In this episode, we explore the diverse world of therapy modalities, addressing key questions about therapy types and their significance. We cover eclectic versus specific therapies, the differences between substance abuse and mental health treatments, and the ideal contexts for various approaches. Learn about popular modalities like CBT, DBT, Psychodynamic Therapy, Humanistic Therapy, Family Therapy, ACT, EMDR, and more. Whether you’re curious about mindfulness, art therapy, or motivational interviewing, this episode provides valuable insights into choosing the right therapeutic tools for your mental health journey.
Tune in to see Therapy Modalities Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Think about these three questions as you listen:
- Do you know what type of therapy your therapist practices?
- Does it matter what type of therapy a therapist uses?
- Should I pick a therapist by looking for a certain type of therapy?
Links referenced during the show:
https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/mentalhealthtips
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
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Episode #278 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] This is Through a Therapist’s Eyes coming to you on July the 4th, America’s independence day. Our birthday is celebrated. I hope everyone’s feeling. Patriotic, having burgers and hot dogs and hanging out with their friends. And we’re getting ready to do some fireworks here in a few hours, John. That’s right.
What about that? Happy happy fourth. My dogs
John-Nelson Pope: are going to go nuts.
Chris Gazdik: They are. My son bought mortars and spiral things and I’m sure he’s just, he couldn’t stand it. He let one off the other day and I wasn’t home. And his mom told me, I was like, of course he let off a mortar.
John-Nelson Pope: We live right on the, on the border of of of Mount Holly.
We were in Mount Holly where Neil and I live in the same subdivision, but. The right next door to where I live is not Mount Holly. It’s in the county and so we have some [00:01:00] bozos that shoot off regular firearms. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Regular out of the county firearms. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. You know,
John-Nelson Pope: you probably have heard them.
Oh,
Chris Gazdik: wow. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. So, so this
Chris Gazdik: is July the fourth. Let me see. We have the book is gonna be out. I’ve been saying December the 11th and I think I’m wrong. I think I saw that it’s set for December the 17th. So, just before Christmas I’ve got to turn this off and down. It’s
John-Nelson Pope: It’s got a green eyed, um, cover.
Yeah, it’s look
Chris Gazdik: it’s it’s it looks good, man. I think it looks better than the blue one I’m really starting to get excited about it. Yeah, it’s sold a few out of the office You can’t get it till december come to the office. We’ll we’ll get it to you on marriage let me see. We have some new youtube subscribers.
I’ve started to get excited about the that to welcome people aboard now Neil you said though we’ve got like 20. So I guess we’re wondering You know, I want to welcome people. I don’t want to leave people out, but explain what you saw. [00:02:00]
Neil Robinson: I think there’s It said ours analytics. We’ve got like 22 subscribers in the last like 28 days.
Yeah and i’m guessing being new kind of the analytic side. It looks like they only notify us on a handful So i’m guessing there’s probably some setting in there that says hey, it’s okay to notify them that you’ve joined in. But yeah, there’s Statistics. We got 143 subscribers plus 22 in the last 28 days.
So if you didn’t get
Chris Gazdik: a greeting, that’s probably why. But Koyi, welcome to the YouTube group, right? You got to give a clap, John and towel Rosette. Welcome to the YouTube group. Fantastic. Love that. So love to have you on board.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Grow and tell your friends, help us out. That’s your job. Click subscribe to us.
That all helps us really is important. Contacted through therapist size. com is the way you can email with us. We respond to things. I respond pretty readily, which, which we’ve been getting a lot on the short. So that’s been fun to hear people’s thoughts, hear people’s questions. So keep it up. We, we really do.
This is the human emotional experience, which we endeavor to [00:03:00] figure out together. And that’s one of the ways that you interact with us. We can do that. So we say that was such. A plum. A plum. Such a plum? Yes. With
John-Nelson Pope: such ease.
Chris Gazdik: Such a plum. Is that, is that a compliment? Or a criticism? A plum. I guess you like plums?
John-Nelson Pope: I like plums. Okay. But, but that’s not the origin of it. I
Chris Gazdik: like to be a plum. Yes. Get it? Got it. Yeah. You’re a plum. Modalities. Therapy modalities. Better than
John-Nelson Pope: being a prune. This is
Chris Gazdik: episode 278, you’re killing me. Do you know what type of therapy your therapist practices? Does it matter what type of therapy a therapist uses?
And should I pick a therapist by looking for a certain type of therapy? I think these are pretty cool questions and I’ve I’ve gotten quite, you know, with Craig, when he was the cohost, he was like, what is cognitive behavioral therapy anyway? I’m like, ah, we need to do a show on that because people don’t really know.
There’s such mystery, John, about what it is that we do. [00:04:00] And I find that clinicians ourselves get hooked up with this issue on, you know, what modality do you use? Well, and that’s
John-Nelson Pope: an emphasis that we have. In academia, at least with the programs, because you want your, your, the counselors in training or therapist in training to actually have a theoretical basis.
It doesn’t really matter what they’re doing as long as it’s consistent. And from there, if they want to move on to a different one, they are more, more than free to do it. What fits their personal. Why? Why? Because it’s a discipline. Okay. It’s a discipline. In other words, it’s knowledge. They can drill down and, and do this.
I think, and my recommendation is that for a young therapist, and by that, I mean, you could be like 40 or 50 before you go into it. They’re new to the profession. New to the profession. Is that you, that you follow [00:05:00] that pretty consistently for the first several years. Then start to bring in integrate other theories into your practice.
Chris Gazdik: I love that you make that suggestion, honestly, because I, somewhere in here. Oh, the first section. Yeah. Eclectic versus a specific type. I’ve I’ve, I’ve often, I’m going to confess. I’ve often been kind of haunted by Dr. Neil Newfield. If you’re listening out there, man, I love you. He was my favorite college professor.
I learned the most from him. His class was the hardest but he was, he was absolutely awesome, but I flat out disagreed with him when he makes the strong notion that you need to pick a modality, stick with that modality. And become the top 5 percent in that modality before maybe you go on and change and whatnot.
And I didn’t like that because I’d like to pull so many different things into what I’m doing and having been trained. And [00:06:00] you’re kind of watering that down a little bit by saying, Hey, choose one and stay with it specifically for, you know, and that
John-Nelson Pope: you, that you know it, that it becomes a part of of you.
And if you, if it’s not a good fit, you certainly can move into another modality.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: And I, for example, I’ve never been a great fan of CBT for,
Chris Gazdik: yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: no
Chris Gazdik: cognitive behavioral therapy.
John-Nelson Pope: I’m really,
Chris Gazdik: I’m shocked at that.
John-Nelson Pope: I’m usually
Chris Gazdik: we’re like lockstep brother. What happened? Well, I love CBT.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s, I think it’s been distorted a lot in terms of manualization.
