#399: Kratom Chronic Pain, Solution Focused Grief Therapy, Postmenopausal Loss of Desire

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Its gonna come and it could be like a whole

(00:01):
yellow snow bit exactly. I see where you're going with this.
It'll be a sunrise. Oh my god, it'll be a sunrise.
Good all right. Yeah, see it's where the chutch ept
didn't suggest that it is. You know, AI is not
taking our jobs. They'll take a great creative jobs any times. Yeah,
these writing jobs are here to stay. The Hollywood Union
is safe. What is that? The Screenwriters guilded Waite writers guilt.

(00:23):
They're fine. Those guys are going to be safe forever.
Keep your jobs. Writers from fabulous Las Vegas and that
of This is pod therapy, real people, real problems and
real therapists.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
You can submit your questions anonymously pod therapy dot net
or email. It's at pod therapy guys at gmail dot com.
And now broadcasting from the SJ and Rukus Studios Pond Studio.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
That's Jim. I'm Nick.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Time for some pot therapy.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
I don't know how to say hello from Portugal, Pew pew, Texes.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
I got some interesting news I can all right, I
just real quick before you interesting news. I'm sorry, Jim
just said something, yes, and I just need to check
on something real quick based on something that Jim just said.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Jim, what language do they speak in Portugal? Oh, Portuguesean,
Portuguean okay, one for one like Mexicans, you know, because
oh is it Portuguese? He was Spanish quizzed.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
On this fantasy football drafts.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
No, that's that's a card because he definitely just said,
like lay something.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, peep you because they you I think someone speak Spanish.
Someone lay in Portuguesean. Okay, don't they. I don't know
the Spanish people don't be Portuguesean. Yeah, I've never studied Portuguese.
All right, well, I I also I'm sorry, Nick, what
did you have those interesting? Well we're equally I.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Don't even remember now, but uh no, so I uh
I teased a little bit. I was gonna be a
podcast music right, Oh yeah, so we recorded that today.
It is on the Basement Broadcast. What Test Miller? Oh
has a podcast, Yes, the Basement Broadcast.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay, check it out.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I was interviewed for that and she so kind of
how we do or are supposed to do Monday deep Dives. Yes, yeah,
so they they kind of do a similar thing. And
so this show is what she calls the B side
and she just interviews a guest. And I was a
guest and it was all about music.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
It was honestly, and I'm not this is not hyperbole.
I'm not exaggerating at all. Huge Dick probably the best
podcast that's ever been recorded. Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yes, okay, many are saying many people are many are saying, wow,
that's good. Correct, when you won, you won podcasting. That's
that's really at this point, so big news. And again
that podcast is titled The Basement Broadcast. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Probably going to be up for another month yet. Okay,
I think there's a bunch of episodes that are gonna
come out. Oh that's fine, keep your eye open for that.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, whenever tests gets it all put together, we'll get
the link. We'll make sure it's in our episode description,
and we'll we'll highlight it again. In other news, Best
of Las Vegas voting has begun. Go to vote Jim
dot Net every day, every device until August eighteenth. Oh,
it opened August eighteenth until September something something and vote
for me every day until last Tuesday. Actually voting is closed. Yeah, sorry,

(03:28):
Vote Jim dot Net every day, every device, very exciting stuff.
Very happy to be in the running again and hopefully
defending my title. There are forty fucking mental health clinics
in Vegas, now I did. I was in this category.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Some of those out and I got to say a
lot of them are really good.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Okay, right, well, fuck yourself a lot. They're even opening
a new category that's now called counseling. It's just getting
fucking ridiculous. Like there's two different mental health counseling category.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
You're looking at this all wrong. You should be looking
at that there's two that I can win.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I didn't know about the second one, and if I
would have known, I could have like tied it all
into my little vote jim dot net website and gotten
two votes. So how do they define the difference between
We don't fucking know. I think that somebody just wrote
into the newspaper. That's how I got the category invented
in the first place, because they didn't have the mental
health clinic, and I wrote in and said, hey, you
should have some kind of mental health thing. They added

(04:16):
it the next year. You can write out again. Because
Matt Maddingle's ice cream Social is nominated again. Oh are
you for our best Las Vegas Comedian. Oh, very cool,
very cool.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
That's all we are.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh, I think of you as a Las Vegas comedy group,
but we're a podcast media. The show is a podcast.
Is there a podcast? We are not a comedian.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
I do I do appreciate that you are now considered
one individual, right that feels right? Yeah, Like Matt and
Mattingley's ice cream social is up against Jerry Seinfeld. I
feel like, oh, dude, now we have to get you
over the finish line. If you redirect vote Jim dot Net,

(04:58):
it has a whole new goal.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
We just have to get our brothers fucking beat Jerry Seinfeld.
I think he is. I think he's literally nominated in
this category. Oh that's a that's a tough run, buddy. Yeah,
it's uh, we'll see. Well, now there is no people category,
and so people nominate us for something. They're like, oh,
these guys should be in for something. They're just like
this whatever, just yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
We want to wait until next year when Jerry Seinfeld
is competing with Jim for best Mental Health.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Motherfuckery, where they broaden the definition of mental health even more.
Best Mental Healthy Comedian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, pod therapy
dot net. Right is that our website? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
because slash therapy, That's where I was going with that.
Patroon dot com slash therapy, you can catch our early show,
the pre show. You can hear about our fantasy football adventures,

(05:47):
and also hear about my new real not ironic script
for a Hallmark Christmas movie that I improved, which you've
you've I love the notes. I'm gonna be honest. People
don't give you enough credit, I think for you're writing,
your writing abilities a lot, Yeah and yeah, but still
but not enough, not enough the accolades, not enough until

(06:07):
the Oscar. I don't feel that we've really like how
Copola doesn't get enough respect as a film direct. That's
how I was thinking. It's a lot of respect as
a film, but not enough. Yeah, yeah, no until until
this good man has an Oscar. The value of all
oscars is deteriorated. So patron dot com slash therapy, you
can hear my rough draft of my script. You can
hear about our fantasy football fundies and our favorite holiday

(06:28):
drinks and the problem that Nick clearly has with caffeine.
It is an issue, my man. It's worried for you.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, I think you need to go get check. No joke,
This actually happened last weekend. I was golfing, yeah, and
I was kind of like on the T box and
I was a little I was a little Yeah, it
was a little jittery. It took me a few holes. Yeah,
it's kind of like level out a little bit.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Has some hair of the dog. Yeah, it's not good.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Gosh, I should probably dial this back a little bit.
Did I mean to describe this? I had a three
foot putt and I hit it thirty five.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
This is how people get addicted to cocaine. This is
exactly how it happens. Jason the Tiger literally Tiger Woods.
We got some great questions for today's show. Excited to
read them off to you. The first one, we're leading
off the order with a tough one, and we were
just talking about this at the rehab that I work
at as well. It's a really common thing, but the
title is chronic unbearable pain. Hello pod therapy. For the

(07:37):
last eight months, I've been in chronic pain like someone
has stuck a knife in sensitive skin, constantly pressing and
relief never comes. I've seen two doctors that prescribe me antibiotics,
but that has not helped. I've tried over twenty herbal
supplements and even multiple rounds of fasting, making an appointment

(07:59):
to see a special list, but that could be weeks
or even months away. I'm emotionally exhausted without relief, so
much so I'm even considering using kratum, which is addictive.
What do you say to your patients suffering from chronic pain?
At this point, it is affecting my will to survive?
Any good resources or books Yours truly, signed auci. It's

(08:24):
a good name for that letter. What is cretum? Yeah,
you want to take that? No, all right, so I'm
on it right now. So so kratim, dude is a
panias so creatim is like it's another basically opiate. It's

(08:46):
like partial llucinogen partial opiate. But you can get it
at smoke shops. So it's one of these drugs that's
not been around long enough to be scheduled by the government.
I'll be like forbidden. So you drive past any smoke
shop and they'll have signs out that say you can
buy kratum. But cretum comes from a plant that's really
popular in Asia and so like in Asian countries, they

(09:07):
they mix it into a tea and it's basically just
like an opioid's tea, and it basically has the exact
same effect where you like, it's a painkiller, but then
it also is extremely addictive. You go through the same
spirals where you become tolerant of it, you need more
and more of it, and it's a real fucking mess.
And Nick finds it hysterically.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Jesus for remembering of a time that we had to
dispose of like a pound of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, you have the rehab. When that kid brought it in,
he insisted on it. If you've never seen it before,
it's very it's very light, yeah, fluffy. Yeah, that looks
like I had to dispose of it. So I'm like,
I guess I'll flush it down the toilet. But when
you say that, like, yeah, like they make tea out
of it, Yeah, they do. So it's like, oh my god,

(09:53):
like so many flushes as you pour it out, it
just gets in the air. It's so light and Mary oh,
it's on top of the water. It is uh illegal
to buy, possess, use, or sell in uh six states.
Good Louisiana is the latest one. August first of this year.
Nevada has an Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Louisiana.

