April 23, 2025 • 23 mins
The Healing Power of Psychoanalysis, Revealed by a Patient for the First Time I’m contacting you with a guest/segment idea on psychoanalysis by someone who undertook the journey, healed lifelong emotional and psychological wounds, and wrote a memoir that's the first in-depth personal account told from the patient’s point of view. The Big Idea: Psychoanalysis is full of mysteries — it taps into the subconscious more than any other form of therapy and sets up a unique relationship between analyst and patient. No one really knows exactly how or why it works, just that it does. But one patient, in candidly revealing her own journey, invites readers into that very private patient experience as she grapples with hidden and haunting demons. Why it Matters: Whether due to taboo, fear, shame, or reluctance, very few patients have shared their journey of psychoanalysis with others, let alone written about the experience. Too many people are unaware of the transformative powers that this penetrating, multi-layered therapy has. Key Messages: In her unique memoir, written in the narrative style of Mary Karr, the author recounts her two analyses — one when she is in her twenties and another in her sixties — that form one continuous story of immense discovery and healing. She dramatizes firsthand accounts of how she and her two very different analysts unlocked the traumas, losses and terrors of her past, enabling her to confront and understand them, and finally feel free to fully enjoy her life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Arrow is my name Arrow.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's a very unusual name and very beautiful.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Well, it's basically you know, back in the early part
of the nineteen eighties, my first wife was writing a
book and she was trying to create a character that
went into this nightclub. And we were sitting there in Lewistown, Montana,
and I said, how about the name Arrow Stevens, And
she goes, I don't like Stevens. I'll keep the name Arrow,
but I'm gonna put an E on it, and we're
going to call him Arrow Collins. And so when I
(00:28):
returned to Billings, Montana in radio then I thought, I'm
I'm going to become this Arrow Collins.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And that's how it all started.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I see, well, it's great, you hit on the perfect name.
Are you still in Billings?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
No, No, I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh uh huh. I've been to that beautiful place you have.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
What did you do when you were down here?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was there for a lecture. Yeah, I was giving
a lecture. Yeah, but I got to, you know, roam
around and see it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's a crazy little city, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah? Yeah, beautiful, really special.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know, we're talking about names, So let's talk about
your name in the way that I mean that one
of the things that really sticks out, and because I'm
one of those people that I believe in speaking in
melody and Joan K. Peters is that that has a
rhythm to it and it sticks out.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I didn't choose it, It chose me, uhh. But yeah,
I mean, it's my stepfather's name, and I was given
it when I was, you know, five years old, so
I'm used to it. But I have to say, there
are a lot of Joan Peters in the world, so
(01:42):
that's the downside of having a generic sounding name.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
But you're proving in your book though, just because there's
a lot of Joan Peters out there, your book is
proving that you are an original because you're untangling a
lot of things here.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, that is true. That is very true. Thank you
for saying that I did have and wrote a very
unique experience, which for some reason, well I mean for
reasons actually covering the book, very few people have done,
(02:17):
and partially it's because I couldn't even have done it
while I was still working full time, because it's too
much exposure for your colleagues, your students, whatever you do,
if you you know, wherever you work. But once I retired,
it gave me the freedom to do that. So I
(02:38):
think that's really really why there are books about therapy,
but books that are about psycho analysis exposed that much more.
You know, we can share perhaps that we have addictions
and we figured out what to do about them, but
to share a kind of primal loneliness or neediness, that's harder.
(03:03):
I mean, that's more more vulnerable. And as Americans particularly
were trained not to sure.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Like the dirt off your pants, come on, toughing it up. Yeah,
that's exactly right. Oh my god, oh my god. Yeah,
but you know what you do though inside this book
that I've never experienced. This it's the patient's experience, not
the doctor. Yes, that's right, that's unique that and for
you to when you say that you know those moments
of being alone, But as the author, were you not
(03:33):
thinking about the potential of their being readers?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know, I started this book when I was almost
finished with the analysis, so throughout I was incredibly lonely
in this experience. I wished I could find a book
that would tell me about somebody else's psychoanalytic experience. So
(03:57):
I didn't feel so alone in it because it's so bewildering.
