Chris and Adam review the shows we did this month on menopause in great detail covering both the Part I and the Part II that we did this month. THey follow this up with a review on the Teen crush and what we mean when we speak of “True Love”
Tune in to see the month of August in Review: Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Links referenced during the show:
The ‘male menopause’ – NHS (www.nhs.uk)
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
Audio Podcast Version Only
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Episode #242 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Through a Therapist’s Eyes. Welcome and hello August. We’re still in August, August the 31st. Just barely, just barely by the nick of our chins. The August month in Review show is what we’re doing today with Mr. Adam k Cloer. How are you? Great. I’m your host, Chris Gick. And you are Neil behind the curtains.
How are you? I’m good. Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Good day today.
Chris Gazdik: You like coming outta the curtains and, and chatting with us, or
Neil Robinson: you wanna stay? It’d be more fun if I wasn’t producing at the same time, like I realized I need to get like my kid here just to sit in the, like, just toggle
Adam Cloninger: the camera. We need to get him like a table where he’s.
Like at the computer and then everything, he can just Oh. Have like a little, that way it’s
Neil Robinson: like it’s easier laptop. Maybe. Maybe Chris and me need to switch seats so it’s more right in front of me. And you two can share the couch maybe.
Chris Gazdik: Does it matter if you’re right in? I don’t understand.
Adam Cloninger: No, I meant [00:01:00] like we could do like three separate things then it’d be harder to
Neil Robinson: like switch the camera.
Yeah. Now you’re just adding more work. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry, man. More You just
Chris Gazdik: have to talk producer. Listen, this is the month. Oh, let me do my other stuff. Yes. Yes. So this is through a therapist eyes where you get insights directly from a therapist and a couple of guys on the month in review, not to delivery of therapy services in any way.
Adam, you’re gonna be happy, man. I, I took your motivation. The book is, the book is being edited, man. Good man. Good. Yeah. Yeah. He, you see dw, or not dw, that’s geez, that’s the lady that makes everything go at the office. Courtney Donaldson, the, the editor got it back to me. So now I’ve basically, I gotta rewrite the whole thing.
So
Adam Cloninger: now I gotta go back and listen to January’s episode because we talked about.
Chris Gazdik: Goals, man. Big goals. And I don’t, I haven’t, no idea what, well, I think it was a couple months after that you wanted me to get it done this year, and I’m like, yeah, I totally, yeah. But
it
Adam Cloninger: was one of your New Year’s resolutions you had
Chris Gazdik: probably, was it?
I think it was, we need a,
Adam Cloninger: so my [00:02:00] problem, my problem is I have no idea what mine was so I can go back and look at it. That way I can get motivated. I think yours was good tattoo. For this year. Oh rah. Go.
Chris Gazdik: You wanna show the YouTubes? Well, look, look at what we got. Give, give a good picture there. You gotta, but it’s
Adam Cloninger: all nasty and re like healing up right now.
You do it. You could do it. Just put it in front of your face. Now you have to. It’s like nasty and hell.
Neil Robinson: Can you see
Chris Gazdik: it? No, you can’t see it. There you go. Oh man. That’s better.
Adam Cloninger: That’s
Neil Robinson: better. There you go. It’s very cool. Tattoo Lea fish. We’re getting Chris to going by the end of the year.
Chris Gazdik: It’s not gonna happen.
Not into pain, but let me see. So yeah, this is a book on marriage guys that we’ve been talking about. It’s the follow up to the first book. I did a slow play with it. I really didn’t want to bring another book out in the middle of the pandemic. So I’ve been kind of slow playing this along, taking my time.
But I’m in full gear now. We’re, we’re editing and writing and so there’s gonna be a book on marriage out. It’ll take a little while still. The publisher’s gotta do their thing with it and hopefully they accept it. So how many they get it published? How many words did you get? Oh yeah, about 50 large man,
Neil Robinson: [00:03:00] 50.
Luke, just, Luke just crossed 50 K on his book. He got
Chris Gazdik: 50,000 on his book. Okay. That’s good. Good young man. That’s impressive, man. I’m Neil’s little kid is writing a story, a book, a novel. Yeah. It’s a fiction though, right? A fiction novel, yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Neil Robinson: No, he’s writing a book on marriage too. My 14 year old’s writing a book on marriage as well.
So you got competition.
Chris Gazdik: That would be awesome. I would be super impressed with that. And it would be
Neil Robinson: fiction because he doesn’t know anything about it.
Chris Gazdik: Fictional about marriage are, are you going credit a
Adam Cloninger: credit book from a teenager’s viewpoint? Exactly. He’s on credit. Your
Chris Gazdik: book. This is the human emotional experience, which we do endeavor to figure out together.
So let’s launch on the week or month in review. We do with. Adam k Cloer comes on and he goes he takes us all the way deep down into a rabbit hole to start us off with some sort of mental health related topic that is in the news, that is in the world or something. Not in the news necessarily, right?
Mm-hmm. Yep. Researches it, discusses it, and we [00:04:00] kick it around. So, so where are you taking this today, man? Should I, should I be nervous? Like, last time we needed a, we needed a a, a disclaimer on the last
Adam Cloninger: one. Yeah, well, we need, we need a disclaimer this time too, but it’s not anywhere near as bad. The disclaimer this time is, even though I play one on television, I’m not actually a doctor.
Chris Gazdik: So, but you stayed in Holiday Inn, right?
Adam Cloninger: Yes. Or isn’t, or is that
Neil Robinson: Motel six? I can’t remember. Holiday Inn Express, that’s Holiday. Holiday Inn Express.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, it has to be in express? Yeah, I believe so. Is there a difference between Holiday Inn and Holiday
Adam Cloninger: Inn Express?
Neil Robinson: I. One’s faster. That, that was the ad. It was for that brand.
I didn’t know. I’m pretty sure. Comment. Let us know if we’re right
Chris Gazdik: before we get Yes. There you go. Before we go down into the rabbit hole, just so you know as well, we’re talking about the, the review of August, which we did a part one and a part two on Menopause Normalized. That was the title. And then we did the Other Side of the Hormone Change, which is the earlier in life episode.
What was it? 41 2 41 2 41. Your [00:05:00] first Love The Teen Crush. Is it real True love. So true love. A lot of our relationships there with the youngsters. But really we talked a lot about us older folks and all. But you know, it’s funny, I was telling you guys before the mics came on, dude, I’m like, I, I saw our topics and I was preparing and getting ready and reviewing and everything.
I’m like, oh my, do we have to talk about menopause again? Like, ah, three guys talking about menopause. How’s that gonna go, Adam? You ready
Adam Cloninger: for this? We, y’all can just skimm over and we’ll just spend more time on the other two topics. How about that? There’s only one other topic. Ah,
Chris Gazdik: oh, that’s right.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. Yeah.
So two thirds of this review will be this
Neil Robinson: menopause man, I should have came up with a bigger, longer for rabbit hole.
Chris Gazdik: It is a topic that is uncomfortable to talk about seriously, and I owned it one part, one when I was like, look man, I, I, I did not want to bring this topic up, but I got permission in my mind to do it with a show that [00:06:00] was out on the New York Times podcast that I check out the Times and they said Menopause has a moment, and they really did awesome coverage on this topic.
I can’t wait until we’re reviewing it to say one of the things that, yeah, I mean, one of the things is a reality man. This is a statement that I will make a bold statement about, that we do need a national and worldwide dialogue about this issue. I think that is absolutely a hundred percent true. That’s a statement that I’ll make about Wait, it’s going around the world right now.
We we’re, I’m trying You’re
Adam Cloninger: making a na international
Chris Gazdik: statement. I mean, I really am. Yeah. I’m trying because I think around the world thing for a third time in last month. Yeah. We’re doing it again. Oh gosh. All right, man. Let’s hit the rabbit hole. Where we going? Okay.
Adam Cloninger: So I wanna talk for a few minutes about EEG five or Aris.
Okay. Y’all familiar with that? Heard the term kind of sound
Chris Gazdik: familiar. Like Aries as in the horoscope, Aries, e
Adam Cloninger: r i s. It’s technically EEG five. It’s in the, the new Covid variant we’ve been seeing a lot [00:07:00] about on news
Chris Gazdik: outlets and, oh, I, I’ve, this is a thing I didn’t know. Yeah, so that’s, that’s the variant that we’re talking about.
It’s Aries. Yeah, it,
Adam Cloninger: this e g five, they call it ariss for short. I don’t even know why it’s for short ’cause it’s actually longer. But E G five is what it’s called. I call it EEG five. I think that’s easier
Chris Gazdik: to say. That sounds like a Star Wars robot. Yeah. Sorry. That’s where my brain goes. I just snorted too.
