Head Inside
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and mental health professional hosts #Head-Inside formerly Mental Health Matters. Interviewing doctors and therapists, treatment professionals, organizational leaders, and other members of the mental health community about the importance of mental health awareness, treatment and the future of addressing mental health in the US. Discussing trends in the field and how to support mental health in our communities from hospitals to the dinner table.
Head Inside
The Pitfalls of Pop Psychology with John Egan
Explore the societal underpinnings of pop psychology with us as we tackle the overuse and misunderstandings of terms like gaslighting and narcissism, particularly within the recovery community. Join us as we welcome back John Egan, Director of Business Development at Futures Recovery Healthcare, who shares his valuable insights and experiences as a therapist. Together, we navigate the delicate balance between sensitivity and the necessary discomfort for genuine personal growth, acknowledging that recovery is seldom a smooth journey.
Our conversation also highlights therapeutic processes like exposure therapy and emotional regulation, illustrating these concepts with real-life examples from residential treatment centers. By drawing parallels to societal issues such as political sound bites, we underscore the significance of real dialogue over mere confrontation.
Arriving in our conversation at the power of personal transformation, focusing on personal power over referent power; power by association. Societal pressures and pop psychology often push us toward external blame or validation, yet true growth demands introspection and accountability. Through the metaphor of climbing a mountain, we convey that the true beauty of achievement lies not in shortcuts, but in the effort and growth experienced along the journey. We also reflect on the complexities of human emotions, emphasizing empathy and self-reflection as key to fostering more compassionate interactions with others.
Hello folks, welcome once again to Mental Health Matters on WPBM 1037, the voice of Asheville. I am Todd Weatherly, your host behavioral health expert and therapeutic consultant, and you know I'm happy that somebody decided to not only be a guest on my show but then also felt like it was worth returning. My friend and colleague, mr John Egan, is joining me today. He's been on the show before. He's the Director of Business Development with Futures Recovery Healthcare Futures. Welcome John to the team in 2019,. Having worked in the field of substance use disorder treatment since 2009 in many capacities, he adds tremendous energy and value to the strategic business development team and reinforces the team's passion for helping others, alongside the responsibility of cultivating and maintaining relationships. John graduated from Loyola University in 1998 and received his master's in social work from Widener University in your Philadelphia, pa. John was recognized by the Karen Foundation as an unsung hero in the field of substance use disorder treatment in 2017. John is proud of his own journey in recovery and has been sober since August 16, 2007. Congratulations, john.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:John attempts to be of maximum service to all individuals and families seeking recovery. John lives with his wife and family in West Palm, where he's deeply involved in the recovery community, also enjoys snorkeling beaches and cooking and working out and playing with his dog and the Villanova Wildcats, of course. John, thank you so much and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, todd, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:And you know the reason, not that I wouldn't want you on the show for any good reason. You have many, many insights to offer and lots of. I remember our conversation about your recovery journey when we were on the show the first time. But you know you, uh, and you've been doing this for a while. I've known you for gosh, I we're pushing. We're over five years, we're pushing on a decade now, somewhere close to that, and every once in a while you'll send me your thought pieces and articles, and sometimes you'll post them to LinkedIn or you'll push them out to the therapeutic community. And this time you sent me one like hey, what do you think about this? And I said, oh man, you know, because I really love this, and it was titled pop psychology, which I thought was great, but the thing that you were focusing on was, you know this, what we're seeing now is this overemphasis on gaslighting and narcissism, trigger warnings and overprotection and, you know, basically balancing sensitivity and recovery in this place where people can do real growth, because real growth is not comfortable, as we both know.
Speaker 1:This topic has been big on my list with several of the interviews that I've had in the last year, because it's not only something that I think kind of we see in greater society, we see in recovery communities, but we see it with therapists and therapeutic professionals where, you know, we get so mixed up into the sensitivity of our language and what we call somebody and everything else that all of a sudden we're not recognizing that, look, there's work to be done here. A person never gets the guarantee that they get to be comfortable all the time. In fact, that's not a very good way to live. It's not a balanced way to live. And what made you write this article first of all, what brought you to sending it, writing it and sending it to me?
Speaker 2:I remember exactly where I was. So I've been as you know. I started in this field and wore many hats, but when I got into the clinical realm, I've always kept even so. I used to be a primary therapist and my passion is always there. I think we've talked about Ikigai, the four interlocking circles of what you're good at, what you're passionate about, what the world needs and what you get paid for.
