Human beings are amazing creatures that are built to survive and thrive even under the harshest conditions, but that doesn’t mean we need to do it alone. In this episode Chris looks at what we do after we experience a traumatic event. He looks at the cool on the outside mentality that we strive to achieve because we do not want to appear weak. This leads to overcompensating in other facets of our lives. Chris gives recommendations how we should respond to these situations to better manger ourselves and our relationships.
Tune in to see How Cool Humans Can Be Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- Chris opens the show reading a poem that really encompasses the way we try to handle the traumas of our past.
- They go back to the Uvalde shooting, but this time they talk about the news coverage and how you can manage the over exposure of all the information.
- Wall Street Journal podcast that covers the unethical practice that an online therapy service, Cerebral, was doing by over prescribing Adderall.
- Kasie states that roughly 1 in 12 of those on Adderall meet the criteria for it.
- We all carry pain from trauma at some point in their life.
- We do emotionally or physically mask our pains just to make it through life.
- When people go through criticism, they do not stop loving the person criticizing, instead they stop loving themselves.
- It’s easy to look at trauma from the outside at a later time and say it should have been done this way instead.
- They go over What are desirable responses to the pain wall likely walk in.
- For you and those in your circle, it is good to have a check-in to see how things are.
- Pain has no time limit.
- If we develop our willingness to take action, we will find the appropriate action to take.
- Episode 163 about Challenging our Assumptions is a great episode to go back to look at how the untreated pain can be affecting the way we react.
- Avoid ruination and let other people in.
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Poem by Michael Taylor
Vulnerability has become a liability. The will has been broken and control of the mind has been compromised, feeling empty. There’s nothing left spirit broken, held hostage by a negative power unseen being led by thoughts, images, and unidentified voices in my head that sound mistakenly like my own controlled, a puppet spiritually dead with an ample supply of the breath of life retained void, close my eyes and try to imagine a better place, a different race, different version of God’s grace.
Understanding beforehand the type of cards I was. My trespasses feel the same shame that I felt. Look to the skies where people say, come, I help lift my hands, make a sincere plea to God, but with no face or a voice believing becomes hard. Do I stay on this path? Am I on the right track? How much time did I lose?
When shit faded to black since day one seems fallen. Angels have guarded this post surprising hopes and dreams that I valued the most. Imagine my place sacred to one where no place resides black skies in a dark sun, no illusions, no confusion and no place to run. Come to terms with the fact there’s no progress.
Looking back crooked path, headed straight, all faded to black.
Episode #190 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Vulnerability has become a liability. The will has been broken and control of the mind has been compromised, feeling empty. There’s nothing left spirit broken, held hostage by a negative power unseen being led by thoughts, images, and unidentified voices in my head that sound mistakenly like my own controlled, a puppet spiritually dead with an ample supply of the breath of life retained void, close my eyes and try to imagine a better place, a different race, different version of God’s grace.
Understanding beforehand the type of cards I was. My trespasses feel the same shame that I felt. Look to the [00:01:00] skies where people say, come, I help lift my hands, make a sincere plea to God, but with no face or a voice believing becomes hard. Do I stay on this path? Am I on the right track? How much time did I lose?
When shit faded to black since day one seems fallen. Angels have guarded this post surprising hopes and dreams that I valued the most. Imagine my place sacred to one where no place resides black skies in a dark sun, no illusions, no confusion and no place to run. Come to terms with the fact there’s no progress.
Looking back crooked path, headed straight, all faded to black.
That is a real depiction artistically created. And of course, I have permission to share that with you today because it fits perfectly into what it is that we’re going to be talking today [00:02:00] about. And that is somebody that has been through it, as you might can tell it the title today is human beings are so quote unquote cool in the pain that we bear.
And I wanted to start out with that because this, this idea for the show today came from a very real session, you know, with the person that created that artistic display and. He is so cool. And I appreciate your willingness to allow me to share that with people because it it demonstrates, you know, what we have in our inside experience.
And I think it was just so beautifully done that I wanted to share it to think about as we go through the show today, the pain that we all bear, and we’re going to talk about what we want to do with that pain. And what’s ideal in kind of managing the stuff that we see through our therapist’s eyes in sessions, right?
Yeah.
Kasie Morgan: This is [00:03:00] Through a Therapist’s
Chris Gazdik: Eyes
The human emotional experience. So if you’re finding us for the first time, we usually do a Facebook live. We’re not doing that today on the YouTube version, you could see us dressed. This is my Saturday attire. My hat is awesome. Is it not Kasie?
Kasie Morgan: Morgan Daljit is what I would say.
I like the sweat rings.
Chris Gazdik: It’s the weekend, man, this is my thing. I’m in my gym. I’ll turn it around for you at
the five
Chris Gazdik: that would be sad. I don’t know. I do have that book out, re understanding emotions and becoming your best self. We welcome you to, through a therapist eyes the podcast, where you get personal insights directly from a therapist or in this case, the therapists in your own home or personal time and your car.
So you see the world through our lens, but be aware it’s not delivery of therapy services in any way, help us out. And thank you for listening. We really appreciate you listening around the world. We need those five stars. We need those apple iTunes reviews. [00:04:00] They really help us grow the show. We also have the merchant button out there that you can get cool stuff.
Jigsaw puzzle hats. Really got to get some of the expressions slogans that we have out there. We haven’t done that yet. We’ll keep you posted there, but definitely help us. Cause that makes a big. That makes a big deal to get us out, to, you know, grow the show in the audience and then contact that through a therapist eyesis where you can interact with us.
And usually on the Facebook live as well was we enjoy doing that. So the human emotional experience, and we do, we want to figure this out together. How are you doing this Saturday morning? Ms. Kasie, how are you going over
Kasie Morgan: there? You’re glowing. You’re like,
Chris Gazdik: you can’t get the smile.
Kasie Morgan: gone. Like I know. I just have kind of like PERMA smile today.
It’s awesome. Yeah, I’m in a good place. I’m in a good place. I’m in a pretty good mood tonight. So I’m going to keep it going throughout the podcast.
Cool.
Chris Gazdik: Well, we’re going to do some current events. W w what’s interesting. If you listened to last week, you heard us go on through the Uvalde thing. And I know, I know the name of the city now, and that that gives an [00:05:00] indicator.
I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time with it cause we did do a whole show on it last. Well, what I wanted to do with this is, you know, just sort of revisit, like some things that I really been thinking about with this as humankind now has 24 hour news coverage. I want to through a therapist eyes tribe.
And please definitely tell at least one person of this conversation, because I’ve really think that we need to learn how to handle the news. Oh yeah. Wait, people don’t handle the news wet real well. I think we suck at managing this new idea of being inundated with it. And I want to maybe highlight, I, I screw a lot of things up, but I want to go through real quick or what I did with this news as evidenced by when we did the show last time it was going to be just current event.
We made it the whole show because it was conversation. I think you and I really needed to have, but I think at the time we didn’t even know how to pronounce the city’s name. Did we. [00:06:00] Right. And I think that’s because you and I did the same thing. Maybe you can model this as well, because when you’re watching over and over and over again, this creates
keyword,
Chris Gazdik: unnecessary anxiety for you.