Adam Cloninger: So anyway, on the EEG five Yep. There’s, you see a lot of stuff on the news outlets and the social media and know people are saying, you know, don’t comply or, you know, mandate does not mean it’s by law or what, you know, stuff like that. I. There’s a lot of covid variants. E G five is one of the newer ones, and, and there’s some concern by some people, and I wanna, in my opinion, again, not a doctor, but in my opinion, I don’t think there’s needs to be as much concern.
There’s a lot of covid variants and about 17% of the US cases are currently e g five. Now [00:08:00] when you take consideration, there’s so many different variants and 17% of ’em are e G five. That sounds like it’s really bad,
Chris Gazdik: but Well, that means 80% of them would be the previous other variants.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah, but there’s like a lot of different variants.
I mean, there’s like a lot. Okay, so it, you know, when you consider how many different variants there is, and then this one is or a i or, and then there’s, this one is 17% of it. It might sound like, oh, this is really bad, but okay. The symptoms are pretty much the same. The tests work, the, the rapid tests, the ones you have with the medical facilities, they all work.
They’re thinking that any kind of antivirals that’s already existed are probably gonna be effective to it. So in my mind, we shouldn’t be panicking. But with that in mind, there are gonna be be people that’s gonna be panicking.
Chris Gazdik: So, well, I don’t know where we’re going on this rabbit hole, but I’m gonna jump in and say we shouldn’t have been panicking in 2020.
I, I, it’s been a while. Like I was a big advocate trying to talk about the issues of covid when it was new with like [00:09:00] some, some, some real basic concepts. There were three of ’em. What did I come down with? One, we needed to stay calm. And not allow fear to take over too. We needed to not be ignorant and allow ourselves to be informed so that we’re prudent so that we can make good decisions.
There was, there was like a three liner thing that I was thinking about in that regard, but one of ’em was definitely, you know, like, look, we don’t need to be panicked about things that we don’t understand. That’s, that’s where we get into a mental health crisis. Right. You know, the fear and the panic and the fear mongering kind of as well, that kind of gets going on in, in social media and whatnot.
Like, let’s be prudent about what’s going on and, and, and listen to people and have trust for science that’s out there. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot, there’s a lot there. I don’t know where it is. A rabbit hole man. Where are we going? No, that you were actually
Adam Cloninger: covering exactly what I, I wanted to know what kind of what people might be thinking in your opinion about, you know, not panicking and stuff like that.
[00:10:00] So you kind of covered it so, That’s the rabbit
Chris Gazdik: hole. That’s kind of the rabbit hole. Yeah. You know. Well, I, I’ll let you, I’ll let you chime in, Neil. See what, see what you’re kind of thinking really, because I, I think that there’s, there’s so many directions that, that we can go in with it. And, and you’re right, it is coming back on the radar.
I, I, I’m starting to have people in my clinical practice. Are they mentioning it? Oh, absolutely. Well, ’cause people are getting sick. Yeah. People are getting covid. And I have, I have a colleague of mine that got covid probably with this variant, and it’s now moved into long covid. Well, but, and she’s having a hard time.
Well, from, from
Adam Cloninger: what I’m reading, even though there’s a uptick, the cases are still relatively low, but again, 17% of it, so it’s, it’s sounds like it’s more it spreads easier,
Neil Robinson: but
Adam Cloninger: less intense, you’re saying? The antivirals are expected to work,
Chris Gazdik: so I don’t think, well, we’re in a different age now. We know what Covid is and we have treatment.[00:11:00]
You know, four, but when, what do you, what are you thinking? Man,
Neil Robinson: I’ve, I think with a lot of the stuff, I, I think you’re gonna have a lot of, I think there’s gonna be a lot of jaded people from the, like you talked about, like, everyone’s like, don’t, you know, we’re not gonna comply. And, and honestly, I think a lot of the mandates and stuff that came through were a little bit over the top.
I mean, there was, when you, when you look at the chain of events that happened, you look at the initial outbreak, you look at Italy, which was a catastrophe in itself, right? ’cause they didn’t know what was going on, right? That was where a lot of the initial fears were. ’cause doctors were not doing the right course of treatments and caused a lot more problems with, you know, early in intubation and stuff like that.
Like, that was the initial fear. And you talk about the panic and stuff. Once that, once that made it through that and things kind of started figuring out what was going on and people started realizing one, for majority of people, it’s not. That as a big, as big of a problem as they originally led. There was preexisting conditions that did cause people, but even with the flu or [00:12:00] a lot of the other viruses, you had people who had preexisting conditions or more susceptible to it.
But you start realizing, oh, it’s not as big of a concern, because now we’re starting to learn how to fight against it. And I think the biggest thing is because we know how to fight against it. More people have had it, some people it’s worse than others, but they survive it. Right. It’s, it changes the whole idea of like, like flu nowadays.
The flu back in 1908 when the Spanish flu came by, it was a pandemic. Now it’s like, oh, gotta go get my booster shot. Or I got like, oh, I got the flu. Stay home. Vitamin C, zinc, stuff like that. It’s, it’s exactly like, it’s a different
Chris Gazdik: attitude. It’s exactly like the flu. Neil, I, I, I think the biggest mental health component is where Adam, you triggered my brain to go with is we cannot have fear and panic run our decision making.
Like, how many ways in mental health do we have fear driven behavior that is destructive and bad? So I think that’s the highlight with this, with this rabbit hole. But, but the second subset highlight though, is, is really that we need to take [00:13:00] this stuff seriously. I mean, I, I, I get concerned when people are just like jumping off into an opposite sort of fear.
Like, don’t control me, don’t tell me what to do. I’m not being compliant. I’m gonna, I’m not gonna take this seriously. That’s a problem too. I, I’ll, I’ll be very clear about that. That’s a problem because we, we, we, we need to have a level of prudence about what we know and what we don’t know about this, and a level of mental health component trust in people who study this crap.
Like, I don’t know the science behind this. People do now, you know, we need, like,
Adam Cloninger: we’ve got a better idea of what’s gonna
Chris Gazdik: happen now. We’ve got a much better understanding. Yeah. A much better understanding in treatments. You know, the, the, the thing that sucks is, is the, the downturn in trust that we have in the C D C and our various health organizations like Fauci got destroyed through that whole thing.
I don’t understand it. There needs to be about 20 fauci ss out there talking about what we know and what we don’t know with the ability [00:14:00] to say, this is a novel virus. We don’t know, man, this is the, the best we got now, a month after we found this, is this. Well, we’re trying our best. I I I,
Adam Cloninger: I may have mentioned this earlier, I don’t think I, I don’t think I did, but it’s been in the US since like April.
That helps any, so it’s not like it What the new variant? Yeah. So it’s
Chris Gazdik: not like it’s April, may, June, July, August. So, I mean, it’s been a little bit, but we’ll get about half a year probably, you know, maybe we don’t know when it got here. We will say it’s been here for half a year. Yeah. I don’t think that people are tripping out that there’s a new variant.
I think people are tripping out that, oh crap, people are still getting sick from Covid. Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Well, not only that, no, not only that, not wrong. There’s a lot of people freaking out that now I’m not going back to mask. I don’t wanna do
this and ’cause ma I mean, right. I, I, you gotta remember from what I do for a living, I’m in not only a manufacturing, but I’m also in the office setting too.
So, mm-hmm. I, I, I could have both, so, The masks suck for safety glasses, man. I’m telling you, they, it
Chris Gazdik: sucks for safety glasses. What do
Adam Cloninger: you mean? Well, it’s [00:15:00] hard to not have safety glasses fog up. It really is. Oh yeah. So then you’re also causing another safety risk. Yes. There’s all kinds of things you can do.
You can do this and do that and make your safety glasses. Yeah. Spit on ’em.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, but I say that to elevate humor will get us outta here because when you spit on glasses, it’s gotta be like your, your get goggles. Someone else to
Adam Cloninger: spit on ’em. That’s what you should do. Well, you don’t do that.
Chris Gazdik: That
Adam Cloninger: would be bad.
Yeah. Yeah. Get someone else to spit on them
Chris Gazdik: because when you spit on scuba goggles, it doesn’t fall up and stuff. So you need to spit on your goggles. That’ll fix that problem.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah. So, so as, so if it does go, when you first come into the facility, you’re working as soon as you come through the door, spit on your glasses.
Yeah. There you go. Even if it’s prescription. Yep. Keep ’em from fogging up and then you’ll be much better off through
Chris Gazdik: therapy size. Man, we got covid solutions, baby
Neil Robinson: spit on other people’s safety goggles. You got
Adam Cloninger: problems? We got solution
Chris Gazdik: All right, listen, that was a good rabbit hole, Adam. ’cause I think that is un unlike what I believe or dial into.
