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Phyllis E Leavitt, MA · Postcards to the Universe

0:09
Welcome to Postcards to the Universe with Melissa Caprill. Do you believe in magic?
0:15
What if you were told that all you had to do was get a
0:18
little creative and work a magic spell to bring anything you can imagine into your
0:23
life. Here on Postcards to the Universe, we will share manifesting tips,
0:29
postcards, creativity, abundance, and prosperity. Here's your host, Melissa Caprill.
0:39
Hey guys, and welcome to Postcards to the Universe with Melissa creating the
0:43
life you crave. How are you guys doing on this wonderful Wednesday? Can
0:47
you believe we're already in March? I swear I thought last year was going
0:52
fast. This year is like already starting, Like whoosh. I cannot even
0:57
believe we're in March. It's rainy here in South Florida, which I kind
1:00
of like because it keeps things a little bit on the cooler side, because
1:03
you know, we're already getting hot. So for all you guys that are
1:07
still in the cold, I'm jealous. You might be jealous of what I
1:11
have, but I'm jealous. I love the cold weather. I hope you
1:15
guys are doing well today. I have a really interesting show today it's a
1:22
little different than what I usually have, so I'm really excited to talk to
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my guests. Who's going to join me in just a minute, Phyllis Levitt.
1:29
She's an author and she wrote a book and it's titled America in Therapy,
1:34
a New Approach to Hope and Healing for a Nation and Crisis. And
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she's gonna just she's going to join me in just a couple of minutes.
1:42
I just want to say a big thank you to my regular listeners. I
1:47
love that you're here each week. I love the emails that I get from
1:49
you saying you're enjoying my show and my guest lineup, so that makes me
1:55
very happy. If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. I
1:59
hope you keep coming back. Just to let you know, since we are
2:02
recording, we are live. We record the show live. You can always
2:07
listen to any previous show that has that we've recorded in the archives on Home
2:15
Times Radio. And I also take the show and put it on my website
2:20
Postcards to the Universe, and I put it on the podcast section of the
2:23
webs of the website, so you can go back and you can see all
2:27
the guests that I've ever had. If you like, if you like the
2:30
show, and I hope that you do, and yeah, I mean I
2:34
have so much fun doing it and I meet the most interesting people. So
2:37
for me, yeah, this is like I love Wednesday so much. I
2:40
also a little bit about me if you're just tuning in to me for the
2:44
first time. I am an artist. I'm a photographer, and I'm also
2:47
an author. Ooh, thunder, I don't know if you could hear that.
2:52
We got thunder going afternoon storm. So my book is titled Postcards to
2:57
the Universe, Harnessed the Universe's Power and manifest your dreams, and I talk
3:01
all about manifesting. So what I do is I would photograph a person's manifesting
3:07
postcard, which is kind of like a mini vision board, and when their
3:10
manifestation what they put on their postcard came up and showed up in the reality,
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I would share their stories. So there's thirty of those in the book,
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and I have a bunch of writing exercises that helps us, you know,
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kind of get real clear on what it is we want to manifest.
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And there's also a lot of fun games and exercises in how to manifest Love
3:35
money, health, career, and so much more. And then of course
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you can follow along with all the stories. So if you're interested, and
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I hope you are, to see and read the stories and look at the
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photos, you could get the book Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can
3:51
go to your local bookstore and they'll order it for you if it's not already
3:53
there. And I decided because the book came out, My god, I
3:59
can't even believe it before COVID Truthful Lady end of twenty nineteen. So I
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started just about six months ago reading the book live on my social media.
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Everything's under postcards to the Universe. I have it on TikTok, Instagram,
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I put it on LinkedIn, and then I upload it to YouTube. So
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I'm doing short videos of me reading the book. And I started rephotographing the
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postcards because I photographed them very different than pre COVID now post COVID. So
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it's been really fun for me as an artist exploring it and doing these and
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doing these pictures again and really appreciating people's stories of transformation and their stories about
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how they manifested, you know, the love of their life or their career
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or their home or whatever. It is. So if you do come on
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my social media and see the stories, please say hello and send me a
4:56
like. I would really appreciate it so that I know that you're there.
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And I'm also asking people to keep sending me manifesting postcards, which I explain
5:04
on postcards to the universe, So I tell you how to create one and
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where to send it. And if you sign up for my newsletter, you'll
5:14
get a free gift on a manifesting little ritual you can do, so if
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you sign up for that, I started doing a workshop. It's called Manifesting
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through Gratitude, a visual journey. It runs Thursday evenings. It's five weeks
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and then I rerun the workshop and we use gratitude and our camera phones to
5:34
manifest and it's a lot of fun because we all have camera phones. We
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have it. We're on our phones constantly nowadays, right, So why not
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use photography to help you manifest what it is you already you know already for
5:49
buy what you already have, Seeing what you already have in your life that
5:54
you're already grateful for, it just brings more power and it raises your vibration
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to manifest more of what you want in your life and it really does work.
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It's crazy, and at the end you have this really beautiful visual gratitude
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journal. If you have any questions, just reach out to me. You
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know, you can connect to me anyway through social media or email me.
