If you missed the last 3 episodes, you missed some pretty interesting topics. We started the month off by continuing our conversation on Addiction by discussing the impact after recovery and the estrangement of the family and friends of the addicts. The next week, we talked about womanizing and what that really is. Who normally does it and how you can avoid becoming a victim of it. We wrapped up the month with discussing conflict and how we need it in our life to grow, but normally people try to avoid it.
Tune in to see the April Month in Review Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
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Episode #227 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello. This is Through a Therapist’s Eyes on April the 27th, 2023. We are doing the April month in review. So typically we have Mr. Adam Cloninger hanging out with us and unfortunately he has an emergent situation that he needed to bump on the road to. So Adam, we’re, we’re with you in heart and spirit and we’re hoping things are going well.
Speed to you. Drive carefully. I told him that live, so we just found out, out a couple hours ago. So we only have Mr. Neil Robinson hanging out only, only
Neil Robinson: Wow. That’s, That’s kind of like rough. I mean, I’m, I’m the second fiddle. I know, I know. Adam’s more exciting. But that came out wrong.
Chris Gazdik: That came out out so wrong.
Only, only,
Neil Robinson: only Mr. Neal, can we
Chris Gazdik: delete this and, and do an editing.
Neil Robinson: This is gonna be a posterity’s sake deck. Can we do an edit? It’s like, prove what you really think about me.
Chris Gazdik: You really [00:01:00] want to edit this thing out and you’re the editor. You could do that. Nope. That came out so wrong and we are so highly privileged to have Mr.
Neil Robinson with us.
Neil Robinson: Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Glad to be here.
Chris Gazdik: This is the month in review we’re gonna be doing for the shows that we did in April. Off the cuff, we did Addiction Recovery, estrangements, and Family Dynamics. I was really hoping that we would have Adam, like I really wanted to talk to him about the show that we did on Womanizing.
So unfortunately that’s, That’s not gonna happen. But and then lastly, conflict make for a great story, but a lousy life that we just recorded last week. So this is through a therapist eyes where you get personal insights directly from usually a panel of therapists in your own home or personal time in your car.
But it’s not delivery of therapy services in any way. We have the book being created. That’s the way I’m gonna say that now. I think it’s in tow, it’s coming along. The next one’s on [00:02:00] marriage. Nice. Yeah. Through a therapist eyes, I’m curious how they’ll name it you know, rediscovering your marriage and becoming your best selves or something like that.
Re
Neil Robinson: re under re-understanding your marriage and trying to figure them out. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: that’s right. Holy cow. Subscribe by clicking the bell for the notification on YouTube. Join our channels. We’re really trying to pump that up this year. We’ve got switched over to YouTube instead of the Facebook Lives, and we would love to get up to a thousand members and we should do a drive or a push for that.
Listen, it makes a big deal difference when you subscribe to the show. Tell your friends, speak out. We really need your help. You make this go. We don’t. You do. So five stars on Apple, iTunes leaving a review on Apple iTunes. It really makes a difference. Please help us. Also, we’ve got buy me a cup of coffee.
We’re gonna start talking about, we’re gonna have memberships for the show. And guys, we really need that. These microphones are getting old, these creaky stands you can see on YouTube. I’m shaking it back and [00:03:00] forth like we need some clippers.
Neil Robinson: Yes, we need some lap lapel mics. That’ll be really nice. What are they
Chris Gazdik: called?
Lapel mics. Lapel. I’ll call ’em Clippers. Yeah, I know you do. Contact at through a therapist. is.com is where you can email us and stuff. This is the human emotional experience, which we endeavor to figure out together. So on the YouTube live, I don’t think we had it on the show, but we, we need a cool name.
So I have another ask for you. I’ve got all these asks today. I feel. Feel like pushy with things today. What, what am I doing? It’s,
Neil Robinson: it’s called audience involvement. Yes. So I wouldn’t be pushy about it. We’re trying to do what you guys want. Yes. So, yeah, we, this is a cool, it’s a cool ask. Right.
Chris Gazdik: So, so, so we, as you know, we start the month in review off with kind of, Adam’s game is cool.
He gives us two words. And he has two current event articles that have been in the news, that are in the world. Really. I don’t know if it’s just a news that affect mental health. And then we kind of [00:04:00] kick that off and, and, and talk about that with, with what he has seen. So the the ask is, we need a cool name for it.
Like what is this Adam’s Cool events or Adam’s current events or I don’t know, something, something would be a, a good name. So we need, we need you creative people out there to help us name the game. What is the game? Let’s start there because I think that he gave you the two words he did and the news articles you do you know them or just He gave me.
Like a, a
Neil Robinson: rough overview what they’re about. Yeah. Now one, he didn’t really give an article, but honestly, both things, I, I understand enough that when we talk about it, I think we have enough conversation. You’ll be, you’ll be at depth. Yeah. I, I think we’ll be fine to go over it when, when, when you get the actual information.
Interesting,
Chris Gazdik: interesting. So I don’t get to debate with you though, what ones we, this is all I, you, this is the choice I to your choice. Oh boy. Okay. Well, let’s shoot man. What do we
Neil Robinson: got? All right. The two words are Guillotine and TikTok. [00:05:00]
Chris Gazdik: Guillotine,
Neil Robinson: guillotine and TikTok. Those are, those are your two words.
Chris Gazdik: The news items are guillot. How can guillotine be a, see, you know what? I thought it was gonna start happening. Is Adam’s gonna start getting, like, he already messaged with us a little bit, you know? He gives these
weird obscure, like last week he gave these obscure words. I don’t like that. That needs to have some sense
Neil Robinson: to it.
No, I think it’s fun. I think, I think it definitely weird cause Cause I feel like if he goes too obvious with it, then it makes our choice. So the fact that he’s fun with obscure things that are kind of like wordplay. One, I love wordplay. Yes. But I think that’s great. But then two, it just, it keeps it more interesting.
It keeps it more honest. Like, which one do we really want? So I like the fact that we don’t really know. Because how am I supposed to pick
Chris Gazdik: TikTok when I’ve got guillotine? We gotta go guillotine.
Neil Robinson: I mean, you sure? You seem like you’re a toker. I am not. Probably The fact that I called you a talker probably means that I’m not a toker.
So
Chris Gazdik: my head is being slammed on the mics. I am not a talker. Although that might be a good platform to get on there. No, we’ll, the curtain
Neil Robinson: [00:06:00] guy, no. We’ll, we’ll stick with YouTube.
Chris Gazdik: All right. Well, so YouTube. YouTube and Instagram. Guillotine. What, what the heck could guillotine be in mental health? We’re talking about the thing that cuts people’s heads off,
Neil Robinson: right?
Well, I mean, that solves your mental health problems, right? But no. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: So far from a phlebotomy, Adam, dude, this
Neil Robinson: is interesting. So that you’re picking guillotine is what you’re picking. Okay. So, Guillotine, I guess, and I didn’t know this but I guess there’s riots in France, so France guillotine, they were like one of the last countries to still use that.
Oh. But there are riots in France regarding 10, the minimum retirement age from 64 or 62 to 64. So they’re now increasing the minimum retirement age. Oh, so that’s, yeah. Not what you thought, right? No,
Chris Gazdik: no.
Neil Robinson: And I didn’t know this, so I haven’t been paying attention, so, but I have
Chris Gazdik: not noticed that either, that story.
Neil Robinson: But I could see like if we took, put that here, think about now, what is it here? 62 and a half is like the minimum, or is it 60 here? I thought it was
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:00] 63. Be honest with you. Yeah,
Neil Robinson: somewhere around there. So imagine going from like 63 to 65, right? Like what that would do for the psyche, for those people that are close to retirement.