Speaker 2:And if I could find my sweet spot you know, the japanese coined this term ikigai which is basically when you wake up and you've never worked a day in your life because you love what you do um, that would be group facilitation. I, I thrive. I don't know if it's my extroverted personality and the fact that maybe I'm a middle child and attention, see, I don't know what it is. Maybe we won't pathologize myself, but I've always enjoyed the group dynamic versus the individual dynamic. Just some, some therapists love individual therapy. I just love group therapy. Even if you have a group of six, as soon as one leaves and one comes in, it's a whole other experience, just of the power of that Absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's a dynamic right.
Speaker 2:So I was in and I was in this group and there were 12 people in the group, which I think that's pretty much a good max size before you start to lose sensibility. But in this group we were discussing I forget the topic we were discussing about but one of the female clients says, well, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop my narcissistic husband and I let it go through that. And the next person that shared said well, my husband would give you a run for your money because he's the biggest narcissist. And after the whole, all the group members had shared, 11 of the 12 were married to narcissists, including some male clients married to female narcissists.
Speaker 2:Right, I just did it, I just did the air quote and in my head I was like, well, I'm either in the matrix or this is mathematically almost impossible that every single person is married to a narcissist. And I started to realize that, you know, and I started like just to keep in my ears peeled for these terms, these actual psychological concepts that absolutely exist in the world but have now become so mainstream through Tik TOK and you know you're you're flying through reels of Instagram or Facebook however you're getting your news and I see now that it has become almost like this, abnormal psychology is now normalized.
Speaker 2:And so then it would, I mean, if everybody's married to a narcissist, that wouldn't be abnormal, that would just be normal. But I, just in my heart, I was like there's no way this could possibly be happening. So I started to think about all the other things I started to hear, and you know, it's always if you, I say always the prevalence of, if people disagree with someone, they're being gaslit the, the inherent selfishness of humankind, right? Whether you know the Hobbesian or the, I forget the other onesness of humankind, right, whether the Hobbesian or the, I forget the other one.
Speaker 2:There's philosophers some think that we're inherently good, some think we're inherently bad, and then I think that humans are both. But humans are by nature selfish to suffice their own needs right before becoming we're also communal. Their own needs right before becoming we're also communal. And so when did it become from like people acting selfishly to if I do something selfish, I'm a narcissist, right, and I'm I'm, and so, um, then the other thing is in working in the field, and you know, futures is a trauma-informed facility with multiple modalities of approaches to treat trauma, but that word even of itself yeah I'm not a.
Speaker 2:I'm a social worker, so I've never actually been a fan of when people are like oh, this is big t trauma versus little t trauma.
Speaker 1:I try to define that, of course, right right, I love gabor montes.
Speaker 2:He just said it's basically trauma right it's, it's a wound Right, so none. And I hope, while we go through this, that what I want to kind of overarch is that, yes, there are narcissists out there and yes, gaslighting it's not a psychological term, it's from an old movie like that actually happens, this kind of manipulation of coercion of language to make you kind of question your sanity.
Speaker 1:Did I say that? Did I say that, yeah, that's about right that there is absolute trauma out there.
Speaker 2:If we understand that it's out there, not everybody has it then, and so I wrote this thought piece kind of with that in mind, to kind of say, hey, I think we maybe went a little too far, whereas people that have not gone and gotten there whether it's some sort of education and from a higher learning institution or under a board of licensure maybe we have to just be very, we have to pull the reins back before kind of throwing out these psychological concepts, because if you use it in the masses it loses its value anyway.
Speaker 1:That's kind of that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I remember exactly it was 11 out of 12 had been married to narcissists.
Speaker 1:And I was like eh, so what do you think it's about, like, besides the fact I mean, clearly people will take something that gets used, they'll grab onto the language, they'll make the term something that's relatable to themselves, whether it's accurate or not, and then you know that just compounds, that effect compounds across social environments. So we end up with this. Everybody you know gaslighting being overused and poorly defined. Or narcissism, or personality disorder well, it's everywhere. That's not true. There's more to this than just a simple term and even psychology. Even when you have someone who is, say, could be diagnosed with such a condition, even then there's a lot of nuance and subtlety and clinical sophistication that goes into into creating that definition. So it's, it can't just be housed in a word anyway yeah what do you?
