Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
28. All Talk: When Therapy Feels Pointless
Now that we've (nearly) survived the end of semester crunch time, we're delighted to return to a regular podcasting schedule again. We're also excited about the new texting option for listeners. (Click the link above to try it out!)
Have you ever been overwhelmed by life circumstances beyond your control and wondered what good therapy could do? Maybe you've tried everything and concluded there's nothing to be done so why talk about it? We've been there too! Today we're unpacking those feelings and dishing about the good, bad, and the ugly of our own experiences with therapy. We discuss qualities we look for in a therapist as well as the value of reflecting on our emotional health and what important messages might be embedded in our deepest, darkest emotions.
Find a Therapist Near You (Psychology Today)
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This is.
Speaker 2:Rebecca, and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 1:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we've questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 2:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 1:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 2:So whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up. We are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Uncovered.
Speaker 2:Life Beyond. Hello everyone, Welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond. This is Naomi.
Speaker 3:And this is Rebecca. So, guess what, we are back, and I think we both had a lot of different stuff going on. I am very deep into finals and, naomi, I know you just got out of finals too. Just from the other part of finals, from the professor angle, I am the student.
Speaker 2:Right, I turned in my grades yesterday and that was a really good feeling.
Speaker 2:But I have already had one student who said Wait a minute, I thought I was going to get this grade and so, but I'll have to go back and change that. But yes, and I'm realizing that the second half of the semester is a really tough time to podcast, yeah, yeah. So I don't know, maybe we can bank a bunch of episodes this summer. But it's good to be back because I miss getting on the mic and talking about these things with you and spending time with our listeners. Right?
Speaker 3:It's like the perfect little world, like I get to have a conversation with you, we get to touch base with our listeners and, speaking of, speaking of, we want to hear from you guys. And, naomi, you just have a really cool feature, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yes, so Buzzsprout is the podcasting platform that we use, and they just launched this new feature that allows listeners to text us directly from the show notes. If you go to the description of this episode in your podcast app, right at the very top, you'll see a link that says text us, and so if you click on that, it'll automatically populate with the number in your own texting app on your phone. You send the text to us. We are the only ones who see that. In fact, it's important that you put your name in it so we know who you are, because we'll only see the last four digits, and so this is just a really quick and easy way for us to hear from you, because we would love to hear from you and we mean you, not them over there you so drop us a line, let us know what you're thinking. We'd love to hear from you. It would totally make our day.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think this feature is super cool and to back up what Naomi said like, truly, it makes our day to hear from you all, whether it's an email, whether it is just a quick text message Facebook message, however works best for you it makes our day and we value your feedback, so please know that as well. Speaking of text messaging, we kind of had a conversation going between the two of us and that kind of launched our subject for today. So, naomi, why don't you start us off?
Speaker 2:All right. So, as you know, life has been very full and I often feel that I'm trying to be three places at once trying to be the parent I need to be and keep the household running. To be the parent I need to be and keep the household running. Also, doing my job and being there for my students and colleagues. And teaching is the kind of job that it will take as much or more of the time you give it. It will expand to fill all the time you give it.
Speaker 2:So there's that Once upon a time I was involved in community events and I would like to have friends. Sounds so pathetic, but the reality is that I feel like I have paired everything in my life down to the bone in terms of cutting out non-essentials and I'm still running ragged. And in the past I've I've been in therapy and I it's been a wonderful, wonderful support for me in the past and I've been thinking maybe I need to get into therapy again, maybe I need to talk with someone about this. But there are all these things that kind of hold me back and I feel a little bit hypocritical because I'm the first one to encourage people to go to therapy and I hear myself saying the same things that other people say, like what's the point of going Therapists can't change my circumstances in life.
Speaker 2:I can't change my circumstances, like, unless I were to win the lottery and then I wouldn't have to work anymore and then I could just be a parent, I mean. So why go to a therapist if I know I can't life hack my way out of this or get a coach or you know, like coach whatever, a coach, or you know, life coach, whatever. So of course, you're the first person that I talked to about this, because I know you are a believer in therapy as well, and not just a believer, but you have been involved in therapy enough to know that not all therapy is the same.
Speaker 3:To know that not all therapy is the same. Not all of it is equally useful. Like, the Venn diagram of the qualities I want in a therapist has about 5% overlapping space and I laughed when I read that. But it's true, it's true.