Like, I could just only imagine here in the States what that means. So like in France, it’s the exact same thing. Well,
Chris Gazdik: okay, so this isn’t about the, the issue, but I am reminded of our conversation we were having in panel not too long ago that I kind of made the point, and this sort of demonstrates a little bit some meat behind my point.
Who were we talking about? I forget the topic, but I was, I was maintaining that the, these issues kind of are around the world. Mm-hmm. Like we, we, we in the states get kind, I think kind of a bad rap because, you know, our political system is so skewed and everyone’s in their own silos and it’s left against right.
And that type of thing. But, you know, I, I have a sense that like, what, I don’t know the story, but the Italians are fighting over tomatoes or something, is what I heard. You know, we’ve got [00:08:00] the massive issues in Israel with Netanyahu. You know, you, you’ve got not too, too long ago Brexit and the incredible challenges that are in, in Great Britain, and of course the Ukraine stuff and, and the missing disinformation that’s out there with that.
I mean, this stuff is like everywhere so far as people’s experience in social media, you know, so this is kind of another example of that. They’re rioting, I guess,
Neil Robinson: as, I will have to look that one up and get more details, but yeah, according to him, they’re rioting in France. I mean, yeah. Even Canada had the issue with Trudeau and the whole trucker convoy, like, well, yes, there, there is really a lot of stuff.
And, and my question is with social media and the news being 24 7, Are we just being more aware of what’s going on around the world, where a lot of these things are, you know, before ish would be considered local versus international kind of news, which is an
Chris Gazdik: interesting, I think it has a lot to do with nine 11.
I’ve said this before in the [00:09:00] show, nine 11 was the first sort of major event that we can watch around the world and the throw in the development over the next several years of an instant ability to get the news. Yes. And an instant ability to respond to the news and a viral explosion of whatever is hot in the moment.
And you’ve got a recipe for human. Oh God. Just like hu horrible human impulsiveness.
Neil Robinson: Yes. Technology’s an amazing thing, but it takes a little bit for humans to catch
Chris Gazdik: up. We are way behind. Yep. Knowing how to cope with this so when something doesn’t go the right way and you get, you know, a policy that changes.
In France and people are violent about it. I mean, hope they’re not using guillotines. But yeah, to answer your question, this is a major mental health reality because of the macro level issue that we feel so strong about a particular issue, [00:10:00] and you’re going right up to the bar. And now you’re going to Lucy pull the football rat out from under me and now I gotta work two more years.
Two more years.
Neil Robinson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s, that’s crazy. That’s, that’s like, imagine that’s tough. Imagine, imagine talking to an 18 year old being like, Hey, you got two more years of high school. Oh. Oh. Just like what the riots that would happen at that
Chris Gazdik: point. That hits hard cuz I got Adam first congratulatory If he, if he graduates on time, it’s still an if cuz it hasn’t happened yet.
I got a high school graduate this year. She just hit me.
Neil Robinson: Fantastic. You’re, you’re finishing your high schoolers and I, my, my, my oldest is will be a senior next year, so, We’re starting that whole process of like, my wife is slowly starting to get that realization. It’s
Chris Gazdik: real. It’s real. It’s real. So, yeah.
I, I hate to hear that guys around the world and, and in France. I mean, it sounds like it’s a very tough time. It’s a scary time not knowing how this is gonna come out, how this is gonna, you know, work itself out. [00:11:00] You know, I can tell you that from a mental health perspective, when change is happening, we get afraid of that change, but sometimes change is really necessary and we need to work through the way that we feel with just the idea of change and then evaluate kind of what’s happening.
You know, it’s funny about the retirement age too. I’ll add Craig on the show long ago, pointed out that retirement is actually a new concept. Okay. The, the, the, the retirement age was sort of arbitrarily set, at least in the States, and I suspect followed around the world at the age that it is now 62 during the New deal.
Do you remember Craig talking
Neil Robinson: about this? No, I think that was before I, I hopped
Chris Gazdik: on, so, okay. Yeah. And, and so during the New Deal was Franklin or Yeah. Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t be te
Neil Robinson: Well, Teddy was a long time ago. I think it would probably be Franklin.
Chris Gazdik: Franklin, [00:12:00] yeah, I think
Neil Robinson: that’s right because more cuz more likely.
Was that kind of tied also to social, social security? All of it
Chris Gazdik: being, yeah, the New Deal involved a lot of things and part of it was social security and the retirement age was set arbitrarily like 62, 63, wherever it is. And I think it’s stayed the same since probably, well, do you know the, the expected life expectancy at
Neil Robinson: the time?
Like 65 probably or 70, like it was relatively, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t sixties. Wow. I guess, yeah, I guess back then, whenever that was, that makes sense.
Chris Gazdik: In the thirties or so, in the twenties or thirties, whenever that was all out, it was low. So you were, your life expectancy was like before the age of retirement, and so it just grew into like this thing that now as our life expectancies have grown and grown and grown, that age hasn’t changed.
And so if you look at the history of how that was developed and how that is, systems need to kind of change with life expectancy. And dare I make a stand or say that it’s reasonable to consider raising the retirement age. Craig’s [00:13:00] notion of retirement is such that, why would you re not, I shouldn’t say that.
Craig found information where somebody was talking about the notion, why would you retire when you have so much productivity left in your body, in your mind, if you have something to offer. Why would you
Neil Robinson: retire? Yeah, so, so looking at it, just so you know, it was around 1939 ish when it happened and the expectancy in the thirties was basically 58 for men and 62 for women.
Yeah. So it goes back to your statement, well, retirement age of 65, how many people were really around. And also the idea that social security was a supplement. It wasn’t something that a lot of people weren’t supposed to rely on course. And so now with, like you said, life is expectancy changing, this has been around for us.
So now people start expecting it. The whole idea needs to be shifted. And like you said there, it’s some arbitrary number that was created a long time ago by the government that technically looking at the numbers, they really weren’t gonna have to give out a lot of social security. Not at all. So, yeah, sounds like a
Chris Gazdik: great deal all now it’s a [00:14:00] free
Neil Robinson: for all.
Exactly. So yeah. But yeah, that’s it. That’s kind of an interesting thing. The other thing about technology that I thought was interesting, not only do you get news faster, but think about the organizers, the protests, you think about what it used to be like to protest. You had to hand up the flyers, you had to try to help.
Now it’s like something happens and you got that. And, and the thing is with, with people’s hide, men herd mentalities and that kind of stuff. Like as soon as it happens, the emotions kick in. Everyone wants to act now. And so now you have these protests faster and there’s a lot more, I think, aggressive too.
Aggression to it cuz there’s more raw feelings. Absolutely. So these protests
Chris Gazdik: are now even more, you haven’t even had a day or two to, to process what’s happened, to contain what it is that you’re feeling to become more objective about the issue. Yeah, it’s just. Now.
Neil Robinson: Right. Which goes back to the issue of news and impulse and now how do you
Chris Gazdik: Human impulsive behavior.
Exactly. Huge mental health issue. Yes. Good one, [00:15:00] Adam. Let’s see. Episode, let’s get into our reviews. So show number one was episode 2 24, which was on the heel of 2 23, where we just got completely inundated with thoughts about what is addiction. So this, this was the actual show that we intended to do in the first place.
Right? And this is cool the month in reviews too, because Neil gets to come out. Onto the mics, behind the curtain in front and speak your mind as you were listening to the show and hearing all these things. And I know this particular issue when we recorded last month’s review with addiction was, was quite interesting to you.
So I, I’m curious, you had a lot of thoughts about it, just what your thoughts were or are about the estrangements in relationships that when an addicted individual gets into recovery has to go back and kind of reestablish or, you know work through into a rea connection with these [00:16:00] relationships that are lost.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, I, it was actually a very interesting topic because.
Chris Gazdik: Ooh. Ooh. The three questions too, by the way, real quick. Yes. Do, do you have a clear understanding of what addiction is and what does
recovery mean to you? And what do we mean by addiction being a family disease? So, we’ll, you know, kick through that.
