The Taproot Podcast - 📚👶Interview with Psychotherapist Win Schepps on Why Children Need to Know it’s Ok to Cry

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

Source: https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-eajkz-... 🌟📚 Meet Win Scheppes: A Lifelong Friend, Mentor, and Dedicated Social Worker at 86! 🤝💼 Discover the inspiring story of Win Scheppes, a remarkable social worker who continues to make a difference in people's lives well into his 86th year. With unwavering passion, he exclaims, "I love doing therapy so damn much," showcasing his unrelenting commitment to his profession. For an incredible 57 years, he has served his community from his Homewood office, touching countless lives along the way. 🌟💙 But Win's journey doesn't end there! Recently, he accomplished a lifelong dream by publishing a heartwarming children's book. This touching work aims to convey an essential message to children: It's okay to cry. Through his book, Win aspires to provide comfort and understanding to young readers, fostering emotional well-being and resilience. Join the local Alabama community in celebrating Win Scheppes as he embarks on a new chapter as an esteemed author. 📖🌈 If you're curious to explore Win's incredible book, check it out here: 👉📚 https://www.amazon.com/-/zh_TW/Winsto... Witness the power of compassion and the indomitable spirit of an extraordinary individual dedicated to making the world a better place, one therapy session and one page at a time. 🌟🌍💕 👴🧡 #WinScheppes #LifelongFriend #InspiringMentor 🤝💼 #DedicatedSocialWorker #TherapyPassion #CommunityImpact 📚🌈 #ChildrensBook #EmotionalWellBeing #Resilience 🌟💙 #AlabamaAuthor #DreamRealized #BookPublication      Find more at: Taproot Therapy Collective Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Address: 2025 Shady Crest Dr 2nd Floor Hoover, AL 35216 Email: [e-mail] Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/cnverPNUPuxiPkbc8 Podcast: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.... Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]   https://gettherapybirmingham.com https://www.amazon.com/-/zh_TW/Winston-Schepps/dp/1098302710   Read More at https://gettherapybirmingham.com/blog/   Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

all right so this is Joel Blackstock with the taproot therapy collective podcast and I'm here with Wynne Schepps who has been a therapist for how long 57 years 57 years and they're going to keep me until I learn to do it right and Wynne taught me Sunday school my son is also named after him and he was the first social worker and therapist that I encountered as a kid. And I stayed consistently interested in what he did until I became a therapist myself. And so Wynn is 86 this year and still working. Four days a week. You've got to learn to save so you can retire.

Yes. I want to get Rich Lockett out and retire. Wynn loves it a lot. Yes. I want to get Rich Lockett out and retire. Wynn loves it a lot. Yes, I do. I love what I do. I don't have to work anymore. I just love working so damn much. I love what I do. So, Wynn has a children's book that we'll get to at the end that he wrote,

but I think, like a lot of therapists, there's kind of a lot of pain in his story, and his story has always been really compelling to me. So, if you want to, we can just kind of a lot of pain in his story and his story has always been really compelling to me so if you want to we can just kind of start at the beginning of your life and go through your career because you've seen a ton of history too

I mean like the profession you were trained psychoanalytically you're like doing therapy in the beginning psychoanalytically no I have a masters from NYU in psychiatric social work okay but you were in psychoanalysis and the supervisor I was in psychotherapy Analytically, no. I have a master's from NYU in psychiatric social work. Okay. But you were in psychoanalysis and the supervisor... I was in psychotherapy.

I've never been in psychoanalysis. Okay. But there was a lot more Freudian stuff in the water, you know, pre-1980. The cognitive revolution comes in and CBT becomes real big. But you've just seen a ton of history. You've seen the profession change. Yes, I have. So, I guess, where do you want to start?

I mean, do you feel comfortable telling us a little bit about the early, the beginning of your life? Yeah, sure. I was born and raised in Ohio. I'm the second of two children. I have an older brother four or five years older than me. I pretty much

always felt he was more okay than I was. Maybe a part of that comes from the theory that the first child is more like the more dominant parent, and the second child is more like the other parent. I was always more like my mother, and my older brother was more like dad. I didn't really know my dad because he was training to go overseas as a part of World War II. In fact, his plane crashed in Presquick, Scotland, when he was flying over to lead an armored infantry unit under General Patton shortly after D-Day. I was seven or eight years old.