Then I think we’ve got to learn how to manage what people to be in tune with the news. Now want people to deal with the issues, but I want us to learn, get the news flash, know something’s going on and then turn it off. Like, I think both you and I did. Did you
do that as
Kasie Morgan: well? Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely do that a lot just because I can not.
Consistently read and reread, and then I’ll get down the rabbit hole and then I’ll go to click this link for this article. That’s linked to the hours in
which myself. Yeah. And, and,
Chris Gazdik: and how does that affect your mental health unnecessarily? So call your senators, be active, go protest, go give speeches, give talks, [00:07:00] write blogs, do anything that you want to do to manage issues.
I’m all about staying involved, but when you get news like that, shut it down and then rally yourself and then understand what’s kind of going on. You’ll get better information anyway. And that’s why I wanted to highlight, like, there’s a lot of questions on what happened with the police officers after we spoke about what were people doing, how were decisions made?
And they’re going through this whole timeline and understanding things now. But whatever day that was, we didn’t understand what. Literally the news was there while people were still trying to identify people. Yeah.
Kasie Morgan: I think that that’s when one really good rule of thumb is like, I’ll get the new slash I’ll understand that something has happened.
And then usually I’ll wait a couple of days before I try to interact with it. Just because so much more will be out there then. Right. And there’ll be less opinion and maybe some more fact
less
Chris Gazdik: opinion. Or hearsay and misinformation.
Can I say that again?
Chris Gazdik: Less [00:08:00] opinion and hearsay and misinformation a few days later, for real.
So on a podcast, I listened to date at 5 30, 1 22. We’ll have it highlighted on the thing. They talked about, how 1158 is the answer to school with like 19 police officers. And a kid was in the room with a nine 11 operator, you know, with calls like until like 12, 19 and even later. And so the big scuttlebutt was, you know, what was going on?
Why were we not going in? And the reason why that was the case I understand is that they made a decision that it was no longer an active shooter. And instead it was a barricaded, assailant. Now you can talk about why we made that decision and who made that decision. And they did, they examine those things in show.
But I just say that little piece of information, because now
we know this
Chris Gazdik: and it is pretty factual. It’s not an opinion. And now we can even have an adequate discussion about gun control or what’s kind of going on. And [00:09:00] I think the big discussion to have is the PTSD effects on these kids and these police officers and these teachers and the families in the community.
And so on, that’s a discussion we need to be having the most.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. And I think that the truth is, is that that is an acutely stressful event, right? So I think you have to even put that on a spectrum that not everybody is going to internalize what happened in the same way. That just because I was somebody that attended school, there does not mean that.
I am going to have the same experience as someone who may have been close enough to hear the actual footsteps of the intruder, right. Or something like that. But no matter where you were or how you’re related to the event, or either as a participant in the community, that’s listening to the news or you’re listening to the news, you know, four hours away or half a world away.
It is an [00:10:00] acutely stressful event that can drum up all kinds of things like vicarious trauma, compassion, fatigue, secondary trauma. And I think those are right. And so, right. Like I was going to say to kind of bring that back down to like normal terms. Like it’s just basically that just because you weren’t there and you weren’t involved does not mean it.
Doesn’t have some sort of effect on your nervous system and make you respond differently to your kids waking up the next morning and going to school and
Chris Gazdik: it’s unnecessary. It’ll it’ll do a number on you. Yeah. So let’s switch gears to another current event that he said was cool. We’re going to talk about Cerebra real quick.
What do you know about cerebral?
Kasie Morgan: I know that on my social cerebral advertises all the time about ADHD medications. Well, for me, they’re advertising about ADHD medications probably cause I Google them all the time. So. Oh,
interesting. Now,
Chris Gazdik: did you look at the current event or are you just saying
that?
Kasie Morgan: I just saw, I just thought on there. I was like, oh, cerebrals on [00:11:00] there. Like I know that that’s like an online platform where you can get ADHD medication. Wow.
Chris Gazdik: Wow. That is interesting that you present it that way. Cause I’ve seen cerebral too. And I know there’s these, these companies are kind of coming on online, doing different things.
It’s kind of interesting. Well, they got a little bit in hot water and I thought it was interesting. And it’s interesting the way that you just genuinely and organically cited your experience of cerebral. Cause listen to this. So the online company cerebral is in trouble for Adderall prescribing practices from this wall street journal podcast dated March, may the 13th that I saw why an online telehealth startup is limiting Adderall.
And what happened is they had practices prescribing and pressuring the clinicians to prescribe these suckers and to even change diagnosis and the company’s auditing practices for the clinicians in cerebral [00:12:00] as a big dollars or two and 150. Last year, where was their profits causing these alleged inappropriate practices with schedule two drug?
Not that Adderall is, yeah, man, they got money hungry and they wanted to just shoot out scripts like left and right. For people for Adderall and the clinicians were like, yo. This is not okay. And thankfully, because we have licensing boards and we have oversights and stuff that we have as clinicians to uphold, and they were, they were squawking hard.
Like you can’t do this to me. You cannot practice this way. You cannot tell me what to diagnose for instance, or whatever. Like, is that not crazy?
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. I mean, I definitely think it’s crazy because scheduled two substances are nothing to mess around with, especially stimulant medications, you know, and they’re not for everyone.
And I think everyone is not always an informed. Person when being prescribed that level of medication and what that means for your [00:13:00] body. And so I think if you’re uninformed or you’re misinformed, or you’re working with a clinician that kind of has the power in that relationship yeah, it’s a very slippery slope and dangerous practices to say, you need this diagnosis.
You need to make sure this percentage is getting a prescription
Chris Gazdik: I’m passionate about this stuff. And this bothered me when I heard what was going on with that, because I don’t take diagnosing lightly. I don’t avoid it. I think it’s important. But man, when you start having bureaucratic oversight on that kind of a thing, no, man,
Kasie Morgan: I think it really also for me in this chair, it cheapens the experience for people who really do need the medications.
Like there are legitimate. For Adderall, there are legitimate needs for methylphenidates and all the stimulant medications that come along. And non-stimulant medications that are now available for people with an ADHD diagnosis. But I think it cheapens that experience because then everybody’s like, well, anybody who wants to can go get Adderall and, and not everybody needs it [00:14:00] really about one in 12 people that are, that have a diagnosis of ADHD.
Meet the full criteria and for ADHD. So an interesting statement. Yeah. So I think it’s really interesting, especially when I was working in the school system, thinking about teachers who would come to me and say things like I’ve got like 11 out of 23 kids in my classroom that are like ADHD. And I’m like, that’s not even statistically possible.
I don’t think at this point that like half of your class has this diagnosis. And so there is a lot of misdiagnosing when it comes to that. And so I think the fact that this online platform, which is hard in and of itself to even see the nuances of a person to assess them for attention deficit, when you’re online, I think it’s, it’s really interesting.
Plus you’re getting one shot at this individual. You know, most insurance companies only require an assessment to be completed within the first six sessions. And a lot of times you do a lot of differentiation. When you’re [00:15:00] doing diagnosing. So people might come in and see me and I’m giving them like generalized anxiety diagnoses initially, because we do have to have a diagnostic code per appointment, but then later as I get to know them better, and maybe we look more in depth at some assessments.
Yeah. And we think about the whole spectrum of their life then. Yeah. We can narrow it down to like an ADHD diagnosis versus anxiety. But from the jump, it’s really hard to differentiate that if they don’t already come in carrying that diagnosis.
