Self Love

Psychology jargon goes through a cyclic evolution just like any vocation. Are "new age" concepts like self-love and mindfulness new concepts? If not what were they known as in the before times?  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/new-gps-intimate-relationships/202205/the-keys-self-love   Transcript: you're listening to psych with Mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:07 guest go to www.sitewithmike.com follow the show on 0:12 Twitter at psych with Mike or like the Facebook page at psych with Mike now 0:18 welcome into the site with Mike Library this is Dr Michael Mahon I am here with Mr Brett Newcombe and intern Michael 0:24 hello hello good morning how are you gentlemen Exquisite yeah my uh 0:30 daughter's dog is staying with me for a couple of days and he made some noises 0:36 from the other room to which I said be quiet dog and you guys said that sounded like an old man in the other didn't 0:42 sound like a dog yeah how do you train that dog to make those noises yeah well I don't know he doesn't live with me 0:48 anymore but um yeah yeah that was funny so uh 0:55 I think that there is at least okay let 1:01 me ask a different question Brett you are and without meaning any 1:07 any uh uh negative connotation you're the oldest person in 1:13 the room yes absolutely okay and and the reason that I say that experientially and cosmically 1:18 yes is because you were a teacher born earlier ever yeah yeah and then you also 1:26 were a therapist forever you actually taught me and even though I feel like 1:32 I've done therapy for a long long long long time you've done it even longer than that and so what I would ask is 1:40 it feels to me like this idea of mindfulness this idea of self-love this 1:47 idea of uh aware of all all of these kinds of of new age new age right 1:57 kinds of Concepts that are being baked into psychology feels newer to me but I 2:06 also recognize things are cyclic and so what goes around comes around so what I would ask you is 2:12 are you aware of a a time in Psychology where these Concepts were being promoted 2:20 more than in my experience or do you feel like these things are 2:26 newer age they weren't being framed this way they weren't being this phraseology was not being used 2:32 these are marketing strategies my argument is frequently made that every so often you 2:40 have to change what you call it yeah so that you can charge more money for it right because the insurance companies are in this constant chess game to 2:47 reduce your payments so DSM has to be revised I also think though that people want to continue to 2:55 propose new theories and so you have to repackage things to be able to make it 3:00 fresh so that you can sell it as a new idea uh yeah but they're also 3:08 I mean when you sent this article for us to talk about my first reaction is you know Psychology today is becoming like 3:15 Brides magazine yeah these articles this article you read this article you just won't let that brights thing go well you 3:21 sent me the article that's all I can say all right um it's just fluff it's pablum it's 3:27 verbiage so I was going to say well I'm gonna throw fit and we're not going to do this conversation and then I thought 3:33 you know there is a legitimate conversation to be had around the idea 3:38 of doing therapy with t people and trying to facilitate their ability to be more 3:45 self-honest self-accepting self-actualize another term from the past uh you don't have to 3:51 call it self-love but don't that's why I agreed I would have the conversation that's exactly though the point you're 3:58 trying to make yeah is that that uh I think that these things aren't new I think that they have been in Psychology 4:05 before I think self-actualization which was a meslovian uh idea is exactly this 4:14 same thing it was just so phrased We Come Back to Basics yeah 4:19 my basic concept of doing therapy is that I have to have excellent attending 4:25 skills I have to be able to do reflective listening accurately and 4:31 empathically and I have to create a safe holding environment if I can do those three things and you spend enough time 4:37 with me I will learn Who You Are what's going on with you to the point 4:43 that I can then facilitate your exploration of issues that are causing 4:49 you pain behaviors that are causing you difficulty and I can throw all kinds of words and theories and terminology and 4:55 labeling and all that into the mix but the reality is if I do that I believe I 5:01 can help you improve your quality of life and reduce your level of frustration and pain so by doing so if 5:09 you're improving that individual's quality of life yeah how is that happening do you believe 5:14 that they are internalizing some of the skills that you are demonstrating in 5:21 that therapy session yeah I hope so because that's the microcosm of the universe the two of us are here well and 5:26 you know all the theories say well whatever they're struggling