Latest / Badass Confidence Coach | Your Personal Trainer for Your Mind / 296. What 30 Years as a Therapist and Coach Taught Me That No Influencer Can Teach You

Transcript

296. What 30 Years as a Therapist and Coach Taught Me That No Influencer Can Teach You · Badass Confidence Coach | Your Personal Trainer for Your Mind

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are going to talk about what my 30 years as a therapist and as a coach has taught me that no influencer will tell you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this came about from a conversation that I had with a new-ish person in my practice who came in telling me the diagnoses of the people in their family, the mental health diagnoses.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is actually not uncommon for me in my office and a lot of therapists, therapists, we get this.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: People come and say, you know, my mom's a borderline, you know, or or my wife's, you know, my husband's a total narcissist.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: They have narcissistic personality disorder.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been hearing that for 20 years.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hearing it more now.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to talk about it on the podcast because you all know if you've listened to or watched the podcast before, I get a B in my bonnet about all of this because with social media today, people are diagnosing each other and pathologizing and weaponizing mental health diagnoses, DSM 5 diagnoses, all the time, all over the place, and really don't have the background or the knowledge or the skill, the credentials to do that.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to talk about today because I think it's a problem.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a problem what we're doing, you know, sort of with each other in our lives.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get into it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's validating when you finally have a name to what it is and how it is you've been feeling about yourself.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole and it's a wholly other thing, though, to hear something like on TikTok and think, oh, that's me.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have that.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of us are doing that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I hear it in my personal life.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: People say, I have ADHD because I saw a TikTok on it, or you know, you Anna, you said something, Anna, about attention deficit, you know, or what, and you know, they're like, I have that, I have that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, okay, you may have what I'm saying may resonate for you.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have the tendencies, maybe.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It may resonate a couple of the couple of clinical criteria that I just mentioned about ADHD, yeah, but you don't know that you have it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You have to get a proper diagnosis.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about it in more detail today.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you saying the influencers don't you're not you're not suggesting that they're gatekeeping information, you're suggesting that they don't have the education to deliver the actual diagnoses.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's your suggestion, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, exactly.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you know, I've been a therapist for 30 years.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of when I got my advanced my licensure, when I sat for my license, it was 1995, 1995, so 05, 15, 25, 31 years.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been coaching, like legit coaching for at least 10 years.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I brought that into my practice.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's when I switched my practice up.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You all, you may know the story about why I started coaching.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard me talk about it before because as being an athlete and being coached my whole life at sport, and I realized and I was very coach-like, and that's when I and I shared an office with other personal development executive coaches, and I started to talk with them and realize, okay, I really and they would say you actually are more like a coach than you are like a therapist in many ways, and how you talk and how you say you talk with your clients.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I started to get coaching myself, business coaching and coaching from a former therapist to move to sort of morph into bringing coaching into my practice.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so in the past 30 years, I've watched the self-help world completely transform.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were always books in the psychology section, Barnes and Noble, Member Borders bookstore.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was always a self-help section.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I really never went in there because even in high school, when I in my senior of high school, when I was taking psych, and certainly in college, you could never use those books when you were writing papers.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: You always had, you know, you have to have to cite your references and everything that you did.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't use psychology today.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't use a self-help book of how to move out of your shame.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like you couldn't use those books.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: They were not considered legitimate when it came to writing in in academics, academia, writing papers.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I never I knew they were there, but I never really went there.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the library and did research and looked at the studies and looked at the data, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that was always a thing.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But today we, and then what happened was over the past 15 years, blogs came in and blogging was the thing, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was the thing.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Writing and going to people's blogs and reading their blogs.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then it turned into podcasts.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think blogs, I actually hear that today blogs are coming back a little bit.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really the form of Substack.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I do like blogs.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think I love to write, I love to read, I love to write.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I do have an appreciation for it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: They went way down.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're coming back in in Substack form, a paid version.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: But podcasts have taken over really in the past, I'd say 10 years, 15 years ago.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: They started 10 years ago.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: People are really, you know, listening to a podcast and getting a lot out of it.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: To now it's somebody with a ring light telling a stranger that their mother's inability to make eye contact with them at dinner explains their entire adult life.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nice smile on your Tibbs.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like you have to you gotta pre the precursors, they have to have a ring light.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's right.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we went, that's the history though.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We went from vlogging to podcasts to now social media, and everybody's got a ring light, but you've got a mental health advocate or a mental health influencer or a or a parent coach on TikTok or on Instagram or whatever, maybe even like on Snap, telling you that that's the reason why.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's there's no nuance.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why, you know, and I have accepted it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I'm not very popular on social media because I mean, I'm on there.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on Instagram, I'm a TikTok.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to do.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Gen X, or this doesn't come naturally to me.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing it now for six years, and I've gotten used to it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm public speaker, so it's actually easier to for me than a ton of the therapists I coach because it's very, very, very hard for them.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're used to being in an office, we're used to being one-on-one with an individual or a couple or a family.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is all very brave new world for many people in the therapy and in the coaching space.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to do because it feels performative.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we are not performative people.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're quiet people, we're in the four walls of our offices helping people deal with the real shit and their lives.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And being behind a camera and a ring light feels really different.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I've told them you got to find a way.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You there is a happy medium here.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta find a way.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with all of my colleagues who've said this is hard.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me that there's new, but Anna, there's nuance to every situation.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make a blanket statement?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people on social media who are doing this, and there's millions of people who are dying for that information, wanting that information.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're just, they're just like starving for that for that information.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then they they get it, but be careful who you're getting it from, is what I say.