Chris Gazdik: And I will say, I’ve said it a thousand times, medications are very, very appropriate.
They’re they’re very helpful tool to manage mental health, but they’re not a solution. Yeah. And they
Kasie Morgan: don’t change their situations. That’s my landing. Yeah, absolutely. They’re not a solution. And anybody who tells any clinician, if there are young clinicians out there or even experienced clinicians, if anybody is putting pressure on you to supplant diagnoses for the purpose of pharmaceutical intervention, then that is clearly a no-no run [00:16:00] run.
That’s it. Hell no.
Chris Gazdik: Hell no. Yeah, yeah. We’ll edit this episode. We need to,
Kasie Morgan: sorry. Sorry. I’m not trying, but I’m just letting you know that that is a
no, that is a big
Chris Gazdik: no-no right. So what is this quote mean to you? I guess as you hear it, human beings are so quote unquote cool. In the pain that we bear it, it came from a real therapy session where we were talking about it and I was like, man, is that what you’re talking about?
You’re you’re cool. Under pressure. Cool. In scope. Cool. And heart cool. And spirit. Like there’s a lot of ways. The word cool to me means, and we all have pain and we’re going to talk about the different types of pain that we go through, but don’t, we appear sometimes. Cool in. Yeah, while we are bearing internally the pain that we, that we have.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. I’m just so thoroughly impressed by every person that [00:17:00] comes into my office. No matter their developmental or mental age, I’m so impressed by them because when I hear. Everything that they have been through. And I see them in front of me as a person who is seemingly stoic appearing to be strong.
Like this is an amazing process for people. And so I do think that people are so cool in that experience because they realize that the world keeps turning, like world keeps turning and I have to keep up with it. So they try to push forward and they try to push through. And I think that they really do get to some cool places and I’m really impressed.
It really is like, this is definitely a calling for me, but it really is a privilege for me to do this job.
Chris Gazdik: So think about all the different things that we’re talking about here. I mean, could we all carry a certain amount of pain is just a part of the human, emotional experience, right? You know, pain from trauma.
[00:18:00] It may be a divorce that you’ve gone through or that you’re looking at separation when you were just talking there. Kasie, I was thinking of the, the family of origin with chemical dependency. The world just keeps on going on. Nobody understands as a child. What I see in my home. And I reconcile that reality and know that I have to keep on moving forward.
I mean, you said that, and I thought of the kids that are in chemical dependent families or having a critical parent, who’s just critical, critical, critical chop,
chop,
Chris Gazdik: chop chopping you down. Yeah. You know neglect, high conflict, family patterns or relationships sexual molestations or abuse of some kind of abandonment forms of engulfment forms of abandonment.
There’s all sorts of things that people were experiencing. I don’t know if I were to go a little bit longer with a list. I think that [00:19:00] we could develop a list, you know, being picked on as a kid being stood up on a date, you know, feeling body image issues, dealing with eating issues, dealing, you know, like it’s just, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that we walk around with and we all look cool.
Yeah. We all
Kasie Morgan: look cool. Yeah. I mean, masking is a real thing. Right. And I don’t mean like COVID-19 masking it. I mean, like, I mean like yeah, emotional masking, right? Like that’s a real thing and it’s not because we really try to fake it till we make it, because I know that that’s like go-to term a lot of the time.
It’s terrible. It’s not terrible, but I mean, I, I do think we mask because we know that, you know, w we have to keep going, like, you can’t just stop working when you’re having a really hard day. You can’t you know, not parent your children when they’re still there. And [00:20:00] so, you know, I think that we do emotionally mask and physically mask our pain a lot and appear to be stoic and cool, even if we kind of feel disrupted on the inside or dysregulated on the inside and even more.
So I think some of our younger friends that come to see us, they are so diligent and being able to be resilient when things are falling apart around them. It is remarkable
to me. And I think
Chris Gazdik: that as I’m listening to you, the comment that comes to my mind is that that’s part in part. What creates the positive benefits of the things that we go through,
right?
It creates resiliency. In some
Chris Gazdik: ways it creates a certain amount of quick decision making street smarts, man, you know, there’s a lot of things that get developed in the life experiences that are causing us pain. Some of the hardest workers I know are operationally out of the pain of just anxieties. And such.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. So in one of my [00:21:00] previous jobs, I was the residential director for like group homes and psychiatric treatment facilities for children. And the kids that would come through and go through those programs. I mean, you wouldn’t believe what they had endured. I mean, you would, but I mean, a lot of people would not believe what they had endured by the age
of like 11.
Chris Gazdik: I would believe it, but I would look at that kid and not have any idea. You would
Kasie Morgan: never, never know if you saw them at the mall, he would never look at them and say like, oh, this is a child that has been through like all of this, like destruction and devastation in their life by the age of 11. But what we do see is we see people commenting, judging, and like putting forward thoughts about yeah.
And opinions about what these people need to be doing. Right. And so like, or if that were my kid, I would just whip them.
Right, right.
Kasie Morgan: Right. Like, like I would just beat them, blah, blah, blah. Well guess what? Like they’ve survived so many beatings already, like things like that. So I think [00:22:00] that, yes, we do try to mask it.
But I think also as a population, we do look at people and we don’t look at them as a population of people who have experienced an immense amount of pain. We judge behavior, we judge the outward appearance. What this person presents to us and then make snap judgements on what they’re doing currently.
Like.
So I had, so it’s funny, you guys are
Chris Gazdik: you know, your kids over here nailing you in the other side of the room. Remember
the commercials, never let them see you sweat. You’ve heard the expression. I’m sure you remember the, the, it was, I think it was deodorant commercials that kind of kicked that up.
Do you
Kasie Morgan: remember those? I mean, I might’ve been about four
came out. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah. We had that
Chris Gazdik: as like a national kind of campaign. That we bought into, and I was thinking about that expression, you know, kind of preparing this show. Never let them see you sweat. Like in my time that was really valued, man.
That was like, that [00:23:00] was your go-to. That was what you aspired to be able to portray of yourself. Yeah. And gosh, how many people is that killed spiritually?
Kasie Morgan: Oh, a lie. And I think it’s the same thing. Like, you know, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and things like that. Put on your big girl panties, like all of that stuff.
I think while there’s a time and place for it, like you have to kinda like get yourself up and kind of move forward in your life and be resilient. There’s also something to be said about the vulnerable spaces that people can get in as well. But people are so cool in the pain that they bear like to where you would never know what’s going on with a person if they don’t tell you.
And so I think
keynote,
Chris Gazdik: yeah. Yeah, just wanted to highlight that. Sure.
Kasie Morgan: But, but I do think it’s important to try to take some steps back and really think about like, we don’t know where a person’s been or what they’ve been through is what I was going to say.
So the
Chris Gazdik: next little spot is vanity. We allow our vanity to dominate [00:24:00] exposure to what it is that we, we actually feel.
And definition of vanity is assess a pride in her admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements, or the quality of being worthless or futile, the definition of vanity, right? The, the cloth. That was interesting. The quality of being worthless or futile. That’s what vanity is. Did you know that?
It’s, it’s interesting words.