And so, yeah, yeah. So. Well I
Chris Gazdik: don’t use manuals, I don’t even use my handouts anymore, I, I don’t.
John-Nelson Pope: But there’s nothing wrong with CBT, I mean I, I love Aaron Beck and So maybe the
Chris Gazdik: application The application, yeah, the rigidity The rigidity of it, okay.
John-Nelson Pope: So in other words, the, the client, it seems to take a back seat to the fact that it’s [00:07:00] manualized, but you know I have strong Feelings about that sort of thing.
You do. You have a
Chris Gazdik: pastor’s heart. Yeah. Yeah. I like your super client center.
John-Nelson Pope: I’m existential. Okay. All right. I like our EBT as well, because I think it takes it a step further than CBT. We’re probably losing people. R E B T. R. E. S. P. T. T.
Chris Gazdik: You did it. You say congratulations.
You’ve got
John-Nelson Pope: me doing
Chris Gazdik: that. Every that’s rational.
John-Nelson Pope: R E. B. T. Is a rational mode of behavioral therapy.
Chris Gazdik: So I want to get into like breaking things down a little bit more. So listeners can kind of get an idea of, you know, what therapists are And I think, honestly, we have to be careful, John, because I could, I could get into the, the geeky world of academia and, and talk all the, the talk with the buzzwords and the different [00:08:00] modalities and what they are.
And we’re going to do that a little bit today, but I, but I want to. But I want to broaden the stroke a little bit so that people can demystify the modalities. That, that would have been a good title for the show. Demystify therapy modalities because it seems so mysterious, so weird, so uncomfortable, and therefore I feel like people probably avoid therapy services to a certain extent.
Anyway, because I don’t want you and your academic therapy modality to be in my head, man, you know, feel weird because it is a little weird. If you think
about the, the behind the scenes and, and the, the structuredness of, of, of research and, you know, efficacy.
John-Nelson Pope: I think one of the things, and I think you and I are both, there’s a part of me that’s also data driven and Mm-Hmm.
So the CBT is very appealing. REBT because it’s, there’s a lot of empirical data that would say it’s evidence based, and you can, you know, you can, you [00:09:00] can replicate it, you can, these are tried and true.
Chris Gazdik: Let’s do it. Let’s do a quick little game. I thought we’d do this and I’ve debated back in my head. Oh, five minutes.
Yeah, I know.
John-Nelson Pope: What fresh hell is this?
Chris Gazdik: Let’s do a game john,
John-Nelson Pope: okay,
Chris Gazdik: and what we’re gonna try maybe is to see you’re gonna smoke me I think
John-Nelson Pope: no i’m not
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, probably so You name a modality, I’ll name another modality. Neil, make sure that we don’t repeat one and see how many we could just kind of come up with.
I don’t, you’ve, you’ve looked at the sheet. We’ve got some listed, but you, you want to, you willing to play for a moment? Yeah. Okay. You name one.
John-Nelson Pope: Solution focused therapy. Solution focused. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: I will. That’s in
John-Nelson Pope: the, the
Chris Gazdik: CBT family. I’ll go motivational interviewing. Oh, excellent.
John-Nelson Pope: Gestalt therapy.
Chris Gazdik: Gestalt is an awesome one.
Psychodynamic, yeah. Theory.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. With Psycho-Analytic.
Chris Gazdik: Psycho. Is it the same thing? Different, yeah. Psychoanalytic and psychodynamic
John-Nelson Pope: dynamic is different. Too different. It’s psychodynamic is a lot shorter than Psycho
Chris Gazdik: Ad Larry and [00:10:00] Psychotherapy.
John-Nelson Pope: Jungian. Psycho. Youngian loved that.
Chris Gazdik: I’ll take the R E B T because I forgot that one, but you reminded me a little bit ago.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, R E B T is great. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You got another one?
John-Nelson Pope: Gestalt? Not gestalt, I’m sorry, a reality?
Chris Gazdik: All right. How about narrative therapy? Oh, I love narrative therapy.
John-Nelson Pope: There’s another one. There’s another one. Did I say, I did say reality, right? Yeah. Transactional analysis, transactional analysis. That was when I was a kid.
That was like the bomb.
Chris Gazdik: All right. Family systems theory,
John-Nelson Pope: Bowenian, how
Chris Gazdik: about emotion focused therapy? I talk about that on the show a lot.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Dialectical behavioral therapy.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, dbt. See
John-Nelson Pope: that’s in the CBT.
Chris Gazdik: Rebt. Act. That’s a new one. What does that stand for? I gotta my notes. Acceptance.
Acceptance and is ACT and commitment therapy. That’s right.
John-Nelson Pope: And that’s in the CBT family as well. Okay. There’s, but that’s a family [00:11:00] head.
Chris Gazdik: You got another one?
John-Nelson Pope: Uh, okay. Okay. Hope you can do this. Um, feminist, feminist, feminist therapy. Yes. Oh, come on. There’s a whole chapter. Never even heard of it. It, it’s an empowerment that so all the stuff I have one art therapy, art therapy, play therapy, music therapy, music therapy.
Um,
Okay, you got me. Oh,
Chris Gazdik: we started. I think we’re running out of it,
John-Nelson Pope: but now that’s, there’s, there’s more, there are more therapies.
Chris Gazdik: There’s a lot of Adlerian
John-Nelson Pope: therapy. I said that
Chris Gazdik: one.
John-Nelson Pope: You did say that, didn’t you?
Chris Gazdik: The point is, this is fun. We’ll call it a tie because I’m starting to struggle as well. The thing is, is it’s so, you see what I mean?
Like we just rattled off like what? 10, 15 different, like what is bohemian therapy? Is it a rhapsody? Like what do people, [00:12:00] people, how can we
take, you like that? Yeah. How can we take the mystery out of therapy modalities for people?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Let’s think.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And it’s overwhelming. And, and all of these therapies are just ways of helping people be able to get a handle on what’s going on inside of them so that they can actually find a way out of some of their, their complex or their.
They’re anxiety and depression.
Chris Gazdik: I need things dumbed down for me and simplified. I agree. I mean, yeah, that’s a
John-Nelson Pope: trans TA is basically a psychoanalytic therapy. Yeah. Yeah. And I
Chris Gazdik: mean, it’s fun for therapists to kick around and to study and to look at and research and you know, we get grounded into a modality, but really when it comes down to it, it’s yet relational problems, internal problems, you know, different insecurities and feelings and emotions that all swirl around that you’re trying to kind of manage in your.
Internal self and in your relationship to others. Ah, [00:13:00] you got it. We’ll give you the wind. Mindfulness of course. There, there are others still, there are many others still, but the, but the thing is, is just to, to, to simplify this. It really is just managing your crap, figuring out how to manage your emotional junk.
You know? I mean, does that sound too? That’s right.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, there’s another thing I’m going to kick around is that first thing I was when my doctoral program is 60 percent of what a, what a person does, a therapist does and a counselor does is that the person’s going to get better. But the idea is, is that you want to be, you want to raise that 60 percent to 70 or 80 or 90% 95 percent effective.
