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You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist is a podcast for seekers, dreamers, and questioners that intimately explores the human experience. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills years of wisdom gained from her practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She invites guests from a broad variety of disciplines and many walks of life, including researchers, writers, artists, healers, advocates, inventive outliers, and creative geniuses. Together, they investigate, illuminate, and inspire transformation - in the self, relationships, and society. Curious about many things, Stephanie’s uniquely interdisciplinary psychological lens tackles challenging social issues while encouraging personal and relational wellness. Join this journey through the inner wilderness.
Swell AI Transcript: 113. Group Chat FINAL.mp3
Jake Wiskerchen:
I fundamentally believe that we have spoiled ourselves rotten to the point that we have no distress tolerance anymore. And that is also a form of stimulus where we don't know how to deal with things not going our way. And then we distract ourselves with stimulus screens, endless social media scrolling. The more and more we research this stuff, the more it comes out that this stuff is not positively beneficial to not just our psyches from a psychological perspective, but also our neurological capacity to handle things. And what we've done, I think, is we've patterned ourselves to the point where a week in silence sounds terrifying to most people. Float chambers sound terrifying to most people because it's inviting you back to a place of harmony with nature and God that we have just abdicated.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Welcome back to another group episode where I reconnect with guests I've had in the past. Today I'm here with Jason Littlefield, Xander Kegg, and Jake Wiskirchen. So I'll have everyone go around first, just introduce themselves and where you might have heard them before if you are a long-term listener of this podcast. Jason?
Jason Littlefield: Yes, hi. Jason Littlefield, and I appeared on episode 46, Empowered Humanity Theory, with Jason Littlefield.
Stephanie Winn: And Xander?
Zander Keig: Hi, everybody. I'm Xander Kegg, and you might have heard me on episode number 38, Trans Mental Health with Xander Kegg. And Jake.
Jake Wiskerchen: Jake Wiskirchen, and I'm so appreciative that Stephanie knows how to pronounce my name correctly. It's a rare quality. I was on episodes 2 and 97, Demystifying Firearms and Other Taboo Topics, and Healthcare Ethics and Philosophy, respectively. And I love, love, love this format. I learned so much.
Stephanie Winn: I'm glad. So today we're going to talk about a term that Jake has actually brought up. Most times I talk to Jake, actually, I hear him use the phrase emotional functioning, and yet I've never actually stopped to ask what he means when he says that. So today we're going to talk about emotional functioning, as well as mental fitness, which is a term that Xander uses. Xander and Jason both have backgrounds in social and emotional learning before it went full-blown woke mad. So we're going to talk about the benefits of what social and emotional learning might have intended to be at one point, sort of separating the wee from the chaff or the baby from the bathwater, so to speak. We're going to talk about emotional functioning, social and emotional learning, mental fitness. We might talk a little bit about nervous system regulation. I am currently doing some brain retraining, nervous system regulating exercises for my own health. It's one thing to feel like you know about those things as a therapist. It's another thing to go through your own personal health crisis that forces you to relearn your own tools from scratch. So I hope that today's episode will bring a lot of value to anyone interested in psychological well-being. And so before we dive in, though, I just want to give everyone an opportunity to update listeners on what you've been up to since we recorded our last episode or any sort of projects that you want to inform people about. And we'll go in the same order, starting with Jason.
Jason Littlefield: Okay. I have finally written a book. I wrote a book called Empowered Humanity Theory, a framework for living an empowered and dignified life. And I'm glad to have that out there in the world. I'm also continuing to consult with school districts looking to work on their climate and culture and the wellbeing of the people in their systems.
Stephanie Winn: Very cool. And Xander?
Zander Keig: Well, like Jason, I recently wrapped up my memoir. a third space, a nonconformist guide to the universe, publishing it through Thought Leader Press. And as a result of going through that process, I just fell in love with this way that we were able to get the book out within about 15 weeks. So I decided to start an imprint through Thought Leader Press called Third Space Press, which is part of the name of the title of my book. I've just started that up recently. And I've also been doing a podcast the last, well, last year I started up in 2023. It's called The Umbrella Hour. It's on the UK Health Radio Network. And I've been having a great time interviewing mostly trans people. But now this year we've spread out to LGBT and allies and others as we call them.
Stephanie Winn: Wow. And congratulations on your memoir and starting a press as well and a successful podcast. Yeah. And Jake?
Jake Wiskerchen: I'm going the opposite direction. I'm actually pulling away from some things. I've been in, I don't know, about ninth gear for, I don't know, decade and a half or so. So I have resigned from a couple of positions that I've held for a really long time, and I'm taking a step back from Walk the Talk America, which is a nonprofit I'm a part of, bridging the gap between firearms ownership and mental health care. But I am redirecting some efforts into some things that I truly love, like coaching my children in Little League Baseball and my own podcast that I've had for about seven years called Noggin Notes. I'm excited for this period of relative boredom in my life. I think I need a reset and I'm looking forward to not having my hair on fire quite as often as I used to. And I'm going to recenter myself and My family and some of the other stuff that really brings me joy and energy and be more mindful of where I deplete that energy.
Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I'm in a similar place myself. I mean, it's ironic to say that while I'm recording a podcast. Obviously, I haven't cut back on everything. It's interesting that I find you joining me again, Jay, for another group episode while saying that you're cutting back on things. I appreciate that I'm one of the things – or my podcast is one of the things that you're keeping in your world, but I'm actually in a similar place of cutting back on overextending myself and trying to refocus on my immediate world and the things that bring me joy. I've even taken up a new hobby. I'm learning macrame now. I'm hoping that brings me a little joy while I'm not physically capable of getting out and doing things like gardening and hiking.
Jake Wiskerchen: At least a plant hanger in the mail, by the way.
Stephanie Winn: Oh, okay. You'll have to send me your address. I actually just looked at a macrame plant hanger that's on my wall yesterday, and I had a moment of, I now know how to replicate that exact hanger. I was like, I know how to make that knot, and that knot, and that knot, and that's all it's made of, and wow, I can do it. So I will be making those very soon. All right, so, so emotional functioning, mental fitness. We know that hobbies that bring you joy are definitely part of a healthy toolkit, but I think I want to start off by asking you, Jake, since I feel like this question is long overdue, when you say emotional functioning, what does that mean to you?
Jake Wiskerchen: Oh, good therapist question. What does that mean to you? Or a reporter after a game? What what does it mean to you to win this game? facetiousness aside, I've been doing emotional functioning really, since I graduated back in whenever it was late 2011. I learned it from one of my professors and graduate school. His name's Chuck Holt. He's now retired. And so I want to give a hat tip to Chuck for introducing me to the concept of emotional functioning. And I take everything that I do from a book called The Psychology of Emotions by Carol Izzard. And I just held that in front of the screen for the listening audience who can't see. It's out of print, it can be found, it's so little pricey when you do find it, and it reads pretty well if you're really interested in this kind of stuff. But essentially at the core of this, we have emotions in our brain, they do a certain thing, and the whole purpose of functioning versus any other word is that they serve an adaptive function to response to environment. So if the environment is throwing stimuli at you, your limbic system, along with some other gears and mechanisms, will excrete chemicals that tell you how to react to these types of things. Learning how to navigate those core emotions, and Izzard identifies 10 that all human beings have, and navigating those to go into reason or logic mode, meaning your frontal lobe and not reacting out of limbic state, is critical to things like accurate communication, distress tolerance, engagement in your environment, de-escalation, all sorts of stuff. So I teach emotional functioning. I teach the 10 core emotions. I have a video series if you're interested in this stuff. I've done several podcasts on it. The point is that I want to improve relationships. I want to improve human functioning. I want to put people back in charge of their decision-making with great intentionality. And the way you do that is you learn what your body is telling you to do in response to a certain situation so that you don't reflexively respond, but you respond methodically and intentionally. And just to put a little cap on this real quick, the reason there's 10 core emotions is because through Izzard's research and compilation of some research that other people have done, These 10 have a discrete unique function. So each of the 10 does something separate and apart from all the other ones. And the reason you don't hear other words besides these 10 core emotions, things like jealousy and envy and love, frustration and overwhelm, things that we would refer to as feelings. It's because those things are hybrids of either emotion or hybrids of emotion and thought. And so if we can parse those out, we put ourselves in better charge of our responses to environment, puts us in better charge of our decision-making. We do things we don't regret a little more frequently. So That's essentially why I call it emotional functioning. They serve an adaptive function. And this just isn't taught in any curricula. Every time I present this to government or non-governmental entities, schools, groups, whatever, associations, there's this mind-popping moment where everybody goes, huh, I think I knew that all along, but now you've put words to it. And it's quite empowering, I think, as well. So Why this dovetails into social emotional learning, which is your guys' areas of expertise and somewhat mine too, I've worked in the K-12 system for long enough, is that I get highly offended when I hear SEL referred to in a pejorative fashion because it didn't used to be that way. What we were trying to do is teach children how to understand their feelings and separate them from their thoughts or any other physiological sensation. And what it's become is this Trojan horse for ideological attack and capture within our educational institutions and now even corporate institutions. So over here, I am trying to present this material, say emotional functioning, learn your emotions, learn how your brain works, teaching fundamentals of neuroscience or whatever. And every single time I bring it up, I get almost a reflexive recoiling because the last four years, emotional functioning writ large under the auspices of SEL has taken on such a terrible, I guess, impression to the community. And people are very suspicious now, especially the political conservatives. And the centrists are very suspicious about this, this quote unquote SEL. So I'm trying to fight a good fight uphill with, you know, research in my back pocket. And you guys know better than I do how frustrating that can be.
