Episodes
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Doug throws a little science and neural linguistic programming at Kenzie to demonstrate how using certain language in session with clients can help in their pursuit of change. Kenzie and Doug highlight Sarah’s progress as it’s becoming more natural and instinctive for her to ask for help when she needs it. Sarah acknowledges the evolution of her relationship to control and boundaries. She continues to explore the idea from her last session about the rigidity of her religion of data. Sarah feels progress, and she still feels stress and anxiety, as she notes, “I don’t feel unrelaxed.” Doug introduces Spoon Theory to help understand our relationship to the energy and bandwidth we have in a given day.
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Mentioned in this Episode:
Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino
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Kenzie is jacked up on caffeine and we’re getting existential in this one. In the session, Drew emotionally retells the story of the birth of his child and the traumatic experience he went through in the hospital. Along with a new baby boy, comes a heaping dose of existential anxiety. Doug bears witness and helps Drew process an emotional release. He already feels a parental responsibility for his child’s life, and with it, he also feels a real fear of death for the first time in his life. Now more than ever, Drew has a deep appreciation for the preciousness of life and a motivation to be truly present for moments as they happen.
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Episodes manquant?
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Doug and Kenzie discuss the hotly debated topic of whether or not repressed memories are real. In the session, Sarah revisits some traumatic memories of growing up in the cult. As she moves towards her own emotional experience, Doug helps explain her dissociation and offers tools with an intellectual understanding of her trauma response. Sarah can see it objectively by looking at a sibling’s rigidity as a similar but different trauma response, then she applies that same lens to herself. It’s a back door therapeutic technique to help build her compassion for self. They are laying the groundwork for making her feel safe and supported before going too deep into the raw emotion. Doug and Kenzie break down taking this route to process complex childhood trauma rather than the direct emotional route.
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Doug and Kenzie discuss the question of whether or not people can actually change. In Drew’s session, his thoughts meander so Doug throws a few things out to see what sticks. They work through Drew’s thoughts about being prepared for fatherhood and his feelings about protecting his son from the bad experiences he had growing up. Drew expresses feeling like he’s missing out on mile markers of having a baby by not being present enough. This leads him to the root of grief for his own childhood, especially in light of going through transitions into adulthood with an unstable relationship with his parents. Doug and Kenzie break down the arc of a session and seeing the forest for the trees, especially when a client comes in talking about lots of trees. Doug shows how progress in therapy is like a river that flows in a forward direction even when it’s a babbling brook. And Beckett finally joins Kenzie on the couch!
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Doug and Kenzie break down codependence and answer a listener question about having contact with your therapist outside of your regularly scheduled sessions. In Sarah’s session, she processes some family drama involving her ex-husband. She shows progress by not getting drawn into the crisis and by letting her son have his own feelings without going into “fix-it” mode. Doug helps Sarah acknowledge how her current behaviors are more reflective of her own core identity and not the identity that was borne out of the cult. They connect this to last week’s session when Sarah gave a eulogy to her T-shirt with the motto “Keep Calm, Let Sarah Handle It.” She is now embodying a new badge of honor.
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Drew gives an update on his medical health and it leads to a discussion about parenting. He is worried about turning into his parents while he is preparing to become a parent himself. Doug explains how we can have traits of a personality type like narcissism or borderline without it being a diagnosable personality disorder. Drew is worried about finding a balance between focusing on himself without being too selfish and focusing on his baby without giving up himself. Kenzie and Doug break down the psychological concept of being a “good enough” parent and how we can course correct along the way.
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Doug helps Sarah stay in the moment and allow emotions to come up. She acknowledges being more comfortable in constant motion and hypervigilance mode when she is more focused on “doing” rather than “feeling.” We hear a pivotal moment in her therapy when Sarah reads a poem she wrote as a eulogy for the motto “Keep Calm, Sarah Will Handle It.” It is an emotional goodbye and homage to her old self that embodied the motto she literally wore on a t-shirt that her siblings made for her. Sarah can envision a path ahead as a new version of herself that doesn’t try to handle everything for everyone all the time. As she says, she’ll “Keep calm, then move out of the way.”
