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Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Summer Replay With The Mental Men: Vulnerability and Healing in Modern Therapy
What if the key to transforming your mental health journey lies within the wisdom of experienced therapists? In the premiere episode of season nine of "Finding Your Way Through Therapy," we introduce the "Mental Men" – Andrew Kang, Pat Rice, Dr. Robert Cherney, and Dennis Sweeney – who have profoundly influenced my path in the therapy world. These esteemed professionals open up about their own journeys, from overcoming personal crises to adapting to the ever-changing landscape of mental health, setting the stage for an enriching discussion on mentorship, personal growth, and the importance of vulnerability in therapy.
Join us as Bob shares the deep sense of fulfillment he finds in helping those in need, while Andy reveals his transition from law to mental health, thanks to the invaluable mentorship he received. Pat's powerful recovery story highlights the significant impact of guidance from mentors like Dennis. Together, we explore the evolution of therapeutic practices, the challenges and triumphs of adapting to new formats like Zoom, and the profound lessons learned from both mentors and patients. This episode captures the essence of the therapeutic alliance and the continuous journey of self-improvement and higher consciousness.
Reflecting on the transformative power of therapy, we delve into the future of brain-based interventions like EMDR and the critical role of therapeutic relationships, particularly for trauma survivors. The conversation emphasizes the ongoing nature of mentorship and the reciprocal learning between mentors and mentees.
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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:Thank you. I haven't figured out if I should put some applause between me speaking and the intro, go woohoo when you guys come on or what have you, but anyway I'll figure it out. Welcome to the premiere episode of season nine of Finding your Way Through Therapy. It's episode 108. So if you haven't listened to episode 107, that was the combination of my flight experience a couple of months ago tells you where I'm at now and kind of a combination I thought that would be cool for you guys to hear. So go and listen to that if you want. But episode 108 is what we call, and I don't know if it's politically correct anymore, but we called each other. I think they started it.
Speaker 2:Obviously I came in after everyone, but they called themselves the Mental Men going on informally for so many years between three main members of this team. And I wanted you guys to meet a few of my what I consider mentors, supports, whatever you want to call them. There's so many things I can say about them, but let me just go through their biography. The first one is Pat Rice. You know Pat Rice from so many other episodes. I think this is his seventh or eighth appearance on my show, so go check it out for the past, but he's 74 years old, he's sober 37 years and has been a psychotherapist for 31 years. He does a lot of holistic stuff fifth dimension stuff, and really is shifted from therapy to more of a holistic approach.
Speaker 2:Dr Robert Cherney I never call him doctor, but I guess this is the formal way. He's a licensed clinical psychotherapist and he is currently the chief psychologist at Advocates Community Counseling in Marlborough, massachusetts. He also has a private practice, has been licensed for 38 years and has done many things, including working in a hospital, working in a community setting, the private practice, and he also done it for a national chain. He's done it all. And Dennis Sweeney is an LMHC. I consider him my mentor. When I started he was so amazing. He worked in a hospital for 20 years, then has went into private practice slash outpatient treatment for both community settings and private practice. He's just an amazing guy. Dennis is the calmest of us all and really is an amazing person to consult with and I consider him a friend, which is really, really cool and hopefully we'll talk about golf. But Andy is a licensed independent therapist who is a private practice owner of Boston Professional Counseling. Prior to becoming a therapist he was a different type of counselor. He was practicing law in Boston for 10 years and now he treats professionals, addresses the barriers to well-being and aims to destigmatize mental health care and help individuals and family in needs. I've known Andy through these guys for a while.
Speaker 2:I feel like this is the longest intro I'll ever do, but these guys this is I needed to put in a way record our conversations. Some of you may know I have about six or seven questions prepared for every episode. I'm hoping to get through maybe, I don't know half realistically with this group. So here's the interview. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.
Speaker 2:Well, hi and welcome to the premiere episode of season nine of Finding your Way Through Therapy. It will be episode 108, but this is probably the most meaningful one, for a personal reason is that I have what we refer gently as mental men group that I've known for several years. I consider all four men different types of mentors that I've had in my life and I'm so happy for them to call me colleagues now, which is still weird to me, but I'll definitely touch on that, I'm sure, during our conversation. But I want to introduce Dennis Sweeney, who is someone who mentored me when I was doing my internship and then went to work and he was at the same job I was and he mentored me through that. So Dennis says I'm a colleague now.
Speaker 2:It's hard to believe. So Dennis says I'm a colleague, now it's hard to believe. We got Dr Robert Cherney, who is someone who I also met through my first job as a therapist, who again mentored me through a lot of stuff. I don't understand. But that's just me and our favorite, who has now been on a total of six episodes, who has been here on different situations and always well-received and always well-downloaded, and that is Patrick Rice. So I don't need to introduce him too much. But guys, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. Thanks.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I feel like I know all of you, yet I think my audience doesn't know all of you except Pat. But Pat will still do an intro in case they missed those few episodes. But how about we start off with Dennis, or let's go with Dennis Sweeney?
Speaker 5:So I've been doing this business. I was thinking, steve, that we've known each other for a few years was a nice year there. It's been more than a few, so I've been doing this since last century. It's been a journey. I am a licensed mental health counselor and my primary focus is on treating people in recovery, and I see recovery as a major part of the therapeutic process, regardless of what it is that you're trying to recover from. It's taken the shape largely in addiction and recovery, and I have, over the years, had a lot of struggle but also found a lot of hope in watching people achieve recovery through a lot of effort, and we all know recovery of substances is also related to mental health, so it's always a great combo to think about.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go with doctor, so, bob, you go next.
