Avsnitt
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I once had the opportunity to meet the mayor of Alsace, a region in eastern France where the Alsatian language is pretty well dead. The mayor spoke to me about a book that he had written which talked about endings. He wanted to explore the idea of a beautiful end.
This idea of a beautiful end never left me. It has guided me in many parts of my life when I have decided to end certain careers or move on from certain jobs. It has always felt important to really pay attention to what was driving me and in many ways to block out other people's perceptions and any kind of normative or collective ideas of what I should or shouldn't do.
Today's podcast in some ways will be about me deciding to pause the podcast, potentially end it for a while, and take some time to restore my creative energies.
Many of you will have heard of the quite famous Canadian analyst Marion Woodman. She passed away a few years ago but she was iconic. I was once sitting in one of her lectures and she said, “The greatest affront to the ego is the self.” In that sentence, she's referring to the capital “S” self which was a concept of Carl Gustav Jung. The concept described the complete and whole repository of a human being. This included the unconscious parts of us that we can't consciously access. The ego was often tethered to the self but could at various points in our life move away from or become dissociated from the self so that we sometimes come out of contact with this rich repository of who we are.
For me, this always connects with the Greek idea of Chronos and Kairos, Chronos being the time that we are aware of (such as looking at one's watch and knowing that it is one in the afternoon) and Kairos representing a kind of other time that we are unaware of.
It also makes me think of Wolfgang Giegerich’s concept of the soul’s logical life: there is a kind of logic in our lives that confronts our conscious awareness. We may make decisions to do something, to go somewhere, to plan a trip, or to study a subject. We may think everything is going to go in a particular way and, as we know, life intervenes. There is that very cute expression that exists in many languages: “One thinks and God laughs.”
I know that in terms of building this podcast, bringing on guests that have really touched me, reaching out to you, and delving into subject areas that are very close to my heart, this is something that I have done out of love. But I can also tell that it has come to a natural end for now. There's been a conflict there between an expectation that I set for myself and that others have had for me and an internal rhythm that is certainly demanding that I take a break. These moments (moments when you build something or have a particular architecture and other voices that are swimming around begin to grow in power and clarity and go against a conscious attempt in life) are quite unnerving.
So welcome to this year's last installment as we head into the holiday season. Welcome to a podcast where I'll take some time to open up with you, explore what it means to end things, and share some of my thoughts on why this is often the hardest thing but a very important thing that we must do.
Show Highlights:
What happens when we don’t listen to the little voice inside of us. Why we resent in-depth processes of healing. How capitalism has pervaded holidays. What individuation is. How the noise of the collective drowns out our individual subjectivity. The tension between what we feel as individuals and what the collective wants. Why endings can be beautiful. How to withstand and even celebrate endings. Why there doesn’t always have to be a new beginning to every end. Why endings aren’t failures.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/podcast/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
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Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to episode 32. In today's episode, I have a meaningful chat with psychotherapist, couples therapist, and certified emotionally focused therapist Louise Wästlund.
One of the reasons that I love this interview is that, if you're not familiar with the research that looks into the neurobiology of attachment, Louise's way of talking about relationships (and a kind of democracy in relationships when it comes to our emotional needs) is clear, compassionate, and just very thoughtful.
I wanted to do a series before I break for the holidays on looking at how we deal with all of the different challenges and opportunities of meeting with family and of spending time together. I wanted to consider some of the more superficial ways that we might respond to the complications that family and other important relationships can often provoke in our emotional and interpersonal lives. It's very easy to put people and in particular our partners into boxes around some of the frustrations or sensitivities that get evoked when it comes to family.
I think Louise does an amazing job at what we call in therapy “attachifying” certain phenomena that come up. What that means in simple terms is that when somebody perhaps becomes irritated or tired or maybe somebody freezes because of a certain emotional response, it brings up discomfort in us. But when we look at things through an attachment lens (meaning what is the need and longing that is driving someone to behave in a particular way), then the whole lens shifts. As you'll hear Louise explain, even when somebody is seemingly minimizing somebody's feelings (as in, “Why are you making a big deal about this?”), on the surface that looks like someone is being uncaring. But Louise goes in and talks about how, at the end of the day, even when someone is trying to turn down emotion in that way, it's coming from a very sensitive place in them.
Perhaps they don't want their partner to be upset. Maybe they just want the night to go well. Possibly they're just feeling nervous about their own emotions. These are altruistic and somewhat benign sensations from the point of view that on the surface it might look like somebody’s being irritable but, when you actually dig deep, you can see that there's a real attempt at caring about their partner.
This is the bread and butter of healing relationships and of looking at what on the surface may look like someone being somewhat malicious when, in fact, they're really just trying to settle themselves. These kinds of reframes are at the heart of deepening our close relationships with others and really scrutinizing why we get our backs up, which I think can just make us closer.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with Louise, looking at how we should think about our relationships and some tips to help us get through the holidays in a more collaborative and loving way.
Show Highlights:
How visiting family can make one partner feel left out. The importance of getting that team feeling back in our relationships. How our love and care for each other can ironically spiral into conflict. Why we minimize our partner’s negative emotions in family situations. How cultural differences can trigger arguments and make us question our compatibility. What happens when we tell our partners that their emotions aren’t our problem vs. when we open the door and show them we care. Why we need to find the root of our discomfort and anxiety. How to prepare for the holidays with your partner.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/podcast/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Welcome to episode 31. I feel quite inspired as we all realize that the holidays are soon upon us. For those of us that live in parts of the world that get colder at this time of year, things really start to change. As we get into late November, things are getting ready for this time of the year that is quite special. No matter how you celebrate, you can't avoid the ways that people start to get ready to hibernate with each other.
The interesting thing about family and relationships is that it can be a very stressful time for many people to be home and to face relationships that don't get a lot of attention when we're working throughout the year. So I want to dig deep with you all and prepare us emotionally to go into some of these opportunities to get closer.
To do that, I'm going to talk about intimacy. I’m also going to have a number of couples therapists and guests to share from their perspective why it's hard to stay close and to get close and also some ideas about what we can do to get ourselves ready.
I wanted to address a kind of misconception that a lot of couples come to even when they come to couples therapy. There can be a very superficial notion that couples therapy is about the relationship. That may seem like a very strange thing to say. Of course, it's about the relationship. What I mean is that couples will come and say, “Oh, our problems are about this relationship,” as if there's another relationship the person is in which is better. Of course, if that is the case, then there are bigger problems in that relationship, but that's a subject area for another podcast.
The issue is that what is so profoundly important when it comes to thinking about intimacy is that, in so many ways, it doesn't have to do with the other person at all. If we're evacuating something that we want for ourselves (for instance, if somebody else is outgoing, and we're like, “Oh, I love how you are at parties” or “how you can schmooze or how social you can be”), often that represents our biggest fears. Or, the other way around. Maybe we see someone who's quiet and pensive and it just seems so refreshing to meet somebody who's not always talking all the time and it's hard for us to slow down.
Eventually, shit hits the fan. Period; full stop. That's what I mean that couples therapy is not really about this relationship. Often, it's about the cross that somebody has to bear in their own life.
