September 30, 2022 • 38 mins
Barbara and Katie McLaughlin, MA LPCC from Cedar Rose Counseling and Wellness discuss Skills Based Mental Wellness.
Katie's Website: https://www.cedarrosecounseling.org/
Katie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpzmNBGGfRRDM622WnkRNtA
Katie's Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GWygA1iSoEHBGHuLeBQTZ
Katie's Website: https://www.cedarrosecounseling.org/
Katie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpzmNBGGfRRDM622WnkRNtA
Katie's Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GWygA1iSoEHBGHuLeBQTZ
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome everybody to the Hard Podcast.I'm Barbara Say Navarro and I'm here today
with Katie McLaughlin from the Cedar RoseCounseling and she's going to be talking with
us today about our favorite topic,skills base mental wellness, and Katie,
i'd like to well, actually Ishould say first of all, how we
(00:21):
met, right, So we meton Facebook. We've been following each other
for a while now, and it'sbecause the things that we like on sorry
not on Facebook, on LinkedIn,on LinkedIn, the things that we've been
sharing and liking and posting about haveall been revolving around skills and that's what
we were I think drawn to,you know, because so similar approach.
(00:42):
So I wanted you to come onboard, introduce who you are and your
business, and then let's talk somemore about that perfect. Thank you so
much for having me. I'm reallyexcited to be able to one just connect
and too, to be able tospread the good news about old space mental
wellness to the world. And hopefullythis can be something that gets more and
(01:04):
more popular with with the months andyears that come, for sure. But
yeah, so a little bit aboutme. I guess I do own my
own private practice. I'm a mentalhealth counselor. I went to school for
that with my undergrad and my graduateprogram was all about counseling. So no,
(01:26):
I'm now I'm doing doing the thing, doing the counseling thing. I
started my own Yeah, what arethe letters behind your name? O goodness?
Yeah, so right now, SoI'm an independently licensed counselor. So
I'm a licensed Professional Clinical counselor.So it's LPCC at least for Ohio.
(01:46):
Fantastic. Yeah, they're different,They're different everywhere. It's so interesting.
So yeah, I started my owncounting practice back. I think it was
last August, so i've been Itwas almost like full circle about a year
now, and with cedar rows beingmy full time thing. Before that,
(02:07):
I obviously had my internship and practicaland all that in school, and then
I went straight into community based mentalhealth, which was a lot. It
was a great learning experience, butI knew I did not want to stay
in that forever, so I wentinto private practice in a group setting.
When I was there for a coupleof years, and then I started CEDOOS.
(02:30):
Wonderful, what just out of curiosity? What made you decide to go
entirely on your own, Like Ican see the transition to private, but
I'm wondering, you know what promptedyou to just be I'm gonna do it
although myself. Yeah, I'm gonnajump right in. Yeah, you know.
So I was at the group fora couple of years and it was
(02:51):
a great experience. It was agreat learning experience, and I just kept
kind of getting like prompted to trythis thing out on my own. And
I actually have a minor in business, and I just love the business side,
and I didn't really feel like Iwas able to focus on that as
much, maybe growing that as much, and while terrifying, I wanted to
(03:12):
see where that was going to takeme on my own terms. Fair enough,
Yeah, I totally relate to that, especially in the terrifying party.
Yes, every day and growing gooddistress tolerance to be an entrepreneur. Right.
Oh yes, I did not fullyrealize that before I jumped in,
but it is true what they say. So speaking of distress tolerance, that
(03:36):
gives us a segue into our topicof the day, which is skills based
mental wellness. I'd love to knowwhat that term means to you. M
So, when I think of skillsbased mental illness. And I think I
have maybe like described it or usedit with clients in the past, but
I never had that term until Istarted following you guys at Heart. So
(03:59):
I love I love right, it'sperfect, It's perfect. So I love
that. I love that, andI've been using it so much now because
it's it's a great description for whatit is. And I think what skills
based mental wellness means to me iswe're looking at one a holistic approach and
a very like proactive preventative approach tomental health, which is so needed,
(04:25):
right because like as a counselor,I typically see individuals who, like,
we're already in crisis. We werein a space where we need to use
those skills, but we haven't learnedthem, and so now now we're in
a lot of distress. So wekind of have to come to a place
of like grounding, calming our nervoussystem, all of those good things before
(04:46):
we can even teach those skills tobe able to use them. So it's
a very long process when when peoplecome to see me, and that's just
it is what it is. Sobeing able to proactively teach these skills when
we're not in crisis, that we'renot in distress is huge. And you
know the ultimate goal is to putcounselors out of business, right we don't,
(05:06):
not necessarily, but like kind ofit would be great if everyone had
these skills to know how to manageand regulate their thoughts and emotions so we
didn't feel like we were being likebombarded by our internal systems all the time.
That's fantastic. Yeah, this isthe concept of you know, the
expression the best time to buy ahouse was thirty years ago, the next
(05:30):
best time is today. Yeah,Or the alternative of that is from the
prevention message that we use is swimminglessons versus lifeguards. So we lifeguards,
we need therapists to help us whenwe need rescuing, when we really are
in an extreme situation, you know, where we can't kind of do it
(05:55):
on our own, we need abit more help. And yet if we
had swimming lessons, those instances wouldbe less and they would be less severe,
right because we would have already todeveloped skills. And then it just
makes therapist jobs so much easier becauseyou get to focus on the good stuff,
which is like really working with theclient about what's going on with them
and how you know, how they'reapplying skills, and it's a better way
(06:17):
to do it as opposed to havingto go back to foundation and teach those
skills, right right, right,Yeah, it's it would be such a
different picture, such a different storyto be able to, you know,
come into counseling saying, I,you know, just need a little bit
extra assistance. I have these skills, you know, maybe I'm not implementing
them in the best way, orI'm not fully understanding how to even implement
(06:41):
or like are they going to workfor me? And how do they work
with your body and your mind?Rather than just not having any skills at
all? Right, right, it'skind of like the consultant that applies in
the situation as opposed to the generaleducation that teaches the you know, the
generality of the skills. Sure,yeah, absolutely so how what does that
(07:01):
look like in your practice? Howdoes it How do you integrate skills into
your practice? What do you dowith them? When do you tell people
about them? How do you teachthem or practice them? What does that
look like? Yeah? So,like I said, when people do come
to me, they and I specializein treating anxiety disorders. So typically I
see very you know, highly anxious. The first session is pretty emotional,
(07:25):
typically just because there's there's a lot, there's a lot on their plate,
a lot on their minds, alot on their hearts. So we do
a lot of grounding and just calmingthe system, calming the nervous system first
and foremost, because unless unless wedo that work, we're not even going
to be able to collect these skills. So it's a lot of relaxation training
and such at first, and thenwe're able to get into you know,
(07:48):
I do a lot of education,especially about the connection between our brain and
our nervous system and how that showsup in the body to normalize it,
and so then we can start gettinginto skills. But I do find that
once we start to normalize just whattypically happens in our body as a stress
(08:11):
response, so much of that guiltand shame starts to fall away and we
start to have a very different relationshipwith our inner experience, so we can
actually grasp on too. Okay,this is what it looks like to end
engine breathing exercises on a regular basis, And I know that that's going to
effectively call my nervous system and thefear centers in my brain. And so
(08:35):
it's definitely a process. But that'skind of where I begin. Fantastic,
So you have a lot of yourwork available to the public for free,
tells about that. Yeah, thatis something that I've been very passionate about
for a really long time actually,and I just I started my YouTube channel
I think about a year ago.I think it was last summer. And
(08:58):
I also have meditations for as well, and I just there's so many fantastic
applications out there, but they're oftenyou have to pay for this. You
have to pay for the information,whether it's through counseling or through a phone
app, or pay for meditations wheneveryou want to use one. And that's
totally buy into each their own andhow they want to run their business.