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's hard for people in the clinical realm to do this on social media.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some are doing it and doing it very well.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of people who are on there who probably don't have all the credentials.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get into this in this episode today, who we are listening to, who you all are listening to.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I would caution you against that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, right, sitting at the dinner table and they are saying things like, that's why your mother's not making eye contact with you at dinner all the time.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're you're pathologizing that and you're you're giving this person a diagnosis.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're not close because she's always been that way.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But but you're not seeking out outside professional help.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're just listening to the people, not just well, yeah, you're listening to the people on social media who are telling you something that resonates for you.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one scenario.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a big miss, I think, because you're talking about like the therapy world, like those that have actually been educated, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your world and and the coaching world.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the coaching world and your gen X world, all wrapped into one, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's wrapped into one person.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you understand the necessity to get to know the person, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because that person's scenario, that person's the reason why they're coming to see you is very personal to them.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you can then talk about like the things that that person needs to work on, which are very private things most of the time, right?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: If not all of the time.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why it's hard for you to go out on a ring light microphone and say to the world, everybody, hey, you should, right?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not used to that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're used to office.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not clickbaity, and I've been told that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like Anna, you're not, you know, I've had AI's even told me, like, you're not new, you're too nuanced.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And social media doesn't like nuance.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, well, I'm not changing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll never be.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I never wanted to be like somebody who had millions of followers.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that will be a lot, and that's not my goal in life.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not my, I don't believe that that's my purpose.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Would I like to reach a larger audience?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I'm not changing who I am.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot be a clickbaity person.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can't throw out something in 30 seconds.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even in TikTok, you can talk for 10 minutes.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can on Instagram now.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do it a little bit more there.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not, I'm not real always exciting to listen to.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I accept that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I accept that I'm okay with it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but but don't you also feel it's a little irresponsible for somebody to grab a microphone and to give this broad, just this broad brush advice, like like you don't know how somebody's gonna receive that and what they're gonna do with it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's an irresponsible statement.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I want to say too, I mean, some of what is out there is genuinely good.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't follow many therapists and coaches.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I do follow some.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some is genuinely really, really good.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it, it's funny.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the things I think are really good are people putting up like static posts or like carousels of the five best things the therapist told them.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, you know what I mean?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like they really learn from their therapist.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wow, that therapist was wise and really told them some sage insights for them.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they put it on social media to share it with all of us.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are times I read and I see things.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, that's really good.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually like that therapy.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I will follow some.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most I don't, yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it is doing real, also measurable damage to people.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I have to to speak up about being a therapist and watching all this, you know, and a personal development coach.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And almost none of these influencers, they're not gonna tell you what I'm about to tell you because it's bad for their business.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: They know it.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they know it, but they're not gonna tell you what I'm gonna say right now, right?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here it is.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the most popular voices in this space, they're not lying to you exactly.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not really outright lying, they're doing something that's much more subtle.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're taking real clinical material and they're stripping out the part that makes it safe to use.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what just really bugs me, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then they're selling it at a scale that I could never touch.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us therapists could never touch.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's bothersome.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's their business model.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's I think I want to show you what that looks like, what it actually looks like.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want you all to see, you know, because not just as a feeling that I have within myself, but with the numbers behind it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I did some research on this before in getting ready for this episode.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with, you know, why this arbitrage even exists in what it is that we do, what I do clinically, and what a lot of maybe people who are sort of coaches do, or just everyday people are doing on social media.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: There is a genuine, well-documented shortage of licensed mental health providers in the United States.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's estimated.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me put my glasses on here because I want to read my research.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Estimates put the U.S.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: gap at somewhere around 160 million Americans are living in a mental health professional shortage area.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: 160 million Americans alone.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the United States.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Worldwide, only about 30% of people with a diagnosable mental health condition ever receive formal treatment.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that probably has, I didn't go into the details of why that is.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably access to treatment.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably living in rural communities, it's probably not having health insurance, especially in the United States, not having adequate health insurance, providers not accepting their HMO.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's insurance, all right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some people maybe not even realizing that they have a diagnosable mental health condition, not looking for treatment.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think many of them are also today for various reasons.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's coming first, the chicken or the egg, we don't know, but they're going to social media for looking for answers for their issues that are they're having in their life.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that gap didn't create the influencer wellness boom by accident, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is no accident.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: It created a vacuum, this shortage.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It created a vacuum, and content did what content always does.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: It rushes in to fill the gap, right?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when there aren't enough of us to go around, someone with a phone and a following becomes the next best thing, right?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem isn't that people are looking for answers online.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's really a kind of a normal thing to do.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is what they're finding what they get there.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be specific here because air quote misinformation can sound like a vague complaint, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're hearing that word misinformation all the time now.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't vague.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually for what we're talking about today, it's been measured.