Speaker 6:Thanks, yeah, I appreciate that, steve. I'm really glad you're having us on. It's really nice to be here with all these guys that I know so well and knowing you, steve, kind of seeing you grow over the years. I just remember I heard your name first when you Steve kind of seeing you grow over the years. I just remember I heard your name first when you were doing I call it forensic work, but it's really you were doing the court work and you were doing the stuff over at Advocates. It was kind of interesting to see your growth, you know, not only in the clinics but then in your own practice. So congratulations as per.
Speaker 6:Dennis, you know I've been licensed 38 years now and I'm a licensed psychologist. I'm also a licensed alcohol and drug counselor. My focus is adults and couples. I have seen a lot of people that are, for example, in recovery, but I also have seen people with different kinds of psychiatric illnesses. My practice it's, I think, a little bit more narrow than when I'm at the clinics. I do community mental health work and anyone who has done that Dennis and Steve, I know you've done it. You know that you see everything coming in the door. I am so grateful to have had the chance to do that. Now it's been 22 years this month, so you know, I supervise and I train people and I consult, but it's beautiful because the people that we are helping really need the help. So I love that work. I'm, you know, I'm just grateful that I've been able to do this for so long and I plan on doing it as long as my brain holds out, and we'll see.
Speaker 2:Well, bob, thanks for the compliments and I will pay for the next round of golf, no problem. Thank you for the compliments, but how about we turn to Andy? And again, sorry, I don't use the formal name, sorry.
Speaker 4:No, no problem, Steve. As you mentioned, I was a lawyer and a farmer former life and I had a crash and burn in that career and in my personal life around that time and that's what led me to search for something more meaning. That's how I ended up here doing this work. That's how I first met I think Dennis was probably the first amongst you that I met Many of us on this call, but many of us just in this world. We all got mentored by Dennis and he showed us the ropes in a very, very major way. That's how I met all you guys, but also running through the same place that Bob Helms advocates, the community mental health organization that helps so many. That's where I did my training. That's where I cut my teeth and met all you guys. I think, steve, you and I passed by in the halls when you were doing that forensic work there and I remember thinking, wow, like I think that guy's a cop. I better stay away from that guy.
Speaker 3:I better not mess with him.
Speaker 4:He looks pretty serious. And then I remember getting invited to Bertucci's one Sunday where we all would meet and have a meal and just talk about all of the challenges of doing this work. And that's when I really they would open up the taps and I would just put my bucket underneath there and take in all that great wisdom. So that's what I'm looking forward to today.
Speaker 2:Well, since you said I was so serious, I'm not paying for your golf game, but I appreciate that I didn't know that impression was odd, but I don't mind it at all whatsoever. And let's go back to Pat. Pat, you've introduced yourself many times, so please do it again.
Speaker 3:Okay, I will in a different way and thanks again for putting this together. It's a similar lineage here. Other people have seen my other cast, know that I'm a recovering person and when I was in rehab in the mid-80s a counselor asked me, said you know, it looks like you still have a brain left. He said what do you want to do with it? And I looked at him and I said I want your job and he told me what I had to do to get it and I literally did that. I got to connect with him seven years later and he told me what I had to do to get it and I literally did that. I got to connect with him seven years later and he was not surprised. But that led me into meeting Dennis initially, because he was my intern supervisor when I was in graduate school. He's younger than I but I am probably the senior citizen here.
Speaker 3:Dennis really led me in a remarkable path. I'm going to give a little bit more about that Because in recovery you know since this is about therapy and all of that, the process and one of the first groups that I sat in, one of the first of many therapeutic blunders that were the greatest learning experiences In the processing with him. Afterwards he said it's time for you to do your work. That got in the way in there and I said what work? He said the work on your deep narcissistic injury, whatever it is, and I never forgot that and that led me to a period of about the better part of a dozen years of remarkable psychotherapy with a person that was very gifted in treating trauma and everything which then became what I treated in dual diagnosis, and I've morphed from that. I actually then had graduate students for 20 years myself, just like Dennis did, in the same hospital that Dennis in that system. And then Bob and Dennis, who were the director and assistant director of an outpatient program at as it evolved, gave me my first non-impatient job as an outpatient clinician in the famous start-out program, and so I've known them literally all my career. Wow, it's really true. Which spans I've been licensed for 30 some odd years as well. Everything that I am now I owe to listening to people talk about the mistakes that we make and learning from them rapidly and the fact that our patients are our greatest teachers if we listen astutely, which has led me to a lot of things.
Speaker 3:I don't do the direct addiction work. Now I work with families. I've done a lot of grief work because of the losses in the addiction process. You know so many young people have died and I do forensic work, as Steve does and I know Andy does, and evaluations. But my own private practice, which is still flourishing on Zoom now, one of the great things, the different great changes, is that I haven't seen a person live in several years.
Speaker 3:So I'm very comfortable in this format now, which I find striking in one respect, because I was very resistant and I help people now with their own spiritual evolution, which I could elaborate a little bit about it and, for lack of a better term, it's just ascension, consciousness or developing a higher state of mind. One thing I've learned, and I'll end with this, is that as my brain ages and there's atrophy and entropy and everything physical, the mind and consciousness expand. You can still expand it if you practice that type of process which is meditation and these types of things which I now mentor a lot of people with. I think the natural adjunct is to healing people. For what? For life, yes, and then to evolve.
