Picture a reunion decades in the happening; the Mental Men—Dennis Sweeney, Robert Cherney, Patrick Rice, and Andrew Kang—reconvene, swapping tales from the trenches of mental health practice. Their voices are rich with the wisdom of experience, from Pat's pivot toward the nexus of spirituality and grief counseling to our collective metamorphosis from clinical collaboration to sharing laughs on the golf course. It's not just a trip down memory lane; it's a celebration of personal evolution and the resilience of friendships forged in the fires of therapeutic work.
This episode isn't shy about confronting the raw edges of recovery and the potent influence of early attachments. We tackle how these profound connections can either impede or ignite personal growth, sharing stories that illustrate the enduring power of the therapist-client relationship—often surpassing the relevance of therapy methods themselves. Discover the philosophy of giving back that sustains recovery, and join us as we delve into the shared humanity of helping others heal, a process that's as much about grief as it is about growth.
Stepping into the future, we examine the mind-body dance and its fascinating implications for mental health treatments. The conversation sails from 'hearting' versus 'thinking' to the prospects of new brain-targeted therapies, and the critical influence of diet on our mental landscapes.
Don't forget to check out The Peer Network. A great tool to help everyone out!
Picture a reunion decades in the happening; the Mental Men—Dennis Sweeney, Robert Cherney, Patrick Rice, and Andrew Kang—reconvene, swapping tales from the trenches of mental health practice. Their voices are rich with the wisdom of experience, from Pat's pivot toward the nexus of spirituality and grief counseling to our collective metamorphosis from clinical collaboration to sharing laughs on the golf course. It's not just a trip down memory lane; it's a celebration of personal evolution and the resilience of friendships forged in the fires of therapeutic work.
This episode isn't shy about confronting the raw edges of recovery and the potent influence of early attachments. We tackle how these profound connections can either impede or ignite personal growth, sharing stories that illustrate the enduring power of the therapist-client relationship—often surpassing the relevance of therapy methods themselves. Discover the philosophy of giving back that sustains recovery, and join us as we delve into the shared humanity of helping others heal, a process that's as much about grief as it is about growth.
Stepping into the future, we examine the mind-body dance and its fascinating implications for mental health treatments. The conversation sails from 'hearting' versus 'thinking' to the prospects of new brain-targeted therapies, and the critical influence of diet on our mental landscapes.
Don't forget to check out The Peer Network. A great tool to help everyone out!
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Merci beaucoup. Thank you so much and welcome to episode 136 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. If you haven't listened to 135 yet, please go back and listen to it, because it is a very important conversation about antisemitism. Malakasha talks about all these important things and then some. So please go back and listen to that. But episode 136 is a returning from episode 108 and 122. So we'll call this mental men. Three Mental men are Dennis Sweeney, robert Cherney, patrick Rice and Andrew Kang.
Speaker 2:We had again a good time recording this. I'm recording post-interview, so taking away a little bit of the magic here, but I hope it makes sense Again. Dennis Sweeney, pat, bob and Andy all have their private practice. We've been on and off doing this for 20 years. I haven't been involved for 20 years, but this goes back to all the way back to Dennis and Pat doing it. So I hope you enjoyed the interview, because I certainly enjoyed it. I like to immortalize these moments of people I truly, truly respect. So I hope you enjoyed the interview and here it is.
Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 136. You recognize these faces. So if you're on YouTube and go ahead and go check out my YouTube on Finding your Way Through Therapy. You'll recognize these faces and they've been on episode 108, episode 122, 136. I was doing the math before you guys all got on. There's a 14 episode symmetry going on here so we cannot change that anymore because that's our lug. But I wanted to welcome everyone on the podcast Andrew Kang, pat Rice, robert Cherney and Dennis Sweeney. Guys, welcome back again to Finding your Way Through Therapy. And everyone loves the name Mental Men for the record, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Steve, Great to be here For the few that missed the show. I mean, if I know, we like. We went from like a two-minute intro to a one-minute intro, so you got 30 seconds this time to just quickly introduce yourself. By the time we're done, in a few months we're going to be down to five seconds. But let's start with Andrew. You came on first. There you go. That's on you.
Speaker 4:Okay, my name is Andy, andy Kang. I'm a therapist in private practice, learning at the feet of these good gentlemen here, and I'm just happy to be back, happy to be back to work here in January. So happy new year everyone.