Jason Littlefield: Yeah, I've, I've really distanced myself from even using that phrase SEL or social and emotional learning. You know, I, I was an SEL specialist from 2014 to 2021, ultimately stepped away in 2021 because my job description got rewritten in a way that I had to advance the ideology. I could no longer sit back and get paid and question it, but Anyway, what I try to remind everybody is that humans by our very nature, we are social emotional beings and we have brains. And if we have a understanding of that neuroscience and how we work, what are the things that cause us to harm each other and to harm ourselves? And what are the things that we can do to strengthen our relationships and interconnectedness with each other? our environments do shape and inform us. So I believe that as a human being on this planet, I owe it to this generation and the rest of our species to say, hey, if If we can recognize those things that are within us that cause us to harm each other and those things that can bring us closer together, we should really focus on the things that bring us closer together and mitigate those things that cause us to harm ourselves and each other. Especially if we're in a state now where the ideology that is causing us to harm each other is politically motivated. I mean, that's just really silly and we should all be able to collectively step away from these bad ideas and move towards what is the best for the health and wellbeing of our species.
Stephanie Winn: It seems like when it comes to understanding our emotions, we can make a mistake either by trusting those emotions too much or not enough. That's kind of an oversimplification. But what I mean by that is that, for example, taking the emotion of anger at face value as an indicator of what's true about a situation could certainly lead to overreacting and doing some damage. On the other hand, not trusting that there is any valid reason that you're feeling anger and attempting to suppress that anger could also lead a person to not take necessary action to, let's say, protect themselves or someone they love from potential harm or danger or anything. Similar things could be said about almost any emotion, but one of the challenges I'm personally facing right now is what do you do when your nervous system starts going haywire, when those emotions aren't operating as they should? And this is part of the challenge of providing counseling to individuals with trauma or neglect histories, because those histories can make it difficult to trust their emotional functioning. You know, in my case, it's a combination of things in my background with illness that have actually caused what could be conceptualized as injury to the nervous system. So when the nervous system starts going haywire, you know, I've been stuck in sort of chronic sympathetic overactivation, which has lead, led to sensations of anxiety in my body when there's, there's nothing causing them. And it can be hard to learn, hard to adjust, especially if that's something that a new condition. So I just wanted to sort of invite any reflection. I'm working on being a little bit more vulnerable and letting my podcast be a source of wisdom and guidance for me too as I'm on my own healing journey. What do we do when the nervous system goes haywire and we can't trust what our emotions are telling us?
Jason Littlefield: My initial reaction to something like that would be to just acknowledge that right now this is a moment of suffering, you know, because it, In those situations, it's not a pleasant thing. Just acknowledging and recognizing that there is some suffering in that moment and just resting with it. Then I move into breathing strategies and noticed any judgmental thinking and really try to disrupt those thoughts of judgment with more inquiry and compassion. That's how I deal with those moments and with Empowered Humanity. I mean, that's what I'm putting out there for others as well.
Zander Keig: Well, I recently went through a situation, Stephanie, where my father died. And, you know, he had dementia for the last five years, and I was his sole family caregiver, and then his durable power of attorney. So I was very much involved in his life. And we had a good relationship my whole life. He was a very wonderful man and a good father. And so I felt like I was prepared because I had quote unquote lost him already, because he didn't know who I was for the last while. But I, I guess I wasn't because all of a sudden, I found myself maybe a day and a half, two days after he passed. almost incapable of organizing anything. I was putting things on my calendar wrong, my sleep pattern complete. I've never had a problem with sleep. And all of a sudden I wasn't sleeping well. All of a sudden I was feeling like old aches and pains in my joints. It was like, it was like everything just went off course. And I also had a pain in my chest. And I was like, am I having a heart attack? And somebody said to me, a nurse said to me, no, you have broken heart syndrome. It's like the body, The body reacts to stress and I didn't even mentally know that I was stressed. I didn't feel stress, but my body experienced the stress. And what I did was I cleared my calendar for three weeks. I rescheduled all my meetings. I just took all of the demands off of my life. That's how I chose to do it. And of course, as somebody who teaches well-being and wellness and self-care, I just started applying all of those techniques to myself. But even in the midst of it, I'm sure they were helpful. because of how long I've been doing them. But in the moment, it didn't stop me from having to experience discombobulation and disorientation.
Jake Wiskerchen: This is a really rich subject. And I want to touch on a couple of things that were brought up. The first is you mentioned vulnerability. And when I teach emotional functioning, I teach it in a wave, which brings me to point number two, which is that all emotional experiences are temporary. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. And neurologically, if there's an environmental stimulus that creates the emotional response, you only have about three to nine seconds before it's gone and then you're on to something else. Unless you continue to revisit with your thinking, right? So you can direct your attention to a number of things, thereby influencing your emotional state. The peak of the wave though, the beginning, the middle and end, the right in the middle is where we lose control. And the example I give, if I'm teaching this in person, or even if I'm just doing it auditorily over podcasts, I'll say, I'll throw a marker at somebody. Usually I make eye contact with the person first, so I'm not freaking anybody out, but I'll be teaching a whiteboard and I'll throw a marker at somebody and I'll say, did you have any control over whether or not you were surprised right there? And surprise is one of the 10. And usually it's, no, I just reflexively reacted. My hands went up, whatever. I blinked. And I say, right. So there, right at the peak is where you lose control. And we being Westerners in the Occident, driven by science and medicine and certainty and guaranteed outcomes and stamps on boxes that provide reasonable predictability of products, functioning and all that stuff. We don't like losing control. So at almost every turn, certainly adults who never taught this stuff, Gen Xers like ourselves or older, we will resist losing control, which usually translates to an avoidance of the emotion itself. So we tend to bottle this stuff up, stuff it down, etc. And when we do that for long enough, we do get physiological reactions. So we get, you know, aches and pains, we get belly aches, we get joint aches, we get all sorts of headaches, right? We get all sorts of physiological responses to this psychological or neurological failure to attend. And if it stacks up over time, we end up with chronic pains and aches and all sorts of things. So the body absolutely does break down if you avoid or otherwise explain away instead of enduring your emotions. Now, People will hear that and go, well, that's a really cold, cruel way of describing a father's death, for example. I say, yeah, well, that's not to invalidate the grief process. But to your point, Xander, the idea that you had been stressed out and then suddenly it all came rushing in, I think a lot of us go through that experience when we're carrying a lot of burden, either actually or psychologically. And we don't realize it until we're sick. And we're sick in ways that often manifest in symptoms that we're all familiar with, like drinking too much, or depression, or anxiety, or whatever. Sometimes it's psychosis. And we go, well, how did I get here? To me, if I play this emotional functioning lens, I say, well, you're just not attending to your emotions. And that's not a judgmental thing. It's not pejorative. It's just observative. And so I, for me, if I, if I try to peel this back a little bit and go, what are you actually feeling and why now we can work through some of that quote unquote stuckness. And I, I myself have, I've experienced that too. I mean, Stephanie shared, Sandra, you shared my, I have a similar, I've had several experiences this where I go, yeah, no, I don't think I'm stressed. I don't think I'm stressed. Well, I just teed off the program by saying that I've been going, you know, mock 12 with my hair on fire for the last decade and a half. Like. You're bound to break at some point. And there were a few breaks in there where I go, oh, yeah, I got heart palpitations, but they couldn't find anything on the echo or whatever. Like, well, maybe you're anxious, Jake. Maybe you got too many irons in the fire. Oh, yeah, maybe I do. You do that long enough, you end up with premature gray hair and belly aches and smoking too many cigarettes and alcoholism. So it's a big deal. And I'm glad we're talking about this, because we need to let the listening audience know, the observing audience, if you're on YouTube, understand that this isn't some psychobabble woo-woo. It's not a Trojan horse designed by the Gates Foundation to infiltrate your kids. I mean, some of it is, but if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, like Stephanie was saying, we have got to attend to our emotional functioning or we're going to end up a very ill society.
