psychotherapy

#21: Holistic Psychotherapy with Phyllis Alongi

June 16, 2019 Health, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality 01:05:40

The journey of healing through psychotherapy entails an unearthing of our authentic feelings that we have learned to shut down due to various reasons, including trauma and societal constructs. More and more, we recognize the importance of connection and relationships for our mental health. The space between two people, whether they are client and therapist, two friends, or lovers, may be an essential factor in healing.

On this episode, we have a conversation with professional counselor and educator Phyllis Alongi. Based in New Jersey, Phyllis brings a holistic approach to psychotherapy and healing. We explore toxic relationships, the therapeutic container, clinical inuition, Sandplay Therapy with children, and we also tackle some sensitive mental health topics like trauma, borderline personality disorder and suicidality. Phyllis is a Reiki and Healing Arts practitioner and she is currently completing her doctoral degree in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology. 

Highlights:

  • Therapeutic Alliance
  • Navigating Toxic Relationships
  • Clinical Intuition
  • Using Sandplay Therapy with Children
  • Trauma, Borderline Personality and Suicidality

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:                             

Welcome Phyl to the show.

Phyllis Alongi:             

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Thal:                             

Thank you for coming on.

Adrian:                        

 Phyl. I’d love to hear, just about the early years before psychotherapy, before you found your profession. Maybe if you can share with our listeners a bit about your history. You can go as far back as you feel is necessary to kind of bring us to date as to how you discovered the profession and why you’re doing it currently.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Sure. I think that my religious background really had a lot in molding me toward the field of psychotherapy and psychology. Initially, I wanted to maybe be a psychiatrist. I was looking more in something a little more toward a medical model. I was raised a Catholic. I engaged in in 12 years of Catholic school education and it was very prominent in my upbringing and in my family, very family oriented, Italian, New York, you know, upbringing. We were Catholic, we went to Catholic school, we all went to church. It was, there was no question that that’s not how you practiced. I knew that, you know, growing up that I needed to be connected and fulfilled because church was very peaceful for me. But it was what was happening in church that didn’t settle well with me, and then throughout adolescence I really questioned and started to doubt my faith, based on some of the events that happened to me when I was 15, I was on vacation with my family, on Easter Sunday and at a restaurant in vacation in Miami, Florida. My father died and had a heart attack. My mother was 39 and widowed on spring break with her three kids and now her husband’s not here anymore.

To come back (inaudible) from that, it took many, many years. I will share with you that one of my very close family members, developed a substance abuse issue. It really put a strain on our relationship and on our family and I started to question my faith and I started to question, what is my religion and from these questions and these doubts, the yearning to be connected to something, to my belief in a higher power. I customized Christianity and Catholicism to my own spirituality, to meet my needs to connect. Psychotherapy seemed very organic in a way because it was about the human experience and it was about the things that I was gravitated towards, about people, about how interesting I think the mind is [inaudible] tried to scratch the surface and figure out why people do what it is that they do.

I think that plus my spiritual background really propelled me into the direction it was, felt very organic. Studying psychology, learning about counseling theory and technique. It never even felt like I was in school. None of that felt like a requirement to me. I’ve always been a duck to water and gravitated towards that piece of it, and as I became more and more entrenched in psychotherapy, in practice and in my life I’ve learned to take bits and pieces of what feels right to me and implement that into my practice with people.

Thal:                             

Amazing! So it’s the spiritual aspects, I guess, of psychotherapy that attracted you to psychotherapy as opposed to psychiatry, you think? How would you describe psychotherapy?

Phyllis Alongi:               

If we look at psychotherapy through a transpersonal lens or a spiritual lens, we understand that it is what’s between the two people. That is something that we can’t taste. We can’t feel, we can’t color, we can’t touch, but we know that it exists. What is it about two human beings that we can create this space between the two of us, and be able to facilitate healing in that. Yet it’s not something tangible. If you look at Catholicism, many of the mysteries and the main focuses of what we are to believe in are not tangible. It felt very much like that, it is my faith in humanity, it is my faith in my spirituality in the essence of another person where I meet them in that area (inaudible). I know that it exists, and that is the space for healing.

Thal:                             

Phyl, we just want to go back a little bit and describe that space between two people, the therapeutic alliance. In your opinion, how does that process unfold? What are the elements that have to be present for healing to take place?

Phyllis Alongi:               

That’s a wonderful question. When people come to therapy, oftentimes they look for the psychotherapist to not only guide them but be the first, the initial space creator. Part of what’s healing and what facilitates healing is what a client brings, what the other person brings to that space. There has to be some equality in that. What creates that therapeutic container? The elements, I feel, that are very very important to the facilitation of not only cocreating it, but also in where the healing starts is when there’s presence and a person comes to therapy willing to be in the moment, willing to delve deeper, to expand themselves so that they’re ready to shed all of what they’re afraid of to all the preconceived notions that they’ve heard, what therapy is like, or what they went on my website and they saw me first and thought, oh, she’s this or she’s that, and to shed all of that and just be in the moment of each other’s energy.

To me that essence of healing begins that therapeutic alliance. Of course, receptivity, how open we both are to being with each other. How open we are to each other’s suggestions and to the energetic flow or the direction that the therapy is going in, which is client led, but it comes from this participatory cocreated spiritual place where we’re ready and we’re receptive. We’re present and we’re in the moment of that. The alliance is built on that equal cocreated trust that what I need is inside of me and you’re going to help me move through that. You are going to help me ignite that in me so that we can discover ways only I know my limitations and only I know what’s going to work for me and you’re going to help me discover that. We can work through that together. I trust that I’m in the right space at the right time. It truly is exceptional, and when two people, that moment where there’s true healing and there’s true trust and the alliance, the rapport really starts to form, the cocreated therapeutic container gets stronger and stronger and it gets more open to what needs, what will fill it, and what needs to be addressed.

Thal:                             

It’s almost like this therapeutic container is a third element that’s available between the therapist and the client.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes and it’s not only initiated by the therapist at the onset of therapy, the client needs to come to therapy already ready to do those things, ready to be present, to be receptive and to begin the alliance. When I look back at years of doing psychotherapy, what were the characteristics of clients who really made nominal therapeutic progress, like whose lives changed, who brought themselves to a space where they were feeling better, where they were higher functioning, where they were more content. I look back at those characteristics because they came to therapy ready. I’m not saying like locked and loaded where I have all the answers and I know what I have to do, but that I’ve thought about it. I’m not going to let psychotherapy happen to me. I’m going to be an active participant in it. I think coming with that mindset, seeing your work through that lens helps to shape that container.

Thal:                             

In many ways, this is much more empowering. A lot of people feel like psychotherapy is …is this some kind of mind control? Some of them think that or some of them might think, oh, does this really help? What’s the point of therapy? Really a large part of it is what the client brings in and their willingness to realize that the elements of their own healing is within them.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes, what I need to heal myself, the things that I need to heal, to facilitate healing, to cultivate healing are inside of me, and in this space, we’re going to tap them out. We’re going to tease them out and we’re going to move towards healing. There’s so much in that…there’s intuition, there’s desire, there’s things like my commitment to therapy and there’s a lot of factors and sub-factors involved in that. I think willingness, receptivity, presence and the cocreation of that alliance being, you know, ready to do that are probably that my top three.

Thal:                             

That’s a very empowering narrative.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, how do you describe to your clients your style, sort of your approach to therapy? Cause I, you know, there are many types and techniques out there, do you specialize in any particular methodology? How do you typically describe the process?

Phyllis Alongi:               

It’s so interesting because when you join websites like directories and websites like psychology today, they’ll ask, what are your specialties, what techniques do you use? I always find that very interesting o r a client will call and say, you know, someone will inquire, do you do DBT? Do you do CBT? Are you this kind of therapist? Are you that kind of therapist? And I always say this, tell me what you’re looking for? My approach to therapy is that it should be client led and that based on what the information you provide to me of what your needs are, what you’re struggling with and where you want to go, then I will tailor or customize that to suit their needs. Because you know, if CBT techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, might work with one person that they might not work with someone else, someone else may not be open to just the idea of that and wants something more interactive or less inside my head and more in my behavior.

It depends. I like it to be very client led and it’s a very eclectic blend of what I’ve learned. I consider myself very intuitive so I sometimes go with my own clinical intuition of what techniques I think would work good. You know, would work well with someone, what they would be open to, how they would respond. Oftentimes I might think it’s one way, and then as I get to know someone better, it’s revealed to me that’s something else we’ll work. Usually, it’s just led by the client based on their conversation, what they’re looking for, where their level of functioning is. I think that that’s probably what I am, I’m more holistic and I come from a very spiritual place and I allow the client to tell me about spirituality before I bring it in. I let them bring it in, first, so that I know that it would be welcomed and that they’re receptive to it. I use a myriad of years of bits and pieces of what I’ve learned and what I’ve incorporated that I know is what the client is looking for in the moment.

Thal:                             

Before we move on to the next question, using words such as empathy and intuition nowadays, you know, it could mean so many different things. What is intuition to you? What does it mean?

Phyllis Alongi:  

To me, intuition is a way of knowing without knowing how I know. When I see someone, it’s not a message or channeling, I wish I could say it was that, but it’s energy. My energy is reading your energy and I’m getting information based on your presence and your essence. This is the best way that I can describe it. I hope that it makes sense to your listeners that it’s a feeling that I get and then I take a moment to think what is this feeling? Then I get some information and I don’t know how I know to do that. For instance, I’ll give you an example. If I’m working, if I don’t know a client very well, maybe it is the first or second time that they’ve come to me for a session and we’re talking and I get this feeling like I need to ask about a specific sibling or a maternal grandparent and it is inevitably impactful, has had an impact, negative or positive on this client.

Why would that feeling come to me if we were talking about some work situation or they were explaining something else to me? It’s a way of knowing something without knowing how I know it’s not in anything the client said. It’s not in anything that any paperwork that they would do beforehand or in the intake, it’s not a conclusion that I’ve drawn. It’s a knowing that I get when I’m very connected to someone’s energy and 100% in the moment when there’s that cocreated healing environment and it’s two people present in that spiritual, exceptional transpersonal space between the two of us and we are connected is when I get the most intuitive information and it really does help guide where the sessions are going.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, in your opinion, is this intuitive abilities something that can be trained? I mean we live in a society that it seems that the left brain function sort of analytical mode is highly celebrated and perhaps these sort of intuitive skills are a little bit less familiar with and perhaps often just not even an area focus in education. Is it something that can be trained?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I definitely think that psychospiritual practices, Yoga, meditation, Reiki, even massage therapists, mindfulness, those are ways to increase it. We all have intuition and I think how we can train someone is how we can harness it and it would be in cultivating practices and giving some guidelines and really learning how to trust early on those intuitive moments that you have. You can ask any therapist who would tell you that they have had clinical intuitions and that they’ve gotten feelings about what to ask clients and directions to go in and have been very successful. Sometimes maybe you’re not right, but that you have to learn to trust it enough to ask.

You have to do it in a way that’s through the lens of appropriateness and respect for the profession, and for the person. To weigh whether or not it is a good question to ask and is it appropriate for me to ask at this moment? That comes with practice. I think training would come in the form of clinical supervision. Certainly a piece of that could be, let’s go through your cases. We talk about the code of ethics, we talk about dual relationships and HIPAA violations, confidentiality, you know, documentation but let’s talk about your clinical intuition. When you get those insights, how do you feel about them and is it something that you know, like any other kinds of technique that you would use?

Is it something that you feel comfortable with? Is it something that you want to cultivate, that you want to fine tune? Is it a skill you want to hone? If a supervisee says yes or a therapist or even a seasoned therapist who’s like,, I always do that, but I didn’t really know anybody else did that because it’s not very mainstream. I think it certainly can be discussed and channelled and fine-tuned and brought to a space where we could definitely come up with some techniques and more guidance on how to cultivate it and when not to use it.

Thal:                             

Training clinical intuition, that sounds amazing! So that means the therapist has to be working on themselves outside of that therapeutic alliance because what they bring into that therapeutic space can influence the healing process.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes, Thal, absolutely, it’s important to note that if I’m having energy reading, or if I’m having a reaction and response, somatically, to you, maybe you are to me and I have to respect that too. So, yes, we need to have, clinical supervision outside and therapy outside of our own practice so that we can, one, unload, everybody’s energy in and all the things that we’re working on with all our clients, two, bounce cases off of someone else, but also to work on ourselves ongoing all the time. I don’t think it’s something that you do for x amount of years after licensure. I think it’s something you need to do for the rest of your life.

Thal:                             

You work with different modalities. One of them, you’re trained as a Sand play therapist, and maybe can you talk to us about that. Can you tell us what Sand play therapist is?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Sand play therapy is an amazing modality in which there’s sand, which, you know, is the earth that we’re all very familiar with. When you feel it on the bottom of your feet, just how therapeutic something that organic can be. It was developed many years ago by a woman who trained under Carl Jung. It is a fascinating, wonderful modality to process trauma and other issues. Someone may be having anxiety or depressive symptoms, but especially for trauma without words. So there’s a specific tray that we use that’s a standard size, a regulation tray. Then we have all of these miniature symbols, these miniature objects that are really archetypal symbols. If we look at Jung and we look at what he taught us, it’s that the collective unconscious and that there are symbols and there are archetypes that we have that are based on and shaped by our own personal experience.

Then he believes that there are ones that are innately, inherently, inside of us simply because we’re human. And you know, those are amazing little miniatures and symbols that we use, and they’re so powerful. A client would come to my office either, you know, adult or child. Needless to say, children gravitate toward the sand like it’s amazing. We have to really tease out two things here. When I’m holding onto something and I’m aware of it, it’s very powerful and it’s bigger than me. The more I talk about it and the more I process it with someone and I externalize it, it’s power gets minimized. It decreases. Sand play therapy for a child, let’s just use a child as an example of you know, this situation, so we’re going to say it’s a child who comes to me who may be years and years and years before, as an infant there was some sort of abuse or something happened to them, and that was at a time before they had language or had acquired language to articulate that trauma.

So how are they going to talk about it? How is this going to happen for them? If our body remembers on a cellular level, we have memory of our trauma, of our childhoods, of our life, maybe even in the womb, so how are we going to articulate that at this time before there was words and because the sand and the miniatures are representative of our unconscious and what’s inside of us, it comes out in this narrative, in this story through these archetypal objects and these symbolic objects.

Someone, unguided, will begin to build a tray, which means this is the therapeutic container, which is myself, the office, the space between the two of us, the sand, the hands, the miniatures, the lighting. Sometimes people want to build trays to music, so they pick the music that they like and they just build and they create this extraordinary world in a sandbox on wheels that can turn around, that can spin. When they’re done, they tell you the story of what’s happening of what this world is that they created, and as each of those segments of the story unfolds, the trauma gets smaller and smaller because it’s coming from that cellular memory place. It’s coming from that primordial moment, from my ancestors, from archetypes, from the collective unconscious, and it’s coming from what’s processed and happened to me, before I could even have language to tell you.

When I do it with adults, they’ll oftentimes ask me about it and then ask me if they can do it, and then they get very emotional and tell me or go for like childhood objects and maybe things that are representative of what’s happening in their life now or in relationships. It is a beautiful experience and honestly an honor and a privilege to witness because the mind struggles with intense emotional pain and we have to process it. At some point that’s just the way our psyches work. It will force us to. It’ll keep knocking until we actually process it. This is a wonderful, imaginative, creative, therapeutic way to process what we’re dealing with, what we’re struggling with, without using any words.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, I love to ask you, just considering people that might not even have experience working with a therapist. How do you understand trauma? What is trauma and how might you describe that to somebody who is approaching this for the first time?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Adrian, there’s so many facets to trauma. I mean, if I saw a car accident on the corner of my block that could traumatize me and someone was injured or just the loud noise of it or holding my breath for that second when I saw two cars collide would be vicarious trauma. If someone that I love goes through something, an illness or when I care about this person, and we’re very close and I see that something is happening for them, I am affected by it, that’s traumatizing. That could impede and interfere with my everyday functioning because it’s something that’s wounded me somehow. It’s pain that I’ve held on from something that’s either happened specifically to me or I witnessed that’s impacted me negatively, and it hurts when I think about it.

When I think about this event or this relationship or this childhood that I’ve had this relationship with someone in my life when I was a child who affected me in a way that was negative. Trauma could be really ongoing. That’s why it’s important even in education, especially in education and especially with children that we…for our educators, for our psychotherapists that work with kids, social workers, school psychologists, whoever, any collateral contact that works, works with the child or an adolescent. I think especially for education though, for educators to ask instead of saying what’s wrong with you, to come from a space of what’s happened to you. We have to understand that someone’s experience brings them to where they are and we want to be able to meet people where they are, and as a psychotherapist, you have to understand when someone sits down in that space, either next to you or you know, because kids like to sit next to us, or sitting across from us.

When someone sits with us, they’re sitting down physically, it’s one person, but it’s all the people in their lives that have affected them in some way. So one person sits down, but there could be 15 people in the room and we have to be able to say instead of what’s the matter with this, what’s wrong with this client? We have to think through the lens of trauma informed psychotherapy. Where have you been? What’s happened to you? It just changes and shifts the dynamic, and it shifts the perspective of the way that you see someone. It comes from the heart. I think that’s something people have to remember. Psychotherapy is a science, psychology is a science, but it’s the science of people and people come from the heart and we have to remember that that’s where they speak from. That’s where they process from. That’s where their pain lies? We have to be able to, to remember that.

Thal:                             

All the elements seem to include play, spontaneity, and people, and so that has to do with relationships, which takes us to our next question. A lot of people have struggled and continue to struggle with toxic relationships. How would you define toxic relationships?

Phyllis Alongi:               

A toxic relationship is a relationship and it can be a limited relationship. It doesn’t have to be an intimate relationship that has a negative impact on a person. Oftentimes toxic relationships are, we really have to change the way we look at that too, because we want to blame someone and we have to remove that from the equation because it’s not a matter of blame. It’s not a matter of whose fault it is. We have to look at, in the relationship between two people where maybe the power isn’t equal or there’s some strain on the relationship or one person is suffering from mental illness and is acting out towards this other person and doesn’t even know it. or maybe someone loved someone and wants to be with them and the other person doesn’t yet they’re together. So in toxic relationships, and I’m using air quotes, although you can’t see me.

Toxic relationships, I think what we’re looking at is unhealthy. It’s unhealthy because it doesn’t speak to my best self because when I’m in this relationship, I’m less than who I really am and what my best potential is as a person. It stifles me, it minimizes me and it makes me smaller than who I really am. People have such light and such energy to them and negative relationships really try to snuff out someone’s spiritual flame. When I think of of negative relationships, toxic relationships, unhealthy relationships, somehow or another, we managed to stay in them longer, well beyond than we should, and we have to look at why. This is why I say we one of the reasons why we need to take blame out of the equation because me being in this toxic relationship and even aware that it’s not healthy and I’m staying in it longer than I should. I’m benefiting from it in some way.