And, and. And being a catalyst for change, a positive change in a person’s life
Chris Gazdik: and be able to document that documented data that suggests you’re physically, emotionally doing better. Most
John-Nelson Pope: of the stuff like with the psychoanalysis with Freud. It [00:14:00] is that it just came up in his head, you know, is basically that’s a perfect transition, John.
Chris Gazdik: Let me jump in because we have an awesome YouTube question from cast. Hey, cast. Hey, cast. Nice shout out to cast. It’s an awesome question. I should have had it in my lineup and I didn’t. And it fits in the, in the show right now. She says, who, who invents these therapies? Question mark. It’s an awesome question.
Sigmund Freud.
John-Nelson Pope: Sigmund
Chris Gazdik: Freud is his name, man. Well, it’s not a fraud.
John-Nelson Pope: No, he’s not. Who
Chris Gazdik: creates these John?
John-Nelson Pope: Well very creative people, right. People that are very behavioralistic behavioral therapy. That’s another therapy. Yeah. A BF Skinner. So, I mean, it’s. It’s one of these, the, the people have this idea, they get an idea in their mind as to what would be effective.
Sometimes the therapist himself or the person that comes up with the theory is, is a [00:15:00] troubled individual themselves. And they’re able to make sense out of, out of life. For example Albert Ellis. Okay. Yeah. Father
Chris Gazdik: of what?
John-Nelson Pope: Father of R E B T. Okay. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Okay. And so he wanted to go out with girls and he was very shy and he said, I can’t do this.
I can’t do this. And he was going down to campus one day and EMDR is another one. Okay. You definitely won, man. Okay. No. And so what he does is he says, I want to go out with this girl. Okay. Cool. And so he goes through his, a process where he disputes his irrational thoughts. And then he asked a girl out and she turns him down.
He then says, I’m going to ask another girl out and she goes through his process, goes through a process. And he started seeing a, B, C, D and E. And he was able to go through the through those steps. [00:16:00]
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, I mean to answer your question, Cass, I think that it really, it kind of goes all the way back.
Where would you say, John, like, you know, we’ll call them ancient, I guess, but very early day philosophers and such, right? Socrates. Good example. Socrates, yes. Socrates was a philosopher. And human beings have been aware of the Since ages of time ago, that we have emotions and we have a quest for happiness and we have these, these common human, I mean, it’s what makes us human.
And simply to answer the question, who creates these therapies, people that think about them and write them down and put a name on a particular therapy modality, then all the academic people. People come in and study this and create efficacy from, you know, data points and stuff. But basically people just think about their emotions or what they see and how things or why
John-Nelson Pope: they do things impulsively or why compulsively,
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:00] yeah, what, what goes into this?
What is, you know, Freud thought a lot about subconsciousness and did some research to kind of, you know, study people. It’s basically, you know, You know, can we say that a therapy modality, a specific therapy modality is the result from studying people, right? I think that’s a I just created that in my head.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, and that’s when that was during a time in which there was called histrionics in the, so that you would say that that’s from the uterus, the Greek word. And so that they would assign women back in a very dark ages, dark ages. Yeah. You know, because the idea was Socrates, Aristotle thought that the uterus traveled when somebody was unbalanced.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So, and so Freud This
Chris Gazdik: is why I was really excited to do this show with you, John. So, so Freud
John-Nelson Pope: So Freud actually kind of gave a little bit of a scientific explanation and [00:18:00] he talked about why we have dreams and that sort
of, and what, what’s going on and what kind of work we do. And so he said, this is the subconscious that is like like a rolling cauldron.
That comes up and goes to the top of most of the stuff and our bad stuff is down below and it’s deterministic and so and that worked for a while. Until the mid thirties, forties, and then other people came on and added, added to it and said, you know, Adler said, this is a social thing. It’s not just an individualistic or deterministic.
It’s dynamic.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: And so Alfred Adler, who was another Austrian kind of did the social idea. And so when, if you have a inferiority complex you can, you can blame Alfred Adler for that. Right. Right. So the, the,
Chris Gazdik: it got labeled. I, let me, let me turn to you, Neil grab your mic and all that. Cause I, [00:19:00] I want to ask a non clinician this question cause we can get all academic John, like I said, and then we we can do that, but I think we got to be careful.
I’m curious from a non clinicians perspective, Neil, do, do, do you think the public around the world, people just around the world get mystified by this kind of stuff or are really curious about? Emotions and feelings and pursuit of happiness and the things that philosophers would think about do we get mystified by it?
Or do you think people are really curious about
Neil Robinson: it? Well, it obviously depends on the purpose the person person The person because you know every person is different their personality is different And I think there’s a lot of people that are in there’s the curious nature that that wants to do it I think overall it’s it’s I don’t know.
I think as a breakdown. I think most people always ask why? You When you deal with interactions, I think there’s always that curiosity because like why does my spouse do [00:20:00] this? Why do my kids do that? Why is my friend like why do I do that? Like they ask those questions. Why now do they take that step to really try to figure it out?
I’m not sure but I think by nature everyone’s curious about why unless you have kind of a Psychopathic I’m like you just don’t care about other people. I think everyone People
Chris Gazdik: are mystified by the science of therapy but They don’t realize they’re very curious about why and what I do and what my partner or people do and that’s actually what therapy modalities are thinking about.
There’s like a disconnect.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. But I think the biggest thing, when you look at like your little game you played, I don’t think people understand the complexities and the uniqueness of a lot of the stuff that goes into it. Like, and I think that’s to me, cause I’ve thought about it. Like, well, why would you go to a therapist?
I said, because they study everything. And then I’m just going to chime in. I think staying with the modality until you get good at it, I think is better than trying to jump [00:21:00] around too soon.
Chris Gazdik: All right, Dr. Neil Newfield.
Neil Robinson: Well, and the reason why I say that is from an IT background, if you learn a software and you know what’s going on, you become the expert in it.
So you can move to the next. I think it’s like
Chris Gazdik: speaking a language. It’s very
Neil Robinson: important to understand that. Like, I don’t think you have to stick to it, but I think you have to build a base. So you can be efficient. fishing in it and help them. But I think the fact that you now have other tools, once you get efficient at one, you can go to the next modality and then you figure out how to incorporate that to learn.
But I think that’s the thing people just don’t understand when you go to a therapist, the modalities are so important. That’s because I’ve talked to my wife about with this, like,
Chris Gazdik: yeah,
Neil Robinson: that’s why you go, because now you guys have learned so much. And all these different ways. So when one modality is not working with
the patient, you might switch it up if you have experience with it to better serve them.
