Join us for Episode 277 of Through a Therapist’s Eyes as we review the month of June. Dive into conflict resolution and the apology/forgiveness cycle from Episode 275, exploring key questions about resolving conflicts and understanding the nuances between conflicts and chronic problems. In Episode 276, we shed light on family life with Bipolar Disorder, distinguishing it from Borderline Personality Disorder and uncovering the emotional strains and challenges families face. Hear a personal story of diagnosis, medication issues, and practical coping strategies for families.
Tune in to see the Month of June Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Links referenced during the show:
https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/monthinreview
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@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
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https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
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Episode #277 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] It’s Through a Therapist’s Eyes, and we are doing the June month in review here on June the 26th. So welcome. If you’re finding us for the first time at the end of the month, we do a review of the shows that we did in June. We bring Mr. Adam Ploninger to hang out with us. How are you, sir? I’m good. Doing good.
How are you? Doing good as well. And then we have Neil who comes out behind the curtains and hangs out with us. You want to say hello?
Neil Robinson: Hello.
Chris Gazdik: So we are going to be reviewing the two shows that we did conflict resolution and apology with forgiveness cycles, and then family life with bipolar disorder, all about bipolar, which I was surprised we didn’t do a show alone on bipolar disorder, except for like episode, like, 10 or
Neil Robinson: 16 or something.
Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: only had one
Adam Cloninger: show on
Neil Robinson: Bible. Yes, we’ve done a lot where the it’s referenced like what I’m looking for. There’s like, there’s all these other ones that it’s like reference bipolar, bipolar, like it’s just little con, but nothing about the [00:01:00] topic.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. So, so we took a pretty good deep dive on it and in different ways.
And so let me see this is where you get insights directly from therapists in this case, month in review. You all brilliant non clinician people, I guess, right?
Neil Robinson: Not us. We’re just here for, for jokes.
Chris Gazdik: But knowing this is not the delivery of therapy serves in any way, click subscribe, your job, really, if you like the content to help us out, maybe really Subscribing, telling people about YouTube lives on Thursdays and bringing in some more subscribers.
Click the bell for notifications, Facebook Instagram. We’re on there. We got podcasts on Spotify and everywhere you get your podcast. Five stars is the thing we’re looking for. Contact at through a therapist’s eyes. com to interact with us. This is the human emotional experience, which we endeavor to figure out together.
You said something cool about our site that I think is kind of cool to highlight. Not rhymes. [00:02:00] Sight and light and, nevermind. What, what did you notice?
Neil Robinson: Oh yeah, YouTube. We hit 30, 000 views. Yeah. On, on YouTube, which is really cool. I think that’s cool. So, really, really want to grow that one and get some, get some traction.
Y’all need to join in
Chris Gazdik: on the, the, the clap. Like you know, like they do on What’s the sports show that I like? Just blanking on the sports show.
Neil Robinson: I don’t even know. I haven’t watched a sports show in a long time.
Chris Gazdik: That’s gonna bother me. On ESPN. SportsCenter? West Virginia Kicker. You’re asking me? Yes, I am.
Both of you did not watch the freaking NHL hockey grand finale game seven for the Stanley Cup. Neil, tell me you checked it out.
Adam Cloninger: Nope.
Chris Gazdik: Dang,
Adam Cloninger: so he asked me are you watching the stanley cup and I said something along the lines of we we have a stanley cup I prefer the yeti though Yeah
Chris Gazdik: Brutal we are on alcoholfree.
com. I like to mention that because I got an email correspondence that told us about Them placing us on their [00:03:00] podcast searching tool, which is a really cool place if you’re dealing with alcohol issues at all they got a lot of cool resources. It’s a podcast. Dispensary, I guess, or a main list that it’s just
Neil Robinson: resources in general.
I think, and we’re one of the podcasts or shows that they, they selected just for their website. So I think it’s really cool.
Chris Gazdik: So we give them a little honorable mention, alcoholfree. com, go check that out. And then. We have two new honorable mentions for YouTube joiners. Kyle and Victoria, welcome to YouTube lives, or YouTube in general.
Love having new people aboard. I decided last week we need to highlight when that happens, and so we have two now. So, numbers are growing, and we do want them to grow. That’s what Neil said earlier. To get what is our goal? Thousand. Thousand subscribers. Thousand subscribers. So, we got a little way to go with that, so help us out.
One per week is Just fine. So on the month in reviews, we jump over to Adam, who has created a cool, fun game, a little concept called down the rabbit hole with Adam, where he gives [00:04:00] us fun things to talk about. And you said you had three short ones. Are we going to do all three? What are we doing here?
You
Adam Cloninger: only had two shows. So I had like one topic and I thought, you know, I’m going to throw two little weird things I saw this week. I just thought I’d throw at you. I didn’t
Chris Gazdik: see weird mental health conditions. I guess, well,
Adam Cloninger: no, the other, well, yeah, I guess actually. Oh, and I guess it correct. Actually, all three.
Yeah, all three of them can be mental health. Yeah. Well, they have to be mental health. This is a mental health show. I know. I know. But well, the cool thing is, you know, no matter no matter what you find on the news, you can tie it in with mental health no matter what, you know,
Chris Gazdik: that is true. So that is true is one of them.
The great debate tonight.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Indirectly,
Chris Gazdik: yes. Oh my gosh, I am on a hot streak, Neal. What is going on? Indirectly. Wow, I expected a flat no with that.
Adam Cloninger: Indirectly, I don’t want to get too deep into that. No, yeah, well, so,
Chris Gazdik: alright, well, down the rabbit hole with Adam. Where we going, brother?
Adam Cloninger: Alright, so the first one’s an oddity.
Y’all may remember a few years ago, there was a thing, I think it was about a, what color is a dress or something like that? [00:05:00] Yes. Okay, there’s, there’s a couple now where it’s What color is a dress? What? Like
Neil Robinson: Basically, there was this picture and if you looked at it, either you saw a white and gold dress or you saw a blue and black dress and legit, like depending on different people, some people are, yeah.
And there was a shoe. There was also a shoe that they did it with that they saw was like teal and gray or some other colors and yeah. Yeah. You probably can’t. Yeah. It’s, it’s all, but yeah, and there’s legitimate where some people saw one color, some people saw the other. And if you did certain things, you could still kind of maybe see the other color.
It was a really weird, like psychological, like test or like it’s something about the vision. But yes, I remember that. Where do I look this up? Just look up, what color is the dress? Yeah. You’re going to look it up now.
Chris Gazdik: Yes.
Neil Robinson: Okay. I’m surprised he hasn’t seen it, but he wasn’t a big Facebook person. He was too busy on his Farmville and his Mafia Wars.
Chris Gazdik: Really off the book. Yeah, that. Yeah, that’s it. That’s it?
Adam Cloninger: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:00] Okay, so I’m looking at the science of why do no one agrees on the color of this dress. That’s what it says. The science of why no one agrees, oh, I read it wrong, on the color of the dress. What
Neil Robinson: color is the dress to you?
Chris Gazdik: Well, yeah, well, there’s three dresses and there’s, it’s a horizontal pattern of stripes, right?
So the one on the right is blue and black for sure. The second one is brown and white dolled out. And the third one on the left is brown and white very clearly. What is the deal? People see this as red?
Neil Robinson: No, they just, it was either gold and white or black and blue. And it was the one picture that people argued about it.
Yep. There was a whole thing about that one, depending on how you looked at it. It would show you two different things.
Adam Cloninger: It’s probably the one in the middle that they were showing.
Neil Robinson: It’s
Chris Gazdik: just, that’s gold brown. Really? It’s brown and white. Okay.
Adam Cloninger: What is [00:07:00] this? What are we looking at? I mean, I would think that you’re in that case, you’re going to be looking in the shadow, but I was going to say, was there something kind of like that?
So this one’s on one on ones where you, you hear something, but depending on what you’re seeing, you hear something different. Have you seen this? I think I’ve heard something about that one, yeah. Okay. The, the one, the current one I’m looking at is called Green Needle Brown Storm. Have you seen this?