Stephanie Winn: Do you think it's an occupational hazard for therapists? Xander and Jake, you're both therapists, and Jason, you've done therapy adjacent. work. I mean, I think we sit with a lot of really heavy and difficult emotions, and we hold still calm faces and body languages, we don't physically react when when we're hearing really heavy stuff. And, you know, on this subject, and Sandra, please hold your thoughts, I do want to hear what you have to say. But I'm thinking about, for example, how, you know, I've heard some really horrific stories in my 10 plus years as a therapist, and it's my job to hold a calm, grounded presence, to create a safe space for those horrific stories. But then on my podcast, I've seen a few nasty comments that people have tried to leave on YouTube, depending on how nasty they are, I might delete or block them. But because it is my channel, and I do what I want with it. But in response to in my episode with Sarah Stockton, where she she's, she's a sex therapist. So she's she's dealt with all kinds of weird things. And so when she talked with a very plain demeanor about adult males with diaper fetishes, which is something that she's worked a lot with, I had a disgust reaction, I think, through my face and my nonverbal gestures or sounds. And a few people left this negative comment saying that, you know, basically, what kind of therapist am I if I would show disgust in reaction to talk of a diaper fetish?
Jake Wiskerchen: How dare you be authentic?
Stephanie Winn: And here I am thinking, so they're taking two different situations, right? Here I am talking not to the person with the diaper fetish in the context of therapy, but I'm talking to a person who has counseled people with diaper fetishes in the context of a podcast where what I'm actually doing is I'm empathizing with the listener by showing, you know, what I'm really doing is I'm, I'm empathizing with the listener and what the normal human reaction to that is, right? So it's kind of an unfair criticism, but I use that to say that, you know, there's a situation in which I think it's appropriate to go, yeah, ugh, right? But when we are in therapy, absolutely the expectation is different. There's times when that's not appropriate. On the other hand, there's times when that kind of reaction would be appropriate because it's empathizing with something that the client is saying. But in any case, we have to make our decisions of how to react verbally and non-verbally based on what's best for the patient. And so I'm saying all of this to pose the question to you guys, if you think it's an occupational hazard for therapists to end up with sort of psychosomatic symptoms on account of repressing, compartmentalizing, sublimating, dissociating from the natural emotions and sensations that arise in the process of hearing and sitting with stuff that might create feelings of repulsion, horror, disgust, shame, anger in a normal person.
Jake Wiskerchen: Yeah, let me jump on that real quick because I found myself recently in this place where I'm being asked to come teach to various entities on the workplace struggles and issues, specifically with management, middle management, but also with the subordinates underneath. And I teasingly blame Google for innovating the whole bring yourself to work, bring your whole self to work. It's like, no, bring your work self to work, leave everything else at home. Well, now everybody's bringing their whole selves to work, and management doesn't know how to deal with personal issues in the work setting when it's interfering with work. They don't want to seem cold and aloof. They don't want to seem invalidating. They don't want to overextend. They're really stuck, right? So it's not just therapists. So what I find myself doing is teaching emotional functioning. What do you feel? What do you think they're feeling? We teach empathy, we teach validation, but then we teach boundaries. And what you're really talking about there is boundaries. You make a boundary with your own YouTube channel. I say, I'm not going to allow this content on my YouTube channel. I'm going to trust my disgust response to say, if I'm disgusted, I don't need other people coming here and being disgusted in the comment section, right? So you set a boundary and you say, beyond this, you shall not cross. And what I'm teaching these individuals, and I think what we're supposed to get specially trained as therapists to do is leave work at work. And we do that through an ethical lens, the ethic of autonomy. is the idea that we are acknowledging an individual's ability to handle for him or herself their own stuff in life. It's not mine to carry. It would be very inappropriate to do so even if I could, but I can't anyway. I don't want to take that from one session and in the next session or all my collective sessions throughout the day to home because what I'm inherently doing is I'm interfering with that moment of life that requires my full attention. If Xander's my patient from 9am and I'm still thinking about him when I go home, Well, Xander's in my living room now instead of my wife. Or if Jason was there at four o'clock and I see Xander at five, I'm not fully present for Xander if Jason's still on my mind. So I have to learn to turn that off, set it aside. And it's not because I'm cold or cruel, it's because I'm honoring their own ability to deal with their stuff. And it's irresponsible of me to carry it in my own head as if I can do anything about it anyway. So, we start to teach good boundaries, then we have healthier relationships because we're not carrying this bag of psychological problems that's really not ours to carry. And even if we could, it would be very unhealthy for us to solve somebody else's problems for them as it is because we're not teaching them self-reliance and resilience and all that. I think what we want to angle for here is an acknowledgement of what's going on, a validation, so we can drain our limbic system. I'm stealing this from Christian Conti, who's a longtime friend and mentor of mine. Drain the limbic system, open up the logic channel so we can explore options adequately. And I take that from yield theory, which is something he developed. And then we can perform adequately by opening up our variety of options for us to choose rather than reflexively responding out of the emotional state or the mood.
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Zander Keig: I was going to say earlier that the We know from research that caregivers in particular tend to defer and compartmentalize a lot. Emotional needs, medical needs, dietary needs, all these things can be put on hold for too long by too many people, and then it results in poorer health outcomes for the caregiver than the care recipient oftentimes. And the difference would be that it's not a job you can leave. It's often 24-7. for the family caregiver in particular. And so the boundaries are the most important thing in any given setting. It's harder for people to establish boundaries when it's with a family member. right, versus when you're a clinician and you're working with clients. And so being able to teach caregivers how to establish boundaries when they have a family member who's becoming irate with them, because they're not at the beck and call 24 seven, especially if there's no reprieve. If you have no other family members, if you're, you know, like a child and you have no siblings, if you have no respite services available because there's not enough money for that, or you don't live in an area that has respite services. So it can do a lot of damage. And so being able to work on, as Jay calls it, the emotional functioning, I call it mental fitness, and being able to strengthen our resolve. And I just wanted to mention why I call it mental fitness. I'm not the only one. I didn't make this up. But what I love about saying mental fitness is that it, it avoids some of the other traps for people who are like, Oh, I don't want to delve into emotions. I don't want all that woo woo therapy stuff, or, you know, emotional intelligence and how that's now attached with SEL and So it avoids that thing, because you can just say, well, you know, physical fitness is really important, right? You exercise your muscles, and it helps sustain your stability and your skeletal and your muscular system. And it's good for your health, the breathing from exercise, right? And so it's like, well, we can do that mentally, too, right? So you just put it into this context, like physical fitness is good for us, and so is mental fitness. But I would describe it almost exactly how Jake described emotional functioning. It's just using terminology that doesn't automatically set off people's sensors that is something that they don't want to be around.
