The Taproot Podcast - 😈Icky, Mean, Hateful: On the nature of evil in psychotherapy

Starting point is 00:00:00 That boy needs therapy. Psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy. You're psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy. Lie down on the couch. That boy needs therapy. Hey guys, it's Joel with the Taproot Therapy Collective podcast, and today I'm going to be reading an article called Icky, Mean, and Hateful on the nature of evil in psychotherapy. It's a longer article. If it's easier for you to read something like this, I recommend you check out our website at www.gettherapybirmingham.com.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Navigate to the tab where it says blog and read it where you can find this and other articles that are not available on the podcast. I don't record every article. And so the article begins. One of the things that happens frequently in family therapy is that a person or a group of family members will accuse the other person or group of family members of being mean or hateful. Now, most of the time, if someone is abusive or they are intentionally hurtful, they won't deny that they have ill intentions. They think the other person deserves it, and they'll make that clear in therapy. So put simply, someone who has meant to be mean will usually admit that when they're accused of it. Other times, one side denies intentionally trying to hurt the person,

Starting point is 00:01:25 accusing them of trying to cause harm, and they say they didn't mean to hurt them. So when this happens, I draw a line down a piece of paper, and I have each side write down what they remember was said, you know, the hateful thing. So on one side of the paper, there will be an objective statement, and these statements might include something like, you drank too much and you yelled at me, or you spent more money than you said you would, or you didn't do what you told me you would. And then on the other side, there will be a subjective statement, which is what the other person remembers, who's calling the first person mean or hateful. And it will have something that is subjective, usually something like this. You said I'm obnoxious, or you said I'm stupid and I can't

Starting point is 00:02:05 do math. So these statements refer to the same event, but each party hears two different things. So when we don't want to grow or change, when other people offer us criticism, you know, constructive or not, or they just ask us nicely to change, we view them asking us to change our behavior as an attack, because we don't believe that they can't. We view it as a judgment, which is why that second column is full of subjective statements. So when someone points out that I went over budget, it's easier for me to feel like they are in the wrong for making me feel stupid than accepting that I could change the behavior or learn new things. And when I get drunk, it's easier for me to think that someone is judging me

Starting point is 00:02:47 than it is to admit that I made a mistake and maybe feel some guilt or shame. So, you know, I tell clients often in psychotherapy that avoiding conflict does not make them a good person. If you're avoided at all and you've come to therapy with me, you've heard that. So often what avoidance does, or avoiding conflict or difficult conversations, or even avoiding being assertive, and the worst is avoiding what we know is true in our own head. We can't even think it. Your therapist is just asking you to think it, and you can't do that.

Starting point is 00:03:20 That makes us enablers of bad behavior, and it makes us contributors to the problematic state of this world. It makes us contribute to evil when we are avoidant. And one of the ways that we do this is by pretending that the truth is always in the middle of each conflict, and that all perspectives are equally valid. This is avoidance, because holding the authority to judge one side versus another makes you feel icky or judgy. You know, you were around people who were judgmental. You don't want to be like that. Well, you're not. If you're being assertive, you're just being honest. We want life to be this children's movie where all conflict is just a misunderstanding between two benevolent parties,

Starting point is 00:03:58 and both sides have a good point. And sometimes that's true, but that is not always true, and trying to turn all conflict into that just isn't life. It's not adult. Sometimes people do say and believe things that are just wrong. Each person could have a valuable perspective, and they could make a unique contribution to our collective reality, but the operative word here is could. Not everyone chooses to. And if you're pretending that everyone will or everyone was, I don't know that that's

Starting point is 00:04:26 honest or going to help you get anywhere in family or individual therapy. Any person's validity of perspective is predicated on that person's ability to be honest with themselves. How can I be honest with anyone if I can't even look in the mirror and be honest with myself? If you can't be honest with yourself or accept objective reality, you know, things that are just true about something, then every word that you say about that thing or that topic that you can't be honest with yourself about is a lie, whether or

Starting point is 00:04:55 not you mean it to me. It may be an unconscious lie. A lot of people say, well, the person doesn't know that it wasn't true. And it's like, well, they were there. You both saw the same thing. What do you mean? Yeah, but they just don't know it. And I understand what they mean. They mean that that person is just kind of unconsciously panicking and refusing to let themselves know something that is true because it makes them feel icky or judgy or whatever. It doesn't matter if you mean to be lying or not. If you pretend that unconscious or unintentional dishonesty is just a perspective somebody has, and that deserves our consideration, you know, and everyone needs to consider this and treat, you know, something that's true and something that's false as equally valid just because this person has a feeling about it, you know, that is an absurd

