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[Music] welcome into the psych with mike library this is dr michael mahon and i'm here
with mr brett newcomb hello it's really hot and it's well there are
issues of concern around something called climate change and drought climate change is a pigment of your
imagination that's what some people say with sweat rolling down their face yeah
yeah and no water in the pipe yeah and i guess uh uh we should clarify or or at least set
the the the frame of reference it's the end of july
in st louis missouri and it is it's just oppressively oppressively hot i heard
you supposed to get to 104 today 104 today i that i heard on the radio this
morning that there was a uh
that the the the mercury reached 115 in oklahoma yesterday wow
yeah so my sound quality just changed did you turn something down i i manipulated
something because it was really loud in my in my it's just only mattering if you can be heard
we'll see everybody can be heard one one hopes you know uh i think that
um you would live longer if you could reduce your
level of anxiety and one way to do that would be to learn how to appreciate small things like oh well i'm not this
is amazing i'm not anxious i'm perfectionistic
is there a difference i'm not sure they are yeah yeah so i i sent you this article on uh
from neuroscience news yes not psychology today or bride magazine
well you're reaching more a field for your your intellectual acumen we've had
articles from neuroscience before i know but i just was recognizing today that you but
my reluctance to do that is because then you say oh she's got all these
words and things in it that you can't win yeah yeah that's true i should just change the rules for the conversation i
should just learn to appreciate that yeah as long as you're not anxious about it yeah yeah you appreciate the small things that
uh enjoy the moment set in the moment meditate and you but
the reason that i wanted to uh so this is an article about enjoying
the moment what's it what's the title of the article searching for meaning try appreciating the small things right
yeah and my philosophy is that there are no new
things that everything's a rebranding of something that somebody did before i
mean obviously maybe if you discuss that's actually been said before yeah nothing new under the sun exactly i read
that years ago and you talk about this all the time that that people come up with new theories or come up with words
they just rebrand old theories yeah and put them back in the mixer come out with something else i remember when
back in 2008 2009 2010 when we were still at webster and
the concept of mindfulness was huge in the zeitgeist of the psychological
community and all of our students would come in and talk about oh i'm going to be a mindfulness counselor
that's what i'm and and i would say what do you use the word zeitgeist yeah when i was young it was uh the term was
velchong world view mm-hmm yeah
same stuff yeah same point so they're going to be mindful counselors and you said what are you going to be mindful ah
yeah and i would say what does that mean and it was
if you ask 10 different people what it means to be mindful you're going to get 10 different answers we will all emote
and obfuscate because there really isn't a definition of that i mean we all think
we know what that means but there's not an official psychological definition
well and even if there were people wouldn't adhere to it rigorously right
yeah it's because it's all smoking mirrors well i don't know about that
actually yes you you you have said that for so okay so explain what you mean by that
um it's not a hard science it's not replicable you can't do an experiment
with measurable ingredients and then have someone on the other side of the world with similar training and equipment replicate the experiment get
same results so it's a fluid medium it's a dance of relationship and understanding of
connectivity where people who are struggling in their lives with with
pain or distress of one kind or another frequently referred to you by someone else like the
wife says if you don't go to counseling we're going to get a divorce or the judge says if you don't go to counseling
you're going to have a longer prison sentence or the employer says if you don't go to counseling you're not going
to have a job be employed so you get people to come in and say my life is really
i'm unhappy and i'm angry if they'll say that they'll frequently make a joke if
they're men and say i don't know why i'm here but my boss or wife told me i need to be here i don't really agree
and then you start trying to have conversations with them and you have to do all the posturing of who's in charge
whose is the biggest who has the most authoritative interpretation of reality uh and who's
going to win the competition so my original question was i'm sorry
did i lose the thread how is well no you you created a tapestry ah there we go uh
my original question was how is this what we're talking about learning to appreciate the small stuff
different from mindfulness but now i'm interested in exploring this idea of
then what really is therapy so you're saying that that it's smoking mirrors in that it's
about the quality of the relationship so does that mean that you don't think that
it really matters what the therapist says well i think it matters exponentially i
