Greg Kovacs

This is podcast description.

This is podcast description.

Fish stories are like opinions. Everybody’s got one. The difference is, people actually enjoy a good fish story. In his first book, Mark Usyk sets out to prove that he not only has a couple, but that he knows how to tell them as well. But are they really all fish stories? Or is he trying to unlock the mysteries of the universe as only an angler can? From his time as a cell tower climber with a bunch of fly rods packed alongside his climbing gear, to his days spent at a grungy and thankless production factory job indoors and all but cut off from the great outdoors, to memories of simpler days and the ones that got away, here are 61 short stories told by a self-proclaimed marginal fly fisherman. Whether they’re about fishing or something more is up to you to decide.

From Reflections of a Fly Rod, by Mark Usyk

I met today with Mark Usyk, author of Reflections of a Fly Rod and Carp are Jerks and blogger at Streamer Junkie. Using flyfishing and storytelling as his medium, Mark has embarked on a journey toward his truest self like few others can.

The Author

Reflections of a Fly Rod

Carp are Jerks

Environmentalist

Trout Power

Blogger

Streamer Junkie

Dreamer

The world seems to be spinning out of control. Social distancing, holidays without family, and an uncertain political climate make it seem like our psychological moorings are unraveling. In today's episode of True You!, I speak with Dr. Mike Griffin about the challenges of COVID-19 and political stress on our emotional health. Fear, unpredictability, and perceptions of lost social relationships appear to be the culprits.

Fear

When COVID-19 crossed continents reaching pandemic proportions in April 2020, our curiosity quickly turned to fear and anxiety. Since the function of fear is to prepare the body for potential threats, it is no surprise that rates of fear and anxiety increased by 20% in some parts of the world over the summer.  Fear and anxiety can sometimes be a good thing, but when they become persistent and overwhelming, it often leads to chronic psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress, phobias, chronic anxiety, and depression.

Unpredictability

A perceived lack of predictability is associated with increases in fear and anxiety. Earlier this year and almost all of a sudden, everything seemed to become unpredictable. To compensate, we tried educating ourselves on how to identify, avoid, and treat symptoms of COVID-19, only to discover many conflicting opinions from people we have been taught to trust. Compounded by the uncertainty of the 2020 presidential election, our sense of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety became a significant and overwhelming part of our lives.

Loneliness

Researchers have identified a common fear response called tend-and-befriend. In times of national or personal crisis, social support has proven very important. For example, following Hurricane Katrina, social support played a crucial role in mental health recovery as well as building resilience to the crisis.

Interestingly, the research to date has not shown any significant increases in loneliness. Social media has enabled new and powerful ways of maintaining essential social connections, especially now in a world gripped with a pandemic. 

With advances in social media, coupled with video chat apps like Facetime, Zoom, and Skype we have been able to adapt to new ways of maintaining social connection.

Remaining at risk for decreased social support are those who do not have access to such technology, including the elderly and the financially disadvantaged. 

Putting the Pieces Together

When our thinking is clear and rational we hold power over our emotions

Cognitive science tells us that our perceptions contribute to neurochemical reactions in the body that we experience as emotions. It is critical that the information we use to understand COVID-19 or political stressors be as clear, understandable, and rational as possible so that we can predict the steps needed to keep ourselves safe. We should avoid sources of information that do not offer evidence-based and trusted information.

With healthy thinking, you’ll have healthy emotions.

In these times of uncertainty, unpredictability, and unprecedented societal flux, we must use our available resources to support ourselves and each other. We must be sure to maintain social connections, consume information with a discerning, rational mind, and seek counseling if needed. Mental health counselors are trained to identify problematic thinking and will help you think differently about the world around you.

Referenced Resources:

Tulane University Self-Care Tips

American Psychological Association COVID-19 Free Resources

I spoke with Jim Brule’. Jim is a Maggid, which is a traditional storyteller who tells stories of healing, hope, and transformation. But, I first want to talk a bit about storytelling. None of us are strangers to the practice of hearing and telling stories; we’ve been hearing stories since the day we were born and often even before that. We all love to listen to a story told by a good storyteller. For me, it wasn’t until graduate school that I realized how powerfully stories can define us, and how we can allow stories to change the way we understand the world around us.

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

Patrick Rothfuss, author

In fact, when we tell stories to our kids we are contributing to the development of their morals; we are sculpting their values into something that resembles the way our own parents sculpted ours. Just re-read some of the fairy tales that we listened to and read as kids. Read some of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales and you should be able to see how those works may have contributed to the German national identity. Or read Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” or even watch some of our modern fairy tales, like Frozen and Moana. These stories instill values and morals into our kids, and into us, parents, as we tell them. You can very easily find themes of gender equality, gay rights, and warnings about having too much political power.

