Finding Help: Therapy, Recovery, & Community

Internet addiction is a condition that we are just starting to recognize and grapple with collectively as a culture. It’s also something that the therapy community is also starting to take seriously and address with clients. And I think if we are honest, most of us can likely identify some form of internet addiction in our own lives, be it mild or severe. Zulaikha Straight, MA, LPC, is a trauma therapist and certified addiction coach specializing in internet addiction. We talk about how this addiction can take on many different forms, including shopping, pornography, social media, and gaming addiction, to name a few. We also discuss how the underlying issues driving the addiction need to be addressed for there to be any long term healing or recovery and the ways that help are available.

0:00 Introduction

2:40 Why Zulaikha started treating internet addiction

5:15 What does internet addiction look like?

7:25 Pornography addiction - the most dangerous form of internet addiction

13:30 Shopping addiction - the dopamine rush from hitting the purchase button

18:20 The consequences of a culture addicted to the internet and the documentary “The Social Dilemma”

26:40 Social media addiction - the underlying need is to be validated and accepted; splitting our identities between public, private, and social personas;

32:50 Possibility of change; looking at the trauma underlying internet addiction; different trauma treatments

40:00 Gaming addiction - the only form of internet addiction confirmed at this point by the DSM and psychiatric world

48:13 What Zulaikha would pass on to people who are listening

Zulaikha's website: https://integrativeGA.com

Facebook: https://facebook.com/integrativeGA

Instagram: https://instagram.com/integrativega/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/integrative-counseling-ga/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/integrativeGA

A lot of times there’s a thin line between a mental breakdown and a spiritual experience. Adam has had his fair share of both. He shares them here and it’s quite a ride.

Things kicked up a notch when he was a NCAA Division 1 football player managing a worsening drug problem. In a televised ESPN game, he had a psychotic break. Spiritual experiences, continued drug use, 12 Step Recovery, and total acceptance eventually follow.

1:35 Amphetamine induced psychotic break during a D1 NCAA football game

5:05 Continued psychosis for 4 months

7:20 Psychosis ends then “things get weird”

9:08 An overwhelming spiritual experience; “losing total sense of time and space”

13:05 “the thin line between a mental breakdown and a spiritual experience”

15:35 Beginning to use black tar heroin

17:35 Instant relapse, going to the bluffs to score drugs

21:35 Why he stopped relapsing - the 12 Steps

23:05 Difficulty  of what families experience

26:05 Lao Tzu and Taoism; peace, contentment, and creativity in recovery

28:00 A few second of contemplation

30:20 Being back on heroin, living in Tulsa with his mom, losing his girlfriend

32:35 Waking up dopesick, using heroin and cocaine

34:35 Getting back into recovery

37:35 Being deeply ashamed of who he was; out of dope, out of money, out of gas

39:05 Looking at a gun and contemplating suicide

41:35 Revisiting spirituality in recovery: Taoism, Zen, Bruce Lee, Alan Watts

46:05 Shared Space, building a recovery-focused social media software

47:35 Pema Chodron, “Comfortable with Uncertainty”

50:05 Taking the 3rd Step

52:35 Working in the treatment field, Life as play rather than work

57:25 What Adam would pass on to people listening

For more information, visit https://mattshedd.com

A Jungian psychotherapist who approaches the most seemingly ordinary human experience with the curiosity and reverence of a philosopher and a poet, Mitchell Smolkin, MACP, RP, is a profoundly interesting conversation partner.  We work through some big questions in this episode. Specifically, we discuss how therapy can intersect with spirituality in moments of great suffering to be a profound meaning-making tool in our lives.

How do we find dignity in suffering? [1:30]

How can we use art and religious narratives to make meaning? [8:45]

Why is it so difficult to talk about spiritual and religious identity? [13:30]

How do you work with religion and spirituality in the therapy room? [20:00]

How can we acknowledge and work with our cultural and spiritual inheritance in therapy? [27:30]

What would you say to people who are suffering right now? [36:30]

For Mitchell’s podcast, look up "The Dignity of Suffering" wherever podcasts are found. Also, you can visit Mitchell at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/

For more of Matt Shedd's work, visit https://mattshedd.com. 

Terrible things always happened to Kyle when he drank. And yet Kyle could NOT stop drinking, even though he desperately wanted to.

We start off our conversation with his description of being in the hospital with the DTs. And it makes "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem tame. 

He recalls after being detoxed, swearing he's not going to drink at the same time that he's lifting the bottle to his mouth.

Eventually, through the process of a 12 Steps program, surrender, and community, a life characterized by isolation and despair starts to give way to connection and hope.

Here's the story of how Kyle found help.

For more of Matt's work, visit https://mattshedd.com

If addiction is a process characterized by a state of violence toward oneself and others, perhaps the way to recovery is nonviolent. Perhaps lasting habit change doesn't involve forcing, coercing, or punishing ourselves into doing things differently but instead consists of a process of disarming ourselves of ineffective coping mechanisms. And in taking that risk, maybe we can open ourselves to finding a new power grounded in community rather than alienation. In this podcast episode, Matt Shedd lays out how he sees the language and process of nonviolent direct action as coinciding with the process of 12 Step Recovery and the science of mindfulness and habit change. Exploring the intersection between these approaches, Matt draws from several traditions and bodies of knowledge. Looking at the Big Book of A.A; the work of researchers Dr. Judson Brewer and Brené Brown; and Gandhi's practice of "Satyagraha" and the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Matt walks through how he sees all these voices point to a unifying truth. When we learn to lay down the weapons of faulty defense mechanisms (which are only hurting ourselves and those around us), we can perhaps connect to a collective power or way of being that helps to heal ourselves and those around us.