Thal:                             

Absolutely.

Phyllis Alongi:               

By being in this relationship, there’s some benefit to me, and I may not even be aware of it.

Adrian:                         

Yeah, the word that’s coming to my mind is also codependent relationships. Could you share with listeners what that might mean and how that would work out as an example.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Adrian, that’s a term that’s used a lot in addiction because a codependent would be like an enabler. Technically, I think, traditionally when we look at codependence, we look at that like the need to save, the need to really help someone, and because we want to love and nurture and care about this person, we allow them the space and the time to do what it is that they do that has a negative impact on us. Codependency could have many masks, many phases and we can do a whole podcast just on codependency, but I believe that that is so true. It’s so interesting because I see it in families and it’s very oftentimes not really looked at through that lens of family relationships that there is certain codependent behaviors that are evidenced in a family dynamic.

Where the one person maybe isn’t well, and then the child becomes parentified. The parentified child really cares for that parent. The role is confused, but how does that adult child benefit from parenting their parent? We have to look at that too. This relationship fulfills my need to nurture, my need to heal, and I don’t know how to move from that. I don’t know how to detach from that emotionally. I think that’s in a lot of relationships that are not healthy detachment, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone. Your own independent mental health and wellness is not really where it should be because you’ve been snuffed out or stifled, your psyche has been shaped in this negative atmosphere and so it hasn’t been able to grow properly.

Like a plant that’s not nearly in the light enough, it will twist and vine around. It’s misshapen. I think sometimes, kids that come to me with anxieties or the parentified child, they’re like that twisted vine, they’re misshapen and it takes a lot to get them to the space where they need to get, where a parent needs to back down and see, I can accept my role and try to work with kids to kind of not be afraid. That’s what I think about toxic relationships and codependency, it’s another example of a cocreated relationship because initially maybe it was facilitated by one person, but the dynamic now is cocreated. Working on moving that and shifting that kind of energy is a process and it takes time. I tell people there’s no magic wand, but if you are committed and willing, you can certainly get to where you need to get but this is going to take time.

Thal:                             

I just love the metaphors that you’re using to describe all these dynamics and without really being stuck with all these terminologies. I want us to also maybe touch upon the borderline personality structure. I don’t want to call it a disorder. All these personality structures are an ego defense mechanism, just like the codependency. So what can you say about the borderline, basically?

Phyllis Alongi:              

Well, it depends on, like everything, the degree to which someone is in one direction. I think that personality disorders, I look at them as like autism spectrum disorder, like on a spectrum. I agree that you have it or you don’t, but somewhere in there it’s either very intense or not. I think that if we look at, let’s just say borderline personality disorder per se, there are certain characteristics to that. We can talk in extremes, that are very difficult for family members and people who are close to employers and coworkers living with someone who has a borderline personality disorder symptoms is very difficult. It is easy to get sucked into the web of histrionics and drama. The universe, in my opinion, the universe, I’m sure there’s no study on this but I do believe that the universe hears that gravitation towards emotion, high emotion to high drama, to Histrionics, to problems, to obstacles, the universe takes a little snapshot of what it is that you’re thinking and that’s why we have to really monitor our own thoughts.

 If I’m always thinking the worst, the hardest, the longest, the craziest, the most dramatic, the most tumultuous relationship, the most passionate lovemaking, the most I was waiting the longest on line, those kinds of things that the universe takes a snapshot of that and so that’s what it gives you, I think, that constant state of thinking so chaotically is what the universe then provides and it perpetuates the lifestyle of someone who has a borderline personality disorder. You can really detect it, early on, although we don’t like to, but you can see features or like a borderline personality disorder flavors in adolescence. There are certain behaviors and thought processes, just the way their mind strategizes and it’s always me and this is happening to me and all of it.

It’s always a snow storm, but a blizzard, their periscope, will go up and look around the room and see where’s the heat, where’s the electricity and that’s where I’m going to gravitate towards, and it is on a very nonconscious level. It is just on an energetic level. Life is very chaotic, very sad, and relationships are navigated by control and how can I manipulate this and make this relationship everything that I need, and it’s really, in my opinion, very underlying fear of being alone, of abandonment. So I will keep my people with me for as long as I possibly can forever. You’re never going to leave me and I’ll do anything I can to see to it that you stay with me, and those relationships are very difficult. Children of parents who have had or were diagnosed or gone undiagnosed with borderline personality disorder, similar to adults who were children of alcoholics, have a whole other host of issues that they deal with going into adolescence and adulthood, emerging adulthood.

When we ask someone’s history, it’s not only biological but to see what runs in your family, only because essentially, because I want to know, where are you coming from, what’s happened to you? If you tell me that you grew up in a household with a parent that was diagnosed or is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, then it sheds a whole new light on the situation. It’s difficult. It’s very difficult. My advice is that everybody be in therapy, that there’s family therapy that there’s in-home therapy, which would be extremely helpful because the family would get engaged and you’re seeing the dynamic in its natural habitat. Very interesting, very revealing. Every member of the family should have individual and family counseling. It would be the real way to do that and the most effective.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis in the psychological circles I’ve noticed that borderline personality specifically is a bit, it seems a bit stigmatized and I wanted to ask you, are there hidden gifts to people that might actually have a strong borderline tendency, that might be helpful to work with?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Oh, absolutely and you know, Adrian, isn’t it true that every mental illness is just an extension of something we all are experiencing and it’s just the difference is that it’s chronic, it’s bigger than me, it’s interfering with my every day functioning. It’s interfering with relationships. That’s where the difference lies in the end of the spectrum. It’s further down the spectrum of some of our own behaviors. What are the gifts if manipulation could be a gift, if just the sense of how to navigate a situation with fine tune, heightened sensory abilities, amazing. You know, there are many gifts to that, and just like observing and assessing a situation or a person finding, being able to hone in on someone’s strengths and weaknesses, also a gift. In relationships, where even in marital relationships and intimate relationships, being able to detect what it is and anticipate what the other partner needs is very high on the gift skill I think of of someone who may be suffering with that type of disorder.

Thal:                             

That’s very important that you mention those things because you know, that brings in the role of empathy in difficult relationships. It seems like borderline personality disorder now is the thing that everybody’s talking about and everybody’s realizing and there is a very negative side to it. A lot of people that suffer with borderline also suffer from suicidal thoughts or people that are living with a borderline suffer from suicidal thoughts, which takes us to our next topic, which, I know that you liked her nationwide in the United States, around the topic of suicidology and its connection with youth issues. What can you say about that please?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I will tell you about that in a moment but I just want to say that as far as the stigma of mental health is concerned, it’s with every diagnosis and it’s with every disorder, and people have gifts, period. We were talking about, I think we went from negative relationships to negative relationships and borderline personality disorder, but any mental health issue deserves respect and that person deserves treatment and they deserve to feel proud about that. I work really hard to diffuse and break the stigma of mental health, people are people and they are not their diagnoses, just like they’re not their mistakes. That’s something that I want to make perfectly clear and there are people, specialized psychotherapists, who have really specialized in working with that population. If you are suffering or someone you know is suffering with a borderline personality disorder, finding someone who is specializing in that area would be amazing. That would be my recommendation because it’s some, it’s a very dynamic topic and so, we’re getting more and more information about it and so it’d be someone who would be very passionate about working with that population.

When we talk about suicide we have to look at, whether it’s adults or adolescent or child, we have to look at risk factors. One of the risk factors is clinical. If you have a mental health diagnosis, any kind, you are at higher risk for suicide. If you are in a relationship with someone who is struggling and that has a health issue, not only a mental health issue but an illness or you know, you’re in a relationship that isn’t working, there’s some situation that’s causing high anxiety or depressive symptoms or you know, some turmoil in your life. It puts you at risk for suicide.

 Certainly, exposure to suicide, exposure to loss will hike you right up the list of risk factors and being in a relationship with someone who has attempted and that level of exposure to suicide or loss can really be one of the biggest risk factors. Also, recently there’s been some good research coming out of I think it’s Yale actually about nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior originally was not connected to suicide at all for many years. It was like there’s suicide, self-injurious behaviors aren’t really related to suicide and Thomas Joiner and some of the other suicidologist are really looking at the connection between misbehaviors and threshold for pain and injury, self-injury and its intersection with suicidal ideation and behavior.

Adrian:                         

I was just going to ask you, if you can give an example, I’m just thinking of is that the same as just bad choices, like not unhealthy behaviors that’s leading to a slow death? Is it that what is considered or is that different?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I think that that’s different because there are certain components. Suicide is a very complicated issue. Even when we look at suicidology in the field of psychology, it’s over like out there and in a field by itself. There are many, many, many reasons why someone would contemplate suicide or attempt suicide, and it is very multi-determinational. It’s multilayered. It’s never one reason why it’s mostly always more than one reason why. And those risk factors clinical, exposure, history, family history, access to means situations. Those come together like the perfect storm and somewhere in the middle of that, it starts to lay the groundwork. When we look at the working definition of suicide, it’s an attempt to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with intense emotional pain and impaired problem solving skills. What it really means is that when someone wants to die by suicide, wants to hurt themselves to kill themselves, they don’t want to die, they want to end that intense emotional pain because in the moment of crisis thinking, which the characteristic of suicidal thinking, all they are doing is crisis thinking.

When someone is stuck in crisis thinking, they can’t get back up to healthful problem-solving skills. So they get stuck in unhelpful problem solving skills and then there’s some triggering event and suicide becomes an option. There’s an irrational component to it. There’s an impulse component to it. Suicidal thinking can be ambivalent or even sending a message sometimes. So when we look at all of that, we have to understand that within this complicated issue, you know what it really is and when someone is suffering from that intense emotional pain, they don’t realize at the moment in crisis thinking that it’s only temporary, that this pain isn’t going to last forever. That there are ways that I could, you know, help myself that I could, I could maybe alleviate this.

I need to ask for help. I need to reach out, externalize and reach out of that pain and ask someone for help. To know where to find the resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Number, the 74174 crisis text line. You can just text and say, I need help. I feel like I’m going to hurt myself. Talking about it is very relieving and we know that from survivors of suicide attempt that once they talk about it, they feel better about it and it actually buys you some time because there isn’t that impulsivity component to suicidal behavior. There’s a sense of not belonging. There’s a sense of burdensomeness to family and friends, not feeling connected to anyone or anything. That adds up and that’s all part of the suicidology theories, that feeling of that sense of not belonging.

It’s so important for us when we look at youth suicide. It’s so important for us to really, encourage our kids to join something in the community and schools sports to be connected to something and to find that trusted adult, that caring, trusted adult to have that connection with. Those are the two biggest protective factors for not only suicide, but other risk behaviors like substance abuse we have in our country right now and in specifically in the county that I live in the neighboring counties, we have a very big opiate epidemic going on and the same risk factors, warning signs, and protective factors for suicide are the same ones that we could apply to substance abuses and other risk behaviors.

Adrian:                        

I imagine people that want to direct, whether it’s friends or family members towards help, there can be resistance, often there is resistance to help. What can you offer for those who are trying to help someone who is suffering and they want to bring them to a therapist or a counselor. How do we help them get over that obstacle or that resistance?

Phyllis Alongi:               

That’s a great question. Resistance is difficult and I’m going to say don’t give up, you know, don’t give up. You have to keep asking. I think we need to explain to people because they think if you tell someone that you have suicidal thoughts, you know, suicidal ideation is very common and it’s more common than we think. The Center for Disease Control did a youth risk survey, I think it’s 12.5% of a hundred thousand youth were thinking about suicide. It’s pretty common. When we tell someone, listen, I know you’re struggling, whatever you’re struggling with, you’re not the only one. We can find something that might be suited for you. Therapy doesn’t always mean, doesn’t always look like me and you, you and some old guy, sitting across from each other, or like, but they think Freud, maybe my back to you and you’re lying on a couch.

But that there’s art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy, there’s sand play therapy and all these different psychodrama, all these different modalities that work really well and that we can find one that will work for you and you’re not alone. Individual therapies. Amazing. Group therapy is amazing. There are wonderful support groups for survivors of suicide attempt and also for survivors of suicide loss. I’m sure that you can find in your Canadian resources that are amazing and not to give up, and to keep asking the person, we here in the United States we have organizations that provide in-home therapy services and that people feel more comfortable in the privacy of their own home. It could be over Skype. There are so many ways and so many different modalities and avenues that you can go to that you could explain to someone. Just because you’re thinking about suicide, doesn’t mean you’re going to end up hospitalized because that’s another myth. The number one myth surrounding suicide is if we talk to someone about suicide, we’re planting the idea of suicide in their head and that is the number one myth surrounding suicide.

Thal:                             

Thank you. These are very important and heavy topics really, that we touched upon today. Before closing, since we are talking about relationships, I’m thinking about couples therapy and communication. What is the role of proper communication in a healthy marriage and a healthy relationship?     

Phyllis Alongi:               

I’m immediately in defense mode because every conversation I have with you ends in an argument or slamming the door and sleeping alone or being in the dog house, and I don’t want that to happen so I won’t communicate or I’m not ready to talk about it right now and I don’t know how to tell you that so I’m shutting down and you’re following me around the house wanting to get out of everything you need to say. I think people need to put, you know, when we talk about communication and couples, I tried to help teach couples to argue differently and to communicate on a different level and shed those old patterns, those old habits so that they can have positive conversations that are meaningful and that respect each other, because that’s so important that a person feel heard and respected and not judged.

Whether it’s about something that happened at work or with the kids or with us isn’t minimized by your judgment. It’s so important that a person feels like what they have to say weighs more than what I’m not saying. That you are hearing what I’m saying as an insight to what I need from you emotionally. Can you meet my emotional needs or maybe maybe you don’t want to anymore? Sometimes when relationships aren’t working and it’s not what one person wants, one person really wants the relationship to sustain that communication that’s negative, it isn’t going to work so we have to look at when, when I meet with couples for the first time, the first question I ask is, does everybody want to stay together?

 Do you both want to be in this relationship? If the answer is yes, then we’re going to roll our sleeves up, we’re going to get in it and we’re going to really do some homework and we’re going to make the commitment. It’s just like joining a gym first time you have to learn all the machines. You have to figure out what works for you what doesn’t work for you, what exercise is beneficial for you. Does this hurt too much? Do I feel comfortable doing this? What do I like? What do I not like? We have to rediscover each other as people, not just my wife or my husband or my partner. We have to look at who you are and how am I connected to you. If I don’t feel connected to you, how can I get reconnected to you if that’s what we both want? That’s the essence of successful couples counseling because it’s what we both want and we’re both willing and receptive to making some changes that are hard to do so that we can, our relationship can sustain all the waves of greatness and the things in our lives that happen that aren’t so great.

Thal:                             

Hmm. Amazing.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, I’d love to leave our listeners with some resources. What’s on your list of heavily recommended books for the people that you work with.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Well, Codependent No More always, that book is very old. My partner in practice and I always giggle about it because we’re like, did you write down the Bible? That is such a great book for someone who is in a relationship and wants to make changes. I think everyone should read Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy. I think that that’s amazing. That’s a book that I would recommend to anyone who wanted to learn about being in the here and now and having to be in the present and maybe looking at psychotherapy from a therapist’s lens would be great and would offer some great insight. There’s Eyes Wide Open by Mariana Kaplan, which is also another wonderful book about bringing spirituality into session, which is also very beautiful.

 Any clinician who wants to learn about intuition, Terry Marks Harlow. She has some really great workbooks, and some good insights into how to incorporate intuition and how to not be afraid of your own intuition. She’s done tremendous work and continues to do tremendous work in that area.

Thal:                             

Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I just want to say that if you or anyone you know is struggling either in a relationship or with something within themselves or you know, that therapy can be an amazing experience. It can be even just like a polishing of the skills that you already have. You don’t have to have any kind of problem. You can just want to take your life a step further. You just want to maybe gain some insight or hone your psychospiritual skills and interests that it’s a beautiful space.

There are some wonderful Reiki practitioners and that’s another great modality that I use as an adjunct to talk therapy like Sand play therapy because it’s, it gives people a great way to learn, to be in the moment of themselves, to feel their own bodies, their own energy, to learn, to breathe, to do some, wonderful mindful breathwork and understand that, and I’ll leave you with this, that everything we need to heal ourselves is inside of us, and sometimes we just have to reach out outside of us externally to figure out how to tap into that.

Thal:                             

Amazing. Thank you.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Thank you so much for sharing. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful experience and I was so happy for you to do it and I feel very grateful and blessed to have had the opportunity. Thank you.

#18: Life After Ayahuasca with Laura Lockhart

May 26, 2019 Health, Podcast, Psychedelics, Psychology, Spirituality 01:07:23

“Not why the addiction, but why the pain?“

-Dr. Gabor Maté

The work of healing our trauma can be daunting, non-linear and complex. It is a path that conjures in us courage and resilience. On this episode, we have the honour of sharing an inspiring story of healing, transformation and wisdom. From an early age, Laura Lockhart has been struggling with mental health problems that included trauma, depression, panic attacks and multiple suicide attempts. Laura was diagnosed with so many disorders that many psychiatrists refused to take her on as a patient. Just when she thought she had exhausted all of her options, Laura met Dr. Gabor Maté, a world renowned author and trauma specialist. Dr. Maté believes that the mind and body cannot be separated and that disease is often an expression of deeper unresolved emotional stress. In 2014, Laura attended an Ayahuasca retreat with Dr. Maté and for the first time in her life, she was able to begin working with the deeper issues beneath her suffering. We hope you enjoy her story! 

Laura is currently an intern psychotherapist in Toronto. She can be contacted at lauradlockhart@gmail.com

Highlights:

  • Childhood Trauma and Suicidality
  • Ayahuasca Retreat with Dr. Gabor Maté
  • Working with Emotional Pain

 Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcripts

Thal

Welcome Laura to the show.

Laura Lockhart

Thank you for having me.

Thal

Thank you. Um, Laura, you know, I just, I’m very interested in transformative experiences and what that means in our lives. Um, maybe we can start with that. Like what was a transformative experience in your life?

Laura Lockhart

Okay, so a transformative experience in my life. Um, that would have to be my journey with Ayahuasca. So I had been severely depressed and um, panic attacks and a whole gamut of diagnoses from different psychiatrists. Um, doctor after doctor, couldn’t get the help that I needed treatment program after treatment program and I remained this emotionally disregulated, anxious, depressed person that the medical community was telling me that there was no hope. My doctor was like, I don’t know who else to send you to anymore. Um, I’d had psychiatrists see to me that I was so multifaceted that people wouldn’t want to work with me. I’d been told that I was going to be on medication for the rest of my life. So to treat it like I would if I was diabetic and just accept that this is the way it was. Um, and then I found Dr. Gabor Maté through Beyond Addictions Kundalini Yoga program. And I attended his seminar and he spoke about Ayahusca. And though I’d heard about it before it had gone in one ear and right out the other didn’t resonate with me at all. And then when Gabor spoke about it, it really resonated with me. And there was a, uh, knowing that I had to do this and um, because there was about 300 people at the seminar, getting up to him was impossible. I would have had to stand there for well over an hour probably. So I chose to go home and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And so I just opted to send him an email. Either he would get back to me or it would get lost in the millions of emails that he receives. And he responded to me later that night and just invited me to come back and talk to him. And so I did. And then about nine months later I was at his retreat. And, that was five years ago now. And I have not been on medication since. And although I still experience depression and anxiety, in no way, shape or form, is it anywhere near what it was.