with in life they're going to project onto you and you're having a chance to react to it 5:33 differently and cause them to have to go home yeah what because how many times have you had clients that would come in 5:39 and say are you going to give me homework I said well do you need homework you don't need homework okay I'll give you homework but you won't do 5:45 it and then you'll come in next week and say you're going to be really mad at me I mean why would I be mad at you well I didn't do the homework that's all yeah 5:52 and why did they even ask if you're going to give them because they've been taught exactly and they want to feel 5:57 like they have quality for cost oh you gave me something to do right even if I'm not going to do it right right 6:02 and and for anybody who is very very structurally 6:09 a cognitive behavioralist and you really believe in home homework we're not 6:14 saying homework assignments aren't beneficial what we are saying is that homework assignments should never be 6:20 given because to make sure to hold the client responsible for doing the 6:26 homework it's always about if you give the client this assignment yes if you do 6:31 it we can talk about what the effect was but if you don't do it there's just as much information to be gleaned in 6:38 therapy from a client who doesn't do their homework as a client who does do their homework so years and years ago 6:45 before you were born okay there was an argument about that's hard to believe differential between counseling and 6:52 therapy and the argument was made that counselors provide behavioral 6:57 interventions like I can help you stop having panic attacks or I can help you quit smoking or I can help you lose 7:03 weight we use this cognitive behavioral stuff teach you new language teaching new habits uh and therapy was about 7:10 personality change self-structure change 7:16 I don't know that I could make a distinction or have a horse in that race I believe 7:22 fundamentally if you come to me and I pay attention to you and I see you accurately and empathically reflect that 7:29 back to you that we can dance a dance that offers you an opportunity for 7:34 growth and change I don't know what the outcome is going to be but I believe it's beneficial on 7:40 average and don't help everybody I'm not everybody's cup of tea but if you give me that opportunity I believe I can help 7:47 you and that really is about what we would call re-parenting 7:53 which is the dance which is the danceholding environment and we were recently as you repair it yourself I 8:00 don't parent you I don't say okay that's the point I wanted to get to that's the point I wanted to get to is right who's 8:05 doing the parenting and yes the clients re-parenting themselves by internalizing some of the things that are being 8:12 presented especially in emotional regulations you're getting in your way yeah yeah is it fair is it unfair is it 8:18 sad is that okay it reality is let's deal with reality but what options do you have in one episode recently we were 8:24 talking about personality and I was saying that at my stage now almost 60 years old whereas I felt like the 8:30 personality was immutable I kind of feel like now you do have some uh advocacy or 8:36 or nothing is immutable death in taxes I know yeah it it and and but it's through 8:42 that re-parenting that you have the ability to be able to maybe make some changes so we have the younger smarter 8:48 element here let's ask what do you think well I I think it's interesting I see 8:54 you twitching I just like no Warriors it's interesting that you bring up the idea of self-love and self-care in the 9:01 Zeitgeist I think you're absolutely right I I think about uh shows like queer eye right 9:07 um very popular on Netflix Jonathan Van Ness comes out one of the cast members of query comes out with uh this book 9:14 called Over the Top which is all about his own self-love his own self-reflection um and he really dives into Richard 9:21 Schwartz's Parts Theory right he really starts to talk about that it's really starting to dissect one's own 9:27 personality and finding the aspects of one's personality that serves one right 9:33 um so we talk about if you were press apart uh that part can act out in a 9:38 different way if I repress the depression in me that part eventually will either take over the driver's seat 9:44 because it hasn't got the attention or um or act out in another way I have a 9:50 number of friends who are family systems trained and believe and work and I've 9:55 seen it work I mean it's beautiful work it can really it's another way to speak it's another language but I love to jack 10:02 around with them because I'll say part of me really resists what you're saying yeah and you know they just roll their ass and and part of them wants to slap 10:09 me when that happens you know again I I we've talked about this that that is anything new or is everything always 10:15 repackaged you and I being more psychodynamically