Speaker 1:where are we going like? What is it that society is trying to accomplish? What's the wound they're addressing? What's the what's the what's, the need that they have, they're trying to fill by using this language. Do you think?
Speaker 2:maybe it's the um the water concept. Like water will always find its easiest path maybe it's just we're trying to simplify things to make it more for an understanding, but that oversimplification takes away from the complicated concepts that we're trying to relate.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like me trying to tell you what quantum mechanics is in one sentence. It's more than that.
Speaker 1:It might take us a minute. It should right, it should. And we're going to talk about quantum mechanics. Let's give it its due. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:We might need that second episode, you, me and.
Speaker 1:Schrodinger, we're going to sit down. Well, and I think it's a little bit of taking power back. You know, if a person feels and I'm not saying it's necessarily healthy or in balance, I think if a person feels in position by by something you know, the, the behavior of their partner or the behavior of their boss, or you know somebody is, should they're meeting, they got a rub, there's a rub going on in their world somewhere and I can, I can be like you know, I can take this big finger and throw it over at that person's, like that person's of this it's pejorative term, it's negative, or you're gaslighting me now.
Speaker 1:Now we're getting into the realm of the of 10 common fallacies used in arguments and it's like these are these are poor arguments being made against someone in the equation, and they are. Then you've got to like to come off of. If you were a person, you were arguing with me and you said automatically you're gaslighting me. One we've thrown all the content of the argument out the window, first of all, so there's no. And two, we've stopped having a conversation, and whether it was one before that or not, I don't know, but whatever conversation there was available, we've stopped the conversation. We've thrown out this disparaging remark.
Speaker 1:We've taken all the power that is inherent in, whatever it is, the outcome we're trying to arrive at in relationship with this person, and maybe that person's got some amount of power over me and I'm trying to take this power back and I'm trying to shift away from things, especially if it's being done inaccurately and in a way that is distracting or tries to take away from the topic. Let's say, you're an employer and I know that you are and you've got an employee and they've got some poor forward stuff. We've got to talk about this, we've got to have a conversation. You are and you've got an employee and they've got some port forward stuff. We've got to talk about this, we've got to have a conversation about it and in the midst of this conversation it's like you're gaslighting me, that's right.
Speaker 1:They're trying to keep the visibility off of their behavior, throw the conversation off, put it back on you, make you feel threatened and then, all of a sudden, I think you're hitting a nail on the head and it's also um well, we'll see where this goes.
Speaker 2:Um, I couldn't help but think that. Uh, you know, last month we had this election and the start. We stopped listening to each other yeah you know, it became a little sound. It was these quick little sound bites, right, and what? What stinks is is when we get into this power struggle of I'm gonna win this argument or win this situation, or win this experience, first of all, the ears shut down.
Speaker 1:It's tactics, not dialogue, that's right.
Speaker 2:But that's where it gets really problematic, because no one's even listening then to come to a solution. It's just almost you are trying to hurt me and I'm just going to throw this out there to win, but in the end nobody wins me and I'm just going to throw this out there to win yeah. But in the end nobody wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a gladiator arena, you know what I mean, like whoever the guy is standing in the middle. At the end you know yay, and the game's over. And then you know next week there's another event. You know that guy's just another guy in the crowd. Next week there's another event and you know that guy's just another guy in the crowd. It it's this never ending cycle and it it prevents us from having conversations with one another.
Speaker 2:Of course, and I think that my, my passion for why this is is because I I work in an inpatient residential program and so the clientele that I treat or that we treat at futures, first they come in raw, they come in hurting their family systems. If it's usually like it's, it's not a good, it's not a good situation usually, um and so if I immediately go in and come in this defensive posture, um, how are we ever going to get well?
Speaker 2:because I think all, all therapy. I'm trying to think if there's any therapy that's not exposure therapy.
Speaker 1:On some level.
Speaker 2:Right, just a little bit of discomfort in order to grow past, whether an old belief, an old thought yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be I'm afraid of elevators and we go jump in an elevator. But you know, to actually get over that, I'm first maybe going to show you a picture of an elevator before I take you to the elevator, and maybe we walk towards the elevator versus getting in. So all type of phobias or any type of therapy around that is going to be some sort of exposure. Even when we're doing, you know, trauma treatment. We're going to have to kind of go back to that moment.