6:18
Okay, so to get to my guest today. Phillis Levitt graduated from Antioch
6:26
University with a master's degree in psychology and counseling in nineteen eighty nine and had
6:31
a private practice for over thirty years, working extensively with abuse and dysfunctional family
6:38
dynamics, their aftermath, and some of the most important elements for healing.
6:43
Her focus today is on her latest book, America and Therapy, a new
6:47
approach to hope and healing for a nation and crisis. She has also published
6:53
two other books, A Light in the Darkness and Into the Fire, which
6:57
chronicles her personal healing journey. And this is a direct quote from Phyllis.
7:02
When I became a psychotherapist, I never imagined I would one day be entering
7:09
a political arena. But the more I worked with widespread family dysfunction and its
7:14
horrifying legacy of pain and violence, the more I realized that the greatest threat
7:18
to our survival as a country and as a species is our declining mental health.
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I knew that what we have learned about healing family violence can and must
7:29
be applied to healing America. I felt compelled to leave the confines of my
7:33
office and speak to a broader audience. I wanted to share my message of
7:38
urgency to get ourselves on a path of healing, and a message of hope
7:42
that we can restore ourselves to safety, peace and love by healing the wounds
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we have suffered and the wounds we have inflicted that keep a cycle of violence
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going. I wrote America in Therapy for all those hungry for this message,
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and you can find out more about her if you go to her website Phyllislevett
8:03
dot com. I'm going to spell it for you since we're on radio.
8:05
It's p H Y L L I S L E A v T T dot
8:11
com. Welcome Fellis. Thanks so much for being here with me today.
8:16
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to
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be talking with you. Yeah, this is really interesting to me because we're
8:24
in crisis. I mean, I think the world is in crisis, but
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you know, maybe tackle one thing at a time, you start with the
8:30
individual, you go to the community in America. So is, how did
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you like what sparked the idea for you to write this book? Yeah,
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And you know, it's interesting because I looked a little bit up about your
8:43
podcast and about the whole issue of manifesting your dreams. And I knew when
8:50
I was really young that I wanted to be a writer. I had no
8:54
idea what I wanted to write, but I knew that that was my calling.
8:56
And I don't know how I knew it, but I think sometimes we
8:58
know really young, and so sort of long story, really short. I
9:07
had a really difficult time growing up, and I didn't know why. I
9:11
just felt very other. I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. I had
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a lot of fears. I had a lot of anxiety. I had a
9:18
lot of depression, and I did my very best to hide it all and
9:22
appear like I was okay. And one of the ways that I compensated was
9:26
to become a really good student. So I sort of poured myself into school,
9:31
and years later what really began to be uncovered in my psyche was that
9:37
I had been sexually abused as a child. But I had buried all of
9:41
those memories, and that really was the reason why I felt all these very
9:46
difficult feelings that I had no way to even name, let alone understand why
9:52
I felt and did the things that I did. And so I ended up
9:56
in therapy myself when my children were very small, and it was like a
10:01
light went on. I began to I actually began to remember the things that
10:05
I had buried, and I became a psychotherapist. Therapy was very life changing
10:11
for me. I began to make sense of myself. And one of the
10:13
ways that I have often described it is if you imagine feeling like you're just
10:20
a puzzle that somebody threw all the pieces on the floor and you don't know
10:22
how they fit together, but you know they're supposed to. As I began
10:28
to remember what happened to me, all those pieces began to come back together,
10:33
and I began to move through some of the worst of the effects of
10:37
what had happened to me, and I, you know, I would say,
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I sort of came out the other side of that darkness. And it
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was a process, and it's an ongoing process. I think for most of
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us, a healing journey is something we we do in stages and levels,
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but definitely there was light in the darkness, and that actually became the name
10:56
of my first book, and so I became, you know, I that
11:01
was the beginning. I had a really big aha somewhere along that journey that
11:05
I had felt so alone, and I realized I wasn't alone at all,
11:09
that there are hundreds and thousands of people in the same boat as me who
11:16
are not only a mystery to themselves, but they don't have access to help.
11:20
They don't have access to understanding what's going on with them, and they
11:26
don't necessarily even have access to escaping from some of the things that are really
11:30
harming them from other people. And it really like mushroomed out my compassion for
11:37
us as a human race, Like so many people are being hurt by other
11:41
human beings, and what is that all about? What is that cycle that
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keeps repeating and intensifying in certain places? And then so, you know,
11:50
as a therapist, I studied a lot about family dynamics, because that's really
11:56
where psychology has been for a long time, that we don't see ourselves as
12:01
islands. I'm all alone here and I'm the problem that actually isn't what we've
12:07
discovered. We've discovered that our early conditioning and our conditioning as we grow up
12:11
has a lot to do with what we believe about ourselves, the attitudes we
12:18
take, behaviors we've learned, the attractions we have, the places we feel
12:22
blocked, you know, all of that. There's so much that happens in
12:24
our early conditioning. And that's not to say that there isn't something that we're
12:28
also born with with our own individual nature, but our conditioning is, you
12:35
know, our negative conditioning is what causes pain and what brings people to seek
12:39
help. And that's really what happened to me. So the next big Aha
12:45
I had out of all that I learned in my own family dynamics and being
12:50
becoming a family therapist and studying family therapy and family systems and how they work.