I, I think that’s coming on the radar [00:16:00] screen with people’s mental health. I, I just don’t want us to get all panicky and fearful again about all this stuff. Menopause. We’re not fearful about menopause. Neither are we. How do we deal with this? Here’s the three questions. Do you really know what menopause is?
When and how does menopause occur and how does it affect our lives? And I, I think those are some questions that we started out with. Let me answer, no, I don’t
Adam Cloninger: know. And I don’t know because I, no, I don’t know. And I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about it yet, so.
Chris Gazdik: Hmm. But you know about it, you have beliefs about it, you’ve heard of it, I hope, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Neil, how do we summarize all of this that we really went into with, as it relates to both shows and stuff? Yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a lot.
Neil Robinson: It needs to be normalized. You know, that’s, that’s a first thing to, but I think the biggest thing is, is being aware of the symptoms, which means you have to educate [00:17:00] yourself from both sides of the both male and female side, because women go through it and guys are there with them.
And so, so it’s not just women on an island amongst themself dealing with these changes. They’re a significant other, you know, if it’s a guy, they’re also dealing with it too because of the interaction. So knowing the symptoms of what could be causing it is gonna help you deal with it down there. So that’s the biggest thing.
And that goes back to, to me, a synopsis education, knowing what the heck’s going on with their body to know, like how to work with it. That’s important. So when you say
Adam Cloninger: normalize, you’re, you’re talking about be aware that it’s. Normal. What happens? Is that what you’re
Neil Robinson: saying? Or, yeah, normalize it. Don’t make it a big deal.
It doesn’t have to be like the old school, like, oh my gosh, she’s going through menopause. Leave her alone. Like it’s, it just needs to be, it’s like it is the way that it is. You know? It’s, you know, women have their stuff that they go through, guys have stuff they go through. It’s, it’s just a matter of fact.
So we’re gonna use
Adam Cloninger: just one term for both men and women now. It’s just gonna be called menopause. No, it’s menopause.
Neil Robinson: And menopause
Chris Gazdik: don’t. Probably he said menopause. [00:18:00] Honestly. We probably should, but no, we have andropause is, oh, that’s what it is, andropause. Really? It’s called. Okay. And, and, and, and women have the menopause, which, which really honestly is a lot of the same things.
So I’m more familiar with andropause it. Yeah. Well, it, it, it, it, it really is the same thing. I love the new metaphor that I will now forever use with, with this. You remember the menopause, the, the menopause metaphor, Adam, for, for women, they go into, you know, imagine the roller coaster, you know, to the top of the mm-hmm.
The first hill. Right? Right. And what happens next? You go down hard. Yeah. And fast. Right. And furious. Boom, you’re in it. And that’s what, that’s what happens for, for women that go into menopause, that, you know, average age, at age 52 is the medical moment. Of, you know, menopause, which is defined by 12 months without a menstrual cycle, but seven to eight years prior [00:19:00] to that, right?
And I’m, I’ll tell you a little story of why I learned so much about this because it, it affects mental health that I began to see several years ago. And, and that’s a fast and furious seven, eight year dive into like your body being completely different. But men go through same stuff, man. We go up there as well, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick to the top of the first hill of the ride.
And as a ride for men too, we, we lose testosterone and all the hormone production as well, starting at about 40, but we lose about 1% of testosterone production per year. That’s all we talk about in man World, which is stupid ’cause there’s all the other hormones. But what happens after we get to the top, Adam, tick, tick, tick, tick for men, drop butt.
But I, I, I, no, we, we don’t drop.
Adam Cloninger: We drop. Well, okay. Well good. I’m glad you said that. ’cause I don’t, I, when you’re talking about roller coasters, what I think of there’s no drop is these roller coasters where you go up the top and then it goes around like this and goes down slightly and then it starts dropping.
No, we
Chris Gazdik: take a log ride. A log ride. We take [00:20:00] a log ride. Is that a metaphor? It’s a metaphor. Okay. Come on. What do you mean? Where you at? It has to be a metaphor. Yeah. We’re on a long ride and it’s that, that slow, they have a drop too though. And it’s a smooth
Neil Robinson: transition right before death. They do have a drop.
Right at the end.
Chris Gazdik: At the end. And honestly, I wanna submit to you that when men hit about 50, they, it catches up and men are kinda like, what is going on in my body? Right. Like it has been getting different, very, very slowly. Well, I can’t open this
Adam Cloninger: jar of pickles anymore. I
Chris Gazdik: mean, something’s different, honey.
And you open this. Yeah. You lose muscle strength. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. It’s true. You lose a lot of things, your body changes. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if I could find it in my notes quickly enough, but you know, I, I saw a, oh yeah, from the N H Ss in uk this is a better description and a has way more meat to what I, I saw in this.
But for them, men, you get mood swings and loss of muscle mass, reduced ability to exercise fat [00:21:00] redistribution, large belly, or quote unquote, man boobs, lack of enthusiasm or energy. You got those.
Adam Cloninger: So how much of that is just the bad mood and stuff is because of all those things.
Chris Gazdik: It is Ho, ho. Hold on though.
Okay. Difficulty sleeping and increased tiredness, poor concentration, and short-term memory. How many others? I wonder because honestly, that’s the longest list of something I’ve ever seen in doing prep for this show this month,
where people are talking about male symptoms of andropause. I’ve never heard a list that long.
And if you look at that list, they’re beginning to highlight and see that that’s the same list that women go through. It’s just a lot. It takes us a lot longer to get there and they get several, many more. I mean, their list is like 40 strong. So we’re starting to really see that. Yeah, it’s, this is aging, this is how the body ages.
So [00:22:00] Neil, I like the way you say it, like, can we just normalize this crap and go along with our business to cope with the changes and not demoralize women for going through something that’s tough. Yeah. Oh man.
Adam Cloninger: Yeah.
Neil Robinson: I mean, and I think you take, you take, you have to take the emotions out of it because when, especially when you’re going through stuff like this, the hormonal changes, the emotions are already outta whack to begin with on both sides of it.
And so you have to make it more logical. You have to be like, you know, this is what’s going on. You have to understand it. You, it is just, it just takes that extra edge off, you know, because, I mean, I deal that with my wife where she’ll come downstairs and like she’ll, she’ll warm us like, Hey, I’m grumpy today.
Okay. And I decide do I want to poke the bear or not, you know? But that’s, I’m out that, that’s a whole nother thing. Did you ever do that? That
Adam Cloninger: hell, today’s the day I’m a getter. You know? He has,
Neil Robinson: oh, I do it all the time. Really? Oh, I, I live on the, I live on the edge,
Chris Gazdik: man. I don’t think you understand brother’s like a bad idea, man.
You didn’t expect that answer. Did you have
Neil Robinson: Yeah. I, I live on the edge when it comes to my wife. Like it’s, [00:23:00] she does not, I don’t know. Maybe she appreciates it. I don’t know. But, but you
Chris Gazdik: know, to your point, Neil, you know, you do you, we started out with Covid. 19. It was a novel virus, which means it’s brand new.
And we didn’t know. We don’t know. And when we, something’s happening and we don’t know, the fear of the unknown psychologically just takes over and that’s what makes it so terrifying. Now that we know, we know some of things, we don’t have to be all freaked out about it as bad. The same thing goes, as you say, Neil, let’s just put some knowledge on this.
You know, I am amazed at how many women don’t really have a very strong understanding of, of, of things that go on with menopause specifically. There’s just, it’s not, I was
Adam Cloninger: hoping he is gonna stop before he said that. Last couple words, that sentence it,
Chris Gazdik: because I’m not gonna get hate mail from all the women.
Yes. Through a there besides women know nothing. Hey, that’d be a
Adam Cloninger: great short, wouldn’t it?
Neil Robinson: I’m gonna take that out. That’s good. [00:24:00] Know per Chris gda through
Adam Cloninger: purpose, women know nothing. Sure. Taking two sentences, we’ll put an
Neil Robinson: asterisk. Adam and Neil do not support this message. Wow.
Adam Cloninger: Wow.
Neil Robinson: But no, I, I think the interesting thing being abused.
Yeah. I think the interesting thing I talking about men my wife and I were at an optometrist and we had this older gentleman that was, You know, fixing her glasses. ’cause now she has to have readers, which is hilarious. But that’s a whole nother conversation. And so have mercy
Chris Gazdik: on us, man. Yeah. So she,
Neil Robinson: she has, she, she was trying progressive lenses where it has all the different special and it was making her nauseous.
