Love is Forever

Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, partner, there are a lot of names you call your significant other. Personally I prefer partner, because let's face it that's what the relationship is at its heart, a partnership. It's a commitment to be a team forever, but what happens when it doesn't work out? Well you could just walk away, but what if you couldn't? I mean a partnership is forever, right?

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The Strategy That Helps Reduce Anxiety (M)

Almost one-in-five of the US population suffers from social or general anxiety.

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Weight Loss: A Half Cup Of This Food Reduces Belly Fat

Reduce your belly fat 10 percent with a half cup of this food.

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On anxiety

If you're finding yourself in the high anxiety club, welcome! I've been a member since well before the pandemic. I'm sorry, but I've got some bad news for you. We are constantly being bombarded with reasons why we should be highly efficient and constantly producing something. That's how we end up with articles claiming that we can turn anxiety into a super power. Which are complete garbage and are written by people who've obviously never lived with chronic anxiety.

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Caffeine Has A Surprising Effect On The Brain (M)

Your brain on and off caffeine.

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This Sleep Pattern Increases Heart Disease Risk 54%

People who ignore this risk factor increase their odds of developing heart disease or stroke.

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COVID-19, Predictive Coding, and Terror Management

Pandemics have a way of bringing death into sharper focus in our everyday lives. As of this writing, 1,184,988 people around the world have died from COVID-19, including 234,035 in the United States. In the dark days of April, the death rate was over 20%. Although this has declined dramatically (to 3%), it’s utterly reckless to minimize the risks of coronavirus and flaunt every mitigation strategy endorsed by infectious disease specialists.

“He's like an evil Oprah. You're getting COVID. And you're getting COVID!”

One might think that contracting and recovering from COVID-19 would be a sobering experience for most people, but not for the Übermensch (Nietzschean 'Superman'... but really, 'Last Man' is more appropriate) who had access to the latest experimental treatments.¹ Trump's boastful reaction is exactly how the 'Coronavirus Episode' of the (scripted) White House reality show was written: “I feel better than I did 20 years ago! and “I'm a perfect physical specimen.”

This dismissive display reinforces the partisan divide on perceptions of the pandemic and the federal response to it. A recent study by Pew Research Center found major differences in how Democrats and Republicans view the severity of COVID-19. Results from the survey (conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020) were no surprise. 

 

 

And as we know, Democrats and Republicans exist in alternate universes constructed by non-overlapping media sources (CNN vs. Fox, to oversimplify), which in turn correlates with whether they wear masks, practice social distancing, and avoid crowds. A new paper in Science (Finkel et al., 2020) integrated data from multiple disciplines to examine the partisan political environment in the US. They  found that Democratic and Republican voters have become:

“...POLITICALLY SECTARIAN -- fervently committed to a political identity characterized by three properties: (1) othering (opposing partisans are alien to us), (2) aversion (they are dislikable & untrustworthy), and (3) moralization (they are iniquitous).”

The authors concluded that the combination of all three core ingredients is especially toxic. Furthermore:

6/ None of these three properties is especially problematic in isolation. But, in combination, they instill a sense of dread -- a sense that political losses are existential threats that must be averted, no matter the cost.

— Eli Finkel (@EliJFinkel) October 29, 2020

Perfect! Dread and existential threat to a fervent political identity during a pandemic that reminds us of our own mortality. The Science paper has a sidebar about motivated (or biased) cognition and whether Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible (many studies), or whether Republicans are more susceptible than Democrats (other studies).² 

 

We seek out information that confirms our views and push away evidence that contradicts our pre-existing beliefs about “the other”.

Death Denial to Avert Existential Crisis

We also push away thoughts of our own demise: death is something that happens to other people, not to me. Awareness of death or mortality salience — pondering the inevitability of your own death, a time when you will no longer exist — triggers anxiety, according the Terror Management Theory (TMT). In response to this threat, humans react in ways to boost their self-esteem and reinforce their own values (and punish outsiders). These cognitive processes are conceptualized as nebulous “defenses” [nebulous to me, at least] that are deployed to minimize terror. Notably, however, experimental manipulation of mortality salience did not affect “worldview defense” in the large-scale Many Labs 4 replication project, which throws cold water on this aspect of TMT.

Predictive Coding and Perceived Risk of COVID-19

An alternative view of how we disassociate ourselves from death awareness is provided by predictive coding theory. This influential framework hypothesizes that the brain is constantly generating and updating its models of the world based on top-down “biases” and bottom-up sensory input (Clark, 2013):

Brains ... are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. 

Prediction errors are minimized by perceptual inference (updating predictions to better match the input) or active inference (sampling the input in a biased fashion to better fit the predictions). A recent paper considered this framework with regard to beliefs generated during the pandemic, and how they're related to health precautions adopted by individuals to mitigate spread of the virus (Bottemanne et al, 2020). This paper was conceptual (not computational), and it was written in French (meaning I had to read it using Google translate). 

In brief, pandemics are massive sources of uncertainty. There was a delay in the perception of risk, followed by unrealistic optimism (“certainly I do not run the risk of becoming infected”) despite the growing accumulation of evidence to the contrary. The reduced perception of risk leads people to flaunt precautionary mandates, even in France (which is currently showing a greater spike in cases than the US). Subsequently, overwhelming media saturation on the daily death toll and the dangers of COVID-19 updates predictions of risk and triggers mortality salience (Bottemanne et al, 2020). And in support of TMT, Framing COVID-19 as an Existential Threat Predicts Anxious Arousal and Prejudice towards Chinese People. Every day in the US, the president and his minions call the novel coronavirus “the China virus” and other disparaging terms. Is it any wonder that discrimination and violence against Asian-Americans has increased?

If you're American, PLEASE VOTE if you haven't already.

Further Reading

Covid-19 makes us think about our mortality. Our brains aren’t designed for that.

Existential Neuroscience: a field in search of meaning

Neuroexistentialism: A Brain in Search of Meaning

Existential Dread of Absurd Social Psychology Studies

Terror Management Theory

Footnotes

¹ The Last Man is the antithesis of the Superman:

An overman [superman] as described by Zarathustra, the main character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity. In contrary [is] the 'last man' whose sole desire is his own comfort and is incapable of creating anything beyond oneself in any form.

Trump's declaration: “...All I know is I took something, whatever the hell it was. I felt good very quickly . . . I felt like Superman.” Whether his kitchen-sink treatment regimen was a good idea has firmly challenged.

² There's a large literature on potential cognitive and neural differences between liberals and conservatives, but I won't cover that here. I wrote about many of these studies in the days of yore.

References

Bottemanne H, Morlaàs O, Schmidt L, Fossati P. (2020). Coronavirus: cerveau prédictif et gestion de la terreur [Coronavirus: Predictive brain and terror management]. Encephale 46(3S):S107-S113.

Clark A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(3):181-204.

Finkel EJ et al. (2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science 370:533-536.

“What's going on with this guy?”

 

I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020

 

What is the truth underneath the tweet?

  AP Photo

President Trump showed labored breathing during his first appearance on the White House balcony

Regarding his joyride in the black SUV while he was still hospitalized at Walter Reed:

He did not look tough; he looked trapped.

He looked desperate. He looked pathetic. He looked weak — not because he was ill or because he was finally wearing a mask but because instead of doing the hard work of accepting his own vulnerabilities in the face of sickness, he’d propped himself up on the strength and professionalism of Secret Service agents. Instead of focusing on the humbling task of getting better, he was consumed by the desire to simply look good.

 the end.

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MindBlog's 5,000th post - The milliseconds of a choice - Watching your mind when it matters.

This was going to be a post on oxytocin research...but I looked at the Blogger counter to see that it will be the 5,000th post done since the start of MindBlog in 2006.  Wow, that's a lot of words.  I've decided to note the occasion by repeating for the second time a post on material I find very fascinating. Here is the 2017 repeat of a 2014 post:

I'm finding, with increasing frequency, that an article about health or psychology in the New York Times that I find interesting has an attached note that it was first published several years earlier. While working on yesterday's MindBlog post I came across a 2014 post I wrote that I think makes some important points about our self-regulation that are worth repeating. So, I'm going to copy what the Times is doing and repeat it today. I'm tempted to edit it, but won't, beyond mentioning that I would considerably tone down my positive reference to brain training games (that I no longer indulge in). Here is the 2014 post:

This is actually a post about mindfulness, in reaction to Dan Hurley's article describing how contemporary applications of the ancient tradition of mindfulness meditation are being engaged in many more contexts than the initial emphasis on chilling out in the 1970s, and being employed for very practical purses such as mental resilience in a war zone. It seems like to me that we are approaching a well defined technology of brain control whose brain basis is understood in some detail. I've done numerous posts on behavioral and brain correlates of mindfulness meditation (enter 'meditation' or 'mindfulness' in MindBlog's search box in the left column). For example, only four weeks of a mindfulness meditation regime emphasizing relaxation of different body parts correlates with increases in white matter (nerve tract) efficiency. Improvements in cognitive performance, working memory, etc. have been claimed. A special issue of The journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience discusses issues in the research.

Full time mindfulness might be a bad idea, suppressing the mind wandering that facilitates bursts of creative insight. (During my vision research career, my most original ideas popped up when I was spacing out, once when I was riding a bike along a lakeshore path.) Many physicists and writers reports their best ideas happen when they are disengaged. It also appears that mindfulness may inhibit implicit learning in which habits and skill are acquired without conscious awareness.

