August 22, 2025 • 46 mins
Rebeccasode! Answering patron emails.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
05:22 Atsuko Okatsuka & Asian-American comedians
12:57 How would you define Jungian Shadow work?
25:00 Can you experience countertransference in academics?
30:40 Why is it so hard to find a good therapist?
00:00 Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder and comorbidities
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August 22, 2025
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/KIRK to get 10% off your first month.
05:22 Atsuko Okatsuka & Asian-American comedians
12:57 How would you define Jungian Shadow work?
25:00 Can you experience countertransference in academics?
30:40 Why is it so hard to find a good therapist?
00:00 Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder and comorbidities
Become a member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUZWV1DRtHtpP2H48S7iiw/join
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/PsychologyInSeattle
Email: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com/contact
Website: https://www.psychologyinseattle.com
Merch: https://psychologyinseattle-shop.fourthwall.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychologyinseattle/
Facebook Official Page: https://www.facebook.com/PsychologyInSeattle/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kirk.honda
August 22, 2025
The Psychology In Seattle Podcast ®
Trigger Warning: This episode may include topics such as assault, trauma, and discrimination. If necessary, listeners are encouraged to refrain from listening and care for their safety and well-being.
Disclaimer: The content provided is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. Nothing here constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis, or creates a counselor-client relationship. Topics discussed may generate differing points of view. If you participate (by being a guest, submitting a question, or commenting) you must do so with the knowledge that we cannot control reactions or responses from others, which may not agree with you or feel unfair. Your participation on this site is at your own risk, accepting full responsibility for any liability or harm that may result. Anything you write here may be used for discussion or endorsement of the podcast. Opinions and views expressed by the host and guest hosts are personal views. Although, we take precautions and fact check, they should not be considered facts and the opinions may change. Opinions posted by participants (such as comments) are not those of the hosts. Readers should not rely on any information found here and should perform due diligence before taking any action. For a more extensive description of factors for you to consider, please see www.psychologyinseattle.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, Rebecca emails for you more many to get into.
What do you say again, middle tier patron Caitlin. She says,
doctor Kirk and Rebecca, I recently found out about pre
menstrual dysphoric disorder. Oh yes, and think I may have
a mild form of it PMDD. I tried turmeric candles
(00:24):
and apple cider vinegar.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And it was ineffective and it did not help. God
damn it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Would you share your knowledge and experience with this? Also?
What about rejection sensitivity with it?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, sure, thanks, Kate. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Uh yeah, it's so obviously anything with women's health is
vastly understudied and there's not a lot of knowledge around it.
It's a hormonal imbalance that happens just before your period starts.
You should find some kind of to address this. And
I'll say I have a one client that her symptoms
(01:06):
were so severe she went into medical medically induced menopause
in order to try and address it, and that was
the only thing that worked for her. And this was
after years and years and years of trying absolutely everything
that's out there. I don't know where she is, but
certain countries do it better, like Australia does it way
better than we do in terms of medications and understanding.
(01:28):
So it is either a medical a Western medical doctor
or an alternative health specialist. Also, something like my abdominal
massage can also help, but yeah, you need this is
not something you address on your own. This is something
that you work with a professional to try and figure
out and it can really impact relationships.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. Yeah, So this is just my cultural sense of
issues like this like perry partum depression and anxiety as well,
that people will downplay it one because it's women's issues,
and two because there's a fair amount of moodiness or
(02:13):
stress for everyone going through their menstrual cycle and also
you know, around birth, and so I think people will
downplay other people that are having more severe reactions as
like what you're overreacting or it'll clear up, just give
it a couple of days when it's when it's like
the general misunderstanding is like no, no, this is way
(02:36):
beyond and actually is kind of dangerous on a number
of levels, not only for the individual but in the
you know, in the case of postpartum, it can severely
interfere with parenting and can actually affect attachment with the child,
you know, and it's not to shame the person, but
(02:58):
support understanding treatment medications. This kind of thing is extremely important.
One thing that's often downplayed is people know about postpartum depression,
but a lot of people don't even know that postpartum
anxiety is a thing. In fact, I think some stats
demonstrate it's even more prevalent. And anxiety is also just
(03:19):
generally misunderstood. People are like, oh, you're a little nervous. No, Like,
anxiety is life ruining, it is completely debilitating, gets completely misunderstood.
As someone that service from anxiety myself, I can tell
you that most people are just even therapists that I've
talked to or just like, oh, they just seem to
think it's stress. It's and it's like, there's a reason
(03:41):
why it's in the fucking DSM, you know what I mean.
But when it comes to rejection sensitivity, there's not a
lot of research demonstrating a direct correlation there, and there's
also a lot of research on the topic. But my
sense is that the rejections intivity that some people might
(04:01):
experience with pre menstal disfork disorder is probably related indirectly
through the mediating factor of the depression and anxiety and
feeling alone. You know, imagine you're frequently every month going
through this really horrible time and.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Which can last. I believe the statistics are like it
can last for up to two weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it's not just like a day, but we can
be But the point is that it can be very alienating,
you know, lack of support and people misinterpreting you or
not listening to you when you're saying, you know, I
have a particular bad case of pre menstrual disfork disorder,
and they're just like, oh, maybe even other women are
(04:46):
just like, oh, I get a little cranky on my
once a month as well, and it's just like, no,
you don't understand. This is way worse. I'm a completely
different person in this state and through that stress and alienation.
You know, we all are sensitive to rejection, but if
we're stressed out, we're going to be a lot more
(05:07):
sensitive to rejection. But that doesn't really help necessarily, but
it is. It is a known symptom for some people
with pre mensal dyspork disorder. So absolutely, all right, another
email here highest your annual patron Justlyn J. Yeah, good
(05:29):
old Joscelyn g She she writes in a lot, I'm
a big fan of stand up comedians like Ronnie Chang
and Jimmy O Yang who discuss their parents in a
comedy context, often referring emotionally distant father often often referencing
emotionally distance fathers and targetment. Okay, so Josin is like,
I'm a big fan of these Asian American comics who
(05:54):
will talk about, you know, common Asian American parenting experiences.
I imagine this comedy land so well because it explores
an often painful topic for this community. On the other hand,
there are Asian American comedians who rose rapidly on TikTok,
who discussed more nuance experience on stage. An example of
(06:15):
a nuanced mainstream comic is Atsuko Akatsuka.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Whose excellent pronunciation Thank God, that was you me.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I don't know if I've ever heard her name.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Some of hers stuff. She did this very funny piece
where it's her and an East Indian woman comedian and
they're comparing their two foods and they referred to miso soup.
The East Indian woman refers to miso soup as saltwater.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, well you sent that to me. Yeah, so I
included this email in your episode because I know that
you like this Japanese American.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Actually she's born in Japan right now, she was born
in Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Oh, Taiwan. A Japanese person born in Taiwan. Well, because
Akatsuka is not a Taiwanese name, It's a Japanese name.