Neil Robinson: I haven’t heard that
Adam Cloninger: one.
Okay. So unfortunately I was, I was having a hard time trying to find a video on it. A friend of mine showed me one on Instagram, and I don’t use Instagram, so when you, when I tried to pull it up, it just said, you know. Download Instagram. I don’t do that. So anyway, the, and I tried to look up a couple on YouTube.
I didn’t see a really good one. But the one that I saw that was really good was they had, they had this person that had like a bunch of rainbow colored paint
and they were using like a squeegee and on both sides of the squeegee on one side, it said green needle. And the [00:08:00] other side, it said brainstorm.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: So the question is, what do you hear this little. It’s a little di device that does, yeah, it makes a little noise and it’s really weird. I thought, you know, I, I, I, I even thought it was kind of a trick. I, if you look at the green, the site, it says Green Needle and you, and you’re reading Green Needle, you hear it say Green Needle, but if you look at brainstorm, it’s, you hear, brainstorm.
And I thought, okay, okay. That they, I figured that, you know. Somebody’s gonna read this one and then they’re gonna go that one. I thought okay. I’m gonna stay here three times Nope still said brainstorming. Okay, green needle prankster No matter how many times I did it, whatever you’re looking at. Yeah, that’s what you hear So this is how it ties into the debate.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, this is the debate. Yeah
Adam Cloninger: This is how it goes ties in the debate that the that and you’re
Chris Gazdik: talking about the biden trump debate that is on tv tonight This is a debate night.
Adam Cloninger: We’re gonna we’ve been seeing this we see this all time It’s something we always said the the phenomenon is called priming Okay, so based on stuff that you’ve seen or and or heard when you hear [00:09:00] something else you may I actually take the meaning as being something else because you’ve been primed to think that.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Right.
Adam Cloninger: That
Chris Gazdik: was just an oddity I saw. It’s not an oddity, actually. It’s a very common experience, believe it or not. Like, I’ve never gotten into hypnosis, you know, practices. I took a training on hypnosis and learned about it and actually was able to implement it. Never really got good at it because I don’t want to use it in my practice.
You can use hypnosis for, for memory recall or trauma, particularly in the therapy realm. But I use memory recall by just, you know, soothing, de escalating, and then memories come back from trauma. So I never really found
a need to do hypnosis. But when you look at the psychology world, and we’ve talked about implicit bias on here before.
So there is a lot of really powerful psychological stuff going on. Like when you have a hypnosis that does the stage shows and stuff, [00:10:00] that is all 100 percent full legit. It is not a magic show. It is not set up. It is very much people that are good at hypnosis and they engage you. And they really do prime prime certain thoughts.
They really do. Install hypnotic beliefs and hypnotic strategies. Like when I was at this, this, this training, Dr. Neil Newfield, Hey, Mr. Neil field, I hope you see this someday. He was my favorite college professor and he put this kid under hypnosis. And one of the hypnotic suggestions he gave him is when you come to, I want you to do two things just to demonstrate the power of hypnosis and how it works with the mind.
I want you to forget what your name is. And secondly, I want you to notice something about me in my face that looks funny. And he said, don’t worry, I got thick skin. You’re not going to upset me or hurt my feelings or anything. And the reason why he said that is because there’s [00:11:00] a, there’s a myth about hypnosis that you can force somebody to do something that’s not the way hypnosis works.
It’s not the way psychology works. You have to be willing, like you can’t be hypnotized to go kill Neil if I hypnotize you because you would never do that. So, so, so you’re really in control of yourself, but he, he wanted them to know you’re not going to hurt my feelings. And he brought him out of hypnosis and the kid started like, just giggling.
He’s like, what’s, what’s, what’s wrong? What’s, what’s, what are you laughing about? He’s like, your head is really, your head is really small compared to the rest of your body and it’s really funny. And we were like, oh my God, that’s hysterical. And he’s like, And it was also probably true. Yeah, you could, I could see where he’d come up with that.
I thought he was going to go to his nose cause he had a really big nose, but anyway and then he asked him, he’s like, well, by the way, tell the crowd what your name is. And he just like stumbled and he totally could not say his name. [00:12:00] So it was really a good demonstration of how you can use. Hypnotic suggestions and hypnosis in the subconsciousness to bring the subconsciousness to the forefront and demonstrate it With these trance states and the hypnotic suggestions and stuff and yes priming so all these folks that do these shows I mean, it’s quite legit.
They’re just tapping in your psychology
Neil Robinson: Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: and people that are like fortune tellers, which is totally not legit in my view it’s been debunked in many ways, are playing on you though in similar ways, and that’s in a arguably a bad way.
Adam Cloninger: It is neat to see how they do the, do the fortune telling, or the
Chris Gazdik: Oh man, there, there, there are some skilled shysters out there.
Yeah, there are some skilled shysters, they’ll make you believe all kind of crazy stuff, so.
Adam Cloninger: So anyway, check out the green needle brainstorm thing. If you can find the video on Instagram, I think it was better. I saw about three or four other ones on YouTube and they just didn’t have a good video and I’m thinking that the video, watching the [00:13:00] thing moving and stuff, kind of, cause it, to me, it was really good.
Neil Robinson: It
Chris Gazdik: just occurred to me. I’m looking around in my office. I guess it’s in the box. I got toys because I worked with kids used to work with kids. I don’t really work with kids as much anymore, but I have a puzzle box that we love pulling out. There’s these a lot of those types of things. I mean, there’s cards, flash cards basically that got one after the other of like optical illusions and things in the way that your brain just catches things.
So it’s fascinating stuff. What else we got doin doin
Adam Cloninger: Bad news for Chris.
Chris Gazdik: Oh God.
Adam Cloninger: This is something that Can I veto this? Yeah, no, it’s not that bad. We had a one of the favorite rabbit holes we had that you really liked.
Chris Gazdik: Night fighting!
Adam Cloninger: No! That was good too, that was
Chris Gazdik: good too. That was good too.
Adam Cloninger: What’s another one you liked real you really, really liked?
Chris Gazdik: Night fighting? What did I like more than night fighting? Sharks? Do you remember? Yeah. You remember one of those?
Neil Robinson: Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Rage rooms.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, rage rooms! Oh, yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Okay. So, you know, you [00:14:00] People may remember that, I mean, you had a kind of a disagreement. I thought, at first I thought it was good. The more I started thinking about it, I thought, Ah, I don’t know.
Yeah. And Chris said, Ah, I think it’s a good idea. Well, more and more research, it seems like the Raid Dreams is not a good idea. It’s a temporary relief, but they’re offering an alternate now, Escape Rooms. Well, they’ve been around for a long time. Yeah. They’re saying that it’s actually much better for you because you’re actually working to get, to make the situation better.
Neil Robinson: So you’re working on your problem solving and going through the whole process. And if you go with the person you don’t like, then you’re stuck in the room and you have to work it out. Yeah. You’re,
Adam Cloninger: you’re, you’re working it out. You’re figuring this thing out together. That’s right. There you go. Anyway, I just thought that would be bad news.
That’s a nice follow up.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. That’s a nice follow up from a prior And it makes sense, and honestly, what I was thinking that’s positive about the Rage Rooms is just because it does get energy out, and we do activities like that in therapy, we’ll design [00:15:00] things for people like taking apples and throwing them across a tree, you know, just to expose, but that has to be really guided, I mean, you gotta be careful with it.
In all
Adam Cloninger: fairness, the original Rage Room article I read about the particular place that was doing it, I can’t remember what state it was in or whatever, they actually had a On staff therapist there. Right. Good. And you’re supposed to meet with a therapist and go over things and they, perfect. They would actually do spec specific things.
Like if there was a I’m just gonna say you’re mad at your car. They would bring a, a hot wheel car in like your car and you’re gonna smash the car, you know, just so you’re not actually smashing the car. But anyway.
Neil Robinson: Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Or the a word you know, for, it’s a people, you know, they design activities kind, not, not respect, you know, be helpful.