Adrian

I’m curious what, what was in the email that you feel like really resonated with Gabor to respond to you?

Laura Lockhart

Um, it probably wasn’t the email. What had happened was during his seminar, it was his addiction seminar. So his Beyond his in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts seminar. And I wrote, I raised my hand and I told him, I said, I’m addicted to try and kill myself, which was true because that was the way that I had learned to cope with my pain started when I was about 14. Um, and there had been multiple attempts throughout my life and at the time I was meeting Gabor I was 38, so we were in my, in double digits by that point in time. Um, and he basically, he was very gentle with me and he asked if he could touch me and he’s like, what’s this feel like? And he just touched me very, very lightly. I was like, that’s hot. Like it feels, he said, yes, you’re a highly sensitive person and things impact you on a very deep level. And just that his invitation to me if I was willing to accept it, was to learn to suffer. So in other words, learn to feel my pain and learn to be with it as opposed to trying to escape it, which is what I was trying to do. Um, so I think it was that conversation that resonated with him. And then when I emailed him I said, I don’t know if you’re going to remember me, who wouldn’t remember that, but, okay. Um, and I just basically said that you had spoken about Ayahusca, but you spoke about it in regards to addiction. I didn’t consider myself somebody with a formal addiction because I don’t do drugs. Don’t do, I mean I’ll have a beer, but I’m not a drinker. Um, so I didn’t know if it was appropriate for me or if it was strictly for addiction. And, um, I just let them know that, you know, I had done so much in the medical system and I just didn’t feel I was getting anywhere. And he wrote back probably within hours and just said that he’d been thinking about me. So I think that that seed was planted in the seminar.

Adrian

Wow. Yeah. We’d love to go into the Ayahusca experience, but I think maybe if we can backtrack and hear about your life leading up to the, the invitation give you, if you can describe to us a little bit about the background perhaps growing up and, and what it was like as your pre-Ayahusca experience.

Laura Lockhart

Okay. So growing up I was the second child, um, six years apart, two very stressed out parents. My dad was a police officer, my mom was home with the children. Um, so dad’s working 12, 14, 16 hour days. Mom’s trying to raise a six year old and pregnant with me. There’s stress in the family. Um, and by the time I come around, I am what they described as an inconsolable infant. Um, what I’ve learned is, is that it was because nobody was attuned to me, so they couldn’t console me because they couldn’t attune to me because they were so stressed out. Um, it’s not about bad parenting.

Thal

They were not attuned to themselves.

Laura Lockhart

Right. Yeah. Um, so in that, I think what would also happen is because you have this screaming baby that’s heightening your stress and then you leave the baby. Like, I can’t do this anymore and you kind of leave the baby. Um, so there’s abandonment for me, lack of attunement, unintentional neglect, um, and some physical abuse. So I would get, I would, I was hit. Um, and then because my sister is six years older, she resents me. I’m causing all this problem in the family. So I’m the target of a great deal of resentment. Um, so growing up in that, I could see like the looking back, I can see the mis-attunement in my parents. By all means. I had, I had a good home. I was well clothed. I was well fed. Um, I was never left alone alone, but dad was down doing his artwork, mom was up reading the newspaper, I was alone. Um, and it, it goes throughout my whole family too. I see it in my whole family and I think it’s intergenerational. So, um, I have, I have memories of, um, parents flying into a rage and striking me. Um, and then as I get older, I’m unable, I’m less and less able to cope. Um, it’s, I see, I see relational issues starting at a very young age where probably, I can probably, the earliest I can trace it to is like six or eight where I can’t wait until it’s 10 o’clock in the morning, which is an appropriate time to make a phone call so that I can phone my friend because I’m so desperate for connection and so desperate to just be with somebody. And what does that cause on the other end? She’s needy. She’s, like clingy. Um, so people don’t like that and they disconnect from me. It’s too much for people. Um, so a lot of relational issues. Um, then get into middle school, high school and it’s just, uh, a hot house of loneliness, depression, anxiety. I wouldn’t go to school if I didn’t know.. If I didn’t have somebody to eat lunch with, um, because that loneliness was so deeply painful. Also experienced a lot of stomach upset, a lot of, um, intestinal issues. And my parents would take me to doctor after doctor after doctor. Nobody could find anything wrong. Okay. Well, finally one doctor says it’s stress. I think she’s stressed out. It’s the 70s who wants to believe that their infant is stressed out. We don’t have all this information yet. Um, so, um, by the time I get to high school, I’m so paralyzed with anxiety that the stomach upset is a daily thing. I’m missing 35 days in a semester. At one point in time they had asked me to leave school because what’s the point? Um, I didn’t end up leaving school. Fortunately for me, I became very physically ill at the school and was vomiting. So they saw that it was real. Um, like I wasn’t just some lackey, so they didn’t end up kicking me out of school. But I certainly didn’t get the education that I needed. Um, and nobody at the school was attuned to me. Like nobody stopped and said, why is this young woman who is clearly very bright and very articulate, not doing, not performing? Why is she missing so much school? Why is she isolated? Because I wasn’t a problem maker. I was that quiet child that never caused any trouble. I was very polite, very soft spoken, well spoken, so I wasn’t the “problem child”. So I get missed just okay, not performing up to her capabilities and passed onto the next one. Um, at that point in time, I didn’t know I had mental illness. I didn’t even know what mental illness was at the time. Um, there were times where my family physician had tried to put me on medication for depression, but telling me that it would help my stomach issues. Um, then at 16, so my first, my first suicide attempt was at 14, but I didn’t know how to do it. So I took like 10 Tylenol and it had no effect. Couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work, but it didn’t work. Um, and then at 16 was the, the, the Big One. And, um, my parents rushed me to the hospital, so small town, my dad drove me to the hospital. They had to call ahead to make sure the doctor was going to be there. They pumped my stomach, um, and admitted me overnight, but then released me the next day with no follow-up. Nothing.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Adrian

At this point I want to ask, because you mentioned your parents were, so dis-attuned to you. Was this the first time for them too, as a wake up call or were they sort of, you know, noticing that you weren’t well before that?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I think they were noticing I wasn’t well, but for them it was that I was just being difficult. So my not getting out of bed for them was just me being stubborn. Maybe asking for attention. Yeah, yeah. Me being a problem teenager. So the way they dealt with it was to try and force me out of bed, yell at me, get out of bed, um, force me to go to school. Yeah. It wasn’t, it wasn’t treated as maybe we should look at what this, what’s causing this.

Thal

And nothing at the school, like no counseling. No… Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. None.

Adrian

And so after that, the Big One, you were sent back home after one day… What was it like, like coming back, realizing it didn’t work? Or you know, what was going on in your mind at the time?

Laura Lockhart

Um, for me that it was life. Um, what was going on for me was a lot of shame because there were friends that had been there that night, so there was a lot of shame and embarrassment and, um, my dad talked to, uh, the one friend that was there for the whole thing and just ask that it be kept confidential. Um, but other than that, nobody spoke to me about it. My friends didn’t speak to me about it. I didn’t speak to my friends about it. We just went on like nothing had happened.

Thal

Yeah. It’s like the shame was experienced on multiple levels. It’s like you’re experiencing shame. Your parents are probably experiencing it, your friends as well. And it’s like nobody’s talking about it. It’s like, as you said, it’s like misattunement on so many levels.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, life just carried on as per usual. And um, by the end of my first year of college, that’s when I started to realize, realize that there was something wrong. Um, that’s when the panic attacks started. So that hyperventilating, the shaking, the crying, the, um, the, the cold sweats of full blown panic attack to the point where it would last for hours. And I remember going to my mother’s and she, she brought me into her bad to like stay the night with her and at some point in time she realized that maybe she should take me to the hospital because that’s how bad it was. Um, so she took me to emergency, they put you in a separate room. Um, and the doctor came in and he was a very kind man. Um, but the first thing he did was prescribe, um, a bunch of medication and then sent me to a psychiatric outpatient program the next day. Um, and when I went to that, um, I went alone and I saw a social worker and she did my intake and assessment and then, um, she brought in the psychiatrist and he didn’t ask me many questions at all. Um, but together they decided that I was bipolar and put me on lithium and a bunch of other medications. And the lithium made me crazy person. Like I was a walking Zombie, but I had tremors all the time and every time I went back and I was telling them that, you know, my symptoms are getting worse, they’re not getting better or they’d would just up the medication. I’ve since had multiple doctors say, there’s, you’re not bipolar. There is like, I don’t even, I don’t have any symptoms of mania.

Thal

Yeah I was about to say like, it doesn’t sound like there was any manic episodes during your childhood or during your struggles.

Laura Lockhart

No, but I’ve since seen the report that they sent my doctor and in it she writes that, um, that my mother reports a year long manic episode when I was 11. She didn’t speak to my mother. I was there alone. And then she also reported that I reported a year long manic episode, my first year of college. That isn’t what I said. What I said was that I felt good about myself my first year of college because I was getting straight A’s and it was the first time in my life.

Thal

And so that was manic?

Laura Lockhart

That was my mania.

Adrian

You’re too happy.

Laura Lockhart

I was too happy. Yeah. I enjoyed those days a little too much.

Thal

You loved yourself a little bit too much.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. But I think she also factored in like a shopping addiction. And um, at the time I didn’t know that euphoria meant manic. I just thought it meant felt good. So when she asked me if I ever felt euphoric, I, I think that was the sticking point is that I said yes. You know, my first year of college I felt really good that I was getting straight A’s.

Thal

It’s in the wording.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, I hadn’t studied psychology yet. I didn’t know the connection. Um, so they just kept upping the medication, upping the medication. And I’m becoming more and more zombified. Um, I’m a mess at work. Work is starting to notice. Um, people are pulling me aside and saying, Laura, like something’s changed. This is not, you look at your writing, it’s like, this isn’t you. Something’s wrong. That was a catalyst to another suicide attempt. But this time I had a bunch of psychiatric medications to use. And I was rushed to emergency, um, where they didn’t, they didn’t pump my stomach. Now they just let you drink the charcoal, which is gross but better. Um, so they admitted me overnight into a psychiatric unit, um, which I fought tooth and nail, didn’t want to be on a psychiatric unit. They take away everything. They take away all your personal goods. Um, you’re in with other people. It’s just not a comfortable place to be when you’re feeling terrible. So at one point in time, I think I stayed two nights. Um, cause yeah, cause it happened on a weekend. So I had to stay Saturday night and Sunday night because the psychiatrist wasn’t in until Monday. So on the second night, a nurse pulled me aside on the ward and she said to me, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I don’t think you’re bipolar and I don’t think you should be on all this medication, especially the high dosages that you’re on, especially at your age. I was 21.

Thal

Wow. So how many years since the first diagnosis?

Laura Lockhart

That was, that was probably like… it probably wasn’t even a full year since that first diagnosis. So I was still on the lithium and everything. Um, I can’t even remember what she looks like, but thank goodness she came into my life. So she told mw you’re over 18, you can refuse your medication. I don’t recommend you refuse it all. I suggest you go with half tonight. And then we’ll wean you from there. So that’s what I did. I immediately found a new psychiatrist who did all the testing. No, I’m not bipolar. However, it was still just more drugs, more drugs, more drugs, more drugs. Yeah. So that continued for the next 20-23 years.

Thal

Wow. Okay.

Laura Lockhart

So yeah. Okay.

Adrian

Yeah. At this point, it sounds like there’s awareness and even like a desire to get better, like, because you were seeking help so that wasn’t there early in your life. Um, what did you try? So in those 20 years, I imagine you must have tried many things, tried different modalities or techniques. What were some of the stuff that you were trying?

Laura Lockhart

Um, there was always a strong urge to get better. I was always jealous. Like I remember being in grade two or grade three and finding out that one of the kids at school saw a therapist and I was immensely jealous, but I never had the nerve to ask my parents. Um, I never thought they’d, they’d let me for some reason. I don’t know why. Um, and so when I finally started seeking help, um, I went the route that I knew. So I went the medical route. I went to my doctor who sent me to a psychiatrist. Um, I tried, so I tried many different, um, I tried CBT, DBT. Um, I did two inpatient programs, one through a psychiatric out in Oshawa and then one out in Guelph. Um, both inpatient one was eight weeks and one was 12 weeks where I lived there the entire time. Several different outpatient programs through the hospital. I tried a suicide program through a day program through a hospital. Yeah. I was seeing a psychotherapist, but probably I hadn’t tapped into any of the psychotherapy modalities, um, just all that, all the psychiatric stuff. And it wasn’t working for me. Um, yeah. But I knew there was something in me that could not accept that this was going to be my life, that I was not meant to be more than what I was at the time, which was a mess.

Thal

And, um, and so then you met Gabor?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Thal

Okay. And what changed?

Laura Lockhart

Um, so in order to go to the retreat, I had to come off all my medication, um, which he cautioned me about. He did say, now, based on your history of suicide, you really want to have a discussion with your doctor about it, um, because you can’t do Ayahuasca on these meds. So my doctor was very open to it and very supportive. Um, he didn’t necessarily believe in Ayahusca. Um, but he was more inclined to let me go to a warm country where it would be sunny where I’d be in therapy circles. Um, so he was very open and he gave me a weaning schedule and I came off my meds.

Thal

And that’s amazing because you’ve just been doing the sort of mainstream psychotherapy modalities and the medical, um, circles. And so, and then you went from that to right away Ayahuasca.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, it was a true calling. Like it was like I, I had to get there. Financially I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Um, my mother didn’t like the idea. She didn’t, A psychedelic in a strange country with a doctor, didn’t sound reputable to her. My dad was actually very supportive and said, what have you got to lose? And it was actually, um, they’re divorced now, but the two of them came up with the funds to help me get there. Um, so that’s how I got there.

Adrian

Could you describe the program a little bit and when we’re perhaps even your experience flying in, what was that journey like? I mean, it must’ve been… that alone, probably we could dive into an entire episode, I imagine.

Thal

Yeah like, you know, your inner feelings.

Laura Lockhart

Um, so I was scared. I was thinking, what am I doing? Am I a crazy person. So I didn’t follow the weaning schedule that my doctor gave me. I decided that, oh, I’ve missed these medications before many a times, you know, when you couldn’t get to the drug store or whatever. Oh yeah, I’m good. I don’t need to wean. And I went cold Turkey. Never do that. So I ended up violently ill for many weeks. Um, I landed in the hospital twice for IV because like for IV fluids, because I was so violently ill, they had to put me on a drug that they give chemo patients for the nausea. And at the time I’m not putting two and two together because it’s been a couple of weeks since I’d come off the medication. So I’m not telling them, oh, I’ve come off all this medication. I’m just telling them I’m not on any medications, so they’re not able, because I’m not giving them the pieces. They’re not able to put the pieces together. Um, so having been violently ill for several weeks, the thought of going into the jungle and vomiting was not appealing. It’s like, no, I’ve done that. Thank you. Um, and I was going alone with people I didn’t know I’d never met them. Um, I had only really talked to Gabor twice, so I didn’t even know him at the time. Um, I knew I knew about his, um, his episode on the Nature of Things with Dr. David Suzuki, A Jungle Prescription. So I had watched that, but I didn’t even delve into the research on Ayahusca or get to know much about it because the more I learned, the more nervous I became. So in order to do it, I had to like not investigate it. I had to just go blind.

Adrian

A leap of faith.

Laura Lockhart

Leap of faith. Um, the journey, the journey was chaotic. Um, so I left Toronto. They had to de-ice the plane, uh, because of the, when the plane was late getting to my connection, um, I might’ve missed the, the connecting flight. I meeting people on the connecting flight that are going to the same retreat so that we can travel in the other country together. So at least I don’t have to travel in a strange country completely alone, but I might miss my connection. So we land at the exact same time that my connecting flight is supposed to be taking off. And the flight attendant tells me they’re not holding the plane. They’ve already started booking the hotel rooms. So now I’m starting to like, okay. So I connect with one of the women that I’m supposed to meet. She’s already on the other plane. She’s asking them, uh, she can’t get any information. I get off my plane feeling somewhat defeated and um, somebody turns to me and says they’re holding the flight. Run! So I book it.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

And I’m not very fast. [Laughing]

Adrian

In slow motion.

Laura Lockhart

I slow motion book it. And I’m rounding the corner in the terminal only to learn that I have to get on one of those trains to take you to another terminal, which you know, just like this is not booking it in any way, shape or form. But I’m booking it. The second I land my butt in that seat, the plane takes off. Like there is no time. It’s like land take off. So I made my flight, my luggage did not.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

So I land in this very tropical country in very humid weather in my jeans and sweatshirt because I’ve come from Toronto where it’s snowing and my luggage hasn’t made it. Then we have to take a water taxi to the actual location that we’re going in. Getting off the water taxi, I fall into the ocean in my jeans and sweatshirt with nothing to change into.

Adrian

Welcome! [laughing]

Laura Lockhart

Welcome. Welcome to your Ayahuasca journey. Um, my luggage doesn’t come till the next day. It comes the next day. Thank goodness I didn’t have to wait a couple of days. Um, but I arrive at this Ayahuasca retreat center, which is very remote. Um, I remember walking the dirt path with donkey poop and having to take your shoes off and like crossing a river. And I just start to cry. I’m like, what am I doing? What have I come for? I want to go home and I want to go home now. Thank goodness the people at the retreat are very kind and very loving souls and they find me raggedy clothing to wear so that I can get out of my wet jeans. And uh, the woman I actually bunk with was able to provide me some clothing so that I could, you know, be comfortable. Um, but at this point in time I’m thinking, what have I done? Like I’ve left my comfort, my home, my friends, my family, everything to come here to this strange place that’s… And it was the most life changing experience I’ve had.

Thal

Amazing. Yeah.

Adrian

For people who might not be familiar with the Ayahuasca tradition, the plant medicine, could you share a little bit of background?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. It’s not for everyone, but for those that are feeling the call, it can be helpful. I also didn’t just do Ayahuasca. I returned from my Ayahuasca journey and went into intense therapy.

Thal

So maybe we can, yeah. Integration.

Laura Lockhart

So, um, so what was the question again?

Thal

Um, so for our listeners who don’t know, what Ayahuasca is, can you, can you say about it?