So I mean, but who knows, maybe a Japanese father,
or maybe Atsuko married a Japanese but Otsuko is also
Japanese name.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, well, okay, but anyway, her comedy focuses a lot
on her schizophrenic mother.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Okay, let's see. I find I enjoy the more nuanced
stories more, but still respect the me to talk about
cultural stereotypes on stage. End of email, end of female. Yeah,
I mean Asian American or Asian comedians who speak English
are not a monolith, right, you have a lot of
(07:41):
different Well, I.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Think of the person that I knew that did this
was Margaret Cho talked about her family and got a
TV show out of it.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're right, yeah, what was her big thing? We're going
to go Montgomery wall right, But Ali is another name.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
She doesn't really talk about her parents. She talks about
her husband than our kids. She talks about Asian stuff
and her rampant sex life. My god, is anybody getting
it more than her?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Well, Asian Americans, on average, I find they haven't absorbed
the kind of White people shame around sex. I mean,
there's certainly complexes around body and sex and sexuality and
gender and everything, but I find that Asian Americans on
average are just freer to be more human and women
(08:37):
I think in particular. Of course, there are plenty, particularly
like Korean because they're more Catholic and stuff. But so,
you know, it's hard to lock things down. But well,
very much reminds me of a lot of Asian American
women that I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
And that's something actually we've talked about in the Sex
Therapy program. There was a whole module on this about
Buddhist and Hindu and Jewish cultures focus on that sex
is a blessing versus Christian culture, that sexist can be
dirty and you shouldn't talk about that.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah. So, anyways, and Ali Wang in her earlier stance,
and I've seen her live, oh yeah, and I mean
her first Netflix special, I think it was like crying,
and of course in Beef. She's great. But the part
that Ali Wang I do remember her making a joke
because she used to be married to a half Japanese
(09:33):
I think, half Filipino and herself she's half Chinese, half
Vietnamese I think, and so she would get into details
around like my Japanese Filipino husband hears how he annoys
me and I annoy him with my Chinese noess, and
so I don't know, there's just there were a lot
(09:53):
of jokes like that in the beginning. They've since divorced,
and now she's dating the guy from SNL Bill Hater,
and she brought him on stage when we saw him
when I when we saw her live in Seattle. But anyway,
also extremely funny, Yeah, very funny. Yeah, interesting guy.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah. That show that he has on HBO where he
plays this serial Arry, Yeah, amazing. Anyways, what are we
talking about?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
But I also want to mention another Asian American, the
first real Asian American stand up comic that I think
people forget about, as Shang Wing. He is from Houston, Texas,
born and raised and has a Texas accent. Like if
you just heard him talk, you would not think he
(10:46):
was Asian. American. But the thing I appreciate about appreciate
about him is that he is like all the Asian
Americans I know, which is that we're we're American, you know, first,
and depending on the generation, right, because I like fourth generation,
and so the tiny thread of Japanese nous that's in
(11:06):
mey is imperceptible in a lot of ways, you know
what I mean. And this guy, Shang Wang, it's hard
to see him as an Asian American the way that
he talks. And like I remember seeing him, I don't know,
maybe twenty years ago, and he's on stage and he
starts talking and then he immediately says, I bet you've
never seen an Asian guy with a Texas accent. And
(11:30):
he's like, this is I was born raised in Houston,
you know. And I just like, thank God, you know
what I mean, Because every time there's an Asian actor
in a movie or TV show made in America, made
the United States, before they talk, I'm praying to God,
please no accent, please, no accent, Please no accent. And
there's always a fucking accent. They will take someone who
(11:52):
born and raised in the United States no accent, and
they'll make them have an accent. Asian is foreign, Asian
is the other is exotic, and it drives me fucking nuts.
And so when Shane Wing gets on stage and has
a Houston accent, I say, thank fucking God, let's take
a break.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
What was even the question?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I don't even know. I mean, well, Jocelyn t was
basically just saying that she appreciates more nuanced points of
view about Asian American parents, not always reducing it to
the tiger mom and the distant dad. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Absolutely well, And this is on the heels of Meet
the Flockers four is about to come out, which is
like the ultimate Jewish parent.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
I didn't even know there was a three. I guess.
So is Bab's going to be in it?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I don't know, but like that her as the Jewish
is the crazy hippie Jewish mom and that that was
like the most joyous moment.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And isn't it also Dustin Hoffman? Anyway, you two member
and patron and from the San Francisco Bay area, She says,
I noticed many YouTube and TikTok self help gurus talking
about shadow.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Work, which is a Jungian concept.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, it sounds like a great self help healing method.
How would you define it? Oh boy, what are the
Jordan Peterson? What are Jordan Peterson and tel Swan missing?
Is it oversimplified on TikTok? How would a trained clinician
use this in a legitimate way? Also, can this be
used in dreams?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
That's so Jungi in dream work? Is there all Jungian concepts?
So I have to say I am not a TikTok
watcher and I don't know who those two people are.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
That's just oh I do okay?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So you will feel if I don't, if I'm not
answering it you. So this is work that I do
a lot with clients. This is actually a directive that
I've been doing for years to draw your shadows. So
the concept is that within us, all of Jungian concepts
begin within us. There is the part that we want
(14:08):
to avoid the most. So the classic Jungian moment in
pop culture is when Luke learns that Darthus's father right
within all of us is this part that we would
like to not be there, that we do anything we
can to reject to distancer ourselves. And shadow work is
(14:32):
if you can befriend your shadow, you can be way
more integrated and tolerate the parts of yourself that are
distasteful to you. Or more than that, if we get
into Jungian dream work, that's a whole other thing. But
Jung would have clients bring in their dreams and discuss
them and would have them then imagine who are you
(14:55):
as every part of that dream. But it's way more
complex than that. I don't even this is like.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No, no, you described it. The only thing I would add,
I guess or emphasize is that it is the goal
of it is to integrate it, not to change it necessarily,
but to accept it, embrace that part of yourself and
(15:22):
find its voice and what it's trying to tell you
to do. And it can feel like a threat. It
can feel like something that is going to destroy you,
or shameful. Sometimes it's it's quite obvious the reason as
to why we have made it into a shadow, like
if you're gay, for example, that can be a shadow
(15:44):
part that can be a denied aspect of self.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Or I was thinking the sex therapy work I'm doing
like poor an addiction where someone is like or any
kind of addiction. I have this horrible thing in me
that I wish it wasn't true when I do everything
I can to keep it secret from everyone.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, even myself.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, and it controls my life and I keep going
back to it, and it's like, okay, if we can
get in there and figure out what do you do?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
What are you doing? Or it could be aggression anger, violence,
At least that's the way it feels when it's sectioned
off or shadowed.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And with my ADHD clients, it's often their ADHD symptoms
it's you know, why am I so forgetful, so messy?
So why can't I do the things I hate that
part of myself?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, And for some people, they'll go into denial about
something like that and will act like everything's fine and
deny that that they do have symptoms of ADHD because
they just they can't accept it yet. There's a difference
between being ashamed of something but very aware of it
and actually having it be a shadow, which is to
(16:49):
mainly be in denial, like the individual just doesn't even
recognize it consciously. You can make things half shadowed, but anyway,
Jordan Peterson teels one, I haven't heard anything directly that
from my memory that they've said about it. I'm guessing
that they both have good and bad things to say
(17:09):
about it, Contrary to what a lot of people will say.
Both of these individuals appeal to people for some legitimate,
right headed reasons. They have good things to say or
helpful things to say at times, but they also have
a lot of problems. I've done whole breakdown takedown videos
(17:29):
of Jordan Peterson and Tiel Swann pointing out the highly
problematic things that both of them say, but they also
say things that are things that absolutely I could get
behind and have. But I haven't heard them speak directly
about the shadow. I think that Jordan Peterson probably when
he's talking about shadow because he at least over time,
(17:53):
he's become, in my perspective, more and more conservative in
his outward munication, outwards teaching, and he's big on this
sort of traditional masculinity thing, and so I imagine that
his shadow talk has something to do with that, of like,
there's a lot of men out there who have shadowized
(18:16):
their true masculinity and they have to like bring it out.
I don't know, it's just a guess.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So just on the flip side, if you want to
go down the Jungian rabbit hole, there are so many
great podcasts on Young books. You can read the source
material of Young. You can attend a Jungian conference, or
every major city has a Jungian foundation and you can
(18:42):
attend one of their talks. Jungians love to share and
talk and think and bring you in. It is an
incredibly complex theory. It's one of the foundational Western psychology theories.
And he was a peer of Freud, Is that correct, yeah, student, Yeah,
(19:04):
and they broke over. I believe one of the things
they broke was union's Young's focus on the collective unconscious
versus early sexual problems that defined I'm not saying this
very well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Don't know, you are right, well, their relationship was complicated.
I have a book behind me that's literally just the
letters between the two of them. It's just it's this
thick book that just has the massive amounts of communication
and the details that are in there. You know, the
way that each of them thought as they were developing
(19:44):
their thoughts, the mentorship that Freud gave Jung their disagreements,
there's a lot of nuance there. It's a complicated relationship.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So I consider myself deep down at Jungian. So much
of the terror work I do is based on Jung's work,
but also Jung was a fantastic visual artist. And there's
a book I believe it's called The Red Book, which
are it's and it's printed like massive format, like two
feet by one and a half feet.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, we had a whole ceremony wearing it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, and it's full of mandalas that he would paint
at about his dreams, like and they're exquisite, Like this
was an incredible This man was not just a really
talented psychologist, but an incredible visual artist. So you know,
do everyone do yourself a favor, go down the Jungen
rabbit hole for a day or so.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Speaking of things that I've rewatched that I had seen
before is the movie with Fastbender playing Jung.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Is it Young Versus Freud or something?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, no, it's the Something Method. I can't remember what
it's called. But Kiera Knightley plays this infamous or famous
patient of Jung, and it's at a period of time
when Yung was young and Freud was they were still
involved Freud and Jung, and the movie speculates about the
(21:15):
sexual relationship between Jung and his patient. It's very divisive
as a movie because I think it's a Cronenberg movie.