For more of Matt's work or to reach out to him directly, visit mattshedd.com. 

What happens if a therapist properly understands their client’s unique brain differences and challenges? It can potentially save the client and therapist years of pursuing therapeutic interventions that are ineffective for that client’s particular brain. Kelli Willard’s approach as a therapist changed dramatically when she officially received an ADHD diagnosis. A better understanding of how her own brain functioned helped her shift her entire perspective, not just on her own daily life, but also on working with individuals and couples as a therapist. In our talk we discuss neurodiversity and how everyone’s brain functions differently. Kelli’s work with clients seeks to move past unhelpful disease models related to different-functioning brains. Rather, she focuses on helping her clients embrace and work with the gifts and challenges associated with their unique brain functioning.

Learn more about Kelli's work at: https://loveallthebrains.com/

For more about Matt's work and the services he provides, visit https://mattshedd.com

What if we learned to welcome every emotional experience we had–even the unpleasant ones?

Natasha Vayner, LCSW, talks about how she uses radical acceptance in the work she does with her clients. “There’s space for feeling, for thoughts, and there’s space for anger–really anything,” Natasha explains. “Anything is welcome.”

She also explains how she uses EMDR, a technique that provides a specific methodology for clients to create this room for new experiences.

“[With EMDR] clients hear themselves saying the things that they never thought they would say. They are feeling the things that they never thought that they would feel. And the clinician is there to support [the client] in going deeper and deeper.”

We start by talking about Natasha’s first exposure to the idea of radical acceptance through the work of Tara Brach and how it changed her life and her practice.

For more about Natasha’s work, visit https://www.groundedpsychotherapy.com/

To learn more about Matt Shedd’s work and the services he provides for therapists, visit https://mattshedd.com

What is it like to be an African American therapist helping clients work through racial trauma that one is also experiencing? 

According to Sherrae Lachhu, LMFT, doing this well involves having the humility and willingness to learn about each client's unique personal and cultural backgrounds. 

"All trauma is not the same," Sherrae points out. "I know trauma; I know oppression; I know what it feels like to come from a marginalized community. I don't know how everybody within my community feels, let alone other communities." 

In Sherrae's work as a therapist based in Huntersville, North Carolina, she specializes in making therapy accessible to BIPOC individuals. And in this conversation, she also discusses the healing groundwork that therapy can provide for people to understand themselves and pursue meaningful lives that they don't feel the need to escape from.

For more about Sharrae’s work you can visit: https://love-acceptance.com/

To learn more about Matt's work, the services that he provides for therapists, or for help producing your own podcast, you can visit https://mattshedd.com.

Ana Aluisy is a therapist in Tampa, Florida, specializing in multicultural couples counseling and making mental healthcare accessible to minority communities. In our talk we cover a range of issues, like why more people are coming to therapy during COVID, the unique bond that can exist between a therapist and a client, and the challenges that minority communities can often face to receive mental health support.  Here are some of the the main subjects we touch on:

-Why more people are coming to therapy during Covid (1:30)

-What therapy is actually like (3:10)

-Working with clients’ false beliefs of being unworthy or unloveable (9:10)

-Multicultural couples counseling (12:30)

-Different cultural perceptions about therapy (15:20)

-Writing a book for the Spanish-speaking community (18:20)

-Barriers to treatment for minorities: accessibility, availability, utilization (21:00)

Visit Ana’s Website: comegethelp.com

Check Out Ana’s Book "Reinvent Your Relationship: A Therapist's Insights to Having the Relationship You've Always Wanted": www.indiebound.org/book/9781630478971

For more information on Matt’s work or for help getting the word out about your therapy practice, visit mattshedd.com

Even if the mental health difficulties don’t seem connected to our family relationships, a lot of times they are. We all participate in systems, like our families, that affect us whether we acknowledge it or not.

As Travis Ramsey, LPC, puts it, “If one part of our family isn’t working well, it doesn’t make all the other parts behave better, it makes them behave worse.” And at the same time, “When one person changes, it can change the whole family system.” As an emotionally focused couples and families therapist, Travis helps clients see the difficulties they are experiencing in conjunction with the systems they are part of and helps clients to work to heal those systems.

“A lot of times people think that it’s just personal problems that bring them into counseling, and they don’t often see how it is related to their relationships.”

By looking at the relationships, and taking this systems-oriented approach, Travis helps his client’s understand their own confusing emotions and behavior. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re doing, that doesn’t make sense to you–my goal is to help you make sense of it.”

And doing that involves experiencing the feelings along with his clients: “We are feeling it together. And I am going into that experience that you’re having. And what that requires of me is that I can’t be afraid to go there.”

To learn more about Travis’s practice visit:

https://www.travisramseytherapy.com/about

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/travis-ramsey-smyrna-ga/198473