Obviously knowing whether we are in an attentional or mind wandering (default, narrative) modes is useful (see here, and here), and this is where the title of this posts comes in. To note and distinguish our mind state is most effectively accomplished with a particular style of alertness or awareness that is functioning very soon (less than 200 milliseconds) after a new thought or sensory perception appears to us. This is a moment of fragility that offers a narrow time window of choice over whether our new brain activity will be either enhanced or diminished in favor of a more desired activity. This is precisely what is happening in mindfulness meditation that instructs a central focus of some sort (breathing, body relaxation, or whatever) to which one returns as soon as one notes that any other thoughts or distractions have popped into awareness. The ability to rapidly notice and attend to thoughts and emotions of these short time scales is enhanced by brain training regimes of the sort offered by BrainHq of positscience.com and others. I have found the exercises on this site, originated by Michael Merznich, to be the most useful.  It offers summaries of changes in brain speed, attention, memory, intelligence, navigation, etc. that result from performing the exercises - changes that can persist for years.

A book title that has been popping into my head for at least the last 15 years is "The 200 Millisecond Manager." (a riff on the title the popular book of the early 1980's by Blanchard and Johnson, "The One Minute Manager.") The gist of the argument would be that given in the "Guide" section of some 2005 writing, and actually in Chapter 12 of my book, Figure 12-7.

It might make the strident assertion that the most important thing that matters in regulating our thoughts, feelings, and actions is their first 100-200 msec in the brain, which is when the levers and pulleys are actually doing their thing. It would be a nuts and bolts approach to altering - or at least inhibiting - self limiting behaviors. It would suggest that a central trick is to avoid taking on on the ‘enormity of it all,’ and instead use a variety of techniques to get our awareness down to the normally invisible 100-200 msec time interval in which our actions are being programmed. Here we are talking mechanics during the time period is when all the limbic and other routines that result from life script, self image, temperament, etc., actually can start-up. The suggestion is that you can short circuit some of this process if you bring awareness to the level of observing the moments during which a reaction or behavior is becoming resident, and can sometimes say “I don’t think so, I think I'll do something else instead.”

"The 200 msec Manager" has gone through the ‘this could be a book’ cycle several times, the actual execution  bogging down as I actually got into description of the underlying science and techniques for expanding awareness. Also, I note the enormous number of books out there on meditation, relaxation, etc. that are all really addressing the same core processes in different ways.

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The NDSEG Fellowship

I might as well talk about it, this will be my second time applying for NDSEG, so today we'll go over exactly what that is, why I'm doing it, and why, if you're working on a PhD, you may want to do it as well. NDSEG is tricky, but if you get it then you should be pretty well set for funding, it's a great program, but it also means you're being funded via the DOD.

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The Type Of Narcissism Linked To Eating Disorders (M)

This type of narcissism is often a result of parental invalidation.

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A Unique Sign Of High IQ

This behaviour is a sign of higher intelligence.

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Therapist or Patient: Who’s in Charge?

Let’s talk about psychotherapy. Why hasn’t it changed much in the last century? And if a patient isn’t getting well, is it the fault of the patient, the therapist or the therapy itself? In today’s podcast, Gabe and psychologist Barry L. Duncan discuss the idea of holding therapists more accountable when the patient isn’t getting better.

Join us for a great discussion that sheds new light on how we should be treating mental health issues.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

 

Guest information for ‘Barry L. Duncan- Therapist or Patient’ Podcast Episode

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D. . is CEO of Better Outcomes Now and a psychologist, trainer, and researcher with over 17,000 hours of face-to-face experience with clients. Dr. Duncan is the developer of the clinical process of the evidence based practice, the Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS), a process that ensures that clients are privileged and therapy is accountable.  Barry has over one hundred publications, including 18 books addressing client feedback, consumer rights, and the power of relationship in any change endeavor. Because of his self-help books (the latest is What’s Right With You), he has appeared on Oprah, The View, and several other national TV programs.

 About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Barry L. Duncan- Therapist or Patient’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Psych Central Podcast, I’m your host Gabe Howard and calling into the show today, we have Dr. Barry L. Duncan. Dr. Duncan is the CEO of Better Outcomes Now and a psychologist, trainer and researcher. His self-help books, the latest is What’s Right With You, have led to appearances on Oprah, The View and several other national TV programs. Dr. Duncan. Welcome to the show.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: It’s great to be here again. Thanks for having me.

Gabe Howard: Today we’re going to discuss holding therapists accountable and their need to evolve. Now, as a person living with bipolar disorder, I can tell you that patients are always encouraged to change our way of thinking and to evolve. But in some ways, therapy hasn’t really changed all that much in the 20 years that I’ve been involved. Now, I’ve been involved as a patient. But Dr. Duncan, what are your overall thoughts on that?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Well, I think you’re right on the money with that, I mean, as a profession, we really haven’t changed a heck of a lot in the last hundred years in a lot of ways. I mean, there’s a lot of these models and techniques. In fact, there’s over four hundred models and techniques now. But a lot of things about psychotherapy have not changed, like, for example, who’s in charge and how the hierarchy works and who calls the shots and how collaborative it is. And all of those things are pretty much the same as it’s always been. And that’s why we do need for therapists and the field itself to evolve to be a bit more accountable than it’s been in its last hundred years.

Gabe Howard: It’s interesting to me that you say it really hasn’t evolved in the last hundred years because everything’s evolved in 100 years. I can’t hang on to a cell phone for more than six months before it’s considered outdated old technology. So for something to last a hundred years, was it just perfect or are we really using this antiquated method that isn’t giving us our best results?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: There had been an evolution of different models and techniques and ways of understanding people’s problems and way of treating people’s problems. The only problem with that is that no one approach now developed is any more effective than the approaches developed 50 years ago.

Gabe Howard: Gotcha.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: All approaches work about equally well. That means, then, that psychotherapy as a treatment endeavor has not improved. It was as effective 50 years ago as it is right now. That’s the disconcerting part, and that is because we have not been results oriented. We haven’t been accountable to the client, the consumer or the patient, whatever you want to call that person sitting in the room with you, we haven’t been accountable to what they think would be a successful conclusion to the therapy.

Gabe Howard: And is that who you think that therapist should be accountable to?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Yes, it would be totally accountable to their perception of their own benefit, their perception of their experience of the therapy itself, rather than feeding the therapist, the provider, the psychiatrist, a psychologist, whoever they’re seeing, instead of fitting their viewpoint of how the therapy should go, how the patients should wind up, it should be taken from the construction, the perception of the person receiving the treatment.

Gabe Howard: Do you get a lot of pushback when you say that, because I know people living with mental illness or even people with mental health concerns, we often feel like whenever things go well, it’s because we have a great therapist. And whenever things go poorly, it’s because we’re not listening to our great therapist. That’s our world. But you’re over on the other side. Do your colleagues like you saying this publicly?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Actually, a lot of them do, but there’s a portion that don’t like that arrangement where they blame the client when there’s no change and take credit when there is, I would like for that to be spun around completely, 180 there. And when there is change that the client take credit for making the changes because they’re the ones doing it. And when there’s no change, it’s about the treatment model and how the treatment model interacted. Is the right fit for the person receiving it rather than putting the blame on the client’s shoulders, which is what psychotherapy has done since the beginning. Right. When there’s no change, it’s because of the client’s psychopathology. Think about how we organize our profession. If you change, it’s because I’m so super brilliant and I’m a great practitioner, if you don’t change well, you are quite sick. This is going to take more time, more effort, more drugs, more therapy. That’s been the kind of mentality. I think that kind of story is reaching its end at this point. And people are starting to realize that they’re far more fruitful ways of going about this.

Gabe Howard: A lot of my listeners don’t know this, but whenever we set up a guest on the show, we always ask the guests to submit some questions because they know the questions that they get asked most of all. And I can’t know everything as much as I tell my wife that I do. And one of the questions that you submitted, I think it might be my favorite question ever. The question is, what does the death of George Washington have to do with our topic today, Dr. Duncan?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Actually, it is the perfect story for our situation today, because here’s what happened to little George after he retired from the presidency, right? Right. His Mount Vernon estate every morning. And on a cold, blustery December day in 1799, he got back from his ride and he got a sore throat and a cough. And so, they put him to bed and they summoned the area physicians. The first physician got there and administered the standard of care of the day, and Washington’s condition grew worse. The second physician got there, re-administered the standard of care of the day and Washington lost consciousness. And then finally, the third physician arrived later that night, re-administered the standard of care to an unconscious George Washington, and by the next morning, George was dead. Now, what was that standard of care? It was bloodletting. And while medical historians quibble over whether or not the bloodletting hastened his demise or outright killed him, the fact of the matter is that they continue to apply the same treatment despite direct evidence from the patient that it clearly was not working and making it worse. And that’s exactly what people do today. They will continue to administer the same treatment to a client despite direct evidence that the treatment isn’t working. That code creates chronicity in clients. It causes them to get worse over time. We used to call that bloated files syndrome. It was more about the person who’d been in so many unsuccessful treatments, more so about that than about the person themselves. The people began to have a mentality about themselves, that they’re untreatable, they’re too sick, they’ll never get better rather than having it look to the outside and saying, gosh, maybe the treatments I’ve been getting or not what I am needing and let me try different people, different treatments to see if I can get to a better place.