I'm not sure, but it is very S and M
and very sexual and is taking liberties and so a
lot of all my Junion friends hated the movie.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I never saw it's like, but I.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Like it because there's not a lot of movies out
there that depict this time and Vigo Mortensen plays Sigmund Freud.
I don't know, it's a pretty fascinating movie, but yeah,
it seems to go a little far with the S
and M kind of stuff, but I don't know it.
I feel like people in our field should talk about
(21:57):
this movie more because.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
It and we can do a podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Okay. It does get at a lot of the foundation
of our field and of the way that patients would
actually present back then, you know, with hysteria and stuff,
because it was a lot of conversion and a lot
of people that were struggling with things clearly, and it
would manifest in what their culture in Austria or wherever
(22:24):
they were. So With's Switzerland, the way that they thought
that people should manifest psychological issues unconsciously. You know. Conversions
are when we have a psychological stress and it converts
into a somatic response, like numbness or blindness or paralyzation
or hysterical fainting. Right, it's hard to know if that's
(22:47):
actually what's happening because you can't really scientifically measure this.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
But side note, but when I went to the Evergreen
Psychologie in the late eighties early nineties, all of the
women's bathrooms haven't we would call the past out coaches.
I don't know if they were for, who knows what
they were for, but like almost I think like every
public women's bathroom on campus had this little side room
that had a bed in it, and we all thought
(23:12):
it was so funny. The men's rooms the mineral shock,
Like what are you talking about the bed? We don't
have a bed, But I thought, like, were this for
the hysterical passing out? Like what were these couches?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, So it seems and even today when we look
across cultures, there are different somatic conversions in different cultures.
Like in the United States, we have fewer conversions apparently
seemingly than we did one hundred years ago, presumably because
we have other ways of expressing unconscious stress and we
(23:48):
have more likelihood of someone that will help us with
by listening to us or something like that. Again, it's
a generalization, but in other cultures, not only will those
supports not necessarily be there, but there's a different indoctrination
into the way that your body should express stress. And
(24:08):
in the one hundred years ago in Europe, there was
a different idea than what we would see today in
terms of how the body should manifest stress. And of
course women are more stressed in general, particularly back then,
because of the massive sexism and all that kind of stuff,
so there's even more need to express somehow, you know.
(24:30):
And so it seems as though people like Anna, oh,
you know Bertha Pappenheim, the famous patient of Joseph Breyer,
who was Freud's mentor, which is all of psychoanalysis based
on that relationship, and spiel Rhine, Anna, spiel Rhyn. I
think her name is the one with young. Anyway, I'm
getting down the rabbit hole. Another email, but let's take
(24:52):
a break.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Super impressed with your name, recall.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
All right? Another email listener, Hally. She says, can you
experience counter transference as a teacher? I hear you describing
it within the contax of your context. I think context.
I hear you describing it in your profession, of your
(25:20):
professional and it's there's some type it seems familiar with
dealing with. Sometimes a student can really get under my
skin and I have a hard time separating this feeling
from what I am supposed to do as a teacher.
How can teachers deal with this? We don't have super
We don't have supervisors like you do. Yeah, what do
you think? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I think it is ever present. You know, I mean
to go back to young. This person is probably annoying
you because some aspect of yourself or someone you love
is popping out through this person's words or actions. And
so any way, and I'm so sad that most fields
(26:02):
don't have supervision, Like lawyers also don't have supervision or consultation.
You know, there's all these intimate professions that the person's
personality can really impact treatment. We have so much evidence
of this or can influence teaching, and so yeah, I
(26:25):
would say to try and relax and see this person. Well,
I don't know, how do you explain how to address
counter transference in the moment. I usually say, try and
acknowledge what you're getting triggered by, why you find this
person so.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Ch Well, it's a topic that is in the literature
referred to as counter transference management, which is a whole system.
So it depends on the counter transference, it depends on you,
It depends on where you are in your career with
certain kind of transferential reactions to clients and students. I
(27:05):
suppose with certain topics of my kind of transference, I
can instantly recognize and deal with it without having to
see consultation because I've sought consultation so much and been
through so much therapy around it that I instantly recognize
how it feels, and I instantly I'm so familiar. There's
(27:26):
so much practice that I instantly know the pitfalls, like
I can do all this within like a couple seconds.
But in the beginning of my career, I wasn't even
aware that this was happening. And then at a mid
awareness I would be having the feeling and sort of
aware of it, and that I'd have to think about
it or talk about afterwards. So you know, it's very
(27:46):
different approaches to this and case by case. But and
some kind of transferences related to traumas of ourselves, and
some of them are not, some of them are induced,
or some of them are just regular feelings that you
get as as a therapist or as a teacher, And yeah,
how do you deal with it when when you're a
teacher the same things that you do when you're a therapist.
(28:10):
You become aware, have a system, and don't tell yourself, well,
next time, I'll just handle it better. You've got a
prep and you've got to do the work, and you've
got to dig deep and you've got to figure out
what's going on there, because if you have a vulnerability,
then it's incredibly important and very fruitful in all aspects
(28:33):
of your life to become aware of it and heal
from it so that it doesn't affect negatively your your
body and mind and soul and emotions in the moment,
but also won't interfere with your professional efforts, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So yeah, yeah, And I think often the first step
for me when I'm experience in counter transference is why
is this behavior so annoying to me? It's the first step.
Would this be as annoying to anyone else? What is
happening here? Why am I so triggered? And I just
(29:10):
want to acknowledge For teachers, there's often it's true for therapists,
but there can really be institutional pressures that are different.
They're expected to teach this kid this certain thing and
a certain amount of time. I mean, therapists can also
be under those time constraints. And I work with a
lot of teachers in my practice, and you know, sometimes
(29:31):
it's that kid isn't going to what The external pressures
can really impact how you're feeling about a student.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Absolutely. Another aspect is that being a teacher is more
akin to being a group therapist than an individual therapist.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, and the relationship, you know, if you're seeing them hourly,
five days a week, that's a very intense relationship, right.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You become very much entwined in each other psychologies and
the roles that develop in particular systemic groups. You know,
in particular systems, where there's a scapegoat, there's a star,
there's the silent one. Particularly when there's stress in the system,
(30:17):
so everyone is being gravitated towards and allocating themselves into
a particular role. The problem with roles is that they
become more pronounced, more rigid, more exaggerated when the system
is stressed out and each individual is not allowed to
be flexible to meet their needs given the scenario, they're
(30:38):
at one more emails, one more super long term patient.
So I changed super long. I changed the form to
allow for not only three plus years, but also six plus. Yes,
and Serenity from California, whom I know I have met,
but you you might have met. Serenity is a very
(30:59):
long term high contributor to the podcast Yea. She says,
I was wondering why the majority of therapists are ineffective
and seemingly poorly trained. Ever since my old therapist died
in October of twenty eighteen, I've struggled to find another
therapist who both has the correct theoretical orientation and training
(31:22):
and is also a good fit for me. I've tried
many therapists since then. Some have lasted a few months,
others a few sessions. I can't say any of them
has really helped me. I feel like most therapists are
only able to address surface c livil symptoms and not
the root cause of those symptoms. It's like if you
have lung cancer and you go to the doctor and
all they do is prescribe cough syrup. My issues are
(31:45):
mostly caused by childhood relational traumat I think relational psychodonamic
therapy works best for me. Psychodynamic therapists are hard to find, though,
and even when I do find one, they're often super
boring and I can't connect to them, let alone attach
to them. It's super frustrated, and sometimes.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Iferentity does not have serenity, I.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Feel sometimes I feel hopeless. I realize insurance companies favor
short term therapies like CBT, but so many therapists don't
accept insurance, and so I don't understand why this preference
by insurance dominates the field. I think your podcast should
be required listening for clinicians, So I'm annoyed when I
tell a therapist about your podcast and they have no
(32:23):
interest in listening to it. End of emial serenity good?