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And I worked in a sexual abuse treatment program for a number of years,
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so I was really upfront and close personal experience and learning on that level.
13:07
The next big I I had was that many people in positions of power
13:13
are operating on abuse dynamics and they're hurting many many people. They're enacting policies
13:20
and laws and they proliferate ideas and beliefs about certain segments of our population that
13:26
are very harmful, that are discriminatory, that are you know, pasting certain
13:31
people as inferior or a threat, or you know, whole segments of society
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without without understanding that we're all human beings who were born innocent little babies and
13:45
if we're problematic, something happened to us that created that. And and I'll
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say one last thing and then preach jump in, you know. And so
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I learned a lot about the what the effects of unentree abuse and neglect are,
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and I could see them happening all over our countries. And that's not
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to say that there aren't wonderful things happening. There are wonderful things happening,
14:11
you know, like you're doing. And there are people who are you know,
14:16
philanthropists and who volunteer to help prisoners or you know, children who have
14:20
been deprived, or they contribute money, or they set up education programs in
14:26
a prison or whatever. There's millions of programs that are going on. And
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in fact, one of the things I learned when I was researching for my
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book is that there's an extraordinary amount of volunteers, and in America people are
14:39
giving and giving and giving. That doesn't necessarily eradicate the ill effects of some
14:46
of the things that are happening in what I call the family of America.
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And I felt like I needed to talk about that because for two reasons.
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One is, you know, it's really hard to heal something if you don't
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know what it is, right, And that was true in my story.
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If I hadn't begun to remember what happened to me, I would have had
15:05
a really hard time healing. And that's true in our country. I think
15:09
we need to know some of the effects of our history and some of the
15:13
effects of the dynamics that are playing out from the top down as well as
15:18
bottom up, which is the individual and the individual family. And I wanted
15:22
to make that common knowledge because the hope lies that just as we can find
15:26
healing as individuals, we could find healing as a country if we understood how
15:33
important it is to do that and how to do it. Yeah, no,
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thank you. Yeah, that's it's really interesting. And I it's okay
15:45
so to say this, and I don't want to offend anybody, but I'm
15:48
going to say it because we're talking about America. I thought we were further
15:54
along as a collective country before Donald Trump became president. I really did.
16:04
With the Obama administration, I really was seeing the progress, and I had
16:11
a very hard time understanding the racism, the hatred, and the violence I
16:18
was seeing. And then I started to understand from a greater perspective that the
16:27
a gift that was given to us is it shows us really where we still
16:33
are, how far we have to go, and how deep the wounds are.
16:40
So it was like my my eyes were opened. So I'm trying to
16:47
understand the roots of hatred and violence. Is it because of poverty? Is
16:52
it because of abuse? Like? What is your professional take on that the
16:59
roots of the hatred of violence that we see perpetuated. Well, this is
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the first way that I say it, and it's a very complex issue,
17:07
obviously obviously contributing factors, so I don't want to oversimplify it. But basically
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what I would say is, just as a starting point, the best food
17:18
for human beings is love, right, The best food for human beings,
17:23
And I kind of say it this way, is love, a sense of
17:26
belonging, cooperation, being supported, being celebrated, having our basic needs be
17:34
provided for and learning the skills of non violent conflict resolution, because we have
17:41
conflict as human beings right of course, the same way, but there's different
17:45
ways to settle conflict, and many of them are very very injurious, and
17:51
some of them are very peaceful and actually contribute to greater understanding. And so
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when we're fed basically fed those things, and nobody gets it perfectly because we're
18:03
you know, we're in quest human beings. But when we're basically fed that
18:07
kind of a diet, we don't hate. We don't want to kill anyone.
18:12
We don't want to rape someone, we don't want to steal from them,
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we don't want to place the land, we don't want to target certain
18:19
vulnerable populations or you know, visit injustice on certain people. We just don't
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want to do those things when we're actually fed the best psychological and emotional food
18:30
for human beings. But many people are not fed that, and people are
18:36
actually fed the opposite in their own homes. And I think there's a there's
18:41
a legacy of trauma and abuse that's been passed down from generation to generation.
18:48
I don't know where it started, and I'm not probably going to go into
18:52
that part of you know the conversation, like you know, because you know,
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we're basically animals and we had to be to survive, right, But
19:00
we're much more than animals in terms of our emotional body and our intellectual body,
19:06
and our ability to construct community and culture and ways of cooperating with each
19:14
other. And somehow our ways of competing have gotten out of control. And
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again I don't have the answer to the whole sociological history of the human race.
19:26
I have some ideas, but just to speak to what I think people
19:32
would really help people understand is that we are tasked with breaking that cycle.
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So if we're not being fed, what's good for human beings? And I
19:42
think we all know this. How do I feel when I feel someone loves
19:45
me, I feel amazing, or if they recognize something about me that they
19:49
think is valuable or they really want to include me. I mean, it
19:53
feels freaking amazing, Right, that's good. And if you feel rejected or
19:59
ign or scorned or laughed at, or you know, or assaulted, it
20:04
feels the opposite. And I think what we need to know is that the
20:11
more we assault people in our homes. And let me tell you, as
20:15
a therapist, and I work with a very ordinary population, you know.
