's how?
• 9:11
  So that's from 23? How?
• 9:13
  How long were you? I mean, I'm pretty sure you
• 9:15
  can't be active at all for. Yeah, so I was, I was really out
• 9:19
  of Commission for a while once I started having the procedures
• 9:22
  because PRP increases the inflammation to aid in the
• 9:25
  healing. Right.
• 9:27
  So it gets worse before better. Right.
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  But it also, it was, it was a journey.
• 9:32
  It was a journey. I want to hear about the
• 9:34
  journey. Yeah.
• 9:35
  OK. I ended up having, I had one
• 9:42
  doctor that did not do a great job, OK, and from one of the
• 9:46
  procedures that he did, I did not see this going in this
• 9:49
  direction. I think about this from this
• 9:54
  procedure I ended up getting a really bad staph infection.
• 9:59
  How does that happen? I don't know.
• 10:03
  You don't know. It's just another debilitating
• 10:05
  thing. Does this guy ever adjust to?
• 10:08
  Does he? Does he help?
• 10:09
  Yeah, who you just. That's who you're here for, huh?
• 10:11
  Yeah. That's what.
• 10:12
  We're here for so the irony of my life.
• 10:13
  Not just good looks. Yeah, that just.
• 10:16
  Surprised as I am. The irony of my life is that
• 10:20
  both of my parents are chiropractors.
• 10:22
  My brother is also a chiropractor away not my husband
• 10:24
  is a chiropractor. That's crazy.
• 10:26
  And I have back issues. And you have back issues.
• 10:29
  You have back issues. So you haven't you?
• 10:31
  You haven't ridden really since. Not really.
• 10:35
  So you go visit your horse. Yeah, I go pretty often.
• 10:38
  Is guy ride? No.
• 10:39
  Not allowed on him, no one's allowed on.
• 10:41
  Really. Yeah.
• 10:42
  Well, he's he's not your typical horse.
• 10:45
  He's a he's a ex competition jumping horse.
• 10:48
  Yeah, he's a sport horse, so he's very powerful and very big.
• 10:51
  But is he? Is he a very opinionated?
• 10:54
  He's like trying to drive like a like a retired Formula One car.
• 10:59
  You don't just get in there unless you know what the hell
• 11:01
  you're doing. Yeah, you know.
• 11:02
  What I mean Formula One card that also sometimes might want
• 11:04
  to kill you? That's the personality, right?
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  Right. Right.
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  So horses have a lot of personality, right?
• 11:10
  Yeah. Do you train horses?
• 11:13
  I used to, yeah. And how do you train a horse the
• 11:16
  same way you train a dog? Or like anything else, like sort
• 11:18
  of. Sort of.
• 11:19
  Incentivize or. I mean, it's it's consistency
• 11:22
  repetition. How do you decide on a horse's
• 11:25
  personality that you like or not?
• 11:27
  Takes time. You can.
• 11:29
  Pick up on some of their mannerisms pretty pretty early
• 11:32
  on, but in training them it's especially when they're young,
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  it kind of can change every day. So gotcha.
• 11:40
  It was very fun and I that's the part that I liked about it, but
• 11:43
  I was definitely not fearful of them and I think a little, a
• 11:51
  small amount of fear is a good thing.
• 11:53
  Yeah, I think it is. Terrible, and it keeps you safe.
• 11:56
  Yeah, I mean, it's like the reason why anxiety anxiety isn't
• 11:58
  inherently a bad thing. It's when it's out of control
• 12:00
  that it's a bad thing. And like, it does exist for a
• 12:02
  reason. Like the reason why we
• 12:03
  experience it. It's yeah, it's cool that you
• 12:05
  say that because I talked to a lot of my clients about the
• 12:08
  differences between stress and anxiety.
• 12:11
  What's the difference? Well, stress.
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  Stress is a natural response to a stimulus.
• 12:18
  OK, anxiety is. Irrational response to a
• 12:21
  stimulus. It doesn't make sense.
• 12:24
  Well, it could make sense. It's I mean.
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  Anxiety is produced when it's not exactly congruent to the
• 12:33
  stimulus causing. It yes, correct, because it
• 12:35
  hasn't, because whatever you're interest about hasn't manifested
• 12:38
  yet. Exactly.
• 12:39
  So it's irrational. So it's a well, it's an attempt
• 12:41
  to prepare. Which is irrational.
• 12:44
  Is it? Rational, Rational looks like
• 12:48
  congruent, right? This thing is this thing is
• 12:51
  scary, right? In real time.
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  Thus I'm fearful stress response is an evolutionary response.
• 12:59
  It's something we require for survival, right?
• 13:02
  Anxiety is the presence of stress response that is not
• 13:07
  related to or based on or congruent to the stimulus
• 13:11
  causing it. So it's like.
• 13:14
  What can't it be, For example, if I have social anxiety and it
• 13:17
  stems from a particularly bad event that happened, let's say,
• 13:21
  you know, five years ago, you know, and I, we got rejected by
• 13:26
  a girl in front of 100 people at a bar, you know, and, and now
• 13:31
  I'm afraid it's not irrational. I'm coming up with this
• 13:35
  hypothetical in my head before I put myself in that situation
• 13:38
  every time and. But it's no longer exactly
• 13:42
  present to the way that it was correct the actual time you.
• 13:45
  Experienced, but it's potential outcome that I want to avoid,
• 13:48
  yes. So it's associative, but it's
• 13:50
  not necessarily. History not based on present
• 13:52
  stimulus, yes. Thus it's irrational.
• 13:55
  The difference between rational and irrational isn't probably
• 13:58
  what you're thinking. Of OK, so explain so what's so
• 14:00
  explain that so. Rational is congruence, right?
• 14:04
  So it's like saying. Cars are coming.
• 14:06
  It's raining. It's gonna rain.
• 14:08
  It's like saying let's go with a bear, OK?
• 14:11
  Grizzly bear. Scary.
• 14:13
  OK, Why is it scary? Because it has a lot of capacity
• 14:16
  to kill you, OK? Very scary if you associate
• 14:20
  grizzly bear with being just like all bears, right?
• 14:23
  This is where you go wrong. So grizzly bear equals scary.
• 14:27
  OK, So if we put that as rational fear, right, That makes
• 14:31
  sense. You should be scared of scary
• 14:34
  things. OK, Now, if you over generalize
• 14:39
  that all bears are scary, you've now stepped away from rational
• 14:44
  thinking, right? You have over generalized and
• 14:46
  now all of a sudden you're associating fear of bears.
• 14:50
  Beautiful, which doesn't make any type of sense.
• 14:52
  It's thus irrational. Now the history might tell you,
• 14:55
  yeah, the bears are scary, right?
• 14:57
  But that's not based on the exact stimulus in that moment,
• 15:01
  right? It's thus maladaptive.
• 15:03
  It's no longer present to you. So rational does not necessarily
• 15:06
  equal understandable, exactly. Something could be
• 15:09
  understandable and I could get where you got how you got, but
• 15:13
  that doesn't necessarily make it a rational decision exactly.
• 15:16
  And I guess people probably equate the two very often.
• 15:20
  Yeah. And irrational, nobody likes
• 15:23
  that concept. Nobody wants to think of
• 15:25
  themselves as irrational. Yeah, but we are.
• 15:29
  We're very rational. And coping strategies, defense
• 15:32
  mechanisms, we all have them, right.
• 15:35
  And I think that eventually they are maladaptive.
• 15:39
  Yeah. You know, they're, they came
• 15:41
  from a good place. That makes sense why that
• 15:43
  happens. Right, they're understandable.
• 15:46
  Right, very understandable at times.
• 15:48
  It's just that when that same stimulus is no longer present,
• 15:51
  it's now irrational. I gotcha, I gotcha.
• 15:55
  How did you get how did you know that you wanted to become a
• 16:00
  therapist, psychologist. When did this happen?
• 16:03
  Because it seems like you had a pretty diverse background before
• 16:07
  this that wouldn't necessarily point totally to this.
• 16:11
  I mean, unless I'm missing something, which I probably am,
• 16:14
  you know, but based on the fact that it's been 20 minutes to our
• 16:16
  first time meeting, but but no everything I've.
• 16:19
  No. Not yet.
• 16:20
  Weird. Not yet, not yet.
• 16:23
  Guys guys guys. Pretty fair about your privacy.
• 16:27
  I. Imagine.
• 16:28
  What? Yeah.
• 16:30
  How'd you get started? What, What, what?
• 16:32
  What? Encouraged it you did You always
• 16:34
  know that this was something you were interested in?
• 16:36
  You always knew it. Yeah, I think that people get
• 16:39
  involved in their career path for a variety of different
• 16:41
  reasons, often times good reasons.
• 16:45
  Maybe it's something that they experienced in their life that
• 16:48
  drives them towards it. I think mine was a combination
• 16:51
  of that, you know, dealing with my own life and stressors,
• 16:56
  seeking therapy also when I was a kid.
• 16:58
  You started typing when you were a kid.
• 17:00
  Yeah. How old are you?
• 17:02
  When I started, I think I was 7 or 8, and then I saw a therapist
• 17:07
  off and on throughout my life. What's therapy like for a 7 or 8
• 17:11
  year old? I didn't like the therapist when
• 17:13
  I was a kid. I really didn't like her.
• 17:15
  Do you think most kids don't like their therapist?
• 17:17
  No, I think some kids really love their therapist.
• 17:20
  OK. And then I think it can be
• 17:21
  really helpful. I did not like that therapist.
• 17:23
  I don't know that she was so helpful to me.
• 17:27
  What were they trying to what? What was the goal?
• 17:29
  What were you trying to accomplish by at that point?
• 17:32
  Working through anxieties, you know, working at understanding
• 17:38
  my own thoughts. I think it was helpful to a
• 17:41
  point that I could speak out loud to someone, somebody
• 17:44
  outside of my life also, which I think is one of the best things
• 17:47
  about therapy. But I didn't like her.
• 17:51
  I didn't like that her office had painted clouds on the
• 17:55
  ceiling, which was supposed to be therapeutic.
• 17:57
  And that's like one of the things that.
• 17:58
  I remember. About it, yeah.
• 17:59
  I just didn't like her. And so I don't think I got that
• 18:03
  much out of therapy with her. So I don't think she was as
• 18:06
  impactful. But I came from a family of
• 18:10
  helpers, right? So I wanted to help.
• 18:13
  I didn't want to physically touch people the way that my
• 18:16
  parents do, right, with adjusting people, but I wanted
• 18:19
  to help. And then at one point I had a
• 18:21
  therapist that was very impactful my life and I felt
• 18:25
  like this is really cool. I want to help people the way
• 18:27
  she helped me and then. That's the best, isn't that?
• 18:31
  It was very, very impactful. But I think even bigger than
• 18:36
  that, I think therapy is who I am at my core.
• 18:41
  I think it's what I was meant to do.
• 18:44
  To heal. To heal, understand, to work
• 18:48
  through things with people to help them better understand
• 18:51
  their own thoughts and where they stand, identify additional
• 18:55
  ways of thinking. I think, I think I was always
• 19:01
  meant to be a therapist and I feel very strongly about that.