Speaker 3:And again, part of this is I'm really eager to hear what my colleagues have to say as well, because that's why the mental men started 25 years ago and it's still going. A form of it is going with more younger people in it, and it's probably been one of the most helpful things, not only for my clinical practice but especially for me as a practitioner clinician, to keep me level and understand that I'm not alone in this. We always have resources, and I told every one of my grad students you get a group of people that know what they're doing and you stick close to them and you'll never be without someone to ask can you help me with this, can I run something by you? And that's the greatest asset I think in my practice is I can see many of them right in this room.
Speaker 2:And I think that that brings up a little bit of what are the things that I really appreciate from this group, and something that you guys really impressed on me and I continue to do so to this day is to mentor others, and I think that what I hear here is that Dennis is the commonality here about mentoring, but I know Andy and I know Bob and I know Pat I certainly have also but we've all passed on that ability to mentor other people and I think that that's key to the development of this field. I think that learning from a book is one thing. Mentorship is a whole different ballgame, and if you don't have a good mentor and I consider all four of you mentors and I have many others, but this has been, I think, the greatest gift I've got in my practice for all these years- it's interesting you say that, steve, because Pat mentioned we learn from everybody.
Speaker 6:we see clients and students. I've been lucky enough to have interns from various college graduate programs around New England for the last 20-something years now. I've learned a lot just from being the supervisor of these folks and trying to mentor when I can. I'm always struck with if I can stay humble and curious and keep my mind open. It just keeps on, andy, it was a great image there with the spigot and pouring it in. That's how I feel sometimes and one of the things that strikes me is that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. I love it.
Speaker 6:Sometimes I wonder how people get into this, but then I've kind of come to the conclusion after many years of my own therapy that I think a lot of us get into it because we have lived experience and we basically we search for answers and if we're fortunate, we do our work and then we get into the field and I come to the conclusion that if you are just looking for answers, you may not stay in the field or you'll stay in it in a way that isn't directly clinical or directly working with clients. You can do something else. But if you stay in this field and you continue to do the clinical work, you have to have the heart and soul for that. The soul kind of develops over time, fortunately, and pat stuff with the meditation. And I mean I've had a meditation practice now for about 20 years and it's fascinating to see how you can grow. But it's also a good thing to know your, your own limits and I think that's where, as we age, we have you know, you start to feel some of that stuff.
Speaker 4:I just wanted to add to that point Bob was making A lot of times. I find that it's the asking of the question that's much more important than the finding of the answer. Clients certainly are directed towards answers, but what we're doing with them is teaching them how to search, teaching them how to ask a question and then figure out what would be part of an answer, without ever actually maybe even getting there and being okay with that. The discomfort of not knowing everything. When I'm doing supervision with clinicians, that's what I'm trying to impress upon them. You need to get the people to ask the questions and to be searching for themselves, as opposed to chipping in with what you think the answer is. I have that problem myself, so I have to pull back on my own reins so that I'm not jumping the gun in that way.
Speaker 2:And I know that one of the things that I've really got impressed by, you know, kind of like doing that transition One of my first professors in undergrad had said you know, this was McGill University. There's about a thousand people in a auditorium I am not kidding you and the professor says how many are here just to learn about themselves? And a bunch of hands went up. I said, okay, of all those who have their hands up, how many of you are actually doing therapy? And a lot of hands went down and said, all the hands that went down, you'll probably be late lousy therapist, because you're going to just look for answers through others. And I always remember that because I was like at first I in my head I went fuck you. And then after that I'm like no, he's right. Which I guess brings up the next question that I have for every guest that I have and now I have four, and let's again go back with Dennis and if the question is is have you ever been in therapy yourself?
Speaker 5:Uh, yes, it was a long time ago and I remember very clearly I was feeling stuck and I needed to understand what was keeping me from being able to do the things that I needed to do.
Speaker 5:I have to say that there were two primary experiences in therapy that were I mean, obviously I still carry them with me because they are so close to my awareness and one was I came to understand at the time that part of what was happening is that we were my wife and I were pregnant joined there a little bit that my wife and I were pregnant with our first son, joined there a little bit that my wife and I were pregnant with our first son and I was having one heck of a time finishing the nursery and my therapist said, well, that's what your dad would have helped you with. And it just was a remarkable point of realization and a flood of tears that I just did not know was there. So there's just so much that we can help people to understand about what's painful that you might not really be aware of. The other one was that he said to me very clearly he said that I needed to stop being so damn serious about myself. I'm still working on that one.
Speaker 2:Well, andy told me already that I'm too serious apparently, so I got to be careful with that too myself.
Speaker 4:That was my erroneous impression as a young social worker, Steve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you listen to the podcast and you've known me now, he was also a lawyer, remember that listened to the podcast and you've known me now.
Speaker 3:It was also a lawyer. Remember that.
Speaker 2:Well, Dennis, thank you for sharing that. That's an amazing realization. We all have those aha moments in therapy. That just kind of gets us and it just means so much. I know for me that meant a lot. My therapist to this day still makes me go aha a lot, which brings me to different points of view, for sure.
Speaker 6:I just wanted to add one thing regarding Dennis. You don't know this, but you were an inspiration for me to get back into therapy. When we were running the program over at HRI, dennis and I worked together for it seems like it was 30 years. It was, you know, it was a long, long, long time and I loved that. And then you left, understandably so, because the commute all by itself was bad enough. But there are other things too, and you're the losing you. It triggered some grief in me that I hadn't really, you know, worked through around my mother who died very early. It was really interesting to kind of do that work even after I had done other therapy work, and that helped tremendously. But I just wanted to thank you for that. It was something I didn't really know was still laying within me.