focused uh neither one 10:23 of us really use that language of Parts theory that doesn't mean that it isn't real or isn't relevant it's such an echo 10:31 of all that I learned about working with multiple personalities yeah uh which I mean it is an in a fight with it's just 10:38 an echo of how I learned to understand it uh but I don't know that it matters at the 10:44 end of the day I have to hear you accurately and reflect to you what I'm hearing not judgmentally but accurately 10:51 so that it resonates with you I mean he sees me he understands me he accepts me then I can challenge you can you accept 10:57 yourself right the whole thing about guilt I don't accept myself because I'm so guilty I've I'm carrying this burden 11:04 of of angst and regret and so on and we have to find a way to say what 11:11 is that in service how is that impacting your survival and your progress yeah 11:16 could you let it go and if and what would it take for you to be able to let it go what would it be worth I believe 11:23 that all behaviors cost and pain all choices cost and pay we have to do the 11:28 emotional economics can we give you new coin of the realm to play with uh 11:34 that's the challenge of the dance well dance with me the only thing that I can 11:40 or there is something that I am very aware of as we're having this conversation that just recently happened 11:46 and there's no reason for people to know this you guys know this my daughter just graduated from medical school and we had 11:54 graduation last weekend and while we were at graduation my daughter said to 12:00 me I just want to tell you that when we 12:05 were little you were a really big advocate of we have to love ourselves 12:11 and that that has to be the focus of Our Lives because on my email there's a 12:17 Latin phrase that is Nemo debt quad non-habit which means you can't give away something that you don't have and I 12:24 always told my kids you can't really love somebody else if you don't love yourself you can't really trust somebody 12:29 else if you don't trust yourself and I've always believed that that is a foundational psychological principle and 12:36 she said you know I just have to thank you for in ingraining that in us because 12:42 it was not something that was looked unfavorably in my family I remember my daughter said when she was 12:50 still in a pumpkin seat in the back of my mom's car grandma do you love yourself and my mom said well I don't 12:56 know probably not and my daughter would just went off on oh well I want you to love yourself and because my dad says 13:02 that you got to love yourself and you can't and I just want you to be happy grandma and my mom came over that day 13:08 and and confronted me and said what are you teaching your kids you're messing your 13:13 kids up and all this stuff and because that wasn't something that was promoted in my family the idea of 13:20 self-love was not something that was okay your shame is a very powerful language yeah speak it's also a very 13:25 easy language to speak and and I think brene Brown has a quote out that shame derives its power from being unspeakable 13:33 and so if we Revel in that shame and we we exist in that shame we will never 13:38 truly love ourselves um and it's so I'm a member of the queer community and it's really prevalent uh 13:45 Jonathan Van Ness is also in the queer Community um there's a another person uh RuPaul 13:50 um very famous for being a drag queen and ends every episode by saying if you can't love yourself how in the hell are 13:57 you going to love anybody else right and I I it's interesting too I think you got that from me I might have yeah no no I 14:03 think RuPaul was I might have gotten that from you uh possibly um but I really do think it's 14:08 interesting that that has come out of a community where shame tends to be a 14:14 driving motivator a driving uh factor in a lot people's lives there's another 14:20 book called The Velvet rage whose author I can't remember at this moment but all about shame right does shame 14:28 research and says these are the stages that uh that a queer man goes through as he grows into into life um and it's it's 14:35 focused on shame back in the 90s there was got an author Leo buscalia yeah the 14:40 doctor of love love doctor he was on he was huge on Hugh Donahue back when you 14:45 Donahue was still on yeah yeah I think he was replaced by Dr Ruth but I think they had a different Focus Savage has 14:52 his problem yes right Savage Love is no self-love ultimately and it's it's interesting to me that that these ideas 14:58 of self-love really find pillars in in the queer community and in other 15:04 marginalized communities um and it's and then people who tend to 15:09 pillars can be anchors yes they can help stabilize you and ground you if you can buy the same thing religion can do for 15:15 people yes can anchor you in times of turmoil 15:20 I've often said that clients who have a religious anchor to 15:26 hold on have