May 8, 2025 • 68 mins
SHOW #83! Season 3, Episode 14: Welcome to the disSOLViNG fear podcast!
IN THIS EPISODE, I talk with Dr. Joan Peters: a professor emerita from California State University. She recently wrote a memoir about her experience with talk therapy, and the benefits of psychoanalysis (analyzing how our childhood experiences and subconscious beliefs end up impacting our adult behavior and decisions).
This episode isn't about research and academics! It's just two "gals" talking about therapy, and one of them (Dr. Peters) just happens to be a professor with a PhD! We chat about Joan's personal experience with therapy and the many ways that psychoanalysis helped her, especially when she was in her twenties. Therapy sessions completely eliminated her recurring nightmares!
Joan's stories about her therapy journey are electric and enlightening! We take a deep dive into the benefits of therapy, and how psychoanalysis helped her make sense of (and dissolve) old childhood fears.
Share this episode with anyone in your life who is considering therapy, having sleep issues, or trying to process a past experience or trauma.
Learn more about Dr. Joan Peters at www.untanglingjoan.com/home
Below are links to the books and resources we mention in this episode. Enjoy!
The Body Keeps the Score: link to this book on Amazon
Untangling: link to this book on Amazon
AMAZING THERAPY RESOURCES
Therapy can help so many of us shed light on our subconscious beliefs from childhood, and the emotions and perspectives that we carry around with us, as a result of our past experiences.
As the famous Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
Fear doesn't run the she show, YOU do!
Welcome to the family.
Much Love,
Alissa
Free monthly newsletter at https://missalissa.myflodesk.com/newsletter
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Let's Connect on Instagram @miss.alissa.shirk
Thank you for being HERE at disSOLViNG fear.
disSOLVE fear and navigate life with courage, creativity, and authenticity!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Dissolving Fear podcast, where fear doesn't run
the show, you do Fear doesn't run this show.
I'm your host, Miss Alyssa Shirk, and if you're new to the
podcast, thank you for being here at Dissolving Fear.
You can scroll through over 80 episodes and explore this
podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.
(00:20):
I share a variety of authentic, informative, and inspiring guest
interviews, as well as proven tools and practices that can
help us all dissolve fear and anxiety and live our best lives.
Personally, I'm a coach, speakerfor Paulo, yoga teacher, and
creative entrepreneur on a mission to help people face the
uncertainty of life with more courage and creativity.
(00:44):
Follow this podcast. You'll love the results.
Loving life is what we're all about here on the podcast and at
missalyssa.com. Enjoy the show.
If you're looking for authentic inspiration, today is your day.
My guest isn't a therapist. She's not offering any services
or life hacks. Doctor Joan Peters is a PhD at
(01:04):
California State University who wrote a book about how she has
healed, evolved, and embraced a new life as a result of therapy.
She is simply here to talk abouther healing journey and the
power of therapy from a patient's perspective.
It's an honor to have you here on the podcast.
Doctor Joan Peters, welcome. Thank you so much for having me,
(01:25):
Alyssa. So you're a professor of
literature and writing at California State University, and
today you're joining us from Ojai, California, where you live
with your husband, dogs and somespunky little chickens.
Indeed I do. That's right.
I am a professor emerita, so I'mretired and I I did teach there
(01:50):
for 16 years from the time it opened.
Wow. And then you recently used your
literary know how to write a memoir, which we're definitely
talking about today. So before we dive into your
personal story about your personal healing journey, if you
don't mind, catch me up on your professional life and how that
(02:11):
fell into place over the years. And then we're going to dive
into your personal life as well.Have you always been a
California girl? What was your?
How did your life unfold? So no, I'm a New York City girl
and, and I think my mother told me even when I was a little
girl, I said when I grow up I want to live on a farm.
(02:33):
And I kind of always had this fantasy of the country and rural
life. And, you know, I spent most of
my time in cities. But finally, when my husband and
I, well, my daughter was six years old and it was kind of a
good time to move because she hadn't quite started school yet.
(02:54):
I mean, she was just had been inkindergarten and so on.
And we decided that this was a moment where we could make a big
move. And we moved to this little town
we had visited, only visited to,I mean, to, to talk about a leap
(03:14):
of faith. We, we really didn't know much
about how we would live there, what it was like.
But it turned out to be, you know, we followed our instincts
and it turned out to be a great move for us.
We love living in a small town. I mean, you can really when you,
(03:35):
when you've lived in this city all your life, you so appreciate
the dry cleaning person knowing who you are and the person in
the bank saying hello, Joan. I mean, it's just so special.
The pharmacy will say, oh, no rush, we'll stay open for you.
Just come on, you know, come on down.
(03:58):
And I think we get more of a kick out of it than people
who've grown up in a small town 'cause it's so exotic for us.
And you, you know, you kind of know everybody you see, you've
seen them in the grocery store or on one of the two main
streets. There are only two so.
(04:20):
That's fun. Yeah, yeah.
And As for teaching, by the way?I, I always wanted to be a
college professor and I, I started out training for that
and did it from the time I was 22 years.
Old. Loved it always.
(04:43):
I'm actually a full time high school teacher right now and
obviously I have a number of passion projects such as this
podcast and I do coaching and speaking.
So I understand that sometimes our students end up inspiring us
in unexpected and deeply fulfilling ways.
Did your students at the collegeinspire you to write this book?
(05:04):
Or what was the turning point for you that made you decide to
write the memoir, which is called Untangling, by the way?
Thank you for asking that. And I did notice that you were a
teacher too. And I'm so glad you mentioned
what we get from our students because I always felt like it
(05:26):
was such a privilege to be with these interesting minds and
their their point of view on whatever you're reading or
talking about. And it was always so exciting
for me to feel their excitement about, you know, just learning
about the world. So, yeah, I've, I've, I've been
(05:51):
AII feel lucky that I get paid, even though it wasn't that much.
You know, you, you go in to teaching because you love it,
not to make a fortune. But I felt so lucky to be paid
for this work. That was a pleasure.
Every day was a pleasure. Even the student who's not
(06:11):
paying attention, you know, who falls asleep, you know, there's
always a way of contacting a student if you really care.
I think anyway, that was, that was a great pleasure for me.
And I taught creative writing really almost from the beginning
of my teaching career when they didn't really have so many
(06:35):
creative writing classes. So they were happy to have me
experiment and create a class that hadn't even been on the,
you know, on the curriculum and learning from teaching my
students to write. And eventually I focused in on
memoir because I found that to be the most compelling.
(06:59):
And to get these my students whowere let's say, 19 to 24 or 30,
you know, sometime they're olderstudents up until I've had
students who are 70 years old who've come back to take
classes. And I found that.
(07:20):
What they? When they really dug in, they
had such amazing stories that. We.
Have such amazing stories to tell one another about our lives
that we would never guess you know the person sitting in the
next. Chair that that they've had this
experience or that family drama or whatever it is, or this
(07:45):
extraordinary sister or this totally ordinary little brother,
you know that they can describe it and bring to life their,
their experience. It's it's magical.
And in teaching, I, I often would write something along with
(08:06):
my students to give them an ideaof, of what I was asking for.
And and that did contribute to my writing, my own memoir.
Was there a turning point that made you decide now is the time
to write well? I mean, this was a kind of
wonderful, mysterious process. I had been writing about my life
(08:29):
for a very long time, and I hadn't quite found the story.
In the story. You have to have a really clear
story to tell. And I had a lot of different
incidents, but they didn't all come together.
And I was in a deep psychoanalysis.
And I'm, I'm happy to explain what that is and how it's a
(08:52):
little different from therapy, although it is therapy, but it's
a specific kind. When I started to e-mail my
analyst, because my problems really came up in the middle of
the night, I would wake with nightmares.
I had restless legs. I sometimes would have to get up
(09:15):
in the middle of the night, put on my coat, over my pajamas and
go for a walk, just to walk off this kind of fear energy.
And during the day I was perfectly fine, competent, not
excessively frightened. And so I began to e-mail my
analyst in the night when it washappening to me, so I could
(09:36):
better express what it was. Because by the time the daylight
came, I I only remembered it vaguely, and at one point I'd
been emailing her. For quite a while.
And the emails became more and more elaborate as I was
explaining more to her about notonly what my nightmare was, but
(10:00):
what my other. Thoughts were and what was so
why I was so. Frightened in the middle of the
night. It's called night, Night
frights. And finally she said to me, have
you ever thought about writing about psychoanalysis?
Because of course that's what I was doing in these emails.
One after another after another was writing about.
(10:23):
The. Process of coming to see what is
in my psyche, what is in my mindand and making connections and
and then she would we would discuss it and then I would have
more understanding for the next time I was going to write her in
the night and I think that that because I was really.
(10:48):
Already writing it, she was inspired and she also knew me
well enough to know I've been writing all my life and, and I,
I mean, I have published severalbooks.
So, so I, I had had a lot of practice and she knew I'd been
(11:09):
struggling to find the right vehicle.
And so in a way, we came up withit together.
But it was definitely her idea. But boy, it was like immediate
I. It was electric, like a sign had
just lit up. This is my book.
And I realized once I started tolook, do research, that almost
(11:34):
no one has done this, no one haswritten.
There are a couple of books about therapy and there are a
couple, couple of classics patient.
There's a patient of Freud's anda patient of Winnicott back in
the, you know, 1920s and 30s andand and 50s.
(11:58):
But just a handful really just about four.
And they're not really very complete.
They're sort of impressions and just a little bit about what the
psychoanalysis was. So essentially I realized that
this had not been done. And also going through this
(12:19):
process, I was really longing toread someone else's experience
of it because it's so, I mean, really, it's very heavy, it's
very dramatic. And it's not like dinner table
conversation, you know? Who are you going to talk?
To about this, a lot of people, you know, we don't, we don't
(12:41):
talk to each other about our therapy.
You know, it's, it's very private.
So I was very alone with it. And I wished I had a book to
read to essentially to tell me that I wasn't, I wasn't the only
one going through this hard process.
And I decided I'd better write the book for myself because it
(13:05):
wasn't out there. And my hope is that other people
will, it will help them, you know, to understand what they're
going through in therapy or an analysis, and also just to give
people some tools to think psychoanalytically about their
(13:29):
own lives. Because I wish I had had that,
you know, from, from I was so clueless, you know, I had no
idea why I was making certain decisions.
It just felt like I that's what I'm going to do, you know, And
often they were not good decisions.
(13:49):
You know, they were just too, they were precipitous.
I shouldn't have done it. And the wrong, the wrong
boyfriend, the wrong, you know, whatever.
And, and once you have a sense of why you do the things you do,
there's, it's all, it's all in there.
It's all in the brain. Yeah.
(14:12):
Well, I'm excited to have this interview because I am.
I like deep talk more than smalltalk.
And so I thought we would dive in.
I haven't had a chance to read your book.
I will read it this summer when I'm off of school.
