Mental Health Mondays – Start your week on the right side of your brain.
When brought up by our own Mr. Pope about the idea of a neurologist who thought that human’s lives were determined for them, we had to dive into this topic further. Pope leads the conversation where we talk about the effects that genetics, experiences, traumas, etc. will dictate the life we are going to have. We push back on the idea of how free will can counter those tendencies. Whichever way you lean, it was a great conversation.
Tune in to see Emotional Freewill Vs Determinism Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
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Episode #251 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Through a Therapist’s Eyes, and I am your, your host on what is the date today, November the 9th? Is that right? 9th, yes. We have Mr. Victoria Pope here with us. Mr. Victoria Pope. Sure, let’s roll with it. Okay.
John-Nelson Pope: Now my wife might have some problems. Okay,
Chris Gazdik: you can still be Mr. John Pope. Yes, yes, right.
Welcome
John-Nelson Pope: guys. You better, you’re my daughter. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Y’all have a good week. Both
John-Nelson Pope: have brown
Chris Gazdik: hair, yeah? Yeah. Y’all have a good week. Yep. Been busy, huh? Have been busy. Loving the weather, I am. I know, I
Victoria Pendergrass: feel like I’m overdressed today because it ended up being too warm for my sweater
Chris Gazdik: today. It’s hot. It got, it got hot in our locale here most lately.
So, this is Through Therapy Sides, where you get insights, personal time in your car and home, but not the delivery of therapy services. [00:01:00] We are going to be talking about free will versus determinism, which is a cool topic, I think. Honestly, generated by none other than the Pope, Mr. John Pope. And on, on first sight, it’s kind of like, well…
This is simple in my brain. I was thinking, because of course we have free will, like we’re human beings, but then I got to thinking more and more and more about it. Yes. Over this week. And so we’re going to actually make you probably wonder a little bit, do you have full free will? So that’s a little teaser.
Got the book coming out next year. Talking about it though, cause I’m getting excited about. Kind of getting into this marriage book. Do you have a date yet? Or like a time frame? No pub date. Yeah, no pub date. Ah, it’d be four or five
months from now. At least so. With the publishers. So by summer? Yeah, by summer.
Late spring. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. liSten, we need you to click the subscribe button. We need you to [00:02:00] give us some star reviews. John gets cranky if it’s not five stars. Can’t be four stars. And, but it really does make a difference for us, so please, write a note on i Apple i, what is it, Apple iTunes?
Apple Podcast? Apple Podcast, Jesus.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s not on
Chris Gazdik: iTunes?
Victoria Pendergrass: No, iTunes
Chris Gazdik: is separate, it’s separate. iTunes is a very different thing, it’s, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really do podcast. Apple Podcast is its own app. And you can write reviews there, it makes a big difference, we need your help.
Victoria Pendergrass: And they don’t have to be long.
No, they can just be short and sweet. They’re great.
Chris Gazdik: Yep, really truly Algorithm Yeah, you could say that it’s a fact that algorithms help us find this stuff also We have our sponsor that is still with us riding with first horizon bank You can go to firsthorizonbank. com. We appreciate them supporting the show.
They are A bank that cares [00:03:00] honestly about financial literacy. We had them talking with us on our show a few, a couple of months ago, and they really take that seriously. They’re there to help you. They want to help you. They want you to be financially literate, knowing the products, interest rates, how they can help you, what they can do.
They like care about your bank banking and financing
John-Nelson Pope: found in a community near
Chris Gazdik: you. Correct. First,
John-Nelson Pope: they’re all about, they’re all about community
Chris Gazdik: first for rising bank. Victoria who? First Horizon, I think. Correct. Although it should be First Horizons, I still, but I do digress. Thank you for that. It’s
John-Nelson Pope: not Lost Horizons, like I said last
Chris Gazdik: week.
Oh, did you? Yeah. I didn’t even pick up on that. And I did the transcribing. Okay, so this is a cool topic John. I, I, I really meant what I said, uh, on the front end that I, I really was kind of thinking like, okay, well. As you saw it with the friendship topic that I did, I [00:04:00] was kind of like, what are we going to do with this free will thing?
Because I’m kind of like… Okay, this neurologist is claiming that we don’t have free will that’s exactly right, and I’m kind of like that’s complete bull Complete bull like I don’t I’m in full Disagree mode. Well, they’re thinking about it this
John-Nelson Pope: week evolution has brought you to the point that you think it’s full Right.
And only by predetermined actions that have happened to you in your past culminating into your present right now and your relationships, are you able to come to the idea that maybe there is no free will. Right.
Chris Gazdik: What he said, Victoria. Are we
Victoria Pendergrass: saying, and we, you might get to this later, so just shoot me off if you do, but are we talking about like every single decision we make in our life from small things to big things?
Are we only focusing on like The big things are we only focusing on the small things. Is it we’re
John-Nelson Pope: gonna focus in fact, [00:05:00] he would argue Somebody that’s a pure determinist like he is like Sapolsky would argue that Everything is determined and has brought you there and it’s not like and there’s no God involved There’s no creation.
It’s just the fact that Everything has brought us to this point and that we can actually our brains fire off with the decision even before. We make the decision consciously and they’ve hooked people up with electrodes and all measurements to show that we’ve already made
Chris Gazdik: the decision.
Neurological measurements to say this happened when instant milliseconds before or yes, milliseconds. Yeah. Super, super short
John-Nelson Pope: time frame, but the decision was made before you even Form it in
Chris Gazdik: your brain before you became conscious of it. You’re right. So that proves nothing though in a sense interestingly, right?
So it’s you’ve already got my brain working. I’m gonna say are
Victoria Pendergrass: we saying that like [00:06:00] It’s our, instead of, I’m confused, like I’m already confusing myself.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I, I actually came to this in terms of, of an experience when I went to a lecture by Frederick Allen Wolfe, who’s a physicist, quantum physicist that talked about actually the, there’s a chemical activity that takes place in the brain, that little gates open.
Right. And that’s even before thoughts are made. And so they’ve known about this for years. That was back in 1990 that I saw heard the lecture.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, but you know, in thinking with my brain on this, John, as you just presented it, I mean, that makes perfect sense because you have to have the, the functional processing in nano, in millisecond nano level.
You know, processing before you have a behavior or a, a, a conscious thought the [00:07:00] supposed subconscious is going to have all of these things in operation before, you know, has to be created somewhere before it comes to our frontal context and we develop thoughts around it or to the modal motor muscle realities in making a movement or a muscle.
Activate, right? So, I mean, they’re, you know, nanoseconds for sure, but I mean, sure, how, how, how could it happen otherwise?