This is what I discuss throughout today’s podcast. I hope you benefit from this introductory episode to the upcoming series on deepening our relationships over the holidays.
Show Highlights:
What Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, demonstrates about relationships and intimacy. Why hyper-focusing on somebody else fulfilling our needs is a problem. Why we can’t expect someone to make our problems go away but have every right to expect our relationships to be playgrounds for vulnerability. Why it’s so important to put language to our distress, especially in relationships. The anxiety that leads us to pull away from our partners. Why notions of compatibility aren’t sustainable. Why we need to explore vulnerability and intimacy to deepen our connections.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/podcast/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
Get “The Intimacy Problem” eBook: https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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This episode is the third in a series of podcasts that I have been recording on the subject of shame. I think it's a really important area of investigation because, as the neurologist Stephen Porges pointed out, the strong emotions that human beings contain drive our actions, our thoughts, our behaviors, and our decision-making. There was a huge shift in the classic notion of mind over matter when, around the turn of the last century, there really was an emphasis on investigating how emotions influence human beings’ behaviors.
I think that what I'd like to focus on today, since I've gone into the elements of shame and what it looks like, is perhaps to give some insights from my clinical practice on how shame can be addressed. I'm reminded in thinking about this of the late Jaak Panksepp, who wrote a seminal book called The Archaeology of Mind. Jaak was once quoted as saying that he could not develop any pharmaceutical solutions for depression and other forms of mental illness that could replicate human connection. He could never synthetically create a solution that is as powerful as the way that another human being can affect you. Of course, he was referring to that in the positive sense as in the comfort and solace and soothing that we receive when things go well in human interactions.
That is a segue to basically articulate that what inevitably helps soothe views of self that are based in shame, such as I am not deserving of affection, comfort, love, or validation, in simple terms is the opposite. If a human being can allow in a view of themselves that can temper or begin to shift some of these hard and deeply established negative views of self, that can start to create change.
Now of course, if it was that easy to simply hear that we are different than what we believe, then we would just have a very quick mechanism to fix some of these more intransigent emotional states. So obviously, it's not as simple as just hearing this.
In this episode, I open up with you and give you some insight into what this looks like in my office. Often this happens in couples therapy because, in couples therapy, we can leverage the affection and desire that someone has for the other to get into some of these more difficult emotional places that people guard. The process in individual therapy is somewhat different. There needs to be a very strong alliance. The relationship that a therapist has to their patient or client obviously has different psychodynamics and emotional reverberations than a couple.
I hope you enjoy some of my musings around the landscape of healing from shame and injuries. Don't be disheartened if, when you make the decision to heal or find yourself exposed, you start to feel different (either softer or you have anxiety for the first time in your life) because you've been working so hard to keep these things at bay. Unfortunately, as is the case, we must go through. There's no real way to circumvent or shortcut the strong emotions that one has been keeping hidden.
Show Highlights:
Why safe containers and “good enough parenting” are so important. What the dragons of shame are. The fear of humilitation and shame that drives many successful people. What leads to midlife crises. Why we build veils around our personalities. How unrepresented emotion shows up in our body. Different examples of what healing can look like. Why relationships should go through challenging times. Why healing needs to start with validating and having empathy with ourselves.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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More and more people who walk into my office are sharing with me that they get to know me here in this space and feel in some ways that they already know a bit about me before they walk through my door. It's an interesting feeling. In some ways, it's kind of nice to have this forum to go into aspects of what I love and what I do. It's also a space that's quite personal and I'm trying not to push myself to perform or create something that doesn't feel germane to my mission.
On that note, I'm in the middle of what I've conceived as a kind of three-part series looking at shame. In thinking about today's episode, I thought about conveying some very clear ideas that come from the science of emotion.
I was reflecting on the last podcast and realized that I went in many directions and circumambulated around the idea of shame. But for today I thought of zeroing in on some concepts that are extremely helpful when I'm working with others and perhaps even when I'm reflecting on myself. Specifically what I'm referring to is the notion of the way that emotions get organized in the human being.
One idea that we often talk about is the notion of action tendencies. An action tendency is something that someone might do in response to an emotional signal in their body. How one responds to those basic emotions, first of all, varies quite dramatically. Second of all, whether moments are going to feel repaired and whether they have the potential to even bring two people closer together is highly dependent on one's ability to be able to be present with and understand one's emotional response.
An action tendency can look like somebody trying to fix it. Somebody might feel like they're letting their partner down or letting somebody down at work and they go into a hurried response to fix it because they're worried something bad will happen.
When we talk about notions such as shame, which many people carry from having felt like they let others down going all the way back to childhood, those experiences will color how overwhelming a particular moment is for somebody. Join me for this episode as I get further into this idea and explain many facets of shame in this arena.
Show Highlights:
Why our ancestry is so important in how we respond to our emotions. How our responses to emotion manifest in our relationships and at work. How our intrapersonal relationship with ourselves affects our interpersonal relationships. A piano-playing metaphor to help explain this concept. What a lack of information does to our relationships. Why we need to learn how to tolerate vulnerability to have a conscious relationship. What dissociation from shame can look like. The ways our bodies attempt to protect us. How we embody shame and why it’s so destructive. Why life is a never-ending process of discovering and learning.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to episode 28. As many of you who listen to the podcast know, I just came off of a really intense, creative journey with some colleagues and friends from a number of different countries. We all met in Sweden to work on a project which is tentatively called the Boris Project or Boris's map. We explored material that goes back to the 1940s during World War 2, letters that were written by my great-grandmother to my grandfather. Unbeknownst to my great-grandmother, these would be the last letters that she ever wrote to him.
To be honest with you, the energy required to go through this material took me to the core of my being but it also left me bereft of a lot of creative energy because I gave it everything I had. Over the last 72 hours or so I was seriously thinking about pausing the podcast just to recoup and to collect my creative energies. But, after speaking with my producer, my assistant, and some other people that collaborate with me to help support the podcast, I'm going to consider this chapter two. I’m going to change the format a little bit and focus in on areas that are very close to my heart. Today, I would like to focus on shame.
As a close friend who very lovingly listens to the podcast recently told me, for him, the way that I've talked about shame before on this podcast is very foreign. That makes sense to me because how we experience others and ourselves and the world is very specific to the individual. At the same time (and today in my work was a great example of this), certain feeling states can be difficult to survive.
Nothing for me is more powerful than being with people when they take the risk to articulate profoundly difficult emotions. I think that one of the most difficult things about negative feeling states such as shame and guilt and humiliation is that we want to move as far away from feeling this way as we can. The reason that this is such a focus of mine is because I believe very strongly in human relationships. I know, personally and professionally, what it means for people to be able to stay in their own bodies, to have a language for how they feel, and to be able to communicate that to somebody else, particularly if that other person is someone that they are close to.
I spent hours today in my office with many beautiful souls, brave individuals who, on multiple occasions throughout the day, dug so deep to talk about how broken they feel. I don't mean perpetually broken. These are people that go to work, have kids, and are enjoying life. This isn't a kind of brokenness that arrests people in their tracks. No, I'm referring to setting a very high bar when it comes to the level at which we connect with other people.