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah? I also fear my therapists will die and I
will never be able to find another therapist as good
as my therapist. So you're living that, and I'm so sorry.
It sounds like it's been a multi year struggle at
this point. So I would look at a psychoanalytic There
must be a California Psychoanalytic Association and check out folks there,
(32:55):
you know, training in different parts of the country is
really different. If you lived in New York, you'd find
tons of psychoolag therapists. You're not going to find as
many as in California because that focuses on marriage and
family therapy. So there are regional differences in the work.
We haven't talked about this at all, but any minute
now the Multi State Pact is going to open up
(33:18):
and therapists are going to be able to just like
traveling nurses, therapists are going to be able to work.
I think there's thirty three states, so hopefully that will
open things up for you. You can maybe see someone
who's trained on the East Coast. You know, therapy is hard.
I wouldn't say that the training is bad. I would
(33:40):
say that a lot of therapists are afraid to go deep.
It's it's hard work. What do you think, I can't
think of it.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'll say I think the training is bad. I think that,
and this is just my sense of things based on
my limited pocket of experience, but I think that the
training has either shifted more towards CBT, but also just
more towards I don't know how to describe it it.
(34:14):
When we were in graduate school, the professors the baby
boomers who were teaching us, there was a greater likelihood
that they had a lot of depth, and whether they
called themselves psychodamic therapists or not, you know, these were
the people who seemed more like Irvin Yallam, you.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Know who's thinking of philand of age.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, people who you wouldn't even be able to lock
them down with a particular.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Theorem prorotation doctor Gwendolyn Jones. I mean these like they
were amazing.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah. It was about philosophy and depth, and they had
much more foundation and actual humanistic therapy and and philosophy.
There was a lot of psychodonemic philosophy that was also integrated.
You know, they knew about CBT, but it was just
(35:09):
like a tool that they would use. But the foundation
of who they were and the person of the therapist,
the wisdom that was required, and the way that people talked.
And you and I came up under those people, and
I am very much in that world. I know you
are too. But the new generation of therapists are being
(35:30):
taught by either Gen x's or even millennials, who are
good people, and many of them are great therapists. I'm
not generalizing at all. The way that I see it
in terms of the shifts in emphasis is that the
con to the way we were trained was there's very
little professional ethics and professional professionality that was taught to us.
(35:55):
We were taught by people that might not ever even
talk about that. It was just like, let's sit in
a room and sit on the floor and talk about
the meaning of life and that kind of stuff. Whereas today,
because of the effort to professionalize that's been going on
for a long time our profession and for a lot
(36:18):
of good reasons, there's a lot more emphasis on professional
ethics and being professional professionalism, how to make money, and
how to keep good notes and how to not get
in trouble, and all those things are absolutely important. People
listen to this podcast know that I'm a very big
proponent of that kind of emphasis. But something has to
(36:40):
be sacrificed, and I think what gets sacrificed is sitting
in a circle and talking about philosophy and about the
meaning of life and about the human experience and about
what you know. Bougenthal and Carl Rogers and Freud and
Jung and Karen Horney and all these people. Irv Yolam,
(37:01):
what they can give us instead of just reading the
summary of just like, here's how you actively listen to someone,
Carl Rogers said, you just repeat what they say back
to them. Like the reduction that happens to humanistic psychology
is a crime, I think. And that's my sense is
that something had to go. And when ethics was being emphasized,
(37:28):
and the worry of the scrutiny of the public and
the shame of having famous cases where people would have
sex with their clients or being called out for this
and that, you know, there was an effort to fix that,
which is good, but like I said, something had to go.
And then you add the emphasis of insurance, you know,
(37:50):
you just have to follow the money, and the emphasis
on short term therapies and CBT. I feel like on average,
they just don't like the kind of of philosophical musings
within psychoanalytic thought and they're just like, look, all that's bullshit,
and let's just be pragmatic about this, you know what
I mean. And there could be some wisdom to that.
(38:11):
You know, short term therapies can be great solution focus
narrative therapies. These are short term therapies. But all of
these movements have conspired to result in what I think
to be an unfortunate result of fewer therapists that actually
know how to help people, that actually know the foundation
(38:32):
of the human experience and how therapy actually works, or
how it can work in a way that is more
suited to a lot of clients. Because CBT can be
very helpful and is very suited for some scenarios. Absolutely,
I use it all the time, but I do think
that there is something lost.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Well, and I'm wondering if this is why IFS Internal
Family Systems is so popular right now, is that it
allows for people to enter into something that's a little
deeper as a way of studying, to sit with the
client with a concept.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah. I mean I've always said that IFS is basically
just a simpler way of explaining psychodynamic or Gestalt or
other more elaborate systems of understanding. Plus a lot of
the writing in psychoanalytic literature object relations stuff, self egotherapy,
(39:32):
so and so, and it's so impossible.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
To understand so rejecting breasts.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, well that even that is like, well, at least
there's somewhat of a kernel of understanding that we could
relate to. But if you just read client. Yeah, most
of us, what the fuck are you talking? But it
was also one hundred years ago they were dealing with
a different language system. So I just think a lot
of factors are conspiring to result in a lot of theory.
And then you and the current prom problem is you
(40:01):
have a whole generation of therapists that are halfway in
graduate school and another half of them is on TikTok.
And there's a lot of really stupid people on TikTok
talking about things that they don't know anything about, including clinicians.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Well, and also the move that everything's online. I mean
there's a whole section of clinicians that have barely sat
in a room with a live person, and that's so different.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, I mean, I hope that that doesn't negate the
possibility of good instruction and supervision. And I'll say this,
I'm generalizing. There are plenty of professors out there, plenty
of students today that are absolutely completely in my and
your camp along these lines. I'm not saying that it's
(40:48):
all like this. You know, there's every professor is different,
every program is different, every student is different. But it
is worrisome. I see a lot more therapists today that
have basically no understanding and no way to gain understanding
that I think is required to actually help people like
(41:11):
Serenity from California and I you know, that's the question
that she's saying, is like.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Who is deep enough for me?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah? Why is it so hard to find a good therapy?
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (41:20):
The other thing that I'll say, Serenity to you specifically
is that you had a really good relationship with a
therapist for a long time and then your therapist died.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I would say, Serenity, if there's one gift we
can give you today, it's go to a several day
grief and loss retreat to deal with this loss that
is clearly influencing you now and your ability to reattach right.
And there's no way that that can't. I mean, I
I one of my dearest friends is retiring and I'm
(41:54):
getting a bunch of her different clients, and one of
her clients who's come to me is so sad, and
we talk about that and we sit with that, and
she's like, you know, I don't know if I want
to come back, And I'm like, I totally get it.
I'm not, and I'm I'm equally sad that my friend
is retiring. So we both have grief about this, but
(42:17):
you know, we sit in the grief and the loss
of it. I remember one time I was with Kaiser
back in the day, no it was group health then,
and I was at the big Kaiser Center seeing a
therapist and they fired my therapist and then he just
gave me someone else. And I was like, I need
to process you with you with the fact that, like
(42:38):
I had a different therapist and now I have you,
and she was like, that's not why I'm here. And
I was like, well, then I can't see you because
if you can't address with me the loss that, like
some corporation just fired my therapist and I worked with
them for like two years, then like we're not a
good match. So yeah, the loss of a therapist can
be huge if it's some one that you can really
(43:01):
talk to, right And so.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
As I think you're getting that partially at least, is
that that loss can make it very hard.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Because no one's going to be that person, no matter
how smart they.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Are, even if they are of that ilk, it will
take a long time to develop that. And so there's
a possibility that you know, you're saying that the ones
that you do find they're boring. And maybe that's the case.
And you know, you were spoiled with a good connection
(43:33):
and a good therapist for you, a good fit, and
so what you might be running into is just it
takes a long time. You know, it's kind of like dating.
It's hard to find a good match.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, and why was this? Why did is there? I
don't mean to psychoanalyze you, Serenity, but you wrote in
so you know what you're getting. Well, it's this this
attachment wound repeat any previous attachment wounds? Or was there
no good attachment before? And this was this therapist was
(44:04):
the first attachment. But you know there if a pattern
like this, if you cannot find a good therapist anywhere,
I'm just curious, what are you bringing to this situation? Yeah,
because you at some point, you know, we're in the
Winnicott category of like who can be good enough? There's
(44:26):
nobody that's going to be that person who left us.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
And just one final little tip is a way to
expedite the tender ification, if you will, of finding the
right therapist would be instead of actually meeting with all
the therapists, you actually just email them or talk with
them on the phone for five minutes and just have
a prompt that you ask them.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Are you funny?