Speaker 2:You know you're getting old. When we talk about the holidays and what sickness there was running in the family and or you in the last month and he welcomed. And Dennis, how about you go next?
Speaker 5:So Dennis Sweeney, also a practicing clinician in private practice, been doing this for over 40 years now and, speaking of being old, and it's nice to be here- Welcome, as usual, and as I've identified Dennis before as one of my main mentors, and all my bad habits have been learned from him, bob, your turn.
Speaker 3:I think most of us have had Dennis in our lives for a while. It's great. Hi, I'm Bob Churny. I am a psychologist, I'm hitting the 40 year mark myself and I'm in private practice, as well as being the chief psychologist for a large mental health agency that is serving this Metro West Boston area. So happy new year everyone.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate it, bob, and I know you've worked at that agency for a long time, because I got there, you were there, I left, you were still there and you're still there now, so you're like a fixture among that agency 23.
Speaker 1:Wow, 23 years I thought I was going to be a lifer at 15.
Speaker 2:So I'm happy I ran Pat Rice not certainly, he certainly. Last but not least, go ahead.
Speaker 6:I was beauty before age, so it was. Even though I'm the elder states person here I have. I've been practicing about 35 years and met Bob and Dennis. Certainly, as from my early training, dennis was my trainer and Bob was his boss, and it was an extraordinary dynamic in which to, in which to learn and grow. And so I'm a private clinician as well. I do less work now, focused much more on spiritual growth and development and grief and loss, than I was in the diagnosis practice I had for many, many years, but I used to do a lot of forensic work too, but I'm pretty much done with that. So it's, it's just great to be a part of the mental men. I think we must be going on 25 years or something like that, so, but it's, I always enjoy these, these revisits, and something about 14 must be a real lucky number.
Speaker 1:So and.
Speaker 6:I'm really grateful to be through 2023. It was a challenging year and I'm very hopeful for this year and on many, on many dimensions. So glad to be back.
Speaker 2:We're all happy to be back, since there's no golf going on right now in the Northeast. That's the only way we're going to talk for a while. So maybe 14 has to be shorter just so that we can get back to our golf games. But one thing that you mentioned, pat, is you know you talked about how your careers evolve from, you know, working in the mental health field to dual diagnosis, to more of a and forensics and then going to more of a spiritual kind of practice.
Speaker 2:At this point, you know we all have a style that we develop in time. And I was joking earlier because Dennis is a great mentor and taught me a whole lot. But you know, if you look at calmness and demeanor, me and Dennis are probably very much opposed in that way. But it's not a bad thing. I think I had to develop my style. Dennis has his style. But I want to start with you, pat, since you brought it up. You know how do you define a style. As a therapist, I mean, that's something that I find is interesting to define. In general, I still struggle to this day.
Speaker 6:I think that I define myself by going to all of the trainings that we have to go to for continuing. It is when I see something like the first time I did a motivational interview, ceu study I said, oh, that's what I do. You know, I wasn't aware of these types of things. My early training, you know Dennis, the co-leading groups with him, you know he allowed me to blend my way into learning. He told me once that you're never, you're not going to learn anything from what you do intuitively. Well, you'll only learn from your mistakes, which is why I'm sitting in, and that was true. And so you use an error in judgment or naivete as a learning curve. My goal was to not make that mistake twice. But, as Dennis said earlier, before we get on his style, his style was a self-psychology style. It was my end too, because I watched him work, adopted a lot of his calm technique. He would remind you, or would remind me, that I was not a calm individual and I didn't resemble the person I am today in many ways because of my own life experience, whatever, from which I had to heal, and he was the one that told me. He said I don't know what it is, he said but somewhere in your past there was a huge narcissistic injury. It was accurate and that's the first time I went, that's the first time I had a label for it. I knew what it felt like and suddenly it also allowed. You know you're talking about your book, steve, but that allowed me to not pathologize myself and see it as a condition that needed to be dealt with and learned from before I could help other people with the same condition. As Dennis said, pat, your biggest fault right now is that you are overly identified with patients and that's a blind spot and you're going to have to learn how to do that. And I watched him work and I watched others work. I had a wonderful therapist myself for 15 years who I stole everything from these people, as I still do.