I remember faking crying when the telegram came that the dad had died because everyone else was crying. I didn't really know the man, so I thought in order to be a part of the family, I should probably cry too. The family moved to Hollywood because I had taken tap dancing for about four or five years, and I found out later in my therapy that I may have been living my mother's script

because she had been a frustrated actress. Please feel free to interrupt at any point in order to expand y'all. I'm proud to say that I even tried out for the part of the only white boy tap dancer in the movie Singing in the Rain.

But I wasn't cute enough or I didn't dance good enough. So that was about the point my mother developed breast cancer, which she testicized. In the early 40s, the only treatment for breast cancer was mustard gas. She received mustard gas treatment, but she died when I was 11. I remember being very critical of myself when I was standing outside of mom's room because I thought I needed to tell her goodbye

but I couldn't and as a therapist I've learned I couldn't say goodbye because that would have confirmed she was dying and as an 11 year old I could not accept she was dying she died when I was 11 I began to stutter at that

point trying too hard to be perfect. I'm not sure why, except I do feel the stuttering is trying to avoid stuttering. And in my own talking therapy, I've had, I've probably had five or six different therapists. I probably had 500 to 1,000 hours of therapy

to get me to my present level of security. I moved in with my aunt and uncle. My brother stayed in Hollywood to finish high school. I was raised by another West Point graduate. My father was a West Point graduate. My brother moved into a different home when we were 11. And so I really, in essence, lost my entire nuclear family. I thought I should become perfect for fear my aunt and uncle might kick me out.

So when we went to my mother's funeral, my aunt told me not to cry. Your mom wouldn't want you to. Thus, the book, 80 years later. Yeah, you've told me long before the book existed, 20 years before the book existed, Wynne had always told me that one of his biggest goals in life was to write a children's book convincing children that it was okay to cry. So it's been a long time coming to write your book. Hell of a long time, yes.

I was raised by my aunt and uncle. I was never ordered to go to West Point, but I was told since we didn't have any money, West Point is free. I could get a very fine education. West Point being the military army academy, if anyone's understood. The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. But West Point's army, right? Yes. What's the Navy in Annapolis?

The Navy is Annapolis. And then what's the, is it the Air Force Academy? The Air Force is in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It's the Air Force Academy. Why Army as opposed to another branch? Because my father, uncle, and brother had all gone to West Point. Okay. And I was living my family script, S-C-R-I-P-T.

My family script. I didn't cry. I didn't get angry. I did have the courage many years later to tell my uncle that when I was angry, I bore holes in his floor. Because my talking therapy that I did helped me know it's okay to feel what you feel. In fact, one of the theories that I've held to, Joel, is that if you're not psychotic or have a brain tumor, you can't feel anything wrong. So therapy has really helped me and being a therapist I feel a lot of people I know, if not most therapists, are people who have had

therapy and people who are trying to be helpful to others as a way of being helpful to themselves. So having a lot of pressure to go to West Point, a free education, in fact you get paid for going to the Academy. I go to West Point, a free education. In fact, you get paid for going to the academy. I went to West Point. I graduated in 1959. I did infantry airborne school because my brother, who was a West Pointer also, told me that I should.

Should is a word that I believe comes from the critical parent ego state, not the nurturing parent ego state, by the way, for the record. So, I served my three years. I called my uncle, Colonel McGee, who was in charge of the military part of President Roosevelt's funeral, and told him I was going to resign my commission

and go into psychiatric social work. My uncle's words, quote, You'll be poor. You'll be poor, Winnie. All you got to do is serve 13 more years. And I had found the courage in my own therapy to say, Judson, this feels like it's terribly important for me to do, to help others and in the process help myself.

But Winnie, you'll be poor. So I called my older brother, who at a certain point the audience may remember, and he said, go for it. I could cry saying that. And if my first book does well, I'm going to write another book called Go For It, and dedicate it to my older brother.