So, over the next three podcasts or so, I would like to open up and talk to you about what it means to put language to some of the hardest emotions that human beings have to face. I hope you will join me and benefit from digging deeper into your own difficult emotions.
Show Highlights:
Why it’s so difficult for humans, in general, to talk about hard emotions. How understanding ourselves and our world gives us a sense of order. The difference between shame and guilt. How shame attacks our perceptions of ourselves and our relationships. Why it’s so difficult to rid ourselves of shame. Why radical authenticity just isn’t possible. Emotions aren’t dangerous; what we think and feel about our emotions is. The danger of hiding or stuffing our emotions. Why it’s so crucial to open up and dig deep in relationship with others. The difference between emotions and feelings.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Today is another special episode that links back to last week. If you listened to last week's episode where I met and interviewed and talked with my fellow artists and collaborators, then you'll recognize some of the melodies in today's episode which we recorded in the great synagogue in Stockholm, this beautiful art deco sanctuary that is very special.
The theme of today's podcast has to do with a very special ritual that is close to my heart, which in Hebrew is called havdalah, which translates as separation. The reason I'm so fond of this idea and ritual is because of attempts to provide support for the transition between the sacred to the profane. I believe that much of what we experience as suffering in our life has to do with moments where meaning, relationship, our fantasies, and our sense of ourselves breaks down.
I'm a firm believer that progress in our lives happens when we move forward, we change, those around us change, we lose loved ones, we don't recognize ourselves because we're older, we don't think the same way we used. It could even happen in just the simple moments where we feel off, can't get our bearings, and don't feel grounded. All this language describes times when we're in between.
If you've been following my podcast, there have been many conversations about this from different angles. My podcast recently with Dustin Atlis about Martin Buber comes to mind and Dustin talking about how Martin Buber said that we can never inhabit a permanent sense of connectivity. We'd be out of the world if that were the case. The world is full of this kind of brokenness.
The ceremony and the music that you're going to hear in today's podcast is intended to give a container to what is often a really tricky transition. I think we all go through it. It's the same transition of coming back from vacation and the first day of work or even something as simple as a night out or a day off or a visit with someone you love who has to leave or saying goodbye to somebody for the last time. These are incredible transitions that we have to face and bear and integrate and hold.
You'll hear me talk a little bit about this ritual in the podcast but I thought I’d just give a preface to it so it's a bit more orienting for those listening who may not be familiar with it. There's a moment where wine, fire, and spices are used as three elements to denote this liminal space, this space in between, a movement from a time of connectivity and sacredness into the world of the banal. The first song that we will sing for you today in the podcast is called Liba. The lyrics have to do with transcending the darkness in us and how do we withstand nights, for instance, where we can't sleep and the time is ticking away and everyone else is asleep around us and we're kind of alone with ourselves. It’s about a sort of yearning for love to help us deal with these moments.
Being able to hold the space where nothing makes sense, where there's a kind of foreignness to ourselves or to the world, is really crucial because they're always there. You might wake up and there's a very dramatic news story, for instance. The anniversary of the Twin Towers comes to mind. These kinds of events punctuate our seemingly seamless reality which is not seamless at all. We just want it to be so we can rid ourselves of anxiety. This is a noble goal but I think that the ceremony you're going to hear today reverses things and says, “No, we're going to stare this kind of transition in the face.” For instance, we smell the sweetness of spices in a moment where we are transitioning out of a time of connection and into the world of the everyday. It's an important skill and tool to be able to recognize when things do not go our way, when somebody is unavailable to us, and when the world around us is changing, and to recognize and find space to contend with, try to make sense of, and withstand those moments of absolute foreignness.
I hope you enjoy this ride that we will take you on today from the great synagogue in Stockholm with my good friends Aviva Chernick, Marcelo Moguilevsky, and Cesar Lerner. I hope you'll let yourself go, listen to the music, and maybe put this on in moments when things feel off and it's hard to feel one's direction in life. I hope it brings a kind of recognition that this is all of our stories. Maybe knowing that we have people around us and behind us in those moments when it's hard to make heads or tails of life will give us what we need to get through and contain the uncontainable.
Show Highlights:
Why it’s crucial to realize that we are stronger together. Why we can’t have joy without suffering. The space we need to hold our pain. What soothes our soul and helps us transition from the sacred to the everyday.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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This episode is inspired by a letter that was written by my great grandmother to her son, my grandfather, in 1941. These would be the last letters that she would ever write or he would ever receive from her. I am exploring this material in Stockholm, trying to take something from these artifacts of a lost time to understand memory, pain, loss, failure, and absence.
In thinking about the podcast, which is called The Dignity of Suffering, there's an interesting translation of this material to offer it a kind of renewed dignity. They are dignified on their own, of course, and they don't need anything more but something about giving them music and life seems to connect something that couldn't be materialized in the world as we know it.
I'm here with some wonderful friends from around the world. Joining me are Aviva Chernick from Toronto, Masha Dimitri from Switzerland, Cesar Lerner from Buenos Aires, and Marcelo Moguilevsky who is also from Buenos Aires.
For today's podcast, we're just going to talk together, with their beautiful music in the background, about what it means to live in the spaces in between what we think we know and the eruption of what we do not know. Just before we hit record, Marcelo offered that he never knows when the emotion is going to come but it always comes. There's always that tug of war in life. One of my teachers says that, “Desire is pleasure remembered.” We're always trying to invoke moments in our life where we feel some kind of connectedness. And yet, of course, we can't force these moments.
Certainly, our workshop, for me at least, has been an exercise in purpose and then destroying that purpose over and over again. On that note, we're just going to talk a bit about what it means to fail. We’re asking questions like, how do we survive each other's despair? How can we survive together this edge of oblivion, this nothingness that we are always walking every day of our life? I hope you enjoy the conversation and the music.
Show Highlights:
Why letting go is one of the most terrifying and pleasurable parts of living. Why we need guilt and shame. The power of embodied teaching. How moments write themselves over and over again through the years. Why we all need to learn to come out of time. Why failure shouldn’t be judged but can be beautiful. How living in Sweden during this pandemic has been isolating in and of itself.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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When I was thinking of creating a podcast or some of the books that I'd like to write, one of them is to go in this direction of “Confessions of a Couple’s Therapist.” If you're new to the podcast, you can go back and listen to me do a session with a couple live, which I'd like to do again. But one of my great joys in my life, in my professional life and my life as a teacher, is talking and thinking about human relationships.
I'd like in today's podcast to zero in on a particular dynamic that I am laser focused on in every session that I ever do and, frankly, focused on in my own marriage. It has to do with a very simple idea on the surface, that the human being loses their higher order capacity when the ways that we confront the world become literalized. What I mean by that is that there's a phenomena that when we are scared, overwhelmed, slighted, or embarrassed (and of course this is different for everybody in terms of the valence and how this manifests), there's a particular way that the human brain reduces things to binaries when we don't see another way out.