i just don't think that i have a defined answer it's not like you bring it to me and say how much does this cost and i
say oh it's 32 dollars and 12 cents or how much does this weigh and i sell it 18 ounces
it's not it doesn't work that way it is an interactive experiential medium
where we spend time together and i try to facilitate a conversation
that you have with yourself with me being a reflector and a repository so i listen to what you say
and i reflect it back to you and if i do that accurately it's like holding a mirror up and what i try to
surround the mirror with is a zone of safety so that you're not feeling attacked or
criticized or threatened by what you see in the mirror you're able to express it
reflect on it reflect back on it and then we can discuss if you wanted to
see a different vision what would that look like and how could you implement it
and if you do that then you can make different choices in your life that hopefully will alleviate
or remediate the pain that's existing so when i would talk to students they would
say oh i'm going to be a mindfulness counselor i'd say what does that mean and they would oftentimes
say to me things that are in this article i'm going to ask people to you know slow down to deep breathe maybe
meditate pay attention to the trees listen to the birds and that may actually be
good advice but if you are delivering that advice to a really anxious person
who doesn't see the ability to slow down and look at the trees and listen to the
birds that messages is is useless isn't it yeah it is it
reminds me of the opening song of the music band where all the traveling salesmen on the train are
confed fabulating about professor harold hill being so successful selling boys bands
around the midwest and especially in iowa and their constant reiteration or complaint
is he doesn't know the territory meaning he doesn't follow the rules he doesn't do it the way he's supposed to he doesn't do it the way we do it
he manages though to make an incredible living and impact and influence lives
doing what he does he just doesn't do what they do what they want him to do and the outlier then is always
criticized by the mainstream because he's not walking in the middle of the road that they want him to walk
in and that they are convinced is the right road so they society puts pressure on you to
stay in the middle of the road and so then you inculcate that pressure
with an impact on your self-image your sense of
what do i need to accomplish what's a positive win for me how can i avoid losing
how will i know when i've what what how will i know when i'm satisfied happy are you happy
i don't know i don't have this or that or the other and so this approach the
neurology news approach article is saying that there is value
and potentially progress in learning to slow down the mental script that's echoing in your head
that's been imposed on you by your culture your family your religion
your boss your corporate messaging
and just experience something so you just hit on a on a point that i
think is salient but is really the heart of the issue which is
you know to slow down the mental processing
to me that's more what mindfulness to the extent that meditation is an
allegory for mindfulness that's really what is the the the
therapeutically effective part i think so uh but it's like my wife and i were
commenting the other day in conversation we're both retired and people will ask us well what do you
do now that you're retired and i give some smart ass comment i'll say like i don't do i be
and they don't understand what that means and so they they think i'm being a smart aleck which of course i am
but what we are astonished by my wife and i
is we pretty much do whatever we want to do although she will put me in the trick
box on a regular basis because she'll turn up me and say what do you want to do today and i don't have a road map for today
sometimes i do oh i want to go to the botanical gardens or i want to go to the art museum or i'm going to go to the movie or what have you but oftentimes i
don't i don't have a map for today i just want to be here and do whatever comes to mind so then what is your
response i don't have a map for today i just want to be here and do whatever comes to mind do you have something you want to do
i'll consider that and sometimes she does because sometimes it's a lead-in like when where do you want to go for dinner any kind of question uh but
sometimes no neither of us have anything to do we'll just sit here and stare at him so then if if
are you okay with your wife's name yeah absolutely i love her no no but i mean if i say that yeah so if if you and
phyllis are having a conversation and she says what do you want to do today and you say i don't have a road map and
did you have something and she says no is she okay with that answer or does that answer
make either her or you feel like oh now i'm anxious now i need to find because i
think that that's a lot of times what we we go out and we try and find things to do because we think we're supposed to be
doing something yeah well she's more that way than i am she she still hears voices in her head about you need to be
doing something yeah at the end of the day she'll think back and say did i do anything today and or did i was i just a slug
and she gets herself worked up about that much more than i do i don't i'm not that
self-aware or self-reflective that at the end of the day i add all the pluses and minuses to give it a point value i