Gabe Howard: I think that this leads to patients just giving up. I hear the word quackery a lot. I hear that they the therapist just wanted to talk to me and it didn’t do any good. And you hear a lot of terms to describe therapists from the disgruntled. Do you think that part of that disgruntled-ness comes from what you’ve just described?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Absolutely. People become disgruntled when there’s no change and when they see no possibility for change or no hope for change, one of the factors that makes treatment beneficial for people is that it inspires hope. A very famous psychiatrist, Jerome Frank, had a very nice perspective on this. And he thought that when people come to treatment, they are demoralized by their lives and they believe that every day is going to be just as miserable as today. But what therapy does is, in his words, re-moralizes or gives them the possibility that’s not true. And then that inspires people to catalyze them into action. And then they do things to make meaningful changes in their lives when it’s not helping. Therapy can make you quite disgruntled and start to believe that you’re unchangeable, which is the worst conceivable outcome.

Gabe Howard: So this begs the question, Dr. Duncan, how do we get therapy, which, as you stated, hasn’t really changed all that much in the last hundred years? How do we get them all to change?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: There has been a movement within psychotherapy, this called systematic client feedback, and Michael Lampert is the pioneer of this. And he had this idea that why not measure in each encounter with a client’s believe they’re benefiting from their therapy and then those clients who aren’t benefiting will be identified so that the therapist can then do something different with them? That’s a great idea. But there’s a more radical side that really appealed to me. And that was that don’t make it an expert kind of a process. Don’t make it to where it just gives information to the therapist. Why not let it be a collaborative process that’s done together with the client and the provider and have that process of monitoring outcome to see whether or not the person is benefiting and then collaboratively figuring out what else can be done and or to move them on to greener pastures with somebody else, if indeed they can’t collaboratively come up with different ideas to be beneficial to the client. The relationship is called the Therapeutic Alliance, which if the alliance isn’t good, it’s very unlikely for anything good to happen in the therapy. We also check in with people in each and every encounter about how was this experience for you today? Are we talking about the right stuff, the approach that we’ve taken to address your goals? Do you really think that’s going to be helpful to you? So we check that out with these two four item scales.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: It takes less than five minutes. And when you do that, you identify the consumers who aren’t benefiting. Because an important thing we know, Gabe, is that who is providing the service accounts for most of the change of any treatment being administered. Now, what that means is that it doesn’t matter whether your psychodynamic or your cognitive behavioral, who you are as a person accounts for much more how change happens with clients than the models and techniques that you use. If that isn’t in line with the clients, the best thing you could do is to fire yourself and let the person see someone else.

Gabe Howard: Let’s step away from therapy for a moment and even step away from mental health treatment and into physical health treatment or just patients versus doctors. There’s a huge movement in America right now for patients voices to be heard. And again, I want to be very clear. This isn’t a therapy relationship or even a mental health relationship. This is all of patients feel that they are not being partnered with. And when I say all of patients, they don’t have the downside of having the discrimination or the stigma of being out of their mind or crazy or not thinking straight or we need to do this for their own good, because after all, they can’t advocate for themselves because they’re sick. And I point that out because if it’s happening over on the quote unquote, physical health side, meaning for somebody with cancer, for example, what hope does the mental health side have? Because we’re much easier to ignore? Can you talk on that for a moment? Because I know that many patients are like, look, even in the best of circumstances, we’re not believed.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: From a medical point of view, it’s really the same dynamic that exists, you have an expert and the patient who needs the help of the expert. What you find is that relationship and medical treatment is also predictive of eventual outcomes, even with biological markers has been a recent research in the last five years that when patients believe they have a good relationship and good communication with their medical provider, they get better outcomes and even biological marker better outcomes. So the same processes could be helpful in medical care. In fact, my colleagues and I have developed measures for primary care docs, so the same dynamics exists there. So we validated our measures in primary care science and our next step is to actually try and see if it improves outcomes. Once we started measuring outcomes and doing this collaborative process with clients and psychotherapy to solicit their views and whether they’re benefiting and solicit their views of how the experience of therapy was going. We then started doing randomized clinical trials, which is the language of science, where you compare clients who didn’t have the support of their treatment and clients who did. And we’ve done eight randomized clinical trials now and it doubles overall treatment outcomes for those clients who have systematic client feedback as part of their therapy. 

Gabe Howard: I don’t know why we separate mental health and physical health out, but for the purposes of this conversation, moving it out of the physical health realm and into the mental health realm, patients know that we have to be involved. We see a therapist one hour a week and then all the other hours or hours. Essentially, if we don’t participate in therapy, it does not work. We know that hard stop. You cannot send an unwilling person to therapy and expect it to do any good. They’ll just sit there and ignore you for an hour and then go off and do whatever they want. So knowing that is an absolute fact, why do you think you’re getting any pushback whatsoever? Is there I’m going to use a mean word. Is there just an arrogance among therapists that they can convince people who don’t want to listen, to listen, or is it just deeper than that?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: I think there’s certainly an arrogance there, but I think that there’s I call organizational apathy toward doing anything, that it’s a change. We like to work the way we’ve always worked. That’s always worked for us before. They see it as adding to what they’re already doing. A lot of therapists believe that they are overworked and underpaid. The master’s in social work and master’s in counseling are the two lowest paid master’s degrees in the United States. It’s different in Europe, but here in the US, it’s a very low paid master’s degree. People feel up against it a lot of times. And so when they’re asked to do more, know someone comes in from the outside and said, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it improves outcomes and decreases dropouts. It’s a way to be collaborate with people like. Oh yeah, I heard that was the last paradigm shift. So people tend to hunker down. Implementation is a long term process for people and it takes training and use and supervision. And I basically tell people when I’m implementing an agency that about twenty five to thirty three percent of therapists will say, I really like this, I’m going to do it. I see the benefit from it right away. But then everybody else has to be brought along. And most people learn from their own experience. So they need to have the experience of it being useful to them before they’ll completely buy in.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Arrogance is certainly part of it. And there’s that, that this is an old old idea, back and from the beginning, the sanctity of the closed room, nobody else in there except me and the client, no outside influences. And this is this private time. And I don’t want to let anybody else or anything else in and doing any measurement process or formally soliciting the client’s voice. It’s not what I’m about. The really sad part is that a lot of therapists and this is the arrogance or believe that they know what the client needs and wants without ever asking them. That’s the part that drives me crazy. They think they already know the answer. You did an RCT in Norway, and the person I was working with, Morten Anker, he is a good friend of mine. He did a survey of the therapists before we did the trial and there were ten therapists. And he asked them, do you think that getting systematic client feedback about the client’s view of benefit and their view of the alliance? Do you think that will improve your effectiveness? All ten said no. We already know whether people are benefiting. We already know whether we have a good alliance with people. And guess what happened? Only one of the ten was correct because nine out of ten improved their effectiveness with this systematic feedback from the client.

Gabe Howard:  Stay tuned and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Sponsor Message: Gabe here and I wanted to tell you about Psych Central’s other podcast that I host, Not Crazy. It’s straight talk about the world of mental illness and it is hosted by me and my ex-wife. You should check it out at PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy or your favorite podcast player.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: Welcome back, everyone. We’re here with Dr. Barry L. Duncan, discussing how to hold therapists accountable and their need to evolve.  Dr. Duncan, is that you’re met with this resistance and you are able to overcome it, but what do you say? There’s this knee jerk reaction in me to say, hey, I told you that this would be better for your patients. Why are you arguing with me? But I know as an advocate, yelling at people doesn’t ever work. So I’m curious as to your method, because, as you said, you’re overcoming years of thinking and people’s ways of doing things. 

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Yes, we’ve implemented many places. In fact, we have one point five million administrations of our measures in our database, so there are many people doing it there. Thirty thousand registered users on our website. But there is this kind of initial response. And I first started training people. I was shocked that they didn’t say, wow, this is such a great idea. We’re going to do this right away because it identifies our people who are benefiting in mixed therapy, more collaborative and honoring the client’s voice and all of these values that people are always reporting that they have, that when push came to shove, they wouldn’t actually do it. And I was shocked by that. I had to develop ways of inspiring people rather than mandating people do this. And what really got me into it was it’s about social justice and client privilege and making sure that we level the playing field with clients and we got them engaged and involved. But other people get on board for other reasons. It identifies the people who are likely to drop out before they drop out. It improves effectiveness. It’s been proven in real world settings to raise the bar of everybody’s performance. It involves the known predictors of how people change. My kind of go-to in helping win people over is to show them the work. Therapists really like to see the work itself, because then I go from being a talker about it to showing them.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: And I, of course, releases from my clients and anonymize the videos. But I show them the actually doing this with people and people’s comments about liking being involved in the process, liking being involved in all of the decisions, liking how transparent the process is and getting better, recapturing some people that would have otherwise not benefited. I have a video that’s very popular with therapists where it’s a client who I was not successful with. I really wanted to be successful with her. I really liked her. She was a great young person, couldn’t have wanted her to work through her struggles more, but I was not the right fit for whatever reason. And then I do a consult with one of my colleagues who took over therapy, and then she changed quite rapidly. So the message is that we all have clients who don’t benefit and there’s nobody that’s one hundred percent effective, the very best therapist on the planet, or about two thirds effective, which means that one third of their clients do not benefit, that if we identify who those third are, we can either change up what we’re doing or we can get them in front of somebody else. That is a better fit. In the old days before I started doing this, I think I would eventually figure out that I wasn’t being helpful to people, but they may have dropped out by the time I figured it out.