So we went back, talked to them, and the guy’s looking at it and, you know, we started talking to him. He goes, how old do you think I’m, he is like maybe 50 or something, but he ends up being like 75 or something, some higher number. Right. And there’s what he brought up as, On men. We talked about that slow rollercoaster.
You look at any celebrity long ride, right? That long ride. Right. But at the end we talked about that, that decline. ’cause he was talking about how when he was like got to like 70, his like his [00:25:00] body size shrunk like half, right? Like so you’re kind of maintaining. All of a sudden it just, your muscle masters dropped.
Like, and you look at actors like Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, like for some reason like these men, manly men, like out of the blue, they look great and all of a sudden they just look a lot more feral, a lot thinner. Just out of the blue. Both of them. If you look at the newer movies, it’s like how are they walking around still?
Still. That’s funny.
Chris Gazdik: That’s really interesting that you’re pointing that out. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Neil Robinson: So, but yeah, I thought so. That kind of equated to the idea that men had that log ride and then all of a sudden you get that dip right at the end because, you know, while we might be losing muscle mass at a certain point, at a certain point it just really drops, you know, we really lose it.
So, or,
Chris Gazdik: or, and I think really kind. Well, maybe it is really, I guess, I guess we need to study that. We need science on that, honestly, because, you know, whether there’s a drop drop like that, that, that’s interesting. I, I, I never thought about it as, As that with, with men. But at some point is it a, is it a big drop or do you start being like, holy crap, I’m really different.
You start noticing. I, I feel like it’s, there’s a [00:26:00] noticing to what’s been changing, whereas women, you, you notice because it’s changing so freaking rapidly. I mean, seven, eight years seems like a long time, but dude, I’m telling you like that is like, That’s no time to go through the massive changes that they go into.
Let me tell you why I originally came with this idea that, that, that identified the clinical issues that I shared. I, I think it’s a good thing to do on a review show. Like we’re just not gonna be able to touch all that we got into in those two episodes. It’s clear to me right now being halfway through our, our review, right?
So please definitely check this out ’cause we need a national and worldwide dialogue about the issue of menopause. That’s my bold statement. And, but I say that because I have really come to be, be very aware of the, the massive impact on mental health that this really creates through a case several years ago now that I talked about in episode one or part one of this, that this lady, Adam, I don’t know if you, you heard this story?
I don’t or we’ve ever talked about it, but. Do you remember that part in the [00:27:00] story where I told this? I’m just curious if
Adam Cloninger: you recall that or Yeah, I’m, it’s not ringing a bell yet, but you haven’t
Chris Gazdik: really said much yet, so I dunno. Perfect. Yeah. So, so I want you to hear your reaction Okay. To this then.
’cause ’cause you may not have heard this. Thi this woman came in a, in a mandatory referral that I was working with, right. And that means somebody at work, usually that’s a dirty drug screen or whatever. I know your company does that a lot. Yeah. So you know how that works. But this was just because she was asking weird questions and they were concerned about her.
That’s, that’s the reason why they mandatory like
Adam Cloninger: weird questions. Like, can you give an
Chris Gazdik: example? Why are people so worried about me? Why are people watching me? I don’t understand why I’m the center of everyone’s attention and everyone’s in a small office being like, you’re not it. I don’t, it was a weird question ’cause she’s getting a little paranoid.
She was getting a little bit edgy. Okay. Interesting use of the word paranoid because yes, as I got to meet with her and see what was going on, she began to describe, like, ’cause I got rapport with her after a few sessions. No, she was full on [00:28:00] psychotic. She was, she was walking into restaurants and public places thinking they were all talking about her and she’s being tracked on the internet, being h, hiv Yeah, I know.
Positive. Like, holy crap. What’s that? I know somebody like this. Yeah. Right. Yes. Well, it was, it was really dramatic and, and I saw, I really started to wonder like, you know, what’s the puzzle here? I don’t understand what’s going on. And I really take it very seriously when I meet with somebody, like I wanna diagnose, I wanna figure out, and I couldn’t figure it out.
There was no bipolar, no depression. The only thing that I came across was anxiety. A real clinical experience with anxiety. And, but what was odd is that was only about a year prior, I. She was in her forties and there, and that’s not the way anxiety presents. I mean, it, it’s not a new thing at that point in life.
Very often if you have clinical level anxieties, you have that, you know, through your life. So now I’m like, well, why would, why would she have this level of anxiety that’s there and have psychotic experiences and, and, and whatever it was that clued [00:29:00] me in, I worked out with her a whole symptoms list of menopause and I, I brought out a list and I started talking to her, did you experience this?
And she’s like, yeah. And this, yeah, and this, yeah, this, yeah, this and this and this. Yeah. And I’m like, oh my gosh, this, these, she’s got all kinds of changes that have happened. So, so basically it’s
Adam Cloninger: not, she didn’t have a mental issue. She had a physical health issue that was causing Yes. Her to think something a
Chris Gazdik: hundred percent.
We identified this and I literally googled Dr. Google. Can you be psychotic with men? And the answer was, yeah, people have experienced that. We’ve given people, women, Haldol in psychiatric hospitals, which is a very serious and strong medication for antipsychotics wait, because of menopause, misdiagnosed, misunderstood.
What’s going on, Adam, we talked for about two, three weeks and, and she was like, man, I don’t understand how I was thinking those things. I was thinking, I’m so glad we figured this out.
Adam Cloninger: So that helped [00:30:00] her like understand. And she wasn’t as
Chris Gazdik: it was, that was it. Again, I’m gonna say paranoid. She wasn’t psychotic, she wasn’t paranoid, she was barely anxious because she understood it better because she understood it.
Neil Robinson: Hey. I think that that unknown causes a lot of, you start thinking of you go down your own rabbit hole in your brain, like, what is wrong with me? What’s going on? Because these things are heightened because I know my wife being, you know, she’s 41, she’s looking at things and someone has, she saw like YouTube, Instagram, thinking about someone talking about all the symptoms of perimenopause.
Oh, that’s awesome. And just going through that, it kind of like helped her like, oh, I think. That’s probably what’s going on with me. And just, and that’s why I said it’s so important to normalize and educate, to know what’s going on because then you don’t freak out. Freak out. Yeah. You don’t feel crazy because you have something where you have this weird thing that you keep going into your head and thinking like, what’s going on?
Like it knowing your, how your senses are heightened, knowing how your emotions are changing, knowing all these different places allows you to understand and be able to be like, oh, okay, [00:31:00] I’m not, I’m, that’s not really the problem. I can address it and I can look at it. And that’s what you did for your patient is like you educated her to help her understand what’s going on with her body.
And the fact that she’s a, she’s a woman that age and had no clue, goes back to the problem we’re running into, which is no one knows and they’re uneducated. Needs to be normalized.
Chris Gazdik: And honestly it drives me nuts that the medical profession, I feel like I’m gonna make another bold statement. I don’t wanna piss any doctors off and gynecologists and stuff.
I hope and feel and do believe that it’s gotten better. But up until recent times, medical profession has done women a disservice because they’ve gone in with symptom sets of things they’re really concerned about. And they’re like, what’s going on with me? And they’re like, well, I don’t know. Here’s some creams.
Well, is it menopause? Oh, no, no, no honey, it’s too early for that. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s not it. And they have that and many more stuff going on, which makes them feel crazy. Well
Adam Cloninger: then too, that they’re probably a lot of it going on where they’re saying,
Chris Gazdik: ah, it’s just menopause. [00:32:00] What do you mean? Well,
Adam Cloninger: you were saying that, oh, it’s too early for that, but you know, all these things going, going wrong with, and they’ll say, oh, I got this going on.
Oh, it’s just menopause. Don’t worry about that. But not addressing the health issue, I. That’s what it meant.
Chris Gazdik: I don’t think that was happening a lot. I I, I’m, I’m not tracking with you yet. Because, because, ’cause I feel like it was much more like, no, it’s not menopause. Don’t worry about it. It’s, it’s nothing that we’re not, we don’t, we need to treat that.
I mean, we’re talking about like hair falling out, thinning of the nails, you know, dryness of, of, of skin and really everywhere menstrual cycle coming a little bit early, a little bit late. I mean, there’s, there’s like 40 different things and, and someone will go into a medical doctor and be like, well, what’s going on with me?
Why is this the case? And they’re like, well, I don’t really know. I mean, you want birth control to regulate your cycles on it. No, not really. Well then it’s fine. Is it menopause? No. No, it’s not that. But, and, and, and they feel crazy.
Neil Robinson: But, but I do think it’s, there is a downplay [00:33:00] and maybe it’s not, oh, it’s menopause.