John-Nelson Pope: And, and, and I think that you’re correct about that. And I think that that’s how we work. I mean, that’s, but the idea is, is that when somebody, most people think Joe Blow. Thanks. And there’s no Joe six pack.
There’s nothing wrong with it, but just thinks that, well, this is my own decision. I’ve made this my mind up and I’ve thought about this long and hard. And this is
my original thought. And I’ve thought about it when I can’t, when I came to the aha happened. for me to say something, but the [00:08:00] reality is the decision is made before we even…
Chris Gazdik: Let me give you, let me give a fundamental or a simple example of this that I was thinking about this because again in review, right?
John-Nelson Pope: It’s not, it’s not doesn’t appeal to our prurient interest, does it?
Chris Gazdik: Victoria, what did you just say? It’s a
Victoria Pendergrass: heck of a frown now.
Chris Gazdik: Neil, what did he say? Purient? Purient. He’s frowning.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, in other words, it it doesn’t tickle our, our libidos or anything
Chris Gazdik: like
Victoria Pendergrass: that. Our libido. I’m so used
Chris Gazdik: to that. No, you are not. It tickles our fancy, yes, I think it does tickle our fancy, or peripheral, parapheral, or whatever it is. I love words, man. So, okay, so, here’s, the little journey I’ve done with this is, I thought originally, like, wow, of course we have free will. Like, I’m so prepared to completely disagree with this neurologist.
And what it is when John was telling us about this topic, but then I got more and more curious about, about this [00:09:00] topic because it was like, wow, I, I, what, wait a minute, I can agree with him. This neurologist crazy neurologist guy and here’s something that I thought about that I was gonna tell you guys off mics, but you’re like no we should do this on the air So I’m like, okay.
Well, I look a little silly, but that’s fine because You know how when you’re engaged socially with people you find yourself picking up on their mannerisms or you know You mirror behavior, you mirror some things that you’re drawn to or whatever. Well, I’ve been, this is funny, so if I had free will over this, maybe not.
Maybe I’m mirroring John because I’ve become enamored with your laugh. That one! That one! I love it, it’s awesome. I’m starting to do John’s laugh. Oh my
goodness, right? Yeah, and it’s this, you know, holding back laugh smile That’s some sort of sound. I
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s like i’m a rocker When I stand so [00:10:00] when I rock I sway you move or when I stand I sway back and forth Okay, and like when my mom and I are in conversation with each other and we’re like On, we’re like facing each other.
Yeah, we’re like building up a tidal wave or something like just sway
Chris Gazdik: you in the backyard
Victoria Pendergrass: pool. If you get like three of us together who all rock and then we’ll end up on like, we’ll end up rocking like the same way and it’s almost kind of, I don’t know if you’re watching, you can see my hands, but like we’re almost like.
John-Nelson Pope: I would say that’s 3 billion years of evolution and the fruit of that is rocking back and forth. We will rock you. Rock you. We will rock you. We will rock
Victoria Pendergrass: you. My husband will literally like grab my arm and be like, stop moving. So the unconscious
Chris Gazdik: processes such as priming, framing, heuristics, biases, habits.
They proceed or determine for us what we do. So in the simplistic term, you’ve got to think [00:11:00] about the determinism there. Like, are we really choosing, am I choosing to laugh like John? Or is that just something that is a process that’s happening that you can become aware of and change, but this is what we do in
John-Nelson Pope: there.
Go ahead. All right. All right. That’s, that’s good. So in a way, let’s say in terms of therapy, how would that play out? Would be maybe there’s a modeling that takes place. Right. Right. Yeah. And that a person comes to therapy and they choose, they’re able to, to, to do things differently or they’re, they feel affirmed and accepted in therapy.
And so that person who’s never felt affirmed or, or, or appreciated can actually begin to, to heal. It’s a
Chris Gazdik: lot there. Okay. Can we back
Victoria Pendergrass: up a little bit? Yes. Can we? Yeah, we’re jumping on it. No, it’s safe. No, can we define free will and can we define what determinism is? Because I.
John-Nelson Pope: Sure. Why don’t you, why don’t you read that?
[00:12:00] I can read, read
Victoria Pendergrass: the, uh, free will and philosophy, philosophical, philosophical, goodness gracious terms is the ability to act accordingly to one’s own research and preferences or reasons and preferences without being constrained or. by external factors or predetermined by prior causes.
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. This is exactly the opposite of what Zapolsky is, is arguing.
So what is determination, a determinism?
Okay. It’s human behavior is entirely determined by the biological and environmental factors that are beyond our control. Okay, again, we have three billion years of evolution and beginning with the most primitive viruses and cells, okay? Cells probably came before viruses, [00:13:00] but anyway, and which is counterintuitive, but he would argue that there’s nothing about us that makes us unique.
Our consciousness. This is where, I think Chris, you will diverge from, from him, is an artifact of evolution. In other words, it just happened. Yeah. Okay. We are sentient machines aware of themselves. We are. So I
Victoria Pendergrass: rock
John-Nelson Pope: because of. We are meat bags that are engines and machines, right, Sam. Okay. So I don’t, I don’t agree with that.
But the, the book that he made, and he’s at Stanford University, and it’s determined a science of life without free will. And he is a MacArthur genius grant awardee in 1987. So he’s, he’s about my age. Okay, so he’s about Maybe three years, four years philosophy, and he’s a [00:14:00] neurobiologist. He actually has also studied baboons, the primate brain.
So when you rock back and forth, he probably would. I don’t rock that
Victoria Pendergrass: way.
John-Nelson Pope: I rock side to side. Side to side. Okay. Don’t rock the ba
Victoria Pendergrass: baby. That was even before I had a baby too. Okay. Then once I had a baby, it got
Chris Gazdik: worse. Yeah, I think there’s lots of things that go into that, Victoria. And I think, John, it’s funny, man.
Like, one of the things that drives me crazy about the types of philosophic thinking and arguments that are made is the extremism. You know, I love the definition of determinism without the, the, the one word. What was it that you use now? I lost it with, with no exception of others. I mean, you know, exclusive of anything else, any of those permanent kind of words.
And I, and I heard one, do you remember what it was? I don’t see where we read it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s, it’s not that all. Behavior is determined, but when you, when you look at biology and we’ll get into some of the [00:15:00] things that determine or take our free will away to a certain extent, it’s not all, but it is some.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, I think it’s, I think personally it’s significant. I think it’s. What I ultimately will come to the point my point is, is that despite it’s the nevertheless, despite all the deterministic factors in our lives, in other words, we, we have to be as complicated as we are in order to be able to act.
