Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast - Hero's Journey: Getting Rid of the Faulty Narratives

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

"The Hero's Journey" entails several predictable steps of leaving and returning transformed. Striving towards one's heroic possibilities and unfolding one's potentials is deeply pleasurable. Realizing that our narratives can be seen as part of a journey can encourage these pleasurable aspirational attempts and reframe hardships. This concept of The Hero's Journey is something I use often in my practice and find very useful. By listening to this episode, you can earn 1 Psychiatry CME Credits. Link to blog. Link to YouTube video.

Hello and welcome to the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Podcast. I'm here to talk about getting rid of burnout, increasing job satisfaction, and feeling like an expert in what you do. One thing that created a lot of burnout and angst for me was trying to get continued medical education right at the last minute. So why not join the CME membership and do CMEE while listening to this podcast? Go to Psychiatrypodcast.com. Sign up, sign in, take the test, and the certification is emailed to you in seconds.

All right, welcome back to the psychiatry and psychotherapy podcast. This is your host, Dr. Puder. I am going to be doing an episode today on getting on track on your hero's journey, talking about the hero's journey, talking about how we can create narratives that get us off track of being on the hero's journey. The hero's journey is essentially a call to something, moving into a different space, and then coming home with a new gift to give. and along the way there are trials, there are guides. And I think it's helpful to see the arc of our journey as potentially multiple of these journeys

which change us, right? And multiple guides along our path. And so before we begin, I kind of wanted to give a short update on what is going on in my life. I moved to Florida with my family. And for the time, I'm doing everything over video calls in Zoom, we decided to move to be closer to family. It was a big move, stressful, but exciting at the same time. I've been enjoying rowing and spending time with my family. And I decided to not jump into another job, but to start a private practice and continue some of my duties at the university I was at.

So I'm actually running a partial program in IOP still and the medical director out there, but doing everything by Zoom at this time. I am seeing patients in California and Florida out of network, or cash pay, essentially, and doing psychotherapy and med management over Zoom. And I've also been doing some coaching, which I've really enjoyed. I've been, you know, educating mental health professionals for a while. and coaching kind of allows for that relationship to look at different aspects of where you may be stuck in your practice or if you're pressed and overwhelmed by something to help you guide through it. So select coaching clients, some overseas even. I have one in Saudi Arabia, one in Ireland.

And sometimes we look at things like the Big Five personality type or how they can grow and their psychotherapy skills. So I'm really enjoying that. I'm actually going to be holding off from starting a private practice here in Winter Park because right now everything is over video calls anyways, right? Because of COVID and just not wanting to create unnecessary risk. So if you wanted to reach out to me, go ahead and contact me through the website, Psychiatrypodcast.com, or you can shoot me an email at DR at Davidputer.com. That's the letter DR at David.

peter p-u-d-r-com or you could call me at 909-334-2608 909-3-334-2608 so secondly i am doing some exclusive content on patreon i released an episode on patreon and a q-and-a on patreon recently patreon is a it's a way to support monthly like five dollars a month the idea being you know if every one of my subscribers supported the podcast a little bit, I would be able to devote more time. And for the first two years or so of doing this podcast, you know, I was putting in a lot of my own money, so it's a way to support the work that's being done here for years to come. So I am hoping to build that so I can just kind of focus on content creation. And if I could do this half time, I would. You know, it's been one of those sort of passion projects that gets done early in the

morning and late at night. And so I'm hoping in this new phase of my life here in Florida to be able to block off some days to just work on the content and dig into stuff. So now we're going to transition into this episode. And one thing that I've been thinking about lately is what do I really want to communicate? What excites me? What is kind of something that, maybe I haven't spoken about, but that I use commonly in my practice, something that combines different threads that I've gotten excited about over the years. And really, what came to me recently was the hero's journey. And this step of leaving and returning transformed. The hero is someone who subordinates self and dedication to an identification with a cause outside oneself.

And there's this striving towards one heroic possibilities and the unfolding of one's potentials, which is deeply pleasurable. Sometimes it's like you reach the goal itself and it's a little bit, like a little bit anticlimatic. It's the striving that often is deeply pleasurable. It's kind of like the discovery of yourself and the unfolding of new potentialities, which is really exciting. So it's the journey itself, which is pleasurable. Of course, it's not always pleasurable. Sometimes there's trials, and sometimes it's really difficult. So realizing that our narratives, the stories that we tell ourself can be part of this journey. Either maybe we've gotten off track in self-criticalness