Speaker 2:Right, because I want a therapist who's going to understand this part of my life and also this part of my life and also is going to be sympathetic to this other thing and and you know I've this is something I've also thought about and this really connects to our episode on making peace with the patches, when our lives feel like they've gone in a lot of different directions, the fact that they're not integrated makes somehow makes everything more complicated, and I think it would be nice. I think I want a therapist who can, who can, understand those different parts of my life. But yeah, the Venn diagram gets really complicated.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think having a therapist that you don't feel like you constantly have to explain yourself or your situation to is so helpful. I have had therapists who have just sat and like look so puzzled over the Amish Mennonite culture.
Speaker 3:And then other therapists are so puzzled over some of the religious trauma. Some therapists try to bypass the religious trauma and I think being really clear on what you want from therapy is helpful, and I say that but also feel like I need to give the caveat it's okay If you're not quite sure what you need. You just know you need help. That's okay too. But I've been learning and I think, as I become more self-aware, that is maybe an easier part of it.
Speaker 2:But just to be really clear in what I want in therapy and maybe what parts of my life I feel like I need to address the most, Right and talking about this, I think brought up some things that we've observed about the experience of going to therapy and what has been helpful about it, what makes it helpful, and we thought this might be a conversation that others could identify with too. Just in very practical terms, the go-to place for me is psychologycom, because they have that, that listing of therapists, and you can go through and you can filter for folks in your area or you know all different kinds of of things that issues and approaches, methodologies, that kind of thing, and that's a really helpful resource and we can put a link to that in the show notes. But there again, I mean how many of us have interacted with someone online? And it's our interaction online or the perception we get of them as a person based on what we've read about them or read, you know, if we've read an author's work and then we meet them in person, it's not always the same. The people that look great on paper may or may not click with you. When you go to a therapist and you spill your guts and you explain all these different experiences you've had and their impact on you and what you're struggling with, it's really demoralizing to go through all that emotional labor if you then realize, a couple of sessions in, that this is not clicking, this is not working, they don't get. You're not remembering these really important details in my story, and so being aware of that also makes me hesitate.
Speaker 2:As I scroll through all the local therapists on psychologycom, this is Naomi dropping in from the future to add a very important resource that I wanted to be sure to mention, and that is that many college campuses have a counseling center where they offer free counseling services to students. So if you're considering different colleges to attend, or you're already in college and you're feeling overwhelmed, please look on your college website or ask someone if there's a counseling service available or if they can at least make recommendations. Seeing a counselor on campus is sometimes the first opportunity that someone has to see a therapist without it showing up on their insurance, and maybe somebody else is paying for their insurance, so things can get complicated there, and so a therapist on staff at your school's counseling center is going to respect your confidentiality and you won't have to worry about anything leaving the room. It will all stay right there. So this is just something to keep in mind.
Speaker 2:That is a resource for you. It's a resource I've used myself more than once as a student, used myself more than once as a student and I am often referring students to the counselors on our campus because they're such an important resource. And finally, please don't wait until you are completely overwhelmed and immobilized to seek help. It's easier to bounce back when you are just a little bit stressed rather than when you are drowning. Now back to the show.
Speaker 3:I think you bring up a really important part and we're going to talk about this later. But therapy is exhausting. It's emotionally exhausting and it's worth the exhaustion to. To work through it is is some of the most honest labor that you can do. But it's also okay to pay attention Not only okay. You should pay attention to what your body is telling you in the sessions. I went going into it assuming that the person in front of me was the expert and who was I to question their methodology and it took me a bit. But there are therapists who have not done their work and they will either be triggered by you or they will bring their shit to the room and I'm aware enough of that to understand that there's not enough space in the room for both of our. I think of a Schitt's Creek episode where David told Alexis that there is not enough room in this family for both of our drama and I have held the role of being the unstable, unstable family member for long enough.
Speaker 3:Don't think you're going to take it away from me. If I am in a room where the professional in front of me is triggered, or the professional in front of me brings their dysfunction into the room, I'm aware enough to know that there's not going to be space for mine. Absolutely Right, agreed, and I think those of us who tend to be more of an empath will quickly latch onto that. Whether we know it or not, and I think those are important things to be aware of Is there space in this room for me? And if, for whatever reason, you feel there's not, you can leave. Or if you said something very important one session and two sessions later, they have no memory of it. It's okay to find someone who takes better notes. Just because it's a professional in front of you doesn't mean it's the perfect fit.