Gabe Howard: Right, and then you can’t refer them.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: They can’t be referred, and it means they walk away saying therapy wasn’t helpful rather than saying therapy with Barry wasn’t helpful and it could be helpful with somebody else, with different ideas, different trainings, different kind of personality, whatever. It got me to the end of right away with people from the second or third encounter saying, does it look like things happened? What do you think we should do about that? And that conversation is really cool because it does comment on the partnership. And we can get to maybe if there is something that’s holding us back, have a frank conversation about it and move on, or we need to change approaches altogether or think about it in a different way. 

Gabe Howard: Dr. Duncan, is there any downside to holding therapists accountable and to your method? We’ve talked a lot about the positives, but let’s be fair. Does the pendulum swing back the other way?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: There could be potential downsides, for example, if the payers, managed care companies, insurance companies use this as the sole decision to throw people out of their you reach maximum gain, no more sessions for you rather than that being. This is information, the decisions made between the client, the therapist, about when therapy should end or when it should be cut back or what have you. It also could be a downside if management decided to use it in a punitive way. For example, to say you’re your therapist, Gabe, and I say to you, well, we measure outcomes here with this system. And if you don’t attain 60 percent effectiveness with your clients, you’ll be reprimanded. Or if you get 60 percent, I’ll give you a raise. That would be a really horrible consequence. So in all of my contracts and all of my agreements, I spell those things out that it can’t be used that way. It can’t be used to reward or punish therapists. It can’t be used as the sole determinant, whether a person continues in therapy or not, because, again, those decisions are far more collaborative than that, than a number from a scale. But the number from the scale, it’s our insurance policy in that it keeps us honest so that we have those conversations with. And one thing that I really is troubling to me as I look at therapy across many organizations and many therapists, is that therapy can devolve into a place where there’s only a processing of the client’s life.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: It’s just an ongoing commentary on what’s happened that week with no thematic connection to a change that is being tried for. That winds up happening because it’s a much easier thing for people to do rather than being accountable for making a meaningful difference in people’s lives. And that’s why measuring outcomes is very important. You can prevent that. I do implementation a lot of agencies that wind up doing supervision and I’ll say, what are you working on? And I’ll say he’s been through a lot. And this is a place where you can come and get support and say, so what’s the end game to providing support? This is the only place that he can get that. I said, wouldn’t it make sense to have a discussion about a goal that he could get support in his real world because you’re not going to invite him home for Thanksgiving dinner? Right.

Gabe Howard: All right.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: We’re not really a support system. Not really. We’re temporary support system for people. We hope that they can get support systems in their natural world and that we are not a replacement for those things. And that’s what happens. A lot of time therapy can become replacement. And we’re not that kind of relationship. And those lines can get really blurred when those circumstances when you’re not accountable to person, to clients and first to there being some results that come from it, we can have these endless process oriented, support oriented therapies now in saying that there’s nothing wrong with process or support, but there shouldn’t be that change component. That’s a part of it.

Gabe Howard: Dr. Duncan, as both a patient and a mental health advocate, I like anything that improves outcomes for patients because that’s me. I want outcomes to improve. I do believe that therapists want outcomes to improve as well. It’s just we’ve always done it this way. Why do we need to change? Change is scary. It’s the kind of thing that you often go to therapy for.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Absolutely. You know, one of my favorite agencies of working with, they’re called Wesley Community Action, and they have a big poster in their waiting room and it says, We pledge to have as much courage as the people that we serve. We have to be courageous ourselves as therapists to make changes that we know are for the better, rather than saying the way we’ve always done them, because that’s where our comfort zone is. And we ask clients to make changes all the time. We ourselves aren’t willing to do it. Sad commentary on us, basically, but it takes courage to do things that are different. It’s hard for some therapists to get feedback that therapy is not helping. OK? Wouldn’t you rather know? It’s not helping them believing that it does and then the client drops out. You don’t know why some therapists are squeamish about getting direct feedback about the relationship. Those are incredible things for people to say to you because they’re trusting you enough that there won’t be some negative consequence by their being candid with you. And that’s exactly what we want clients to be with us is as candid as possible. It’s a gift when clients say things negative to you, because if you can work through that with them, it will build the alliance even stronger and the client will be more likely to benefit from the service.

Gabe Howard: I like that, I like that a lot, Dr. Duncan, do you have any last words or comments on the topic? And also where can people find you online?

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: BetterOutcomesNow.com is the Web site, BetterOutcomesNow.com and there’s a section called Resources and there’s all kinds of free resources there, articles, videos about a lot of the stuff we talk about there, brief videos about. Lots of free stuff, in fact, 253 downloads are on the website.

Gabe Howard: Wow, lots of cool stuff.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: And something I’d like to leave you with is if you were a client in therapy, if you would like for that therapy to be accountable, it would be a nice thing to bring up to your therapist. And you could tell your therapist that he or she can download the measures for free from the website. BetterOutcomesNow.com and watch a video and could learn how to use them quite readily. They want to go so far as to read a book. They can do that too. In my book, What’s Right With You, which is written for a general audience, I recommend that you monitor the progress of your own therapy. Even if your therapist says that you do it, you monitor your own progress so that you have a sense from session to session whether or not you are gaining. And of course, that book tells you how to do that. There’s also stuff online that would help you how to do that. That’s a free download.

Gabe Howard: And advocating for yourself as a patient is something that, well, Gabe Howard, Psych Central and pretty much every organization that I’m involved with highly recommend. Steer your own bat. I think that’s really the bottom line. When we wait for stuff to happen to us, we’re not really in control. And when we advocate for ourselves with our doctors, our medical teams and even in our own families, workplaces and general society, I think it really does impact our outcomes, our mental health and, of course, our overall lives.

Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D.: Absolutely.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Dr. Duncan, and thank you to all of our listeners for listening. My name is Gabe Howard and I am the author of Mental Illness Is an Asshole, which is available on Amazon. Or you can get a signed copy for less money over a gabehoward.com and I’ll even throw in stickers from the show. Remember, we have a super secret Facebook page over at PsychCentral.com/FBShow. I recommend that you sign up for that. If you have any topic ideas, please, please, please send them to me at show@PsychCentral.com. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please, please subscribe. Use your words and tell other people why they should subscribe. Ratings are powerful and remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling any time anywhere simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We’ll see everyone next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

 

The post Therapist or Patient: Who's in Charge? first appeared on World of Psychology.

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Why have we become more comfortable and less happy over the past 40 years?

Arthur Brooks offers another article in his biweekly series on "How to Build a Life," pointing out that we haven't gotten happier as our society has become richer over the past 40 years because we chase the wrong things. Some clips:

Consumerocracy, bureaucracy, and technocracy promise us greater satisfaction, but don’t deliver. Consumer purchases promise to make us more attractive and entertained; the government promises protection from life’s vicissitudes; social media promises to keep us connected; but none of these provide the love and purpose that bring deep and enduring satisfaction to life.

This is not an indictment of capitalism, government, or technology. They never satisfy—not because they are malevolent, but rather because they cannot. This poses a real dilemma, not just for society, but for each of us as individuals. But properly informed, we are far from defenseless. Here are three principles to help us keep the forces of modern life from ruining our happiness.

1. Don’t buy that thing. Brooks points to research that analyzes:

...the happiness benefits of at least four uses of income: buying consumer items, buying time to pay for help (by, say, hiring people to do tasks you don’t enjoy), buying accompanied experiences (for example, going on vacation with a loved one), and donating charitably or giving to friends and family. The evidence is clear that, although people tend toward the first, much greater happiness comes from the other three.

2. Don’t put your faith in princes (or politicians).

If I complain that government is soulless or that a politician is making me unhappy—which I personally have done many times—I am saying that I think government should have a soul or that politicians can and should bring me happiness. This is naive at best...Government cannot bring happiness, but it can eliminate the sources of unhappiness.

3. Don’t trade love for anything. In the...

...famous study that followed hundreds of men who graduated from Harvard from 1939 to 1944 throughout their lives, into their 90s...subjects who reported having the happiest lives were those with strong family ties, close friendships, and rich romantic lives. The subjects who were most depressed and lonely late in life—not to mention more likely to be suffering from dementia, alcoholism, or other health problems—were the ones who had neglected their close relationships....You will sacrifice happiness if you crowd out relationships with work, drugs, politics, or social media.

The world encourages us to love things and use people. But that’s backwards. Put this on your fridge and try to live by it: Love people; use things.

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A Depression And Pain Treatment Effective For 89% (M)

Most people reported that they found better ways to cope with their pain after the programme.

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This Vitamin Deficiency Increases COVID-19 Risk

Being low in the vitamin puts these workers at higher risk of catching COVID-19.

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Funding and you, a PhD story

New day, yet another topic for me to talk about. Today I've decided to spare everyone from hearing about my data processing woes to instead touch on a topic that I haven't discussed before (at least I don't think I have!). Today we're talking about funding your PhD. Specifically why it's important and what power you have over the funding you recieve.

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A case for "we" in an "I" country

James Morone does a review in Science Magazine of "The Upswing" by Robert Putnam with Romney Simon. Some clips:

At the turn of the 20th century, the United States suffered from rampant inequality, vicious partisanship, a torn social fabric, and unabashed egoism. Individuals and corporations lunged ahead, the devil take the hindmost. But from that terrible epoch—eerily similar to today—something admirable sprang up and flourished: six decades of steady, albeit imperfect, social amelioration.

The United States steadily became “a more egalitarian, cooperative, cohesive, and altruistic nation.” In the 1960s, however, the nation tumbled back toward a brash new Gilded Age, marked by ferocious inequality, bare-knuckle partisanship, social fragmentation, and a culture of narcissism. Putnam and Garrett sum up the three epochs as “I–we–I.”