Chris Gazdik: I think words are really interesting and the culture knows the whole meanings of stuff. Kind of, we use it, we feel it. We experience it. I didn’t know. That’s what vanity really meant. I mean, I kind of did, but I guess I just experienced the essence of that word when I, when I hear it or use it.
And, and I feel like it dominates our exposure, you know, the sense of vanity that we have, or the fear of vanity that we have. Does that make sense?
Kasie Morgan: Like in what way do you think that dominates our exposure
Chris Gazdik: being vain? Like either we feel worthless [00:25:00] or helpless in some way, and we don’t want to demonstrate that, or, you know, because of our vanity or, I mean, we are really consumed with the way that we appear the insecurities that we have, the strengths that we have, you know,
the confidence that we wear on our sleeve or demonstrate to people, power
Chris Gazdik: interviewing, you know, power speaking or falling down and avoiding eye contact.
Like the sense of vanity, our experience of ourself, I think is all in the middle of the pain that we, that we bear, whether we’re hiding it. You know, exposing it.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the truth is though, is that when people are criticized, right. Because I think that a lot of our vanity is born out of the critical nature of things that have been said to us or said about us.
And so we do in spite of, or we fall, like you said, and not make eye contact when we go in the other direction. But I think when people are criticized, they don’t stop loving the people who are doing the criticism, [00:26:00] they stop loving themselves. And so I think that that’s a big deal to kind of highlight there is that sometimes vanity comes from a place of.
Lack of self-love
Chris Gazdik: the quality of being worthless
Kasie Morgan: or right. So that core belief of like, of unworthiness. And so I put forward this front of confidence and security in myself because of the things that have been said or done to me. And so I think that that’s important to highlight there that really, when people are heavily criticized, they don’t stop loving the people doing the criticism, particularly
caregivers.
Yeah. I think you
Chris Gazdik: use the phrase hurt people, hurt people, you know,
Kasie Morgan: a lot. Yeah. But I do think that you turn on yourself before you do other people.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Oh, well, yeah. Turn on yourself before you do that to other people. Yeah. It’s an interesting reality that you’re on point. You [00:27:00] know, so how do we tend to attempt the avoidance of vulnerability?
I wanted to think about that for a moment with you, because I mean, when you think of vulnerability, you know, gosh, yeah. We, we definitely want to avoid that. We don’t want to demonstrate that we don’t want to put that out there. And you know, I’ll tell you, you know, in, in the face of Uvalde that Texas story, that we just did some coverage with how many of those police officers are going to feel comfortable in the space to demonstrate their vulnerability with what they’ve just endured instead?
Are they on the defensive? Why didn’t you go in, why didn’t you do this? Who made that decision? Why didn’t you X, Y, and Z. And I don’t know that we allow ourselves or others. In, especially traumatic [00:28:00] situations to be able to really be okay with a necessary part of processing the events, vulnerability.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah.
I a hundred percent agree and, and I will never forget this experience. As long as I live on my first exposure to doing like a root cause analysis on like every time there was a major event, right. When we were at the psychiatric rehab treatment facilities, every time there was a major event, we would look at like a root cause analysis.
Right. So we’d sit around this table and we would talk through like, what happened, you know, and, and who did what and what did happen and what could we do differently the next time? And there was a person present. He was a nurse in the unit and all of the workers had like barricaded themselves away from this aggressive child.
Like that was like 12 or 13 years old. And he was kind of holding the whole home hostage. And so. The nurse intervened and really probably saved a lot of injuries from a lot happening to a lot of other people, but the [00:29:00] nurse did not use necessarily like the appropriate taught technique in order to intervene, nobody was hurt.
Nobody was put in a compromising position. They just simply stopped the action from happening. The people around this table were ready to crucify this nurse on the basis of their behavior. And there was one person my mentor to this day, his name is also Chris, but there was one person and this was before he and I were even like in that type of like friendship dynamic.
But there was one person that spoke up and said, we are absolutely not going to put this on him. None of us at this table were there. None of us felt what he felt in that moment or the duty to respond or not respond given the situation. And I think that to me, that that has to be the perspective that we try to take with these police officers.
You know, when you have protocol, you have jobs. These people also have families to go home to that when we don’t give perspective to the [00:30:00] situation and know that we were not them, we were not the ones who had to decide. When and how and what to do, knowing that there had already been loss of life on the inside, knowing that there were weapons being used, knowing that like, it’s just such a hard situation that when we approach the situation with why didn’t you do that?
We are not approaching from a place of understanding or building to a solution. We are starting from a place of blame and there’s really no place to go when we blame others than to be on the defensive end of that. And so even opening that conversation with them, I don’t think has been very appropriate from any perspective because we weren’t there and we’re
not them.
Chris Gazdik: I really appreciate that. And thank you for sharing that, Kasie, because I mean, we really, and the same thing goes with the teachers and, you know, just the different administrators and the things that go on. I mean, it’s fair to have conversations. It’s fair to develop protocols. It’s fair to be [00:31:00] able to have those discussions, but it’s got to come from, you know, in our opening, you know, it’s got to come from a place of grace.
It’s got come from a place of, you know, allowing ourselves and the other people to have vulnerability in the circumstance so that we can really get at what’s going on and recover. Otherwise you’re just, you’re just slamming down a barrier that, that haunts people literally potentially for the rest of their life.
Right. Yeah. You, you got a mic, sir. I just,
Neil: I gotta ask a question about this one. Do you see that the re the reaction of people outside of it, the blame game that they do is that kind of almost one of their ways that they avoid vulnerability, because they’re trying to put pressure on someone else and that’s, cause that’s what I feel like is happening when something bad happens.
It’s not a matter of rationality. It’s about whose fault is it because. Direct my vulnerabilities onto someone else and pass that buck.
Chris Gazdik: It sounds like you’ve been in like psychology school [00:32:00] and doing therapy for 20 years,
bro. Like in a word. Yeah. You’re on point. I think it’s a really excellent point because we really do like to project, we like to look at the other person you know, we like to pass the buck.
We, we like to remain safe. We want to avoid criticism. We want to be all those things I could go
on.
Kasie Morgan: Or, or we even want to continue to hold onto our own ideals about like like gun control or lack thereof or whatever. And so we, we don’t want to see situations necessarily for what they actually are, like just the facts of them.
So we interject a lot of feelings into that. Right. And so I think that’s the whole thing of this matter, in my opinion, is that we look at something and we respond to it based on the, on the feelings that are generated. But then if you actually take a step backwards and look at the objectable facts of things that happen in the, what actually transpired, [00:33:00] then what you can see is that there were a lot of systems at play.
There were a lot of decisions that were being made behind the scenes. There were a lot of things involved that an individual would have to make basically a game time decision to be able to decide how, when and where to respond
Chris Gazdik: and a game time, but a, a decision in the moment. Yeah,
Kasie Morgan: exactly. Like in a split second and it’s life or death.
And so I think that when we look at not just law enforcement, but any type of respondents,
this is getting so deep. Yeah. Sorry, but it’s the kid who’s in the room making a split decision.
Chris Gazdik: It just breaks my heart to like use their classmates. I’ll just say it blood to PR to let them appear dead and play possum.
That’s how some of those kids survived. I mean, these are. These are amazing. And I’ll take it off of Uvalde, and go to like, you [00:34:00] know, situations in your home with, with sexual molestation. And I remember, you know, we used to blame the victim a lot for, you know, being scantly dressed and, you know, causing unwanted attention or, you know, the, the many variations of circumstances that we find ourselves in.