Speaker 2:Right, the fact that they're not a good fit doesn't mean they're necessarily bad person, right, right, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a personal thing like that. It can just be. Well, I've been in a situation where it seemed that a therapist was more interested in a in a protocol. It was more interested in here's this formula. We're going to walk through these steps and you're going to practice these steps and practice saying things this way, and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I want to have a conversation about what's going on here. I wanted to do some digging and try to get some insight into what's going on here. I'm not here just to learn how to say things differently.
Speaker 3:I want understanding, Right, you want to be able to make sense of the world Exactly. And I think it's important to remember and I think this is true with any type of coach, any type of pastor, caregiver but no therapist is going to be able to take you further than they themselves have gone, and there are some therapists who simply have not done much of their own work.
Speaker 2:And that isn't to make you distrust therapists, but rather to allow you to trust what you're feeling internally and what you're seeing, agreed, agreed, and I will just say that in that same case, I mean, this is a therapist that I had found online and it's such an impressive background in terms of training.
Speaker 2:I mean on paper this looked like the perfect therapist and it just did not click. In fact, I remember at one session I was at the end of the session, I was, I was dissatisfied with the way the conversation had gone and I was just, I was in tears and it was those trigger tears. Where they're you're crying, not even sure why you're crying, but the tears won't stop. And the therapist reaction was kind of like I can't, I don't understand why you, why you're crying and not even sure why you're crying, but the tears won't stop. And the therapist's reaction was kind of like I can't, I don't understand why you, why you're crying now, like and it was like it was almost like a this doesn't make sense to me, so it's not important. And actually it was indicative of something much, much deeper that was not being addressed and I knew it was time to end that session. It was not helping, or it helped to a certain degree, but it was not the kind of help I was needing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and guys, this is an important issue. So I was in therapy it was soon after my brother passed away and I had had other trauma behind that and the first counselor was not a good fit. And then I found this other counselor and after one session I well, I think I did this quite often, but after a session I would just go out to my car and cry and I don't think I knew why I was crying, but I was just crying, but I was just crying. And one day, unbeknownst to myself, his secretary went to get the mail and she saw me in the car crying and he addressed it the next time.
Speaker 3:He said does that happen every time? What's going on? And the fact that he was curious enough and concerned, like I just remember forever. I was like no one else ever validated my emotion or my tears in that way and sadly I wasn't allowed to see him any longer because he wasn't a Christian, and I've often thought about that dynamic. But I had people in my life who found out he wasn't a quote Christian counselor and told me I wasn't allowed to go any longer, which is probably one of I don't know. Recently that's been something I've been thinking about and struggling.
Speaker 2:Well, I suspect, or the objection might have been that he wasn't a Christian. I think the real issue is that his goal wasn't to make you conform to the social norms. His goal was your health.
Speaker 3:And he was giving voice to a lot of things that many other people were fully vested in, keeping silent and exactly, and guys, this is a, this is a very real part of therapy, but before we talk about that. So, naomi, why are you thinking about therapy if you feel like maybe nothing's going to really change?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's this typical pattern of you get overwhelmed by circumstances. We try our hardest to get it right. We, the self-help books, we listen to the podcasts, we read things online, we try this approach and we try this hack and we try to do things, to make things work. And and I'm talking about my situation here just in terms of the logistics, right, I'm not, it's not even so much about emotional concerns, right? Or relational concerns, that's. I've certainly been to therapy for those already and I might be in therapy again, right, but, but I'm thinking about this from this very kind of almost logistical place. But all that stuff is not working.
Speaker 2:And I think it's so easy when I, you know, read those productivity books at the beginning of the year about making good habits and that kind of thing, and inevitably they don't pan out, inevitably I don't stick with the routine, and it's so easy to think I'm the problem.
Speaker 2:We internalize that sense of failure and we go what's wrong with me, that I can't do all this? And I think I've been to therapy enough that in this situation, I'm going yeah, the problem is I can't be three places at once. There's no way you can life hack your way out of that, and so what's the point of going to therapy? But I think the other other ways that we can run into this same dynamic is maybe we are in a toxic relationship, or it can feel unfair that we're the ones who have to go to therapy and get ourselves fixed, when we might not be the one whose behavior is the most toxic in this situation. And in the cases like that, what do you do? Why go to therapy then, if the therapist can't change anything and we can't really change our circumstances either?