• 19:04
  So it's cool that I had great experiences with it.
• 19:07
  But bigger than that, I think it was always what I was going to
• 19:11
  end up doing. That's amazing.
• 19:13
  Thank you. You're really fortunate to have
• 19:15
  figured that you know to do, you know, so you think you knew that
• 19:18
  since you had that great therapist where you're like,
• 19:21
  this is like. I think that she was very cool
• 19:26
  and insightful to me and I had a great experience with her, but I
• 19:30
  think she just kind of unlocked that for me, right?
• 19:34
  And, and LED me to that understanding of myself that
• 19:36
  that's what I was meant to do. You know, I and I think that I
• 19:42
  probably would have come across it one way or another.
• 19:45
  Yeah. Do you think that therapy is for
• 19:47
  everyone? Absolutely, yes.
• 19:50
  I think that every single person can improve themselves and their
• 19:54
  life by talking to somebody about it.
• 19:55
  Absolutely. Do you think that therapy has to
• 19:58
  be with a therapist? No, no, I do not.
• 20:04
  I think that it's, you know, the training that a therapist has is
• 20:09
  not like that of your friend or your significant other.
• 20:13
  The perspective that somebody has on your life when they're
• 20:18
  not in your life is important. You know, any good therapist
• 20:23
  will tell you that we don't give advice.
• 20:27
  We offer guidance of like identifying your own advice for
• 20:32
  yourself. But I absolutely think that
• 20:36
  every single person can improve by choosing to take
• 20:40
  responsibility for their own actions and make a change in
• 20:44
  their life. So you think therapy is really a
• 20:46
  call to responsibility? Yeah, I think it's about taking
• 20:50
  accountability of of your own. I don't think that all people
• 20:54
  are willing to do that. I think it's a very, very
• 20:56
  challenging thing. That's the reason why when you
• 20:58
  force someone to go to therapy, it almost never works, right?
• 21:01
  Exactly same reason, same thing as rehab, for someone to go to
• 21:05
  rehab. See how that goes?
• 21:06
  You know, I mean a percent, 8085%, you know, failure rate,
• 21:11
  you know that people. It's significant.
• 21:12
  It's it's. Super significant.
• 21:17
  Because you have to take accountability for your own
• 21:19
  life, and you have to choose to want to make things change.
• 21:22
  Yeah. And if somebody forces you into
• 21:24
  that, it's not going to make a difference.
• 21:26
  You have to want it for yourself.
• 21:27
  Gotcha, gotcha. So what's your so when do you
• 21:30
  become a therapist? How old are you?
• 21:31
  When you what is it called LLCSW?
• 21:34
  No, I'm, I'm not a social worker, I'm a therapist.
• 21:37
  So I'm I'm a mental health counselor specifically, so
• 21:40
  slight variations. I don't know what the difference
• 21:43
  between any of them are. So there's a lot of overlap,
• 21:47
  which is why it gets very confusing.
• 21:49
  My to some extent, to some extent, my schooling is more
• 21:55
  specific to the helping relationship.
• 21:57
  So it's more focused on that and it's also focused on the the
• 22:03
  spectrum of mental health, whereas social work is a little
• 22:06
  bit more focused on like case management and helping people
• 22:11
  assimilate into society. Social work, right?
• 22:16
  So slight variations different, but a lot of overlap in what we
• 22:20
  can do. So my license enables me to do a
• 22:24
  variety of things, just like social work, but it's just, you
• 22:29
  know, nuanced differences, let's say.
• 22:31
  What kind of techniques do you use?
• 22:33
  CBT. Anything else?
• 22:35
  I would describe it as very eclectic.
• 22:38
  I don't think that all of the people benefit from all of the
• 22:42
  same things CBT is. CBT is a funny way of saying I
• 22:46
  do talk therapy. It's kind of like what we all
• 22:49
  say we do. Well, they're synonymous, aren't
• 22:51
  they? I believe so.
• 22:53
  People will tell you otherwise. People would definitely tell you
• 22:55
  otherwise. OK.
• 22:57
  But I kind of use them as like tools in my tool belt and when I
• 23:00
  think something is applicable, I pull it out.
• 23:03
  But what I think is most helpful above any of the like named
• 23:07
  types of therapy is I talk to people about their lives.
• 23:12
  I work with high functioning individuals that want to
• 23:16
  optimize themselves. Optimize.
• 23:18
  Optimize. Yeah, that's a good word.
• 23:21
  Yeah. Especially thrown with a random
• 23:24
  Y in the middle somewhere. There.
• 23:25
  Yeah, that's what we think. I think, I think, I think it's a
• 23:28
  great marketing pitch. I think so, so, so, so you, you
• 23:34
  have your own, your own practice.
• 23:35
  You. You do your own thing.
• 23:36
  Yeah, yeah. So I've had my practice now for
• 23:40
  five or six years. Wow, awesome.
• 23:43
  What was it? What?
• 23:44
  What did you do before that? So I finished my masters and I
• 23:50
  dove head first into private practice.
• 23:53
  You went straight from. Really.
• 23:55
  That's not common, right? No, no.
• 23:57
  Almost unheard of. Why did do you have a?
• 24:01
  Do you have a hard time working for people?
• 24:02
  I no, it's not even that I, I can take direction and, and you
• 24:08
  know, I think that that would have been very good learning for
• 24:13
  me also to work in like community mental health or
• 24:16
  something like that. But I knew what my end goal was.
• 24:19
  To you like, why not just get started, right?
• 24:22
  Exactly. And I really believe that like
• 24:23
  when you first get out of school, you have kind of the
• 24:25
  most amount of momentum and motivation.
• 24:28
  So I figured it's going to be a hustle.
• 24:31
  Yeah, now it's a great time to hustle.
• 24:32
  So what do you do? How do you so you graduate and
• 24:36
  now you're like, I have no money.
• 24:37
  I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do and I
• 24:40
  just know that I want to do this.
• 24:41
  But first of all, when these kind of, because I think that,
• 24:46
  and this is really important, I think just in general, I think
• 24:49
  people tend to get super overwhelmed and you have a whole
• 24:51
  bunch of steps in front of you and a whole like you're like,
• 24:54
  you know that you want to get to here and you know, you're
• 24:57
  starting here and everything in between is kind of just a big
• 25:00
  question mark. And that, I think, overwhelms an
• 25:02
  enormous amount of people. For sure.
• 25:04
  So how did you deal with that? So I think one of the things
• 25:08
  that was scariest to me was that there were so many routes
• 25:12
  forward, too many routes forward.
• 25:14
  How on earth are you supposed to know, like, which one you take,
• 25:17
  you know? And I didn't really know where
• 25:21
  to start. I had a great supervisor, and
• 25:25
  she certainly helped me when she could.
• 25:29
  But I was trying to learn how to be a therapist and also trying
• 25:33
  to understand how on earth to run a business.
• 25:36
  Yeah. And running a business is not
• 25:38
  something that they teach you in grad school.
• 25:40
  They don't teach you that anywhere.
• 25:41
  Which is the dumbest? The dumbest?
• 25:43
  Yeah, it's so stupid. And and I think they do
• 25:49
  therapists a disservice in like a program like mine that they
• 25:52
  don't talk to you about. Could you if you?
• 25:55
  Want a disservice? I I listen by my own choice,
• 25:59
  which is, you know, say what you will about the decision.
• 26:02
  I was a creative writing and literature major, right?
• 26:05
  Even if I were to say with full confidence, I'm going to be a
• 26:09
  writer, I'm going to go to Hollywood and write scripts, I'm
• 26:12
  going to go to New York. I'm going to, you know, write in
• 26:15
  a magazine or do journalism, whatever it is.
• 26:17
  I still need to know accounting. I still need to know how to
• 26:19
  balance a checkbook. I still need to know what it
• 26:21
  means to pay a mortgage or what it means to do that.
• 26:23
  I didn't have to take. I think one math class.
• 26:26
  That had nothing to do with anything.
• 26:28
  And you know, and I'm sure, yeah, everyone will complain.
• 26:32
  Like I said, I'm here to be a writer.
• 26:33
  I don't want to take accounting. I'm here to be a therapist.
• 26:35
  I'm not here to take accounting classes.
• 26:36
  But like, you know what percentage of therapists go into
• 26:40
  their own? You know what at least want to
• 26:42
  try go and making their own private practices.
• 26:44
  And so many of them flop because they have no fucking clue how to
• 26:47
  do it. Yeah.
• 26:49
  Which is, which is a shame. So what, what, what, what So
• 26:51
  you've been doing this. I'm curious also, you know, it's
• 26:56
  similar story, I know for businesses and podcasts that
• 27:00
  like an enormous percentage of them fail within the first year,
• 27:04
  right? And then I think once you
• 27:08
  survive for like a year or two, then the odds of your success go
• 27:13
  up exponentially each year after that, right?
• 27:15
  Because there's you've already made it way past where most of
• 27:17
  the other people are and now you're competing with a top X
• 27:20
  percentage. Does that happen with private
• 27:23
  practices also, that a lot of people would like start for a
• 27:26
  couple of months and be like, oh, I can't, I can't do it.
• 27:28
  Yeah, I would. I would imagine yes.
• 27:30
  Have I looked into the specifics?
• 27:32
  Also no. Done it yourself?
• 27:34
  So what have you done yourself to stay successful?
• 27:36
  OK, so first rewind. Let's go back to the beginning.
• 27:38
  So I was very fortunate because I had a very random gig.
• 27:46
  My cousin worked in marketing for a very big company and she
• 27:53
  hooked me up while I was in grad school with a social media job.
• 27:57
  OK, so while I was on bed rest while I was in school, I was
• 28:02
  making money and that was it was something, it was something that
• 28:06
  I could do. I was liking images on social
• 28:09
  media, you know, I was reaching out to people, I was connecting
• 28:12
  with people. I didn't know anything about
• 28:14
  marketing, but it was, you know, it was cool.
• 28:18
  So whatever, I worked a lot of hours and and it was a great gig
• 28:25
  for the time being. So while I had that job, I also
• 28:31
  was ramping up on, on my practice, right?
• 28:35
  So I was fortunate to have something that was so flexible
• 28:40
  that when I needed to give hours to the practice, I could, I
• 28:44
  didn't have a set schedule, I didn't have set hours.
• 28:47
  I could work as much as I wanted to, as little as I needed to,
• 28:50
  whatever. And I also had very supportive
• 28:53
  parents. So it's.
• 28:55
  The best thing in the title? Right.
• 28:56
  And and I was very fortunate to have that.
• 29:00
  So I couldn't have done this without some variation of it.
• 29:04
  And so it's very expensive to start practice.
• 29:07
  And while I think I did it in the least expensive way also.
• 29:13
  Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of people don't
• 29:15
  make it because of that, right? Totally, totally.
• 29:18
  So I recognize how lucky I was to have those things, but it was
• 29:23
  definitely an uphill battle for a while.