(09:18):
But I very much believe that everyoneshould have access to this information and that
really those of us who are inthis position, it is our jobs to
make it more accessible to folks.So that's something that yeah, I do
a lot of it for free.Actually all of it is for free,
(09:39):
and I just really want to getthat information out there in a way that
hopefully is easily understandable and easy toimplement for just kind of the average person
who maybe doesn't, you know,I never had a psychology degree or anything
like that, exposure to this kindof information. Yeah, that's one of
your either you're most popular, mostviewed, or video that you like the
(10:03):
best that kind of puts things ina nice nutshell and presents it to people.
Yeah, so I would say somy most popular and my favorite are
different. We will say that mymost popular right now kind of surprised me.
It's actually one of my meditations forbeating insomnia. It just continues and
(10:24):
it's how I get a lot ofsubscribers and all of that. That's been
very new recently and just kind ofone of those things. But it sounds
like that's very much a need tobe able to. You know, sleep
of course is so important and insomniaas a real deal, and so that
practice has become very popular and that'son my YouTube channel. But I would
(10:45):
say my favorite video I did kindof like a miniseries. I did three
videos about control strategies, so likehow we are responding to our internal systems
basically our thoughts and our emotion andbeing able to instead of fighting with them
constantly. We can normalize that theyexist, and we can respond to them
(11:07):
differently and practice certain techniques to respondto them differently or other than trying to
just make ourselves happy all the time. It's just a common thing that that
we want. Maybe we believe that, like I should be happy all the
time, and I'm feeling sad,So what does that mean about me?
Yeah? In the Heart program,we talk about the importance and the value
(11:30):
the role of emotions in terms ofproviding us information. Like it's our like
a car dashboard, right, youhave lights light up on the car dashboard
to tell you, oh, here'sa warning sign and with your tires,
or a warning sign with your engine, or a warning sign or something else.
Your emotions are like that as awarning sign, and it gives us
information. And instead of like avoidingand you know, ignoring and pushing under
(11:52):
the carpet and doing all kinds ofthings that help us avoid and distract from
them, we should actually calm downand then focus at them, which is
what you were describing of. Onceonce you get people to manage their distress
levels and come out of emotional crisis, all sorts of things become available in
(12:13):
terms of understanding and awareness and beingable to talk about stuff and behaviors change.
And this kind of goes to thepoint of of another concept that we
talk about in the Heart program,which is the cognitive triangle. We actually
it's it's like kind of technical becauseyou know, it's what we learn in
psychology. Yeah, right, Andyet this is like, I don't know
(12:35):
if you remember the book series ofuh is it something for dummies? Right?
So, oh yeah, yeah,aeronautics for dummies for dummies or you
know whatever. This is like youknow, managing your your your mental wellness
for dummies, right. Yeah.So the cogno triangle being that the three
(12:56):
key things affect how we're doing ourbodies, right. One part of the
triangle our emotions and our thoughts,and they all interact with each other.
So this is what you're describing by, you know, when we're all distressed
in our body and we're super emotionaland you know, hyperventilating and crying and
angry and all of those different thingsthat affects how we're thinking and how we're
(13:22):
feeling. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and I think in ways that we
often don't realize or typically understand.Yeah, And even like, it's so
interesting looking at the research of youknow, our mental models, the way
that we view the world in general, Like those beliefs, at least the
(13:43):
foundations of those beliefs are built withinthe first three years of life. So
we're going about our life, youknow, when we're in our twenties,
our thirties or forties, living inthese mental models, but leaving them to
be true without really even acknowledging orknowing that without knowing yes, yeah,
we don't know how our operating systemworks. That's effectively exactly. I love
(14:05):
that. It's so true we areliving in a system and almost like being
bombarded by it every day because wedon't know what it's trying to do to
help and survive. Yeah, what'sone of your favorite self awareness skills that
allows people to kind of look up, you know, kind of not disassociated
(14:28):
because all the time, Yeah,but other people in the industry will understand
what I'm talking about, but Idid that. You can kind of come
out of yourself and look down andsay, what the heck is going on
with me right now? Why amI in such a state? Where is
it coming from? What's your favoriteprocess or skill for that I would say
(14:52):
in a in like a general term, is mindfulness just being practicing being aware
of the present boocket Yeah, yeah, but I would say it's like a
specific practice cultivating our what they calllike the observing mind and mindfulness, right,
like being able to just observe ourinner experiences, observe our thoughts,
(15:13):
acknowledge that they're there, observe ouremotions, acknowledge that they're there, and
how they're how they are feeling inour body, like where are we feeling
muscle tension? Where are we feelingheat, coolness, tingliness? Like you
said, emotions and thoughts they're hereto tell us something. And so if
we can observe what's going on insideof us right now, that gives us
(15:39):
a pretty good picture of of what'sgoing on, so we can start to
better interpret I guess those those signals. Yeah, mindfulness is so powerful,
and yet I feel as though asa society we've sort of, I don't
know what the right word for,cheapened it, or we'd like like simplified
(16:03):
it down to juts, let's sitand meditate and that's mindfulness, right,
that's it, And there's a rightway to do it, right, and
there's the right way to do it. And yet yet mindfulness in and of
itself is like, you know,any activity can be a mindfulness activity.
And even even you know, likewe talked about going for a walk on
the grass barefoot, or watching cloudsor I don't know, you know,
(16:30):
feeling the sensations on your fingertips oranything. Any activity can be mindful if
you're using the mindful attitude or processof mindfulness. You know, like,
so you're observing without judgment and you'reaccepting what's going on. So mindfulness is
like really rich, but I feellike we just barely scratch the surface of
(16:52):
what it is. What do youthoughts on mindfulness? I totally agree?
And what's so unfortunate about the waythat society I think has really summarize it
or even just like wopped off thetop and saying like this twenty minute meditation.
This is mindfulness. That's how youpractice it, and it's the purpose
(17:12):
is to clear your mind. Andif you don't clear your mind, you're
doing it wrong wrong, right,that's even even that whole point clearing your
mind, that's that's necessarily the rightresponse because actually what you want to do
is fill your mind, but onlywith the thing that you're putting it on,
right, everything, but like I'mgoing to focus my mind on this
one thing and stay there for aperiod of time. Yes, absolutely,
(17:37):
empty, absolutely, and it's notYeah, it's not even realistic to clear
our mind for one because our mindis a thinking machine, a prediction machine.
It's busy, it's making sense ofyour world. That's just what it
does, and that's normal. Soit's so unfortunate that that's the outward view
of mindfulness. I think if wecould be able to normalize what mindfulness actually
(18:06):
is, that would be lovely.And I hope that that's you know,
what happens in just through like themeditations that I put out. But if
we can, I guess I typicallydescribe it as like a mindfulness muscle,
like that that mindfulness attitude or perspective. It's it's a skill that we can
learn and it can grow in timewith repetition, just like strength change strength
(18:29):
training, right, like as themore times that we practice it, the
stronger it will get, the easierit will feel to practice and focus our
attention on one thing. I sowish that I hope that that is where
society will go with it one daywith more of us talking about it.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah,My Bill, my partner, and I.