(10:16):
It is now illegal to Nevada has a real problem
with it. And it's one of these things that you're
finding again at smoke shops. It's all over the place.
You can even buy it online, and it's a real problem.
And because it's not like forbidden federally, people get this
misunderstanding about it, and I think it's like ubiquitous. It's
kind of like we don't see this as often these days,

(10:37):
but do you guys remember when spice was every Oh yeah,
and everybody was like, hey, just because it's legal doesn't
mean you should fucking smoke this or bath salts. Yeah,
it was like again like you were seeing like zombies
like guys and shit wandering down the freeway and we
were all like, look, I get that the federal government's
slow to outlaw this shit. It takes an Act of
the Senate in Congress, and they can't even fucking fix
daylight savings time, Like, they're not gonna fix this.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
The thing with that specifically is like even when Congress
passes a law to make it illegal.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
All you have to do is you just change one
small thing exactly right, what are you talking about? Som
is a real pain in the ass. It basically has
the same effects as like heroin. It just it's not
as potent, but like it has the same problem and
what's happening the same opioid receptor exactly, and so opioid's

(11:31):
pain killers, right, and so like this is where a
lot of people find kretom is. They're not having success
with traditional pain specialists and other things, and so they're
starting to pursue this kind of on their own. But
then it becomes this terrible loop. So I'm glad that
the writer is writing in and saying, look, I am
getting desperate and I'm thinking about this, and I think

(11:52):
that gives us a chance to teach the public and
to reflect, you know, on behalf of the writer. Thatt
is a real dangerous game to play. And I've had
lots lots of people just in this last year. I
had a patient who was traveling across the world. They're
kind of a remote worker, and so they're kind of
taking advantage of that and kind of doing the digital
nomad thing. Got addicted to cretum and Thailand and like

(12:12):
just really dangerous and like really discovered, like hey man,
I'm not in a good place and like trying to
get help. And like in Thailand it's ubiquitous, like you
go to every bar and you could say like, oh,
I won't have a beer, I'll have tea. I'll have
you know, credem tea, and just yep, here you go.
But then like it's just just like heroin, Like it's
a liquid heroin, but it's not as potent, so you're
not gonna like it's not common that people just like
straight up O dion kretum, but they do the same

(12:34):
spiral right where the tolerance increases, the addiction increases, they
start to dissociate, they start to break from reality, terrible
symptoms of anxiety, and then just like again, it's only
gonna get worse.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Like me with caffeine, a.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Very similar it's almost pound for pound the same. They're
also finding a lot of stuff with it, liver and
kidney damage. Oh yeah, so people that already have any
kind of liver or kidney problems really shouldn't get closer.
It's a fucking mess and it's tough because it's one
of those things that people go, oh, but it's natural, right,
And we've had this fight with the public for a
long time, and this is saying this is talk about
high doses and then extended use what was it called

(13:11):
chronic use, chronic use. But the thing that happens is
basically it stacks up on it tolerance Yeah no, uh
like uh compounding, like yeah, basically like that in your system.
That's the effects you keep them on it. Yeah yeah,
yeah over time and apparently with that confusions, confusion, hallucinations

(13:32):
and delusions and paranoia. Oh yeah, no, it's a fucking
the paranoia not they say that's rare, but the hallucinations
apparently are pretty common.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah. So this is like one part opiate, one part hallucinogen.
It's a real pain in the ass. And like it's
it's ubiquitous in society. It's really really popular among younger people.
But what the writer's talking about, and this is something
we just had in our our rehab very similar in
the rehab I work out, we had a patient present
with addiction to cretim but really they weren't addicted to cretum.
They didn't want cretum, they didn't just like having creatum.

(14:03):
They were a person living in chronic pain and had
tried all these prescription painkillers and had just gone up
the escalator with that, because you know how that cycle goes.
It's like, oh, let's start you off with vicodin, and
then all of a sudden you're on fucking delotted, you know,
and then you need like heroin or something, and then
they are in fentanyl. And so like this person was
just going up and up and up, and they had
diverted over to cretum in the hopes to get away

(14:25):
from the orange bottles and hoping like, look, this seems
like a nice little Asian smoke shop. It's a little
bit more natural. Yeah, I'm using herbal supplements, which this
writer relates to, right, and like starting to try this
other organic path, and then cretum kind of gets lumped
into that category. Is like, oh, this is one more supplement.
It's a leaf, it's a tea. And then here we
have this patient going through all those symptoms that Jacob

(14:46):
just described, and it's really tough because at the rehab level,
you're trying to help this person, but they they are
describing a real medical problem, that chronic pain is real
and when you're trying to remove this drug that's become
a secondary problem, you immediately bump into that number one
biological driver. And so this is where my interns were
really struggling. We're all working on like the ASAM and

(15:08):
talking about dimensions and like they're like, but Jim, there's
a biological driver here that's real, Like this, this pain
is real. We got to think about sure, and this
comes and I got a chance to teach them about
hyper algesia and in doctor Pohle's theory, and we should
probably talk about that because that seems like something that
the writer really needs to hear more about.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah. So basically, there's if you were to draw this
out on a graph, like I'm so, your vertical access
is going to be your pain and then your horizontal
axis is over time with opioid use, what you tend
to see is you're going to see it's a very
significant decline and pain. I'm sorry, it would be the dosage, right,

(15:47):
dosage yeah, versus dose Yeah. Yeah, So you're going to
see a steep drop and then it's going to stay
work really well yep, and then all of a sudden,
this what Gem's referring to as opioid induced hyper LGZ,
which it almost becomes like a U shape, yes, and
it shoots right back.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Up way higher than it is. It's baseline you shape
like me, it's a Jacob line.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
And so it's basically what happens is over time, these
your paint receptors become super sensitive and then now things
that wouldn't normally trigger pain now do trigger pain, right,
And so it's it's different than tolerance, and that tolerance
is when the effect wears off or you need more
of it to get the same effect. This is different.

(16:33):
This is actually creating sensitivity reception.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
I remember doctor Pohl, our our former boss and mentor,
who did a lot of great research on this, really
specialized in it. He would kind of teach it to
us as the opiates kind of deafen. They don't take
away the pain, they deafen your ability to sense the pain.
And your body notices that something's wrong with the volume.
So it turns the knob and it says, oh, I

(16:58):
can't hear it really, well, let's go ahead and turn
this thing up. And so it used to have the
knob at one and then it doesn't here well, so
it kicks it to three, kicks it to seven, and
then when the opiates come off of your system again,
now the sound is blaring and it's out of seven,
it's at an eight, and you're like fuck, and you
immediately have to cram more opiates in your system. And
now you're getting the double trouble, right, because now you're
kicking from the opiates, you're addicted, you're tolerant of that

(17:20):
that hurts already to like just withdraw, and now every
time you don't you come off of your dosage or
you're coming down from the medication, the volume knob of
the pain is ripped over to the right and so
it comes roaring back, and that's hyperalgesia. The sensitivity increases
over time, and that's that you shape that Nick's talking about,
where the mesice is working for a while and then

(17:42):
eventually everything is worse. So this is something right that
I think we want you to be informed about because
whenever somebody's dealing with chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia, which
I'm sure your pain specialist is going to talk to
you about, and you're facing a very interesting thing because
it sounds like your first two doctors wanted to treat
this with antibiotics. I'm curious what they were trying to

(18:03):
deal with it sounds like there's a diagnosis yet, Yeah, yeah,
and the writer seems to talk about skin pain and
I you know, I'm guessing I'm just spitballing here, but
like doxy cyclean and stuff like that, like antibiotics that
are more focused on skin, and sometimes it's like some
kind of fungal infection or like some kind of beneath
the surface. I wonder if that's where his doctors are
starting with advice podcast. Yeah, do not take medical advice,

(18:25):
but I'm just I'm curious if that's if his doctors
are saying, hey, let's hypothesize that there's an infection, there's
something causing your pain, let's use the medicines that might
take that away first. Now that hasn't worked, so now
they're probably going to refer him to a pain specialist.
And I think Auci's now going to get to sit
down and go over those options. And unfortunately, the tools

(18:46):
that a pain specialist has are usually going to be opiates.
But they're getting better at not just dumping those down
your throat and saying good luck, like they're trying to
navigate the pain signals itself from a lot of different
methods now, but in the meantime, get you out of
pain so you can function.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Because that's a that's a tough road to go down
because you know, the difference between pain is very important.
We need to have pain, yes, right, so you know,
when there is tissue damage, we need to have that
message that sends a message of pain, so we know
to deal with the issue, right, the problem and what
what is what chronic pain really is is it's it's

(19:26):
the brain continuing to receive those messages when there's no
tissue damage exactly, you know, And so it's you have
to find there has to be some long term management
with this. And unfortunately one of the things is like
when we when we go to prescribing opiates, then we
have to ask and have this conversation with your you know,

(19:48):
with the prescribing doctor, what's the long term plan, right,
because if we're just gonna treat this with opiates, then
that we're gonna have to continue to increase the dose
right over time? The no winning I mean yeah, so
I mean so what so what is going to be
that long term strategy to dealing with this, right, Well.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
It doesn't have to be that long term. Yeah, that's true.
I mean you can just use a lot of opiates. Yeah,
there you go. I mean, in some cases you do
not take advice from this podcast, don't ever. No, but
this is something that doctor Police to teach us about.
And one of the things that he used to preach
was also, all pain is in your head. And at
first that sounds very dismissive because people don't feel that
they're being taken seriously. People like, oh, you're kind of
imagining it or making it worse. When you're stressed, when

(20:31):
you're anxious, when you're emotional, your pain seems to spike.
I'm sure this is all being fabricated in your mind.
And doctor Poul would say all pain is in your head,
and he didn't mean that dismissively. He meant no, literally,
the concept of pain pain itself. There is no organ
that is called pain. Pain can only exist as a
neurosensor signal to the brain. So it is just a

(20:52):
signal sent by organs interpreted by your brain to interpret
it as suffering. So you will attend to that. But
then he talks about how over time when you're in
chronic pain. Emotional pain and physical pain become indistinguishable signals
to the brain. Yeah, and so when you are in
emotional anguish, you start to feel physical symptoms of pain,

(21:13):
and when you are in physical pain, it causes emotional anguish,
and round and round the fucking circle goes. And then
we can get addicted to drugs in the middle of
all that, which treats both emotional symptoms and physical symptoms.
And now you really start to create a house of cards.
And that's why this is so complex. And writer you
talk about like, is there any good resources or books?
I've mentioned his name now several times. I'm going to
quote the book A Day Without Pain by doctor Melpole Pohl.