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So a study on the most popular ADHD content on TikTok found that fewer than half of the symptoms discussed in those videos actually matched the diagnostic criteria that we as clinicians use.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's scary.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's interesting.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: A separate review of autism content found that over 70% of the most popular videos were inaccurate or overgeneralized.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: See, this is why it drives us therapists crazy.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And a broader review, pulling together 27 separate studies, found TikTok had the highest misinformation rate of any platform they analyzed for mental health content.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So take that in for a minute.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the part that matters most to me as a clinician.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't just that the information is wrong, right?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's what wrong information does once somebody has absorbed it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers found that people are five to 11 times more likely to inaccurately, I'm sorry, inaccurately, right, and incorrectly self-diagnose than to correctly identify an actual mental illness using this kind of content.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I am reading this from what I wrote down.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: In one study in ADHD specifically, people who already suspected that they had it became more confident after watching the videos whether or not the content was accurate.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: The algorithm doesn't just reflect what you're worried about, it reinforces it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, the algorithm is always you're going to keep getting videos and it's going to reinforce like maybe you have two of the nine clinical criteria.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have to meet criteria for a diagnosis.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I read, I go over with my therapy clients, I go over the criteria.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, get out the DSM 5 book, and sometimes I'll pull it out in front of them and we'll do it together.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do it with my clients.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like so you, and many times you're like, Well, yeah, I have two of those.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have all nine.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have three of them.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of know, especially if I know them pretty well.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, I don't, maybe I don't.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't actually have a diagnosis of, let's say, ADHD.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have some of the symptoms.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we work with it in a different way.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that does inform the therapy that I'm doing with my client.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: But my client's like, huh, I guess I don't have ADHD.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: All these years I thought I did.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, many times what we're finding is, yeah, I do have ADHD.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when undiagnosed, I'm seeing a lot of adults who were diagnosing now who, when they were really, I mean, they had it when they were their whole life, and they should have been diagnosed at nine or 13 or something like that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some things.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But so, all that to say.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that is why this is such an important conversation.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: I mean, we are all intelligent people.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: All of you who are watching this and listening to this podcast, you're smart people.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're interested in mental health, obviously.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're interested in personal development, you're interested in things like confidence, obviously, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you're here.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to be clear this is not a knock on anyone who's found something helpful online.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have found, you have found, I found things really helpful online.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, so many of us have.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: The information, it isn't always wrong, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the caution that's missing, especially when it comes to social media.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the caution piece that, you know, okay, just tread lightly when you're watching this or reading this, tread lightly.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then go and maybe, you know, do some research.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's a PubMed.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Go to the Google Research.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole section in Google where you can find the research.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would say if you really are worried that you do have a mental health diagnosis, find a therapist.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can find therapists in your communities.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are community mental health agencies where there's a sliding fee scale.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even have to have insurance where you can pay.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've had clients, I've had family members have clients who've gone and they pay$10 a session.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they've had some really good therapists.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Many times you'll have those are a lot of the internships are for the master's level grad students.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're in Chicago.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got how many, four graduate schools?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And oh geez, we've got four graduate schools in social work alone.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've got, I think at least four masters in counseling, master and masters in counseling and psychology.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have so many here in Chicago in the suburbs for people who are looking for masters in counseling, spiritual counseling, counseling psychology, clinical social work.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And those people that they're going to community mental health agencies to do their internships.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, and you can find, I mean, I've had some amazing grad students as interns.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing about that is that usually after nine months, school year, you're done with them.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But many people, they only need seven or eight or nine months with a therapist.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are fantastic.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Many of them have come from second jobs, second careers.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're fantastic, you know, and they're learning and they're getting supervision.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting really good clinic, you're getting great clinical care because they're talking to their supervisor pretty much every week about their clinical cases, and you might be one of them.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know what I mean?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a thing I think that's missing is take the information, but then go somewhere with it, right?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, so clinical language is very satisfying, I think, to us, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it what it does is it gives us a name for something that used to just feel like chaos inside ourselves, like and it's attachment.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're how many of us are hearing that term today?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're how many people have read the book Attach, which is the newest and the latest book that's been in the zeitgeist, I'd say the past five, six years about attachment theory.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we learned about I learned about attachment theory in undergrad.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Attachment theory is it's been around for decades.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And but this book made it very popular again in the lay population with most of you.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we understand, you know, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment a little bit more.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: We read a book, or or that's even better, I think, than you watch somebody on social media talk about attachment, and you're like, oh, I'm I have anxious attachment, or that I have a trauma response.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is my trauma response.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is my trauma response, or you know, they're an emotionally immature parent.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we learn a lot about emotionally immature parents by watching TikTok and watching, and I am using TikTok a lot because that's where I do see a lot of this, and and a little bit on maybe Meta or which is Instagram and Facebook.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: But please don't leave it right there because one person was in the front seat of their car talking about their emotionally immature parent.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you're like, that's me, that's my story.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not your exact story, that's their story.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And are I don't know, are they a licensed mental health professional?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are they a uh like I don't know, a uh parenting coach for be careful, be careful of I I just really would caution people that all right, that might feel good inside of you because it resonated for you, but be careful that their story might not be completely your story.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, but here's the thing the moment that we have this term that someone else said, you're like, yes, yes, they understand me.