But what was it about the 1960s that cracked a sunny community and turned it back into a selfish, snarling, and segregated land? ... a powerful potential cause glints through, and the authors seem repeatedly tempted to settle on it... At the height of the civil rights movement, George Wallace, a fiery segregationist, stunned everyone by riding a crude racial backlash to strong showings in the 1964 primaries. The Republican Party, led by Barry Goldwater (in 1964) and Richard Nixon (in 1968 and 1972), cashed in and began to wink at white privilege. Suddenly, the majority of white people stopped voting for Democrats (who averaged just 39% of the white vote in presidential contests between 1976 and 2016).

...in 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau predicted a majority-minority nation within a generation, further stoking white fear. Putnam and Garrett return to racial tensions in four different chapters, raising the question of whether it was white racial anxiety that shattered the great American “we.” The authors do not go so far as saying yes, but they lay out enough evidence to allow readers to judge for themselves.

Despite painting a bleak portrait of recent U.S. history, every shred of data in The Upswing reverberates with the same exhortation: We came together once, and we can do it again. The authors emphasize the role that bold reformers played in imagining a better, more inclusive nation during the 20th century's long upswing. Their book is an extended call for a new generation to take up the fight.

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The end of the experiment

Well today was a milestone for me, the end of an experiment I wasn't too excited to do in the first place! Of course, now comes the semi-difficult part. I need to process the data, draw some conclusions, probably publish a few papers, and get a presentation made. Things need to happen quickly too, so while I'm done, I'm not. At least, not yet.

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How To Decrease Unwanted Thoughts By 50% (M)

Stop painful memories coming back again and again.

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The Diet That Reduces Heart Disease And Stroke Risk

The best types of protein to live longer, beat diabetes and heart disease.

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Podcast: Value of Personal Mental Illness Stories

Openly sharing our personal mental health stories can help others know they’re not alone, especially when it’s a rarely-discussed or taboo subject. In today’s Not Crazy podcast, our guest Rachel Steinman, a podcaster, writer and mental health advocate, discusses what it’s like to host a podcast where she shares her family’s mental health secrets.

By talking openly about her family’s four suicides, mental illness, substance abuse, family affairs, and more, Rachel is changing the narrative and replacing it with love, compassion, and understanding.

(Transcript Available Below)

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Guest Information for ‘Rachel Steinman- Value Mental Illness Stories’ Podcast Episode

Rachel Steinman is a Los Angeles native who received her Masters in Education and has taught every elementary school grade, K-6. She’s even been the school librarian, a job she adored. Rachel never set out to become a writer, a podcaster, or a mental health advocate but that is exactly what she proudly calls herself after discovering her beloved grandfather’s unfinished memoir 24 years after he jumped from his high rise. Rachel is sharing her family’s story to rid the shame and stigma that come with family secrets and generations of mental illness. By talking openly about her family’s stories of four suicides, bipolar, depression, substance abuse, family affairs, and more, she’s changing the narrative and replacing it with love, compassion, and understanding. She’s also cutting generational trauma so she doesn’t pass it onto her precious daughters and to inspire others to share their stories openly.

Rachel is a lead presenter for NAMI speaking about ending the silence to discuss mental health warning signs and offer resources and hope to middle and high schoolers as well as their parents. Rachel hosts and produces the Dear Family Podcast celebrating our complicated families and overcoming obstacles to find mental wellness. She lives in Studio City with her husband of 20 years, two beautiful, bright, and musical teenage daughters, and her adorable rescue puppy. 

 

About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

 

 

 

 

Lisa is the producer of the Psych Central podcast, Not Crazy. She is the recipient of The National Alliance on Mental Illness’s “Above and Beyond” award, has worked extensively with the Ohio Peer Supporter Certification program, and is a workplace suicide prevention trainer. Lisa has battled depression her entire life and has worked alongside Gabe in mental health advocacy for over a decade. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband; enjoys international travel; and orders 12 pairs of shoes online, picks the best one, and sends the other 11 back.

 

 

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Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Rachel Steinman- Value Mental Illness Stories’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Lisa: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a psych central podcast hosted by my ex-husband, who has bipolar disorder. Together, we created the mental health podcast for people who hate mental health podcasts.

Gabe: Welcome, everyone. You’re listening to the Not Crazy podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I’m your host. And with me, as always, is Lisa Kiner. Lisa.

Lisa: Hey, everyone, today’s quote comes to us from Ryunosuke Satoro, and he said, individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

Gabe: I like quotes like this for so many reasons, but there’s lots of quotes like this, right? You know, just like.

Lisa: It translates nicely into a poster.

Gabe: Yeah, yeah, we do have the kitten doing the hang in there thing.

Lisa: I love that one. That’s my favorite.

Gabe: But isn’t it so overdone?

Lisa: Yeah, but it’s a kitten.

Gabe: But isn’t like the stronger together thing overdone as well.

Lisa: Together, everyone achieves more.

Gabe: Together, everyone does achieve more, and what makes me sad is not the glurge-y nature of the quotes or the simplicity of it or just the ughhhh of it. It’s the fact that we don’t know this. Like, do we really need a poster or a quote to tell us this. Is this not just like basic common sense? Like why don’t we have a quote that says, hey, if you hold your breath, you’ll die? 

Lisa: Good point, I never actually thought about that, why do we have all these quotes and the answer is because, yes, people do actually need it. 

Gabe: We also need a place for kittens hanging off stuff to get work.

Lisa: Good point. Otherwise, what jobs are they really qualified for?

Gabe: They could just be our little cuddlies. I don’t

Lisa: Good idea.

Gabe: I don’t know why.

Lisa: Good idea. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Gabe: I think it’s a good idea. You know, Lisa, we get mail. We get mail, comments just. 

Lisa: And we appreciate all of it.

Gabe: We do. Thank you, everybody. And one of the things that keeps coming up is they ask us why our guests never share personal stories. And in fact, they referenced us saying, hey, we don’t have guests on to share personal stories. We’d rather debate a subject or discuss something or share their point of view. And the question specifically came up, so are you saying that personal stories are bad or are they stupid? Do you not like them? And first, I want to say unequivocally, if I couldn’t share my personal story, I would not have a podcast.

Lisa: Good point, you’re sharing your story constantly, it’s a job description.

Gabe: So there’s this little piece of me that thinks, hey, we made the decision because I don’t want the competition. That is not, in fact why I made the decision. The reality is personal stories are extremely valuable. And I encourage all of you to share. They’re just so well represented in the space. But you know what’s not well represented in the space? The opinions of people living with mental health issues and mental illness. I want to tell people what I want. I don’t want to tell them my story and hope that on the strength of my story, they get it. You should not treat me like shit. Why not? Because I am a person and deserving of respect. Rather than you should not treat me like shit. Why not? Hang on. Let me tell you a story of when somebody treated me like shit and it made me feel bad. We wanted to get into why we developed these opinions and how we want the world to follow us.

Lisa: So, you don’t want people to have to infer what you mean, you want to just tell them.

Gabe: Oh, yeah, that’s a much faster way of saying that.

Lisa: Yeah, well, if it were up to me, it’d be a lot shorter show.

Gabe: So, listen, I decided that we would invite our good friend Rachel Steinman over to discuss the power of storytelling. Rachel is the host of the Dear Family podcast. She’s an awesome mental health advocate and she knows a lot about getting people to share their stories and, of course, the value of that. So, Rachel, welcome to the show.

Lisa: So nice to have you here.

Rachel: Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

Gabe: As I just mentioned, you are the host of the Dear Family podcast, can you briefly tell our listeners what that is?

Rachel: Sure, it is a podcast where we celebrate our complicated families. We find mental wellness, and I interview inspirational people who have overcome obstacles and we talk a lot about family members that have mental illness or people that have mental illness and how they’ve overcome it or how they’re dealing with it. And we also talk about family secrets and the importance of just sharing stories and having open dialog to rid stigma and shame and find love and compassion and understanding.

Gabe: And, Rachel, that’s exactly why we wanted to have you on the show. We’re all mental health advocates and in this case we’re all podcasters, which is kind of rare for us. It’s a unique occurrence, right, Lisa? We don’t have a lot of podcasters on our podcast.

Lisa: Yeah. Oh, so meta,

Gabe: I just wanted to set you up to use meta.

Lisa: I know. I have to use that at least once an episode.

Gabe: But, Rachel, we’re all mental health advocates, but we go about it very differently. Lisa and I believe very strongly in people with lived experience, sort of viewing the world and translating it for people who haven’t been there. And you believe very strongly in people sharing their stories and talking about what happened to them. And what I really like about your podcast is you really, really dig deep. It’s not fluff. It’s like you said, it’s no secrets. You dig into the family. There’s just a lot of debate about which one is right. And I kind of think it’s a stupid debate because I think they’re both right. 

Rachel: Well, I definitely appreciate your platform and I can see why it’s so important, but I’m coming at it from a daughter whose mother has bipolar, whose grandparents both died by suicide, whose brother was addicted to crystal meth and ended up homeless. And all these years of shame and no one really talking about mental illness. I wanted to change that narrative. I wanted to openly talk about it because I don’t want to pass this on to my daughters. I don’t want that generational trauma continuing. If we don’t talk about it, then that shame may continue or they may not feel comfortable speaking out. This really all began when I started writing and I wrote an essay called Grandpa and Anthony Bourdain, and it was after Anthony Bourdain took his life by suicide. And I talked about my family and so many people, private messages or publicly came out of the woodwork that I had known from high school and on and said I had no idea that you had that family. You hid it so well, I have something similar, or my mom or my brother or my husband or myself. And I realized literally everyone has a family member dealing with the mental health issue or they themselves are dealing with it. And let’s talk about it. 