and stuck somewhere, or maybe we are moving forward and moving towards some aspirational attempts, you know. And this allows us to reframe hardships as potentially it's that part of every great story which has conflicts, right? There's no, like, great myths where the hero doesn't struggle. So the hero's journey has been described by several people. Edward Bernard Bernard Taylor, an anthropologist, did it early on. Odo Rank, a psychoanalyst, talked about the myth and birth of the hero in 1909. He even saw just the moving, from water to land of infancy. That's like a quest of sorts. There was Lord Reagan in 1936, and then of course Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, who describes the ultimate

hero archetype. Interestingly, George Lucas was heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell in writing the Star Wars. So if you watch Star Wars, you can see so many of these things just laid out. I also think about one of my favorite books and movies is The Hunger Games. I think it speaks directly to our times. And you have the lead protagonist Katniss Everdeen, who starts off in this very poor district. And her sister is called to fight and to the death against other adolescents in these hunger games. And Katniss takes her younger sister's place. So she's sort of thrust into this.

Like she would not have done this if it wasn't to, you know, save her sister, so to speak. And she's a very real and authentic character, right? And then you have the upper, more wealthy areas, which have almost forgotten how to struggle. So Katnais has really grown up hunting. She's grown up more like with a lot of reality. And a lot of the people she's fighting up against. are, you know, people who are consumed with consumption. And, you know, they're not just doing plastic surgery.

They're changing their, like, bone structures to make themselves look like more like animals or, you know, they're consuming not just food that tastes good, but then they're, you know, it's almost like pure gluttony if you listen to how the upper levels are described. which sometimes, you know, these authors are able to get past our defenses. You know, if they were just describing what was going on, for example, in Hollywood culture, it wouldn't hit us the same way. But it can get past our defenses as like, oh, this is so extreme. And why do I resonate with this character so much, right?

She has this messianic life-saving capacity. She's saving lives of, people that you grow to care about, her sister being the first one. And she brings back something special to the people after she's able to sort of overcome. Another one of my favorite movies is Mel Gibson's Braveheart. That came out when I was like probably 10 or 11. I remember watching that in the theater. Yeah, maybe that wasn't the best idea. But it was very powerful. He fights for his people because of the tragedy that happens to him, his wife is killed. When people got married back then in Scotland, the English would have first rights to the wedding night, right? So they would have

sex with your newly married wife. And that was so disturbing to Mel Gibson's character that he secretly got married and then his wife was eventually killed and he fought for everyone else's right and freedom against the English. He eventually dies, right? He eventually has almost like a crucifixion like death, which is a very archetypal hero, right? But in that process, it really ignites the full rebellion against the English. There's Neo in the Matrix. There's Neo in the Matrix. You remember how he is living in normal life, and then he realizes that this life he's living, there's this kind of completely separate reality. People are in these containers, you know, some sort of AI or something future is like keeping people alive in these water containers,

where they feel like they're living in normal life. But then he takes this pill and he realizes like, oh, this is, there's this other, there's, there's, this other world that we are really in. So, you know, he kind of goes through that hero's journey. And so, I mean, you could keep going down the list of movies where this is the case. And there's really, Joseph Campbell was really, if you read his book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces, he talks about psychoanalysis and how essentially the therapist is helping the person move into another domain

where they're learning about themselves and then they change when they come out. And it's kind of how I see therapy to some degree. It's like, I remember one person's critique. It's like, oh, people, it's so narcissistic that you just end up talking about yourself. It's like, it's interesting because what I find is that when people do that for a while,

then when they go back into the world, they're often more concerned about some passion project or making the world a better place, serving others. It's like this process of talking about the traumas of your life, talking about the struggles, does change the way that you view other people and view yourself. So he combined a lot of the Jungian archetypes, unconscious forces, rights of rituals. And he would say a hero is one that gives one's life to something bigger than oneself, saving a person, people, an idea. To some degree, it's about sacrifice with a conception

of a higher purpose, meaning, goal, aspiration, then one can encapsulate in a purely self-loving action. In the hero, they have a transformation of consciousness. So the hero themselves, right? Think about Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, you know, he himself has a transformation in his consciousness through trials and revelation. He develops this sense of courage. They give up this self-protection, protecting the ego and are able to help other people. And so there's this transformation that goes on. It kind of makes me think about the, you know, as the Ericksonian stages go on, moving into, generativity, how older people move from seeking their own conquest to now generativity,

helping other people. So in a sense, the hero becomes the guide, right? A lot of people are talking about the hero's journey and culture right now. Actually, people are developing brands, you know, like, buy this couch. It will help you be the hero, you know? Or, If you drink this drink, right? Now you can enter into your trials more successfully. So people are selling you stuff. It's almost like the commercialization of these archetypal forces. And it's very powerful and it's very subtle. And so I would also challenge you to start noticing when brands, when people are trying to sell you something with this hero's journey idea in mind. Sometimes this act, the heroic act is a physical deed, saving a life, sacrificing oneself for another, slaying the monster,

and sometimes the act is a spiritual deed, learning a new way of living, bringing a unifying message for the time. We definitely need unifying messages for the time, right? So the question becomes, how are we going, how are we doing, right, in our journey, if we consider ourselves the hero, how are you doing in your journey? And then how are our patients, the people that we treat, doing in their journey?