So I did go for it. I got out of the military. I called Adelphi and said, I'm ready to enter graduate school. And they said, it don't work that way, Sheps. You have to give us a transcript, et cetera, et cetera. So I got a job at a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed Jewish children and began to learn about the field of being a therapist and as a way of getting to know my father's faith because he had been Jewish.

I did enter NYU even though Columbia turned me down because my grades at West Point were just terrible. And I took a test to prove I was not an idiot. I got into NYU. I got a master's in psychiatric social work in 1965 during which time I had been coming to Birmingham to visit an Army friend of mine, and he had introduced me to a lady named Michael Kay. And that part of my life became history, because I did come back to Birmingham to work for the Department of Psychiatry, and we dated some more and I found the belief in my own therapy first psychiatrist, first counselor I saw that I was lovable as I was

to include all my feelings if you're not psychotic or don't have a brain tumor you can't feel anything wrong so we had a wonderful 47 year marriage she developed cancer of the ovaries shortly after we got married and almost died but she got cured so we have adopted children and other than those rare times I could have killed them

and no jury in the world would have put me in jail I wouldn't change a thing Warren Scott are the loves of my life since I lost my life about 10 years ago to, unfortunately, cancer. So, I developed a practice in psychotherapy. I've seen, as I said earlier, 5 to 10 different therapists who have helped me know that I am okay, my feelings are okay. And I started writing a book in my head. Is it okay to cry because of my aunt

because of my aunt telling me my mom wouldn't want me to cry at the funeral. So I began writing a book in my head and I re-met a very dear friend that I had met the summer that I met my wife while we were still dating, who basically told me I didn't have any guts if I didn't publish this book. And it sounded wonderful for her. And I thought about what she said, and I thought, that's right, and the book might really help a lot of people because family scripts tend to teach boys don't get sad and girls don't cry. That's ridiculous. If you're not a psychotic or don't have a brain tumor, you can't feel anything

wrong. And in my own personal therapy with other therapists and my own practice as a psychotherapist, I learned that's a good thinking that I could share with the world in a book. So the book became Is It Okay to Cry? Dedicated to my friend, Pugs Douglas. I couldn't find a publisher who wanted to publish it. So I paid to have it published. And I'm very proud to say that I do feel that that dream of mine has been

fulfilled so you've been in therapy a long time the styles of therapy you're in are they similar do you notice like a change in things over time you know having been a patient and a provider you know for how many

years? 57 years. Yes, I've learned there are other styles, but the other styles are not right for me. Or I'm an old farger who doesn't want to change. I'm not sure, Joel. So you were a cognitive behavioral therapist, mostly? I do some CBT. I do some gestalt work.

I do some CBT. I do some gestalt work. I do some psychodrama. I like role play. But I mainly like talking because my talking therapy has helped me learn that when I lost everybody, I became what anyone else wanted me to be. I lost me. And in the last 20, 25 years, I have reclaimed me. And that feels absolutely wonderful. So I've continued doing talking work. I don't do EMDR. I don't do brain spotting.

You obviously do that wonderfully. But those things are not right for me to do as an untrained person. Sure. Yeah. And when there's also like, it seems like there's always been a three line of like a lot of the humanitarian, like Virginia Satir type stuff

and what you've described your conceptualizations. Did you know Satir or go train with her? I once entertained her, as a matter of fact, in my home. Oh, really? I did not know that. Lovely, lovely lady. I do a lot of grief work because I've had a lot of grief in my own life and I do cry with clients when I feel like crying. She was a wonderful lady. She did wonderful wonderful grief work. She did wonderful book work. Rest her soul. So you're getting integrated then. I mean, there's a lot.

I know about the way that you talk about cases because I've heard about it since Sunday school. You'd even bring cases in when I was in sixth grade sometimes. Without mentioning names. Without mentioning names, of course, yeah. No identifiable information. So I have a sense of how you think. I'm just curious how you got there, what you're putting together. And that makes sense that there's some gestalt and CBT and the kind of humanism, human potential, Virginia Satir stuff.