Neil Robinson: Well, one, I hope that we have a clear understanding after spending a whole episode. And I think we probably, I don’t think we do. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was confused after that one. Still trying to figure that out. The difference between the addiction. A lot of people are, yeah, it’s, I was even talking to my wife about it too, and she’s like, wait, what do you mean?
And then I started explaining like the things you talked about. I’m like, she’s like, oh, that makes more sense. She had an uncle who would always have a couple beers every night with a couple, like with his cup milk, and that doesn’t make him an alcoholic with his cup of milk. He would have milk too. It was weird.
He would have two beers and then like his two beers and then a milk. Her aunt would. Bringing his stuff when he got home from work and it was like a couple beers and a cup of milk and his dinner, it was like milk and Kahlua,
Chris Gazdik: no milk. And ru it [00:17:00] would just be
Neil Robinson: like, you would have a cup of milk and you’d have a couple beers and that was just what he would use.
Like, I don’t know the whole, but it goes back to the idea of what is addiction and what that changes and what that really means, the extent of it. So that, that was an interest conversation that I had with my wife. Nice. Because I’m like, just because he had this every night doesn’t mean he was an addict because there’s more to it and we explain the difference.
And I was like, oh, it’s that control, that loss of control. There were so many things. My eyes open when we talked about it, but I think a couple things that stood out from the show was one, the idea of when you look at actual addiction, the idea of always being in, in a consistent state of recovery versus recovered
Chris Gazdik: is recovering or
Neil Robinson: recovered, right.
I think that was a huge thing because when we talk about addiction and the fact that it’s that loss of control, you have to resort yourself to knowing that. It’s, I can’t, I can’t do this if I want to go with that controlled route. If I want to do like, oh, I can,
actually a re [00:18:00] recovering alcoholic because there’s something genetically that’s putting you at a disadvantage to being able to control it.
And so I think that’s a very important thing. When you actually have an addictive personality, you actually have that. I think that’s a good indicator to understand which leads to your family, because having them understand
Chris Gazdik: that, well, before we go to family, did, did we, did we talk about severity levels with addiction?
Actually, I don’t think we did elaborate.
Neil Robinson: What do you mean?
Chris Gazdik: Because this goes with the idea of recovered and recovering and what is addiction. And somebody recently said something that got my brain, which ha has happened through throughout my career. You know, you hear different things and you think and see these things differently and it, it sort of moves around until we get science that kind of really nails things down a little bit more for us.
So this is cool and this is new in my thinking, so follow me for a second before we go to the family thoughts that you had. So if we have genetic [00:19:00] predispositions that set us up for the susceptibility of not having control over our relationship with alcohol or said drug, As defined by best way I’ve come up with is predictability, control and predictability.
High predictability you have control. Low predictability. What happens when you use not as control? So if we have that biological reality, as with a lot of other realities with cardiac genetic dispositions or you know, colon troubles or a, any, and the number of issues we have, biologically diabetes, it sets up a severity level too.
Like people that have a genetic susceptibility with addiction also might be sort of geared biologically to have a really strong one, which is quick progression and really significantly [00:20:00] harder addiction issues than more on the mild side. So is it so that the, the severity levels. Or how things progress is different and guided in some way biologically.
And I would think,
Neil Robinson: yeah, I would. I would think so too, because it just goes back to, you talked about it before with someone who drinks, there’s a, they have a
build up, a tolerance, and they might slowly af after a couple weeks. They might add another beer at night or they might, but it’s a slow progression where an alcoholic would basically be like 1, 2, 3, 4, like you extend a lot faster.
That severity, once you trigger that, whatever that is, that makes you feel good once you take that first hit or you take that first. Have that first drink or you have that first whatever, that’s where you have that severity of it begins to grab you, it goes from zero to 60 a lot faster. You’re, you’re a, you’re a sports car as opposed to a, like a vw
Chris Gazdik: and we see that, man.
I mean, there’s some people, they’re drinking careers. I mean, they’ve been drinking for [00:21:00] 15, 20, 30 years before they end up getting to some of the significant signs and symptoms that have been there all along, but it’s screamingly loud at that point in their life. Like not many people would deny they have a drinking problem at that point.
Mm-hmm. But they’ve been doing that for that long. But some people are hitting that when they’re drinking careers only five years long or three or less. Right. And, and, and that’s
Neil Robinson: crazy. Well, here, do you think part of that is not genetics, but also maybe their life where basically maybe there’s always, maybe there’s certain issues where like combo.
As things happen, they have the availability to dive into it faster, more versus having a busier life. And they don’t, it’s harder to dive into it because they have a significant other that watches them. They have a busier life. They have, like, there’s certain things on the outside that maybe is keeping them from it and you don’t realize it till they, they quit their job, they change their job, their spouse.
Like there’s these things that kind
Chris Gazdik: of unlock. There is, but there isn’t. There’s social and emotional [00:22:00] realities mm-hmm. That are a part of the mix. That’s why this stuff is, you know, pretty complex. Yeah. But when we’re really just narrowing it down to the biological part, that stuff doesn’t matter as much.
It really doesn’t. If it, if it’s that
Neil Robinson: bad, no matter what the scenario is, they’ll, it doesn’t matter. They’ll go for it no matter what. Because there are
Chris Gazdik: completely balanced people or family systems that have. A raging alcoholic or drug addict that’s in the mists. Mm-hmm. Their social and emotional life has been support and encouragement.
You know, we don’t have any trauma. There’s not domestic violence. There’s not really much going on. But yet your relationship with weed just took off. Yeah. Or pills took off. Right. And because you finally got that first, whatever your brain’s euphoric system got kicks
Neil Robinson: in and you, you, you felt good. Yeah.
And you just go from there.
Chris Gazdik: Yep. Hell of a ride. So they’ll go back to the family thing. I I, I kind of cut you off a little bit there. [00:23:00] You remember where you were. So, so
Neil Robinson: the, the thought process on the recovery versus recovery is the idea that when you’re dealing with family and friends, they also have to understand that, that this isn’t something that you, you finish and you move on.
That it is a continual process that they have to be aware of. So just, you know, part of that is, That added strainer that added, that added thing over, overhanging them. If they don’t take care of it, like this is a continual process. This isn’t a, he’s fixed or she’s fixed and you move on, it’s the reality that there’s a continual risk of diving back into it.
There’s the continual risk of getting hooked back into it. And I can see that causing a strain in the, unless you have clear expectations or clear, you know, this is what it means going forward. Because there is the constant like. I can’t do the normal things because I know I now have these limitations.
So I can see that as a kind of an odd strain too on the family because you kind of add that, have that kind of hanging over your head until you kind of go to your next step of get the non [00:24:00] addicts getting their treatment and learning how to recover themselves with dealing with the past
Chris Gazdik: situation. Ooh.
Getting the non-addicts their treatment as well. Yeah. Before we go there, I wanted to kind of do, part of what’s cool on these review shows is I, I get to cover a little more content that we didn’t get to get to or wasn’t able to do and,
and with this issue John, if you remember, he wants to go back and deal with the family dynamics again cuz we didn’t get to talk at all about.
The traditional substance abuse family characters that play out. And I, I, I was cool because John and I come from a similar background in that information being steeped into us. It’s not thought a lot about nowadays much honestly at all, but I wanted to take this opportunity to do this. It’s so, so follow me, Neil.
It’s, it’s crazy right? When, when you have an alcoholic, dysfunctional family system, it operates in much of the same ways from family unit to [00:25:00] family unit. A family unit, it’s almost scary and creepy. Sort of like when I describe abandonment and engulfment in, in marriage cycles, people feel like, oh my God, are you in my house?