Where are they? And so we'll get into the stages and what it might look like at different stages. You can think about yourself at times as you relate to other people. Sometimes you're the helper, sometimes you're the guide. Sometimes you are a partner

with them trying to help them in their journey. Okay, so the first stage is departure or separation. The hero is living an ordinary life, right? So you can think about like Spider-Man, how he's just like a normal high school student who might get picked on and you might have some sort of connection with that type of character. There's nothing heroic about him, right? And then he receives a call to adventure and must depart the ordinary world. And there's a reluctance or hesitation towards the call. but the mentor helps. In there, there's like the imposter syndrome, right?

I can't do this. I'm not ready for this. Sometimes the hero is thrown into it, sometimes deciding. Right? So it's like maybe, you know, in your own journey, you decided at some point you were going to become a mental health professional. You felt called towards this service that we provide. And yet there's a part of you that was reluctant.

or hesitant. I know I was. I kind of ran away from it at first to tell you the truth. I mean, I was really going a totally different direction. I was planning on going to med peds. And it wasn't until I hit some pretty big roadblocks that I did a transitional year and I kind of kept running away, putting it off, putting off the decision. And then I finally made the decision in October probably later than most people submit their applications for residency. So there's a reluctance or hesitation, but a mentor helps. There's guides, there's, you know, the Yoda, right? The Yoda type of people, the Gandalf type of people.

So there's this call to adventure. There's often a refusal to the call, you know, based off of other duties. Maybe they feel like they have fear, insecurity, feeling an imposter or inadequate, but feeling like they're not really meant to be the hero, they're more of a victim that needs to be saved. There's a refusal of the call. And then there's often this mentor or guide, maybe some artifact, like you can think about how Spider-Man was given the ability,

the suit and the ability to, you know, create the webs and stuff like that. So there's an artifact that's given. You can think about Frodo, it's given the ring, the precious. There's a crossing of the first threshold, you know, where they basically like enter into this. Like, I'm no longer, you know, I'm in Narnia. I'm in this other world. There's this crossing the threshold. There's this, and then there's the belly of the whale. You can think about now you have a hero who is thrown into the belly of a whale, like Jonah, right?

three days in a whale. It's kind of like he's unwanted, he didn't really want to go in there. So in Star Wars it could be like the garbage disposal. And it can kind of be this Hunger Games world. Or some, I don't know, you know, like you can think of different portions in the different journeys that are some of these dark moments like these storms, right?

It can be seen as this idea of coming up against all that is unconscious. you know, not something that we can access with our conscious mind. It's beneath the surface, right? We come up against the shadow. The shadow is realizing we are capable of evil, aggression, destruction, hurting others, jealousy, anger, malice, lust, kind of the id, right? So it's like that unconscious id. What does the id want?

One of my supervisors said, the id wants everything. So what is the shadow? It's the dark part of a personality, the unknown, unrecognized by the ego. Normally we have this social veneer. We project to the world. And this is even stronger, of course, nowadays. And social media and our public persona, right? I know some people only post the positive.

And then there's people who post like the negative, but they're really just like trying to seem authentic, right? So it's still like the persona. The persona now. it's like authentic, right? That's like the ideal. Show me some authenticity. It's this ideal we desire to align with and sometimes we believe we are that person, right? And that's the danger is to then we don't see that we're capable of having this shadow. I think about how as therapists we can often focus on how people have anger, right? We see the anger.

but we're not focusing on the anger, we focus on the hurt or the sadness underneath or the loss, which often there is, but it's like we neglect to see that people are capable of aggression or competition or fighting, right? Think about the animal kingdom, fighting is pretty normal, and it's like the most tamest person, right? It's like that male or female high trade agreeableness who has forgotten that they have this strength in them that's maybe pretty dormant. So sometimes people who are the kindest people, they love these gangster movies. Part of us can be drawn to the destructive, powerful characters. And we can kind of live in a slight fantasy maybe.