In any meaningful way in, in the world and in our environment. And I think that we, so there’s certain patterns that we do and there’s even instinctual aspects to us. Let’s like it with a baby. For example, they, they know how to swim as soon as you, when they come out of the, if you threw them in the water in a pool, they wouldn’t be able to swim.
Now they forget it.
Chris Gazdik: There is the factor of instinct,
John-Nelson Pope: right? Instinct, yeah. Now there’s, that helps us [00:16:00] survive and so that keeps our autonomic nervous system going so we don’t have to think about breathing. Right, you
Victoria Pendergrass: don’t have to tell yourself to breathe in, breathe out throughout the day.
John-Nelson Pope: But he would go, he would argue even further that all the ideas, he would say that we are privileged where we are us here in this room, for example, we all had to get advanced degrees to get, to get this and that we all came from relatively good backgrounds.
I think we did. I think I came from a privileged background. And he would then say that some people aren’t. And the problem is, is that he’s not, he’s not empathetic with people like that, that don’t have many things. But at the same time, he would say that, that it was determined that we would not. Be where we are today, right?
And I don’t think we have a lot of choice.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, which just seems farcical. You [00:17:00] know,
Victoria Pendergrass: to a large extent. Let me talk about this, I just have a hard time, I keep just imagining, like, big scale things. Like, big scale decisions. And in my head, sorry, I keep imagining, like, if I were to turn and slap John right now, what would that be?
Would that be predetermined or would that be my own free will? Well, I’m going to, give you
Chris Gazdik: an example. Okay, here we go. Give me an
Victoria Pendergrass: example,
Chris Gazdik: John.
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. You think of the cuckold husband whose wife cheated on him. He says, all right, she says this, honey, my will is simply not of my own making. My thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which I am unaware.
And over which I exert no conscious control. I do not have the freedom you think I have. I could not have done otherwise because I am nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck over which I have no control that brought [00:18:00] me to the moment of infidelity.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oops, I just slipped and fell into her bed.
This
Chris Gazdik: is
John-Nelson Pope: right.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I’m going to use that as an excuse next time I screw up, right? So
Victoria Pendergrass: you are, so he would say that my thought of like turning around and slapping you right now is predetermined. Yes. That I did not, that I, but then I’m stopping myself from doing that.
John-Nelson Pope: Then that’s predetermined. You, because you, you have the privilege of growing up.
of a, of a, an industrial industrial, industrious father and mother who, who raised you and that, that the chances that you could get in severe trouble if you slapped an old man. Elder abuse. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Well, but isn’t that. What we’re saying in some of the [00:19:00]
Victoria Pendergrass: determinism, I mean, well, but here’s the
Chris Gazdik: thing, here’s the thing, and I don’t want to keep us on track a little bit with like, how can we apply this in therapy and in our real life and our real emotional experience.
And so the thinking here, you correct me if I’m wrong, John, but to make it real world, you know, All four of us, we were betting men in Victoria Woman. We, we would absolutely Thank you. No, you’re not a Anyway. I was gonna make a joke, let’s go. We would all lay down a thousand dollar bet that she’s not going to slap you with any viciousness in her intent.
And we can say that that is predetermined. And, but, but it’s not, it, it, it, it is, I would maintain her free will. However, that’s, this is where the blending comes out. Her moral code, her teaching, her experience in life has kind of gotten her organized around like, that’s just
John-Nelson Pope: stupid. This is the argument there.
They’re scientists. Neuroscientists would argue that we don’t have free will. But it’s combat and [00:20:0
of art, which would basically say for all intents and purposes, it looks like free will. It smells like free will it walks and it quacks and it looks like free will.
But it’s not free will. It’s all determined because there’s a sense of the consequences that would come if you slapped me, right? I would, I would I’d get, no, I would get a restraining order because my background is such that I would not slap you because I was raised to be a gentle man.
Chris Gazdik: So, meanwhile, I would get up out of the chair and crack her head open so that she doesn’t ever hurt my friend again.
No,
John-Nelson Pope: thank you. Thank you. I let you do the dirty work. All right. Now, I have, I have some, obviously, I have some problems with that. I think that it’s, it’s more than just the, the, the semblance of free will. I think. [00:21:00] We do have the free will, and I think over the little things, we even have free will and agency, but he would argue otherwise.
I
Victoria Pendergrass: think, I think I kind of, if I understand exactly what you’re saying, or at least somewhat what you’re saying, John, it’s almost like if we could give it a different name other than free will. Yeah, like the blending of it because I get what he’s saying about how it it seems like we have free will but then in certain Aspects we technically don’t so with those things of like when it starts to blend with like your okay So it’s
Chris Gazdik: like no, I’m curious.
I should have looked this up. Actually. What was the shows that we did on? Bias, what was it? You know? Intentional or unintentional cognitive bias, you know Yeah, so because we talked about this on the show before yeah, and and we have these these biases [00:22:00] that are a part of our psychology You know, it’s the subconscious learning that we have.
And when I was talking about it with a prior co host, however long ago, Matt shared this awesome story and he literally was realizing that he had these biases in his psychology Then he never even realized that he had when he talked about not liking dogs, connecting that to a dog attack that he had when he was, so you did therapy, right?
We did. It was, we identified it was, it was, it was real time. Very cool. And he never realized it, but that’s not necessarily free will. It’s it’s you make decisions. It’s just psychologically. Let
John-Nelson Pope: me ask you this though. If you have the insight and you have that aha moment, like, I’ve had a religious experience, by the way, he thinks that that’s a mental illness if you’re religious.
So so think
Chris Gazdik: mental illness is a
John-Nelson Pope: religious, it’s like, it’s like OCD religious religiosity reli. [00:23:00] Religiosity
Chris Gazdik: scru. This guy’s crazy, man. Yeah, this dude’s crazy. So. But Sapolsky’s crazy. I’m going to make a bold statement. Mr. Sapolsky, you’re crazy. All right. Sorry. Okay.
John-Nelson Pope: All right. No, he’s not. He’s a guy that grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home where there was a lot of ritual that he grew up in.
And when he was about 14 or 15 years old, he kind of had this revelation that it’s aha. He was laying in bed about two o’clock in the morning and it was said he was even determined. You know, that, that he, he made up his mind that this was all a farce, that there was no God, that this was okay, but, but he He’d spent 50 years developing a very complex, complicated worldview that would factor out some sort of external force or some sort of in other
Chris Gazdik: words, interesting, he wanted to make himself right.