Stephanie Winn: One thing I like about that term mental fitness, Xander, is that when you think of the analogies such as physical fitness, well, one does not typically take for granted that they will be physically fit without attending to it. Physical fitness is the result of attending to the need to strengthen and exercise your body. And so when we frame mental fitness that way, I think there's a bit of an implication that it's something you need to actively attend to and cultivate, that it's not something that you'll just have. And I think one of my concerns about some of the sort of myths in the younger, psychologically unhealthy generation that we're all worried about is that there are myths about mental health, and I think the myth is that it's sort of the subtle implication that you either have it or you don't, and if you don't have it, then you're a victim and you have all these diagnoses and labels and you deserve all this special treatment and there's nothing you can do to help yourself out, which is just a really inaccurate and unfair projection onto people of average or better mental health, most of whom, you know, some of whom have gotten there through a lucky combination of genetics and upbringing, but many of whom are in decent shape mentally because they've made sure of it, because it does take effort.
Jason Littlefield: Well, and I wanna touch on the research of Richie Davidson right now out of the Center for Healthy Minds, but his team actually found that our psychological well-being is a learned skill, that there are four scientifically validated areas of the brain that relate to our well-being and their attention, resilience, outlook, mainly having a positive outlook, and generosity, and that each of those constituents demonstrates plasticity. Therefore, our psychological well-being is a learned skill. So that the more that we engage in practices that build awareness and equanimity, and practices that build kindness and compassion for self and others, and the practices that celebrate our common humanity. So the more we engage in those three practices, we're actually strengthening our psychological well-being. And it's as simple as opening a door for a stranger, smiling at a stranger. How many times in a day can I engage in a breathing practice, look outside at nature, How many times a day can I find a commonality with somebody else? Because the research shows the more times we do those things, we're increasing our psychological well-being.
Stephanie Winn: I love that out of the four concepts that generosity is included, that it's right up there. And I want to add that among the challenges posed by a chronic illness, which I know I'm unwillingly becoming an expert in. Chronic illness takes away many things, many of the coping tools someone might have had before. Like for me, like a lot of my favorite coping tools involved physical activity that I'm not capable of doing right now. Generosity is one of those things that can be harder to maintain when you're ill. So you might have the habits of good mental fitness when you're physically healthy, then you get hit with an illness. And while I can't be generous because I'm not making as much money because I don't, or I don't have as much energy to give, I'm just really relating to that because generosity is actually one of my core values. I'm realizing as I'm hearing you speak how much I value that being included in that list and also how it's something that can be especially challenging to uphold at certain times in life. Sorry, Jake, what were you going to say?
Jake Wiskerchen: I wanted to throw something out because what Jason's talking about and what Xander touched on is this, and you've mentioned it too, is this idea of self-control, self-discipline, practice, all that stuff. And I'm a big fan of William Glasser and choice theory. And I think it speaks to the potential of a human being to be able to be in charge of one's own decision-making. And if I know our audience well enough, especially the detractors, I can almost already hear the DEI talking points of resilience is imperialistic or selfish assertion is white supremacy or whatever all those nonsense talking points are that only serve to invalidate what we've known for 40,000 years as fundamental core components of humanity. And I'm trying to figure out how we combat that or what your guys' experiences may be with combating it. When we've got actual teaching out there, some of it is in the SEL curriculum because it's starting to undermine a lot of parenting and parental rights and so forth through the avenues of the schools, but others of it is done through corporate training. And they're pushing this nonsense into people's heads with the bully stick of compliance or else. Or else you don't get promoted or else you lose your job or whatever. You get struggle sessioned in the HR department. So we're here sitting here going, yeah, you know what? Be self-aware. Control your emotions. Acknowledge what's going on around you. Take charge of your own decision making. Act with intentionality. Practice these good things. And there's this whole cadre of people out there that are indoctrinating society with the idea that like, no, no, no, you can't do that because it's bad or evil or mean because not everybody has the capacity or whatever their talking points are. I just wanted to tee that up because I like diving into this instead of talking around it, because I think a lot, a lot more people out there than we realize are faced with this challenge and I want to be able to help them step up underneath that pressure and push back on it rather than just, you know, genuflecting and bending the knee.
Jason Littlefield: Well, that criticism comes from a collectivist political philosophy vantage point and collectivist political philosophy does not like the individual, and increasing an individual's awareness and their role in the world and their ability to choose and make decisions. So I think that when people are confronted with that feedback that you just gave, the best thing they can say is, No, thank you. That's a collectivist political philosophy, and I don't believe that. I believe that we need to strengthen human beings.
Zander Keig: I think a really good example that I've learned about in my life on how to handle this was you know, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who decided to, you know, come out of meditating away from people during the Vietnam War to start doing his walking meditation where he was visible to all people as he was walking around, you know, and then called it Engage Buddhism. So I feel like part of my practice is I speak honestly and I speak plainly. And I just tell people who I am, what I do, and how it's impacting others based on the feedback I get. And if they have criticisms of that, I will listen to it and I will challenge it if I need to. But otherwise, I'm just going to keep walking my walk and talking my talk. And I'm not going to be just, you know, dissuade by by those individuals. I honestly don't encounter it very often. I must be in a place, you know, I live in Florida. So I think that might be helpful. And I'm also working from home a lot. So I'm not really encountering and I'm not on social media. So that's one of the boundaries I've set for myself is I just don't expose myself to a lot of this nonsense that gets directed either at people like us or the ideas that we hold to be true.
Jake Wiskerchen: Where this comes from is the recent encounters with the people who've hired me to come teach this stuff. They have repeatedly and consistently said they're afraid to help their fellow mate at work because they don't want to be perceived as fill in the blank, whatever it is, there's a culture of fear and self-censorship across many entities, and they don't even know where it comes from. It's just like they, right? And so anyway, Steph, go ahead.
Stephanie Winn: You know, I think I'm aligned with Xander in terms of just not dealing with detractors, which I know you've also advocated for in the past, Jake. Xander, I admire your resolve to stay off of social media completely. That sounds really healthy. I've definitely limited what kind of notifications I receive and what I'm willing to deal with. And Jake, I think you said there at the end, the culture of fear and self-censorship. Sometimes when I'm asked to advise people in situations like this, it helps to name If one person is feeling it, maybe it's something that other people are feeling as well because I think part of the fear is it's this fundamental fear of being bad that comes from a culture where there's witch hunting and where there's this kind of implicit notion of original sin, the woke version of that, right? That we all have this stain on our souls of racism and white supremacy and Western colonialism. That idea is so embedded in this culture of fear and censorship that you talk about that I think a lot of people walk around feeling either massively guilty or entitled depending on their personality, outlook, and where they fall in terms of the intersectional classification of victim and oppressor. And so if one person's walking around feeling that way, probably a lot of people are. And I think sometimes knowing that the fear that you're projecting onto others, that they will see this mark on your soul, is maybe a fear that others are also experiencing. And maybe if we can name that that's a fear for all of us and that takes some of the weight out of all of it, it sort of depersonalizes it a little bit. There was one more thing I was going to say about that situation. I think the original hypothetical that you posed, Jake, you gave an example, and it was just one example, but that this bizarre idea that resilience is somehow inherently only white or something like that. It's much easier said than done because I'm sitting here talking to people who agree with me. on my show, which is mostly listened to by people who appreciate what I have to say. It's much different when you're actually in a confrontation with people who hold these views, but I like to fantasize that I'd be able to remain cool, calm, and collected and say something like, so you think only white people can be resilient, so you think black and brown people aren't resilient, is that what you're saying? That sounds really racist, you know, just kind of like highlighting the absurdity. Of it?
Jason Littlefield: Well, resilience is a, I mean, it is a thing. I mean, when something bad happens to us, we bounce back. We bounce back quickly or we bounce back slowly, depending on whatever the adverse event was. And as a human being on this planet, we are faced with adverse situations multiple times in a day. So resilience happens whether we want to or not. And if you've got somebody convinced that they can't be resilient, then they're not going to try. to bounce back. And if people aren't trying to bounce back, they're not exercising that resilience constituent of well-being, so their own psychological well-being is being diminished. And if they think that the world is this place of oppressors and oppressed and there's perpetual white supremacy and racism, then they don't have a very positive- they don't have a positive outlook at all. So if they're not engaging those neural pathways, that's another constituent of their psychological well-being that they're not exercising in. And that's- Part of the reason why I started speaking out and questioning wokeness was that I noticed that those that are engaging in this and thinking it and feeling it and doing it, their psychological well-being neural pathways are dying of atrophy because they're not engaging those areas of the brain. And we as a society right now are normalizing and institutionalizing this idea, this framework of feeling, thinking, and doing that is damaging the neural pathways that are linked to our psychological well-being. And you can say a political, you know, left or right or whatever, but the fact remains is that's what we're doing right now in real time.