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Neil Robinson: And I think that’s really cool. I think that’s where people don’t understand. And I think that’s where we would get kind of overwhelmed by like, well, I go to therapist, they’re just going to talk to me. Yeah. But you don’t understand what they’ve done and what they’re, what they’ll tell you. Tools are going to bring to you when you talk to them.
Chris Gazdik: And that’s, [00:22:00] that is, that’s a good transition to talking about some of these specific things, but I’m listening to you, Neil. And yeah, I mean, I hear all the time, John, people talk about, well, it’s why I take an active, you know, I’m much more active in my sessions back and forth with people, because I will hear a lot, just like you were saying, Neil, they don’t get therapy because they just sit there and they listened to me and I don’t think they’re doing anything,
John-Nelson Pope: they’re not working.
Chris Gazdik: Right. But, but, but what you got to understand is that might be really like psychodynamic or, or, you know, those types of modality gestalt. I studied gestalt therapy, but it’s a very here and now. And in the moment, kind of a mindfulness practice that I don’t use because I think I would freak people out if I just said, Hey, put attention to your, to your legs and see what energy’s there or you can, or just get
John-Nelson Pope: lost.
Well. And yeah, I think from my own experiences that I use a [00:23:00] gestalt techniques with somebody I’ve worked with for, for a while, because it has to be chair and empty chair and trust because, and also a lot of dream work in terms of gestalt. Oh,
Chris Gazdik: you do dream work?
John-Nelson Pope: I do dream work with, with gestalt because you see yourself in who are the characters in your dream, for example, and you actually represent all those people.
Or even animals in the dream that you might have. And so, you know, there’s a lion in the dream. There is another person. And so you might actually see or someone who is being a villainous, so to speak.
Chris Gazdik: Dream analysis is another form of therapy, actually. Yeah, it is. It
John-Nelson Pope: is. And that’s Freud started that.
Right. I mean well, actually the Greeks, actually
Chris Gazdik: the Greeks did that. Did they, yeah, they did. People usually steal stuff from other people.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Well, the Greeks were pretty smart. They had the, the oracles at Delphi and then, and it was always it was always something that was kind of nebulous and, and, but they had some [00:24:00] very wise people there that would interpret and they would interpret the dreams, so.
Chris Gazdik: So at risk of
scaring people or boring people or whatever, I want to go through some of these modalities. I
John-Nelson Pope: am so excited about this! I’m not bored!
Chris Gazdik: So I’m not thinking of you and I, I’m thinking of the listening public. I’m geeking out. What is I know, right? What is humanistic theory? Their theory therapy. What is ACT therapy?
What is the MDR? You know, I want to go down to explain some of the bigger ones so that people can have an understanding and ask intelligent questions. As you say, Neil, if you’re going to go see a therapist, it’s a good question to ask, what, what do you, you know, what do you use? What type of therapy primarily do you engage in?
I’m going to, I want
Neil Robinson: to put a disclaimer that says the non clinician look at this as. Tools in your therapist arsenal to better help you and not they’re not trying to because I some people [00:25:00] might look at this as ways to manipulate them or it’s like you’re these things are there to really help to understand because everyone’s different.
So I just want to put disclaimer before we start going into this, think about what we’re going to be talking about and think about, okay. Can this there, you know, have I seen these behaviors by therapist? Why are they doing it? What’s going on and think of it as a positive, not a negative.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s yeah, I’m sorry, but that’s why you do a thorough assessment, right?
Because
Chris Gazdik: go there. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, the reason why is because you need. To know as much about your client as possible from the get go so that you get an idea what this client, what the client is needing, and what he or she I is, you know, do they think in terms of analogies, I do that a lot. So, metaphors.
Metaphors and that sort of thing. But if you’re somebody that’s kind of like concrete, concrete, you
Chris Gazdik: Asperger’s folks aren’t going to work well with
John-Nelson Pope: that. No, no, they’re not because they it’s, it’s [00:26:00] alien. It’s a language that’s just not there for them.
Chris Gazdik: Right? Yeah. That’s a super important point. I’m glad that came out because you really do.
I, I look a lot at that, that first contact, that first session is such an important time because I’m trying to get. and trust and those crucial things that I think probably above any modality, those are the most important things. Get report, get trust built, you know, understand that I can help you relationship is key.
Therapeutic relationship is crucial, but then I’m getting a lot of data about how you work, what your tendencies are, what your emotions are. I’m thinking about diagnosis. Therapists, listen to this, I am assessing substance use issues and that’s a big hole. I, I love picking on that because there’s such a great divide between mental health therapy and substance abuse therapy and we need to block that.
So bogus. No offense
John-Nelson Pope: to people that are, are [00:27:00] pure substance. Useful. You’ve got to have it’s both. It’s both. It’s not either or it’s both. And
Chris Gazdik: right. So I’m, I’m looking at what direction do we want to head in? And I take in count your goals. Like, you know, we always ask, it’s on the initial paperwork. Like, what do you want to get out of this?
How, you know, and, and, and I’m thinking, right. Framing things up. I mean, if they’re family dynamics, I’m going family systems theory. If you’re thinking errors are really twisted in anxiety, I’m probably going to go CBT direction. If I’m thinking about, you know, the stress that you feel on the poor self esteem, I’m going to look maybe at mindfulness stuff and stress management, stress tolerance increase.
You know, there, there, there, there really is that first session that. Drives where and how, and then to your point, Neil, why we do what we do.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, you know, for example when you’re doing like with, with folks with mindfulness, that’s there’s an insight drivenness [00:28:00] aspect to it, but there’s a lot of behavioral therapy that’s involved.
So there’s an integrative aspect in that modality itself. I think people that are a little more adept at that. Thanks. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And younger therapists, you’ll get used to like pulling these different things in. It’s, it’s kind of like it begins to be second nature. You begin to kind of shift and as you connect better with your client.
John-Nelson Pope: And I think too, Chris is that you need to know what speaks to you as a therapist.
Chris Gazdik: Fair enough. Excellent point. Go, go with that.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I, I think that that’s why your friend, your Dr. Newfield was so, so wise and I could have. Studied under his, his at his feet as well. So the idea is that you had undergo a process of self discovery when you are, are in school for two and a half, To three years.
Oh, yeah. Become a therapist. Do [00:29:00] you do a lot of work? We require when I was at Montreat and I was at my former place and I guess that means at the University of Louisiana Monroe, I, I required the, the, our students to go through therapy themselves. Yeah. I’ve
Chris Gazdik: heard some programs do that. Social work doesn’t do that a lot.
Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: And because if you don’t know thyself. Right. Who said that?
Chris Gazdik: Socrates. Socrates did. Okay.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Know thyself. If you don’t know yourself, how can you possibly be able to, if you don’t know who you are, how can you possibly help someone know who they are?
Chris Gazdik: Right. And
John-Nelson Pope: so.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I love Casey’s statement of, you know, the best therapists have therapists, you know, and, and I think that that really ends up being pretty, pretty true, but just to finish that point with the substance abuse versus mental health, I think that it’s really gotten better.