Speaker 1:And sometimes you're even having to do before you can even do that work. You're having to teach the person how to regulate first. They have to get stable enough so that they learn how to regulate before they can go start even looking at that content. Because without this capacity to regulate, digging into trauma can just be either re-traumatizing or you just never really get anywhere because you're too busy perseverating on the content. And so I think that you work and you do live, ultimately, in a residential treatment center. A lot of your life is spent there. As much of your life as you spend in bed and with your family is spent with the people who do treatment and that sort of thing, Our work lives and our home lives.
Speaker 1:I think you do a pretty good job balancing, but I know you spend a lot of time, Whereas out in the world the parameters are not the same. We're not necessarily required to do work. We're not necessarily required to engage in relationship that is of depth or to kind of or to a large extent. I think this is the big one. Take accountability for what I am in this situation.
Speaker 1:And even even if you're working. You know, for me and I think you probably echo this if I find myself in a situation or in a relationship with a person where it really doesn't work, it's not a match and there's a lot of butting heads or whatever else I'm like. Why am I in this? What about me called this experience to my life? Why am I bumping up against these conflicts? What is it that has caused me? Obviously I must have needed to bring them to my visibility again, right? Um, because I've I've failed to recognize something or I failed to work something. So it's not to say that people aren't responsible for their behavior. They are. But I have a lot more power and control over where I'm responsible for something and what I can do differently about it than I am with other, expecting other people to behave differently.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and I prefer that I think when we I think last time we spoke and I think I've been, uh, pretty transparent about my journey, but when you were sharing that, it brought up a lot of like. So I'm in a journey of wellness and I have to be accountable and responsible for my actions in order for me to have sustained wellness. It's just, I believe that wholeheartedly, I cannot play the victim role in recovery. Personally I just can't. And so it brought to mind when I was doing the intensive work in my own journey I came to a spot where I was looking at all my resentments in my life and there was this pattern.
Speaker 2:There's this pattern of ex-partners right, and for the sake of their anonymity we'll just use generic names of who they were, but say it's Judy, paula, barbara, amy and Helen. Right, and in the victim mentality, there's one thing that those five women had in common and they all cheated on me, all of them, they all went outside our committed relationship and felt I had that sense of betrayal. Right, and once again, I'm not here to minimize that traumatic, how traumatizing that is when your sense of safety is ripped apart from you because that relationship was so dear. But now I have five experiences and if I was in this, what we're talking, this pop psychology I'm traumatized and I can never be in another relationship because no woman can be trusted, because they all cheat right, these narcissistic women.
Speaker 1:Ladder of inference right, these narcissistic women, Ladder of imprints right, right Now.
Speaker 2:Would you like to Todd, being the clinical man that you are, would you like to possibly guess as to one other thing they have in common?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, when you look at all the problems in your life, the one common thing that you can find in all those scenarios is you.
Speaker 2:Me. And so the reason I share that and I say that with Jess now is that maybe, just maybe, I'm not as dateable as I think I am and maybe, just maybe me leaving each of them to go find cocaine at 2 am in the morning was their sense of betrayal and like. So maybe I actually have mistakes and faults of my own in this relationship that led but in this victim mentality I can never, I would never, I would have blinders to that Right, because I'm the consummate victim and how dare they treat me like that? And so I share that, because until I actually looked at my, my responsibility in that relationship, I would never get better.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In terms of pop psychology. If I didn't know any better, I would just be like oh, all women are cheaters.
Speaker 1:They're all narcissistic.
Speaker 2:They're all narcissistic.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, well, it's like the. You know, if you, if you keep running through roommate, every person you get and bring into your apartment, situation never works out and they're all bad roommates.