Starting point is 00:05:43 proposition. Yet, you know, most people do this all the time, and just so that they don't have to feel mean. And I'm not advocating when I'm saying this for you to pass self-righteous judgment or throw out discernment and humility. The opposite of truth is not lies, but it's certainty. And judgment is unhealthy when it comes from an unresolved superiority complex. You know, when comes from an unresolved superiority complex. You know, when you have an unresolved superiority complex, you judge other people all the time just so that you don't have to feel inferior. And a lot of times people who don't want to pass judgment, they've been hurt by someone like that, and they're like, well, I'm not going to be like

Starting point is 00:06:19 them, so I'm just going to not admit reality to myself. Well, that's a little bit too far. If reality is hurting somebody's feelings, that's not your fault. Judgment is a part of mature adulthood. When we allow our intuition to tell us that some things are simply wrong, no matter how widely accepted or traditional they are, they just are not right. Moral certainty is one of the first stones on the path to fanaticism. So I'm not saying that you should never doubt yourself, but having just a moral clarity, that's an essential ingredient to

Starting point is 00:06:53 mental health because you're just able to know clearly what you know and apply the same standard that you have for yourself to others and vice versa. Now we can never wield judgment or discernment as a tool that helps us make healthy decisions and avoid destructive paths if we get overwhelmed by guilt every time we start to notice that other people are behaving badly sometimes. And even people we love or people that helped us are all the reasons that we use to not notice that. We just don't let ourselves see it. Many times when we talk about psychology, politics, religion, or family honesty, or family honestly and openly, it makes people feel icky or guilty. And this is because most people do not want to know what they think when it comes to these arenas of life, or they don't want to accept what they already know.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Carl Jung talked about it a lot, the psychologist, he calls this the shadow. The slippery half-truth that we tell ourselves so that we don't have to accept the whole truth that always walks behind us. And often this is because of trauma, this kind of dishonesty, because we don't want to hurt others by criticizing them because we were hurt as children. We don't want to be like the abuser, so we decide that we're either going to play victim or we're going to enable a victim. And the second one, enabling the victim, is more common than somebody who has kind of a victim mindset or like a personality disorder. And that's one of the ways that we don't notice that trauma is still running our lives. You know, we just make it easier to believe that everything is our fault or enable

Starting point is 00:08:18 other people's bad behavior by refusing to point out unhealthy or self-destructive tendencies in others, which as an adult is your job, you know, to point out to people who you love and are not trying to enable when they're being unhealthy and when they're being self-destructive. But that starts with you being honest about that in your own head. So if we're afraid of judgment, we think that we can avoid it, but instead our avoidance causes more problems. Instead of having frank conversations about where our beliefs diverge from others, we try and control others through praise. You know, telling somebody that we love them because they make good grades is just as damaging as saying, I won't love you if you make bad grades. They're kind of the same statement.

Starting point is 00:09:00 You know, telling someone that, you know, we like them because they do certain things is still judgment. Sidra and Hal Stone in their book, Embracing Ourselves, they talk about how most judgment is passed through positive statements. It's passed through praise. And that still does damage to children when they show up in therapy as adults. Other times, and that's because it makes the love sound conditional. And then children are just as afraid as if you told them that you weren't proud of them or, you know, something else. So other times, this unconscious fear of holding authority or passing judgment blinds us to the judgments that we do hold and pass all the time. And so many people are unaware that

Starting point is 00:09:46 they hold judgment because they have identified with it for so long as just a part of who they are. And sometimes these individuals grew up in families where they may not have even realized that they were being constantly passively criticized. And that's because the places where we were taught to criticize ourselves, and often we hide an unhealed wound there, we don't notice that what we're saying to our children or to someone else is damaging. And so the things are people who we judge very intensely. They have potential to become important teachers for us

Starting point is 00:10:22 because we can learn why we need to other this person, why we need to judge them. And you can mindfully find out if that is something where you have a trauma and an unconscious bias that's making you be judgmental, or if that's just something that's true about life that you should accept. But when you find yourself having an extreme emotional reaction to somebody, that maybe is a good sign that there's some shadow projection there and that they may be an important teacher for you. It doesn't make them a good person. It makes your experience with them a lesson. So when we have these unconscious biases, we often can't see them and we can't apply our values consistently until we can see them.

Starting point is 00:11:01 We apply values in the abstract, but we ignore our values when we are looking friends, family, or patients in the eye. Maybe this avoidance is worse in the bless-her-heart American South where I live, but it's something about it seems very old and very human. You know, I encounter that when I read ancient history too. So it seems that many people who are afraid to grow and change will accuse others of being hateful and judgmental or mean for just pointing out reality to them. And this goes back to the subjective and objective statements from therapy. You know, those people who are attacking an objective statement and turning it subjective, they do that because they do not want anyone to point out their own hidden mistakes and insecurities. And Remember, fear of judgment always comes from