(18:52):
You know, we go to thegym and one of the things that
we talk about is exactly what yousay about it becoming easier with practice and
repetition because our body is developing,you know, that neuropathway of the habit,
right, it becomes automated and wedon't have to think about it so
much, and it just kicks insometimes when we don't even think about it.
Like the idea of slowing down yourbreath to calm yourself down. That's
(19:17):
something that for me kicks in whenI get into like a like a nervous
making situation, and I know,I don't even really pay attention to the
fact that I'm doing it. Ijust noticed after the fact, Oh yeah,
my breathing has changed, and youknow, now I'm calming down.
But so we go to the gym, and you know, I don't know
(19:37):
if you've ever done I'm probably gonnascrew up the name of this power cleans
you know, where you lift theboat back in the day, so actually
back in the six Yeah, Sothis is a very regular strength training exercise.
It's extremely good for like full bodymuscle development, right, and it
(19:57):
addresses all kinds of back issues andknee issues and shoulder issues and and and
of course it's this weird series ofmovements with a bar right, sometimes with
wait, maybe without if you're starting, And it's very awkward at the beginning
for a lot of people, andit's just like, wait, which part
(20:18):
do I do for to day?My hips do this, and my knees
do that, and my back issupposed to be straight but curved, and
I'm going to explode. And andas you do it more and more,
it becomes easier and easier. AndI think that the idea that things are
always easy from the get go isthis weird misconception that we've we're bringing on
(20:41):
board and we're stuck with, insteadof the idea that things are awkward at
first and we grow into them.So I really like that. I like
that message that you're talking about aboutnormalizing things and changing from you know,
when you first try, like gettingon the bike right, the first try,
it's really awkward, feels weird,it's too many things to think about,
and then over time, you knowyou're jumping curbs and not even thinking
(21:03):
about how you're doing it absolutely andjust that it's it is a process and
that's just a normal part of humanliving of developing skills. Like we that's
what happens when we're babies. Wewe're not great at walking at first,
but here we are at however,whatever age we are now and like we're
doing just fine. Like it getstotally easier with time. And I had
(21:25):
just gone through a bit of thatmodule in the Heart program to about habits,
and I loved it. I thinkyou guys simplified it in a way
that is so easy to understand whenyou're talking about you know, you are
building a new neural pathway, youare building a new skill, and this
is how it kind of operates,and it's it just takes time, and
it takes time, and it takesrepetition, you know, kind of just
(21:45):
have to trust the process. Wheredid you learn all this information? Did
you pick it up in your inyour education and your degree in your field
work on the side, Where didit come from? I think a lot
of it came from, of course, you know, my undergrad degree and
counseling my master's degree as well,but I also did just a lot of
(22:11):
reading, a lot of learning onmy own too. I mean I came
into the counseling field because I,you know, went through my own stuff
when I was a teenager and allof that adolescent angst and all of that
kind of stuff. So I don'twant the depression and anxiety and all of
those things. And so it tookme a long time to figure out,
you know, what are the skillsthat make sense for me and what's going
(22:32):
to be most effective for me too. So I had it from kind of
all angles, I guess, likefrom a personal perspective and from that just
clinical professional perspective that they that theyteach us in schools, and a lot
of it overlapped. There were somedifferences as well. Right, I feel
like that is what happens most ofthe time, is that we pick it
(22:52):
up throughout our lives as we continueto be students and learn about how to
manage ourselves. If we're doing that, but if we're not doing that,
Yeah, I feel like there isn'ta place where we teach people this kind
of information until they get to thehospital. And then, like you said
(23:15):
earlier, that's really hard. Youknow, how do you learn to swim
when you're already drowning. You know, you're falling off the boat and now
I'm going to get you swimming instructionsfor how to hold your breath. Yeah,
it's just not quite going to workout, especially when we're in that
state of fight. Like our brain, the logical part of our brain is
not it's separate, like that connectionis not there for protective reasons, but
(23:38):
it's just it's going to be reallyhard unless we can start to calm down
or teach it. When you know, we're young, kids start learning some
of these techniques so we don't getto that point where we are drowning.
Yeah. Lately, we've been workingon webinars for school staff, so that's
(24:02):
teachers, you know, parent educators, wellness center staff, administrators, but
also like school therapists and academic counselorswho interact with students when they're when they're
distressed, right, that's kind oftheir remit is to handle that. And
we've been starting this series of webinarson how to help adults learn the skills
(24:26):
to teach the students and also kindof to do themselves and model hopefully fingers
cross adults to model the skills anduse them themselves. But as we talk
to people, I'm finding that people, you know, like when they take
the trainer course that a lot ofthe time I thought was going to be
(24:49):
on how to integrate the material intoteaching other people, but it seems like
so much of it is just wow, I'm using this in my own personal
life, and here's how it's going, and here's what response I'm getting that.
You know, it's just interesting thathow it's like people are sponges there
was some information because they're not gettingit systematically anywhere else, right, Yeah,
(25:17):
yeah, it is interesting that thisinformation is not really widely taught.
So it's great too to have programslike you guys that are actively teaching this
to you know, individual of allages, but especially to adults. So
one they learn how to regulate andthey don't feel like they're drowning. So
and so they can model it toto kids and teenagers and whomever else that
(25:37):
they run across, so they cankind of help to co regulate. Otherwise
we're all kind of just floundering.So remind me again, who is your
your clientele? Is it? Isit like what age? I know you've
talked about anxiety, but what agerange are you working with? So I
have, like, within my careerthus far, I've worked with pretty much
(25:59):
the whole spack drum. But rightnow I work pretty much only with like
late teenagers, so maybe like sixteenseventeen, yeah, sixteen seventeen, and
then young adults. I work witha lot of young adults, So probably
between sixteen and thirty ish is mygeneral range. So a lot of transitions,
(26:21):
a lot of just really insightful youngadults who really acknowledge the impact of
like caretakers and adults in their lifeand how they've learned how to respond to
situations. And unfortunately, many ofthem, I mean, like many of
us, right, we didn't reallyhave those not necessarily role models that I
(26:44):
mean kind of we learn the correctbehavior that was going to be helpful for
us, and so we're relearning bangersthat can be helpful. So it's good
about from the perspective of not goodand bad good role model, bad role
model, but like effective role models, right, Yes, when when people
do things that are effective in achievingour goals and you know where we want
(27:11):
to go with what we're what's goingon, right, things are effective and
helpful in general rather than middle teamsunhelpful habits. That's okay, So let's
see. One of the questions thatI had for you was about how would
(27:34):
you compare and contrast the way youwork with when I don't know how much
exposure you have to how other therapistsare past therapy used to work. Is
there any difference or do you feellike you're filling a gap somewhere? Yeah,
so I feel like the approach totherapy has changed certainly over the years,
(27:59):
and I think we're coming into aspace that is more in alignment,
I guess with the approach that I'vebeen taking. Excuse me, it's so
interesting, but I would say,you know, within the lab, there's
been a lot of change I guesswithin the last couple of years from what
I've seen, and we're bringing inmore understanding of the mind body connection,
(28:21):
and and I guess acknowledging that emotionsand thoughts are not bad at least I
think I think that's where we're going. I hope, I hope that's what
I'm seeing. But I think fora long time, you know, cognitive
behavioral therapy has been like the primarytherapy for a lot of different things,
and for a good reason. It'svery effective in its own right. It's
(28:44):
based in just how our brain operates. That's great, But I do think
that, you know, many ofthe techniques kind of have caveats depending on
what we are working with. Somuch of cognitive behavioral therapy is identifying unhelpful
thoughts and or they call cognitive distortions, which kind of just puts a little
(29:04):
bit of a bad taste in mymouth. But to each their and to
each their own, I t yeah, it's something other than distortions. So
yeah, it was identifying these beliefsand like fighting with them, changing them,
challenging them, and it just kindof it has You know, when
(29:27):
I first started counting, I didthat because that was what was taught and
that was what I knew, andI quickly found out that that was not
effective, at least in the majorityof the individuals that I was working with.
