Being there for your kids - How to Get from Here to There

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

     Your healing journey begins with challenging your mindset. There are 5 paths to take, navigating each path clears the way from your stuckness to soaring, becoming who you want to be. Today's podcast presents the first of five paths. Check it out.

Hi, I'm Dr. John Robinson, and this is Teachable Moments. I want to share with you the first of five paths on your healing journey in mental and psychotherapy. You feel like crap. Stuff has happened both to you and around you, which just adds to your burdens. It's been this way for a while, and you're just done. You share some of your stuff with a good friend of yours. He doesn't have answers. He doesn't judge.

He just listens. And so your healing journey begin. You get a referral to begin psychotherapy, Google your prospective therapist, and decide to get just one appointment with them just to check them out, see if it's a good fit for you. Mental intelligence psychotherapy, also MPT, is a term I coined some time ago in consultation with my colleague, Dr. Kristen Lee. In this process, your therapist helps you engage both the software of your brain, the mental, and the hardware, the intelligence, to bring all of your resources to bear on your healing journey. In doing so, over time, you create new neural pathways called neurogenesis that form new habits and thought structures to maintain your healing journey. In my new book, The Healing Journey, Overcoming Adversity on the Path of the Good Life, I identify five paths of your healing journey. These are proposed changes in your core beliefs.

In each of four subsequent podcasts, I will explore each of these paths. First, move away from focusing on what's wrong and embrace what's right. In traditional counseling and psychotherapy, therapists follow the medical model and take time to confirm your diagnosis. This is a delineation of what's wrong with you. Insurance companies even require this diagnostic code from your therapist in order to be paid by insurance. As a population, we are trained to think about diagnosis. What's wrong with me? With MPT, I gently help patients focus on what's right with them. This is puzzling to new patients at first.

Folks are very skilled at rattling off their list of woes. Rather than rehash old stuff, I encourage patients to find and embrace their strengths and successes. Barry came to his third session with me. During the first session, he outlined his presenting problem in great detail. He gave me a thorough account of his symptoms, relationships, precipitating events, and sundry maladies. During the second session, having reviewed with him his returned behavioral questionnaire, I gave him an assignment. Between now and when we get together again, Barry, I want you to journal at the end of each day. Think about the various things that went right for you today, and jot your thoughts and feelings about each item in your journal, I concluded.

When he came for his third session, I began, so, Barry, you got something for me? I noticed that he had a journal in hand. Well, kind of. I mean, I don't understand why you wanted me to document what went right with me for the past week. How does that address my problems? Barry handed me as nudes. Fair point. Let me explain.

From your first two sessions, it became clear to me that you fully know what your problems are and how they manifest in your daily life. It's clear to me that you have been downward spiraling and are stuck in the mire of your life to date. You seem to start each day with, okay, here we go again. You got that right. So, I concluded, let's try a new perspective. As we continue your healing journey, I want you to move away from focusing on what's wrong and embrace what's right with your days. Typically, what we pay attention to grows. New habits can be cultivated. Focusing on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, instead of on symptoms and diagnoses, generates lasting positive change. To find more about this excerpt from my book, The Healing Journey, Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life, go to Amazon, books.com and buy your own copy. If my comments stir questions of your own, contact me through my

website at www.org, thereformykids.com, or email me at John Robinson 0.0 at bell-south.net. I'm Dr. Jonathan C. Robinson, licensed clinical psychologist and author of Teachable Moments Building Blocks of Christian Parenting and my new book, The Healing, The Healing, Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life. Blessings, Dr. John. Christian Parenting is available online at AmazonBooks.com and in local and national bookstores. More on Dr. Robinson at TMC-P-I-N-C.com.