Speaker 6:One last thing is I've always been connected to a collegial network In the whole 35 years. I started at the old Lanhamor Startout program, which was a terrific learning module with study groups and all kinds of in-house CU type things and seminars. But you know, as we go on, I've you know the first time we all got together in Dennis's office for the first mental men and I started when Andy and Mark and others were in there. I'm like geez, these people really know stuff, even though they were younger and mentees of mine. You know I'm always amazed at how much I learned from the people that I have mentored in a way.
Speaker 6:So there's an old adage that I stole from a veterinarian on television that said I've never met a clinician I couldn't teach something to or learn something from, and that's why I've told every student stay close to these, these collegial networks, because it's a remarkably complex thing, the human condition, and we have our own perspectives on it in blind spots, but as a whole entity, as a mental men group. You know, whether it is a formal thing like this or a walk on a golf course which is 20 minutes of golf and a whole bunch of conversation, it's an opportunity to never feel like I'm alone and as I do now, I'm more into a life process of helping people ascend in their own consciousness and in grief, as my greatest mentor probably, which was our friend Dick Fleck, a chaplain and a Dominican and an extraordinary person, you know, a wonderful clinician. I see Dennis's face and Bob's face and Dick's face when I am in my own countenance, especially in Zoom, because I get to see myself and at times I go, geez, I look just like that. So then I'm here, I am wasn't that, you know. But so we steal all our good stuff and, as Dick told me, that if you steal from everybody it's it's research, not plagiarism.
Speaker 6:And if you're stealing simply to now say one thing when, when I first left my internship, I was working as a coordinator in the public detox and Bob and Dennis allowed me to basically take everything I wanted to from the paradigm of the start out high end short term addiction treatment program and implement it in the public detox Because it's all about helping people. And so I probably started out in theoretically as a humanist and went into a self psychology as a paradigm for doing psychotherapy and I'm getting back into the kind of humanistic, humanitarian type of approach to things. We're all in this together and if we don't help each other we're pretty much lost.
Speaker 2:So I steal from you all the time, pat, one of my favorite things. When clients tell me, wow, that's brilliant, I'm like ultimately. Just remember one of my colleagues said there's only three original ideas in the world. We just keep on recycling him in different names and my clients always relate to that. They're like that simplifies the world and I'm like I think that's the job right, or sometimes, of what we do and just simplifying the world. But I quote you and I do name you sometimes and some people like is he famous? I'm like, well, he's famous in my circle.
Speaker 6:Not not Hadley as they say in Maine.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to, you know, like, since you mentioned Dennis and talking about self psychology not that I wanted, I'm just skipping around here, so but I wanted to go to Dennis and ask him about that stuff.
Speaker 5:Well, self psychology is? It's a school of thought that was first developed by a psychiatrist by the name of Heinz Kohut. Unfortunately, if you, if you sort of listen to some of his devotees, they complicate the heck out of it. So I've tried to remember going to a conference Bob, you and I and Arthur went to this conference years and years ago where we were listening to people talk about Kohut's papers and Arthur leaned over and said if I buy breakfast, can we leave now? Yep, and to simplify it, kohut talks about the importance of, of relationship and the report, the importance of of how we reflect to one another and sort of the the. I think the core element to any good therapy and, steve, part of your drive here is to help people to understand how to find their way through therapy, and that, to me, the core element is in the relationship, always in the relationship, and I don't care what your style is, it comes down to that, that relationship that you have with somebody and and somebody has with you, because it is a mutual thing. It's not just about one person or the other, it's, it's both. But Kohut identifies that, that we go through different stages throughout life and we repeat those stages over different periods of time and he he talks about the first stage being the, the stage of reflection, and he identifies that as sort of the gleam in your mother's eye, and that the first place that we get a sense of who we are, as to whether we're good or bad is, is in that sense of of that, that caretaker who's looking down on us and the reflection that comes back to us. As an aside and I'm a, thankfully again for the fourth time, I'm a new grandparent and I have this theory that one of the most important developmental experiences for any of us is when our diapers are being changed and that if, if our diaper is being changed and somebody is looking at us with this sour face and smelling and not, you know, being happy about what's happening, well, that's a reflection of what's coming from us. I'm giving you this and this is your reaction, and so I'm always very careful when I'm changing a diaper for a grandchild, that I am always very positive in how I'm looking back, no matter what it smells like or looks like. So that's the first stage, that the. So we get a sense of who we are, we get a sense of ourself by that reflection from other people. The second stage is a stage of idealization and that we we find somebody that is really good, people that we idealize and we identify, geez, this is that that person's got something that I want, I want to be like that person, and and then we sort of get our sense of who we are from that and that identification. Then we move into another stage where it's a peer stage where, geez, you know, I like the people that I'm with, I like the people who are around me and I'm pretty good because of that, and that's where we get our sense of self. And then we eventually evolve into a sense of you know, I guess I'm, I'm pretty good because I'm me and I I feel comfortable with who I am. And those stages evolve over different times in our lives. It happens when we're infants, it happens when we're adolescents, it happens when we first become professionals.