something additional to fight with in times of trouble and crisis then 15:33 clients that don't have that and but you've also said that that can both be a 15:38 benefit but also a liability that religion can give you the illusion 15:45 of having some sense of certainty and maybe I'm maybe I Mis well no I think 15:50 the caution that I would offer is the things that I say personally in my personal life are different than the 15:55 things that I say counseling my job is not to proselytize my beliefs about religion and faith my job is to take 16:03 what you believe and help understand how it anchors you or how it gets in your 16:08 way and then offer to you new ways to think about that not as a as a 16:15 conviction of my premise but as a growth within you that gives you more freedom 16:20 and less okay so if if if religion causes a blockage for growth yeah then 16:29 it's not a positive well what I kind of heard you you picking at there is uh the 16:34 idea that while religion can anchor you say somebody comes that can also come with a risk of an existential crisis yes 16:41 in and of itself if they start to question or doubt their own religion right with that gain comes comes another risk 16:49 yeah but yeah to my question to my answer is what doesn't come with other risks right right that doesn't exist 16:55 okay let's run to our break and we'll pick this up on the other side hey guys Dr Michael Mahon here from 17:02 Psych with Mike and do you think that you have a story to tell I know that 17:09 when we started psych with Mike the things that we really wanted in a 17:15 podcast hosting company was that they knew what they were doing and libsyn has 17:21 been around since the very beginning they're the oldest running consecutive still existing podcast hosting company 17:29 in the entire world I think but certainly in the United States so they've been around since people started 17:36 uploading things to the internet and so they have a lot of experience but we 17:43 also needed a service that was easy to use and libsyn is just so intuitive and 17:50 even though they've got all of this experience they just keep on upgrading so they just recently went through a 17:57 major renovation a major upgrade lips and pride and made the service even more 18:03 intuitive and user friendly than it was before and it was so user friendly before that I was able to figure it out 18:10 and get site with Mike up on the service so we've been using uh Lipson since the 18:16 very beginning of Psych with Mike for over two years now we love them and as a 18:22 friend of the show if you go to libsyn and start a podcast right now you get 18:28 your first month free so you go to libson.com and use the code 18:35 f-r-i-e-n-d so friend of the show friend that's l i b s y n.com and use the code 18:44 f r i e n d and you get your first month free and as always if it's Friday it's 18:52 cycling okay we're back and the one part of the 18:57 article that I actually liked was there's a section where the author is 19:03 talking about you know you can kind of monitor your own sense of self-love by 19:10 are you quicker to self-criticize or are you quicker to self-praise and I think 19:16 that that's a really important concept so I think a lot of that is driven by the scripts that you internalize as a 19:23 child the parenting scripts that your parents used who in the hell do you think you are 19:28 messaging that you internalizing well who do I think I am what makes me better what makes me different I have to be 19:34 this way shame power control pain or levers that many people parent with 19:42 mm-hmm there's a a line in a song that I like where this guy is talking about his 19:50 experience in Catholic school and he says that he got his knuckles bruised by 19:56 a nun dressed in black who told him that fear is the Heart of Love so he never 20:02 went back and I think that that is so true that's my daughter's dog is so true 20:08 in a lot of our experiences that people taught us that fear is the Heart of Love 20:16 and it's not it's not when we love other people and it's not when we love 20:23 ourselves my father specifically said to me I don't care if you love me but you will fear me 20:28 yeah there's a great Michael Scott quote from the office it's would you prefer to be feared or loved and he says is it too 20:35 much to ask for both I want people to be afraid of how much they love me and I 20:40 said yeah that sounds good oh afraid that's a nice thing yeah I didn't think that's where that was going in the 20:46 beginning yeah uh okay so now actually now I'm gonna pose a question uh because 20:53 if you look awe up in the dictionary the definition of awe is Majesty with a 21:02 sense of fear I mean that's that's the that's the definition so is sinners in the hand 21:09 you're an Angry God well but but is fear required as a part of Love reverence and 21:18 respect are different are different okay I think they are different um and I think reverent 21:24 in in religion