Speaker 3:To be fair, what forces us into therapy is typically horrible pain. I mean like pain that you don't know if you can get out of bed right. You're overwhelmed. You have tried every tool you have and it is pain that will take you to therapy. Unfortunately, like you mentioned, oftentimes we tell ourselves, or even other people will tell us, that we're deserving of this pain and that we need to fix ourselves in order to be treated with respect and to be treated with compassion and even just basic dignity. And that, my friends, is so difficult and so hard. And the truth of it is, sometimes those who are causing the pain will be the last ones and maybe never will go to therapy, but you find yourself there anyway and sometimes it's not about fixing yourself.
Speaker 2:And that's what we want to talk about next. So what if we are the only one in our situation that's interested in change? Why go to therapy then? Since we know we can't change other people, why is it worth considering?
Speaker 3:You know, one of the biggest things I realized is I go not to change the situation as much as we would like to, and not even to change myself so much, but more to change how I engage with the situation and how I show up. I think sometimes we adapt to roles that maybe at one point in our life served us and maybe the roles aren't serving us well anymore, but that is how we know how to show up, and showing up differently is scary. We don't know how to do that, and I know therapy helped me a lot with that. It helped me think about the way I showed up and if that was truly who I wanted to be.
Speaker 2:Right, because I think our default setting is typically to conform to the social norms. That's what all the voices around us are telling us Right, to be convenient, to go along with the program, to stuff our feelings or get right with God. So we don't have those feelings and we don't even know what is our own values, what is our own, who we are as individuals, apart from those social expectations and a good therapist can help us figure out. What do we want out of life? Where is this pain coming from? What is it in this situation that's causing the pain? What aligns with my values? What are my values and what actually?
Speaker 2:How much of the way I'm engaging, the way I'm coming to the situation, is actually in line with what's important to me in life. When we are in a situation where we know that we're expected to go along with this certain behavior and it may not even be bad behavior, but it's behavior that is not sitting right with us, it's not working for us, it might be causing us a lot of pain, or you might realize it's causing someone else a lot of pain, but there just doesn't seem to be any way to avoid conforming with that expectation A good therapist can help you identify what actually matters to you and distinguish between that and the social norms.
Speaker 3:Right, and I have this theory, and again, it's a theory and I'm not an expert, so it's a theory. But I think oftentimes those of us who are the first to read the self-help books or the first to go to therapy are often the ones who are kind of the scapegoat in the family, in the relationship, in the community, and we are the ones who have taken the responsibility, the fall for, however, the situation is Because we wouldn't be reading those things if we didn't think that there was some way that we could change.
Speaker 2:We had some kind of agency to impact the situation.
Speaker 3:And the reality is, if you're playing the role of the scapegoat, there is no one interested besides you in fixing that.
Speaker 2:Because the scapegoat works for everybody else. I mean the role of the scapegoat serves the interests of everyone else, not the scapegoat.
Speaker 3:I think we could do a whole episode on the scapegoat and how it has a lot of religious overtones and it feels so normal and so natural and even so sacrificial.
Speaker 2:We have so many kind of spiritual words to make it sound really good.
Speaker 3:Give up the cloak, turn the other cheek. It's fine, it's good, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not Because look who is expected to turn the other cheek and who's not. Look who's being asked to forgive and who is not being asked to forgive.
Speaker 3:It is not the one with power.
Speaker 2:They are the ones who deserve respect and they get to exact retribution and they're doing it oh, because God said they're supposed to do it Very self-serving. And when we grow up in a context where we are discouraged from being an individual self and we're encouraged, every voice is telling us that maturity, the thing to aspire to is to conform to these social expectations. We don't even have a language to make sense of our world. We don't have a language to talk about our emotional experience or what we're observing in others that we can understand, have some insight into our own experience, and I mean in my own experience. Just for a concrete example, I was years and years into therapy before I recognized when I was triggered, like I mean, I knew the terminology but there would be these occasions where I would find myself just crying and I had no, no idea why. It just didn't make sense. And I think the temptation sometimes is to say oh well, if it doesn't make sense, then something's wrong with you.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, no, no. You're the crazy emotional female once again.