They write down anyway. Alright, so the rabbit hole. This kind of ties into, how can I say, you know how we have different social things where people have kind of been bullying and stuff. Do y’all remember what one of the main reasons that was being said about why people bully is because it, there’s kind of like um, people don’t know who they are, they’re kind [00:16:00] of you know, on the other side of the world or whatever.
So the recent news article, there’s a guy in New Jersey, That he attacked another player over at Online Gaming Dispute. He flew from New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, jeez! Entered the guy’s house at 2 a. m. With a mask.
Chris Gazdik: Oh my gosh. And attacked
Adam Cloninger: him with a hammer.
Chris Gazdik: You gotta be kidding me. Nope.
Adam Cloninger: This is what I thought was weird.
This is he’s being charged with and you’ll see why I think it’s funny. Second degree murder and armed burglary with a mask. Did he murder the guy? No, no, no, no. Second, second degree murder. Attempted murder? Attempted murder, probably attempted murder. Yeah, cause he didn’t. You’re right, probably attempted cause.
I don’t think he killed a guy, because he did say that the guy that’s being attacked actually called out and his father in law or something ran out and broke it up or whatever. Oh my god. Second degree attempte
thought was weird was an armed burglar with a [00:17:00] mask. I didn’t know that was a thing.
With a mask. With a mask. Oh, and one other thing, the guy that the accused was stating about the victim, he said that he’s a bad person online. He’s
Chris Gazdik: You know, wow. Wow. People, y’all need to have direct conversations with people and have relationships. So we’re not like doing this online crazy land. You know, people do act crazy behind a screen.
And I mean, I used to watch my little kid play PlayStation online. Do you ever, you ever watch that and or play online? Yeah, actually, or whatever. Actually,
Adam Cloninger: believe it or not, I know you like
Chris Gazdik: gaming.
Adam Cloninger: Believe it or not, my favorite game of all time Assassin’s Creed, they had an online thing. I don’t know if the new ones do, but the old ones did and they were alright.
Chris Gazdik: But their talk on there is trash. Yeah. Like cursing and slamming people and offensive, [00:18:00] just
Adam Cloninger: brutal. Well, they offended, he offended this guy pretty bad. Pretty bad? To go down from Jersey? Yeah, flew, flew down.
Chris Gazdik: To attack him with a hammer in the middle of the night. Yep. That’s a little derangement. I tell you we get a lot of activation of emotion online, you know all of the you know radicalizing of of people towards violence and all of the disinformation that’s out there and People putting forums on, you know, following news stories and tearing addicts up that are in the news and all the comments that you read are just nasty.
It’s just unfiltered, unabridged, just nastiness. And it’s just because you’re safe behind a screen.
Adam Cloninger: Because you’re in Florida and I’m in New Jersey, I’m going to say whatever I want to. It’s not like you’re going to fly down and attack me with a hammer at 2am and Peace. So anyway,
Chris Gazdik: all right, well, be careful about [00:19:00] online hygiene.
That’s a new term, online hygiene. We have sleep hygiene. I got to get better term than that, but being healthy online. You said I’m not on Facebook much anymore. Neil, I’m finding, you know, here’s an interesting thing that Gen X or Gen Z is doing, and I’ve confirmed it a little bit anecdotally with a very small sample size, but.
I feel like the Gen Z folks have, we need to get to our shows. The Gen Z folks have basically like, you know, I grew up with Instagram, Snapchat, took pictures of my half of my face, sent it and worried about streaks and all this kind of stuff. And they all, it’s been normal for them, but it’s kid stuff.
So they get off of it. Also, I don’t want to do the adult old stuff. You know, I’m not going to get a Facebook page and they’re like, well, you know what, mindfully, I don’t need any of this stuff. They are getting off social media in droves. I’m not buying that. They are. You don’t buy that?
Adam Cloninger: I bet they’re still doing Instagram and whatever else.
Well, [00:20:00] they use Instagram for news.
Chris Gazdik: But they’re not like doing all chatty and posting and doing all that. They’re just shifting. Shifting.
Neil Robinson: They’re probably still on something, but it’s just not Instagram anymore. It’s like, once again, it’s that. X. Facebook. Facebook is this older generation Instagram is kind of the younger one, you know, of course, tick tock and all of its legal issues, which is just a whole nother rabbit hole itself.
But then, I mean, there’s just going to be another app and nothing they’re going to use as a, as a way to do it. Right. I think. It’s just a shift. They’re going to find the late, whatever the latest app is. You’re just too old to know whatever it is. Yeah. Like we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re out of that cycle.
You circle where all of us are too old for that. Remember
Adam Cloninger: Facebook wasn’t the first anyway.
Neil Robinson: MySpace. MySpace. My wife had a MySpace page. I didn’t really actually have anything at the time, which was weird. That I was, I wasn’t. I didn’t do MySpace. I
Chris Gazdik: didn’t do MySpace. Yeah, AOL my internet connection
Adam Cloninger: was too slow for anything.
Absolutely. That was so annoying
Chris Gazdik: I was doing good just to get a few of those stupid games before I went out to hang [00:21:00] out with my friends in college And that was my
Adam Cloninger: my internet was so bad that when I was on the computer If one of my friends would type in i’m like it Freeze it up. It just, I’m like, Oh man,
Chris Gazdik: I had a good game going.
All right, let’s get to some of these, to these shows that we did. Show one, episode two 75 conflict resolution and apology forgiveness cycle. So the questions were, what is the difference between conflict and problems? Which comes first, the apology or forgiveness and then how to resolve conflicts. And y’all want to ask you, if you remember how we differentiated between conflict and problems.
Neil Robinson: They’re different. The problem is like kind of like that, that deep seated, like situation you have to resolve it. That’s, that’s where the conflict is just usually it’s just a moment in time where you just go against someone. So like the problem is definitely a lot more and the next problems lead to conflicts.
Usually it’s the way that the way I think about it, but yeah, that problem is that, you know, when you and your spouse have a conflict or [00:22:00] siblings have conflicts, it’s the problem. Peace. Sometimes it’s because of a deeper problem that they haven’t actually solved.
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Adam Cloninger: So which, which one do y’all consider worse than problems?
Problems
Chris Gazdik: for sure. It’s more chronicity, more internal. Some of that psychology stuff with implicit bias we were talking about. I mean, you know, problems are something that therapy really is, is good with that you really need to get at. What’s driving your behavior or the way that you’re thinking, all those types of things.
It’s pretty depthy. The re it’s not talked about a lot, but the reason I wanted to differentiate was because I really wanted to try to normalize when we were
doing that show. And I don’t think it came out enough, which I keep saying is why I like these review shows to really re hit these themes that we missed or didn’t really get.
Adam Cloninger: As you think about it for a couple of weeks,
Chris Gazdik: right? Because I really wanted to normalize conflicts. It’s like. They happen all the time and people are afraid to deal with them. And we need to be able to deal and resolve with simple [00:23:00] situations without mixing in, as you said, Neil, absolutely on point problems that are a part of the way that you interact.
Most of the time you’re dealing with problems that you don’t even know are active when you’re in a conflict. And that’s what creates the hours long conversation, which is horrible, right? So. Next question I want to ask is you Adam. Trick question, which comes first from the apology and forgiveness cycle?
Does the apology comes first or the forgiveness come first? The apology comes first. Yeah, that is the common thinking. Gotcha though! I set you up though.
Adam Cloninger: But the forgiveness doesn’t always come.
Chris Gazdik: It doesn’t always come. I just
Neil Robinson: knew that the apology doesn’t always come either. That’s true. That’s true.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. So, Neil, hammer it down, because I think after the show we were talking about, you were like, oh, that’s so cool, the way apologies actually serve the person [00:24:00] apologizing that we were talking about. So, apology forgiveness cycles, which one comes first?
Neil Robinson: It depends on the people, but really, yeah, it’s, I, what you brought up was I always knew forgiveness when you, when you look at forgiveness, it’s not about the other person.