in particular at least how I have understood um Christian religion as I've grown up 21:29 is that uh God has two parts to him right um grace and mercy whereas Grace is 21:36 receiving something you don't deserve and mercy is not receiving something you did right uh and so I I think love can 21:44 exist without that I don't I I agree love can't exist without fear in some sense because if 21:51 you aren't afraid of either losing it or um what can come as a result of this 21:56 vulnerability right that you're entering into someone with someone else it does it have vulnerability at all so the 22:02 Buddha said that the heart of all despair is attachment and so the 22:07 Buddhist concept is Love without attachment and so there is no fear of 22:12 losing that and that you know Buddha said that the greatest love is love that doesn't have that fear of loss 22:19 associated with it transcendentalism and and so I and and I will be honest uh I 22:28 believe that human beings are ingrained at the level of our DNA to be in committed relationships so to me the 22:35 idea of Love without attachment is something that I feel is alien to Being Human but that 22:43 you know that that caveat put out there you know we do have a concept in uh in 22:50 in our world of love without fear and is that a superior form of love should we 22:59 even have fear associated with love 23:06 I think it's uh I don't know I don't I'm not clear on 23:12 what I want to say um I think the idea of humanity 23:21 is that we try to hold on to things to Anchor ourselves to things and people 23:27 to be safe before we stay in one place instead of wrong motions 23:32 the idea that you're articulating about The Love without fear is a greater love a larger love a more encompassing love 23:40 and as the Buddha is suggesting transcendentalism is suggesting if we can detach ourselves from these fears 23:47 and these inhibiting anchors then we can be more expensive and we can see a larger part 23:55 of the universe I don't know if that's doable or not yeah I think that's my understanding of 24:00 the discussion and it you know this is something that I've really thought about 24:06 a lot in Greek in the Greek language there are six or seven words for love 24:12 depending on which reference choice you look at and we don't have that broad kind of love language in our society and 24:21 I think that we're missing something because of that I think that we should be more focused on that but let's go 24:27 back clinically to this idea of are you quicker to self-criticize or are you quicker to self-praise you know if you 24:34 look at yourself and you answer that question in the negative I am much more 24:40 quick to self-criticize that's actually something that we can help you with in 24:45 therapy we can help you learn compensatory measures where you can 24:52 practice trying to be more self-presentative amazing and in the 24:58 beginning that's going to be really hard to do so one of the ways you approach that 25:04 clinically use a specific example I was talking to somebody the other day was telling me that they get in depressive 25:09 cycles and they stand at the front door they want to go outside and they know they need to go out and walk and be in 25:15 the Sun but they just can't go out they just can't go out and I suggested to 25:21 them that words matter and the language you hear in your head structures reality 25:26 and so you have to learn to recognize that voice that says can't and change it 25:32 to will or won't so it should shouldn't can can't get rid of those and make 25:39 affirmative choices but it's not one trial learning you can't do it today and say I will go outside and go outside but 25:45 you have to change the script that you've internalized from childhood that gives you an opportunity to 25:53 be more free right and less bound to your depression and while that isn't one 25:59 trial learning I do think that that is spotter than for the therapy session so 26:04 you can say I will go outside today and go outside and then the next time you come back and see me we can talk about 26:11 how was that you didn't die was it do you want to get to a place where you can say I will stop therapy 26:18 some people do yes there's a lot of um like reaffirmation in that language yes 26:24 I I've heard the same example with vegetarianism people are really wanting to become vegetarians and they say 26:30 instead of saying oh I can't eat meat they say oh I shouldn't eat I don't yeah exactly tell their friends I don't teach 26:37 me I'm not smoking today yeah I don't smoke yeah right right no I think that words matter the the 26:44 words absolutely matter and that's why it I feel like it's super super 26:50 important to work with people who are overly self-critical to try and even if 26:58 it isn't change that to self-praise at least start by modifying the 27:05 self-critical language you know because it can make a huge difference just like 27:10 you're saying the difference between I don't