Speaker 5:One of my primary focuses of work has been change this now to recovery and addiction, versus addiction and recovery, because it's recovery first and you work to try and help people to identify what they're recovering, not their addiction. So when you think about that, the core elements of the 12 step program and the way it actually works, it reflects all of those things People come into program. Geez, isn't it wonderful that you hear you look for a sponsor. That person's got something that I want. Then you join a group and then, boy, I'm in recovery, I'm really working this and this is good and I can help other people. So it's reflected there, it's reflected in middle age I'm learning. Now it's reflected in older age where we're all sort of learning to work through different things and we get that reflection, we get that sense of geez, I wanna be like that person, I like the people we're with and I'm okay, I'm gonna get through this, this is gonna be good. So that's sort of the core element of my way of engaging people when I work with them.
Speaker 2:Well, certainly, style that I had definitely took on, and that's something that I think, looking at everyone nodding on here and I hope you go to the YouTube video I think a lot of people really related to it.
Speaker 2:That's essentially what I tell people is that what type of therapy works? The best is a therapeutic alliance, because it does not matter how good you are at IBF or CBT or DBT or self psychology or spirituality, if you don't have a good strength of relationship with your therapist. What's the point and I think that that's something that I talk about a lot and you are truly an inspiration for me on that and I remember you saying you're the first person who ever told me if someone leaves, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, and I used to think that was like a failure on my part, and you may not remember you said this to me, dennis, I do, and that's why, among many other reasons why I say that you're a mentor to me, bob, you're next because we need a psychologist. I mean, none of us are psychologists except you. So we need a psychologist's point of view and then we'll go to a lawyer point of view.
Speaker 5:And you'll have to tell your background.
Speaker 3:Dennis, that was well said. They're really nice encapsulation there, that whole idea of like lived experience and how it impacts us. I really, you know one of the things I tell a lot of people that I teach and the relationship is the core healing element of this whole thing.
Speaker 3:And trying to develop that and sustain. That is crucial, and a lot of the stuff that I do in the community mental health system is see people who they did not get the reflection or the idealization or have a chance to look around and see their peer group as something that's supportive or feeling comfortable with yourself.
Speaker 3:A lot of that, those basic tenants that you talked about, depending on how organized your life is and the people that are in your life, especially early on, the changing diapers is a. It's an interesting kind of process and I do believe that that's something that we absorb as infants and as young children, and you know how am I being not only perceived but reacted to? And one of the things I learned in my own therapy was, if your family has issues and there are difficulties or there's things such as depression or anxiety or addiction in the family, some of that stuff gets kind of pushed aside because the family is working toward getting through and doing the best they can rather than paying a deep attention to what the children are needing. And that helped. That really helped me to understand that better, because I've had some lived experience myself with this and in order to get to those stages, in order to give it away, you have to either find it somewhere in your own family of origin or you have to find it in a healing relationship like therapy. And I was fortunate enough to get that, and one of the biggest things that I learned was or at least one of the things was to grief, work that needs to be done in order to move past this. You start to realize what you didn't get over time, and then you can either decide well, I'm gonna be angry, resentful and bitter and pass it down, or I'm going to work at it and provide it, either through someone else in a decent, loving relationship, or I'm going to figure out a way to do it through therapy or whatever we do, we have to figure out a way to either heal ourselves or pass it down in a way that's negative, and I just made a choice, and I really Dennis you.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of us got into the field to some extent because we were trying to first figure out some of the things that we needed to, and then, later on, what I realized is we could use those things to help others, and so, in a lot of ways, that's what I've done and the lived experience though you know I think it's fascinating how it can.