(21:38):
It's a really good book. I think it stands the
test of time. It won several awards, and I believe
that doctor Poll and doctor Schiote had even created a
workbook that we used to kind of have there as well,
and it might even be called A Day Without Paining Workers.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
That's I've got that in my office right now, do you.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I think both are published by Central Recovery Press, which
is useful because you can go to their website and
they have tons of resources because they employed doctor Pole
and doctor Schiote and went this route and really tried
to be a national trendsetter with the treatment of opiate
addictions and chronic pain. And what was nice about that, Auci,
is that the way that doctor Paul approached it, he
wanted to get people off opiates because he saw that

(22:13):
as only adding another layer of complication. And his goal
was I want my patients to function. I'm not trying
to free them of all pain. He famously us to
tell us all the time there's only two pain free
states under general anesthesia and death Zoe. He said, my
goal is not to get you out of pain permanently.
My goal is to help you have a different relationship

(22:34):
with pain so that it does not drive the car.
It might still be a passenger, though, and I'd love
to get it out of the front seat and into
the back seat and just something that's around you but
not dominating you. And he had a lot of interesting methods,
and doctor Sciotia, a psychologist stepped up, had a lot
of interesting mindfulness methods to just like change that volume
dial with your relationship to pain organically and psychologically. So writer,

(22:56):
I would really encourage that, but chronic pain is a
psycho logical issue as much as it is a physical issue,
and unfortunately it's an area that we have not done
a great job with our physical health colleagues bridging that gap.
We tend to silo ourselves. I don't think a lot
of mental health providers are very well trained in chronic pain.
You and I literally worked at a world class program

(23:19):
that specialized in it, and I feel comfortable describing it.
I would not consider myself an expert at treating it,
even though we studied under these folks, Like, it is
just so nuanced and so complex. Yeah, it's a really
really hard thing to deal.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
With, man, Yeah, definitely so.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
And yeah those two for working through it. Man, it's
not easy.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
It isn't easy. But there are some resources out there,
So please check out that book. It's it's really good.
It would be great to get doctor Pohle on an episode.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Are you crazy?

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Man?

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I've told you what I did. I know you're just
gonna humiliate me. He would pull no fucking punches. He
doesn't give a fil why. I'm he would never do it,
and be if he ever did, it would be to
look me right in the eyes and just tell me
what he fucking thinks. I don't want any of this.
I don't want to smoke at all.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
If I reached out to him, asked him to do
an interview and never mentioned that you were on the show,
I think.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
I could get away.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
I don't think he would even recognize me. I think
if we were all now, maybe he would. I don't know. Man,
he's a really nice guy, and so I think he'd
be like, oh, Jim, Yeah, he used to work for me, right,
you're the guy gave me that pen. Yes, sir, please
like me. It's been fifteen years. Can we be okay now?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Please don't do that. That would be the worst we
are doing that. I have already sent him a message
on LinkedIn. Yeah, And you know what, And I would
also encourage you, Auci, to look up on YouTube doctor
mel poll po h L.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
He has.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
He's given so many big talks, he's conferences all the time,
and he's a great sp in, a great interview and
I'm sure that he's got content everywhere talking about this stuff.
But you know, Auchia, I just strongly encourage you a
stay away from the fucking creative man. Don't fuck around
with it. I do not see this is a good thing.
That's a bad idea. I just don't want you playing

(25:15):
with that. I want you to talk to a specialist,
and I want the specialist to help you navigate this.
It sounds like your medical team is trying to figure
out is there a cause that we can cure, and
as time goes on, if there is no cause, then
we need to start learning how to manage this with
medical and psychological tools. And if they don't refer you
to therapy, I strongly encourage you to try to find

(25:38):
that as well. Everybody drink I've recommended therapy. It always happens.
But even though there are very few of us in
the field that specialize in this, in the studies that
doctor Polis to show us, we know that whenever somebody
is attending to their emotional health and they're finding positive outlets,
even the cathartic relief of talking and languaging through their pain,

(25:58):
it lowers the volume on the emotional pain knob and
that affects the physical pain knob because all pain is
in the brain, and so if you're lowering one, you're
affecting the other. With you realizing and.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Honestly, there's no one on earth who's dealing with ten
level pain right that wouldn't take the deal of Like, Hey,
what if I can get you down to a six?

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah? Yeah? Would you take a nine and a half?
Ye yes, I will got it. Yeah yeah, I will
take that whenever it takes it. What if I told
you have to sit down and talk to you know,
a shrink for an hour a week. Yep, that's gonna
take me down half a point. It's worth it to me.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Anyway, Auchi, you are not alone in this. Please look
into those resources. Please say the fuck away from the kratim,
talk to a pain specialist, talk to a therapist, look
into some of your options. I hope this gets better
for you. I have seen so many people navigate this,
and I just want my last word on this to
be a lot of what Nick and I saw at
that program at Las Vegas Recovery Center back when they

(26:52):
had the pain special Specialty program. It looked like miracles
to me. I saw people coming in in wheelchairs completely
oken and leaving on their feet doing yoga, like their
relationship with their body fundamentally transformed. So I know there
are paths to wellness, and I just strongly encourage you
to pursue those but I promise you, if you just

(27:14):
get into unrestricted opioid user fucking around with craton, it
is only going to make this more complicated and more
difficult to undo. So please, if you can avoid that,
don't go down that path. We are going to take
a quick break and when we come back, we're talking
about grief in therapy. You're listening to pod Therapy.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Today's episode that brought to you by Judy Carolyn Albert,
Sammy Scoop, Sarah Smith, Mike Helm, Darond The Loan Dive,
Brady Maalaisa and Max the Ginger Scoop. If you would
like spots in the show, become with therapn dot com
slash like.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
This John Deere, have buddy, thank you a solid hat.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Wear it often.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, it's it again. And I know I've pointed this
out before. It's super ironic because we don't have any
grass anywhere in our states. Just no point.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
I don't know, I don't know that does more than grass.
It's actually I mean, lawnmowers are probably a very small
percentage of their market, but.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
They sell a lot of rakes for Rocks Tractors.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Mostly it's a tractor company. So they've got a lot
of a lot of uh it's it's not it's based
kind of in the Quad Cities, but Waterloo, Iowa, where
I live. Yes, that's like that's the major employer is
John Deere. Okay, they've got a lot of a lot
of a lot of plants. And John Dear one of
my friends, one of my good buddies. Uh, snubby, snubby snubby. Uh,

(28:44):
he works for John Deere and he works in the
the wind tunnel.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Oh, they have a wind tunnel. It was like a NASA.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Tractors going.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
We gotta test these things tolerances. We got to hit
Mack nine by next month. Aero dynamics on this tractor
our ship. We're never gonna get the Russian Russians fucking
yard over there. We're never gonna make it.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Man, all right, We're we're gonna wrap up. Misheard lyrics
from so.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
John Dear does make rakes by the way, Oh thank
god John.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Uh Uh, Jim, you're gonna take over Whitney's points all right?

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Oh good nou.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Okay, here you go, Jim. A rock song casually reported
yet another death.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
These are lyrics. No, they're incorrect. Yeah, this is a
this is a description of the lyrics. Oh okay, a rock.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Song casually reporting yet another death.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
All right, so if I guess that did I get to.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
You're not gonna guess. Here are your options?

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Another one bites the Dust by Queen Highway to Hell,
a d Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan, or
let it Be by the Beatles.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Fuck it comes off as a well, that sounds like
another one bites the Dust. That sounds like that's what
those lyrics are doing.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
I think it would be your final answer.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Oh okay, I feel like you're trying to talk me down.
You know what. Fuck you? Yes, it is my final answer.
It is correct. Yes, I'm playing your games, bitch.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
I've got two chickens to paralyze by Eddie Money, is it? I?

Speaker 1 (30:35):
No, I don't want options. Two tickets to paradise. Oh
my god, I've got two chickens to paralyzes.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yes, you are correct, all right, Jim misheard, here's a
misheard lyric. We didn't start the fire, it was always burning,
said the worst attorney.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Oh jesus, well, I know the song, I think, but
you have to do. What is the song and the line?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Okay, I can get the line. I think, all right,
we didn't start the fire. It was always burning since
the world's been turning?

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Is that it?

Speaker 1 (31:12):
That doesn't say anything about a lawyer at all? Well, okay,
but that's the wrong lyric. Right is the little lawyer thing?
But the song's about the lawyer. It is, of course
it is. Oh Jesus, I thought it was like, it's
about an arson attorney. The whole song, the whole rock
song is the life story of an arsen attorney.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
What was his name?