Or, you know, yeah. Go into understanding things from it. Yeah, I mean, he’s brilliant. I [00:24:00] mean, he is so smart. Yeah. Philosophers are, are
Victoria Pendergrass: amazing. Now that he mentions the whole comparison between OCD and religion, I can kind of see it. Yeah. Okay. Sorry if I let my brain just
John-Nelson Pope: wander. So you’re going to flagellate yourself.
Yeah, the flagellants back in the middle ages, they would
Chris Gazdik: basically self
John-Nelson Pope: harming for doing penance during the plagues, for example, that’s so an ecstatic religious experience. There are some similarities. Schizophrenia, for example, is the idea that you’re hearing voices, right? Okay. Or hallucinating auditory.
That’s those are positive. Not positive in a good way, but positive
Chris Gazdik: symptoms of
John-Nelson Pope: that is that you hear the voice. And so that’s a wiring issue in your brain biochemical aspect, which would
Chris Gazdik: be determined for you. You’re experiencing something, [00:25:00]
John-Nelson Pope: but it’s the nevertheless that I think he misses. And the, and by that, I mean that you even, I have known people with schizophrenia who know their have schizophrenia.
They know that they are prone to hear voices. They believe it. They still believe it. And yet they are, they choose to say, okay, this is not reality. And they, they’re able to live fairly reasonable productive lives. John Nash is a good example. Oh, absolutely. A lot
Chris Gazdik: of self control. Thinking of him.
Right.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s the nevertheless. That is control. And so we’re more than the total of our sum. That’s what I think Zipofsky is, is arguing is that we’re nothing more than that, but I think there’s something that is outside and greater than
Chris Gazdik: ourselves. Oh, absolutely. Well, there’s, there’s certainly…
That’s where the religious aspect… [00:26:00] Exactly. comes into it. Yeah, religious. Yeah, which which actually two things Neal’s got on YouTube for us. Thank you Neal for episodes 173 and 174 we did a part one a part two honestly because there was so much to get to and talk about With the idea of implicit bias and so we’ve talked about this idea of you know Are you in control of your?
Will your decisions, behavior and emotions or with implicit bias, how are we affected by other things with our thoughts, thinking patterns and whatnot. So, for instance, you bring up the religion thing, Victoria. Yes. YouTube, we got, we got it out there where, you know, it’s the classic religious debate, right?
Or contradiction that… evidently, because I asked my pastor this cast directly, you know, with the same curiosity. She’s, she’s talking about how in good old Catholic school, we quizzed the priests and, you know, fathers about like, look you know, [00:27:00] if, if, if, if we have free will, how does God already know what’s going to happen?
It’s a classic kind of question. And it’s an unanswerable kind of question. But it, but it’s not in the sense of God operating in God,
John-Nelson Pope: is God, can God make a rock that he can’t lift? How? That was just using an old
Chris Gazdik: joke. Oh no. That’s
John-Nelson Pope: George Carlin who was a famous atheist
Chris Gazdik: comedian. Oh, I love George Carlin.
I love George Carlin. But as, as I’m understanding this, there’s no way to really determine, you know, theologians can, can, can debate this type of, of, you know, like confusion, but you know, you, you have absolutely your will to make decisions. However, it’s like, if you know the beginning and the end of the story and you don’t operate in the same limits of time that we operate on, so believers would believe God can already see the outcome, but it doesn’t mean it’s determined.
It’s a [00:28:00] mind blow if you get into thinking about it. Yeah, so then
Victoria Pendergrass: is it, what comes to mind for me is bullies, right? Hurt people, or the saying like, hurt people hurt people. There’s a glitch in the program. Yeah, so then it’s like, if you have a bully who, is, you know, bullying a kid, being mean to a kid younger than him at school, but the bully has someone older than him.
That’s so then it’s like, is he, is he using free will to choose to like continue like the chain of bullying or is that a predetermined thing in his brain because of his environment that like. You know, it gets sticky, I feel like.
Chris Gazdik: It’s not sticky, it’s cool to think about. There’s a meme that I saw when we were talking about implicit bias, and I love this meme.
Wish we could find it and pull it up, you know, for YouTube viewers. If you can imagine this picture, it was a very powerful [00:29:00] meme for me. And it had everything to do with like, alcoholic, dysfunctional families, and verbal and physical violence. So, you had an old man standing, and he’s just… yelling down at this, this middle aged guy and the middle aged guy is like holding like almost a shield, knelt down, hurt, injured, but dealing with the barrier.
And in front of the middle aged man is presumably a son, a child where he has peace and quiet and, you know, his hand is on his shoulder. But that’s an act of volition. It’s, it’s a, it’s a… It’s an act of volition. Go, go with
John-Nelson Pope: that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. No, go, go with it. No, it’s an act of volition that, that he would choose not to do that.
Whereas I think if you’re deterministic, you would, right. You would, oh… If you did stop [00:30:00] that, it’s not your own volition that does it. It’s an accident and it’s an the script has changed. And so you have to follow the new script, which basically would say, Oh, I’m going to, my son’s not going to be abused.
Okay. I have a problem with that. I think that doesn’t give us any, any agency or, or, or be able to make any choice.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That’s where the philosophy. View of this determinism. I’m not digging. I don’t want to spend a whole lot even more time on because I think it’s just it’s just farcical Because we do have agency as you say we do have in the therapy process a Dynamic experience that we we all experience all the time where people are actively changing family culture They’re actively engaging their
John-Nelson Pope: But Jay Haley did that with family sculpting, right?
Yeah, family sculpt, sure. So in other words, he’d get the family and he’d move them
Chris Gazdik: around. Who did that? That’s Virginia
John-Nelson Pope: Satir. Satir did it after Haley did it. Really? Haley did
Chris Gazdik: it before. [00:31:00] There’s always a smarter person in Victoria that comes before. No,
John-Nelson Pope: no, we, that’s the point. This, this book that he’s talking about, that he’s written in a sense, and he has a lot of good diagrams and, and showing biochemical exchanges.
There’s another book that was written by a by a behavioralist in 1948. It’s called, it’s a novel Walden 2 by B. F. Skinner and yeah, he put his, he put his daughter in a, in a cage. And that’s so crazy, right? That literally true. You could get away with it back then, but to change her behavior, but he, he had, he came up with this utopian world and it was very Kumbaya and there was no crime because people’s behaviors changed and it was in a sense manipulated by the engineers.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like the giver, the movie, the giver.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. What
John-Nelson Pope: is the giver? Yeah, [00:32:00] I think I’ve seen it where they
Victoria Pendergrass: live in a world of like black and white almost. Yeah. Yeah, they all have their job And then there’s and it’s because it’s all it’s all it’s on netflix. It’s all yes
John-Nelson Pope: what you’re describing Is it a girl kind of movie?
