This month we started by looking at how you can use your friendships to help with your parenting. We then were led on a discussion by our own Mr. Pope where we did a deep dive on the idea of Emotional Freewill versus Determinism. Then to wrap up the time with the panel we discussed the ever-important topic of why you should talk about emotions or past events, in therapy or otherwise.
What did you think about those shows? Do you agree with the panel and where they landed on each topic?
Tune in to see the November Month in Review Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
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Episode #253 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Through a Therapist’s Eyes episode 253. We have the November month in review. At the end of the month, we do a review of the shows that we covered in November. So we have three shows this week that we’re going to be hitting into. The, the shows were what? Let me see. Episode 250 Use Friendships with Parenting Strategies.
Thought that was a fun conversation with John and Victoria. And then, interestingly, John created a show that we went with where it was Emotional Free Will vs. Determinism. Episode 251. Adam, I’m gonna be interested to hear what you think about it. About that one. I think you’re going to be able to pop off on that one.
So lastly was why talk about emotions or past events in therapy or otherwise episode two 52. So we review these shows, things that we talked about and things that we didn’t get to talk about a lot or enough. And so we invite you to kind of get on the YouTube live and interact with us. If you’re able to do that.
So this is where you get insights usually directly from a panel of therapists in your [00:01:00] time in car or home. Though it’s not to delivery of therapy services in any way we are sitting here on November the 30th, 2023, getting ready to hit the big month of December. This is where you subscribe on YouTube.
You want to do this part, Neil? You’re good at this part. You say I suck at this part. What do they got to do to support the show? Click, respond, advise, review. How do they do that?
Neil Robinson: So depending on what platform you listen on, if you’re on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe, you know, give us likes on our shows and, you know, click the bell.
So it notifies you if you’re listening to on iTunes or Apple podcasts, whatever that is, you want to review five star Spotify, go ahead and follow, you know, the idea is just. Interact with us. We’re on all the social media platforms pretty much. So if you find us, let us know, comment,
Chris Gazdik: interact with us. I got you saying iTunes.
Listen, it’s a big ask. We have a view. If you’re watching the show, you like our content. That is an important way to support us and help us. Get found contact
at through a [00:02:00] therapist eyes. com is an email that you can use after the show. We’ll respond to those This is the human emotional experience, which we do endeavor to figure out together So we have the sponsor as well first horizon bank.
We are happy to have them aboard. They have sponsored to show for an unspecified period of time we’ve enjoyed talking about their neighborhood banking style Their interest in financial literacy. They have all the bank products that you would expect I would suppose. I don’t think they’re lacking anything.
Is that a fair statement? We have one in our town too, don’t we? We have several.
Neil Robinson: We have absolutely. I actually got a little over the place. Now that I’ve talked about, like, they’re one in a acre. Oh, yeah. Oh,
Adam Cloninger: there’s another one. Oh, look, there’s another one. I see them all over the place too. I just saw one of them.
I was
Chris Gazdik: like, Hey, that’s, that’s them. That’s those guys. Yeah, they have a great banking system, guys, and a real neighborly feel when you walk into their branches. So check out First Horizon Bank for all your banking needs. So let’s get into a quick current event. Not really a current event, but, you know, here we sit in the middle.
We’re, we’re November the [00:03:00] 30th you know, getting ready to get into December. Around the world, we celebrate Christmas and various holidays, I guess Hanukkah, it’s, it’s, it’s a holiday season. And it’s only in the States we do Thanksgiving, I guess, is that anywhere else in the world? Never really even thought about that.
An international podcast, we don’t do Thanksgiving around the world, do we? Yeah, probably not. Isn’t that interesting? It’s egocentric of me to think that we did everywhere, but we don’t!
Neil Robinson: We’re giving Thanksgiving’s kind of around Columbus and discovering our country, right? You know, the other countries might be like, good, we got rid of them, but you know, but yeah, I work with some people in Europe and they’re like, yeah, we’re working.
There’s no holiday. Yeah, there’s no
Chris Gazdik: holiday. Absolutely. Yeah. Why, why would you answer your phone, Neil? I need you for, for computer tech stuff. So but in the middle of the holidays, the thing is like. It’s a really stressful time of year, so listen out there, I want you to understand, you know, you’re not alone when you’re dealing with the [00:04:00] holiday stress.
My therapy office just runs rampant with all kinds of turmoil that people get into. We think of happy holidays, and fun joyful seasons, and all of the hallmark realities, and you might not be feeling that way. And you know, we, we do try to normalize that at this time of year because there’s a lot of people that are really hurting family distress, estrangements, deaths, loss.
We’ve got war zones around the world. I mean, it, it is intended and we hope for happy holidays and there are things that we can do to make our holidays more joyful, but you are not alone, ma’am or sir, you’re really not alone in the struggles that, you know, we do feel. Increased stress happens and it mixes with turmoil that we have internally.
And so we see this in therapy all the time. So please do your best to take care of yourself and take care of your loved ones. Be with family is important, but, [00:05:00] but realize there’s a lot of people struggling out there. And if you’re one of those, you are definitely not alone in that. So find people reach out and goodness, don’t be alone.
Okay. So on the month in reviews, we do jump into. A rabbit hole. I like the rabbit holes. They’re kind of fun. They really are
Neil Robinson: just kind of fun at them. They’re not a lot of fun. They’re
Adam Cloninger: just kind of like it because you don’t know what it’s going to be. It’s like a surprise to you. It is a
Chris Gazdik: surprise. It is a surprise.
So Adam ingratiates us with a topic that he finds. It’s a mental health topic out in the world, maybe in the news, maybe something that you saw. We’ve talked about all kinds of fun, crazy things. I think you’re, you’re pretty unique. I think my favorite one thus far is the No, the night fighting.
Oh, yeah. Okay. That thing was rocking. Yeah. I actually pulled that up in a session. You’re like, whoa. For fun. Yeah. Yeah. They literally fight with knives
and swords and stuff over there in in Europe. [00:06:00] You guys, it’s it’s crazy. There’s a league for that. Yeah, there is a league. Yeah. So, where are we going today, sir?
Adam Cloninger: Alright, so and this kind of ties in directly with kind of the comments you’re making a minute ago about
Chris Gazdik: during the holiday. Oh, that’s still
Adam Cloninger: your thunders. No, no, no, not really because I wasn’t going to go directly to the, the holidays, but there was a couple of topics that I’ve been looking at, but I kind of put them on the back burner.
There’s one about ants. I’m going to pull that on you and probably in a month or so. There’s another one about a cave. I’ll, I’ll talk about it. Ants
Neil Robinson: like the animals or ants like the
Adam Cloninger: Ants like the animal. And then there, a cave some archaeological findings. I’m going to go on that later, but I want to find out more, but I want to understand it more before I can start talking about it.