Starting point is 00:11:45 this unresolved wound. When you hold authority comfortably, you know, people with this unconscious wound will always react negatively to you. And you're just holding authority that you have to pass, you know, a knowledge of right and wrong over your life. But that's going to make someone who has a fear of judgment react very negatively. Because even if you're saying something that's correct about another person, they're still going to see that as an attack on them. Because if that person could change, you're telling me I could change too, but I don't think I can change. So you just pointing out what that person did, maybe having an opinion about it, that's an attack on me. Sorry, man, you did something wrong there. And you may have felt that energy from certain

Starting point is 00:12:25 people in your life because they would rather have their faults ignored and enabled. And so they want you to do that for other people when you talk about them. Sometimes it's everyone. Sometimes it's certain kinds of people. Sometimes it's males, females, you know, whatever. But you see people who have a consistent reaction to you pointing out something about a certain kind of person, notice that. So when you tell someone how their behavior affected you in family therapy, you'll often hear things like, well, you must think you're perfect if you're going to point out something that's honest and true about me. And we don't have to be perfect in order to point out failure. You know, being moral means having integrity means you're

Starting point is 00:13:05 pointing out your failures at the same rate that you're pointing out other people. That they occur. You're not pretending that everybody else makes the same amount of mistakes. You're just being honest about mistakes when they happen, including your own. If somebody is criticizing other people, but they don't think they ever do anything wrong, that's a good place to maybe notice that this is going on. You probably want to not accept advice from people who think that they are perfect, and you definitely don't want to accept criticism or feel bad about the judgment of somebody who has never said sorry to anyone, because it's probably not constructive criticism. They're probably projecting on you. So, you know, trying to avoid judgment of other people is not a virtue. It's a sin.

Starting point is 00:13:54 You know, we owe it to ourselves and others not to carry water for bad behavior and solve destructive patterns. Loving others is giving them what they need, not what they want. And what we need is not always a gift that we want right now. There's a beautiful passage in a case study I read a long time ago. And this lady, her husband was dead and she was dying of cancer, but she had these young children. And because she was dying of cancer, she had an oxygen machine and these different machines. And the kids were too young to understand. They're like four and five. And it was just very sad that they're going to lose their mom in a couple months. They were going to lose their mother. And so the mother's therapist told her, you need to go be with the children. And she said,

Starting point is 00:14:38 well, I'm not going to be around them because when I'm around them, they scream and they get upset because they don't recognize me. They don't recognize these machines. I look sick. It freaks them out. And she said, no, no, no, you need to be there and you need to be loving and you need to get them used to you because you're giving them a gift, but it is not a gift that they want right now. You need to be the mother in the mind of a 30 or 40 year old man who is remembering what his mother treated him like when he was five, because you won't be there to see all that stuff. So they don't get this gift right now. They don't want it, but you need to give it to them because that's what parenting is. And that affected me. I really think about that a lot. You know, am I giving somebody what they want to feel good about myself

Starting point is 00:15:20 or am I giving them what they need because I'm being moral? So it's our job to give honesty as a gift. And others can open that gift if they want, but they don't have to. And if somebody does not want your constructive criticism, then don't offer it. You know, don't cut them slack in your own head or insist that others cut slack for them. My critique in this article is not very much about the way we behave. It's not really about behavior as much as the way that we think. Most of us are afraid of being judgmental. And when you give up your right to judgment, when you're letting people around you slide because it won't be worth it, they'll blow up, or you're letting them slide because, well, you know, I did bad things once and and I don't want anyone to point that out, so I'm going to let this slide because

Starting point is 00:16:08 I don't think I can be forgiven, so I'll just unconditionally forgive everyone else. If you're doing it for some kind of reason that's about unresolved trauma, then you are not acting with integrity. You have a responsibility to discern and apply your own moral authority to life. As an adult, you have that responsibility to apply your own moral authority. Not what is traditional, not what you were taught is right, not what other people say is right, but the things that you have actually learned are effective, that make you feel better and that make you grow. And you cannot function as an adult without this ability. You have a lot of adults that act like children in this world. And that may sound like I'm being mean or judgmental, but look at this world. I mean,

Starting point is 00:16:56 look at the people that we platform. I mean, are you kidding? If you can't be honest about that, then read this article five more times. Because most adults do not grow into the capacity to be adults, you know, and I haven't in a lot of ways that I'm honest about with my family, my therapist, my friends. Send me an email. I'll be honest with you if you want. But, you know, if you cannot ask yourself, is this world and myself better off for this decision with clarity and know that you behaving this way is actually making you better off and the world better off, then you're avoiding a pretty big part of mature adulthood and a big part of knowing who you are. Avoidance is not mature. even if you don't get it, even if other people don't get it, if you know that my decision to go into this field or my decision to, you know, confront this person or whatever is going on is better for me and the world is better for it too, then why not do it? You know,

Starting point is 00:17:59 one of the only reasons why you wouldn't would be something like fear, which is not really a good reason to make decisions based solely on being afraid. So ignoring these realities of life, it leaves you neurotically reliving childhood, which most people do. And I'll admit that healthy and unhealthy behavior can look the same from the outside. Some people criticize others just to deflect judgment off their own flaws. And this is an example of a person who is avoiding admitting the things that it is their job to change and grow through. They want everyone else to look bad so that they don't have to look at themselves.