Speaker 2:Exactly no, no, no, no, no, no. My body was trying to tell me something and I needed to pay attention to what it was trying to tell me. It was giving me really important information and therapy, and reading the books that I have read through therapy gave me that emotional literacy so that I could understand oh, this is what's happening to myself, and also when it happens to someone else.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I think it's not only emotional literacy I mean, it is that but there's also words for experiences, real experiences that we've had that we don't have the language for. The same therapist was the one who gave me language for some of the trauma I had experienced, and it was language that Christian counselors before him hadn't given me. And that's not to say a Christian counselor is bad, but it is to say a Christian counselor is not the end. All be all. Look out for the other person to give it all to God. Just believe in God that it makes us defenseless and it gives away our power, power that maybe God gave us. And I think we need to be really aware of that, because I do think there are licensed professional therapists who will revert to some of those scripts and I think it's really damaging when we hear that.
Speaker 2:Agreed. I think it could be helpful to be aware of a therapist goals and whether those goals are in alignment with ours. Are in alignment with ours if their goal and I think this is the goal with a lot of voices in faith traditions to define health as conformity. Someone who is emotionally healthy is someone who is a woman.
Speaker 2:A woman who's emotionally healthy is self sacrificing and is pleasant and is always shows up serving others with a smile and a cheerful spirit and yes, and and, and makes others feel good and is deferential and doesn't take up too much of the conversation, which, in studies, it's been shown that if a woman speaks more than 30% of the time, she's seen as dominating the conversation.
Speaker 2:And so if a therapist goal is to get you as their client, to conform to these norms, I mean, if that's what you want, then it's good to be on the same page there. But if that's causing you pain in your life and you're realizing, wait, this is not working, then it's really important to have a therapist who is seeing you as your own individual person and is helping you come to a greater awareness of what your values are, what you care about in life, what your interests are, what matters to you and what's not working for you. Right, and relationships are important, but not not working for you, right. And relationships are important, but not relationships that require you to abandon yourself and just conform to whatever the social pressure is asking of you. And I think it's really, really important that we are clear about where a therapist is coming from and clear about whether or not that is going to work for us.
Speaker 3:Absolutely and to be fair. You know all of those things being generous with our resources and time and showing up friendly, and you know all those things doing service. That is important, that is valuable. But guess what? It's important and valuable whether you're male or female. And the other thing that I think was so pivotal in the way I started thinking about things is for years, for years, in my head, anytime I had, you know, a decision, he that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him, it is sin.
Speaker 3:That will make you obsessive, compulsive in a hurry, and I never once considered that it would be okay to do good to myself. I never once considered the fact that it was good to do good to myself as well. I was never in that verse, I was never in that adverse, I was never in the equation, and that separation that we so easily do to ourselves is what's damaging, and you need a therapist who can point that out to you and a therapist who will remind you of your value. And the best therapist I ever had. I could say some of the most shameful things too, and she would somehow be able to say it back to you in such a validating and even a compassionate compassionate, but you almost came out being the hero, like I remember sitting there.
Speaker 2:They were reframing. They were reframing and saying so, you're seeing this situation through a lens, yeah, that's where you're experiencing a shame. And they're saying hey, what about seeing it this other way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know, but I'm like what the heck? I'm actually the hero in this situation. I never considered that. Let you drown in your shame. She doesn't get triggered by your stuff, but she reframes it in an honest and a healthy way and somehow allows you to let go of that shame, which we're going to talk about shame in just a bit, so we'll come back to this.
Speaker 2:I agree, and I think part of that is helping us refocus on what we can and can't control, and to me that's what boundaries come down to, so what a therapist might be able to help us with in a situation where, where we can't change the situation. Maybe they can help us learn how to reframe the situation in the way that you just described, or to help us think of strategies to protect ourselves, to how to set boundaries or how to realize oh wait, that person's emotions are out of my control.
Speaker 3:I can't control them, and keeping their emotions in check shouldn't even be a goal of mine, like that's not my job, and you know let me just say here, I think for Amish, mennonite women and probably outside those circles too, but we are told that we have that control over particularly the men in our lives that if we show up and we're submissive and kind and gracious and feed them and make their favorite dinner and do all the things they then you know will, will treat us this way.
Speaker 3:At the same time, they never admit that that is, in fact, manipulation. So we are groomed. We are groomed from infancy to manipulate. But if you get caught manipulating somebody, you are also in so much trouble, like the. The art of manipulation is so fine tuned. Yeah, art of manipulation is so fine tuned. Yeah, it's so fine tuned. But it's also a situation where you can't win, because either you're not, either you're not doing all the things well enough, or else boom, you're busted for manipulating.