You've heard me talk about how the real goal in life or the goal of most situations is to figure out what is a perceived threat (when we believe there isn't a way out but really there is) and what are the situations where we have to be acutely aware that we are in danger. Of course, there's no recipe for that. That is Darwin, to an extent, at its core in terms of the way the organism evolves and shapes around an environment to be as successful as it possibly can.
This isn't just related to couples therapy. Maybe those of you who are out there aren't in relationships or don't care about couples therapy. What I'm underscoring is less to do with a kind of cliche of a couple coming in and seeing a therapist. It has more to do with the fundamental ways that we organize and protect ourselves. I dive into this much deeper throughout this week’s episode. Please join me to hear more.
Show Highlights:
What our inner self-care system is. How a life-long relationship between two people can build so much pressure and heat. How we literalize our worldview, others, and ourselves. Why we zombify others so easily. How our childhood experiences predict the strength of our self-care systems. Why we should stop and ask ourselves what we do when we feel overwhelmed. How I help the more verbal partner process his or her emotions in my couple’s sessions. The physiological impact of slowing down and processing in this way. Why some of us simply don’t have the ability to communicate our emotions. How we can begin understanding ourselves.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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This conversation today is quite a close topic to my heart. I interview podcaster and life coach Furkhan Dandia who left the corporate world as an engineer and had this realization in his life that it would be important for him to devote his energies and his time to helping facilitate conversations between men.
As you'll hear in the podcast, I feel in some ways like I had the privilege of going to a high school that was focused on the arts and theater. In many ways, the stigmas around talking, especially between men, were confronted quite early on. But obviously, that isn't the case in so many parts of society.
Furthermore, we have to be sure that we do not lump all societies together. This idea of talking about our inner lives and putting language to our experiences has such an incredible range around the world. It's very important, I think, not to jump to any kind of ethnocentricity around it, meaning we have to be careful not to look at other cultures through our own lenses. In many ways, because the podcasting world tends to reach a bit more of a Western audience, we exclude (I think to our detriment) the range of ways that masculinity expresses itself around the world. I like that theme in Furkhan’s and my discussion today.
There's a great need to foster and facilitate conversation, not in any kind of positional way that would suggest that there is any one way of being, but when it comes to the fractures of emigration and of moving, which I've spoken about quite often in this podcast. At that stage, there becomes a need to facilitate exploration of one's experience. That is something I see clinically all the time.
So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Furkhan. I think the world is a better place with people like him who have taken up the mantle in their life of challenging patriarchal ideas, challenging old social norms, recognizing a significant difference between the thrust of his own life which may be culturally informed by certain gender stereotypes, and digging deep and making space for other men. I really liked the generosity of energy and spirit he has and I hope you'll check out his podcast, EZ Conversations, and let anyone you know, know about his work in case it would be helpful.
Without further ado, here is my interview about men talking with men.
Show Highlights:
What inspired Furkhan to start his podcast. Why he struggled to express himself growing up. How men as a whole struggle with expressing themselves. How Furkhan and his dad began to open up to one another and restore their relationship. How he has attempted to break the generational trauma in his family. The shame that men experience around opening up and how to get to the root of it. How to address toxic behavior without shaming and marginalizing people. The long history of this topic in literature and society. The beauty to be found in our imperfections and impurities.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
EZ Conversations
Furkhan on Instagram
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to episode 23. I just came back from quite a long adventure, criss-crossing Ontario, Canada, visiting family and friends, singing, and also working with a lot of my clients that I still see virtually overseas. I'm back here in Stockholm, landing, getting my bearings again, and here with you.
I was reflecting on what I wanted to talk about today. I think it's time to do a solo podcast and reconnect. What's on my mind is a kind of moment that I went through during my Master's degree in psychology which was a moment that I think a lot of people go through when they study a subject with a certain intensity. It had to do with feeling kind of unmoored from some of my earlier assumptions when it came to theories of the mind of life.
For practical reasons, what I would like to delve into today is this tension between an area of psychology that tends to focus on self-help solutions and looking at human beings on a particular spectrum in terms of functionality and sort of the foundation of what had brought me into the field of psychology which was much more attuned with a kind of mystification of human life.
To put that in clearer terms, looking at life experience as divined in a way, in the way that we might say, “Well, that didn't go so well but I learned from it and it was meant to be.” You don't get a job, for instance, or a relationship ends and you can very casually say, “Oh, it was meant to be.” There's a real question of whether that's just us rationalizing something away or saying that to comfort ourselves or whether that is really true. What does that mean if someone says, “That was meant to be”? That betrays that we don't really think we had much choice in the matter.
I don't know if we always scrutinize these casual assumptions in that way. But, personally, my first introduction in any profound way to psychology was to the work of Carl Jung and dreams and looking at the ways that the images and events that we dream of at night act as a kind of unconscious counterpoint to our waking life. This is the idea that there's a kind of wisdom and logic that is always present and guiding us and there are ways that these ideas have evolved in a much more contemporary way. To an extent, this kind of literary understanding of our lives, seeing a kind of narrative in our life, stands in contrast with a more reductive way of looking at the human body and our behavior from the sort of somatic and physiological standpoint (which is somebody makes a decision not because it was divined or meant to be but out of a more reductive way of saying, “Well, there's a craving there”).
I might, in today's podcast, stick a little bit with the foundations of my own thinking which I come back to often. They have to do with a basic idea that Carl Jung had as a kind of matrix, if you will, for psychological health. It was this basic notion that connected the ego (our conscious experience of ourselves and what we know) with what he called a kind of capital S self (this kind of broad, all-containing, often unconscious, breeding ground for our creativity). Dreams and symbols from dreams would emerge from and represent these core foundational notions that we're trying to connect with and touch. The idea is that we get glimpses of the capital S self in moments in our life (in connection with others, in spurts of creativity, or in dreams). There's never this perpetual connection to the self so much as an increasing awareness of what it means to become who we are.
Another idea that I wanted to have in the back of our minds today is this notion of teleology, which is that we're driving towards something. Whereas, in some sense, when we talk about having a crisis or something being wrong, there's one end of the psychological spectrum which looks at that really as something being wrong. Why did you get into that car accident or what was wrong with you that you weren't paying attention at work and you made this mistake or you missed your flights? These are very kind of pedestrian mistakes that could have been avoided.
There really is a kind of tension of when and how do we treat something as just some error and when do we think about events in our life that don't go our way as a kind of other logic that is unfolding? I don't find it easy to hold that tension. Tune into this episode to hear more of my reflections on this topic.