even of being that type of person or like living out that type of person so let me give you some quotes here there's one by young unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is on a whole less good than he imagines himself to be everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life the blacker and denser it is at all counts it forms an unconscious snag thwarting our most well-meant intentions. So, you know, a lot of people, when they read about, for example, in Germany what it was like to be going through World War II, Hitler, the Holocaust, a lot of us imagine being the ones that would be like Schindler, right, who would be trying to secretly rescue Jews. But the majority of the people actually were just

kind of going along with it, trying not to get themselves hurt. A lot of people kind of joined in, right? So what percentage do you think of people were actually heroic in that time, in that culture? Probably pretty small. So, but we like to imagine that we would be like that. What does that look like for our time, right? Sometimes it's standing up against the wave of something that's going one direction. I ask myself that question. What should I be doing that's maybe speaking the truth in a way that is difficult to speak? Okay, here's a quote by William Shakespeare. This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine. It's like he's acknowledging his darkness here. Here's another one by Young. This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way. So this confrontation. So this

with the darker part of our self-right. It's the first test, you know, on this journey. So he's kind of talking about the hero's journey a little bit. A test sufficient to frighten off most people. Yeah, most people don't want to look at that, right? They externalize it. Oh, it's everyone else that is embodying these characteristics of aggression. I don't have any aggression.

For the meaning of ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can, project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved. So we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized.

into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly difficult because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality. There are many reasons, this is me talking now, there are many reasons that we would not want to see this part of ourself, the aggressive part, the competitive part, maybe the lustful part that doesn't fit our normal, our normal thoughts of what's okay. And what he's saying is that this part of us is going to be there regardless of if we know it's there or not. Right? And maybe it's not us, you know, we like to think that we're harmless. Like, oh, I'm not capable of these bad things, you know.

And it's funny how like in families, when I look at, when I do some like family work or family therapy, it's like often the family member who is completely unaware of how how much malice and resentment they have towards other members of the family and then they place all that on the other person right and it's so obvious to any person looking in from the outside that they are to some degree the problem you know which is my like episode on forgiveness is i think so important in this regard because it's like we we have we might have clues of bitterness resentment you know like how much time do you spend ruminating on that one past person in your life that's anger right how much of your emotional energy is spent on that if you'll say above 20% that's something

you need to to work through so we have clues of the shadow but we don't want to come up against it if we come up against the shadow we may feel some self-discussed self-crued self-crued criticalness, shame. And it may be a guide that helps us see that, or not see, not see the shame as like, you know, making us feel more shame, but see that we are feeling that and that it, can we tolerate that more so that we can actually see who we are, right? If we can integrate the aggressive parts of us, then we are more embodied who we really are. We don't need to act upon every aggressive urge, of course, or every lustful thought, but we can notice them. And if we can notice them without shame, we can move through this stage of the hero's journey. Okay, here's

another quote. The myth of the hero is one who conquers the dragon. This is by Carl Jung. Not the one who is devoured by it, and yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who has never met the dragon, or who if once he saw it declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked a fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it, wins the hoard, the treasure hard to obtain. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives some faith and trust. The pistus in the ability of the self to sustain him. for everything that menaced him from the inside he has made his own.

He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty that makes him capable of self-reliance. I think that there are a lot of us who, it was not okay to be angry growing up. it was not okay to show aggression and so it's sort of shoved down and kind of you know sometimes it comes out in like a passive aggressiveness and you know what is the drive what you know I've had friends who it's like their aggression is and they feel it in every domain of their life it's probably it's probably best when it's moved into either a singular domain or a sublimated domain, but when we also know that it's there, right? So for example, sports is a great

way to supplement an aggressive drive, but board games with friends is probably, you know, when you want to win at all costs, when you're even willing to cheat, that would be like probably a not very good supplemented aggressiveness. When we are willing to hurt other people to win, that would be a horrible or not you know it's both something that's common but also not the most desirable right uh you know it's like the it's like in some very competitive classes people would rip out pages from library books so that other people couldn't learn the material that's like not that's not a great way of it's like who are you competing against you got to keep your focus on the enemy right which is diseased you know like as as physicians we're not

fighting against each other, we're fighting against disease, the progression of disease, fighting against death. Right. So that would be where we would want to put our energy towards. Here in Plato's Republic, there's a quote, there is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless. Here's a quote by Frederick Nietzsche. fear of wild animals that has been bred into the human being for the longest time, including the animal that he harbors within and fears. Zarathustra calls it the beast within.