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Well, I would ask I have childhood relational traumas related
to this, and that what's your general approach to me?
I would imagine that would be a very good screener,
particularly if you did it over the phone, because they
wouldn't be able to think about it, because if you
asked me that question, I would have a very concise answer,
(45:12):
and I would understand what they're getting at, and I
would understand that they have run into other therapists that
don't have a good approach or don't seem to have
any clue what you're talking about. So you can quickly
eliminate a lot of people without having going through all
the problem. Then once you get past that, so maybe
(45:33):
the second question is tell me a joke. All right,
Well that doesn't for that episode. Everyone out there, please
take care of yourself. Find a therapist that fits with you,
because it's
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Worth trying again.
All right, Rebecca emails for you more many to get into.
What do you say again, middle tier patron Caitlin. She says,
doctor Kirk and Rebecca, I recently found out about pre
menstrual dysphoric disorder. Oh yes, and think I may have
a mild form of it PMDD. I tried turmeric candles
(00:24):
and apple cider vinegar.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And it was ineffective and it did not help. God
damn it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Would you share your knowledge and experience with this? Also?
What about rejection sensitivity with it?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, sure, thanks, Kate. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Uh yeah, it's so obviously anything with women's health is
vastly understudied and there's not a lot of knowledge around it.
It's a hormonal imbalance that happens just before your period starts.
You should find some kind of to address this. And
I'll say I have a one client that her symptoms
(01:06):
were so severe she went into medical medically induced menopause
in order to try and address it, and that was
the only thing that worked for her. And this was
after years and years and years of trying absolutely everything
that's out there. I don't know where she is, but
certain countries do it better, like Australia does it way
better than we do in terms of medications and understanding.
(01:28):
So it is either a medical a Western medical doctor
or an alternative health specialist. Also, something like my abdominal
massage can also help, but yeah, you need this is
not something you address on your own. This is something
that you work with a professional to try and figure
out and it can really impact relationships.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. Yeah, So this is just my cultural sense of
issues like this like perry partum depression and anxiety as well,
that people will downplay it one because it's women's issues,
and two because there's a fair amount of moodiness or
(02:13):
stress for everyone going through their menstrual cycle and also
you know, around birth, and so I think people will
downplay other people that are having more severe reactions as
like what you're overreacting or it'll clear up, just give
it a couple of days when it's when it's like
the general misunderstanding is like no, no, this is way
(02:36):
beyond and actually is kind of dangerous on a number
of levels, not only for the individual but in the
you know, in the case of postpartum, it can severely
interfere with parenting and can actually affect attachment with the child,
you know, and it's not to shame the person, but
(02:58):
support understanding treatment medications. This kind of thing is extremely important.
One thing that's often downplayed is people know about postpartum depression,
but a lot of people don't even know that postpartum
anxiety is a thing. In fact, I think some stats
demonstrate it's even more prevalent. And anxiety is also just
(03:19):
generally misunderstood. People are like, oh, you're a little nervous. No, Like,
anxiety is life ruining, it is completely debilitating, gets completely misunderstood.
As someone that service from anxiety myself, I can tell
you that most people are just even therapists that I've
talked to or just like, oh, they just seem to
think it's stress. It's and it's like, there's a reason
(03:41):
why it's in the fucking DSM, you know what I mean.
But when it comes to rejection sensitivity, there's not a
lot of research demonstrating a direct correlation there, and there's
also a lot of research on the topic. But my
sense is that the rejections intivity that some people might
(04:01):
experience with pre menstal disfork disorder is probably related indirectly
through the mediating factor of the depression and anxiety and
feeling alone. You know, imagine you're frequently every month going
through this really horrible time and.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Which can last. I believe the statistics are like it
can last for up to two weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, it's not just like a day, but we can
be But the point is that it can be very alienating,
you know, lack of support and people misinterpreting you or
not listening to you when you're saying, you know, I
have a particular bad case of pre menstrual disfork disorder,
and they're just like, oh, maybe even other women are
(04:46):
just like, oh, I get a little cranky on my
once a month as well, and it's just like, no,
you don't understand. This is way worse. I'm a completely
different person in this state and through that stress and alienation.
You know, we all are sensitive to rejection, but if
we're stressed out, we're going to be a lot more
(05:07):
sensitive to rejection. But that doesn't really help necessarily, but
it is. It is a known symptom for some people
with pre mensal dyspork disorder. So absolutely, all right, another
email here highest your annual patron Justlyn J. Yeah, good
(05:29):
old Joscelyn g She she writes in a lot, I'm
a big fan of stand up comedians like Ronnie Chang
and Jimmy O Yang who discuss their parents in a
comedy context, often referring emotionally distant father often often referencing
emotionally distance fathers and targetment. Okay, so Josin is like,
I'm a big fan of these Asian American comics who
(05:54):
will talk about, you know, common Asian American parenting experiences.
I imagine this comedy land so well because it explores
an often painful topic for this community. On the other hand,
there are Asian American comedians who rose rapidly on TikTok,
who discussed more nuance experience on stage. An example of
(06:15):
a nuanced mainstream comic is Atsuko Akatsuka.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Whose excellent pronunciation Thank God, that was you me.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I don't know if I've ever heard her name.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Some of hers stuff. She did this very funny piece
where it's her and an East Indian woman comedian and
they're comparing their two foods and they referred to miso soup.
The East Indian woman refers to miso soup as saltwater.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, well you sent that to me. Yeah, so I
included this email in your episode because I know that
you like this Japanese American.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Actually she's born in Japan right now, she was born
in Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Oh, Taiwan. A Japanese person born in Taiwan. Well, because
Akatsuka is not a Taiwanese name, It's a Japanese name.
So I mean, but who knows, maybe a Japanese father,
or maybe Atsuko married a Japanese but Otsuko is also
Japanese name.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, well, okay, but anyway, her comedy focuses a lot
on her schizophrenic mother.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Okay, let's see. I find I enjoy the more nuanced
stories more, but still respect the me to talk about
cultural stereotypes on stage. End of email, end of female. Yeah,
I mean Asian American or Asian comedians who speak English
are not a monolith, right, you have a lot of
(07:41):
different Well, I.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Think of the person that I knew that did this
was Margaret Cho talked about her family and got a
TV show out of it.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're right, yeah, what was her big thing? We're going
to go Montgomery wall right, But Ali is another name.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
She doesn't really talk about her parents. She talks about
her husband than our kids. She talks about Asian stuff
and her rampant sex life. My god, is anybody getting
it more than her?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Well, Asian Americans, on average, I find they haven't absorbed
the kind of White people shame around sex. I mean,
there's certainly complexes around body and sex and sexuality and
gender and everything, but I find that Asian Americans on
average are just freer to be more human and women
(08:37):
I think in particular. Of course, there are plenty, particularly
like Korean because they're more Catholic and stuff. But so,
you know, it's hard to lock things down. But well,
very much reminds me of a lot of Asian American
women that I grew up with.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
And that's something actually we've talked about in the Sex
Therapy program. There was a whole module on this about
Buddhist and Hindu and Jewish cultures focus on that sex
is a blessing versus Christian culture, that sexist can be
dirty and you shouldn't talk about that.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah. So, anyways, and Ali Wang in her earlier stance,
and I've seen her live, oh yeah, and I mean
her first Netflix special, I think it was like crying,
and of course in Beef. She's great. But the part
that Ali Wang I do remember her making a joke
because she used to be married to a half Japanese
(09:33):
I think, half Filipino and herself she's half Chinese, half
Vietnamese I think, and so she would get into details
around like my Japanese Filipino husband hears how he annoys
me and I annoy him with my Chinese noess, and
so I don't know, there's just there were a lot
(09:53):
of jokes like that in the beginning. They've since divorced,
and now she's dating the guy from SNL Bill Hater,
and she brought him on stage when we saw him
when I when we saw her live in Seattle. But anyway,
also extremely funny, Yeah, very funny. Yeah, interesting guy.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah. That show that he has on HBO where he
plays this serial Arry, Yeah, amazing. Anyways, what are we
talking about?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
But I also want to mention another Asian American, the
first real Asian American stand up comic that I think
people forget about, as Shang Wing. He is from Houston, Texas,
born and raised and has a Texas accent. Like if
you just heard him talk, you would not think he
(10:46):
was Asian. American. But the thing I appreciate about appreciate
about him is that he is like all the Asian
Americans I know, which is that we're we're American, you know, first,
and depending on the generation, right, because I like fourth generation,
and so the tiny thread of Japanese nous that's in
(11:06):
mey is imperceptible in a lot of ways, you know
what I mean. And this guy, Shang Wang, it's hard
to see him as an Asian American the way that
he talks. And like I remember seeing him, I don't know,
maybe twenty years ago, and he's on stage and he
starts talking and then he immediately says, I bet you've
never seen an Asian guy with a Texas accent. And
(11:30):
he's like, this is I was born raised in Houston,
you know. And I just like, thank God, you know
what I mean, Because every time there's an Asian actor
in a movie or TV show made in America, made
the United States, before they talk, I'm praying to God,
please no accent, please, no accent, Please no accent. And
there's always a fucking accent. They will take someone who
(11:52):
born and raised in the United States no accent, and
they'll make them have an accent. Asian is foreign, Asian
is the other is exotic, and it drives me fucking nuts.