Show Highlights:
The religious guilt that often drove people to therapy in the early 20th century. How the motivations for attending therapy have changed in our modern society. Why we often question if we’re “normal” when entering adulthood. How we “zombify” other human beings. Why I struggle with the teleological idea that everything in life has a purpose. What archetypal psychology is. How our body is like a symphony. What happens to us when that symphony becomes so sufficiently damaged during development that it stops working properly. The potential of merging the two philosophies of romance and logic. Why dream work can be so powerful. Why we need to address both the symbolic and physiological aspects of psychology. Why existential crises will always occur and the dignity that that fact affords.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to episode 22. Today's kind of an exciting conversation on many levels. If you've been following my work and my podcast, you'll have gleaned some of the important ideas around how difficult it is to get through some of the more defensive ways that human beings deal with the world. We are so exquisitely intelligent and wired for survival that our environments growing up and generationally contribute to create these very sophisticated, emotional matrixes that govern us. And to some extent, as you'll hear me and my guest, Joe Satin Levin, talk about today, the processes of these shifting grounds underneath our feet as we mature and try to make sense of ourselves and the world and answer certain existential questions, a lot of that is is often out of our hands. And we are, in many ways, here for the ride and we kind of just need to pay attention and let certain events in our life affect us and to take them seriously.
On the other hand, as Joe opens up about today when he helps us understand neurodivergency, what that means, how it affects people, and really a contemporary way of appreciating the different ways that people are wired, it can really affect our ability to have relationships with ourselves and with others. The reason that Joe ended up on the podcast with me today is that he wrote a very moving piece, an essay which I introduce in the podcast, that I read and it touched me. Not only is he a great writer and super intelligent but he took a risk in the piece to name some very personal parts of his own journey towards dealing with medication and entering into the world of looking into the effects of psychedelics on human beings and in the healing process.
I have had the privilege of looking at some of the more current research, particularly with MDMA in the United States and PTSD with soldiers. It's fascinating from the point of view of how it contributes to us being able to get through these intransigent ways that the human being protects themselves. This has been our quest as human beings for thousands of years. It is not new, this question, at all. The idea of coming to our own self-awareness and consciousness has brought with it a tremendous weight and burden as we reflect our own existence to ourselves and to others and all the ways that that goes right but all the ways that that can go so terribly wrong. We are often just hanging by a thread in terms of our own sanity and I think this is really at the heart of our conversation today which is how we maintain our identity, how our identities become sometimes supremely rigid, inflexible, and also at moments in life when we all of a sudden become aware of parts of ourselves that were previously hidden to us that are crucial.
Joe tells a beautiful story in the podcast today about a moment with his son where he becomes aware of himself and his relationship to his son and this emotional pivot that he made to hold his son in mind. That's another theme that, of course, you will recognize from my work and from the conversations I've had with you and with others here.
I'm always kind of tickled and it's a continual process of restoring my faith in the world when these moments of I wouldn’t say synchronicity, but just sort of when things align and I'm touched in a way that inspires me to reach out to people that not only I love but also when there's a convergence of our lives. This was one of these cases where I'm here with Joe Satin Levin, my old neighbor but also now a future colleague who is jumping into the psychotherapy fray and, in particular, passionately writing about and trying to disseminate information on some of the most exciting frontiers in psychotherapy.
So, without further ado, I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Show Highlights:
How Joe’s article came to be. What neurodiversity is and what it means to Joe specifically. The internal and unconscious aspects of being social for the neurodivergent. The decaying of personality we all go through as we mature. Why we need to wrestle with our privilege. Modern stigmas around medication. Why people need more stimulation today. What Joe’s medication allows him to do. His experience of feeling unworthy.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to episode 21, The Power of the Breath. Today I interview a colleague who became a friend who I met at an interesting conference in Boston on trauma a number of years ago. We clicked and spoke about many aspects of the field and our lives that are important to us. Esther's real gift is a commitment to the body, to yoga, and to creating space. In our interview today, I really discovered a real lightness of being that I can only imagine people benefiting from when they can be in her presence.
When all the noise fades away in our lives, when we are on our own, when we're trying to fall asleep, maybe we're on a plane and it's quiet, we come back to our breath. I know for me, I've had a religious yoga practice for many years. There's always a moment where I am able to reconnect with the depth of my breath. Esther has a lot to say on this and I'm gonna let her speak for herself. But there's something about breathing that underscores our entire life.
If you remember in an earlier podcast when I interviewed Sean Smith, he went to great lengths to talk about the fact that these primary drives, like breathing and eating, they are always unconsciously there, they are always a priority, and they are often beyond our conscious awareness. So it seems important then to slow down and take some time and to talk about breathing.
I felt my breath actually many times in the conversation with Esther, just bringing our attention to being present which I know has become somewhat of a cliche. It's become fetishized. It can even be a critique of somebody you're with: “Hey, come on. Be present with me. I haven't seen you in a while.” To be honest with you, I don't think that a lot of what is conveyed in the mindfulness movement and notions of being present goes all the way. It feels to me like it is a stepping stone to what lurks underneath. But to be able to feel ourselves breathing and to reconnect with our breath is a luxury and, I know for me, a very powerful way of centering myself.
So, without further ado, I want to introduce you to Esther who is a psychotherapist, a yoga teacher, an artist, an art therapist, a creator, and someone that really has devoted her life to connecting with others and creating space to breathe. Esther has had her own multifaceted journey to becoming a psychotherapist, art therapist, and student of yoga and meditation. Please listen in and enjoy our conversation.
Show Highlights:
Why breathwork is such an important part of healing. What a breath signature is. How your breath controls your mind and emotions. The dangers of having a shallow breath signature. How breathwork creates community. What the experience of deepening our breath does for us. The power of silence. The cultural differences in breath. Why we should experiment with different ways of breathing. Why, even though there are consequences for breathing a certain way, there is still no one right way to breathe. Why breathwork isn’t about you.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
Esther on Instagram
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Today, I would like to focus on some of the feedback that I've been getting on the podcast. In particular, people are writing and asking about a phenomenon that I see a lot in my practice. I've certainly gone through it in my own life. It is a situation in relationships where loneliness can creep in or, worse, one of the partners feels like they are doing all the work emotionally.
What's very interesting about this is that when couples come to see me, it isn't normally both partners that feel this way. I may have touched on this a bunch before in the podcast but in the literature on attachment and the ways that human beings organize themselves around the ways that they reach for comfort, there really are different styles.
When we look at the neurophysiology of emotion, what we tend to see is that this organizes itself around fight or flight. Specifically what this means is that if somebody has the instinct of feeling alone or in need of comfort, one person may up-regulate (go into the sympathetic nervous system and go into action towards, to reach, to ask for help, to pick up the phone, to write an email). Other people will down-regulate (will go into the parasympathetic nervous system, will go read a book, want to go for a walk, not want to talk about it).
Of course, these lines are not that simple. We can oscillate: sometimes we just want to go for a walk or sometimes we want to talk to somebody. But I can tell you in my thousands of hours of practice, there really is a clear distinction between what somebody does the vast majority of the time.
Now, where it gets really tricky is when, over time, this very kind of binary dynamic sets hold in a relationship. One person who tends to go into outward action when they need something comes up against another person who tends to down-regulate and really ruminate in a very personal, private, and quiet way.
There is something we call the pursuer and the withdrawer in relationships. The pursuer is the person who plans everything and comes up with ideas for the weekend or is the one that's doing the activities for the kids. The other one is more of the silent helper who doesn't really come out in the same way, doesn't take the initiative in the same way, and maybe supports through action. There are a whole bunch of threads here for us to bring together and to explore in this regard. Listen in to hear my reflections on them.