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I'm going through, right?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: We you feel a sense of relief, like understanding, and that's real.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's real.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's like, oh gosh, I okay, feels good because I someone sees me, someone hears me.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: That person's going through has been going through, you know, and talking about something that I went through, and I just didn't have the words for it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I give you that that that is very real for you.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm questioning is what happens next, right?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that doesn't do anything with uh change, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's that's like some air.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is big time air quotes.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is like quadruple air quotes.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is like educated, getting educated on a topic.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, consider the source.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting some education in terms of a term or a scenario, but like the next step is on you.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: You still have to act on it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's what happens next.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, a real clinical process for me as a therapist doesn't stop at the label, right?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even, even because this comes up all the time with coaching clients, because my coaching clients know I'm there to coach them.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: They also know I'm a therapist, a mental health professional.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've said many times here on the podcast, they don't want therapy with me.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And because maybe they've been in therapy, they've worked on issues, they don't, they're like, I don't, I don't need that right now.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're also a coach.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know that that's why I came to you for you were recommended to me for you know performance coaching, confidence coaching, whatever it might be.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they know I'm a therapist.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll say, they'll talk about something like, oh, you know, so I think so-and-so is a total narcissist.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get into it a little bit.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say to them, I'm not sure about that, or help them through something that's moving more into the mental health realm.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I do do that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do do that.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of coaches do that a lot.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not, they're just not saying it.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I've told you all before here on the podcast.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: I there's a lot of coaches that I know.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, you know, that's like therapy late what you're doing there.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a little, you're getting into therapy.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of gray with some coaches.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are coaches who are executive coaches and they talk with, you know, maybe they're they're coaching a group, uh a group practice, a group law firm, a firm, or they're coaching, you know, they've been hired to this huge accounting firm and they coaching all these accountants.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and they're talking about, you know, like maybe profits and losses and they're coaching on that.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's coaching.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: But those, even those coaches will talk to me about how there's personality problems or there's mental health issues with accountants.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I and they they call me and say, Anna, can you come in and help out?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know how to deal with these people.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the people who are thinking are stand-up ethical coaches.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that is not my realm, but I know that's what you do.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, you know, come in and help out, and maybe you can coach them up on a few sessions or see a few of these individual people because there's mental health stuff and there's personality issues that I'm not trained.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: But many people, many coaches will will actually go there and try to delve into that.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you gotta step back.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your jam.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what you do.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they probably maybe some of them just kind of just brush over that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they do, right?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they they focus on other things, they kind of push this one off to the side.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll get back to it later, and then they never actually do.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens to him most of the time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's you're right.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: You really, I'm glad you said that.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you know, so the process doesn't stop at the label.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think the question is, does this actually apply to you specifically?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the nuance for you in your life, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So a spra a responsible answer to okay, do I have ADHD?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or was that drama in my life?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It used to take real time to arrive at.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it takes time.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we can just say like this.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have to get to know you.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can't always see ADHD in my office.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're coming in, and in that moment, maybe they're they are able to be.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I can tell, but sometimes I can't.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell the first five sessions.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: They come in, they can focus on me, they can focus on the questions I'm I'm asking, they can answer them.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they go off on a tangent, but a lot of people are storytellers, a lot of people are tangential.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that they're they have ADHD.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: They could sit in a chair for 45-50 minutes, they could stay on a Zoom with me.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that they have ADHD.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was trauma.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have to get into it.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have to, I need to understand and know you better.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I need to hear that story.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's listening.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's listening, is what you're saying.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Listening to versus an influencer never listens to anything.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: They can, right?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're producing content.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want everybody to understand.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so it takes time to arrive at an understanding of my client.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now it arrives in a 15-second hook, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the clickbait stuff.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because a hook that took months to earn honestly doesn't perform as well online as that one that sounds so definitive for you.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's going on, right?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the cost of skipping like the friction for more of these influencers, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and this is where it does actually cost people something.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I cannot tell you how many people I've sat across from over the past 26 years in my practice and listening to them coming in and they've already diagnosed themselves.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: What I get more is they've diagnosed their family, their di family members.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: What they're doing is they're using language that they picked up from content that was never built, never built with them specifically in mind.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is so, so common today.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're right.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, like, yeah, I mean you actually they're you're and when I get to know them and I hear the story, and we've had some sessions, actually, you're you're you're pretty spot on about that.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But often the label doesn't fit as cleanly as it did it seemed to online.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, what happens is we spent a lot of time under undoing a story that they've built up in their mind before they ever got to the actual work.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're coming in and they're doing the work with me.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I with them are undoing the story.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have people, what I'm getting a lot is narcissism.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting a lot of people saying that they know somebody's a borderline, and I'm getting a lot with trauma.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I want to do the TED talk on this, but I won't give you my title away because I don't want anybody to steal it because it's a never feeling title, my TED talk.