And so when Shane Wing gets on stage and has
a Houston accent, I say, thank fucking God, let's take
a break.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
What was even the question?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I don't even know. I mean, well, Jocelyn t was
basically just saying that she appreciates more nuanced points of
view about Asian American parents, not always reducing it to
the tiger mom and the distant dad. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Absolutely well, And this is on the heels of Meet
the Flockers four is about to come out, which is
like the ultimate Jewish parent.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
I didn't even know there was a three. I guess.
So is Bab's going to be in it?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I don't know, but like that her as the Jewish
is the crazy hippie Jewish mom and that that was
like the most joyous moment.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And isn't it also Dustin Hoffman? Anyway, you two member
and patron and from the San Francisco Bay area, She says,
I noticed many YouTube and TikTok self help gurus talking
about shadow.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Work, which is a Jungian concept.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, it sounds like a great self help healing method.
How would you define it? Oh boy, what are the
Jordan Peterson? What are Jordan Peterson and tel Swan missing?
Is it oversimplified on TikTok? How would a trained clinician
use this in a legitimate way? Also, can this be
used in dreams?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
That's so Jungi in dream work? Is there all Jungian concepts?
So I have to say I am not a TikTok
watcher and I don't know who those two people are.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
That's just oh I do okay?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So you will feel if I don't, if I'm not
answering it you. So this is work that I do
a lot with clients. This is actually a directive that
I've been doing for years to draw your shadows. So
the concept is that within us, all of Jungian concepts
begin within us. There is the part that we want
(14:08):
to avoid the most. So the classic Jungian moment in
pop culture is when Luke learns that Darthus's father right
within all of us is this part that we would
like to not be there, that we do anything we
can to reject to distancer ourselves. And shadow work is
(14:32):
if you can befriend your shadow, you can be way
more integrated and tolerate the parts of yourself that are
distasteful to you. Or more than that, if we get
into Jungian dream work, that's a whole other thing. But
Jung would have clients bring in their dreams and discuss
them and would have them then imagine who are you
(14:55):
as every part of that dream. But it's way more
complex than that. I don't even this is like.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
No, no, you described it. The only thing I would add,
I guess or emphasize is that it is the goal
of it is to integrate it, not to change it necessarily,
but to accept it, embrace that part of yourself and
(15:22):
find its voice and what it's trying to tell you
to do. And it can feel like a threat. It
can feel like something that is going to destroy you,
or shameful. Sometimes it's it's quite obvious the reason as
to why we have made it into a shadow, like
if you're gay, for example, that can be a shadow
(15:44):
part that can be a denied aspect of self.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Or I was thinking the sex therapy work I'm doing
like poor an addiction where someone is like or any
kind of addiction. I have this horrible thing in me
that I wish it wasn't true when I do everything
I can to keep it secret from everyone.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, even myself.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, and it controls my life and I keep going
back to it, and it's like, okay, if we can
get in there and figure out what do you do?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
What are you doing? Or it could be aggression anger, violence,
At least that's the way it feels when it's sectioned
off or shadowed.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And with my ADHD clients, it's often their ADHD symptoms
it's you know, why am I so forgetful, so messy?
So why can't I do the things I hate that
part of myself?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, And for some people, they'll go into denial about
something like that and will act like everything's fine and
deny that that they do have symptoms of ADHD because
they just they can't accept it yet. There's a difference
between being ashamed of something but very aware of it
and actually having it be a shadow, which is to
(16:49):
mainly be in denial, like the individual just doesn't even
recognize it consciously. You can make things half shadowed, but anyway,
Jordan Peterson teels one, I haven't heard anything directly that
from my memory that they've said about it. I'm guessing
that they both have good and bad things to say
(17:09):
about it, Contrary to what a lot of people will say.
Both of these individuals appeal to people for some legitimate,
right headed reasons. They have good things to say or
helpful things to say at times, but they also have
a lot of problems. I've done whole breakdown takedown videos
(17:29):
of Jordan Peterson and Tiel Swann pointing out the highly
problematic things that both of them say, but they also
say things that are things that absolutely I could get
behind and have. But I haven't heard them speak directly
about the shadow. I think that Jordan Peterson probably when
he's talking about shadow because he at least over time,
(17:53):
he's become, in my perspective, more and more conservative in
his outward munication, outwards teaching, and he's big on this
sort of traditional masculinity thing, and so I imagine that
his shadow talk has something to do with that, of like,
there's a lot of men out there who have shadowized
(18:16):
their true masculinity and they have to like bring it out.
I don't know, it's just a guess.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
So just on the flip side, if you want to
go down the Jungian rabbit hole, there are so many
great podcasts on Young books. You can read the source
material of Young. You can attend a Jungian conference, or
every major city has a Jungian foundation and you can
(18:42):
attend one of their talks. Jungians love to share and
talk and think and bring you in. It is an
incredibly complex theory. It's one of the foundational Western psychology theories.
And he was a peer of Freud, Is that correct, yeah, student, Yeah,
(19:04):
and they broke over. I believe one of the things
they broke was union's Young's focus on the collective unconscious
versus early sexual problems that defined I'm not saying this
very well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Don't know, you are right, well, their relationship was complicated.
I have a book behind me that's literally just the
letters between the two of them. It's just it's this
thick book that just has the massive amounts of communication
and the details that are in there. You know, the
way that each of them thought as they were developing
(19:44):
their thoughts, the mentorship that Freud gave Jung their disagreements,
there's a lot of nuance there. It's a complicated relationship.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
So I consider myself deep down at Jungian. So much
of the terror work I do is based on Jung's work,
but also Jung was a fantastic visual artist. And there's
a book I believe it's called The Red Book, which
are it's and it's printed like massive format, like two
feet by one and a half feet.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, we had a whole ceremony wearing it.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, and it's full of mandalas that he would paint
at about his dreams, like and they're exquisite, Like this
was an incredible This man was not just a really
talented psychologist, but an incredible visual artist. So you know,
do everyone do yourself a favor, go down the Jungen
rabbit hole for a day or so.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Speaking of things that I've rewatched that I had seen
before is the movie with Fastbender playing Jung.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Is it Young Versus Freud or something?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Well, no, it's the Something Method. I can't remember what
it's called. But Kiera Knightley plays this infamous or famous
patient of Jung, and it's at a period of time
when Yung was young and Freud was they were still
involved Freud and Jung, and the movie speculates about the
(21:15):
sexual relationship between Jung and his patient. It's very divisive
as a movie because I think it's a Cronenberg movie.
I'm not sure, but it is very S and M
and very sexual and is taking liberties and so a
lot of all my Junion friends hated the movie.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I never saw it's like, but I.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Like it because there's not a lot of movies out
there that depict this time and Vigo Mortensen plays Sigmund Freud.
I don't know, it's a pretty fascinating movie, but yeah,
it seems to go a little far with the S
and M kind of stuff, but I don't know it.