Yeah. You know, it’s, maybe they’re not saying it’s menopause, maybe it’s, oh, it’s just your hormones are outta whack. Or like, you, you, but I think it also goes back to what you said before this. There’s so many symptoms and it goes on for so long, that slowly becomes problems or it slowly becomes aware. And so because it’s such a slow buildup, they don’t actually account for it as being associated symptoms of, of perimenopause and stuff like that.
And so I do think it is, it is minimized a lot. And I think it’s also just, you know, They don’t put two and two together. It’s like, ah, you’re just, your hormones are just outta whack this month and you’ll be fine next month. You know? Right.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Is that what you meant, Adam? Kind of, yeah. Yeah. I, I, it is, and I, I think there’s, I, I’m curious what she found on, on YouTube.
So she kind of saw somebody talking about this on YouTube. ’cause That’s awesome.
Neil Robinson: Yeah. It was one of those shorts she, she ran into and she started, I’m like, and then she’s like, starts seeing the symptoms. It’s like, okay, it makes more sense. Like I said, it’s, it’s educated and [00:34:00] normalizing the whole situation.
So, but honestly, you know, you look at the history of medical for women, you know, you have two things that kind of go against them as one. The medical profession for so long was just men. Yeah, and society in general was women just kind of did what they needed to do and just kept quiet about things. If they had problems, they just kept quiet.
They weren’t supposed to talk or bring up their problems, you know, from women or from men’s side. So really, I think we talked about like the sixties and the seventies is kind of really, this is really early on
Chris Gazdik: understanding. It was, I was surprised by that. And that came from the New York Times podcast.
It did a really good job of diving into some of the history with this. Like people started talking about this a while ago with hormone replacement therapy. I mean, then that got demonized because of cancer, hormone cancer concerns, but then they, we, we figured out that it isn’t that big of a cancer. All, all that was overblown and, and overly feared, but well, some, some cancers
Adam Cloninger: is, you really can’t take
Chris Gazdik: anything.
Oh, no, I get that. Well, if you [00:35:00] get cancer for another reason, I know that Yeah. Hormone, we, we, we try to take hormones down, right? So that it, the hormones feed the cancer that you’re, you’re having. But that’s, but, but, That’s not saying that hormone replacement therapy caused cancer. Right, right. Okay. Yeah,
Adam Cloninger: it was, it
Neil Robinson: was, it was, it was like a percentage, and a percentage was basically related to hor.
So like when you break down, it was such a small, like triggering
Chris Gazdik: effect of like, yes, to make up numbers, but make the point you have like hormone replacement therapy that’s taken to treat these things has
about a 3% likelihood of causing cancer for that woman. And then they did studies where they found that there’s a, a 17% increase or 25% increase.
Ooh. And that’s scary. Like I don’t want a quarter of an increase chance, but that’s not what the number said. It was a quarter of 3%. So that’s makes it 4.5% in increased
Adam Cloninger: chance. So now, now I think the, the way of thinking is I think if, if you have, if you already have some type [00:36:00] of cancer that’s not threatening, it could make it increase.
I.
Chris Gazdik: A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We wouldn’t, which we wouldn’t want to do that, but it needs to be an individual decision between your doctor and, and, and the, and the woman. So we do now recognize that H R t hormone replacement therapy is a good option, but that’s a hell of a story that I just, I, I, I’ll never forget that in my career now because it, it just brought my mind elevating the mental health ramifications, you know, when this stage of life is.
Has gotten into, I mean, the marital ramifications are profound. The ramifications on anxiety and depression, long-term experience before that is profound. The, even, even the parenting realities when you begin dealing with your teenagers and you’re, you’re going through this, I mean, God, right? Neil’s, Neil’s laughing.
You gotta say why. I
Neil Robinson: mean, I, I have a 17 year old that we’re scrolling through the, the, the idea of, you know, next stage in life. And my wife is very rollercoaster [00:37:00] of emotions right now from excited, but yet terrified, happy, but sad. And, you know, it’s just get to her and say, it’s just
Adam Cloninger: menopause. Don’t worry about, it’s no big deal.
No, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding. Every woman is kidding.
Chris Gazdik: Pissed off.
Adam Cloninger: I’m kidding. I’m
Neil Robinson: joking. And then she’ll say, yes it is that she swings at me. That’s you. But, but she, once again, my wife is very logical as far as this like, Logical as far as knowing something changed, you’ve been pretty grounded and logical.
Oh yeah. I mean now in the heat of the moments because of emotions and change. And I think one thing I do wanna talk about is in the next episode you talk about how. Menopause doesn’t create problems, it just magnifies them.
Chris Gazdik: There you go. Take my thunder. That’s, that’s one of our things we need to do.
That’s
Neil Robinson: something you have to understand through this is like, she’s still my wife and she still has her, but sometimes it does elevate our, our conversations. It does elevate situations. It does, right. You know, it’s just the way things are and that’s just, you have to be, as you talked about it, my kids have to understand that.
I have two teenage boys that like, oh no, mom’s going crazy. All of a sudden like, [00:38:00] okay, just. Write it out kind of situation. So they’re dealing with it too. But once again, my wife is very grounded in the ;ike lake. I
Chris Gazdik: just wanna highlight it ’cause I think you didn’t say it as boldly. You know, the, the statement is that menopause does not create any new problems.
And, and we, we mistakenly feel that it is the problem now. It’s not the problem. There’s nothing of a problem with it. It’s nothing. It’s, but a medical reality of change. So it doesn’t create any new problems. It just magnifies whatever’s going on. Times a factor of 10 or whatever. It makes mental health and marriage problems or parenting challenges, blended families with step parenting and the stresses there.
It doesn’t create any problems with, with, with step parenting. But man, when you start going through this, it makes the, the problems that are there magnified or like
Adam Cloninger: magnify the joy messing with your
Neil Robinson: wife and. Oh, it does, it does dramatically. The, the, the emo, the righties I get out of
Chris Gazdik: that is just, just so [00:39:00] much fun.
Listen, my wife’s probably not gonna listen, but on the off chance that she is, I am going to say I am not brave enough to go there at all. Do not do that. That is poorly.
Adam Cloninger: Just everybody knows it was mentioned before the show. That’s the only reason I said some people enjoy
Chris Gazdik: it was not mentioned before this show.
It was, it was in the show. No, but he’s lying again. I’m being destroyed over here. Okay. That’s not cool. Alright. Really final part of this that I wanted to point out that we really didn’t get to go on the show a lot about, which is unfortunate because, you know, this could be a positive thing.
Listen to my little list, right? First of all, any woman hysterically will tell you, it is wonderful. Victoria was awesome about this, wasn’t she? Yeah. You know where I’m going? Mm-hmm. Take, take it. Where am I going?
Neil Robinson: Well, the idea that. There’s no more period. There’s no hormonal swings. There’s no monthly, well, there’s no bleeding.
There’s no, like, it’s gotta be
Chris Gazdik: fantastic. Yeah. She spent a year being pregnant and then post-pregnancy, you know, not, and then when it came back, she was talking [00:40:00] about like, yeah, my wife,
Neil Robinson: my wife went through that. Did, she did the i u d. She didn’t have the stuff. Terrible. And so, yeah. And then you get back on birth control.
You have to fight with it. Yeah. It’s, yeah,
Chris Gazdik: it’s not fun. It’s gotta be horrible. I’m so glad I’m a dude. So this goes away. Also changes. Good. Right? Scary. We don’t know what this is, but change can be good. It brings new opportunities and new understandings. There’s so much empowerment in, in accepting our age as we get older and, and, and what our bodies now are.
There’s no more nonsense. Like we can get down to life and having maturity within increased life experience. You know, having the, the, the value of being older and the wisdom that comes with that. Just to name a few, like, you know,
this, this is a transition of change that causes shame and. Fear and all sorts of horrible, tough times with mental health if we don’t know what’s going on.
But it by far, it does not have to be a bad, terrifying, and we definitely don’t need to throw our women under the bus. You men out there listen and learn about what’s going on so you don’t [00:41:00] join the world and in, in marginalizing what they’re experiencing. So, you know, I hope this is an uplifting, empower, empowering reality to normalize what happens in this life change process.
Menopause, normalized. Shall we move on? I
Neil Robinson: was gonna say, if a man’s having issues with his woman being on menopause, look at yourself because there’s probably something that you have of been avoiding that’s led to the situation. So if you have it, oh yeah. Don’t just put it all on her. But I think the other thing you wanted, which goes back to a previous episode, shame with medical conditions it up.
You should not be ashamed with this whole situation. And that’s is very powerful to think about because sometimes the women might be ashamed going through this because they don’t know what’s going on or they don’t want to deal with it or they don’t wanna address it. And then that leads to further problems.
So go back to whatever episode it was like 2 38 or 2 37 or something like that.