20:22
I haven't worked with a criminal population or or people on the spectrum of like
20:26
severe mental illness. I've really worked with people like you and me, or
20:30
the people and the level of abuse and neglect that people have sustained in their
20:36
childhoods. I think most of us don't really know because we hide it so
20:41
well and we were ashamed of the pain that we carry, or we don't
20:45
want anyone to know that, you know, like I felt ashamed of even
20:49
saying that I was really abused for years, I could bear with those words
20:53
out of my mouth, even though it wasn't my fault. It didn't work
21:00
flex on me as a person, but somehow I felt like it did.
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So our task is to interrupt the cycle. And if what really hurts if
21:11
the best one you put it in the positive, If the best food for
21:15
human beings is love and connection and all the things I mentioned above, then
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we have to look at how we're not feeding each other that food and what
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the results are. People who are hurt become symptomatic. I was symptomatic.
21:30
I was really depressed and anxious and all that I talked about. Some people
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symptoms are much more socially maladaptive. My symptoms mostly hurt me. Many people
21:45
become violent, Yeah, they become they become isolated, they become socially at
21:52
the word. But you know, they're they're not socially attuned, and so
21:56
they and they don't they don't feel empathy for other human beings, and so
22:00
it makes it much easier for them to act out with no remorse. Yeah,
22:04
and when someone like that gets into a position of power, we're in
22:08
trouble. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that before that if you have been
22:15
neglected or were abused, or you grew up in a toxic environment, one
22:21
or two things happen you. Either it either turns inward and you turn against
22:26
yourself, or it turns outward and you turn against others. If you don't
22:32
learn how to heal it, right, you got to heal it within you.
22:36
And you know not I don't want to stereotype, but the nature of
22:41
the game seems to be women, now this is not one hundred percent have
22:44
a tendency to go inward and turn on themselves, and men have a tendency.
22:48
You know, hormonal hormones have a lot to do with that go outward
22:52
and become more violent. Right, So, so how do we heal that?
22:59
How do you do we personally, like anybody listening who knows they're suffering,
23:03
who knows that they grew up in a toxic abuse of environment and haven't
23:07
dealt with it, how do we deal with it? Yeah? I think,
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well, one of the gifts of psychotherapy and I kind of use those
23:15
principles. But what I do want to say is you don't have to be
23:18
a psychotherapist at all to be a healing agent in this world. Right,
23:22
But there are certain things that I learned as a psychotherapist that are kind of
23:27
principles that became very very conscious for me as I work with people. And
23:34
so the first step I think is education. And that's one of the reasons
23:40
why I wrote a book and where I like to talk about it, because
23:42
how much of I learned from reading other people's books and writing other people talk
23:48
about the things that they've uncovered and discovered that have been helpful. So I
23:53
think the first step is the education. I really think as a as a
23:57
really as a world population human beings. But I'll talk about America. I
24:02
think we need to make psychology and family dynamics something that we are committed to
24:08
teaching our children. I agree, because we need to know what's happening to
24:14
us. If I had known how even a clue where my symptoms were coming
24:19
from when I was young, I would have had a different life. If
24:23
I had had a safe place to remember what happened to me, I would
24:27
have had a different life, starting much younger. And I'm very grateful that
24:33
I had that opportunity at all. Don't get me wrong, right, Yeah,
24:37
But so I think we start with education, and I think we have
24:40
to we have to really understand what is a healthy family, and again that
24:44
we're all in perfect and we just learn as we go, but what really
24:48
creates a dysfunctional and abusive family? And understand what the symptoms are. For
24:55
instance, and I think this is a good analogy. You go to a
25:00
doctor, they ask you, you know, where is the pain in your
25:04
body? When did it start? How severe is it? Does it come
25:08
and go? Is it all the time? Is it just in this one
25:12
part or does it radiate out? You know? And then they ask you,
25:15
note what's your food intake and how is your sleep? And you know,
25:19
did anything happen? Did you have an injury blah blah blah. You
25:22
know, right, so they really zero in as much as possible on the
25:29
origins of what you're suffering from, because the more they know about the symptoms,
25:34
the more they can find the cause and treat it. And the same
25:38
thing is true for our psyches. So the next thing that I want to
25:44
say is that the power of remembering our early conditioning sometimes is everything. For
25:51
me, it was life changing. It was absolutely life changing in probably more
25:56
ways than I can even describe here. But in any case, I made
26:00
sense to myself and let me and let me just say this, and please
26:06
interrupt me, because you know, yeah, no, no, I'm gonna
26:08
let you finish your I'm gonna let you finish your thought and then we'll take
26:14
a break and we'll come back. Go ahead, finish your thought, Okay.