It's such a strange activity to go in and tell
a stranger about your deepest experiences, and in doing that,
I really wanted, you know, allies and other people who
(04:20):
could who I could talk to. Now, a lot of
people do know other people, especially if you're in a
psychology program, a graduate study program of some sort, you
might know other people who are in psychoanalysis, but most
ordinary people like myself don't. So that was a huge motivation. Finally,
(04:41):
to provide for other people, not only a kind of
companionship in going things, because you can't talk about it
with you know, your husband at dinner. He's only interested
for so long, let me tell you. So I wanted
to provide companionship, but I also wanted to provide the
(05:07):
tools that I learned to use to other people who
might never go through psychoanalysis. And that that makes it,
I think, very different from other books because it doesn't
exist out there. A psychoanalyst write about this, but they
(05:29):
write about it for other analysts, and it's very technical.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, the dudes and the don'ts. It's like, don't do this,
don't do this. Have you done this? You got to
do this for ten days? It's like, oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well that's a kind of therapy short form. But if
you go into the longer and more complicated form, like
what's really going on under there that you can't resolve
in one, two, three, you know, let's say it doesn't
go away. You know, I see you have a lot
(05:59):
of lack of confidence. Well why do you feel so
bad about yourself? Trust yourself? Go forth? And a lot
of people just can't because they're stopped by something so
deep they don't know what it is. And I think
that with some of the more psychoanalytic thinking, you can
(06:21):
really uncover all kinds of things that you developed feeling
and thinking in your early childhood that can really release
so much anxiety. Yeah, and it can and really take
you to the source of your depression.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
One of the things when you were talking about the
doctor and stuff like that and how they want to
undig things, I'll never forget doctor Dave telling me you're
addicted to excitement. Let's figure this out. Let's figure out
why you think you have to have this excitement in
your life at all times, and why you want to
break all these rules because you're addicted to excitement, and
I just think that there are so many people that
need to have somebody. I called him a coach, tell
(07:04):
me what we're doing today, Coach, what do you want
to know?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yes, yes, that's right, and it's very helpful. I've had
it myself and it got me through, you know, important
transition times in my life when I really just needed
someone to you know, support me and keep me going
(07:26):
to the next stage. I couldn't have taken a deep
dive at those points. Maybe I was too young. Also,
when you're developmentally being challenged into adulthood, you have so
many fronts. You know, you have figuring out your profession,
your partner, your course in life. There really may not
(07:51):
be time for that deep dive. But there are other
times that are or when the let's say, need for
excitement is in some way keeping you from enjoying your
life and the things that you have, or keeping you
moving in a way that's that doesn't feel good anymore,
(08:14):
and you can't stop it, you can't shape it. That's
when you have to start asking yourself different questions. And
I think that's that's what I can offer readers. You
know that think about think about it this way. You know,
(08:36):
when did you first experience it? What does it feel
like for you? What is and more importantly, what does
it feel like when you don't have it? What happens
if you have two days with nothing special, no excitement?
What does it feel like? And that's your that's your
(08:56):
door that opens down into the deeper part arts of you,
the fears.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I call that defragging, and I do that every single day.
Ask yourself the questions and then question the answers, and
my god, you go deep into those things.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, but they're available, yes, because in some way we
know them, We know they're there. We just are so
afraid of them. We don't want to know. We don't
want to know how vulnerable we are. How if we
don't have excitement, we feel like nobody loves us, nobody
cares about us. And there you are, in your deep
(09:37):
sense of unlovability. And then you have to really look
at that. Where did that come from? And it's not
about blame. It's about turning the attention to yourself. How
did my upbringing affect me? And you're not blaming your parents.