Stephanie Winn: I think what's at stake often influences people's quickness to resilience, how much of it's a matter of survival. When push comes to shove, if your survival is on the line, you'll do what you have to do. And you may or may not think of that as being resilient or bouncing back, but you're showing up to do what you must, and I think part of how we got ourselves here is that we're more in our heads than ever. I say this as somebody who does intellectual work and lives a sedentary life, partly by choice and partly because it's been exacerbated by the fact that I have an illness that affects my mitochondria. But you know, so I'm one I'm one to criticize. But at the same time, I'm I'm a big fan of things that are visceral and sensual in nature. And I think a lot of our problems that stem from modernity come from our disconnect from the natural world. I've also been watching a ton of Outlander recently, so half the time I'm living in the 18th century in my head, which I, as violent and bloody as it was, and as, you know, backwards, as unsafe as it was for women, and as much as people are at risk of dying in childbirth and dying of diseases and all that, there's a part of me that really romanticizes life before the Industrial Revolution, life before plastics and electricity. And when I watch historical fiction dramas, I live in a very visceral, sensual world where we worked with our hands and in bodies and in relation to the sinking of time. And so I think part of what's allowed the sort of woke mentality to fester is that our survival, including our social survival, doesn't depend on those things that are grounded in reality. It depends on our ability to create a certain fiction about ourselves that other people believe and which is disconnected from material reality. And so when we're living in a way that's more connected to reality and our survival is at stake, then our resilience will show up because we fundamentally have a will to live. And you can still see this in modern life in examples such as the fact that no matter how much somebody tends to have an external locus of control or blame others in their day-to-day life, most people, when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle, will take responsibility for driving that vehicle safely. In other words, they have an internal locus of control behind the wheel. Even if they have a little road rage, still, at the end of the day, they're going to make sure they're driving safely, even if they know they can't count on other people to drive safely. And so, we don't have a ton of car accidents, because when there's something at stake, when you're behind, you know, thousands of pounds of heavy metal and machinery moving at high speed, you recognize what's important and you take responsibility for it. And so that is a way that we're still grounded in material reality in day to day life that sort of highlights what I'm talking about.
Jake Wiskerchen: Do you guys think we've all become just for lack of a better descriptor, fat, dumb and happy. That's allowed that kind of complacency and detachment from, I don't know, threats. So we, we just don't work on our resilience because we don't have to, because everything's delivered to our doorstep and we've got streaming services and instant gratification all around.
Jason Littlefield: I think that helps. And I think the culture, the victimhood culture also helps. I think that the culture of fear that you described earlier is something else that helps perpetuate this as well.
Zander Keig: I would think that maybe part of the criticism of this way of experiencing life or viewing life would come from a person or people who would say, well, maybe you're fat and happy. And I forget what the third thing was. Sorry, that's my ADHD. But it's, you know, that it's it, they would say there are people who are living even are in our country, not knowing where their next meal is coming from, or they don't have a roof over their head, or they're living in a really violent family or a violent neighborhood. And so their ability to become resilient is challenged by those circumstances.
Stephanie Winn: And so- And isn't that- Isn't it always so easy to point to whoever is the least fortunate person in society, right, as a way of completely changing the subject, right? Because, like, I don't think any of us are sitting around talking about, like, starving children and saying, like, fuck up, kiddo, just get over it, like, you know?
Zander Keig: Well, but as a matter of fact, it's like, some of the most resilient and anti-fragile people that I know are people who have gone through a lot of adverse situations, right? They've had a lot of disparity in their life. They've had a a lot of challenges. I mean, myself, I was a homeless teenager. I was in juvenile, you know, like a lockup for juvenile delinquents. I spent a year in a psychiatric hospital undergoing conversion therapy as a young masculine woman. I mean, I'm talking real hardship and I am a very resilient person leaning towards anti-fragile in many ways. And so it's like, it's sometimes if what people I think don't understand is that the Well, again, mental fitness, right? We strengthen our ability to be, you know, in the world, right? Through engaging with other people and practices. And so it turns out that those unfortunate experiences that we've had and other people are having and other people will have, we can use those as ways to strengthen, right? We can, instead of looking at them as ways to, to keep us down, we can actually look at them as ways to build us up, to have that what they call post-traumatic growth, right? To be able to become stronger through those difficult situations.
Stephanie Winn: I agree, Xander, and I've had a lot of similar experiences, both from the perspective of getting to know people in the intimate way that you do when you're a counselor, as well as just from my own experience. I've been through a lot of personal hardship. I was also a homeless teenager. I've been through a lot of stuff. Even on this podcast, I've had guests who, in a very well-meaning way, refer to my skin color and presume to know that that tells them certain things about my background, and they're wrong. with most assumptions that they would make about me based on the color of my skin. You know, for example, you look at me as a white-skinned person and think that I probably grew up surrounded by white-skinned people. No, I did not. I grew up surrounded by people who look differently than me. I was a minority and I was bullied as a result, right? But that doesn't fit the convenient narrative that, you know, racism only happens in one direction and There's no such thing as a white person with racial trauma. And that's just one thing, right? But people can also look at the fact that I'm middle class, that I'm educated, that I have a stable relationship status, or any of these other things, and use that as indicators of a certain worldview. And I do wonder, what is the rationalization of the cognitive dissonance when someone who has that mentality is confronted with some unexpected facts about the background of the person in question? You know, do they dismiss that person as a traitor to their people? Do they dismiss them as lucky? Do they say, oh well, but you're privileged because of all these other factors? You know, I think the one thing that people who are stuck in a certain mentality won't do is the thing that I think would be the most conducive to well-being, speaking of mental fitness and emotional functioning, which would be to view it as an opportunity to learn something that could be useful. Because I personally am interested in stories of resilience. It was one of the first things I started doing on this podcast was having on people who I thought had interesting stories of how they became the people that they are. Because as a therapist, you get to see that. Obviously, I wasn't bringing on my therapy clients, but I had the lived experience, as they like to say, of witnessing what makes people become who they are. But I think what people stuck in the woke mentality don't want to do is what I think is the most interesting and useful thing to do, which is to go, Wow, how did you overcome that? How did you make those lemons into lemonade? Maybe I could learn something that might benefit me or people I care about. But that would mean that you want actually to put an end to people being disadvantaged. That would mean, you know, for example, if you talk to someone like you or I who has been homeless at one point in your life, That, you know, if you're trying to learn how does a person go from being homeless as a teenager to being a successful middle class person with a master's degree, then that would mean that you're also holding out hope that the people who are currently homeless could have something better in store for them. And as I've said in the past, and I will say again, I think that there is a shadow of sadism. I've been using the wrong term. I've been saying masochism lately. When I mean sadism, I'm talking about these dark shadowy forces within people. But there's a dark shadow of desire to see other people suffering because it upholds one's cynical worldview. And so I think some people don't actually want to see others escape poverty, escape trauma and suffering, go on to have stable households, stable incomes, stable relationships, meaningful careers, and live a life where their identity is based on what they're creating and offering and how they're enriching their community as opposed to how they're suffering and how they're disadvantaged. Because I think seeing people overcome like that threatens certain people's worldviews and so they don't really want to see it. That's my personal belief.
Zander Keig: As I say, I think there's a lot of envy. that's expressed through that kind of worldview. It's like that person has something that I want, and I feel like I can't get it or have it, so I don't want them to have it either, and then try and destroy it.
