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E5 | The Story That Needs to Be Heard with Sophie Trudeau · The Andrew Mychal Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A quick note before we begin, the Andrew Michael Podcast is a space for people to share their personal stories and lived experiences.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, therapist, licensed health professional, or coach, and nothing shared here should be considered medical, mental health, or professional advice.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some content may not be appropriate for children.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's what's called a third wave therapy.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it blends a lot of the traditional change-focused components of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and it pulls in a lot of focus on mindfulness and acceptance.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that really is what makes it third wave.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just about change, it's also about accepting that there are painful components of all of our lives that we can't change.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that sometimes what's needed in those moments is to accept those things.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we find the relief from our suffering.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: We all have stories that shape who we became.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some we understand, some we still carry, and some we don't even recognize until another person helps us see them differently.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael, and this is the Andrew Michael Podcast.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Honest conversations about the experiences that shape us, the patterns we carry, and what becomes possible when we finally understand what's been driving us.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes hearing someone else's story is exactly what we need to better understand our own.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get started.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Three years ago, I was referred by a doctor to a program called DBT.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was a teacher there that showed me that my behavior and my patterns may not be as normal as I thought.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's because of this teacher, I'm now Andrew 2.0, somebody who's okay with being vulnerable and connecting with their emotions.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so honored that that teacher is here with us today, and her name is Sophie.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sophie, welcome to the show.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: For people who may not be familiar, can you speak a little bit about what is DBT and what's the acronym mean?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and it is a treatment that was created by Dr.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Marsha Lenahan.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the focus of the therapy is really to support people in learning new skills so that they can manage their emotions primarily, and also the challenging situations that they find themselves in differently than how they might have been doing up until the point that they enter treatment is what's called a third wave therapy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it blends a lot of the traditional change-focused components of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and it pulls in a lot of focus on mindfulness and acceptance.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so that really is what makes it third wave.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just about change, it's also about accepting that there are painful components of all of our lives that we can't change.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that sometimes what's needed in those moments is to accept those things.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we find the relief from our suffering.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you were explaining that I was thinking about my own life of not really wanting to acknowledge those emotions.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: For me, a lot of times I was always blaming other people.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was very hard to take a moment and kind of reflect.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what DBT felt like to me.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was like shining a mirror, looking in the mirror of your life, going back to your childhood and now even your adulthood.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: How did you come to find DBT?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And how long have you been, I'm going to say, teaching it?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: When I was living in Canada, I was working in an outpatient substance abuse recovery program.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And DBT has been demonstrated over the years to be a gold standard treatment for many different areas.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: It really started as a, you know, focus for people with personality difficulties and extreme emotion dysregulation.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yet over the years, it's also been shown to be very helpful for people who struggle with different kinds of addiction.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was my first exposure to DBT, was teaching it in skills in a skills group then.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I moved to South Florida, I really wanted to become fully immersed in comprehensive DBT.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I ended up working at the practice that I'm currently at.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have to be a therapist or how do you get certified to teach DBT?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You must be a master's level therapist or above.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to go through a foundational or an intensive DBT training, which is offered by the more business component or the business side of the organization that Dr.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Linehan created.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you go through a formal training process with them a six-month supervision.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And all of the things that we ask our clients to do in DBT, therapists who are training to become DBT therapists must also do.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So diary cards, skills training, homework, so that it's really an opportunity to recognize if I'm going to ask someone to do this, then I need to know that I've put myself through that same process too.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know that, but it makes me feel better that you have gone through the program to really understand how hard it is.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of men specifically are scared to go to therapist.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We think that they won't understand us, especially women.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I have talked to a lot of my guy friends and they're like, why do you like women therapists over men?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Both are fine, but for me, um, I've always been able to connect more with the femininity and the loving and nurturing part of working with a woman therapist.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me as a man to kind of be vulnerable and express those emotions.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at your classes, are they normally what's the blend of males to females in a traditional cohort or work group?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, there are more women in the skills group than men.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm thinking back to when you were in the group, I believe that you were the token male in the group at the time.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you brought such a wonderful energy to the group, uh, and really were a very special presence.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: That being said, right now in my skills group, it is the complete opposite.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are seven men in the group, and there's only one woman.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that is atypical, I would say.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, we're noticing across our different practices that there are more men entering DBT than ever before.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're very excited and encouraged by that.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is there, are you guys advertising different?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that there's just more information?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in a three-year shift, I mean, that's uh what 360 degrees?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, from women to men to men to women?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing anything differently.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're not targeting different kinds of audiences.