I heard Claudia black of traditional family therapist and substance abuse expose expels [00:30:00] upon how she has found in the last 10 years doing a whole lot more mental health. therapy. Mm hmm. And I haven’t heard a lot of mental health folks switching to the substance abuse and getting that training, but I’m pretty dogmatic on that.
Mm hmm. You, you, you’ve got to get treatment training in both realms. You can’t do one or the other. If a person
John-Nelson Pope: doesn’t have insight, then how is that going to last? That’s my question. And I think that’s one of my bones I had to pick with CBT initially or behavioral is that it’s not necessarily insight driven.
I think you could become very insightful as a result of behavioral therapy. Yes. I kind of caught CBT, but generally speaking, it’s not emphasized. To, to the extent and that’s why one would call depth psychology would be or, or depth of ideas. So people can,
Chris Gazdik: I don’t understand depth [00:31:00] psychology, depth
John-Nelson Pope: psychology is was in existential terms.
Okay. It’s to be able to talk about going in, go in and go into the emotional emotion. Yeah. Why are your motivations? This is what Neil was talking about in my mind. I was interpreting that is that you people want to know why. Yeah. And what motivated them? What’s their motivation? Acting. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Acting things out.
Yeah. And playing through. Okay. So let’s go. Let’s go. To some of these specifics. Let’s, let’s go down through some of these. I mean, I think the big one is CBT. People are very much wanting to know what There’s nothing wrong with it. Behavioral therapy is We did, I thought we did an episode on it, but actually, I never did find it.
I swear we did a CBT episode, but thoughts, feelings, behavioral connections, you’re really delving into, you know, how you think, how you behave,
John-Nelson Pope: dispute to stink [00:32:00] and thinking,
Chris Gazdik: stinking, thinking is a substance abuse term. Yeah. A lot of cognitive behavioral stuff is in substance abuse treatment. And then you, you really.
Activate your behavior and try to move your behavior in a different way or move your thoughts in a different way that there’s an interplay between those two. So you’re using either of the two to really affect change. Right. Not a pretty decent sum. That’s a good.
John-Nelson Pope: Perfect. Okay. And by doing so, your thinking changes, therefore you become, you, you start to see things from a different perspective.
Chris Gazdik: This next one bugs me a little bit. Okay. I’m a little bugged out about dialectal behavioral therapy, DBT. How can I convey why I’m bugged out a little bit? You know what? I think it’s your term with the CBT. Do you find that people with DBT practice get pretty rigid also? Yeah. Okay. [00:33:00] Yeah, I think that I never thought of it, but I’m thinking that in the moment, I think that’s what bugs me is the rigidity with a dbt practice
John-Nelson Pope: that it’s well, and I don’t want to use it.
It’s a religious in a sense, not religion in terms of a higher power or anything like that. But there’s a system. Of of following that, and I think that may be part of the, the, the rigidity to it. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Like don’t box me in kind of thing, you know, it, but it, but it is a very effective thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong.
Like I love all of the modules and the lists of skills. I mean, it’s, it’s probably the easiest and best way, particularly for a younger therapist, I would think to say like, well, what are the skills that I’m trying to teach? You literally have them taught in the book. It’s like, right. Module one, module two, module three, and four.
And you go through these, well,
John-Nelson Pope: cognitive processing, processing therapy is another one.
Chris Gazdik: You’re slaughtering me with our game. But let’s stay with dbt for [00:34:00] just a second. So, so this is developed. By a lighting in Marshall on a hand, I had some colleagues in the past that were very into it and that’s always stuck with me.
You, you really go through four modules. What were the modules? Mindfulness. Here it is. Yeah. Mindfulness, distress, tolerance, emotion, regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. And actually they’re very much like it. The dbt clinician is probably like the king or queen of mindfulness. It’s like when you go through.
Groups ’cause they do a lot of DBT in groups and oftentimes this is just, this is really designed for borderline personality disorder that we also need to say, you’ll do a module of mindfulness and then you’ll go to a mind module of conflict resolution. Then you’ll come back to the module one with mindfulness and do the interpersonal effectiveness and then you’ll come back to mindfulness.
You see. So they, bingo. Really center around mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. Be in the moment. Experience what you’re experiencing do [00:35:00] with that. ’cause a person who
John-Nelson Pope: feels empty, borderlines do and borderline in, in oneself, doesn’t know who oneself is. Mm-Hmm. . That, that kind of en enables that person to develop a personality.
Yeah. That, I mean, a, a sense of self.
Chris Gazdik: Well, a process, a process of what do I do Uhhuh to get to a place of understanding myself and internal and the self-soothing and that,
John-Nelson Pope: that sort of thing. Right. Okay. Here’s another that. Why I mentioned cognitive processing therapy is also a branch of CBT or, or REBT.
And basically it’s used for people with PTSD. And so you have have folks that, that basically and, and they go through a lot of similar things like DBT in terms of some of the processes that go on that. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. So let’s go on to one of the dynamic ones, the old school thinking, the psychodynamic and Ed Larian therapy.
How would you kind of [00:36:00] summarize that John?
John-Nelson Pope: Well, I think I did the psychodynamic is sort of is Freud on steroids. Basically. It’s very fast relatively speaking because psychoanalysis used to be a couple of times, three times a week. For an hour for years, the old
Chris Gazdik: school of a therapist actually had the title of an analyst, right?
I’ve, I’ve heard people early in my career say, well, I had an analyst and I was like, what? It’s yeah, it’s another name for a therapist doing psychodynamic
John-Nelson Pope: practice. Yeah. And so this kind of speeds it up and part of it psychodynamics lends itself to groups, group therapy. So that is, is interesting.
You can do it individually. You can do it individually, but, but you don’t I think you more
Chris Gazdik: commonly do it individually. I’ve never thought of I love psychodynamic stuff, honestly. I’ve never thought of doing a psychodynamic group, really.
John-Nelson Pope: You have a psychodynamic group, and you can, Really? Yeah. The process, that’s what we got at [00:37:00] cemetery when I did my clinic, cemetery, seminary, I did it at the cemetery, I did a clinical pastoral education and we did psychodynamic groups.
Oh, wow. That sounds like fun. When you get, you dig deep, do you? You dig deep, you get, and that’s depth psychology. And so you can do that and you do it fairly quickly. You do it over 16 to 20 or 24 sessions. And it’s a lot of fun.
Chris Gazdik: That’s cool. Okay. It’s fun. All right. Let’s move on to humanistic theory.
What was the
John-Nelson Pope: other one that you said? Psychodynamic, Adlerian.
Chris Gazdik: Adlerian,
John-Nelson Pope: Adlerian is great, isn’t
Chris Gazdik: it? Oh, I love Adlerian stuff.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. You know, You know,
Chris Gazdik: remember I was all excited about that when it came back from the Adlerian conference for three days and just got immersed in all that stuff again. And it’s been a little while.