Speaker 5:Yeah, the therapy may conclude, but it never comes to an end.
Speaker 3:Ooh, that's a pompous picture, that's beautiful. Therapy may conclude, but it never comes to an end. Ooh, that's a pompous picture. That's beautiful. I still quote him all of the time. I hear myself channeling Dennis. Now I still do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we all channel Dennis when the moment gets serious, and I think now I channel my inner Dennis and I go and get people when it needs to be serious. So, bob, you enjoyed your experience in therapy.
Speaker 6:Oh yes, I started probably around 27 when I had moved out here for my internship. They had a program back then that's just kind of one of the things that's changed for basically residents psychiatric residents and psychology interns, psychiatric residents and psychology interns and they would literally do an evaluation over at Beth Israel and then basically pair you with the therapist that they felt was going to be good for you and with you. So I participated in that, and I was fortunate enough to find my first therapist, and it lasted for years, and I really feel lucky I'm probably about the age he was then. There's so many little tidbits that he was able to show me, not only about my experience or how it's impacted me and my family of origin, which is always an interesting topic, especially my family but, uh, also a little, you know, tidbits around like the therapeutic relationship, you know therapeutic alliance.
Speaker 6:He said to me once if you can help a client feel safe, respected and understood, that lays the foundation for a lot of the work, and I've never forgotten that. It's funny what stays with you. I've always, always been grateful, though, and I've had very good experiences in therapy, and I've encouraged members of my family to do that too, but one of the things that strikes me is you have to make yourself vulnerable in order to do the work, and if that's something that you're afraid of or you don't think you can handle it, if you really do get honest with yourself, I can see why some people will either not approach therapy or they'll drop out prematurely.
Speaker 2:I think that what we learn in therapy is also what we learn about ourselves. And I don't know if you guys you know we'll get back to a little bit of the therapy, but I certainly sometimes ask questions. I'm like maybe I should ask myself that question once in a while too, and I don't know if that happens to you guys, but it certainly happens to me fairly regularly.
Speaker 6:I agree, I do therapy constantly on myself, which you know. I got a few rough edges, so part of what the way I describe it is, you know the sandpapering off the rough edges and really listening to feedback from others, both overt and subtle ways, and it's endless and it just continues. Dennis, as you mentioned it, I really don't think it's ever and it just continues. Dennis, as you mentioned it, I really don't think it's ever going to end and I feel that's a gift bob, my arm's getting really tired from sanding all my rough edges.
Speaker 4:I gotta say my shoulder and my arm starting to hurt yeah well, we need to hear more about your sanding then right exactly I.
Speaker 4:I've been in therapy since early 2000s probably and I continue to be in therapy. When I supervise people I say you need to be in therapy and you need to be in supervision. So I do both those things. I do private supervision, I do the group not as frequently as I should, and then I do therapy, and I do the group not as frequently as I should, and then I do therapy and it's it is my weekly honesty break. You know, it's my weekly checking. Bob, like you were saying about getting vulnerable, we're in this position of what is essentially power all week. We're the authority in this position a lot of times, and so it's good to be in the other chair, it's good to be the person who just gets to unload or say the crazy thing because you need to say it. It's another thing to be receiving that all the time, but I just find it's completely necessary to keep my head on straight.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have said it better myself. I think that you talk about the work being forever. I sometimes need someone to work my rough edges, so I'm still in therapy regularly and my therapist reminds me of those rough edges. I don't sand as much, it's more like an ax, but nonetheless I still do it. How about you, pat? I know we've talked about it before, but let's throw it, yeah.
Speaker 3:My last therapist, when we terminated, gave me a power sander, so it's because I needed a shoulder then. So I was in therapy before I got plain and sober in the mid-80s. I would say it was ineffective at best. But one therapist when I did go into treatment, I called her from treatment and she said oh, that's what it is. I knew there was something. She fired me. Actually she told me I was wasting her time and my money because we're going around in circles. She couldn't figure out what you know I was. Just I was gaming myself and her. So that was very useful. I never forgot that.
Speaker 3:But I was in therapy from about 1986 until probably the early 2000s well into so I don't know the better part of 20 years, with the same person, mercifully, who I started out with. She was a mid-age intern in what was then Trinity Mental Health back in the day. We all remember that. And then she went into private practice and took me in. I say this move is that? I told her I couldn't afford her. She said you can't afford not to see me. So she treated me pro bono until I could afford her, which I returned that I paid that forward a lot. It still gets me, not that gesture, which was humanitarian, to say the least, but how much, what was to ensue, how it helped me, how defined me and how it allowed me to do this.
Speaker 3:And the last probably five or six years was more like practice management. She was teaching me how to be a private practitioner as I was trending out of the structure of institutional work and all of that and really developing the full private practice. The full private practice. So that whole process led me to, and what Dennis had invited me to look at in my own when I was his student is that every student I had I did actually the bulk of my students were when I was doing forensic work and I trained them to be emergency room clinicians doing, you know, psych triage. So I sat there and I would triage them first in the interview and if I took them on, then I'd do it even deeper and then I would suggest Actually it wasn't a suggestion I'd say, okay, you're here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you're going to be in therapy for an hour on Wednesday with this person. Okay, they take your insurance, blah, blah, blah. And well, I said, no, you don't understand. This will help you, but also you're going to get the privilege, which I had, of watching a really good therapist work. You're going to know how to do the work and it will be intuitive and you'll also heal, so that you don't make as many mistakes as you can if you don't do your own work. So it's that classic, you know, which I was taught is that you don't put the bumper sticker on that says take my advice, I'm not using it, and that's what I've heard here is everybody's authentic in what we do.