Starting point is 00:18:37 What's the quote in the Bible about, you know, there's a speck of sawdust in your eye, or you see the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye, but really you have a blog coming out of your own. You know, so to others, the same criticism may be, you know, a good faith attempt to offer somebody constructive criticism on where they hurt others needlessly, and that person has diverged from their stated values. So constructive and unconstructive criticism can look the same. Somebody can be saying the same thing. I'm kind of of the opinion that you can do anything in a healthy way or an unhealthy way.

Starting point is 00:19:12 You can't always tell the difference from behavior. You need to know the person and the motivation. And so some people who criticize you consider the criticism, but it's not valid. It's not about you. It's their perspective. And other people, even though you really want to point out everything that they did wrong in their life, you really want to say, yeah, but notice if that criticism is right. Even people attacking you for the wrong reasons can be important teachers. So this kind of dealing with judgment, this is hard

Starting point is 00:19:43 to tell apart in ourselves and in other people. And for me, therapy was very beneficial because I was able, it helped me build this ability in myself because, you know, I finally had a therapist who wouldn't let me entertain her and wouldn't let me turn, you know, control a narrative. She was able to listen to what I was feeling. And when I would run into the woods with thinking, she could push me back into what I was feeling. And that allowed me to face it. And then that allowed me to be a little bit more honest about when emotion was what was running my mouth and not my brain. So, you know, Alfred Adler, psychologist Alfred Adler,

Starting point is 00:20:24 there's a good article about him on the blog if you want to go to that. He said that all problems in mental health come from somebody not wanting to do one of two things. One, help other people. Two, wait till they ask you for the help. So this article is not defending your right to punish or antagonize. Other people's decisions are theirs and they're not for you to change or obsess over. Again, this article is mostly about what you think. We don't always try and, you know, go in and spank the person or hold them to account. Sometimes somebody might, but mainly we just

Starting point is 00:20:56 obsess about how these people are doing it all wrong. Well, you know, we're wasting our own life. You don't have the right to obsess, or at least you don't have the right. You don't have permission from me. That's not what I'm saying to do. You can obsess and you can't change the behavior of your parents, your friends, especially not your patients. Remember what Alfred Adler said, one, help people, two, wait till they ask you to help them. And this is the first step of the change process. You know, instead of that, you know, this article is about allowing clarity in your own communication and thinking. Unless somebody asks you for help in their moral development and growth, then leave them alone. Unless somebody asks you for help with their decisions and moral dishonesty,

Starting point is 00:21:43 that's not any of your business. You have no right to enforce your morals on the world. You know, many sessions of therapy with me end when I just tell people, look, you're making a case that you deserve to feel better, and I absolutely believe that, and that you deserve, I think you deserve love too, but you're making a case that because you deserve this

Starting point is 00:22:04 so much, you should be able to feel better without changing your behavior. And I just don't know a way that you can. I think you have to decide if you want to listen to what I'm saying and then agree that behavior is a problem. We may not know how to change it, but we can try a whole bunch of tools until we find one that does, but you're asking me to change your symptoms without you having to grow and without you having to change the way that you think, feel, and act. And I can't do that. And I leave that decision up to the patient. Maybe you don't want to do that, and that's okay. It's not my life. You know, we can't keep acting the same way and expect to feel different. You know, I let my patients decide if they want my help.

Starting point is 00:22:47 I'm getting better at letting my family decide if they want my help. But whether or not other people get better should not be my decision. And I'm not perfect in that sphere. Integrity means that the same ethical standard that we have for others, we should apply equally for ourselves, and vice versa. There should not be different moral standards for people with the same cognitive ability. So to be an adult, we have to be comfortable passing judgment by applying our moral standard to ourselves and others consistently. And that means that we have to judge

Starting point is 00:23:23 the parts of some people that make us feel icky and make us feel bad to judge. And that means that we have to judge the parts of some people that make us feel icky and make us feel bad to judge. And sometimes that icky, bad, guilty feeling will lead you into facing your own trauma and therapy. Where you were afraid to go is where you were hurt before, and you need to go there if you're ever going to get better. Even if it happened a long, long time ago and you were four or you don't remember or you were 13, you still have to go back there if you want to change. And so that means that you have to judge even those that we love and even those that we would rather make excuses for. Even the parts of loved ones that we would rather not notice. If you can't discerningly notice where your children or your family are failing to grow