You know, there's this part of us, which is that survival mammal capacity. And we both have a fear of it, but we also have. it within us. And it would be naive to not see that. We could become skeptical and then we could move into wisdom. So what if someone did not find their shadow and in the process kept their child from departure and separation? So there's this thing called the devouring edible mother I would like to talk about. This came to me, I was lying awake, thinking about this episode, and a story in which the mother becomes this devouring edible mother

and refused to allow her child to venture into the world. It came to me. You know, this is the mother that thwarts, instills feelings of guilt and shame with ever leaving her, or him, right? It could be a devouring edible father as well. The child is protected from developing competence at an extreme. There's this thing called Munchausen syndrome by proxy

in which the parent creates an illness or injury in the child to keep the child infantile, to keep the mother in complete control, and the mother gets some sort of power or connection from this. I had a case As someone who covers CNL, Counsel and Liaison in a big hospital, you see these cases,

and they float under the radar for a while, and then the primary team just kind of it dawns on them, like, what if the mother's like causing this? And they call us in. I remember this one client I got called to. I'm going to change some details, of course, as I always do.

The daughter had knee contractures. or so the daughter and the mother professed. And so Northo took her back, put her under anesthesia, and the contractures were not there, which is not what happens, right? So we know that someone is creating the stiffness if you get them out of their normal mind, and now it's like complete flexibility, right? Unlike there's some people who do have these contractures, it's like even under anesthesia, the contractors are still there.

the stiffness of the muscles. So in this case, it was interesting because the other pediatric surgeon put the girl in a cast afterwards so she couldn't bend her legs, which I was like, like, what, like, why did you do that? And the orthopedic surgeon said, well, the mother really asked for it. And I told the orthopedic surgeon, like, no, you need to like tell the mother what you found. Be very clear that this is not a physical issue and you need to take the kid out of the cast right away and document what happened and why you think that this is not physical.

So the orthopedic surgeon did that. Of course, the mother was irate and left, you know, and we were called in soon after, and the mother didn't want anything to do with me and my thoughts that this was psychological, that she needed therapy. The kid needed therapy. We had a program for this.

This is what, by the way, this is a, if we're able to, help the family. This is something that our MEND program takes care of. We have these people who have stress-based illnesses, is how I like to consider it. And it's harder when there's a malingering effect. So malingering is when the people are doing it on purpose to gain some sort of financial thing, maybe a lawsuit or something like that. And it's not something I don't like to document malingering, but, you know, I'll definitely know that this is not a good case that we can help. And sometimes we have to start documenting the evidence of malingering.

Here's this person said this when this was what risk reality. So it's like we catch them in a lie, we document. We don't say they lied in the documentation. We said what the incongruency was. And then after that's been documented for quite a long time, you may have a legal trust. for putting malingering in the chart if it is going to save the person. Anyways, this is where it gets a little bit tricky, right, and we're not going to be able to go into this completely.

But my point is that there's this devouring edible mother who wants to keep their child stuck and not moving forward. And I can remember another sort of mother child diad where it's like kind of kind of, you know, The kid is now in their 20s and is just watching fairy tales with the mom, and the mom still skips the scary scenes of the fairy tales. This is like a true story. So they go to, you know, the mom comes home from work, the daughter and her snuggle up, watch the fairy tales, skip the scary parts,

go to Disneyland on the weekend, kind of like are continuing to live this like infantile life. Of course, the kid is like, has this suicidal part of her because she does not want to stay stuck. There's part of us that when we get so stuck, not moving forward on the journey, we could get depressed,

we could get anxious, we could get suicidal. And so although there was absolutely no stress in this person's life, there was this suicidal tendency, there was a deep desire to move out of the cocoon. right, but also like a fear that the mother had placed on her. I think about this in terms of the Ericksonian stages, therefore, for mother, you know, for

parents, how do we help our kids? And the early Ericksonian stages are trust autonomy initiative, which are part of the journey, right? To venture out, you need these things. Stage one of the Ericksonian stages is trust versus mistrust, zero to 1.5. And it requires a parent or guide who is empathic and the infant can attach to. Pure empathy, right? Almost pure empathy at this stage. And then stage two, there's autonomy versus shame. Requires the guide to let them have some freedom and also emotional refueling.

So the kid ventures out, explore. and then comes back for some emotional refueling. Exploration is rejoiced in. Success leads to the ability to explore limits of ability, autonomy. Failure leads to feeling excessive shame about abilities, excessive inability to venture out and explore due to the fear. So you can think about how you could have an incredibly empathic mother who then just doesn't allow for the exploration.

So this is kind of like, you know, stage two here, age 1.5 to 3, where there needs to be venturing out. It's interesting when you find people who don't have trust and have shame with exploration. And they could have other, you know, gaps in the Ericksonian stages as well. What they might need is a therapist who's empathic who can they can attach to, but also allows them to explore their creative. creativity, their giftedness, which they may not really have access to. We have to be patient with this. If they don't have trust, if they don't have the ability to explore, it may take time. It's not going to be 10 sessions, and then boom, you're ready, right? This is like a developmental need.