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't changed anything from a marketing strategy.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: My hope is that the stigma around men being vulnerable and men seeking therapy and men um having permission to talk about their emotions is going down.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's my hope.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's my hope too.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as I was researching, getting ready for this conversation, I didn't realize that one out of five men struggle with anxiety and depression, and that 80% of the suicides in this in the United States are by men.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for D for DBT that there are outlets out there for men because I think so many times the normal coping tools are drugs, sex, food.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And for me personally, they never give you relief for the moment, but that fades.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really appreciate about DBT is I feel like it really helped me create lifelong coping tools that now that I teach to other people.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: For people out there who might not have ever been in a DBT classroom, what are some of the skills that um you talked about before, like the diary card uh that really kind of stand out to you as the ones that really help move the needle for people?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think all of the skills are so incredibly helpful.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to pick just a few.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I think is foundational to DBT is the mindfulness component.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because without the mindfulness skills, we have no awareness.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're relying on automatic processes that are oftentimes from early learning experiences.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: We get conditioned to react in a certain way, even though that might not be the most helpful thing for us to do.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's with those initial mindfulness skills that we then learn what am I feeling right now?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: What am I thinking?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: What's my body telling me?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: What are the urges that I'm having?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's when we start to understand what the thoughts mean, what the emotions mean, what the physical sensations mean, that we can then begin to implement the other skills to do things differently.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's really at the heart and soul.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then the emotion regulation skills I think are so foundational that people are not taught, and I know you and I have had this conversation before, people are not taught how to regulate their emotions.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: There are, you know, more I think parents that are doing that now than ever before.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, for decades, there has really been no dialogue or no framework for how to teach people to identify, understand, self-validate, um, take in the information that our emotions are trying to teach us or get us to pay attention to.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, emotion regulation is really, really um an important set of skills that people learn through DBT and don't really learn anywhere else.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when I hear the word mindfulness, my definition is being conscious, being aware.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your body is always talking to you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for me, when I would get angry, there would be this fire that burns inside me.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: For other people I've been around, they kind of know it.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, will say things like, I'm getting ready to blow my top.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is mindfulness.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: You become aware of those sensations.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what was helpful for DBT was with for me when we would do a bunch of the exercises of asking ourselves these questions and then sitting with your body with that sensation.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you asked me this, why does my hand shake?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I, you know, rocking my leg?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of the exercises that you had us do was the diary card, which was very impactful for me.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Prior before you, I didn't recognize this, but because my work was so stressful, I would drink a bottle of champagne every night to slow my mind down.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or I have friends that will smoke weed to slow your mind down.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Once I found meditation, I realized that the breath can actually slow the mind down.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak a little bit to how the breath and the nervous system and mind are all kind of intertwined for people who might not realize that?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think what you're maybe referring to is the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that sympathetic nervous system prepares us for action.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's fight or flight.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when we're in that state, all of our attention and all of our organs are really orienting us to be able to respond quickly to a perceived threat.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the parasympathetic nervous system helps us downregulate from that.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And through our breathing, we can activate that parasympathetic nervous system in moments where maybe we've perceived a threat that isn't actually a threat, and yet we have that response nonetheless.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or when we are beginning to feel some amount of agitation or anxiety.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can regulate essentially our entire nervous system with our breath, which keeps us alive and is with us all of the time.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the most portable tool that we have.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: That question sits at the heart of my book, Who's Driving the Bus?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the story of my own journey, looking back at the parts of myself I carried from my childhood, the ways I learned to protect myself, and how I began to understand who was really making the decisions in my life.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: If any of that feels familiar, I hope my story helps you recognize some of your own and reminds you that the way you've always reacted doesn't have to be the way you always respond.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: To start the journey, get who's driving the bus at andrewmichael.com or on Amazon.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's available in print, Kindle, or you can listen on Audible.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: After I completed meditation school, one of my teachers taught me the stop skill, which you had also taught me.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And for people who might not realize, the word stop is an acronym, which is the S is stop.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: The T is to take three deep breaths, the O is to observe, and the P is to proceed.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I probably use that at least once a day, where someone will cut me off, or I see something online that upsets me.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing to me to know that I have that skill in my back pocket, that taking those three deep breaths allows me to kind of reset my mind.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think growing up, it was perceived that if somebody asks you a question, give them an answer.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in that, my quest for responding quickly got me in a lot of situations that I needed to dig myself out of.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And now I realize even with that skill, I can be having a conversation with someone and taking those three deep breaths.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of times we are so programmed to resp to react.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or, and in that reaction, I don't, at least for me, a lot of those responses were not kind.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them were coming from a very triggered perspective.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You guys talk a lot about respond versus reaction.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you kind of speak to the difference between the two?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: One of the ways that I like to think about this is to refer to a famous quote by Victor Frankel, uh, who is a psychiatrist that lived through uh the concentration camps.