• 29:26
  It's very hard to make a name for yourself when you are
• 29:29
  starting from nothing. Yeah, and I hated going to
• 29:34
  networking events. Hated it.
• 29:36
  What about what about then did you hate?
• 29:37
  You felt like you were cheesy. You felt like they were fake.
• 29:40
  I am not a fake person. I don't, I can't do it.
• 29:44
  I just I get awkward. I hate everything about it.
• 29:49
  I like real conversations with people which is why therapy
• 29:54
  makes a lot of sense to me. But very surface bullshit
• 29:58
  conversations do not. And so going to networking
• 30:01
  events, I felt like I was so inauthentic.
• 30:05
  I, I felt like I just didn't belong at them.
• 30:09
  You know, I would tell somebody I was a therapist, they would
• 30:11
  tell me their whole life story and every trauma they had ever
• 30:13
  experienced. And what you do about that.
• 30:17
  Please don't. You could be a client, but don't
• 30:21
  tell me this right now, do. You get that a lot.
• 30:24
  I feel you get that. I feel I feel like people like
• 30:26
  hear therapist and they just a license to just dump yes, go
• 30:31
  crazy with that. Strangers.
• 30:32
  Just anybody. So much so that at this point I
• 30:36
  have learned that I need to like make up or have like a cover
• 30:39
  story. Gotcha.
• 30:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'll tell them like
• 30:43
  something totally out of left field so that they don't ask any
• 30:46
  further and. That's smart.
• 30:48
  You ride horses. Yeah, I'm a horse rider.
• 30:51
  You know, I could be. Come up with something something
• 30:54
  so outlandish that they have no response.
• 30:56
  To so you start so so how do you get your how do you get your
• 30:58
  first clients? Do you do you do advertising?
• 31:01
  Do people reach out to you or you on a social media?
• 31:04
  You know, how does it build up there?
• 31:05
  Because I imagine that like I know from my own business that
• 31:08
  most of my clientele are doctors.
• 31:11
  I sell medical equipment and most of them are not just
• 31:13
  looking on Facebook or looking on Instagram, this kind of
• 31:16
  thing. So I know that the channel of
• 31:18
  marketing that I have to go through in order to kind of get
• 31:21
  the best kind of customers, the best kind of, you know, clients
• 31:24
  is not best invested in social media necessarily.
• 31:28
  You know, what do you, what do you, what did you do at the
• 31:31
  time? At the time I was just trying to
• 31:36
  meet people and talk to them about it.
• 31:41
  What else was I doing? I was trying a little bit of
• 31:44
  social media but I hated it. It's so hard to maintain, right?
• 31:47
  It's. So hard to maintain and it's
• 31:49
  also very fake. It gives me a real appreciation.
• 31:52
  People that could do it, by the way.
• 31:53
  Yeah, Because the people that post like daily or, you know,
• 31:56
  yeah, three or four times a week, I'm like, it's, it's
• 31:59
  exhausting. And like, it takes a lot out of
• 32:03
  you, at least at least out of me, you know, like even just
• 32:06
  sharing my stupid podcast and my story, I'm like, yeah, look at
• 32:11
  it like I, I need a break after that, you know, like it's
• 32:15
  exhausting. It's, it's, yeah, I can't do it.
• 32:19
  I'm not great at it. I'm not great at it.
• 32:21
  I'm working on it, but I'm not great at it.
• 32:24
  So I I was trying to just get my name out to anyone that I could,
• 32:30
  passing out business cards. It was rough.
• 32:34
  But in an industry like this, once you get the ball rolling,
• 32:38
  the momentum that you have keeps it rolling.
• 32:41
  Then clients tell other clients. That's it.
• 32:43
  Referrals are big. So I really would say that a lot
• 32:48
  of the growth was referrals through other clients,
• 32:52
  especially in the beginning. And then I got really lucky
• 32:55
  because I found some different online platforms that would
• 33:01
  enable me to get credentialed with insurance companies without
• 33:05
  me having to do any of the work. And that's why a lot of
• 33:10
  clinicians shy away from that because to try and be the
• 33:15
  therapist, run the business and handle the billing and the
• 33:18
  insurance stuff is way too much. There's not enough.
• 33:20
  Can I ask? You about that?
• 33:21
  How does that work? Yeah, how does?
• 33:24
  How does? How does billing insurance work?
• 33:25
  So you got, so you got, you got a, you know, client.
• 33:28
  A patient walks in, a client walks in, and it's either
• 33:32
  typically out of pocket or covered by XY and Z insurance.
• 33:35
  So I'm now in network with most major insurances and and so I
• 33:41
  have I'm now a member of these platforms that since I'm in
• 33:45
  network with them, they handle all of the so.
• 33:48
  You so you have a, let's say a set charge that you charge per
• 33:51
  session. You've passed that to the
• 33:53
  insurance company. Not even, it's less than that.
• 33:56
  So I have my out of pocket rate, right.
• 33:59
  So if somebody doesn't have insurance, they don't want to
• 34:01
  use their insurance. We can go that route.
• 34:03
  It's very easy. Cool.
• 34:05
  Somebody wants to use their insurance.
• 34:07
  I verify their insurance benefits through one of these
• 34:10
  platforms that I use. All right.
• 34:13
  They have negotiated reimbursement rates.
• 34:17
  What is it so negotiated reimbursement rates means that
• 34:20
  there that you give you pass along XY and say that's a
• 34:23
  $200.00 bill the. Platform negotiates, so let's
• 34:26
  say. So the two main ones that I work
• 34:28
  with now are Alma and Headway, OK and two different platforms,
• 34:33
  but they operate similarly. So let's go with Alma.
• 34:36
  Alma has contract with all of these different insurance
• 34:41
  companies, right? And the way that it works is
• 34:44
  that they'll say we'll offer you providers and in turn you send
• 34:50
  us the clients, right? For these providers, they
• 34:54
  already have a an agreed upon amount that each clinician will
• 34:58
  make and there's nothing taken off the top of what I make.
• 35:03
  I make more money utilizing these platforms than I would if
• 35:07
  I was in. Technically.
• 35:09
  Credentialed with them, right And the reimbursement is, is
• 35:17
  what's the word guaranteed. By the platform, by the platform
• 35:24
  that you're using that are associated with all those
• 35:26
  businesses. Exactly.
• 35:27
  So it's all streamlined for me. I don't have to personally
• 35:31
  negotiate rates as I would if I. People would ordinarily have to.
• 35:35
  So usually what happened is you'd call Blue Cross and you'd
• 35:38
  say, hi, I just billed this patient $200 for a session and
• 35:42
  they'd say we're going to send you back 150.
• 35:44
  Is that how it works? Yeah.
• 35:45
  So when you first get credentialed, you have to let
• 35:50
  them know your credent, you have to let them know all about you,
• 35:52
  whatever. And they say, OK, we'll offer
• 35:55
  you this much per session. It's usually a garbage amount,
• 35:59
  but that's all they're offering. You say garbage amount like
• 36:02
  under 100 bucks, Yeah. OK.
• 36:04
  Yeah, which is sounds absurd. OK sounds absurd by the way, to
• 36:08
  go to school for X amount of years and then be a therapist or
• 36:11
  a psychologist and. But they will offer you that
• 36:14
  amount because maybe you know what your license is, you know
• 36:18
  what your, what your degree is, whatever.
• 36:21
  And then you can say, you know, well, I, I want to have more
• 36:26
  whatever they'll say, no, here's your amount.
• 36:28
  And that's kind of it. But then each time that I do a
• 36:31
  session with any of the clients with that insurance.
• 36:35
  And the reason why you want to work with the insurance company
• 36:37
  to begin with is because presumably the, the, the client
• 36:40
  would not be able to pay you out of pocket because they're
• 36:42
  already, because they're already paying their insurance bill.
• 36:44
  And so you're getting new patients that ordinarily
• 36:47
  wouldn't walk through the door and you're finding that middle
• 36:50
  and they're getting paid, you know, so they're paying the
• 36:51
  insurance X amount. The insurance is going to pay
• 36:53
  you some kind of middle ground between what they would have
• 36:56
  paid you to walk in and what you would have had if nothing you
• 36:59
  know. And it's 2025, nobody wants to
• 37:03
  pay out of pocket, especially not right now.
• 37:06
  People are struggling right now. People are struggling now.
• 37:08
  So when I tell them my cash rate, they're like weekly.
• 37:11
  No way. Yeah, but I'm already paying for
• 37:14
  my health insurance, so yeah, I might as well utilize that
• 37:17
  benefit. Do you have to get?
• 37:18
  Insurance as as a therapist, do you have to get like insured?
• 37:23
  Yeah. Then what is that like?
• 37:24
  I have a a liability insurance. That and that's in case someone
• 37:27
  comes after you and says that you did that you.
• 37:30
  Yeah, just like any malpractice. Yeah, what is what would cause a
• 37:34
  malpractice to in therapy? In therapy it's things like.
• 37:41
  Because if someone like got divorced because something like
• 37:43
  that because of the session that I mean therapist.
• 37:46
  There's there's ethical guidelines that we have, right.
• 37:48
  So if you were to like overtly cross an ethical guideline
• 37:52
  that's, you know, something that you'd be liable for if you
• 37:55
  handled somebody harmed someone else and you didn't alert
• 37:59
  services, you could be liable for that.
• 38:01
  There was abuse. You know, the things that we
• 38:03
  have to report on, you could be live.
• 38:05
  Have you had to report anyone before?
• 38:07
  No. That's good.
• 38:09
  What would you have to do? Would you feel bad about it if
• 38:11
  it came? If it came to it.
• 38:13
  Yeah, yeah. It's a tough situation.
• 38:15
  It's so tough. You know the the details of it.
• 38:17
  You're not always Privy to it, so it's very difficult.
• 38:21
  Right, right. Do you watch The Sopranos?
• 38:23
  No. You should.
• 38:27
  You should. You should because.
• 38:28
  Drama. Well, it's a lot of drama.
• 38:31
  It's interesting because I've heard from other therapists or
• 38:35
  psychologists that have spoken to that watch the show, that the
• 38:38
  premise of the show is that there's a mop boss and he's and,
• 38:41
  and the fundamental relationship in that show is him with his
• 38:47
  therapist. And he's like the first mob
• 38:49
  boss. Everybody got a therapist and
• 38:51
  he's trying to juggle his life of raising a family, his wife,
• 38:56
  his Gumar, his, you know, being the boss.
• 38:59
  What? I didn't know that was the
• 39:00
  premise of. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:02
  And the whole show is, and the whole show is actually a
• 39:05
  psychological evaluation of who Tony Soprano is.
• 39:08
  And at the end of the end of the show, the show actually comes to
• 39:11
  a conclusion because they actually diagnosed him and and
• 39:15
  the therapist says, I'm sorry, I can't, you know, I don't know, I
• 39:18
  can help you anymore. I think you're, you know, beyond
• 39:20
  the scope of what I'm able to do to work with and and then the
• 39:24
  show ends very, very short after.