But for today Oh, so you’re giving us a foreshadow. Foreshadow. So, but for the day, uh, and y’all may have talked about this for, have you seen that the life expectancy has dropped over the last few years? No. Well, where? Worldwide, but specifically in the U S there’s some statistics that’s actually really concerning.
So, [00:07:00] so worldwide, well, no, I’m sorry. In the U S in 2019, the life expectancy was 78. 8. Okay, in 2020 it was 77, and in 22 it was 76.1. For real? Yeah. So a lot of that they’re saying is because of covid. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: That’s statistics gonna factor into that. When you
Adam Cloninger: start really looking into it, start talking to experts.
There’s some other things that need to be also brought up too. For example, the gap between men and women has increased, increased, increased especially in the us but now. The gap between men and women is around six years, which is the highest gap has been since 1996. So
Chris Gazdik: I assume that’s pointing that men are growing in the gap, meaning we die younger than women.
Yes. Still? Yes.
Adam Cloninger: So you know, of course, one of the big thing they said was COVID. That’s a big one. But they [00:08:00] also pointed out opioid epidemic, mental health, and chronic metabolic, metabolic, Metabolic disease. Metabolic disease. There you go. That’s what I was trying to say. What he said. To borrow your phrase.
Alright, so, with mental health being in mind, I wanted to point out, you know, that and I found, I found, I actually found a website that actually could be useful for this. It’s called mental I’m sorry, man therapy.org. Have y’all seen this? Man Therapy man therapy.dot org. So if you go on the website, there’s a link where you can go and it’s like an intro.
It, it, it’s, it’s like a, it’s like a man website. Okay. The guy’s only very mindly and the guy’s got a voice like this. He’s talking. He almost does it like jokingly, but it’s actually got some legit things on it. Like he’ll say well, I don’t want to run it for you, but he’ll, he’ll say, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to talk about some things, you know?
And then he, I think his last name is not Burgundy, but it’s like [00:09:00] something else. It sounds like a, you know, a seventies. Newscaster name
Chris Gazdik: or something. It sounds like it’s a comedic way to break men into dealing with real stuff.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then something, you know, there’s a video, the intro video, he actually says some stuff in it and you’re like, you know, kind of comical, but he says, but below there’s a link, you know, this is not just for me.
And if you’re, if you’re a woman that’s got a love, a loved one or son or husband or boyfriend or whatever, there’s also links here. There’s a, a link where you click on and take a little small test. Sean. The test, you know, will kind of give you some players, the head inspection, they call it, it says, take the head inspection
Neil Robinson: because you just can’t rub some dirt on your emotions.
I
Adam Cloninger: love it. Okay. Awesome. But it looks like he looks like Nick Offerman. He
Neil Robinson: has the mustache and the flannel. Yeah, it’s, it’s actually looks really cool. Man
Adam Cloninger: therapy. org. So I actually liked that. But one other thing I also saw while I was doing this research talking about the, the mental health thing. So men are less likely to seek out mental.
Mental health treatment, which is, [00:10:00] you know, we’ve kind of always sort of assumed that suicide is still among the leading causes, and men are still four times more likely to commit suicide than women. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: So. And I might, I might wonder if some of that is military. I know women are very much more in the military now, but, there’s a, there’s a lot going on in the world as it relates to that, which also wars that have kicked up probably impact life expectancy around the world kind of as well, you know, I’m a little confused is that, and I’ll tell you why, though, because just anecdotally, I talk about the much more broad acceptance of dealing with mental health than what we’ve ever had.
I Don’t consider myself a cultural expert, but I have excuse me. I have been very aware of over the last 25 years. Like I never saw men in therapy and I really started to see a lot [00:11:00] more men in therapy as a younger clinician. And then, but I never saw black folks doing the therapy thing.
And now. Definitely see that. I even see black men, the one holdout that I’ve noted. We have a high Hispanic population in the area, and I would never see, you know, Hispanic folks, really, let alone men. And I’m actually starting to see Hispanic men being able to engage this stuff now on their own volition and everything.
It’s really cool.
Adam Cloninger: It’s kind of interesting you said that because while I was doing this research, they did mention some stuff about the race. I said that. The the white men are started, have started to seek, you know, counseling and stuff, but there’s two holdouts is still black and Hispanic are still kind of, oh, it’s definitely, they’re starting, they’re sitting there starting, but they said, as you
Chris Gazdik: still like, when I say I never saw a black man when I was a young clinician, it just, I did what they weren’t, I didn’t see them.
And we have high African American population in this area. Did you see black women? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, [00:12:00] but but, but again, I’m
seeing, you know, a well variety of people now, and I’m also a little confused by what you’re talking about, because mental health has been put on the radar screen so much more now, it’s an accepted topic, so I feel like we’ve broken a lot of barriers.
But the other thought that I have about that is, I mean, goodness, we now know for sure that there is a connection between the medical realities and the mental health, emotional realities, you, you, you aggravate at minimum the medical realities that are going on with your blood pressure and your heart rate and all of the pressures that go into stress and muscle tension for the body and inflammation.
I mean, I could go on. And so now that we have mental health being, you know, on a much higher level awareness level, we’re probably catching up and attaching it to that. But that’s been going on for a long time. I don’t know [00:13:00] if it’s just a stressful place in the world since COVID we’ve talked about it and I wonder if there’s a direct relation, not just to, you know, people dying from COVID, but.
Just the incredible levels of distress people are in I’m I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that’s it So this that is disturbing numbers, though Yeah,
Adam Cloninger: and you know, I dug there’s more stuff in there that I saw but there’s news articles or videos everything else So pretty grounded in yeah, there’s there’s some there’s some other stuff in there I didn’t really get into but yeah, check out check out that man.
He’s thinking
Chris Gazdik: the org You usually have good thoughts. I rambled there a little bit. Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: No,
Neil Robinson: I think, I think the, the struggle is, one, we’ve talked about it on social media. Two, there isn’t, there, while you say there’s more awareness of mental health, the concern that I have is, it’s, they’re exposing a problem without really help.
Arming people with the tools to [00:14:00] how to handle it. So you have a lot, you have a lot of people who are saying, Oh, I need to be aware of my feelings, but they’re, they weren’t raised or taught how to cope when there’s problems or they’re not, they don’t, they’re not harmed or to handle that you get a lot of that
younger generation that they always want to play their video games, be on social media.
Chris Gazdik: Can I do a shameless plug? Sure. Through a therapist’s eyes, re understanding emotions and becoming your best self is a great resource.
Neil Robinson: Exactly. And, but that’s, but that’s, I think that’s the biggest struggle is because you have a lot of white male that society is, they’re going against the white male a lot.
And so while we’re dealing with, Hey, we need to learn our emotions. A lot of them just don’t really have the resiliency that, that we used to have. They don’t know how to cope and deal with. Problems, like you said, it’s more stressful. If you don’t know how to handle the stress, if you don’t have an outlet, if your outlet is playing video games, which is more dopamine or more social media, which is more dopamine, you’re not going out and exercising, you’re not staying fit, you’re not [00:15:00] doing the human interaction, people, you don’t really have those outlets and then that’s a lot to deal with.