• 28:01
  unknown: Right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can do a TED talk on all of this, sure.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Which I won't bore you with a TED talk because that's not what this is about.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that that's well, TED Talks are not boring, but that's not what the podcast is about.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say that because I love TED Talks.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think that so I have a client, I had a client, this is many years ago, who came in to me telling me that he was married to a narcissist and that she has narcissistic personality disorder and spent the first two sessions telling me about the marriage and all the problems with her and why she was a complete narcissist, and that he really was thinking about ending the marriage.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think I'm done.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm done.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was after, so okay, everybody.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So sessions are 45 to 50 minutes after almost two hours of listening to him.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's all that took, of hearing his life story, his story, the marriage, you know, just wanting to share.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Really, he was very talkative, wanting to share with me all of what was ailing him, what was wrong with the marriage.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage had issues.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: The marriage there was a problem.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of stonewalling, a lot of just disrespect that was happening, a lot of silo treatment stonewalling.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is many, many years ago.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to, I can't remember all the details of this case.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I bring it up here because he kept talking about the narcissism.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I finally said to him, Yeah, I don't think we're looking at a narcissist.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You have no way of diagnosing your wife.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're not a therapist.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: This person, and I said, and I actually have to tell you, I don't think she has NPD.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think she has narcissistic personality disorder.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, I remember the look on his face kind of sat back on the couch, like sat back, like, oh, oh, okay.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you cannot diagnose your wife.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't diagnose her.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know her.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've never treated her, I don't know her.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: You've never met her.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've never met her.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to, I cannot sit here as an ethical person, ethical clinician, and tell you that yes, she has NPD.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hell no, I would never do that.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't do it either because you don't know.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are there issues in the marriage?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did I have some ideas of what was may have been going on with her?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Could she have been a narcissist?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she could have been.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: I really didn't think so.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've worked at people with NPD.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think so.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that this is a perimenopausal woman whose their marriage was really in a slump.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were really busy with running kids around.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think they'd lost each other.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there was a lot of anger coming out in her.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that at that time she was, I she was in a perimenopausal.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I said to him, you know, there's I think there could be some hormonal changes going on.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's complicated and it's layered for you in your marriage.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that you need to go to couples.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you need to have a talk with her.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think you guys need to talk.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: They were talking.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I forget.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was this is probably 15 years ago.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: But that stands out to me when I was thinking about cases and examples for today's episode.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was one.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had somebody who came to me more recently telling me that this person is a borderline.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you have, well, I get what you're, I get what you're saying, but they really knew nothing of borderline.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: People just think it's the anger and the rage and sort of their asshole personality that comes out because borderlines really kind of piss you off.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the stereotype of a borderline is their rage.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're ragers.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: They are, they rage.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what is it?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the other side of borderlines?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Also, are people who are very, very afraid of being abandoned.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: They have been abandoned, many of them.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this intense fear of abandonment.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And please don't leave me.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the borderline, they're on the border.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: The border, the border is abandonment and fear.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's this rage.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not anger, it's rage.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't just get mad.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: They get rageful.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they do it to the people, they do it to so many people in their lives.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why many times when borderlines come to me, they have no friends.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they've cut off all their, they've cut off all their friends, and they don't have many family members who really want to be around them anymore.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because what is outward is a lot of that anger.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say it's more rage.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the other side is a very, very sad, depressed individual who has lost people in their life.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand it.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they keep continuing the cycle because of their difficult personality.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're always getting abandoned.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: So so they're like their own worst enemy.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's a little clinical moment there for all of you.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I did it very quickly about borderline personality.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: They are difficult individuals.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And borderlines are the type of people who need to be in treatment for years.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: They need to, in many ways, they need to redo the relationship with their mother.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes that happens with the therapist.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: They are hard clients.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're a hard clientele.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had a senior, senior, she's a national speaker now on trauma, tell me she was she's from the Chicagoland area.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: She had a very successful practice here.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember hearing her speak when I was 25 years old.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: She was a keynote at a mental health conference.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then she and I, many, many, many years later, probably two decades later, worked on a case together.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this before on the podcast.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she saw a lot of borderline personalities.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to me, You know, you're, you know, and because she was seeing, I was seeing the wife, she was seeing the husband.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to me, which she probably shouldn't have done, because she'd she'd seen my client, the wife, a couple of times as a and and did a couple, like two or three couple sessions with them because she wanted to get to know the wife, although she wasn't the couple's therapist, but we'll often do that.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll pull in the couple to meet the other, this, the partner, the spouse.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: But her client was the husband.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: My client was the wife.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to me, You know, she's a borderline, you know she's a borderline.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, all right, you don't really know her.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, you don't really know her, which kind of brought my respect level for her down a little a notch because I'm like, you don't know her, you know the husband.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're listening.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: She had a good cli.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: She's probably listening to his well, yeah.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she did have a good clinical radar.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: She did.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: She did a really good clinical radar, and it really wasn't for her to tell me that my client was a borderline.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I actually don't know.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think she might be, it was early on in my relationship with her, but I don't know that she's a borderline.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, the point of that conversation, she said to me, she said to me is Anna, you know, you can't see more than two people like this at one at once in your practice.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I remember remember I told you this.