Show Highlights:
The connection between typology and the fight-or-flight response. The importance of continual self-reflection. Why emotional pain can halt our interior function. How our brains adapt to respond to danger during development. The difference between a sense of urgency and vulnerability. Our body’s capacity to push away discomfort and dissociate. The software our brain develops during childhood. Why some people are so independent. The deep-seated fear of disappointment that is at the root of many up-regulating partners. How transference occurs in relationships. Why putting language to our emotions is so critical. Why vulnerability can be so difficult for some people. How becoming conscious of our internal software can improve our relationships.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Today we go all the way to Australia to find and speak to this incredibly dynamic therapist, Isiah McKimmie, who is a sexologist, couples therapist, sex therapist, and coach. If you want to find out what a sexologist is, you're going to have to listen to the interview.
It is a huge pleasure to have Isiah here all the way from Australia. I recently started interacting with folks on Instagram and there she was kicking up a storm, teaching folks around the world how to have better sex and better relationships.
I reached out to Isiah because so much of what I do with individuals, couples, and in my own life has to do with how our bodies, over time, let others in. When it comes to intimate relationships, there's no hiding in sex. It often reveals our pain, our vulnerability, and as we get close, this is a place that couples often have to work at to get even closer.
So after spending a week writing about and talking about the body and why, in certain cases when language fails us, sex can often be a place where people find refuge but also where people start to get very confused when it creates an imbalance or it creates a lot of friction in relationships (people can often feel unseen, exposed, and vulnerable), Isiah just brings this incredible lightness of being to the conversation. I was so impressed with the joy and positivity and just lightness that she kept coming back with as we explored this in relationship.
So, without further ado, here's my interview with sexologist Isiah McKimmie.
Show Highlights:
What brought Isiah to working with couples. Why intimacy is such an important, hot-button issue in relationships. How sexual rejection can feel like abandonment. Why working on connection and communication is key to building sexual intimacy. What a sexologist is. How to deal with the loss of the “honeymoon phase” and move forward to the new phase of your relationship. Why putting in effort is so crucial. How to normalize the ups and downs in the process of building intimacy. How trauma can make safety not feel safe to us. How to navigate the intimacy differences between men and women.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Welcome to Episode 18. I was once attending a conference in downtown Toronto and the theme of the conference was the entry problem: how do we enter into psychological material? There's a whole philosophical tradition, most notably at present taken up by a German psychologist and philosopher named Wolfgang Geegref who relies on a way of looking at psychology that postulates that it is basically psychology studying itself.
So when we're in therapy or we're thinking about ourselves, it's a very difficult thing to do. It's not like looking at an organ, for instance, and assessing what's wrong and deciding whether to do surgery or take another approach. Psyche studies psyche.
And about halfway through the day at this conference, I had to go move my car and I put the car in the underground parking lot at this hotel. I went to go back upstairs to rejoin the conference and there was a doorway not too far from where I parked. And up the stairs, there was another door that I opened and the door closed behind me. And then I realized that there were no handles on any of the doors in the room that I was in. Actually, there was a window just facing the street. I found myself with all these locked doors with no handles.
Sounds like I'd entered into a psychiatric ward. But no, I somehow had entered a door that I wasn't supposed to. And the irony wasn't lost on me that here I was at a conference discussing the entry problem and there was no way for me to enter. I eventually bang so hard on a door a man in a chef's hat came out. It must have been the rear of the kitchen and I imagine that security fixed the issue after that.
The reason I tell you this story is apropos of my interview today. Dr. Dustin Atlas is the director of Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Religion at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His current book project, Buber Talks Jewish Dialogue and the Nonhuman World, uses the work of Martin Buber to interrogate contemporary post-human concerns in Jewish thought, politics, and life, exploring the ways in which Jewish thought allows us to engage the nonhuman. I reached out to him because I have only a peripheral knowledge of the philosopher Martin Buber’s work. Martin Buber, who lived from 1878 to 1965, was a prolific author, scholar, literary translator, and political activist whose writings ranged from Jewish mysticism to social philosophy, Biblical Studies, religious finance, rhinology, philosophical anthropology, education, politics, and art.
But most famous among his writings was a short but powerful book entitled I and Thou which he wrote in 1923 where he considered our relations to others as twofold. There was the I-it relation which prevails between subject and objects of thought and action. And there was the I-thou relationship on the other hand which exceeds the subject-object relationship. All to say that Buber, and as you'll hear Dustin go into great detail in our interview today, was very much concerned with the limitations, challenges, and obstacles informing authentic connection.
And this goes back to the entry problem because this is not something that can be forced or manufactured. This is a notion that pervades much of our lives but also a lot of psychological theory.
In thinking about my preface to my conversation with Dustin today, I wanted to share a kind of moment that I don't know whether I talk about it very often. I don't know if I've heard many other therapists talk about it. But it's the moment when somebody first walks in the door for therapy and there's a kind of unknown that enters the room. Usually, there's a lot of hunger when somebody finally decides to go to therapy. Usually, there's a lot that comes with that in terms of expectation. As I publish and produce more, people come in maybe having a sense of who I am, having listened to this podcast, having read my writing. And all of that is in the room.
And, of course, this is who I am. But in that moment, meeting an individual, it isn't who I am. I've never been in that moment before. And, as I've maybe talked about previously in this podcast, I also think it's important to resist certain temptations when it comes to finding answers. And I think that that pervades to a degree the conversation with Dustin today where, at some point, I felt that the two of us were talking about a kind of space to hold the nonspace, the nonbeing.
Later in our chat, he references relationships and references Martin Buber, talking about all of the different revolutions that human beings go through in a long-term intimate relationship. This is something that I face every day in my clinical practice with couples and in my own marriage
where it's really important. I think that that's what I really appreciated about Dustin sharing with us his expert knowledge in the work of Martin Buber and others. It's crucial at least to try to frame the dissolution of moments in time, of ways that we understand ourselves and others, which we need on the one hand to not become psychotic so that we have some kind of predictable, continuous psychic skin and experience.
But also one of the huge challenges existentially is having to mourn the loss of so much of what we experienced as familiar and real. And, understandably, there can be an incredible clinging on to what we have come to know about ourselves and others. And to be honest, I think this is half of what I do as a therapist: sitting with people in mourning the loss of what they imagine themselves, their future, and others to be and tolerating a kind of nonspace, nonbeing that often we have no indication of how long being in that state will last.