Speaker 1 (31:30):
It was like Edward r. Fire or something that makes
it really was? It was Burns, Edward Burns, attorney at law.
That's right, that's right, Arson attorney at law. Yeah, arborist,
Avid arborist. I don't know how to get this answer.
So did I get it?

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Like?

Speaker 1 (31:51):
I don't know? Is that is it the correct thing?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Sure? Yeah, all right, last one misheard lyric. It doesn't
make a difference if we're naked or not.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Doesn't make a difference if we're naked or not. We
got each other and that's a lotful. Well give it.
We're halfway there. Oh, blizard on a chair. I love
all the repeats that wizard on the stairs. Those are

(32:25):
so good, I say, give them the points of the Lord
for the bear. Yeah, there's like a whole like list
of the meme answers for that, and I dig it
Grief in therapy, Hey pod therapy crew, fellow therapist. Here,
I'm in a bit of a bind and thought this
might resonate with others, both in and out of the field,

(32:46):
so here it goes. The universe has apparently decided it's
grief season in my case load. In the past couple
of weeks, I've had an influx of clients, some brand news,
some I've known for years, suddenly facing devastating, life altered losses.
Here's the problem, well, I understand and lean into the
common factors. My main theory is solution focused brief therapy

(33:08):
IT and the usual tools finding exceptions the miracle question.
Goal setting feel completely wrong in the face of earth
shattering grief. Yesterday I sat with a long term client
describing a shocking loss and it hit me, I have
no idea how to write a treatment plan for this
set meaningful goals, or even if I should or help

(33:31):
beyond just sitting in the pain with them. So my
big question how do humans work through grief that feels
like it exists outside of time? And as a therapist,
how do I walk with them through it in a
way that's actually helpful. Any wisdom strategies or resources would

(33:52):
be so greatly appreciated, thinks a non a therapist pronouns
are she and her? Oh a lady, get my cavafier.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
I used to have this, uh, this problem a lot
with uh. I think for a lot of I don't
know a not a therapist level of experience, but I've
had this experience with like a lot of interns, yeah,
or folks that are new with solution focused therapy. Yes,

(34:25):
the trap that you can easily run into with the
miracle question.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yes, so this is not the time for that question.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
You can still use the miracle question, but you you
have to set it up and you have to word
it in a particular way. So for those of you
who don't know what the miracle question is. So, solution
focus brief therapy is a great philosophy in therapy. I
I love it. It's probably the thing that I've spent

(34:55):
the most amount of time on. Yeah, probably even more
than CBT to be honest, and SFBT is kind of
a it's one of those where you can use solution
book focus brief therapy, but it almost feels more more
than just a technique. It's almost kind of a mindset.
You can have a perspective. Yeah, and so the miracle

(35:19):
question essentially if I were to summarize it, So let
me back up first. So a solution focus Brief therapy,
a lot of it is kind of coming back to
this idea that there's always exceptions right to everything, and
the exceptions are where we find the keys to success.
So there was an old I remember in one of

(35:41):
the books I think there was written by Stephen Deschazar,
who is one of the founding guys of SFBT, where
he's talking about like this old like Chinese proverb or whatever.
We're talking about like the utility of a vessel isn't
in the hall, but it's in the empty space between.
So if you imagine like a boat, you know what

(36:03):
really makes a boat float and function on the water
is it's the empty space in between the hall. Right then, anyway,
I'm not going to go to you get it. So
the idea behind this is that there's we spend so
much time looking at problems and how do we fix
the problem, that we ignore all of the exceptions. So

(36:24):
if I have a client that is constantly depressed, except
you know, on this one day they weren't depressed.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Or maybe anger, maybe.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Anger.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
I'm always angry, yelling at my kids, I'm yelling at
my boss. I need to get this under control and
destroy my life. Then then what we do is we
find a time. Tell me about a time you weren't angry.
Tell me about a time that you didn't lose your
temper with your children, Tell me about a time that
blah blah blah. And you try to find all of
these exceptions, and then we try to figure out what's
the common thread in all of this. We were reverse

(36:59):
engineer a solution out of that. Yeah, So whatever the
problem is. If if you're a if you're addicted to math,
you're not a perfect addict, right, Yeah, No matter what
you do, you will never do anything perfectly. So there's
going to be a time where you didn't use math, right,
tell me about that time that we find that fascinating

(37:20):
and it's not. When we frame it this way, it
can come off oversimplified. It's really not. It's a very nuanced,
gentle approach that doesn't oversimplify the problem into oh but
there was one time you didn't do it, so let's
just copy and paste that. Yeah, not at all. But
we want to instill a lot of hope. We want
to empower the client to find their own unique twist

(37:42):
on the solution. We don't want it to be formulaic.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
And implementing it wouldn't look at all like what I
just did, right, No, no, yeah, this is the the
run of the cover. Yeah, we're just reading behind the scenes,
the nuanced.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
And you know, pairing it with things like motivational interviewing
and like other techniques go hand in hand with it.
It's really like practical, it's a very practical. Let's look
at what you're doing, let's look at what we can change,
let's make a small degree of change, and let's focus
on what we want to see differently tomorrow. It's very
very practical. Yeah, which really breaks down fast when we're

(38:18):
talking about grief.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
So the miracle question is a technique, a way to
help identify the exceptions, except not exceptions that have already happened,
but really kind of looking at what would this look
like if the problem was gone?

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Right. It's a way to draw a very stark contrast
into what change needs to look like and feel like
in your life, because a lot of times patients don't know.
They come in and say, I don't know, I'm unhappy. Yeah,
and you say, okay, what do you mean you're unhappy? Well,
my life's not going very well. So what do you
want out of therapy? I want you to fix my life? Okay,
this is getting really rough, so we asked the miracle
question to help them illuminate what it is that would

(38:58):
actually look differently.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Again. Another reader's digest version of this would be if
to be able to say, Okay, so as you're thinking
about this problem, let's just say a miracle occurred and
this problem is gone. What would be different about your life? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (39:16):
You wake up tomorrow morning and there's a bright light
in your room and it speaks to you in a
soft voice, and it says all your troubles that you
were worried about that you were going to go to
therapy about those have been resolved. And then it flickers
away and then you think, holy shit, how high was
I last night that I just saw this thing that
I just hallucinate this thing. But then something inside of
you thinks, what if that's real? What if that voice
was telling me the truth. You start going through your

(39:38):
day and you start noticing things that have changed in
your life. What do you see that's different that confirms
that voice was telling the truth? How are you different?
How's your life different, how's your family different? How do
you feel different? What would you notice that's different.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
So there's a lot of different techniques because if you
just throw that out there and say, let's say I'm
in therapy because I'm grieving because my mother died, right
and like they throughout the miracle question, miracle happened, what
would be different, Well, my mom mom didn't die. Then,
as a therapist, yes, you're exactly.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Okay, I'd like to try to get okay, new miracle.
Mom's definitely dead, So I'm getting around that they're different.
Way is mostly powerful powerful, Okay. There are rules with
the genie. No raising anybody from the dead, can't make
anybody fall in love with anybody else. Laddin rules, Laddin rules, So.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
There are ways. There's a million different ways of utilizing
a miracle question. I can think of ten different ways
that I used it on a regular basis. And have
you ever, Jim, have you ever have you ever done
a yes set?

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's a really useful skill to
like keep it going and then draw it out.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Okay, So so Jacob, all right, so go into movies, right,
think about like movies, Like we kind of we kind
of got out of going to the theater during COVID, but.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
And it was it sucked because it's nice though, as you,
me and Whitney had been going a lot.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, that's been a lot of fun, true, bitch. Yeah,
But I love the experience of going to a movie.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
I love being able to like go there. I like
being able to walk in. I like even like getting
the anticipation, getting the snacks, sitting down, waiting and then
the lights kind of dim and then that THHX sound
comes in and on the screen. Yes. Yeah, okay, So
what I did is a yes set, right, Okay, So
what it is is it's a technique where I'm slowly

(41:42):
naming off things and I'm getting the person say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
which increases the likelihood that they're going to say yes
to the next thing, right, Right, So.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
You're steering them in a positive direction, exactly the goreement.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
So you can do a miracle question, but you should
really kind of lead up to it with a yes,
set right, and create a way of doing this. So
like I always used to do this with, you know,
working with people and just kind of saying, like you remember,
like when you were a kid and you didn't have
a care in the world and you could just be
outside just playing all day and you're going to mom.