think the old white protestant message is
you must be productive you must be doing something yes that is the message and it's a cultural imperative it was for
men of our generation but what i've found is now that i'm off the treadmill now that i'm not uh a wage slave or
don't work for someone or for something i don't have the same yardstick to
measure progress so this article is suggesting that there is
benefit to just being but being aware that you are being but that's the the
we've done shows on the difference between doing and being right and we both agree that
being is superior a way of if you can it's hard that's a challenge i think
that the that you know white anglo-saxon protestant messaging is what gets in the
way of that because people have that is you your word inculcated into them
and and how do you stop hearing that message so that you can
just sit and be um for me
it's a i think it's a reflection of my stubbornness and my oppositionality i have always been oppositional i don't
like authority i don't like rules that limit or constrain me
in in service of someone else's agenda
i'm willing to be self-disciplined if i set an agenda for myself i will limit or constrain myself to try to reach that
goal but if someone imposes one on me you've got to increase your sales output
by 32 this month it will fire you i don't like i don't respond well to that
okay let's run to our break and when we come back we'll pick this up all right
hey guys dr michael mahan here from cyclic mike and do you think that you
have a story to tell i know that when we started cyclic mic
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okay we're back and so all right so i hear you saying that that you can be oppositional and so someone says this is
the message or this is the expectation you will try and bristle against that so does that
well i will try to find a way to do it but differently from how you told me to okay just to prove to you that i was
smarter than you were and i could but then how do you at the end when you get to retirement how do you
exist mental adjustment it's a significant one yeah and it doesn't happen overnight and
as a counselor i worked with a lot of men who reached retirement age or families where the men reached retirement age and men would retire and
they would say well i sold my company or i've taken my buy out and now i'm gonna play golf every day
and so they play golf every day for six months and then they come in saying i'm going crazy right uh
i need to find something to do i need to to measure myself against another hill to climb i remember one man telling
me i need the force of a wind to lean against something that will push me
so i can overcome so it it's still part of his internalized script that he needs to be a go-getter
and conquering mountains right uh and so we had conversations but what if
you you don't find that what if there's not something to lean against and he's a
pretty smart guy and his response was his life will give you one mm-hmm you know his wife got sick or you'll create
one same difference yeah um but he had to find it wasn't what he expected to find
to lean against but he had to find a way to survive that particular set of obstacles
so when i hear all of that yeah that you're talking about and and
you know when i've done therapy and come up against this where people are struggling to hear that message you
know appreciate the small things see the trees hear the birds to me especially when you're talking
about retirement what that comes down to is a
lack of identity so the the protestant message says you'll be a good person
you'll have an identity if you are working towards these productive goals
when you're talking about mindfulness and appreciating the small things and slowing that
mental kind of of rush of thought down
what i see is that people then are forced to
be more aware maybe not even consciously but intuitively of this
question of identity and they don't have an answer for that and that's what they struggle against and so for me i want to
try and help people to establish an answer to those existential questions
i think that that has to be a part of learning how to slow down
i think there's significant value in having the conversations but i think you have to frame it in your own mind not
necessarily in the client's mind in terms of trying to identify the
cultural messaging that creates the world view of your client whether it's a religious one you know i
think a cotton mather a famous puritan preacher in the 1700s 1600s
gave a speech called sinners in the hands of a sermon centers in the hands of an angry god
the theory was that it wasn't a matter of grace if you got
to heaven it was a matter of earning brownie points with god so if you behaved
in a set of strictures uh that were defined by what would get you to heaven
meaning not sin and these ways this is one this is one that's one those are three
don't do those then you can go to heaven when you die and the whole philosophy of life was that this life was to be one of
uh woe and conflict through which you navigated to get to a place where you could get off and be in
a joyful state for eternity um so if that's the messaging that you
received from childhood and from the surrounding culture it's going to be internalized in your
head and if it's not working for you as a message you find out that you're inherently