I feel like people in our field should talk about
(21:57):
this movie more because.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
It and we can do a podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Okay. It does get at a lot of the foundation
of our field and of the way that patients would
actually present back then, you know, with hysteria and stuff,
because it was a lot of conversion and a lot
of people that were struggling with things clearly, and it
would manifest in what their culture in Austria or wherever
(22:24):
they were. So With's Switzerland, the way that they thought
that people should manifest psychological issues unconsciously. You know. Conversions
are when we have a psychological stress and it converts
into a somatic response, like numbness or blindness or paralyzation
or hysterical fainting. Right, it's hard to know if that's
(22:47):
actually what's happening because you can't really scientifically measure this.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
But side note, but when I went to the Evergreen
Psychologie in the late eighties early nineties, all of the
women's bathrooms haven't we would call the past out coaches.
I don't know if they were for, who knows what
they were for, but like almost I think like every
public women's bathroom on campus had this little side room
that had a bed in it, and we all thought
(23:12):
it was so funny. The men's rooms the mineral shock,
Like what are you talking about the bed? We don't
have a bed, But I thought, like, were this for
the hysterical passing out? Like what were these couches?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, So it seems and even today when we look
across cultures, there are different somatic conversions in different cultures.
Like in the United States, we have fewer conversions apparently
seemingly than we did one hundred years ago, presumably because
we have other ways of expressing unconscious stress and we
(23:48):
have more likelihood of someone that will help us with
by listening to us or something like that. Again, it's
a generalization, but in other cultures, not only will those
supports not necessarily be there, but there's a different indoctrination
into the way that your body should express stress. And
(24:08):
in the one hundred years ago in Europe, there was
a different idea than what we would see today in
terms of how the body should manifest stress. And of
course women are more stressed in general, particularly back then,
because of the massive sexism and all that kind of stuff,
so there's even more need to express somehow, you know.
(24:30):
And so it seems as though people like Anna, oh,
you know Bertha Pappenheim, the famous patient of Joseph Breyer,
who was Freud's mentor, which is all of psychoanalysis based
on that relationship, and spiel Rhine, Anna, spiel Rhyn. I
think her name is the one with young. Anyway, I'm
getting down the rabbit hole. Another email, but let's take
(24:52):
a break.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Super impressed with your name, recall.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
All right? Another email listener, Hally. She says, can you
experience counter transference as a teacher? I hear you describing
it within the contax of your context. I think context.
I hear you describing it in your profession, of your
(25:20):
professional and it's there's some type it seems familiar with
dealing with. Sometimes a student can really get under my
skin and I have a hard time separating this feeling
from what I am supposed to do as a teacher.
How can teachers deal with this? We don't have super
We don't have supervisors like you do. Yeah, what do
you think? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I think it is ever present. You know, I mean
to go back to young. This person is probably annoying
you because some aspect of yourself or someone you love
is popping out through this person's words or actions. And
so any way, and I'm so sad that most fields
(26:02):
don't have supervision, Like lawyers also don't have supervision or consultation.
You know, there's all these intimate professions that the person's
personality can really impact treatment. We have so much evidence
of this or can influence teaching, and so yeah, I
(26:25):
would say to try and relax and see this person. Well,
I don't know, how do you explain how to address
counter transference in the moment. I usually say, try and
acknowledge what you're getting triggered by, why you find this
person so.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Ch Well, it's a topic that is in the literature
referred to as counter transference management, which is a whole system.
So it depends on the counter transference, it depends on you,
It depends on where you are in your career with
certain kind of transferential reactions to clients and students. I
(27:05):
suppose with certain topics of my kind of transference, I
can instantly recognize and deal with it without having to
see consultation because I've sought consultation so much and been
through so much therapy around it that I instantly recognize
how it feels, and I instantly I'm so familiar. There's
(27:26):
so much practice that I instantly know the pitfalls, like
I can do all this within like a couple seconds.
But in the beginning of my career, I wasn't even
aware that this was happening. And then at a mid
awareness I would be having the feeling and sort of
aware of it, and that I'd have to think about
it or talk about afterwards. So you know, it's very
(27:46):
different approaches to this and case by case. But and
some kind of transferences related to traumas of ourselves, and
some of them are not, some of them are induced,
or some of them are just regular feelings that you
get as as a therapist or as a teacher, And yeah,
how do you deal with it when when you're a
teacher the same things that you do when you're a therapist.
(28:10):
You become aware, have a system, and don't tell yourself, well,
next time, I'll just handle it better. You've got a
prep and you've got to do the work, and you've
got to dig deep and you've got to figure out
what's going on there, because if you have a vulnerability,
then it's incredibly important and very fruitful in all aspects
(28:33):
of your life to become aware of it and heal
from it so that it doesn't affect negatively your your
body and mind and soul and emotions in the moment,
but also won't interfere with your professional efforts, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
So yeah, yeah, And I think often the first step
for me when I'm experience in counter transference is why
is this behavior so annoying to me? It's the first step.
Would this be as annoying to anyone else? What is
happening here? Why am I so triggered? And I just
(29:10):
want to acknowledge For teachers, there's often it's true for therapists,
but there can really be institutional pressures that are different.
They're expected to teach this kid this certain thing and
a certain amount of time. I mean, therapists can also
be under those time constraints. And I work with a
lot of teachers in my practice, and you know, sometimes
(29:31):
it's that kid isn't going to what The external pressures
can really impact how you're feeling about a student.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Absolutely. Another aspect is that being a teacher is more
akin to being a group therapist than an individual therapist.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, and the relationship, you know, if you're seeing them hourly,
five days a week, that's a very intense relationship, right.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You become very much entwined in each other psychologies and
the roles that develop in particular systemic groups. You know,
in particular systems, where there's a scapegoat, there's a star,
there's the silent one. Particularly when there's stress in the system,
(30:17):
so everyone is being gravitated towards and allocating themselves into
a particular role. The problem with roles is that they
become more pronounced, more rigid, more exaggerated when the system
is stressed out and each individual is not allowed to
be flexible to meet their needs given the scenario, they're
(30:38):
at one more emails, one more super long term patient.
So I changed super long. I changed the form to
allow for not only three plus years, but also six plus. Yes,
and Serenity from California, whom I know I have met,
but you you might have met. Serenity is a very
(30:59):
long term high contributor to the podcast Yea. She says,
I was wondering why the majority of therapists are ineffective
and seemingly poorly trained. Ever since my old therapist died
in October of twenty eighteen, I've struggled to find another
therapist who both has the correct theoretical orientation and training
(31:22):
and is also a good fit for me. I've tried
many therapists since then. Some have lasted a few months,
others a few sessions. I can't say any of them
has really helped me. I feel like most therapists are
only able to address surface c livil symptoms and not
the root cause of those symptoms. It's like if you
have lung cancer and you go to the doctor and
all they do is prescribe cough syrup. My issues are
(31:45):
mostly caused by childhood relational traumat I think relational psychodonamic
therapy works best for me. Psychodynamic therapists are hard to find, though,
and even when I do find one, they're often super
boring and I can't connect to them, let alone attach
to them. It's super frustrated, and sometimes.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Iferentity does not have serenity, I.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Feel sometimes I feel hopeless. I realize insurance companies favor
short term therapies like CBT, but so many therapists don't
accept insurance, and so I don't understand why this preference
by insurance dominates the field. I think your podcast should
be required listening for clinicians, So I'm annoyed when I
tell a therapist about your podcast and they have no
(32:23):
interest in listening to it. End of emial serenity good?
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah? I also fear my therapists will die and I
will never be able to find another therapist as good
as my therapist. So you're living that, and I'm so sorry.
It sounds like it's been a multi year struggle at
this point. So I would look at a psychoanalytic There
must be a California Psychoanalytic Association and check out folks there,
(32:55):
you know, training in different parts of the country is
really different. If you lived in New York, you'd find
tons of psychoolag therapists. You're not going to find as
many as in California because that focuses on marriage and
family therapy. So there are regional differences in the work.
We haven't talked about this at all, but any minute
now the Multi State Pact is going to open up
(33:18):
and therapists are going to be able to just like
traveling nurses, therapists are going to be able to work.
I think there's thirty three states, so hopefully that will
open things up for you. You can maybe see someone
who's trained on the East Coast. You know, therapy is hard.
I wouldn't say that the training is bad. I would
(33:40):
say that a lot of therapists are afraid to go deep.