But I'm just guessing that it was kind of like your body's
subconscious way of bringing thetrauma to the surface in these
(14:34):
dreams. Your body was like knock, knock,
knock. We are going to look at this
because it's going to help you to lift this.
Yes. And I think I think a lot of
people who are very competent intheir lives, I was very
functional and competent and hada.
Full and rich. Life so it it's, you know, like
(14:56):
the bestseller, the book that's been on the bestseller list.
For for I don't know. Years now, the body keeps the
score. It's all in there.
And that's what was coming out physically because I really
couldn't understand it psychologically.
But once I began to put it together with the help of a very
(15:19):
good analyst, you know, it relieved the, the, the
nightmares and, and I began to, began to be able to make sense
of my life and to connect with the part of my life that was
hidden from me and only coming out in, in my body.
(15:40):
You know, and I think a lot of people have headaches or stomach
aches or, you know, they have physical manifestations of, of
their anxieties, of their, of, of their hurts, of, of things
that are difficult to look at. And often we have no idea what
to do. What?
Even if we know, know them, you know, Even if we're aware of how
(16:05):
anxious we are, or you know. How?
How we? We make bad decisions or we we
get too. Brought up about.
Things and we're too reactive and we can't stop it because we
(16:26):
don't understand it. So yeah.
And then rather than saying, well, this is just how I am, you
know, I have fear, I have baggage.
We can change ourselves and we can change what we carry through
life with us. And I do want to talk about the
difference between therapy and psychoanalysis.
(16:46):
But first, can you tell us a little bit about your story?
From what I can tell, you went through something and then the
psychoanalysis sessions have really changed your life for the
better and given your story a happy ending.
So if you want to talk about thedifference between therapy and
psychoanalysis, that's great. But I'm also curious how you
(17:08):
ended up seeking help in the 1stplace.
Like you were having nightmares,what was what was affecting you?
What's your story? Well, as I say, I was really
doing well in my life. I had a great, this is I'm
talking about when I was 27 years old.
So I was just setting out in life, but I was doing really
(17:29):
well. I had a great job, lovely
partner. Things were going OK.
But I did. Have these nightmares and I
would wake up screaming and of course I would wake up the
person I was sleeping with my partner at that time.
And finally, you know the. I didn't think about it, but my
(17:53):
partner said, you know, something's scaring you and
you're scaring me and you're waking me up every night You
need to go to therapy. And I didn't even know the
difference between therapy and psycho psychoanalysis.
I just, I, I thought, yeah, I'llget a therapist and I found a
therapist and we began. Almost.
(18:15):
Immediately. To talk about these nightmares
and she would ask me some questions about my childhood and
I. It was the first time I realized
I didn't know much about my childhood.
I only remembered really a lot from when I was older, when I
(18:36):
was 8. And the nightmares were very
specific. There were women who were going
to come, come after me to kill me, but with a needle, with an
to inject something into me thatwould take away my ability to
fight them off. And, and just as they were going
(18:56):
to destroy me with this needle, I would wake up screaming.
And I went with that, having no idea.
I, I nobody ever tried to hurt me or kill me.
Nobody was ever mean to me and my family, so it's not obvious,
but she began to ask me these questions and when I.
(19:17):
Couldn't answer any of them. You know, I really just didn't
know. About my early childhood, she
sent me to interview my relatives and I did and.
Boy. Did I find out a lot?
For one thing, I kind of knew this, but no one ever spoke of
it. My father died when I was 2 and
(19:40):
I didn't really know anything more about it and it turns out
as she asked me to get more information from my mother and
my mother poured out this story.I mean, I was an adult by then
and I had never heard it, but she told me how he had gotten
(20:00):
diagnosed with cancer when I wasborn, the day I was born, and
that he. Was dying and we had lived in a
tiny apartment, just three roomsand he was dying in the bedroom.
And she would have to prepare morphine needles.
Needles full of morphine. I was a little girl, 2 years
(20:23):
old. I would and she and my analyst
would send me back to ask my mother where was my high chair,
what would I have seen because she was preparing the needles in
the kitchen and I would have been there.
You're not going to let a 2 yearold walk around the house by
themselves. So I did see those needles and
(20:46):
little by little this man who was my father.
And at one time I saw pictures that I finally found we only had
four of me on his shoulders and in his arms.
So I must have had an experienceof having a daddy.
(21:06):
And then this man wasted away to70 lbs and my mother was giving
him needles. And I watched this and little by
little she explained to me, and this is psychoanalytic theory,
that as a, as a small child, I would have made-up a kind of
(21:28):
fairy tale, cause little children think in black and
white. They, they have no subtlety.
And in my mind, my mother was bringing these needles to the
father and he was dying. In other words, she was killing
him. And, and I, I, I said, that
(21:48):
doesn't make any sense to me. My mother was feeding me, she
was clothing me. Why would I think she was
killing me and she was she My analyst would explain how
children think and why and even though.
You were trying to make sense ofit all, and that's why you were
having the dreams that needles will make you unable to fight
(22:09):
off things. Because when you saw your dad
get the medicine at the needle, then he was really unable to,
you know, fight the cancer and survive.
And so it kind of took the fightout of them.
And so you were having nightmares, the needles where
someone was coming after you, even a woman like your mom
trying to take the fight out of you.
And if she would have got a holdof you and stuck you with 1, you
(22:33):
would be losing your fight. Exactly, exactly.
And my father, who had been a very big, strong man, was
wasting away. So I was seeing him get weaker
and weaker. I was seeing it, my mother.
Described how she had to carry him into the bathroom to wash
(22:54):
him you know, and. You to see all of that, Yeah.
I know, I know. And and this is honestly, I had
no memory. I, I, I thought I, my mother
would say to me, you didn't knowanything.
You were a little, a little kid,you were a baby.
You didn't know. And that's how my mother made
herself feel better. But obviously I didn't know.
(23:16):
And when this this took about? Six months.
But when this analysis, when shegave me her analysis of the
dream, it went away. I did not have them anymore.
It was so dramatic for me. It was so it was.
(23:37):
That was the moment I discoveredwhat the unconscious is and how
it holds something that's so much more complicated and and
scary that you have to, you haveto just forget it and put it out
of your mind if you're a small child and you cannot process it
(24:02):
and nobody's helping you to understand it.
My mother just couldn't. You know, my mother was 26 years
old, two little babies, no money, and she just couldn't do
you know, she. Couldn't sit there and and
explain everything to us and I don't know.
Cheer us up. And so she really also had to
(24:26):
leave a week after he died. She had to go back to work full
time. She was a a, a model in a
showroom. So suddenly we were without him
or her. And I think it really was
traumatic. And my mother dealt with having
to leave us at home with a babysitter by just pretending
(24:49):
everything was fine. And I think a lot of people do
that, you know, with the best motives, You know, as if if I
just keep the machinery going, it'll all work out.
Because she was, you know, she was in her 20s.
She really didn't know how to make it better, and I understand
(25:12):
that now, but as a small child you just feel abandoned and
you're terrified and you have nightmares and that's how it
happens. The Doctor Who gave the
injections, who always came to the house back in that day, was
a kindly, wonderful man and I loved his ministrations.
(25:36):
I loved, you know, when, when older authoritative men were
kind and, and fatherly. So I wasn't, I mean, it really
was unconscious. It was not in the real world as
it were, where I was coping verywell with whatever I needed to
(25:57):
do. So we can be very divided.
You know, we can, we can have our conscious minds really
having a pretty good time and our unconscious minds holding
all the suffering that we don't know really how to.
How to? How to?
Process what to do with, especially if we got kind of
(26:22):
stuck at A at an early age, whether it's five years old or
two years old. These are these are ages when
you really need a grown up to tell you what's going on and why
you feel the way you do and to acknowledge your feelings.
(26:43):
My mother would keep saying you were a baby, you didn't, you
didn't understand any of it. And that's not true.
You know, a 2 year old. I watched my own 2 year old
daughter. I was really curious and she
knew her daddy very well. Oh yeah, they know us better
than we know ourselves. Exactly.
(27:05):
So, you know, then I really saw how attached a AA1 year old is a
2 year old is to her father, youknow, if he makes himself
available. And I saw that, you know, you
really, you really can't just dismiss it as old babies are
fine and they'll, you know, they'll forget about it.
(27:27):
No. We don't forget about it, you
know. We're they're reading the vibe
of the household and the vibe ofthe parents emotions like their
little empaths. They're so.
That's exactly right. Yeah.
So that was my introduction in my 20s to what psychoanalysis
(27:48):
had to offer. And it was pretty spectacular.
I mean, just six months in and my nightmares of, of many years
finally stopped. And I also in that time learned
my family's history and, and I, I had a chance to sort it out
(28:10):
and to understand who my mother was and why she was not able to,
you know, take, make better choices about how to, how to
explain to two little children that their father died.
She just didn't, you know? I think we.
Had a real privilege to be able to talk to her about it later in
(28:35):
life. Like I'm just talking about a
lot of listeners and like myselfincluded, like we don't want to
maybe go talk to our parents about how our childhood was for
so many reasons. I mean, I think, you know, like
in my case, I think my mom's perspective is like, everything
was fine, similar to your right,everything, everything was fine.
(28:58):
It was fun. But like from our perspective,
you know, our dad was an alcoholic.
He went to rehab. Like there's proof in the
pudding. Like he literally went away.
You know, we're not just making up that we think they drank too
much or whatever, right? So I just think for some people,
it might be really hard to go interview your family.
(29:19):
And so that was like a real a real blessing for you, I think
because, yeah, sometimes the parents, they're not as
talkative about what they did wrong or they could take offense
to it. And well.
Does she take offense to? It well, what I was going to say
is if you have a therapist or you really need an analyst
(29:42):
because the therapist doesn't necessarily want to push you
into the depths that we're talking about, but if it's an
analyst who can support you in doing it, it's really up to you
and me to take the risk of saying what you just said.
But Mom, it wasn't all OK Dad was an alcoholic.
(30:06):
That hurt me. We were there too, you know, in
other words, you have to be willing to push it and to
confront and to upset your mom, My mother, I, when my mother
poured out this story, it was the first time I saw her cry.
(30:27):
And I immediately wanted to say,OK, do over, forget it.
I'm sorry, I asked. It was so frightening to see her
breakdown and some part of us doesn't want to take that chance
to to. You don't really want to see
your mother upset. You don't really want to be
(30:49):
confront confronting. You don't want to push it.
And part of you is scared to open that all up and to see just
how you know how much family upset is underneath all of that.
The other thing is I didn't justask my mother, I asked other
(31:09):
relatives who were actually moreforthcoming.
So then I had material to take back to my mother and it was so
worth it because finally she also was able to unburden
herself. She didn't have to keep up the
charade that everything was justfine and you were perfectly all
(31:34):
right with all of it. You know that that it's costing
our parents also to, to really to lie to themselves, to be in
denial, if you see what I mean, And, and to take those chances
and to risk all of that. Well, you know, that's how
(31:56):
closeness gets made. I wasn't close with my mother.