• 39:27
  And so the whole but what the government of spoken to a
• 39:31
  psychologist and therapist about the show like she's the worst
• 39:34
  therapist. Like like if she was anyone
• 39:36
  therapist in real life, like it would be a shit show.
• 39:40
  It was. It was terrible.
• 39:41
  That's what's tough when you, when you, I mean, in any
• 39:44
  profession, right? When you see it on TV, it's
• 39:46
  always like slightly different than how you'd need to do it in
• 39:49
  real life. Yeah.
• 39:50
  But I I didn't realize that that's what the premise of.
• 39:52
  The show was yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool.
• 39:54
  And there, you know, I mean, I don't know if she shows up in
• 39:56
  every single episode, but, you know, and she also goes through
• 40:01
  a lot of these moral quandaries, having to be a therapy.
• 40:03
  Therapist for a mafia boss and on one hand she wants to help
• 40:07
  the patient on the other hand, he's very overtly telling her, I
• 40:11
  had a friend of mine and he had to disappear.
• 40:15
  You're like, well, so I wonder how?
• 40:19
  I wonder how Gray the lines are that if someone says something
• 40:23
  like that, like someone insinuates a crime or something
• 40:26
  insinuates something. So our, our legal parameters are
• 40:29
  that everything stays confidential, unless of course,
• 40:32
  you express interest in harming yourself, that's number one, or
• 40:36
  harming someone else, right? So if they express that they
• 40:40
  have the means to do it, a plan for action, you know, maybe
• 40:45
  history of violence, things like that, then OK, we deem this to
• 40:48
  be a legitimate threat. Contact authorities, right?
• 40:52
  The difficulty in the mental health field is that these
• 40:58
  systems are designed to be helpful and they are often times
• 41:01
  not. Can you elaborate?
• 41:05
  So in Florida, we have the Baker app system.
• 41:08
  OK, OK, so legally somebody expressed interest in harming
• 41:13
  themselves, right? Suicidality you would contact
• 41:16
  authorities to have them do let's say a Wellness check,
• 41:20
  right to see you know what, what the parameters of the situation
• 41:25
  are. Do we take them in?
• 41:26
  Do we not right. The difficulty of that is that
• 41:30
  if the client does not outright say to the cops face I am going
• 41:36
  to kill myself, they will not take them in.
• 41:39
  Right. So you have, you know, a
• 41:42
  teenager that is upset, but they don't want somebody telling them
• 41:47
  what to do. They don't want to go to the
• 41:49
  hospital. They don't want to do anything,
• 41:51
  but you know that they're going to harm themselves, the cop
• 41:54
  said. I can't.
• 41:54
  Do anything about it? Because it's illegal to harm
• 41:59
  yourself. Well, does it, do you think it
• 42:02
  protects a lot of like, do you think that the language comes
• 42:07
  like loose language comes up often enough that if they were
• 42:10
  to be able to kind of take people away or, you know,
• 42:14
  hospitalized people based on rhetoric, that a lot more people
• 42:18
  would be needlessly hospitalized or taken away than like, let's
• 42:22
  say, you know, hypothetically, like unless I know right now the
• 42:25
  case is very specific unless you say these words.
• 42:27
  But what if you say like, you know, like, I just wish it would
• 42:30
  all be over, you know, and like, that's a very clear, you know,
• 42:35
  insinuation as to what you're saying.
• 42:38
  But, you know, so on one hand, I feel like that would like be
• 42:42
  good grounds to at least look into it.
• 42:44
  Yeah. On the other hand, I mean,
• 42:46
  yesterday, you know, 2 days ago, we, you know, I had a super
• 42:49
  stressful weekend and, and, you know, I was sitting, you know,
• 42:53
  we sat down and my wife would take a shower and I had both
• 42:57
  kids with me and it was like 10:00 at night.
• 42:59
  And yeah. And the four year and the four
• 43:01
  month and four week old was crying and you know the whole
• 43:04
  night. Took a shower.
• 43:05
  And I said to him, I was like, and she came out and I was like,
• 43:08
  I love you. I'm so close to snapping right
• 43:10
  now. I don't want to.
• 43:12
  Yeah, I know. But like someone could take
• 43:14
  that. I feel like if you just heard a
• 43:15
  transcript of that, like that sounds like almost like
• 43:18
  borderline like abuse, You know, that sounds like a little crazy.
• 43:21
  Like, yeah, it doesn't sound great.
• 43:23
  So like I could see how you need like, very specific language to
• 43:26
  protect the person talking. On the other hand, like you
• 43:30
  said, like it doesn't give you the space to really be able to
• 43:33
  kind of help in what you or trained to know or trained to
• 43:36
  identify. Yeah, it's a it's a very tricky
• 43:39
  space to be in, definitely. At the end of the day, I think
• 43:44
  what stays most important is somebody's safety.
• 43:46
  So I'd rather overcorrect than undercorrect, definitely.
• 43:51
  But the difficulty really is that we all say stupid shit
• 43:55
  sometimes. Like been there, but a therapist
• 44:00
  is trained to understand the nuance difference between like
• 44:04
  when this person is actually a threat to themselves versus when
• 44:07
  they're not. And there's things that we look
• 44:09
  for kind of reading between the lines on what somebody is
• 44:12
  saying. And so by the time a therapist
• 44:15
  is contacting the authorities, it's because they've likely.
• 44:19
  And again, I can't speak for all of the therapists, but if you're
• 44:22
  well trained and you're doing your job, yeah.
• 44:24
  You've seen the signs. Yeah, Then, you know, it's
• 44:27
  because this person has been deemed to be a threat.
• 44:30
  And when the police get there, that's, that's unnerving, you
• 44:34
  know. And no, I don't want to go with
• 44:36
  you. I'm not going to kill myself.
• 44:37
  That's often times the response that people get.
• 44:41
  I think that we have a crisis of mental health in this country
• 44:46
  that's quite bad. And I just think that the
• 44:48
  systems that are in place are designed to be helpful and are
• 44:54
  not always helpful, which is tough.
• 44:56
  And I'm not saying I know the right way.
• 44:58
  All right, for the record, I don't know all of the things,
• 45:01
  but. Do you have any, do you have any
• 45:03
  ideas as to what do you think could make it better?
• 45:05
  Like just even steps or or small ideas that you think actually,
• 45:09
  let's first, before you even do that, let's identify.
• 45:11
  Do you want to try to identify what do you think the root of a
• 45:14
  lot of the because you can't identify V root.
• 45:16
  Obviously mental health is a mass spectrum, but what are some
• 45:20
  of the roots that are causes that that that are causing this
• 45:25
  mental health epidemic that we're experiencing?
• 45:27
  Because if you unless or and how much of it do you think is
• 45:31
  really just people diagnosing it for the first time as opposed to
• 45:34
  like shutting it down like you know, our parents generation
• 45:37
  used to do. Yeah, Yeah.
• 45:41
  I think that there's a lot of reasons.
• 45:44
  Like you said, there's a lot of reasons.
• 45:47
  I think it comes from a lot of different sources.
• 45:49
  There are some things that are, let's say biological, genetic to
• 45:55
  some extent, right, passed down generation to degeneration.
• 45:58
  There are other things that are you talking.
• 46:00
  About like generational trauma kind of thing.
• 46:02
  Generational trauma, but also I believe that there are
• 46:06
  biological markers of some of these mental health disorders as
• 46:10
  well. For example, like you just like
• 46:13
  just any any random. Example.
• 46:14
  Often times with schizophrenia, there it is.
• 46:17
  Yeah, that's genetic, OK. You know, sometimes bipolar
• 46:21
  disorder, but the truth is that it's, I can't even say with
• 46:24
  certainty that one of these is definitely genetic, but
• 46:27
  sometimes. Also it's yeah, yeah.
• 46:29
  Yeah, and that's why mental health is so abstract and so
• 46:32
  complex that there isn't anyone specific 'cause right.
• 46:37
  So with that being said, that it kind of can also come from maybe
• 46:41
  anything. What other reasons are there?
• 46:46
  We know, for example, like huge factors, hypothetically at least
• 46:50
  I would think is physical Wellness, right?
• 46:55
  That must do physical Wellness that that you know, that that
• 47:01
  exercise, you know, generally is really, really good for your
• 47:05
  mental health. And we also know that people do
• 47:07
  not like to do not exercise very often in this country.
• 47:10
  And there's probably far more gym memberships than there are
• 47:12
  people working out in the gym, correct, You know?
• 47:14
  That plays a role. There's a lot of that.
• 47:18
  Yep, social media, absolutely. But I think mindset behind any
• 47:21
  of these things, I think that the conversation around mental
• 47:25
  health is often times about like this stigma that there is right
• 47:31
  about getting help for something like that, or you have to be
• 47:34
  crazy to get help for something. You know that this idea is it's
• 47:40
  not bad enough to seek help. But the truth is when you when
• 47:43
  you don't opt for for some kind of help, that's often times when
• 47:47
  it gets worse, correct? So what?
• 47:49
  Was it preventative maintenance? Exactly.
• 47:51
  Exactly. And preventative Healthcare is
• 47:53
  just not liked. Doesn't exist, right?
• 47:57
  Because it requires responsibility and discipline.
• 47:59
  And accountability, yeah, yeah. Which a lot of people don't
• 48:03
  have, especially nowadays. Also, willingness to work hard.
• 48:08
  You know, a lot of people want to pop a pill to forget about
• 48:12
  all of the things or to mask it or to Band-Aid it, and they
• 48:16
  don't want to work on themselves to make things different, so.
• 48:19
  But right, so if you're trying to convince someone that is
• 48:22
  like, listen, like, you know, I may not be getting better, but I
• 48:26
  feel fine on a day-to-day basis because of XY and Z, you know,
• 48:29
  and like I may not be thriving, but like, you know, I'm going
• 48:32
  through life, you know, like I'm just one of those people.
• 48:34
  Like why would like, what do you think would incentivize them to?
• 48:38
  What do you think would incentivize the average person
• 48:42
  to be proactive and healthy about themselves?
• 48:46
  Drive to want to be. Better if you don't want, you
• 48:49
  can't. Yeah, I was about to say, I feel
• 48:51
  like a lot of people don't have that.
• 48:52
  I feel like a lot of people are just content with I feel like.
• 48:55
  Complacency. Yeah, and complacency is kind of
• 48:58
  almost built into human nature, I think.
• 49:00
  I think that some people, you know, we for me, like my biggest
• 49:04
  challenge with everything I do is I have a tendency to think
• 49:08
  good enough, you know, while I'm doing anything I do, I'm going
• 49:11
  for a jog. I've reached, you know, 3/4 way
• 49:14
  through what I wanted to do good enough, you know, I'm fine.
• 49:16
  You know, I wanted you to jujitsu 2, three times a week.
• 49:19
  You know, I'm like, I did twice this week.
• 49:21
  Good enough. I'm not going to do a third time
• 49:23
  like that. That that's my biggest struggle.