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that he writes about is that between any kind of stimuli, so any sort of situation that evokes a trigger in us or a cue in us, there is a space to respond.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when there's no space at all, it's the reaction.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're simply going with the default, automatic, learned behavior, oftentimes rooted in very, very old patterns.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: The response is what you're talking about.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: The moment where we pause, take a couple of breaths, observe what's happening with us, and then decide what do I want to do next?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to say, I need more time to think about that?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to, you know, respond?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see your perspective.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do you know, I want to do something different, walk away?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: It allows us to think about what makes sense in this moment and to take in some of the information of the moment and to take in information that we're getting from ourselves internally to then decide what makes sense here and now, versus let me just do the thing that I always do, even though that may not be applicable whatsoever, or that may be harmful in this very moment.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you were talking, it kind of took my breath away because prior to you, I didn't realize I was allowed to say, Hey, I need more time to respond.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that I was allowed to say, I'm gonna walk away.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have learned in my last relationship.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he said, You're very avoidant.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, what do you mean?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, I'll ask you a question and you don't respond.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I originally said my response was, Well, I just don't have an opinion.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, just say that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have an opinion, but the fact that you're not saying anything leaves me as your partner confused.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand what's going on.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I asked you the question.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It took me a little bit of time before I worked up the courage where I could say, I don't respond because I don't feel safe.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't respond because as soon as I respond, you respond back and tell me that what I'm feeling is wrong.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes you've heard the term like gaslighting.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you can only get shut down so many times.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason that I really enjoyed DBT was you guys role-played with us and you taught us one or two statements of how we were allowed to kind of create that own gap for ourselves.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is this program taught in schools?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: For me as an adult, uh, my life would have been so different if I was taught this as a child.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, agreed.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are some DBT in schools curriculum that is starting slowly to be disseminated.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a program that some DBT therapists have come up with to implement this within the academic system.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is it as widely available as I think we would all like it to be?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it is in existence.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the two individuals who have really been spearheading this have um, you know, made trainings available and resources available, um, but we're a very long way from the end goal.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: When you think back to your childhood, Sophie, what led you to wanting to be a therapist?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always found um myself really enjoying being connected and with other people.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that felt like a natural affinity for me to be in conversation with others.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've considered myself to be relatively extroverted for most of my life.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the helping profession aligns with my values.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I care deeply for other people.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I like helping other people.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I love learning and I love knowledge.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that happens when you have the privilege of being a therapist is that you get to learn so much through dialoguing with other people.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're an example of that.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I learned so much through you.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know our skills group and the participants learn so much through you.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it becomes this enriching process of yes, people are learning, hopefully, from their therapists, and leaving those, you know, therapeutic processes with tools or perspective that they might may not have had before.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the same is true for therapists.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's this constant enrichment.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that incredibly valuable.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, thank you for the compliment.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I receive it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being in that class and seeing a lot of people in pain and knowing that you were the teacher and trying to be respectful of not telling them what to do.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think in my life, and I will I'll make a generalization, no one likes to be told what to do.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that by sharing your experience and telling a story, people can really learn the lesson in that.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason, again, for this podcast and having you on here is everyone has a unique story that needs to be heard.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in sharing that story, it kind of frees something inside of you, but then also gives you the ability to help other people.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me sad for a lot of men because we hold everything inside.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are taught from such an early age, depending on your environment, that you're not allowed to talk about your feelings, that you're not allowed to express what's going on in you.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that manifested as anger, because that's all that that's built up inside.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you refer back to where I started and then I got to graduation, can you speak at all to the changes that you saw from the beginning to the end of my time at DBT?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think you you impressed me right from the beginning.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think when you came into DBT, you had already done a lot of work.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I I remember a dialogue where I said to you, I don't think you need this treatment.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: You've got this already.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you said, I really want to do this, I really want to learn the skills of DBT.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the motivation that you had right from the get-go, I think allowed you to take the work that you had already been doing and then integrate the skills.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, then take that information and really share it with others in a way that is extremely powerful.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what I observed is that your awareness grew a lot over the process, your anger was expressed differently.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: You implemented the stop skill time and time and time again.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You made changes to your relationships, you made changes to the way that you handled painful emotions, that some of maybe those maladaptive strategies that had been there in the early days to numb out or to escape, that by the end were no longer existent for you.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of my next door neighbors used to say, Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And most of my life I wanted to be right.