And after many of these kinds ofconversations, there was 1
moment where my mother was talking about how hard it was
for her, you know, having to go back to work and having to be so
(32:16):
they didn't know, having no money and all of it.
And how again she said to me, but you, you and David, you
didn't know anything. I protected you.
And at that moment, I said, Mom,it happened to me and David too,
not just you. And she reached for my hand and
(32:39):
said I didn't know. And that was an amazing moment
for me of breakthrough with my mother.
I mean, I had, I had really never, never gotten her to
acknowledge what we had gone through and that we were as a
family going through it together, even though we were
(33:03):
small children. So I think it's worth it if you
have the support, if you have a a therapist who's also trained
psychoanalytically, they don't have to be a psychoanalyst if
they understand the psychoanalytics underneath.
And they can help you to bear bear creating a new relationship
(33:32):
because you have to let the old one go and know that this is
going to be different. This is going to shake things
up. Yeah, if you can share it, you
can bear it. Yes.
And. I think a lot of people isolate.
We isolate because we're afraid of criticism and judgement.
(33:52):
And so, you know, you could havejust gone through life having
nightmares and not shared that with anybody.
But it's good you have a loving husband who was like, hey, babe,
why are you, you know, up at night with all these nightmares?
But yes, sharing can be very cathartic.
Do you think it was cathartic and healing for your mom to
actually tell that story to you?Unbelievably, yes, absolutely.
(34:14):
I mean, it was filled with guiltfor her because she, you know,
she had to confront the fact that we were, we had been
hurting, you know, and so, you know, it was a it was mixed.
It was really hard and she didn't have a therapist to help
her. It's just, it's just wasn't in
(34:36):
her generations toolbox. You know, she was never going to
go to a therapist and, and, and she didn't, she was such a an
independent person who would never, never speak publicly
about these private matters, even to me.
(34:59):
And she was somebody, you know, don't trust anybody and don't
need anybody and be, you know, take care of yourself kind of
woman. And she did.
And she was tough because she had to be, but she was also a
very forbidding woman. And when she told me these
(35:22):
stories the first time, I, I remember thinking another mother
and daughter would have fallen into each other's arms and just
held on, right? She's pouring out the story and
crying. I would never have touched my
mother that way. She was so forbidding.
(35:42):
She was like so in her body, so stiff, you know, she was a
model. So she carried herself very a
kind of dramatically and and we couldn't even hug each other in
that moment. So it it was, I'm not trying to
say, you know, she told me the story and it was all fine.
(36:06):
It wasn't she, you know, by thistime she was in late middle age
and she was who she was and she could only go so far.
But there there was, we were much closer than we ever had
been. To me it was, it was incredible
so. It was worth, worth the risk and
(36:26):
the effort and the work. Did she end up ever getting
remarried? Oh, yes.
She remarried when when I was 5 and my brother was 10 and she
married a man who was highly asthmatic.
And every time he came to state where he came, moved into our
little apartment, he would get very ill.
(36:49):
And he went to an asthma clinic.And they were very smart.
They were psychoanalytic. And they said to him, they said
to him, you have to move your new family into a new apartment
and do not bring one thing from her former marriage.
So we left and and suddenly we were in a completely new
(37:14):
environment. A new apartment, new furniture.
There wasn't a fork from the oldapartment, nothing.
Not a picture. And I never saw.
That's why I had never seen evena picture of this dead father
until I rummaged through my mother's drawer when I was 8
(37:35):
years old and found four photographs of, of him with,
with me and my brother. And I had never, I, I had never
seen him. I had only an inkling that he
had even existed. So, you know, this was pretty,
pretty radical. It was cutting off the first
(37:58):
five years of my life and my brother's first ten years.
We, we never mentioned this first father again.
Never, nothing had ever happenedbefore the new apartment with
the new, with the new forks and knives and chairs and and
couches. And the new husband he was had
(38:22):
asthma attacks and that's why hethey recommended he move and
with him. And what they were clearly
perceiving is that he was, he had moved into our apartment
where this father had died, where my mother's first husband
had died. And it was freaking them out.
And he would have these asthma attacks.
(38:43):
He obviously felt the presence of her of not only the father of
her children, but her first husband.
And they were right because he it was it took a year of he had
to move back into his parents apartment.
He couldn't live with her and they were just dating on
(39:05):
Saturday nights. And finally she said, I can't
take this anymore. And that's when he went to the
clinic and they gave him this idea, which was very psycho, I
think very psychologically astute.
They didn't explain it to him, but it worked.
You know, he didn't have to confront my mother's other life.
(39:28):
On the other hand, it was a pretty radical erasure of our
lives and our experience for me and my brother.
And we were never allowed to mourn this father or think about
him or say his name. So he disappeared.
(39:52):
And that was not healthy either,not for us.
I don't think it was healthy formy mother.
But it was the best they could do.
And, you know, it was a sad family because there were too
many secrets and too many tensions.
And my mother, my mother was very high handed with him.
(40:14):
You know, these are my children.You cannot tell them what to do.
I mean, it was, it was a lot of tension.
It wasn't. You know, it wasn't like, let's
sit down at the family table andtalk about what's going on here.
No, there was none of that. And we grew up with a lot of
fears about what all these secrets were, especially in my
(40:39):
my experience when I was 8, my mother said something very, I
didn't even know what she was talking about.
Some uncle is coming to pick us up and taking us to lunch in
Brooklyn and. This man I had never seen in my
life came and and took my brother and I to see his family.
I didn't even know who they were.
(41:00):
I was 8 years old. It turned out to be my dead
father's family. And they wanted to see us
because they wanted to see theirbrother's children.
Nobody told us what was going on.
And I mean, these, these are these things end up being
everyday traumas. Yeah.
(41:22):
And that's another thing I wanted to mention, that trauma
is not being, it's not only being locked in a basement and
and starved, you know, I mean, it's also just very everyday
ordinary people who don't, who can't cope emotionally, you
know, they're just not handling things well.
(41:45):
Yeah, how about your brother? Did he have any nightmares?
How did he feel when you startedtalking about your childhood?
Was he like, Oh my gosh, I remember this now, you know, I
had forgotten. Or did you have like a bonding
experience with your brother talking about everything?
My brother and I were. Always.
Close we shared 1 little room inour in our new apartment and we
(42:11):
he was very, he was very protective of me.
He, I, I, I know this sounds exaggerated, but I feel like he
saved me. I mean he was so good to me.
And I mean he was also a teenageboy.
He was also a 10 year old boy who would beat me up.
I would then, you know, I mean whatever, but I knew he loved me
(42:32):
and, and I knew that he, when push came to shove, shob, he
would explain things to me. And he, he was the one who
explained who these strangers were, who we suddenly were
supposed to relate to. And he and I never talked about
it except in, in this one instance where he, he explained
(42:54):
to me who these strangers were. He, he said that, you know, you
were only two and I was older soI, I had met them before and
blah, blah, blah, blah. But my brother became a
psychologist and not for nothing, I mean, we were both
trying to find a way to understand what our, our, our
(43:17):
lives were and what our, what our psychological lives were,
even though honestly, we, we hadnever met a psychologist.
I mean, this is not, it wasn't in our social world.
So we individually made this up ourselves.
We just intuitively knew we needed help psychologically.
(43:42):
And once we were grown up once, I mean we were adults in our in
our late 20s, we had both been to see psychologists by then.
Then we really talked. It was the first time really we
began to talk about what had happened to us and what our
(44:03):
childhood had been. And, and we, we understood each
other 'cause we had, you know, we had been through it, We knew.
What the what it was like, what the issues were.
We, even though we rarely saw each other, we lived on
different coasts, we had different lives.
(44:24):
We'd get together for, you know,somebody's wedding.
And so it was very rare, but we always had a moment where we
exchanged something about our our, our childhood.
Do you still speak on the phone a lot or?
We don't speak on the phone because he's moved.
(44:45):
He and his wife have moved to Ojai, California, where I live,
and their daughter lives here too.
And we, we now our family together physically for the
first time, really, because we've always lived in very
different places. Yeah.
That's so awesome. I know.
(45:06):
And that has to do, I think, with healing, with getting the
help that made it possible for us to talk about everything and
to be close with one another andto value that closeness.
So yeah. This is all, like, so
fascinating. I have a sister.
(45:27):
She's two years younger than me,but her memory is better than
mine. So I feel like that has been
kind of a disadvantage for her because her memory of childhood
trauma is more vivid than mine. I mean, maybe mine's
subconscious and I'm having nightmares, you know what I
mean? But like, she definitely recalls
a lot more things than I do. But we were in Boulder having
(45:52):
coffee a few years ago, and it'sa kind of a weird conversation
to have, but I was like, what was your worst childhood memory?
Because you have all these memories and you're talking
about them. And she told me what it was.
We used to have to go get our dad from the neighbor's garage.
And in the neighbor's garage, everyone's drunk and firing off
(46:12):
conspiracy theories and drinkingmore and more from the keg and
smoking. And none of us wanted to get him
and go get dad for dinner, but we had to go walk down this
country Rd. and get him for dinner like our mom asked us to.
And so I was like, she said thatwas her worst memory.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, thatwas my worst memory too.
(46:34):
And I can't believe this because, yeah, I mean, it's just
a whole thing. And so I guess my point is that,
you know, siblings are all so different.
Like your brother was older so he knew more about what was
going on and who his aunts and uncles were and my sister's
younger but she has a better memory so she seems like.
She. Well, but but.
(46:55):
But you just, I mean, you just described something that to me
is so beautiful where it you can't change what happened.
But to share it, as you just said is to bear it and to share
it between the two of you. It doesn't matter who has the
better memory as long as you're kind of what's happened with me
(47:17):
and my brother is, you know, I went through a lot of trouble to
find out all the details of whathappened to us and also who the
family trauma going back, you know, going back.
And he because I kind of could bring him this information.
It then jogged his memory so that he came up with more things
(47:42):
that that he even realized he knew.
And, and so the two of you working together, if you look at
it as not just a really important exchange, but
something that can change your life, you know, if you can
really, you know if you can, if you can examine what it was
(48:08):
like. For each of you and and
recognize that it's going to be different for each of you
because you're different people.Who you?
Were. At maybe 8 years old trying to
deal with this scary garage and the the the frightening vision
of your father drunk. Are you you?
(48:29):
You're going to deal with it differently because you're
different people. You have different brain
chemistry. You have different moments in
your life when you were encountering it.
And you can still learn so much from one another, especially if
you, if you think psychoanalytically about what I
(48:50):
mean. What that means is how'd not
blaming? It's not about blaming.
It's how did that affect me? What did I do with that?
Yeah. Did we go back to our rooms and
talk about it? Probably not, because you didn't
have the skills to do that. You didn't know.
(49:13):
We were 45 and 43 when we first talked about it.