Politics

And the stories we tell our kids often align with the beliefs and values underlying our political ideologies. Psycholinguist George Lakoff writes about the ways in which our current political leaders have become skilled at weaving the language of liberal and conservative worldviews into their public discourse, and how that language becomes so deeply engrained into the teller and the listener that the transmission of political values has become an art form.

In fact, it is impossible to have a transformative discussion with someone on the opposite political spectrum unless you understand the etiology, the silent meanings, of the words used by your opponent-storyteller. The only way we are going to win an argument with our political opposite is to use their own language, which carries generations of secret meaning meant to silently deliver deeply held beliefs, values, and morals. In fact, the power of stories to inform complex systems of thought is reflected in the fact that at a meeting in 2019 of the Annual Society of Neuroscience they held a minisymposia devoted to the topic of storytelling.

Neurology

I don’t want to make this too much about neuroscience (although Jim will speak briefly about this), and I certainly don’t want to make this about politics. But it reminds me why I love the art of storytelling. A good story affects us cognitively, neurochemically, and emotionally; it affects our values and morTine these ideas in action. And stories serve as hosts in the transmission of those values and morals to our children and to future generations.

Today's Guest: Jim Brule'

Jim Brule’ is a Maggid, which is a traditional Jewish narrator of transformational stories. He is a teller of stories that inspire growth and change in the listener. Jim is also a Clinical Psychologist by trade and is actively training others to become transformational storytellers. Head over to TransformationalStorytelling.org to learn more about Jim’s work as a Transformational Storyteller. Here’s my discussion with Jim Brule’. And stick around until the end of our discussion when Jim offers a story of transformation and hope.

Think about the last time you interacted with your spouse or partner. Did you think about how events in your partner’s day affected their current emotions? Were you able to acknowledge and understand their emotional state, and then use your own emotions to sooth them? Or did you stay inside of yourself, unable to use emotional expression to sooth your partner? In every interaction with our partner, and in every other social interaction, we have an opportunity to engage in one of the simplest and most powerful forms of relationship enhancement: Emotional Attunement.

Remember Plasma Balls? When you touch the orb, the purple or blue bolts of electricity pull away from the center and gather at the tip of your finger.

Emotional Attunement is like a Plasma Ball. Your partner’s emotional orb would be boring and unfulfilled if left sitting on a shelf, untouched. Instead, they need us to place our emotional fingers on the orb and connect with their emotions; to pull their emotions toward us, and ours toward them. When we can do that, we are practicing Emotional Attunement.

Emotional Attunement is an essential relationship skill in which we recognize, understand, and engage with our partner’s emotional state. And research on relationship health consistently finds that when we fail to remain emotionally attuned to our partners our relationships experience a loss of trust, resentment, and eventual breakdown.

WHAT CAUSES LACK OF EMOTIONAL ATTUNEMENT?

Attachment During Infancy

Emotional Attunement is an essential skill that we learn as infants. When our primary caregiver consistently recognizes, understands, and meets the needs expressed by our emotional state, we begin to develop a belief, that persists into adulthood, that emotional expression is a good thing; it helps those around us to better understand and meet our needs.   

However, if something gets in the way of our primary giver’s ability to consistently respond to our emotions, due alcoholism, severe depression or anxiety, excessive work stress, or even marital distress, then we develop a persistent belief that our emotions have no value; that we should not express them because they are likely to fall on deaf ears.

To make this more challenging, it is often the case that when a primary caregiver is unable to respond appropriately to their infant’s emotional messaging, they are more likely to value their children for their ability to sooth the parent’s emotional state. When that happens, those infants develop a persisting worldview that their emotional needs are not important and that there is no value in emotional expression.

Instead, they believe that their job in life is to say and do whatever is needed to keep important people close to them. They learn that their worth is only to give to others. They learn to give away compliments, emotions, and physical energy in an emotionless, inauthentic, and draining effort to sustain the relationship. Or they give nothing, instead waiting for a mother figure to meet their emotional and physical needs (i.e., “I’m your wife, not your mother!”). Those with insecure attachment styles as a result of misattunement often first consider a partner’s behavior in terms of what it means for them, their needs, and the overall security in the relationship.