Like, how do you know this? And I’m like, no, I’m really not. We just know the patterns that get created with human behavior. Well among much of anything else, anything really else that I’ve come across in, you know, our field of mental health and substance abuse until eft, the abandonment marriage cycles. I haven’t really found things that are this clear and this precise as these characters that play out in substance abuse families sound interesting.
Very much so. This is when Adam would like crack some sort of joke or something, wouldn’t he? Maybe he’d be like, family dynamics. Well that reminds me when we had a dynamo out there and sorry that was a very poor attempted Adam, wasn’t it? That was, that’s okay. That was, that was pathetically shameful.
It’s all right. It’s okay. [00:26:00] So, so, so you have the addict, right? And we’ve talked about co-dependence on the show before, right? Mm-hmm. Well, the addict and the co-dependent person link up like, just beautifully. It, it’s, it fits like a glove, a codependent person who’s looking for someone to take care of, to make themselves better.
Remember I am what the other person is. The other person is, well, I am well, the other person is not well then I am not well. So I’m trying to make you well, so that ultimately I’ll be, well that’s the line of sort of emotional experience. A codependent person goes through. Well, an addict is gonna eat
Neil Robinson: that up.
Right. Cuz the addict’s gonna be taken care of by the codependent it, they’re, they’re gonna be able to do their addiction. They’re gonna do what they want to,
and the codependent person’s gonna be picking up the slack, trying to make them feel better. Right. And
Chris Gazdik: yeah. Now you’ve got the first born child.
The first born child is actually referred to as a family hero. And it literally [00:27:00] kind of goes in this order. Nothing’s ever this black and white. But a family hero has all kinds of emotional stuff. They’re observing internally, going through and seeing their family operate the way they do dysfunctionally and whatnot.
And they go out and they become wildly successful. They’re the valedictorian, they’re the Allstar sports, the overachiever. They are the overachiever. And I can say this publicly because I know that he shared and he wouldn’t care. Do you remember our buddy Tom Duda? Mm-hmm. Right? Yep. He is the ceo. Amazing man in, in Canada.
We hear this. Tom. I love you buddy. We miss you. I need to give you a call. We need to chat just to. Catch up, but he, he shared that about him. He was a CEO at like, what? Like, I’m making it up, but it was like 28 or something. Do you remember? I remember young.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. I don’t remember how old he was,
Chris Gazdik: but stupid young.
Yeah. High achiever. The family. He were the next is the family scapegoat, the second born child. And that’s because they have their own internal feelings and whatnot, and they see the dysfunctional stuff that’s going on [00:28:00] and they’re pissed off and they, they draw attention away from the addicted individual and loudly become the focus of all the problems.
I am the scapegoat. I am the loud, I am always in trouble, blah, blah, blah. The hero, by the way, takes the attention from the addiction issues away and puts it onto the lofty goals and high achieving. Third comes the oh yeah, of course. I have to think there for a second. Third born child tends to become into the mascot is what they’re called.
They see the family hero, they see the scapegoat, they see the emotional dynamics of what’s going on. They have all sorts of feelings about this internally, and they just bring humor. They can’t, they don’t take anything seriously and they just run with laughing and goofy and they’re the goofy, goofy clown kid.
Right. And then the last one actually is called the the lost child, because the youngest tends to just get lost. In [00:29:00] their own little world, their own little space, they just shut down, withdraw, and they have their own little corner. So I just wanted to lay those out there as a cool piece that we didn’t get to talk about with Family Dynamics, and I’m sure we’ll do a full show on that stuff.
We actually have in our Annals of episodes, so, so if
Neil Robinson: there’s only one or two kids, does, does the mascot and the Lost Child become like, merged in with the other two? Or is it just one of those things where you just have overachiever, underachiever and
Chris Gazdik: that’s it? Yeah, kind of. That’s it. And, and it, it also moves around a little bit I think in these roles.
Like I said, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that right birth order, but you, you’ll find, for instance, in family Dynamics, there really generally is for sure somewhere, usually a high achiever. It’s, it’s the person that just they go do, do you think
Neil Robinson: personality dictates the role they play in some, probably in some, like, I know you have the birth order, but I can definitely see where sometimes it’s a personality thing, you [00:30:00] know, if, if the first personality has a kind of a laid back kind of joking personality or an abandonment, they might be more, will, you know, might be more wanting to make jokes as opposed to being an overachiever.
Chris Gazdik: I’m just making a joke. Kind of, but not really. In our dysfunctional family as a child, I was actually the family hero and my brother, the older one turned into like the mascot slash
Neil Robinson: scapegoat, right? And so that goes back to personality. There’s a role that has to be played to kind of, for the, that the children are trying to fulfill in this dysfunctional alcoholic environment.
And based on the personality, you’re gonna fall into one of these four categories. Oh, yeah. Depending how, how you, your nature is, And then the role you need to fit, basically
Chris Gazdik: think so now you’re onto it. And, and by the way, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really maladaptive in a lot of ways. I mean, with the struggles and challenges that I had growing up, being the high achiever.
I mean, you know, it sucks. You know, you’re afraid of failure. You afraid of disappointing people and get the heavy people pleasing thing. Come on. I mean, I had [00:31:00] to unwind a lot of that stuff as, as I matured and grew and hopefully I did a little bit of a job. I could see that in your personality.
Neil Robinson: Oh yeah.
You’re, you’re you’re very aware of situations and I could see you being an overachiever. Oh. Like wanting to please a lot of people. Oh. So yeah. It’s just, just a difference in how you are. So, ah-huh. It’s
Chris Gazdik: had some good results.
Neil Robinson: It, it has done some, but it, but it makes sense. I could see how your personality le left you as the overachiever.
Yeah. Like I can easily
Chris Gazdik: see that. Yeah. So let’s move a little bit to, boy, we’ve covered this in a long time, haven’t we? Addiction is such an interesting issue though, because so many people talk about it and don’t. I think miss it nowadays in the clinical culture that we have with alcohol use disorder, which is so stupidly named.
I will say that it is so stupidly
Neil Robinson: named. I, I feel like there’s a lot of things that. I feel like the medical field or society is trying to sugarcoat, even though something shouldn’t be sugar coated. I get my wife [00:32:00] and I’m talking about, I don’t remember what we’re talking about, but they’re like, why would you call it that?
Like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not a good thing. Why would you try to make it seem okay? Or why would you make it less water it down? Less painful than it probably is. And I remember what we’re talking about, bro. I’m not, so I’m not gonna say what we talk about. But yeah, it’s like why would you try to make it less than what it is?
It’s a serious situation. Why would you try to make it like, yeah, because to me, in my head I’m like,
Chris Gazdik: alcoholism is alcoholism
Neil Robinson: right. To me, it’s like, if it’s a problem, call it what it is. If a duck is
Chris Gazdik: a addiction, Exactly. And so it’s not a use disorder.
Neil Robinson: And, and to me in my head, like the more harsh it is, hopefully the more it’s gonna basically help you realize it and move on.
But every personality’s different. So Indeed. But seeing the kid, going back to your, the last question, family disease, each kid is affected by the disease. And so that’s why, that’s why I could see where the term family disease, because even though one person’s an alcoholic, it dictates massive impact. Yeah.
It’s huge. So, but yeah, going back to the, the last thing we talked about [00:33:00] is, you know, it is important when you’re part of, when you’re in a family that’s dealing with someone who’s an alcoholic, they have to address their own problems. They have to go back to that, that non-ad needs treatment. You’re
Chris Gazdik: segueing for
Neil Robinson: us, right.
So we can close to the next one. But yeah, I think, and I think that’s, that’s something that maybe people don’t really think about that. Yeah. While they do not, while the one person, while the one parent, or. The one person was the alcoholic. There is ramifications that you have to address it yourself so you can have a productive life going forward.