Speaker 2:By a third or fourth bad roommate, you might be bad roommate, I just might, and so what's neat is that you know, and depending on where I'm at, but I'll, I'll, I'll personalize this for me and this would be kind of like when we are working with with clients that are are that come in. We'll just use the word terms broken, right? Um, we have to slowly repair, like maybe I just got to get my life in order to become dateable, and maybe these are the my attitudes and the way I speak and the way I conduct myself and the way I dress and my physical shape and my emotional wellness and my mental wellness and my spiritual journey. Maybe I should start to incorporate some wellness in that and then I'd have a whole new person to actually engage in a relationship with.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what you're talking about for most people is terrifying, and I'm not saying that's inaccurate. I mean I think that if you're doing that level of personal work for yourself and making some monumental shift in the way that you partner and live life and conduct yourself and take care of yourself and and commence with wellbeing, if the first thing you could come up with isn't terror, you probably haven't looked closely enough, cause it's like it's terrifying, it's worth it, and the road is a little long Any other areas where kind of this overarching term has bled into the mainstream culture and actually possibly causes more harm than good.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I think I see people, these large terms because that's what they are, you know. They point at something that's ugly and it's you know, it's pervasive in our environments, and so this person goes and takes power back. But I I think that you kind of nailed it on the head here is that people are actually incredibly uncomfortable with reflection. Uh, they do not want to look at how they're responsible, what things it is they need to do in order to create a different life for themselves, to be in different partnerships or relationships, to have different kind of outcomes in their life, and in order to, instead of doing that, they grab these big terms and they throw them as blame elements at their environment. You know, because I mean consistent with people in recovery and people in treatment and everything else one consistent theme you'll find we've all been guilty of it which is to blame others or things outside of yourself for what's going on with you or what's happened to you. And I'm not saying things didn't happen and people weren't didn't do bad things, but you know, you're the common denominator and you're also the person who can be responsible for making things different and and creating change and it's almost like a more external locus versus internal locus and I think that that's the deeper psychology of our social media and you know we've got this better in pictures model kind of thing going on about you know what a good life looks like, and this person did this
Speaker 1:incredible thing and went to this great place and took a picture in front of this wall. That's somewhere, amazing. You know, we've got this. Outward things make me look like a person of worth and value. Yeah, where I've been, what I've done, who I'm associated with, deepak Chopra.
Speaker 1:In one of his more recent books he talks about this. He talks about referent power and internal power. So referent power is power that you have as a result of the car you drive and the job you have and the people you know and the house you live in, etc. That's reverent power. These things that I'm associated with or have.
Speaker 1:They give me this visibility of power, but it's an illusion in many ways. The only real power that exists is internal power the power that if I believe that I'm a person of worth not because of what I own or what I do or who I know but I can look at myself and I can accept myself and I know who I am warts and all and I love that person and I value myself and, as a result, I have internal worth. That's life law. That's something that's hard to corrupt. I can take away your house and your car and you can lose a job and all those things can go away. So we're very much living in a society in my view that's referent power driven much live in a society in my view that's referent power driven.
Speaker 1:We also tend to seem to take the self out of self-worth. You're right, I was looking for the acronym.
Speaker 2:I'm like sel, oh self right yeah, I, I am funny if you laugh, I'm good looking if you click like or somebody swipes, right, but inherently, oh, I mean, that's a whole other ballgame. I think what's neat about that is, if I work on the inherent, the internal power, I actually don't need the external.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'm not actually going to be seeking status, which is actually, when you think about what, what true narcissism is. It's almost like a grab for unearned status. It's let me get this elevated sense of prestige without the inherent work that's needed. Did we talk about the hill and the helicopter last time?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think we did.
Speaker 2:So when I talk with clients I say let's go to the top of a mountain. Being from Philly, I think of Rocky putting his hands in victory. But it's if I get in a helicopter at the valley and we take a ride up to the top of the mountain and they drop me off, I can raise my hands in victory and that that view is nice.
Speaker 2:Take the picture right, let me get the lights. But the reality is, the beauty of the mountaintop is the struggle of the valley, it's the falls along the way, it's the wanting to give up when I think I can't do it, it's the scrapes and the bruises and the doubt. That's what makes the mountaintop so beautiful. It's the work to get there. That's how we kind of started this. I think a life worth living and a life of purpose is completely analogous to the not to go Christian on you, but the size of the cross that you bear. That is where we're going to find the worth, because if everything's given to me, what's another car?
Speaker 2:I look at these. They have 30 cars in their garage. They probably don't even remember where they were when they bought the second one.
Speaker 1:Or how many they have. Sometimes Maybe that's true. That's not to say that somebody hasn't lived a life, and just because they're prosperous doesn't mean that they haven't done these things right. But you know I think that it's what you're referring to as well is that the work is constant, always. You know, you just can't like there's no the Rocky moment, like you're saying. It's like, oh yeah, I reached it. Okay, great, you know, let's roll on back home, like Rocky still had to keep training, yeah yeah, there's another mountain. There's another mountain.