So, especially when we're talking aboutcertain things like obsessive compulsive disorder and
intrusive thoughts, challenging those thoughts andfighting with them, trying to make them
(29:49):
go away or thought stopping does moredamage than good. So I have kind
of taken a more of a broadapproach to responding to our thoughts, emotions
in a way to change our relationshipto them. Rather than this one's bad,
this one's good. It's kind ofjust these things are happening within us,
(30:11):
and we have the power to decidehow we want to respond to them,
and I have found that be muchmore effective in a broad range.
Rather than Okay, this technique isgoing to be for this thing, and
this technique is going to be forthis thing, and oh did we you
know, diagnose wrong. Then thisisn't going to be effective and we have
to change our whole thing. Thisapproach seems to be much more effective just
(30:33):
in on the whole. Great.I love it. Have you? I'm
sure that you know that we doa lot of dialectical behavioral therapy. That's
a big base of our curriculum,and that is because of my experience in
the hospital programs that I was workingand finding that because it's it's skills based
(30:57):
again back to skills based mental wellness, it was just extremely useful for people
because so much of it is aboutdistress, tolerance or prices, survival,
or emotion regulations so that you're notin that vulnerable place where you're where you're
being bombarded by strong emotions and overwhelmedby them, and those skills give us
(31:18):
the ability to kind of step backand give space so that then we can
actually use the CBT, use thethought, and you manage our thoughts think
about us in a kind of Idon't know, dispassionate is the right word
for it, but like a calmway. Right, we're not distressed when
we're trying to think about it.I just pop my stack of what I
(31:40):
was going to ask you now.That happens to me all the time.
Well, yes, so we canget that part out, something about what
was it? Something about DBT andoh I can't remember now. Well,
(32:01):
so in the absence of that,is there anything that you would like to
bring up, or like an issuethat you want to vocalize or spread or
talk about. Yeah, yeah,or like one key thing that you'd like
people to walk away with. Actually, let's back up. Is there anything
(32:25):
that you would like to talk about, you know, to wrap up this
conversation and then we'll come to ourlast question. Sure, Well, I
think I think they kind of gohand in hand, and I think they're
connected to what we were just talkingabout, or just like responding to responding
to our internal experiences differently, likenot coming to them with trying to fight
(32:46):
with them or make them go away, or that the thoughts that we have
make us weak or bad, orthat our feelings make us weak or bad.
There can be such you know,when we when we approach these very
powerful emotions and we're experiencing them andwe're trying to fight with them, we're
(33:07):
kind of putting ourselves in our ownlittle stress ball, and it's like perpetuating
our stress response. And so Ijust I wish that I hope that that
can be more widely understood that ourinternal experiences are not dangerous, but when
we try to challenge them and fightwith them and make them go away all
(33:30):
the time, that our brain isseeing them as dangerous. Yeah, and
that that is going to show upin your body. And that's just a
normal stress response. So if wecan respond to them in a different way,
we can call them that stress responsefor one, and we can feel
much more at peace and in controlof our experiences. So interesting, I'm
(33:52):
getting this mental model of like amartial artists using the energy to you know
again itself to fight, you know, like and you take their energy and
use it against them. Right,So this would be like, you know,
we've got some energy that is eitherlimiting us or undermining us, and
(34:13):
how do we use it in aproductive way, turn it around to make
it work for us and instead offighting against it, because the fighting against
it exhausts us, because actually theenergy is coming from us in both and
now we're like totallyhausting ourselves. Yeah, no, wonder we're also exhausted that
we're fighting this inner battle every singleday, right right? Well, all
(34:37):
right, So if you were toleave one key message with our audience,
what would you like it to be. I would really just like it to
be that you know, your thoughtsare are just that they are thoughts.
They are your brain trying to makesense of your world. Your emotions are
(35:00):
just trying to tell you that theyhave that your brain has identified something and
it's feeling a certain type of way, and it's it's letting you know that
these are normal human bodily responses andthat you get to experience and I am
saying, get to experience the fullspectrum of emotions and they kind of enrich
(35:21):
each other, and that they're thatthey're they're normal, our thoughts are normal,
our emotions are normal, and that'sreally I mean to summarize. These
are normal experiences and it's it's perfectlyokay that you're experiencing them. Yeah,
that's fantastic. Thank you very muchfor that. Please share with us where
people can find you. Sure.So, okay, So I have my
(35:45):
YouTube channel. I have meditations whichyou can find on my YouTube channel,
as well as anchor and Spotify andwhere you find podcasts. I also have
some just free resources and a newsletter, a blog, so everything is on
my website. Maybe I can sendyou the link. I don't know how
you want to do that, butyeah, see I'll send those resources.
(36:08):
You can download them if you want, just mental health tips and tricks and
all those types of things. Mynewsletter would be a great option. YouTube
channel and they're weekly. Sometimes it'seducation, sometimes it's a meditation. You
never know what you're going to get, but hopefully they can be beneficial.
But those are the primary places.Excellent. So again, just what is
(36:30):
your URL for your website. It'sbasically it is Cedar Rose Counseling dot org.
Cool, and all of your resourcesare there, and I recommend listeners
that you check out Katie's resources becausethey're fantastic. She's got an awesome voice,
(36:51):
calming and great for meditation, andI bet that's why so many people
just listen to it over and overagain and thank you for your kind words.
I appreciate it. Awesome. Allright, thank you very much,
and have a great day and we'llsee you next time. All right,
So, any thoughts about did wemiss anything that you want to add in?
(37:15):
I don't think so. I thinkwe covered a lot. I think
that was good. I'm glad we'reable to set aside some time just to
cover some of these topics. AndI hope it's helpful for your guys's audience.
Yeah, I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be.
We're currently we're getting more adults thanteens, which is good because the adults
(37:37):
need to learn this stuff as wellas the teens. Because very often in
the past, when we've addressed teensdirectly, and this has happened in therapy
in the hospital, the teens say, but my parents don't do this.
The teens are so insightful, theyknow, they're like, I do this
because my mom does this, andshe's not going to stop. So much.