That's exactly, exactly my brother and I were older when we
really delved into it, and that was when I started to write this
book. So it, you know, I, I think, and
I think it's so worth whatever effort you put into really
(49:37):
looking at what happened as a, as a family, as individuals, as
siblings together. And I, I think you, you, you'll
be amazed by how much you can learn and how much it helps to
understand who you are and why you live the way you do and why
(50:03):
your anxieties or what they are.All of it.
That was really wise advice. What you said, it's not about
blaming, but it's about understanding.
How did that affect me? Is that what you said?
How did that exactly? Yeah.
Yes. And to really go back to that
moment and stay with it and ask yourself what was I feeling?
(50:28):
What was I thinking at that moment and at the next moment
and the next time? And how did you, what did you
put together in your mind about who your father was?
And what were you? What did you feel?
You know, was it shame? Was it anger?
Was it all of it? And to really talk with your
(50:51):
sister about her array of feelings and see how how much
that changes, how you are with yourself because so much of this
is inaccessible. We don't know what's, you know,
what's in there. And it stays in there.
You know, once it goes in as a child, it's there.
(51:15):
Yeah, yeah. And I'm friendly with my
parents. We see each other all the time.
And so there's no blame. And I think often times too,
it's, it's generational trauma. And, you know, like, it comes
down through the generations. And so, yeah, it does take some
exploring. If someone is listening to the
interview and they want to seek out professional advice,
(51:37):
psychoanalysis or services, do you have any recommendations?
I sure do. First of all, finding a
therapist, finding an analyst takes a little work.
And by that I mean I always recommend talking to at least
three different people first. Having a phone conversation with
(52:01):
maybe several people and picking3 from them that you that you
feel might, might be able to help you.
Then going to talk with them viaZoom or in person and really
talk about what you think your issues are and what you what you
want in a therapist and see if you feel like there's a match.
(52:24):
If you, if you go to three different people, then you have
to make an active choice and you're going to you're going to
really think about comparing them.
What can I get here? What did I feel here?
What you know was this comfortable?
And I think you make a better choice so that there's a better
match rather than if you go to one person that seems like the
(52:48):
this is what analysis is or thisis what, what therapy is.
So you want that. And you also might want to think
about somebody who's psychoanalytically trained, even
if they're not psychoanalysts, because they can really go
deeper. They have more skills at helping
(53:09):
you to uncover what's what's unconscious.
So in that case, you might need to go to the the people who are
being trained or often trained at.
It's not the only place, but trained at institutes,
psychoanalytic institutes and the the people who are in
training, who have supervisors helping them are often really,
(53:35):
really sliding scale low. Oh, that's true.
Like a psychoanalytic institute.You actually can look up
psychoanalytic institutes. They're not necessarily
affiliated with hospitals or universities.
People go to universities to getpH DS in psychology, which is
and they have clinical training.But psychoanalytic orientation
(54:00):
usually comes from, not always, but usually comes from these
institutes. Like I think it's William
Allison White Institute in New York City, in LA, there are, I
think probably 8 different institutes and, and they, all of
them have that they exist reallyto train analysts and, and I
(54:27):
happen to know some of the people in training and they have
marvelous, they're, they're, they're so eager and so ready.
And they not only have excellenttraining, but they have somebody
supervising them who's. So you're getting 2 experts and,
and, and that's affordable. And people think, oh,
(54:48):
psychoanalysis, you go four daysa week or something like that.
No, I only went twice a week. You can.
It really has to do with the effort that you bring and the
depth you're willing to go to itit with with a therapist.
So many therapists are trained psychoanalytically, and I was
(55:12):
lucky because the first time I went for therapy, I didn't even
know she was well. What happened is she gave me the
fee was $25.00 an hour because she was in training.
She had a tape recorder and taped our whole session and she
would talk it over with her supervisor.
So I was able to afford it at $25 a session because she was in
(55:38):
training. And that's, so that's available,
that's out there. And you know you, I think you
can get some very talented people.
I know I did. Yeah.
And if you're employed and you have you're like with a company,
one thing you can look into is like an EAP, the employee
assistance programs some businesses have like free
(56:01):
therapy sessions. It's not, it's not
psychoanalysis, but it's a certain number of free sessions
per year to every employee just for being an employee and to
encourage positive mental healthin the workplace.
So I think in EAP, just ask if HR had, because it's usually
free sessions. You know, actually I just
(56:22):
thought of something. I went to some awesome, I think
she was probably a psychoanalyst.
She had a PhD. She was awesome.
It was at the Colorado Center and it might be called the
Colorado Center for Excellence, but it's, you know, it's
therapist. Have you?
Heard of that one? No, but I mean, it's, that makes
perfect sense as it could definitely be an, you know, one
(56:43):
of the institutes and, and also in my case, my insurance paid
for it when I, when I got my jobin California, I just had, you
know, Blue Cross of California and they paid for it.
They paid 88, they paid 85%. So that was really obviously
(57:07):
very helpful. So you know that it's worth
exploring and, and, and there are psychoanalysts, many
psychoanalysts have one or two spots in their overall clientele
for Medicare patients or Medicaid patients.
So there's that too, you know? It's never too late to look into
(57:29):
something and live a better lifebecause you've unpacked some of
your past. My aunt is 76.
She's getting married in August.There you go.
Exactly. We're it's never too late.
Never, never, never. And by the way, Psychology
Today, if you go on their website, they have find a
therapist and and they have all these wonderful listings.
(57:52):
You can look in your area, you can do a geographic search and
it each, each, each therapist introduces herself or himself
and they have a picture and you can really pick and choose.
And that's a great way to begin because they are all, everybody
(58:13):
who's listed there has been vetted what they say is true,
you know, where they got their certifications and pH, DS or
whatever. So that's a great resource.
I think one thing I'm taking away from our interview is the
fact that we didn't even talk about your other therapist in
your 60s because you had two. You had a psycho in your 20s and
(58:37):
then a psychoanalyst in your 60s.
But it seems like both of them helped you find freedom.
Like freedom from your nightmares, freedom from being a
prisoner of these past memories that you couldn't piece together
and make sense, and then freedomto live a more fulfilling life.
And and also freedom from anxiety.
(58:59):
I was, I mean, I, I really have been very lucky in life.
I have a wonderful life. But like a lot of.
People, I bring so much anxiety with me and that I mean, what a
joy to be in your life without anxiety.
And it's not like I have none, but relatively it's, it's, you
(59:19):
know, amazing to me not to be having to be perfect and then
control everything and, you know, to just enjoy my life, you
know? Yeah, and sometimes our beliefs,
they come out of nowhere. My point with that Center for
Excellence or whatever that I went to is I was talking to the
therapist and then I was talkingabout how I injured myself.
(59:42):
And I was like, and I just don'tunderstand it.
I'm such a good girl. And that's what, yeah, that's
what came out of my mouth. That was for.
It is. Where I thought that being a
perfect good girl was going to shield me from any accidents,
injury and suffering. And that's been my mode, yeah,
my whole life, being a good girl.
(01:00:03):
And so in my mind, as a 45 year old, I just could not understand
why I was having a health issue because I've been such a good
person. Yeah, yeah.
And I'm sure if you take it backto that childhood that you
described, you will find a kind of like I did fairy tale idea
(01:00:24):
that if you were very good, somehow this family of yours
would heal and your father wouldbe like your little friend's
father, you know? You know, I and and and by the
way, children inevitably blame themselves.
So they have to have a reason. I mean, for you it's, you know,
(01:00:47):
maybe I wasn't good enough, maybe I wasn't a good enough
girl. And, you know, you begin to
explore those. That's I would say that's like a
prime image in your psyche. Yes, and I mentioned this
because it is fascinating what comes up.
(01:01:08):
We all have memories and fears lurking deep inside our
conscious in our bodies. And when the past surfaces,
sometimes we can face the past, we can face our fears, and then
we can move, like you said, withless anxiety and move a little
lighter and feel stronger and more solid and more confident.
(01:01:28):
Yeah, exactly. And more solid than our past
stories, and more confident thanour past fears.
And so I really loved this conversation about not just like
shedding the layers of who we are, we're not throwing it away,
but we're looking inside and we're uncovering like the truth
that which is that we're free and we have so much potential
for peace and prosperity and to help others.
(01:01:52):
I think that's true. So one last question.
You've had your book Untangling.It's been out since February.
How many podcast interviews haveyou done?
And why have you decided to go public with your story, write
the book, and talk so openly about your past?
You know, so many people ask me that because there's, it's, I
(01:02:14):
really have shared so much aboutmy own vulnerabilities and I
feel like I, I have been so privileged to have have this
therapy, this psychoanalytic therapy.
And I want to share that I, I feel it's almost, I've almost my
(01:02:36):
mission and I've kind of offeredup my psyche as an example.
But what I really am describing is how the psyche works, because
I do believe that people just, if they, if they knew a little
bit more about how the psyche works, that they would really be
(01:02:57):
able to understand themselves better.
And that's just an amazing advantage.
So part of me really said to myself.
Why not? What am I?
Hiding what is what is so terrible in there?
Well, there's nothing so terrible in there.
It's just our human frailties, our, our deepest fears, you
(01:03:23):
know, they're pretty much the same.
We all are children in this world needing incredible comfort
and dependency and, and parents who are really going to be solid
'cause they are if you know, if,if they're not able to protect
(01:03:45):
us and, and, and guide us into the world.
We, we feel, you know, we, we'redeeply insecure and people,
especially Americans who are so like my mother, independence is
everything. We are so frightened to talk
about our insecurities. And I, I really felt a mission
(01:04:06):
to do that and to show people that it's it, it's, you know, I
thought my friends would look atme and go, Oh my God, who are
you? But they didn't at all.
And people seem to feel it givesother people permission to look
at their insecurities and their fears and their frailties and
(01:04:29):
to, you know, share that not only among your, your closest
people, but as a, as a, as a, asa community, as a larger
community, so that we're not so afraid of it.
Yeah. And for everyone listening, it
sounds like just if you recall something from your childhood,
(01:04:50):
just know that as kids, we tend to, you know, make up a little
story about what it means and who we are.
And so you can kind of analyze your own memories in a way if
you just reflect, like, I think I have to be a good girl.
Well, Doctor Peters, if you haveany last words of wisdom to
share with us, now is the time. You can also tell us where to
(01:05:13):
find your book, which has been. Out.
Yeah, my book is on Amazon and that's the easiest place to find
it, but it's at Barnes and Nobles, you know all the usual
places where you find books. And I have a website
whichisuntanglingjoan.com and I have on the website, I have a
few other the reviews and, you know, some different things that
(01:05:37):
have happened. I thought it's only been out
there a a month. So it, I haven't had many, many
experiences, but I, I have done about 8 podcasts and I've
enjoyed so much talking about the book with, with others, you
(01:05:59):
know, 'cause that's my whole idea that it's been really fun
to get great questions and to think about, think about.
What? What they mean and and I'm
learning more from the questionspeople ask me.
So that's been wonderful. And you're helping people to not
(01:06:20):
shy away from therapy and psychoanalysis.