Speaker 1:Holy crap, there's another one over there. You know there's always this journey and you're talking about something you know in reference to the garage you bear, victor Frankl. One of his main quotes is you know, be worthy of your suffering. Now, you may have, you may have done this journey. That was a journey of suffering, a journey and you certainly know this from your own personal story but it's you know. You're a person who's turned that into something that is of great value and worth, not only to you and your family, but also to the people that you work with and the organization that you serve. I think you've genuinely become worthy of your suffering. I hope that I've done the same, but I'm conscious of it all the time.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I do believe that the pain, personally, the pain I've been through my falls, my collapses, my like that's the best thing I have going for me, right, in order to be helpful to someone else, like you know, it's much easier for you to believe that the smile is genuine if you know that of the pain I come from, whereas I just walk around with a smile, I'll be like oh, what do they call those people? Uh, fake, you can't be. You can't be optimistic like well, I mean not always, but you can be um but I think optimism is a state that I choose right, I, and, and.
Speaker 2:so if I am entering into a treatment facility or if something's happening in my life and I immediately just think that you're gaslighting me because your opinion is different, like I'm never going to have to actually go, take that journey within to those painful moments. Yeah, I'll always be a constant victim.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that what we're talking about here is a bit of a like. You know, for a person who might be listening, there's a warning If you're bandying about a lot of psychological terms you know these pop psychology terms and that sort of thing then why are you doing that? I mean, you and I both know that if someone is gaslighting others, or if they are genuinely narcissistic, pointing it out to them is not the way to help them get better. That's not the path. If you're throwing stuff out like this and you come to realize that what you're doing is trying to take power back over people, it's like where and why do you feel disempowered? What is it that's causing you to have to fill the God-sized hole in your soul with platitudes and pop psychology and blame and chaos and disorder, because that's what that creates in your life. If you're experiencing these things on some level I think that I've had the term thrown at me before it's like you're gaslighting me. Gaslighting, it's like you're gaslighting me. I'm like no, I'm disagreeing with you.
Speaker 1:Disagree, and that's different than gaslighting you. I'm not saying that you don't believe what you're saying. I'm just saying that the information that we're talking about and the conclusion that you reach is different than the conclusion I reach based on the same information.
Speaker 2:And so, if we have, I guess we should probably have a general definition of what gaslighting is. But if it is the coercion, well, how would you define gaslighting?
Speaker 1:Coercion? How would you define gaslighting? I've looked it up a couple of times and I think that it gets vague. But I think what it is is when a person, when you're saying something about your experience or you're communicating with another person, and they take that information and one they doubt that you are drawing it from real experience, they doubt your validity as a person who's qualified for saying it, and then they start to wrap their own sentences around and they know what actually that you know they are using it as a moment for manipulation. If they can cause you to doubt yourself and, in the course of doubt, believe what they are saying yes, Then that's a highly manipulative tactic.
Speaker 2:And I think, as we mentioned, it does happen.
Speaker 1:It does happen. It does happen 100%. There are people out there doing it all the time.
Speaker 2:They question their reality based on a different set of beliefs or opinions of an experience. But that also happens every time I've ever like. I'm 48 years old now.
Speaker 1:Uh-oh Getting close.
Speaker 2:What I believe about insert subject is different than what I believed when I was 21.
Speaker 1:100%.
Speaker 2:But that doesn't mean I've been gaslit. It just means that I've had to question my own reality, right, my own, my own concrete set of beliefs about what this is. Because a new experience was like oh might be something different here, which is what happens in normal dialogue.
Speaker 1:Right, well, and I think if you had, your kids aren't quite teenagers yet. Is that right, dimeca?
Speaker 2:Oh, my One, soon One, soon right One in 11 days.
Speaker 1:I think if teenagers and we might see this, like you know, with parents it's like why do you keep on gaslighting me, like I'm not gaslighting you? I'm telling you I'm not giving you the keys to the car because you're not ready to drive it yet and I don't want you to be out past 11 and you know, like me, setting boundaries with you is not gaslighting. I think that's where that stuff can get used and what that teenager would be doing is trying to edge you over to their side and give them what they want. Ultimately, you know right, but I, I, when people do this in such a way, I don't think that anybody who's genuinely gaslighting someone, if they find themselves in an environment where, or context or relationship where that's going on, I think a lot of times they don't realize it. They don't see it because the person's being very masterful yeah, about how execute it.