Laura Lockhart

So it’s a plant medicine that’s been used in the Amazon for centuries for healing. Traditionally, just the Shaman would drink it and then work on the, the people, but it’s transitioned somehow that now the people and the Shaman drink it. Um, I had ensured that I was doing it in a very safe space because there are unreputable Ayahuasca retreats out there. There are unsafe Ayahuasca retreats out there. I made sure that I was going to a very reputable and very safe place to do this. It is a psychedelic, um, so you are vulnerable. Um, I did it. The lineage that I worked in, um, my Shaman works in is the Shipibo lineage and ceremony was kept very traditional. Um, the chants aren’t just, so it’s a whole ceremony. It’s a six hour ceremony. It’s done with intention. Um, every chant that comes out of their mouth is done for a specific reason to help move the energy to help in the healing process. It’s not a random, these people are highly skilled and know what they’re doing. Um, what else can I say?

Thal

How many, like how many times did you drink it, if you want to go into that?

Laura Lockhart

So my first retreat, which was highly transformative for me was three ceremonies. However, the difference between my retreat and a lot of other retreats, um, is that I had processing with Dr. Gabor Maté. So there were 25 or 26 participants and every day for hours on end, we would sit in a circle and process. And when one person works, everybody in the circle works. Yeah. That’s how powerful the circle is. Um, so there were nights where it had gotten dark and we had to do processing by flashlight because that’s how long we had been sitting in the circle. So from right after breakfast until bedtime, we were in that circle with the exception of a few breaks here and there for lunch and dinner. Um, a very regimented diet. Um, you can only eat specific foods. Um, in respect for the plant. Um, the way that’s been described to me is that you wouldn’t pour salt and sugar on your garden. So in respect for the plant, you treat your body with that same respect. Um, ceremonies were six hours long done at night in the dark. Um, very powerful, very painful. Um, some very difficult moments. Some times I didn’t think I was going to make it through to the other side. Um, and so very grateful when I did and the difference even after just the three ceremonies. The small things, very small things, which are actually big things. Um, for example, my dentist had been trying to get me to floss for 40 some years. Well now I was 38 at the time, so probably like 30 some years. And I came back from my Ayahuasca journey and I just started flossing every day. Like why? I don’t know. But I did. Um, things like I started wearing makeup again, um, because I had gone into such a depression where all I did was just wear sweatpants and didn’t do my hair. I didn’t do anything. I just throw on my sweats and left and I started taking care of myself again. Um, there’s still some self care that needs to come into place. I’ve still got some difficulty in that area, but, uh, immensely different. Um, but like I said, I didn’t just do ceremony and come home and go back to life as it was. I did ceremony and came home and the first thing I did was the Landmark Forum, um, which was also very powerful. Um, there some complications with it and the sales pitch, but the material itself I found very powerful. Um, and then following that I went into a trauma treatment center. Um, so not a western medicine, a holistic trauma treatment center. Unfortunately no longer exists, um, where I was there for four or five sessions a week for quite some time, um, where I had different modalities. So I had psychotherapy, I had massage, I had acupuncture. Um, where it wasn’t just like, okay, let’s look at your thoughts. Let’s look at the energy in your body. Let’s look at where you’re carrying things. Let’s look at where you’re holding this trauma. Um, yeah.

Thal

And, and so you were open to trying all these things after Ayahuasca like, it’s, it truly is a transformation considering that prior to Ayahuasca, it was, you know, mainstream, nothing holistic. And now it’s like there’s this openness.

Laura Lockhart

Some of the difficulty prior to the Ayahuasca journey was that I didn’t have the funds to try the holistic modalities, which I was starting to feel drawn to. I didn’t quite know that I believed in it yet. Um, but now I’m a firm believer.

Thal

Wait, no, that’s a good point too. Right? That the funds for the, like the fact that it is expensive. Yeah. Like some people are turned away because of the not having funds.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, I had looked into psychotherapists before, but I simply couldn’t afford it. Um, and I had, I also have fibromyalgia, so I had explored, um, just about everything I could at that point in time with regards to fibromyalgia. And what I was really getting was that I needed massage and I needed acupuncture and I needed things that I just couldn’t afford.

Thal

Which would make sense if it’s OHIP covered. But that’s a different conversation.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, we could have a whole other episode.

Adrian

I wanted to go back, you mentioned the intensive integration circles, the processing with Gabor, for like entire day. What does that look like? What is processing? And because you had experience of psychotherapy, it’d be nice if you can maybe draw comparisons of the Ayahuasca experience to what traditional psychotherapy sessions are like, how are they different?

Laura Lockhart

Okay. Um, so, okay. But when you come out of an Ayahuasca ceremony, because it’s a psychedelic, there’s a lot of funky things that have happened in the night and it’s very easy to get lost in the, the visions and the experience and forget that there is very pertinent messages in those visions.

Thal

Um, especially when they’re negative and you know, they take you back to the specific experiences in childhood or whatever.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, um, what that looked like was often Gabor interrupting us and stopping the story. Um, and bring us back to our bodies and bringing us back to the emotion. Okay. So what was the emotion when you were seeing that? What were you experiencing in that time? And essentially bringing us back to the emotion that that whole experience was inviting us to feel, which would have been repressed at the time of the trauma. So it may have looked like somebody re-experiencing their trauma in the ceremony or it may have looked like something completely different that just brought up the same emotional state. But there was a lot of, you know, anger and fear and shame that people were given a safe place to go into and feel the things that they’d repressed in their bodies.

Thal

So he, so he was engaged during the ceremony as well? Like, or this is after the ceremony?

Laura Lockhart

This is after the ceremony. Yeah. So, um, after ceremony we all go to bed. It’s like three, four in the morning. Um, and then we wake up the next day and that’s when we do the processing. So each person speaks. So all 25 or 26 of us speak to our experience the night before.

Thal

Just speaking about the ceremony itself because there are two different perspectives, like some people see it as, so this is the contents of my psyche that are amplified during the ceremony or some people see it as this is the medicine, you know, teaching us and um, giving me stuff that I need at that moment. And maybe it’s combination of both. Um, I don’t know, but it’s just something that, you know, I was thinking about.

Adrian

What do you think it is? In terms of your experience.

Laura Lockhart

In terms of my experience, I would say it’s both. So it would show me things that my psyche was doing. Um, so I would often get stuck in and it was excruciatingly painful and this is my life, but where I would have the same three sentences repeat over and over and over and over and over, over and it was intense and it was rapid and I couldn’t stop it. That’s my rumination. That’s my negative self talk, rumination. And it was on full blast. Like it was intense. There were times where I thought I was going crazy. Um, it also showed me my anger and unfortunately at the time I wasn’t ready and I repressed it within ceremony. So I had this vision that came up and it was like black silhouettes and then flashes of red, like a very violent red. And I had no idea what it meant. And then I spent the next six hours in shear excruciating sub- humanlike pain that I’d never experienced before. And I was calling for them to get me charcoal because I wanted this medicine out of my system. Um, and unfortunately that got miscommunicated in the ceremony and they thought I was asking for tobacco. Um, but it was Gabor the next day that said that I didn’t want to do the work. He said that was you wanting somebody else to do the work for you. Very much my experience in life.

Thal

Wow.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah. So, and it wasn’t until my seventh ceremony that that lesson came back to me and I got, I very much got that I was resisting my anger and that’s why my pain came up and that the more that I resist feeling what I needed to feel, the more I was going to experience my pain.

Thal

And, and so then your pain or your anger was strong enough or your resisting mechanism was strong enough that it was still overriding the ma, the medicine basically.

Laura Lockhart

Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was a, and they kept telling me not to resist. Like that was, I mean, what else can you tell somebody? There is nothing else to tell somebody other than stop resisting and they’re telling me in a very gentle way. Um, but I was annoyed. I was like, what do you mean stop resisting? Like how do I stop resisting? I don’t know how to stop resisting. What am I? So I thought that I was resisting the pain, so I would lay there in ceremony and try and like breathe and like, okay, allow the pain, allow the pain, allow the pain. Well, no, I had to allow the anger and that’s what I wasn’t allowing. And I had no idea. I had no idea.

Thal

I mean, I definitely relate. They’re like, you know, when someone tells the old just like, go or stop resisting and like, what do you mean? Yeah. You’re like holding, holding on tight with your body.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. But at no point in time, in any of my previous therapy had anybody addressed the fact that I wasn’t allowing my anger. I had no idea it was new found information to me that, oh, you mean I have to feel this? Yeah.

Thal

And so then the processing with Gabor helped you deepen that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. So, yeah. So the next morning I had no idea it was anger even. When I told him about the vision and then I had no idea what it meant, he’s like, that sounds like anger. And I did the classic repression and denial and like dismissive. No, I wasn’t that angry as a child because, you know, we all had happy childhoods. Um, and he said he, he may have said, bullshit. I can’t remember exactly, but basically he said, that’s not true. Um, and he said, you can’t tell me. He said, how did you feel when your mother was hitting you? And that’s when it occurred to me that I had a murderous rage in me and that I was suppressing that. Not that you go out and murder people.

Thal

No, absolutely.

Laura Lockhart

But that you kept in touch with, with that so that it’s not stuck in you anymore. The feeling that you felt as a child and you were not able to express or..

Adrian

This first experience you had it sounded like a lot came up, a lot of insights, perhaps experiences. What did you do with all that new stuff? Coming back from that trip? You mentioned you started flossing, there were some behavior changes. What else could you add in terms of the experience re-entering back to your life?

Laura Lockhart

I really just had to learn to learn, to feel what I hadn’t been feeling and that took a lot, a lot of work. Um, it sounds so simple and really it is, but it’s so complicated. Um, I remember laying on the table with the act, my acupuncturist, and he was, and I could feel the mechanism happen where it’s like I was feeling it, feeling it, feeling, and then I was like, oh, I’ve just repressed it. I don’t have control over that, but I was doing it. And so bringing that awareness into my, into my body, not just into my logic but into my body was very important and that took a lot of work and a lot of safety. I needed a lot of safety and..

Thal

And trusting yourself.

Laura Lockhart

Trusting myself, trusting those around me that they might be giving me some difficulty information, but they’re doing it from a very loving place. Yeah.

Adrian

How did your relationship with Gabor continued to evolve after the first ceremony?

Laura Lockhart

Um, he really became a mentor. Um, he doesn’t like the word therapist. Um, but he became a, I don’t even have the words for it. Um, he just became like the catalyst for my seeing what I needed to see, which I wasn’t seeing. And there were times where he wouldn’t talk to me unless I had gone and felt what I was feeling. So he would say, you’ve asked for help, I will help you. But what I want you to do first is to identify the emotion, sit with it, allow it, have compassion for it, hold it and then we’ll talk. Which was frustrating but important because my way of not being with emotion was to reach out for help.

Thal

How did that look like? Did you have like a specific practice that you were doing or just…?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I didn’t know I was, I was winging it. Um, they don’t tell you how to feel your emotion. They just tell you that you have to feel it.

Adrian

Go look it up.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, go, go look it up.

Thal

Cause I do that too. That’s why I’m asking you. I’m like, how do I feel this? I just Google it. [laughing]

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah, so I didn’t know. I was really just winging it and um, what it would look like for me was to just sit quietly and be with whatever was there. Um, and in actual fact, I got a lot of training in my therapy on how to do that, which was like identifying the sensation in the body, allowing the sensation to be there. Um, even inviting it to get bigger, a lot of meditation around, around my pain. So instead of trying to suppress my pain, trying to numb my pain, inviting it, welcoming it, and letting it be there and learning that it was, it was actually a lesson that I had been trying to numb for decades.

Adrian

You mentioned landmark forum as one of the things that seem to kind of immediately proceed the, your experience. Uh, what did you get out of that, that training?

Laura Lockhart

That I was creating a lot of my own suffering and I was doing it with the, the, the, the story in my head, the, the dialogue that was going on in my brain. Projecting a lot of my own stuff onto people. Um, making meaning out of things that didn’t mean anything. Um, and living my life as though what I believed about myself was true when in no shape or form was it?

Thal

Yeah. That it’s like static and rigid, that it does not change that, you know, oftentimes we see ourselves and our personalities as these things that I’m this or I’m that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And that in order to, in order to excel in life at whatever it was that I wanted to do, that I had to step out of the fear and that I had to act anyways. And that really showed up in a lot of my, um, my therapy because like I said, I couldn’t afford this therapy. So I had to find ways to get it, and that meant showing up and just trusting the process that I was in the right space and that if it was meant to happen, it was going to happen. And if it didn’t, then it wasn’t the right, the right path for me. Um, it also showed up in school. I couldn’t afford school. I, I hadn’t worked in years. Um, and, but as long as I stayed, stuck in the story of I can’t afford this, I was never going to do it. So I stayed stuck in that for many years. Um, and then I really, that teaching really stuck with me that like, just make it happen. Don’t, you may not know how you’re going to make it happen, but just make it happen. And so that’s what I did is that I applied to the school with no idea of how I was going to pay for it. And I even got the first bill. Please deposit this amount of money by such and such a date and still had no idea how I was going to pay for it. But I, I took the risk and I threw my hat over the wall cause I had to go get my hat then. And just, um, if, if I wanted it bad enough, it was going to happen and that I would work extra hard to make it happen.

Thal

And so, okay. So when will come in and you, you did the first retreat and then landmark and then you went again and did another retreat?

Laura Lockhart

So, um, yeah, so the first retreat, landmark, um a Trauma Treatment Center in Toronto. Um, and then another retreat and then.

Thal

How was it different then from the first one? How is it different than going back to the plants again?

Laura Lockhart

Um it was, it was different in that I was different. Um, the resistance was still there, but it wasn’t as strong and it wasn’t as potent. Um, so I was able to allow a lot more than I had the first time. Um, which meant I got a lot more out of each ceremony because I was allowed, I allowed the medicine to work more than I had prior.

Thal

You let go.

Laura Lockhart

I let go in some, in some cases. Um, there were times where, um, I was in excruciating pain again, um, both emotional and physical. And I remember the helper on the retreat telling me, you know, ask the plant to teach you in a gentler way. And I did. And it amplified. Um, so that was the lesson that I needed at that point in time for whatever reason. Um, yeah. So after that second retreat, um, I went to another retreat that wasn’t a medicine retreat. Um, but it was all about like the ego constructs that we live in. And, um, and I spent a month at this retreat, I’m learning to let go of the beliefs and projections and things that I put on myself and other people and then back to Toronto for more therapy. And then, um, so school came about two and a half years on the journey.

Adrian

This is training to become a psychotherapist?

Laura Lockhart

Yes.

Adrian

What, what inspired you to make that decision to become a therapist for others?

Laura Lockhart

Um, I had always wanted to be, um, I remember probably when I first started at universities that was my goal. It was that I wanted to become a psychologist, a PhD psychologist, and have my own private practice. Um, thank goodness that didn’t happen because I wouldn’t have known how to help anybody at the time. Um, but because my mental health derailed, I was able to get my undergrad, but there was no way I was going to be able to do a Masters or a PhD. I mean, I couldn’t even function hardly at all. Um, so it was really a dying dream. Um, and then it wasn’t until I met, um, the psychologist at the Trauma Treatment Center, Jesse Hanson, and he was the one that suggested to me, well, there’s other routes. Um, how about have you looked into psychotherapy training because that might be more up your alley, um, where you have to do your own work in order to learn to become a psychotherapist. And that really appealed to me, but again, I was stuck with the, that construct if I can’t afford it. So couldn’t make it happen. And it wasn’t until about two years later that it finally clicked in that I’m not going to make it happen if I just stay stuck in this story of I can’t afford it. Yeah.

Adrian

So, so what, what happened the last minute you said you didn’t have the funds and the due date was coming?

Laura Lockhart

Yeah, I had an anonymous donor. Um, I still don’t know who, um, they approached Jesse at the, the Trauma Treatment Center and decided to donate the money, but they did that based on what they were seeing in me, in my growth.

Thal

That’s amazing. So yeah, it’s amazing. Then what happens when we drop the stories that are not serving us.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And when we’re on our right path.

Thal

Absolutely.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Thal

Soul path.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah.

Adrian

Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s such an inspiring story. I imagine you hear that often when you, when you share with others, but at the same time, I’m careful not to paint overly, you know, a rosy picture because this is reality. I want to ask you, what are some challenges you still face today on the path of healing?

Laura Lockhart

Um, so I still, I still struggle with relational difficulties. Um, I still isolate a lot. Um, I still struggle with self care around food. I still have a tendency to binge eat and binge eat junk food. Um, getting my eating under control has been very difficult. Um, I still struggle with my body. Um, so I still have a weight issue. Um, I still have difficulty, um, getting into my body in movement, any kind of movement is still very, very difficult and very painful for me. So yeah, it really does. Like hearing me speak really sounds like I’ve turned the other page and everything’s glowing, but it’s not. Um, but it is immensely different than what it was. So I no longer trying to kill myself. I’m no longer, um, the thoughts still come up, but I no longer attach to them. Um, so now I know that I don’t want to do that. Um, before I used to think that I really truly wanted to die, but now I just, the thought will come up and I just think, and I don’t want to do that. Like I respect myself now.

Thal

So it’s this, you know, very deep level of self compassion that you’ve accessed through healing.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah.

Thal

And it’s important then to understand that healing is not a rosy path, but it’s one worth taking. And you know, I’m also touched by your story and it’s, you know, it requires a lot of courage.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. And healing isn’t linear. Like as long as I heal, I will still go back into those old patterns every once in a while and expand and contract and then, but my contractions get a lot smaller. And my expansion, it’s got a lot bigger and I mean I’m able to function.

Adrian

Laura what’s your vision for, for your, I mean one, one the one hand for the future of psychotherapy but, but also at a personal level for yourself?

Laura Lockhart

So my vision for, um, psychotherapy is that more of the people start to recognize these alternatives. Um, and psychedelics obviously in safe places with proper assistance, um, that we really open up to just new ways of doing old ways of doing things that are becoming new again.

Thal

Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Um, yeah. And for myself, my vision is to, um, work with people that are me. That are very much like me. Um, yeah. People that have tried everything are determined to get better, won’t stop at anything to get better because that was me. I was going to knock on every door in the city.

Thal

And I think one of the really important things to understand is someone listening to this and struggling through the same issues feel like they’re the only ones going through that at that moment. And it’s just knowing that that’s not true is helpful too.

Laura Lockhart

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not true. Um, there’s so many people out there like, yeah. So, yeah.

Adrian

Thank you so much, Laura. What an incredible story and thank you. I also want to mention for people that might be interested in reaching out, um, personally, uh, they can, they can contact us on the podcast and we can definitely direct them to you. Yeah. And there might be some inkling to reach out to Gabor as as well, but he doesn’t take client s and he’s not doing his retreats anymore, so, yeah.

Thal

Thank you. Thank you, Laura, for sharing your story with us today.

Laura Lockhart

Thank you.