It’s about yourself because forgiveness is definitely something that if you don’t, if you don’t forgive and move past, it’s just going to eat at you and it’s just going to hurt you. Right. Resentments. Yeah. So, but then you said what you thought was, this was, was apologies was for you. So if you’re the one that does the wrong, Apologies is for you to help get over the guilt or shame of, of realizing you did something wrong.
And because that also guilt and shame is almost just as bad as that anger you have. It’s amazing how it can hinder you. And so when you brought that up, it was like, I never thought about how important apologies were for the person who does the wrong. Or who’s perceived to do the wrong versus because I always knew forgiveness was, you know, you can’t control someone apologizing to you, but you can control your forgiveness [00:25:00] of that person or your apology of that person.
So it’s that. That internal locus of control or something.
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. Nice clinical term thrown in there. Adam, it’s funny because people totally think, that’s why I probably shouldn’t set you up, but apologize for that. Please don’t be in conflict with me. Do we need to resolve anything? Are you, are you, are you taking over?
He’ll never forgive you.
Adam Cloninger: We’ll get, we’ll go to the knight thing and just beat each other up with little swords.
Chris Gazdik: We’re going knight fighting now. I’m not fighting you. You’re, you’re way more in shape. You could do 40 push ups. I said I don’t have a chance. But you got the
Neil Robinson: extra weight behind you.
You’re good.
Chris Gazdik: I do, I do. I can’t get momentum together and, and maybe get a good one in, but. No, apology and forgiveness is something that people really think I need you to apologize to me and then Following I will forgive you but that is all completely wrong in in in not healthy in the way that neil was just describing And I like and we took a deeper dive on this but usually when if you and I [00:26:00] are in conflict We probably have something that we both have not done perfectly, right?
So there’s actually four things Four tasks that need to be done, and they need to be done in any order. A forgiveness can come completely before somebody apologizes because you’re letting go of your anger. That’s what you’re doing when you’re forgiving somebody. So if you and I are in conflict, we have four tasks.
You probably need to apologize. You probably also need to forgive me. I need to apologize and I also need to forgive you. And the two tasks that I’m doing are for myself. They’re really not for you. They’re there. I get much more of the benefit. Now, if I apologize to you, you’re probably going to feel good.
Oh, I’m glad that I can let go of that now. It might be helpful, but you need to be able to forgive regardless if you get an apology or not, because you can’t keep that anger. It’ll eat you up. Right? Right. Right. So, in any order, all four are going to need to happen, usually, right? And people [00:27:00] just do not think about apology forgiveness cycles that way.
So, do you forgive me? Sure. Okay. I’m not feeling the forgiveness. I’m not feeling it, Neil. I’m, I’m, I’m hurt over here. It’s not about
Neil Robinson: you.
Chris Gazdik: All right. It’s not, I have, I have already apologized. I let go towards, towards what I have done to Adam tonight. All right. That’s real simple. We took a deeper dive on the show, but does that make sense?
You know, so, so there’s also another cool thing that I’m, I’m just doing a quick review because I thought there were really cool things in here. You guys have heard probably of Gary Chapman’s five love languages, right?
Neil Robinson: Yep.
Chris Gazdik: Have you heard of this? I doubt it. You don’t read a lot of self help books, do you?
No. You need to. I’m not going to do something else I need to apologize about, Neil. I almost let it slip.
Neil Robinson: Adam, you’re not good enough. Go get some self help books. Great.
Chris Gazdik: Alright, now
Adam Cloninger: you
Chris Gazdik: need to apologize to Adam.
Adam Cloninger: I probably only slept about 8 hours tonight because of it.
Chris Gazdik: Well, there’s this very well known book that came out.
I’m The five love [00:28:00] languages, everyone raved about it. Everyone loved it. I think it’s, it’s an awesome material. But he also wrote the five languages of apology, right? Or, or was it forget? Yeah. The, the, the five styles rather the five styles of apology. And so if you don’t speak the same language, just like in love languages.
You know, it’s like quality time. You never heard of that? Physical touch, words of affection. That’s the, that’s the five levels. Yeah, gift giving, those are weird people. I don’t understand that at all. I love all you people who give gifts. I didn’t mean you’re weird. Now I have to apologize to the listening public.
Neil Robinson: They’ll never forgive you. I tell you, hate
Chris Gazdik: mail is coming now. No, it, it’s, it’s really cool because if you, if, if, if your love language is, you know, acts, or acts of service, and mine is words of affirmation, you, I need you to tell me things with words. And you need me to do things like wash your car and, and that conveys, [00:29:00] I feel, some sort of wave affectionately towards you.
This is the same thing with apology. So think about how do you give an apology? Before telling you the five, do you know how you tend to take responsibility for something? What do you do when you apologize? Or how do you say your apology? How do you say your apology? How do you, well, it didn’t even necessarily say.
So how do you do apology?
Adam Cloninger: Well, you need to make, need to make sure you do it in a way where the other person can relate to it.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Well, you’re advanced to there. Okay. How do you relate to it though? Cause you’re probably going to do it the way you want people to apologize to you. And there’s five different ones he identified.
Hmm. Do you know, Neil? What yours is? Cause I don’t really know what mine is. I haven’t thought enough about it to be honest with you.
Adam Cloninger: So you’re saying that I, I would probably apologize the same way I would think someone else should apologize to me. Correct. Yes.
Neil Robinson: Okay. Do you want to see the five options?
Chris Gazdik: I want to struggle.
I, how do you, how
Adam Cloninger: do you do apology? [00:30:00] So if you get it, I try to always do the right thing anyway, but I mean, when you do try to see it their way and, you know, apologize for hurting their feelings or whatever.
Chris Gazdik: Okay, so, think about this, the five are expressing regret, accepting responsibility, Making restitution, genuinely repenting, and then requesting forgiveness.
So let me try to narrow it down for you in what you’ve said and in knowing you. Obviously requesting forgiveness is not your style. Accepting responsibility. I don’t think it’s your response style either. Maybe expressing regret, maybe making restitution, but genuinely repenting is like, I am genuinely sorry and there’s no ifs, ands, or buts, or follow ups and explanations about it.
I feel like you might be making restitution or expressing regret. Does any of those stick [00:31:00] out?
Adam Cloninger: I have no idea, man.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, you don’t know. Don’t know. Do you know, Neal?
Neil Robinson: For him?
Chris Gazdik: For you? Yeah, he
Neil Robinson: has no idea
Adam Cloninger: for me.
Neil Robinson: I was, I think accepting responsibilities is one that I would probably, like, when I think about, like, when I deal with my kids or my wife, like, I’m thinking about, like, what I say when they, like, and I’m thinking, I think that’s one thing I have a big deal about, like, if you’re going to do something wrong, just admit it and then just take care of it.
Like, just move, but you have to, like, That phrase, accept responsibility. That’s like a big part of what’s up when my kids do something wrong. It’s like, that makes sense for you. So that’s mine. And I think I
Chris Gazdik: might be expressing regret, you know, like, Hey, I did this wrong. I wish I would have done it differently.
Can’t take it back. You know, in combination with genuinely repenting, like, I’m really sorry. That’s you’re going to have to ask Julie. I’m gonna have to ask Julie. Yeah. They’re on the phone. Yeah, let’s call her up, man. She’s listening. Julie, what is it? Text in here and tell us what the heck Adam does. He doesn’t know.
But I think, I think it’s a bad idea. [00:32:00]
Neil Robinson: But I think it’s also because that is an interesting, you know, look at the five love languages and these, that was an interesting topic is if, Something happens and Chris apologized, like his apologies, whatever it is. Like if he doesn’t apologize in the same apology language you have, you might not see it as genuine because it’s, you don’t, it’s hard for you.
It doesn’t really have an impact on you. Like
Chris Gazdik: asking for forgiveness.
Neil Robinson: Right? Exactly. I don’t care if you ask for forgiveness, like whatever, just deal with it. I guess
Adam Cloninger: my thing is I want somebody to actually mean it. So,
Neil Robinson: so genuinely repenting maybe. I think so. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You really want to say you’re sorry and mean it and don’t make excuses about it and just be genuine about it I could see that because yeah I don’t want to
Adam Cloninger: hear somebody just say and like you don’t really mean that you don’t want lip service.