You're helping people to consider it.
I am, yeah. I do want to encourage that.
And I and just as much, I just want to encourage psychoanalytic
thinking, you know, that that not to stop short of
investigating what's going on inyour psyche.
(01:06:41):
I mean, this is sort of to me, it's like, you know, an owner's
manual take, because I remember what it felt like to not have to
be clueless about why I was doing what I was doing, you
know, and, and I think it, I think it gives you a fuller life
to understand yourself. I do.
(01:07:04):
I would think it's a beautiful thing to bring into a
partnership, just like you and Ijust had an amazing, yes, we
said about our childhoods and the ideas we've formed.
I mean, like, I'm sure you've had an amazing conversation with
your husband. Well, the most exciting thing in
a way is that he is now in therapy and it's so now I'm
(01:07:25):
finished and I get to watch him just coming into all of this
information that's so interesting for him and, and,
and his own, his own, you know, I don't want to use grandiose
terms, but it's like watching anenlightenment happen, you know,
(01:07:46):
and it's, it's exciting and we really do talk a lot about this
subject with each other. And it's been a a joy to do
that. Yeah, it's like a very intimate
way to get to know somebody. You're not judging your past,
you're not judging each other, but you're just becoming closer
because you're getting to know, like, what makes you tick and
(01:08:07):
why you think the way you do. And.
Exactly. Yeah.
And we can, we can notice in oneanother as as partners, certain
themes that emerge that the other might not be aware of.
And it's, it's really been interesting to kind of be the
other person's point person, psychologically speaking.
(01:08:28):
Yes, well, that completes our episode for today.
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Welcome to the Dissolving Fear podcast, where fear doesn't run
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I'm your host, Miss Alyssa Shirk, and if you're new to the
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(00:20):
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(00:44):
Follow this podcast. You'll love the results.
Loving life is what we're all about here on the podcast and at
missalyssa.com. Enjoy the show.
If you're looking for authentic inspiration, today is your day.
My guest isn't a therapist. She's not offering any services
or life hacks. Doctor Joan Peters is a PhD at
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California State University who wrote a book about how she has
healed, evolved, and embraced a new life as a result of therapy.
She is simply here to talk abouther healing journey and the
power of therapy from a patient's perspective.
It's an honor to have you here on the podcast.
Doctor Joan Peters, welcome. Thank you so much for having me,
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Alyssa. So you're a professor of
literature and writing at California State University, and
today you're joining us from Ojai, California, where you live
with your husband, dogs and somespunky little chickens.
Indeed I do. That's right.
I am a professor emerita, so I'mretired and I I did teach there
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for 16 years from the time it opened.
Wow. And then you recently used your
literary know how to write a memoir, which we're definitely
talking about today. So before we dive into your
personal story about your personal healing journey, if you
don't mind, catch me up on your professional life and how that
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fell into place over the years. And then we're going to dive
into your personal life as well.Have you always been a
California girl? What was your?
How did your life unfold? So no, I'm a New York City girl
and, and I think my mother told me even when I was a little
girl, I said when I grow up I want to live on a farm.
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And I kind of always had this fantasy of the country and rural
life. And, you know, I spent most of
my time in cities. But finally, when my husband and
I, well, my daughter was six years old and it was kind of a
good time to move because she hadn't quite started school yet.
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I mean, she was just had been inkindergarten and so on.
And we decided that this was a moment where we could make a big
move. And we moved to this little town
we had visited, only visited to,I mean, to, to talk about a leap
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of faith. We, we really didn't know much
about how we would live there, what it was like.
But it turned out to be, you know, we followed our instincts
and it turned out to be a great move for us.
We love living in a small town. I mean, you can really when you,
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when you've lived in this city all your life, you so appreciate
the dry cleaning person knowing who you are and the person in
the bank saying hello, Joan. I mean, it's just so special.
The pharmacy will say, oh, no rush, we'll stay open for you.
Just come on, you know, come on down.
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And I think we get more of a kick out of it than people
who've grown up in a small town 'cause it's so exotic for us.
And you, you know, you kind of know everybody you see, you've
seen them in the grocery store or on one of the two main
streets. There are only two so.
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That's fun. Yeah, yeah.
And As for teaching, by the way?I, I always wanted to be a
college professor and I, I started out training for that
and did it from the time I was 22 years.
Old. Loved it always.
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I'm actually a full time high school teacher right now and
obviously I have a number of passion projects such as this
podcast and I do coaching and speaking.
So I understand that sometimes our students end up inspiring us
in unexpected and deeply fulfilling ways.
Did your students at the collegeinspire you to write this book?
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Or what was the turning point for you that made you decide to
write the memoir, which is called Untangling, by the way?
Thank you for asking that. And I did notice that you were a
teacher too. And I'm so glad you mentioned
what we get from our students because I always felt like it
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was such a privilege to be with these interesting minds and
their their point of view on whatever you're reading or
talking about. And it was always so exciting
for me to feel their excitement about, you know, just learning
about the world. So, yeah, I've, I've, I've been
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AII feel lucky that I get paid, even though it wasn't that much.
You know, you, you go in to teaching because you love it,
not to make a fortune. But I felt so lucky to be paid
for this work. That was a pleasure.
Every day was a pleasure. Even the student who's not
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paying attention, you know, who falls asleep, you know, there's
always a way of contacting a student if you really care.
I think anyway, that was, that was a great pleasure for me.
And I taught creative writing really almost from the beginning
of my teaching career when they didn't really have so many
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creative writing classes. So they were happy to have me
experiment and create a class that hadn't even been on the,
you know, on the curriculum and learning from teaching my
students to write. And eventually I focused in on
memoir because I found that to be the most compelling.
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And to get these my students whowere let's say, 19 to 24 or 30,
you know, sometime they're olderstudents up until I've had
students who are 70 years old who've come back to take
classes. And I found that.
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What they? When they really dug in, they
had such amazing stories that. We.
Have such amazing stories to tell one another about our lives
that we would never guess you know the person sitting in the
next. Chair that that they've had this
experience or that family drama or whatever it is, or this
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extraordinary sister or this totally ordinary little brother,
you know that they can describe it and bring to life their,
their experience. It's it's magical.
And in teaching, I, I often would write something along with
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my students to give them an ideaof, of what I was asking for.
And and that did contribute to my writing, my own memoir.
Was there a turning point that made you decide now is the time
to write well? I mean, this was a kind of
wonderful, mysterious process. I had been writing about my life
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for a very long time, and I hadn't quite found the story.
In the story. You have to have a really clear
story to tell. And I had a lot of different
incidents, but they didn't all come together.
And I was in a deep psychoanalysis.
And I'm, I'm happy to explain what that is and how it's a
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little different from therapy, although it is therapy, but it's
a specific kind. When I started to e-mail my
analyst, because my problems really came up in the middle of
the night, I would wake with nightmares.
I had restless legs. I sometimes would have to get up
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in the middle of the night, put on my coat, over my pajamas and
go for a walk, just to walk off this kind of fear energy.
And during the day I was perfectly fine, competent, not
excessively frightened. And so I began to e-mail my
analyst in the night when it washappening to me, so I could
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better express what it was. Because by the time the daylight
came, I I only remembered it vaguely, and at one point I'd
been emailing her. For quite a while.
And the emails became more and more elaborate as I was
explaining more to her about notonly what my nightmare was, but
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what my other. Thoughts were and what was so
why I was so. Frightened in the middle of the
night. It's called night, Night
frights. And finally she said to me, have
you ever thought about writing about psychoanalysis?
Because of course that's what I was doing in these emails.
One after another after another was writing about.
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The. Process of coming to see what is
in my psyche, what is in my mindand and making connections and
and then she would we would discuss it and then I would have
more understanding for the next time I was going to write her in
the night and I think that that because I was really.
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Already writing it, she was inspired and she also knew me
well enough to know I've been writing all my life and, and I,
I mean, I have published severalbooks.
So, so I, I had had a lot of practice and she knew I'd been
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struggling to find the right vehicle.
And so in a way, we came up withit together.
But it was definitely her idea. But boy, it was like immediate
I. It was electric, like a sign had
just lit up. This is my book.
And I realized once I started tolook, do research, that almost
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no one has done this, no one haswritten.
There are a couple of books about therapy and there are a
couple, couple of classics patient.
There's a patient of Freud's anda patient of Winnicott back in
the, you know, 1920s and 30s andand and 50s.
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But just a handful really just about four.
And they're not really very complete.
They're sort of impressions and just a little bit about what the
psychoanalysis was. So essentially I realized that
this had not been done. And also going through this
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process, I was really longing toread someone else's experience
of it because it's so, I mean, really, it's very heavy, it's
very dramatic. And it's not like dinner table
conversation, you know? Who are you going to talk?
To about this, a lot of people, you know, we don't, we don't
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talk to each other about our therapy.
You know, it's, it's very private.
So I was very alone with it. And I wished I had a book to
read to essentially to tell me that I wasn't, I wasn't the only
one going through this hard process.
And I decided I'd better write the book for myself because it
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wasn't out there. And my hope is that other people
will, it will help them, you know, to understand what they're
going through in therapy or an analysis, and also just to give
people some tools to think psychoanalytically about their
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own lives. Because I wish I had had that,
you know, from, from I was so clueless, you know, I had no
idea why I was making certain decisions.
It just felt like I that's what I'm going to do, you know, And
often they were not good decisions.
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You know, they were just too, they were precipitous.
I shouldn't have done it. And the wrong, the wrong
boyfriend, the wrong, you know, whatever.
And, and once you have a sense of why you do the things you do,
there's, it's all, it's all in there.
It's all in the brain. Yeah.
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Well, I'm excited to have this interview because I am.
I like deep talk more than smalltalk.
And so I thought we would dive in.
I haven't had a chance to read your book.
I will read it this summer when I'm off of school.
But I'm just guessing that it was kind of like your body's
subconscious way of bringing thetrauma to the surface in these
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dreams. Your body was like knock, knock,
knock. We are going to look at this
because it's going to help you to lift this.
Yes. And I think I think a lot of
people who are very competent intheir lives, I was very
functional and competent and hada.
Full and rich. Life so it it's, you know, like
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the bestseller, the book that's been on the bestseller list.
For for I don't know. Years now, the body keeps the
score. It's all in there.
And that's what was coming out physically because I really
couldn't understand it psychologically.
But once I began to put it together with the help of a very
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good analyst, you know, it relieved the, the, the
nightmares and, and I began to, began to be able to make sense
of my life and to connect with the part of my life that was
hidden from me and only coming out in, in my body.
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You know, and I think a lot of people have headaches or stomach
aches or, you know, they have physical manifestations of, of
their anxieties, of their, of, of their hurts, of, of things
that are difficult to look at. And often we have no idea what
to do. What?
Even if we know, know them, you know, Even if we're aware of how
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anxious we are, or you know. How?
How we? We make bad decisions or we we
get too. Brought up about.