And, and, and you have these trauma reactions going guess, remember what happens when you know, your amygdala’s firing off with chemicals and hormones and, you know, cortisol just coursing through your veins. I mean, are you going to be the best decision
Kasie Morgan: maker? No. Cause you’re not even accessing the frontal lobe of your brain in that Tom
Chris Gazdik: let’s begin, you are completely offline. And you’re just getting through, which is why a lot of the circumstances that come up for the first time in this person’s life in our office, 23 years later for the first time you can actually. Work with wrapping your thinking back around that process so that you’re not immediately offline again, because you will get [00:35:00] off line again.
That’s what people tend to just move on and move on to the next and to the next kind of events,
Kasie Morgan: trauma reality. It is. And I, and I can’t even imagine because really, and I think we talked about this last show too, but the honest truth is that it is not in our immediate human nature, outside of a protective stance to look at another human being and attempt to take on another life.
Right. And so while this happened and while other situations happen where, you know, we’re in times of war and things like that, It’s not within the nature of being to do that. So it is stepping outside of ourselves. And so I can’t even imagine as an adult to come into a situation where there is a child that is like shooting other classmates and things like that, but that there’s a younger person that looks significantly younger than me.
And then my job is to take them out, you know, and, and I’m not trying to say, and I’m not trying to say right wrong or otherwise, or [00:36:00] anything like that. Like, I don’t want to make this a political statement, but I think it is not within our nature. It’s the
emotional reality.
Chris Gazdik: Let me jump into what you’re saying, because I think that get it to the it’s it’s, it’s the, the human emotional experience.
There’s a book writer over there. If you see it “On Killing”. Yeah. Okay. And that, that guy pulled that out. Sarge Sergeant Grossman, I think is his name. It’s a second
shelf down into this chair.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, okay. That’s cool. Well, his, his name is Lieutenant Colonel Grossman. I’m pretty sure. And he, he, he did a whole study on this.
He’s a military veteran of many years and he looked at all the times back to the civil war to the revolutionary war. And how many muskets were like, not shot out of the guns? Like, you know, of people, it’s, it’s a thing we know that it’s not a natural state to be in. Right. And, and we’ve, we’ve inoculated ourselves from the act of killing so much so that we don’t think chickens actually get killed.
We just go to Kentucky fried chicken, you know, [00:37:00] they get killed. Well, let’s not
degenerate.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. But we haven’t seen it. It used to be a part of farm life and family life. That was a sort of a part of the cycle of life and stuff. You know, native Americans would get the buffaloes and all of the, you know, but now it’s not
Kasie Morgan: drink and sweet tea on the porch and somebody’s chopping the chicken set off over there on the stump.
Yeah, that’s right. Literally
that’s the way they used
Chris Gazdik: to be. And so it’s not natural even more so now in the way that we operate, as I think what, what you were kind of saying when you’re dealing with traumatic
Kasie Morgan: reality. Yes. And so it’s really easy on this side of pain to look at someone else experiencing that and saying, I would have done that differently.
Look
at how we bear
Chris Gazdik: this. This is like, you know, again, we’re so cool. In the pain that we bear and I’m even looking and thinking about like, you know, the seal team that talked about when they went to Osama bin Laden, it’s a quote that I’ll never [00:38:00] forget. You know, the interviewer, somebody was interviewing them like, wow, what was that like?
I mean, how did that work when you were doing this? And you know, they’re researching the book or whatever. I mean, did you, did you run into, did you know, did you have, and they’re like, no, you don’t run into a gunfight.
We like took one
Chris Gazdik: step painfully slow at a time, turning a corner, having to take down a gunman and like five more steps, very purposely and methodically, you don’t just run in Darden dash in like you get killed.
So training can really help with a lot of these things as part of my point there. But part of what, you know, the myths are about all this anyway.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. Yeah, it is traumatic. And then I think too, like even thinking about it from the perspective of the aftermath of it, like walking out of the building, right?
So you are like, let’s say an officer or something, or you are a teacher or you’re somebody that’s directly involved. [00:39:00] And then you’re told by lots of officials, you’re not allowed to talk about this. So then you go home to your support system and you can’t even discuss really what happened because it’s still under investigation.
So like there’s no effort at support. Nobody’s calling each other. You’re just left by yourself with your thoughts on what just
transpired
Chris Gazdik: or where he just took me, you know, the child who has a family member, that’s being inappropriate sexually. And they say, I will kill you if
this was somehow your
Chris Gazdik: dad or your dad, right.
Like, or your brother or Glock down baby. Lockdown
Kasie Morgan: complete isolation and yeah, it’s, it’s crazy.
Chris Gazdik: It’s absolutely terrible, but that’s, that’s the pain
that we’re
Kasie Morgan: buried and that’s the emotional realities,
or just even, even simply let me even make it
Chris Gazdik: a little simple. Right? You had a pack of girls and you know, you were just stood up by the guy who was [00:40:00] a jerk and the girls are definitely going to be picking at you mean, girls being mean to each other.
So you’re not going to say anything about, you know, I wasn’t even picked up, I didn’t come and I don’t want to share that I’m embarrassed or the guy who went to the meeting place and she wasn’t there. The guy’s not going to go back and tell my buddies. Oh yeah, that was great. You know, he well, she wasn’t.
I was embarrassed. I’m ashamed. I’m insecure with it. I am then thus alone and we’re going to develop a list here. We’re moving soon to like what our desired responses when we’re in pain and you see the foreshadowing it’s, don’t be alone. Is that one of the things that we could
Kasie Morgan: say? Yeah. Even if I would say, even if it’s just situationally alone.
So I even encourage people that I work with on a regular basis that, okay. So like I get, you’re kind of introverted things like that, but if you’re going to work on something like you’re going to type a paper or whatever, why not do it at the local [00:41:00] coffee shop? Why not do it at Barnes and noble, like put yourself in an environment that isn’t isolative so that you at least have kind of the wrestling and the hustling of other people like that environmental kind of factor that can help with that.
What about the
opposite? Do you ever think much
Chris Gazdik: about overexpress.
Kasie Morgan: Me. No, I do not.
I am not sure. I’m sure that’s true. I mean, I do know for myself, I do notice when I need some alone time. Like I put my kids on, what’s called no touch policy where it’s like, cause I mean, if they’re around me, they are like, they either hold my hand or touch my arm or half the touch. They just touched me with like one finger on like my leg.
And so I, at a certain point it’s just overstimulation. I’m like, please nobody touch me right now. And then that’s when I know I need to go and like isolate myself somewhere for a little bit. But yeah, I
Chris Gazdik: know [00:42:00] it well. Yeah. So what I was thinking there is, you know, the opposite is true too. I was thinking of people that are having all kinds of emotional pain inside and they.
Explodes out so regularly, like, you know, we’ve talked about borderline personality disorder on the show or people that have narcissism, which they’re acting terribly narcissistic, which is prickly we’ve did a show on that too a few months ago, but it’s coming from that place of pain or anxiety where people were just all on edge and like literally just screaming inside themselves.