That may take a while. Stage three is initiative versus guilt through age 3 to 5, and it requires a guide without criticism or over-control to allow for play. Not restricting initiative, but allowing initiative. And questions are answered. When successful, the child has initiative, is able to make up games, play with others, plan activities. So you can see as the initial guide or later guide, there's a necessity of empathy, autonomy, boundaries, and love.

All of those things can be there. Of course, people need different things from the guide, but you can start to see how those might be necessary. Okay, you can also see this journey from adolescence to adulthood in this sort of stage, going from an infantile dependence to an adult, willing to bear the burden of moral, legal, and mental accountability, which is, by the way, difficult.

There's part of us that doesn't want to grow up and wants to be like a Peter Pan of sorts, right? Live in Never, Neverland. But there's part of us that needs to grow up to come up against the things that are scary and in the process to notice that we have that fighter within us, right? Which can be a shadow of sorts. So in short, a failure of departure separation can lead to a childish, infantile adult. If you've ever dated or married this type of person, it can be pretty draining because you'll be put into the mother role.

Either, you know, a mother role if you're a male or a female being married to this type of person. And if there's no departure separation, it can also lead to a lack of. of moral responsibility. So not bearing the normal burden of life, right? To some degree, I think of like the dark triad as like the someone embodying these like, kind of like darker characteristics. They haven't really, you know, moved through it, moved through.

They've kind of gotten stuck in like, I am this shadow. You know, there's the over sort of like living out of the shadow sorts. There's the psychopathy, which of course could be more of a biological, but there's sociopathy, which is more of the baked version. There's, of course, you know, genetic and biological influences with psychopathy, but I also think that people can live more psychopathic disregard for other human beings as people. Pedophilia is kind of a fail. A fail to later to launch. We talked in our episode on pedophilia about how a lot of pedophiles are really just psychologically very naive. They're like, they're totally stunted psychologically. Dr. Cummings

talked about that. There's also like narcissism, right? You think about narcissism as like placing all of the bad on everyone else and fighting for this like social veneer image of yourself, which is completely false. And when people, people point out the discrepancy, you know, attacking, isolating. So a failure of departure separation leads to this childish, infantile adult. Let's say they get through this part. They get into the second phase of the hero's journey, which is called the initiation. The hero goes into the unknown or special world with a road of trials.

sometimes they're alone, sometimes they're with helpers. The hero is tested along the way. Eventually, the hero reaches the ordeal where they have to overcome the main enemy or obstacle. And in this, the hero undergoes something called apotheosis and gains a reward. So there's this road of trials, a meeting with the goddess,

atonement with the Father Abyss. You know, there's these sort of sub-steps in this where I'm not going to get into that in detail. But basically in this stage, they're in this other world. They have trials, they're tested, and then they come up against the sort of the climax. There's often helpers, and there's sometimes a guide as well. And I was thinking about, like, how do people get off course in this stage when trials hit? trials will hit by the way in life family members will get sick you will get sick trials will hit and we're jolted into this sort of alternative reality right trials can also be things that

are like addiction or falling into maybe materialism or hedonism without regard to what initially captivated our attention. It's like no one watches the hunger games and says to themselves, I really want to be like those people who are gluttonous, who are doing all of that crazy plastic surgery, like beyond plastic surgery, right? No one like sets out to want that. People align with catanus, right?

They align with the hero. They don't align with these sort of, nefarious people, but we can get pulled into seeking for comfort when what we really need is clarity of mind. I think about Jesus and his three temptations. So even if you're not Christian, you can appreciate that Jesus himself had this sort of like hero's journey. The first temptation, he was thrown, he went into the desert, he wasn't thrown in the desert, he went into the desert and didn't eat for 40 days and 40 nights. And at the end of it, that Satan, the devil came to him and tempted him.

And so the first one was, turn this stone into bread. And I was thinking about how essentially that's comfort yourself instead of when what Jesus needed was clarity of mind and reliance on truth. So often we're pulled into the temptation of just comfort yourself when what we really need is clarity of mind and reliance on truth. The second temptation was, throw yourself off this building and angels will pick you up. And to some degree, this is performing to the crowd for the purpose of our own glory rather than what Jesus was called to, which was like healing people, serving people, right?