eat meat and I won't eat meat 27:15 is only one letter but it makes a huge difference in the way 27:21 that you perceive it in yourself well it kind of brings us back to the new age word of empowerment yeah you accept your 27:29 power to act you're not trapped you're not stuck you're not limited you're not bound by these strictures you have the 27:36 power to choose we just did a whole episode on personality I think one becomes a behavior you are exhibiting 27:42 and the other is a choice in your personality trait yeah and and choice 27:48 among personality traits yes you know I I I'm really 27:54 so I am very aware that uh 28:01 there's and and it's always this way but there's a a real 28:07 um sense in our society that we have 28:13 so many more opportunities we have so many more people encouraging people to 28:19 be empowered to express their to be you know body what's it what's it called 28:26 when body uh uh happy when you're happy in your own body body positive 28:32 um you know and and so we reject the old kinds of of 28:38 media driven ideas of what is attractive and just be body positive and so we have 28:44 these messages and then on the other still sell Barbie dolls little girls yeah and but but and and I have I've 28:52 heard from clients that they feel like it's harder today to be able to feel 29:00 loved because the ideas that they see on social media of people promoting their 29:08 lives is is so incredibly difficult to live up to and I tell people all the 29:14 time what you see on social media is a lie I mean nobody's living that life maybe you just don't turn off social 29:19 media well well that I think that's the problem is that they are living that life now previously when we look at at 29:26 advertisements or Hollywood that is separate and that is removed from your pocket but now I think we have children 29:34 and teens in particular have social media and they build lives that portray 29:40 this image they build false identities yes it's not real and that becomes their 29:47 entire existence and that's that's not a job for them that is them now 29:52 well I don't know I disagree because I influencers you mean yes because they're 29:58 promoting that and that may be their social Persona online but they're still 30:04 you know so I see these these you know depictions every year the social media of you know people at Thanksgiving and 30:11 everybody's having a great time and they're cutting the turkey and everybody's happy and laughing but I 30:16 know at that table there's a lot of dissension people are arguing with each other and somebody left and you know was 30:22 angry and somebody else drank too much Rockwell painting no huh but but I think that but I wonder if 30:30 there are more opportunities to be yourself today but that some of the 30:38 straitjackets that we live in are just as real today as they were in the 1960s 30:44 right yeah but you could live in a 50 Cent video today instead of a Norman Rockwell painting sure 30:49 and I so I guess it's picky poison but but in the end that hurt but in the 30:57 end you do have some agency to be able to 31:04 change the language that you use to be able to think about yourself to me the 31:13 language the self-talk is more important than the social media projection is that 31:18 fair yes yes and so what I would be saying to 31:25 individuals is it's more important how you conceptualize yourself than whether 31:31 or not you get 10 million likes on your Facebook feed 31:38 well it's Fame is so microscopic now that it truly is fickle and brene brown 31:45 talks about this idea of scarcity in life and a focus on scarcity uh which eventually 31:51 she she argues leads to a focus in scarcity of oneself uh and you know we 31:57 talk about um the generation between the Boomers and the Gen xers uh really had to uh 32:04 keep up with the Johnsons right or keeping up with the Joneses that was a whole big thing then 32:09 um and I think in some ways is now too but just in a much more microscopic way 32:15 um I mean I get on my social media and I feel as though I can never keep up with 32:21 all of the things that I should do I should be an interior designer and a 32:26 photographer and a musician and uh and uh and uh you can have it all you can't 32:31 have it all um so I wonder how and when we I I'm grateful for some 32:39 of the self-love talk but I I hear your point around there is now a societal 32:44 pressure to say you have to love yourself and if you don't well what's wrong with you yeah like like that's the 32:52 normal the the normal state would be to love yourself when I'm not sure that 32:58 that's ever been the normal state but it is a state that we should aspire to we would like to Aspire to 33:04 yes yes those language matters all right hopefully that is beneficial for people 33:10 as always the music that appears inside with Mike is written and performed by Mr Benjamin de clue uh if you want to do 33:17 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