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Drew digs deeper into his core thought that his self-worth depends on how good of a provider he is to his family. Doug helps Drew explore taking care of himself in a healthy way rather than working so hard to provide that he keeps spinning plates until he gets overloaded and shuts down. Doug reframes the see-saw concept of a work-life balance to it all being under the umbrella of life with a balance of work, rest, and play. Drew draws the link to how the current imbalance is affecting his relationship and intimacy in his life right now. Kenzie breaks down how your individual dreams don’t have to die just because you’re in a relationship.
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Sarah is interacting with the world around her slightly differently. Doug invites her to experiment with what it’s like to be the observer, especially when interacting with her siblings. Sarah is shifting from the person that tries to fix or correct everyone to the person that can just notice something happening without taking it personally. She realizes that sometimes the most powerful thing she can say is nothing. Kenzie and Doug break down the current progress and process of re-wiring Sarah’s brain without making it overtly clinical.
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Drew sees progression and growth in his relationship with a friend, but doesn’t see it with his parents. Drew has an epiphany about his relationship with them that he names “conditional love,” as he is more aware of how he people-pleases in order to feel love from them. Doug helps Drew slow down and process his thoughts and feelings about the evolving relationship with his parents. Drew acknowledges feeling embarrassed, frustrated, and disappointed in who they are now, especially as it might reflect on how people see him. Doug validates his feelings and reflects it back to him before helping Drew reframe it. By radically accepting his mom as she is, he can see that she might be showing him love the way she is capable, rather than the way his love language usually recognizes it.
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Doug and Sarah reflect on how growing up in a cult stripped her of agency and individuality in her own life. She is reclaiming her individuality and feeling strength in her sense of self now. Doug and Sarah make the link from this to the issue she has with control. Sarah walks through a specific example when one of her sisters was driving her car. Sarah processes the anxiety and feelings around letting go of control and spoke up for something selfishly – meaning she was taking care of herself. Doug and Kenzie break down how we can process anxiety when it hits for all of us by staying mindful and present focused instead of going back into our past or future tripping. And they actually go over a couple of tools that we can all take with us.
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Jennifer Lawrence on Hot Ones – What do you mean?
Relax, Nothing’s Under Control – T-Shirt
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Drew has a birthday coming up and a few doctors’ appointments on the horizon. He is able to organize his thoughts and come up with a plan both for addressing his medical health and for celebrating his birthday. Doug helps Drew acknowledge that he is not responsible for his parents’ response to him and his boundaries. Drew is adulting! Doug and Kenzie are feeling it – literally – as an earthquake hits during recording. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media:
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Sarah acknowledges being in a constant battle with herself because of how she wants to hear feedback from others for things she has done. She has a hard time accepting praise; and, she doesn’t mind constructive criticism if it helps her grow. Doug helps her make sense of getting comfortable without having feedback be the validation. Doug and Kenzie break down external versus internal validation and the drive to be perfect versus doing your personal best. They discuss what it is to be good enough and how “meets expectations” isn’t a negative thing. Striving for perfection is about doing your best, which can be “good enough” if we allow it to be. However, many of us feel that we’re not doing enough unless something is done perfectly, especially when there’s a historical experience of criticism and an internal voice in our head constantly criticizing us. What does doing your personal best mean to you? Can that be good enough or does it need to be perfect? Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join us on Social Media:
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Mentioned in the Episode: Link to Rapper’s Delight from “Happy Feet” Link to “Spinal Tap” These Go to 11 -
Drew is feeling independence and individuation from parents, especially when he signs a lease on a new place without using them as the guarantor. He had a breakaway moment after mom didn’t show up the way he wanted her to on a phone call. He felt solitude and the “solid-tude” of relying on himself not on his parents and the anxious-attachment style that often lets him down. Drew is experiencing what it’s like to choose himself and put his needs first ahead of everyone else, instead of his old pattern of putting his needs last. Doug helps him understand what it means to show up for someone the way they want, rather than the way he wants them to show up for him. It’s not about mind reading - it’s about communicating what would be supportive to you and asking someone what feels supportive to them.