So it's kind of like this fame for the sake of your personal glory. and then the third temptation was bowing down to the devil and with the exchange of I'll give you all the power and authority in this land like I will give you like money and power and riches and stuff like that it's like fame for fame's sake right power without meaning is worthless is basically how I view this if you are in a place of power or authority you have have to consider how you use that power and authority to serve other people. To serve only yourself is a very sort of empty service. And I think about the largest buildings often denote what is looked at as the most powerful thing in society. So for a long time, it was churches, right? And then it was the kingdom, the king's palace. And then it was something else. What is it today? What are our tallest buildings today? Banks, places of, you know, sometimes it's like investment banking, which is like what, we're going to, we're going to buy this company to do these trades. I almost think about this

in terms of the GameStop thing. I don't know if you're watching that, but it's, there's a, there's like a an interesting aspect of the revealing of how these like old money people have a lot of power. So basically they were buying these things on GameStop, thinking that GameStop was going to go down, but a bunch of people on Reddit decided they were going to buy it. So the price went way up. So these people who had thought and had bet against GameStop going down in value were going to lose literally like tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars. And so Robin Hood, which is one of the big investment platforms, literally shut down trading of this.

So it didn't allow people to buy it. And it also forced people to sell it against their will. What was that doing? Was that a Robin Hood event? No, that's like the opposite of Robin Hood. It's like the people who have wealth are losing that. And therefore we're going to shut this down so that they can't lose more money. It's like there's so much irony there, right?

It's like the antithesis of like Robin Hood, the name Robin Hood. It's like forever that brand is just destroyed. And I'm sharing these things because one, it's going on in our culture at this time, right? There's a drive towards living a certain way and we have to think to ourselves. is this part of one of the trials that we are going through, the choices? Right? Okay, another trial that we go through is potentially rejecting the mentor. We have this mentor, we have this guide, and we can decide to not invest in it.

We can decide to fall instead into narcissism. And often there's this idealized image of ourselves. remember what I talked about before, this like social veneer, we can start to believe that is who we really are. And the guide sometimes is trying to point out the discrepancy, and that discrepancy is met with anger, hostility, or running away. Instead of being authentically transformed, our eyes being opened, and a new way of living more authentically, I would say, occurs.

And it's like we can't change if we don't even know that that exists. You know, if we don't even know that the shadow exists, it's like we can't really, like, authentically live. So it's like knowing that that's there, that those thoughts are there. And I would say as a therapist, this is also very important. So it's like I am, as I'm doing therapy, monitoring my reaction to the patient. I'm monitoring, you know, do I have any thoughts which are abnormal, which might be their thoughts, but am I having any thoughts that are my own thoughts, which I need to notice and utilize?

You know, so at times, maybe it's competitiveness, you know. And so if I am then reacting to this client out of that competitiveness, then it will not be helpful reaction. It will not serve the client. So it's like over time of doing my own work, and this is why like doing your own therapy, having your own supervision, getting your own coaches, is so important because it helps you continue the journey.

And if you reject the mentor, if you reject the guidance, it's possible to get off track and to fall into a form of like something that is more like a narcissism of sorts. So, for example, instead of serving the client, you're serving yourself. satisfying your own psychological needs

because your psychological needs are unconscious you're not registering that they're there because maybe the shame is so high you can't recognize them there and so then you are inevitably focused on meeting your own psychological needs rather than that of the clients

it's actually very hard why why pay someone who is good at this? Well, because they're able to subjugate their own needs for your needs, which is part of the necessity of the equipping of you for your journey. So I had this one therapist, it was my first therapist, who would give me this advice, but it was like advice that they needed to give themself. It was like so close to themselves. It was like they were imagine. that my issues were like their issues with their kids.

And I reminded them of their son, so to maybe. And at the time, I wasn't nuanced to be able to know this. I just had like a reaction against it. And I would tell them, you know, like this advice is not helpful. It doesn't help me when you give me this advice and they would just keep doing it. Like they almost forgot like I was giving them that. And I would tell them like, I don't think this applies to me because this, this and this. well, you could say was I rejecting the guide at that point.

You know, if the guide was actually saying things about myself, which were true, that might be rejecting it. But I think I was rejecting their inability to step out of their own experience into my experience, which was triggering for me at the time because I think early on I was able to be in other people's experience to be the helper. and so what I needed at that point in my journey was to understand my own desires and my own emotions

to be able to work through my emotions, right? Because part of overcoming traumatic experiences is to be in touch with not just other people's portion of what was going on, but your portion. So by dissociating away, From my experience, I had been adaptively helping out those in my environment, but I was unable to, therefore be in touch with my own emotional experience, which was stifling my ability to be a therapist.