Starting point is 00:24:04 and be authentic, then maybe they have become an extension of your own ego in an unhealthy way. The people when you say, hey, your son did something wrong, your daughter did something wrong. Oh, no, I just think that you don't know. OK, you haven't even listened to what I said. You just heard that your child did something wrong and you've mistaken your child for yourself. So you're explaining how they can't do anything wrong. And guess what? Both of you can. If you find yourself saying things like, but she was from a different time, or, but, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:32 but you don't understand, or maybe if you, you know, took a long walk and got a connection or whatever. Yeah. You know, probably if everyone on earth sat down by the fire and had a long heart to heart, the world would look better and we'd get along. But that's not going to happen because there's billions of people. Is it true? Not. But maybe there's some hypothetical that could happen that would mean that everyone else might act that way in the same situation or would mean that maybe, you know, there could be a situation in the future that I could come up with in my head where like someone would change. Okay, great. Take a class on writing novels. Is what somebody said about this person true? Yes or no? Is it true? And if it's objectively true, you know, and given in earnest without judgment and you just can't

Starting point is 00:25:16 accept it, then that's your fault. And it's your failure to know who you are too. You know, how do we know the whole person honestly without noticing all their parts? Much of adult reality comes down to a simple binary. Would you rather live in denial of reality comfortably or would you rather live honestly, even if that causes you anxiety, that honesty? And it will. Joanne Terrell at UA, she taught me ethics and she was a really good teacher. And she said that, you know, if you feel certain about a choice you made in a really hard ethical

Starting point is 00:25:52 decision, you've made a mistake because we want to say, okay, here's the rules and the rules point me in this direction. And this is absolutely the truth, white and black. And that isn't life. You are always dealing with contradictory forces and you have to sit in that gray area. You have to sit in that anxiety if you're ever going to be honest. And that honesty will lead you to the best decision. You know, we would all prefer to live in the myopic comfort of childhood where everything that makes us feel bad is bad. You know, Scar and the Lion King, he made Simba feel bad because he was the bad guy.

Starting point is 00:26:28 I don't know the Frozen one. I know my daughter's watched it. What's another child movie? You know, the Ringwraiths want to take over the world and Sauron wants to kill all life on Earth. The things that make the main character feel bad are bad. But that's not adult life. In adult reality, some of the things that make you feel bad are just

Starting point is 00:26:46 things that are reminding you you don't know how to do everything yet and you're not perfect and you need to work on things. Some people's criticism will make you feel bad. And, you know, unfortunately, it's just not reality that everything that makes you feel bad is bad. Some of those things that make you feel bad are just invitations for you to grow up. And people may offer you that in a loving or an unloving way. One of the most frequent times that my patients tell me that they feel known and they feel loved and that they appreciate a moment of therapy is just when I point out that their self-deception is happening, that they're lying to themselves in a loving way, I point it out. Because I want them to feel both seen, honestly, and also known, that I know that that isn't who they are. It's just what they're choosing to do or what they're

Starting point is 00:27:34 doing right now. You need to make clear the difference between people's behavior and people's potential, you know, because they already feel like they are the behavior. That's why they don't want to look at it. And if you make them understand that they are their potential and their potential is solely up to them and whether or not they can ask and accept for help from themselves and others, you know, that's when there is change. So, you know, no one's flaws mean that they're undeserving of being loved. Not No one's. And it is that love that you use to invite your friends and family and patients to change when they're asking for it. self. You know, the places where parents failed us say nothing about us. More often, those are places where our parents stopped growing, and they refused criticism, and they could not heal past that point. And so they could not love the parts of themselves that is past the blank edge of the

Starting point is 00:28:36 map. And they refuse to chart the rest of the map, and they don't know who they are. And they couldn't love themselves in that space. So of course, they couldn't love themselves in that space so of course they couldn't love you and that is not your fault you know we have the tools that we find or that are given to us as we're growing up and some people are given very few tools because their parents didn't have a lot to give them you know parents can't always come with us or even understand the places that we're going but that doesn't make growing up a bad place to go. It's perfectly acceptable and adult to admit that there are bad parts of good people. One of the reasons I like depth psychology is that it frees us from, you know, in interpersonal relationships, it frees you from bad guys and good guys or people who are, you know, bad and written off and people I won't

Starting point is 00:29:23 listen to at all and then people who are perfect that't listen to at all. And then people who are perfect that I listen to a lot. There are parts of us, you know, we've talked a lot about that. And I like Jungian psychology and the post-Jungian stuff that came from it, like internal family systems and all that, because it breaks people into parts and that helps us understand who we are with more honesty. And so with something like depth psychology, you can understand, you know, I don't have to cancel grandpa at Thanksgiving or lie to myself about who parts of who he chooses to be and still chooses to be and will probably always choose to be are. You know, I can say that I like these things about this person. I like their soul and I know who they are. And there's a place where they're not