No
Chris Gazdik: It’s a book
Victoria Pendergrass: that they made into a movie. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Sorry. I’m sorry. I was Pulling your chain. Okay, so at the midpoint here Let me ask for you to take a break and think for a moment How important it is. If you enjoy the conversation to click the subscribe button to hit the, the reviews on Apple and subscribe and thumbs up on YouTube, those things really help us out.
So we really appreciate you, you doing that. Let’s, let’s, let’s focus in a little bit guys on. Some of the things that I think really apply to what we do in therapy and what we think about that affects, I mean, I think we all agree, you know, we
don’t know that we [00:33:00] need to go much further on, you know, determinism per se, in the philosophical view with that.
We all agree that we see the impacts of what he would say determinism in our therapy room all the
John-Nelson Pope: time. Now, he’s got a point, okay? He brings up the the idea that there was a man that was convicted of killing nine people. Okay. And he was a, he was a serial killer, okay? Or a mass killer. And He talked about when he was eight years old, the boy had was in a car accident, was in a coma for two weeks.
He had substantial brain damage. Where do you suppose? Well. In his temporal lobes. Right. Right. Sure. So he, he had no executive functioning. Right. And so.
Chris Gazdik: Exactly. Yeah. So, and that’s why he
Victoria Pendergrass: killed, that’s why I killed
Chris Gazdik: nine people, nine people. Sociopathy is a thing that people are interested in, fascinated with, and it’s a thing that happens honestly, because you just [00:34:00] don’t feel emotions is the basic, most simple way to understand it.
Right? Right. Or you have brain injuries, brain traumas, real neurological process that you’re not thinking in typical normal ways. Now to get into weeds with it, you actually still feel emotion, I believe. But right, but with sociopathy, sociopaths, true people that are, you know, hurting animals and stuff, their system is all jacked up.
It’s like they’re colorblind. Blue was red, yellow was green. They just. They’re not experiencing the situation correctly,
John-Nelson Pope: correctly from most of our experience. I think sometimes their blood pressure is, is, would be when you were in like a dangerous situation or something like that. It would be normal or the, the, the sense and not always, but with sociopathy,
Chris Gazdik: with sociopathy.
Right. So, I mean, these are, these are not good points to support determinism, but it’s, it’s, you know, his main points against. Quote, unquote against free will.
I want to reframe that and suppose it to say [00:35:00] these things that I want to really highlight are things that we deal with in therapy that affect
John-Nelson Pope: our free will.
Yeah. Now, now let me, let me say this, if this is deterministic. What is the use of therapy CBT, REBT, for example, which he would probably embrace, uh, is it an engineer that would be like, we are mechanics that would
Chris Gazdik: help, right? Right. Let’s go there next. Let’s, let’s go there after this. I want to, I want to, I want to dial down into, you know, these, these main points, because I think that if we understand these main points there, Then we can really get at like, how do we use these things to influence them?
And, and what are, what are we doing? But these main points are really important. And, and, and you have here teaching us that, you know, the first thing is, is really biological and we just mentioned, you know, brain structure and. You know, sociopathy and, and I mentioned brain injury, but what about our genes?
You have written [00:36:00] hormones, neurotransmitters, the development. You know, didn’t,
John-Nelson Pope: didn’t we discuss some of that with I think so.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Victoria, how in control of yourself are you during that time? Dudes have no idea, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Little to none,
Chris Gazdik: right? Do you seriously say little to none?
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean you can’t control a hot flash.
You can’t control, like, the fact that you’re temperamental and that you have, like, that your emotions are off.
Chris Gazdik: Right. And nor can men. You know, when we’re experiencing things for those same reasons or other… Reasons kind of as well
Victoria Pendergrass: and that’s what I think is that where is that when they words are hard today
John-Nelson Pope: Even that it’s been predetermined
Victoria Pendergrass: But is that what we’re saying is the difference between free will and control[00:37:00]
Because okay example if we’re if we’re like earlier John mentioned the example of like cheating Right, right. And so if you’re If the husband or what the partner says, like I couldn’t help it, like, or whatever, like,
Chris Gazdik: you’re still legally responsible. Yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: like control is being able to say no versus like free will, or are we saying that that’s
Chris Gazdik: the same thing?
I think I can help. I think I hear you. Free will is just basically you do make decisions to control your behavior. Is that what you’re saying or wondering about? Yeah, I mean it’s not, you know, not having free will, you’re not even making decisions. It’s already determined. But again, getting into the, go ahead John.
Yeah, sorry.
John-Nelson Pope: No, no. I was, I was thinking. Somebody has a a form of OCD where they have racist thoughts. They think racist thoughts are the worst thoughts in their minds. Oh yeah. And they do [00:38:00] not live that way. They, they act and treat people equally. And so in getting back to your bias, implicit, explicit bias, but, but more in a sense that look at this as a sort of a, a, a medical bio biochemical condition, I think psychotherapy would be very helpful with that person, but to do away with the guilt and the shame and that that person recognizes it.
Not as so much as a real sense of prejudice as, as a sense that they are that’s just like hyper religiosity
Chris Gazdik: happens. You want to get racy with this real quick? Huh. Right. Cause more than hyper religiosity. Sure. But even, even more racy or, or, or, you know, wild, if you will, like more than once in therapy I’ve had OCD.
Is, is the source, I believe, of obsessed thinking, not compulsed behavior. Let me be clear about that for just a moment. Different. Because, because people, [00:39:00] people struggle thinking if you have OCD, you have to have
compulsive acting out behavior, and that’s not the case. I have had more than once people with obsessed thinking patterns because of OCD about sexuality with children.
Interesting. Right? Right? Now, immediately, your brain freaks out, racy wise, like, oh, if you’re thinking about that and you’re obsessed with that, clearly, you must have pedophilia. You must have sexual attraction to children. And that’s, guys, that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a big difference.
Victoria Pendergrass: Between attraction and
Chris Gazdik: thinking.
Pedophilia is pretty rare. It’s not… very common. But O. C. D. With sexuality and kids. I’ve dealt with that multiple times, right? So, so wow. How that affects your thoughts in your process. But you still control your behavior, right? Right. You’re
Victoria Pendergrass: choosing
Chris Gazdik: not [00:40:00] to act on it. You don’t act.
John-Nelson Pope: Now in existentialism therapy, logotherapy, for example, they would talk about choosing your own way that in a way that you, you do have agency, you do have the ability to choose.