(09:57):
They have their own problems, their own reasons. But something
affected you enough that you don't feel lovable. Every baby
is lovable, every single baby. You can't resist babies, but
parents do. Parents have all kinds of their own emotional problems,
(10:21):
and maybe you didn't. Maybe the message you got was
not lovable so much as burden or upsetting or any
number of things. This baby is not behaving the way
I want him to. This baby is too hard for me.
(10:42):
I can't do this. And these are not even feelings
people are conscious of, And that's again what I offer.
How do you make them conscious, not be afraid of them?
And understanding is going to make it easier for you
to forgive your parents, Accept what happened, look at it
(11:06):
for what it is. Terribly upsetting and hurtful.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Oh this is getting good. Please do not move. There's
more Joan K. Peter's coming up next. Thanks for coming
back to my conversation with Joan K.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Peters. What do you do in situations? Joan? Where the
you know?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Research shows that we don't really start remembering our lives
until we're three years old. But the thing is, though,
is that people will write their own story without physically
knowing their own story, and a book like yours is
going to tell people that, hey, look, you need to
take a real look at your life. Don't don't try
to design what you think happened when you were younger.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's right, that's so interesting. Well, here's the thing. There's
a book that's been on the bestseller list for you know,
seven hundred years, The Body keeps the Score. You know,
your own body and your own dreams are giving you
so much information about what you don't know consciously, and
(12:05):
if you pay real attention to what's going on, when
do you get the migraine? When when is your stomach upset?
And what's really going on when you have these physical
symptoms or when you dream, maybe you're dreaming the same
sort of anxiety dream all the time. You know that
(12:29):
you know you can't, you can't, you can't find your
office anymore, or whatever, you know, whatever it is. It
sounds funny, but if you really look at that anxiety
and take it seriously and kind of go down into it,
you will find stuff that you think is inaccessible to you.
(12:53):
I mean, even before you have the language to express it.
I mean I certainly did in these nightmares, a recurring
nightmare that I couldn't I couldn't make heads or tails
of But once I looked at the symbol in it
and started to investigate what it meant with my mother,
(13:17):
and you know, I interviewed people. I got the information
I needed about what happened to me before I even
had the language to express it. Wow. And I interviewed
my brother. I found out what was going on in
my family when I was between the ages of just
(13:38):
born and three years old. And that's available. People will
tell you, even though they may have opted to keep silent,
to repress it, to not think about it. There's a
lot of information that you can get from your family.
(14:00):
I think it's, you know, much more available than people think,
because most families just don't talk about hard things, right right.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
One of the biggest shockers that I guess I didn't
prepare my heart for it as I grew older, was
the fact that my mother never wrote anything down. Don't
the only story I know about my mother or my
personal experiences about my mother, And I just wish I
had her handwriting or her And I think that's the
reason why I've been a daily writer for thirty one
years is because nobody will ever say I don't know
what he was thinking about. It's all in the books.