You’re right Right, right.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, but like if if yours is is You know asking for forgiveness and I express my regret and I tell you i’m genuinely sorry and [00:33:00] you know I accept my responsibility and I make restitution. Here’s my plan to never have this happen again That’s a whole if yours is requesting and I never ask you to forgive me, then in your eyes, I never apologized.
It is very powerful in realizing this because people will fight and fight and fight over and over again about the same thing for years, for years, right? And. Never realized that this has been addressed. It just wasn’t in the same language. But, and I think that,
Neil Robinson: and I thought that was interesting because love language you hear about, you know, that whole thing, quality time versus gifts.
You could have a thing where, you know, your girlfriend or wife or whatever wants to hang out on the couch and watch TV and you’re like, you’re busy. And all you do is you just keep buying her. Necklaces. And she’s like, I don’t care about these fricking necklaces. Just spent an hour with me on the couch.
And so you’re, you’re like, I’m doing all this stuff for you. I’m buying you all this stuff. They’re like, I just don’t care, but you’re not, you’re not talking to me. And so it’s always knowing. And that’s [00:34:00] why it’s a point on these things. Knowing your partner’s love language, whether it’s apologies or whatever, helps you kind of understand, Oh, well, that’s what that apology didn’t really work.
And she’s still pissed at me. So wait a minute, Julie keeps buying me things. Should I be worried?
Adam Cloninger: Yeah.
Neil Robinson: That means you need to buy her stuff.
Chris Gazdik: Exactly. You’re screwing up. No, she says in, she says, For Adam, it depends on who it is and what he’s apologizing for. So basically, Julie doesn’t know either. Yes, she does.
Yes, she does. Yeah, she probably does. She does. But let’s move on to conflict resolution because it’s, it’s something that we didn’t really hit a lot on when we spoke and spending on time on, like, how do you really do this? And I, and I think that’s because my, My goal was to really kind of get at like, you know, normalize this and just deal with your own internal feelings and really get into what you can control, which is your apology and your sense of forgiveness.
And [00:35:00] then the conflicts, because you’re avoiding problems becomes so much easier to manage. What do we do when we actually get into a conflict? Any ideas guys, what, you know, when you got conflicts, how do you go about dealing with them?
Adam Cloninger: Nip it in the bud. Early.
Neil Robinson: Run away. Run away. Oh, hey, that’s not the healthy way.
Adam Cloninger: I didn’t say I didn’t qualify it. Shut down. He didn’t say the healthy way. I did not.
Neil Robinson: Hey, I, I, I saw a short that said, you know, the, the step away rule, the 15 minute rule. And like, if there’s a major conflict, so I hear that’s good. You can run away. You just have to come back.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, that was funny. The one of the comments, we had a lot of interaction with that particular short.
One of the comments on there was, what happens when he says, get the F out of my house? Yeah, well, that’s not exactly conflict rather than someone else typed in. He’s like, well, he didn’t say I’ll be back in 15 minutes. So that’s not the 15 minute rule. We can have fun with [00:36:00] it because it’s so emotional. You know, when you’re in a state of conflict with somebody and you know, you need to deal with this.
And I tell you, you know, Neil, I know you actually, actually, I know you better. You weren’t making a joke, really run away, shut down. I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t want to have this conversation and it then gets avoided and it just doesn’t get dealt with. Not a good plan. I really want to normalize like do this and when you begin to allow yourselves in a close relationship, particularly marriage, but this is not just marriage.
You you develop more confidence and being able to express anger like receive other people’s perception for what it is. Avoid taking things personally and getting, getting into like a bad space about insecurities and stuff like when you do this a little bit more regularly and, and get into a conversation where conflict is and, and [00:37:00] successfully resolve it, man, your emotional health just skyrockets with all of those things.
And so, how do we do this? I actually have three steps. We did this on episode 40. Three steps to resolve any conflict. Right? The first step is tell the person to stop doing what they’re doing. Usually, if you simply do that, the conflict usually stops. Right. And then you, what are you smiling about?
Adam Cloninger: Oh,
Neil Robinson: stop it.
Adam Cloninger: Julie knows what I’m thinking of. It’s not her. Oh boy. We need her texted to join the show. Yeah. We don’t need to talk about this. I know we will talk about
Chris Gazdik: this. So second step is back off and give the person space so that you’re not getting aggressive. And the third is get objective. Third party help if you’re still in conflict, and that isn’t a judge, necessarily, or police officer, it could be just a [00:38:00] friend or a priest, or a pastor, or a therapist.
But, you know, you do those three steps, and I think that you’re going to go a long way to resolving most any conflict that you’re in. Now there’s many ways, and we did do a whole show on it, episode 40, so I won’t spend much time on it here, but many, many ways to kind of go in and through, you know, that process.
Each step. Step one, there’s many ways to tell people to stop doing what you’re doing. I mean, humor is a great method, right?
Neil Robinson: Diffuse. Yeah. That’s a great way to diffuse.
Chris Gazdik: Deescalate, diffuse, and just, you know, somebody’s squaring off on you. My brother told me, I remember when I was a kid, like, what do you do when somebody wants to fight?
She’s like, I just make them look stupid and say funny things. I’m like, Okay. Well, that’s a great idea.
Neil Robinson: So, I get my wife to stop being mad at me. I make her laugh at me. She hates herself for it but it’s so good.
Chris Gazdik: Right. You sit back and enjoy it. He’s like, yes, she hates herself. Oh, no.
Neil Robinson: No, I just enjoy the fact that.
Oh, ouch. I just enjoy the fact that I win, you know, she’s like really pissed at me and I do something and she starts going like cracking and [00:39:00] laughing. I’m like, ha.
Chris Gazdik: Got it. I’m out. Now, we don’t have to deal with the problem.
Neil Robinson: I’ll deal with it later for sure. On some things.
Chris Gazdik: Helpful traits, normalizing this.
I think we’ve talked about that actively. Listen, communication, but that’s so simple. People talk about like communication. So weird. Usually there aren’t communication problems. I like to tell people, I know that sounds crazy and couples counseling. I say that and they’re like their eyes turn and whatever.
And I’m like, look,
Adam Cloninger: there’s like, well, why are we here then? Right.
Chris Gazdik: That’s literally what they say on the initial paperwork. Like we need better communication. And I’m like, oh, I’m going to get it with this. Cause. Usually, you communicate about very complicated things all the time with your spouse. I mean, you set up a marriage for crying out loud.
You planned a wedding. You can communicate just fine. But when you get into your emotions, as the kids say nowadays, when you’re in your feels, I love that phrase. You can’t talk about whether you’re going to [00:40:00] get Coke or Pepsi at the grocery store. Right? You just get so twisted. So it really isn’t usually communication problems.
It’s more insecurities and what not. What did I say wrong?
Adam Cloninger: You’re trying to find something minor.
Chris Gazdik: Huh?
Adam Cloninger: You’re trying to find something minor about the Coke or Pepsi.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, absolutely.
Neil Robinson: That’s actually a big deal though. I can see that being minor to somebody like that. Now the big question is, is it Dukes or Miracle Whip?
Oh, God. Depends on
Adam Cloninger: what, where the country, or what part of the city. I know somebody that’s a
Chris Gazdik: Duke’s crazy man. You can’t have Miracle Whip. Miracle Whip’s nasty. Huh?
Neil Robinson: Miracle Whip’s nasty. Is it? You probably use Miracle Whip, don’t you? I don’t care. And you drink Pepsi?
Chris Gazdik: I do.
Neil Robinson: Yes! Yes and yes. They’re both sweeter.
That’s why I’m kind of leaning towards that you’re probably going to eat both of those. Pepsi’s sweeter than Coke and Miracle Whip is definitely a lot sweeter than Duke’s.
Adam Cloninger: I think Chris might be just Canadian.