(37:57):
Should I? Why should I?Yeah? But the answer to that
is, well, do you wantto be like that? I mean,
you know, right, so youlike how that makes you feel when you
do that? Or would you liketo be a different way or feel a
different thing or experience and you know, experience something to because you're here,
so it doesn't seem to be working. So change even if you're you're adults
(38:23):
around you aren't changing. Maybe youneed to change if you want this to
be different. And of course we'regoing to try and work with the adults,
and everybody has their own ability todecide if they're going to change or
not change. Yeah, definitely,absolutely that that is in their control and
hopefully just that knowledge is helpful toacknowledging that they have something that's in their
(38:46):
power, especially as a team.Yeah, for sure. All right, Well,
Welcome everybody to the Hard Podcast.I'm Barbara Say Navarro and I'm here today
with Katie McLaughlin from the Cedar RoseCounseling and she's going to be talking with
us today about our favorite topic,skills base mental wellness, and Katie,
i'd like to well, actually Ishould say first of all, how we
(00:21):
met, right, So we meton Facebook. We've been following each other
for a while now, and it'sbecause the things that we like on sorry
not on Facebook, on LinkedIn,on LinkedIn, the things that we've been
sharing and liking and posting about haveall been revolving around skills and that's what
we were I think drawn to,you know, because so similar approach.
(00:42):
So I wanted you to come onboard, introduce who you are and your
business, and then let's talk somemore about that perfect. Thank you so
much for having me. I'm reallyexcited to be able to one just connect
and too, to be able tospread the good news about old space mental
wellness to the world. And hopefullythis can be something that gets more and
(01:04):
more popular with with the months andyears that come, for sure. But
yeah, so a little bit aboutme. I guess I do own my
own private practice. I'm a mentalhealth counselor. I went to school for
that with my undergrad and my graduateprogram was all about counseling. So no,
(01:26):
I'm now I'm doing doing the thing, doing the counseling thing. I
started my own Yeah, what arethe letters behind your name? O goodness?
Yeah, so right now, SoI'm an independently licensed counselor. So
I'm a licensed Professional Clinical counselor.So it's LPCC at least for Ohio.
(01:46):
Fantastic. Yeah, they're different,They're different everywhere. It's so interesting.
So yeah, I started my owncounting practice back. I think it was
last August, so i've been Itwas almost like full circle about a year
now, and with cedar rows beingmy full time thing. Before that,
(02:07):
I obviously had my internship and practicaland all that in school, and then
I went straight into community based mentalhealth, which was a lot. It
was a great learning experience, butI knew I did not want to stay
in that forever, so I wentinto private practice in a group setting.
When I was there for a coupleof years, and then I started CEDOOS.
(02:30):
Wonderful, what just out of curiosity? What made you decide to go
entirely on your own, Like Ican see the transition to private, but
I'm wondering, you know what promptedyou to just be I'm gonna do it
although myself. Yeah, I'm gonnajump right in. Yeah, you know.
So I was at the group fora couple of years and it was
(02:51):
a great experience. It was agreat learning experience, and I just kept
kind of getting like prompted to trythis thing out on my own. And
I actually have a minor in business, and I just love the business side,
and I didn't really feel like Iwas able to focus on that as
much, maybe growing that as much, and while terrifying, I wanted to
(03:12):
see where that was going to takeme on my own terms. Fair enough,
Yeah, I totally relate to that, especially in the terrifying party.
Yes, every day and growing gooddistress tolerance to be an entrepreneur. Right.
Oh yes, I did not fullyrealize that before I jumped in,
but it is true what they say. So speaking of distress tolerance, that
(03:36):
gives us a segue into our topicof the day, which is skills based
mental wellness. I'd love to knowwhat that term means to you. M
So, when I think of skillsbased mental illness. And I think I
have maybe like described it or usedit with clients in the past, but
I never had that term until Istarted following you guys at Heart. So
(03:59):
I love I love right, it'sperfect, It's perfect. So I love
that. I love that, andI've been using it so much now because
it's it's a great description for whatit is. And I think what skills
based mental wellness means to me iswe're looking at one a holistic approach and
a very like proactive preventative approach tomental health, which is so needed,
(04:25):
right because like as a counselor,I typically see individuals who, like,
we're already in crisis. We werein a space where we need to use
those skills, but we haven't learnedthem, and so now now we're in
a lot of distress. So wekind of have to come to a place
of like grounding, calming our nervoussystem, all of those good things before
(04:46):
we can even teach those skills tobe able to use them. So it's
a very long process when when peoplecome to see me, and that's just
it is what it is. Sobeing able to proactively teach these skills when
we're not in crisis, that we'renot in distress is huge. And you
know the ultimate goal is to putcounselors out of business, right we don't,
(05:06):
not necessarily, but like kind ofit would be great if everyone had
these skills to know how to manageand regulate their thoughts and emotions so we
didn't feel like we were being likebombarded by our internal systems all the time.
That's fantastic. Yeah, this isthe concept of you know, the
expression the best time to buy ahouse was thirty years ago, the next
(05:30):
best time is today. Yeah,Or the alternative of that is from the
prevention message that we use is swimminglessons versus lifeguards. So we lifeguards,
we need therapists to help us whenwe need rescuing, when we really are
in an extreme situation, you know, where we can't kind of do it
(05:55):
on our own, we need abit more help. And yet if we
had swimming lessons, those instances wouldbe less and they would be less severe,
right because we would have already todeveloped skills. And then it just
makes therapist jobs so much easier becauseyou get to focus on the good stuff,
which is like really working with theclient about what's going on with them
and how you know, how they'reapplying skills, and it's a better way
(06:17):
to do it as opposed to havingto go back to foundation and teach those
skills, right right, right,Yeah, it's it would be such a
different picture, such a different storyto be able to, you know,
come into counseling saying, I,you know, just need a little bit
extra assistance. I have these skills, you know, maybe I'm not implementing
them in the best way, orI'm not fully understanding how to even implement
(06:41):
or like are they going to workfor me? And how do they work
with your body and your mind?Rather than just not having any skills at
all? Right, right, it'skind of like the consultant that applies in
the situation as opposed to the generaleducation that teaches the you know, the
generality of the skills. Sure,yeah, absolutely so how what does that
(07:01):
look like in your practice? Howdoes it How do you integrate skills into
your practice? What do you dowith them? When do you tell people
about them? How do you teachthem or practice them? What does that
look like? Yeah? So,like I said, when people do come
to me, they and I specializein treating anxiety disorders. So typically I
see very you know, highly anxious. The first session is pretty emotional,
(07:25):
typically just because there's there's a lot, there's a lot on their plate,
a lot on their minds, alot on their hearts. So we do
a lot of grounding and just calmingthe system, calming the nervous system first
and foremost, because unless unless wedo that work, we're not even going
to be able to collect these skills. So it's a lot of relaxation training
and such at first, and thenwe're able to get into you know,
(07:48):
I do a lot of education,especially about the connection between our brain and
our nervous system and how that showsup in the body to normalize it,
and so then we can start gettinginto skills. But I do find that
once we start to normalize just whattypically happens in our body as a stress
(08:11):
response, so much of that guiltand shame starts to fall away and we
start to have a very different relationshipwith our inner experience, so we can
actually grasp on too. Okay,this is what it looks like to end
engine breathing exercises on a regular basis, And I know that that's going to
effectively call my nervous system and thefear centers in my brain. And so
(08:35):
it's definitely a process. But that'skind of where I begin. Fantastic,
So you have a lot of yourwork available to the public for free,
tells about that. Yeah, thatis something that I've been very passionate about
for a really long time actually,and I just I started my YouTube channel
I think about a year ago.I think it was last summer. And
(08:58):
I also have meditations for as well, and I just there's so many fantastic
applications out there, but they're oftenyou have to pay for this. You
have to pay for the information,whether it's through counseling or through a phone
app, or pay for meditations wheneveryou want to use one. And that's
totally buy into each their own andhow they want to run their business.