(42:19):
Mom calls you in it's time to go to bed,
and you have one of those nice night sleeps where
as soon as you put your pillow to the bed,
you're just out and you sleep soundly. If you were
to imagine tonight that you have a night like that,
and you have a sleep exactly like that, and in
the middle of the night a miracle occurred and you
woke up the next morning. But because this miracle happened

(42:41):
while you're sleeping, you had no idea what would be
the first indicator to you that's something it's a yeah,
And so it kind of slowly builds up to it,
as opposed to just saying, let's say a miracle happened.
You know, if you do that then you've lost them, right. Yeah,
here's so you can phrase a miracle question in the

(43:01):
sense of like, we are not changing anything that has
already happened exactly. Okay, Yeah, everything has happened up to
this point. Now what and you kind of have to
be creative, but you have to frame it. You have
to set the rules first.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Now we invent a way to bring my mother back
to life, I'm always gonna come back to that. But no,
that is the real difficulty of trying to use solution
focused therapy on trauma, because it is very tangible, it
is very practical, it's very here and now. What is happening?
What was going wrong? How can we do something slightly different?
Even the miracle question is designed to contrast in real, practical,

(43:41):
lived experiences, here's what change would look like. We're ultimately
trying to discover illicit and amplify change. But when you're
dealing with trauma, as the writer's talking about, change isn't
the goal. Healing is the goal experiencing and counting. I
feel like.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
You're moving away from the miracle question too quickly. Go ahead, Okay,
you can still use the miracle question in that sense. Okay, Okay,
I'll give you another scenario, all right, so writer, you
can use this one too. This is another favorite of mine.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Okay, where ancient Chinese proverb ancient Chinese bran who run
in front of carget time.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
This is this is the walk in the park. Okay,
So I want you to this is. We're just gonna
do kind of a vision imagination thing here real quick.
So I want you to imagine that you're walking through
the park. Okay, it's a beautiful day. It's one of
those perfect days. Is there music going? Yeah? Yeah, okay,

(44:39):
purpose chicken.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
You don't hear it?

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Oh I can't hear it?

Speaker 1 (44:45):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Okay, you're fucking killing this.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
That's what it does. It just lashes time.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
We're going, we're going for a walk, and it's a
beautiful day. It's like the perfect day, tempt right, Sun's shining,
it's amazing. But you can't really enjoy this day. And
you can't enjoy the day because of the grief that
you're feeling, because of all of the problems that you're
dealing with right now, and it's just weighing you down.

(45:14):
So you decide that you just need to sit for
a minute and so you see this park bench, you
sit there, You're dealing with all of this heavy stuff.
You're upset that you can't enjoy the day. You don't
even realize that next to you is an elderly person,
and this person's in their eighties. You kind of realize
that this person's there, you don't really think anything of it.

(45:36):
You're just so caught up in your emotions. And then
you kind of look over. You see this person, and
this person's looking back at you, and you realize that
you're sitting next to your future self. You're sitting next
to you at eighty years old. They know exactly what
you're going through. They know the grief that you're dealing with,
they know the pain that you're going through. They got

(45:57):
a big smile on their face. They slide over, they
put their arm around you, and they say.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
What mm I like that.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Okay, So it's just another version of the miracle question.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Right right now, it's just masturbation. I know you want this,
you know I want this. You know that I know
that you want this. Gay it's just us.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
So it's just another version of the miracle question, except
we've changed it, We've reframed it in a way that
you're not changing the past. We are one recognizing that
this absolutely sucks and this is not going to go away.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I love that. I think you painted it beautifully and
I think that is a great illustration of how this
technique still has value and trauma work. And I would
agree with you where I would I would continue the
conversation is that to me, the miracle question has a
lot of great value for me, at least the way
that I apply a s FPT kind of in the

(47:00):
beginning of encountering what ails us and setting a stage,
helping me form a treatment plan, and kind of mapping
out the quest right where do we want to go?
And setting goalposts what does success look like? That's kind
of where I draw that for me. Where I can
appreciate the writer as well, though, is that solution focus

(47:20):
brief therapy is very task oriented and is very goal driven,
and a lot of the other exception finding and goal
setting and scaling and things like that, are very much
about eliciting and finding change and measuring progress. What is
difficult about grief and trauma healing is that in many ways,
and we've used other metaphors to talk about trauma in

(47:41):
the past, we've talked about the ball in the room
with the button, and every time the button is compressed,
you feel the pain. And the beginning, the ball is
really large, and over time this ball like shrinks in size,
but it keeps bouncing around and every time it compresses
against that button, it still hurts, you know, even when
it's golf ball size. It doesn't happen very often, but
eventually it finds the button again. I think those metaphors
kind of communicate this more realistic approach and grieving and

(48:04):
trauma work that sort of prepares the patient for the
understanding that we're not gonna build a ladder to climb
out of this pit. We're gonna wander in this very
terrible space and we're gonna go through your nine levels
of hell. There is no stop watch, There is no
way to time this. And I don't want to push

(48:24):
you in a way that SFBT often does that kind
of nudges you toward progress, elicits optimism, elicits hope. Trauma
is weird and grieving is weird because in many ways
they have to go through just breathing in and holding
the pain, and that's part of it. And there is
no practical way to expedite that. But the work is happening,

(48:46):
and writer, I guess that's where I would join Nick
as far as like offering you some real practical advice.
You know, therapists, the therapists how to treat this patient.
You talk about, like how do I even design treatment
planning for this. I'm a big fan of the text
that I make a lot of my students perch. It's
called The Complete Adult Psychotherapy Treatment Planner. It's published by Wiley.
I thought for sure you were going to say Dad
Vice or dead Vice, a bunch of stories about getting gross.

(49:13):
It's about treatment planning for trauma. This is just a
book for people with children, no God anyway, So get
that planner if there's a whole chapter in there about
ways to frame treatment goals and objectives that surround uh
A trauma, processing and grieving. And also what I really
like about that book is it also indicates to the therapist,

(49:34):
here are evidence based practices that we use when we're
dealing with trauma. Here's probably the recommended playbook. At the
end of the day, I think Nick and I we
do a lot of trauma work. There's a lot of
trauma working addictions, solution focused brief therapy, motivational interviewing. I
think of these not as as sets of strategies. I
think of them as perspectives. Like you said, I think
of them as a dialect a way that we just

(49:55):
naturally talk, but we also know how to weave that
into true trauma work. And trauma work is walking through history,
processing the memories, hot tears on cheeks, remembering pain, and
then gliding into life and then talking about their pumpkin
spice latte that they got and how they're looking forward
to the fall and how excited they are, and then

(50:16):
all of a sudden, their breath leaves them and they
suddenly look blankly into the sky. And here you are
talking to them in therapy, and they say, this person
I miss loved this time of year. I remember the
first time I bought them a pumpkin spice latte. They'd
never had one. And like, there isn't quite a solution
focused technique or maneuver that I would really want a

(50:36):
therapist to deploy in that moment. I want you to
switch your skill set. I want you to just do
person centered therapy, right. I want you to go full Rogerian.
I want you to lean into the therapeutic alliance. I
want you to follow them through trauma. I want you
to create space, be curious, do a lot of intuitive
work about them, like going into the memories, asking probing

(50:57):
deep questions, trauma timelines. I think have a lot of
value you in this kind of scene. But grieving, the
best model that I've ever found for grieving in therapy
is a reference to ancient Judaism. They have a practice
called shiva, and I think it's still practiced, but it's
the way that they do funerals and grieving where family
and friends sit with a grieving person and imagine the

(51:20):
pain coming out of this person like a black, billowing
smoke that's filling up the room, and those who love
you are physically in your presence breathing this hot smoke
into their lungs on your behalf, so that with every
breath there's a little bit less in the room and
we're just in it together. And to me, when I

(51:41):
do grieving therapy and trauma therapy, that's often what it
looks like. It's just bonding with this person, walking through hell,
with them keeping their head above water. If I can
sprinkling in those solution focused techniques, being optimistic, using things
like your framing of the miracle question to also remind
them one day you will get through this. One day

(52:04):
you will heal. But also you'll never be the same
as you were before this trauma. It will fundamentally change you.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
I think with a lot of my approaches, they don't.
If you were an outsider looking in onto any of
my therapy sessions, if I'm working with grief, you would say, oh,
Nick has switched gears. He's using something different.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Oh I see, But in reality, I'm not, because it's
fundamentally always your Yeah, what.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I'm doing is i'm i'm I'm changing the approach of
how it's being used, or I'm i'm adjust I'm moving
the goalposts. Okay, So, like, for example, when it comes
to treatment planning, you know, I'm You've heard me say it.
I'm like huge into treatment planning. That's that's my thing
right now. If you actually look at a treatment plan
that I would be developing for someone in a situation

(52:53):
like this, from an outsider's perspective, you may say, well, like, oh, well,
this is way different than your typical treatment plan, and
it's really not just the focus as different. It has
changed as opposed to creating a treatment plan based off
of like progress in uh overall functioning, right, or increasing

(53:15):
functioning or decreasing symptoms right. Instead of that, the treatment
plan is going to be more exploratory, right, It's going
to be like, hey, let's not we're not going to
do anything right. What we're going to do is we're
going to sit and we're going to explore. I'm really glad,
and we're going to feel comfortable with where we're at, yes,

(53:35):
and then we can start moving.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Yeah, like if we were languaging that and I was
actually going to pull up the text of that planner
because I have it on my phone, but I don't
want to take the time to let it load. But yeah,
Like an example treatment goal that we might have for
somebody dealing with anxiety is Nick will decrease episodes of
anxiety severity by fifty percent three days a week or whatever.
And these very measurable things, these units of measurement. But

(53:58):
with trauma, we really don't, you know. We we tend
to say things more like Nick's ability to cognate and
process the pain and emotions, to be able to name
those emotions and cope with them in healthy ways will increase,
you know, like he's just gonna do the fucking work.
And really it's just we're going to climb down into
hell together and we're going to learn how to sit

(54:18):
in the smoke for longer and longer until there's less
and less of it and that's it. And like the
treatment plan language, this is why I like that planner
because it really does have great phrasing for that to
you know, conceptualize that. But I'm really glad you brought
that up because I think this goes to your point
of like people would think that you're not doing solution
focused work. You really are, but you're also changing what