Neil Robinson: He might be. Do you, do you just drink maple syrup?
Adam Cloninger: What
Neil Robinson: am I doing [00:41:00] here? Like somebody saved me.
Sounds like we’re starting a conflict. I feel like we need to resolve it. Alright. One thing I do want to bring up about the conflict is the thing you talked about is normalizing conflict. And what I was just thinking about is when I think about early in marriage and my wife and me had very different personalities, I’m engulfment, she’s abandonment.
I won’t tell her that cause she’ll get mad at me because she hates those terms, but it’s two different personalities. And what I found is being an engulfing person, I would basically try to deal with the stuff on my own and eventually it comes to a head and you do, it becomes a bigger issue. But now it’s, You know, we’ve grown in our relationship.
And so now it’s like, if something comes up, I just blurred it out and it’s a smaller conflict, right? And the more you kind of go through this process, it’s no longer a two o’clock in the morning argument. And you guys are both yelling at each other. It’s a two o’clock in the afternoon, little spat, and then you guys are done.
You move on. And that’s the importance of. Getting this out, dealing with the conflict. So either it doesn’t [00:42:00] become a problem or, you know, like
you said, you build that relationship with that person to be like, okay, I’m, I’m done with you. Let’s deal with this problem. And then you move on.
Chris Gazdik: Are you in a place of confidence about that now as a result?
Neil Robinson: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. There’s a lot of times now that I’ll bring things up to her and it’s like, I just. Either now I just don’t care, you know, 20 years, whatever, or I just feel more comfortable like I can tell her because I’m not worried about how she, well, I still kind of am worried about how she reacts, but that’s a whole nother thing, but it’s, yeah, no, it’s a lot different now.
It’s a lot more of just, oh yeah, here’s an issue, get it out of the way and I don’t have to deal with it later. And it’s just, it’s a lot healthier for us as a couple. So I would
Adam Cloninger: prefer that term to use issue instead of conflict. Conflict just seems too harsh. That’s why I was even asking you, that issue sounds good to me.
Neil Robinson: Conflict just
Adam Cloninger: seems
Neil Robinson: much more But an issue is what you conflict, conflict over.
Adam Cloninger: Right.
Neil Robinson: So, technically conflict is the action of you and another person, like, disagreeing or having Having an issue. Yeah, having, dealing with an issue.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. But I think that’s what we want to reframe, Adam. I think you’re [00:43:00] right.
I mean, it does Conflict just seems too harsh to me. It does sound harsh, but it’s not. That’s the whole point. It, it, it’s, I’m not really good with somebody being upset with me. Like if Neil’s you’re upset with me because I didn’t send you the opus things that you mentioned, I didn’t even get the email
Neil Robinson: or when you said I wasn’t a real producer.
I
Chris Gazdik: did not say that. I did not say that. I’m still hurt by that. What’s that? I’m still hurt by that. Oh, man. I, I apologize. How can I make restitution for just accept
Neil Robinson: responsibility? We’ll be fine.
Chris Gazdik: All right. That’s right. I am responsible for the feelings that you have, although, all right, we’re going into another rabbit hole.
It’s getting weird. Where are we at? Oh, yeah, rash. Yeah. I don’t want to shy away from that, Adam, because I think that there are, there’s a competing interest that you have and that you have to kind of engage each other in the discussion and there’s, you can think of it as an issue, but people, people were just afraid of that anger that they’re receiving from, from people.
Adam Cloninger: How about dispute, [00:44:00] quarrel, squabble or disagreement? I like squabble.
Chris Gazdik: Squabble? Don’t squabble about things.
Neil Robinson: Squabble resolution. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Those are the, two. Antonyms. Synonyms, rather.
Adam Cloninger: Synonyms. I don’t know, conflict just seems so harsh to me.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: That’s why I remember at the very beginning I asked, well, which one do you consider worse?
Because to me it just sounds
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Adam Cloninger: Anyway.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, yeah, you did. Yeah, problems are worse. Alright, we are needing to move What do we need to sum up with that? I think that we’re good. We didn’t talk a lot about what third party means. Mediation, arbitration, therapy, John liked that I had conferences in that as a, as a, a third party person, but a pastor or programs, groups, sometimes just a common friend.
So let’s talk about the show that we did, episode 276, Family Life with Bipolar Disorder. The three questions, do you know what bipolar really is? Can you differentiate this from borderline personality [00:45:00] disorder? And do, what do families experience with this? So. Adam, I’m gonna go to you first to see, oh boy.
Non-clinician view. I’m really, really curious to hear how you’ll say. What do you think bipolar disorder is?
Adam Cloninger: Well, just based on what it used to be called. I know it’s ups and downs. Okay, so you have, you know, you’re doing good, then you’re like in deep depression. Everything’s great, everything sucks, and it’s kind of no, no medium kilter, it’s either, either, you know, to the extremes.
Okay. Close?
Chris Gazdik: Definitely close. How long are you in those extremes is a really important differentiator.
Adam Cloninger: Okay, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Do you know how long people get into those extremes? No, but I think one
Adam Cloninger: of the first shows I did with you, you talked about this. I can’t remember what we said. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: we, we may, we haven’t mentioned it a lot, but we haven’t done a full show.
That’s where people get really confused. Even in my field, [00:46:00] we, you know, John and I really connected on psychiatrists, not really being around the client enough sometimes, and they’ll see depression. And when they’re not really assessing the stages that people get into with hypomania or mania. And also they’ll get confused with like borderline personality disorder, which is the same sort of moving mood up to down, like far ups and then far downs really rangy though.
The big differentiator here is that you’re in a hypomanic or manic episode for weeks to months. And that is where you’re impulsive, you’re hypersexual maybe you’re feeling just euphoric, I mean you’re on cloud nine, you feel great, but your speech is pressured, you could become delusional, you don’t sleep and you still get energetic, you make really impulsive decisions like spending money
that you don’t have, like, people that are in a manic episode sometimes will write a book, and sometimes they’ll go to sleep, [00:47:00] It’s it’s pretty wild.
And you’re there for weeks. At minimum, more like months. And then, you’ll get into a depressive episode. Where you’re the depressed side. Like we all know, maybe more commonly. Lack of motivation, lack of interest, lack of energy. Lack of sleep or hypersleep. Lack of appetite, foggy brain. Depression sucks.
And so you’ll be in that for weeks to a month. Now, bipolar one, I like to think of it simply, you’re more up in manic states and every now and in depression, bipolar two, you’re really more in depression states more commonly, and you might get hypomanic or manic time or two. And then there’s Cyclo Thic Disorder, which is.
Really confusing where you do rapidly move between those two poles, but still in periods of time, not day to day or week to week or moment to moment or day to day, like borderline personality. So that’s the bipolar one on one. But Neil, let me go to the second question with you. Can you? Oh, I just did it.
Never mind. Can you [00:48:00] differentiate between bipolar disorder person? The personality disorders? I just gave you the answer.
Neil Robinson: It’s how frequent the shift is. It’s almost like multiple times in a day. So he knows these things. That’s it.
Chris Gazdik: That’s it. All right. What a family’s experience. Isn’t that a more involved thing?
I feel like I’ve talked a lot. I want to give a story of diagnosing, because we’ll talk about diagnosing this. And we actually had a YouTube question. Hopefully you’re listening and we can kind of go through that. But what do you remember? What, you know, can you imagine Adam and Neil, what do you remember from our conversation about what a kid’s really experienced with this?
What a family member as far as
Adam Cloninger: are the kids going through or they’re seeing other, like the parents, the parents go through it. Yeah. I would think they’re. Think things like what’s wrong with them, or is it me, or is it the sister, or is it the brother, or it must be dad, or it must be mom, or [00:49:00] it must be whatever.
Am I gonna get the good mom or the bad mom? It must be the president, you know, whatever. Dad’s always upset about the gas prices, you know. I don’t know. No, yeah, on point.
Chris Gazdik: Chaos. It’s chaotic. You know, what do you think, Neil? Or what do you recall?