When you meet your significant other, your spouse, you’re not having baggage or things that’s causing problems. When you go to work, you’re not having issues. If, if you want to actually have a relationship with a repair relationship with the alcoholic parent, you know you have to repair yourself, cuz there’ll be resentment, there’ll be avoidance, there’ll be all sorts of stuff if you don’t deal with it.
If you want a. Relationship to basically blossom
Chris Gazdik: from that. I just had a conversation today, and I’m not gonna say realizing because I, I think [00:34:00] they’ve realized it a while ago, but realizing more and more the depths upon which this, this person has been ruled by addiction, being all around them in their life from a child to now, you know,
in midlife and the reality of somebody being in rehab, you know, your wife or husband, you, you really have a challenge.
Because everyone comes around and they’re like, oh, how’s your spouse? Is your spouse doing okay? Are they, are they recovering? Are they doing good? Are they doing good? How’s your spouse? How’s your spouse? How’s your spouse? You know, meanwhile it’s like, what about me, Brett? Like you do realize, I’ve been living with now realizing an alcoholic for 20 years, right?
Yeah. And the impacts on my life and my emotions and my need for recovery, if they’re aware of that, and this person is and has [00:35:00] been, but the depths of the need to be aware of your own impact and emotion goes into that like Britain’s childhood since before he even got married. Yep. You know, and, and if you don’t do that recovery, ma’am, who’s married to an alcoholic, or sir who’s married to an alcoholic or drug addict, then you’re really missing the boat because this is.
Equally about your emotional journey than it is the person who goes off into wonderful treatment programs against recovery and treatment. And you’re left here like absolutely needing to do your own work. The bystander
Neil Robinson: has to take care of themselves just as much as the the person who’s doing it. It is.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely something we’ve figured out now for the last 30, 40 years prior, we didn’t even realize it ourselves in the
Neil Robinson: field. Like Mo, I feel like, just like those statements, I feel like the focus was always on the person, the alcoholics themselves, not understanding the ramifications of the people around it.
So I’m gonna move
Chris Gazdik: on to [00:36:00] the next show to review just because of time and, but we, where did we land is on the ideas of, you know, what do you do to reestablish those relationships? So check out 2 24 and I think that you’ll get, you know, more on that then. But, oh, Adam, where are you to make womanizing jokes?
Episode, I don’t know if he would make jokes, if he would be that brave about womanizing. You think he’d crack jokes or be all silly about womanizing? I’d make
Neil Robinson: fun of him being the single guy.
Chris Gazdik: Ooh. He is. I don’t know that we can call him single anymore. Yeah, I know that now.
Neil Robinson: But it’s still one of those things that, you know, he’s definitely, you know, closer to that than, than
Chris Gazdik: you and I are.
He’s definitely closer to that than you and I are. Yeah. But he sat on the show. He’s a taken man. I remember that. I bought, I know he is. Yeah. That was, that was shocking when he was like, oh yeah, I’m taken. I’m like, what did he just say? All right. Anyway, we do digress. Episode 2 25 was, what is womanizing with the [00:37:00] three questions?
How do we define this in modern day? Why has the term mansplaining come out so much for us? And is this traumatic experience unidentified? What, what did you take from the, the show on womanizing Neil? How did that bring through in your brain as we, as we went along?
Neil Robinson: I would think that. When you look at the actual term womanizing, I feel like there’s certain things that are either, I feel like there’s a twist in civil in society where womanizing has become more white.
They, they’re using that term more than they should for women. Did
Chris Gazdik: that come out now that, that John and was really good about that? Yeah. And I know
Neil Robinson: Victoria talked about some stuff too that I was kinda like, like there’s this weird dynamic going on in society where like, if a guy doesn’t commit, he’s a womanizer.
But yet, wait, no, that’s not really what, like, there’s, there’s some stuff in the, in the idea of in society what an actual womanizer is. When you break it down and you look [00:38:00] at the, the really what it means to be a womanizer, like just like what it really means to be an alcoholic. There’s some chronic, there’s per, there’s some stuff going on that’s, that’s more, that’s deeper than just some guy who basically just doesn’t want to marry his girl.
Right.
Chris Gazdik: You know, there’s a commitment fo or
Neil Robinson: something. Right. So, so I, that was one thing I kind of took away from it, that it’s kinda like, okay, well really what does it mean is like, so this was an eye-opener when you think about what it means. And so There’s a deeper meaning to a womanizer. There’s more to it than what society fix it is.
John
Chris Gazdik: added a really important piece to it, but first I’m gonna go with the this is the first time we used chat, g p t definition. You remember how Victoria didn’t even know what chat G p T was?
Neil Robinson: That was funny. But she’s also a therapist, not a, not a technology person, so she’s a millennial. Like, what the heck?
She’s not a techie millennial. That there’s a difference between like someone who just uses Facebook and Instagram and someone who actually really dives into technology. Like there’s a difference. Listen, she got on our
Chris Gazdik: networks and made the printer work. I [00:39:00] didn’t even have to call our tech guy. Still
Neil Robinson: still different.
There’s a difference.
Chris Gazdik: And the way that I’m not letting her go, I’m not letting her hear. Plus she
Neil Robinson: also has a one year old and like she has enough stuff. Support about, yes. Okay. Like chat g BT is so far down on her radar, like with everything else, she’s, she’s learning and growing and doing, being a newer therapist that I
Chris Gazdik: can accept.
So that I can accept. But we used chat G P T, which if you don’t know what it is, it’s a new, new internet thing. I’m not even going into it. We did give a nice description of that. But, but it’s a artificial intelligence. Sort of artificial intelligence tool that takes all of the Internet’s information and interacts with you directly to ask questions and get into dialogue and, and it does a lot of amazing things.
It’s gonna be amazing for the human race, all told honestly, but this definition came up for what is womanizing chat, GT’s definition, A behavior that involves a pursuit and objectification of women for the purpose of sexual conquests [00:40:00] or gratification, often without regard for their feelings or wellbeing.
It could take many forms including persistent, flirting, casual sex, and engaging in multiple simultaneous romantic relationships. John really added a very important and, and interesting, well powerful component. That needs to be put into our understanding of womanizing, and that is compulsivity, right?
There’s a compulsive side to this. There’s a, there’s a, a bunch of emotional realities that someone that’s caught into womanizing that, that, that is not managing really well and it’s spinning off into really inappropriate boundaries and conquests of the prospective partner. And, you know, this type of a, of, of a thing like Bill Clinton with many, many sexual affairs [00:41:00] allegedly or so, you know, president Trump with many, many, allegedly as Perso affairs is one that’s in the courts now, like literally today, right?
And, and we talked about John Edwards, these political figures, but there’s Epstein and all these different high profile button. Day-to-day people as well that are really engaged in a highly compulsive type of, of behavior with, with sexuality in women, that, that compulsivity is a really important piece.
Makes
Neil Robinson: sense. Well, and that’s why kind of to me, that the reality that woman as someone who is a, a chronic womanizer to me is almost on the same level as someone who’s an addict. Because it’s like you said, that compulsive, it’s a really, that they changed their life to find that woman that’s, that’s like their addiction is those relationships, those conquests, like that’s an interesting term because there’s a level of thrill to it.
So
Chris Gazdik: remember, remember when we were kicking that around, like, is that still a [00:42:00] term? What’s the new clinical terms? And we were working that out in real time through our experience, particularly John and I I think when the term womanizing was. More readily used and whatnot, or came out we didn’t really even know about sex addiction.
Mm-hmm. We really didn’t even know it was a thing. Yeah. And now we do. And so the compulsive nature of your behavior with womanizing, I suspect has
a very big connection with the compulsive behavior. That is sex addiction. Well,
Neil Robinson: I mean, even think about, okay, so here’s something that maybe is a far stretch, but part of the thing we like looking at the behavior of a womanizer, it’s also there’s the thrill of the hunt.