Chris Gazdik: That’s three or four before
Neil Robinson: that. You’re right. Yeah. So go check that out too, because that’s important. ’cause it is natural. It is the way that it, [00:42:00] that you know, we are with everything and you just have to. It is a good thing.
It’s that next phase in their
Chris Gazdik: life. Yeah. It’s just terrible when people feel the guilt and the shame for getting more irritable than what they know they should be getting, but they’re feeling that way. It’s like, why am I feeling the way that I’m feeling? Well, the the way, the reason why likely you’re feeling, the way that you’re feeling is ’cause you just had a baby and you’re having postpartum depression.
Mm-hmm. Now I just switched the topic from menopause to postpartum depression, but it’s really, really got a similar reality, right? All hormonal changes. Your hormones are changing rapidly when you’re pregnant and then
when you’re no longer pregnant, you, we know that post. We don’t shame women for that.
Why would we shame women in their forties? Actually, we do
Neil Robinson: more than we should probably with postpartum.
Chris Gazdik: That’s, that’s true. Thank you for correcting me. You, you go a little further with that ’cause you’re, you’re right.
Neil Robinson: Well, well, I mean there’s a [00:43:00] lot of women who go through it and they don’t ask for help.
My wife kind of went through it with our second kid and you know, it’s one of those things women don’t ask for help, guys don’t step up or really pay attention to what’s going on. And you feel like, as a mother, you’re supposed to be this, this wonder woman that can do everything. And so when you go through the things where you go through postpartum, your hormones are all outta whack.
’cause you just had a baby. Now your hormones are bottoming out and you don’t feel like it, but you still have to be there for your kid. You’re not getting sleep because the kid, you know, there’s all these things and there’s a lot of stuff that, you know, women don’t ask for help or they don’t. Look at really what’s going on and you get stuck in these cycles.
You know, we, like I said, we went through that. Finally my wife got some Ambien and got some good sleep on, you know, a couple nights of good sleep and it kind of changed her back to the way it was. You just don’t understand what what’s going on. And so perfect postpartum needs to be normalized just like menopause needs because it is a hormonal change and you need to address it so you can actually learn how to handle it or take care of it or treat it.
Chris Gazdik: And I might say men [00:44:00] menopause andropause, if you will. Let’s call it to be normalized. I’m so glad
Adam Cloninger: you’re saying that. ’cause I was sitting, started thinking the whole time. We keep saying we want ’em, it happens to men too, when we’ve spent most of the show talking about women. Right. I guess
Neil Robinson: I have to rely on you two being you guys older.
Are you guys going through menopause? I’m an angel.
Chris Gazdik: Puse. I definitely sure am. I told Victoria, I showed her after the show, my spot on my leg that has no hair on it. And John was like, I have no air on my legs at all. You know, like. Yeah. This is a dude thing too. Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: I’m thinking I’m gonna go to work and be a jerk and say I’m sorry.
It’s just menopause.
Chris Gazdik: It’s just menopause. Andropause. Andropause. Yeah. You gotta say andro. Guess.
Neil Robinson: Okay, andropause. I’ll tell you what, once my leg hair goes away there, I know I have a real problem ’cause I got very hair leg, so
Chris Gazdik: I do too, man. But like right on my ankle, there’s like a whole two inch spot where there is none.
It’s, it’s the craziest thing ever. I’ll show
Adam Cloninger: you after. Show that I still like this term, man. Oppa,
Chris Gazdik: Manop. I do two. I I still like that. We gotta give much better names for this, by the way. Like menopause is one moment, 12 months after your last cycle. [00:45:00] And then we have premenopause and post menopause like perimenopause, prem.
It’s stupid. Can we not have cooler names for this? Maybe that’ll help our societies get along better with this and normalize it. Well just call it. Just
Adam Cloninger: call it menopause and be men and women. Or whatever you
Chris Gazdik: may identify. Well, what I’m saying, the the decade description, we gotta come up with something much cooler.
You people out there that are good with memes, create some memes and rename this shit so we can have some, some better, you know, some better fun. And tag
Neil Robinson: tag, tag the show in it so we get
Chris Gazdik: more. Definitely tag the show in it. All right, let’s go on before we don’t have any time for episode 2 41. Your first Love The Teenage Crush.
Is it true or real Love. True love. So what is a teenage crush is a question two. What is true love? And third question that we thought about for this was how do you, or did you handle all the intense emotions that emerged from these close attachments and And, and, and, and really we spent a lot of time discussing.
So Adam, I’m gonna ask you and Neil, you had a lot of thoughts on this show. I [00:46:00] remember. I think we were talking about it and you were chuckling in the background, wanting to know when we was talking about Soulmate. Do you remember that? I think this is the show that I’m like, oh, we definitely have to talk about this.
’cause you said something or did something. Do you remember? I,
Neil Robinson: I probably did. ’cause I think you, I think you were like antis soulmate. You were like, I think was anti That was
Adam Cloninger: last review. ’cause I remember something about that. No, it was, it was since then. It was, it was, yeah. We talked about soulmate.
Y’all said something about last review. ’cause you, you made a comment about ah, soulmate thing.
Chris Gazdik: Oh really? Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Didn’t I? Unless it was
Chris Gazdik: on the back porch that night. I think. I think you was listening to the show and you thought No, no, no, no, no. It could have
Adam Cloninger: been, it could have been a night on the back porch when we’re
Chris Gazdik: talking.
Oh, it probably was. Yeah. I was just hanging out with you could. It could’ve been now. Yeah. Yeah. Dang it. I poisoned it. That’s right. I, we did talk about that on your deck anyway. I’m curious, Adam, what says you about
Adam Cloninger: soulmates? Yes. Yes, but I thought that that’s not what I thought you were gonna ask me.
I thought you were gonna ask me about, is it true love the young, true love. Is it really true love? I, [00:47:00] I was gonna say
Chris Gazdik: yes. Oh, it absolutely is. Yeah. I appreciate that. Okay. Yeah, a big, a big summary point that I wanna really highlight with this show of 2 41, man, we marginalized teenage affection and I, and it, it bothers me.
It always has. Victoria really joined with me because she, she works with kids a lot. I mean, we, we, we use these words, teenage crush and just say, oh, you’re, you’re, you’re just, it’s puppy love. That’s horrible. I don’t understand
Adam Cloninger: that. Well, it’s, it’s at that point in their life that it is just as important.
’cause that’s, that it’s based on their experience. Yes. It’s
Chris Gazdik: just as difficult, it’s real feelings. The only thing that’s different is this, the first time that they felt romantically attached and lovingly towards a, a, a dating partner and felt. And, and I
Adam Cloninger: think, I think it’s easier to get over
Chris Gazdik: too. Oh boy. I totally disagree with that.
No, I do not agree with that. Maybe
Adam Cloninger: I shouldn’t say it like that. Maybe I should say it takes less time to get over just as difficult, but less
Chris Gazdik: time to get over. [00:48:00] Maybe less time. I don’t know. But I mean, I, I think that. The, the, the reality with that is, is I have found that when people are dealing with a breakup of any kind at any point in time, that is the point at which they tend to be most decompensated really is the.
Clinical term, but that means they’re struggling the most. Right. And if you’re a teenager or if you’re in midlife, or if you’re an elderly person, it doesn’t matter. That is a horrible, horrible loss that really people are struggling with the most. So
Adam Cloninger: I think time has a lot to do too. I mean, somebody’s a teen, teen crush.
I’ll say Teen crush. People say that, but didn’t like that term. But if they’ve seen somebody for a month, okay, well it’s horrible. Yeah. A week, they’re gonna be over it. Now somebody you’re. Saying for years. Yes. It’s gonna take some time.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, I see your point. Yeah. You know, middle school dating for a week is different.
Yeah. This is not what we’re talking about. Okay. We’re not talking about a high schooler who is dating five [00:49:00] people this month. Right. You know, that kind of stuff. That that’s, that’s impulsivity, that’s that kid’s not really having the emotions, they’re not really having much maturity. This, you’re right.
This does designate as a, and it’s awesome, Adam, ’cause I never thought about qualifying it that way, but we’re really talking about a longer term committed relationship. Call it three, four months or longer, where you’re really connected and dating maybe upwards of half a year to a year. Yeah. Like, this is, this has gotta be like your senior year experience or you know, all of ninth grade.
You know? Yeah.
Neil Robinson: I think, I think you have true love versus true infatuation. Kind of like that differences kind of thing. Because I mean, My youngest has been dating his girlfriend for like a year and a half now, which is surprising. And then my oldest, he finally got into a, seemed like pseudo healthy relationship until they kind of, you know, had a, had a struggle, a lover’s quarrel, whatever you wanna call it.