And if you don’t know how to deal with it, it’s going to cause a lot of problems. So while mental health awareness is good, there’s still a lot of stuff that you have to learn how to
Chris Gazdik: handle it. Yeah. Mental health awareness without tools. Without willingness to engage. Yeah. No, it’s interesting. I mean, I, I was just listening to you thinking what kind of cultural effects or influence Might this generation be dealing with I I get kind of fascinated casey was awesome A therapist that used to be on the show more regularly Really got into talking about cohorts and stuff that you know, and and Boy, is it true to say, I mean, you, you, you, I started thinking of this when you mentioned social media.
I mean, we’re more isolated than we ever have been. We feel more alone, we’re, we’re much more anxious than ever before, which creates tension and all the things I just [00:16:00] listed with medical realities. I did. It’s interesting. Yeah. Do you have a cohort thing developing? Right.
Neil Robinson: You don’t have your trusted buddy that you can go talk to and say anything you want if you, and if you say anything on social media, you might have a few people support you, but there’s a lot more people looking at that, trying to drag you down a lot faster behind your back.
Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that you just, we just don’t have that face to face. You know, you’ve talked about the importance of
friendships and actually. Interacting with people and talking to them. That’s, that’s huge. And when you don’t have that outlet, when you don’t have that friend or that person, that confidant that you can rely on and you’re just internalizing it, it’s, it’s
Chris Gazdik: tough.
Did you set up that segue on purpose? Sure. Four. That is a perfect segue. Let’s get into some of the reviews guys. So episode two 50 use friendships with parenting strategies. I, I, it is, it’s a perfect segue, Neil, because
Adam Cloninger: you know, that [00:17:00] seems so natural. You did.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, and then he sort of non verbally denied it.
I think he didn’t really take credit for
Adam Cloninger: it. Did you write this
Chris Gazdik: before? No, I’m just kidding. So, you know, I purposely developed that to play off of the shows that we did before, because you’re right, you know, we talked about friendship recently on the shows, and I thought, well, let’s, we haven’t talked about parenting enough, and that’s been a little bit on my mind, because we need to deal with the kids.
And I thought, well, That’s a perfect combination, and I don’t think people think about that combination very much at all, right? Parenting, my family life, and how I would incorporate friendships into that. Isn’t that an interesting combination? You ever think about that, Adam? Yeah. Like, do you use friendship in parenting?
Sure.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah, you talk to your friend about, hey man, kids doing this, what do you think?
Chris Gazdik: Is that what you’re [00:18:00] thinking though? It is what I’m thinking actually I’m just pushing back I don’t know that people really do that that honestly, I don’t think we compare notes or oh, yeah
Adam Cloninger: Sure, we do. We do.
Chris Gazdik: Okay in a superficial way on the side of a baseball team sitting on the sidelines at practices.
We find out that everyone else and we’re usually shocked that the other kids aren’t picking up their towels either or dealing with the candy wrappers or take a five hour break in the middle of morning routines. You know, we feel like we’re alone with all of those things. And I don’t know that we’re talking about how to facilitate these different things in a, in a, in a depth the way Not
Adam Cloninger: in a depth y way, but maybe it’s more like just complaining about
Chris Gazdik: Oh, heck yeah!
Yeah. Well, a lot of that. What’s that, Neil? It’s just an outlet. It’s a venting outlet. It’s a big, fat venting outlet. That still helps, though. It does! I don’t want to poo poo that, but I just want to encourage us, as I think that’s what we talked about with [00:19:00] With that particular show so the questions were do you know what love and logic is do you know what the lost decade is?
And how can friendships be a part of parenting? I don’t know how much we want to go back into we’ve talked about the lost decade and I did that show with you Didn’t I yeah, that was one
Adam Cloninger: of the remembering come a different different view
Chris Gazdik: and you’re yeah, that really added a lot to to the way that tell them what we’re talking about.
So
Adam Cloninger: mine was a little different. Mine was the kids grown up and me at my age and, and getting a chance to actually do something later on because I wasn’t around as they’re a little bit. How would you say yours is different than that? Well,
Chris Gazdik: standard, I look at really even the age of your oldest kid being age 4 to 14.
You enter into that space where it’s just all about the kids. And you’re just engaged with You know, the [00:20:00] youth group and the church activities and sport after sport and dance after dance class. And, you know, all the things that we’re, we’re, we’re really run
because we take the role of parent, whether it’s mom or dad seriously, and it kind of consumes our lives.
And as a matter of fact, one of the things that we see primarily in that lost decade among several pitfalls is the. Really the lack of friendship. You don’t really have time to hang out with your buddies or your girlfriends. There’s very limited weekend out with girls or, you know, things like that. I mean, you know, you have like professional services for mother’s day.
What is it called? You know, like mother’s day out or something like that. Right. We just don’t have that as a focus, but you had a different experience in the way that is it fair to say divorce and life progression and how things change
Adam Cloninger: that up. And me working when my kids were little, didn’t seem a different shift, a lot of stuff.
So it’s kind of me trying [00:21:00] to. Like reconnect with them later. So it’s a little bit different,
Chris Gazdik: but it’s still a universal experience. I think with parents where at some point you get all consumed with that in your life. And it’s interesting when we talk about it with Victoria, you know, being a new parent, you know, she’s, it’s happening literally beginning to happen, you know, before our eyes and she’s more aware of it, but you know, it’s, it’s easy.
And then, and then the other brief is, is love and logic. It is one of what I call the trifecta. Three primary things that I really experienced being a profoundly impactful methodology or mindset that you get into. I talk about Dave Ramsey’s with financial peace, university marriages, talk about emotionally focused therapy.
And, you know, this love and logic is a strategy that. Absolutely, for me, when I came across all this stuff several years ago, like, [00:22:00] really impacted the way that I even engage parenting myself. The long and short of it is, you know, little Johnny, you can do anything that you want to do, uh, as long as you don’t cause a problem for somebody else.
aNd when you cause a problem, you need to fix the problem. And then the parent identifies I see you didn’t fix that problem, Johnny. Don’t worry about it. No problem. We’ll take care of the problem. We’ll fix it. And then you come around in the back end and create a high structure environment with very low power struggles that really teach life lessons in a compassionate way.
Like that’s the nuts and bolts of, of this whole philosophy. It’s, it’s, it’s a game changer when you really get, get into it. I think we’ve done shows on that. I don’t know how much we need to review those types of things. And what are you thinking? He’s Neil’s got it. Neil’s got a smirk.
Neil Robinson: That just, just sometimes when you describe it, you miss out parts of it.