I also want to avoid in my preface any kind of reification of these notions. There's certainly an attempt on my part to share a very private experience as a therapist where there's a very real part of me in the room trying to connect with someone, especially when we are first meeting, but also a part of me that needs to just observe and wait and listen. And frankly, the older I get, the more I've noticed that I’m not only listening to a voice which is not mine and is mind at the same time but also a somatic felt sense of what my body is telling me in the moment. And in other podcasts, maybe I'll go into some of the great work of people like Allan Schore and Peter Levine who confirm and really shore up the brilliance of those parts of our membrane that allow us to know a certain wisdom. But really I think what pervades my conversation with Dustin is a kind of lament between an attempt at reaching some kind of connection with others, with animals, with inanimate objects, and the necessity to have to wait, withhold, and not cling on to experiences that, ultimately, we experience as true or authentic. Dustin doesn't mince words with the ideas that he finds very troubling. I often bristle at the notion of authenticity because I don't really know what it means. We're never fully authentic. That's what the discovery of the unconscious, I think, really solidified for us, that we don't really know often if we're being true or not being true.
Dustin and I sat together a couple of years ago now in Kingston. I was just getting to know him and he, first of all, let me know that he was a scholar of Martin Buber’s work. And then he added that it wasn't even so much the conventional notion that a lot of us think of when it comes to Buber and his focus on relationship and really that delineation of relationship, but he brought up the fact that he’s even more interested with his work on relationship with animals and even with things, with objects. And so I wanted to bring Dustin onto the podcast in part because it's just an interesting area of thought to consider how two people connect and as a therapist I'm constantly oscillating between the fact that I think I'm just making everything up and maybe occasionally I actually connect with somebody. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Dustin Atlas.
Show Highlights:
What sparked Dustin’s interest in the work of Martin Buber. The nothingness that comes with dialogue. What animals teach us about how dialogue is ephemeral. Martin Buber’s hostility to Carl Jung. The different kinds of relationships we can have with objects. Why Buber said religion isn’t experiential. Why children interact with objects much more easily than adults. The differences between young and older Buber. How to bear disappointment about the things you thought you knew and had but don’t know or have anymore. Why you live in a narrow world if you only relate to other human beings. How playing with our kids is a form of dialogue. The fractured space of relations.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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When I was doing my research for this podcast, I came across a book online that had been written by Mitchell Smolkin. But this book was not a book that I had written. The name of this book was called Understanding Pain: Interpretation and Philosophy and had been written over 30 years ago when I was about 12 years old.
I was surprised and I did a bit of digging and it turns out that now living in Arlington, Virginia is another Dr. Mitchell T. Smolkin, a retired internist who, in his life, also has had a deep fascination and interest in the human being’s struggle to deal with pain and how they do so through philosophy and religion and how we contend with the often existential crises that painful events and physical symptoms caused us in our lives.
It was quite moving for me. It was another sign that what I am doing is worthwhile. I dug a little deeper and contacted his son and he put me in touch with his father. So on today's podcast, I have the great pleasure of interviewing, drumroll please, Mitchell Smolkin.
What really caught my attention on today's podcast, which surprised me to an extent with the candour Mitchell addressed it, has to do with the placebo effect. Placebo, from Latin, means “I shall be acceptable or pleasing” and refers to what is often ruled out with the scientific method. It is a nonorganic cause and effect when it comes to treatment, and it needs to be separated from actual cause and effect so that we can replicate and disseminate tools, methodologies, and medication that will have a similar effect across the board.
When I was having a chance to read over my summer vacation, I was floored as I was connecting yet again with different scientific developments in psychology that seemed to suggest placebo playing a significant role. In this instance, it was in the field of neurofeedback, a method of retraining the brain for a number of psychological conditions. Once again, I was confronted with the notion that the personality, passion, commitment, patience, and idiosyncratic nature of the doctor plays a significant role in outcomes. And as a result, there is criticism that there isn't enough evidence that this actually works. And yet, for people who practice this, the anecdotal evidence from their practice, their clinical experiences overwhelmingly support the outcomes that they see every day with people. This is of course an old and important fault line, and a difficult one to cross when it comes to agreement on the efficacy of certain treatments.
I remember shaking my head because every time that I investigate a new area of the field, it seems to come down to the power of human relationships. I often reinforce this point, and you've probably heard me say it on this podcast before, that so much of what we see and experience as mental illness or difficulties in living are relational. I focus and dwell on this because it strikes me then that if we're going to make headway in terms of helping the human organism feel safe again or sometimes for the first time, it is going to have to happen in a relational context. And so I'm not surprised that as we search for new ways to treat individuals, groups, and families, that we keep coming back to this notion of the placebo effect.
I was very touched and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Mitchell. For me, to be honest, it was emotional and I felt a certain calm in our conversation and a different kind of pace with the two of us just sitting with some of these questions of how we contend with suffering. What an amazing experience that the two of us, who have never met and share the exact same name, have spent a great deal of our professional lives thinking about these issues.
My final comment will be something that I perhaps gleaned from my conversation with him: the humility that we all have to bring to these issues in our lives. Sometimes all we can do is sit with somebody and marvel at the awesomeness of the questions that these crevices in our lives provoke in us. This is not easy to do when there is such a hunger for answers and for peace of mind which of course I long for as well.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Mitchell T. Smolkin.
Show Highlights:
Mitchell’s career history. How being an internist is different from being a physician. How Mitchell bridges his philosophical interests with his daily clinical work of dealing with people who are physically ill. Why he shows his patients that he’s willing to talk and the result of doing so. How mental illness can disguise itself through physical symptoms. The healing power of relationships. How seeing a doctor in a white coat can be a placebo in and of itself. The tension of finding meaning in life. Why we need to sit with unanswered questions and drop the pressure to find answers.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
Supporting Resources:
Understanding Pain: Interpretation and Philosophy by Dr. Mitchell T. Smolkin
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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I spent the last little while focusing on parenting but at the same time, considering the theories in psychology that support our understanding of human development and how that can inform us as parents to either make decisions that shift our behavior or to reflect on them with our children. In that light, It was really a great pleasure to have my son Gabriel on the podcast last week.
Today I wanted to share that clinically, in my practice and my thinking, I have found myself at times returning to some of the foundations of my own training. Something that scares me from time to time is the way that we can glom on to theoretical frameworks and forget that, actually, they form part of a moment in time.
For instance, attachment theory has become incredibly popular right now. And so when it comes to relationships and understanding ourselves, I see a tremendous amount of chatter about safe attachment, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, mixed states. And if this means nothing to you, don't worry about it. I'm just holding it up more as a mirror to the way that we, in various times in history, use theories and certain schemas to try to understand the human experience.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who I studied for many years, was the one who came up with psychological types, which informed a test that many of you are probably familiar with called the Myers-Briggs, which became the most popular corporate assessment tool for personality, at least in America, for many, many years. And what's interesting is that these tools sort of get co-opted for productivity. So in the case of the Myers-Briggs, it was used to try to understand how to make teams work better together. If you discovered that certain people were extroverts and certain people were introverts and certain people led with their thinking functions as opposed to their feeling functions, then you might understand why there is friction in teams and people are not working as efficiently together as they can.
A huge piece, though, I think gets missed when we oversimplify and we label human behavior. With regard to the Myers-Briggs, one of Carl Jung's most singular points was the fact that it wasn't so much that you discover that somebody is an extrovert. That's true and helpful if we understand that we tend to recharge and get energy by going out into public or making friends. But what Jung was really on about wasn't just so much our dominant function. I believe that he was very interested in our inferior function, that is what is unconscious to us or what comes up in relationships that we project onto others, places we tend to ignore and that we have to put our focus on. And I believe somewhere he said that we play in the inferior function or magic happens in the inferior function, meaning when we can play around in our weaker muscles, that's where growth happens.