(14:29):
Just go get it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh huh, that's so interesting. Well, I mean writing things
down is I mean, you obviously have a gift in
an inclination, but you know she she didn't. But what
you know, going back to sort of the question what
(14:51):
was her impact on you?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Oh, everything I do in life, even today. I mean,
my mother's ashes are right here, six inches from where
I'm sitting, right here. She is with me at all,
all times. In fact, I always always compared to people
that I say, you know at the end of Star
Wars where Yoda come and he appears as a spirit
or he goes yeah, that's exactly what losing your parents
is like. They're with me more today than they were
(15:15):
any other time.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Absolutely, And that's available for you as well. I mean,
I like you and you and me we lost our parents,
but they are there so vividly. Yes, And that's another
incredible tool to look at the most seemingly insignificant memory
(15:39):
that comes up for you, and to look at it
and stay with it over and over again until you
figure out what is that emblematic of, Because it's really
about many of the experiences you had with your parent
that are sort of caught in one particular moment that
can seem very ordinary, but they're not not. If you
(16:03):
hold on to it and you remember it and it
comes back to you again and again, you know, just
little things, you know, whatever it is like a moment
where maybe you wished for attention that you didn't get,
or maybe where your mother wanted you to do something
(16:27):
or behave in some way that you just didn't want
to even though it seems like, you know, an ordinary
kid thing, if it stays with you, that really might
be important information that you've denied to yourself because you
need to feel like your mother was. You always loved you,
and you always felt loved you know. There are a
(16:49):
lot of idealizations, right, and in some situations it's very
painful to look at the ways even a good mother
may have failed you or hurt you. And those are
the things that we hide when we are steely strong
(17:10):
with ourselves and independent. You know, in my life, my
mother taught me to be independent, and she was so
steely strong independent that I mean she never even hugged
me or kissed me nothing. Well, I mean again, it
wasn't cruelty, it was who she had to be to survive,
(17:33):
came from you know, immense poverty. You know, there were
a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Was she part of the silent generation too? Because I mean,
right after all, see that's exactly what my mother was.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, wow, And that's why I say we
can't blame them who knew how hard I mean, that's
really hard to grow up in that atmosphere. Yeah, So
it's not about blame. It's turning the attention to me.
What did it feel like to never get that kind
(18:03):
of incredibly important just affection holding, you know, body contact
that children need, desperately need and to recognize I had
to recognize it and to see it for all of
(18:25):
the longing in me for just sheer physical comfort and
everything Its symbolized, not just the physical comfort, but the
way that we need tender understanding and love warmth from
our parents. Well, I didn't get that. My mother taught
me to be independent.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So for me feeling dependency, feeling the need for comfort
from friends or family members, that felt shameful and I
suppress that completely. I didn't even allow myself to know it. Well,
that's the sort of thing that really is available if
(19:11):
you know for sure that it's not shameful. And that's
really a lot of what my exposing myself is meant
to make you feel as a reader, that it's not shameful,
it's not a terrible thing about you. It's perfectly normal
human need. And I think that that's the root of
(19:36):
a lot of difficulty, a lot of fear, a lot
of depression. I think that's what's underneath it, these feelings
that we are ashamed of and shouldn't be.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Where can people go to find out more about everything
that you are doing? Because I mean, I mean, I
can hear the educator in you, I can hear the motivator,
I hear the real person in you.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I just want people to get to know you.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, they can read my book. It's all in there.
They may know me better than they wish. People tell
me that reading the book feels like they're in therapy
with me. Yeah, and that's a great thing because it means,
you know, I'm sharing my experience. And people not only
(20:26):
don't share their therapeutic experience, but they don't even tell
people they're in analysis, you know, like it's embarrassing. Somebody
will think you're crazy. Well, it's not at all about
being crazy. It's about accepting so many parts of ourselves
that we're taught are unacceptable. And I think reading Untangling
(20:51):
is a way to begin and then to really look
for some therapeutic help if you need it. And there
are a lot of therapists. I know, people say, well,
who can afford it in this economy, But there are
therapists who accept Medicare and Medicaid, and therapists who, particularly
(21:18):
from institutes, who are being trained in psycho analytic thinking
and they're just starting out, so they may have a
supervisor who's helping them with you know, their patients in
their early years, and that that would mean a much
lower price and maybe even free if somebody's just starting out,
(21:42):
but you're but that person is well trained and being supervised.
And in fact, my first analyst had a tape recorder
to record our sessions. That's when we use tape recorders
to record the sessions, so her supervisors could go over it.
And I just thought, great, there's now I have two
(22:03):
people helping me, and that can mean free therapy and
very good therapy. So there are all kinds of resources
out there if you just start thinking in a certain way.
About what you need. You know, right now, there's a
huge trend towards cognitive therapies and they're really changing the symptoms,
(22:28):
the behaviors, and in so many cases that helps, but
in many others, like with just depression, it doesn't. Now,
of course people are offered chemical solutions, you know, prozac,
soolof whatever. But I didn't want that and it didn't
work for me. I didn't want to cover over my problems.