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Jake Wiskerchen: This is why I love Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Jordan Peterson, David Hawkins to a certain extent. People who write about the entirety of a human being, like the depth of a person being limitless in its capacity. If you believe that we're divine beings, we have great potential for all things, great and terrible. And the only thing that gets in the way of actualizing that is the ego. And the ego state for a healthy ego person is one in which you can receive feedback that alters your worldview to the point that you grow and you become more self-aware, more conscious. A fragile ego person will invoke their defense mechanisms at the slightest whiff of a difference of opinion or worldview. and they double down. So what happens here is we get people who conflate what they think or what they believe or how they perceive with who they are at their core. So we use the capital T, capital S, true self of Jung for this. If your true self is meant to do a certain thing and how you view yourself is something different and you can't reconcile those two, what ends up happening when somebody questions how you think or what you believe, There's a limbic defensive response emotionally out of a place of fear, which is one of our 10 core emotions that says, look out, you're under attack. And it's not true. All that's under attack or being questioned is what you think. It's your idea. It's not who you are. But if the individual is conflated who they are with what they think, then the brain is going to interpret any questioning of that as an attack on self. So you get an ideologue who hasn't explored the ideology well enough to hold it loosely with an open hand. All they do is regurgitate talking points to question one of those talking points and say, well, let's push back on that idea that resilience is a white supremacist thing. Does that mean that black and brown people aren't resilient? They're going to screech and re-read and redirect and misdirect and obfuscate and Darvo because they themselves can't examine what they think because to do so is to examine self. And it's like, no, no, it's not who you are. It's just something you think. And if you haven't examined it well, you're going to be defensive when questioned. This goes for political alignment. This goes for religious belief. This goes for the job you work. Somebody comes along and says, hey, you know, Xander, I think you think you're a hell of a therapist, but you really, you need some work. And you're not healthy egot enough to receive that feedback and go, well, I could probably attend some more CEs or something. right, you're gonna be like, No, man, I'm the best therapist in the world. And then we get a defensive response, and we get a fight. Right. So I think what threatens people in that space the most is somebody else who's completely anchored and not attached at the same time. I believe very comfortably what I believe about certain things, and I don't care if they get attacked because I can separate myself from what I think. I've trained myself, I think, well enough now that if I get a defensive response, that's an area I have to examine. That's a blind spot of mine. And so I have to pump the brakes, not double down on my poorly formed opinion or whatever, and go, hmm, there's something here because I'm feeling something in my limbic system. And then on top of all this is the conformity or the compliance or the alignment or the belonging that goes with the tribe. And if there's a tribe of people who all believe the same thing and they haven't examined their beliefs, to question that questions, not only the identity of the individual, but the belonging of the tribe, which is where boundaries come into place. If you can set healthy boundaries, what you're essentially saying is you're not in my tribe and I don't need you in my tribe. And I explained this in the shame and guilt videos. or there's one video. The idea is shame exists to let us know that we failed somebody's expectations. Guilt says, go make it right. And they're very separate emotions, very different neurologically, but they often walk together and we need them because historically through anthropological analysis, The theory is that Homo sapiens evolved because we held together in tribes, and the Australopithecus and the Neanderthal and the Denisovans, they all died off because they were smarter, more intellectual, they lived independently, but they couldn't stand together against things like climate change and predator attacks. So we need shame and guilt. But what's happened in modern times is social media, for sure, the advent of social media has told us that everybody's in our tribe and everybody's opinion matters. It's just not possible. So we have to set healthy boundaries to say, that's fine. You can believe what you believe. I don't need to be part of your tribe. But the unhealthy egoed people, the fragile egoed people who are part of that, who demand conformity, the collectivism that Jason's talking about, Like, they can't stand that you're not a part of their tribe and they're not similar thinking. They'll screech and shout and shriek and name call and they'll cite terrible science and poor literature to get you to conform out of that shame and guilt response. And if you don't know your shame, guilt well enough, you might be compelled to go, oh man, I feel bad because I'm failing to meet their expectations. They expect me to think like they do. No, you don't. You don't have to think like they do. Think like you do. But that requires practice, right?
Stephanie Winn: I wanted to say in relation to what both of you were saying, Xander and Jake, you know, Xander, you pointed out that perhaps envy was at play in situations where someone is resistant to seeing and welcoming the resilience in others. And I wanted to talk about envy in relation to emotional functioning. You know, what is that? What is the purpose of envy? What does envy tell us? I, I think in a, in a healthy person, envy doesn't arise too frequently. But when it does, it points to something it's it says, I want that. Right? So where envy becomes unhealthy, I would argue, is when it turns to bitterness, scorn, ridicule, you know, attacking others, or just crippling shame. I think where it's useful is where it turns into action. I want that. Hmm, okay. How badly do I want it? Do I want it badly enough to make significant changes in my life? Because if not, if I'm not willing to set aside whatever I have to do, time, money, effort to make that happen, you know, maybe I can just be like, okay, that's nice that that person has that outcome. It's not my focus in this life. Or maybe actually, I realize I do want it really badly enough to make some significant changes in my life. And now I've just learned something about the direction that I'm heading. So it seems to me like that is sort of the healthy function of envy. But Jake, since Since emotional functioning is your passion, I'm curious if you have anything to add to that.
Jake Wiskerchen: Yeah, envy and jealousy are similar. They're not part of the core 10 because they're hybrids like I mentioned earlier. Envy seems to be a hybrid of interpretation of what's happening and a fear that you won't get it or perhaps a sadness that it won't happen. Same thing with jealousy. Jealousy might involve both fear and sadness or one more than the other, something like that. So, we have to tolerate the fear and say, all right, I'm scared that I'm not going to get this thing that Stephanie's. Stephanie's got a great podcast with a huge following. I have two podcasts and both of them put together can't match Stephanie's following, right? I'm a little envious of Stephanie.
Stephanie Winn: And my podcast doesn't get nearly the following of Xander's podcast.
Jake Wiskerchen: Yeah, well, you're the host for this one, but Xander crushes everyone. But the idea is that I've got reasons to be envious of all three faces on this screen if I don't know myself well enough. If I know myself well enough, I go, that's just their path and not mine. I can do my podcast as a hobbyist. I don't need to generate revenue off of it. Jason sits on some boards of directors for some very impressive institutions. I would also like to be a part of those institutions, right? Free Black Thought has intrigued me for a really long time, but that's not me right now. That's not my calling. I'm staying in my pocket right now. I can navigate that fear and say, that's an irrational fear that I have. There's no actual threat present to me. Maybe it's a threat to my belief system. Maybe it's a threat to what I think I want. But those are tolerable fears that once I align them with reality, my expectations now are met because I'm expecting what I want for myself and I'm getting it. Same thing with the sadness or the perceived disappointment that I'm not, quote unquote, where I should be. This is where I get things like imposter syndrome. I shouldn't be in this room, right? All these other great people around me. Where do I belong? Well, that's a perceived disappointment. And the perception comes from the frontal lobe, which we can change. Emotions we can't necessarily change unless we change our thoughts about them, right? So it's up to us to analyze and evaluate whether or not the emotions we're feeling are actually even legitimate or useful, because they can certainly be legitimate without being useful. And I can get stuck in jealousy and envy pretty for a really long time, that then leads to things like contemptuousness and anger. And out of those, if we act out of those emotions, we can end up doing things we regret, like saying, screw you all. And I'm ending this call, right? And that's going to break relationships and probably not go over super well with my reputation. But I did it out of emotion. not out of logic. Logic would say, that doesn't get anybody anywhere if I just hang up on the call because I'm envious of these people. That's weird. But we absolutely do go through these things. So being able to separate them, I think, is the answer to the question. If you find yourself in that situation, You know, feeling something that's imprecise, like overwhelmed. Everybody's overwhelmed is going to be different from my overwhelmed because we all perceive things differently. But behind overwhelmed is usually a fear. It's a fear of not being able to accomplish what's being asked of us. And so if you go, well, all right. In this moment, I can only achieve certain things, align expectations with reality, realize I can only have one number one priority at a time. deal with that one thing, and then again, have the self-confidence, the resilience to say, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it people like me and be at peace with it. Then you're in a good spot, but in order to get there, you have to practice it. And if you haven't had any opportunities to practice it because you've had your voice stolen from you, or you've been invalidated for a long time, it's really hard to channel the courage to stand up under such things because you don't have any history to rely on.