Things and we're too reactive and we can't stop it because we
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don't understand it. So yeah.
And then rather than saying, well, this is just how I am, you
know, I have fear, I have baggage.
We can change ourselves and we can change what we carry through
life with us. And I do want to talk about the
difference between therapy and psychoanalysis.
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But first, can you tell us a little bit about your story?
From what I can tell, you went through something and then the
psychoanalysis sessions have really changed your life for the
better and given your story a happy ending.
So if you want to talk about thedifference between therapy and
psychoanalysis, that's great. But I'm also curious how you
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ended up seeking help in the 1stplace.
Like you were having nightmares,what was what was affecting you?
What's your story? Well, as I say, I was really
doing well in my life. I had a great, this is I'm
talking about when I was 27 years old.
So I was just setting out in life, but I was doing really
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well. I had a great job, lovely
partner. Things were going OK.
But I did. Have these nightmares and I
would wake up screaming and of course I would wake up the
person I was sleeping with my partner at that time.
And finally, you know the. I didn't think about it, but my
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partner said, you know, something's scaring you and
you're scaring me and you're waking me up every night You
need to go to therapy. And I didn't even know the
difference between therapy and psycho psychoanalysis.
I just, I, I thought, yeah, I'llget a therapist and I found a
therapist and we began. Almost.
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Immediately. To talk about these nightmares
and she would ask me some questions about my childhood and
I. It was the first time I realized
I didn't know much about my childhood.
I only remembered really a lot from when I was older, when I
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was 8. And the nightmares were very
specific. There were women who were going
to come, come after me to kill me, but with a needle, with an
to inject something into me thatwould take away my ability to
fight them off. And, and just as they were going
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to destroy me with this needle, I would wake up screaming.
And I went with that, having no idea.
I, I nobody ever tried to hurt me or kill me.
Nobody was ever mean to me and my family, so it's not obvious,
but she began to ask me these questions and when I.
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Couldn't answer any of them. You know, I really just didn't
know. About my early childhood, she
sent me to interview my relatives and I did and.
Boy. Did I find out a lot?
For one thing, I kind of knew this, but no one ever spoke of
it. My father died when I was 2 and
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I didn't really know anything more about it and it turns out
as she asked me to get more information from my mother and
my mother poured out this story.I mean, I was an adult by then
and I had never heard it, but she told me how he had gotten
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diagnosed with cancer when I wasborn, the day I was born, and
that he. Was dying and we had lived in a
tiny apartment, just three roomsand he was dying in the bedroom.
And she would have to prepare morphine needles.
Needles full of morphine. I was a little girl, 2 years
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old. I would and she and my analyst
would send me back to ask my mother where was my high chair,
what would I have seen because she was preparing the needles in
the kitchen and I would have been there.
You're not going to let a 2 yearold walk around the house by
themselves. So I did see those needles and
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little by little this man who was my father.
And at one time I saw pictures that I finally found we only had
four of me on his shoulders and in his arms.
So I must have had an experienceof having a daddy.
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And then this man wasted away to70 lbs and my mother was giving
him needles. And I watched this and little by
little she explained to me, and this is psychoanalytic theory,
that as a, as a small child, I would have made-up a kind of
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fairy tale, cause little children think in black and
white. They, they have no subtlety.
And in my mind, my mother was bringing these needles to the
father and he was dying. In other words, she was killing
him. And, and I, I, I said, that
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doesn't make any sense to me. My mother was feeding me, she
was clothing me. Why would I think she was
killing me and she was she My analyst would explain how
children think and why and even though.
You were trying to make sense ofit all, and that's why you were
having the dreams that needles will make you unable to fight
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off things. Because when you saw your dad
get the medicine at the needle, then he was really unable to,
you know, fight the cancer and survive.
And so it kind of took the fightout of them.
And so you were having nightmares, the needles where
someone was coming after you, even a woman like your mom
trying to take the fight out of you.
And if she would have got a holdof you and stuck you with 1, you
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would be losing your fight. Exactly, exactly.
And my father, who had been a very big, strong man, was
wasting away. So I was seeing him get weaker
and weaker. I was seeing it, my mother.
Described how she had to carry him into the bathroom to wash
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him you know, and. You to see all of that, Yeah.
I know, I know. And and this is honestly, I had
no memory. I, I, I thought I, my mother
would say to me, you didn't knowanything.
You were a little, a little kid,you were a baby.
You didn't know. And that's how my mother made
herself feel better. But obviously I didn't know.
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And when this this took about? Six months.
But when this analysis, when shegave me her analysis of the
dream, it went away. I did not have them anymore.
It was so dramatic for me. It was so it was.
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That was the moment I discoveredwhat the unconscious is and how
it holds something that's so much more complicated and and
scary that you have to, you haveto just forget it and put it out
of your mind if you're a small child and you cannot process it
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and nobody's helping you to understand it.
My mother just couldn't. You know, my mother was 26 years
old, two little babies, no money, and she just couldn't do
you know, she. Couldn't sit there and and
explain everything to us and I don't know.
Cheer us up. And so she really also had to
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leave a week after he died. She had to go back to work full
time. She was a a, a model in a
showroom. So suddenly we were without him
or her. And I think it really was
traumatic. And my mother dealt with having
to leave us at home with a babysitter by just pretending
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everything was fine. And I think a lot of people do
that, you know, with the best motives, You know, as if if I
just keep the machinery going, it'll all work out.
Because she was, you know, she was in her 20s.
She really didn't know how to make it better, and I understand
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that now, but as a small child you just feel abandoned and
you're terrified and you have nightmares and that's how it
happens. The Doctor Who gave the
injections, who always came to the house back in that day, was
a kindly, wonderful man and I loved his ministrations.
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I loved, you know, when, when older authoritative men were
kind and, and fatherly. So I wasn't, I mean, it really
was unconscious. It was not in the real world as
it were, where I was coping verywell with whatever I needed to
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do. So we can be very divided.
You know, we can, we can have our conscious minds really
having a pretty good time and our unconscious minds holding
all the suffering that we don't know really how to.
How to? How to?
Process what to do with, especially if we got kind of
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stuck at A at an early age, whether it's five years old or
two years old. These are these are ages when
you really need a grown up to tell you what's going on and why
you feel the way you do and to acknowledge your feelings.
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My mother would keep saying you were a baby, you didn't, you
didn't understand any of it. And that's not true.
You know, a 2 year old. I watched my own 2 year old
daughter. I was really curious and she
knew her daddy very well. Oh yeah, they know us better
than we know ourselves. Exactly.
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So, you know, then I really saw how attached a AA1 year old is a
2 year old is to her father, youknow, if he makes himself
available. And I saw that, you know, you
really, you really can't just dismiss it as old babies are
fine and they'll, you know, they'll forget about it.
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No. We don't forget about it, you
know. We're they're reading the vibe
of the household and the vibe ofthe parents emotions like their
little empaths. They're so.
That's exactly right. Yeah.
So that was my introduction in my 20s to what psychoanalysis
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had to offer. And it was pretty spectacular.
I mean, just six months in and my nightmares of, of many years
finally stopped. And I also in that time learned
my family's history and, and I, I had a chance to sort it out
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and to understand who my mother was and why she was not able to,
you know, take, make better choices about how to, how to
explain to two little children that their father died.
She just didn't, you know? I think we.
Had a real privilege to be able to talk to her about it later in
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life. Like I'm just talking about a
lot of listeners and like myselfincluded, like we don't want to
maybe go talk to our parents about how our childhood was for
so many reasons. I mean, I think, you know, like
in my case, I think my mom's perspective is like, everything
was fine, similar to your right,everything, everything was fine.
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It was fun. But like from our perspective,
you know, our dad was an alcoholic.
He went to rehab. Like there's proof in the
pudding. Like he literally went away.
You know, we're not just making up that we think they drank too
much or whatever, right? So I just think for some people,
it might be really hard to go interview your family.
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And so that was like a real a real blessing for you, I think
because, yeah, sometimes the parents, they're not as
talkative about what they did wrong or they could take offense
to it. And well.
Does she take offense to? It well, what I was going to say
is if you have a therapist or you really need an analyst
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because the therapist doesn't necessarily want to push you
into the depths that we're talking about, but if it's an
analyst who can support you in doing it, it's really up to you
and me to take the risk of saying what you just said.
But Mom, it wasn't all OK Dad was an alcoholic.
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That hurt me. We were there too, you know, in
other words, you have to be willing to push it and to
confront and to upset your mom, My mother, I, when my mother
poured out this story, it was the first time I saw her cry.
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And I immediately wanted to say,OK, do over, forget it.
I'm sorry, I asked. It was so frightening to see her
breakdown and some part of us doesn't want to take that chance
to to. You don't really want to see
your mother upset. You don't really want to be
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confront confronting. You don't want to push it.
And part of you is scared to open that all up and to see just
how you know how much family upset is underneath all of that.
The other thing is I didn't justask my mother, I asked other
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relatives who were actually moreforthcoming.
So then I had material to take back to my mother and it was so
worth it because finally she also was able to unburden
herself. She didn't have to keep up the
charade that everything was justfine and you were perfectly all
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right with all of it. You know that that it's costing
our parents also to, to really to lie to themselves, to be in
denial, if you see what I mean, And, and to take those chances
and to risk all of that. Well, you know, that's how
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closeness gets made. I wasn't close with my mother.
And after many of these kinds ofconversations, there was 1
moment where my mother was talking about how hard it was
for her, you know, having to go back to work and having to be so
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they didn't know, having no money and all of it.
And how again she said to me, but you, you and David, you
didn't know anything. I protected you.
And at that moment, I said, Mom,it happened to me and David too,
not just you. And she reached for my hand and
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said I didn't know. And that was an amazing moment
for me of breakthrough with my mother.
I mean, I had, I had really never, never gotten her to
acknowledge what we had gone through and that we were as a
family going through it together, even though we were
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small children. So I think it's worth it if you
have the support, if you have a a therapist who's also trained
psychoanalytically, they don't have to be a psychoanalyst if
they understand the psychoanalytics underneath.
And they can help you to bear bear creating a new relationship
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because you have to let the old one go and know that this is
going to be different. This is going to shake things
up. Yeah, if you can share it, you
can bear it. Yes.
And. I think a lot of people isolate.
We isolate because we're afraid of criticism and judgement.
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And so, you know, you could havejust gone through life having
nightmares and not shared that with anybody.
But it's good you have a loving husband who was like, hey, babe,
why are you, you know, up at night with all these nightmares?
But yes, sharing can be very cathartic.
Do you think it was cathartic and healing for your mom to
actually tell that story to you?Unbelievably, yes, absolutely.
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I mean, it was filled with guiltfor her because she, you know,
she had to confront the fact that we were, we had been
hurting, you know, and so, you know, it was a it was mixed.