Speaker 3:You know, for me, self psychology and attachment theory have become central to my work, and I really love attachment theory and how that explains a lot of the way we react and how we cope in ways that are necessary initially, while we're growing up or and then later on, those survival skills become impediments, because things like trust becomes a big issue when you don't feel like you're being reflected on or idealized or held in esteem by people that are supposed to love you. So there's a lot of things here, but I think if we can figure it out early enough, or at least do the work that we need to, we can give it to other people, and the more I you know, I found, the more you give away. You know you got to give it away to keep it, as they say. So I've been fortunate in that sense.
Speaker 5:I've come to believe, in terms of attachment, in that sort of kind of a watchword. For me is attached to very little. Connect to everything.
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Speaker 6:Hmm, sounds Buddhist.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 6:I think the Buddha said that all suffering is in attachment and desire. The second precept of the Four Noble Truths yes.
Speaker 6:It's letting go. We help people to let things go, especially their past. The most profound thing I ever heard in a recovery context was on the being in the moment is that if you're going back in time, you're going to feel conflict and regret. If you go forward in your mind, you're going to feel fear and conflict. The only place that we can achieve peace of mind is in the present moment, which is in Buddhist lore. That is what is the only thing that is real. This aged guy, I don't know, 1990 in Bahá'u'lláh, 50 years sober, by the name of Homer, said I haven't learned much, he said, but I've learned that if I can keep my head where my feet are, that's the only place that the higher power walks with me. It's the only place I have mad peace because I'm not alone. I'll fast forward, maybe five years after that, when I was in a very rigorous meditation discipline called Siddhiyogur at the time, which is of Hindu origin and its practices.
Speaker 6:The Guru, who was an enlightened being, I remember she said not in relationship to addiction recovery, but in general, everyone is recovering from something You're past, you're the environment, war, whatever it is. She said something that I never forgot because I wrote it down. She said that in all recoveries the community of recovering peers is essential. That's what Dennis was speaking to us about. We are taught that social psychology. People live in groups. We get isolated by hurt, by loneliness and all of that. That's a rut that we can furnish and just that isolation I spend a lot of time working with the educating folks is to the difference between solitude and isolation. It's very different. If you are empathic in nature, solitude is often the way, a means by which to recharge your battery so you can be of service and use to others. I didn't mean to usurp your slot, andy, so forgive me.
Speaker 2:Well, we have no time for Andy. Good night everyone. No, I'm kidding, no, I just wanted to share a couple of things. The spiritual side is something that I've always found very interesting, pat, I tell about the gift that Dennis gave me. The gift you've given me is the fact that I bring up spirituality more and more in my practice, when it's appropriate, of course, and how it's important for a complete self.
Speaker 2:I wanted to share another story about Bob, because one of my first staff meetings at Advocates sorry to bring the name up, but in Marlboro I was sitting in a group supervision. Mr Bob is running it and I don't really know, bob. I can't remember what came up, but it was something that was fairly complex as a story. I looked at the leader of our group of all 20 or so community members say I honestly don't know. Does anybody know the humility and the knowledge that came from? That was so amazing.
Speaker 2:I wanted to tell you about the gift you gave me, bob, and I really thank you for that. I remember that moment. You may not remember that moment, I don't remember what we were even talking about, but it was really striking how quickly you said I don't know. Does anybody know here. That really taught me that I don't need to know everything in order to be who I am or whatever I do as work, and I really appreciate that. In attachment style, I have a whole lot to say about that. How about we give a chance to the lawyer turned therapist or an actor eventually? I'm sure we didn't want to usurp you by any means, andy, but definitely want to hear more about your style and how you perceive all that.
Speaker 4:I'm sure that being the last one in line is always a little rough, but there's so many things to pick up on and I won't be able to do it all. I will say my diaper game is pretty tight. I've got four kids all pretty much into adulthood.