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I told you this about her because she's a very well-known, I don't want to say her name, very well-known speaker therapist in the United States, in North America.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, you know, you can't have more than more than two borderlines in your practice.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna burn out.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna burn out.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because she knew how hard this client was based on what her husband was saying.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she was right, it's true.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very difficult client.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was burning out because I had several borderline personality disordered clients in my practice.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just really very difficult personalities clinically to work with.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're human beings, they're God's children, they're they're people too.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And but it can be very difficult because they're they can be, they can be very demanding.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not all, not all.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Most can be very demanding and they're and they're they're hard.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people with borderline personality do need to be, they need to learn dialectical behavioral therapy.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a therapy of choice for people with borderline personality, and they need to be in a group DBT.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be in a DBT support group.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a whole other thing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could, I could, could do uh a clinical session on that for the podcast if y'all wanted me to, because I know a lot about this and did it for many years.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you need support around seeing borderline personalities.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So all that to say that many, many of the people that I see in my practice, and many of the people that even people in my personal life will talk about, they are borderline.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say, Yeah, you don't, you don't know.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know that they're borderline.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, like, well, what is it?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just last week someone said to me, Well, what does it mean exactly?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: What exactly is a borderline?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I explained to her, like, this is what she's like, oh, I didn't know that part.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, of course you did.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're, you're, you know, you're in sales.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, of course you didn't know that.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you know that?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why would but why, yeah, why would you know that?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but I caution you to be labeling people.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I caution all of you who are listening and watching to be careful of what you're watching on social media.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, you have somebody who's like, I've been in therapy for years, my mother's a borderline.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: And because the symptoms of what she's saying about her mother are similar symptoms or criteria to your mom, it doesn't mean your mom's a borderline.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's really important.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So those two clients you started off with, they used the stories you started off with.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever meet the other person?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did therapy ever go to the point where you had to have that second person come in?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like I met the husband once.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: He came into my to my office to meet with, because the wife is my uh client.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I met him once, and what did I think?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thought he was a narcissist.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, think I actually do think that he had he was narcissistic, he had narcissistic features, yeah, which is a really important di differential for everybody.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like we will see people, and I've said to I say people to people in my personal life all the time, yeah, there there could be some narcissistic features, there could be some borderline features.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't know that they have a diagnosis.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, NPD, narcissistic personality disorder is like two percent of the the the population in North America.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Two percent.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Most people don't have that.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a small number.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Many people are narcissistic, but remember, narcissists, narcissists have no empathy.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who that's a telltale sign that people are not talking about.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my husband, my ex-husband's a narcissist.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're weaponizing a term is a narcissist, like, oh my god, he's a devil.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us have narcissistic features.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Many, many, many of us are narcissistic at times in our lives.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us go through seasons where we're all about ourselves, we're all about our image.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've had a glow up, maybe we've lost weight, maybe we got Botox, maybe we finally are doing well in our job and we think we are the shit.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Many, maybe, maybe we discovered running.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: We see this in triathlon.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: You discovered running or you discovered triathlon and you're 35 and you've like uh married with kids and going to your job every day, and all of a sudden you have this new group of people.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, you've lost weight, you look great in your bike kit, and you came as second in your age group.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we have watched people become narcissistic.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're a late bloomer and you're celebrating it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, and it's a midlife crisis, and that's okay.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: But then they come out of it.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've been around them for years, and then they come out of it.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, the the novelty has worn off, and they're not so narcissistic anymore.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: They've come back to earth and they're like their normal self again.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have seasons of that.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen women who've gone through glow-ups, and you're like, oh, guys, she's feeling herself.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: She's a narcissist.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, she's got she's just feeling herself.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is she all about how she looks?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is it narcissistic?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Will she stay that way?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just narcissists have no empathy for other people, they don't have it.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they're missing the gene.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be a whole different person, is what you're describing.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's way different.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: So be right.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's all this to say.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: So did I so I did think he was narcissistic, but I didn't know him.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really know him.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Which would explain why the wife said to you what she said, right?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like that was her interpretation as well.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Her no, no, no.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: That she did not tell me he was narcissistic.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was the other case of the husband who came in and told his wife's a narcissist.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's funny.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: I never met her.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: I saw him and I only saw him for a handful of sessions.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think that after I told him, it was actually a great sense of relief.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: After I told him, Yeah, I probably saw him for two or maybe two times after that.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see him for very much.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: He I said, I don't think she's a narcissist.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot more going on here.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think you need couples therapy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think you need you need to do because I he loved her and they had a great life.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: They had a really nice life, but they lost each other.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I think you need to go to couples therapy, and I think you need to have a conversation with her.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't, he said, okay.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was a great client.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I and it was he, I know he had the utmost respect for me.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I he he came to me from other people who knew me in the North Shore, and he really listened to what I said to him.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, All right, all right.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I never saw him again.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: I told him to go to couples therapy.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: You think it worked out?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I do think he was like, okay, heard, heard sure therapist, heard clinician.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not sure that she's a narcissist.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was very helpful for him.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the other case where I was seeing the the client, the the wife, and and this other therapist was seeing the husband.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: I did think he was narcissistic based on actually what the therapist told me, but I I didn't know.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, we never really talked about that.