Speaker 3:I was not only gifted by Dennis and Bob as mentors, but someone that they knew Dennis and Bob as mentors, but someone that they knew I'm not sure Andy knew, but an AA sponsor mentor that I have for many years, dick Fleck, who we all work with, and he was someone that was invaluable in my life, teaching me how to be a man, just how to grow up and behave like an adult and not overreact. I think he was the one that said you know, he was a chaplain and a Dominican, but he said that if, when all hell's breaking loose around you, especially in an emergency room, the calmer you are, the more curative you can be. Everybody, your fellow clinicians, everybody needs you to be the calmest person in the room if you're going to be helpful. I never forgot that. And then another mentor that we all had, arthur Professor Mercoli. I remember him once saying something similar, but he said the difference between a smart therapist and a wise therapist is a smart therapist knows what to say and a wise therapist knows when not to say it. I've never forgotten that.
Speaker 3:But all of my students, and many of them, will hear these podcasts because they really like them and it's reconnected me really great to a lot of them, which is a nice piece of the puzzle at this point in my life is just reconnecting to people that are so important in my life. But it's allowed me to really see how much this is a fluid process, a dynamic process of paying it forward, and we're always connected to those that helped us and we learn from those. I've learned so much from my students because they all brought different from all over the country. There are students from many schools from all over the country that just you know their own experience enriched me and the diversity in my practice so and I think more than anything it has been the ability I'll just say with my therapy, and then I'll end is that I went from basically kind of cognitive behavioral therapy as my therapist evolved and she was a Janine Roth and EFS and then EMDR therapist and of all of the things that helped me with the core work that I needed to do, it was EMDR.
Speaker 3:It was stunning I know Steve, you're a skilled practitioner it changed everything. And then I was referring people out so I saw the multimodal additional idea where you can consult with other people and I encourage a lot of my patients to do that, to use all of the available treatment to effectively comprehensively. It's like functional medicine, now comprehensively treated, and now with the magnetic therapy that is going on and all of that, they're starting to understand brain and what's actually going on. So the next generation is going to treat illness, not symptoms, and they'll actually figure out all of these medications, what they're actually doing in the brain, and not just treating the symptoms. Because when you do that you chase the symptoms, the side effects, with more medication and then you're chasing your tail. So sorry, I ran on there a bit but I couldn't be where I am today personally, professionally or spiritually if it wasn't for all the help I was getting.
Speaker 2:I think you bring up a lot of good points here, and one of the things that when people ask me what the most effective therapy is is, I say it's the therapeutic alliance. It's not a particular type. Sure, cbt's proven to be a little better for mood disorders than others, but ultimately, if you don't have a good relationship with your therapist, it doesn't really matter, does it? I think that you mentioned another thing about the brain work, and I can talk about neurology all the time and EMDR, and I think EMDR is a kickback to old school psychoanalytic therapy and people talk about it as a thing that's not like that. But to me it's like we are blank slates. When we do EMDR, I'm not intervening as much as I usually do, and it really is leaving that space for people. So I think that everything like you said before, pat, I think is there's only three original ideas in the world. We just recycle them, and I think of EMDR as a recycling of a little more active but nonetheless much more psychoanalytic than people give credit for for EMDR. And that's just my two cents.
Speaker 2:There's two places I would like to go here and you guys can decide what you want to go.
Speaker 2:But the first thing is about mentorship, and I think that that's something that you all mentioned and I certainly mentioned it right off the top, but I know I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for people like Bethann Schacht all you guys For me even had Greg Wildman, who taught me a lot on the crisis team.
Speaker 2:There's Sarah Cloud, who really has helped me in different ways, and I look at my colleagues in my practice today and they learn from Megan, who's going to be on the podcast, courtney, who has been on the podcast, kara has been on the podcast, bill has been on the podcast, michelle has been. We can get this information from everyone else. How important is it for a therapist to go through some sort of like? I don't know everything, because I think that when I was 20, I knew everything, and as I get older I really don't know anything, and that mentorship is always such a valuable tool. So I don't know if you guys want to talk a little bit about mentorship, but I think it's a good place to go here. Anybody who wants to go in and jump in, except Pat and jump in, except pat.
Speaker 6:You know, I'd be interested in hearing dennis's perspective on this because I think, in certain ways, dennis, you you've mentored all of us, including me, and uh, you have a wisdom about you and, uh, that seriousness, I'll tell you, you're the guy who used to ask the questions that I couldn't answer, even when you and I were running the place.
Speaker 5:Well, what I was thinking back to was the very first job. My oldest son and I guess I am plugging something here, steve, a little bit early, but my oldest son has involved us in something called StoryWorth, involved us in something called StoryWorth. So we get questions. My wife and I get questions on a weekly basis that we respond with written answers to, and the end of a year they will put together a book of all of these answers.
Speaker 5:And one of the questions was what was the most important job that you ever had? Sort of a lot of different reasons for a number of different really important jobs. So one of the most important jobs for me was my very first position on the open psych unit at Leonard Morse and it was one of those places where the theory was we are going to bring in people that need to be trained, we're going to train them as best we can and then we're hopefully, they're hopefully going to leave and sort of take that, that training and good news elsewhere and spread it around. So that was the sort of the first place that I was exposed to the importance of mentorship.