You got converted. It was a nice reminder, honestly I wouldn’t say converted. I got reattached. Yeah. Because, because that stuff early on [00:38:00] was, was pretty cool. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Birth order. It’s a big thing and it’s spitting one soup as if thinking and so they’ve got little techniques that they follow. Specific techniques.
Think as if. Right. Yeah. So I, I find that kind of a dynamic process. And insightful oriented. Insight oriented. Dream work is also important to it as well.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah,
John-Nelson Pope: and
Chris Gazdik: which is interesting. I’ve never really done dream work. I don’t like it because to me I’ve always kind of said when it comes to that Dream The if you’re listening
John-Nelson Pope: to us for the first
Chris Gazdik: time John oftentimes breaks out on song, I love it, but I I think it’s so left up to abstract interpretation.
So when people ask me about dreams, I’ll do a little bit of that, but instead what I really like to think about, and I will always ask the question when somebody is talking about dreams, how did you feel in the dream? [00:39:00] Because to me, that’s not really needing interpretation and is the main point.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And, and, and the, the thing is, is that the client or the patient’s one that does the interpretation ultimately.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Well, ultimately, but I find people struggle with that. I mean, I dreamt that a pig was in my dream and I blood led him, and I don’t know what that means. Well, pigs can represent richness. Uhhuh , or they can represent, okay, I I, I’ll buy that. Or they can represent, you know dirtiness, uhhuh, , you know, so it’s, I don’t know that people, I guess what I’m saying is I don’t like to rely on people to interpret their Mm-Hmm.
Metaphoric understanding of that dream. I get, I find that I get lost when I try to do that with people, John, does that
John-Nelson Pope: sound crazy? No, it doesn’t. You, you drive me crazy. So
Chris Gazdik: I just sidestep it and go with how you feel. And that tells me a lot because that’s,
John-Nelson Pope: well, how do you feel right now about [00:40:00] it? So I had, I had, when I was in seminary, I had all these dreams about tornadoes coming, right?
And there were seven tornadoes coming bearing down. I knew what that meant. I was getting ready to graduate and I was engaged and she didn’t like me very much. And life’s about to go crazy. Yes. Life’s a bitch, you know, didn’t take a lot of interpretation. Exactly. And
Chris Gazdik: that’s where I find, you know, that now I, now I will say two reoccurring dreams are kind of interesting because you know, you, you have I found that with somebody.
Kind of recently, it’s like, oh, this, this reoccurring thing is like, what’s going on with that? And I dialed into that and we found a big deal. Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Had dread with the tornadoes coming in. Dread. Yeah. I had seven UFOs. And guess what was on at that time when I was at seminary? Close encounters of a third kind.
Oh wow. Yeah. And your brain just takes that. Just takes and molds it and goes with that. Mm-Hmm. . And so someone suggested, the therapist suggested that, [00:41:00] all right, instead of waking up, you, you determine you’re not going to, you’re not going to, to wake up. You are going to go through it.
Chris Gazdik: When you’ve done therapy, John, do you sit there and like, oh, you’re operating from that modality or this?
Therapists in therapy can be tough.
John-Nelson Pope: Do you? Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: I kind of do too. I mean it’s like,
John-Nelson Pope: I
Chris Gazdik: evaluate. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. Alright let’s move on a little bit with It was on the list. I don’t use, I don’t think I use Well I use humanistic therapy all the time and it’s effectiveness, I And it’s core piece.
What would you say about humanistic therapy? That’s a, that’s another bigger one that is out there.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, and again, that is one that has a very positive view of humanity, I think, as opposed to psychoanalysis and, and, or not mechanic and mechanistic. And so it’d be different than CBT and all those other ones, modalities [00:42:00] we talk about.
And humanistic would be like person centered. Right. Would existential, it would be gestalt, even gestalty, gestalty, and that is empathy and reflecting wholeness and unconditional positive regard that comes from humanistic. Yeah. The core conditions that was, was very, very important with Rogers.
And he, he started and developed Rogerian started which is client centered or person centered saying the client or the patient is, is the expert. And so that there’s that that. We get to be as the we get to be a company, the, the client or the patient in their journey. And so it’s a lot of times it’s non directive.
And the problem with that is, is that insurance companies don’t like that. They want you to. No,
Chris Gazdik: we’re not [00:43:00] even touching the insurance and
John-Nelson Pope: they don’t and and they don’t like diagnosis and they don’t like to put down and I I’ve known some people with marriage and family therapy backgrounds. Oh, we don’t do diagnosis.
Yeah, I’ve heard that. But you got to have that. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And it’s a part of our process. Science, you know,
John-Nelson Pope: and I think that’s, it’s part of our science.
Chris Gazdik: So, all right. My social work brand, I got to claim we got family systems theory, man. Yeah. There is a kind of a modality where you’re looking at interaction patterns.
You’re looking at strategically operating with challenges or changes with behavior and interaction. You’re looking at structurally how the family works. Like
John-Nelson Pope: minutiae and. Those guys
Chris Gazdik: or that do the, do the
John-Nelson Pope: genograms and
Chris Gazdik: I do a genogram on every person I meet. So I guess the answer is yes.
So yes, but I didn’t know it. I haven’t thought about that. So I, I must’ve pulled that. Well,
John-Nelson Pope: and it was just in [00:44:00] terms of, Well, yeah, I think, I think that’s true. I think they’re very true and you, you like to see how the families interact and you need to know the family history,
Chris Gazdik: the story, intergenerational trauma and things like that.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. It’s kind of biblical too. And that’s all
Chris Gazdik: right. How about act therapy? This is a new one. And it’s quite the rave. Did you know that?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah, I know the other
Chris Gazdik: rave
John-Nelson Pope: too.
Chris Gazdik: People, people love acceptance and commitment therapy. Wow. I’m boning up on this a little bit. What do you know about it?
John-Nelson Pope: I know
Chris Gazdik: very little about it.
Okay. Okay, I’ll be honest with you. Yeah, I’m boning up on it. I’m going to start, because I like it, I think. It’s, I mean, acceptance and commitment therapy really a lot of mindfulness. Yeah. and behavioral strategies. They have six core processes acceptance, cognitive diffusion, being present self as context values and committed action.
So it’s, I think the [00:45:00] thing that I’ve, I’ve kind of taken a lot of CBT and, and other things in that family too. I didn’t know it, but I, that’s my natural fit with. being very active and how can we change things? What, what kind of things can we commit to? What, what types of things? So you’re talking about this in session.
It’s next week. Motivation,
John-Nelson Pope: right? Intentionality. A
Chris Gazdik: lot of metaphors as well. Yeah. So, so in
John-Nelson Pope: a way it’s, It’s not eclectic, it’s more integrative in terms of a family system. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: I’ve started to dive into acceptance ACT a little bit, and I’m very consistent with it, but didn’t know it. Right, so that’s kind of, that’s kind of interesting.