(54:41):
the purpose of it is, right, and what your intentions are.
It's not to cease using math. It's not to be
less angry. I don't want to see you do less
trauma pain. That's not the goal. The goal is we're
going to get every last drop of this until you
have done it.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, because sometimes you know, in therapy it's all about
moving and it's about going someplace. Well, sometimes it's useful
to just sit and let's get our bearings straight. Let's
figure out where we're at first. Yes, yeah, and then
we can kind.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
There is no fast way through this. There is just
the correct way. And like you think we've talked in
the past about crisis intervention and debriefing and like meeting
with first night, there it is and you know you're
here when we go through like really traumatic events and
we like sit with those people and process what they've
been through. It's really not a race. There's no method,

(55:27):
there's no way to build ladder faster. It's just be
with that human let them process this whenever it arrives,
grieve it in an honest and organic way, confide in language,
and metabolize these memories, these thoughts, these feelings, and they
may have to do that as many times as as
they need to, and then eventually the suffering is made
less through the process. And that's it. And if you've

(55:48):
done that, writer, you've been a therapist. You've joined that person.
And it's really hard. As a therapist. The trauma work
is one of the hardest things that we do. And
it's one of the areas that most therapists will admit
to each other we feel the least effective at, we
feel the most powerless in because it's very hard to
measure our success in addictions work. When your person is
sober and their relapse plan is strong and they're making

(56:12):
good choices, and you can measure all these great things,
you can start to feel like, Wow, I'm really good
at this, and like I know exactly what plays this
person needs and how to increase their motivation and their
stage of change from A to B. But with trauma work,
it's really hard to know, because when we descend into
the grief of hell with them, I don't know how
far we have to go. I don't know where north is.

(56:32):
We're just wandering through this horrible fucking experience and I'm
hoping and I'm holding onto this idea in the back
of my head that eventually we will see a glimmer
of light through the fog and we'll start walking toward that.
But as a therapist, few things feel more powerless than
joining somebody with trauma work and grieving. But few things
are more beautiful and more rewarding in this career than

(56:55):
to have walked through hell with somebody and get them
to the other side of that. Because few humans, I
think have the natural attending skills and the training and
the patients and the intuition to walk with somebody through that. So, Writer,
you might feel powerless, you might not know what your
strategies are. You might be like God, damn, I wish
I had a playbook. I promise you if you lean
in on your person centered skills, if you use solution

(57:17):
focused thinking and optimism as just a fundamental perspective without
allowing that to accidentally become dismissive of this person or
to accelerate this person any direction. If you're just patient
with them, and you're present with them, and you let
them language what they're going through and be curious about that,
you will eventually arrive on the other side and they'll
get there and they'll feel better, and they'll move on

(57:38):
as best as they can. But also, don't make it
a goal to restore them to who they were before
this loss. It's not the goal. That can't be done.
You cannot unring the fucking bell. All you can do
is help them discover who they are on the other
side of this trauma. That's it, and hopefully it's manageable
for them. But good luck, writer, I'm glad to have
you in the field. I think you're asking really great questions,

(57:59):
and please you know, continue to follow up with us,
give us feedback. We love just hearing from colleagues and
just trying to do the best coaching we can. If
you're not already in the discord, I strongly encourage to
be in it. We have a lot of other colleagues,
a lot of other therapists, a lot of students that
you know, have gotten tangled up with this damn podcast
and they love to comment and give feedback, and a
lot of people who've been through therapy and been through

(58:20):
this kind of stuff, and they'll have feedback for this
question too. And so every single question we have in
the discord, it turns into a case study of listeners
kind of given their two cents. So if you want
more thoughts, more feedback, I really encourage you. Patreon dot
com slash therapy, throw a dollar in the hat. We
won't even see it. Patreon will get it, but you'll
at least get access to the discord and then you
can kind of see what other people discuss related to

(58:42):
this question. But good luck with this one. A Nona therapist,
glad to have you in the field. We are going
to take another quick break and when we come back,
we're talking about a positive thing finally losing desire in
my marriage. You're listening to pod Therapy's happiest episode, Simplifies
Things Today.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Episode is brought to you by Judy Schneiderley and Carolyn Albert,
Sammy Scoop, Sarah Smith, My Cow, Darren Cuttingham, Cody the
the Loring Guy, Brady Machi Max and if you would
like to smash the show, becoming their matreon dot com
slash therapy. All right, we're doing cryptids, Myths and Oddities.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
True?

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Am I saying that right? Cryptids? I think it was right?

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Okay, I think it's pronounced crypto. I think one unit
of crypto is acrypted.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
No?

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Is that not it? No? Okay, then I think I'm
off bigfoots a cryptied oh like bigfoot coin? Right, Okay,
that's it. Now you're caught it. I got it.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Okay, take me right, Uh Jim, what is the name
of Scotland's legendary lake Molts? Oh?

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Oh oh oh nessie, Oh.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah, I got it on the fly.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Yeah, hell yeah, last name? Uh Smith?

Speaker 2 (59:56):
No oh, Scotland. It's got to be a call of hanners. Yeah, okay,
that's whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
They're all the same. Who cares all.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Right, Jacob, the Yettie is most most associated with which
mountain rain?

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Oh? Ship the Alps? I think? Oh, the German Ones?
The Swiss? Is that the Swiss Alps? I think it's
the Swiss Alps. Can I get a rebound if he's wrong?

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Yes, you can.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
I think it's the Himalayas it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Let's go. Okay, what's the capital of Portugal? Fuck all right, Jim,
Which South American cryptid is rumored to drain live stocks?

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Goat sucker, let's go, dude. I'm pretty good at this
crypto the rain many Yeah, I watch a lot of
like History Channel, but not the parts that are about
history UFOs and like, this ship's real. I don't think
they have a history part more.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
No, that's been gone for years.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Yes, so the whatever the funk I'm watching is sponsored buyer,
created by the History Channel. It is just this ship.
It's like that Aliens build Egypt, you know, And I'm
fucking deep into The answer is always yes, yes, yes, dude,
they did.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
They did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
The pyramids aligned with the stars, man and the goat
thing is real. All the ship's real. These are not
nobody question boats were real or not? The goat sucker thing.
It's our empire sucks on goats.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Jacob which Harry Humanoid is the Canadian counterpart to Bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Oh, I know this one. It's a bigfoot. Ah yeah,
the mounty bigfoot. So there's a big big hat. I
believe it's big meter, flat brim hat, very polite bigfoot. Yeah,
he's the metrics. That's what I'm going. That's scoop meter foot.

(01:01:55):
That's right, big big meter. They don't they don't do feet.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Oh, I don't know. You want options? Sure, skunk ape yaowi,
sasquatch orange panadic. I've heard I've heard skunk ape. I've
heard those words said in that order before I'll go
scunk Cape.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
No, No, I'm gonna go Sasquatch.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
I just feel like that's the like if it's not
skump Cape, it's But the reason I know that is
because I have a there's a shampoo I buy from
Target called Sasquatch and he looks Canadian, and so my
brain is like, oh, yeah, that guy. I think there
might be a Canada flag on. It might be a
Canadian shampoo.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah, an look like to you someone looks Canadian.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
What does a Canadian person look like to me Celine
Dion Justin Bieber. That's all I got. Oh, this is bullshit,
stun Cape. It is just a different cryptid. Ah, just
a different yeah, yeah, Okay, here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Last last, uh, last two, which cryptid from West Virginia
reportedly has glowing red eyes and large wings.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Oh, go for it. The Mothman. Oh oh did you
ever see Mothman? Prophecies with Richard Gear scared the living
shit out of me. I'm pretty sure I did. Oh God,
it was so bad. It's like bad and scary.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
This one. I didn't know which. Pacific Northwest legend tells
of shape shifting, which often associated with coyotes or wolves.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
I think it's the skin walkers. And I've seen them.
They're in Death Valley and I've fucking bumped into them
Death Valley and Valley of Fire. They're everywhere in fucking
Valley of Fire. Point of order. When Jim told the story,
originally he did not report having seen them. No, No,
they reported having heard them. I heard them. They tried
to talk. You said they were calling for a mother.
There were no moms. It was all dudes. It was

(01:03:47):
a boy scout camp and they were calling mommy, and
it was clearly a fucking skinwalker trying to call me
out of my kid kill me.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
I'm gonna give you two points for getting it right
in the fly. I'm taking away a one point. Okay,
claiming to having heard one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Oh no, you're silly. No, this is real. But I
have seen one. I came home from the camp out
and told you, well, I don't know if I saw one,
but I mean that's how it works. I know if
you saw one, I don't know. No, if you see him,
I know if you was that a guy? Was it
a skinwalker like that child? Was it a kid who
needed help? I'll never have to know about it because

(01:04:22):
I did not get out of my part of the
newspapers the next day it was, which I think was
published by the skinwalker. It's all part of their propaganda. Dude,
you have no idea how high this goes, you pressed,
This is so deep, this goes all the way to
the top. Fucking skinwalkers are trying to get me out
of my tent. Not falling for it. I believe I
am in a commanding lead in this trivia challenge. You

(01:04:43):
just lost three points.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Nope, losing Dion inherited Whitney's, which was likeative negative.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
I have a debt. You're almost right now you owe
me and both eight dollars. Losing desire in my marriage,
Hello pod therapy. I've come to realize, at the ripe
age of fifty five, that I am on the autism spectrum. Additionally,
I am postmenopausal. Not to make you uncomfortable, but I
think this is important information. I've been somewhat happily married