Starting point is 00:30:02 being honest and they're not being self-defeating. They're being self-defeating. They're running from who they are. They're being afraid and they're passing judgment in an insecure way. And I don't really like that part of him, but it's not my part to deal with. And it's not really my part to make him deal with unless he asked me for the help. And a lot of times when you're trying to find out if people want that help, you can just tell them how their behavior makes you feel. You know, when you do that, I kind of feel like I don't want to be around you because I just, I'm not able, you know, whatever it is, you know, and they can either attack you and say, well, that you should just get firm up and you're weak or that's outrageous. And then, you know, they don't want the help there. Or maybe they say, oh, I didn't

Starting point is 00:30:44 know I was doing that. And you've got your foot in the door. A lot of people ask for help, but they're not really asking for help. The person is just like, why would he do this? Well, I don't know because you set him up to and then you enabled him and then you, well, why would you say that to me? That person is asking you for help, but they're not really asking for help. And then there's other people who are just like,

Starting point is 00:31:05 I don't know why I feel this way. I mean, they're not saying help me, help me, but there's an openness to change. And I think that's what Adler means. He doesn't mean that you don't help anyone unless they walk up and say like, please, sir, may I have some help from you? He just means that you wait until people are open to growth and you continue to invite them there, but you can't force them there. You know, a long time ago, I had a patient in therapy and they told me, my boyfriend keeps cheating on me and I keep forgiving him. And I was like, well, could you not forgive your boyfriend? Like? Do you have the choice if he cheats on you to not forgive him? And they said, oh no, I couldn't do that.

Starting point is 00:31:48 I have to ignore the bad behavior and I have to take him back. Or I have to tell him I forgive him. And I told the person, you know, that's fine, but that is not what forgiveness is. That's just enabling because forgiveness is a choice. And if you can't not do it, then you're not doing something noble by doing it. You're just doing the only thing that you know how to do. You know, we should have grace and forgiveness for our own and others' mistakes. Judgment should not make you feel like a god by proxy. Forgiveness comes after honesty, though. You can't forgive me for the crime that I committed, and I'm still committing, and I plan on

Starting point is 00:32:29 continuing to commit, because I haven't asked for help yet. That's not how grace works. Continuing to let somebody off the hook for behavior they refuse to change might make us feel less icky, but it also means that we don't have integrity. The best predictor of future behavior is always going to be past behavior. And if I will not admit that I have a problem, then I likely am not going to change, and you are within your rights as an adult to point that out to me. When people make objective statements of fact about you or other people, then that cannot, by definition, be mean or hateful. Unless they're cherry picking something just to hurt somebody, people putting reality out doesn't have a morality. Reality is just what it is. And then we, with the limitations

Starting point is 00:33:21 of that, try and figure out how to act within those limitations. And that is morality. You know, objective statements are just true or false. They can't be mean and they can't be hateful. And, you know, it's true that when those statements are about patterns or projections from someone's psychology, that's threatening, but it's still real. That's the way that they think. It's the way that they have demonstrated that they think and likely will continue to. And so one of the places where I see, you know, people have the hardest time accepting reality is when people point out honestly and without judgment, you know, the patterns and the preferences with which a friend or family member thinks and everyone else gets angry. And that happens in family therapy or the people who don't want that redirected at them or would rather enable somebody, they get

Starting point is 00:34:08 mad because they don't want to admit that those patterns are real. And patterns are one of the easiest things to ignore because, yeah, they did it yesterday, they did it the week before, they did it the month before, they've done it every week. But how do you know they're going to act that way in the future? That's so arrogant of you. Well, it's not because the way that psychology works is through these patterns and preferences, you know, on a very base level. So the things that you do, the values that you identify with, they say something about you. How could they not? You know, we don't pick our theology. We don't pick our philosophies. We don't pick our politics. We don't pick our personal beliefs

Starting point is 00:34:41 randomly. We do that as a projection of our own psychology and our unresolved trauma. And you can't say, well, they were raised to or they were told to believe that or to let somebody off the hook. Because we have to be accountable for our own lives and the things that we do. And if there is an unhealthy, unconscious process in someone you love, then you're not being honest if you ignore it. You are enabling, and you're enabling yourself if you attack others that are simply pointing out facts that you want to ignore about other people. So if someone has become an extension of an unhealthy belief system, or if their actions become unhealthy because of something that they were told to believe, that is still absolutely that person's fault, and it is their responsibility to change it, because it can't be anyone else's responsibility. They are the only

Starting point is 00:35:29 one that can ask for help. They are the only one that can accept the help. They are the only one that can grow and change. No one else can do that for them. So who else's fault is that supposed to be? You know, our actions, our beliefs, our self-image, religious beliefs, you know, even or especially the modalities of therapy that different people pick, they're projections of our own psychology. You know, how could they not be? We pick them. If you're spinning your tires in the mud trying to justify intellectually something that you don't want to face emotionally, you're being avoidant and enabling. You know, these patterns are real. That's how I do my job. If you can't refute the truth of what someone challenging you is saying,

Starting point is 00:36:13 notice where your emotional self wants to say, yeah, but that's the beginning seed of avoidance that leads us to enable the brokenness of this world. It's what leads us to do and contribute to evil. And there are many more people It's what leads us to do and contribute to evil. And there are many more people, hundreds of people contributing to evil for every one person that actually does the material action. The other people are doing the avoidance that allows it to take place. So face this stuff. Watch your own reactions and notice where it is hard for you to not attack others when they state facts. That is where your psychology is still operating like a child's.