And the thing that like, cause when you described it to John and Victoria, cause they didn’t know the way it was interpreted was, Oh no, you’re just going behind the scenes [00:23:00] and you kind of just. Deal with it on the back end. So it’s kind of like this weird passive aggressive thing.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. They really did have a trip out with that, didn’t they?
So did I do it again? Did it, is it too
Adam Cloninger: short?
Neil Robinson: No, I was listening. I was fine. The only thing that I think’s weird is that statement. You say like they cause a problem. They try to fix a problem. Then you say, then you come fix it. We say, Oh, it’s, it’s okay. And then you fix it. I don’t think you need to tell them it’s okay.
It’s, it should be you messed up. Now I have to come and do it because you have to. So I think the fact if. And the way it’s described, like, I think just saying like, Oh wait, you messed something up. You didn’t fix it. Well, it’s okay. I’ll take care of it. It’s like, no, it’s not okay. But I’ll still, as the parent, I have to now sub.
So it’s just the way it’s described. Cause I don’t think you mean it that way. You’re not basically completely putting off to the side. Like,
Chris Gazdik: yeah, we’re not disregarding
Neil Robinson: the right. And so the way it’s described, it’s like, Oh, no, it’s okay. So, and that’s what, when I talked to my wife, the first couple of times I described it, she’s like, Cause he’s smoking.
Like, but no, as we’ve talked about it more, it’s like, okay, no, it does make sense. And [00:24:00] it’s similar to now that you’ve elaborated, it makes more sense. Cause it’s like how kind of we try to raise our kids. But when you first described it, it’s like,
Chris Gazdik: yeah, it’s funny. I need to be careful with that. Cause I try to, I try to give an elevator version of that.
And that’s happened more recently because I’ve gotten out of. I just don’t work with kids as much anymore, so I don’t work with the family dynamics with that as much. So I’m probably losing a little bit of the flavor in the meaning of that, because it really is a cool way where you’re letting the kid Problem solve and learn how to find solutions and skin their knee or screw up and and they figure out that they really need to mess you know they messed up and they really need to figure out how to fix the mess up because when they hear the parent or this is taught in schools the teacher says hey don’t worry about it johnny i’ll take care of the problem that’s like an alarm like they They freak out.
They’re like, oh my God, what’s coming? I mean, it’s creates tremendous anxiety for the kid because they know [00:25:00] something’s coming, you know, I’ve screwed up and I didn’t fix it and now something’s going to happen. Cause they can’t, you know, we can’t just let things go away. The world doesn’t work that way.
When we, my
Adam Cloninger: kids don’t like me to fix things sometimes.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, heck yeah, man. More than, more than once, all the dirty dishes and candy wrappers and crap that they left out in the room ended up in their beds. That they find when they’re tired and sleepy and put their feet down into the blankets. It’s like, oh god, what is all this?
That’s my solution for your problem that you’re creating, right? And that’s a silly one, but there’s lots and lots of those ways. Well,
Adam Cloninger: I’ll give you an example. One thing I did more than once, just a couple times, I did this. Kept going over on the data
Chris Gazdik: usage. Oh boy.
Adam Cloninger: Sure. Gave the warning. Once. Gave the warning twice.
And I said, alright. I’m gonna fix this. It’s better not happen again. Alright. Dad, my phone’s not working. Yeah, I know. I cut it off. What do you mean? [00:26:00] Whenever I have a date, I just cut your date off. What?
Chris Gazdik: That’s torturous.
Adam Cloninger: Didn’t happen anymore. Nope.
Chris Gazdik: I fixed it. Yep. That fixes the problem. I fixed it. Yes, sir.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, I think with this whole topic, you know, the use of friendship and parenting, parents get to feeling so isolated, so alone and desperate with the awesome responsibility of teaching these. Little people life lessons and the irritability’s come out so fast. I don’t care if you’re a great parent you get way irritable with your kid much more than you want to admit or that’s ideal and I’ll admit that you get into power struggles and i’ve said many times over Enemy number one to parenting is power struggles.
So Even the bitch sessions are great Because we need to vent and we need other people to help us [00:27:00] like hear what’s going on and relate to what we’re doing and You’ve got you cannot be alone with this crap like, you know lover or hater Hillary Clinton I think coined the term it takes a village and I we used to have a whole group We used to have families intact and units together and now a lot of times You know what the most difficult thing in the world might be picking
Adam Cloninger: dinner
Neil Robinson: Oh, sorry.
Adam Cloninger: And that
Chris Gazdik: single parents, all you single parents out there, man, just know that is one of the most difficult things in family life to cope with. You’re, you’re literally alone when the heat rises and the confusing responses, you know, there’s always in parenting the, what do I do with this one? I have not prepared for this.
And you go to your husband or you go to your wife at least. Well, when you’re a single parent. What is it, the buck stops here. That’s [00:28:00] tough and scary and overwhelming. It’s a big deal.
Adam Cloninger: What is it with your politician quotes here? Do I have, do I have multiple quotes? The buck stops
Chris Gazdik: here. Maybe I, maybe it takes a village.
What was that, FDR
Neil Robinson: or one
Adam Cloninger: of the Roosevelt’s? Yeah, I don’t think. Hillary was the one that coined that term originally. Oh,
Chris Gazdik: okay. Fair, fair fact check. Of course, she used it. She used it. Now somebody’s got to Google where did that term come from. It was before that, I’m sure. It was before that. So where do we go with that?
How do we do with that show? What do you remember, Neil, from hanging out with us? Behind the curtains,
Neil Robinson: that wasn’t an odd show because of the, I think Victoria thought it was different, but I would have to say. Listening to you talk and stuff like that, I think one of the interesting things about parenting and then having friends involved with it is parenting is such a, there’s so much, there’s such high stakes in parenting that when you talk about, like, when you talk to other parents, it’s more about venting than it was about getting guidance or help because I find [00:29:00] with most parents, they don’t want to get advice from anyone.
And, but the thing is going, going back to this thing is if you really build friends. And if you come to me with a question about your kid or something, and I’m going to give you my suggestion with, because of my experience with my household, it used, it should be taken as like, okay, he’s just trying to help.
He’s not trying to do it, but you have to build a relationship. If you don’t have that relationship in the friendship, you’re going to get defensive. Versus actually like listening, being like, Oh, let me try that tip or let me try that tactic. And so I think that’s the important, like we talk about friendships with parenting, you almost want to build that friend, you have to have a good friendship so you can get deeper in those conversations.
So it’s not just a, a venting sessions.
Chris Gazdik: I say it many times over. I love these month in reviews. Cause we do cover different things that we didn’t talk about. And one of the things that we didn’t talk about, Oh, Truman we’re getting a YouTube live that said it started with Truman, I guess, is that the the buck stops all the buck stops here started [00:30:00] with Truman.
So sounds about right. You know, on the month in reviews, we, we, we cover things that we forgot or didn’t talk about. And one of the things we failed to talk about during that show that you’re touching on now is, is parent guilt.