And that even if it’s every, it looks like everything is predetermined, the fact is you can do that. It’s going back to the myth of Sisyphus. I don’t know if you’ve read that, the book by Camus, for example,
Chris Gazdik: can make fun of you a little bit. But it’s true. Okay. Yeah. Why would I read about SIUs or Celsius or the myth of Sisyphus and Sicily?
I understand what Sicily is, bro, but dude, , Sisyphus. Oh, . Did you hear the laugh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Go ahead. If you’re, if you’re, go ahead. He. He had,
John-Nelson Pope: he was punished by the gods in Greek mythology for doing something against the gods. [00:41:00] And he was very prideful person and all of that. And so he gets his comeuppance.
And so his punishment is to roll this huge boat, a huge boulder up the hill and he gets to the top. And
Now what the gods want is to break him. Yeah. Okay. And he can’t do it. And so basically what he does is he chooses to drive them nuts by keep doing it and not collapse.
And again and again and again over and over. And he drives the gods who are much greater
Chris Gazdik: mess with him. Yeah. Drives them crazy.
Yeah, it reminds me of Dr. Strange. Oh, yeah Let’s move on here real quick before we go crazy we got i’m aware i’m aware of the time so I think we can understand the biological pieces of this. What about interestingly enough the other main points about our environment That’s a little bit more I think for people to grab onto you got your [00:42:00] biological realities.
They very much affect Our behavior right and you have to become aware of that’s the case. Hey, I’m in my menstrual cycle Now is not the time for me to point out that my husband’s an ass. Okay, great Biological. Mm hmm. What about I just used as an example Victoria’s right now. Are you gonna get angry with me?
No
She’ll slap me, she’ll slap John because then we’ve already determined I would have to hit you and then we’re all in trouble. We’re all going to jail. No. What about the environment, your culture, family relationships, the norms that you get into the cultural societal norms of your, your, your, your locale, your city, your state, your country, the culture, like these environmental things, question mark, actually affect our behavior.
Well, yeah, taboo
John-Nelson Pope: taboos. Yeah, they affect us. [00:43:00]
Chris Gazdik: Can we focus on that for a minute to the non believer who would say, Bull crap, I’m not gonna act like my family. I’m not gonna do marriage like my parents did. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna act like these crazy Americans that say this and do that. Right? Yeah, but I
Victoria Pendergrass: mean, okay, think about how many people come from abusive relationship and jump right into another abusive relationship.
Or they watch their parents. Be abusive towards each other and so then now they are either the abuser in their family or the abused in their Marriage or in their
Chris Gazdik: absolutely fall into
Victoria Pendergrass: it. And so but not those patterns can be broken over time, right? But you’re kind of I hate to use this word, but you’re kind of more predisposed to Being in those relationships based on but what you experienced
John-Nelson Pope: but remember his imagery Of the, of, of the father [00:44:00] in, in the shield with the, that was abuse.
You can break that. That’s
Victoria Pendergrass: what I’m saying. This can be broken, but we’re talking about here is that they can affect like how the behavior is. You. I mean, and that’s just an example
Chris Gazdik: and we have one more with the unconscious processes that that go on there But you know, what’s what’s I just felt an urge right Victoria to piggyback on what you’re saying There this this is what I really believe guys that one of our one of the factors that makes therapy much more have way better outcomes, much more effective is, is, is following a level of facilitating and creating insight for the person that we’re working with.
It almost to me has to start by having insight, Victoria, that my family acted that way and I don’t want to, my biology is affecting [00:45:00] me in this way and I don’t want it to. Yeah, the next one is my subconscious process, you know, is happening. It’s real, my implicit bias that we talked about in one episode 173.
It affects me, but I don’t want it to, so does it have to. You follow what I’m saying? Oh, definitely.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, we, we can, and this is where I come down in terms of therapy is, is to empower. I don’t know if this would be a word in his vocabulary of empowering somebody to, to, to make a choice and to break out of the mode and to, to choose something different for himself or herself.
Yeah, so
Chris Gazdik: are you reading a comment? Yeah, I was trying to sorry. I saw a lot there. I was like, is that something we need to get to? Okay, so so those are
the things we can see that the biology, you know, we can see that the [00:46:00] culture and and what about the the subconscious? Somebody take that like what happens John with the subconscious realities How does that, how does that really affect us, even though we don’t want them to?
Well,
John-Nelson Pope: I, I think that would, Sapolsky would, would argue that. He said that there’s factors that we’re not even aware of, that it, they’re, they’re roiling underneath. The, that external sense of who we are, which is like, if you imagine a pot of water that’s boiling and you, you see before it it begins to boil, you see the, the, the bubbles form and you see the, the, the currents and you can actually see that.
But on top, you don’t see anything at that point. And so
Chris Gazdik: he lied, our duck swimming. Feet under the
John-Nelson Pope: water, right? But he will also might see us as we don’t just have one conscious consciousness. We are [00:47:00] several or multiple consciousness. It’s like the multi
Chris Gazdik: universe. Yeah. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Oh boy. Yeah. And I, I just he says this he says, we don’t change our minds, our minds, which are the end products of all the biological moments that came before are changed by circumstances around us.
And this is, we have no free will at all. This means holding people morally responsible for their actions is wrong. And he would argue… It’s crazy. I know it’s crazy to me. He would argue that we shouldn’t have prisons or penitentiaries. Right.
Chris Gazdik: Because those actions were predetermined? Yeah, no one’s responsible for anything.
Right. Again, this is just farcical and hogwash crazy, but… Please tell me we’re doing a part two. No, we’re, we’re, we’re going to wrap it up, wrap out of this, this stuff with determinism and, and, but here’s, and here’s one way that I want to do this, that I was thinking about John, you know, when you had this topic kind of coming up and all, I, I feel like, you know, when we think of animals, right.
So I’m [00:48:00] going to pose this in a little bit of a question to you and for us to kick around for just a minute, like, so I was listening to a neurologist as well. On a show somewhere, and they make the statement several times over in their art arguments for theism, actually. Mm-Hmm. . If you are curious, John, and what he was saying is that dogs don’t have memory.
Mm-Hmm. . Okay. So I’m curious what we believe about animals and their ability to remember. Mm-Hmm. . Which is, and how, how that works. What’s that? I say
Victoria Pendergrass: that’s.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, because, because that’s, that’s a key component. Whereas we, we know with Pavlov for instance, and I could talk about my dogs, they have routines. I changed the routine up and they know that when I open up a certain door, they go down to go out this way, as opposed to out the dog.