Did it comes out, you know, in their, their they’re hyper or, or agitated or, you know, winery, you know, a lot of times that’s coming from like, you know, the pain that people are bearing. So it can be, overexpressed just as much as, probably more commonly, I think I’m going to say under express, right? Let me say that again.
It can be overexpressed [00:43:00] I think more commonly though, equally. So under expressed. Yes. So the interaction between people in our lives over the years when we’re bearing pain, You know, is important to kind of look at what, you know, where, what, what level am I,
where
Kasie Morgan: am I at? Yeah, I think that’s another key factor here is to know yourself, which
Chris Gazdik: probably by the way, you’re either one or the other under expressing it or overexpressing, and you
can be
Kasie Morgan: both I at different times, but my
point is it’s really, really hard to be in the sweet spot.
No, it’s perfectly
Chris Gazdik: impossible to be
perfectly
Kasie Morgan: expressed. Yeah. And I know for myself when I’m overexpressing I feel like I’m doing a great job. Like, I feel like, oh my God, I’m doing a great job. Nobody knows that I’m like ridden with anxiety right now. And then the truth is it’s like, everybody knows that I’m written with anxiety.
Cause they’re like, you’re talking five miles a minute. You’ve had 11 cups of coffee. Chris can attest to this fact, he sees me every day at the office. Like he knows like, if I’m like, he was like, you okay, girl. I’m like[00:44:00]
probably same.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. It is like, I feel like we know each other well enough now to where we can be like, Hey, like what’s going on with you? I like, let me check in with you real quick. Yeah.
And isn’t that an
Chris Gazdik: act of kindness?
It’s nice. And isn’t that important? It’s
Chris Gazdik: so important to do with the people that are in your circles and allow back to where we became, right.
And allow for that level of vulnerability appropriate. Of course, professional boundaries, safe marital boundaries. We talked about that not too long ago, you know, the, the realities of, of, of human relationships, but to allow that, that pain to be real on the level that your relationship applause, matter of fact, a great guidance that I’ve chronic created, because I’ve wondered about that.
Oversharing, not sharing enough, like how, how do you manage that? You want to share on the level that is consistent with what the relationship [00:45:00] you’re sharing with is. So if you barely know somebody you’re just playing softball together and your fun buddies, you’re really not going to share a whole lot about what happened last night or what your life was 20 years ago when you were growing.
But if you’re talking to your bestie or your boy, you know, besties girl, boys, boy. Right. Did you know that? That’s a thing. Yeah. Besties are
girls aren’t they isn’t that true?
Kasie Morgan: Dudes. Dudes can’t have besties. Yes, they can’t.
Chris Gazdik: We Neiljust give me. Head shake. Yes or no. Can boys have besties?
Neil: You can have best friends, but you can’t have besties.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, dude, we don’t have besties.
Kasie Morgan: I am so
sorry. That is like a thing. Yeah. That is like the
Kasie Morgan: sexist, most sexist thing you’ve ever said ever, ever. I’m looking at you. This is your show. Oh wow. You better back
it up. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Now I’m not backing off that one, man. Okay. Fine. Whether it’s your boy, your best friend would just avoid the term all together.
How about that? That’s fine. I’ve really angered her. Everybody.
Kasie Morgan: No, I’m just saying like I have a couple of guy friends that would call [00:46:00] me their bestie.
Chris Gazdik: Well, that’s different.
Neil: But you’re a girl, right?
Kasie Morgan: So if you have a female friend, you can call her a bestie. Oh, I never
Chris Gazdik: have, I haven’t
Neil: either, but it’s just, just kind of, there’s a different way to say it, you know, as a guy, I don’t want to be caught a bestie breath.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Exactly. I’m better with that. But see, my youngest has
called my wife, bruh, like just at a passage,
Kasie Morgan: that’s a term of endearment. Exactly.
Neil: But that’s weird if I called you a bro, I was like, that’s just weird. Now I’d
call you my bestie and I’d call Chris my bra and you my bestie,
Chris Gazdik: I can’t call Neil, my bestie.
But we have degenerated completely out of the target. Let me kind of say, if you’re really talking to something that is really close to you, then you’re really going to want to go on a high level of information so that you’re really kind of in geared and hopefully the closest person, which is the most difficult is your [00:47:00] spouse, you know, or your faith creator.
That’s an everything relationship there, hopefully, which is scary and intimidating. So, but you don’t do that with your new buddy that you just met. And you’ve hung out a couple of times. So you gauge the level of sharing with the level of relationship that you have.
Yeah.
Kasie Morgan: I think that that’s very appropriate, but I also think that when you are in a space where you have experienced maybe significant trauma, then you may have found yourself in a position where you have ever shared with people.
And what we call that clinically is being inappropriately, familiar with people. And that does come from a trauma. So a lot of times people that experience highly intensive, emotional things may overshare. And that’s because you are still in that survival brain place and not in that reasoning and logic understanding place.
Once you get there, you look back and you’re like, oh man, why did I tell them that? Like, why did I share that with them? Same thing. Like if you go out,
that’s created
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:00] friendships for me sometimes for sure. Honestly.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. Vulnerability. There’s a lot of power in vulnerability, but I think that I just wanted to throw that out there because you know, there’s multiple times where I’m like, I can’t believe I shared that with them because.
It was just, I was just in a space. It just came out. It just came out. Yeah.
All right. So
Chris Gazdik: let’s talk about what is ideal. Okay. Okay.
You know
Chris Gazdik: how cool we are in the pain that we bear? What, what ideally do we want to do? And I, I put some time to this and thought to this on w w what’s what’s it, what’s the best vision look like?
Right. So I see what you think about these Kasie, or start off with things that you have off the mind. Do you have anything firing, you know, avoiding the terrible strong tendency to hide it from others? Hide it from ourselves. I mean, that’s gotta be probably number.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah, I think I’ve said it multiple times on the show.
You, you have to feel the feelings so that you don’t become them. [00:49:00] Right. So if you are trying to do suppression of pain, first of all, it comes out. Like, I want everybody to know that’s listening. It’s coming out. It’s coming out on the people you love. It’s coming out on the grocery store clerk. It’s coming out on the freeway.
Like wherever it’s coming out, it’s coming out. It’s coming out in a plethora of ways. So feel those feelings. So that you don’t have to overwhelmingly become them. So if you’re feeling hurt, if you’re feeling anger, if you’re feeling the pain, it is okay to feel the feeling, recognize it, do something about it, and then you can move forward.
If you don’t recognize it, do something about it. Then you end up becoming that feeling some way somehow with someone else. And it acts out it’s always
a behavior.
Chris Gazdik: And here’s a, here’s a second follow-up to that in my methodical management of skills list, I’ve been working a lot lately doing some professional speaking engagements, which I’ve enjoyed by the way, I can come talk to your group, your company, your people.
I would enjoy that check in.
So what you were just
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:00] saying adds to, or comes PR prefaces, actually a very specific emotion management tool that I think is awesome of checking back in on stuff, purposefully allowing and withdraw, you know, calling that feeling any emotion forward. It might’ve been 15 years, but just check back in on it, see what’s there and allow it to be because then you can kind of manage it even more so later on next week, next month, next year, you know, I just, I just shared literally today.
My my buddy, my boy, Aaron Clark, whose son, 13 years old died. We went to the graveyard today and celebrated his, his fourth anniversary of that today. Wow. That’s what I was doing before you today. Is that your best day? It’s not my bestie he’s my boy is my boy, but it was a powerful, poignant reality.