Starting point is 00:36:51 And if you hear yourself making excuses for someone, when someone points out something that is simply true, then it's time for that part of you to grow up. Fighting evil starts with your ability to look into your own eye. Most religious traditions, they start when they're trying to challenge the ego, and then later they're co-opted by those that want to enable the ego and the self image as it exists right now, not what it could be. So, you know, don't misuse your own spiritual or philosophical tradition to this end. Really don't abuse your psychotherapy modality to that end, but that's a whole nother conversation.

Starting point is 00:37:26 You know, in relationship counseling, the biggest predictor of success is not the size of the problem that the couple or the, you know, polycule or the family is facing. You'll see giant problems like drug addiction or serial adultery and that a couple heals from. And you'll also see small problems like avoidance and white lies that end a marriage. The biggest predictor of success is whether or not all parties are willing to accurately label the problem and agree that it should change. When you face your own shame, remember that it is not the size of the error, but the elaborateness of the defense mechanisms that you enable.

Starting point is 00:38:06 Evil is created when we rationalize and avoid labeling bad behavior so that we can insulate ourselves from the need to change. We all have the responsibility to change, and if someone willfully chooses to make themselves and the world a worse place, be honest about that fact. Defend their soul's potential, but not their behavior. Not even their behavior if it comes from trauma. And don't defend their refusal to actualize their potential. If somebody tells you not to speak ill of family or ill of the dead or, you know, a politician, a celebrity, tell them that you would rather be honest. If not authentic honesty, what else do we have?

Starting point is 00:38:45 You know, really, what other personal freedom do we have? They all start with that one. Maya Angelou was a wise woman, but when she said, when people tell you who you are, believe them, she was talking about challenging your ego and the manners and the traditions that you were told made you noble and good, so that when you saw somebody act against your values, you understood who they were and you just let yourself know that. But a lot of these quotes about psychology get co-opted on Instagram and used to defend bad behavior. And one of Maya Angelou's that gets misused is, people don't remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel. Some variation of that will pop up on your Instagram. If somebody doesn't remember anything that you said and they

Starting point is 00:39:32 think you are responsible for how they feel, they have a personality disorder. Write them off. Other people's emotional reactions to things that you didn't say because they can't remember are not your fault. Or things that you said as say because they can't remember are not your fault. Or things that you said as an objective statement that they turn into a subjective statement. That also is not your fault either. So stop quoting Maya Angelou on Instagram when you want other people to take responsibility for your emotion. Your emotional reality is your job. It is your job to remember and think about the points that others make, not to blame other people for how those points make you feel and then forget them. That is not what Maya Angelou

Starting point is 00:40:12 meant. That is how her quote is used all over the internet. You know, I know that trauma plays a part in our beliefs about ourself and what we do. I know that it informs religion and philosophy and taste and culture. And I know that there informs religion and philosophy and taste and culture. And I know that there are reasons that people make the choices that they do, but we are the ones responsible for our own life and development. Ultimately, our lives are the sum total of our own choices. And as a friend, as a family member, as a therapist, you are not doing anyone a favor by pretending that that is not the case. Patients know that on some level, before they come to see you, that they want to grow. Even if they fight you during the growth process, they know that.

Starting point is 00:40:50 And ultimately, patients will leave if you fail to point out as a therapist that their life is their job. People come to therapy for many reasons, but underneath all of those choices, we are really only ever making one choice. Do you go into the parts of yourself that you're afraid of? Do you face them? And do you grow and change? Faced with that choice directly, most people will choose to run. And I understand the tragedy of that, but that does not

Starting point is 00:41:18 make that decision or its consequences any less real. Most biographies are a tragedy, but that is not your fault. The only biography that you have control over is your own autobiography. Everyone has the ability to heal and change. You are not doing yourself or others any favors when you make excuses or make an argument that lack of growth is just part of someone's implicit nature. That's just how she is, or that's just how I am. No, it's not not that's just how you chose to behave and you can stop choosing to be that way if that makes you feel icky so sit with it and then go to therapy those people or you could change if you want to know you're

Starting point is 00:41:56 not doing them any favors by indulging the belief that they can't change and in order to make them feel better telling them that that's just part of their nature and that we're all built different and that this is just something that implicitly is who they are. It's not. It's a choice. And you change if you want to. Maybe they don't want to, but don't pretend that they can. The parts of ourselves that defeat our authentic self should make us feel bad. And in order to feel bad enough to change, we have to feel that anxiety. That's why things like aa say you have to