Neil Robinson: Well, I mean, I think chaos is a greater to put it because when, when the kids don’t know what they’re going to wake up to, you know, even if you look at siblings and stuff, if you, if you wake up and am I going to have to deal with a happy mom or a sad mom, or am I have to deal with a happy brother or a sad brother or father, whatever it’s, it’s, it’s.
My wife, when you raise kids, the best thing you can do is give them a consistent environment. Yeah. And, when you’re, when you have bipolar, it’s very hard to be consistent, and it makes their life very, it can lead to a lot of anxiety, I can see that, because you don’t know how to react, and you’re going to have a lot of problems, because you don’t [00:50:00] know, if you ask your mom to make you a bowl of cereal, how is she going to do it?
Is she going to make it for you, or is she going to throw the bowl at you, you know? Or is she just going to be in the bed, and you can’t get her up for a day? Cereal!
Chris Gazdik: Depression, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Neil Robinson: So that’s a big thing that I can see with kids dealing with that.
Chris Gazdik: But you know what’s interesting? I was thinking as I’m listening to you.
It isn’t like not knowing what to expect from day to day. That actually happens classically in substance abuse families. Because on any given day, you know, the family member might be trashed and you know, you just never know if that’s going to happen or not. There’s unpredictability day to day. That’s not so much curiously, I think, with bipolar.
Adam Cloninger: I was thinking the same thing because you said it’s like a longer period. Right, right. But, but I could think longterm though. Like, you know, exactly next year when we go to the beach, I wonder if mom going to be okay this time. Right. Last year she was,
Neil Robinson: Oh, we got the holidays coming. Is it going to be this or this?
Yeah. Is it
Adam Cloninger: going to be like last year
Chris Gazdik: or the year before last? Right. I remember when mom lost her noodles and she [00:51:00] went raging and she was, have
Neil Robinson: you ever watched the bear? No, but I’m going to the bear. It’s an epic show. It’s a cooking thing. It’s Chicago. Season 2, you’ll, there’s one episode where they’re at a family dinner and it is intense and It’s a cooking show?
Sort of. It’s a real show. I can’t watch. It’s not a cooking show. No, no, no. It’s, it’s, it’s It’s a sequel to, The main character
Chris Gazdik: is a sequel to what’s the show that he was in? Oh, is
Neil Robinson: it actually a sequel to that? Right, okay, but no it’s an actual show but it’s about this guy who inherits his brother restaurant in Chicago And it’s him trying to rebuild it or do some stuff with it.
So it’s a real show. It’s really good The character interactions are fantastic. It’s really really good really but in season two they have a thing with like a whole Family situation and all that stuff, which was kind of like chaos. And how’s the holiday going to be? Was it a
Chris Gazdik: bipolar person? You think?
Neil Robinson: I don’t know, but I just know the chaos that [00:52:00] my wife and I felt watching that episode.
It was intense.
Chris Gazdik: All right. I bet it is. I don’t, I don’t know the show, so I can’t be certain. You just have to watch it. Tell me what you felt. Watching, just literally just watching the show, knowing the characters, having almost a relationship with the characters at least, and you’re seeing this chaos. What did it feel like to literally watch a show?
It
Neil Robinson: was, I felt like I was on pins and needles the entire time. And it drove me like I was like, it’s a 45 minute show and we like stopped it for after 30 minutes because we had to take a break. Really? They, yeah, it just bothered Alicia and me. Like, it’s just one of those things. It was very, it was great episode, but it was just.
The whole family is. Probably bipolar, honestly, at the characters. It’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah. You’d have to watch it. You felt like you had to go to your room for a little bit. Yeah. We had to like turn the TV off and be like, all right, let’s watch some like blues clues or something. I need some like,
Chris Gazdik: wow. It was crazy.
You’re totally turning me off for the, the, the series show. Great. [00:53:00] Show I you to watch it, but the thing that I, I, I thank you for, I wanted to dial in on that because the feelings that you were having, obviously just watching a show is. It’s surprising. Can you imagine literally like living the pins and needles, the eggshell, the, I mean, you know, when somebody is hypomanic, y’all, they, they, how can I put words on that?
Like, I wish we could show a clip or something of what you’re talking about, because the intensity is so high, like this is somebody that is going to tell you they are euphoric. They feel godlike. Okay. You got to realize they think they have all the answers and they will intensely tell you exactly what you need to do, what you need to know and why you’re wrong.
And it’s pressured speech. They will speak fast, speak loud and speak often and tear everything down. And because they have this godlike knowledge, it’s, it’s, it’s really intense. Can you imagine being [00:54:00] disciplined by somebody who’s in that state of mind?
Adam Cloninger: That’s my daughter.
Neil Robinson: Is your, is your son depressed? So do you have bipolar kids?
Well, the question is also when you look at like parents, when they’re that hypomania manic or a manic state, do they really do like some of them, do they even do discipline or do they just kind of let it ride sometimes too?
Chris Gazdik: There’s a lot of abuse that goes into it. I mean, they will be checked out and in their own world, but when they’re around, they’re pretty verbal, pretty, you can get pretty nasty, pretty like off the.
I mean, just off the chain, like, I don’t even know, what are you yelling at me about? Like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Cause you, cause you get, you get fragmented ideas too. And the person’s manic there, they’re, they know exactly what they’re talking about. It’s like they have 10 different thoughts and they can only speak one and it doesn’t make any sense.
It could almost literally sound like gibberish.
Adam Cloninger: I, I keep seeing these things are almost like connected in some relationships. Like if you have somebody that you’re having a [00:55:00] conflict or a problem with, Right. And they go to apologize and it’s you’re speaking a different language for apology. Oh, yeah. The person that is Having a trouble having trouble with it One person may think it’s no big deal another person like really just so I can kind of see these two things almost like working Hand in hand,
Chris Gazdik: you know, it’s funny Adam.
You’re right. Most of the things that we really do talk about are Interrelated because The emotional realities we deal with in our mental health is so embedded. You’re so right. You can look at any news article and it can kind of pull around in the rabbit holes that we go into with mental health. It’s because it’s so foundational to the way that us human beings interact.
And so these things really do pull together. And I think that’s why people get so overwhelmed and confused with it all too, because it’s like, I can’t even make sense of what’s going on. There’s too many things to kind of tease apart. Spent a career teasing apart like this is this [00:56:00] and this is this this is where this comes from This is this part of the puzzle and you know, we figure it out because i’ll tell you which is a good transition When you start talking about how can families manage this better and how do you how do you cope with all of this?
Man, you have got to get knowledgeable You’ve, you’ve got to learn about like, what is going on for my mom? What is going on for my dad? Or sometimes your kids do have bipolar. You know, how’s my, why is my kid acting this way? It’s, it’s bizarre. And, and you can really create. A lot of animosity if you don’t understand that this person is in an episode and they don’t really have control of themselves.
It takes a lot of the zing out when you really begin to learn, like, wow, they have not been taking their medicine, they are off their rocker, and, you know, we need to be careful. Because how well do you think it’s going to be getting into
conflict with somebody that’s manic like I just described? That’s, that’s not going to go well.
And it [00:57:00] can be dangerous, honestly.
Neil Robinson: I have a question for you based on the last show. You talked about medicating, you know, trying to medicate this whole situation, but you also talked about how if they’re in their depressive state and they’re taking their antidepressant and then they become manic, the antidepressant would really kind of put them over the top.
Yeah. Right. So then how do you actually medicate for someone who’s bipolar? That could be one or the other kind of thing because you also talked about if they’re manic, they don’t take their medication, right? Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Okay.
Neil Robinson: So what, how do you medicate? Cause that was something that kind of brought up in past.
I’m like, but we didn’t really cover like, how does that work on a bipolar basis?
Chris Gazdik: You’re absolutely right. The reason why, what Neil’s saying is we talked about how dangerous it can be. When you find a person with bipolar disorder, oftentimes they’re coming to treatment when they’re in a depressed episode, because you feel great when you’re manic or even hypomanic, which is manic light.