#17: Absorbed by Awe with Kirk Schneider

May 19, 2019 Culture, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality, Technology 01:18:26

The messy aspects of our human experience, our feelings, our flesh, and our psyches can never conform to the prevalent culture of quick fixes. It seems that our technologies are speeding ahead of us. It appears as though we are trying to catch up but to no avail. Are we going to turn into automatons absorbed by our screen or can we slow down, contemplate, and cultivate an awareness of the unknown with humility and wonder?

On this episode, we speak with Kirk Schneider, Ph.D, a psychologist and leading spokesperson for contemporary existential-humanistic psychology. Kirk began exploring the fundamental questions of human existence at an early age following the death of his brother. Kirk believes that one of the keys to human flourishing is through the cultivation of awe and presence, especially as we approach the AI and robotic revolution. Kirk offers his critique of mainstream cognitive behavioural therapy as he advocates for an integrative model of psychotherapy that celebrates the messiness of life. Kirk was the former editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and is an adjunct faculty at Saybrook University, Teachers College at Columbia University and the California Institute of Integral Studies. His major books include The Paradoxical Self, Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, Awakening to Awe, The Polarized Mind, and The Spirituality of Awe. In 2004, he was presented the Rollo May Award from the American Psychological Association for his work in advancing humanistic psychology.

Enjoy!

Highlights:

  • What is Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy?
  • How to Live with a Sense of Awe
  • Restoring Our Capacity for Presence

Resources:

Listen:

An Original Poem Inspired by this Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:

We do have a starting question and we’re wondering about the spiritual orientation of your childhood. If you had a spiritual orientation.

Kirk Schneider:

I was brought up Jewish descent and I really grew up in a pretty secular household, so there wasn’t a lot of attention, there was very minimal attention to ceremony or religion even. Um, my father was pretty much what you call an atheist, I would say. And my mother had that leaning as well. And uh, they certainly appreciated the historical lineage of Judaism. But I would say especially the philosophers like Spinoza, to the degree that we all knew about these people. Miamonides, I mean Jewish philosophers who talked about life and raise questions about life. I think they appreciated the spirit of inquiry in particular.

Thal:

The mystical arm or the contemplative arms of the religion?

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Yeah. You could say that. I would say more the contemplative arms. They were pretty much products of the enlightenment, especially my dad who went on to become a school teacher in math and science, and then he became a principal and then he went on to get his doctorate in education. So he was a humanistic educator and very much aligned with the humanistic psychology temper of the times. I grew up with people like Abraham Maslow and Frank Barron and Rollo May, Carl Rogers, surrounding me. Even in my playroom, I would use some of their textbooks as building blocks to build cities. So, I mean, I, I remember from a very young age of being surrounded by that kind of thinking, but I had a very unique upbringing in that I grew up in an Italian Catholic, German neighborhood, working class neighborhood in the Cleveland area. And so I, I really got to know those traditions in a very earthy way as a kid. I mean I spend time for Christmas with friends across the street and um, I got to know some about the traditions, some of the prejudices too. We definitely were impacted by that. One day I woke up to find a giant Nazi sign painted on our ping pong table. It was hanging in our garage. It made a huge impression. I got caught up in some of the prejudices of the time too as a kid, kind of joining other mobs of kids. And one incident I remember in particular is my father pulling me out of that mob. It was probably the only time that I remember him hitting me. Yeah. Hit me pretty good on the butt. And then sat me down and explained the seriousness of what I was involved in and how hurtful that is could be to other kids. Just more about having sensitivity. People as human beings. It made a huge impression.

Thal:

I hear you when you talk about that. Just for me, I remember 911 was a big event, where I went into an identity crisis after as a Muslim woman in the West. And, um, and realizing that maybe the dark side of religions is the divisions that it creates. And it’s a paradox because similarly they do have, they all have the mystical arms, the Sufism, Kabbalah, they’re all connected and in many ways doorways to experience the divine. But we have to overcome the divisions to arrive there, I think. I feel.

Kirk Schneider:

Well, I’m sorry to hear about the challenges that you went through.

Thal:

I’m sorry to hear about your challenges as well. Absolutely. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Well, it was some, some difficult times. I agree with what I hear you saying. I think one of the great problems of traditional religion, or actually one of the great challenges, traditional religions, is that they all point eventually to the deconstruction of religion that is religious boundaries around human beings where boundaries that make certain human beings, uh, seen in a certain way and others in other way, the whole us-them tension. When most of the great religions are about, in their essence, it seems to me, you know, embracing the stranger, right?

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kirk Schneider:

Being humane to each other. Walking humbly before the vastness of creation. They call it God. But they can do tremendous good in that way. And then we have had some interpreters of religion, I’m thinking of Gandhi and King for example, who exhibited that. Rumi comes to mind as well. My limited knowledge is poetry. She’s wonderful.

Thal:

Yeah. Yes, yes. There definitely needs to be a revival of, of the mystical.

Kirk Schneider:

I think so. Yeah. Although I think sometimes mysticism can also become dogmatic in its own right at times when it’s…

Thal:

Anything can become dogmatic. Once humans start putting their hands.. [laughing]

Kirk Schneider:

That’s right. It’s a human challenge. But, it is why I call myself an enchanted agnostic. If you want to know my religiosity, that’s it. I take mystery very seriously.

Thal:

I love that.

Kirk Schneider:

And I’m, I’m very exhilarated by the notion, the experiences mystery to me. It helps to, to lift us out of the petty and narrow identifications that we get into both towards ourselves and others. Yes. And we forget that we’re participating in something much, much greater and incredible. I mean, I call it awesome.

Adrian:

Kirk you shared with us the challenges of getting involved in the mob behaviour early on as a kid. Um, I’m trying to connect some of the dots there. How did those early experiences lead you towards a path within psychology and more specifically existentialism, you know your interest… Essentially what drew you towards that, that area of human psychology?

Kirk Schneider:

Well it was certainly partly that challenge, that struggle of growing up, feeling somewhat alienated but also crossing bridges with other kids and feeling a part of different cultures, people from different backgrounds and all that stirred in me as well as the teachings I would say that, uh, my dad communicated, my mother as well was very bright and thoughtful and so a lot revolved around discussion, but I would say maybe even more pivotal was the death of my brother when I was about three years old. He died of a convergence of illnesses and, my parents did everything they could to save him. He was only seven at the time. And that pretty much shattered our world for a period of time. And it caused a great deal of emotional turmoil among all of us. I don’t know if I would say particularly me, but I mean myself and in terms of being such a young, impressionable child, I was very lost and actually very terrified of the world and death and illness. I would have night terrors where I would see, witches and monsters at my window at night. I remember I would go through these long periods of crying, long periods of temper tantrums too. At one point I believe I kicked my mother’s tooth out in a rage and I was losing touch with reality in some ways. I know my father even kept notes on me. He was so concerned. Anyway it was by mother, however, who was most in touch with psychoanalysis interestingly. And she was going through it herself after the loss of her son, which I can’t even, it’s almost can’t begin to imagine what she was going through at that. But she referred me to a child analysts. And so I became a patient at a very young age. I was about five years old, I believe. And I saw this guy, middle aged guy for about a year, and it was probably one of the most important contacts in my life and certainly formative in my move toward not just thinking about being interested in human behavior, but you know, really living it and feeling it. I think one of the most important parts of that work is, I don’t remember a thing that we said really. What I remember is he was very calm and a powerful presence really, and the feeling that he had been through a lot himself. He didn’t reveal anything about his background as far as I know, verbally. Nonverbally he felt very seasoned to me. It felt like he could hold me and that’s what I really needed. At that time it was very difficult for my parents to do because of their own turmoil. And, uh, anyway, that started me on a path toward, um, being able to in a sense gradually move from a place of kind of abject terror and paralysis to gradual risk taking with him and expressing my feelings and verbalize what I was going through as well as I could at that age. Uh, and uh, and even intrigue about life and these questions that terrified me before. These were huge questions. I was opened up to at a very young age. What the hell is the meaning of all this? What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to my parents? What is death? What is life, you know, how do we live it? These started becoming more and more intriguing questions to me as I was able to kind of work with such scary places in myself. And I think that was really the beginning. That was my introduction to existentialism. In a lot of ways, my world being ripped open.

Thal:

As you’re describing your experience, I’m just thinking about a lot of adults really out there that are in fear and are paralyzed by fear and are unable to experience awe in their life. I don’t even know how to like if I’m going to frame a question, but maybe just to hear your thoughts around that.

Kirk Schneider:

My thoughts are that in some ways there are two ways to look at that space that gets ripped open. You know, the, the uh, the safe and the familiar, getting ripped open, to the radically unknown, uh, the boundaryless because you don’t have any guideposts at that point. You’re in free fall. That can be seen as totally horrifying and floundering. But I think through good psychotherapy, especially depth psychotherapy which is not just talking about, but meeting the person with their whole body experience, can begin to allow more of a sense of awe, more of a sense of wonder about that space because remembered that the very space that feels terrifying and overwhelming and boundaryless is also a space that’s potentially very freeing, you know, and can enable your imagination, your creativity, more of a self creation in a sense or a communal creation. It allows freedom that the safe and familiar, the narrow path, often does not permit. Now which one is better quote unquote? You know, this is a struggle for everyone. Or a question for everyone. But for me that was very important in a sense. I guess my post-modern awakening that you know, or philosophical awakening that so much of our world is constructed by people. If you can hold that tentativeness about how we’re programmed and how we’re conditioned, you can begin to expand and deepen if you have help. But help is huge. So I don’t want to discount that. And I think that’s to speak to your question there is in terms of how does one move in this direction, we need “helpful witnesses” as Alice Miller put it. Whether they’re therapists, neighbours, you know, clergy, parents, friends, or I’m thinking of Maya Angelou, the great poet found it in books. She went to her local library following horribly traumatic sexual abuse that she went through. But she found heroes and people who related to her through literature. Some can happen in different ways, but it’s so crucial that we have that help along the way.

Adrian:

Yeah. This is so interesting because we’re not just talking about these concepts like philosophical concepts, you know? There’s a practice of this and that to me with the existential therapy is the bridging of that into a real practical level. Um, but for a lot of people, I, I have the sense that they might not know what that, what that looks like. Um, would you be able to describe what that might actually look like in terms of working with somebody in a depth oriented manner and connecting with their existential aspects of being?

Kirk Schneider:

Sure. I just want to add, did I feel extremely blessed to have had this kind of help along the way. Again, something not to be skipped over. And I had a similar pivotal experience or time around graduate school around when I was 21 or so, very far from home and had a kind of anxiety, panic attack, breakdown that I received pivotal help for by a local existential depth therapist at the time. So these, these really were my formative, probably most core bases for my direction and informing my direction. And that I had some great mentors too which we can get into later. Want to, uh, I guess we’re talking about, again, being able to have that kind of support. So…

Thal:

Thanks for going and mentioning it because it is, it is important. I mean, I even, I’m even grateful that I’m able to get the depth psychotherapy that I’m going through. I’ve been going through Jungian Analysis now for two years and I already see the benefits of that. So yes, it is important to mention that maybe not everyone, you know, has that opportunity.

Kirk Schneider:

That’s right. But everyone who goes into this field should, in my view. If you’re not taking that trip yourself, I think it’s very hard to be there in an optimal way for the other person.

Thal:

Very true.

Kirk Schneider:

Or at least in some way that you haven’t done that kind of down and dirty, you know, encounter with your own blocked off places. It’s hard to support, you know actually doing the work. But in terms of your other question about the approach, I guess we’re getting more into the theory at this point. I really see, what I call existential-integrative therapy as formed around two basic questions. Now these are mainly implicit questions in the encounter, but sometimes they’re explicit. Those questions are: how is one presently living? So it’s like holding the mirror to that partner or client to help them to see as close up as possible for them. How are they living right now? What is the state of their union in a sense or disunion. And not just intellectually or not just behaviorally on the outside, but with their whole body experience to the degree possible. And this is the integrative part, the degree possible. The client’s desire and capacity for deeper changes is a very important piece of this. And not everybody has the desire or the capacity to look, let’s say beyond symptoms or symptom change. We’re just getting back to work or whatever, or they’re so fragile that they maybe just need something physiological to help them through whether that’s medication, which I have a whole lot of skepticism around. But I also am open to as a possibility for many people just to get through the night. So how are they presently living? The second question is then how are you willing to live? After you’ve looked inside, you know, with as few sort of consolations as possible, really attempting to see the starkness of where you’re at. Now what does that imply for how you’re willing to live your life? So those really address the kind of a basic philosophical questions of freedom and responsibility, existential questions. You have the freedom to explore and to look at what’s going on. But we also have the freedom and responsibility ability to respond to what we have discovered. I actually call it freedom, experiential reflection and responsibility because it’s not just questions about just simply moving from, uh, recognizing what’s going on to just kind of instantly changing. It often takes kind of a whole body awareness of what’s going on before one has a deep sense of how one wants to change as opposed to just a cognitive conditioning for many people, not for everyone.

Adrian:

Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how does one overcome the inertia or the stuckness that one might experience in terms of, you mentioned freedom, but sometimes freedom is paralyzing because there’s so many choices, you know, which job do I take? You know, do I want to continue this relationship or end it? Um, and so how does one work to the point where they actually activate themselves to, to begin the steps of change?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, I see the therapy as helping the person again, seeing closer and closer into the mirror of themselves as to how they’re living and how they’re willing to live. And for those who are willing to take the deeper journey with this therapy, that mirror and that an intensifying of seeing where they are and where they want to be and not only want to be, but you’re mergingly are willing to be is the impetus for many people. So it builds a kind of counter-will as Otto Rank put it, or a frustration. Some of the Gestaltist put it. As as you, you, you’re very rarely exposed to that kind of that intensity of frustration about the state of your life. And this is a very exceptional space for wanting to keep coming back to, again a very focused and present way and revisiting where it is you are, which is usually blocked. That’s a part of your battle and you’re blocked in some way and where it is you want to be, not only want to be, but are willing to commit to be and to keep going over that terrain. I find that that builds that counter-will for many people to the point where they’re not going to take it anymore. You’re not going to keep living in that prison. You know, whether it’s drugs and alcohol or how they hold themselves back from pursuing something that they deeply desire or are passionate about, a love relationship or maybe a project art work of some kind. It’s a very organic process in that way. And so once they can throw those blockades off they can come into their fuller being, again more of their whole bodily experience, the fuller ranges of thoughts, feelings, sensations, imaginings, intuitions and discover or connect with meanings that were latent before or dormant. But now the person’s will has been strengthened to the point where they can be pursued.

Thal:

I think it was very important what you mentioned earlier too, that the therapeutic alliance is not about the therapist only. It’s also about what the person is coming with. Are they willing to live a full life? Do they really want to go into the depths? It’s not just about what the therapist does. In that relationship. And it’s also important when you said that, um, overcoming those things, then will, you know, take us to a place where there is meaning and which takes us back to that question, the meaning crisis and um, you know, nowadays, you know, in general how we live our life is very mechanistic, very rigid, very in our head. And really this is about coming to life. And what I want to say is there is no fear, this work. I think once we overcome and then then awe comes in. Raw

Kirk Schneider:

Well hopefully.

Thal:

Everybody should do this.

Kirk Schneider:

I agree with that a lot. A lot more people would benefit from this journey. I mean, I feel there’s always a level of some anxiety, at least for me. Um, but I don’t see that as bad. I just see them as human.

Thal:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Flesh and blood and a certain vulnerability, which is part of what intensifies and vivifies life. But the point being, yes, if you can come into that you can feel a lot more vital about living about possibilities, and maybe even adopt a sense of awe towards living as a whole. So it’s not just about necessarily pursuing certain goals or meanings, but a whole attitude towards living that is freer. That whole attitude of being able to open to the amazement of that freedom as you were saying before. It can be dizzying. It can be overwhelming. But the more you can be present to you know, the good, the bad and the ugly within yourself and coexist with that and come into the more of who you are, the more that you can, open to the amazement and really the miracle of this opportunity that we have of being a part of something that’s so far beyond us and that is very elevating. I’m not saying one can stay on that plane all the time or even that’s necessarily desirable, but it certainly can be very powerful and a very important antidote to depression. If we think about people like Viktor Frankl for example, in the death camps, some people in the most dehumanizing conditions are able to connect with something much greater than themselves and their situations and through that find an impetus to go on. Stephen Hawking, another example, with his ALS, attuned into the cosmos, you know. Yeah. Or Maya Angelou.

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the work is not about getting rid of our anxieties and fears because those will never go away. It’s about holding them with depth and um, more spiritual maturity. I don’t know. I’m limited by language. Um, but yeah. But um, on a practical level, what’s the difference between depth, psychotherapy depths, existential psychotherapy, and say the more mainstream cognitive behavioural therapy?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, the main difference is that we’re more concerned with what you might call process as opposed to content. So it’s not that the verbal isn’t important. That’s of course very important to helping someone to become more aware of their concerns and how they want to live in their lives. But probably even more important is how they say what they say, what they bring to their words. In other words, how they hold themselves, their facial expressions. What the energy is like in the room between you. It’s that cultivation of a fuller presence to what’s really going on here as distinct from just helping somebody to move from one way of thinking to another way of thinking. Helping somebody change thoughts, make thoughts more rational if you will, which has all kinds of questions around it itself. Rational for whom? Yes might help them function better in the world in certain ways. But is that really to their benefit in a deeper and fuller way. Like going back to the old job or the old relationship might be, you know, adaptive in some ways, but maybe those are oppressive in a lot of ways and not really helping them or the culture in the longer run. So this notion of, uh, helping somebody to decide the direction of their lives in their deepest core rather than with some overlay of this is how you do it and this is what has been shown through aggregate data that helps people. Yes, through one lens and I’d say it’s a narrow lens and narrow methodology. Often that can be helpful, but there can be so much more. And I think so many people are, are short changed from having that chance to stay more fully present with what is important to them through, you know, some of the more programmatic therapies. There’s a lot around this. I mean, another analogy here, and this is a little bit crude, but I think it makes the point is that sometimes what we’re doing with cognitive and behavioral therapy is we’re changing the window dressing on the titanic, right? Okay. So you can make things prettier on the outside in a way but are you really getting to what that person is struggling with at their core? And we’ve seen so many times where people’s presenting problems, maybe something that seems more on the surface, they’re not sleeping well, they’re not eating well. Uh, the one client who had assertiveness issues with their boss, okay, so you help with that. But if those people stay with you for the longer journey or the deeper journey and are willing to pay attention to what’s going on in their bodies and what that brings up and what that associates with their deeper being, their presenting problems often shift to quite profound existential issues. Like, I don’t want to just be assertive, more assertive at work. I want to live more free in my life. I want to feel more free as a person, want to be able to express myself and access myself. I’ve seen this happen a number of times with clients. You know, I realize, I mean, I’m not eating well or sleeping well. I’m in like a black hole in my life. A bottomless pit. I’ve lost. Okay. So now we’re getting to the deeper questions. Not just to think about them, but to try to be present to those places. As I say to reoccupied parts of oneself, that one has blocked off and that’s often nonverbal. You can’t put that in words as we were intimating there before. You need to experience it.