You didn’t know,
John-Nelson Pope: you’re, you’re, yeah, it’s like having a religion and not knowing that you’re actually a Presbyterian or something. Yeah, I’m
Chris Gazdik: finding that, I’m finding that with ACT the more I dive into it. Oh boy, John, so, EMDR. Okay. Eye movement [00:46:00] desensitization. What’s the R? Oh, come on. What’s EMDR? Eye movement desensitization.
And re not repetition. Re no.
John-Nelson Pope: Ah, we’re good. You’re gonna have to, you’ll help us. Neil, help us.
Chris Gazdik: Hey Siri. What does EMDR stand for? Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, reprocessing,
John-Nelson Pope: reprocessing. Okay. All right. What do I think about it? Yeah, I think, I think we’ve talked about this. I think it’s thought it’s changing stinking thinking, but I don’t think there’s anything magic about having your finger waved and going back and forth or tapping or, or that sort of thing.
Stinking
Chris Gazdik: thinking is a substance abuse term.
John-Nelson Pope: Yes. I think it is. Is, is taking, I think it’s redirection. I think basically what happens is if you can reframe it and then you’re able to lay down a longterm [00:47:00] memory from let’s say PTSD. And so a lot of people said it’s a cure, it could do it in one, one session for PTSD.
The problem is with PTSD is, is that there’s multiple PST, PTSD sessions that. Encumber themselves like like or like the layers of an onion. It has to be,
Chris Gazdik: well, you and I work with trauma, I think a lot, and I think that’s what bothers me with this particular one is when people get locked in again, back to that idea, you know, well, I
John-Nelson Pope: make some people very rich that, that take it’s a very expensive training for the therapist.
Oh God. Yeah. But I went to meetings. Yeah, it’s not going to
Chris Gazdik: pay for the certification like it seems
John-Nelson Pope: to me that here it’s like Reiki is like putting your hands over a body and that that person’s going to change. Well, there is going to be a there is going to be a positive reaction. to this because you have somebody taking time and paying attention to you [00:48:00] for healing.
Right. I think EMDR does something very similar and I know I’m being controversial and people are going to be upset with me.
Chris Gazdik: I know, but it’s true and it’s one of the things I’ve said before. I mean, a lot of times when you’re doing EMDR, which is, you know, making eye movement using bilateral movements, you can do tapping on right leg, left legs, changing up the symmetry so it’s not.
Like, you know, a rhythm, it’s, it’s got to learn how to
John-Nelson Pope: play the drums. Yeah. Well, yeah, absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: But, but the thing is, is it’s, it’s, it doesn’t like, you don’t need to lock in by saying I have trauma, I want an EMDR therapist and that’s all I want to work with because there are, they will do,
John-Nelson Pope: they will do that because we want to do it very quickly and we want to, and that’s people, that’s our human nature.
Right. And we want to have a quick fix. You
Chris Gazdik: mean tell me I could do three sessions and be fixed? Yes, that’s great. Sign me up. I’ll spend 1, 500. Yeah, it’s, [00:49:00] there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat. Huh. And trauma work can be very in depth. And so, it doesn’t need to be a one specific, you know. This is why
John-Nelson Pope: ACT, though, is good.
Because it is commitment. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Acceptance also. Acceptance.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: I, I, I think I like act.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You should look into it a little bit. Get our act together. It’s a cool, it’s a cool thing. All right. Moving on a little bit. I don’t want to, and then we’ll, we’ll sum it all together, but mindfulness therapy, we kind of talked a lot about mindfulness.
That’s a big rave nowadays, you know, mindfulness activities, mindfulness practice, you know, meditative kind of stuff. I think people are really catching on to that and you’re going to have some powerful experiences with that. What are you experienced with? Art therapy. Have you done much with art, drums, drawing, you know, art therapy?
I
John-Nelson Pope: have, I have clients that have, that I work more in terms of psychodynamic with that also do drum therapy. And that is music. [00:50:00] Drum therapy is
Chris Gazdik: wonderful. Yeah. And music therapy. That’s like a drum circle where you’re all playing there and doing that, creating a group feel together. Yeah. It’s powerful.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And I think there’s often there, there is a religious aspect to it. And I don’t mean that it’s spiritual. You mean maybe spiritual connected well, but ritual ritual in terms of of that. So spiritual of course is kind of amorphous, but this is the, the, the ritualistic aspect of it, of, and you can be very spiritual and be religious at the same time.
Okay. Okay. But, but I like, I like that. Art therapy is great.
Chris Gazdik: I was going to tell a whole story. I’m going to give it a super brief because it just to give you an idea, therapist listening, I met with an art therapist and learned from a little bit. It was really cool. They took a schizophrenic patient and did art therapy with them.
And I just feel like that doesn’t match, but it really did. And, and, and it was like a, a 24 session. That [00:51:00] they presented and the initial drawings were like very sketchy, very disinformed, very fragmented, as you would expect with a schizophrenic patient, but then as they were talking and working on things and drawing, the latter pictures, 24, 25, 26 picture, you know, towards the end of their therapy relationship, very defined, very secure, very oriented.
They’re rewiring their brain. They were literally rewiring
John-Nelson Pope: hand coordination.
Chris Gazdik: It was amazing
John-Nelson Pope: to
Chris Gazdik: see them lay that out. In, in the way that they did, they didn’t do brushes. It was just drawing, but it was, it was fascinating. Art therapists. I love you. And by the way, occupational therapy does a lot of that kind of stuff.
Very well too, as an honorable mention.
John-Nelson Pope: I like how you said that I was just thinking of Van Gogh as an artist in Starry Night, for example, and how they get kind of [00:52:00] bizarre looking colors and very bright colors. But one can’t know what, what he had in terms of what we know is some sort of a thought disorder or.
Significant mood disorder. And that’s, again, a creator of things. A creator, and it really helped him.
Chris Gazdik: Neil’s got the mic, usually that means something good’s coming. Oh,
Neil Robinson: it’s just Van Gogh. Van Gogh lived on cigarettes and, like, lead paint. Like, he was He had a lot of problems. The interesting thing about Van Gogh was the fact that he wanted to be an impressionist.
You can never figure out the style. So that sunflower painting that you see, I think he painted like, dozens of them. And he just did that one over and over and over again. It’s really crazy. He did Olive
John-Nelson Pope: Grove, Olive Grove’s too, a lot.
Neil Robinson: Yeah, so he was an interesting, interesting bird. And he did not live a really healthy life to go with that.
All the creative mental stuff that he had. But yeah, he’s an interesting, he
John-Nelson Pope: had he actually did a painting of, of himself as a skeleton smoking a cigarette.