• 49:25
  And I have to. But I mean, I expose myself
• 49:27
  constantly to content and to people and to friends and to
• 49:31
  different, you know, books and things that are telling me not
• 49:35
  to be complacent. And I constantly remind myself
• 49:37
  because if I don't remind myself all the time, then I I fall back
• 49:42
  to that tendency. Yeah.
• 49:43
  You know, well, functionality really is such a spectrum, how
• 49:47
  well we're functioning. You always have the ability to
• 49:49
  optimize yourself. Doesn't mean you choose to,
• 49:52
  right? Doesn't mean you buy into it.
• 49:53
  Doesn't mean that you have enough motivation to to not only
• 49:57
  see the change that you're capable of, but to put it into
• 50:00
  action. A lot of us reach that point,
• 50:02
  right? But I think that mental health
• 50:04
  is also such a spectrum. And how well are you
• 50:07
  functioning, right? If you are stuck in neutral and
• 50:12
  that's OK to you, you'll probably stay there.
• 50:15
  If you're a neutral and you're uncomfortable, good should be
• 50:19
  now. You're yeah, yeah.
• 50:21
  Now you shift gears. So I think that that's where
• 50:24
  some people find themselves. But people that are comfortable
• 50:27
  and neutral won't experience that.
• 50:30
  And is that part of the mental health epidemic?
• 50:34
  Probably not, because neutrality is worse than being net
• 50:38
  negative, right? And there are a lot of people in
• 50:40
  a net negative. Here you think people with that
• 50:43
  we definitely have a self-destructive tendency.
• 50:45
  I feel like you know. And part of that, I believe, is
• 50:50
  an enabling culture that we have.
• 50:52
  Do you want to elaborate on that?
• 50:53
  Yeah, because I would love to. I would love to hear what you
• 50:55
  think about that. Yeah, Yeah.
• 50:57
  So I think that back to this idea of kind of the negative
• 51:02
  connotation that mental health has, I think that there's while
• 51:06
  we're more, we're, we're more likely nowadays to talk about
• 51:10
  mental health than we were, let's say 20 years ago, right?
• 51:13
  That's very cool. Let's keep doing that.
• 51:15
  You know, the downside of that is that there's kind of what's
• 51:20
  going hand in hand with that is this glamorization of being
• 51:25
  unwell, right? That it's not about being
• 51:28
  relatable to other people that experience difficulties.
• 51:32
  But you have some of these celebrities coming out saying
• 51:35
  I'm bipolar and these are the meds I take and it's so great.
• 51:39
  And you're you're glamorizing something that's not so great.
• 51:45
  You know, we can normalize. It it's a fascinating
• 51:47
  observation. Yeah, it's really interesting.
• 51:49
  We can. We can and should talk about it.
• 51:52
  We should talk about the difficulties.
• 51:53
  But tell me how hard you're working at helping yourself.
• 51:58
  That's what we should glamorize, right?
• 52:00
  That's what we should focus on. And I think that with this
• 52:04
  culture of, you know, talking about the struggles that people
• 52:08
  experience and how, like, cool or trendy it is to have anxiety,
• 52:13
  you have people just slapping around labels as though they
• 52:16
  don't mean anything. She's bipolar.
• 52:20
  What? You don't even know what that
• 52:21
  term means. You know, So we're glamorizing
• 52:23
  it without actually talking about you have to put your ass
• 52:27
  in gear and I. Think people do say that a lot
• 52:29
  about autism these days, right? I feel like everyone's talking
• 52:32
  about autism and being on the spectrum a little bit and like
• 52:34
  they're just like it's become a massively yeah, popular like
• 52:38
  movement. It almost feels like it's just
• 52:40
  to like spite RFK, you know, like it feels like it's just
• 52:43
  trying to spite the fact that when he says they're trying to
• 52:45
  get to the root of like why? Why it's exploded.
• 52:48
  Yeah, that. Yeah.
• 53:12
  I think that to assimilate means to accept, you know, accept and
• 53:18
  choose to move forward. And I think that this enabling
• 53:24
  that we're seeing so much of so readily so frequently of of like
• 53:33
  it's cool to to have these struggles.
• 53:36
  I think that it minimizes these difficulties and I think it
• 53:41
  doesn't disservice to the difficulties, right, You know,
• 53:44
  to the realities of what life is like.
• 53:46
  But it's really interesting because I feel like there has to
• 53:48
  be a middle ground, right? Because on one hand, we just
• 53:51
  grew up with a generation that just completely shunned aside
• 53:54
  any kind of aspect, you know, notion that like you cannot
• 53:57
  complain about how you feel or you know, what your places in
• 54:00
  the world are like. You can't have those kind of
• 54:03
  questions and like shut up and go back to work kind of thing,
• 54:05
  you know? And now it's almost like the
• 54:08
  total opposite where it's like, we want to know exactly why you
• 54:13
  don't why, why you're not coming to work today.
• 54:15
  And then we'll encourage you not to come into work today because
• 54:18
  that's great. As opposed to saying, I feel
• 54:20
  like the, the, the sweet spot would be like, Hey, I you need a
• 54:26
  mental health day or X amount a year.
• 54:29
  I understand that, you know, but what can we do?
• 54:34
  Like that shouldn't be your baseline.
• 54:36
  Like we want you to be better, you want to be healthier.
• 54:38
  We want you to be feel better. And like if you need it, we
• 54:41
  understand. What could we do to make sure
• 54:42
  that we that you don't need those that you feel happier on a
• 54:45
  day-to-day basis, more fulfilled, more content?
• 54:47
  Yeah, how about you're struggling today?
• 54:50
  I see you. Here's resources that can help
• 54:54
  you with that. You're expected to be back at
• 54:56
  work by this date. Interesting.
• 54:58
  So do the Yeah, you, we're giving you the opportunity to
• 55:00
  get back, almost like if you hurt yourself, right?
• 55:02
  If you broke your leg and you're like, OK, well, I have two
• 55:05
  months out now because I broke my leg.
• 55:06
  And then you take six months off because you just don't feel like
• 55:09
  going back to work. Then you probably won't have a
• 55:11
  job when you get back. Exactly.
• 55:13
  So get your shit together, but also we'll help you get your
• 55:15
  shit together. Interesting, right?
• 55:17
  I love that and I want to go back to it.
• 55:18
  Something that you said, because I think it's really impactful.
• 55:20
  You talk about, you know, this Gray space and I think that
• 55:24
  that's so important for kind of any and all of the topics.
• 55:29
  Anything that you could talk about.
• 55:30
  I think that moderation is key to everything in life.
• 55:35
  Anything done in the extremes is not done with health and or
• 55:39
  Wellness even being relevant. So any topic that you could come
• 55:45
  up with should seek moderation. Yeah.
• 55:48
  And when it doesn't, right, when it's done to to whatever
• 55:53
  capacity that's too much. There's some amount of failure
• 55:56
  to that. You're speaking my language,
• 55:58
  you're speaking my language and it's actually crazy when I've,
• 56:03
  I've discovered this a lot in the last couple of years of my
• 56:06
  life. Even things that I've kind of
• 56:09
  taken for granted as like I assume to be good or true or
• 56:13
  like just the way things are is not, but it is not black and
• 56:19
  white like I thought. And it, it's hard.
• 56:22
  It's hard. It's so hard because you know,
• 56:26
  you have a tendency towards that, you know, towards that
• 56:29
  bias towards that extreme. And you also know that turning
• 56:33
  your back on it is turning your back on the way that you've
• 56:35
  thought about everything until now your entire life.
• 56:39
  That's how I feel. And I, I, I, I talked to my
• 56:42
  siblings about, because we used to be like we are, but we used
• 56:45
  to be much close. We very close to my grandparents
• 56:47
  who when they were, you know, maybe 5-10 years ago were much
• 56:50
  more sharp. And you can have a lot more
• 56:53
  intensive and philosophical conversation and debates Judaism
• 56:56
  in Israel and Americas, American Judaism and stuff like that.
• 57:00
  That's stuff that really matters to 1st generation Holocaust
• 57:03
  survivors and people coming from, you know, Eastern Europe.
• 57:06
  And, and it was, it was always like this or that.
• 57:16
  And I understand where it came from.
• 57:18
  But then now looking back ten years later, and now looking
• 57:21
  back with my own family or with my own life and my own
• 57:23
  experience, I'm like, things aren't as this or that.
• 57:27
  And, and I'll tell my siblings, we can't even fight with them
• 57:31
  because if you tell them that this way is not that, that that
• 57:35
  means that everything that they built since World War Two, since
• 57:38
  the Holocaust, this is not the case.
• 57:41
  And they can't face that. And I don't even know that we
• 57:43
  should make them face that. I, I think that they've lived a
• 57:46
  great life. They've provided, they've done
• 57:48
  their, their, their responsibility to humanity,
• 57:51
  they've built a better world. They've had kids, they've had a
• 57:53
  family, they've passed everything down.
• 57:55
  They, they've done their job And like, let them have this almost
• 57:58
  on one hand, but that doesn't mean that for us that we should
• 58:01
  fall to this. We should fall for that same
• 58:02
  kind of doctrine. Yeah, absolutely.
• 58:05
  I think that you're you're exactly right that that's just
• 58:09
  kind of the way that they existed within their world.
• 58:13
  You know, that's what got them through.
• 58:14
  These are coping strategies. So, you know, I think they lived
• 58:17
  at a time where having definitive answers for things
• 58:22
  was something that was defense and also coping.
• 58:25
  Yeah, sure. So it makes a lot of sense as to
• 58:27
  why that was so heavily utilized at that time.
• 58:32
  Again, it's now maladaptive, right, Because it just no longer
• 58:35
  suits you. There are things in life that we
• 58:39
  have to definitively know, you know how we feel about something
• 58:42
  where we're at, right? Like there is still black and
• 58:45
  white. We're not saying that that no
• 58:47
  longer exists anymore, right? But what we are also saying is
• 58:50
  that the importance of all of the things being done with
• 58:54
  moderation is also very real. And to allow for this Gray space
• 59:01
  sometimes means that you give yourself the the patience or the
• 59:06
  willingness to accept that things will not always be
• 59:09
  exactly your way. And also, that's OK.
• 59:13
  Yeah, yeah. That's a lot easier to have been
• 59:15
  done, by the way. A lot easier to have been done.
• 59:18
  You know, absolutely, but. How?
• 59:20
  How are you with? That feeling.
• 59:21
  How are you with that in your life?
• 59:22
  Personally I think I different topic areas I struggle with it
• 59:27
  more than others. For example, I'm also human.
• 59:30
  OK. What areas do I?
• 59:33
  Struggle. Do you catch yourself or?
• 59:35
  Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 59:37
  And my response largely irrational.
• 59:40
  OK. Like, again, also a person you
• 59:43
  can test because I think it's always a work in progress.
• 59:48
  You know, you come across a new topic area and all of a sudden
• 59:52
  you're just fighting, you know, going against the current and
• 59:56
  you don't really want to place an amount of acceptance on this
• 59:58
  is just what reality looks like. Yeah, right.