Going back to, you both said we do talk nowadays and use friendships and stuff. You know what we shame parents, at least in our culture. I don’t know how it is around the world. Frankly, I really be curious. Some of you listening in other parts of the world, what it’s really like, because I can say in the States, we are horrible.
We are really, really mean to parents by, by throwing guilt. I mean, you know, can’t you get your kid quiet in a restaurant? Like what, what kind of crazy parenting crap are we seeing today? I mean, let the memes start and the tick tocks go because you know, it’s just we’re horrible. We give, we give parents little grace.
So out there listening stop that like can we just stop
Neil Robinson: that [00:31:00] well it goes back We’ve talked about the stepping it should be about the kids Not about who’s right or wrong And I feel like a lot of the people who critique parents is because they just want to say say their piece and make them Feel better about other stuff they have but it should be about the kids if I parent one way and it’s working for my kid That should be what it’s about not not because I don’t follow a love of logic or because I don’t follow some other thing
Chris Gazdik: totally because it’s another good point actually in talking we didn’t talk about that each kid really is different I mean, you got multiple kids out of them.
Did you we
Adam Cloninger: all do?
Chris Gazdik: Night and day night totally, you know, it’s funny. We just hung out a lot together as a family Thanksgiving My younger kid looks at his older brother. He’s like dude, we are totally different people and they are One wants to go live back in West Virginia, he likes the country, quiet, whatever.
And the other’s like, oh, he wants to go into big cities. All about, you know, being in Chicago and New York and we’ll see what he goes to. But, [00:32:00] they really are different people. And they require different strategy with it. You know, I’ll tell you in that love and logic. To highlight one of the big uses of friends that isn’t used a lot, people get really confused about, you know, you had a great example Adam with what you do in the back end when you’re fixing the problem that kids created, that’s a really difficult thing to be creative with.
Another bonus content, I’ll use the example when my older kid just decided to totally take over the bonus room on his own accord, he moved all of his room stuff and like claimed, okay, the bonus room is now my bedroom and I’m like, yo, like, no, this is not the way we roll. Kids don’t make the decision about your mother and I’s house and what room is going to be what, right?
That took a good two or three months with multiple layers and facets of like, no, I’m going to fix this problem. You’re creating a problem for [00:33:00] the whole family. And some of that included closing the vents off. And, you know, I actually opened up the window to make it really cold in the room one time, turned the heats off and, you know, it’s like to prove like, no, we’re not heating this room, you know, and he had to pay a little bit of money for the extra lighting and there were like so many layers to try to figure out like, what do you do with this?
It’s moved all of his stuff to another room. I didn’t know I had to consult the group that we’re in. Actually, I brought that up. So
Adam Cloninger: what happened? Did they make a move your back? Are you living? Oh, hell yeah.
Chris Gazdik: He’s not going to stay there immediately. Or no, I had no power struggle. Yeah. It took two or three months to get like organized with like, no, get back to your room.
And then we ended up. You know, relenting like several months later, like, yeah, you’re older and you can have that privilege. And we talked to him about it first, right? Just take all your crap and take over the room. Neil, where did we land? Where did we land with the different things that friendships [00:34:00] really do, you know, provide to us when we’re engaging in such a challenge that parenting can be.
Neil Robinson: Honestly, they’re, they’re super important. I think you have to, we
Chris Gazdik: got a list help you out as a, as a recall. They
Neil Robinson: give emotional support. They normalize, no, it’s no, those are correct. Yeah. Emotional support, having that extra person to talk to, whether you’re a single parent or even if you have, you’re married, sometimes you need someone else outside of your spouse to talk to that more or vice versa, you know?
Yeah, social interactions. Great. You know, you get to that point where you’re. You just tired of dealing with the same people. You want that social interaction outside of that? No, these are actually great things. The shared childcare. We, we had a few friends that, you know, shared childcare. Yeah. Shared childcare.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. My neighbor and I do this. I watch his cat and he watched our dogs. It’s awesome. It works well. Yeah. We had
Neil Robinson: families like our kids would go over to their house for a little bit and we get, you know, a night out so we don’t pay for a babysitter and then they’d have their kids come over to our [00:35:00] house.
It’s like they were, it works great because you get that break. You don’t have the extra financial concern of paying a babysitter, you know, and stuff like that. So it’s, yeah, I mean, there’s. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that comes, comes out of
Chris Gazdik: this. Yeah. You get groups together with people. You do what you can’t do alone.
You get collaborative learning. If you’re really having conversations again, when you’re confused, I’ll give you a direct challenge, listening. If you have kids, if you’re confused about what to do on a situation when a kid brings inevitably one of these situations where you won’t know what to do, ask three different people outside of your family.
If you can have all three in addition to one inside your family, but to, to, to, to get their guidance or thoughts at least about what they, they might think. I think that’s a good challenge and, you know, kind of practice to, to engage in
Neil Robinson: the feedback is very beneficial.
Chris Gazdik: Okay, let’s move on to episode 251.
This [00:36:00] is where, Adam, I thought you might have some interesting thoughts. This is all about the
Adam Cloninger: determinism. Yeah. I figured
Chris Gazdik: that was going to be the one. Yeah, determinism versus emotional free will. John, I don’t even know how to review this show, man. John laid out some really cool things that this guy named Spolsky came up with.
He has, he has, he has a Pretty smart guy. I’m not gonna go through all of his credentials. You have to listen to the show it was odd to me terribly odd until I really began to think about it This this gentleman is maintaining that we don’t really have free will adam that we just have things determined for us the primary belief that he goes by is that basically a lot of things like our Unconscious biases are genetic realities that create our temperaments and our [00:37:00] mannerisms and all of the things that we’ve experienced in life like for us decide what and how we’re going to deal with situations and stuff such that really we don’t have free will in this situation.
It sounded crazy to start thinking a little bit about the psychological things that go. Go on, but I mean, I guess I poisoned you a little bit. I mean, do you think we have free will to, to do as we, as we would choose?
Adam Cloninger: I think it has to do again. I always say this, like what you, what you feel like the definition of that is and what somebody else thinks definition.
I mean, yeah, we. We have a free will, but at the same time, there’s, there’s factors that’s things into that of what, you know, not only genetics, but what life experiences, things has happened, all kinds of things.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Somebody has been in a war zone. It’s walking down the downtown city streets of Charlotte and looks up at a sparkling sprinkle in the towering skyscraper.[00:38:00]
Freaks out and doesn’t really get to determine how he’s going to experience the next five minutes when he freaks out seeing a sniper come out, right? That’s a factor.
Adam Cloninger: And there, there’s still, there’s still a, even if it’s just a sliver, there’s still the, even if it’s like I said, just a sliver of free will, but there’s factors that can sway it.
Chris Gazdik: That’s how I look at it. A hundred percent. You know. Yeah, what’d you, what’d you think about John’s presentation when he, cause he kind of created and designed that show, Neil, when, when we were, when we were going through it. Hold on, before you do that.