Neil Robinson: Well, yeah, cause he lived
Chris Gazdik: I got nothing to add here. Was there mushrooms involved anywhere of, you know, it’s a little MDMA. Like what are we doing here?
Those are drugs. If you didn’t know last one, I want to touch that. I think it’s a bigger one is motivational interviewing. I love motivational interviewing.
John-Nelson Pope: That’s what we, we learn. That’s what our new counselors learn. Do they first here? Here? Counseling courses. Good
Chris Gazdik: deal. I love that because it, it really works with motivating the individual.
I go with I was just going to say that you stole my thunder. I go directly here when I’m dealing with substance abuse issues, because it really looks at like being pre contemplative and you’re outside of a circle and then you move into a a contemplative state where you’re wondering, am I going to do anything?
Is it something that I need to do? And then you get into a determination state and then you get into an action state and then you go into maintenance. And so there’s different stages in the motivational schema that you, you think about, and I, and I love it. I like to [00:54:00] think where people are. And, and I love when I meet with somebody first session or two, first session or two.
And I find out like they’re really already in an action state. Like that’s awesome. Yeah. I had
John-Nelson Pope: one who only came, this is recent who substance use and it’s alcohol. But now you, he traded to go to cannabis use many times, many, many, many times. And he had absolutely no insight and he was in denial and it was the river in Africa in Egypt.
I mean, it was so, so much of that, but he had no, he was in, he wasn’t even, he was pre contemplation and he, he knew intellectually that this is where his wife was expecting him to go, but he didn’t. I love that. I love that. I love. And no matter what I did, in terms of motivational. Yeah. It wasn’t biting. It just hit a wall.
It [00:55:00] hit a wall.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Affable
John-Nelson Pope: fellow.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Just affable. Substance abuse is hard. I think that’s why a lot of mental health therapists. By the way, John, just don’t want to deal with it because the denial is so strong and to break through that Is just so difficult. I think it’s why people don’t like working with with teenagers as well I know I struggled at first with teenagers for sure you know many years ago trying to begin working with teen and i’m like, all right He’s he’s I don’t want to listen.
I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to participate. You know, it’s a really a different, it’s a different art to working with kids and especially teens. But okay. Still many others. Did we mention schema therapy yet? See, I’m cheating as I have my list in our little game. Schema therapy. I don’t think we mentioned that.
Yeah, I didn’t, I don’t think I did either. Interpersonal therapy. Solution focus. You mentioned narrative. We did drama, music, dance movement. therapies. I think we did pretty good with our list. You know, I want to go to you in summing us up a little bit. [00:56:00] I, I love this conversation. I think this has been terribly fun.
I know, right? It’s so fun. What do you think people hear from this though? Did we take some of the mystery out of this in going through some of these modalities and, and what might people still be wondering? I’m, I’m really curious to tap into your mind that way.
Neil Robinson: Well, I would have to say that I think I brought up this topic that we should do this a week or two ago.
I’m like, yes, he’s using it already.
Chris Gazdik: That’s right. Thank you. Thank you, Neil, for that. Yes.
Neil Robinson: And as a layman person, I, cause I hear all the terms on the show. And so I was like, I’d love to know more about the different ones, why you use it. So I think hopefully when people come through these, this process there, they understand.
The seriousness of what their therapist put in, the time they put into it, and the, you know, what they learn, you know, it’s, everyone’s so different. This is heavy stuff, it’s not easy to learn. Yeah, and that’s the thing, they have to understand, is that when you get these people and they come in, it’s like, [00:57:00] well, every therapist is the same.
No, they’re not. They’re really not. There are so many different ways that they can work with you because of the experience and because everyone’s different.
Everything works differently for different people. And I think the important thing you guys brought up was a therapist picks a modality that fits them just as much as it fits their patients too.
And I think that’s important to understand. So you can go to one therapist. And hate them. And it doesn’t make sense. You have no break. They go to another person and they might just, it just because they switched modalities, it’s huge for you. And so
Chris Gazdik: you got to get a good fit. Yeah.
Neil Robinson: So I think, I think that helps hopefully patient know that.
If it doesn’t work initially, that there’s hope that there could be something else to help that
Chris Gazdik: different type of, I think that, and so I think this actually
Neil Robinson: gives them some hope that it’s not always like, I think this was good because it doesn’t give you so many, it’s just a wide breadth of, of resources that they don’t understand.
Therapy’s therapy, but most people don’t understand that there’s more to [00:58:00] therapy than just sitting. There’s a
Chris Gazdik: lot of science here. Yeah. I’ll tell you, Neil, we’re where it drives me nuts. Cause we’re not paid like this, but I mean, there’s a lot of training that goes into this. A lot of training. You had your initial
Neil Robinson: one, and then you guys have continuing education.
There’s
Chris Gazdik: four years. Listen, there’s four years of undergraduate study. Then you have two years of graduate level. Then you, huh? It’s gone up. What do you mean? It’s two and a half years, three years now. Seriously? Yeah. I didn’t even know that. Yeah. To get an MSW is like two and a half three year process. For counseling.
No kidding. Yeah. Well, wow. And. So seven years, not six. But then you go through supervision, which is an intense learning under like an apprenticeship, if you will. And then as you say, there’s continuing education that you’re expected to continue to do. And that’s the other thing.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s just that when you get, you get these folks and they’ll.
And as an educator they’ll get a folks that’ll say, well, I can, I can learn just as much online and I’m going to do it as fast as I can. [00:59:00] And yes, you can technically do that faster. The problem is, is that incomplete. Have you been able to integrate what you’ve learned? In those years that you studied, and I think that’s part of it comes with, and I, and so it’s, it’s it’s different.
It’s not a job. This is a profession, right? It is. There’s an art to it. And so like lawyers and doctors. There’s a practice to it or minister.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. My friends like, you know, like, Oh my God, Chris, you just, you just talk like therapist. I’m like, I’m just hanging out. Matter of fact, you’ve done that to me. It times like, I’m sorry.
This is, it is, it gets ingrained. It’s kind of, you know, what you do and it becomes a part. I mean, particularly if you’ve been doing it for what, 20, Five, 30 years, right, John? So, all right, you got, you getting thanked online, Neil, for, for bringing the topic up, it was a good show. It is said so listen, I was worried that we would be [01:00:00] too geeked out in science with it, but it seems like you brought me to back.
We did it. We did a good job and, and, and congratulations for winning our little challenge game.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, Yeah, I didn’t even think of schema, though. That’s, that’s good.
Chris Gazdik: Listen, I hope we’ve taken some of the mystery out of this. Therapy is helpful. Therapy is a really super special thing. We’re passionate about mental health and substance abuse treatment.
So lock in, man. Go get it done. Get well. So we’re looking for you because there’s a lot of different therapists with a lot of different modalities that can be around. A lot of good therapists
John-Nelson Pope: out
Chris Gazdik: there. There really are. There really are. So happy 4th of July again. Stay well. We’ll see you next week.