(22:52):
I wanted to understand them, and they were all understandable.
And I think I think that's really the prem us.
You know, you can, you can take the shortcuts of
cognitive therapy or whatever it is, but to really understand
yourself is a profound liberation. I think it's what we
(23:14):
all want. Wow, I know I did. Yeah, I wanted that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You have got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Thank you, Erro, thank you so much, and thank you
for your enthusiasm.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Will you be brilliant today? Okay, Miss Joan K. Peters,
thank you Okay, bye bye.
Arrow is my name Arrow.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's a very unusual name and very beautiful.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Well, it's basically you know, back in the early part
of the nineteen eighties, my first wife was writing a
book and she was trying to create a character that
went into this nightclub. And we were sitting there in Lewistown, Montana,
and I said, how about the name Arrow Stevens, And
she goes, I don't like Stevens. I'll keep the name Arrow,
but I'm gonna put an E on it, and we're
going to call him Arrow Collins. And so when I
(00:28):
returned to Billings, Montana in radio then I thought, I'm
I'm going to become this Arrow Collins.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And that's how it all started.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I see, well, it's great, you hit on the perfect name.
Are you still in Billings?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
No, No, I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh uh huh. I've been to that beautiful place you have.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
What did you do when you were down here?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was there for a lecture. Yeah, I was giving
a lecture. Yeah, but I got to, you know, roam
around and see it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's a crazy little city, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah? Yeah, beautiful, really special.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
You know, we're talking about names, So let's talk about
your name in the way that I mean that one
of the things that really sticks out, and because I'm
one of those people that I believe in speaking in
melody and Joan K. Peters is that that has a
rhythm to it and it sticks out.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I didn't choose it, It chose me, uhh. But yeah,
I mean, it's my stepfather's name, and I was given
it when I was, you know, five years old, so
I'm used to it. But I have to say, there
are a lot of Joan Peters in the world, so
(01:42):
that's the downside of having a generic sounding name.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
But you're proving in your book though, just because there's
a lot of Joan Peters out there, your book is
proving that you are an original because you're untangling a
lot of things here.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, that is true. That is very true. Thank you
for saying that I did have and wrote a very
unique experience, which for some reason, well I mean for
reasons actually covering the book, very few people have done,
(02:17):
and partially it's because I couldn't even have done it
while I was still working full time, because it's too
much exposure for your colleagues, your students, whatever you do,
if you you know, wherever you work. But once I retired,
it gave me the freedom to do that. So I
(02:38):
think that's really really why there are books about therapy,
but books that are about psycho analysis exposed that much more.
You know, we can share perhaps that we have addictions
and we figured out what to do about them, but
to share a kind of primal loneliness or neediness, that's harder.
(03:03):
I mean, that's more more vulnerable. And as Americans particularly
were trained not to sure.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Like the dirt off your pants, come on, toughing it up. Yeah,
that's exactly right. Oh my god, oh my god. Yeah,
but you know what you do though inside this book
that I've never experienced. This it's the patient's experience, not
the doctor. Yes, that's right, that's unique that and for
you to when you say that you know those moments
of being alone, But as the author, were you not
(03:33):
thinking about the potential of their being readers?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You know, I started this book when I was almost
finished with the analysis, so throughout I was incredibly lonely
in this experience. I wished I could find a book
that would tell me about somebody else's psychoanalytic experience. So
(03:57):
I didn't feel so alone in it because it's so bewildering.