And we talked about online gaming addiction. You talked about the PVP aspect of it, where you’re playing against another player and that dopamine hit from you doing that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean that, I mean, it kind of correlates a lot of those behavior addictions you were talking about those, whatever you call those [00:43:00] processions, thank you.
Process addictions. It’s very similar. You have the pvp like woman. I tried to find someone, find that woman, get that woman before someone else does. There’s a plus. Then you have this, the, yeah, exactly. Oh, well then you have the, the conquest, the actual, you know, actually doing the deed. And then on top of that, it’s like once that’s done, the throws over.
Now you gotta find the next one. Yeah. And then the next one. And then you’re just constantly going one after another where you, the, now you’re adding more
Chris Gazdik: and that’s likely sex addiction. I mean, you’re, you’re like describing sexual addictions. Exactly. Which is womanizing, you know? And, and also I, I, I really don’t wanna lose this highlight.
I know we’re, God, I’m aware of that time. We need to move to the next review show, but, John and I really connected a lot with the idea that where is the title of and what did we come up with? Womanizing or man, I, I, I think, I don’t know man. I don’t know if this but it, man,
Neil Robinson: it’s almost one of those things where, I think the term for women, because I was thinking about this a minute ago.
I feel [00:44:00] like you have a womanizer who’s a guy who basically do that. And then I feel like with women, it’s almost like, I think the common term I feel like they use is she has daddy issues or something like that. And I don’t, but that’s that whole idea that there’s that idea that, yeah, I see that not having, you know, attachment issues moving from one guy to the next.
Like, and maybe that’s not the correct term, but that’s the closing I could think of outside of someone and how people talk about it. Right? Outside of that, it’s like derogatory terms that you use for women who sleep around shit, you know,
that kind of stuff. And so it’s kind of weird that from a guy’s side, they have some, a term for it that makes it kind of interesting.
Where on women’s side it’s very derogatory. It’s not, yeah. And so it’s one of those, it’s interesting, but it’s the same basic thing. It’s the, it’s attachment issues,
Chris Gazdik: it’s compulsivity we talked about with high level women nowadays. At least cracking, if not breaking the glass ceiling. There are all sorts of executives that are out there, and this is happening, and I went out on a limb and said, I think we’re gonna see this a lot more in the decades to come.
I, yeah. [00:45:00] Where, where men are gonna be silent about it. i e but it, it’s gonna be a, a, a major reversal. I, I think you’re gonna have
Neil Robinson: a lot more women who are gonna be doing this and then you’re gonna have a lot more men talking about them getting, having this done to them. I think there’s both sides of it that the increase of women is gonna inc it’s, that’s gonna happen because like you said, that glass ceilings broke.
So a lot of these women, they’re, they’re changing their roles, they’re changing the way things are done. They’re gonna be in those positions to do it, but then guys are gonna get a point like, You know, who am I chopped
Chris Gazdik: Liver, you know? Well, let’s be clear when this happens to you, it is not, whether you’re a guy or a girl, it is not an okay thing.
And if you know of this, we made a big point on the show. Speak up, speak out. Like it, people can get trapped in this. Women are really, really stuck and feeling alone. And it, it’s a horrible,
Neil Robinson: there’s a lot of guys in relationships like this that they get sucked in by that girl, and then they have that quick [00:46:00] relationship, that quick fling, and then they move on.
Or they’re, you know, enticed to do something they don’t want to do, but, but because of they, their side of their relationship. And of course this doesn’t go into any, anything that where you do force, that’s a whole nother issue in itself. But the reality is, is there’s the narcis John brought up narcissism and those types of things as well.
Oh yeah. So, yeah. I definitely think this is a this is definitely not just one-sided when it comes to woman. It’s just not men going after women. It’s. It’s really
shifting as well as to whether there’s a lot more women doing the exact same thing the other way around. So
Chris Gazdik: again, I don’t think we’re gonna go into the mansplaining thing.
We’ve came up and we kind of, I think did we pretty conclusively agree Victoria, John and I, that that mansplaining is kind of really different.
Neil Robinson: It’s nothing like it mansplaining. It is just, there’s all sorts of stuff with it, but it’s nothing like womanizing. There’s Yeah, different universes we talked about that.
It’s, it’s a completely different level. It’s completely different. Everything. Like, it’s just, but I know that there are, there are some people that see it [00:47:00] as the same thing for various reasons. Like, but it’s not, it’s not, it’s not the
Chris Gazdik: same thing. So it’s very, very different. Definitely a way lower severity scale.
Yeah. So where do we land really it is to say, to deal with re relationship issues in arguably an abusive relationship. How to manage, avoiding, or healing or recovering from womanizing, respecting boundaries, honesty and transparency, dealing with communication issues avoiding objectification, meaning you really kind of respect and value the person as the person is.
And there’s probably a whole lot more about relationship dynamics that we can go into. I do wanna
Neil Robinson: point out Victoria’s quote. Oh. It was the, basically, what was it? Boundaries without consequences is just a heavy suggestion. Yes. I think that’s just like raising kids. If you don’t have consequences to what you tell them to do, it’s just a suggestion and it just doesn’t carry the weight.
And I [00:48:00] thought that was a fantastic quote that Victoria, I know it wasn’t hers. She says she got it from somewhere else. So once again, audience, if you know who said that quote, let us know. Yeah. So we can credit it, credit, credit it correctly. But I thought that was a great thing. It really is true because sometimes for some of these guys and women that do this, if you don’t have clear boundaries, it does.
You just basically get taken advantage of and you have to learn to cut off. If it comes down to it. It’s huge. And we had that show on boundaries. I don’t know what episode was, but if you have issues with boundaries, check out that
episode. Go to our website through a therapist size.com and just search for boundaries
Chris Gazdik: you’ll find.
It’ll definitely come up. Yeah. No, I’m glad you did that. That is, that is fantastically well done. So the other episode 2 26 we did is a great story conflict, makes for a great story, but a lousy life. And it was a show that I had, I should have done literally like a year and a half or two years ago. I intended, I have so many different content pieces and, and I found this one sort of ro roaming around my, my topics list.
It, it was Mr How did I [00:49:00] do wanna show? Yeah. Mr. Daniel appreciate doing therapy with you. It’s such an honor and a privilege and I’m sorry that it took, excuse me this long to get into this. But, but we did better late than never cuz this was his, this was his quote, this was his thought. And I thought it was really, really, A powerful thought to think about how do we incorporate this in life?
So we talked a lot about conflict, right? Why are we so drawn to watch or root for conflict? I e Like why does it make for a good story? And then the second question, what, what pain is triggered with conflict? Making it a lousy life, right? And then we, we spoke pretty well, I think about what good can come from conflict.
I, I don’t know if we. Actually, I don’t know that we did a whole lot of that, but we, we probably could have done more. We, we, we talked
Neil Robinson: about some of the good that comes from our, because you know, I think looking at this, [00:50:00] and when you look at our natural tendencies as as man and stuff like that, conflict is a good thing.
I honestly, to me, I think conflict it’s necessary is a great thing. I think
Chris Gazdik: anytime it came up, John and I kind of agreed with each other and we went on. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Great. And it was like, it was like, yeah, yeah, absolutely right. And then we went on, it was like, so, but here’s an interesting question and I don’t, I wish we would’ve sat down on for a minute.
If we can easily agree that conflict has positive outcomes, for sure, not a lot of conflict there in the discussion, then why do we avoid it so much?
Neil Robinson: Like, why do we avoid exercising. It’s painful during the moment.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Well, dang, dang, damn, Neil. That’s right on
Neil Robinson: point. I mean, how many times growing up or even now when you, like, when you like thinking about growing up when your parents argued and they had that conflict, how did that make you feel?[00:51:00]
I mean, it was, it was, it was terrified. It
Chris Gazdik: was rough, it was horrible. Absolutely. You
Neil Robinson: know, or when your spouse or a coworker or you know, your kids have those conflicts, like it’s, it’s rough. It’s painful at the time, but mm-hmm. What you get out of those. Cause I know there were times my wife and I, we’d get in arguments and fight.