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to win, which meant I would do do or say anything I needed to do to win, because that's what boys do.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're either a winner or a loser.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really learned during the time at DBT was I didn't care about winning anymore.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be happy.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a life coach tell me, like, you know, you're allowed to be happy.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So much of my unhappiness started in my childhood of not being able to express my feelings or being around certain men that would implode the rage that somewhat manifested when I was a boss.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I used to rule with an iron fist.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that the best way to lead people was to break them.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: What I realize now is the true, the true strength of a real man is to build people up, not to tear them down.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned a lot of that from you.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: You were very supportive about building us up, about pushing back gently, and also giving us the space when I was flooded.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't respond.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the questions I can feel it now, the sensations in my body when somebody says something to you that makes you uncomfortable, or more than anything, points out something about yourself that's necessarily the truth.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was a moment when I was the boss and I had an employee come in.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: He had said something, I said something back, and he came into the office and he said, Um, I've never had anyone who's ever been able to make me feel as little and horrible about myself as you.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, I was like, you're just weak.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Suck it up.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: As I sit here and I say it now, I absolutely cringe.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even want to say it because it makes me number one, it makes me sad for that person that that was his experience.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me sad for me that I thought that that was okay.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm grateful that I found DBT in you to realize that that's just you don't have to be that way.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that so many of us think, well, that's just the way I am.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is just my personality.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to how DBT can show you that your pattern is not your personality, that your pattern doesn't have to be your future.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a happy, positive life, you have to practice.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you're really speaking to the primary dialectic in DBT.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: A dialectic is when there are what appear to be opposing truths that coexist.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the primary dialectic is acceptance and acceptance and change.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we can accept that at the time that you had that interaction with your employee, you were doing the best that you could in the moment with the knowledge that you had, with the skills that you had, with the conditioning that you had, and that we would still want you to do differently and better once a different and alternate path becomes available.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is really what we're taking into consideration all of the time in DBT is accepting that we are who we are, that we have these ways of being, these belief systems that have probably been with us for some time, and that those things can change.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that in order to change them, it is an active practice of recognizing when we're falling back into old patterns and making a conscious, intentional effort to do differently.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that over time, that practice then starts to become our new way of approaching the world.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier, you had talked about how there were more men currently in your class than women than when I was in the class with you.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Could you speak at all to the differences between that, uh, having the majority of a male class?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, could you speak to some of the topics that the men speak about now?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I was with you, I tried, there were still moments where I didn't feel comfortable saying certain things because there weren't other men there.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think the issues are not so different.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: The presentation is where we see some of those differences.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we're talking about a maladaptive coping strategy and maybe looking at what that would look like for a male versus a female, I think, you know, one of the things that I've observed is something like video game use is much more common or appears to be much more common in men.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so anything can become maladaptive, depending on how you use it and the frequency in which you use it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's the the issues are not that different.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's simply the behavioral expression, I think, that is primarily the difference that I'm noticing.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the other is the emotions being expressed, some movement, hopefully, on this front.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And yet I think that men are generally taught that they can express anger and not many other emotions.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, whereas women are taught it's okay to cry, it's okay to feel sad.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that that's the other sort of difference is a lot of the men are presenting with dysregulated anger and an internalization of other emotions.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas typically when there are more women in the group, um, there's more emotions that have been normalized to be expressed, and there's less less internalizing of emotion and more externalizing of emotion.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of the quotes that I heard from a teacher was that anger is the memory of trauma, or it was anger is the memory of sadness.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: To your point, again, it's fine to come across as angry, but to say I'm scared or to want to cry, society views that as weak.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there was a period where I didn't cry for 15 years.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't cry at a funeral, I didn't cry at holidays.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when you store that, it has to go someplace.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even as I say it right now, my mind drifts because just saying the words out loud, I start to sweat.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: What are people gonna think by me saying that?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And even saying it now, giving myself permission to admit that.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was debating whether or not I'm gonna make this next statement, but I'm just gonna do it and we'll see if we cut it or not.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that there is a segment of the population, the male population, that has disdain for gay men.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in my experience, part of that is because gay men are very much in touch with their feminine side.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're playful and goofy and laughing and kissing and doing all the little things that little boys do until you get to the point where somebody says, you're not allowed to do that anymore.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm probably most proud of is several of my students are married men, and they have found it very, they have been grateful to see another version of another man.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I may be a gay man, I'm tall, six foot three, dark hair, handsome, and I don't always lead with that, but I'm proud of the parts of myself that I have allowed myself to tap into.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had said to my dad one time, I think the true definition of a man is someone, again, who's loving and caring and sensitive.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really grow up with a lot of that.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the classes that you are now, is it difficult for a lot of the men to acknowledge that before the class and then after the class?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do they feel like they are more able to share that with their wives?