It was really hard and she didn't have a therapist to help
her. It's just, it's just wasn't in
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her generations toolbox. You know, she was never going to
go to a therapist and, and, and she didn't, she was such a an
independent person who would never, never speak publicly
about these private matters, even to me.
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And she was somebody, you know, don't trust anybody and don't
need anybody and be, you know, take care of yourself kind of
woman. And she did.
And she was tough because she had to be, but she was also a
very forbidding woman. And when she told me these
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stories the first time, I, I remember thinking another mother
and daughter would have fallen into each other's arms and just
held on, right? She's pouring out the story and
crying. I would never have touched my
mother that way. She was so forbidding.
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She was like so in her body, so stiff, you know, she was a
model. So she carried herself very a
kind of dramatically and and we couldn't even hug each other in
that moment. So it it was, I'm not trying to
say, you know, she told me the story and it was all fine.
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It wasn't she, you know, by thistime she was in late middle age
and she was who she was and she could only go so far.
But there there was, we were much closer than we ever had
been. To me it was, it was incredible
so. It was worth, worth the risk and
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the effort and the work. Did she end up ever getting
remarried? Oh, yes.
She remarried when when I was 5 and my brother was 10 and she
married a man who was highly asthmatic.
And every time he came to state where he came, moved into our
little apartment, he would get very ill.
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And he went to an asthma clinic.And they were very smart.
They were psychoanalytic. And they said to him, they said
to him, you have to move your new family into a new apartment
and do not bring one thing from her former marriage.
So we left and and suddenly we were in a completely new
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environment. A new apartment, new furniture.
There wasn't a fork from the oldapartment, nothing.
Not a picture. And I never saw.
That's why I had never seen evena picture of this dead father
until I rummaged through my mother's drawer when I was 8
(37:35):
years old and found four photographs of, of him with,
with me and my brother. And I had never, I, I had never
seen him. I had only an inkling that he
had even existed. So, you know, this was pretty,
pretty radical. It was cutting off the first
(37:58):
five years of my life and my brother's first ten years.
We, we never mentioned this first father again.
Never, nothing had ever happenedbefore the new apartment with
the new, with the new forks and knives and chairs and and
couches. And the new husband he was had
(38:22):
asthma attacks and that's why hethey recommended he move and
with him. And what they were clearly
perceiving is that he was, he had moved into our apartment
where this father had died, where my mother's first husband
had died. And it was freaking them out.
And he would have these asthma attacks.
(38:43):
He obviously felt the presence of her of not only the father of
her children, but her first husband.
And they were right because he it was it took a year of he had
to move back into his parents apartment.
He couldn't live with her and they were just dating on
(39:05):
Saturday nights. And finally she said, I can't
take this anymore. And that's when he went to the
clinic and they gave him this idea, which was very psycho, I
think very psychologically astute.
They didn't explain it to him, but it worked.
You know, he didn't have to confront my mother's other life.
(39:28):
On the other hand, it was a pretty radical erasure of our
lives and our experience for me and my brother.
And we were never allowed to mourn this father or think about
him or say his name. So he disappeared.
(39:52):
And that was not healthy either,not for us.
I don't think it was healthy formy mother.
But it was the best they could do.
And, you know, it was a sad family because there were too
many secrets and too many tensions.
And my mother, my mother was very high handed with him.
(40:14):
You know, these are my children.You cannot tell them what to do.
I mean, it was, it was a lot of tension.
It wasn't. You know, it wasn't like, let's
sit down at the family table andtalk about what's going on here.
No, there was none of that. And we grew up with a lot of
fears about what all these secrets were, especially in my
(40:39):
my experience when I was 8, my mother said something very, I
didn't even know what she was talking about.
Some uncle is coming to pick us up and taking us to lunch in
Brooklyn and. This man I had never seen in my
life came and and took my brother and I to see his family.
I didn't even know who they were.
(41:00):
I was 8 years old. It turned out to be my dead
father's family. And they wanted to see us
because they wanted to see theirbrother's children.
Nobody told us what was going on.
And I mean, these, these are these things end up being
everyday traumas. Yeah.
(41:22):
And that's another thing I wanted to mention, that trauma
is not being, it's not only being locked in a basement and
and starved, you know, I mean, it's also just very everyday
ordinary people who don't, who can't cope emotionally, you
know, they're just not handling things well.
(41:45):
Yeah, how about your brother? Did he have any nightmares?
How did he feel when you startedtalking about your childhood?
Was he like, Oh my gosh, I remember this now, you know, I
had forgotten. Or did you have like a bonding
experience with your brother talking about everything?
My brother and I were. Always.
Close we shared 1 little room inour in our new apartment and we
(42:11):
he was very, he was very protective of me.
He, I, I, I know this sounds exaggerated, but I feel like he
saved me. I mean he was so good to me.
And I mean he was also a teenageboy.
He was also a 10 year old boy who would beat me up.
I would then, you know, I mean whatever, but I knew he loved me
(42:32):
and, and I knew that he, when push came to shove, shob, he
would explain things to me. And he, he was the one who
explained who these strangers were, who we suddenly were
supposed to relate to. And he and I never talked about
it except in, in this one instance where he, he explained
(42:54):
to me who these strangers were. He, he said that, you know, you
were only two and I was older soI, I had met them before and
blah, blah, blah, blah. But my brother became a
psychologist and not for nothing, I mean, we were both
trying to find a way to understand what our, our, our
(43:17):
lives were and what our, what our psychological lives were,
even though honestly, we, we hadnever met a psychologist.
I mean, this is not, it wasn't in our social world.
So we individually made this up ourselves.
We just intuitively knew we needed help psychologically.
(43:42):
And once we were grown up once, I mean we were adults in our in
our late 20s, we had both been to see psychologists by then.
Then we really talked. It was the first time really we
began to talk about what had happened to us and what our
(44:03):
childhood had been. And, and we, we understood each
other 'cause we had, you know, we had been through it, We knew.
What the what it was like, what the issues were.
We, even though we rarely saw each other, we lived on
different coasts, we had different lives.
(44:24):
We'd get together for, you know,somebody's wedding.
And so it was very rare, but we always had a moment where we
exchanged something about our our, our childhood.
Do you still speak on the phone a lot or?
We don't speak on the phone because he's moved.
(44:45):
He and his wife have moved to Ojai, California, where I live,
and their daughter lives here too.
And we, we now our family together physically for the
first time, really, because we've always lived in very
different places. Yeah.
That's so awesome. I know.
(45:06):
And that has to do, I think, with healing, with getting the
help that made it possible for us to talk about everything and
to be close with one another andto value that closeness.
So yeah. This is all, like, so
fascinating. I have a sister.
(45:27):
She's two years younger than me,but her memory is better than
mine. So I feel like that has been
kind of a disadvantage for her because her memory of childhood
trauma is more vivid than mine. I mean, maybe mine's
subconscious and I'm having nightmares, you know what I
mean? But like, she definitely recalls
a lot more things than I do. But we were in Boulder having
(45:52):
coffee a few years ago, and it'sa kind of a weird conversation
to have, but I was like, what was your worst childhood memory?
Because you have all these memories and you're talking
about them. And she told me what it was.
We used to have to go get our dad from the neighbor's garage.
And in the neighbor's garage, everyone's drunk and firing off
(46:12):
conspiracy theories and drinkingmore and more from the keg and
smoking. And none of us wanted to get him
and go get dad for dinner, but we had to go walk down this
country Rd. and get him for dinner like our mom asked us to.
And so I was like, she said thatwas her worst memory.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, thatwas my worst memory too.
(46:34):
And I can't believe this because, yeah, I mean, it's just
a whole thing. And so I guess my point is that,
you know, siblings are all so different.
Like your brother was older so he knew more about what was
going on and who his aunts and uncles were and my sister's
younger but she has a better memory so she seems like.
She. Well, but but.
(46:55):
But you just, I mean, you just described something that to me
is so beautiful where it you can't change what happened.
But to share it, as you just said is to bear it and to share
it between the two of you. It doesn't matter who has the
better memory as long as you're kind of what's happened with me
(47:17):
and my brother is, you know, I went through a lot of trouble to
find out all the details of whathappened to us and also who the
family trauma going back, you know, going back.
And he because I kind of could bring him this information.
It then jogged his memory so that he came up with more things
(47:42):
that that he even realized he knew.
And, and so the two of you working together, if you look at
it as not just a really important exchange, but
something that can change your life, you know, if you can
really, you know if you can, if you can examine what it was
(48:08):
like. For each of you and and
recognize that it's going to be different for each of you
because you're different people.Who you?
Were. At maybe 8 years old trying to
deal with this scary garage and the the the frightening vision
of your father drunk. Are you you?
(48:29):
You're going to deal with it differently because you're
different people. You have different brain
chemistry. You have different moments in
your life when you were encountering it.
And you can still learn so much from one another, especially if
you, if you think psychoanalytically about what I
(48:50):
mean. What that means is how'd not
blaming? It's not about blaming.
It's how did that affect me? What did I do with that?
Yeah. Did we go back to our rooms and
talk about it? Probably not, because you didn't
have the skills to do that. You didn't know.
(49:13):
We were 45 and 43 when we first talked about it.
That's exactly, exactly my brother and I were older when we
really delved into it, and that was when I started to write this
book. So it, you know, I, I think, and
I think it's so worth whatever effort you put into really
(49:37):
looking at what happened as a, as a family, as individuals, as
siblings together. And I, I think you, you, you'll
be amazed by how much you can learn and how much it helps to
understand who you are and why you live the way you do and why
(50:03):
your anxieties or what they are.All of it.
That was really wise advice. What you said, it's not about
blaming, but it's about understanding.
How did that affect me? Is that what you said?
How did that exactly? Yeah.
Yes. And to really go back to that
moment and stay with it and ask yourself what was I feeling?
(50:28):
What was I thinking at that moment and at the next moment
and the next time? And how did you, what did you
put together in your mind about who your father was?
And what were you? What did you feel?
You know, was it shame? Was it anger?
Was it all of it? And to really talk with your
(50:51):
sister about her array of feelings and see how how much
that changes, how you are with yourself because so much of this
is inaccessible. We don't know what's, you know,
what's in there. And it stays in there.
You know, once it goes in as a child, it's there.
(51:15):
Yeah, yeah. And I'm friendly with my
parents. We see each other all the time.
And so there's no blame. And I think often times too,
it's, it's generational trauma. And, you know, like, it comes
down through the generations. And so, yeah, it does take some
exploring. If someone is listening to the
interview and they want to seek out professional advice,
(51:37):
psychoanalysis or services, do you have any recommendations?
I sure do. First of all, finding a
therapist, finding an analyst takes a little work.
And by that I mean I always recommend talking to at least
three different people first. Having a phone conversation with
(52:01):
maybe several people and picking3 from them that you that you
feel might, might be able to help you.
Then going to talk with them viaZoom or in person and really
talk about what you think your issues are and what you what you
want in a therapist and see if you feel like there's a match.
(52:24):
If you, if you go to three different people, then you have
to make an active choice and you're going to you're going to
really think about comparing them.