Adrian:

I wanted to ask you, how do you personally maintain contact with that level of presence to allow for awe to even sort of be part of your experience? How do you, how do you approach that?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, again, my therapies have been very important for me to feel less scared about a lot. And to be able to stay much more with myself even when I’m feeling really down or pained or what have you. That is such a gift. I can’t overemphasize that. To be able to be presented that opportunity to realign with your fuller being. Maybe the greatest gift that one can be given. Because that means you can go into almost any circumstance and be okay, relatively okay with yourself, relative friends with yourself. You’ve gotten to know yourself in many more ways than just intellectual or what have you. So that has helped me tremendously. I really try to practice being connected with something larger. In my day to day life. I’ve had some recent struggles that have made that difficult but also have made it more acute. I’ve recently developed a cervical dystonia, which is a neurological condition, which involves a twisting of the neck. It was extremely tormenting at the beginning. It started with me just laying back in the bed and realizing my head is slowly turning and there’s nothing I can do. And so I’ve grappled with this for the last five years or so, and I have a neurologist and I’ve managed to recruit a number of holistic people. I’ve been working a lot on trying to address the physiology of it. But I think one of the most important things that has helped me and I have improved, notably, has been a determination to fully live my life in spite of, or maybe even in light of it. And, I don’t know, I guess I’ve been blessed or cursed with sometimes anger and frustration helping to drive me on and, and help me feel more free because I get resentful of, I guess when I see as unnecessary tracks that one can fall in.

Kirk Schneider:

But that’s where that paradox comes in again, because often these wounds that we’re experiencing are actually the windows, right? These are the gifts that take us to that next layer of growth.

Adrian:

Exactly. And, and that’s, that’s a real tough one for psychology to resolve. You know, I don’t know if we’ll ever resolve it. But that question of do we need actually need to be shocked or jarred in some way in order to go to the next level of consciousness? You know, a deepening or broadening of consciousness is some kind of shaking the foundations necessary? I don’t think there’s a dogmatic answer to that, but certainly we’ve seen that that has been an impetus for many people who feel vital about their lives because it’s taken them out of the box and, and it’s, it’s, uh, in some ways mobilized to live differently, to find a different way. So anyway, going back to that, attempting to tune in to the awesomeness of life, being aware of passing nature of time. Even right now, if I tune into that. It makes even our connection right now that much more precious realizing that it’s all passing. It’s all fleeting. And yet it’s here right now we’re here. That is awe inspiring, really.

Thal:

Absolutely. I feel like when we’re talking about depth existential psychotherapy, I mean the word seems very… it’s a mouthful, but really it’s also about, um, bringing that depth oriented perspective into our, into our everyday that this is something that we can actually live every day and every, um, so maybe we can talk about how, like how can our listeners orient their lives to become, much more depths oriented.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Many possible routes. I was also realizing that, another way that I found this cultivation of depth as very valuable and very much part of my every day life is cross cultural contact too. And I think this kind of awe-based attitude can be very important to bridge-building among people of different backgrounds because so much of it is about coming to terms with “the other” in oneself, right?As well as the other-other. The other-other brings us in touch with the “other” in ourselves as well. And so to go to your question, I think practicing visualizations and I sometimes work with students around this, of sitting with someone of a different culture or background or mindset than you. Maybe your most challenging client or someone you know, that makes your blood curdle even. I mean, to take this to the extreme, one of my mentors, Jim Bugental used to talk about how appalled he was by Hitler in Nazi Germany. But he often wondered if he could sit with Hitler as a psychotherapist and what that would bring up in him. And that can be an extremely powerful exercise. You know, can you sit with political leaders, religious leaders who totally, repel you. What are the thoughts, especially feelings, body sensations that come up, the associations to those images, maybe memories, what happens when you sit with those and stay as present as you can to them? And then maybe imagine that person talking to you, telling you about their lives and their story. I think one often finds that as difficult as it is to do that or even to think about, that there’s a kind of humanizing that can take place whereby, it’s not not about agreeing with or even necessarily supporting the other as much as attempting to understand, being in a mode of discovery. And I would say that when that happens in actuality, person to person beyond the practicing of the visualization, uh, many more times than not, people find a different relation to the other, both in themselves and the other person. And they’re actually sitting with them. And so we’ve been promoting and cultivating some of these living room dialogues. Actually. I joined a group called Better Angels named after Lincoln’s famous speech of the better angels of our nature, you know, to bring the union back. Where it’s a grassroots movement that is now in 31 states. And they’ve done over a thousand workshops where you have a group of liberals and conservatives, usually Republicans and Democrats come together or are willing to come together in a very structured way talk about their experiences. But a lot of it is really all geared toward attempting to understand and learn about the other, not to change the other. And the Credo is “respect, curiosity and openness”. Those are the pivot points. So the facilitators really try to keep people in that mode and avoiding, you know the “I gotcha” questions or accusations or knee-jerk stereotypes. All of that is bracketed back as much as it can. And it’s people honestly attempting to learn about each other just as a basis. And then from there, it’s interesting what people find. They usually discover something new that tempers their sense of one another somewhat. Will that, you know, revolutionize America or the world? I don’t know. But it seems to me that it’s one of the best, most powerful ways of creating at least the conditions for substantive change and more communalism.

Thal:

Yeah. At the heart of what you’re saying is really, um, conversations without the ego, which is not a very easy thing to do, but is really truly transformative, which again, takes us back to the therapy room. And when you were talking about the cross cultural aspect of things, I mean, I’m thinking about, psychotherapy as a practice that has been dumped, like mostly a white practice and, now we’re moving into a world, we’re all, we’re all suffering from the same thing. It doesn’t matter where we come from. And so I see therapy as a tool that’s going to be much more important in the coming years and, and that it needs, it’s, it’s not a, I don’t think it’s just a white practice. I think it’s a human…

Kirk Schneider:

Oh, a number of us old white guys are trying to change that.

Thal:

Because the thing is cause like even from my own immediate circle, a lot of people were resisting like, are you really getting help with psychotherapy? Is it really helping you? Actually yes. If, if we’re open to it. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Well we really need the infusion of multiculturalism to inform our existential therapy. Yes. Because after all, what is existentialism or humanism all about? It’s about human lives, human existence. It’s not about white man’s existence or this class’ existence. I felt for such a long time that the riches of this approach need to be opened up. The box needs to be opened up for, for everyone because this is a human project. The human project. How do we relate, what is our relationship to life as a whole to existence as a whole? We’re all in that as you could say, you know, we’re all vulnerable, fragile, small beings before this vastness and at the same time have this tremendous capacity to take risks, to venture out, to learn, to discover, create. How do we all work with that? And create conditions where that becomes a more appealing road for every one. You know, so I see a lot of these modes, including the existential therapy modes as experiments in many ways. They’re experiments in living and they’re, they’re very, very precious because they’re just not encouraged in most mainstream cultures as far as I know. Um, and especially with technology now, it’s a whole other overlay that I think is making it even more challenging. And that’s why I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about the challenges of the robotic revolution, which seems to be more and more about the quick-fix, the machine model for living. Speed, instant results, appearance and packaging. The interior life could easily get lost and the capacity to pause. That’s where I think it’s so wonderful you’re in that Jungian depth therapy, you’re cultivating that capacity to be more fully present with yourself.

Thal:

I hope so.

Adrian:

Yeah in terms of, like you just mentioned the AI Revolution, you know, with technology, we’re all vulnerable to massive disruption and it seems like we’re inching closer and closer as you know, these technologies are becoming ubiquitous. I’m reminded of the author, Yuval Harari, you know, he talks about the struggle against irrelevance. You know, what will happen the day when most human jobs are easily replaced by artificial general intelligence. And so these existential questions aren’t just for the privileged who have lots of time to ponder, you know, the big questions, they will become at the forefront I think of of every human being.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. They’re coming very quickly and actually there are people who call themselves trans-humanists who actually desire to see the human being as we know it irrelevant because they think that life will be so much more efficient once it’s mechanized. And once, you know, we’re able to download data, through, I guess neural chips and um, we’ll be virtually impervious to disease because we will become cyborgs basically. And this is seen as desirable post humanism trans-humanism it’s called. I think there’s no question that there is a thrust in that direction and we, especially in our depth existential communities need to be very tuned in to this problem because the whole definition of what it means to be a human being is changing rapidly. And so it raises questions about what parts do we want to preserve of this old humanity? What parts are we willing, again, are we willing to shape differently? And I think we have to be careful on both ends. Not to be dogmatic on, on either end because I try not to be a luddite either. I mean, I do believe technology has done some amazing things. It’s, it’s done some great things for many of us. Think about medicine and science in particular improved our lives, but we need to be circumspect about it. And at all costs I believe we need to preserve the capacity for presence. Because that will be our guidance system to be able to pause and to discern, okay, is this really the direction we want to go? And again, not just because my cognition tells me or some abstract, you know, book told me or philosophy, but because, my whole bodily being is questioning this particular direction or replacement of a, let’s say, a physical part of ourselves where my whole bodily being can go on board with it. Willing to take the leap. Boy, I mean, these are going to be really knotty questions when we’re on the cusp of facing that now.

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we’re seeing there’s a sort of, meditation has become this buzzword now for a while. It’s for a reason.

Kirk Schneider:

Yes, that’s true. That’s true. Yeah. I, I think, uh, there, there’s, there’s a great value to this mindfulness revolution that we’re seeing. I also think that it, it can be, can become in some sense a technology in itself, if it’s not about life, you know, if it’s not a, where the rubber hits the road about your everyday living and everyday consciousness, if it’s just, let’s say in a cubicle like a yoga studio or one retreat or, you know, kind of compartmentalized. And it’s not a lifetime cultivation. And if it doesn’t allow one to engage, you know, the anxious and the tragic dimensions of living too, as well as that which connects us to something higher or larger. It could end up bypassing important areas of life that I think existential folks have kept us kind of on path and keep reminding us, grounding us, the messiness of life too. And that’s a part of it. Yeah. I would say put it as helping us to find ground within groundlessness and to be aware that we are in suspense both literally and figuratively. And yet there’s so much of that suspense that we can be conscious to, you know. Conscious about and it can be freeing.

Thal:

Yeah. I’m just thinking about it just in closing. I’m just thinking about, um, uh, something that Adrian had mentioned to me just before talking to you. Maybe want to talk about it, about Maslow and, and peak experiences.

Adrian:

Yeah. I, I was reminded by, I think it was an article I read a few years ago about how actually towards the end of his life, you know, some of this never got published, but how Maslow actually he’s, and he’s quite well known for his work on peak experience and he started referring to experiencing those qualities of the peak, the peak quality in the ordinary. So it’s finding it in the mundane and the ordinary. And this was after, I think he had a near death experience that might have actually created some of that perceptual change. Um, is there anything that you could maybe add to that, because you mentioned he was a big influence in your life and here you are actually in the depths of that same lineage of, of work. How can we integrate the peak within the ordinary, mundane world?

Thal:

Especially since he’s just known for the, you know, for that trying, but there’s much more to his work.

Kirk Schneider:

Right the satisfaction of needs and yeah. Self-actualization triangle.

Thal:

Right that one.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ve always appreciated his notion of peak experience and, uh, I like his direction of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. And of course he’s not the only one who’s, who’s looked in that way. Uh, we’ve had many poets and humanists through history who’ve opened to that, seeing the power in that, uh, I guess one of my concerns with peak experiences that it could be seen as a kind of fleeting high sort of the quick high. I distinguished between what I call the quick-boil version of awe and the slow simmer by awe, by the way, I mean the humility and wonder or sense of adventure toward living. So I think we’ve got a fair amount of the quick-boil, um, but we really need to work on more than lifetime cultivation and the more complex sense of the awesome that includes you know, sorrow and anxiety, some of the real difficult parts of life as well. It’s, that’s a part of what intensifies real living in my view. But how do cultivate extraordinary in the ordinary? Again, I believe it’s to practice and it’s a lot about what you notice. Taking time to notice the details let’s say of another person. The subtleties of your interaction was with someone else, maybe their story and noticing and discovering the details of their story, the many layers, all the different influences that go into them becoming them. Um, from a macro perspective, it’s being able to see how we’re all connected to something larger than ourselves. Participating in this great journey of, you know, the earth whirling around the sun 67,000 miles per hour, and the solar system or the galaxy apparently moving through the universe at 1.2 million miles per hour, we’re all part of this, this spaceship. And if we can kind of get that attunement at points, we’re in touch with that bigger picture, it can be so gratifying. I call a number of, of these ways of cultivating awe, “lenses of awe”, I don’t know if you’ve seen descriptions of that, but, if one could attempt to engage or sharpen one’s awareness, like almost like picking up lenses and seeing through the lens of the passing nature of time in life. For example, we’re seeing through the lens of wonder and surprise, can you be open at this very moment for something different to happen? Something that you discover. Can you allow yourself to be surprised, even though you’re going to that same old class or you’re reading that same old book, or you seeing that same old person so easy for us to get into these slots? Right? Well, it doesn’t have to be the same old, same old depending on our attitude or approach something fresh can happen and you can bring that something for you can help to bring something fresh to the moment too. Can you see through the lens of again, how we’re connected to something so much more in the moment? Just think about the histories and mysteries that we all bring right now. It’s so much we could explore about each other. Also the amazement of what brings us here, how we’re all children of the cosmos just dropped in. Does that shift our view of ourselves? I think it sheds a lot of the usual categories. Just seeing clothing or you know, a certain look or what have you. Being able to pick up the lens of what I call sentiment. Can you tune into your emotionality when you’re seeing someone else or connecting with something or someone or a place. Travel can be great part of this too, but can you engage that something with more of your whole bodily being especially how you’re feeling. Can you open to your feeling when you’re with that person or thing. The capacity to be alone, the Lens of Solitude. I think that’s really big. It’s bigger than we have granted in our culture because so much is cut against being alone, we’re so tethered, you know, often to our iPads or iPhones, we always have to have stimulation. How do you help to create or co-create a sense of awe, unless there’s some capacity to bear feelings to bear parts of ourselves that are unsettling.

Adrian:

Yeah. I just feel they need to also mention here we are talking and technology is actually mediating our encounter with you. And so again, without being dogmatic, I think it’s, it’s beautiful that we can see how these things can actually live together. You know, we’re both sitting here, you’re, you’re in California and we’re in Canada and yet there’s a transmission here, right. Our bodies experience things in this conversation that…

Thal:

Even energetically I can feel it.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah, sure, sure. You just proved my whole thesis. Yeah. I mean it’s just, it’s a great irony in it. It’s why we need to be careful about being dogmatic. I think, uh, a lot of questions can be raised about whether there are significant differences between coming across on the screen and actually living and breathing with each other in person. I would advocate that there are, but, uh, I think all these things need to be explored much more. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing. I recently done a series of lectures to China, to Chinese students too. It’s mind blowing, you know, these thousands of miles and thousands of miles of cultural difference too. There’s some bridges being created and actual, as you say, energy exchanges that I felt. I couldn’t see all of the students. I saw some of them on the screen. And what do we do with that? So you’re right, that is part of the awesome too. Or can be, I think the problem is, comes in, uh, when things are overly programmed, when they’re preset. when, uh, you know, they’ve got an algorithm or when it’s a calculative mode, let’s as Heidegger put it: calculated versus meditative. It closes off and when you close off, what can be discovered and what can happen also. You’re sanitizing to some degree and you’re dulling the potential for radical awe, you know, for our fuller relationship to the mystery of being. And I think that’s the danger. So how do we be careful about closing off our ways of interacting and communicating in laboratory-like settings. That don’t permit greater possibility. Yeah.

Adrian:

Kirk, that’s wonderful. Yeah let’s bring this to an end here. I’m just mindful of your time. Um, but I do want..

Kirk Schneider:

It was wonderful.

Thal:

Thank you so much. That was amazing. Thank you.

#12: Reclaiming the Inner Teen with Avi Zer-Aviv

April 14, 2019 Culture, Life Transition, Mindfulness, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality 01:06:21

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of the most important aspects of healing is tending to our emotional wounds. We have all been hurt. It might look different from one person to another, but some of our wounds are deep and carry a specific age. When we are trying to work on our wholeness, we may have to pay attention to our inner child or our inner teen. Bringing back the lost parts of ourselves and integrating into maturity is the essence of self-development.

On this episode, we have a conversation with Avi Zer-Aviv, a Toronto-based Psychotherapist and educator. Avi is a member of the Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association and a LGBTQI positive Practitioner. Avi’s holistic approach to psychotherapy is informed by decades of deep inner work and spiritual exploration. In this conversation, we discuss the role of psychotherapy in modern society and learn the tricky dance of working with activated “inner teens”. Avi shows us how our deepest wounds can end up becoming our biggest doorways to personal transformation.

Highlights:

  • Difference Between a Psychologist, Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist
  • Psychology of the Inner Teen
  • Healthy vs Unhealthy Shame

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:

Hello Avi, Welcome to the show.

Avi:

Thank you for having me.

Thal:

Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Um, we wanted to start today with, uh, your personal journey. Um, you have been a psychotherapist now for a few years. Um, please let us know how did you get there?

Avi:

I’ll give you the coles notes.

Thal:

Alright.

Avi:

Um never thought I would be a therapist. Never set out to be a therapist. I had a sort of an early awakening when I was a teenager, sorta grew up in the suburbs of Toronto up in York region and white picket fence sort of life. I’m not really religious. I’m very much consumer. And I started to find myself wanting more of probably around 12 or 13 starting to think about things that, um, mystery, the mystery of life, but I didn’t really have any one to bounce anything off of. Um, and um, I had an, I have an aunt and uncle were kind of at the time were sort of the black sheep of the family and they, uh, asked me up to their cottage up in a Bancroft Ontario and I spent 10 days there, and it felt like I found my tribe. I remember thinking that when I was teenager, like, oh, these are my people.

Adrian:

So how were they different from the rest of your family? How are they black sheeps?

Avi:

Uh, they were, they just didn’t drink the Kool-aid of, you know, what is your, what the program of life is supposed to be. They were travellers, they were um, uh, spent a lot of time in Asia. They owned, they owned a, uh, an Indian clothing store on Queen West and meditated and were vegetarians and just things that were off the beaten track. Um, and um, yeah, so I, I intuitively felt that I’d found people I could talk to about things that I’ve been really hungry to talk about and that was kind of where it all started.

Thal:

That’s awesome because those questions that you have at that young age, a lot of people do have those questions and don’t know where to go and sometimes that causes more anxiety.

