Latest / Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development Podcast by Daryl Chow, Ph.D. / Native Wisdom. Frontiers Friday #205 ⭕️

Transcript

Native Wisdom. Frontiers Friday #205 ⭕️ · Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development Podcast by Daryl Chow, Ph.D.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this new episode of Frontiers Radio,
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  SPEAKER_00: brought to you by Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development.
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  SPEAKER_00: And today I'll be reading the Substack polls on native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: Native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: By definition, wisdom is specific, local and indigenous.
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  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, wisdom is native.
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  SPEAKER_00: And everyone has native skills.
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  SPEAKER_00: Native skills are located in our prior knowledge,
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  SPEAKER_00: experiences and relational encounters,
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  SPEAKER_00: often embedded in our high points and low points and turning points.
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  SPEAKER_00: As I've mentioned elsewhere, educational psychologist David Oshbel said,
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  SPEAKER_00: If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead of indoctrinating other people's theories of human development as the first
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  SPEAKER_00: port of call,
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  SPEAKER_00: why not start with unearthing our own localized theories about how growth and
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  SPEAKER_00: healing takes place based on our personal experiences?
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  SPEAKER_00: No matter how well-intentioned,
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  SPEAKER_00: when we begin by swallowing other people's views and approaches,
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  SPEAKER_00: we inadvertently end up mimicking their beliefs and we become somewhat lazy in
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  SPEAKER_00: trying to think for ourselves or further shape and mold our own thoughts,
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  SPEAKER_00: informed by our prior knowledge.
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  SPEAKER_00: This speaks not only on how we are trained as psychotherapists,
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  SPEAKER_00: but also how we attempt to help our clients.
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  SPEAKER_00: Native skills can ferment into native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our education,
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  SPEAKER_00: training and development activities can do well to recognize that unlike
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  SPEAKER_00: specialized fields like being a surgeon or a rocket scientist,
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  SPEAKER_00: the craft of psychotherapy does not belong to a specialized field of knowledge.
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  SPEAKER_00: The art of conversation is inherent as to our humanity.
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  SPEAKER_00: but to be a good conversationalist,
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  SPEAKER_00: and in our case,
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  SPEAKER_00: for a specific intent of promoting healing and development,
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  SPEAKER_00: needs to be honed in.
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  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we must be faithful to the gifts of our nature.
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  SPEAKER_00: A colleague of mine is extremely witty without even trying,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he would do well to incorporate his PC's speech when it serves to climb at the
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  SPEAKER_00: right moment into his therapeutic work.
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  SPEAKER_00: Another therapist I know has this ability to draw out a visual map in a matter of
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  SPEAKER_00: seconds to have make an abstract idea become concrete.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why not use this in therapy?
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  SPEAKER_00: Her third therapist I know,
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  SPEAKER_00: even without all the doctoral degrees and alphabet soup after her name,
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  SPEAKER_00: has the ability to melt your heart and make you want to open up your deepest,
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  SPEAKER_00: darkest secrets to her in the first five minutes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Finally,
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  SPEAKER_00: her fourth therapist I met at a workshop was visibly a metal-head,
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  SPEAKER_00: non-conformist type of personality.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead of lining up his clients to be baptized by the CBT manual,
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  SPEAKER_00: he would do well,
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  SPEAKER_00: when needed,
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  SPEAKER_00: to help shine a light with his clients on aspects that are left unchallenged,
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  SPEAKER_00: opening up possibilities of different ways of being that may help clients not be
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  SPEAKER_00: captured by the middle bump of the bell curve.
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  SPEAKER_00: I would argue that many gifts are honed outside of your education in psychotherapy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not convinced?
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  SPEAKER_00: In one prospective study, the researchers found that a trainee's interpersonal abilities influenced
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  SPEAKER_00: However,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was their ability measured prior to receiving any training that predicted actual
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  SPEAKER_00: client outcomes.
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  SPEAKER_00: The two years of doctoral training had no significant effect.
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  SPEAKER_00: I talked about three other studies regarding a similar point on the lack of training effects.
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  SPEAKER_00: and the pressing issues faced in our educational and training programs.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could see the following piece.
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  SPEAKER_00: On front is Friday, number 149.
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  SPEAKER_00: Become a guiding light as a clinical supervisor.
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  SPEAKER_00: So why not bring what you already have into the service of your client?