Zander Keig: I wanted to say that I really loved that Gen X reference to Stuart Smalley on SNL, Jake. I hope everybody goes and looks up on YouTube, Stuart Smalley on SNL. It's hysterical. What a wonderful skit that was. Back when SNL was good. Well, you know, I grew up in that kind of environment. My mother was a unity minister, a unity church minister, and another unity minister, or at least religious science minister was Louise Hay. And Louise Hay wrote this book that was nothing but positive affirmations. And so that Stuart Smalley character is basically lampooning, you know, the the, you know, new new age or new thought church of the day. So and I grew up in that environment a little bit. So I love it even more because of that.
Stephanie Winn: I want to talk a little bit about nervous system regulation because I think it's a component of all these things, right? Emotion regulation, mental fitness, motion functioning. And it's something that I'm sort of relearning about. It's one thing to have sort of an academic as well as a practical understanding of nervous system regulation for the sake of helping others in the role of being a therapist. It's another to be relearning how to regulate my own nervous system. given our increasing understanding that long COVID can be conceptualized as a brain injury and understanding the role in my chronic condition of dysautonomia, you know, wondering why I'm not getting better looking at it from the standpoint of mitochondrial functioning and the nerves and the cardiovascular system and the gut and everything, and then seeing how it all ties together, which is that if the nervous system is sort of stuck in a sympathetic overactivation, then you're not getting that deep rest that allows for mitochondrial repair and so on and so forth. So I am relearning about these things from the standpoint of being the student and the patient, rather than being the one with the knowledge and the healing tools for others. And I just want to share a few things that I'm learning are helpful for nervous system regulation. And then just kind of open the floor to what you guys have to say about that. So I've been doing vagus nerve stimulation. I have this little device. Some people use a TENS unit. Mine is specifically designed to be clipped on to this little part of the ear right here and delivers a small electrical current. So I've been doing that morning and evening. I've also learned that laughter and singing and humming all help to tone the vagus nerve. And so I've been trying to laugh more. I forget sometimes it's, you know, it's easy to lose your sense of humor when you don't feel well. And then I've actually returned to some to musical tradition from my past. Some people know that in my 20s, I was interested in sort of Hindu adjacent spiritual traditions. I've talked about being in a cult being in a couple of cults when I was younger, and those were Hindu based cults. But but the thing I loved most about the traditions was always the music and the chanting, which is sort of an active meditation practice. And so lately, I recently went for this procedure, and I'm not really ready to talk a whole lot about the procedure, because I need to give it more time to see how I've responded. But I might do a future episode on the stellate ganglion block procedure, which I recently had to help reset my nervous system. And around the time of the procedure, I sort of fell back in love with this music I hadn't listened to in like 10 years, which is Snatam Kaur. She's a Sikh kundalini yoga practitioner who does really beautiful sort of meditation music. And the songs are in different languages like Gurmukhi and there's at least one other language in there. And I read the words and they're like such beautiful meditations on God and the self. One thing I love about Sikhism that I was reading recently is that it's the only major monotheistic religion in the world that does not claim to have a monopoly on truth. So whereas every other religion says we are the truth, this one says yes, there is one God, but we don't claim that we're better than, you know, Christianity or Judaism or Islam. So these are beautiful meditations that I think would, you know, be appealing enough to anyone of any faith, as long as they're open-minded enough. And so going back to the mantras and the songs has been sort of part of my nervous system regulation toolkit, knowing that I'm toning my vagus nerve and relaxing and sort of soothing my brain. And as I've been doing these kundalini yoga chants, I noticed that they have something in common with my other new hobby, which is macrame, which is that they both involve patterns. So as you're listening to the sounds and feeling sort of the movement of your tongue and mouth, there's a rhythmic pattern to it. And similarly, there's a pattern to macrame. And what I realized is that I am repatterning, right? And I think this is important for me in terms of rebuilding my health because I am really sensitive to patterns. I would say that probably one of my top skills is pattern recognition and being able to predict behavior based on past patterns of behavior in other people. And so it just occurred to me, as someone who's so sensitive to patterns and who can, if I'm not taking good care of myself, be really reactive to unhealthy patterns in other people and in my environment, I think engaging in practices that actively construct beautiful patterns is something really healing for me. So now I'm weaving patterns with my macrame, I'm weaving patterns with my song. And, you know, I think any of my hobbies, if I zoom out and look at it from the right angle, I can see it in terms of patterns to like gardening is all about knowing the patterns of the rhythms and the seasons and the life cycle and things like that. So that's sort of my little musing on the topic of nervous system regulation. I'm sort of discovering as I go that I think that there's a connection between learning to regulate your nervous system and engaging in healthy and beautiful patterns. What do you guys think about that?
Jason Littlefield: So all of those activities that you listed that you're doing, actually they involve integrating the right and the left brain hemisphere. And doing activities that do that is a number one predictor of wellbeing. So I would say continue to do activities that integrate the right and left hemisphere. And a very easy one. is just naming emotions like right now I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel happy. That's a simple thing that integrates that right and left hemisphere. Another practice that I do To just kind of release some oxytocin is just bringing my hand gently across my body. Like my guess for those that are listening, my right arm to my left shoulder to where my fingers are touching my clavicle, just resting in that position increases oxytocin, which is really good for that, that nervous system as well.
Jake Wiskerchen: Do we know why it does that?
Jason Littlefield: I do not know why. I know that that is the… You know, the… A newborn, when a newborn is nursing, they're in that area. Obviously, no newborn is going to nurse from me because I'm a male. But I don't know why… That brings us to a naturally calm position, but it does. It will calm us down instantaneously.
Stephanie Winn: It's so interesting what you pointed out, Jason, about the right and left hemisphere integration, and you're right about that. I hadn't connected those dots for myself, although I often talk about that for other people. For example, You know, when I'm talking to parents of distressed youth about what would be some healthy activities for them to get into, one that I talk about is rock climbing. I say this as somebody who is not a rock climber myself, but rock climbing is healthy because it gets you out working with your body, accomplishing things, getting, you know, those endorphins and that dopamine. And because of the cross hemispheric, you know, you have to coordinate the position of all your limbs. And doing that sends you sort of into a state of meditation where it gets you in the task positive network rather than the default mode network, because you you only have room in your brain to concentrate on how every part of you is moving.
Zander Keig: I'll say a couple of things about this. One, from the clinical perspective, especially as a veteran who worked at the VA and the DOD with individuals with post-traumatic stress, vagus nerve stimulation is a very popular treatment that's now being used with veterans. The other thing I'll add is that I often recommend to people that they go online or look for, in their local community, laughter yoga classes. Because laughter yoga, it's forced in the beginning, but it's really very cleansing and therapeutic and silly. And it really just gets you going. And it's just good. It's just good for breathing. It's good also for your lungs. It's good for your core muscles. It's just good. It's good to be laughing. What I'll mention on the personal side is when I was six years old, I went in for the measles, mumps, rubella vaccination. and had an adverse reaction to that vaccination and developed rubella, which led to encephalitis, which means swelling of the brain. And so I ended up spending two weeks in a medication-induced coma because of the seizures that I was having. And then I ended up, when they brought me out of that, I spent two to three months in a hospital, a place that was specifically for people with neurological disorders. and had to go through physical therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy. And a lot of what you're talking about, Stephanie and Jason also, is that integration of all these different activities and how they help strengthen the brain and the physical body and also self-confidence and self-awareness. Because my encephalitis was in just one side of my brain on the left side, And so that impacted or the right side of my brain, which then impacted only the left side of my body. So my left arm and my left leg are smaller and weaker than my right side, but still strong enough that I was able to eventually I went from being in a wheelchair to leg braces to crutches to then being able to play in track and field in school and go into the military. So I was able to overcome a lot because I, one, of that resilience, but also because of the training I got from the physical therapists and the occupational therapists that taught me, you know, they showed me how to build up my body and build up my mind back to where it was. So it's like anything we can do that's either traditional or non-traditional or complementary, alternative, as long as it's not anything that's going to harm us, Some people are going to go outside and some people are going to chant. I was exposed to meditation as a young child. My father decided my 12th birthday present should be a mantra from the Transcendental Meditation Ashram. I've been meditating for, I'm almost 60 now, so for a long time. I find that to be quite soothing. I've done silent retreats. through an insight meditation retreat center called Spirit Rock in Northern California. And I spent a week in silence and loved that. So it's like shutting things out is also helpful, right? Because all the extra stuff, all the noise, all the pollution, and I mean noise pollution, environmental pollution, just the toxic energy from other people will add to that overstimulation that we're experiencing and won't give us the opportunity to relax. We have to find a way to relax so that our nervous system can relax.