Adam Cloninger: Oh. So what, what was John’s take on it? Did he, does he believe in
Chris Gazdik: determinism or not?
No, I mean, we’re all therapists. We’re like, of course you have free will. That’s exactly what we work with. I was curious.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, he. He didn’t, he doesn’t believe it. It’s an interesting, I mean, it’s a definitely an interesting take on stuff. I definitely don’t agree that I think in the, in the grand scheme of things, you still have that choice to decide to figure out how to cope with that.
You still have that choice to, you know, to. to make those [00:39:00] decisions. Just like the twins that could be raised in the same house. One becomes an alcoholic, one becomes successful. One’s always broke. One’s, you know, one get married, the other one sleeps around. Like you still have that free will to make those choices.
Same genetics, everything like that. So I understand the determinism is. And, and John did a great job going deep into like, like I said, it was, it was crazy the stuff that he talked about just because he can go so deep with it. It was kind of a different change of pace cause I know Chris, you’ve been kind of baking it more wide open with this.
And so John literally came in with what, like three, three pages, three or four pages of notes with it. It was crazy. The stuff he came in with. It
Chris Gazdik: was fantastic,
Neil Robinson: but you know, I think that everything does play a factor like you pointed to, but I think in the end, in the grand scheme of things, it is still our choice to do.
We let those things dictate how we act going forward,
Chris Gazdik: but I think Spolsky, this guy, if I’m even saying his name, right? Sapolsky [00:40:00] has a certain amount of, I mean, if you really get in the weeds, I mean, I think most people are like, Oh, yeah, I, you know, particularly our American culture, like, I am an independent, I am a cowboy, I have no one tells me what to do, don’t tread on me.
Right. You know, we value those things. And I think around the world, we like to think that we have an empowered way of living. There are a lot of things that you’re not even aware of that reall
conversation in therapy today about this. I mean, you know, which went right along with our show.
Oh, we’re going to go there at 2. 52. Why talk about emotions or past events in therapy? You know, we, we talked about that in session today because he was like, you know, look, I, I don’t want to talk about these past things. It doesn’t seem like it helps. It doesn’t seem like it, it just, it, you know, I revisit the emotions and it’s, it’s tough, it’s uncomfortable.
And I’m like, yeah, you know, I get it, but, and we’ll get more into it when we switch to the next show, but. If, if we [00:41:00] don’t manage the traumas that we experienced, if we don’t allow ourselves to, to, to, to walk through the different things that we’ve experienced with families and family of origin, it definitely will determine for you Your presets of operation.
A really good example that this guy would probably dive into is when you come from an alcoholic dysfunctional family, we know specific family rules, almost rules are in place that you learn. You can’t break a, and if you break the rules, you get slammed for it. And so it’s like an elephant, you know. How does an elephant stay on a rope?
You know, it can pull it like a twig and leave. But when it was a kid, it learned because chains were on its leg and it couldn’t break free no matter what it did. And elephants have strong, strong memories. Well, so do humans. We have our emotional patterns that [00:42:00] get ingrained. And there’s a lot of them. For instance, in an alcoholic dysfunctional family, you don’t talk about feelings and emotions and events.
You just don’t. It’s not worth it because there’s just going to be another one in the next few days that comes forward to affect you. So you really just learn how to compartmentalize, to develop resistance and just move on, to be street smart, street tough. So to speak, things don’t bother you. So it seems, air quotes, it’s obviously impacting levels of your ability to trust and your ability to kind of, you know, be vulnerable about the way you’re experiencing things and stuff.
There’s, I could go on and on with alcoholic family. You sound like a
Adam Cloninger: proponent of
Chris Gazdik: determinism. Determinism. I am a, am I a determinist?
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Can you be a determinist? Definitely not. And still believe in any kind, type of organized religion? Hmm. [00:43:00] Hmm.
Neil Robinson: But isn’t some religions kind of determinist with, with predeterminate, whatever, where they think, you know, God’s omnipotent and he can control everything.
So don’t, don’t sell
Adam Cloninger: those. So that blows out the free will all, all together necessarily. Right. There’s, there’s
Neil Robinson: some that have that too. Yeah, exactly.
Adam Cloninger: Some
Chris Gazdik: religions, yeah. No, I, I think you obviously can. I, you know, it, it, it is, it’s just, the point that I’m making, I think, is that we feel like we are really fully in control when we have these psychological things going on.
Not to mention hormones and our genetics and our body, you know, people feel anger very different. And I think there’s a lot of biology that goes into like how much your anger releases cortisol and cortisone into your body with adrenaline and you just feel it more. There, there are things that are determined for us.
But obviously my entire career is working on like helping to manage that and develop true empowerment and, you know, ingratiate the ideas that [00:44:00] you’re in control of your behavior and, you know, even the things that you think. But it’s just such a back and forth, even as I say that OCD, right? You have compulsions to do something and obsessions that get stuck.
It’s almost determined for you what you’re gonna think, but then you can
Neil Robinson: make the choice to fight it and, and figure how to deal with it. Yeah. But if you
Chris Gazdik: don’t have OCD, you have no idea how powerful it is that the number seven is in my head and I see it everywhere and I have to count.
Adam Cloninger: You still, you still have doorknobs
Neil Robinson: still, you still have to make those choices to, to
Adam Cloninger: want
Chris Gazdik: to change a hundred
Adam Cloninger: percent.
Neil Robinson: So that, so yeah, I think, I think the big key is if you don’t, if you don’t make the choice, all those factors are going to set you, like you said, just a second, it’s going to set you down a determined path. If you don’t make the choice to change it or find a reason to change it, if they’re
Chris Gazdik: negative, it gets back to our current event.
I mean, I agree with everything you just said, of course, you know, we’ll get back to our current event. Like are people really. [00:45:00] Ingratiating themselves into a process to do that and the answer maybe is we’re losing that. Mm hmm. That’s depressing Maybe so Before we run out of time. I want to give good credence to episode 252.
I’d already mentioned it Why talk about emotions or past events in therapy or otherwise? The questions we came at with this one is does this do unnecessary harm to us to actually focus on the hurts and life’s events? I have people say that to me in therapy. Is there a risk of getting stuck in the distress?
If I think about it, if I experience it, I’m gonna feel it and I’ll get stuck. Right? Can we not enjoy being comfortably numb? Like, is that not a reasonable way to operate? What, what do you guys as two non therapists think about this idea of, how would you [00:46:00] answer the question? I mean, obviously you’re going to know I’m going to say yeah, we want to do that.
How do you guys experience the idea of like, why would we want to do this crap? Why do we want to talk about it?
Adam Cloninger: Well, I like, there’s a comedian that I mentioned about how we caught transgression or whatever, not transgress. What do you call it when you like going back and trying to pull up memories, not transgression.