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: We actually talked about her.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And her her, she was actually a little bit of a mix of the she she had character logical features of character logical.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: We call it character logical features.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's access to their access to diagnoses or characterological features.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: She was a borderline.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: She was very, very hard client.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, so that's that.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And a little bit of narcissism in there too.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what happens, and you see people for long periods of time, you get to really know them, and you start to okay.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's why this takes time.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would never tell you in the first five sessions if somebody was somebody was right.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's the point of what we're saying.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: We call it a working diagnosis, and that's why therapy is so important and to not put all your eggs in the basket of social media, okay?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get information from social media, it's that information's not evil.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's evil.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I it's it's it's the skipping of the friction, and that's what I'm talking about right now is the friction, right?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: The the part where someone who actually knows your specific situation checks whether this applies to you.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I do as a therapist and in a coach for people.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I it lets people build this very confident, very tidy narrative that might not be true about the people in their life and about themselves.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, that might not be true about you, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it and see it more with people coming in and telling me that so-and-so in my life is this way.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just gave you that example.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and once you've named something, and this is what was hard for him.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've named something, it's sort of cemented in your brain, it's hard to go back and reconsider that maybe that's not true.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what that client was able to do.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was able to reconsider, okay, yeah, I have known her since we were 22 years old, and now we're 48.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe it's not true about her.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she isn't a season, maybe she is going through perimenopause.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Perimenopause, what that does to women, it can turn you into like a raving bitch.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's totally hormonally based because estrogen levels have just fallen off a cliff, which affect you give you brain fog, get all the things.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what he was able to reconsider.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of people aren't able to do that.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not telling you to stop watching this kind of content on social media.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not telling you to stop watching your favorite influencer.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it is genuinely really, really good, you know, basically an on ramp.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it's an on ramp for you, right?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: It gets people thinking about their patterns who maybe.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Never never would have done that otherwise.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's what it's doing for you, wonderful, great.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to hold it differently.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear a label, narcissist, trauma, trauma response, anxious attachment, ADHD, whatever it is, ask yourself Did I arrive at this because someone who actually knows my situation helped me get here?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it because a video used a word, a video that I saw on TikTok used a word that felt like it explained everything for me in my life all at once in under a minute?
• 44:39
  unknown: Okay.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: In under a minute.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or in five minutes, right?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Those are not the same processes, even when they produce the exact same sentence.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very important.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to go viral, right?
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have an idea for you.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know how I can go viral?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do a TikTok about mental health or personal development in my bikini.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's how I'll go viral.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I ain't gonna do that.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't, I wasn't actually thinking that, but that's what I've thought.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do I have to do here to go viral?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are times I'm like, what is it that's I'm like putting out because my former social media person was like, yeah, and she's like, you're too nuanced.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, you gotta.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I've said, did I say this to you?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said it to you this week.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was like, did I say it on the podcast?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did say this to you.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to carry my phone around with me.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie in my bed.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna, I just I don't have it in me.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just I'm not 32 years old starting out as a therapist anymore because there's this one young male therapist.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: He actually is really funny.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy watching him.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he says he has really good content.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what I'm saying, they're not all like, I'm not anti-like social media, not anti, you know, therapists and life coaches.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you have to have the clinical expertise.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really never gonna not stand behind that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have the clinical expertise.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: This guy does, yeah.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's young, he's been a therapist, I think not even maybe five years.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's good and he's funny as shit.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: I watch him like, oh my gosh, but I'm 57.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing that, you know.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some really, really good people out there.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just please vet them.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take time.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's all good.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what you want to you want to nudge the industry, you want to nudge the influencer industry and make a point.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's really what you should do.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think you need to have a side-by-side video where you're portraying yourself in like as a therapist, as a coach on one side, it's professional, you'll come up with the words, you'll figure out, and then on the opposite side, so you'll hit play, this will go for a second, and then the opposite side will be an influencer giving some wild advice, dressed in some crazy clothes in a goofy.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: I you would do a lot of work, and you will go viral with that.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what that guy is doing.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know, Tim, but I don't know if I want to do that because I have my practice.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm busy.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm busy.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just see you've got easy to take the time and do that.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you will make a point that will be well received.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's performative, it's very performative, and I have a hard time with being and I, y'all.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know if you know, I mean, I went through second city, you know, I do stand-up, you know.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna continue have to get back.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten let a go a little bit, but I'm gonna back, get back into stand-up to open mic nights.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those are in the evening and those are late at night, and I'm an early to bed person now.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna do it.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love stand-up, I love all of it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love comedy, I love improv, you know, love second city, miss everybody down there.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's performative.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's performing.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: I do like to perform.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it has to feel natural, it has to feel authentic to me.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes doing that on Instagram or TikTok feels performative.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: It feels fake, and I can't, I have I don't have a fake bone on my body, and you know that.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a fake bone on my body, and I'm not gonna be like some people we know who are very performative.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna be like that.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: We know people who are who've gone viral, who are very big influencers here in the Chicagoland area, who are and we know how they are.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm just turned off because we know how they are in their real life, yeah, and they're not the real deal.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just yeah, I know you, yeah.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to go, I don't maybe I don't want to go viral.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, but I think this is this is not who cares about the viral part of it.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: This one is actually making a statement of but of why therapy and coaching is so much different than an influencer's message on social media.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point of this, yeah, right?