Lisa: How specifically do you feel that telling these stories of other folks living with mental illness is helping people who do not live with mental illness?

Rachel: I think it’s hugely helpful. I have heard and I love hearing this and I’m sure you hear this, that it really helps others find compassion for those that are suffering and maybe even find compassion for themselves. And that there’s no shame in asking for help or seeking therapy or talking about it. The more we talk about it, the more others talk about it. Right. Truth begets more truth. And my mom has bipolar. She was not diagnosed until her mid 60s. And for all those years, I was ashamed of my mom. I was embarrassed by her eccentricities and her vulgarity and her swinging moods. And now that I understand that it truly is a mental health disorder and it affects her brain, I have so much more compassion. And it’s made my mom and I so much closer.

Lisa: And then how does your mom feel about that, how does she feel about you telling her story? Is she OK with that?

Rachel: Well, at first, she was not at first, actually, when I started writing essays, because that’s how it began. She was not thrilled about it. She also saw things differently. And I think at one point it pushed her into a manic episode, which did not help. And then I felt guilty and there was definitely some tension because of course, here I am sharing her story publicly. Is it really fair for me to do that? Maybe not, to be honest. But then after my mom started reading them and realizing that there was value in sharing the story, she actually came to me and I’m so grateful. And she gave me her blessing and she said, you’re doing what I wish I could have done. If our story can help one person, then you have my blessing. And I have to say what a beautiful gift. 

Lisa: How long would you say that took between the time when you started and when your mom came around?

Rachel: Not too long, I would say about a year, and I wanted my mom to be my first podcast guest because my podcast’s called Dear Family, and she said absolutely not. I don’t like my voice. I’m not interesting, all of these excuses. But I didn’t push it. And I ended up having my brother, but my mom ended up being my fiftieth episode. And it was so special. She was so open. She’s come so far. So in a way, I think me having this platform made her realize the importance of her voice and the importance of sharing her story.

Gabe: Thank you for being so candid about telling your family’s story, because this is something that I struggle with, not with my family, because they’re OK with it. We apparently just have no scruples whatsoever. But the other people around me, I am surprised that sometimes I’ll see things on Facebook or I’ll get emails from somebody that I knew way back when. And they’ll be like, I heard this on the podcast or I read this in a blog that you wrote and I knew you were talking about me and I don’t like it. Take it down. Now, I don’t mention people’s names. I remove identifying stuff. But even though nobody could possibly figure out it was them from it, they knew it. And that was enough to really make them anxious or fearful or angry. How do you get around that with other folks? Because with your family, hey, you’re a member of your family and you’ve made a decision. But what about like a friend or if you saw your mom interact with somebody else and you’re like, well, this is a story that’s worth telling what my mom did to the store clerk, for example. And I’m just literally making stuff up because while you’re OK telling your mom’s story, are you OK telling the store clerk’s story and does it still have value? Is it just hey, these are paparazzi rules? It happened in public.

Rachel: I want to answer your question, but I have a question first for you. Did you end up taking it down?

Gabe: No,

Rachel: OK, good.

Gabe: No, I never did. No, of course not. And thank you for asking that follow up question. I didn’t take it down because hey one, I made sure that they couldn’t be identified. And plus, this is just life. And three, they did it. But moving all of that aside, where does that end? I mean, how much ret-conning of the past can I possibly do? How much editing and how much revisionist history? I mean, if I can start revising my past, I mean, I’m going to take aim at other things. Yeah, but I did feel bad. I guess that is the part that I want to say. It did make me feel uncomfortable. This idea that I was drudging up unhappiness for this person, I chalked it up to collateral damage. But how reasonable is that?

Rachel: This all began when I was 40 years old, and it was twenty four years after my grandfather had died by suicide. My grandfather was a big real estate mogul in Manhattan and he had to, you know, the outside world, a perfect life. He had kids. He had grandkids. He had money in the bank. He was traveling. He had his physical health to still golf and play tennis. And yet he jumped out of his 14th floor balcony, actually, and died by suicide. I was 16 at the time. Twenty four years later, when I turned 40, his third wife passed away and I was allowed back into this high rise and I found his unfinished manuscript. His father died by suicide. His brother died by suicide and his wife. So that would be my maternal grandmother.

Rachel: My mom’s mom also died by suicide when my mom was just 14 and no one ever talked about it. I found this manuscript and it blew me away, but it was incomplete. There was a lot that was never said, especially, the really important things. There was a lot of business acumen and all of that talked about. But what I was really searching for was missing. It set me on this journey to become his ghostwriter. And I started finishing his story and I realized I had a story to tell. And I am still working on this double memoir that spans five generations. But as I was writing it, I’m digging all this dirt. I’m talking about my family like you cannot believe, right? Talk about opening up a can of worms. I’m talking about my uncles, my mom, my dad, my childhood, my life, things I did that wasn’t right. But if you want to be authentic, you have to tell the truth. And this is my truth. I ended up writing this essay. Well, my family on the East Coast got back to me and were very upset, very angry with me. How dare you talk about Grandpa or my dad that way? They were very, very upset with me. Fortunately, Medium has it’s kind of like an RSS feed. You can change it and it updates. I was able to just say grandpa and get rid of the last name and that appeased them enough. But that was an awful feeling, knowing how upset my family was with me. And yet I totally stand by that essay to this day. I mean, if it’s my truth, it’s my truth.

Lisa: So how does it turn out with your family now, are they still upset about that or have they also come around?

Rachel: So, I’m an open book, so is my mom, some of the other family members are not. I also just recently my cousin was upset about how I mentioned her dad. And yet I know deep in my soul, I can sleep at night because it’s true. And that’s just kind of what I go on. I don’t know if all of them have come around. Maybe it’s selfish of me to say, but I’m OK if they haven’t.

Gabe: How do you feel about the concept of it’s true to you? I think about how I see people and, you know, Lisa and I have this constant struggle and this constant debate about how Lisa sees her parents and how I see her parents. Now, they’re not changing for me, for her. The difference is, is I knew her parents only as an adult. And, you know, obviously they don’t like me very much. I divorced their daughter and there was a lot of turmoil. But in Lisa’s case, they raised her. They birthed her. So when I say, well, you know, your parents are mean and she’s like, no, they’re mean to you. So if I wrote.

Lisa: They’re showing loyalty to me.

Gabe: Right. So if I wrote an article called The True Story about Lisa’s Parents, I wouldn’t have to tell a single lie to make them look bad. But the reality is, is it’s incomplete. Right? I’m only telling the things that they did to me that I don’t like. And I’m therefore and I’m making air quotes, guys, speaking my truth. Do you think that people understand that? Do you think that when people read an article or listen to a podcast by Rachel or by Gabe or by Lisa, they understand that that is that person’s take and that it’s certainly possible, and in fact likely, that somebody else has a completely different take?

Rachel: I love this question so much, because I think that that’s one of the things that writing taught me that helped me in podcasting, is that you have to make the person you’re interviewing a round character. They can’t be flat. That if someone read my article, they would find sympathy for my grandfather. It has to show both angles. So, Gabe, if you’re writing an article about Lisa’s parents, you need to include that part about how great they raised their daughter. And otherwise, it’s not, again, that word authentic. It’s not authentic. So one of the things that writing really helped me do is look at my grandparents, look at my mom, look at my brother, and not just see them as, oh, they just did this and they suck. It helps me look at the past. It helps me see how they were affected. My grandfather, his dad was a narcissist. He learned that from him. His dad died by suicide. So looking at someone as a three dimensional character, finding compassion for them, understanding the history, understanding from where they came is such a better story. Like some of the best storytellers, there’s a villain, and yet you can find sympathy for them.

Gabe: Darth Vader, you’re describing Darth Vader,

Rachel: Right.

Gabe: Right? I just this

Lisa: It was so sad when he died.

Gabe: He terrorized people for three movies, but then

Lisa: Well.

Gabe: We saw him as this flawed character that got, I don’t know,

Lisa: Redemption.

Gabe: Just. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess it’s a redemption arc if we’re using fiction words. I like what you said there, Rachel. You know, the reality is this is an advanced life skill. People can be two things. I was very much angry about the divorce. I was angry that I had caused more problems. And then, you know, here’s this. These other people, they’re coming in and they’re essentially shedding light on their truth, which is that I was a bad husband, so I didn’t like that. Then in reality, you know, I learned that, hey, they can be two things. They can both not be very nice to Gabe, which is, you know, they’re right, I guess. And

Lisa: Loyalty to me.

Gabe: Exactly. And of course, they can be exceptional parents. That gave me my best friend and the woman who saved my life. Well, now what do I do with that? And I think that people struggle with this. And I think this is, to your point, Rachel, why these stories are so important to get out there, not because of our versions of it, but because of the discussions that come up around them. See, right now, when it comes to, you know, bipolar disorder and mental illness, especially in families, it’s never been discussed. I actually think that it is a real bonus that the whole family is emailing you and calling you and telling you that you got it wrong, that you mess this up, that you’re making us look bad, because while that discussion may be aggressive or even angry and hostile, it may well be the first discussion that any member of your family has had about these events in potentially their entire lives. And I think that gets us to a good place.