What’s, what’s the word I’m looking for?
Chris Gazdik: I’m not sure. Keep going. Anyway,
Adam Cloninger: memories, suppressed memories or whatever you’re trying to pull that back memory repression. And so the, the comedian was talking about why would anybody want to do that and why would any therapist want to do that? Cause it’s cause the way he put it was, okay, so you’ve got a bad memory
that you put in a box in your brain and you put it in the attic and a dark, really dark place and decided determined never to touch the game goes so bad, but we want to go and review it.
Yeah, so, right. I mean, I can see, I think it’d be important to, uh, go back and maybe have an understanding of [00:47:00] why something you thought was bad. But at the same time, after you understand it, or if you’ve got whatever good good you can of that thought, It’s okay to go put that thing back away. Go put it back in the dark spot and don’t have to go review it again.
You don’t want to dwell on something. But I do think it’s good to go back and like review and get a good understanding
Chris Gazdik: of something that may have bothered you. But why, Adam? Why would we really want to stay there and do that? Review it and understand it. Okay. Got it. Check. Check box. If somebody To make
Adam Cloninger: yourself better and have a better understanding and It’s like learning.
You learn one thing, you’ll be better prepared to do something else or understand something
Chris Gazdik: else. Do you have any idea how resistant people are to this in In the initial stages of therapy process. Honestly, this is what tools to deal with. How I feel now that we go to like talking about something,
Adam Cloninger: I can see that if they have, if they have something that was a bad memory or bad experience.
Yeah. Why? I mean, you know, that’s painful. Wow.
Chris Gazdik: You know, avoid, evade.
Adam Cloninger: It’s [00:48:00] like stepping in front of a car. I don’t want to do that. It’s gonna hurt. So
Chris Gazdik: I mean, you know. My buddy tells me, Chris, you gotta understand, when people are coming to therapy, it’s like they’re taking their finger and gabbing themselves repeatedly in the eyeball.
I’m like, holy crap, is it that bad, dude? He’s like, yeah. I’m like, what? Why? Why? What do you think, Neil? How, how, how could you convince somebody
why they would want to do this? Like, how do you receive that in your non, just in your non brain
Neil Robinson: clinical brain? Well, I could talk to my wife about this recently, which is very interesting, but I see it as a bad cut that you have a band aid on.
Oh, yeah. Hey, Chris, you want to go plug in your laptop? Make sure it’s actually plugged in all the way.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, dear God. Okay. What, did we just
Neil Robinson: crash? I think we’re good. Nope. We, the, the low battery light came on. Yeah, I was like, well, I ain’t telling about that. Sorry. No, we’re good. It was, it got pulled out a little bit.
We’re good. Okay. Okay. So the way that I see it, so if you get a [00:49:00] bad cut or my son just got a really bad burn on his hand from something at school, we won’t. Bring up that emotion from my wife, but so it was like a third degree burn on his hand. Well, if we, if you go burn, you put a band on mine. Yep. Well, if you don’t see it, okay, well you’re okay.
You covered it out there, but here’s the issue. If you put a band on it, you don’t do anything with it. That band is going to start sticking to your skin. You get, you don’t know what’s going on underneath it. And the worst part about it is when you go to address it, it’s going to be painful. That first time you take that bandaid off, right?
But
Chris Gazdik: the Yeah, we all have, right? But the metaphor, but the
Neil Robinson: purpose of it is now you’ve, now you’re going to clean it now and you redress it, but yet now it’s going to get better. So then in a couple of days you bring it up again. Now you redress it again and you clean it again and every time you do it, it’s, my son’s going to have a scar on his hand forever, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.
It didn’t get infected. There’s not a lot of other issues, so that’s how I see when you talk about because doing [00:50:00] that
Chris Gazdik: over and over and over again is the big point there. Yeah, because
Neil Robinson: the more you take, I mean, how many people I’ve lost my stepmother, we’ve heck even talking about our dog that we had for 14 years, just bring it up at like the first time you think about your dog, you like, it really hurts the more you talk about it’s like it’s still kind of stings, but it’s not.
That bad right and but it allows you to process it allows you to clean it out. It allows you to you know It allows you to work through it and and once you get past the pain Then you can start thinking about depending on what what it is If it’s a loss for grief or like that sometimes now you can get past the grief and you can start Appreciating the person or whatever it was before so now you can find joy Thinking about what that person was like I
Chris Gazdik: got bonus content we didn’t talk about this, but I have developed over the years a, a litmus test for when a emotion is at a resolved state.
Do you know what a litmus test? I know you do, Adam. It’s a litmus test. [00:51:00] Litmus. Yeah, litmus. Litmus.
Adam Cloninger: Litmus, yeah. L I T M U S. Yes, I know what it is. What is a litmus test? It’s a test you do with paper.
Chris Gazdik: Do you know how many people don’t know what a litmus test is? It surprises me when I use this metaphor.
Nowadays, I always ask, do you know what a litmus test is? It’s like a chemical test. Yeah, you dip a stick into a solution. You see if the solution is there for what you’re testing. Anyway, so a good litmus test, a quick and dirty test on Is this situation resolved or not? Is this so a resolved feeling is obviously unresolved when the level of intensity that you feel about the topic is the same or still pretty high as to when you first experienced it.
That’s obviously unresolved, but it’s also unresolved when you feel little or no connection to the emotions that you felt when. They originally happened, and that’s a lot of times what people feel is a resolved emotion. It’s not. So the litmus test is a resolved emotion is that you felt all the feelings [00:52:00] you felt.
When something happened, and then there is a gradual it’s not an immediate decline. It is a gradual decline over time That you feel over and over again until now you feel the feelings. They’re the same feelings and emotions. They don’t go away It’s just a whole lot less intense than when something first happened That’s how you know, you’ve gotten into a good place with this issue that you’ve gotten at peace with it That you’re in a healthy space and the, the, the, the, you never get to zero, but the less and less that you get to, the more and more, as
you say, you’ve dressed the wound and you’ve talked about it, you’ve readdressed it and you’ve, you’ve worked through it a little bit more.
It happens in stages. So, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I think that’s a good example of, or a good description of what we’re looking for to accomplish.
Adam Cloninger: So you know what you’ve effectively done, right? He specifically asked you about how to, like, make this more, um, [00:53:00] more acceptable for people and you’ve given him a very good That’s the best example he can use when he’s has somebody in his, in his, it’s a new metaphor.
Yeah. He has something in that somebody can use and they’re kind of, you know,
Chris Gazdik: you say you burn your hand. Yeah. I don’t want to make it my own. Yep. He’s on it now. So
Adam Cloninger: in
Neil Robinson: five years, five years, I’ll be like, I heard this somewhere. I don’t know who I heard it
Chris Gazdik: from. Yeah. I’ll give you credit every single time.