Speaker 4:So I've changed a lot of diapers and got really, really good at it so fast. Yeah, I find myself saying I don't know a lot more now, the longer I do it, the more I say it. I find that it's actually a really useful tool because it's modeling something that everybody's familiar with but nobody wants to admit. It's almost a sacrilege to admit that you don't know something in this day and age, but of course, nobody knows anything when it comes right down to it. If we're talking about Buddhism, if we're talking about attachment, we don't. All of this stuff was formed so early that what do we really know about it? How do we relate to it on an intellectual level versus a real emotional core level? That's a lot of what we're doing with people is trying to dig into that a little bit and help them describe it, help them put words on it. I think that's where the kind of styles come in and things can be described in a way that's acceptable and palatable to people, which is why when their family is pointing out the same exact thing to them, they're rejecting it immediately. But if I say it somehow, that makes a difference. So when I think of style, I definitely have my spiel about what my approach is and my theoretical stance on things, but I think my style is more about, Dennis, what you were talking about, about connecting. How do I connect with someone? And for me to try to describe that is very difficult because I'm missing the other half of the connection. In the abstract, that connection becomes real when you're with the person. So I'm connected to you guys on this call right now, regardless of whether I'm speaking or not, and I'm taking on information and stuff and I'm trying to think about how I'm going to feed that back in a useful way. That's more than anything. I would say.
Speaker 4:My style is to try to be attentive, to try to be in the moment. As Pat was saying, Future and past. My little pithy saying for that is time travel. You're time traveling and describing that and putting such a simple label on something that everybody experiences and that everybody has a hard time describing when they're doing it or acknowledging or even being aware of, People don't know they're stuck in the past a lot of the times. As they're grinding on something that happened, they don't know they're stuck in the future. If they're worried about something that's coming up, they still think they're in the moment. They still think they're doing the thing they need to be doing, whether that's the past or the future. But of course we all know and can recognize quickly that oh, that's not productive, that's making things harder for you.
Speaker 4:So the connection, the style is for me how do I get that out there so that it can be ingested, so that it can be actually used and metabolized by this person helpfully? And there's some cauldron magic to that. I think also and that's the styles that I've picked up from you guys is it's the little things or it's the approaches, it's the idea that comes out at a random time and I'm like I'm going to use that. I'm definitely going to use that.
Speaker 4:We're out on the course and Pat says something like oh, look at this grass, I could just walk on here barefoot. That sets off all kinds of ideas in my head. I'm talking to people about that the next day, Like invariably I'm using that stuff. So I know that's not really an answer about style so much as just I think it's my approach to things and I'm trying to just get that connection. I'm just trying to see what this person really needs from me in that moment. So I'm not time traveling. Also, I can't be worried about how I'm performing, but it's useful to just have all of these touchstones for style.
Speaker 2:I think it's not a semantics work here. We're trying to figure out a lot of stuff ourselves. That's the good thing about this group. The other thing that I want to mention, andy, is that what you brought to me is you taught me to shut the hell up, and what I mean by that is I can be a big personality, obviously, as some of you may know, and I've seen you just sit there and listen and listen and listen so many times with us and I'm like I got to learn how to do that, and ever since this is years ago you may not even again I like these little tidbits that I picked up on all of you. You highly likely don't remember, but that's what I've learned from you and to learn to shut the hell up and listen. And while Dennis is a strong silent type too, but I think, andy, I really picked it up from you in particular, and I want to mention that too.
Speaker 4:Thanks. It's interesting that you say that, because I actually have to think more about talking more. Sometimes I'm actually stuck in my head having this whole meta conversation with myself. Just looks like I'm being thoughtful and pensive. I've got something else going on, so I got to remember oh wait, is this?
Speaker 2:I need to jump in here, get a beer, you could be stroked and people think you're really thinking hard.