• 1:00:01
  But. You could kind of fight against
• 1:00:03
  it all you want. It doesn't mean that things are
• 1:00:05
  always going to go. Your way and you end up hurting
• 1:00:07
  yourself more. That's the other thing you
• 1:00:09
  notice you end up you end up like what do I even need to do
• 1:00:12
  to this right? Do this to myself.
• 1:00:13
  For right for what? So, you know, I think that
• 1:00:16
  accepting sometimes this is, this is OK, right?
• 1:00:20
  It doesn't look the way I want it to.
• 1:00:22
  This person doesn't agree with me as I wanted them to.
• 1:00:26
  It's OK, you know, I don't need to force that upon them.
• 1:00:30
  They don't need to see things how I see them.
• 1:00:32
  You know, I can. I can do something and have the
• 1:00:34
  outcome be maybe different than I thought I wanted it to be.
• 1:00:38
  And also, that's OK. I think it's a big deal to
• 1:00:42
  actually say these words out loud.
• 1:00:45
  There's a book I just gave, actually.
• 1:00:47
  The guy did a podcast yesterday called Chatter by Ethan Cross.
• 1:00:52
  He was on a humans podcast. That's why I came to it by the
• 1:00:55
  book. But one of the things that the
• 1:00:57
  premise of the book is that we have that voice in our head and
• 1:01:00
  we can actually mold and shape that voice.
• 1:01:03
  That's why, like when if you ever see a kids talk out what
• 1:01:06
  they're doing, it's because they're speaking out of process.
• 1:01:08
  That, as you get older becomes that kind of chatter in our head
• 1:01:11
  and that, that, and we can also continue to reframe those voices
• 1:01:18
  in our head. But the, and, and it doesn't
• 1:01:21
  necessarily need to read through talking, although talking is a
• 1:01:23
  very effective way of doing it. And so I found that even since I
• 1:01:26
  started saying these kind of things on conversations and
• 1:01:28
  podcasts and stuff, one thing, for example, that I noticed
• 1:01:32
  that's very, you know, I mean, I, I go to, you know, I, I, I, I
• 1:01:35
  pray three times a day. And I sometimes when I'm going,
• 1:01:39
  when I'm going to synagogue, I noticed that someone is praying
• 1:01:42
  for longer or shorter than me. And then my initial reaction is
• 1:01:45
  to judge them based on like the extent of their prayer.
• 1:01:48
  And I'm like, and, and, and, and I, and I, and I, and I have a
• 1:01:52
  legit conversation in my head every time this happens.
• 1:01:54
  I'm like, Oh God, who's this guy thinking?
• 1:01:56
  And I'm like, who do you think you are, you douche?
• 1:01:58
  You know, like, I have to keep on going back and forth.
• 1:02:01
  Then like, like, what do you know, what am I doing?
• 1:02:04
  But but until, but for years, I, I didn't even have like that
• 1:02:08
  kind of like even though I knew the concept to be true, it
• 1:02:13
  wasn't, it wasn't in my, the forefront of my consciousness.
• 1:02:16
  It wasn't something that was actively there.
• 1:02:18
  And I think that, and I also think this is what the huge
• 1:02:21
  benefit of podcasts in general has been and why they've become
• 1:02:24
  so ubiquitous in society is because it's people saying the
• 1:02:30
  things and reinforcing healthy ideas that that that can really
• 1:02:35
  make a lot of people's lives better on a regular basis that
• 1:02:37
  you can kind of like bask in like and over.
• 1:02:40
  By the way, unfortunately, you know, it's a double, it's a
• 1:02:41
  double edged sword. It's a tool just like anything
• 1:02:43
  else. You can, you can, you know,
• 1:02:45
  surround yourself with the wrong ideas too, and unhealthy ideas.
• 1:02:48
  But if you find the right ones and you're like, and you're
• 1:02:51
  building good habits out of that, you know, and you can
• 1:02:54
  usually how I feel like the difference between like, I try
• 1:02:57
  to, I, I, I feel like everything is either junk food or health or
• 1:03:00
  healthy food and like it should and everything in life, you can
• 1:03:03
  have a relationship that's a junk food relationship.
• 1:03:05
  You can have a relationship that's a healthy relationship.
• 1:03:07
  You can have a, a business, right?
• 1:03:10
  I was talking to, I had a big, I posted on Twitter months ago
• 1:03:14
  about how, how I felt bad for the Haktua girl because I was
• 1:03:19
  like, this poor girl does an interview, you know, her life
• 1:03:23
  explodes. All these deals over.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah, overnight marketing and podcast deals and, and you get a
• 1:03:30
  manager and agent, everyone's referencing you and and money
• 1:03:34
  pouring in and you're totally not prepared to handle it.
• 1:03:37
  And then all of a sudden a million people are telling you
• 1:03:39
  different things from different perspectives and you make a
• 1:03:41
  mistake that publicly makes you look like the worst person ever.
• 1:03:45
  And then the whole world hates you within a month.
• 1:03:48
  So within the whole month, you're not prepared for that.
• 1:03:50
  That's junk food to me. That's the same thing as, you
• 1:03:53
  know, binging of that, you know, a bag of chips or business or
• 1:03:55
  anything else. And then you feel nauseous after
• 1:03:57
  and you're like, but if you go through a business where you
• 1:03:59
  take five years to build up six years, 10 years to build up a
• 1:04:02
  business and then success comes and you're much more even headed
• 1:04:05
  about it because you're like, I know what it took to get here.
• 1:04:08
  And I've, and I've been, I've been eating carrots and
• 1:04:10
  vegetables and, and tilapia exclusively tilapia for 100
• 1:04:15
  years. And I don't care about the
• 1:04:16
  micronutrients and and I don't care about bottom dwellers or
• 1:04:19
  anything like that then. Things done in moderation are
• 1:04:27
  always best. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04:29
  Toxic relationships. There's no moderation in that.
• 1:04:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:04:34
  Like love bombing. It's a term that like a lot of
• 1:04:37
  people. Use.
• 1:04:37
  I just heard you yesterday for the first time, so.
• 1:04:39
  Trendy. I was trendy, really.
• 1:04:41
  Shoot. It's a very real term, OK?
• 1:04:44
  I'm not saying that it doesn't come from the right place.
• 1:04:46
  OK, We do use that term. But I think somebody caught on
• 1:04:50
  that we use that term and thought it was cool and now
• 1:04:52
  everybody uses it. OK, It's very real, but why is
• 1:04:56
  it so toxic? Because it's done in an extreme.
• 1:04:59
  Yeah, right. It's.
• 1:05:01
  Oh my God. This person made me feel like
• 1:05:03
  I'm the only one on the planet and they want to move in with
• 1:05:07
  me. And they told me they love me.
• 1:05:08
  But when we talk about things like this, this is everywhere in
• 1:05:11
  society, so it doesn't it's not a surprise that this happens.
• 1:05:15
  Because we enable it. Well, because it's convenient.
• 1:05:19
  You want what's? Convenient and it's glamorized,
• 1:05:22
  right? I was talking to, I was talking
• 1:05:25
  to someone the other day and we're talking about how the like
• 1:05:31
  until now in history, intelligence and knowledge has
• 1:05:36
  been of value, like one of the most valuable tools that you can
• 1:05:39
  have. And I think starting probably
• 1:05:43
  five years ago, but especially today, autonomy and discipline
• 1:05:47
  are going to be what makes what's going to separate someone
• 1:05:50
  from being successful or and that's going to be the top
• 1:05:54
  class, the top class are going to be.
• 1:05:55
  Even far between. Correct.
• 1:05:56
  The people that choose the hard path, that choose to take their
• 1:06:00
  time for something that have the healthy relationships and most
• 1:06:03
  people are not going to be able to, are not going to know how
• 1:06:06
  to. They're going to just choose the
• 1:06:07
  convenient way the whole time and they're going to keep on
• 1:06:09
  choosing junk food. We have that choice of junk food
• 1:06:11
  or healthy food in every capacity of life.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah, I think that in American culture we have a an unhealthy
• 1:06:19
  relationship with this need for instant gratification in kind of
• 1:06:25
  all of the things. If there's hard work involved,
• 1:06:29
  we lean away from it. And we try to figure out how to
• 1:06:31
  make it less hard work. Efficiency, effectiveness, those
• 1:06:36
  should both be important, which is something that we've strayed
• 1:06:39
  from. Now we really only focus on
• 1:06:41
  efficiency. Yeah, I think, yeah.
• 1:06:44
  And now you have, you know, this this drive for kids to want to
• 1:06:50
  become influencers rather than, you know, different kinds of
• 1:06:56
  careers. Sure, sure.
• 1:06:58
  It's because it's glamorized, glorified, definitely.
• 1:07:02
  And also it's it's just not something that.
• 1:07:07
  You know, I feel like also it's one of the few, call me crazy,
• 1:07:10
  it feels like it's one of the few stable jobs that people are
• 1:07:13
  talking about. Like AI is taking everything
• 1:07:16
  away from everyone, you know, and I feel you know, and I know
• 1:07:19
  that the the answer that that American children want to be
• 1:07:22
  influencer has been going on for a lot longer than a is existed
• 1:07:25
  for sure, you know, and that's a whole another conversation.
• 1:07:30
  But I think that in the last couple of years, a lot of people
• 1:07:33
  are like, well, I don't even know what I want to be when I I
• 1:07:35
  don't know what I'm going to. I'm thinking about this now.
• 1:07:37
  I don't know what I'm sending, what I'm going to send my kid to
• 1:07:39
  school for. I don't know what he's going to
• 1:07:42
  learn at school that's going to be effective in helping him,
• 1:07:47
  like in helping him in a way that he can't learn to be a
• 1:07:50
  disciplined self starter that learns everything he learned at
• 1:07:53
  school by yourself, by himself anyway, Yeah.
• 1:07:56
  You know, well, the concept of stability is kind of ever
• 1:07:58
  changing. And if we don't acknowledge that
• 1:08:01
  and if we don't accept that, we get left behind.
• 1:08:05
  Yeah, this, this idea of what we think stability is supposed to
• 1:08:09
  look like, it's kind of archaic. And if you don't stay with the
• 1:08:13
  times in some way, doesn't mean you have to completely
• 1:08:17
  assimilate. But if you don't accept it for
• 1:08:19
  what it is, you get left behind. Yeah.
• 1:08:21
  Definitely. Oh, what's that?
• 1:08:23
  So what do you what tools do you use to manage your own mental
• 1:08:26
  health for your own life? I use my husband.
• 1:08:30
  That's it every. That's it.
• 1:08:31
  Every husband should be there for.
• 1:08:33
  He is a wonderful support. What do I use?
• 1:08:38
  Or what did you use before you got married?
• 1:08:40
  Before you met? Before you met guy?
• 1:08:41
  When did you meet guy? How old are you?
• 1:08:43
  When? Did I meet Guy almost five years
• 1:08:45
  ago? 4 1/2 years ago.
• 1:08:48
  What did I utilize? I talk to my people.