Neil Robinson: Well, I, I think one of the cool things that I’ve seen online, cause you like your little pictures and stuff, but I saw somewhere there was like, it was this little, like, black dot, and that’s like your grief, and that’s your pain. It was like a meme, or it was one of the cartoons, but then, then there’s like you around it, and so basically what they say is, You know, the grief never changes size.
You just grow. So it be, it seems to appear less. And so you talk about that grief never really changed that feeling, but you learn how to deal with it. You get stronger around it, but the grief is always still there. So it’s like, even with working out that 45 pound plate is always going to [00:54:00] weigh 45 pounds, but when you work out, it’s going to feel lighter and lighter and lighter
Chris Gazdik: plate is 45 pounds.
Yeah. The way you’re eating too much, man.
Neil Robinson: Well, that’s how it gets stronger. You, you get heavier plates. Of
Chris Gazdik: course we did. We did just get to Thanksgiving. I am hungry. No, like you said,
Neil Robinson: I’m thinking Jim, like maybe that’s part of his problem. No, but no, that, but that’s the idea is as you get stronger, those weights you’re lifting now feel lighter, but they’re the same, it’s the same thing.
Chris Gazdik: It really is. And and people get to a place of discouragement and, you know, feeling helpless with this stuff. I mean, that was the conversation I just had in therapy, you know, in my office today. You know, it’s like again, why would I do that? I can’t change anything that happened. I hate that it happened. I hate the way I feel when I think about it and I can’t change it.
So dang God, I’m not going to talk about it. So you’re
Adam Cloninger: saying today you needed the,
Chris Gazdik: the, I [00:55:00] needed the barn. Yeah. Where was my burn metaphor there, Neil? About four hours ago. No, and I tell you, look, there are very few things that I want to convince you about when I’m working with you in therapy or as I’m talking to you, you know, through a therapist’s eyes.
This is one that I directly am honest that I would love to be able to convince people to experiment, to do, to, to, to demonstrate to you that there is a need for you to do this. And that is talking about your emotions. Talking about the experiences that you’ve had in life, because if you don’t, I will tell you that the experiences that you had will stay with you internally and come out whenever they decide they need to, because they will see something in your life currently today that gets triggered from what happened and you’ll get it in the future.
Thank you. Uncomfortably rising to the surface, causing you to behave in ways that you’d rather not. [00:56:00] And so, I actually want to convince people of this. This is a, this is a big deal in, in my mind. And I feel so much resistance from people. And so much misunderstanding about it. Terribly painful.
Uncomfortable and scary. And just intimidating, you know. You go to a first session in a therapy office. Do you think anyone ever feels calm about that? You know, it’s terrifying.
Neil Robinson: It’s good. It’s really funny because I was just thinking about this because I’m going back to like the exercise in metaphor because I feel like anytime anyone makes, goes to make a stride for a change, whether it’s emotionally, mentally or physically, there’s an anxiety like when you go to the
first time you went back to the gym to go meet your meet that guy you’re working with, like there’s anxiety anxiety.
I’m sure you go like
Chris Gazdik: what is he? Oh yeah. So,
Neil Robinson: so, but it’s funny because I mean, thinking about like physical therapists, you think about you had a surgery, you had an accident, and now you have to [00:57:00] move that joint to break the scar tissue to make sure you get them a bit. And it’s, it’s physically
Adam Cloninger: painful, humbling,
Neil Robinson: but needed.
But needed exactly. And the emotions are super painful. I have a family member. I know that they went through something one time ago and every time, even years later, it’s like, I can’t handle, I can’t talk about it, but they’re, they’re, they’re still an emotion. Like if you dealt with this six, seven, eight years ago.
You, you could have grown past it, but
Chris Gazdik: now it’s still Look, I can’t tell you how humbling it is to sit in a therapy chair and have people share a story that they are sharing with another human being, maybe 30, 40 55 years later, for the very first time with another unit, that is so humbling. It is, it is, it is such an honor to do what we do because people find it to be an artificial safe environment, [00:58:00] to be able to do that, like for the first time.
It’s amazing when people are able to do that. And, and. And I encourage you to do it because otherwise it absolutely is going to create the things that we don’t want, such as patterns of fear, trust issues with others in your life, trouble with attaching to important people. Hurts and the effects on dealing with people at even at work and commitments that you are trying to make or being disenchanted by betrayal, you know, betrayal in marriage and then trusting people again on the second marriage.
I mean, you’re working through all of these things. It’s like. It, I could just go on and on and on, you know, with the, the scars that we all, that we all bear, we just got to deal with them for crying out loud. Right? Right?
Neil Robinson: [00:59:00] Yep. And to me, you have to, you have to decide that you want to improve and the pain is worth the end result.
If you, if you don’t make that, if you don’t have that conviction, if you don’t have that motivation, it’s going to be very hard to keep you coming back and actually working on that next thing. So the results have to be more powerful than the pain you’re going through. You
Chris Gazdik: know, it just came into my head.
What? It’s a mantra that I’m trying to help my son. I never went to the military, so I have no idea, but I know it’s going to be certainly uncomfortable for a little while. And I gave the suggestion to him to use this mantra, and it is a little bit of pain now. for a whole lot of gain later. A little bit of pain now for a whole lot of gain later.
And then, I wonder if he’ll use it. If he says that over and over again when he’s going through the things that he’s about ready to experience and the incredible life experience the bootcamp must be. You know, and, and, and we could all [01:00:00] use that when we’re, when we’re dealing with things like this, I would submit.
Yeah, definitely. Right. So I don’t know, you know, how much time do we have left to really get some convincing to you? You know the the reality of the process that this is is not fun But you know If you don’t do it You just actually remain stuck in what you’re doing because you haven’t gotten unstuck from what happened to you You know, in the past, and we tend to just think, no, I don’t want to get stuck of things in the past, but that’s actually just completely backwards.
And I like the way that I did that. Let me say that again. If you don’t manage the emotions, you don’t manage the events. You will get stuck in the behaviors that that creates today instead of the fear of getting stuck in the way that you felt before. So I don’t know. I could go on. I don’t have time to go on about validation and empathy and, you know, gaining an [01:01:00] experience from somebody else to know that you’re not alone and seeing alternative ways to experience what it is that you perceived and being able to kind of take power over the story that you’ve lived.
I mean, you know, these things are possible and we see it in therapy all the time. So though it be a struggle I hope I’ve been a little bit or we’ve been a little bit convincing because I think, you know, you guys both did agree, right? We do want to talk about emotions and exp
Neil Robinson: a press the the engulfment person.
I think you should repress. Oh,
Chris Gazdik: no.
Neil Robinson: You just have to do it. I think it’s definitely worth getting them out.
Chris Gazdik: Right, right, right. All right I think that is wrapping up november. We are moving into december tomorrow as you guys listen to this unless you’re on the live Then you know we’ll be in december.
So Happy holidays. Hope you guys are doing well out there. Take care and we will see you soon next time around