Avi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s very easy to get isolated. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I felt really lucky, but then I had to come back to my suburban life and the contrast made things even more painful. Um, so I became kind of a rebellious teenager and uh, just was counting the minutes until high school was finished so I could go traveling, which is something really wanted to do and that’s exactly what I did. I, I the minute high school ended I set off and lived in Asia for a year and I myself in India for six months, on a spiritual pilgrimage and meditated my brains out. Lived in south India, different ashrams. The Aurobindo Ashram, Ramana Maharishi Ashram, and I went pretty deep with my meditation practices. But when I got back to Toronto I realized that wasn’t really in my body. I was very much opening a lot of doorways, but I was kind of, my energy was going up and I sort of left body behind and um, that’s how I just might, my instinct was to just to meditate more and that just seemed to perpetuate this kind of feeling of ungroundedness and just feeling of kind of not wanting to be in the world, just wanting to meditate back to whatever source was/is. And uh, then I started getting panic attacks in my early twenties, which was the invitation to psychotherapy.

Thal:

How old were you when you were in India?

Avi:

18.

Thal:

And it’s usually at that age, um, and you know, you going after the spiritual path without the embodied part is what may have caused, um, you wanting to escape, escape your body.

Avi:

Absolutely.

Thal:

And, and so psychotherapy helped you integrate body and soul?

Avi:

yeah, it came very reluctantly. I didn’t really believe that psychotherapy was a valuable tool because of the sort of focus on content, on story and on narrative, on history. I sort of, from a, from a young sort of a this not in not integrated spiritual lens, that was just ego indulging itself and that wasn’t, that was just kind of getting caught in the web of you know, at the time when I called maya, or illusion and so I really didn’t come in, in an open hearted voluntary. I came in really because these panic attacks were getting worse so much so I would have them on the street and feel like I would just couldn’t interact socially. Um, and so I really came to just, I wanted someone to help me get rid of these panic attacks and I gave myself a year to get and get back to my spiritual practice. I could go and become enlightened [laughing]. You know, what is it now 20 something years later? For me, psychotherapy was a doorway into an integrated spirituality. So I didn’t have to leave my spirituality behind. What I did have to leave behind was an idea of spirituality, though that was really about not being here in the world, which in my opinion, any good spirituality is one that is of the earth and is in life. We’re here, we’re alive, we’re in this body, and so why not be here?

Thal:

Exactly. That’s very important to remember because even the word spirituality, a lot of people find it problematic or don’t understand it and assume that it’s about escaping when in reality, all the authentic spiritual teachings are about being in the world and enacting your humanity in the world.

Avi:

Yes, yes.

Adrian:

It sounded like you had your panic attacks and so it was when things were so bad that forced you to, okay, now try, try new things. And psychotherapy, you went into it somewhat skeptical. It sounded like you, you know, you didn’t really fully buy into the idea of it. Um, you even set a deadline in a year if you want to be fixed and then you can just continue on with your meditation. What changed? So what at what moment did it start to shift for you when you realize, okay, this is not what I thought it was and what was it? What, what did it become for you?

Avi:

I worked with a really interesting therapist who was very much all about the here and now. And I thought, oh great. The present moment. There’s nothing like the present moment. This is a spiritual approach. Yet I didn’t, I didn’t have a sense of how much I didn’t want to be in the moment emotionally and vulnerably that I wanted to be in the moment with lofty concepts of mysticism and um, uh, you know, big picture stuff. But to be finite in the moment, to be raw, naked, emotionally naked in the moment was not only painful but was… Opened the door to my deep wounds and all my… And so I, this therapist was really challenging, did not, did not really like it, did not, not so much like, but really challenged me to stay in the moment with him. And, um, that’s not an easy thing when you haven’t been, when you’re not steeped in that and when that isn’t the way you’ve been brought up.

Thal:

Absolutely. And this is the, um, I guess, psychological arm of this spiritual path. A lot of people, um, you know, seek spirituality as a way to bypass a psychological trauma.

Avi:

yes,

Thal:

You know, developmental trauma, whatever, the pain of being human. And um, and so it sounds like psychotherapy in your life was a tool to bring you back into your body.

Avi:

It was. But you know, it’s interesting, when I first started spiritual practices at a really young age, Yoga, vegetarianism, I was amazed at how much clearing happened. And I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of people that don’t, that have just kind of, it’s a great starting point, spiritual practices. And it really does have a way of. A lot of these practices have a way of clearing energy and opening energy and expanding energy. And so, um, you know, in the moment you can be a little bliss bunny because you go from living a humdrum, mundane life to all of a sudden having visions or feeling waves of energy. I, everyone has a different thing, but it’s very intoxicating and beautiful doorway possibly for a lot of people in it. I think psychotherapy is just the downward movement. So if you think about spirituality is an upward movement. This is just the, the integration of, so you could say cosmos and the mundane and the transcendent and the imminent.

Adrian:

Since Thal and I are both training to be therapist, we are commonly asked what is the difference between psychotherapy and seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist? There’s all these kinds of terminologies and credentials. Maybe this is a good chance for us to help kind of differentiate a little bit some of the differences and why you might seek one over the other.

Avi:

Sure, sure. Um, you know, psychotherapy up until the last few years has not been regulated in Ontario. So anybody could call themselves a psychotherapist and the focus of psychotherapists is psychotherapy, is counselling. It’s interventions around looking at people’s struggle, all of our struggle that the human struggle that we’re all in, but then our own personal struggles in our lives and essentially what gets in our way. That’s the, that’s the core of everything is what’s, what gets in our way of who we know we already are in how we want to live. And uh, the work of a psychotherapist is to help a client open to that and explore that and help the client get out of their way if they want to. Tt’s soul work. It’s the work of deep soul work. Now this is my lens of psychotherapy. Now there’s a lot of different types of psychotherapies. There’s cognitive behavioral therapy, which is more practical and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is more interpretive, but the kind of psychotherapy that I’ve been trained in and that has been my healing path is more a relational psychotherapy. It’s more psychodynamic, more, um, more opening to the mystery of self and without trying to fix or solve, but really taking the invitation to go deeper into the mystery. So that’s my unique experience and sort of how I look at psychotherapy. Now psychotherapy is now regulated in Ontario as of the last few years, um, through the college of psychotherapists, CRPO and um, uh, so to be, to call yourself a psychotherapists you have to be a registered psychotherapist. There’s a whole training involved. Um, do you want to know now that it’s sort of the distinction between…

Adrian:

I think it’d be helpful because some people have heard of, okay, I saw a psychiatrist and maybe they are also don’t know, is that psychotherapy? Right? Or a psychologist, you know, even looking at like in a very practical sense like insurance coverage, they might see, oh, I’m covered for all these things, but what’s the difference? They all start with a ‘p’ and I don’t know, you know, they’ll have psyche in it. They seem to be related to the mind because I, I’m sure there are lots of overlaps, but for a consumer who is new and is searching, it might be helpful to provide some guidance.

Avi:

Psychologist, it’s a doctoral program and they’re trained… The specialty with a psychologist is diagnosis. They’re very much trained around diagnosing mental health issues, mental health conditions, and they’re legally allowed to diagnose. Psycho therapist can assess, we can’t diagnose, but we can treat, um, whereas psychologists can diagnose and treat. There are a lot of psychologists that do psychotherapy in the sense of counseling and having these kinds of conversations with people. Um, the focus for many psychologists is diagnosis in that sort of their specialty area. Whereas the psychiatrist is a medical doctor who is trained in their specialty is prescribing medication. And um, uh, now, you know, a psychiatrist can do psychotherapy and psychologists can do psychotherapy, but psychotherapists can’t diagnose like a psychologist can and psychotherapists can’t prescribe like a psychiatrist can. So does that kind of clear up a little bit of the…?

Adrian:

I think that’s a great distinction. Having a sense of even the scope of what they’re trained to do and what they offer.

Thal:

I’m a second year student, a phd in transpersonal psychology. So, I definitely cannot prescribe or diagnose even because it’s not clinical psychology.

Avi:

Right.

Thal:

Um, it’s more, I would say it’s closer to the psychotherapeutic arm of mental health. Um, but a lot of people do also ask what does transpersonal mean? I’m from your description of psychotherapy. That’s, that’s the transpersonal, that’s the, uh, the, the, the space beyond the ego and um, and, and, and through my program, um, we’re able to sort of connect that with empirical research and I’m sort of, we look into how the brain functions during meditation and altered states and all that. So, um, and that’s all within the realm of mental health.

Avi:

The word transpersonal is misinterpreted heavily because the word itself, trans beyond personal beyond the self. Yes. There is an aspect to us that is bigger than ourselves, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get to take the self with us. It doesn’t mean the self sort of dissolves into nothingness and the spirit comes through and um, you know, is running the show without any. I like to the, the sort of adage that I really like when it comes to helping people understand what is transpersonal psychotherapy and what is just the transpersonal itself is, you know, do you guys know the saying it’s not the uh, you know, that whole idea of spirituality being like we’re like all like drops that drop into the ocean and sort of the ocean as the bigger, bigger consciousness, bigger, whatever your name for that is, whether it’s God or Goddess or whatever your thing. So I like to, when I, when I’m trying to explain what is transpersonal, I really like to say it’s not the drop that slips into the ocean, but it’s the ocean that slips into the drop. And that to me is what an embodied spirituality is. You don’t actually get to dissolve yourself, but you do get to take yourself along with, for the bigger ride that is bigger than you. It is bigger than your what do I want? What do I fear? It’s bigger than your wounds. So there is a place that’s bigger than our wounds. Truly. Yeah.

Thal:

And to get to that place, we have to understand her wounds and confront them.

Avi:

Absolutely. Absolutely. That is the price.

Adrian:

So on that note, since we brought up, um, you bring up a few things that are, I think are really important to highlight just so your approach to therapy as embracing the mystery of self, right? So really it’s a journey of getting to know parts of yourself that maybe you have either forgotten or didn’t place much attention and the wounded parts being probably a key part to actually focus on in the therapeutic relationship. Can you maybe share with us what that’s like for people that might not have experienced therapy? What does that process like and how might these old wounds show up in people’s current lives and how they experience the world?

Avi:

Do you mean how therapists work with wounds or how I would work with a wound as a therapist?

Adrian:

Maybe give an example for how it would show up for a person that might not be aware that these old wounds are affecting their experience of the world and that the way they interact with other people because it perhaps is not conscious yet.

Avi:

I see. I see, um, well wounds are a tricky business because to be alive is to be wounded. And what I mean by that is we’re our, our true nature is vast and spacious and wants to merge with everything. This is kind of like the true spiritual identity of who we all are. And so, and then we’re all tossed into this existence where you have a body and you’re called Adrian and we all have different names and you have a, you know, we have separate bodies and separate experiences and we’re sort of tossed to figure it out on our own. So that in itself creates an existential crisis that is just called life, right? This vast, expansive spirit trying to reconcile, living in a finite, um, singular experience. It’s William Blake, one of my favorite, a really great poet, uh, you know, he says eternity, which he’s saying like life source, eternity is in love with time and space. But to become, to go into the time and space, it has to be dismembered. It has to be broken. That pure vast spirit has to be. It’s like a shard of broken glass that you call it, that we’re all calling our separate selves. So it, you know, um, just to breathe and to take up space in a way is to be wounded. There’s a book called, uh, I think it’s called The Trauma of Birth and it’s essentially not, not birth trauma, but it’s just traumatic to be born in an existential sense.

Adrian:

It’s the price of admission.

Avi:

It’s the price of admission. So it’s, it’s a negotiation and um, you don’t have to have had a terrible childhood to… You could have a great childhood and you’re still in those waters. Now, for some people, like you said it, some people are more tuned into that level of, of their self, of their being, and other people are less tuned in and that’s okay. That’s, there’s no, I don’t think that, you know, at some point in life we all will struggle with this for a lot of people. It does come out around Midlife. It’s when a lot of people start to become a little more reflective, but some of us, and that’s all of us in this room actually, um, or just kind of have more of an orientation to introspection.

Thal:

And some people want to tune in, but have palpable wounds that maybe act as an obstacle. Um, and perhaps that’s what Adrian was trying to or was hinting at. Um, maybe developmental traumas or actual traumas. I mean, we’re not gonna go into the details of that, but that, those also can be obstacles or the tools. Yes. If confronted to, to, um, like tune in to the bigger self.

Avi:

Well, because our culture doesn’t give us enough tools, there aren’t enough elders in the culture to help us understand what these wounds are when they come up. The they come up through symptoms is, is because we don’t have enough elders to guide us. They do show up, but they come up through, you know, when I mentioned panic attacks in my case or it will be something different. Most people come to therapy for one of two things. Anxiety or depression or some variation of anxiety or depression means a hyper state (anxiety) or a hypo state (depression). And most, you know, the way, um, it’s like coming back to my story, just I want to get rid of this. It’s just that helped me get rid of my wound to help me fix my wound so I can go back and become spiritual person again. Whereas from an integrated, from an integrated psychotherapy and an integrated spirituality, those symptoms are the doorways to the gods. And what I mean by that is that in, in the exploration of what we’re calling wounds. What we’re calling our symptoms is not just pain and suffering, but is a whole ocean of, of who knows what, desire, longing, yearning, heartbreak, unmet dreams, unmet potentials. And if you follow that, it’s hard to follow that. To follow that means you have to really feel it. And, but if you can stay with it, if you can, if you can follow that thread, um, entire doors that were not there will open for you. So at the end of the day, it’s not so much, okay, I fixed my wounds. Now it’s more, the wound is an invitation into living a fuller, richer, more embodied life and having richer connections with people. I think the deep longing of the times is around connection. Um, there’s a deep isolation that we’re all of us experience and um, the instinct is to fill it with stuff, just name the substance that you know, just think about your life and what substance you go to to fill your need for connection. Right? And so this approach is like an alternative to just try and fill that place inside with stuff. It’s actually looking at the raw energy itself of the desire of the need and seeing how you live in your own skin and how do you, how do you feed yourself spiritually, how do you care for your own being? And a lot of that, that’s a mystery to a lot of people. How to just self care in the sense of …

Thal:

Inner work.

Avi:

Inner work and just being kind, being kind to self. That’s a mystery from..

Thal:

Self compassion.

Avi:

Self compassion, right?

Adrian:

I think a lot of people might actually be surprised to hear this, but even as adults, you’re walking around thinking, okay, I’m a full grown adult that we’re carrying with us many parts of self, including our child selves, right? Especially the ones who are carrying the wounds if these wounds happen early in life. Um, so we are walking with all these selves all the time and I think it’s a helpful language almost to even be able to name some of this stuff and start to just begin to get some clarity in the potentially messy experience that we’re having, you know, when, when someone is overwhelmed with anxiety to realize that, you know, maybe some of it is a longing or a crying for help and it’s coming from the inner child parts. Um, would you mind sharing with us what that might look like in a therapeutic setting where people are working with their, their inner child or. Sure. Or the term, you know, we often hear is reparenting, you know, when we’re learning to reparent these wounds.

Avi:

Something that you said just now, I’m sorta just, I just want to come back for a second to the cult, to our culture itself.

Thal:

Modernity.

Avi:

Modernity. Krishnamurti, a modern philosopher from India said, it’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. And the reason I want to come back to that is there are people that are just more sensitive by nature and those are the people that often end up in therapy, younger. It’s all of you, all of us. And uh, you know, to be sensitive in a world that is on fire, on, in so many ways is a very challenging thing to be really awake in these times or environmental catastrophe. And crisis of meaning. It’s to really look at that, to really be open. It’s, it’s not an easy time to be an awake person and to be a sensitive person. So, um, I just want to say this because just to give people listening a compass here actually, if you’re, if you’re feeling wounded and you’re probably more healthy. So I’m being a little facetious, but what I mean by that is, um, it’s okay to. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to, um, you know, struggle. It’s actually a sign that you’re alive when you struggle.

Adrian:

I think that’s so important to highlight. I mean in a, in a culture that is I think celebrates intellect and being able to rise into the cognitive parts of being that we lose sense of like it’s talking about the sensitivity through the body, through our emotions, and although it’s painful, it might actually be a sign that you’re waking up, that your beginning …

Avi:

And that you’re and that you’re part of you is listening to what’s happening around you.

Thal:

That you’re alive!

Avi:

Yes, that you’re alive! And reacting to what you know.

Thal:

Congratulations, you’re not a robot. [laughing]

Avi:

You’re not a robot, you’re not a robot. There’s such a fear right now of being impacted of impacting each other, that, that what you do and what you say in how he, God forbid that should impact me or God forbid what I do or say should impact you. It’s like we’ve come to a point now where it’s like, it’s that absurd, right? We’re afraid of impacting each other, where that is the whole point right here. That’s the whole reason of being alive is that’s the other word to say that is relationship. I impact you and you impact me. That’s the nature of relationship and so I’m coming back to being wounded, um, you know, using that as an invitation to what’s happening around you, what’s happening inside of you and all of your relationships inner and out. And so yes, we have Adrian about your question. We have relationship with parts of ourself that are at different stages developmentally, including a younger, more, um, a younger aspects of our own history, of our own self that live in us and we are in relationship with them. Uh, whether it’s our infant, part of our nature, pre-verbal part of our nature. I’m sort of more adolescent aspect. We, we do have relationship with aspects of self and I don’t mean that in a sort of defined sort of compartmentalized way. I mean it in the sense of who we are as a tapestry. Yes, just like life. And so we’re, we’re relating to different aspects of ourselves all the time. Unconsciously. Mostly.

Thal:

It is the complexity of being a human. We are not too deep, like, you know, there, there are so many layers to our existence and speaking of that, we’d like to go into the inner teen. That’s a term that we’ve heard you mentioned before. And um, what, what, what does that mean? And um, yeah, yeah.

Adrian:

How is it different from the Child?

Thal:

Exactly.

Adrian:

Yeah. There clearly are differences when we entered teenage years and how it affects us psychologically.

Avi:

So just coming back to what we’re talking about is the collage of our inner self. There’s different parts, um, were mostly encouraged to walk around with what we call an adult. If we are in adults, assuming we’re assuming chronologically we’re in that part of our life. And that could be different things too, but the idea is to be, you know, the adult part of us is autonomous and can make decisions for ourselves and is in negotiation with life, with prioritizing what’s important. And it’s, it’s kind of, you can think of it as a muscle in your, in your mind that, uh, is discerning and that knows how to respond to situations and people. And, and, and there isn’t, I just want to say when, because it’s very easy to fall into, um, perfection. We’re not talking, I’m not talking about any kind of utopic idealized sense. It’s just you could say the part of you that the part of us that knows how to navigate our life and knows how to, um, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for is that knows how to.

Thal:

I’m thinking maybe like these are like bringing up these terms are just tools for us, like you said, to help us navigate our lives. Um, and uh, it’s not an end goal and it’s not. When we talk about the inner teen does not mean, okay, that means I have to grow into the adult. Yes. It’s, these are just tools for us to navigate our growth, our path in life.

Avi:

Yeah. It’s a lens to Lens.