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  SPEAKER_00: When I first started off in a systemic family therapy class,
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  SPEAKER_00: the facilitator asked about what I spent my time obsessing with outside of the
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  SPEAKER_00: professional field.
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  SPEAKER_00: I said music.
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  SPEAKER_00: I played in a band and loved everything about music.
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  SPEAKER_00: She listened intently to my meanderings on music for a bit.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then she asked me the following question.
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  SPEAKER_00: How do you incorporate what you know about music into therapy?
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  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to describe to you the impact of that deceptively simple question.
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  SPEAKER_00: My head was on fire.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure why up until that point, I had not considered cross-pollination.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some 20 years later, music remains as one of my root metaphors.
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  SPEAKER_00: As an example, you could see the essay, The Music of Psychotherapy, Learning in a Wicked Environment.
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  SPEAKER_00: How to invite your native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: Consider the following sentence.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I am at my best, I am like a
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  SPEAKER_00: Resist the temptation to censor yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: See what metaphors arise from your unconscious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's mine.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I'm at my best,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm like a complimentary musician in a band making what you already have,
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  SPEAKER_00: trying to make the song just a little bit better.
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  SPEAKER_00: What's yours?
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  SPEAKER_00: Tapping into each therapist's native wisdom is a form of alchemy that is required in our field.
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  SPEAKER_00: I say we begin with that and join the dots to various theoretical frameworks that
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  SPEAKER_00: we learn in therapy school after the fact.
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  SPEAKER_00: We build on what we have, like Legos.
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  SPEAKER_00: The second way to tap into your own native wisdom
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  SPEAKER_00: is explicate your own guiding principles.
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  SPEAKER_00: As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ralph Waldorf Emerson, essayist and poet.
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  SPEAKER_00: Your first principles are not your theories.
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  SPEAKER_00: First principles are foundational axioms or basic building blocks that can't be broken down further.
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  SPEAKER_00: While theories are frameworks or explanations developed to understand phenomena
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  SPEAKER_00: based on an available data and observations.
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  SPEAKER_00: First principles serve as starting points for reasoning,
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  SPEAKER_00: whereas theories are built upon these principles and other observations to explain
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  SPEAKER_00: more complex ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you start with your principles and you explain with theories after the fact.
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  SPEAKER_00: This distinction makes first principles more fundamental and universally applicable.
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  SPEAKER_00: While your theories can evolve and be modified over time,
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  SPEAKER_00: still your principles can also sharpen over time.
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  SPEAKER_00: So here's an exercise.
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  SPEAKER_00: Take a piece of paper,
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  SPEAKER_00: put a 15-minute timer,
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  SPEAKER_00: and list down what you consider your own guiding principles.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you might be stumped.
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  SPEAKER_00: Press on.
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  SPEAKER_00: Review your case notes to jolt you a little if it helps.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once the timer is up, stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep that piece of paper or the digital note.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sleep on it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Make a promise to yourself to come back to it in a week's time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Put it in your calendar so that you'll be able to be reminded.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are my principles.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't like them, well, I have others.
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  SPEAKER_00: Comedian Grosho Marx
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  SPEAKER_00: What's one of my first principles?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm trashing out a small book on this topic at the sidelines,
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  SPEAKER_00: so tell me at the comments in the sub stack post below if you are interested in
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  SPEAKER_00: such a thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: As you would imagine after reading this piece, one of them is a belief in each person's native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you've read the book about the first sessions called The First Kiss,
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  SPEAKER_00: you would have picked up another one that guides me in clinical practice.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is the dual of follow the pain,
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  SPEAKER_00: and follow the spark.
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  SPEAKER_00: For more on the topic of first principles,
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  SPEAKER_00: you can go to this Substack post and click on the relevant links below.
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  SPEAKER_00: This brings us to another parallel aspect of native wisdom, our client's native wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know most of you would say that I already do that, tap into our client's strengths, et cetera.
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  SPEAKER_00: But listen very carefully to the metaphors that you use in your therapy conversation.
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  SPEAKER_00: As we try to help our clients,
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  SPEAKER_00: is our first port of call one of their native wisdom or one coming from your theories?
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  SPEAKER_00: We might not mean to,
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  SPEAKER_00: but if we fail to build on what our clients already have,
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  SPEAKER_00: the unintended consequence is that we colonize them with our best intentions,
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  SPEAKER_00: rendering them having difficulties hearing themselves clearly.