And it, it hurt him for a little bit ’cause they had been dating for a month or so, and, but [00:50:00] now they’re back together, now that they’ve actually matured. But it still goes back to, at that age, it really, to me, it depends on the person and how committed they get to that idea of that true love. You know?
’cause I feel like there’s certain people that when they dive in, they’re all in and so that’s real. Oh yeah. Like that’s, yeah. And, but some people are like, but that’s the same thing as adults. Yeah. There’s, yeah. Adults are
Chris Gazdik: exactly the same way. Totally same as an adulthood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let’s, let’s get, let’s get ugly with each other.
Oh boy. Let’s get into this man. Both of y’all knuckleheads seem to believe that the soulmate reality thing is a real thing. Why on earth would you believe that? Nonsense. Can I, can I say it that rudely
Adam Cloninger: man? We want to get in this.
Neil Robinson: Really? Okay. So I think, I think there’s a qualifier here.
Okay. What’s the qualifier? There’s a difference between finding your soulmate and the idea that there’s only one person for you. I think there went to, that’s the qualification because. Yeah. My wife and I talk about [00:51:00] this afterwards. There’s like romantics, almost like my wife and I when we met. Like there was a connection.
There’s a lot of stuff. There’s a bigger thing to it where, and we got married, we got engaged like three months after we met and got married three months later. Like, and we’ve been married for, this’ll be 20 years this December. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. But two decades. But then you also have, you have friends.
I mean, you have guys that you would go and you’d be like, Him and I just click, we we get along real well. That’s to me, kinda like you can have a friend soulmate, just like you have a romantic soulmate because some people you just, you bond with, you click with. There’s, there’s more to a relationship.
It’s whether it’s the vibe you give off, the chemicals, whatever it is, there’s more to it in how you connect to certain people. Just like there’s people we can go to and you can’t stand being in the same room with them.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. It’s funny John, John really like layered into that. I think when we were talking, I, I, I, I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t think I previously realized there’s, you know, as many variations in the ways to think about what, what is and what [00:52:00] isn’t a soulmate.
I mean, to me it’s, it’s, it’s very. It, it, it’s very specific. I mean, it’s, you’re the one for me. I’m the one for you. And we’re the only ones for each other. And we have found our souls connecting and that’s it. And we go off into the sunset and live life together, all harmoniously, like the whole thing is nonsense to me.
I, I don’t get it. I don’t understand it. I don’t abide by it. I don’t, and I think it really creates unrealistic expectations out there about how we’re gonna find our person. Well, I, I think
Adam Cloninger: the problem is the definition of what you think a soulmate is and what somebody else thinks a soulmate
Chris Gazdik: is.
Evidently. That’s what I’m saying. I mean, I, I, I really, previous to John saying that, I, I did not realize that there were, that, that many, you know, differences in the way to, to think about this. Yeah. That was surprising to me. Well, well,
Adam Cloninger: look at me. I don’t believe in souls, so. Well,
Chris Gazdik: there you go. Wait, hang on.
Yeah,
Adam Cloninger: I don’t, I don’t believe in souls. Yeah. I don’t really, yes. Fabrication
Chris Gazdik: of. You are such a logical thinker. [00:53:00] All right, that’s another rabbit hole. Memory
Adam Cloninger: is in your brain. When you die, your memory goes, ah, and a story when you get, if you went to heaven or where, or hell or wherever, you wouldn’t remember anybody because your brain’s dead.
In, in discussion.
Neil Robinson: But so the other, the other thing I think about too, and I’m just gonna, I’m just
Chris Gazdik: gonna leave that, we’ll leave that alone subject change. I’m not
Neil Robinson: gonna go down that rabbit hole May maybe next month we’ll talk about that. But I think the idea of what a soulmate is, I think is very important in your relationship.
If, if you have that connection with someone and you think that they’re your soulmate, you’re gonna be more willing to try harder with the idea that this is my soulmate. But if you lose that person, you have to shift your thought process. I can find someone else. So it’s a really weird double-edged sword that is very powerful in the relationship.
But once you lose that relationship, the idea that that was my only person is very depressing. Right? And so you have to kind of think about that from like, [00:54:00] You know, like, ’cause you were married before mm-hmm. And now you found Julie, right? Yep. So therefore, you’ve kind of gone through that before. Yeah.
And I, she’s perfect. We’re perfect
Adam Cloninger: together. Yeah, exactly. What’s what’s funny, and, and, you know, I, I’ll use the term, I, I think she’s my soulmate, even though I don’t really believe in souls. So again, it goes to how your dad, what you define a,
Neil Robinson: a soulmate is you and her are my mind really good fit. Yeah. You guys are a great fit for each other.
Yeah. And, and like I said, to me, a lot of it is a lot of intangibles. It’s not always, look, it’s not like there’s something about when I hang out with my wife, I enjoy hanging out with my wife. Like, I don’t, I would rather spend time with her than a lot of other people. So it’s just the way that it is. And that’s my relationship with her.
Like, okay.
Chris Gazdik: So I just Googled it to see like, what, what are we talking about? We’re gonna a Webster’s dictionary soulmate, a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner. Okay. That’s a little more broad than I would’ve thought about a, a. Definition. That sounds better to me. Yeah, it, it, it, it, it’s a good definition.
I don’t, I don’t, [00:55:00] and I don’t have any problem with that because I think there’re what you’re talking about, Neil, is, is along those lines. However, even with this definition that we can all kind of agree on, I’m gonna get nitpicky and say, you know, ideally, I don’t know what that means. I don’t think there’s an ideal person out there.
Say it again out there one more time. The definition they have here from wherever, dictionary.com a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner.
Neil Robinson: Well, I think that’s kind of weird because there’s a lot of people that you might not think would, you would be friends with, but you click like, I think that’s a really weird thing.
’cause I’m thinking about like, my wife has a new friend she’s found and they really gel and outside of their weird, twisted sense of humor, they’re really nothing alike, but they love hanging out together. It’s one of those weird things. So how can
Adam Cloninger: someone, how can you not have something that’s ideal? So, I mean, there’s gotta be a best of everything.
Looks like there’s the worst of ever. So ideal would be the best case scenario
Neil Robinson: to me. Ideal kind of takes away [00:56:00] like a, a soulmate is like this connection to me. So you’re making it ideal as like, now you’re trying to add logic to a relationship and sometimes in a lot of relationships. There’s no logic to it.
I don’t think so. The fact that they added that term of ideal, I’m with you. That’s kind of a weird term to throw in there. I think
Chris Gazdik: so, yeah. I mean, if you look up ideal, you know satisfying one’s concentration of what is perfect. Most suitable. Most suitable Well, yeah. Most suitable. Is that ideal. Most suitable?
Yes. Most suitable or perfect. There’s, there’s nobody out there that you’re gonna find when you’re dealing with a teenage quil. Most ideal. Most ideal. That is perfect. It’s not gonna happen. Soulmates don’t exist. Nobody’s perfect. That’s the way I look at it. So would you,
Adam Cloninger: would you say there’s not someone that’s most ideal for you?
Neil Robinson: My wife’s perfect for me.
Chris Gazdik: No, I, I don’t because I, because it takes so much work, it takes so much purposeful effort, particularly over the course of a long term relationship, particularly Oh, okay. Well given, so just don’t even, [00:57:00] just, just wait a minute. Hold on a minute. Just, just have anybody then, hold on a minute.
Get this reality. When you def identify somebody that you meet, greet, and date and commit to, and they’re ideal, what do we say about that idyllic reality when they’re fundamentally different? How can they be ideal for you when they go through things in life and become fundamentally different? And one of the fundamental differences that we have, one of the biggest life changes before and after life events that we go through is becoming a parent.
You are a hundred percent different person. So if you were ideal before that, then you’re not, you can’t be ideal after it’s hogwash. But
Neil Robinson: if you change, as they change, who’s to say that you’re not changing in the same fit? Because if, if my wife’s a parent, I’m a parent at the same time. So we’re both changing.
Who’s to say we’re not changing to continuously fit with each other. The space. If you’re ideal for
Chris Gazdik: each other, exactly. Somebody’s gonna change differently. I tell ya, one person might change in this way, the other person changes in this way. It’s, it’s all well, and
Neil Robinson: maybe at that time, [00:58:00] that’s the way it needs to be.
All fluctuating, man. But Yeah, but it’s, it’s a constant moving, moving pattern. It’s, it’s almost like, it’s almost like a soulmate is almost like that jar of water and oil. You see that adds, it shifts. Yeah. Each one is changing, but it still fills up the same void. It still fills the same Well, what I
Adam Cloninger: hear Chris saying is ideal for a wild, but not forever.