Speaker 1:I can see it, I work in the field and I'm like okay.
Speaker 2:There is that dark tetrad of personality types, right the sadism and the psychopathy, and the. Machiavellianism, that stuff really does the narcissism. Those are some. Those are some very very.
Speaker 2:I remember, uh, there's one, there's one client that came out and I know why this is coming up, but we were, there was a this is a old treatment center and there was a client passed by, a client overdosed, and they gathered all the other clients together to kind of process right, Because one of one of them had passed. And, um, you could tell that this, this guy was just very bothered, bothered that his time with his therapist was taken up because this person had died and I was.
Speaker 2:but he had that, he had that blank stare and I was like right, there it is there it is there it is he's, this death is inconveniencing his time, which, uh and so that. So, when I share that, because I've actually I think I've actually come into the realm of meeting that darkness, there's some.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it lives within us.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean, everybody is like that.
Speaker 1:I correct people. There are times when people use the word narcissism. Well, they're a narcissist. I said well, I think they're self-absorbed. I said, well, I think they're self-absorbed. You know, they're so wrapped up in their own experience. It's very hard for them to identify or see how it relates to others or that others are having an experience as a result of their behavior. They're self-absorbed.
Speaker 2:And that's different than narcissism. And just because you're vain, vanity might be a part of narcissism, but it doesn't mean everybody that is vain is a narcissist right there's just. There's a deeper level. I mean, when you look at the, the origin, right from narcissist, uh, the story, the person that fell in love with himself like the vanity in the pool, that was one part of the story. But to to bring in that group that's greek, a greek story into oh, he's obsessed with his reflection right so there's a whole lot more.
Speaker 2:There's a whole lot more going on there, and there's a whole lot more going on to what a I think a true narcissist is versus oh, they're self-absorbed. Well, most humans are.
Speaker 2:I always tell as a joke in the recovery journey I have, there's this line that basically says that selfishness is the root of our problems, right, and so I always when I'm going through with a guy, that's new and I was like all right, do me a favor, clear your brain for a second, and I want you just to think of something other than what you want to think about right now. Let me know when you're ready, and you can't. You can't stop thinking about what you want to think about, because that's that's what we think about. We are inherently wired to think about what we want to think about.
Speaker 2:Now we could be trained to take others into consideration, but I think inherently, we always. You know, it's like I have my favorite meal and Netflix does a good job Tells me what I want to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah Things you might enjoy.
Speaker 1:I'm like, you know what I actually would enjoy that I just posted this quote not too long ago. I think it's Thoreau Um, but uh, it takes the average human being about two years to learn the English language. It takes them about 60 to learn how to be quiet. It's true, I think we're at a large like. You know, what you're talking about is empty mind, right, which is a practice. Like to have empty mind is a practice. I think we try it in a lot of different ways Video gaming, we tune out, we veg out, we do all these things, but it's not actually a practice of empty mind, is it?
Speaker 2:We're not thinking, but we're not empty yeah, and, and the thoughts are kind of cascading over us, not cascading into us right, right, right.
Speaker 1:We're just observant of all these things that are going by, like there's a, you know, in between, in between your thoughts, there's a, there's a space, you know, in between thought and action there's a gap, there's a space in between thought and action. There's a space right, and in that space you've got a lot of room to make some, make some informed decisions if you want.
Speaker 2:So what do you think we can do to so we don't want to too much of an overcorrection, right Like once the the right goes too far, then we have to go left and left goes too far.
Speaker 2:Like, once the right goes too far, then we have to go left and left goes too far, we got to go right. Like, how do we actually just bring it if, assuming we've gone too far, where everybody's being gaslit and everybody has a trigger warning and everybody is a narcissist and normalizing abnormal, is what can we? What do you think we can do besides having this radio show broadcast to the masses?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I mean, I think we need to keep talking about it. I think that part of it is also engaged in this living practice of it with others. You know, with our wives and our friends and our communities, that we, you know we put judgment on the backseat, because judgment that's what leads to it. Right? You have these snap judgments and all of a sudden, you're.
Speaker 1:I've got my moments where I'm impatient driving in the car and you're angry. It's like get out of my way. Who's this person, this jerk? And it's like I don't know if they're a jerk. Maybe they're just not paying attention, Maybe they're having a bad day.