(09:18):
But I very much believe that everyoneshould have access to this information and that
really those of us who are inthis position, it is our jobs to
make it more accessible to folks.So that's something that yeah, I do
a lot of it for free.Actually all of it is for free,
(09:39):
and I just really want to getthat information out there in a way that
hopefully is easily understandable and easy toimplement for just kind of the average person
who maybe doesn't, you know,I never had a psychology degree or anything
like that, exposure to this kindof information. Yeah, that's one of
your either you're most popular, mostviewed, or video that you like the
(10:03):
best that kind of puts things ina nice nutshell and presents it to people.
Yeah, so I would say somy most popular and my favorite are
different. We will say that mymost popular right now kind of surprised me.
It's actually one of my meditations forbeating insomnia. It just continues and
(10:24):
it's how I get a lot ofsubscribers and all of that. That's been
very new recently and just kind ofone of those things. But it sounds
like that's very much a need tobe able to. You know, sleep
of course is so important and insomniaas a real deal, and so that
practice has become very popular and that'son my YouTube channel. But I would
(10:45):
say my favorite video I did kindof like a miniseries. I did three
videos about control strategies, so likehow we are responding to our internal systems
basically our thoughts and our emotion andbeing able to instead of fighting with them
constantly. We can normalize that theyexist, and we can respond to them
(11:07):
differently and practice certain techniques to respondto them differently or other than trying to
just make ourselves happy all the time. It's just a common thing that that
we want. Maybe we believe that, like I should be happy all the
time, and I'm feeling sad,So what does that mean about me?
Yeah? In the Heart program,we talk about the importance and the value
(11:30):
the role of emotions in terms ofproviding us information. Like it's our like
a car dashboard, right, youhave lights light up on the car dashboard
to tell you, oh, here'sa warning sign and with your tires,
or a warning sign with your engine, or a warning sign or something else.
Your emotions are like that as awarning sign, and it gives us
information. And instead of like avoidingand you know, ignoring and pushing under
(11:52):
the carpet and doing all kinds ofthings that help us avoid and distract from
them, we should actually calm downand then focus at them, which is
what you were describing of. Onceonce you get people to manage their distress
levels and come out of emotional crisis, all sorts of things become available in
(12:13):
terms of understanding and awareness and beingable to talk about stuff and behaviors change.
And this kind of goes to thepoint of of another concept that we
talk about in the Heart program,which is the cognitive triangle. We actually
it's it's like kind of technical becauseyou know, it's what we learn in
psychology. Yeah, right, Andyet this is like, I don't know
(12:35):
if you remember the book series ofuh is it something for dummies? Right?
So, oh yeah, yeah,aeronautics for dummies for dummies or you
know whatever. This is like youknow, managing your your your mental wellness
for dummies, right. Yeah.So the cogno triangle being that the three
(12:56):
key things affect how we're doing ourbodies, right. One part of the
triangle our emotions and our thoughts,and they all interact with each other.
So this is what you're describing by, you know, when we're all distressed
in our body and we're super emotionaland you know, hyperventilating and crying and
angry and all of those different thingsthat affects how we're thinking and how we're
(13:22):
feeling. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and I think in ways that we
often don't realize or typically understand.Yeah, And even like, it's so
interesting looking at the research of youknow, our mental models, the way
that we view the world in general, Like those beliefs, at least the
(13:43):
foundations of those beliefs are built withinthe first three years of life. So
we're going about our life, youknow, when we're in our twenties,
our thirties or forties, living inthese mental models, but leaving them to
be true without really even acknowledging orknowing that without knowing yes, yeah,
we don't know how our operating systemworks. That's effectively exactly. I love
(14:05):
that. It's so true we areliving in a system and almost like being
bombarded by it every day because wedon't know what it's trying to do to
help and survive. Yeah, what'sone of your favorite self awareness skills that
allows people to kind of look up, you know, kind of not disassociated
(14:28):
because all the time, Yeah,but other people in the industry will understand
what I'm talking about, but Idid that. You can kind of come
out of yourself and look down andsay, what the heck is going on
with me right now? Why amI in such a state? Where is
it coming from? What's your favoriteprocess or skill for that I would say
(14:52):
in a in like a general term, is mindfulness just being practicing being aware
of the present boocket Yeah, yeah, but I would say it's like a
specific practice cultivating our what they calllike the observing mind and mindfulness, right,
like being able to just observe ourinner experiences, observe our thoughts,
(15:13):
acknowledge that they're there, observe ouremotions, acknowledge that they're there, and
how they're how they are feeling inour body, like where are we feeling
muscle tension? Where are we feelingheat, coolness, tingliness? Like you
said, emotions and thoughts they're hereto tell us something. And so if
we can observe what's going on insideof us right now, that gives us
(15:39):
a pretty good picture of of what'sgoing on, so we can start to
better interpret I guess those those signals. Yeah, mindfulness is so powerful,
and yet I feel as though asa society we've sort of, I don't
know what the right word for,cheapened it, or we'd like like simplified
(16:03):
it down to juts, let's sitand meditate and that's mindfulness, right,
that's it, And there's a rightway to do it, right, and
there's the right way to do it. And yet yet mindfulness in and of
itself is like, you know,any activity can be a mindfulness activity.
And even even you know, likewe talked about going for a walk on
the grass barefoot, or watching cloudsor I don't know, you know,
(16:30):
feeling the sensations on your fingertips oranything. Any activity can be mindful if
you're using the mindful attitude or processof mindfulness. You know, like,
so you're observing without judgment and you'reaccepting what's going on. So mindfulness is
like really rich, but I feellike we just barely scratch the surface of
(16:52):
what it is. What do youthoughts on mindfulness? I totally agree?
And what's so unfortunate about the waythat society I think has really summarize it
or even just like wopped off thetop and saying like this twenty minute meditation.
This is mindfulness. That's how youpractice it, and it's the purpose
(17:12):
is to clear your mind. Andif you don't clear your mind, you're
doing it wrong wrong, right,that's even even that whole point clearing your
mind, that's that's necessarily the rightresponse because actually what you want to do
is fill your mind, but onlywith the thing that you're putting it on,
right, everything, but like I'mgoing to focus my mind on this
one thing and stay there for aperiod of time. Yes, absolutely,
(17:37):
empty, absolutely, and it's notYeah, it's not even realistic to clear
our mind for one because our mindis a thinking machine, a prediction machine.
It's busy, it's making sense ofyour world. That's just what it
does, and that's normal. Soit's so unfortunate that that's the outward view
of mindfulness. I think if wecould be able to normalize what mindfulness actually
(18:06):
is, that would be lovely.And I hope that that's you know,
what happens in just through like themeditations that I put out. But if
we can, I guess I typicallydescribe it as like a mindfulness muscle,
like that that mindfulness attitude or perspective. It's it's a skill that we can
learn and it can grow in timewith repetition, just like strength change strength
(18:29):
training, right, like as themore times that we practice it, the
stronger it will get, the easierit will feel to practice and focus our
attention on one thing. I sowish that I hope that that is where
society will go with it one daywith more of us talking about it.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah,My Bill, my partner, and I.