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's the nudge that you need to give the world.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, here, this is actually fake.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually something you should consider going into, right?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the point of it.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And those of us that know you, that live with you every day, like that are in your bubble, like we know you can pull it off.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, you all don't, you you don't, yeah.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you guys know parts of me and pieces of me come out in here, but like my two best friends are like, that's why I went to Second City.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, You missed your calling.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you should have been on SNL.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you missed your calling.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And most people in my life, my friends, family members will tell me, you know, my daughter just told me from my ex's family, my ex-husband's family.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: She was with her aunt recently, and and we were at a uh a graduation for my our eldest daughter.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we were together, and she saw my other daughter, and Marissa said, Aunt so-and-so was like, Your mom, I haven't been around her for years, like your mama's so funny, like she's funny as shit.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I'll I'll pat myself on the back.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, really, it's funny she said that because we were just at a dinner reception, we were yakking it up, and you know, we were you were there, we're all whatever, we're just talking.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: But she's like, You were there, you saw it.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but she was like, Your mom is so funny, and yeah, and I think Marissa sometimes forgets.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, but they laugh at me all the time.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, we're but we're all love comedy and humor in this family, and we all laugh at things, we all think things are funny, yeah.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, I have had people, my former business coach, my former social media people like, you have a side of you that's so freaking funny that you don't show.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm nervous, I think I'm nervous.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm nervous to do it.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm nervous to do it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can get up on a stage at Second City, I can get up on a any an open mic night stage at a comedy house and do it.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason with social media, I'm nervous to do it.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what that's about for me, but I am nervous to do it.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because I'm alone in my office or I'm alone in my car, and I think it feels maybe it feels inauthentic.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what that's about.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll have to unpack that a little bit.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you should see somebody about the fact that you're you're not funny on social media.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right, here we go.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Ready?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Little improv moment.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Give us give us that little Harry Carrie interpretation.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: You got the glasses.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: Look right into the camera.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: You go right in the camera.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hey! Look at me.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, do you know why my friends call me?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, I can't do it.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: The moon's made a chill.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why my friends call me whiskers?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm curious as a cat.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, I can't.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not very good.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Will Farrell when he's when he does that cure, he does Harry Carey, he used to be our announcer for the Chicago Cubs.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Very funny, very huge glasses.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he said crazy things.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was a WGN Chicago Cubs announcer for many, many years.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: People knew him across the country, not just in Chicago.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he used to say, Hey, guess what?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I so I do do those things that people who know me think it's very funny.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is, anyways, that's that, everybody.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna go on and on.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll try to show up more on the podcast here with all of you as my other side of myself and bring some humor in because I think that that's important.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody said to me, Do you want to be an entertainment podcast or do you want to be more of an educational podcast?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, it's mental health, personal development, which is more educational.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's mental health and wellness, but we could certainly bring in some humor.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think humor is the spice of life.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think humor is where it's at.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think you gotta have humor.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have a sense of humor in all that we're going through because a lot of what we talk about is very serious, you know, serious things.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're able to laugh at life and laugh at ourselves.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where would we be?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I I find humor.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: I laugh with my, I can't tell you every week I laugh with my therapy and coaching clients.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every week we laugh about things.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And thank God.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not every client, not every time, but every week there's laughter in my office and on online with my clients.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'll there's something we'll we'll like be yucking it up about, sure.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which I love.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: So here are some just final thoughts about this episode today.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Over for 30 years, here's what I believe that good clinical work in therapy is slow on purpose.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: That friction isn't the system failing you, it's a system protecting you from someone being confidently wrong about your life at a scale that reaches millions of people before anyone checks whether it's true or not.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: So remember everyone, these influencers, they're going through a they're going by a business model.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: So take what they say.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it may resonate for you.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to the resonance inside of yourself, but go somewhere with it.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the next time something online gives you a tidy label for a messy part of your life, don't just throw that out.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just ask yourself what it costs to arrive at and whether anyone actually checked if it fits you before they said it out loud to a million strangers at once.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: So check yourself, I'd say.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: Check yourself.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Does it fit you?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that one part fits you, but then go somewhere with it.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: See a therapist.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Get a good coach.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you, you know, get a good personal development coach, get a good life coach, get a good maybe parenting coach or divorce coach to help you through.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've got some deeper stuff, that's a psychotherapist.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's a therapist.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: Coaches are not trained in that.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: So as always, please rate and review the podcast.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Makes all the difference to the world.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you if this is of any value to you and if you're still here listening, please scroll down, click the five, smash on that five star button and take a minute, please, to write one or two sentences.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: It makes all the difference in the world.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, if you're in Illinois and you want therapy, reach out to me.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can see you and you're in the state of Illinois and coaching.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can coach you no matter where you are in the world.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, everybody.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mad love.