Thal:

Yes.

Avi:

So this lens of adult is this lens of who we think we are mostly. And um, and then what do we do with the parts of us that come up that are more at a different developmental stage, the teen, the child. And so what is the teen? Uh, you know, it’s really interesting because there isn’t a lot of, we don’t often talk about our inner teen. You hear in popular psychology in books, the inner child is like, there’s hundreds if not thousands of books written on the inner child and how to work with the inner child. And that’s an easy concept for most people. Yeah. You got to have a young kid living inside of you. The kid feels things that kids feel it just named them. If the kid is, if the kid is a happy kid, the kid feels spontaneous and joyous and wants to play. And if the kid is not happy, the kid feels ashamed. The kid feels, um, maybe self-loathing, whatever it is. But it’s a very easy concept to grasp and most people can go, “oh yeah, yeah, there’s part of me that feels very young and shy and all these things”. But when it comes to the inner teen we’re getting into the weeds, because what happens when we actually move in our actual lives, when we move from being children to being adolescents, there’s a radical change happening in our bodies and in our minds and it’s a time where so much energy has to be mobilized to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s a liminal intermediary time. And so the sort of life force us to really mobilize because if biologically, if we can’t do this, we really don’t grow up psychologically. And so there’s a tremendous energy that comes through in being an adolescent and we don’t, again, coming back to the culture, we don’t have a lot of guides for adolescence. Um, you know, there’s, there’s just such a lack of mentorship around what all these changes are. And so we’re, we, we’re often taught to shut it down and anything you shut down goes on the back burner and then it will show up later. And so a lot of us adults are walking around with a very activated inner teen and this inner teen is different than the inner child is not so much about the child kind of just wants to be nurtured in a very basic, elemental level. Children need gathering, support, to be seen, to be acknowledged. It’s very much about dependence needs from a childhood developmental level, an adolescent as a very different developmental need. It’s a time where you don’t want to be coddled and sort of held in that same way. It’s actually a time of… But it’s actually not a time where you want to be left to do your own thing either. In that liminal time it’s a time of rebellion, but even in their rebellion, you want to be there. There’s an energy that teenagers… I don’t know if anyone has teenagers in their life here…they want to be met often, even in their rebellion.

Thal:

My son is a preteen, so this helps.

Avi:

Okay. Well, especially boys, a lot of, a lot of boys with their mothers. Relationship with their mothers. It’s really a time that the psychological umbilical cord is cut and so on the one side that’s “get away from me, mom” but on the other side, on the other side, it’s “don’t leave me”, right?. It’s helpful for when the teenage knows there’s a place to come back to, to check in. So it’s an interdependent time, not a time of independence and not a time of dependence. It’s an interdependent time. It’s a very tricky dance and again, because the culture is very young in the sense of what to do with these energies. For many of us, we just bury that teen at the time when it’s happening, or spin out. You can bury the energy or you can spin out and act it out. So it’s that more stereotypical, rebellious teenager that tells everyone to F off and, you know. But even that it doesn’t fulfill the deeper need there, which is, um, “what do I… What the hell do I do with all of this life force channeling through me?” There’s an inner sexuality that’s being awakened. There’s um, you know, there’s an identity that’s being shed, but the new identity hasn’t been formed yet. So many, so many things happening. And so.. Fast forward later in your life, we all have an inner teen. I was a very rebellious teenager and just did what I wanted and didn’t really care. It’s a time of risk taking. I took a lot of risks as a teenager. Like I had a lot of luck. I didn’t get into as much trouble as I could have. And not everyone’s that lucky, but you know, I find that people that have been more on the Yang side of risk taking and acting out later in their life. Like I’m in my forties now and what I’ve been confronting over the last few years is an inner teen that is more quiet and shy. And that is a really unfamiliar territory for me because I was the exact opposite. So it’s kind of as when I tune into my teen he’s often really shy and I find working with people who have had the opposite experience kind of people that say “that oh my teenage years were fine. I didn’t really have any, you know, I was kind of just an obedient, quiet, good, good girl, good boy…”

Thal:

Yeah, you’re describing me! [laughing]

Avi:

People like you are fascinating because then they come to therapy and it’s like all this, all these jars just started opening and then all the, all the unmet, you know, all that life force. And it’s like, what do I do with it? So it’s good to create a podcast.

Thal:

Thank you Adrian! [laughing]

Adrian:

Even tuning into the energy of the conversation. I feel like this, you’ve mentioned the mobilization of energy. I’m feeling it as we’re speaking to, the teens are in the room now. You know, they’re mobilized. But I’m also getting… Kind of picking up on the importance of grounding that energy. And that sounds to be the key to this work is to find a way to work with that energy, not to diminish it and not to waste it.

Avi:

Yeah. The trick is grounding without shutting down because there’s a lot of talk about grounding and grounding is great, but you have to. We just have to be careful when it comes to the teen. The teen doesn’t want to… That energy does not necessarily want to ground. This is why working with our inner teen is not so simple. The nature of therapy is containment. You come in, you sit down, you have a conversation. Teenagers are future thinking. They don’t want to talk about what happened when they were five or what or what happened…Even when there are few…. it’s a drive. It’s visionary. A visionary energy. Therapy can feel like another suffocating place for an inner teen. So yes, that energy that you’re tuning into definitely needs grounding, but it has to be a very clever kind of grounding. Otherwise it can be instructive and it can come across as just someone telling me what to do.

Adrian:

Which is the last thing a teen wants to hear.

Avi:

So how to sort of, you know, trick somebody into grounding themselves. And it’s a, it’s like I love working with people’s inner teen because I know that place really well in myself and it’s not, it doesn’t freak me out at all. I actually find it really energizing and very… As a therapist, I’m learning a lot because I often get pushed back like, you know, “I don’t want to do that” or “God, I’m so sick of this”. Or “Oh God, you know, another therapist”. I don’t. “I’m sick of talking about my mom and dad”. Great. Because for me, I have to throw out the book of what I think I’m doing and I have to create a new therapy for this person by following them. And so yes, grounding, but on the teens’ terms. That’s where it gets complicated and tricky. Yeah.

Adrian:

Yeah. And, and the word sometimes I hear people use is transmute. So we’re maybe perhaps working with that energy. So by grounding it in where they feel like you’re trying to control them, it’s probably squashing it and we’re squandering this opportunity. I’m the visionary energy. It almost sounds it can be very productive. That’s going to actually, you know, it might be disruptive as it’s appearing in their life, but perhaps with the right guidance, it can actually be turned into a very productive transformation.

Avi:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think so. And um, it’s only as we are seeing in the culture right now, it’s only young people that are going to be the leaders, to face the evolutionary crisis that we’re in right now. The environmental crisis and the crisis of meaning. It’s really young people that are going to pave for the way forward. And we just saw it in the United States with the midterm elections that just happened. All these incredible young people being elected, um, that are visionaries and are not afraid to put bold ideas that are necessary if we’re going to meet the sort of struggle of the time. And so it’s really, we need this energy. We need the energy. And yet we have to figure out how to help people, actual real teenagers, how to hold that energy because the life force in us is not. It’s actually transpersonal in the sense that it comes through us. It’s too big to hold. And when that kind of awakening starts to happen in people, it’s scary.

Thal:

It is. And when you say the word grounding, I remember that word. I like when I first started my own therapy. I was so annoyed with that word. I’ve been in the ground like “I’m done with being in the..” you know. Yeah. So, um, so even that word, like what does it mean to ground? Yeah.

Avi:

For me, what it means is to help somebody figure out how to be in what’s inside without shutting down and spinning out. And that’s tricky. And maybe channeling is a better word than grounding. I don’t know. But working with, working with the life force energy.

Thal:

Energy.

Avi:

Yes. I mean sometimes grounding could be a matter of just speaking the truth. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of feeling sort of incredibly grounded after you’ve spoken the truth.

Thal:

Yes. Yes. It’s actually part of my journey to, um, uh, you know, express and, and heal that the parts that have been silenced or repressed at a younger age.

Avi:

Yeah. For anyone that wants some reading on the inner teen. There is one good book. There aren’t many books on the inner teen, but there’s a book called Brainstorm by, I believe it’s Daniel Siegal. The book is called Brainstorm and it’s all about the inner teen, but also it’s written for teenagers. I think it’s one of the better books on what this whole wild phase is or transitional phase is all about. And it’s a very practical book. So it would be a good one for your son.

Thal:

Oh, absolutely. And we’re going to look into it. Um, I also want to bring up age and also the word that’s coming up for me is shame. That people might feel like, wait, “I’m an inner teen inside?” And feel shame. There’s that. And then there’s age where, yeah, well there is biological age. There is psychological age, emotional age. Perhaps even spiritual age. So yeah, these are things to put into perspective and think about.

Avi:

If the energy of shame is coming up around the inner teen, that’s a really good clue that shame has happened.

Thal:

Oh, absolutely [laughing].

Avi:

So it’s not a coincidence. If you’re listening to this podcast and when you imagine inner teen, you’re going “ugh”, that’s a clue for you as to… Probably something in your own psyche. It’s really more about, you know, so that would be an invitation for somebody who does feel shame because not everybody does get shamed at this time of their life.

Thal:

And to be okay with it and work with it to have self- compassion.

Avi:

Well shame has two faces, right? There’s the healthy aspect of shame, which is a teenager needs to learn. They are limits. They’re are finite… there are limits to what you can do with time and energy and you can’t just, you want to go future, but you can’t conquer the world. There are limits to what you can physically do. And that’s healthy. It’s kinda good to know. Okay, and if I, you know, I’m just go and do what I want. It will have impact. It might have negative impact and I need to know what my impact is. So shame has a good side, but where a lot of us have been mentored in is the toxic side of shame. Where it’s about an identity. Shame becomes an identity and it’s not about teaching limits, but it’s about the whole sense of “you’re wrong”. You’re wrong for feeling what you’re feeling. You’re wrong for doing that or thinking that. If we live in a family unit where the emotions, the life force is not allowed to flow and our parents didn’t know how to ground and channel that energy in themselves then all of a sudden it’s coming up in us, we will be shamed on some level. And shame doesn’t have to look like scolding. It can look like just being ignored.

Thal:

It’s a feeling in the body too.

Avi:

Feeling in the body but just being ignored or being, you know, that could that deeply, that can be deeply shaming. So when shame turns into an identity, that’s the work then to work with shame.

Thal:

And from my own personal experience and experiences of like friends around me that shame actually causes a lot of stuckness in life. And, and you know, that question of what’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? It becomes a loop in the mind. And um, you know, all I think about is more compassion, more forgiveness towards self.

Avi:

You know, the first step with shame is an not necessarily compassion because they’re just wishing there isn’t compassion. The nature of shame is almost itself punitive, right? It’s the first nature. The first sort of thing to do with shame is to externalize it, to speak it, to have someone witness cause shame lives in hiding places. It’s that thing of I’m defective. “Something is wrong with me” and “I have to keep that a secret”. “No one can know that I’m flawed”, so I need to, I need to hide. I need to shut down. And when you start speaking it like I feel unworthy. That is the first step in the direction of healing shame. And um, later it’s really about going into the feelings around it and doing the deep feeling work. Um, but you know, the self-compassion will come later.

Thal:

I was skipping ahead. [laughing]

Avi:

Well, and that’s the thing is, you know, oftentimes people will get shamed in about being ashamed. Why are you so hard on yourself? You’re such a sweet, sweet person. What? Come on.

Thal:

I’ve actually heard that many times. [laughing]

Avi:

“Just be nice to yourself”. And if it was that easy we would all do it and it’s um, it often isn’t helpful to, to, um, to just let someone know that, you know, they should be different. So yeah.

Adrian:

I think that’s so important. Just you talked about… Like we need the courage, we need the courage to begin sharing, you know, and the healing that begins when you start to allow these inner things to come out into the open. I mean just personally this project of doing this podcast has been incredibly challenging because our own shits coming up all the time. We are stepping into a new territory or being exposed feeling more naked than ever. And so yes, like we are seeing it firsthand, you know, our own stuff is mixed in with this creative project and so we’re not just talking about it, you know, as some sort of a theoretical thing. It’s live.

Avi:

I can feel it through the whole…. I can feel a sort of an energy as we’re trudging along that is multilayered and has different aspects and feels strange at moments. And inspiring. There is a real energy here. So you guys are cooking whatever it is that you’re doing. You’re really in something here. And what I love is that you’ve decided to not be perfect in it and not try to get it right. It’s like, let it be messy. That’s great. Forget your perfect offering. Have you heard that? It’s a that Leonard Cohen Song, forget your perfect offering. And the next line is there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. So it’s, it’s your humanity that will probably make this unique.

Thal:

And you know, and I just want to also highlight that this is a universal human experience. I was brought up in a different culture that’s a little bit more collectivist and a lot of, you know, my individuality or individuality in general is usually squashed. And um, but then half of my, more than half of my life, I’ve been living here in Canada and I’m noticing that, wait, even here the same problems. It’s literally exactly the same problems that I’ve encountered as a teenager in the Middle East, people encounter here and personally, for me, I just don’t see the difference. Obviously context is different, but the essence of our human experience, our human pain, our wounds, shame, guilt, all those things are similar.

Avi:

I agree. Yeah. And I think Toronto is a unique place to be doing healing work in 2019, but we are. This is the social experiment. Toronto is a social experiment and it’s by no means, um, you know, a perfect microcosm of a global village. But it is, in my experience as a traveler, one of the better models we have in the world. I really …that the consciousness now is that we are, we’re all in this together. No matter where you’ve grown up, it’s, we have to figure out how to be with each other. And I think Toronto is a really good place to be doing healing work at this moment of history. A: we have the luxury of not having physical wars here at this moment and B, there is a consciousness in the city. I think if you’re tuning in, there is an openness to, to, to kind of stepping into the new. So I feel lucky to be here at this moment.

Adrian:

Yeah, we just had a conversation a few days ago with, with Andrew Harvey and he talked about we’re going through a birthing experience collectively and it’s a birthing of a new human that he was sort of referring to and it’s, we don’t know what it’s going to be. That’s part of the surprise, the mystery and we’ve been going through this, you know, on this planet time and time again, you know, there was a period where most species were underwater and we were a bunch of fish swimming around and at some point that the water got so polluted that some fish had to take the risk to go into the unknown. And some of them ended up on the shore, on the sizzling shore, in air without the proper, you know, gear to, to survive. And yet some of them did and that created the new birthing of an evolutionary transition and it’s such a beautiful metaphor because I feel like this is kind of what we’re referring to you right now, you know, with this collective, a yearning for meaning and people try new things and pushing the boundary that we’re about to see an emergence of perhaps many versions of a new human being or new ways of being.

Avi:

No matter what you feel about the times right now, whether you’re more cynical, “we’re all gonna go to hell in a hand basket” type person or, or more of the, “Oh, you know, we can, we can save our planet” type person, wherever you fall in that spectrum. And we’re all on that spectrum somewhere. And it might change every day for you. Um, these, these are fascinating times to be alive. Forget about what might happen. It’s just a pure wow, we get to be alive in this… What are we in? It’s like, what? What is this chaos that we’re in? Yes. It’s interesting.

Thal:

Absolutely.

Adrian:

There’s never a dull moment.

Avi:

It’s not dull. It’s not dull. Sometimes we, I think we’ve, a lot of us sometimes the wish for the volume to get turned down just a little bit, especially in the last few years with on so many levels, but I think coming back to what Andrew Harvey was saying, the volumes not going down if anything, the volume is going up and um, we’re gonna have to find ways… And this connects to the inner teen. We’re going to have to find ways to stay present with each other and with the crisis that we’re in a evolutionary crisis that we’re in. Um, we’re going to have to find clever ways to stay present because you know, it, it’s just too easy to dissociate. Right now [laughing].

Thal:

And mental health is at the forefront because of those reasons. And we’re learning now that mental health is just not just the brain or just the cognitive side of things and that there is more to mental health. Then just, um, then just that. Yeah.

Avi:

I agree 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to have to find a new model of mental health. I think too, that goes beyond…

Thal:

Everybody should go to therapy [laughing].

Avi:

Whatever your therapy is, I just want to say, psychotherapy is a method. And honestly it’s worked for me and that’s what I do with my life. It’s, you guys are all here because it’s working or has worked in some way for you. If somebody comes in and it’s just, you know, for people listening, you try it out. If it’s not your bliss, if it’s not your path, find another method. There’s really, there’s, there’s so many other ways in. What I, what I really do like about therapy, a good integrative therapy is non prescriptive and so it’s the hunger of the times, uh, to, to not be so regimented and not be so “okay I just need to improve”.

Thal:

Yes, one solution-oriented. Right. And that’s important. Because I’ve like, again, I’ve had people come and ask me, “Oh, so then what? We all need therapy?” And that’s why I made that joke. Therapy is just a tool inwards, like you said, there are many different tools and if it means that you seek a therapist world for a little bit in your life, then so be it. And if, I don’t know, if you decide to start dancing, then so be it. [laughing]

Avi:

I think. Yeah, you’re speaking of therapy is not so much like a session but just, you know, therapy in the sense of, the true meaning of therapy, which is the word therapy comes from a Greek word Tartarus. Tartarus is the underworld in the Greek mythological lens and the underworld is where you go to, um, find yourself in a deeper way and it’s where you go under your body under, down. And so we, yeah, we all need therapy in that sense of I’m tuning in, connecting to, to ourself into the larger sphere. Absolutely.

Thal:

Yeah.

Adrian:

Avi, thank you so much for your time and happy suffering. [laughing]

Thal:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you Avi and may we, you know, conquer our fears and shame and whatever it is that we need to do to become attuned with our inner selves. Thank you, Avi.

Avi:

My pleasure. That hour went really fast.

#3: Psychology of the Unconscious with Jungian Analyst Christina Becker

January 20, 2019 Culture, Life Transition, Podcast, Psychology, Technology 01:04:56

Some of us wake up one day to realize that we have been living someone else’s life. We leave parts of ourselves in the realm of the shadow, which may sneak in on us through unconscious behaviors, tensions in our relationships, various addictions, and neuroses.

On our third episode, Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and registered psychotherapist, Christina Becker (@JungianPath) talks to us about our unconscious. She even guides us through a live dream interpretation. Christina shares her journey into becoming an analyst, a calling that came to her when she was in India in search of meaning in her life. Besides psychotherapy, Christina has a background in music and is currently a consultant for the nonprofit sector. She is also the author of the book The Heart of the Matter: Individuation as an Ethical Process. After all, authenticity is about the heart – the meeting place of the individual and the divine.

Highlights:

  • Depth Psychology
  • Individual and Collective Shadow
  • Functional vs Dysfunctional Personas
  • Dreamwork
  • Recurring Dreams

Resources:

Listen:

A Kernel of Truth, inspired by this week’s episode:

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Adrian

Welcome Christina.

Christina

Thanks. Nice to be here.

Read More