Speaker 6:As you were talking, andy, I was trying to synthesize. Dennis tries to reduce things often to simple. When I first started studying psychology, I think I went to graduate school to figure out how a really smart guy like me could end up so screwed up. And then it became a real intellectual feast. I was rekindling my intellectual processes and it's easy, when you start to study the analysts, the psychoanalytic schools and all of that, to get into the intellectual pursuit of psychotherapy and I've evolved to the point where survival is emotional survival and spiritual survival is a really remarkable thing and I remember my old mentor, dick, always saying that the child, when talking about most people, stay alive by what he called virtual prayer, where your heart is talking to the divine and asking for assistance when your head is so distracted it can't. And when I'm talking about helping people, what I've learned is that the mind is where fear, doubt and insecurity live, and the mind judges, judges me, it judges the world, it judges things I don't understand, makes those types of labels the labels but the heart. And my whole philosophy now is not thinking but hearting, getting into the heart. Sense is that that's what loving is, and relationship is about trust and love. We learn that they're independent. I can love somebody, but if I can't trust them the relationship is flawed at best. And so but it's predicated upon me being useful to anybody else is I must learn to trust myself and to love myself and let go of the things, the mistakes of the past and all of that. So I'm much more into heart psychology rather than head psychology, as odd as that may sound, which is kind of more the you know self psychology and self help programs are about, as Dick had once said, that you know we don't talk about self-duality, we talk about spirituality, but spirit is in and self are the same thing, and that my spirituality is equated in the relationship I have with me. How do I feel about me? Because if that's not in a positive state I'm not very helpful to anybody else.
Speaker 6:I don't think, because I get into the judgment and not into the more of the lack of an intellectual word or psychological word, the love of this person, you know, do you love your patients and the way in that I got paid, love, that natural human love we hope we can, even when they are remarkably flawed. Because when Dennis talks about the pejorative affect you can give someone when you're changing their diaper and basically make a down payment on a therapist, alexis, in the future, you know if I I've had people early in my career that told me stunning things and that I had to make sure that I was doing. One thing that I was taught well by Dennis and Bob is to not show any pejorative response to that. But and that's that's when I would channel somebody else's countenance and that's when the heart was taking over and I was trying to relate to them as a human being and not as this constellation of symptoms or history or anything like that.
Speaker 6:And you do that in that silent process. But I try to get out of up here because, as you all know, that's a very busy place and get down into the, into the quiet. Now for the golf purists out there, the grass to which I was referring was velvet, bent. When you see it on a fairway, it is really special.
Speaker 5:As you talk about that, pat, I think of one of the one of the biggest I don't know areas. For me these days is the, the idea of there's, you know, the heart and the mind, and then there's the brain, and I think that the heart and the mind are again. This is where I don't know, but I wonder more and more about it. It's the heart and the mind that teaches us how to train our brain, because when you come right down to it, it's, it's, it's that function that causes our day to day experience. But boy, I don't know.
Speaker 3:But you know, dennis, that's where the field's going. I mean, it's one of the things we have over at Advocates is transcranial magnetic stimulation. Now, that's a direct brain intervention. It's fascinating and we're just now getting to the point where I think we're going to be interacting and impacting the brain in ways that are going to be therapeutic. But we're. It's trial and error Whether or not it's psilocybin or you know whether or not it's.
Speaker 3:You know hypnosis, whether you know they're EMDR. These are all things that we don't quite understand, even though some of them work. So, but you know, you mentioned not knowing. One of the things I, as I, as I teach, is that I find with the, with younger clinicians, is that they come out of graduate school almost expecting to know everything and it's impossible. And one of the things you learn over time is that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know and it's, it's wonderful, but you have to accept that and you know some of it has to do with self compassion and that comes after a lot of self discipline and things for well.
Speaker 3:For me it's meditation, but it's also learning that it's okay to be humble and curious and that's where I think you're able to say you know, geez, anybody got some ideas about this. And I'm always struck when I've got a Zoom supervision of 30 or 40 people in there and I say anybody got any ideas? And all of a sudden three or four people pop up and it's just, it's magic. I mean I think Andy used that word cauldron magic or something. I mean it seems like when people are together, they're, they're, they're waiting, and sometimes I just watch the screen and I look for people doing this, or you know that I jump on it.
Speaker 3:I say, you know, shirley, you just scrunched your face up. What do you got on your mind? You know, and it's, it's fun, I really enjoy it. But I really think being humble and curious and the older I get, the more I I am that I think it's not knowing is an okay place to be. I had to learn that. I think most of us do, and so now it's, it's, it's. It's a lot easier to, I think, to to be. You know, there are no wrong questions, except the ones that you are too afraid to ask.
Speaker 4:I think we all have that here, bob, I, you know it's like. It's like you network, networking computers or something, you magnifying the power. I feel that every time we get on the phone together, I feel that when we're, when we're together, either in the same room or even virtually just, I could feel that the synapse is firing in a different way. And you know, speaking of mind and body, to me it's all body, like the brain's part of the body. It's not some disembodied thing or some separate thing, it's, it's all integrated in there and you've got to be paying attention to all of it.