sinful and they say oh that's satan talking to you you know be alarmed alarm
what if little pleasures are not sinful what if little pleasures are okay what if
sitting on the mountaintop watching the birds fly beneath you and seeing the valley out in front of you
is a pleasurable thing for you but you're not
productively digging in the coal mine so as a therapist
my job is to say well what if right and so then okay so i'm going to be the client yeah and you just said to me what
if what is sitting on the mountain top watching the birds below you and the the clouds and all
is pleasurable and then i say well then my family won't eat because i'm not working in the coal mine
possibly but what if your family then had to get their own food
could they have you raised have you raised your children to be able to support themselves right
and so when do you let go of that right i think the not in this lifetime right yeah i think
that's the the expectation of most people and certainly the majority of
males so what happens then when you become physically disabled and you're not physically able to go to work and
bring home the bacon right you had better take out disability insurance to make sure that you can cover your wages
for the rest of your life i mean that's what that's what the protestant message why not just go rob a bank
because that would have a lot of other consequences associated with it that you might not
want to negative consequences negative costs for the choice behavior right if the choice behavior you have is i'm
going to sell drugs on the side right or i'm going to rob a bank you might make good money
but if you do there are going to be consequences that society will impose right are you willing to accept those
well no i don't want that to happen to me well then you need to consider are there other alternatives for what to do
i don't like my job i don't like doing physical labor i don't want to be a physical laborer all my life i don't want to wear a shirt that says dave on
it and work for minimum wage well
what other choices could you make right to impact that outcome right but
you know i think that when we're talking to people about this idea of slow down
you know you don't have to be so driven then i think that what for a lot of
people where the uphill swim is or the the upstream swim is
that okay even if i choose this for me yeah then what about my wife what about my
kids what if they what if i can't make as much money and now we can't go on as many vacations right so uh
i am 75 years old i grew up and was functionally productive in an era where
there was a world view about making a commitment to a job showing up for work every day my
some of my clients came from similar backgrounds and i remember having a number of
conversations of frustration about the younger group today
aren't driven by the same messaging and so they're willing to take a job on the assembly line at
chrysler but they'll call in two days a week and say they're going fishing because they want to go fishing more
than they want to come to work but i worked that job and i worked overtime
in double time and saturday time to make money to get to a significant place of financial stability
and i was very successful i managed to do that but these kids are not doing that and yet they want the new pickup
truck and they want the big house and they want it all right now well how are they going to get it all
right now well some of it is going to come from me you know i don't have to pay for my kids truck well
i remember one of the most devastating life lessons is that i learned early i
learned sitting next to a friend who experienced it i was able to observationally encounter it and he had
bought a college mate of mine we were working together in the student center and he
had bought a brand new mustang convertible and his father told him don't buy that
you can't afford it you have these other things that you have to pay for like college
and he said i can do it i can do it right now i've got this job i can make this money summer summer off
so he came summer ended he lost his job and then now we're working at the student center for three bucks an hour
right and he can't make his payments so he goes to his dad and says can you pick up the payments on my car instead
said no he said but but then they'll repossess my card which i told you that's the cost of the choice you made
so he lost his down payment he lost his licensure fee lost his insurance fee he lost his car
and still had to pay off the note yeah so he didn't have a car and he still owed the bill right so he was devastated yeah it was it was his dad's fault right
my dad's a cheap sob he wouldn't pay for the garden he could afford to sure so he wants me to suffer
but i know that guy now 50 years later and he still has that car i mean bought
years later he bought that car back but he still has it and he drives a 15 year old car as his everyday car he
doesn't go spend money willy-nilly he doesn't buy things that he can't pay cash for he learned a lesson in college that hurt
significantly yeah but it changed his world and and this is obviously going down a different tangent thing yeah
sorry sweating the small stuff no no but but you make such a great point that's such a hard
thing to do in therapy is to talk to parents about setting boundaries for
their adolescent children and then consistently enforcing them i think that that's a lost art i don't think that