It's it's hard work. What do you think, I can't
think of it.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'll say I think the training is bad. I think that,
and this is just my sense of things based on
my limited pocket of experience, but I think that the
training has either shifted more towards CBT, but also just
more towards I don't know how to describe it it.
(34:14):
When we were in graduate school, the professors the baby
boomers who were teaching us, there was a greater likelihood
that they had a lot of depth, and whether they
called themselves psychodamic therapists or not, you know, these were
the people who seemed more like Irvin Yallam, you.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Know who's thinking of philand of age.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, people who you wouldn't even be able to lock
them down with a particular.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Theorem prorotation doctor Gwendolyn Jones. I mean these like they
were amazing.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah. It was about philosophy and depth, and they had
much more foundation and actual humanistic therapy and and philosophy.
There was a lot of psychodonemic philosophy that was also integrated.
You know, they knew about CBT, but it was just
(35:09):
like a tool that they would use. But the foundation
of who they were and the person of the therapist,
the wisdom that was required, and the way that people talked.
And you and I came up under those people, and
I am very much in that world. I know you
are too. But the new generation of therapists are being
(35:30):
taught by either Gen x's or even millennials, who are
good people, and many of them are great therapists. I'm
not generalizing at all. The way that I see it
in terms of the shifts in emphasis is that the
con to the way we were trained was there's very
little professional ethics and professional professionality that was taught to us.
(35:55):
We were taught by people that might not ever even
talk about that. It was just like, let's sit in
a room and sit on the floor and talk about
the meaning of life and that kind of stuff. Whereas today,
because of the effort to professionalize that's been going on
for a long time our profession and for a lot
(36:18):
of good reasons, there's a lot more emphasis on professional
ethics and being professional professionalism, how to make money, and
how to keep good notes and how to not get
in trouble, and all those things are absolutely important. People
listen to this podcast know that I'm a very big
proponent of that kind of emphasis. But something has to
(36:40):
be sacrificed, and I think what gets sacrificed is sitting
in a circle and talking about philosophy and about the
meaning of life and about the human experience and about
what you know. Bougenthal and Carl Rogers and Freud and
Jung and Karen Horney and all these people. Irv Yolam,
(37:01):
what they can give us instead of just reading the
summary of just like, here's how you actively listen to someone,
Carl Rogers said, you just repeat what they say back
to them. Like the reduction that happens to humanistic psychology
is a crime, I think. And that's my sense is
that something had to go. And when ethics was being emphasized,
(37:28):
and the worry of the scrutiny of the public and
the shame of having famous cases where people would have
sex with their clients or being called out for this
and that, you know, there was an effort to fix that,
which is good, but like I said, something had to go.
And then you add the emphasis of insurance, you know,
(37:50):
you just have to follow the money, and the emphasis
on short term therapies and CBT. I feel like on average,
they just don't like the kind of of philosophical musings
within psychoanalytic thought and they're just like, look, all that's bullshit,
and let's just be pragmatic about this, you know what
I mean. And there could be some wisdom to that.
(38:11):
You know, short term therapies can be great solution focus
narrative therapies. These are short term therapies. But all of
these movements have conspired to result in what I think
to be an unfortunate result of fewer therapists that actually
know how to help people, that actually know the foundation
(38:32):
of the human experience and how therapy actually works, or
how it can work in a way that is more
suited to a lot of clients. Because CBT can be
very helpful and is very suited for some scenarios. Absolutely,
I use it all the time, but I do think
that there is something lost.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Well, and I'm wondering if this is why IFS Internal
Family Systems is so popular right now, is that it
allows for people to enter into something that's a little
deeper as a way of studying, to sit with the
client with a concept.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yeah. I mean I've always said that IFS is basically
just a simpler way of explaining psychodynamic or Gestalt or
other more elaborate systems of understanding. Plus a lot of
the writing in psychoanalytic literature object relations stuff, self egotherapy,
(39:32):
so and so, and it's so impossible.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
To understand so rejecting breasts.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, well that even that is like, well, at least
there's somewhat of a kernel of understanding that we could
relate to. But if you just read client. Yeah, most
of us, what the fuck are you talking? But it
was also one hundred years ago they were dealing with
a different language system. So I just think a lot
of factors are conspiring to result in a lot of theory.
And then you and the current prom problem is you
(40:01):
have a whole generation of therapists that are halfway in
graduate school and another half of them is on TikTok.
And there's a lot of really stupid people on TikTok
talking about things that they don't know anything about, including clinicians.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Well, and also the move that everything's online. I mean
there's a whole section of clinicians that have barely sat
in a room with a live person, and that's so different.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, I mean, I hope that that doesn't negate the
possibility of good instruction and supervision. And I'll say this,
I'm generalizing. There are plenty of professors out there, plenty
of students today that are absolutely completely in my and
your camp along these lines. I'm not saying that it's
(40:48):
all like this. You know, there's every professor is different,
every program is different, every student is different. But it
is worrisome. I see a lot more therapists today that
have basically no understanding and no way to gain understanding
that I think is required to actually help people like
(41:11):
Serenity from California and I you know, that's the question
that she's saying, is like.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Who is deep enough for me?
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah? Why is it so hard to find a good therapy?
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (41:20):
The other thing that I'll say, Serenity to you specifically
is that you had a really good relationship with a
therapist for a long time and then your therapist died.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I would say, Serenity, if there's one gift we
can give you today, it's go to a several day
grief and loss retreat to deal with this loss that
is clearly influencing you now and your ability to reattach right.
And there's no way that that can't. I mean, I
I one of my dearest friends is retiring and I'm
(41:54):
getting a bunch of her different clients, and one of
her clients who's come to me is so sad, and
we talk about that and we sit with that, and
she's like, you know, I don't know if I want
to come back, And I'm like, I totally get it.
I'm not, and I'm I'm equally sad that my friend
is retiring. So we both have grief about this, but
(42:17):
you know, we sit in the grief and the loss
of it. I remember one time I was with Kaiser
back in the day, no it was group health then,
and I was at the big Kaiser Center seeing a
therapist and they fired my therapist and then he just
gave me someone else. And I was like, I need
to process you with you with the fact that, like
(42:38):
I had a different therapist and now I have you,
and she was like, that's not why I'm here. And
I was like, well, then I can't see you because
if you can't address with me the loss that, like
some corporation just fired my therapist and I worked with
them for like two years, then like we're not a
good match. So yeah, the loss of a therapist can
be huge if it's some one that you can really
(43:01):
talk to, right And so.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
As I think you're getting that partially at least, is
that that loss can make it very hard.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Because no one's going to be that person, no matter
how smart they.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Are, even if they are of that ilk, it will
take a long time to develop that. And so there's
a possibility that you know, you're saying that the ones
that you do find they're boring. And maybe that's the case.
And you know, you were spoiled with a good connection
(43:33):
and a good therapist for you, a good fit, and
so what you might be running into is just it
takes a long time. You know, it's kind of like dating.
It's hard to find a good match.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, and why was this? Why did is there? I
don't mean to psychoanalyze you, Serenity, but you wrote in
so you know what you're getting. Well, it's this this
attachment wound repeat any previous attachment wounds? Or was there
no good attachment before? And this was this therapist was
(44:04):
the first attachment. But you know there if a pattern
like this, if you cannot find a good therapist anywhere,
I'm just curious, what are you bringing to this situation? Yeah,
because you at some point, you know, we're in the
Winnicott category of like who can be good enough? There's
(44:26):
nobody that's going to be that person who left us.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
And just one final little tip is a way to
expedite the tender ification, if you will, of finding the
right therapist would be instead of actually meeting with all
the therapists, you actually just email them or talk with
them on the phone for five minutes and just have
a prompt that you ask them.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Are you funny?
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Well, I would ask I have childhood relational traumas related
to this, and that what's your general approach to me?
I would imagine that would be a very good screener,
particularly if you did it over the phone, because they
wouldn't be able to think about it, because if you
asked me that question, I would have a very concise answer,
(45:12):
and I would understand what they're getting at, and I
would understand that they have run into other therapists that
don't have a good approach or don't seem to have
any clue what you're talking about. So you can quickly
eliminate a lot of people without having going through all
the problem. Then once you get past that, so maybe
(45:33):
the second question is tell me a joke. All right,
Well that doesn't for that episode. Everyone out there, please
take care of yourself. Find a therapist that fits with you,
because it's
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Worth trying again.
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