26:18
Yeah. What I was gonna say is that remembering part of what If
26:22
you have had any kind of mistreatment or neglect in your childhood on a continuum
26:27
from you know, your parents just really weren't available and you didn't get attention
26:32
to you were sexually assaulted or physically abused, or thrown out of your house
26:37
or something like that. If you are mistreated by another human being and it's
26:42
not healed and there's no escape. We tend to take on very negative beliefs
26:48
about ourselves in relationships, that there's something wrong with me, I deserved it,
26:55
I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm stupid, I'm unlovable, and that
27:02
negative belief structure becomes a core of how we see ourselves and the coping mechanisms
27:07
that we develop. So, you know, one quick example would be someone
27:11
who feels that they're unlovable because they were abused and the pain is extraordinary from
27:17
however they were violated, might turn to drugs right the pain and of course
27:23
right, or choose terrible relationships over and over and over again. Abuse.
27:30
All right, let's pause here, let's take our break now, and then
27:33
yeah, we'll really dive into this when we come back. Stay tuned,
27:37
everybody, and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. Conscious Media
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coolest guests, trailblazers, mystics and creatives who enrich our lives. Hi,
30:47
and welcome back if you're just joining me. I'm speaking with psychotherapist and author
30:52
Phyllis Levitt and we're talking from her book America in therapy, a new approach
30:56
to hope and healing for a nation in crisis. Boy, are we in
31:00
crisis? Oh my lord? I want to talk about you talk about this
31:07
about a different take on victims and perpetrators, that we maybe need to look
31:15
at things slightly in a different way. So can you share a little bit
31:18
about that? Yeah, definitely, And I definitely learned this so much from
31:23
my work as a psychotherapist over so many years that you know, Well,
31:29
there's two things that I want to say that I think are very important.
31:33
The first thing I want to say is just about victims, and that is,
31:37
you know, when in the beginning, there's no beginning, Sorry about
31:41
that back I think it was in the eighties there was a lot of disclosure
31:47
about sexual abuse in particular, and there was a huge backlash right away about
31:52
you know, it wasn't true. There was the what do they call it
31:59
up a bit that false memory syndrome society and all that. Oh yeah,
32:02
I remember that people were really coming out and telling their stories and how horrible
32:07
it had been to be sexually abused in their childhood and either buried it or
32:13
not be believed when they tried to get help and it somehow, And it
32:20
was a fabulous movement because it really uncovered something kind of what you were referring
32:23
to in the beginning, like it's out there. You know. The good
32:28
news is we're seeing it. It's being exposed, and that gives us the
32:31
opportunity to try to do something about it. But very soon, and I
32:36
don't know if you you might not be old enough to remember this, but
32:39
very soon everybody was talking about becoming a survivor. I do remember him anymore.
32:46
Yeah, And while we all want to be survivors and not be defined
32:52
by any kind of victimization, for sure, the leak from victim to survivor
32:59
was too quick, I think, and we had to say we were survivors.
33:04
And it's sort of like I had to say, I'm really okay.
33:07
This happened to me. It was really painful, but I'm really okay.
33:10
And that I think is a lot of the culture in America to begin with.
33:14
It doesn't serve people. We have to be able to say this really
33:20
devastated my life. M hm. We have to because and that's part of
33:24
what the best therapy really provides is a safe place to tell your story,
33:30
your whole story. Prior to your tears, release the pain in the space
33:37
where you're held by someone who's not judging you, not rushing you, and
33:42
not having an expectation of you other than that they're going to hold that healing
33:45
space for you. And so that was just one of the things that became
33:51
really clear to me is that we can't push people to say they're survivors when
33:53
they're not ready, to forgive when they're not ready, but to really allow
34:00
them the space to actually heal what true victimization is. And victimization is not
34:07
pity. It's not pitying me. It's not a mentality of I'm never going
34:12
to get up and I'm going to use this as an excuse for X,
34:15
Y and Z in my life. It's not owning your pain is a part
34:19
of the process of healing. And so I just I talk about that a
34:22
little bit in my book because I think it's really important because I know that
34:28
for myself, I didn't even want to talk about any pain at all.
34:31
Right, Yes, I felt like I had to be a survivor and I
34:34
didn't even know what I was surviving, right. Yeah. I think a
34:38
lot of people feel that way too, that they have to be survivors because
34:42
they don't want to be looked at is I'm the victim. Don't look at
34:44
me as a victim, like, don't feel sorry for me kind of thing
34:47
people get, And I understand that perspective. Do you have you found that
34:52
most perpetrators were victims and then they did what I Okay, go ahead,
35:00
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, that's totally the other half of what I
35:04
was going to say is that And this actually goes back to something you brought
35:07
up earlier, which is something that I found to be very, very important
35:15
and I feel as part of the education that I really want to share with
35:17
people is that most perpetrators are victims. And if we're going to stop the
35:24
cycle of abuse, if we're going to stop producing more victimizers in our world,
35:31
in our country, in our communities, and in our homes, we
35:35
have to treat the victimization. We can't keep looking at people like they're just
35:39
evil or sinners, bad or born flawed, because they're not. You know,
35:45
I did a little research on the Ubalde shooter, just a little bit
35:51
of research, and one of the things that I uncovered was that the teacher
35:58
that he had, I think it was in pre school said that he was
36:01
a wonderful child, and by the time he was in third grade, it
36:07
was reported that he was a very at risk child and sutter and he was
36:13
teased. He had had a stutter and he was teased. And then I
36:17
think with a former girlfriend reported that he had told her that he had been
36:22
sexually abused and was not believed. Now, of course, everyone that suffers
36:25
the kinds of things that he suffered doesn't go into a classroom, and of
36:30
course, of course, but some people do. Some people are hurt so
36:36
badly and we don't even probably know all of what happened to this young man,
36:40
right, And I thought it was very I was really moved by reading
36:45
that the room that he went into where he shot the children was his fourth
36:51
grade classroom where he was bullied. And so it's just, yeah, it
36:59
is because it is because happy people who were lucky enough to grow up in
37:04
a loving environment don't grow up to hurt people. I mean, I'm not
37:07
saying there's nobody that isn't born like with a pathology that's dark, and you
37:14
know, there's always those cases, but for the most part, yeah,
37:17
happy people don't want to hurt other people. Loved people don't want to hurt
37:21
other people. Like you said, we need love. The medicine is love.