• 1:08:51
  I talk things out. Do you do you have a group of
• 1:08:55
  friends that you feel like you could talk to and then you talk
• 1:08:57
  to your therapist as well or Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  If. Different topics you go to
• 1:09:02
  different. People for for sure, for sure,
• 1:09:04
  as any smart person should. You can't go to any one person
• 1:09:06
  for all of the things other than your therapist.
• 1:09:09
  You can always go to them with all of the things.
• 1:09:14
  And, and while I try to go to my husband with all of the things,
• 1:09:16
  the truth is that he's not supposed to be there for all of
• 1:09:19
  the things. That's too much pressure to put
• 1:09:21
  on any person. But I think that I seek benefit
• 1:09:27
  from different people depending on topic area and also family
• 1:09:33
  and also myself. In terms, what do you do with?
• 1:09:36
  How do you by yourself? I try very hard.
• 1:09:39
  It's not always successful, but I try to talk things through
• 1:09:42
  with myself. That's a great, it's a great
• 1:09:46
  tool. It's a life skill.
• 1:09:47
  Doesn't mean I'm always good at it, for the record, but I
• 1:09:50
  certainly try. Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  You know the way that we. You talk it out loud to
• 1:09:55
  yourself, or you write it out or what do you do?
• 1:09:58
  Sometimes I talk about it out loud, sometimes I'm just in my
• 1:10:01
  head, you know? Which also isn't always great
• 1:10:03
  because that's how spiraling thoughts really manifest into.
• 1:10:07
  Isn't it interesting how thoughts work in your head
• 1:10:09
  versus once they come out of your mouth?
• 1:10:12
  Yeah, I think it's one of the reasons why I think therapy is
• 1:10:15
  so impactful, correct. When you have to find the words
• 1:10:19
  to verbalize something, it's a different level of understanding
• 1:10:24
  and conceptualization of how you actually feel in order to
• 1:10:28
  produce it, right? Sure.
• 1:10:29
  So to write something down, also helpful, right?
• 1:10:32
  You have to figure out what it is you want to, what words you
• 1:10:36
  want to use to say what you have to say.
• 1:10:38
  Same thing with saying something out loud, right?
• 1:10:40
  So it's a better understanding. One of the one of the most
• 1:10:43
  valuable skills that I learned, I learned one of my college, my
• 1:10:47
  college writing professor was the was to be raw with your
• 1:10:53
  words in writing. And like we like we live in a
• 1:10:56
  world that it's not encouraged to be even to ourselves.
• 1:10:59
  You know, like no one else has to see it.
• 1:11:01
  But like when you just say like, I feel like a piece of shit
• 1:11:05
  today, you know, like I did something today that like, you
• 1:11:08
  know, either I behaved this way or I felt this way.
• 1:11:11
  And like just that honesty to yourself that like even if you
• 1:11:15
  RIP it up and no one ever sees and you throw it in the guard,
• 1:11:17
  you burn in and no one ever sees it again.
• 1:11:19
  Like I feel like just that after transmitting something from in
• 1:11:23
  here, either out your hands or out your mouth enormously has
• 1:11:29
  helped at least me. It's been an enormous tool and a
• 1:11:33
  lot of times, either writing or speaking these kind of things
• 1:11:38
  out, I'll often emerge with an understanding that I'd even had
• 1:11:42
  before I started, before I started talking or writing.
• 1:11:45
  Exactly. Well, that's exactly the point,
• 1:11:47
  right? Because you have to identify for
• 1:11:48
  yourself how you would even come to explain what it is you're
• 1:11:52
  trying to say. So that's absolutely impactful.
• 1:11:57
  Also, I think sometimes it's, it's hard to understand your own
• 1:12:00
  thoughts. You know, you can think things
• 1:12:03
  that are not real. You do it all the time, all do,
• 1:12:07
  right. But to take the thoughts and
• 1:12:10
  make them realities, to take the thoughts and try to understand
• 1:12:14
  them. You know, there's a, there's a
• 1:12:16
  lot of abstractness to all of that.
• 1:12:19
  So I think that any of us, for any and all of us, let's say,
• 1:12:24
  being real with ourselves, being real with the people around us,
• 1:12:29
  humanizing ourselves, you know? Dehumanize yourself like to keep
• 1:12:34
  yourself like either the same. Hold yourself the same standard
• 1:12:37
  as you hold everyone else. Yeah.
• 1:12:38
  And also moving away from the perfectionism that we think we
• 1:12:44
  all need. Yeah.
• 1:12:46
  I think that one of the things that sets my practice apart from
• 1:12:50
  other practices that I've seen is that I try very hard to focus
• 1:12:54
  on being relatable and talking about reality and the
• 1:12:57
  difficulties that just exist for kind of all of us in a way
• 1:13:03
  that's moved away from the clinical, but it's still very
• 1:13:07
  helpful. It's, it's rooted in the
• 1:13:09
  clinical, but it's kind of moved away from it.
• 1:13:13
  And I think that that's where we all find benefit, right?
• 1:13:16
  Because when you can be real outwards, either towards your
• 1:13:19
  therapist or to yourself even, right, that's when growth
• 1:13:23
  happens. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:13:26
  Do you think that people should stay with the therapist forever?
• 1:13:29
  You think that you know, like, what do you like, do you
• 1:13:33
  encourage your clients to just keep on coming back or do you
• 1:13:36
  say like, oh, it looks like you have the tools you need.
• 1:13:38
  It looks like you've been in a good place, like come back to me
• 1:13:40
  when you need. How do you approach that?
• 1:13:43
  How do different therapists approach that?
• 1:13:44
  I. Think there's a lot of different
• 1:13:51
  perceptions of that. I don't believe that there's one
• 1:13:54
  that's right or wrong. For any individual.
• 1:13:57
  For any individual. So you have to base it on the
• 1:13:59
  person, Yeah. I think that a therapist should
• 1:14:04
  tread lightly on trying to decide for any other person what
• 1:14:09
  is or is not therapeutic for them.
• 1:14:12
  If I tell my client we've been seeing each other for a year and
• 1:14:17
  I don't think it's therapeutic for you to come here anymore, my
• 1:14:19
  client might say, but I just feel like you hold me
• 1:14:22
  accountable and I just like talking to you each.
• 1:14:25
  Weekend. Do you get clients that fall for
• 1:14:27
  you? I've spoken to, I've spoken to
• 1:14:29
  the therapist about this before. Actually, I actually, I dated
• 1:14:32
  one. I dated a therapist when I was,
• 1:14:36
  oh God, maybe 20 before, and she would tell me all the time that,
• 1:14:42
  that, that, that patients or clients would like confess their
• 1:14:46
  love to that. Yeah.
• 1:14:47
  Like, because you probably they're opening up and being
• 1:14:49
  honest and like, yeah. You get that.
• 1:14:51
  I've never had that experience. I did work in a homeless shelter
• 1:14:55
  for a short period of time and that was different.
• 1:14:58
  That was a different experience. I, I definitely had some
• 1:15:05
  uncomfortable encounters, let's say at the shelter, yes, but no,
• 1:15:10
  not anymore. And I, I would say that doesn't
• 1:15:13
  happen anymore because I, I'm relatable, but I'm very
• 1:15:17
  professional and I draw a very distinct line and the sessions
• 1:15:23
  not about me. So I'm not I'm I'm showing up
• 1:15:26
  authentically to my clients definitely, but I'm not bringing
• 1:15:31
  all of me to the session. Of course, of course.
• 1:15:33
  But I don't, I don't, you know, but I don't think even takes you
• 1:15:37
  doing that. I think that like most people,
• 1:15:39
  like there's a loneliness epidemic and most people don't
• 1:15:43
  even have anyone they can talk to, you know, So, you know, I
• 1:15:45
  mean, for, you know, anyone to just sit across from someone
• 1:15:49
  that like for a year, for two years, for five years and like
• 1:15:53
  be the more, more realtor than they are to their own parents,
• 1:15:56
  girlfriend, husband, whatever. That's why that extended
• 1:15:59
  relationship with a client can still be of benefit to them.
• 1:16:04
  Yeah. Well, yeah, if they handle it,
• 1:16:08
  if they, if they handle those, you know the if they handle the
• 1:16:10
  way that it manifests appropriately.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah, right, right, right. As long as it's done
• 1:16:15
  professionally, yeah. You know, I have clients that
• 1:16:17
  I've had for years and, you know, I've met with them almost
• 1:16:21
  every week for years. And I've done that because they
• 1:16:25
  find benefit absolutely from these sessions.
• 1:16:28
  And while, you know, they might tell you that they feel like
• 1:16:31
  they're friends with me, our relationship is not one of a
• 1:16:34
  friendship. Yeah, you know, and I know that
• 1:16:38
  the relationships look different than.
• 1:16:39
  That used to be off putting to me.
• 1:16:41
  So I've, I've never, I've gone to therapy once as a kid when my
• 1:16:47
  in high school, my mom was trying to, I had a very hard
• 1:16:49
  time in high school with test taking.
• 1:16:50
  And no matter how much I would study, no matter how hard I
• 1:16:53
  would, you know, work, no matter, he knows how to take the
• 1:16:56
  test would come and I have a whole brand to go blank.
• 1:16:58
  And, but other than that, I, I, and the reason I haven't gone
• 1:17:05
  was because I have a very close, I have a very healthy group of
• 1:17:10
  people that I have very healthy relationships with that I feel
• 1:17:12
  that I've always been able to kind of get what I, you know,
• 1:17:18
  what would be healthiest for me out of these relationships.
• 1:17:21
  I have people I could turn to for different things, you know,
• 1:17:23
  and one of the things that used to be off putting, although I
• 1:17:25
  kind of understand it a little bit more now, One of the things
• 1:17:27
  that used to be off putting to me that I could imagine being
• 1:17:29
  off putting to people is that like we just described, this
• 1:17:32
  therapist isn't your friend, you know?
• 1:17:34
  And like when you're opening up to someone that much, I feel
• 1:17:37
  like people almost want someone else to reciprocate, you know?
• 1:17:40
  And I feel like, you know, that part of my hesitancy was that
• 1:17:44
  I'm going to sit across from someone, they're going to know
• 1:17:46
  everything there is to know about me.
• 1:17:48
  I'm going to feel invested in this person because I am
• 1:17:50
  invested in this person and I'm not going to know anything about
• 1:17:52
  that, you know, I'm not going to, you know, and it's going to
• 1:17:54
  be 11 sided relationship. And like, you know who likes
• 1:17:57
  that? Well, ironically enough, that's
• 1:17:59
  what it's meant to be, right? Because that's what I was told.
• 1:18:01
  You're not. You're not paying me to don't
• 1:18:04
  hear about me, right? You're paying for a session to
• 1:18:07
  work on you, right? So the purpose of that session
• 1:18:12
  isn't to build a friendship. The purpose of that session is
• 1:18:15
  for you to build a better relationship with yourself,
• 1:18:18
  right? Which is why that therapist and
• 1:18:20
  what they do personally and who they are is kind of not
• 1:18:24
  relevant. Right, so you can sit in front
• 1:18:28
  of a mirror and do the same thing if it works.