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  SPEAKER_00: We hear ourselves best when someone listens to us into speech.
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  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't exactly show up as a problem at first because it might even make sense
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  SPEAKER_00: for that particular client.
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  SPEAKER_00: However,
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  SPEAKER_00: I would argue that we are not therapy missionaries getting our clients on board
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  SPEAKER_00: with the schema therapy framework,
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  SPEAKER_00: mindfulness-based,
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  SPEAKER_00: trauma-informed bandwagon.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are more like gardeners.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are there to nurture what is already in their nature.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are to nurture their nature, not impose on them.
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  SPEAKER_00: You see this imposition on ways of thinking proliferating on social media platforms,
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  SPEAKER_00: amping the ever-increasing medicalized ways of thinking about mental health concerns,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially about ADHD,
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  SPEAKER_00: ASD,
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  SPEAKER_00: etc.,
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  SPEAKER_00: I like the argument that I've heard several autistic people make that they prefer
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  SPEAKER_00: to be called autistic individuals and not individuals with autism.
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  SPEAKER_00: The latter suggests that this is part of who they are,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the former implies like they are dealing with a dysfunction,
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  SPEAKER_00: i.e.
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  SPEAKER_00: something wrong with them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Influenced by my training in narrative therapy,
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  SPEAKER_00: I used to think that this wasn't a good way to think about it,
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  SPEAKER_00: as I would rather say a person with autism.
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  SPEAKER_00: However, framing it as part of one's personality allows one to see it not as a flaw, but a trait.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone wise once said, it is not a measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our role is to help others align with their souls so that they have a fighting
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  SPEAKER_00: chance to come fully alive in this one life that we have.
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  SPEAKER_00: This leaves us with another issue.
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  SPEAKER_00: A therapist brought this up to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: I attended the training and I was asked to explain what therapy model I was using,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I wasn't exactly thinking of a specific modality during the session.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was just doing what I know best at that given moment with that particular client.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I bet my money that the giants in our field,
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  SPEAKER_00: like Aaron Beck,
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  SPEAKER_00: Kyle Rogers,
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  SPEAKER_00: Milton Erickson,
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  SPEAKER_00: Virginia Satie,
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  SPEAKER_00: develop their theories retrospectively.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's wrong to be able to say from the outset that I'm doing
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  SPEAKER_00: emotion-focused work or psychodynamic interpretation,
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  SPEAKER_00: etc.
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  SPEAKER_00: I just think that there is another way to be with our clients in a more integral,
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  SPEAKER_00: creative,
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  SPEAKER_00: and grounded way of being that is informed by who we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: When two minds meet, as equals, exchanging and improvising ideas that catalyzes growth.
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  SPEAKER_00: A therapist is not a bot dispensing manualized treatments to each person that walks into our office.
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  SPEAKER_00: AIs can do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: If generative AI is a threat to our jobs,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe it's time to think if it's because we're behaving more and more like
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  SPEAKER_00: homogenous robots.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can see a related post called Can Chat GPT Replace Psychotherapy?
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  SPEAKER_00: The antidote for our sanity and soul is to gravitate towards the dialogical
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  SPEAKER_00: discoveries that occurs when two people or more truly meet each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: from the emergence of logos to dialogos.
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  SPEAKER_00: We stand a fighting chance to tap into our client's native wisdom if we do the same for ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: From the experience of true conversation,
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  SPEAKER_00: connection,
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  SPEAKER_00: improvisation,
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  SPEAKER_00: creative energy and love,
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  SPEAKER_00: then we will discover fire for the second time in history.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Frontiers of Psychotherapy's development, Frontiers Radio on this podcast.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can stay tuned to more episodes coming up.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, you could go through back catalog if you have missed them before.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: More topics on psychotherapy to come,
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  SPEAKER_00: some of them Q&A,
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  SPEAKER_00: some of them related to deliberate practice,
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  SPEAKER_00: all in service of your growth so that your clients reap the benefits.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have yet to join us in the frontiers of psychotherapist development,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: you could go to our Substack,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is darylchow.substack.com.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's d-a-r-y-l-c-h-o-w dot s-u-b-s-t-a-c-k dot com.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you get the weekly Frontiers Friday where we deliver new ideas and
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: what's on the cutting edge every Friday.
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  SPEAKER_00: We hope you join us there.