So I needed to go find the guides and the helpers to be able to help me do that. So, you know, you keep striving and you keep moving forward until you find that, which you are looking for. your inner experience knows that you need to grow psychologically in some way. And you may not find that in the first helper. You may not find that in the second helper. It was actually the third for me who was, it was a couple of people. I could, Dr. Tar, of course, I've talked about Harvey Elder and then my therapist, supervisor that I've had.

And it was these different guides, these different people in my life and spiritual people as well. I've had some spiritual guides that have been helpful. Sometimes they speak truth in ways that you don't want to hear. But it's good. It's good to hear. So I was thinking about rejecting this idea of rejecting the mentor and not finding the mentor. And I was comparing that to a study, Jennings 1999, about what makes a master therapist. and he talked about how master therapists are voracious learners. They have this hunger, they have this thirst for learning. I see that in a lot of my listeners.

Then when they email me, they let me know, like, I just am consuming this material. I'm almost surprised how someone can listen to two episodes a day, almost every day or something like that. You know, like they're just voracious learners. And the other thing he said that master therapist had in common was an accumulated experience that had become a major resource for them. And he describes it as experience that, like, things happened in their life, difficult

things, and they catabolized it and let those things be a tool that allowed them to help other people. He also talked about how master therapists appear to have emotional receptivity, to find as self-awareness, reflective, non-defensiveness, and open to feedback. And they wanted to learn. They were so hungry to learn and grow that their mindset on feedback changed. I have to say that my mindset on feedback has changed over the years. Obviously, I get a lot of feedback because I have a podcast, so I get lots of emails. Some very critical, often others full of gratitude. but the feedback that I'm really looking for is from my patients

or people who are supervising me. And the feedback is information. It is something to think about. Often from patients, it tells you more about their own experience, but there's tidbits that you can learn. There's tidbits you can grow. I supervised a nurse practitioner, and we received this like three-page letter

from a patient. And we read the letter. It was a very critical letter. But there were things that we could grow and learn from. Here are some things that I experienced. And this person that I'm supervising is incredibly teachable. She wants to learn and grow. And she really is not bristling at the thought that there are things that she can still grow.

This is a great mindset to continue, by the way, your whole career. I co-teach with Dr. Tar. He's 90 or so years old, and I will say something, and then he will say something after. And he's subtly correcting some opinion of mine or some thought of mine. And we've been doing this for five years. We teach almost four hours every week together, psychiatry residency, psychotherapy classes. We watch video of the residents, and we co-teach, and he's been doing this. And it is over time adjusting my thoughts on psychotherapy, my approach, how to deal with people, what to say and what not to say.

And it's priceless. It is absolutely priceless. I allow him that place in my life to correct me. And sometimes he feels like it's too much. But I tell him, no, I'm really looking for that. I'm really looking for your honest feedback. And I'm looking to grow because I need people. to speak into me in that way, as I also speak into other people who I coach or mentor.

So we will leave it there for today. When we come back, we will talk about the third phase, the return. I'm also going to go through steps on how to actually help guide someone through this process. Things like how to identify missteps in the arc of the narrative, how to identify what is real and what is not real in someone's narrative. You know, we have lots of facade that we need to cut through or, you know, emotions. Like, what is the real emotion? How do we get to the real emotion? Dreams, art can be very powerfully helpful in that.

And then how do we identify what we can't control and what we can't control in the narratives that we live? You know, there's that famous, there's some famous quotes by some Stoke philosophers. I'm going to share. Victor Frankel, how we can choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. That is reaching Nirvana, by the way, so I don't think you can do that right away, nor can I. And then also a step of like, how do we empathize with the shame that inevitably comes up and the self-criticalness? And by decreasing the shame, we can actually see ourselves more clearly and are, you know, therefore,

that's the role of the guide is to decrease shame. Shame just, I'm pretty sure shame just shuts us down and moves us away from our authentic self. So we need to figure out ways of decreasing that. So that will be part two. I'm looking forward to that. And if you want, send me a message. If you are on psychiatrypodcast.com, it's just the, it's one of the navigation menus

there. And if you want to support the podcast, sign it for Patreon, you'll get special content. I'll be doing some Q&A probably once a month. And yeah, look forward to getting to know you guys more. It's been great. I sent out one email a couple weeks ago saying I was doing some coaching, I had some openings, got a couple new clients and I've been really enjoying it. Really, really meaningful. And I feel like it's the people that really appreciate what we're doing here in this podcast and that just make the best coaching clients ever. So it's almost like I don't even want to advertise outside of this because if you are here listening to, you know, these episodes and this is kind of like, yes, I like that. There's something about that. I want to grow in that.

Then that makes a really good coaching client. All right. Leave it there for today. Take care. Thank you.