Speaker 5:I remember, as I left that job, one of the people that had the biggest, one of the biggest impacts on me said you know, when you first came to the unit it was clear you were a pretty nice guy but you didn't know anything. That was absolutely true. It was through the people that were caring enough to sort of step beside me. I never had anybody really pushing. They were all stepping beside me to help me to learn. So mentorship, it's just incredibly important and it also addresses what I think is one of the most significant aspects of therapy is to help people to understand the negative impact of isolation. I spoke of recovery being a primary focus for me. Isolation is a primary enemy to anybody's recovery, so mentorship also addresses that very directly.
Speaker 2:Also addresses that very directly, and I think that it's not a plug, dennis, as much as something that you really enjoyed and made a difference in your life. So no worries about that, and I'll make sure to actually try to figure out how to put it in the show notes so that people can go to it if they wish.
Speaker 3:It sounds amazing yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that it's something that we should all be doing, because, except for you know me, who's in my early 20s? At this point, I think that we all need to start looking at our lives in a different way, and I think that that's really appreciative. I think that having to sit down and doing that is probably much more fun than it sounds much like therapy.
Speaker 5:Yes and no. There was a lot of therapy, a lot about therapy. For me that was not fun. A lot of it was like tea, but it was still very productive I think it's.
Speaker 4:It's funny. You say that, dennis, because people come in and they sessions are difficult and they want to know why aren't I feeling good at the end of this? And usually what I say is well, it's because you're not at the end, first of all, and there may not be an end. But it isn't about getting happy or even making the the bad feelings or sad feelings go away. It's really just learning how to weather that stuff. I mean, you know we're talking about mentorship.
Speaker 4:One of the things that I've learned sitting with you guys is some of the stuff that you've talked about, about being calm and being patient is another one that I think of with you guys. All the time is waiting and letting stuff develop. As I said, I always have to pull back on my own reins because I'm wanting to jump in and jump into stuff, whereas I learned from you guys and others that if you let it come to you, it's a lot more powerful much of the time. And another piece of mentoring that I try to do with my students and other people who I work with is just the concept of modeling. It shows up in our work all the time, every day, with clients.
Speaker 4:Clients we are in large part, I think, modeling certain behaviors, modeling calmness, perhaps, to with clients, and that's what I I'm doing as well. Learning from you guys is following your model, trying to find wisdom. Which boy that's? That's a challenge, because I feel a lot of times like I don't have it. But it's maybe not for me to decide even whether I've got it either. You know, as long as I'm looking, as long as I'm kind of consistently searching for it, I think that's for me the important part anyway interesting.
Speaker 6:You know, andy, I going to just piggyback on that because I agree with you, the modeling that we are able to exhibit or display to our interns or whoever we're trying to enable and teach. I've noticed, especially within the clinic settings, how we treat other clinicians is often a very important thing. How do we basically communicate whether or not it's something that's really positive noticing that or if it's something that's negative, like, well, your productivity hasn't been very good for the last two months? I mean, there's so many little details now that we didn't have to deal with before. But I really think people watch and they say, oh, this is the culture and if we're fortunate, I think we have a very supportive culture that people can take risk in and learn from and can grow, versus something that they feel like the imposter syndrome I call it.
Speaker 6:You know, usually when people come out of grad school, it's underneath it all. Yeah, they might have a master's or even more than that, and they just feel like I shouldn't ask any questions because I'm supposed to know everything, and that's really one of the fallacies of the educational system. You learn a lot of what you need to know in this field on the job, but I love the fact that we can impact the next generation of therapists and it's wonderful and I agree with Pat 100%. I think the brain-based interventions, emdr, transcranial magnetic stimulation, some of the stuff we're doing this is the future, although we will never get away from the therapeutic alliance and needing to have a very strong bond or relationship. However, you want to conceptualize that with our clients so that they trust us, because that's a huge issue and especially if you have a trauma, if you have somebody who's really experienced trauma and in the community it's probably 85% at least of our clients have experienced some form of trauma, and that's a whole other topic to discuss.
Speaker 2:I think that if we talked about trauma, we would be here for another hour easily, because I can't remember who had said this to me. But trauma is the gateway drug. It is absolutely the gateway drug to not only drugs but also mental health issues and a lot of the work that we do, frankly, in my opinion.
Speaker 3:But I know, pat, you wanted to say something about mentorship, because I I I just hear it in your voice of all of the things I've done I've said this before a lot the favoritest thing I ever did was I was 20 years of grad students. It was the greatest loss 10 years ago when I walked away from the hospital system and all of that. One of the reasons I walked away is they were ending people that bought the hospital were ending the intern program which I ran and I was okay, I'm gone. But a couple of things I just wanted to hit upon. I'm not going to talk about trauma, but I'm going to talk about it's kind of like.
Speaker 3:I've worked a lot with head injuries as well and TBIs, traumatic brain injury. There are soft versions. Substance abuse can create traumatic brain injury on top of the ones that are caused by other things. But I think the thing that hasn't been discussed and it has affected me both this I'll start out when the pandemic hit and the social isolation of that. You know I say that I work in Zoom now all of the time exclusively. But there's a loneliness to this that I didn't have, even when the collaborative and native or Andy works now and I work when you always had people around you. It's like being working in clinics, if you were having something that just happened with a client or whatever. You could always grab something. You got a minute, and it didn't have to be another psychotherapist, it could have been the naturopath or the myofascial person or somebody, but you have another clinician that you could just say you got a minute. And so I've really encouraged people and I continue to mentor to this whole idea of a collegial network or your own supervision. When I recommended students for jobs, I said this university, I said okay, if you're going to hire this person, know that they have become incredibly used to and demanding of supervision. So if you can't supervise them adequately, at least an hour or more each week, don't hire them, because you won't be doing them a favor, or yourself. And I said and the other thing Bob alluded to it is that I said from the students that I was able, which all of them recommend I said what I'll tell you is the highest form of praise. They know what they don't know, but they're going to be coming to you so they won't make a mistake as readily as others may, because they really understand what they don't know. But I see this whole. I think we're just on the verge of starting to understand the soft trauma of COVID, what it did to the school systems and the social isolation, and it was like some form of a concussion grenade going off in a very slow process that I think that the next generation and we're starting to see it, but the next generation, especially of educational psychologists are going to really be finding patches for this and how do we get these kids reengaged.