Speaker 2:Yes, so you're, you're blamed if you didn't control the situation, and if you do try to control the situation, then you're also wrong. Yeah, Darned if you do, darned if you don't. Absolutely. And I think I agree, we can run ourselves ragged trying to control things we can't control, and what happens then is that we lose sight of the things that we do have control over. You know and and and what, because we don't have any energy left. And this is a fight you can't win, you can't control. We can't control other people's emotions any more than we can control the weather. And well, what has the saying? You can fight reality, but you'll lose every time. Something like that, but. But also, speaking of fight reality, but you'll lose every time. Something like that. But also speaking of sayings what you were describing, a verse like him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him, it is sin. I think that kind of verse can get used to get people to light ourselves on fire to keep others from getting a chill, Do you?
Speaker 3:want to take any guess what gender told me this in order to get me to do something. They wanted A literal man told me this I was probably 15. And I really did not want to do something. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, in the same vein, I was told that my role at home was to be a servant, and I mean this was later denied then, but I have a very, very clear memory of it and I know it happened tonight and it aligned with so many other expectations too. So, yeah, right.
Speaker 3:And the brilliance of therapy is it allows you to take some of these narratives that you were given, and you even assumed to be factual, and just look at it and to have to parrot something that you have been told since infancy and you assume to be true and have someone sitting across the room from you asking you to explain it all of a sudden becomes difficult.
Speaker 2:Right, or you hear yourself say it. Yeah, oh, I remember talking with a friend in grad school about LGBTQ issues and and, and she asked me about if I knew of any lesbian or gay people in my background and I said, oh no, I said we don't have any. And I heard myself Because the one of the big religious or political leaders in Iran had said the same thing about Iran. Yeah, just not too long before that had been in the news and I heard this that wasn't a therapist, that was a friend, but just explaining, just saying something to someone. There's this weird thing where, at the same time, having someone who can identify with you so you don't have to explain everything, at the same time having someone who can identify with you so you don't have to explain everything.
Speaker 2:While that's, on one hand, that can be helpful, there's also value of having someone outside the situation that when you have to explain those things, you suddenly hear yourself and the therapist doesn't even have to tell you anything. Just by talking through it, you see it differently. Okay, absolutely. I think the conclusion we're coming to here is that the goal of therapy doesn't have to be fixing the situation that you know, maybe it's a situation that we can't change, or you know the part of it that's working as something that's out of our control, and the goal of therapy is not that we're going to somehow have magical powers to fix that, but it's going to give us more ways to show up in that situation and help us be clear about what we do want in life.
Speaker 2:So, what do we do then with those circumstances we can't control? Let's say, a person goes to therapy. A person goes to therapy. How do you deal with the people who are glad you went to therapy but don't think they need it, or they went one time and now they're good. You know, they just had a really good upbringing and everything's fine. Everything's fine.
Speaker 3:Or the one that makes me see red. Well, I came from a good family, so I don't need therapy, but I know you came from a bad family, so you know, I think you should go. Honey, I will bust your balls If you tell me that I am so over that narrative and I am telling you this is a trope that the Amish Mennonite culture adores.
Speaker 2:What's remarkable to me is what that says about the speaker. That says so much more about the person who's saying it than it does about who they are talking to. Anybody who says that and it's not just in the Amish Minite culture, I know, I know you know it's beyond there as well. But because not that every family is dysfunctional, except that we are. If we're human or maybe not dysfunctional, but imperfect, we can't get around it, and some it's to a greater or lesser degree get around it, and some it's to a greater or lesser degree. But to think we can so neatly divide people or families into good or bad categories is just so naive and uninformed, I mean it's just 95% of the time.
Speaker 3:the good families are going to come from families or be families who have resources, who are wealthy, who are considered leaders. The more resources you have, the better you can hide your dysfunction Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And I cannot tell you how many marriages are struggling over this issue that would not need to be struggling over this issue. Invariably, in marriages, you will have someone who is considered to come from a more problematic family and the other person will constantly, constantly tells themselves and believes they came from a good family, therefore they don't need therapy. My brain doesn't understand that. It's like saying I come from a good family, therefore I don't get the cold, I come from a good family, therefore I'll never get cancer, whatever.