Victoria Pendergrass: But my dog also knows when I [00:49:00] say sit. Or when I do this, is that
Chris Gazdik: because of memory or is that because of pure behavioralism, right? Learned behavior that is programmed in to operate. I’m salivating
John-Nelson Pope: to answer.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Pavlov, I’m sorry. Hit it, man. He’s salivating. No,
John-Nelson Pope: no, you know, the thing is, is that every time you come to the door I come home and the dog hears my car and pull in and he’s happy.
It’s I love my wife to death and she’s always happy to see me most of the time I say always but there are times that she’s not and she doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t matter. My dog always Right. I mean and so he has no sense of past And maybe
Victoria Pendergrass: that’s the
John-Nelson Pope: memory the other is is that Even our memories of what we have are rebuilt many, many times over and over again.
And we lay them down and recount things, and things change. And so that’s why sometimes [00:50:00] eyewitnesses are not the best
Chris Gazdik: witnesses. It’s fascinating, right? Because you get into weeds with this, right? Like, a memory, what, what is our memory ability? I mean, I’m not, I’m not gonna say we don’t have it. So you’re saying that what is We’ve tested it psychologically, but how is our memory really that different?
Because We can, we can do in trauma work, for instance, you tell your story and you have experiences from it. Then you set it down and you tell your story again, and that second time, or the third time, or the fourth time. You re author it. It’s, it’s re authored, John. Yeah. It’s a totally different story.
Reframed and reprocessed in a different way. That is narrative therapy. It’s, yeah, narrative or constructivist therapy, I think. Yeah. Right, like, so, the memory thing is fascinating to me. And I don’t know how that goes into our free will with… Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Did you learn that in… What? About narrative therapy? Yeah.
And, okay. I want to make sure she got that good [00:51:00] education. If she’d gone to Montreat, she would have… You would have gotten it, right?
Chris Gazdik: Oh, she would have gotten it much better at WVU. Huh. West Virginia University. I’m not going to
Victoria Pendergrass: West Virginia for college. Huh. Why would you? Well, I did apply to Monterey and I got in.
But it was in too small of a
Chris Gazdik: town for me. Oh dear. Oh my goodness. Have we just gone completely off the rail? I’m asking about memory! I taught it Monterey. That’s
Victoria Pendergrass: well, I mean, okay, because it’s interesting if you want to continue that conversation What do they say goldfish don’t have like have like no memory, right?
but but the goldfish Who miraculously survived for years in my mom and dad’s pond?
Chris Gazdik: They’re awesome there. I have them myself. But
Victoria Pendergrass: when we you walk up to the edge of the stone They know what’s going to swim to the top because they know that we’re about to dump food right, even though we Only do it once a day right mom.
I’m dad only doing today there so then it’s like Okay Is that to me if you know that their memory doesn’t resets every three seconds [00:52:00] or whatever? then you know, it has to be a learned behavior because Learned behavior isn’t the same thing as memory.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s fascinating. One of the articles I read was about, uh, what is what is ROM, read only memory?
It’s where you play back the tapes over and over again. And that may be What
Chris Gazdik: is oh, R-O-R-R-E-M or r rem, you’re talking about a computer Rom
John-Nelson Pope: Rom, right? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So like a CD rom. So, so in other words, you, you replay the same thing over and over again, and that’s with Catfish or, or, or Goldfish or Koy.
Whatever. But with us, memory is also something that you stand outside of yourself and you can recall. And you can, in a sense be able to be dissociated from the event itself. And I
Chris Gazdik: don’t think And be in the prior event. Right. Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Is that why when we have dreams sometimes of past experiences?[00:53:00]
experiences, we view the dream as a, as a third party observer, like watching down on the event, like watching ourselves and you’re processing, because that’s a memory
John-Nelson Pope: and you can reauthor that lucid dreaming. You could, you
Chris Gazdik: could, I love my job. It is so cool. Yeah, it’s fascinating stuff. And I was thinking about it all week, you know, as we were going through, you know, thinking about what are we, how do we want to deal with this?
And so, you know, yeah, I was thinking about that animals and memory and that neurologist saying animals don’t have memory at none, but they have behavior that’s predictable because we’ve taught them. It’s just, it’s, it’s an
interesting thing. Differential between, or free will or control over emotions versus, and
John-Nelson Pope: then we can get into saying are, is there a ability for artificial intelligence to be there, will there be sentencing sentiments, sentience, sentience, would there [00:54:00] be sentience with artificial intelligence,
Chris Gazdik: which sentience for those that are wondering, or is the ability, if I’m correct, right, the ability to be aware of oneself Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And to pass what used to be the Turing test, but machines are machine learning has already surpassed that. They can fool us many times. And yet that doesn’t mean they have. They’re actually sentient. They really haven’t. Oh, okay. Yeah. They do. They really have memory, right? Which we do. And, and I think Sapolsky gets it wrong.
I think we do. I think he would argue that we are more biologic. Yeah. And that we are, in a sense, everything we do is determined, and in a way we’re just part of the, that matrix or that simulation. I think we’re, there, we’re made of better stuff than that.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah, look, we have, we only have several minutes, five minutes or so to go before [00:55:00] we need to wrap up.
How, I mean, it’s such a meaty topic, John. How do we, how do we summarize this into what we do in cognitive behavioral therapy in the here and now therapy, such as Gestalt or, you know, different things that we’re trying to do or that people just humans out there listening to us can, can, can develop insight about.
John-Nelson Pope: I’m not a big fan of CBT and R E B T. Okay. I’m not. Victoria’s
Chris Gazdik: aghast if you look at her face right now. But
John-Nelson Pope: it’s effective, but you can be Okay, thank you. It is effective. You can be so compassionate and empathetic and that I think that those tools that you get with challenging your beliefs. Right.
Your, your, your stuck points and that. That sort of thing. Cognitive therapy stuff. Cognitive therapy stuff can make a great change. But I believe [00:56:00] it’s the relationship that ah, that the, that the, that makes sense. Therapist has
Oh, absolutely. That gi that can helps that person believe that that’s gonna work and it
Chris Gazdik: does work.
Furthermore, I’m gonna make a bigger, bold statement okay? Okay. In, in agreement with you. And I don’t know, I, I think therapists around might even get upset with me or this and that, but I look. I, I think this is why we have bad therapy a lot of times, John. Mm hmm. And it bothers me because I like to think I’m, I’m passionate about mental health and substance abuse counseling.