37:24
I have a question for you, since you have an you're an expert,
37:29
and this is the one crime. I mean, there's a lot of
37:31
crime I don't understand, but I don't and I can never grasp the understanding
37:37
of sexually abusing a child. I just I understand how murder can happen.
37:43
Of course, I understand how robbery can happen. I can even understand how
37:45
rape happens. I don't understand children. I just can't wrap my mind around
37:52
it. Yeah, what is that pathology? I think I would just I
37:59
would sort of answer it in a general sense. Many many people who abused
38:05
children were abused as children. I don't know if there are statistics, and
38:09
even if they were statistics, they wouldn't necessarily be accurate, because you know,
38:14
the number of people who don't report anything is enormous. So right,
38:17
of course, but many, many people who abused children were abused as children,
38:23
or they witnessed abuse as children, or they were made to abuse as
38:29
children. I've heard stories as a therapist, yea of clients who were made
38:34
to abuse other people when they were children or participate in abuse. So the
38:42
broad stroke, because we do you say, like, well, if you
38:45
were beaten as a kid, why would you ever beat anybody? You know
38:49
how hard that feels? Or you were sexually abused, why would you ever
38:53
do that to someone when it was painful and horrible and scary? You know,
38:59
So it doesn't make sense, but psychologically it does make sense. And
39:05
these are also some of the things that I really try to explain in my
39:08
book because I think we need to know this. Someone who sexually abuses as
39:13
a child isn't just a horrible person. Do we want them to do that?
39:16
No? Do we want them to stop them from doing that? Yes?
39:21
Do we want them to find treatment? I think is one of the
39:24
one of the big issues that we face. But here's the broad stroke.
39:30
The broad stroke is that we tend to repeat what we know. Yeah,
39:35
and you might look in even in your own life. Like my mother.
39:40
This is kind of a silly example, but I think it's a good one.
39:44
Just to give you an illustration. My mother would like often really rag
39:49
on my dad for the littlest thing, you know, like you forgot to
39:52
buy this at the store. How could you forget to do that, you
39:55
know kind of thing, And I thought it was so obnoxious when I was
40:00
a kid. Did that ever come out of my mouth? Yes? Oh
40:08
yeah, yes, yes. So that's a tiny illustration of we tend to
40:17
repeat what we know, and if what we know is really destructive and really
40:22
hateful and really violent and really harmful, it's in our unconscious as a way
40:29
to cope with life, as a way to somehow get some need met in
40:34
a twisted way, if that makes sense. Yeah, And they think about
40:39
this in psychological literature, which is called the repetition compulsion. We tend to
40:45
repeat doing what sometimes what was done to us, but also to allow to
40:52
be done to us what was done to us both. So from what i'm
40:58
yeah, it makes sense. So I'm and I always thought this. And
41:00
I'm not a psycho, you know, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,
41:04
psychoanalyst or anything. But I have always thought that the best way to
41:08
change the world is to start when they're babies, basically, and when they
41:15
first get into school in kindergarten, because if we can get them there in
41:20
a generation, the world can change if we can get them there. And
41:24
I have a conversation with a friend who she says it needs to start in
41:30
the family, and I agree with her, and I said, I agree
41:32
with you, but there are many people who don't have a family. The
41:39
mother may be a single mother. She can't she's working three jobs to put
41:44
food on the table. You got we have to do something collectively. It
41:49
can't just be in the family. It doesn't. Many people don't have a
41:53
family or a healthy family. So what do we do? How can everybody
41:59
listening? Looking at your book and highly recommend you get the book, by
42:01
the way and read about it, because this is life changing. If we
42:07
want to leave our children in a better world, you know, we need
42:09
to kind of get this. We need to get this already. So what
42:15
can we do for us listening to you, for those of us that have
42:19
children, or don't have children, or want to help or want to be
42:22
aware, what can we do? Well? I really want to speak to
42:24
what you just said about the family, because I think one of the institutions
42:30
in America that is suffering the most is the families. I think, and
42:36
this is where I look at the microcosm and the macrocosm, so I call
42:39
it microcosm is individual families and individual people. And the macrocosm is our larger
42:45
institutions and our government agencies and prostitutions and people that are in power, and
42:52
we have to look at them both because right now, the people that are
42:57
in power in the family of America of the power to create policy or not
43:02
that help families. And right so, and what helps families? How do
43:07
we care for families? We make sure that they can afford good food,
43:12
good housing, good education, good medical care, that they can live in
43:17
communities where they're safe. Right so, these are some of the basic ways
43:23
that we express love and care in a family and for families. And if
43:29
as a country we're putting billions of dollars into nuclear weapons and weapons of mass
43:35
destruction and better ways to kill people and to extract more people, then we're
43:39
all those funds could be used to provide sarpy for people who are hurting.