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Sarah is going through all the emotions with her teenager and the situation he got into at school this week. While she continues to practice using natural consequences to parent her kids, she is also allowing herself to have her own emotional experience. Sarah is re-parenting herself by letting her kids to come to her and giving them the space to feel their feelings and sit with it (something she didn’t have growing up). She acknowledges the challenges of not acting on her instant reaction in these parenting situations, especially when interacting with her ex-husband. Sarah is able to stop and process before just going to her default protective mode to either fix the triggering event right away or bear the brunt of the consequences herself to shield her children (like she did for her siblings growing up in a cult). Sarah is healing her inner child!
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Doug helps Drew focus on himself, not just the baby on the way. Drew admits that he isn’t feeling joy in things the way he’s used to feeling it and that it’s taking him out of the present. Drew realizes that he’s looking for the joy instead of being in the moment and letting the joy find him. This leads Drew to acknowledge the existential anxiety that he’s also been feeling. Doug and Kenzie discuss anhedonia and sitting with clients when they are experiencing this feeling. They also talk about what happens when we may have missed something in a session as a therapist or feeling like our therapist missed something as a client. Have we missed something else, let us know… or if you’ve missed something, check out the podcast archives and listen to Drew and Sarah from day one of their journey in therapy!
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Doug helps Sarah move forward along a path toward her emotions. They discuss her learned pattern of being dismissive of herself and her feelings. The pursuit of data and facts that turns Sarah into the “justice warrior” is a defense mechanism to not feel the feelings. Doug uses an analogy with Spock and Kirk to highlight a spectrum of being logically driven versus being emotionally driven. Sarah connects this to how she can sound like a robot sometimes while suppressing and invalidating her own feelings. Doug invites Sarah to give herself permission to bring out her inner Captain Kirk so she can practice allowing her emotions to come up and out.
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Drew is feeling like an adult and living in the world. He acknowledges feeling strength where he used to feel weakness in asking for help. He’s getting support in his life by virtue of actually asking for help from others rather than doing everything on his own. Doug and Drew talk about the subtle differences between being an individual and being independent. Doug and Kenzie discuss the therapeutic relationship as a secure attachment. With this secure base to jump off from, Doug is able to challenge Drew, and Drew is able to explore his independence.
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Sarah is experiencing the difference between being of value at work and being the singular essential piece that also carries with it all the responsibility and pressure. She notices how she’s starting to relax a bit and soften her edges when she isn’t in complete control. Doug helps Sarah acknowledge how the control issue arose to protect herself as a child growing up in a cult, but it isn’t serving her well now in her adult life. Doug invites her to come out of the protective shell to feel her own emotional experience rather than stay “safe” inside and keep her feelings internalized. Kenzie presses Doug to break down the abundant use of analogy and personal stories in session rather than stay in Sarah’s own personal experiences and emotions. They find that the analogies, especially the airplane one, really do land for Sarah… do they land for you too?
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Doug and Kenzie talk about connecting to your inner child. Then in the session, Drew is adulting and creating distance from his parents while preparing to be a father himself. Doug digs deeper with Drew in the session to get to the emotions underneath all the progress we see and hear on the outside. Doug explains an analogy of photographs to show how we often perceive (and misperceive) people. There are polaroid snapshots from one instance in time and there are “Harry Potter” pictures that constantly move and change - but neither is a true moving picture of our actual life now. The images someone has in mind of us don’t necessarily line up with how we really are now. We want people to see us and know us for who we are, but we are constantly changing. This gets murky when we put up walls and present false pictures to people, especially family members.
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