• 1:18:31
  Yeah, I mean you won't experience an.
• 1:18:33
  Individual feedback. Perspective or feedback?
• 1:18:35
  Yeah, yeah, which is why it's of limited benefit, but.
• 1:18:38
  It's where do you draw the line between the feedback that you
• 1:18:40
  gave. I don't disclose a whole lot
• 1:18:45
  about myself unless I think that it's therapeutic for them.
• 1:18:49
  If it helps us to connect further then.
• 1:18:52
  So you say like, oh I also have that problem or like you say I
• 1:18:55
  relate to that or like what? Do you?
• 1:18:57
  Yeah, I mean, I, I share problems or issues less
• 1:19:00
  frequently because I don't, I think that I can express empathy
• 1:19:04
  without disclosing reasoning why I sit in the depths with them.
• 1:19:11
  And truthfully, it's it's not about the fact that I've
• 1:19:15
  experienced the exact same thing.
• 1:19:16
  So I don't need to relate in those.
• 1:19:18
  Ways you don't need to help the person feel like no.
• 1:19:21
  No, I think that what's more helpful is to some, in some
• 1:19:25
  cases, let's say I don't want to generalize too much, but I think
• 1:19:29
  in more cases it's more helpful to say it is, it's reasonable to
• 1:19:34
  feel this way, right? And what can we do about it?
• 1:19:38
  Right. Because if I just sit in the
• 1:19:40
  shit with you, we're not getting out, so.
• 1:19:45
  You're more prompt. You almost like keeping up a
• 1:19:49
  conversation. You always keep almost like
• 1:19:50
  keeping the conversation going so that it doesn't stop at,
• 1:19:54
  yeah, I mean spare station. Yeah, I think, I think we have
• 1:19:58
  to stop long enough to process the feelings, you know, but
• 1:20:02
  we're not staying there, right? I think moderation, right.
• 1:20:06
  Do some processing of the feelings and also talk about
• 1:20:10
  what you're going to do to get yourself out.
• 1:20:12
  But it can't be only one or the other.
• 1:20:14
  It has to be a combination of both and to what extent.
• 1:20:18
  You know, 60407030, I don't decide that.
• 1:20:21
  You do? Yeah, sure.
• 1:20:23
  But I'll help you get to that, yeah.
• 1:20:25
  Page that page that what's what's an ideal setup
• 1:20:28
  professionally for therapist that like, how do you know, how
• 1:20:33
  do you feel when you feel like I've made it and like I'm where
• 1:20:36
  I want to be with my with my career and my life?
• 1:20:39
  Yeah, I don't know an exact goal that I have is your.
• 1:20:46
  Goal to be busy. Is your goal to have X amount of
• 1:20:49
  zip client? What's what's your?
• 1:20:51
  It's it's ever expanding, I could say.
• 1:20:54
  So I don't have one specific goal because it's shape shifts
• 1:20:58
  and it it just keeps evolving. My caseload is full which is
• 1:21:03
  very cool to me. That's crazy how what's
• 1:21:06
  considered a full caseload? It varies person to person.
• 1:21:09
  I see a lot so I often hovering around 30 sessions a week.
• 1:21:16
  Wow. Gotcha, which is a lot and most
• 1:21:18
  therapists I know prefer less. Please you still have to do
• 1:21:22
  notes and what other works associated with the other than
• 1:21:25
  the session is billing like. Being in touch, yeah, the
• 1:21:28
  billing stuff, you know, all of the scheduling and organizing
• 1:21:33
  and then for me at least, is working on ways to continue
• 1:21:37
  expanding. So more recently, within this
• 1:21:41
  year, I've hired some additional clinicians, yes.
• 1:21:44
  Congratulations, that's so exciting.
• 1:21:46
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  Wow. And I've really loved it.
• 1:21:50
  Really. Really.
• 1:21:51
  Love it. Do you love that because you
• 1:21:51
  have people to work with? You love it because you could
• 1:21:53
  help more people you feel like? Do you set the tone for what the
• 1:21:56
  clinicians, what type of like clinic you're going to have?
• 1:22:00
  Yes, yes to all of the above. Yes, that's such a phenomenal
• 1:22:05
  YEAH opportunity. I love the idea of normalizing
• 1:22:09
  this type of therapy, therapy like this, you know, more
• 1:22:13
  relatable, more real human person to person.
• 1:22:18
  And so, yeah, when I'm hiring, that's something that I keep in
• 1:22:20
  mind is a therapist's ability to offer this because I think
• 1:22:25
  that's so impactful. So when I'm looking for
• 1:22:29
  somebody, that's certainly something I'm looking for, but I
• 1:22:33
  also love having a sort of mentorship with new clinicians
• 1:22:38
  or additional clinicians. And there's other things that
• 1:22:42
  I'm toying with the idea of trying out different, you know,
• 1:22:44
  supervisory type roles. Cool.
• 1:22:48
  Would you think about expanding the type of therapy that you
• 1:22:51
  offer? Like what do you think of, like
• 1:22:53
  music therapy or pet therapy or especially in South Florida, I
• 1:22:56
  just told an ultrasound machine to people that do dolphin
• 1:22:58
  therapy. Amazing.
• 1:23:00
  Amazing. Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  We went down there to meet them. It's really, really cool.
• 1:23:03
  Yeah. There's a lot of different forms
• 1:23:05
  of therapy. I think that they're all useful
• 1:23:09
  and or beneficial. Under your umbrella like have
• 1:23:13
  like. It would be cool.
• 1:23:15
  Applications. It would be cool, but I kind of
• 1:23:18
  feel like there's something to be said about like when you go
• 1:23:22
  to a restaurant. And they just make pizza and.
• 1:23:25
  They make pizza or or you go to that restaurant and they're
• 1:23:29
  offering way too many things. And you think, how could you be
• 1:23:32
  good at all of the things? Correct, Right.
• 1:23:34
  You know, So I don't want to be that.
• 1:23:36
  I also don't want to offer only one thing.
• 1:23:38
  Yeah. Well, it would be you, but
• 1:23:41
  that's so that's the benefit, right?
• 1:23:43
  Like the benefit is that you got your philosophy that's kind of
• 1:23:48
  introduced, that's interconnected through
• 1:23:49
  everything. And then you have different ways
• 1:23:52
  of manifesting your philosophy and bringing them to and
• 1:23:56
  bringing them to fruition, helping people in different ways
• 1:23:58
  that would speak to them get to almost like the same kind of
• 1:24:01
  place. Right.
• 1:24:02
  Yeah. There's also different specialty
• 1:24:04
  areas, right? So I work with some specific
• 1:24:07
  things. I work with high functioning
• 1:24:09
  people that want to optimize under my umbrella.
• 1:24:12
  The clinicians that work with me, you know, we'll see some
• 1:24:15
  type of variation of that. People wanting to work on
• 1:24:18
  themselves, obviously, but different trauma areas.
• 1:24:21
  I might have, you know, 1 clinician that focuses on
• 1:24:24
  trauma. I might have another clinician
• 1:24:26
  that focuses on grief, right? So I like to have the very cool.
• 1:24:29
  Day, right? But in my own practice, my own
• 1:24:34
  caseload, I keep some variation and I like to lean into what
• 1:24:39
  works. I think it's a life skill so.
• 1:24:42
  Do people come to you and then you'll pass them along to your
• 1:24:45
  colleagues? Yeah.
• 1:24:48
  I think that XY and Z is better. Is better for grief or better
• 1:24:51
  for? I don't.
• 1:24:52
  I don't usually work with them before passing them on, but when
• 1:24:56
  somebody approaches my practice, I'll say based on what you
• 1:24:59
  described, this person is a good fit.
• 1:25:01
  Cool. Yeah.
• 1:25:02
  And my role is to grow their caseloads as well.
• 1:25:05
  Do people do therapists take it personally when people switch
• 1:25:08
  therapists? I don't and in fact, when I
• 1:25:10
  start someone new within the 1st 5 minutes, I let them know we're
• 1:25:15
  going to do a consultation to make sure it's the right fit.
• 1:25:18
  If for any reason it's not either you don't like talking to
• 1:25:20
  me or the things you want to discuss are not in my area of
• 1:25:23
  expertise, find someone who is. So I personally don't take it.
• 1:25:28
  I, I do not take it personally, but I think everybody's
• 1:25:32
  different on that. I think the goal is for you to
• 1:25:37
  like your therapist and to get benefit out of it.
• 1:25:40
  You can't get benefit if you don't like your therapist.
• 1:25:42
  I know I have so many friends that lie to their therapist.
• 1:25:45
  Like it's so stupid dude. If you're not, if you're lying
• 1:25:47
  to your therapist, who you're not lying to, you know, like,
• 1:25:50
  right. Seriously.
• 1:25:50
  And then you just stay in that neutral zone.
• 1:25:53
  Yeah, yeah. And and that's like, and those
• 1:25:56
  are the same kind of examples of people that if you send them to
• 1:25:58
  rehab would, you know, would be out in a week and back at it,
• 1:26:02
  you know, exactly because you're not, not there for it.
• 1:26:05
  Yeah, cool. I think this is so much fun.
• 1:26:08
  I hope that I hope this encourages you to to jump start
• 1:26:12
  your own. And now that you got some some
• 1:26:14
  footage, this will be the beginning of the next most
• 1:26:17
  successful podcast that'll very quickly overtake mine because
• 1:26:21
  you'll have video and we'll see we'll.
• 1:26:24
  See. Don't take it.
• 1:26:25
  Up that much. That's right.
• 1:26:25
  That's right. It's hard.
• 1:26:26
  No hype, no hype. I'm going to keep on doing what
• 1:26:28
  I'm doing, but you should definitely, you should
• 1:26:31
  definitely do this. I'm so excited for you to
• 1:26:34
  whatever is whatever is coming up for you.
• 1:26:37
  It really seems like you really have since you have a vision.
• 1:26:41
  And I mean, oh, do people feel like they look up to you more
• 1:26:47
  because you went straight Like you have all this private
• 1:26:49
  experience now that other people have, you know, like most people
• 1:26:51
  don't have. Maybe, maybe.
• 1:26:54
  I think there's just different routes, you know, and I don't
• 1:26:56
  want to say that like going to work at a clinic is the is the
• 1:26:59
  worst route. I think they gain amazing
• 1:27:02
  experience people. Like look at you and be like,
• 1:27:03
  wow, you've been in your own practice for this amount of
• 1:27:05
  years and you're you know, you've only been doing this for
• 1:27:08
  X amount of years and like. Yeah, it's definitely different.
• 1:27:10
  It's definitely. Not.
• 1:27:11
  That's cool, yeah. But it was a struggle because of
• 1:27:14
  that. But I'm at least proud to say
• 1:27:17
  that. I think it's amazing.
• 1:27:18
  I think it's amazing. I think you did great work.
• 1:27:19
  And then keep it up and we'll do this again.
• 1:27:22
  I hope you awesome, beautiful day.
• 1:27:23
  Of course. Thanks for coming.
• 1:27:24
  Bye everyone.