Rachel: I totally agree. The moment that happened, I thought this might be the first time they’re all discussing this tragic event kind of with open eyes. What you said about the two sides, I actually think sometimes there’s three sides. I think there’s your side, their side and the truth.

Gabe: I like that, I like that.

Rachel: And the other thing that I will point out, I think that is a huge saving grace is forgiveness. By seeing the true picture and being able to step back, you are able to look at your family members’ past and find forgiveness. And that is so healing taking that weight off your shoulders. I was able to forgive my mom first for things that she did because I was able to understand that was her bipolar. My mom was able to forgive me for separating and pushing away from her because that was my coping mechanism. Having these conversations and being able to find that compassion leads to forgiveness. And I think if you can forgive, it’s your gift.

Lisa: We’ll be back in a minute after these messages.

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Lisa: And we’re back discussing the power of personal stories with podcaster Rachel Steinman.

Gabe: Let’s talk about the next step in the evolution of open discussions or let.

Lisa: I have a question. 

Gabe: I haven’t asked mine yet.

Lisa: So do you feel that this has been beneficial to your family?

Rachel: Absolutely by me kind of opening up the can of worms and forcing some discussions, like I said, my mom and I have never been closer. I was ready to kick my mom out of my life. She was just so erratic. And then once I started really digging deep, that helped me find that compassion and that understanding. It was almost like I put on new lenses and saw clearly for the first time. And I’m talking about going back multiple generations to my grandparents and to even their parents who I never knew, and seeing how this generational trauma can get passed down, how if you don’t talk about it, it can fester. So, yes, I’m so glad that I went on this journey. And if nothing else comes of this, which I don’t believe is true, it saved our relationship.

Gabe: I like what you said about seeing things clearly, but I still worry about how clearly change is. And I again, I think about my own life and I have probably the most ridiculous example of this. Are you familiar with the TV show King of the Hill?

Rachel: Yes, I don’t watch it, but I’m familiar with it.

Gabe: Yeah, I loved King of the Hill. I loved that when it was on, I watched every episode when it was brand new. Now, when it was on, I was you know, I was young. I was I think it premiered when I was like 17 years old. And, you know, it ended probably when I was around twenty three, twenty four. And, you know, now with COVID and we can’t do anything, I decided to pop open Hulu and literally watch it from scratch. Now, for those who don’t know, you know, King of the Hill is about this conservative Texas family. This guy, his name is Hank Hill. He sells propane and propane accessories. And he’s this real quiet guy who likes football. And his son, who’s 12, is named Bobby Hill. Now, Bobby is the exact opposite and he talks a mile a minute. He’s a chubby kid. He hates sports. And he’s just a weird, funny little kid. And when I watch it the first time, I very much related to Bobby Hill. Right. He’s just trying to be who he is and make his way in the world and live his best life. I’m 43 years old now and I watch the exact same show again.

Gabe: It didn’t change one iota. And I’m watching it. And I just completely related to Hank Hill. You know, here’s this guy who’s trying to live his best life. He has a kid. He’s got this idea in his head of what being a father is. And he doesn’t know how to connect to his son, who’s the exact opposite as him. And he’s just desperately doing his best. And nothing seems to be working. It’s the exact same show, Rachel. They didn’t change anything. The only thing that changed is I got twenty years older. I think this is why openly discussing our stories and talking about them and keeping them in, whether it’s the public consciousness or the family consciousness, is so important because as Lisa and I have discussed a million times, our parents were dumb as shit when we were kids. And then the minute we turned about 35, we realized they were geniuses, that nothing changed

Lisa: So what you’re saying is then part of the benefit is that you’re able to reinterpret it with new eyes at a later time? I’m not quite sure what you’re saying, Gabe.

Gabe: I think the benefit is that age provides perspective. I could not see things the way that my parents saw things because I was not under the pressures that they were under the reasons that my parents made, the decisions they did when they were raising me is because, well, they had other children to think about. They had a mortgage, they had jobs, they had other responsibilities. Gabe had no understanding of that. I just thought that my dad thought that I was weird and didn’t want to connect with me. And that’s why I liked the Bobby. Well, once I became older and I had my own struggles with managing work and making friends and connecting to the children in my life, I realized that, oh, hey, it’s not that my dad thought that I was a weird little kid that he didn’t like. It’s that my dad just had no idea how to connect with me either. And that’s what I saw in Hank Hill. We often talk about things right when they happen because it’s fresh and the crisis is right there. Can you believe mom did this? Can you believe Gabe said that? Can you believe this bad thing happened? And then we take the whole thing and we ball it up and whatever age and place we were in the world is the only way we ever think about it for the rest of our lives. So, however, Rachel saw her grandfather’s death at 16, becomes how she sees her grandfather’s death for the rest of her life. But by discussing it, by seeing that manuscript, by talking to other family members, you start to realize that there were things that 16 year old Rachel didn’t know. Now, again, I’m speaking a lot for Rachel all of a sudden. What are your thoughts on that?

Rachel: So I interviewed a woman named Dani Shapiro, she is a New York Times best seller and she’s incredible and she’s a memoirist, which it stayed with me. She talked about how when you write about trauma, you can’t write about it right after it happens. The only people that can do that really are poets. You need time and space to look at things. And I definitely agree with that because if I had just thought about my grandfather the way I did when I was 16 and didn’t understand why somebody would take their life, when I thought they had everything, then I would still be stuck in that place of, in a way, feeling like he was selfish. And now, of course, I don’t think of that at all. I understand how somebody could take their life, that there’s so much pain that you wake up every morning, you feel like, what’s the point? And I never could have understood that at that age. Now, again, talking about how we change with age and how there’s that wisdom as we grow older. I remember looking at my parents, too, and thinking like they’re [beep]. Sorry. That they’re idiots. 

Rachel: That they’re idiots because they don’t, they don’t know. And I never want to be anything like them. And now I have teenage daughters and they will say things to me that I just laugh at. Like you don’t know or you’ll never understand or things like that. And I know that in 15, 20 years, they’re going to change the way they look at things. But yes, there is something really amazing about looking at things after having more experience. And I have to say being a parent definitely changes things. I’ve talked about this. I was a kindergarten teacher straight out of college who used to judge parents because they didn’t have time to read to their kids, or they would bribe their kid with candy. And I remember thinking, I will never do that. And then cut to I have my own kids. And so and then I feel guilty for judging them. But I think that, yes, the importance of storytelling is to see different views from different ages, also to talk about it. So, for example, my mom now has a label. We know she’s bipolar. Well, my girls know she’s bipolar. She’ll grow up looking at things differently than she would have had we not been able to talk so openly about it.

Lisa: Ok. Uhm, 

Gabe: Hold up, let me say thank you real quick. 

Gabe: Thank you so much, Rachel, I really appreciate that.

Rachel: Of course.

Lisa: Oh, I didn’t know that’s what you were going to do, OK? I thought you were going to say thank you for being here. I thought, why would you do that when I have a question. But I understand now, never mind.

Gabe: Rachel, I love so much that you don’t have a co-host like that, that’s how you set that up. You got to

Lisa: See how much her life is lacking. Poor thing, I feel so sad for you.

Gabe: No, her life is great. I’m just teasing, Lisa

Rachel: Although, you guys definitely seem to have fun together, and I love that, it’s impressive.

Gabe: I owe her a life debt, like I’m

Lisa: Like Chewbacca,

Gabe: I keep trying to get away from her, but I’m not allowed. I’m

Rachel: She pulls you back in.

Gabe: I mean, that part is kind of true.

Lisa: I try.

Gabe: In a way. We’re joking, right? But as you know, Lisa and I, we are divorced and that is unusual. They’re like, well, if you’re still friends and you like each other, why couldn’t you be married? As if as if

Lisa: We get that a lot.

Gabe: Marriage and friendship is are identical things. But in a way, Lisa knows my whole story with mental illness. That makes her extraordinarily valuable. I think it’s why people want to stay connected to their family so much, because your family knows like your entire childhood, like that’s a lot of bonding. I I’m not trying to say that Lisa and I are only friends because she saved my life. But I think Lisa and I might only be friends because she saved my life. That’s like an incredible thing to connect to people. It’s hard to break. I mean, she also likes Star Wars and that’s pretty bad ass. And we like the same restaurants. That’s

Lisa: No, we don’t,

Gabe: That’s true. We hate it.

Gabe: Us. Trying to pick a restaurant is

Lisa: No, we just go there because you’re too picky,

Gabe: You will only eat at, like these weird restaurants that even Yelp won’t review.

Lisa: All everything you pick is so boring.

Gabe: And yet popular.

Lisa: Any who

Rachel: I love it, I love it.

Lisa: Question for, a question for Rachel, question for the person here. So you’ve talked about the importance of sharing your story publicly on a on a large scale, on a podcast or online or in an article. What about do you feel there’s any value in maybe something on a smaller scale, like sharing with your coworkers or talking to the person standing next to you at McDonald’s?

Rachel: Absolutely, I mean, that’s probably the most powerful right face to face, one on one, that’s like a true connection. And sharing your story by being vulnerable, by opening up yourself, it lets other people take their guards down and open up to you. I say this all the time, but by showing how people can overcome obstacles, like I love highlighting people that have hit real low points whether they were homeless or addicted to crack or whatever it is, and how they were able to ask for help, which feels weak but is actually the strongest, bravest thing you can do and then turn their life around. It’s so inspirational and all you need to hear is one story that can move you into action. So, yes, definitely. I think that’s so powerful that one on one connection.