Speaker 5:But yeah, my, my brain works a lot better in the presence of other good brains, I think another, I think, another piece to that magic cauldron, and I'll positively reframe a little bit the idea of of not knowing or knowing, that that you don't know. Everything is being open and that one of the one of the hopeful things for me about self psychology is that as we go through each one of those phases where you go through the different stages of the process, is that if you're open to it, you have a chance to pick up something that you didn't get earlier on. So as life goes on, we, we, we get more filled. We can, if we're open to it, there's, there's more that can get in that didn't get in before.
Speaker 6:But well said, I'm, I'm. I'm going to just say that I believe that we're embarking now in this new year, with where the field will go when I'm long gone and all of that. But we're rapidly ascending in that which is. You know, I started out my education in physics, so I was going to be a astrophysicist and but when you're talking about trains, cranial magnetic stimulation and all of that and all the magnetic therapies and the others, we're talking about a quantum reality as a quantum healing. And I believe this is where we're going when we're treating an organ, the brain often, which we know very little, maybe 15, 20% max of understanding the center nervous system, but we do know that everything in the universe is a quantum, everything affects everything. We see evidence of that, shadows of that, but I have great hope that we're we're about to embark upon a real new understanding of all of it as this whole consciousness and ascends and we start to learn a little bit more about what we're treating.
Speaker 6:All too often in my practice, you know, in psychiatry, it's really you've seen them treating symptoms, not the conditions, and my wife's gone through something where they're studying DNA, which was her original thing, studying RNA and all of that stuff.
Speaker 6:She speaks of things I don't understand, but it's about, you know, getting to the very core of it and I have great hope is I told every student I ever had, every lecture I ever gave with any of these classes is stay.
Speaker 6:Really, I'm really excited for you because you're going to actually start to treat what's going on in a much more integrative way, whereas my, my span of career had been more about treating symptoms. And now that's why I like where I'm going now in is that it's treating more of the entire condition in the organism and the whole. You know, the body is amazing, but it is a vehicle that carries this other thing around, which is what is the energy that we all really are, because everything in the universe is energy. So I'm really excited about that's. What gives me I come into this now is I get all stoked. I'll be stoked for the rest of the day because we've had this synergy of mind and people I deeply respect and trust and value and need in my life, or I'm half of what or less of what I can be for other people without this connection, fellas. So again, it's an honor and a privilege to know all of you.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you on this note we, you know, we've talked for 40 minutes. One of the things I've learned through my career as podcasters that a 40 to 45 minutes set group works perfectly for people listening to podcast. Anything above that, people lose interest, and a little lower than that it's not long enough. So I've learned a few things. The other thing that I want to leave on is this too you talked about all these new things. Let's not forget about the gut biome and how this will probably also transform what we do in mental health. Probably at from my tail end of my career, I've already started anyway, talking about it with different people, because I've seen my one of my best friends in the world, helen, shout out, change her diet and go from being on three or four medications to just about one in that she barely takes, and in a good way and help really work on her mental health in particular. So there's, you know, between the brain and the buy, the gut biome. I think the future is very exciting, very bright, very intellectually stimulating, and we already all have our style. So we're not going to change, we're just going to keep it the same. That's just how we are, but the point is, I think, that the message I hope everyone gets from this podcast is that, no matter how long or how little you've been in this field, you can learn, you can offer stuff, and what you know fits in a thimble, and you just don't know it when you're younger, but as you grow older, it really is the case.
Speaker 2:Guys, I thank you so much. So in 14 episodes we will get back together again. You know, andy, bob, pat, dennis I wish I had a nickname for you, but I don't have one. Thank you, and I will see you guys on the golf course before our episode, hopefully. Well, that concludes episode 136. Dennis Sweeney, andrew Kang, patrick Rice and Robert Trini Thank you so much for being part of the mental men. Great conversation again. But episode 137 will be with a new guest that we've never had before and I'm looking forward to meeting her. Her name is Amida Sharma and she's going to talk about different things, including Norrish Doc, which I'm hoping that you guys really enjoy, and I hope to see you then.
Speaker 1:This number is available in the United States.