Chris Gazdik: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Right. I mean, and, and let me pull this together, you know, with reviewing the Teenage Crush and is that true Love and what we talk about with Soulmate True love. Like True love. What is that meme or skit? It’s a Saturday night thing.
Neil Robinson: I think it was Princess Bride, I think.
Chris Gazdik: Ah, yes, true love. Yeah. John was all over. That was f. It was one of those
Neil Robinson: movies. It might’ve been yeah, I think it was Princess Bride. When they talk about it, you know, the, the preacher at the end talks about when they get
Adam Cloninger: married. The only thing I remember is the sword thing and Andre De Giant
Chris Gazdik: being on, that’s all I remember.
I only remember Andre De Giant. I’m with you. That’s about [00:59:00] great movie my level. But here’s the thing is we, we, I idealize and romanticize that, you know, we have some sort of sense of the romantic way that we’re supposed
to engage our wife or engage our significant other. And, and the reality of it is that that just doesn’t exist.
There. There are so many variations in the way that we meet, greet, date, commit mate, and, and live together it and, and, and, and there’s so much variation in that process over the years that you have to be very purposeful in maintaining it. So why even
Adam Cloninger: look then? Why just grab anybody? I.
Chris Gazdik: Well, you know, when we were, when we were less refined as a race, you know, we, we were very animalistic about it and re procreated the species, I suppose when, homiosapients were young.
We would just get a new sex partner every 2, 3, 4 years. ’cause that’s what our hormones designed us to do. But we, but we have learned a little bit more stability about culture in society. That we go with monogamy and, and, and [01:00:00] long-term relationships. Some would make the argument that, that’s unnatural and we shouldn’t do that.
Or we should have polygamy, you know, one guy and 10 wives is polygamy, right? Like, there are other models, but, but, but none of it is ideal and none of it is, needs to be romanticized and, and mystified in some sort of way that when you have problems in year three of your marriage, that that’s not normal.
There’s a problem here that, that’s, that is normal. I
Adam Cloninger: don’t think he likes the term ideal.
Neil Robinson: That’s what, I’m sorry. Maybe when you give him a new idea. About what ideal is.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I have a lot of ideas. I’m from West Virginia, I’m sure. Yes.
Neil Robinson: But, but I think there, I don’t think there’s really any problem with the romanticizing your partner, even at the longer side of it.
No,
Chris Gazdik: no, I agree. I could No romanticizing the challenge that relationships in the long term status represent.
Neil Robinson: I think the challenge is though, keep it fun. Keep it fresh. I think it’s enjoyable.
Chris Gazdik: Couldn’t agree more. Absolutely.
Neil Robinson: As someone who likes to poke [01:01:00] the bear when she’s
Chris Gazdik: into weird mood. I know. Is that keeping it real?
Holy cow. It’s keeping it fresh. Poor woman. Gotta get my thrill somewhere. All right. What else do we do with this? I think we’ve done a pretty good job. And, and what did, what did we talk about? We, we talked a lot about social media with that show. I don’t think we’re gonna get here. We’ve talked about social media impacts be before, but you know, oh my gosh.
The social media. Adam, you could speak to that with the dating, we remember we did the dating show with social apps. I think that was with you, wasn’t it? Dating, dating show with social apps. Maybe it was with Craig. Actually. I, I’d been with Craig at the time. I think it was with Craig at the time, a long time ago.
Yeah, don’t remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Social media has dramatically impacted the way that we date. It, it, it, I, I think you
Adam Cloninger: may have mentioned that, but I don’t, I don’t remember a whole show about it. So like about semi, I remember you saying back on the show with me and Craig did blah, blah, blah, blah.
Something along that lines. Yeah, we were talking about that. I think you said something along the lines of some, I’m sure
Chris Gazdik: to you on a show. Yeah. Yeah. [01:02:00]
Neil Robinson: But I, I think the biggest thing when we, when we look at this one, you know, it talks about it, I think, I think don’t minimalize their feelings. I think that was a big part of this because as we get older, we, we’ve seen the ups and downs.
We’re kind of jaded. We’re kind of like, oh, we know it’ll pass. But when you have a kid, you’re in the moment. Like it is a big deal to them. And you, you shouldn’t downplay their emotions or downplay the situation. You need to be there for your kids if they’re struggling with it. And help them cope. Yeah, exactly.
Help them cope with it being like, oh yeah, this does suck. I’ve been through there and it sucks. You know, it’s, you’re not, you’re not alone through this. But I, and I think that you get a lot of older curmudgeony parents that forgot what it was like when they had, did have their first true love and they did have their first true breakup and the, the pain it does.
Cause there was a video I saw recently where the guy talked about how there’s three different loves. There’s the first one, which is, you know, fresh, new, hard to get over. But then as you get older and you go through the other things of love, the more long, it was an interesting video. I just watched it. So don’t, but yeah, so it’s the idea of like, if you [01:03:00] lost Lisa, That pain would be a lot different than a girlfriend back in college.
Right, right. But it’s still a loss and a pain from the first one just as much as second one. It’s just a different way, it’s a different depth, but it’s, especially because of different
Adam Cloninger: life experiences, the total, some, their life
Neil Robinson: experiences are different. But I think that’s the important part is when the kids are going through this and they have those first true loves and you know, they break up and they’re eating that pint of ice cream.
Like you see, like there’s, there’s real thing, there’s real pain, there’s real emotions. It’s it, it’s not watered down. It’s almost worse because we talked about it. This is their first experiences in it, and those first experiences are definitely more heightened than third or fourth or fifth time. I think the
Adam Cloninger: takeaway is that yes, they’ll get over it faster, but it’s, to them it’s just as real and just as.
Chris Gazdik: Painful, sometimes suicidal. Yes. The is the reality of it. Yeah. No, I, I, I like the way that Adam, you and I kind of kicked that around in the beginning of this, that it is, it may not take as long ’cause it hasn’t been as long, [01:04:00] but it is as deep and real. Yeah. I, I, I, I totally agree with that. And, and I think, and I think the idea that I would add to, to, to highlight in the summary is that we need to manage the feelings that go along with that, just like you do when you’re an adult.
You manage the feelings that you have in an emotional realm and a close attachment. It’s the same things with there. As a matter of fact you know, shameless plug, we talked about the book that I’m writing on marriage. I mean,
ironically that would help teenagers to read. I didn’t write it for a teenage audience, but I can imagine them getting a lot of benefit out of that.
Particularly when they are, have experienced or are experiencing teenage dating. Do you have a title yet? Probably similar to the first. Okay. You know, through a therapist eyes rediscovering your Marriage and becoming your Best Union spouse or Spouse. I’m just,
Adam Cloninger: I’m just wondering if you need to say relationship instead of marriage.
Or something along the lines. Just think about it. I don’t
Neil Robinson: know. Yeah. I mean, marriage is a western construct, blah, blah, blah. But
Chris Gazdik: [01:05:00] that’s true. I guess we wanna speak around the world. I don’t know. Is marriage a western construct? I don’t
Neil Robinson: know. I’m just saying. But it goes back to your idea of that, you know, not everyone follows the idea of marriage, but yet there’s a lot of people who are committed that maybe aren’t actually officially married.
So, well maybe
commitment
Adam Cloninger: would be the good
Chris Gazdik: term. And honestly, a a a lot of people around the world operate from the culture of having arranged marriages. They call ’em marriages, but, you know, arranged marriages where, you know, your spouses picked for you. Those are very successful forms of, of union because you have to do a lot of the same things that you do if you picked your own spouse.
Which, which is highlighted in a book that I’m writing. The work. The, huh? The work you’re saying? The, yeah. It’s highlighted in the work, right? Yeah. So. All right. Good stuff, man. I think it was a good month. We’ll be moving along to football season. I said we should do a month in review at the end of September about football.
We got a, we got a big, big WVU game this weekend, and I know, Neil, you’re trying for the moonshine stein that’s over there on my, [01:06:00] my desk.
Yeah. You see that? I I’ll, I’ll get it back. You gonna get it back? You did. I did get it from you. Yes. It’d be funny if we went back and forth
Neil Robinson: and got there. The rest of you, the rest of the league’s gonna get, start getting really suspicious, like, what’s going on
Chris Gazdik: here?
Those guys on the podcast are doing something funny. Adam, thanks for hanging out with us again, Neil. We’ll, we’ll send you back behind the curtains. Everyone we are moving out of the summer. I appreciate you coming along for the ride. These, these, these end of month reviews are fun to, to, to look at all that we’ve done together because we do endeavor to figure this out together.
So we will look for you at the end of September and see what we get into. Take care, stay well, and we’ll see you later.