What can I get here? What did I feel here?
What you know was this comfortable?
And I think you make a better choice so that there's a better
match rather than if you go to one person that seems like the
(52:48):
this is what analysis is or thisis what, what therapy is.
So you want that. And you also might want to think
about somebody who's psychoanalytically trained, even
if they're not psychoanalysts, because they can really go
deeper. They have more skills at helping
(53:09):
you to uncover what's what's unconscious.
So in that case, you might need to go to the the people who are
being trained or often trained at.
It's not the only place, but trained at institutes,
psychoanalytic institutes and the the people who are in
training, who have supervisors helping them are often really,
(53:35):
really sliding scale low. Oh, that's true.
Like a psychoanalytic institute.You actually can look up
psychoanalytic institutes. They're not necessarily
affiliated with hospitals or universities.
People go to universities to getpH DS in psychology, which is
and they have clinical training.But psychoanalytic orientation
(54:00):
usually comes from, not always, but usually comes from these
institutes. Like I think it's William
Allison White Institute in New York City, in LA, there are, I
think probably 8 different institutes and, and they, all of
them have that they exist reallyto train analysts and, and I
(54:27):
happen to know some of the people in training and they have
marvelous, they're, they're, they're so eager and so ready.
And they not only have excellenttraining, but they have somebody
supervising them who's. So you're getting 2 experts and,
and, and that's affordable. And people think, oh,
(54:48):
psychoanalysis, you go four daysa week or something like that.
No, I only went twice a week. You can.
It really has to do with the effort that you bring and the
depth you're willing to go to itit with with a therapist.
So many therapists are trained psychoanalytically, and I was
(55:12):
lucky because the first time I went for therapy, I didn't even
know she was well. What happened is she gave me the
fee was $25.00 an hour because she was in training.
She had a tape recorder and taped our whole session and she
would talk it over with her supervisor.
So I was able to afford it at $25 a session because she was in
(55:38):
training. And that's, so that's available,
that's out there. And you know you, I think you
can get some very talented people.
I know I did. Yeah.
And if you're employed and you have you're like with a company,
one thing you can look into is like an EAP, the employee
assistance programs some businesses have like free
(56:01):
therapy sessions. It's not, it's not
psychoanalysis, but it's a certain number of free sessions
per year to every employee just for being an employee and to
encourage positive mental healthin the workplace.
So I think in EAP, just ask if HR had, because it's usually
free sessions. You know, actually I just
(56:22):
thought of something. I went to some awesome, I think
she was probably a psychoanalyst.
She had a PhD. She was awesome.
It was at the Colorado Center and it might be called the
Colorado Center for Excellence, but it's, you know, it's
therapist. Have you?
Heard of that one? No, but I mean, it's, that makes
perfect sense as it could definitely be an, you know, one
(56:43):
of the institutes and, and also in my case, my insurance paid
for it when I, when I got my jobin California, I just had, you
know, Blue Cross of California and they paid for it.
They paid 88, they paid 85%. So that was really obviously
(57:07):
very helpful. So you know that it's worth
exploring and, and, and there are psychoanalysts, many
psychoanalysts have one or two spots in their overall clientele
for Medicare patients or Medicaid patients.
So there's that too, you know? It's never too late to look into
(57:29):
something and live a better lifebecause you've unpacked some of
your past. My aunt is 76.
She's getting married in August.There you go.
Exactly. We're it's never too late.
Never, never, never. And by the way, Psychology
Today, if you go on their website, they have find a
therapist and and they have all these wonderful listings.
(57:52):
You can look in your area, you can do a geographic search and
it each, each, each therapist introduces herself or himself
and they have a picture and you can really pick and choose.
And that's a great way to begin because they are all, everybody
(58:13):
who's listed there has been vetted what they say is true,
you know, where they got their certifications and pH, DS or
whatever. So that's a great resource.
I think one thing I'm taking away from our interview is the
fact that we didn't even talk about your other therapist in
your 60s because you had two. You had a psycho in your 20s and
(58:37):
then a psychoanalyst in your 60s.
But it seems like both of them helped you find freedom.
Like freedom from your nightmares, freedom from being a
prisoner of these past memories that you couldn't piece together
and make sense, and then freedomto live a more fulfilling life.
And and also freedom from anxiety.
(58:59):
I was, I mean, I, I really have been very lucky in life.
I have a wonderful life. But like a lot of.
People, I bring so much anxiety with me and that I mean, what a
joy to be in your life without anxiety.
And it's not like I have none, but relatively it's, it's, you
(59:19):
know, amazing to me not to be having to be perfect and then
control everything and, you know, to just enjoy my life, you
know? Yeah, and sometimes our beliefs,
they come out of nowhere. My point with that Center for
Excellence or whatever that I went to is I was talking to the
therapist and then I was talkingabout how I injured myself.
(59:42):
And I was like, and I just don'tunderstand it.
I'm such a good girl. And that's what, yeah, that's
what came out of my mouth. That was for.
It is. Where I thought that being a
perfect good girl was going to shield me from any accidents,
injury and suffering. And that's been my mode, yeah,
my whole life, being a good girl.
(01:00:03):
And so in my mind, as a 45 year old, I just could not understand
why I was having a health issue because I've been such a good
person. Yeah, yeah.
And I'm sure if you take it backto that childhood that you
described, you will find a kind of like I did fairy tale idea
(01:00:24):
that if you were very good, somehow this family of yours
would heal and your father wouldbe like your little friend's
father, you know? You know, I and and and by the
way, children inevitably blame themselves.
So they have to have a reason. I mean, for you it's, you know,
(01:00:47):
maybe I wasn't good enough, maybe I wasn't a good enough
girl. And, you know, you begin to
explore those. That's I would say that's like a
prime image in your psyche. Yes, and I mentioned this
because it is fascinating what comes up.
(01:01:08):
We all have memories and fears lurking deep inside our
conscious in our bodies. And when the past surfaces,
sometimes we can face the past, we can face our fears, and then
we can move, like you said, withless anxiety and move a little
lighter and feel stronger and more solid and more confident.
(01:01:28):
Yeah, exactly. And more solid than our past
stories, and more confident thanour past fears.
And so I really loved this conversation about not just like
shedding the layers of who we are, we're not throwing it away,
but we're looking inside and we're uncovering like the truth
that which is that we're free and we have so much potential
for peace and prosperity and to help others.
(01:01:52):
I think that's true. So one last question.
You've had your book Untangling.It's been out since February.
How many podcast interviews haveyou done?
And why have you decided to go public with your story, write
the book, and talk so openly about your past?
You know, so many people ask me that because there's, it's, I
(01:02:14):
really have shared so much aboutmy own vulnerabilities and I
feel like I, I have been so privileged to have have this
therapy, this psychoanalytic therapy.
And I want to share that I, I feel it's almost, I've almost my
(01:02:36):
mission and I've kind of offeredup my psyche as an example.
But what I really am describing is how the psyche works, because
I do believe that people just, if they, if they knew a little
bit more about how the psyche works, that they would really be
(01:02:57):
able to understand themselves better.
And that's just an amazing advantage.
So part of me really said to myself.
Why not? What am I?
Hiding what is what is so terrible in there?
Well, there's nothing so terrible in there.
It's just our human frailties, our, our deepest fears, you
(01:03:23):
know, they're pretty much the same.
We all are children in this world needing incredible comfort
and dependency and, and parents who are really going to be solid
'cause they are if you know, if,if they're not able to protect
(01:03:45):
us and, and, and guide us into the world.
We, we feel, you know, we, we'redeeply insecure and people,
especially Americans who are so like my mother, independence is
everything. We are so frightened to talk
about our insecurities. And I, I really felt a mission
(01:04:06):
to do that and to show people that it's it, it's, you know, I
thought my friends would look atme and go, Oh my God, who are
you? But they didn't at all.
And people seem to feel it givesother people permission to look
at their insecurities and their fears and their frailties and
(01:04:29):
to, you know, share that not only among your, your closest
people, but as a, as a, as a, asa community, as a larger
community, so that we're not so afraid of it.
Yeah. And for everyone listening, it
sounds like just if you recall something from your childhood,
(01:04:50):
just know that as kids, we tend to, you know, make up a little
story about what it means and who we are.
And so you can kind of analyze your own memories in a way if
you just reflect, like, I think I have to be a good girl.
Well, Doctor Peters, if you haveany last words of wisdom to
share with us, now is the time. You can also tell us where to
(01:05:13):
find your book, which has been. Out.
Yeah, my book is on Amazon and that's the easiest place to find
it, but it's at Barnes and Nobles, you know all the usual
places where you find books. And I have a website
whichisuntanglingjoan.com and I have on the website, I have a
few other the reviews and, you know, some different things that
(01:05:37):
have happened. I thought it's only been out
there a a month. So it, I haven't had many, many
experiences, but I, I have done about 8 podcasts and I've
enjoyed so much talking about the book with, with others, you
(01:05:59):
know, 'cause that's my whole idea that it's been really fun
to get great questions and to think about, think about.
What? What they mean and and I'm
learning more from the questionspeople ask me.
So that's been wonderful. And you're helping people to not
(01:06:20):
shy away from therapy and psychoanalysis.
You're helping people to consider it.
I am, yeah. I do want to encourage that.
And I and just as much, I just want to encourage psychoanalytic
thinking, you know, that that not to stop short of
investigating what's going on inyour psyche.
(01:06:41):
I mean, this is sort of to me, it's like, you know, an owner's
manual take, because I remember what it felt like to not have to
be clueless about why I was doing what I was doing, you
know, and, and I think it, I think it gives you a fuller life
to understand yourself. I do.
(01:07:04):
I would think it's a beautiful thing to bring into a
partnership, just like you and Ijust had an amazing, yes, we
said about our childhoods and the ideas we've formed.
I mean, like, I'm sure you've had an amazing conversation with
your husband. Well, the most exciting thing in
a way is that he is now in therapy and it's so now I'm
(01:07:25):
finished and I get to watch him just coming into all of this
information that's so interesting for him and, and,
and his own, his own, you know, I don't want to use grandiose
terms, but it's like watching anenlightenment happen, you know,
(01:07:46):
and it's, it's exciting and we really do talk a lot about this
subject with each other. And it's been a a joy to do
that. Yeah, it's like a very intimate
way to get to know somebody. You're not judging your past,
you're not judging each other, but you're just becoming closer
because you're getting to know, like, what makes you tick and
(01:08:07):
why you think the way you do. And.
Exactly. Yeah.
And we can, we can notice in oneanother as as partners, certain
themes that emerge that the other might not be aware of.
And it's, it's really been interesting to kind of be the
other person's point person, psychologically speaking.
(01:08:28):
Yes, well, that completes our episode for today.
If this podcast content felt true for you, follow the podcast
today and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
Have an amazing day and keep exploring your favorite ways to
navigate life with a little morecourage and creativity every
single day. Thank you for being here.
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