Speaker 2:Maybe they're trying to get somewhere.
Speaker 1:Maybe they're, you know, 86 years old and they can barely see and terrified being in the car and it's the only way they can get about like I don't know what their situation is. Man, yeah, I'm not saying that jerks don't exist out there. They certainly do do. But probably a lot more of the world is just having a bad, having having a hard time and dealing with some difficult things. I think that's true for a lot of us and, um, a little compassion is a good way to do it. How to build more compassion? I'm not sure. Uh, I think that we're we're lacking in compassion for each other and I think so too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so too. I think what's unfortunate is due to the, maybe the overemphasis of being triggered right Trigger warnings everywhere.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:What that does is that leads to like a callousness of some.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they take advantage of that. Like then the true ones that we're worried about, they love that Because now they're going to actually take advantage of that.
Speaker 1:I don't even like the word trigger. To be honest with you. It's like you got triggered. Somebody said something or did something and I had feelings about it.
Speaker 2:I felt.
Speaker 1:That's true about everything that happens in my life. I feel some way towards just about everything. Just because you could see the reaction, you know, or I had strong feelings about it. It's like does it have to be a trigger warning? Do we have to live in a trigger-happy environment? Can we stop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I felt a certain way, which is wonderful because we've been talking for a bit now and I've had an array of feelings come through this, but I wouldn't say whether it was good or bad. I don't think any of them were triggering. They just I felt. And when we leave, I'm going to go through more experiences and I'm going to feel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's almost kind of how you, how you said, like we got to get to a spot where we can regulate our ups and downs, where they don't have to be so spiky, Cause it's in the spikes. I think that those maybe irrational.
Speaker 1:I agree. There's certainly material that live in all of us that causes us to have strong reactions to something that's happening in our world. I mean that happens for all of us. There's a quote by I think it's by Parker Palmer it's when in doubt turn to wonder.
Speaker 2:All, a sense of all.
Speaker 1:A sense of all or just live it in the question. It's just like I don't know what that means. You know, I feel these things, but my feelings don't necessarily have to tell me what this means. Let me cut the layers back a little bit. Let me cut past my trigger marks and my experiences and my judgments and my values. Let me just. What does it mean without any of that? Does it have a meaning? Is this person that said mean things to me? Was it about me? Okay, why did I take it that way? What about that material and that exchange caused me to take this this way? Why did I do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and I'll you know, just to be candid and honest, I had a recent experience where I got very irritated, even loud, at a gentleman.
Speaker 1:I did, it was true, I was upset with the way he behaved and the way he was conducting himself, and I let him know in a rather demonstrative way, shall we say.
Speaker 1:And then I came back and my kids were like Dad, you know, and I was like and so I dug in and I'm like, oh crap, yeah, dug in and I'm like, oh crap, yeah, I'm 50, I'm about to be 54, and this is the same period of time when my dad started to go into diabetes, so we've got in our family and everything else. I'm like, dude, your blood sugar was low and you snapped yeah. And I'm like, oh crap, now I'm gonna have to do even more to like, watch my diet, to watch my diet and watch these elements which have a dramatic impact on your regulation. So it was like I could have spent this time justifying my behavior, and what I did is it's not really characteristic for me. I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to say he was right or I was wrong or anything else. It's like, well, why did I do? Why?
Speaker 2:did I do that.
Speaker 1:And then it caused me to reflect and look back and I'm like, oh, I bet your blood sugar was low and now that means something different, cause when you were 20, it meant you got a little grumpy and needed to get something to eat. When you're 50, something it means something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know that energy you could have spent well we sometimes we spend defending our rightness. That's right, let me tell you how right I am. Where it's much easier to kind of explore, not where I'm wrong but where you're accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when? Because in every dialogue.
Speaker 2:There's going to be some nuggets we can learn from right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is there something here? Is there information here for me? Right, mr John? I just spend the rest of the day talking about this with you. Just really enjoy your, your, your presence and your thoughtfulness and your questions, and I'm so happy to have you on the show again. I'm certain we'll have more to come, but this has been WPBM 1037, the voice of Asheville. I'm Todd Weatherly, your host, and John, thanks once again.
Speaker 2:God bless you, sir.
Speaker 1:We'll be with you next time. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. I found you in this. Thank you, bye. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home.