And I think what you’re hitting on right there is something that many, many therapists don’t value or even devalue beyond not valuing it enough. You’re, you’re having science that you’re delivering with CBT and we effectively measured all of that. It does. It works. It works so much better if you allow for…[00:57:00]
The relationship to develop and blossom between you and the client. And I think care therapists are afraid of that, John. I literally have somebody in my history refused to shake people’s hand because of the physical touching that it would be, and they were uncomfortable with that. I mean, I was brand new into the field.
I’m glad I thought that was crazy as hell. And ultimately looking back, I still think 25 years later, it’s crazy as hell. Yes. John, because we have to do what works in healing. Arts and that’s relationship. I couldn’t agree more. I’ll jump off the soapbox, but dude like yes, I couldn’t say it any
John-Nelson Pope: better I think it’s that’s great.
But I
Victoria Pendergrass: also think it’s a mixture of my CBT
Chris Gazdik: Well, we all do
John-Nelson Pope: Lotion focus. How can we get you from? 10
Chris Gazdik: in 10 in five sessions five sessions. Yeah
John-Nelson Pope: go.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah
John-Nelson Pope: I think, I [00:58:00] think part of our, our, you know, we have a presence and I think what you offer Victoria, is your genuineness and your skill. Thanks!
Victoria Pendergrass: So, yeah, I tend to be very direct in therapy and very open and honest.
I won’t be, cause I think this is, might be a tangent too, but I think I’ve, and y’all have probably experienced this, but I’ve experienced too many people who are put off to therapy because, In the past, they felt like they couldn’t be honest with their therapist. The relationship piece. Yeah, when they thought their therapist was doing something that didn’t work.
Or judging them. So I have like a teenager that I’m working with right now, and in her previous therapy, they had her like, doing all this stuff, and she told me like, I didn’t think it w worked. And I told her, I said, if I do something that you think is stupid and that you’re like, okay, I tried it and we, you know, you actually tried, like, be honest with me because then I’m not gonna sit here and shove it down your
Chris Gazdik: throat.
Yeah. Well it works both ways to be effective. [00:59:00] Yeah, no, I absolutely, I I’m, I’m
Victoria Pendergrass: gonna get on a tangent too, if I keep going. ,
Chris Gazdik: you’re, you’re on it. And I’m, and I’m gonna give you, for an example, an embarrassing moment. That’s it, it, I really, I’m an international podcast and I’m surprised I’m gonna do this, but what the hell you know.
Because it was a horrible feeling for me. I may have talked about it before but, you know, I really care a lot about getting rapport with somebody when I sit down. Like, that’s to me, like, almost goal number one, and it starts when I… You know, lay eyes on you in the lobby and we’re interacting like that.
I want rapport I I want to have a little laughter some light hearted moments I want to have you know connection on the issues and so the whole first interview in my mind is carefully crafted around around that, that relationship formation, right? Okay. So, and I’ve gotten good at it. You know, I started out working in the substance abuse field, terribly resistance clients.
I mean, they did not want to be hanging out with me. Right. And so it was really challenged to get that rapport, that relationship formation with, [01:00:00] you know, substance abuse clients. And so, you know, that’s where I started and I’ve honed it since then. But so I had this one moment that was just. Horrible for me when I googled myself.
Everyone’s googled themselves, right? Well, I saw this review one day Oh, man, I mean I only have as far as I know like this one bad review that i’ve ever found It’s not that I looked very often, but I actually re looked for a different reason Related to my book and stuff and I saw this thing out there again.
Oh, yes. It was the same review Oh, you can pay to get that removed. No, I’m not going to
Victoria Pendergrass: Also nothing ever truly disappears on the internet
Chris Gazdik: yes, so so what what this what this What this woman said is that I started therapy, it was going well, she gave me like a three star or something, it was going well, you know I think she said another statement, and then she said, but then he laughed at me, I wanted to melt, [01:01:00] I wanted to melt, I read that and I was like, oh my god, this woman felt that I belittled her and laughed at her for an issue that she had, and which is, A hundred percent never my intention and
Victoria Pendergrass: did you recognize the person like when you saw the
Chris Gazdik: no, no, this was who knows when this occurred and this might have been 20 years ago.
I really have no idea. Maybe it was date stamped. I didn’t, I didn’t look at him and I worried about it, but, but what I, what I am worried about and what I have crafted as a part of my relationship formation. Now, when I had this same spiel that I do, I always throw in there and I hope and I, and I do want to laugh.
We, we laugh in therapy and hope that never comes off. You know judgmental or, or in a bad way because it’s never my intention, you know, to, to do that. It’s a touch.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s the, that’s the
Chris Gazdik: art. Yeah. I had the wrong moment, John. I hit it in the wrong way at the wrong moment.
John-Nelson Pope: There’s a pain management doctors, for example.
You’d be hard pressed to find a pain management doctor that has [01:02:00] a higher rating than a 2. 5. Oh
Chris Gazdik: really? Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Geez. Because they don’t give their patients exactly what they want. Right.
Chris Gazdik: They almost kind of can’t. Yeah. All right. It’s about time for us to get out of here. Closing thoughts? Comments? What are y’all thinking?
Victoria Pendergrass: Is your brain hurt? Yeah. It’s all soaking in.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Go
Victoria Pendergrass: ahead. No, I’m not really sure what I’m gonna say. Again, words are hard for me today. Ask any of my clients that I saw today. They… I have struggled all day with the English
Chris Gazdik: language. Well, thanks for handling it with us, Victoria. We appreciate you. John, closing thoughts, comments?
Yeah, I,
John-Nelson Pope: I, I think that that he the author, Sapolsky, is the neural Scientist is, is very intelligent. He, he’s very provocative, but I think ultimately it doesn’t do much to advance the, [01:03:00] the knowledge of, of the fact that, that we do have an ability to choose. And even if it’s, if some things are determined in our lives and despite how bad things are, we can always choose to have hope and
Chris Gazdik: hope empowerment.
Encouragement. These are the things that we really work with you in the therapy experience. And so, I agree, John. I’m glad that you brought this topic. It was really cool and fun to discuss. Like, look, out there, you need to understand in these desperate times all around the world that you really do have agency over your life, as you’ve heard us talk about.
We’ve talked about controlling your emotions. We’ve talked about falling in and out of love, controlling your romantic feelings. We talked about this being an important part of what we do to… To manage ourselves, to help ourselves cope. So I hope this is an encouraging and empowering kind of conversation, though it is a bit heady.
I agree, Victoria. So stay well, [01:04:00] stay tuned with us and be empowered and encouraged in your ability
Victoria Pendergrass: to control your freedom.
Chris Gazdik: Peace out.