It's such a strange activity to go in and tell
a stranger about your deepest experiences, and in doing that,
I really wanted, you know, allies and other people who
(04:20):
could who I could talk to. Now, a lot of
people do know other people, especially if you're in a
psychology program, a graduate study program of some sort, you
might know other people who are in psychoanalysis, but most
ordinary people like myself don't. So that was a huge motivation. Finally,
(04:41):
to provide for other people, not only a kind of
companionship in going things, because you can't talk about it
with you know, your husband at dinner. He's only interested
for so long, let me tell you. So I wanted
to provide companionship, but I also wanted to provide the
(05:07):
tools that I learned to use to other people who
might never go through psychoanalysis. And that that makes it,
I think, very different from other books because it doesn't
exist out there. A psychoanalyst write about this, but they
(05:29):
write about it for other analysts, and it's very technical.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, the dudes and the don'ts. It's like, don't do this,
don't do this. Have you done this? You got to
do this for ten days? It's like, oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well that's a kind of therapy short form. But if
you go into the longer and more complicated form, like
what's really going on under there that you can't resolve
in one, two, three, you know, let's say it doesn't
go away. You know, I see you have a lot
(05:59):
of lack of confidence. Well why do you feel so
bad about yourself? Trust yourself? Go forth? And a lot
of people just can't because they're stopped by something so
deep they don't know what it is. And I think
that with some of the more psychoanalytic thinking, you can
(06:21):
really uncover all kinds of things that you developed feeling
and thinking in your early childhood that can really release
so much anxiety. Yeah, and it can and really take
you to the source of your depression.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
One of the things when you were talking about the
doctor and stuff like that and how they want to
undig things, I'll never forget doctor Dave telling me you're
addicted to excitement. Let's figure this out. Let's figure out
why you think you have to have this excitement in
your life at all times, and why you want to
break all these rules because you're addicted to excitement, and
I just think that there are so many people that
need to have somebody. I called him a coach, tell
(07:04):
me what we're doing today, Coach, what do you want
to know?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yes, yes, that's right, and it's very helpful. I've had
it myself and it got me through, you know, important
transition times in my life when I really just needed
someone to you know, support me and keep me going
(07:26):
to the next stage. I couldn't have taken a deep
dive at those points. Maybe I was too young. Also,
when you're developmentally being challenged into adulthood, you have so
many fronts. You know, you have figuring out your profession,
your partner, your course in life. There really may not
(07:51):
be time for that deep dive. But there are other
times that are or when the let's say, need for
excitement is in some way keeping you from enjoying your
life and the things that you have, or keeping you
moving in a way that's that doesn't feel good anymore,
(08:14):
and you can't stop it, you can't shape it. That's
when you have to start asking yourself different questions. And
I think that's that's what I can offer readers. You
know that think about think about it this way. You know,
(08:36):
when did you first experience it? What does it feel
like for you? What is and more importantly, what does
it feel like when you don't have it? What happens
if you have two days with nothing special, no excitement?
What does it feel like? And that's your that's your
(08:56):
door that opens down into the deeper part arts of you,
the fears.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I call that defragging, and I do that every single day.
Ask yourself the questions and then question the answers, and
my god, you go deep into those things.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, but they're available, yes, because in some way we
know them, We know they're there. We just are so
afraid of them. We don't want to know. We don't
want to know how vulnerable we are. How if we
don't have excitement, we feel like nobody loves us, nobody
cares about us. And there you are, in your deep
(09:37):
sense of unlovability. And then you have to really look
at that. Where did that come from? And it's not
about blame. It's about turning the attention to yourself. How
did my upbringing affect me? And you're not blaming your parents.
(09:57):
They have their own problems, their own reasons. But something
affected you enough that you don't feel lovable. Every baby
is lovable, every single baby. You can't resist babies, but
parents do. Parents have all kinds of their own emotional problems,
(10:21):
and maybe you didn't. Maybe the message you got was
not lovable so much as burden or upsetting or any
number of things. This baby is not behaving the way
I want him to. This baby is too hard for me.
(10:42):
I can't do this. And these are not even feelings
people are conscious of, And that's again what I offer.
How do you make them conscious, not be afraid of them?