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: The part that you're curious about is whether or not they're able to share with their wives what their own upbringing would have looked like, or in general, being able to be more vulnerable.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think both.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that most, because of their childhood, are unable in their adulthood.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we want men to be loving husbands and great fathers, but in that, there's a sense it's there's a feminine quality of being sensitive, loving, caring, affectionate.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that a lot of men get that.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I and I think it's it's such an interesting point that you're raising because some of the female clients that I work with hold that same stigma.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a part of them that probably at the core wants exactly what you're saying.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a man that's going to be understanding and loving and sensitive to emotion.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on their own history, their own learning, they may simultaneously hold the belief that that's not the way men should be, that that means they're weak.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really interesting that you're raising that because I think it's an internalized message that a lot of men carry with them and that their partners, with awareness or not, may also carry with them.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: My hope is that by being in a context where emotions are discussed and emotions are really identified, and we're normalizing the experience of emotions through DBT constantly, whether it's in the individual or the group context, that then that allows people to take some of that information and to transfer it to other parts of their lives.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you use the word allow.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I use the word permission.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of messages in my mind, and I would say in other people's minds that I work with, that I didn't know I was allowed.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know I was allowed to change my mind.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know I was allowed to ask for something different.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know I was allowed to want something different.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: You had talked about that emotional component.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you gave me the opportunity to share a poem that I wrote that's called The Fire That Burns Inside, which is on my website, which is in the book, which is also set to music, which will be on my website.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: The fire that burns inside is about the anger and rage that manifested as fire.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when things were difficult for me, I would implode that fire, that rage would come out.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being in DBT, you gave me the opportunity to read that out loud to people and express all of the things that had happened to me.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up, my brother would always say, What's wrong with you?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: He would say it to me all the time.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we have to be very careful of language because if you tell someone that there's something wrong with them, even though there isn't, the last word they heard was wrong, right or wrong, good or bad.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when I read that poem and I was done, it had a visceral reaction for the people there, but more for me, it was a moment where I was where I gave myself permission to share my feelings and to cry.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in that, the room everyone was crying.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that moment?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think about that moment often.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: The graduations are often an emotional moment in the group, and yet your graduation in particular was a very special moment where you took a risk and you modeled that it's okay to take a risk, and other people in the group already looked up to you.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that in the way that you transitioned out of the group, you left this lingering idea that it's okay simply to be who you are.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are allowed to be exactly who you were.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it is okay to change.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I had a conversation with somebody sometime, one time, and he said, Don't you want to grow?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you want to change?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that version of myself said, No, I like exactly who the F I am.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that I said it was because at that time I was too scared.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was too scared to change.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't ready to give myself permission to be anything else but this version.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what I realized was most of my suffering came from trying to be somebody or what I thought I was supposed to be and never really being myself.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: As we come to a close, if there's anybody out there who is considering DBT, how do they find it?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, where do they go?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I would recommend is the Linahan certification board or going through behavioral tech, both of those platforms have a directory of certified DBT programs and certified DBT professionals.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what that means is that the programs that are listed there are comprehensive programs that offer all four components of DBT, which is individual therapy, group therapy, access to phone coaching, and that the DBT therapist is on a consultation team that meets regularly to support the therapist and to offer therapy to the therapist when needed, and also to ensure that the clients and the individuals receiving DBT are receiving, you know, evidence-based adherent treatment.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of individuals who say they may do DBT.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: That is different than comprehensive adherent DBT.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me again, how long is the actual uh DBT class or workshop?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: It takes eight months generally when people start uh the adult program, or once they start the group, all the way till the end of sort of one round of the skills training.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes people do a round and a half, or they do two full rounds.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that depends.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: That being said, it it takes a minimal commitment of eight months.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Eight months sounds like a really, really long time, but I had two choices.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did I be right?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or did I want to be happy?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that eight months of learning those tools got me to this.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: It got me to live a life where I can be happy, where I can be aware of my emotions and regulate them the best that I can.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm not perfect and I have my moments like everybody else.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm really proud of the person that I am today.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I did all of that work.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want something different from your life, then I encourage anybody out there to Google DBT.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sad that we have to wrap up, but I want to be conscious of your time.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And more than anything, I just want to say thank you to you.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each person has a unique gift inside them, and your gift is learning and helping people.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm one of those people.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And because of you, now I get to pay it forward on this platform and hopefully ripple and help other people.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: So from my inner child to yours, this is the Andrew Michael Podcast, and Sophie and I are signing off.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes awareness is where change begins.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone came to your mind while you were listening, share this episode with them.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for being here, and thank you for listening.