Speaker 2:Right, right. It's that out of touch with reality. And then I think also related to this is the people who more or less borrow our emotional experience.
Speaker 2:Maybe they'll even take that language that you learn in therapy through all your blood, sweat and tears, right to to work through those things that you've experienced, and then they turn and weaponize it against you. And it doesn't even have to be weaponized. But I mean, I think about how, on shows like the Bachelor at one time, if you had a guy on there talking about having been to therapy, it was just it was such a revolutionary thing and it made him so special. But now it's kind of to the point where therapy has kind of become this term that's used to bypass Right and and and it's and and it becomes. It can be. Just because they said they went to therapy doesn't necessarily mean they have any more capacity for self-reflection than anyone else, mean they have any more capacity for self-reflection than anyone else and in fact it might be that they are playing a game and they're using it, they're weaponizing it.
Speaker 3:Right and I think it's important to manipulate Right, and I think it's important, when you get in therapy, find friends who have also done their work, find family members who have done their work, and be very careful talking about what you're discovering with those who haven't or those who aren't curious about it, because it's easy to give them the emotional experience of having done their work when it was actually your labor, and I think we need to be really careful about that, like, really careful about that Agreed, agreed, agreed.
Speaker 2:So, in wrapping this up, then, what we're saying based on our experience not on our expertise, but on our experience the benefit of therapy is not in changing the situation, but in changing how we show up in that situation.
Speaker 2:You know how we interact with those we live, with the world around us, and I think this is not to say that we always have to upend our life right as we are learning how to be more true to our own values rather than just conforming to social pressure. There are times when we consciously might choose to go along with a social norm, but I think it's important to recognize that there will be a cost for remaining in a stressful situation year after year. It might be serving everyone else, but our body keeps the score. Our nervous system remembers when our body is pumping cortisol through our system day after day. It's going to have an effect on our health, and our physical health, not just our emotional health, and so, remembering that we're humans, we're not machines, our emotions matter, and ignoring them is like putting a piece of tape over the engine light. Praying them away is like putting a piece of tape on the engine light without really addressing and being honest about the situation that we're in and the experience we're having.
Speaker 3:And I think it's so interesting the way we have been taught to look at emotions and view emotions, and then the reality of what emotions actually are. I'm learning that resentment usually means that for me, a boundary has been somehow violated, or maybe I need to set a boundary. I used to feel guilty for feeling resentful and now if I just pause and think, hmm, what's going on, I can usually figure out oh, there's more to this. I used to feel guilty for feeling angry and I figured out. If I sit with my anger long enough, usually it's telling me that there's something I need to grieve, there's some kind of pain there. And what if shame is the same type of distraction? What if shame just hides what we really need to look at? We have shame so deeply embedded in our DNA and I think shame is the message that is oftentimes sent our way when we're not benefiting those who had been benefiting, and many of us see our shame as some type of moral compass. And what if shame actually silences our own values?
Speaker 2:So this is something that has really been a game changer for me in terms of recognizing that shame itself is a signal, a distraction, and that it often is distracting me from the very thing I need, from the very solution to my problem, and it also prevents vulnerability and connection a la Brene Brown Also prevents vulnerability and connection a la Brene.
Speaker 3:Brown, but when we feel a sense of shame.
Speaker 2:When we feel that, when we hear that voice, if we can try to reimagine it like a monster in a dream, and when you see that monster in your dream or nightmare, if we can, instead of running from it, turn and look at it, face it. It often crumbles in front of our eyes. So it may not always, sometimes, what the people think is going to have a high cost, but at least we can choose whether or not we want to go along with the social norm and we can make that choice fully aware of the costs and benefits that come with it, right?
Speaker 3:And you know, therapy, I think, is more about replacing a lot of those default moral settings settings, yes, that we have, whether it's shame, whether it's anger, whether it's resentment, whatever the emotion is, and not trying to silence the emotion, but paying attention to the emotion and what it's telling us. Who knew that we were not just crazy emotional women, but we're actually intuitive and wise women, connected with our emotions, and I think it would be so great for our communities, for our families, if men and women alike were more engaged and connected with our emotions. And a good therapist is going to be your biggest cheerleader in that whole process, going to be your biggest cheerleader in that whole process.
Speaker 2:What is this bringing up for you? We'd love to hear from you. Please leave us a text. That link is in the show notes and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom. That's uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom.
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Speaker 2:stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward. Thank you,