And understanding is going to make it easier for you
to forgive your parents, Accept what happened, look at it
(11:06):
for what it is. Terribly upsetting and hurtful.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Oh this is getting good. Please do not move. There's
more Joan K. Peter's coming up next. Thanks for coming
back to my conversation with Joan K.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Peters. What do you do in situations? Joan? Where the
you know?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Research shows that we don't really start remembering our lives
until we're three years old. But the thing is, though,
is that people will write their own story without physically
knowing their own story, and a book like yours is
going to tell people that, hey, look, you need to
take a real look at your life. Don't don't try
to design what you think happened when you were younger.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's right, that's so interesting. Well, here's the thing. There's
a book that's been on the bestseller list for you know,
seven hundred years, The Body keeps the Score. You know,
your own body and your own dreams are giving you
so much information about what you don't know consciously, and
(12:05):
if you pay real attention to what's going on, when
do you get the migraine? When when is your stomach upset?
And what's really going on when you have these physical
symptoms or when you dream, maybe you're dreaming the same
sort of anxiety dream all the time. You know that
(12:29):
you know you can't, you can't, you can't find your
office anymore, or whatever, you know, whatever it is. It
sounds funny, but if you really look at that anxiety
and take it seriously and kind of go down into it,
you will find stuff that you think is inaccessible to you.
(12:53):
I mean, even before you have the language to express it.
I mean I certainly did in these nightmares, a recurring
nightmare that I couldn't I couldn't make heads or tails
of But once I looked at the symbol in it
and started to investigate what it meant with my mother,
(13:17):
and you know, I interviewed people. I got the information
I needed about what happened to me before I even
had the language to express it. Wow. And I interviewed
my brother. I found out what was going on in
my family when I was between the ages of just
(13:38):
born and three years old. And that's available. People will
tell you, even though they may have opted to keep silent,
to repress it, to not think about it. There's a
lot of information that you can get from your family.
(14:00):
I think it's, you know, much more available than people think,
because most families just don't talk about hard things, right right.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
One of the biggest shockers that I guess I didn't
prepare my heart for it as I grew older, was
the fact that my mother never wrote anything down. Don't
the only story I know about my mother or my
personal experiences about my mother, And I just wish I
had her handwriting or her And I think that's the
reason why I've been a daily writer for thirty one
years is because nobody will ever say I don't know
what he was thinking about. It's all in the books.
(14:29):
Just go get it.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh huh, that's so interesting. Well, I mean writing things
down is I mean, you obviously have a gift in
an inclination, but you know she she didn't. But what
you know, going back to sort of the question what
(14:51):
was her impact on you?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Oh, everything I do in life, even today. I mean,
my mother's ashes are right here, six inches from where
I'm sitting, right here. She is with me at all,
all times. In fact, I always always compared to people
that I say, you know at the end of Star
Wars where Yoda come and he appears as a spirit
or he goes yeah, that's exactly what losing your parents
is like. They're with me more today than they were
(15:15):
any other time.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Absolutely, And that's available for you as well. I mean,
I like you and you and me we lost our parents,
but they are there so vividly. Yes, And that's another
incredible tool to look at the most seemingly insignificant memory
(15:39):
that comes up for you, and to look at it
and stay with it over and over again until you
figure out what is that emblematic of, Because it's really
about many of the experiences you had with your parent
that are sort of caught in one particular moment that
can seem very ordinary, but they're not not. If you
(16:03):
hold on to it and you remember it and it
comes back to you again and again, you know, just
little things, you know, whatever it is like a moment
where maybe you wished for attention that you didn't get,
or maybe where your mother wanted you to do something
(16:27):
or behave in some way that you just didn't want
to even though it seems like, you know, an ordinary
kid thing, if it stays with you, that really might
be important information that you've denied to yourself because you
need to feel like your mother was. You always loved you,
and you always felt loved you know. There are a
(16:49):
lot of idealizations, right, and in some situations it's very
painful to look at the ways even a good mother
may have failed you or hurt you. And those are
the things that we hide when we are steely strong
(17:10):
with ourselves and independent. You know, in my life, my
mother taught me to be independent, and she was so
steely strong independent that I mean she never even hugged
me or kissed me nothing. Well, I mean again, it
wasn't cruelty, it was who she had to be to survive,
(17:33):
came from you know, immense poverty. You know, there were
a lot of reasons.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Was she part of the silent generation too? Because I mean,
right after all, see that's exactly what my mother was.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, wow, And that's why I say we
can't blame them who knew how hard I mean, that's
really hard to grow up in that atmosphere. Yeah, So
it's not about blame. It's turning the attention to me.