We have our conflicts, but a lot of times that’s when we air our laundry and next, you know, now we know the boundaries. Now we know what’s going on, and now our relationship got stronger because of those conflicts or those types of situations or, you know, conflicts could be other stuff. But that’s, that’s why we avoid it because it’s painful.
Yeah. It hurts. Just like going to the gym and running on the treadmill. It’s painful. It hurts. I, I, I think a
Chris Gazdik: lot you’re, you’re really on, on point. I mean, I, I, I was all geeked up for a good discussion about like something, an angle that we missed, but you’re, you’re, I think, probably right on point and right on target with, you know, the fact that it is painful and then we avoid it.
But, but you know, it’s interesting, I, I guess if we were to try to get in the weeds a little bit with [00:52:00] that, right? Like if we really knew, okay, I’ll go with this a little further. If we really, really understood. That you and me being in conflict about some direction we wanna take with through a therapist’s eyes, right?
I’m the content creator. Neil’s the, the, the director of everything else, basically do it all. Like if we’re really in conflict about something and we really knew the benefits that that could create or the creative new outcomes that would benefit us, if we really had an idea that when you and me are in conflict over something, this is gonna be a great thing, then might we avoid it?
Lesson is that different than exercise? It’s painful, yes. But there’s, people know that exercising helps them and I think there’s much more of a push, like, have you, here you go, [00:53:00] Neil, have you ever heard of a New Year’s resolution? Hey, I’m gonna have more conflicts this year.
Right.
Neil Robinson: I mean that’s, it’s a good point, right? It’s usually I’m gonna try to resolve things or I’m gonna try to not fight with my, it’s the opposite. It’s the, I’m not gonna fight with my spouse, or I’m not gonna fight with my family, or I’m not gonna fight.
Chris Gazdik: So I go back to my original question. I’ve saved myself, right?
If we know it’s such a positive thing, it can have good outcomes. Why do we avoid it so hard? Yeah, it’s painful, but we don’t avoid exercise or other things that we know. Are gonna be helpful for us. Do as
Neil Robinson: hard. Do you think it’s because of the fact, like it’s outside there? The other side of the conflict is outside of your control.
When you exercise, it’s all about you. In a conflict, there’s another person. You can’t control how they’re gonna react, what that’s gonna happen like and then you also have the risk. Okay, so if I [00:54:00] go to the gym and I go to the treadmill, worst case I’m outta commission for a couple hours because I push myself too hard.
If you go and you try to resolve or go through a conflict with someone that you care about, what happens if you ruin that relationship?
Chris Gazdik: Come on Neil. I’m trying to have a longer conversation about a good topic. Why are you just like hitting it right on point and nailing it between the eyes and like the conversation’s over mic drop done.
But I No, it’s perfect. You’re absolutely, I’m sure that’s, I think that’s something
Neil Robinson: has, that has to be addressed. Because I think we talked about chronic avoidance. Yeah. If you take the time, like you said, the benefits far outweigh the avoidance, the benefits of to getting over with far outweigh the the long term avoidance issues, and I think that’s what you, like you said, people would much rather not pull the bandaid off and finally heal.
Versus that momentary pain because maybe they don’t know what the, what’s underneath the bandaid? How bad does it look? What’s going on?
Chris Gazdik: And yeah. No, I think you’re right. The fear and, and, and the [00:55:00] powerlessness of not being in control with the other person when you’re in this state of conflict. And I, and I’m gonna go a step further cuz I don’t really have an answer to my question.
By the way, I wasn’t baiting or anything. I, I don’t, I don’t know. You, you have two of the best answers I think I could have come up with, but there’s a big difference with chronic conflict. We talked a lot about that. Mm-hmm. Through, through the episode. Yeah. That’s, we’re not just talking about a conflict between you and me with through a therapist’s eyes and something you wanna do that I wanna go in a different direction with.
We’re talking about a regular and routine personality clash between Chris Gask and Neil Robinson. Chronically. Mm-hmm. Oh boy. How’s that different?
Neil Robinson: Yeah. Are you still mad at me cuz I forgot the table today.
Chris Gazdik: No, I’m we’re good man. We’re good. He really did though. He forgot the table. We don’t, we don’t have our normal setup, like, ah, but
Neil Robinson: I, you’re correct.
The, the chronic side of it, the, the problems [00:56:00] you run into on that is a completely different, just like compound trauma versus a single trauma, there’s a whole, whole nother ball of wax with that when you deal with that. And, and
Chris Gazdik: I remembers that term, or did you already know that?
Neil Robinson: Well, we’ve talked about before on some other stuff we’re working on, and it’s just, there is a difference in that chronic repeated, because the question is, is the chronic conflict because of it over critical person that just makes your life complicated.
You know, that everything you do, they want to fight about it, you know, for whatever reason it is, you know, and, and when you get tore down so much by that conflict and you’re overly stressed about it, in that case, it’s easier to avoid and just live that life than it is to get constantly bombarded. Over and over again with that
Chris Gazdik: conflict.
You know, it’s interesting. I know this is random. It’s totally taking a tangent, but it’s fun to do that sometimes. I I, I love our conversation tonight, Neil, and, and I think you’re a little, I know you, I’ve gotten to know you well. I think you’re a little more advanced than, you know, just a non-clinical person in [00:57:00] the mental health and substance abuse field with some of the stuff not mentioning.
You’ve been listening to the show and producing it for what now, you know, a year and a half. But I mean, it’s fun to have these conversations with people that are not clinical for me. Right, because cuz I could see where things are on point or when they wera off and how we can kind of add information and like when I was doing the show with, with nonclinical folks, that, that’s fun.
I, I think I, I, I just, I don’t know, I appreciate you having this conversation and these month in reviews are kind of cool because it, it really is you and Adam non-clinical and, and, and the conversation’s just kind of
Neil Robinson: different. Plus, plus I don’t, I don’t those, those, those deep medical terms that no one knows except therapist.
I know when
Chris Gazdik: you get therapy, I think we do a pretty good job on the show. You know, not being dried, clinical, whatever. Well,
Neil Robinson: I think it’s funny when you, when one per one of you guys says something deep and it’s like some symptom and then the other person chime in like, oh, layman’s terms use this. Like, you, you guys do a good job of that.
Chris Gazdik: But I mean, it’s, oh, you should, you should [00:58:00] hear conversations with therapists, just therapist and a therapist sitting there talking about shit. It’s
Neil Robinson: like, I’m sure it’s just like two IT guys talking.
Chris Gazdik: It just it ridiculous. It’s really ridiculous. So this is much better, much, much better. So where did we land with this idea?
Conflict makes a great story about a lousy life. You know, it’s such a big part of therapy a lot of times. It w it, ooh. And it was another interesting question to review. And John talked about it. Interestingly, what was that? When you’re dealing with conf
you’re dealing with conflict, do you see this more as a conflict with yourselves internally, internal
Neil Robinson: versus his?
External? External? And John had a very interesting response to that. Yeah. Because you asked him like, when you have, we’ll set it up
Chris Gazdik: first. Better than what I just did. Right? So basically
Neil Robinson: you asked John, I said, when you look at your patients, do you see most of them? Do you resolve internal conflicts or external conflicts?
Right. [00:59:00] And his take was very interesting cuz he basically said, most of my issues are external because usually there’s a conflict outside that they’re dealing with that then they have to deal with the internal repercussions of that basical. Right. Is what he said. So he, yeah. And then he kind of copped out like it’s 50 50 then.