(18:52):
You know, we go to thegym and one of the things that
we talk about is exactly what yousay about it becoming easier with practice and
repetition because our body is developing,you know, that neuropathway of the habit,
right, it becomes automated and wedon't have to think about it so
much, and it just kicks insometimes when we don't even think about it.
Like the idea of slowing down yourbreath to calm yourself down. That's
(19:17):
something that for me kicks in whenI get into like a like a nervous
making situation, and I know,I don't even really pay attention to the
fact that I'm doing it. Ijust noticed after the fact, Oh yeah,
my breathing has changed, and youknow, now I'm calming down.
But so we go to the gym, and you know, I don't know
(19:37):
if you've ever done I'm probably gonnascrew up the name of this power cleans
you know, where you lift theboat back in the day, so actually
back in the six Yeah, Sothis is a very regular strength training exercise.
It's extremely good for like full bodymuscle development, right, and it
(19:57):
addresses all kinds of back issues andknee issues and shoulder issues and and and
of course it's this weird series ofmovements with a bar right, sometimes with
wait, maybe without if you're starting, And it's very awkward at the beginning
for a lot of people, andit's just like, wait, which part
(20:18):
do I do for to day?My hips do this, and my knees
do that, and my back issupposed to be straight but curved, and
I'm going to explode. And andas you do it more and more,
it becomes easier and easier. AndI think that the idea that things are
always easy from the get go isthis weird misconception that we've we're bringing on
(20:41):
board and we're stuck with, insteadof the idea that things are awkward at
first and we grow into them.So I really like that. I like
that message that you're talking about aboutnormalizing things and changing from you know,
when you first try, like gettingon the bike right, the first try,
it's really awkward, feels weird,it's too many things to think about,
and then over time, you knowyou're jumping curbs and not even thinking
(21:03):
about how you're doing it absolutely andjust that it's it is a process and
that's just a normal part of humanliving of developing skills. Like we that's
what happens when we're babies. Wewe're not great at walking at first,
but here we are at however,whatever age we are now and like we're
doing just fine. Like it getstotally easier with time. And I had
(21:25):
just gone through a bit of thatmodule in the Heart program to about habits,
and I loved it. I thinkyou guys simplified it in a way
that is so easy to understand whenyou're talking about you know, you are
building a new neural pathway, youare building a new skill, and this
is how it kind of operates,and it's it just takes time, and
it takes time, and it takesrepetition, you know, kind of just
(21:45):
have to trust the process. Wheredid you learn all this information? Did
you pick it up in your inyour education and your degree in your field
work on the side, Where didit come from? I think a lot
of it came from, of course, you know, my undergrad degree and
counseling my master's degree as well,but I also did just a lot of
(22:11):
reading, a lot of learning onmy own too. I mean I came
into the counseling field because I,you know, went through my own stuff
when I was a teenager and allof that adolescent angst and all of that
kind of stuff. So I don'twant the depression and anxiety and all of
those things. And so it tookme a long time to figure out,
you know, what are the skillsthat make sense for me and what's going
(22:32):
to be most effective for me too. So I had it from kind of
all angles, I guess, likefrom a personal perspective and from that just
clinical professional perspective that they that theyteach us in schools, and a lot
of it overlapped. There were somedifferences as well. Right, I feel
like that is what happens most ofthe time, is that we pick it
(22:52):
up throughout our lives as we continueto be students and learn about how to
manage ourselves. If we're doing that, but if we're not doing that,
Yeah, I feel like there isn'ta place where we teach people this kind
of information until they get to thehospital. And then, like you said
(23:15):
earlier, that's really hard. Youknow, how do you learn to swim
when you're already drowning. You know, you're falling off the boat and now
I'm going to get you swimming instructionsfor how to hold your breath. Yeah,
it's just not quite going to workout, especially when we're in that
state of fight. Like our brain, the logical part of our brain is
not it's separate, like that connectionis not there for protective reasons, but
(23:38):
it's just it's going to be reallyhard unless we can start to calm down
or teach it. When you know, we're young, kids start learning some
of these techniques so we don't getto that point where we are drowning.
Yeah. Lately, we've been workingon webinars for school staff, so that's
(24:02):
teachers, you know, parent educators, wellness center staff, administrators, but
also like school therapists and academic counselorswho interact with students when they're when they're
distressed, right, that's kind oftheir remit is to handle that. And
we've been starting this series of webinarson how to help adults learn the skills
(24:26):
to teach the students and also kindof to do themselves and model hopefully fingers
cross adults to model the skills anduse them themselves. But as we talk
to people, I'm finding that people, you know, like when they take
the trainer course that a lot ofthe time I thought was going to be
(24:49):
on how to integrate the material intoteaching other people, but it seems like
so much of it is just wow, I'm using this in my own personal
life, and here's how it's going, and here's what response I'm getting that.
You know, it's just interesting thathow it's like people are sponges there
was some information because they're not gettingit systematically anywhere else, right, Yeah,
(25:17):
yeah, it is interesting that thisinformation is not really widely taught.
So it's great too to have programslike you guys that are actively teaching this
to you know, individual of allages, but especially to adults. So
one they learn how to regulate andthey don't feel like they're drowning. So
and so they can model it toto kids and teenagers and whomever else that
(25:37):
they run across, so they cankind of help to co regulate. Otherwise
we're all kind of just floundering.So remind me again, who is your
your clientele? Is it? Isit like what age? I know you've
talked about anxiety, but what agerange are you working with? So I
have, like, within my careerthus far, I've worked with pretty much
(25:59):
the whole spack drum. But rightnow I work pretty much only with like
late teenagers, so maybe like sixteenseventeen, yeah, sixteen seventeen, and
then young adults. I work witha lot of young adults, So probably
between sixteen and thirty ish is mygeneral range. So a lot of transitions,
(26:21):
a lot of just really insightful youngadults who really acknowledge the impact of
like caretakers and adults in their lifeand how they've learned how to respond to
situations. And unfortunately, many ofthem, I mean, like many of
us, right, we didn't reallyhave those not necessarily role models that I
(26:44):
mean kind of we learn the correctbehavior that was going to be helpful for
us, and so we're relearning bangersthat can be helpful. So it's good
about from the perspective of not goodand bad good role model, bad role
model, but like effective role models, right, Yes, when when people
do things that are effective in achievingour goals and you know where we want
(27:11):
to go with what we're what's goingon, right, things are effective and
helpful in general rather than middle teamsunhelpful habits. That's okay, So let's
see. One of the questions thatI had for you was about how would
(27:34):
you compare and contrast the way youwork with when I don't know how much
exposure you have to how other therapistsare past therapy used to work. Is
there any difference or do you feellike you're filling a gap somewhere? Yeah,
so I feel like the approach totherapy has changed certainly over the years,
(27:59):
and I think we're coming into aspace that is more in alignment,
I guess with the approach that I'vebeen taking. Excuse me, it's so
interesting, but I would say,you know, within the lab, there's
been a lot of change I guesswithin the last couple of years from what
I've seen, and we're bringing inmore understanding of the mind body connection,
(28:21):
and and I guess acknowledging that emotionsand thoughts are not bad at least I
think I think that's where we're going. I hope, I hope that's what
I'm seeing. But I think fora long time, you know, cognitive
behavioral therapy has been like the primarytherapy for a lot of different things,
and for a good reason. It'svery effective in its own right. It's
(28:44):
based in just how our brain operates. That's great, But I do think
that, you know, many ofthe techniques kind of have caveats depending on
what we are working with. Somuch of cognitive behavioral therapy is identifying unhelpful
thoughts and or they call cognitive distortions, which kind of just puts a little
(29:04):
bit of a bad taste in mymouth. But to each their and to
each their own, I t yeah, it's something other than distortions. So
yeah, it was identifying these beliefsand like fighting with them, changing them,
challenging them, and it just kindof it has You know, when
(29:27):
I first started counting, I didthat because that was what was taught and
that was what I knew, andI quickly found out that that was not
effective, at least in the majorityof the individuals that I was working with.