43:45
It could be to you know, really upgrade the foster care system, or
43:52
you know, help single mothers with daycare, with with adequate daycare, with
43:57
with with with paying teachers better salaries so we don't have the olin and we
44:01
have people, you know, all the things that show that we care about
44:06
one another, and we need to invest in those things as the family of
44:10
America. And I will say, we need to vote for people who want
44:15
to do those things. That's where our power lives, and our voting,
44:19
that's where our power lives. And then of course our power lives in our
44:22
own communities. What can I do? Ask the people around me. Whether
44:27
it's just that I am more attentive as a mother, or I become a
44:30
psychotherapist, or I work in a food bank, whatever. Each person is
44:37
called to something that is their own unique way that your best heart wants to
44:43
make right. You know, a difference, Right it's helping out a neighbor,
44:46
maybe just looking and seeing what's going on right across the street or right
44:50
next door. You know, could somebody use your help, could somebody access
44:54
service? Doing access service? I mean, we it's frustrating because we know
45:01
what the right answers are, but why is it so difficult for us to
45:12
get there? I don't know, you know, I get crazy sometimes when
45:16
I think about these things because it's like so obvious, you know, But
45:20
I guess maybe it's not. No. I think a lot of people have
45:25
a lot of frustration and a lot of fear about what we see as a
45:30
trend and I'll see and this comes straight out of you know, looking at
45:35
abusive families and their dynamics. We have to attack that from all these levels
45:39
that we just talked about, and attack is the wrong work. Address this
45:44
from all these levels that we talked about, whether we're providing more help for
45:49
families and individuals, or we're doing our own healing work so that we can
45:53
become more loving, more peaceful, and more find human beings in our own
45:59
lives. So if this cycle doesn't get interrupted on a mass scale, we
46:05
are actually producing more and more people who do identify with the aggressor and become
46:10
aggressive as a way, and just goes back to what you were saying about
46:15
do victimizers have they been victims? If we don't treat the victim in the
46:21
victimizer, they go on victimizing, and like I said, if they get
46:25
into a position of power, then they can hurt many, many people.
46:30
The other side of that is that many people adapt to abuse not by identifying
46:36
with the aggressor, but by learning to be helpless because they work. And
46:42
when you put those two together, you have people who can dominate and people
46:46
who are able to be dominated. And I think if we don't break the
46:51
cycle of abuse in our families and in our country, then we have more
46:54
and more people who dominate and more and more people who are prone to submit,
47:00
and that is a recipe for violence. Yeah. Well we see it
47:05
all over the world. We see it all over the world, so we're
47:07
seeing it. Yeah, And I do think that the school system, the
47:10
curriculum needs to completely be completely overhauled. I mean, we're doing school like
47:15
we did when school started, and we're in a different world and we need
47:20
to not worry about certain math and certain sciences. Not that it's not important,
47:24
I'm not saying that, but I think that there needs to be classes
47:30
in nonviolent like learning how to resolve issues and conflicts non violently, learn about
47:37
meditation, tapping in with what the body's feeling. There's so many things that
47:44
small studies have shown work, and other countries are way ahead of us in
47:50
utilizing these that we can really I always look at it like that, because
47:53
that's I think personally, this is just my opinion. I think America has
47:59
an arrogance issue. Yeah, collectively, and I believe that we can look
48:06
to other countries who are older than us who have have more experience than us,
48:10
and and say, you know what I see that's working for you?
48:14
How did you implement that? And we sometimes want to be like, oh,
48:17
we're the best, We're the best. Well, America lately isn't shown
48:22
its best. I'm sorry, you know that's and like I said, this
48:25
is my personal opinion to anybody who's listening. Don't get me, you know,
48:29
and want to get mad at me. This is just, you know,
48:31
this is just how I've been feeling lately. Well, I think it's
48:36
really good what you're bringing up, because if we were a little bit more
48:39
open minded, maybe we would learn from some of the things that are are
48:44
working in other brictries. And part of you know, the second half of
48:49
my book is where's the hope? You know? Right? So from a
48:52
psychological point of view, we know a lot. We don't know everything by
48:57
any means, right, but we know a lot about what interrupts the psycho
49:00
abuse and what helps people deal. And can we bring these active listening skills,
49:07
empathy building skills, nonviolent conflict resolution and non violent communication skills, can
49:16
like, just like you said, can we teach these to our children?
49:20
Can we help parents embody these things in their home and instead of vilifying them
49:25
because they don't do it, let's help people do it, you know,
49:30
right. And so there's so so like you know, as a as an
49:36
individual person who did a ton of therapy herself, speaking for so many people
49:42
that I've worked with over the years who have had, you know, on
49:45
a continuum, terribly abusive and hurtful childhoods or neglectful childhoods. I mean,
49:51
I've heard people say things like they were told, you know, I wish
49:54
you were never born from a parent, you know. H In all the
50:00
years that I've been a therapist. Oh gosh, I forgot my thought here.