(01:05:12):
for nearly thirty years, except for the first year or so,
I've questioned what love really is. I don't have the
desire to be intimate physically or emotionally. I've always known
that this isn't normal, but being the people pleaser that
I have always been, I've tried to fake it the
best I can. Lately, I just can't fake it anymore.
I've read that the decrease in estrogen and progesterone can

(01:05:35):
cause women to lose their desire to nurture. I'm not
sure if that is the case, and or I just
don't have the energy to mask and people please like
I have for the last fifty five years. No matter
the case, it's taking a serious toll on my marriage.
He can't understand what is going on, and no explanation
on my part is getting through. I still love him,

(01:05:56):
whatever that means, and still like seeing him happy, but
he's clearly not. He keeps asking what he's done wrong,
and he can't accept that it is me, not him.
I've offered to go to marriage counseling, which he doesn't
want to do, or divorce. I don't know what I'm
actually asking you for, but maybe just getting this off

(01:06:18):
my chest and hopes that others might get something out
of it. Thanks Anonymous, We get this question a lot. Yeah,
this one's interesting, I think because we've definitely over the
years had people say there's a disconnect with my desire
or my libido my marriage. You know, it's been thirty years.
Things are changing where I think this letter is special

(01:06:40):
as I'm hearing the writer say, I am aware that
I am on the autistic spectrum, and throughout my life
I've sort of tried to mask or pretend not to be,
and now I'm finally done pretending, so I'm letting a
genuine version of myself out. It turns out that version
of myself is not as engaged, emotional, and I'm postmenopausal,

(01:07:03):
there's hormonal changes. Maybe that's contributing to this. So I'm
kind of hearing the writer just sort of saying, like, look,
this is a weird spot for me because I do
care about this person, and in some ways I am
kind of indifferent, but in some ways like this is
organically my trae. Sex was never a real motivator, right,
you know, it just never was, And so it sounds

(01:07:24):
like the only thing that has changed is just the
desire to kind of fake that right, and emotional intimacy too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
The writer does say a little bit of both, you
know that it's definitely not physical anymore, and also just
I'm good like and the writer I will saying like
I'm kind of detaching from the concept of love right now,
Like I'm not even sure what it means to be
in love with my person. I care for them and
I want them to be happy, but like I don't
have what they need from me. Man, if you don't
know what love is, listener, I've got good news for

(01:07:54):
you about a lot of music in the eighties. Oh help,
you can go down a really deep rabbit hole about this.
What is love?

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Need you to show me?

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
I think this could just be the whole episode. I
think we just break into songs.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Do we have a drum set? This is true, and
a keyboard, if synth, if we just had one person
who knew how to play it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
I mean I got one beat in me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
I could just I don't even have that. Yeah, this
is a tough one, and I mean from your partner's perspective,
you know, it is difficult to be that partner because
anybody who's hearing this is gonna to some level internalize it,

(01:08:40):
right and think about like, Okay, well what am I
doing wrong? It's like, well, it's not It's not you.
It's I'm going through all of these things. Okay, but
you could be going through all these things. If I
was a better person, maybe I would be doing something.
Maybe maybe it wouldn't be like this, or you know,
did did I contribute to this? Ever? And this I
think is just a normal human reaction. Right when event happens,

(01:09:04):
we internalize, cause sure, so like what did I do
to create this thing to happen?

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
And fundamentally we're in a relationship, right and so like
if your dynamic toward me and your interest in me
has changed, it is not crazy for me to into it.
I've contributed to this equation somehow, like so I've gotten
too old for you, or our dynamic has changed or whatever.
And it's really tough because, like, you know, whether autism

(01:09:30):
is part of this, whether post menopausal is part of this,
is just an extremely relatable phenomenon that a lot of
people as they age will talk about losing libido. I
think that's very you know, par for the course, but
also sometimes feeling emotionally distant. I mean, I was, I
was looking at a statistic the other day and I
didn't confirm this data, but I was talking to another
therapist who was sort of quoting it at me. And

(01:09:50):
then it says something the effect of like seventy percent
of divorces after age forty are initiated by women, and
like the logic of that being that as women kind
of age, some of their hormonal shifts and some of
their life changes, just becoming increasingly independent and sort of like,
you know, I like you fine, but like I don't
need you in my life. I kind of create my

(01:10:11):
own social space, like you're just around, you know, and
like at some point kind of detaching a little bit.
And the writer says maybe I'm losing my nurturing, and
like there's some of those like bonds are just kind
of they deteriorate, and a lot of women become very
independent and sort of say, like, for one reason or another,
I think I'm just drifting away from my partner. And
you know, for a lot of those men, that's scary,

(01:10:31):
you know, like, oh no, I'm losing my partner.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Is it me? Can I make it right? And of
course that your partner's going to have irritable things they
want to say, like yeah, I wish you'd do the
dishes more. You know, I don't like this or you know,
I don't like you say this to me, but like
it is an organic reality, and I guess I just
want to like refer to that data a little bit
to normalize what the writer's going through. But that doesn't
make it easier, right, and doesn't make this dynamic easier.

(01:10:56):
I love that the writer's bringing up couple's therapy. I
think it's tough, but par for the course that the
writer said, do you want to talk about divorce? And
husband's like I don't and I don't want to go
to couple's therapy. I just want to fix this, like
I want to know why, what I can do to
make you like me again? And yeah, you know it's
tough too, because like I think, at best we teach

(01:11:19):
spouse through psycho education, let's maybe teach you about autism, right, Like,
it turns out you've been married to autism this whole time.
This person is just now figuring this out about themselves.
They finally discovered the language, they finally figured out the symptoms,
and there's going to be things about them that they
didn't hide from you that you've sort of known about
them all along, that you thought were just interesting, little

(01:11:39):
quirky personality traits. And now when we tell you what
autism is, you go, oh, yeah, okay, that's her. Yep,
that's definitely her to some extent. Well, other manifestations of
that can also look like this, And like this is
where maybe that was hidden from me because it had
more to do with your dynamic and your relationship. And
now this person's not hiding it. But it's an interesting thing, Nick,
because it kind of opens up this question and I

(01:12:01):
think we've kind of wrestled with this on the show
before that, Like our mental health realities are complex and
we also want to be mindful of how they do
affect our relationships, because relationships have intrinsic value, and like
we do want us to negotiate that space. And that's
tricky because on one hand, I think there's a desire

(01:12:22):
to let people be authentic and not have the mask.
I think that's a phrase that's been used a lot
with autism and with ADHD and neurodiversity. Is people feeling
that they have to ape and pretend to be like
the normies when that's just not their truth, and it
becomes very draining and hurtful over time. And so on
one hand, we want people to be authentic, but on
the other hand, we don't want them to detonate all

(01:12:44):
their relationships raising this flag of individualism, because there's there's
got to be room too for your human ecosystem, and
like all of us are compromising with our human ecosystem
all the time. Like I don't want to be a dad.
Sometimes I don't want to, you know, go to this
kid's game or whatever, Like I want to go just
do my own thing. And like I'm compromising my authentic

(01:13:05):
needs in my authentic self to be a good father
because being a good father means something to me, and
their happiness means something to me. And you could say, well,
you're faking it, Jim, that's not healthy for you. And
I'd be open to talking through that. I'd be open
to finding moderation between both of those values that are
very important to me. I want to be authentic. I
don't want to mask. I don't want to be forced
as a square peg into a round hole. But at

(01:13:26):
the same time, I don't want to abandon and I
don't want to like discard the needs of my loved
ones who need me to be certain things in their life.
And I don't necessarily feel that it's bad or wrong.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Yes, it does, and it does. It's to some degree,
there's no avoiding that. Like everybody has to wrestle with
that to some to some degree, because I mean, now
you think about things like, you know, if Laura is
inviting me someplace. You know she's got friends in town, right,

(01:14:04):
and so they're all going to go out, and they're
all bringing their husbands. So I should go with they're
going to go do something that I have no interest
in doing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
And you're like, hey, I'm an introvert. I don't do
this kind of stuff. I don't want to go in.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
I don't want to do this thing that they want
to do. Okay, but I want her to have a
good time, right, And I know that if I go
there and just act like a total diva, yes, you
know that she's not going to have a good time.
And I'm gonna I could. I could ruin this, right.
So for me, it's not necessarily about me pretending to

(01:14:38):
be somebody else. What it is is it's me doing
what I need to do so that she enjoys the experience.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
I love how you're phrasing that. I almost would add
to that, it's not so much faking, it's finding a
version of me because I live on a very broad spectrum.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
There are colors in my palette that look introversied, introverted
and anxious and garrett and shy. There's colors of my
palette that's the guy up on stage speaking at a conference.
I can summon different versions of myself to hopefully adapt
to the people I love in the situation and its requirements.
I may not be able to do that indefinitely, but
like hopefully I can enough to maintain those relationships kind

(01:15:17):
of like everything.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
Every Sunday night, Jacob taps into a version of himself
that gives a shit about this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
He's doing it what deep deep in his soul. He's
locking the door, he's turning off the lights.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
But no, yeah, I think that is a better way
of putting that. I think is just to be like, okay, yeah,
there's yeah, there's a version of me that just enjoys
spending time with her and her friends. Right tonight, I'm
going to be that person.