Then he is like, well it’s 51% external. Yeah. Which makes sense about the struggle people go through in external conflict. Becomes internalized because of the dealing with it. And so I see his point that, and there’s also a lot more variables on the outside that cause Well I
Chris Gazdik: think that he, he joined with me when we lasered in on that a little bit.
It’s, it’s the external conflicts we deal with in therapy a lot more with the presenting problem. Yes. Right. What brings people into therapy. But then when you get into the examination process, which is a scary and intimidating thing, it’s why we go slow people we don’t like just jump into your head or do any weird stuff.
Don’t, don’t
Neil Robinson: start the treadmill on 15 miles an hour. People, [01:00:00] you start at like two or three in
Chris Gazdik: years. Yes. And we build and we kind of get into the internal realities that are a part of that conflict. Yeah. But the presenting problem, my wife’s crazy and I need, I’m fighting with her all the time, so help me, you know, of course it’s more external, so.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, it was cool to talk to Victoria and John about No, Victoria wasn’t here. Just John.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, Victoria was, yeah, we missed her babysitting issues.
Chris Gazdik: That’s exactly
Neil Robinson: what it was. There was a problem in like, I think, I don’t know what it was, but yeah, she had to go home cause of the
Chris Gazdik: kid.
Okay. That’s right. So it was just John and I, I was saying that, I was like, what was Victoria’s cool tool for? She didn’t, she wasn’t there. Resolution. She’s got ’em because we all do. She, she
Neil Robinson: was avoiding it. She wanna deal with conflict.
Chris Gazdik: That sounded like Adam. Anyway let me see, where did we land in so far as like, how do you do conflict resolutions and all?
And, and it was cool because, you know, I, I spent a little bit of time, I’m not gonna have time to do it [01:01:00] now, but you know, the writing activity that I’ll. Prescribed to, and most of the time therapists have these cool things that we’ve come across over the years or through the miles with like activities to kind of engage, you know, with conflict.
But what do you remember, Neil, or think about how we got to more concepts of how to manage conflict? Do you, do you remember much of that or sort? I, I, I guess I’m saying, I wonder if we talked about strategies to work with people on conflict resolution or if we talked about the, the, the emotional things that we try to
Neil Robinson: manage.
No, you, you talked at the end about what you should do to kind of resolve conflicts and, you know, I’m looking at the list now. The one thing that stood out to me is the genuineness you talked about, the more genuine you are Yeah. And trying to resolve it, the more likely you are to succeed with it. And I think that’s, when I look at conflicts and I look at those deep-seated, those deeper conflicts that come in, there’s a layer that you have to pull away.
And sometimes you have to be [01:02:00] genuine. You have to go into this. This resolution with, I really genuinely want to resolve this problem. I genuinely want to repair whatever’s going on. And if you don’t come at it with that mindset, and you’re always come at it with, if you don’t address your own resentment or your own issues,
Ray,
Neil Robinson: that’s the thing.
You’re gonna have a lot of, it’s not gonna get resolved because what’s gonna happen, it’s not gonna be pretty, going back to taking things personally with a family and friends, right? If you have some, if you have a chip on your shoulder through this whole process, you go in that way. As soon as they say something, you, it’s the, the resolution’s gonna dissolve.
It’s not gonna work. You have to come at it where you really care about the relationship and you care about trying to come to a, come to a point where we need to move past us. And I, I love that. And in
Chris Gazdik: order to do that, what I wanted to get into now, and you’re, you’re there, you’re moving us right into the space that I really wanted to get at with where do we, where did we land, right?
Because if. It goes to that [01:03:00] internal external kind of thing. You’re, you’re putting some description on a, a, a, a dogged reality that if you have all of these things going on internally that are really rocky, that’s where you need to make an intervention. When you’re engaged in conflict and you’re feeling okay, you’re not gonna be comfortable.
It can be painful, like you said, Neil, but that pain comes from your own experiences. Maybe with mommy issues or daddy issues or past trauma that you’ve had in troubles, in relationships that you’ve had or insecurities that are going on. Look, you will know by your blood pressure, your heart rate, your breathing, ma, when you, when you start to get heated, when you start to get elevated, you lose objectivity and you lose touch with the ground.
You have got to get grounded. You have got to calm yourself. Down. You’ve got to take a breath. You’ve [01:04:00] got to contain the emotional realities that you’ve got going on internally, inside. And when you’re able to do that, your ability to resolve conflicts goes way high, right?
Neil Robinson: Because if have two people going after each other, it’s just going against it.
It’s like having, yeah. Messy. Yeah. It gets,
Chris Gazdik: it gets nasty. Blood is on the table, and I’ll tell you, I see this in marriage therapy all the time. You come to me in the bottom of the ninth inning, down by four runs, you know, two outs and a three one count, right? Three balls and one strike. For those of you who don’t listen to baseball, And you want me to like save the day as a therapist when your blood pressure, sir, is through the roof.
Your heart rate ma’am is banging like bombs in your chest and you’re sitting there trying to talk about a conversation. It’s not gonna work, right? It’s not, don’t, don’t think I’m gonna be very [01:05:00] successful. As a marriage counselor in that circumstance,
Neil Robinson: it’s, it’s like if you’re trying to build a tower, like you have a sand council, you’re building a sand council, and you’re over here trying to build on the left side, and then your problem, your internal issue is underneath, kind of scooping out the sand.
And so as you’re building yours to make it work, it keeps crumbling. You’re like, why is it you’re trying to fix this? But yet you don’t realize there’s something underneath taking that foundation. So like you said, if you don’t address the internal, it is so perfect. Not only do you have the external conflict that you see, but you have the internal conflict that you’re, that you don’t, that you haven’t addressed, that you might not see.
Right. That you don’t see. And so that’s, that’s why it’s important that. You can control yourself. So you fix, you might that and you not see
Chris Gazdik: it, so you blame the other person.
Neil Robinson: We talk about the implicit biases. Yes, sir. So,
Chris Gazdik: No, that is an awesome metaphor, man. I love that to death. We are so going to use that in Chris Gasks therapy because you’re, when you’re building a castle, you want to get this worked out.
You want to get this set up, you [01:06:00] want to get this organized and arranged with the other person that you’re working with. And you’ve just got all this water coming right underneath, just like the ocean and the waves. Yep. And
it just, and as much as you retack it just melts. Yep. Cuz you’re not dealing with yourself internally.
That was, dude, that was a mic drop right there. Nicely done. Nicely done. The, the, the
Neil Robinson: other part I liked about you brought up as a point is your Your timing of discussions. Oh yeah, I stuck
Chris Gazdik: at that. That’s
Neil Robinson: huge because that, I mean that’s, and, and you, I do that with my, like I tell my kids like if you want something from your mother, you have to be very conscious about when you ask.
And so I think that’s important too, because I feel like you said, if they’re already heated, You’re gonna have a hard time resolving. You gotta find, choose a different time. You have to. And so I think that’s very important. So deal with your internal stuff and when you’re ready to talk to them, make sure that you know it’s a good time.
I mean, sometimes some relationship you [01:07:00] can blow up and you both yell at each other. You finally get it out because you just don’t, people are good, do that. Which is, but sometimes it’s just, just be smart, you know?
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You know what type of relationship that is. That’s an abandonment, abandonment relationship where both people are just like, that
Neil Robinson: sounds horrible.
It is horrible. From, from my side as an involvement. That’s a And
Chris Gazdik: from my side too. Neil, that was terrible. All right, listen, we’re gonna pump out in May, some new episodes, some new shows. Stick with us. Stay with us. I’m glad that you listened to the April month in review. Go ahead Naomi. Yeah. I’m gonna disappear.
So say goodbye now. Bye. So listen, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, now, I don’t know how to wrap us up, man. Just push the button. Here we go. We’ll see you next week. Stay.