Jake Wiskerchen: My only contribution, because I haven't studied a lot of nervous system rebooting, reintegration, although I do know something about stellate ganglion blocks, and I really hope that works for you. I was going to go with the stimulation. We have to turn off stimulus. We have to. There's a great, great TED talk by a gal named Katherine Buskill, spelled with a K, Katherine with a Y, and then B-O-U-S-K-I-L-L. She talks about the speed of life and how we've outstripped our evolutionary capacity to handle the pace. And I analogize that to, I mean, I sort of cheekily referenced instant gratification ruining us earlier, but I fundamentally believe that we have spoiled ourselves rotten to the point that we have no distress tolerance anymore. And that is also a form of stimulus where we don't know how to deal with things with not going our way. And then we distract ourselves with stimulus, screens, endless social media scrolling. I mean, the guys and gals at the Institute for Humane Technology have done a really good job of outlining that and detailing it in their pretty now famous documentary called the… Oh, geez, I just lost it. Social Dilemma? Thank you. The Social Dilemma. But The more and more we research this stuff, the more it comes out that this stuff is not positively beneficial to our own, not just our psyches from a psychological perspective, if you believe in that kind of thing, but also our neurological capacity to handle things. And what we've done, I think, is speaking of patterning and speaking of behavioral conditioning and habit forming, we've patterned ourselves to the point where a week in silence sounds terrifying to most people. Float chambers sound terrifying to most people because they… it's inviting you back to a place of harmony with nature and god that we have just abdicated we're not supposed to be constantly stimulated all the time morning to night blowing out our circadian rhythms and yet when this happens when we get time alone in nature away from all the artifice we freak out and break down i don't know how many people I've met, close friends, family members, patients who have had similar testimonies where they go, yeah, I went away for some period of time doing something and I didn't have anything around me and I freaked out or I came back and freaked out when I hit the lights of the grocery store or whatever it was. It's like, yeah, we need that reset. Sometimes we, we, we are probably way crispier than we give ourselves credit for being. I mentioned I'm pulling away from some stuff. Stuff like this brings me joy. It edifies me. I derive energy from this type of stuff, so please don't think that my commitment to this podcast is harming myself. It's not. But on the whole, we got to look at our schedules, people. We really do. We have to look at how much device is in our hand and how much time we spend on it. Do we need music all the time at home? Do we need music in the car? Do we have to listen to our podcasts on 1.5 or 1.75x just to consume information? You know what I mean? I think it's really gotten to a point where wheels are going to come off the cart in some form or fashion. I just hope that we manage to pump the brakes before they do.
Stephanie Winn: I've learned to expect that it takes a certain amount of time in nature or on a vacation to decompress and for difficult emotions to come up and then for the peace to come after that. And I really feel for anyone who hasn't had enough time in nature or whatever it might be to even know that pattern about themselves. The people who freak out because, oh my gosh, emotions are surfacing or I'm feeling things I haven't felt before, things like that. And you're right, Jake, about the reaction I get from most people when I mention float tanks is, you know, I, yeah, fear of being alone with your thoughts, fear of boredom. I mean, granted the fear of boredom mostly comes from the kids in the house, which yes, I do think that they would be bored. That's why we don't take them on nature retreats with us either in certain settings. But, but I mean, it's like you're suspended weightlessly in body temperature, you know, 800 pounds of magnesium sulfate dissolved into the water. It's like the nicest Epsom salt bath you've ever had. And you just gradually release the tension from your body. What's so bad about that? A lot of people think it's claustrophobia inducing, but nowadays there are a lot of float tank centers where you're not in an enclosed chamber. You have the option to have open air above you. You could stand up in there. You can have a dim light on or a twinkly ceiling light or whatever options. the place provides. And, you know, I find it is sort of an easy reset that I can do for my nervous system. And everyone I've ever recommended it to, who's gone ahead and done it, has ended up enjoying it immensely. But I do think you're right that there's something about the pace of modern life that it's like, what are people so afraid of encountering if they just spend a moment in silence?
Jake Wiskerchen: I think they're afraid of missing out, honestly. I think that's it. We got FOMO. Just like setting boundaries with people, nobody's going to miss you. Not to drive more anxiety into people, but if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would happen? Life would go on.
Stephanie Winn: Okay, that's a little extreme, Jake.
Jake Wiskerchen: It is, but it's also freeing, I think. Yeah, I think it's freeing because if we learn to take the moments that we're given in a precious fashion, rather than try to cram everything in, we can be a little more non-attached to when things don't go our way and really recenter our ability to choose what we want rather than just accepting what's been given to us. So yeah, that wasn't designed to bring doom and gloom to people. It's just like, hey, let's have some perspective here.
Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show.
Zander Keig: There's also, Stephanie, the things that we ingest. that can also overstimulate the nervous system. Nicotine, caffeine, foods that cause inflammation in our body and then make it more difficult for our synapses to be functioning properly. I mean, Jake mentioned about the circadian rhythm and that's about dysregulating our sleep. When our sleep is dysregulated, that's going to dysregulate all the other systems in our body, not just the neurological. It's going to disrupt everything, our immune system, our digestive system, our endocrine system. It's a really important piece, making sure that we're able to get a good night's sleep. Part of what we can do is reduce certain stimulus like blue light. which overstimulates and overproduces, sends a signal to overproduce certain chemicals in our body that will keep us from going to sleep. So it's like so many things. We don't realize it. I say to people, you know, when your feet hurt or your lower back or your back hurts, you finally remember, oh, I have a body. Because otherwise we're just walking through the world. We're just doing what we do. And when we have a neurological issue that we're dealing with, it reminds us You know, I am this whole being, and I need to do whatever I can to take care of myself. I can't take it for granted.
Stephanie Winn: I'm glad you mentioned sleep. I've yet to do an episode on sleep. I did want Matthew Walker to come on. He's a great sleep expert. He wrote Why We Sleep, which is Definitely recommended reading. I'm aware of the time, so maybe let's go around, give everyone a minute to share any final burning thoughts you just can't wait to get out of your system.
Jason Littlefield: I've just enjoyed this conversation. I think that we have been talking solutions and a way for us to move forward and maybe get out of this quagmire that we are in. Emotions are real. Humans are social, emotional creatures. And it is up to us to design systems for ourselves and society that benefit the social and emotional well-being of us. So thank you for having this discussion.
Zander Keig: Well, first off, I just want to say thank you for having me on this particular episode. I've really enjoyed it. I'm very grateful to be able to Be part of a, of a really thoughtful group of colleagues. I'm glad that we were able to express, you know, some of our learned thoughts on things, but also some of our personal experiences, which I think helps people understand how it is we can put into practice the things that we learn and the things that we know, so that they have the opportunity to do that for themselves as well.
Jake Wiskerchen: I have three things. One is that I'm always grateful to be surrounded by people who are normal and thoughtful and push the envelope of critical thinking. So thank you guys for that. The second is to Jason's point about social and emotional learning is normal and natural. If you're a parent listening to this and the idea of the school or .gov broadly teaching social emotional learning to your children, don't give them the opportunity, teach it to them yourselves. And you can do that by listening to some of the content that we offer. And the third thing is that you give yourself grace when you're undergoing change in the face of long standing patterns and habits. Give yourself grace and permission to go through it. You didn't get here overnight. It's not going to get undone overnight. Now, just because you've been doing something 30 years doesn't mean it's going to take 30 years in the opposite direction. But, you know, it will take some time. And using myself as an example, I embarked on this journey of trying to remove myself from stuff about 18 months ago, and I'm I'm getting there. Maybe in another four to six months, I'll be there.
Stephanie Winn: Well, it's been a pleasure chatting with you all. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com. or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.