And we’ve checked in on it, like he’s purposefully. Multiple times checking on it, see what is there, and he read a letter to his son [00:51:00] today for the second time, the first time was really choked up and he’s still struggling with it. And I’m pretty sure next year he’ll do it again. And it will be he’ll progress with that.
He’s going to evolve because he’s, he’s continually checking in on the pain that he has from his son having died.
Kasie Morgan: I love that so much for so many reasons, but I think the biggest overwhelming reason is that there’s not a time limit on pain. No. Right. So I just want to say that like, just as a blanketed statement, there’s no time limit
Chris Gazdik: on pain.
Yeah. That’s a good statement. Yeah. You know, in my book, a chapter 11. I wanted to highlight, because I think it applies here really well as another idea of what’s ideal, right? Like what’s the desirable responses to pain that we have endured long ago more recently, or are enduring chapter 11, the title is accepting.
Things is part of our emotional growth. I think that’s a cool title that I write about in there, but I’ll give you [00:52:00] some excerpts. The do is do accept limitations, events, and characteristics. Don’t resist and fight against what is true. And I just think that plugs right into like what that’s, you know, that’s an ideal that you’re striving for when you’re, when you’re dealing with pain.
So I talk about. The three, the three A’s awareness, acceptance, and action. In that particular chapter, I said, be aware, we might have shut ourselves off from the reality and not even know that we’re a victim of something like sexual abuse, even, right. You might not even realize what you endured or did go through kind of qualifies.
I mean, not severe and extensive, but it’s, it’s in there. It’s inappropriate, but you might not even realize it. Quote from the book, if we develop our willingness to take action, we will find the appropriate. To take, I don’t know if that’s on the deal, Neil and our [00:53:00] quotes, but I think that’s when we need to hit again.
If we develop our willingness to take action, we will find the appropriate action to take
how’s that? Yeah.
Kasie Morgan: I love that because the truth is, is we all possess the ability to act, but we don’t always enact the willingness to act.
Chris Gazdik: God, I can’t tell you how many times people tell me. I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know what to do. And it’s a stuck spot that people can stay
stuck in for years and never, or always.
Chris Gazdik: And
that’s
Chris Gazdik: like, that’s not a good time. It’s
Kasie Morgan: not, and it’s a really hard place to be. And that’s why I’m so encouraging of anybody who has never tried therapy before to really consider it because the truth is, is sometimes we get into stuck spots and we don’t even know that we’re stuck because we’re just, it’s just our life.
This is the life that we live. This is how we’ve always done it. This is what we’ve always gotten. And so we feel like this is our [00:54:00] station and we get stuck there. And that becomes our new normal, in fact, your brain actually assimilates to your new normal. And so it just starts being responsive to where you are now.
And then it’s just normalized. So you don’t even know that you’re held up or stifled or, you know,
Chris Gazdik: when you were
seven,
Kasie Morgan: right. And you’re just stuck there and you didn’t know that. And so your emotional growth has not really stepped up with your chronological age. And so you’re wondering why you’re acting like a hormonal teenager, raging out, you know, doing crazy things.
And here
are kind of common, very common. It really
Chris Gazdik: isn’t a rare reality. We are talking to you who very well might be listening,
talking
Kasie Morgan: to me. Right? Who are you talking to? I’m talking to me. Yeah, there are, there are multiple things that I never knew. I was stuck on in my life. And I went through
my own journey.
I’ve looked
Chris Gazdik: at some of the things I’ve said, I’m like, why did I just say that? Or people have asked me the question that’s where, you know, pop to me [00:55:00] between the eyes. Like, well, what does that mean to you, Chris? Yeah. I’m like,
I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. I had a really think about
Chris Gazdik: that. So I want to check out the book, man, because not that I want to sell some books. I don’t make that much money from it, but I think it’s very, very helpful to look at these things that are in there. So the three A’s awareness, acceptance and action regarding acceptance.
I think this is directly. I think I remember writing this out of the book. This can be the hardest as we tend to be fighters in life, fighting to conceal or fighting to rectify. Or maybe fighting even for revenge of some sorts. Like we are naturally to a man, woman and child like fighting in, in this world.
We’re fighting with hunger, we’re fighting with our nutrition. You know, we’re fighting literally with our siblings or with our spouses or with ourselves a lot of times. And so this [00:56:00] acceptance, I spent more time on it than awareness and finding action in the chapter because man is so hard to accept when some stuff has really gone down in front of us or around us or in our, our lives.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. Or I think we get hung up on, I should statements. Like I shouldn’t have to
Chris Gazdik: accept, I would have done that.
Kasie Morgan: I shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to accept it.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. So the idea that I think I go into the book as well as his work towards calling things. What they are perceptions can be a deterrent, maybe an outside objective quote, unquote, especially underlined bold printed italicized in bold safe source is needed to manage, to calm, to fight down, get real with the vulnerability, the events, call them what they are [00:57:00] and move forward, making thoughtful decisions about what it is that we’re going.
I think there’s a lot
there.
Kasie Morgan: I had a pastor, my pastor, he said something this past Sunday, it was really awesome. And it was about the word lack. So he was going through a verse and one of the words using the verses the word lack, and he said, you know, we see lack sometimes as such a like plight word, right.
Where it’s like I don’t have enough of, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. But really it’s lack is not meaning that there’s apply or something as against us. It’s more so a shift of perspective that’s needed and I’m liking. Wow. Yeah. And so. When we think about relationships, think about other things in life.
Like we feel like there’s a lack of something that sometimes really it’s more of the acceptance of, of, of a different perspective that’s needed.
Chris Gazdik: So I don’t lack patience in my life with my kids or in with family. I just need a different perspective. Yeah.
[00:58:00] Seriously.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Cause when we see it as lack, we see it as like a plight like this insurmountable
things against
Kasie Morgan: me.
Yeah. But really it’s, it’s a shift in perspective. That’s needed that, that I, you know, this is something that isn’t beyond me that I can ascertain these things.
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That’s cool. So let’s move on a little bit with develop a better understanding of that cool therapy question. And I just kind of highlighted it, right?
Like it is an excellent thing that you can do right there in your car or right there in your home. Maybe you get out a piece of paper. And you’re thinking about what your point of pain is, any one of them. And you can just say, what does blank mean to me? Right. And just ponder that and allow that to go around your mind, because what comes up will amaze you sometimes.
And then when you [00:59:00] check it out with people again, that are safe, that you’re closer to, you could be like, wow, like that doesn’t have to mean that to me anymore. I can develop resiliency. I can develop grounded-ness and
actually give it another meaning for
Chris Gazdik: myself.
How cool
Chris Gazdik: is that? Yeah. And we’ve seen that powerfully through our eyes in therapy, but again, you could do that in your own home, in your own mind, on your own.
Right. So what does X mean to me is an excellent question to always ask. Yeah.
Kasie Morgan: I love that. And, and even when I’m working with couples, right? W w you’ve talked about a lot of marriage stuff as of late, but when I’m working with couples, I will even say, how is X pain, right. Like blank pain are, or insert, whatever painful experience preventing me from being the best partner that I can be like like, how are my ideals on divorce preventing me from being the best partner that I can be?