Starting point is 00:42:25 hit somebody you have to let somebody hit rock bottom because when there's nothing else that they can blame for their situation except themselves then they have to look inward and a lot of times substance abuse will take away the ability to look inward because everything is outward faced with this survival of i cannot feel good on the inside, so I have to look outside for something that makes me feel good. And a ton of the time, you don't have the option not to do that in substance abuse until there's just nothing left. And that's why that concept exists. You know, that anxiety that propels us towards change, if we don't ignore it, if we don't turn it off, if we don't drug it, eventually it will help us

Starting point is 00:43:05 grow. But don't do the enabling thing by turning that anxiety off by telling other people that it's fine when it's not fine. You know, the reason that people who hurt you did that was because they were afraid to face their own fears. Your only choice is to face your own fear. When you don't believe that you can change, then constructive criticism is an attack because all the intonations of what you could be are a reminder that that is not who you are right now. If this is all that I think I can be, then all I can take from the most constructive of criticism is that what I am is wrong. It is wrong because I was made to believe that what I am is all I can be.

Starting point is 00:43:46 In screenwriting, they have this concept that the antagonist cannot change. The protagonist changes, and the antagonist is somebody who gets stuck somewhere on the path to self-actualization, and they can't go past that point, so they try and stop other people who go past it or they attack them. The antagonist has no possibility of change. The shark from Jaws doesn't change. The alien from Alien doesn't change. The hitman in the country desert movie doesn't change. And as soon as they start looking inward, as soon as they start changing, then they are starting to become a co-protagonist in the movie. So, you know, when I start to change, I become the protagonist and everyone has that option. For real change to take place, the other party has to

Starting point is 00:44:33 understand themselves as a series of parts and decisions. You know, who they authentically are is not bad and they have to get that. Just because my behavior was bad does not mean that I am bad. Behavior is a choice and I can change. Most people will never know who they are, and that is a tragedy. They will never face the parts of themselves that they are afraid of, and in avoiding them, they will project them onto you and onto me. And this lack of self-awareness and self-discovery is a tragedy. You know, a tragedy that effective therapy, healthy spiritual practice, and loving families are seeking to remedy by expecting you to change and grow. If you refuse to change, then yeah, you are the bad guy. If someone chooses that, let that be their choice.

Starting point is 00:45:16 Let them be the antagonist. They could understand what you were saying if they wanted to understand themselves. You can absolutely invite people into growth and change in a loving way. Whether someone accepts that invitation is up to them. Their reaction says nothing about you. If you exist authentically with love and honesty, anyone's reaction to that is up to them. If they dislike your honesty, it is the same thing as somebody yelling at a mountain or a rainstorm. Maybe the weather or the terrain or honesty and convenience of somebody, but that is not your fault. That's just another part of reality that

Starting point is 00:45:51 is being itself. So don't let yourself feel guilty if they are angry that you are honest any more than you would if somebody was yelling at the rain. You are only an advocate on behalf of reality and you will not win every court case. Reality is just what it is, and we all choose how to cope with that. Do your own journey, and let others choose if they want to do theirs. Beneath all of our choices, that is really the only choice that we make. Face yourself, or die, never knowing what you are. Hey there, I hope you enjoyed the article. Like I said before, you can always get on the www.gittherapybirmingham.com website and subscribe to other podcasts.

Starting point is 00:46:57 Look at the blog. Not all of the blog posts are turned into articles. Look at some of our free worksheets, some interesting ones on Jungian psychology, dissociative identity disorder, lots of stuff. I know that most of you are not in the Birmingham area and this podcast has probably not helped me find any therapy patients, but that isn't the point. The point is that you can learn about this stuff and we can find people who are on the same pathway somewhere hopefully good but at least

Starting point is 00:47:26 honest so uh please check out the website and i am almost embarrassed to admit this but uh we just did a long show about honesty so um i don't really want to monetize the podcast uh or anything like that but uh so many of the patients who come to our clinic have asked where we get our furniture and then bought furniture from Kardiel. K-A-R-D-I-E-L. Kardiel Furniture Company does a bunch of reproductions of modernist period furniture and then some new modernist inspired stuff. So many patients asked where we got it and then bought it that Cardio made us a brand rep. So if you do want to buy Cardio furniture that does support taproot therapy,

Starting point is 00:48:15 you can use the promo code TAPROOT, all uppercase, I think, T-A-P-R-O-O-T. And you get 5% off. So if you want some modernist furniture and you're planning on buying furniture that you saw at our place, use the promo code TAPROOT to get 5% off at cardio.com. Thank you. And if you have any questions, send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you and signing off.

The Taproot Podcast - 😈Icky, Mean, Hateful: On the nature of evil in psychotherapy

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