people do that very much anymore how many conversations do we have with parents that came in because they had adolescent
boys were acting out and they couldn't find any way to have consequences that worked right i'm
telling me he has to stay home he doesn't stay home he sneaks out and then what and he steals my car uh he goes out
with his buddies well you have to you have to find what does he value well he values soccer
well don't let him play soccer oh no the team counts on that yeah he's the best player on the team
and the coach and the team will be upset we can't take that away right you know right so your suggestion is
well let the team put pressure on him to behave my you know my remembrance of the early days in the
group practice was that cell phones were just starting to think yeah and i
remember that in the early days of our the group practice one of the things
that we struggled with was as a group coming up with a philosophy for what we
were going to say to parents about what was the age to give your child a cell phone and then
once they started to become more and more ubiquitous i would have conversations with parents all the time
and and one of the things that i would say is you know you can take away that cell phone and be like well no we can't
because then we won't be able to get a hold of him and i'd say to the parent how often does he answer the phone when
you call him they're like well never i'm like well then you can't get a hold of him now but they still
couldn't pull the trigger on taking the phone away and i can't take the car away from my kid as a consequence of bad
behavior because i need him to drive his sister's right well what if you had a rule that he
couldn't drive it for his own personal reasons he could only drive it for the reasons that you wanted right oh we can't do that right well why can't you
do that well because it won't work so as long as they put themselves in that box of i can't do that i can't do
this i can't do that nothing changes exactly and so then what are you so then you say
well learn to appreciate the small things yeah you know your garage is empty right now you could
clean it up or you just sit in it and say wow it's a nice garage you could do that you could do that yeah
yeah and then they left and you said that's really stupid and he said well you're the one that's tied to not right
can you untie it exactly yeah and so and then what am i paying you for well i
don't know i don't know what are you paying me for exactly uh so what
i've learned from this conversation is that what it all comes down to
is every human being is involved in a series of
psychological gymnastics that they are conducting within their own mind
and what we're trying to do is to help them learn some new moves you got to
walk that lonesome valley yeah you got to walk it by yourself nobody else can walk it for you and anybody who can't
take away their child's cell phone is going to have the same problem when we talk about learn to slow down and see
the trees and hear the birds until the individual is ready to hear that
message and which will happen when they can't hear any other message yeah as
long as they can still hear the siren call they're going to try to respond it that's their preference right and i've
said that forever about people who abuse substances that a person's going to abuse substances until the consequences
for doing that is no longer acceptable to them not to the boss not to the wife not to
the police officer and that's really the the secret of psychotherapy
it's all about trying except there's a there's no corollary that i agree with you but the coral area is that they have
to have a glimpse of an alternative way forward no that's what i was going to say and that's what psychotherapy is is
trying to give them an opportunity to see a different candle
in the darkness and can you choose to walk towards this candle rather than
staying in within the the boundaries of the light that the candle you're with is casting and for a lot of people that's
scary because there's a period of time where you're walking in darkness between the two
glows of light and i think that's hard for people but to me that's what psychotherapy is is holding that
person's hand while they're walking through that darkness and hopefully they can find that other
candle sometimes people don't yes but because you also creature
your acculturation you have to be leery of not taking on responsibility for the
outcome if you're the therapist you have to provide the options you have to provide the safe holding environment
you have to provide the reflective listening but you can't provide the solution right and it's so damn tempting
to do and what you can't do quit your job stop drinking get a divorce kick your kid out
those are not answers that you can provide that solve a problem
and you can't take responsibility for the client not being able to take positive action in their lives that's
not the therapist's responsibility i mean can you imagine how narcissistic that
you have to be to be able to think oh but i should be able to change this
person's behavior well i just had to think of some of the bosses i had yeah yeah
is that a shot i mean not at me well you're never my boss no yeah no okay i
think it's time to close this all right hopefully that was beneficial for people as always if you would like to get a
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