How are [01:00:00] my, you know, how is this pain from childhood preventing. From being the best partner that I can be. And so I think it’s, it’s really interesting. And you can insert words in that statement. However you want to like the best employee that I can be the best father, the best mother that I can be, you know, so on and so forth, the best therapist, absolutely.
That I can be. You know, how is my current personal circumstances preventing me from being the best therapist that I can be? That’s something I have to reflect on all the time.
Chris Gazdik: I got turned around the opposite side of that to Kasie too, in how does this help me? Sure. To. What I want to be, because there’s a lot of aid that, that creates as well to point some of the things I’ve been
through in life definitely, definitely helped
me become a better therapist.
I can tell you that. No. Right, right. So let’s move on a little bit. In episode 1 63 was a, was a Greer. The highlight. I mean, that was a cool show. When we talked about the the core beliefs, that was the core beliefs episode. [01:01:00] So develop awareness in a similar fashion as to what core beliefs may have developed.
And we took a deep dive on that. I’m not gonna spend any time on it here, but quote, unquote, challenge. The assumptions we live by was what? Well, actually, actually I think that was the name of the episode. Yeah. Here’s one that I like to highlight insofar as again, what are the ideal responses to our pain and stuff?
Pay
attention, pay attention to
Chris Gazdik: your body. Yeah. Like your body will tell you when something. If you let it now, you can shut it down. You can drink it away. You can numb out. You can literally shut down your feelings to the point where you feel like you don’t have any there’s numbness, great numbness.
People can get into. Of course you’d dump out the joy as well. But yeah, if you open yourself up to yourself, it sounds crazy. Right. But if you open yourself up to yourself and just pay attention to your body, you’re going to feel it. [01:02:00]
Kasie Morgan: You cannot selectively numb though that yes. Yeah. You can not selectively numb, but you’re absolutely right.
Like when you are at rest and you are feeling like your best self that’s one way, but as soon as that train takes off from the station, you know, if you’re activated in some
Chris Gazdik: way. Yeah. And you don’t hear this, this is an important thing. And you don’t want to ignore that. Absolutely not. Do not ignore what your spirit, because it’s yourself.
Yeah. You’re trying to tell yourself, literally. That there’s pain here and needs to
Kasie Morgan: be addressed. Yeah. I mean, on a biological and physical physiological level, your brain is literally telling your body that you are in emotional pain. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And we’d like to forget it. Don’t want to see ourselves, sweat, you know, whatever, you know, like
Kasie Morgan: stop, whatever that 1970s, commercial wise.
Chris Gazdik: I know you said you were four, you remembered it. You were alive. Ain’t that thing on 87. It wasn’t. He said it was about there.
Is that when you were
Kasie Morgan: born? I was [01:03:00] born in nineteen
eighty three
Chris Gazdik: eighty three. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What was the name when you graduated from high school? Yeah, I know that, no, I graduated in 91 and again, it ain’t that bad anyway.
Okay. Allow emotional expression cry, right? It is okay. Or elsewise, you know, to laugh. You know, when you’re feeling something funerals are amazing because you’ll see a breadth of wealth. The people laughing hysterically and then a half hour in a puddle on the floor. It’s one place that, you know, people are allowed to cry as in a funeral, think it’s funny, silly, but you know, I’ll allow the emotional expression to occur.
You know, why did we learn along the way that this was inherently a bad thing? I don’t know, but we learned the wrong lesson is somewhere allowing emotional expression to occur. Whether be it happy, positive, negative, sad, or otherwise
Kasie Morgan: allow it. We’re, we’re taught that like, this is this has to be a weakness, right?
Like these are weaknesses and [01:04:00] the truth is, is it’s not, it’s just a biological process of the body,
literally. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And did you know there’s three different types of tears.
Salty. Nope.
Nope. Not salty ones. They’re all salty, I guess. No it’s an interesting fact. I, you just said biological
popped in my brain. So there are tears that you have
to clear.
It’s very, very watery. And you’ll see, you know, when you’ve got something in your eye, like it just drips out. Like it’s just very, very watery and thin. And then there’s tears that we have for moisturization and it’s thicker and it’s there to moisten the whole system of your eye. But then when you’re in sadness or in pain, that is the thickest type of tear.
And do you know that they have actually broken that down chemically and there’s pain, killing chemicals, pain cue. Tears when you’re sad and crying for emotional pain. Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy. Absolutely. Biologically true. Your body is [01:05:00] geared and designed to do that. Let it be, let it go. Let it happen.
I wish I could drill that in your brain next in last, be careful about rumination. Okay. The action stuff in my book chapter helps to avoid this, but boy rumination, you can get suffocated. You can get shut down. If you just stay in a circular ruminating pattern about what somebody did or what you experienced or what happened and just spin it and spin it, spin it and spin it and spin it.
Like I know this is a list of ideal things to do, but it occurred to me that we, we want to avoid. Hmm, right.
Kasie Morgan: Yeah. I mean, I think that that’s one of the biggest pitfalls that I see is the, the ruminating factor, because sometimes when we get into a stuck space it becomes
stuck. I
Chris Gazdik: like to say
suck space or
Kasie Morgan: suck space suck space in the, all the suckers that can happen with life.
So, but what I do believe [01:06:00] is that once it becomes normalized that sometimes it becomes comfortable as well. And so that’s where some of the, that red flags come in for me is that we get comfortable there. Sometimes we choose not to move from that space. So when there is an opportunity to do something about something, to do something different, to create a new pattern, take that opportunity and that initiative, because when we do choose to ruminate, and even though it’s comfortable at that place, what we are choosing is, is a form of acceptance that is detrimental to our mental health.
So we want to. To take that initiative to do something different. Because it is true that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll you get what you’ve always gotten. Right. So you’ve, yeah, you’ve got to break the cycle of behavior, break that pattern. And the way to do that is to recognize like, Hey.
This ain’t it the same that for me, my Connie, to do something, you know,
the first
Chris Gazdik: one and the last one we started with this too, is I’m going to say it again. Like, don’t be alone with this. We’ve got [01:07:00] a a sexual little survivor Neil, I’ve been calling this a video experience that I want to, I want to go with that.
We’re creating a highlight on there, you know, is like, dude, don’t be alone with, this is, you know, when you have whatever pain it is there to bear, don’t do that alone. So closing thoughts and I want to get us out of here. Kasie, what do you think? It’s good. Copper, good, good
Kasie Morgan: conversation. I think, yeah. I think people are really cool.
I think our brains are cool. And I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that has ever given me the opportunity to work with you and your, your painful experiences, because it’s helpful to me in my experience. And I just hope that this show like blesses and keeps
Chris Gazdik: all of you ditto, ditto on that for sure.
Look, people are amazing. Amazing people are resilient. You’ve been through pain. You have. Because we all have it. I hope that you’ve heard some things that you can get, you know, as an ideal to kind of work through them and manage them in their life because they don’t have to own you anymore. You know, in our video experience that we’re [01:08:00] creating, the title is going to be, this is a little bit of foreshadowing.
This shall not defeat me after sexual abuse. That’s what we’re starting with. And I’m excited about doing that project because the pain does not have to win and you stay with us. Stay tuned, stick with us. We will continue to figure this thing out together, take care and have a great week.