But it does seem like there is some more psychoanalytic concepts come up when you're talking and with most providers that I talk to. I mean, is that just more in the water in the 60s? Do you think everybody got a little bit of that? More in the water. Yeah. I learned at NYU humans are the only animal that spent 18 years at home the 60s you think everybody got a little bit of that more in the water yeah i learned that nyu humans are the only animal that spent 18 years at home and the next 40 getting over it

men tend to live through their male children men men tend to have the highest expectation for their for their oldest son and i'm very pleased to say that i and my son are doing so much better even kissing when um i learned to lower my expectations for him i'm okay because i'm okay not because i have a perfect son you know i think that is one of the biggest things that gets the unlived life of the parent out of the way is if you can just not make your kids be an extension of your ego and just let them be who they are supposed to be because who they are supposed to be is pretty cool

one of the other things I learned and you may remember seeing this in Walmart people don't remember what you did for them people remember how you made them feel and I've always been more sensitive than my older brother because he was more like dad and I was more like mom.

So I try to practice sensitivity with my clients and help them know that they can pretty much be anything they want to be. So I got a job as a psychiatric social worker at UAB right out of school and I called you to tell you about it and you said, oh, I got a job

at UAB as a psychiatric social worker in, what, 1962? What was it? 1965. And you said you were making

$6,000. $6,000. A loaf of bread costs $5,000. Well, it does now. And then you said once you had your first supervision session, it was interrupted. Can you tell that story?

Yes, I can. It was 19... I forget the year. I was meeting with my supervisor while I was doing the field placement with retarded adults. At least that was the word that was used in those days, retarded. They're trying to retire that now. They wanted to have the...

Now we say downs and other things like that. And someone came to the door, and Murray Iskowitz, my supervisor, said, they know better than to interrupt me when I'm in supervision. This better be important. And someone came to the door and said, President Kennedy has been shot. It's a ton of history. So supervision ended. But the most powerful thing that came out of that gift,

since Kennedy had been like a father figure to me, was that night I had a dream, not a nightmare, that my father was in a casket in the White House and sat up to tell me goodbye. Because I never really said goodbye to my father, feeling tears in my voice now. Looking at my book, is it okay to cry? Yes, it's okay to cry. And so I had a chance to tell him goodbye. And as a matter of fact, me and my son will be going to New York and I'll be

taking flowers to my parents grave in about a month. Wow and you had told me a story about one time too after a lot of therapy you know you felt resolved and somebody maybe Sandy said that they they said why don't you try this gestalt chair work and why don't you talk to mom in this chair can you tell that story? Yes, I can. Sandy being Sandy Ash, one of my dearest friends in the world who I'm now practicing with also. And I had a dear

friend, Sue Brownell, who asked me if I'd be willing to meet my deceased mother and talk with her. And I said yes. And she said, who would you like to play your mother? And I said you. And we pulled two chairs to the middle of the room. And she looked at me with all the love Sue always felt,. And before I became aware of it, Joel, my primal scream screamed, Why did you leave me?

And I cried for like 15 minutes. And there was something that I needed to say. And we did work through that it wasn't her fault she had died. And that she loved me. And that I was okay.

So I like two chair work. I like distraught work. I like psychodrama work. But that was a very powerful experience that helped me know it's okay to feel what you feel. I got angry and I cried. I think sometimes we forget what we feel because we know too much to let ourselves feel it. You know, we do all this analysis. Well said.

You ever thought of being a psychotherapist? I'm working on it. But, you know, we know all this stuff and we've analyzed our past and we know all these patterns and we have all this cognitive intellectual work. But we forget to just let go and feel what is beneath the surface and to get it out. And I think you were good at that, you know, using talk therapy to build a gateway to the felt experience, which is important. I mean, I would say it's the point. Thank you very much. You know, one of the things that's always struck me about you, I'm remembering like when we were in, what do they call it, Grand Rounds or Schwartz Rounds at UAB.