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
I'm going to find that part. And I really I
resonate with the writer because I've I've definitely talked to
people over the years, especially as we've learned so much
more about neurodiversity. And you know, this writer's saying, look,
I'm fifty five years old. This is an interesting generation
to be because I feel like young people today were
introducing them to this conversation of what is autism spectrum,

(01:16:08):
what is ADHD at a much younger age, and we've
created a lot more public education about that in schools.
We've learned how to identify it in females, especially the
writer identifies as female, whereas that generation girls did not
get any of that language. And when it finally showed
up autism, and like neurodiversity, the field struggled forever to

(01:16:31):
like discuss this, categorize this name this even autism spectrum
disorders relatively new in our nomenclature. I mean, what was
the phrase we used to use for like high functioning
autism just jumped out of my head, Aspergers. Yeah, for
the longest that was our diet autism diagnosis, right, and
it was almost predominantly men or boys that would be

(01:16:52):
diagnosed with that. We just missed all these female features
of this neurodiversity. And so I just I appreciate for
the writer at five years old. This person has always
been who they are and is only now, probably in
this more recent era of time, discovering the words and
the education to finally look in the mirror and say

(01:17:12):
that's what I am. Oh, my goodness, and then learning
from that community. Hey, people in our community, people like us,
we tend to do these things to survive in this world.
It's exhausting. And if you've ever struggled in these ways,
we relate to you. And I can appreciate that the
writers look at that going fuck, yes, yes, yes I have,
and I get that there's this sense of like, I'm
tired of being put upon. I'm tired of other people's needs.

(01:17:35):
I'm tired of being like having to live my life
in this fake and in authentic way that everybody else
matters all the time. So I just I want to
honor that emotional exhaustion while also honoring You've invested three
decades of your life building a relationship with somebody. You
have a shared history, you probably have a shared family,

(01:17:55):
you have a shared future if you want it. There's
hopefully room to get into that middle space with them,
because they're not your enemy. Right it sounds like your
husband's crime is that he loves you and he wants
to be close to you, And you know, I don't
want to villainize that. I don't think you're villainizing that.
I think you're just exhausted. I think you're emotionally exhausted.

(01:18:17):
You're try it, You're tired of putting on the makeup
and trying to pretend. But at the same time, I
think we have to at least allow your husband to
meet the new version of you, the unmasked version of you,
to clarify these misunderstandings. Hopefully. I mean I wish he
would talk to the therapist with you and do marriage counseling.
That would be a great space to teach him about this,
if you're willing to teach him, Writer, if he's open

(01:18:38):
to learning more about this with you. There are books
you know that are out there that are four friends
and family members and spouses of those who are neurodivergent
to try to like give them education and tips. Maybe
that kind of stuff would be helpful. And Writer, you
kind of unburdened us at the end of your question
and said, look, guys, I'm not expecting to pull a
rabbit out of your hat and tell me it's one
weird trick. And hopefully we're chewing it with you enough

(01:19:00):
and relating on it with you that you know we're
normalizing this and at least, you know, normalizing your experience
and giving you some honest feedback. But I'm glad to
see that you're not just hitting the eject button and
running away. I've seen people do that, and they yearn
for it because they feel like it's going to liberate
them and like they're somehow finally acknowledging who they really are.
More times than not, when I see people take that path,

(01:19:22):
I see it, it ends up being a manifestation of
like self sabotage. It doesn't end up being what they
really wanted. It just kind of is this deep inner
yearning and confusion. And I kind of want them to
like talk through that, like in therapy, and just navigate
that water change other things in their lives, you know,
other knobs and dials need to turn before they just
newke relationships, especially long ones like this. Yeah, but hey,

(01:19:45):
there's also such thing as authentic truth, and there's there's
a time when some people wake up thirty years in
and say, you know what, I've realized I don't be
married anymore, and like I just legitimately don't want that.
It's like, okay, just proceed with caution, a lot of deliberation,
a lot of intentional measure during a lot of thinking
through it, and a lot of discussion with your partner.
I guess those are the only tips I really have.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Yeah, I would just echo those same tips.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Just the tip I think we're trying to say, just
the tips, several tips. That's that's always the solution for
your problems. We're at take one last break, and when
we come back, we are wrapping up the show. You
are listening to pod Therapy today.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
It was brought to you by Junior Schneider, Lep, Carolyn Albert, Sammy's,
Sarah Smith, Mike Heldarren Cunningham, Tody the Glorian Guy Brady,
and Max the Genter Scoop. We gonna like to sponsor
the show and become a Thera producer Patreon dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
So, Nick, I don't know if you know this, and
I don't want to make you jealous, but when I
got here, Jacob has given me gifts. Jacob's actually been
saving his newspapers because the other day I asked him
if I could have the one I found on his driveway,
And so now he's just saving the Sunday editions. You
know it's Sunday today, right, Yeah, but there's two of them, right,

(01:21:00):
one from last week and so the second one right,
just saving them for me. Well, I've taken the one
from last week and put it in that chair. Yes,
and then I did the same thing this week. And
I'm flattered. I'm honored. I receive this the way you
want me to, good as a gift of our friendship.
And uh and just really I feel a lot closer
to you and got off the rails a little bit there.

(01:21:20):
But I'm glad you received it the way I think.
I think we're on the same exactly right. I think
we're you know, obviously we're going to get an apartment together,
and uh, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Excited for it, you know, just not jealous at all.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
Yeah, you shouldn't be, because I think you just have
to understand you can't compete, you know, like just there's
no newspapers for you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
I've stopped trying.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
These are for me.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Yeah, I know that the two of you have something special.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
So you're happy for us? Yes, you know, like that's
that's good friend. You're very mature of you, man, just
taking the high road. You're a class act. You you
can be my best man. As we wrap up the show,
we want to remind you that you can sign up
at patreon dot com slash therapy and you can get
our extended show ad free a day earlier, as well
as enjoy our live chat, discord community and our spontaneous
deep dives, interview, skill shares, research roundups and rants and

(01:22:04):
do we have anybody to welcome to that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
Actually, that didn't make it into the script. For reasons
I won't get into. Uh. Scoop Lindsay became a therapal
than you. Thank you, Scoop Lindsay. We also have let.

Speaker 4 (01:22:18):
Me scroll scroll scroll, Let's see Kyle Sharton yay aarrapod.
Welcome all right, Kyle, Scroll scroll scroll Andrew carmidel ah Andre.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
He was what they call him, so thank you for joining.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
Having the new friends. And we'd like to thank the benevolent, revered, generous,
and flagrantly pro therapy diehards who love you all so much.
They gift lit arts that there are partners, Dirty B
and Picket, And we want to thank our bosses, the
mysterious and shrouded Illuminati members of the fan club that
they're producers. Thank you, Jake Schneider, Myra, Robert Brownie, Junior Mint,
Smitty's Scoop, Richard Fucking Macy, Judy Schneider, Malia, Leon Cassab,

(01:23:03):
Carol and Albert, Kevin Chamberlin, Tess Miller, Dan Martin, Sammy
Scoop Slerpekai motherfucker fuck you, Slurpy ruining my goddamn fantasy
football draft, Ben Stanley, slapping your face, Sarah Smith, Adam
Hathaway biler T, Mike helm, Uskar, Swan Rose, paris A,
Sonny Boy, Darren Cunningham, Libs, Sandra mcwaffle, Team Monaco, Thunder Cougar, Falcon, Scoop,
Heyo Hanna, Marie Andrew Langmead, Emma Tonka and Pony Soprano

(01:23:26):
Alina Cody, the Louring Guy, Brady Malay, Chick Chick, Filatio
gabriel A, Dame, Shawn Sutherland, Max the Ginger, Scoop, Chad
mag Adam Warren, Unca, Laprice or Inca who gives a shit?
Sam cone Ba do crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Uh And if you were like to this episode uncut
and unedited would and enjoy our spontaneous side projects. Go
to patreon dot com slash therapy and thank you for
supporting mental health.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
Well that's all the time. We good for this week's session.
We want to thank our landlords, s J and the
Rockiescoy Pond Studio, and thanks to all of you contributed
to our show today. We really appreciate it. And a
remember pot Therapy is and something to keep all of yourself.
Share the episode with the world because some of the socials.
When you do, you can find us at pot Therapy
guys on Instagram, threads on Twitter at slash pot therapy
on Facebook, and Blue Sky, and don't forget about all

(01:24:11):
the extra goodies. It's aground dot com slash therapy.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
If you want to spit a question on the show,
you can ask anonymously a pot therapy dot mat or
email us at pod therapy guys at gmail dot com,
or click the link on the episode description. I'm Ni
tange man, I'm Jim. Thanks you for your appointment. Portugal.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
So it's in Europe, right, Portugal?

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
Yeah, as Jim learned today, it is.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
I did during the fantasy draft. Yeah, they asked me
what was closer, Portugal or Ireland or something like that,
and uh yeah, it took me a beat because I
thought Portugal was in South America. Do Portugal and Ireland
share a border? So they're all in Europe? So I
assume that I mean no, right, because oh no, Ireland's
a dud island. Yeah, look at it. I'm getting it, boys.

(01:24:58):
I got this to Jim dozing. We are in the
country older than this wouldn't have done. Don't know funk
all about. That's where the beer comes from and the whiskeys. Goodbye, everybody, goodbye,

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