So. You’ll give them an antidepressant, which is an SSRI. [00:58:00] They’re trying to bump up serotonin in your brain. The trouble is, when you prevent depression, you’re bumping up. You will throw somebody into a manic episode with just an antidepressant. So it’s a totally different class of medication. It’s designed to bring your serotonin levels up.
up, but we don’t want to do that with a manic person. So we have a completely different class of medication called mood stabilizers. So you’ve, you’ve heard of the old school lip lithium, right? Lithium is, is, is a salt medication that we’ve found that it levels out the mood. So it, it, it doesn’t allow your mood to go up into the crazy land of mania or depressed.
It kind of tries to hold you in, in one spot. So now we have Depakote lithium Seroquil, I think is another mood stabilizer, I think, no, that’s an antipsychotic, but the, the mood stabilizers are different altogether.
Neil Robinson: You’re just basically [00:59:00] bringing the extremes down to the middle. And is that why some people do that?
They feel like they might feel numb or something because they don’t actually have, they don’t like it.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, exactly. Because don’t take my mania away. Don’t take my creativity away.
Adam Cloninger: They like that part. Love that
Chris Gazdik: part. Don’t think about how impulsive they’re being. Don’t think about how unpredictable they’re acting.
Don’t think about all the impacts that, you know, I mean, you can just imagine living in a child. I think we characterized it a little bit. You know, I have to, you mean to tell me I have to take all this freaking time, seven freaking hours to sleep? I don’t, I don’t. I mean, I’m good with the two or three that I get in mania
Neil Robinson: is, or is that medication like, is that one of those compounding medicines that your body gets used to it?
Like the like
Chris Gazdik: tolerance,
Neil Robinson: right? Do you have that? Like cause we talked about how ADHD was more like, it’s like stimulant once you’re done, you’re done. But like the antipsychotics or the antidepressants just kind of like you build up over time. So are these ones also the same way that it builds up over time?
over [01:00:00] time. And if you stop taking it really messes you up. Or is this more like a ADHD stimulant where you take it and you get good effects and you stop taking it, you’re not having the negatives with the other ones. I
Chris Gazdik: understand. It’s more like the antidepressants. It’s a leveling system. As a matter of fact, when you’re on lithium, oftentimes you have to get blood draws because they’re checking your, your functions.
It has some side effects with kidneys and stuff. So you want to make sure that you don’t get too high salt levels in your body. So you have to monitor that. So if you
Neil Robinson: take enough lithium, can you charge your own Tesla? Maybe
Adam Cloninger: not? I’m
Chris Gazdik: gonna say not.
Adam Cloninger: So did you answer the YouTuber’s question specifically?
Chris Gazdik: Which one of? About how to identify or what? I didn’t, and I’m glad you did because we’re running out of time. In, in, in the, I’m not gonna be able to tell the whole story. That I wanted to tell. I did. I did get to it on the show that we did. So you’ll hear it there. But I was able to kind of find basically a school professional that I was working with for a little while.
This is the shorter version and I mean, we’re talking about relationships and her irritability and stress and just [01:01:00] multiple things. And it was an extended therapy relationship. But I’ve got. Felt like something was missing. And what I was able to really clue into is her sleep cycle. And we began to see a correlation between she’s developing insomnia.
She’s not sleeping so much and she’s really getting irritable. And that really helped me to clue in, to identify like, Whoa, wait a minute. This is. Early identifying,
Adam Cloninger: these
Chris Gazdik: are connected. This is, and I wondered, and we played it out and it was, it was bipolar. So it’s really can be tricky to diagnose because of that timeframe thing.
And then also the depression is when you see it and that’s what you treat. And then now I’m saying like, one of the big things to clue in on is your sleep cycles.
Neil Robinson: I thought it was interesting that you talked about, you know, therapists only see them when they’re depressed. So you could almost look at a schedule being like, Oh, You know, Johnny came in for about a month and then we don’t see him for about a month.
Hey, maybe he’s bipolar because he’s happy for a month and he’s sad for the next month, you know?
Chris Gazdik: What’s funny, you see, that’s one of the [01:02:00] things I would advocate in my field for listening therapists. Like, we need long term
relationships with clients. And I’ve had exactly that scenario. Like this person would come into therapy and it’d be like, okay, we’re working on stuff and then you just appear and come back in and we’re working on stuff and you disappear.
And oftentimes it takes collateral information, which is another thing for families, you know help the doctors. Doctors can’t know what’s going on and you can give that information to say, Oh yeah, he’s been checked out for six months. He’s depressed now, but he’s been a wild coyote out here. You know, and, and, and you need to know that.
It’s like, Oh, I wonder what’s going on. So you can really help to tune in. I really feel like this is one of the episodes where I’m just cramming in at the end here. Education, education, education, awareness about this being an issue, encouraging treatment but not kind of forcing it developing a crisis plan so that you can develop an [01:03:00] understanding if this happens.
We, this is what we’re going to do to support Daddy because we know this is going to happen with episodes. Support groups, attend them Focusing on strengths, but often bipolar folks are amazing. I mean, they are high achievers, really oftentimes highly intelligent. I think that’s a fact. They’re, they’re wonderful, amazing people.
It’s just when they’re really not able to control and manage their manic states. They just lose their crap and get, get literally psychotic. So, that’s a little bit about how families can, can cope. Did we cram too much? Did I hurt your brain, Adam?
Adam Cloninger: No, I’m okay.
Chris Gazdik: You’re okay? I’m okay.
Adam Cloninger: You’re okay?
Neil Robinson: At least you, at least you figured out your daughter’s problems.
We’re okay.
Adam Cloninger: No, I was, I was just sitting here thinking that I talked too long now. You were worried about it because you only had two episodes, so I brought three things. I know that was a little
Chris Gazdik: short, but Yeah, we, listen, I could, we could probably talk about any of these topics like forever. It was like
Adam Cloninger: Do another episode on Bipolar.
[01:04:00] We probably, do we need to do
Chris Gazdik: that, Neil? What do you think?
Neil Robinson: I don’t know.
Chris Gazdik: Like a diagnostic show? I feel like we’ve Maybe you should talk
Adam Cloninger: about that and similar, similar other things and like differentiate from them. Yeah. Maybe that’d be a good show.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, we could think about it. I know we have a couple of things we put on the cue lately that you looked at some interesting show topics.
So I don’t know. It’s true. I don’t know. It could be interesting to talk about, you know, the process to identify that’d be kind of an interesting thing where you kind of go through some of the, have we talked about like how to really a therapist to diagnose certain people? And we have done
Chris Gazdik: that early on a long, long time ago though, that is, that would be a way to tie that in and pull that together.
Like what is this, what’s the art and the science of diagnosing and then use.
Neil Robinson: And then, and then let, like, kind of have, like, some topics being, like, here’s, here’s some symptoms. Okay, let the panel look at the symptoms and see which one they think it is. You’re like, we could do a quiz show. Well, quiz you, Adam.
We have to have the panelists, like, see, have, like, a Jeopardy thing. John and Victoria wouldn’t
Adam Cloninger: be able to. You know, this would almost [01:05:00] be having a whole show answering that YouTuber’s question.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Yeah. No, I will circle around to it for sure. And then that is a good idea. We, we, that I love that would be fun.
I
Neil Robinson: like that idea. Now I’m gonna have to build up thing like have all these symptoms and cue cards and like then loser has to buy coffee or something. The next show or something. Love it.
Chris Gazdik: I love that. We, we should do that in a live performance though. Somewhere in some city. We’ll, we’ll come to, to New York and fill an auditorium.
Have
Neil Robinson: someone in their family just walk up to the stage and explain their problems and be like, what’s wrong with him?
Chris Gazdik: Love it. Absolutely.
Neil Robinson: Tell me what’s
Chris Gazdik: wrong with this man. Alright guys, listen. Thanks for hanging out with us. This has been the June Month In Review. We’re gonna fire up and keep going in the hot month of July.
Take care around the world. Take care and stay well.