Gabe: Lisa, I really liked your question and Rachel, I did like your answer. I think that sometimes people believe that things only work on a grand scale. You know, if you can’t have a podcast like Rachel or a podcast like Gabe and Lisa or if you can’t have a huge following in a newspaper or. But that’s like so sad, right? I mean, could you imagine if Lisa would have seen something wrong with Gabe and instead of telling me her story or discussing with me, she would have just let it go and written a blog like that that wouldn’t have found me where I was. I wasn’t searching out this information. So in that way, Lisa is one on one conversation was infinitely more valuable than even the most popular podcast, because I wouldn’t have searched for it. I wouldn’t have read it. I wouldn’t have listened connect it. I thought that was for other people and not for me. And Lisa is one on one conversation with me connected to me where I was. I sincerely think in this age of, you know, how many likes do we have, how many followers, how many hits people forget that one on one conversations have just a tremendous amount of value, especially to the person that you’re having it with. 

Rachel: You talking about the connecting one on one, it just made me think of a story about my husband, who is a entrepreneur, and he’s been in the business world since college and has had some success. And I’m just very proud of him. And someone asked him who his mentor was and who he looked up to. And I would have come up with 10 other people and he mentioned his mom’s friend, this man named Myron, who he’s had multiple conversations with quietly. And it really kind of blew me away that that this one person made these connections and it was those the separate phone calls. And it just goes to show how reaching out and having those conversations one on one is so powerful. And I sometimes get private messages from people. And I have to say, look, I am not a therapist. I just have lived experience, but by me connecting one on one with them privately and making them feel like I do care about them and that they are important and that they can find help has been so impactful for me.

Gabe: My sincere question is it really seems like every single person who has a mental illness or knows somebody with a mental illness immediately thinks that they need to start a podcast, write a memoir or a blog. And I don’t want to stop anybody from following their dreams or putting their information out there. I’m just wondering if some of those people are doing it out of obligation or because they think that’s the only way and are missing out on other ways for them to share. One of the examples that comes to mind is, is somebody hosting a podcast right now that would much rather lead a support group. And instead of leading the support group, they believe that they have to reach more people. And therefore, even though they’d be an incredible support group facilitator, they’re sitting behind a microphone and editing software miserable because after all, they’re reaching more people.

Rachel: There’s probably countless podcasts dealing with mental wellness, I will say the fact that Lady Gaga and it’s every celebrity now is talking about their anxiety or just look at Tic Tok and the teenagers. I mean, it’s almost like

Gabe: It’s very popular,

Rachel: Cool to talk about

Gabe: Yeah.

Rachel: That, what you’re dealing with and struggling with, which, by the way, is fantastic that our kids are talking about it. But does everyone need to be have a podcast? No, probably not. And that was partly why I wanted to make sure that my platform highlighted other people’s stories, because it is important to get stories out there. But, yes, I totally agree with you. I think that there are other platforms that people can share their stories without having to start a podcast. And yeah, absolutely. We do need more support groups and we do need more probably like therapists, especially people of color. We need more cultural sensitivity training. And I would encourage that for sure if you are considering getting in the field and wanting to help.

Lisa: Well, Rachel, thank you so much for being here today, where can our listeners find you

Rachel: So my website is WriteNowRachel.com, that’s write, with a W and I am on all the social media platforms and my podcast is on all the podcasting platforms. Just search Dear Family.

Gabe: It’s an awesome podcast I highly recommend it, and I hope you will check it out on your favorite podcast player or head over to WriteNowRachel.com. And remember it’s write. Like you’re writing.

Rachel: Exactly, and I’m so excited because I’m having Gabe as a guest on my podcast coming up very soon, and we’re going to talk all about him and his family.

Gabe: Yes,

Rachel: Yes.

Gabe: Turnabout is always fair play. Rachel, thank you so much for being here and listeners, stay

Lisa: Yes, thank you.

Gabe: Tuned, because now we’re going to talk behind Rachel’s back.

Rachel: Awesome, I can’t wait to hear it, this later.

Gabe: Of course, again, you can always tune in.

Lisa: Again,

Gabe: In. I don’t. It’s like our favorite joke. You know, we’re going to talk about your behind your back. It’s

Lisa: It’s not our favorite joke.

Gabe: It’s my favorite joke.

Lisa: Why is Rachel interviewing you on the show and not me?

Gabe: Well,

Lisa: Aren’t we a package deal?

Gabe: No, no, no, we’re divorced.

Lisa: Fair.

Gabe: The package deal part of the Gabe and Lisa relationship has long since ended by rule of law. Could you imagine this poor woman? Like she already spent a couple of hours in the studio with us to do this interview, and then we

Lisa: She did.

Gabe: Show up again on her show? For, for real?

Lisa: Ok, there’s a point. She was very patient with us,

Gabe: Do we dislike people 

Lisa: Very good sport,

Gabe: That much?

Lisa: Not her specifically

Gabe: I’m the Star.

Lisa: You are. You’re the Star.

Gabe: Hey, Lisa, we went back and forth a lot when we were designing our show about the personal stories, and I know that I felt a little hypocritical not letting the personal stories on it, because that’s literally my career. I share my story for a living. It’s, that’s my keynote address. It’s literally called This Bipolar Life. And it’s about my life living with bipolar disorder. So I felt a skosh hypocritical. But at the same time, we looked around and there just wasn’t any shows where people were just tackling life or the subject matter through the lens of people living with mental illness. I just want people with mental health issues and mental illness to tell people what they want, advocate for it and fight for it and not be ambiguous. I think that has just as much value as sharing our stories.

Lisa: Of course it does, but why does it have to be one or the other? The whole point is we can have two approaches to this problem.

Gabe: This is the most fascinating thing that we deal with on this show, where people hear that you advocate for one thing and they immediately believe that you are against something else, could you imagine this playing out in the real world? Gabe, what do you want for dinner? Pizza. Oh, you hate spaghetti? You anti-spaghetti? You marching against spaghetti? No, I. I just wanted pizza. I’m not giving any thought to these other things, nor am I trying to push them down or not pay attention to them. And when appropriate, I like spaghetti. I like spaghetti a lot.

Lisa: You just want to make clear that just because this is not something we’re focusing on here; we don’t have anything against it and we support others focusing upon it.

Gabe: Yeah, we also don’t talk about Marvel movies, which I’m obsessed with, but it’s not the space for it.

Lisa: Gabe, your point is that promoting one idea or one approach does not mean that you’re bashing another one.

Gabe: That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. We coulda saved the whole hour. 

Lisa: Yeah,

Gabe: This show could have been 10 minutes.

Lisa: Yeah.

Gabe: Hey, you’re listening to the Not Crazy podcast. This is Gabe. I’m here with Lisa. Lisa gives a quote. Hey, just because we promote one idea does not mean we’re bashing another. There’s room for multiple pathways to recovery. We need to be open to things. Yay! All right. Hey, everybody, thank you for listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Shit.

Lisa: That would be a very odd show for us to have.

Gabe: Yeah,

Lisa: Yeah.

Gabe: This is what happens when your host more than one show, but sincerely, sincerely, all I want people to know is that personal stories have incredible value, as Rachael established better than we ever could. The power of getting in touch with your past, of sharing it with like-minded people, of, she didn’t use these exact words, but of finding your tribe, of making amends with family members. Like this is what openly discussing our stories can do. And it was sad, Lisa, when we got the emails where people were saying, oh, so you’re saying that these stories have no advocacy benefit or that these stories are not a good idea, that you don’t encourage people to promote their stories? I was very bummed that people got that message. The reality, Lisa, is we need them both. Remember when I testified in front of the General Assembly and

Lisa: Mm hmm.

Gabe: Here are all these senators, and if I gave them a fact, their eyes glossed over, if I told them about something bad that happened to me because of these laws or lack of resources, then all of a sudden, their eyes widened like, oh, my, how could this happen to a person? And you and I learned very quickly that the marriage of fact and personal story, the personal story grounds it, the fact gives them an entry point of something to fix. So I am fascinated by this idea that the two things would ever be at odds given how intrinsically connected in my mind they are. Facts are valuable, saying what we want is valuable, advocating for ourselves is valuable. But the reason we do it is always connected to, frankly, something bad, traumatic, or awful that happened to us in the past that we want to ensure doesn’t happen to anybody else ever again. And I think that’s worth discussing.

Lisa: Well, the personal is political.

Gabe: Exactly, I just don’t think it’s worth discussing on the show, not in a bad way.

Lisa: [Laughter]

Gabe: Thank you, everybody, for listening to this week’s Not Crazy podcast. Wherever you downloaded the show, please subscribe. Also rate it, rank it, review it use actual letters to form words to tell people why they should listen as well. I am Gabe Howard. I am the author of Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations. You can, of course, get it on Amazon, but if you go to gabehoward.com right now and buy the book, I will sign it and I will give you a whole bunch of Not Crazy podcast stickers absolutely free. Don’t believe me? Lisa will hold me to it.

Lisa: Lisa will actually be mailing the books, so no worries, there’ll be stickers in there.

Gabe: Stick around for the outtake at the end of the credits, and we’ll see you next Tuesday.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Not Crazy Podcast from Psych Central. For free mental health resources and online support groups, visit PsychCentral.com. Not Crazy’s official website is PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. To work with Gabe, go to gabehoward.com. Want to see Gabe and me in person?  Not Crazy travels well. Have us record an episode live at your next event. E-mail show@psychcentral.com for details. 

 

 

 

The post Podcast: Value of Personal Mental Illness Stories first appeared on World of Psychology.

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