But today, I wanted to go back a little bit to my thesis that I wrote, which in part was a history of psychiatry and psychology looking at how we've evolved from a more mystified and mythological framework to theories, such as even personality types or to go to a more contemporary idea (such as attachment and the way that that leans heavily on the neuroscience of emotion) but to talk about this with a certain flexibility so that all the time we are recognizing that theories, to a large extent, are cultural. I hope you enjoy my reflections on this topic.
Show Highlights:
The danger of being overly simplistic and trying to find objective criteria for self-development. Why it’s hard for immigrants to reflect on their emotional lives. The slow transition over time from identifying our pain and major psychological difficulties with mythology and religious ideas to viewing our emotions and psychological lives as being entirely secular. The first time mental health was connected to physiology. What our disappointment with those we admire and see as leaders actually signify. Why our healing and self-work are never finished. How examples of excommunication in history reveal our unwillingness to tolerate differences and assaults on the collective. The power of being familiar with the emotions that cause you trouble. Why therapy can sometimes mean becoming a little bit sadder but wiser.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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Today, I decided to do an interview with my son Gabriel, who is 10 years old. I speak a lot in the podcast about him. It is never intended to suggest that somehow I know better but it feels more honest to open up about my experiences than always speak about clinical or hypothetical situations.
The discussion with him was very moving for me. He opened up about parts of our relationship that I never knew and, as you'll hear, he also shared with me some hurt that I caused him that I was aware of but that I hadn't quite appreciated in terms of how he dealt with it.
My hope in bringing him onto the podcast was to offer a first-hand experience from a child talking about what helps him and his friends feel safe. He was really excited afterwards, and talked about how much fun it was. That warmed my heart as I didn't want him to feel co-opted in any way.
As a preamble to our discussion, I wanted to perhaps speak a bit more technically about why it is important to go into the trenches as much as possible with our emotions, especially in relationships, because the neuroscience that supports it is clear and I believe very helpful.
From the minute a child is conceived, the organism begins to organize itself around its environment. The reason that there's so much focus primarily on the first three years of life is because the foundation of the nervous system is being laid down. Trillions of neurons are being paired together and the maxim “neurons that fire together wire together” is never more true in the human being’s life. During this development, a chronic maladaptation can emerge. Just like someone writing software, the pre-verbal child's nervous system is literally adapting and responding to the emotional valence of the environment, encoding it, and it's one of the key tools that the human being consistently relies on throughout their lifespan. Those tools are the primitive responses to emotions that the child has at their disposal, which, in the beginning, are primarily in the reptilian brain and increasingly in the limbic and the neocortex systems which take about 30 years to grow.
This is why there is such a high precedence of distress in romantic relationships after children are born. The higher-order mammal (the parent) is in the soup with a child who is mimicking basic emotions that are reminding the adult nervous system, quite unconsciously, of feeling states that may have not been touched in decades or may have never acquired language. When we talk about symbolizing a child's behavior and responses, this is literally the act of using the fully developed adult brain of the parent to interpret the more primitive responses of the child.
Having Gabriel on my podcast today is an example of this where I am using a meta-process of analysis (which is this podcast) and hopefully synthesizing and thinking through with him more basic and younger responses to situations. That is why you'll hear me at times being quiet and restrained when he's sharing something, even if I have a more adult response to it; I hopefully understood that it was important for his voice to have oxygen and for him to feel fully heard. So, without further ado, enjoy my conversation with Gabriel.
Show Highlights:
What it’s like for Gabe to have a psychotherapist and podcaster as a dad. What he thinks makes a good parent. Why situations get harder in high stake moments for both a child and a parent. How places can become significant of bad emotions. A parenting moment I’m not proud of. The right balance between liberalism and conservatism as a parent from the perspective of a child. Why I became more restrictive when we moved to Sweden and how Gabe felt about and responded to it. How kids deflect when they don’t want to be mad at their parents. What happens developmentally at the age of 10. What has made Gabe feel loved and safe as my child. Why it’s so important for parents to be accepting. What the dissociability of the psyche means. Why I choose to give Gabe so much freedom.Subscribe and Review
We’d appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot!
If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/dos015 to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
***
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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I am delighted to bring Pripo Teplitsky on today’s episode as we talk about parenting and what it takes for us to make room for the spirit of the child to emerge. From the minute I heard Pripo's voice, I felt this kinship with his raw and relatable style of connecting. Pripo is a licensed clinical mental health counselor in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina. He has worked with thousands of couples and individuals over the last 17 years. He's also the host of the podcast, Relationships! Let's Talk About It.
Pripo and I share a love for talking about parenting, and it was an incredible pleasure to hear him open up about his life, his son, and his passion for creating a safe, emotional landscape for his family to thrive.
I love something that Pripo said in one of his podcasts on parenting that in doing this work as a clinician and psychotherapist, he had learned so much with couples and individuals about the pitfalls of development when it comes to children.
Pripo has always wanted to experience being a father, having experienced a close and loving relationship with his own. When his parents got divorced, he moved in with his father who told him there are three things to their relationship: communication, communication, and communication.
Modeling how his father trusted him to make decisions by being hands-off in many ways, Pripo’s advice to other parents is to trust your child's path. Not that you have to get everything right. He explains how parenting is not linear, and so, you just have to trust and not get freaked out whenever something's not happening according to your expectation – because expectation is a yet to be realized resentment. And if you're constantly attached to your expectations, there's also going to be constant resentment. Instead, you need to bring yourself in the moment and make the best of what you have.
When parents are freaked out about the direction of where their child is going, Pripo likes to stress the focus of the relationship – specifically feeding the relationship, instead of reacting to the worry. You're going to have issues with kids throughout their life as they grow older, whether with sex, money, drugs or a host of difficult areas. Pripo stresses that if you can cultivate the relationship with trust, vulnerability and openness, your kids are going to talk to you about all that stuff, and it's going to be a lot easier for you to be able to make your mistakes as well.
What I appreciate most about having this kind of conversation with people like Pripo is how we're able to normalize what it takes for us to withstand the burgeoning being that we are bringing into the world and how that affects us and challenges us to grow and make room as parents.
Show Highlights:
Feeding the relationship vs. reacting to the worry Trusting your ability to respond instead of figuring out the right answer Creating an atmosphere that gives children confidence Holding space for your kids especially in their traumatic experiences Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable How conflict is an opportunity Being a strong model for your child How to teach compassion to your kids Modeling intimacy and vulnerability with friends as menSubscribe and Review
Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet.
We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.
If you really enjoyed this episode, we’ve created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from the episode. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/podcast to download it.
Supporting Resources:
https://www.pripo.com/
https://www.pripo.com/podcast-1
https://mitchellsmolkin.com/
Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at [email protected]. For all other inquiries, please send mail to [email protected].
Episode Credits
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
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