There's an auditorium of several thousand people and it's not really something that's supposed to be call and response and like your hand would go up and you would scream over the whole auditorium and the doctor would be like oh I guess we have a question you know is that you refuse to not speak when you feel something and I think that's really powerful you know like there's never a time where you don't where you feel insecure saying anything you know almost to a compulsion. And I wonder, you know, how much of that comes from being a kid that wasn't allowed to say what they felt or didn't even maybe know what you felt because there was no room for it. It's something you just refuse to be, you know, turned off now.

I can remember when my older brother came back from West Point. I was having a problem talking on the phone, and I wasn't able to say hello, and it came out for the audience's concern. And my brother yelled at me, God damn it, can't you even say hello? I believe stuttering is trying to avoid stuttering. And I can remember asking one of the therapists we saw

when my daughter became depressed, finding out that her boyfriend, that she was not his only girlfriend. And we entered family therapy. And I asked the therapist, how can I help my son through his phase stuttering? And he said, don't focus on it. He's not stuttering. He's just talking as well as he can and so are you so i found the courage center speech therapy because i am a stutterer and when i was asked to give a talk in this room i turned it down because quote i'm a stutterer unquote but then i found the courage several days later to call her back and say, I'd like to do the

talk. And I am very proud to say that I found the courage to enter speech therapy too and get to my present level of fluency. Stuttering is an interesting kind of extended metaphor. I've worked with a couple people that have that and it seems like there's this intense energy to need to say something and be heard and also this fear of saying something and being heard and getting it wrong and getting in trouble. Well said, I like that. Bumping up against each other at the same time so, you know, the speech stopped, you know, two conflicting energies. Well, I mean, I think it's interesting, you know, that you have talked kind of about the parental energy, you know, throughout your life and all the things that you bring that kind of culminate with you writing this book. Do you have anything to say about the book?

We have it in the Taproot waiting room. A lot of people have read it. And it's on Amazon, I'm proud to say. Is it okay to cry by Winschaps? And it's about a dog? You don't want to spoil the book, but do you have anything that you want to say? It's about a puppy who's afraid to cry when his mother dies because he remembers that his father once called him a crybaby.

And it's the journey of the puppy, whether he can find the courage to cry at his mother's funeral because he knows that his father dog will be there at his mother's funeral. And one of the things in the book I would like to read, as a matter of fact, says, At age 11, Wynne was orphaned, and at his mother's funeral was told by a family member that his mom wouldn't want him to cry.

Thus this book, and ultimately his mother's funeral was told by a family member that his mom wouldn't want him to cry. Thus this book, and ultimately his career, helping folks know that owning and sharing their feelings is an important part of loving oneself. And, emphasis on the word and, loving yourself is a huge part of overcoming psychopathology. Well, that's beautiful, Wynn. Do you have anything else that you want to plug or say? The book is available on Amazon. It is in a catered cry by one chef. If you're a taproot patient, you can also check it out in our waiting room.

Is there anything else you'd like to say or encourage people to look up? Have the courage to enter therapy if you feel the need to find someone with whom you feel safe that you can tell anything who can help you identify the psychogenesis psychiatric origin of the issue you are facing because as a child you learned what was and wasn't okay and you learned there was no other place to live, therefore you should probably conform to what mom and dad say. Isn't it funny that Christians raise Christian children? Mormons raise Mormon children. Jews raise Jewish children.

And isn't it wonderful to know that it's okay to be you, even though I am proud to have gone to West Point, that it was okay to live my script practicing psychotherapy. So please, don't be afraid to see a therapist or a priest or a counselor

in terms of overcoming scripts you may have learned. Girls shouldn't get angry. Boys shouldn't cry. That kind of thing. I'm working with a client who was ordered to strangle a puppy to death with her mother's gun sitting in the middle of the bed,

which mom did every time they would sit down and talk. And therapy is helping her know that it's okay to be soft. You don't have to show power in order to be okay. So I still practice because I love practicing therapy and may always will. Well, that's beautiful. And thank you. Thank you for sitting down with us. And please check out Lynn's book. And this is the Taproot Therapy Podcast. We'll have a link to the book in the show notes and also on a blog post on GetTherapyBirmingham.com if anyone wants to pick that up.

Thank you so much for listening today. Thank you.