Speaker 3:One last piece is that I'm someone who is still, as I approach 38 years, sober. I still go to meetings. That's this huge network for me. I go to two men's AA meetings intimate. One of them is very intimate, it has basically eight or nine people in it, but it is more a form of mutual self-help psychotherapy than it is a traditional 12-step model. And one is a very traditional model and there are men in there from the class of 86 and five and whatever.
Speaker 3:I still I've never really been with without a sponsor and the person I use now is someone that is my generation, if you will, and we basically sponsor each other but we meet for 90 minutes every single week at least. And if we're not playing golf for four hours on the golf buggy, but we meet for 90 minutes every single week and just process life and it's funny how that goes is that type of an intimacy? Is that some days he's working and I'm using and some days I'm taking care of him. In that regard, the good news is it's rare that both of us are troubled enough so we always have someone to rely upon. I've never outgrown my need for that, that connection, thank god, because I totally agree that that is. I think it was dennis talked about the social isolation is that is the wormhole.
Speaker 2:That truly is so one thing I want to add, also about the mentorship part. Again, talk about all you, and obviously I feel like you mentored me in different ways. I'll toot my own horn. When we did go through the pandemic, a lot of you contact me and say, steve, how the hell do we do this? Yeah, thank you, because at the end of the day, I've done this for over eight years now going on nine years and I could mentor you on how to do it and maybe the soft spots and all that.
Speaker 2:And when I think about mentorship, I always you know, when I was younger and I joked that I was 20, but I'm not that young as I get older, I realized that mentorship is something that continues throughout your life and you can mentor to mentor sometimes too, and vice versa. I don't know if that's your experience, so for you guys, but I think at one point you also share with everyone, because that's how you learn. I don't know what you guys think, but you mean sharing personal experiences or well, I I think of like when you you know.
Speaker 2:I'll go back to the emdr comment, which is eye movement, desensitize, desensitization and reprocessing, just so that everyone knows what we're talking about. I remember when you started your class, bob, you had called me and said Steve, can you help me out? Can we talk about this? And I always saw you as my mentor, and then I can mentor you through the EMDR, which was to me a blessing. I appreciated that you trusted me so much, but I think that mentorship is not I used to think about. It's always the person that's older who's been around the longest, but sometimes mentorship can also go both ways. So I don't know if you guys disagree with me, agree with me or what you think about that.
Speaker 3:I don't think any skilled profession isn't a function of this, that I have not met a clinician I couldn't teach something to or learn something from. As you said, bob, the more we learn, the more we understand how little we know the human condition the earth school, if you will, is a really complicated school. I believe it's the hardest school. You need a lot of help to get through it. It takes a community. I heard a statement once in a meditation program more Hindu-based, but it said the recovery of your sense of well-being in yourself always requires a community of recovering peers. And that wasn't talking about addiction recovery, it was talking about recovery of self.
Speaker 3:I posted something this morning that I came across in my own meditation. That was by Carl Jung. That said we spend half a lifetime developing our ego and then the second half of our lifetime letting it go, which it just hit me. Yeah, he's kind of the spiritual godfather of psychologically godfather of 12-step recovery. So it's an ongoing process but it takes a community to heal. I have this privilege of looking at a great part of my community on the screen right now and it's a really gratitude moment for me.
Speaker 6:Well put, pat. Thank you. I was thinking about how everyone can teach us something and I'm laughing because 10, 15 years ago I was track, I had an intern and he starts talking about this thing called narrative therapy. We didn't have that when I went through, and so one of the fascinating things about him, he's in a private practice now, but we were able to formulate treatments based on that theory and, as a result, I was able to learn it more than I would have if I had gone, probably, to some kind of a seminar. But it's fascinating, but you have to let your ego deflate, you know as they would say Thank God, some of the things that have evolved over the last 40 years.
Speaker 6:it's amazing what's been introduced. Emdr is another example, steve, the whole idea of doing EMDR I was trained in hypnosis way back when. There's some similarities but there's also quite a few differences and I think that it's an extremely effective therapy for certain people and there's a whole lot just in that little piece. But I feel very lucky to have learned because I was probably the oldest guy in the room when I got trained for EMDR. It was fun, the stuff I've seen and, steve, you've seen more than me because once we went virtual, I felt like, well, I think doing EMDR via the Zoom may be a little uncomfortable because of the fact that if somebody's decompensating a little bit, I like to be in the room with them versus over the Zoom, but there's a whole as you well know, Steve, there's a whole group of things that you can do.
Speaker 6:There's whole websites about how to do virtual EMDR, which I think is pretty effective.
Speaker 2:Dennis, I was looking at you chomping at the bit after Pat was speaking, so I want to hear what you have to say.
Speaker 5:I was thinking that I think, Steve, what you were referring to was that the idea of we can get information and we can get technique and we can get training from one another as sort of mutual mentors piece of helping me to feel good enough and as if I'm a competent person in this business, and I can't thank people enough for that.