What did it feel like to never get that kind
(18:03):
of incredibly important just affection holding, you know, body contact
that children need, desperately need and to recognize I had
to recognize it and to see it for all of
(18:25):
the longing in me for just sheer physical comfort and
everything Its symbolized, not just the physical comfort, but the
way that we need tender understanding and love warmth from
our parents. Well, I didn't get that. My mother taught
me to be independent.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So for me feeling dependency, feeling the need for comfort
from friends or family members, that felt shameful and I
suppress that completely. I didn't even allow myself to know it. Well,
that's the sort of thing that really is available if
(19:11):
you know for sure that it's not shameful. And that's
really a lot of what my exposing myself is meant
to make you feel as a reader, that it's not shameful,
it's not a terrible thing about you. It's perfectly normal
human need. And I think that that's the root of
(19:36):
a lot of difficulty, a lot of fear, a lot
of depression. I think that's what's underneath it, these feelings
that we are ashamed of and shouldn't be.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Where can people go to find out more about everything
that you are doing? Because I mean, I mean, I
can hear the educator in you, I can hear the motivator,
I hear the real person in you.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I just want people to get to know you.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, they can read my book. It's all in there.
They may know me better than they wish. People tell
me that reading the book feels like they're in therapy
with me. Yeah, and that's a great thing because it means,
you know, I'm sharing my experience. And people not only
(20:26):
don't share their therapeutic experience, but they don't even tell
people they're in analysis, you know, like it's embarrassing. Somebody
will think you're crazy. Well, it's not at all about
being crazy. It's about accepting so many parts of ourselves
that we're taught are unacceptable. And I think reading Untangling
(20:51):
is a way to begin and then to really look
for some therapeutic help if you need it. And there
are a lot of therapists. I know, people say, well,
who can afford it in this economy, But there are
therapists who accept Medicare and Medicaid, and therapists who, particularly
(21:18):
from institutes, who are being trained in psycho analytic thinking
and they're just starting out, so they may have a
supervisor who's helping them with you know, their patients in
their early years, and that that would mean a much
lower price and maybe even free if somebody's just starting out,
(21:42):
but you're but that person is well trained and being supervised.
And in fact, my first analyst had a tape recorder
to record our sessions. That's when we use tape recorders
to record the sessions, so her supervisors could go over it.
And I just thought, great, there's now I have two
(22:03):
people helping me, and that can mean free therapy and
very good therapy. So there are all kinds of resources
out there if you just start thinking in a certain way.
About what you need. You know, right now, there's a
huge trend towards cognitive therapies and they're really changing the symptoms,
(22:28):
the behaviors, and in so many cases that helps, but
in many others, like with just depression, it doesn't. Now,
of course people are offered chemical solutions, you know, prozac,
soolof whatever. But I didn't want that and it didn't
work for me. I didn't want to cover over my problems.
(22:52):
I wanted to understand them, and they were all understandable.
And I think I think that's really the prem us.
You know, you can, you can take the shortcuts of
cognitive therapy or whatever it is, but to really understand
yourself is a profound liberation. I think it's what we
(23:14):
all want. Wow, I know I did. Yeah, I wanted that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You have got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Thank you, Erro, thank you so much, and thank you
for your enthusiasm.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Will you be brilliant today? Okay, Miss Joan K. Peters,
thank you Okay, bye bye.
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