50:07
Then it's okay, No, that's okay, because I do want to
50:09
ask you because you talk about you say America is suffering, and I want
50:14
to make sure we get to sit talk about this a little bit. America
50:16
is suffering from a mental health crisis. So what do you mean? I
50:21
mean, I know we're kind of saying it already, but you're you're saying
50:24
that you see, America is we are in desperate need to heal our mental
50:30
health as a country. Yeah, I just want to capture the thought that
50:35
I forgot first and that is okay, perfect, If you got it back,
50:38
great, go ahead. We can heal can from even the worst abuse,
50:45
yeah, Chris, neglect, the worst violence. If we're loved,
50:49
if we have a safe place, if we have an opportunity, if our
50:52
inner essence is affirmed and reflected back to us, if we learn good boundaries,
50:57
if we learn empathy, we can heal. And if we can heal
51:00
as individuals, we can healer the country because the country is individuals, right,
51:07
It's made up of individuals. Yeah, it always starts from within.
51:10
That's how you change the world. It starts from within. You change yourself,
51:15
You help everybody around you, you love everybody around you, and you
51:19
keep going and it keeps going and it keeps going, and that's how the
51:22
world changes. Yeah. How many people's story is you know, they say,
51:27
well, what changed your life? There was one person who believed in
51:30
me, a coach who encouraged me to go to college. There was a
51:36
school counselor who helped me get out of the home. There was an employer
51:38
who told me I was really talented. It only takes one person, right,
51:45
Yeah, there was a teacher who really saw in me that I could
51:50
you know, my potential, right, there's all just one person. No,
51:54
it's amazing. Phil's this is so interesting. Have you ever considered applying
51:59
to do it ted talk? You know, I very sweet that you say
52:04
that, because another podcast person that I did an interview recommended the same thing.
52:10
And yeah, woman, who kind of does you know? Do just
52:15
sort of a preliminary training to talk And I would like to do that.
52:19
I just am so busy with the marketing of my book, right, yeah,
52:22
sure, I know, I know how that goes. I love,
52:25
I would love to do. Yeah. I think I think your message would
52:30
be a fantastic tech talk. That's what made it come into my head.
52:34
And every time I have those aha moments, I kind of like want to
52:37
share. So maybe that's in the cards for you down the line a little
52:40
bit, you know, for you doing a tech talk. Yeah, yeah,
52:44
because this message needs to be out and it needs to be seen by
52:46
a lot of people, because we all see the problem. We all know
52:50
what the problem is, and you're right, we know the answer, right
52:54
ye love validation mm hmm, totally totally. I'm sorry. I didn't mean
53:00
to draw into it. No, that's it. Love that basically validation and
53:05
nurturing, just saying I'm here for you. How can I help you,
53:07
how can I support you? How can I love you? That's all we
53:10
need to do. Yeah, And if I can just say a few words
53:15
about the other yesson you had about you know why we're talking about this as
53:19
a mental health issue. Yes. The thing that I want to say is,
53:23
and this goes back to actually things we've already said, is that mentally
53:27
healthy and well people don't murder other people, right. They don't abuse children,
53:34
and they don't abuse children, right. You know, they don't vilify,
53:38
They don't take a whole segment of a population and call them names or
53:44
right inferior. They just don't do that. But they just we're being taught
53:50
and what what? What is one of the things that's so deleterious in some
53:52
of the leadership in the family of America today is that we're being told that
53:59
these great divides and that are these great divides that are being fed and fueled
54:05
and intensified. We're being told that they're ideological issues, that they're not ideological
54:10
issues. People will always have different thoughts and feelings and beliefs. Of course,
54:15
into is our psychology and the way we deal with conflict the way we
54:21
deal with differ studience, and that's a mental health issue because mentally healthy people
54:25
will do their utmost to sit down at the table and try to work it
54:30
out and listen to each other with respect. That's true. I think it's
54:37
so true, and the whole field of psychology. I just can't say this
54:42
enough. And this is why I feel that psychology and our mental health is
54:45
the missing link in what's happening in the in the world and in America today,
54:50
is because psychology is nonpartisans. We don't We're not there with people to
54:58
take sides. We're there to help people hear each other, to grow empathy,
55:02
to have their needs met both sides, to have their needs met,
55:07
or part in peace. We're there to help people reconnect and feel love and
55:12
belonging and feel support, and we do everything we can to encourage that and
55:17
facilitate that, and at worst, if that can't happen, and lots of
55:22
times it can't happen, we encourage people to part in peace for their own
55:25
sake and the sake of their children. And I can tell you that when
55:30
people don't part in peace and they have children, their children really suffer.
55:37
Thank you so much, Phyllis. Check out her book Please America and therapy
55:42
we need it. It was such a pleasure having you. I really really
55:45
enjoyed our conversation. All right, thank you for listening to Postcards to the
55:50
Universe with Melissa creating the life you crave. And I'm wishing everyone a wonderful
55:53
feeling a wonderful week filled with joy, abundance and love. Peace. The com