Speaker 4:I couldn't agree more. I rely on this group to stay sane. This is an isolating profession. We spend so much time in our head, even even though we're sitting right across from another person, that you've got to let yourself out of there every once in a while, and it's it's not just at the end of the day you walk out of the elevator and all of a sudden you're fine after a whole day of compliance. You need people who understand what that's like, something that you know. It's such a unique experience to do what we do with other people that only other people who do it can really kind of understand it, and you need as many of those people around you as you can get. So I feel like I'm always kind of searching for new mentors, and sometimes that means people who have done it less long than me or who are teaching me something new, like narrative therapy I just learned about that myself Makes a lot of sense, though, right, people tell stories and that's the basis of it. It makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of the stuff, steve, you were talking about psychodynamics and how EMDR comes from that.
Speaker 4:I started out in therapy and analysis. That's what I was told to go? Do you need to go do analysis? And then I learned that it was going to be like five years and I just thought, wow, okay, I guess I'm really messed up, I guess it's going to take me five years. And that was 25 years ago, so it was still underestimated. But I think we we just we don't know where we're gonna get help from and we don't necessarily know who's gonna say something or behave towards us in a way that makes us feel cooler, makes us feel better than we're feeling at that moment. That's what I take to um our golf games. You, you know, I walk out there with my whole week kind of still on my back and I feel like I leave it out there, and when we're done, you know, I drive away lighter.
Speaker 2:So literally drive.
Speaker 4:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know I think about and I don't know if you guys I feel like I should I'm going to plug something but this is really not a plug is the myth of normal by Gabor Mathe, and I don't know how many of you have read that or listened to it or what have you, but one of the chapters that he talks about is that we all go into professions to heal something from our past. Into professions to heal something from our past, and the first moment I listened to that I was like, oh crap, he read me like a book and I'm like, wait a minute, it is a book and I think that that's what I'm hearing from all of you and it's being very conscious. I remember Dennis saying that to me like, remember that you also bring yourself to the room and what are you bringing in? I remember that conversation with you, dennis, very vividly. We were doing group this is a long time ago at a partial at the Community Health Center of Advocates, and so I think that that's something else to keep in mind here.
Speaker 3:Just a thought Well, I do a lot of work. Now my practice is pretty much energy work, which is another chapter in this. It's what energy do you bring in and how do you balance your energy, how do you retain your energy, how do you not take on somebody else's energy? It's the old model of knowing where you end and they begin and you need mentorship to figure that out because it changes. Everything changes as you get older I'm 75 now. As you get older, stamina becomes an issue, so you have to be much more protective of your economy of time and energy. So we always have to stay on our toes.
Speaker 3:But I think a place for me to kind of end today is that when Bob was talking about this whole idea of growing today is that when Bob was talking about this whole idea of growing a long time ago, I read someplace that the only fountain of youth that really matters is keeping your body as strong as you are able to and stay curious, keep learning, because that is the key. And if I have any concern it's that someday I'll just get bored. But I know that hanging around with folks like you and doing this type of work, it's the most interesting thing I've ever done. I'm pretty much a half a lifetime at it now. It's compelling. I've never lost my interest in it.
Speaker 3:I still like meeting new people, I like trying to solve the puzzle and help people and all of that. And if that isn't the most vital thing, it gives me vitality. It's significant at every level, especially the spiritual level. So again, thanks for setting this up and as I'm looking behind you at your book cover, Finding your Way Through Therapy, this has literally been like this journey. Here is how do we find our way to continue to be able to be helpful to others, and I really value this connection to all of you as much as I do every round of golf. Golf is kind of adjunct to the whole process.
Speaker 2:As I see it, Golf is never about golf. It's about being with other people. And thank you for keeping me on track on time, because again we went through an hour. I think I said pre-interview that we had what one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight questions. I think we went through two and a half, maybe or two.
Speaker 2:So, you know you guys are going to be invited again, unless you don't want to come, and it's fine. I respect that, but I think that there's a lot to be said in regards to different things that you know everyone wanted to bring up, and so you're invited to come again for the next season. I like to separate our time to keep the suspense to everyone, so I really wanted to thank you guys, and this is this is exactly what I thought would happen is we come up with, like, good questions and we never get to them because there's so much depth of knowledge in this group I was calculating quickly that there's over a hundred years of experience just on this screen in this field, and we are all so humbled knowing that, with the hundred plus years that we have, we still don't know everything, and I truly respect that from everyone.
Speaker 6:Thanks Steve. Thanks Steve. I think you really enjoy the sequel. I'll be looking forward to that.
Speaker 3:Well, you're invited to the sequel At the golf match yesterday. The guy said what's this going to be about? I said it's like a play.
Speaker 2:Well, this being the summer, I'm looking forward to getting a few phone calls and joining you guys on Sundays. Absolutely, I want to thank everyone and we'll definitely do a second part very soon. Great Thank you for having us. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, steve. Great Thanks for having us. Thank you, thanks, steve. Thanks, fellas my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Well, this concludes episode 108 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. Robert Cherney or doctor I should say Andy Kang, dennis Sweeney and Pat Rice, thank you so much. I'm happy I was able to immortalize our conversations on podcasts because this is just the beginning. I'm sure we're going to have each other back for a long time and I'll have you back on for the next season, for sure. But episode 109 will be with Lynn Key, who has a story of. There's so many things we can talk about her story, but we'll definitely start off with her unfortunate situation with sexual abuse and having to bring someone to court, and she's sharing a very personal story. So I hope you join me then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States.