So, especially when we're talking aboutcertain things like obsessive compulsive disorder and
intrusive thoughts, challenging those thoughts andfighting with them, trying to make them
(29:49):
go away or thought stopping does moredamage than good. So I have kind
of taken a more of a broadapproach to responding to our thoughts, emotions
in a way to change our relationshipto them. Rather than this one's bad,
this one's good. It's kind ofjust these things are happening within us,
(30:11):
and we have the power to decidehow we want to respond to them,
and I have found that be muchmore effective in a broad range.
Rather than Okay, this technique isgoing to be for this thing, and
this technique is going to be forthis thing, and oh did we you
know, diagnose wrong. Then thisisn't going to be effective and we have
to change our whole thing. Thisapproach seems to be much more effective just
(30:33):
in on the whole. Great.I love it. Have you? I'm
sure that you know that we doa lot of dialectical behavioral therapy. That's
a big base of our curriculum,and that is because of my experience in
the hospital programs that I was workingand finding that because it's it's skills based
(30:57):
again back to skills based mental wellness, it was just extremely useful for people
because so much of it is aboutdistress, tolerance or prices, survival,
or emotion regulations so that you're notin that vulnerable place where you're where you're
being bombarded by strong emotions and overwhelmedby them, and those skills give us
(31:18):
the ability to kind of step backand give space so that then we can
actually use the CBT, use thethought, and you manage our thoughts think
about us in a kind of Idon't know, dispassionate is the right word
for it, but like a calmway. Right, we're not distressed when
we're trying to think about it.I just pop my stack of what I
(31:40):
was going to ask you now.That happens to me all the time.
Well, yes, so we canget that part out, something about what
was it? Something about DBT andoh I can't remember now. Well,
(32:01):
so in the absence of that,is there anything that you would like to
bring up, or like an issuethat you want to vocalize or spread or
talk about. Yeah, yeah,or like one key thing that you'd like
people to walk away with. Actually, let's back up. Is there anything
(32:25):
that you would like to talk about, you know, to wrap up this
conversation and then we'll come to ourlast question. Sure, Well, I
think I think they kind of gohand in hand, and I think they're
connected to what we were just talkingabout, or just like responding to responding
to our internal experiences differently, likenot coming to them with trying to fight
(32:46):
with them or make them go away, or that the thoughts that we have
make us weak or bad, orthat our feelings make us weak or bad.
There can be such you know,when we when we approach these very
powerful emotions and we're experiencing them andwe're trying to fight with them, we're
(33:07):
kind of putting ourselves in our ownlittle stress ball, and it's like perpetuating
our stress response. And so Ijust I wish that I hope that that
can be more widely understood that ourinternal experiences are not dangerous, but when
we try to challenge them and fightwith them and make them go away all
(33:30):
the time, that our brain isseeing them as dangerous. Yeah, and
that that is going to show upin your body. And that's just a
normal stress response. So if wecan respond to them in a different way,
we can call them that stress responsefor one, and we can feel
much more at peace and in controlof our experiences. So interesting, I'm
(33:52):
getting this mental model of like amartial artists using the energy to you know
again itself to fight, you know, like and you take their energy and
use it against them. Right,So this would be like, you know,
we've got some energy that is eitherlimiting us or undermining us, and
(34:13):
how do we use it in aproductive way, turn it around to make
it work for us and instead offighting against it, because the fighting against
it exhausts us, because actually theenergy is coming from us in both and
now we're like totallyhausting ourselves. Yeah, no, wonder we're also exhausted that
we're fighting this inner battle every singleday, right right? Well, all
(34:37):
right, So if you were toleave one key message with our audience,
what would you like it to be. I would really just like it to
be that you know, your thoughtsare are just that they are thoughts.
They are your brain trying to makesense of your world. Your emotions are
(35:00):
just trying to tell you that theyhave that your brain has identified something and
it's feeling a certain type of way, and it's it's letting you know that
these are normal human bodily responses andthat you get to experience and I am
saying, get to experience the fullspectrum of emotions and they kind of enrich
(35:21):
each other, and that they're thatthey're they're normal, our thoughts are normal,
our emotions are normal, and that'sreally I mean to summarize. These
are normal experiences and it's it's perfectlyokay that you're experiencing them. Yeah,
that's fantastic. Thank you very muchfor that. Please share with us where
people can find you. Sure.So, okay, So I have my
(35:45):
YouTube channel. I have meditations whichyou can find on my YouTube channel,
as well as anchor and Spotify andwhere you find podcasts. I also have
some just free resources and a newsletter, a blog, so everything is on
my website. Maybe I can sendyou the link. I don't know how
you want to do that, butyeah, see I'll send those resources.
(36:08):
You can download them if you want, just mental health tips and tricks and
all those types of things. Mynewsletter would be a great option. YouTube
channel and they're weekly. Sometimes it'seducation, sometimes it's a meditation. You
never know what you're going to get, but hopefully they can be beneficial.
But those are the primary places.Excellent. So again, just what is
(36:30):
your URL for your website. It'sbasically it is Cedar Rose Counseling dot org.
Cool, and all of your resourcesare there, and I recommend listeners
that you check out Katie's resources becausethey're fantastic. She's got an awesome voice,
(36:51):
calming and great for meditation, andI bet that's why so many people
just listen to it over and overagain and thank you for your kind words.
I appreciate it. Awesome. Allright, thank you very much,
and have a great day and we'llsee you next time. All right,
So, any thoughts about did wemiss anything that you want to add in?
(37:15):
I don't think so. I thinkwe covered a lot. I think
that was good. I'm glad we'reable to set aside some time just to
cover some of these topics. AndI hope it's helpful for your guys's audience.
Yeah, I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be.
We're currently we're getting more adults thanteens, which is good because the adults
(37:37):
need to learn this stuff as wellas the teens. Because very often in
the past, when we've addressed teensdirectly, and this has happened in therapy
in the hospital, the teens say, but my parents don't do this.
The teens are so insightful, theyknow, they're like, I do this
because my mom does this, andshe's not going to stop. So much.
(37:57):
Should I? Why should I?Yeah? But the answer to that
is, well, do you wantto be like that? I mean,
you know, right, so youlike how that makes you feel when you
do that? Or would you liketo be a different way or feel a
different thing or experience and you know, experience something to because you're here,
so it doesn't seem to be working. So change even if you're you're adults
(38:23):
around you aren't changing. Maybe youneed to change if you want this to
be different. And of course we'regoing to try and work with the adults,
and everybody has their own ability todecide if they're going to change or
not change. Yeah, definitely,absolutely that that is in their control and
hopefully just that knowledge is helpful toacknowledging that they have something that's in their
(38:46):
power, especially as a team.Yeah, for sure. All right, Well,
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