Life Stressors

Even those who experienced attuned caregiving during infancy can develop problems with attunement as adults. As above, things like alcoholism, being overworked, having severe anxiety, depression, or other forms of mental illness can affect one’s ability to develop or sustain emotionally healthy behaviors. When the stressor is removed or resolved,

I want to talk a bit about authenticity. One interesting thing about authentic people is that you can identify them quickly. Authentic people have an energy that makes others want to be around them—they’re like magnets. Well, without saying it . . . sometimes without even knowing it . . . we are all striving to become our most authentic selves. And, in fact, the process of becoming our truest selves has been studied for decades. Erik Erikson was a developmental psychologist from the 1960’s who put quite a lot of effort into understanding how we can maintain our personal integrity . . .  how we stay true to ourselves . . . in the face of so many outside factors that want to pull at us . . . that want us to be something different . . . that challenge us to remain true to our beliefs, our values; that want to distract us from our life goals. I often imagine our truest self to be a perfectly round ball made up of loose parts connected on the inside with rubber bands . . . so the parts can temporarily pull away from the core then fall back into place when whatever was pulling at it goes away . . . and the goal is to never let a part of that core self get pulled too far for too long by some outside force . . . to not let that sphere stay out of shape for any longer than we want it to be. And when we have full and total control of the shape of that sphere, we have reached the holy grail of authenticity . . . we have become our truest self.

You all know what this feels like . . . we usually experience

our truest selves in kind of fleeting glimpses somewhere in adolescence—most of

us didn’t stay there for very long. Even as adults most of our spheres look

like one of those plastic spherical puzzles that you take apart and have to put

back together again . . . except for some it never really gets put back

together perfectly. Because it’s hard to be our truest selves. And I would

argue that it’s harder today than it ever was!

One of my favorite shows growing up was Little House on the

Prairie.  I liked it for the same reason

that kids love tree forts and big cardboard boxes: for the solace of being

within a confined, controllable, and manageable space—a space where nothing is pulling

at us—where we can be our truest selves. 

The folks in that little house on the prairie were kind of isolated.

Their families and close friends were their primary supports. They tended to

hold a single job for a lifetime usually and their parents and grandparents usually

did the same work. They met a fewer number of people each day, and those that

they did meet likely held similar beliefs and values. It was safe; it was

manageable—it was one socially confined cardboard box.

But society today isn’t like that; we are progressing. We’re

expanding.  We now have text messaging,

cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and email. We travel huge distances

physically and virtually. We change jobs. We change partners. We relocate more

frequently.  We meet sometimes hundreds

of people each day, each with different perspectives, values, and

opinions.  While exposure to that kind of

diversity offers vibrancy and healthy challenges to stuck ways of thinking and

being, we need to remember that rapid and continual challenges to our values

and beliefs can contribute to confusion and unpredictability and uncertainty—it

can be sort of an assault on our psychological moorings—it can cause that sphere

of self to remain chronically out of shape. And when we feel constantly pulled

apart from who and what we truly want to be, we feel it. And it’s not a good

feeling.

It seems no coincidence that rates of anxiety—feelings of

uncertainty and unpredictability—have increased quite a lot in the past t...

A few days ago, in a True You! Short Discussion, I talked

about the fact that hitting and spanking our kids doesn’t work; it’s not

supported by research in any situation or culture across the world. It doesn’t

work. So, what does? Well, I said that I would talk a bit about how to use the

Time Out to help manage our kids’ negative behaviors. Keep in mind that Time

Outs are a part of a larger program of discipline—and there are many healthy

approaches to child discipline. But Time Outs tend to work with most behavior

management approaches.

Parental Control

First, I want to talk a bit about a topic that is an important part of my doctoral research and is something I’ve helped parents understand in over 20 years of work with parents who need solutions to their children’s behaviors. The topic is control. Now most of us parents are very well-intentioned. We aren’t abusive or neglectful; rather, we want to very best for our kids—and sometimes, we want the very best so much that we get too involved in our kid’s business. We start doing things for them that they are very capable of doing for themselves because we want to be sure that they succeed; we want to form a base on which they can thrive and eventually launch into adulthood. And we do that. We build a formidable launching pad for our kids, designed exactly to our very own specifications. Then we put huge walls around it, add three layers of offensive weaponry to keep out anything that we have deemed to be bad for them, then we plop them in the middle of this launching pad and tell them to thrive. I know this world is insane. As the father of a 12-year-old this world scares the hell out of me. I’m nervous about coordinating her launch into adulthood and it’s tempting to hover over her, making sure she does everything I think she should do to ensure her success. But when we do that, when we overcontrol our kids, when we do everything we can do to minimize their discomfort, to minimize their failures, to make sure they’re warm, that they don’t get their feet wet in the rain; when we make sure they pass that big test or properly manage their friendships, use guilt or shame to redirect their behavior, when we hit or spank then, we are often satisfying our need to feel like we’re actively parenting our kids; that we are ensuring their success in this crazy world. When we impose our will on our kids, what we are really doing is removing our child’s sense of agency over their environment; we are removing their sense of control. We are taking away from them to opportunity to learn that there is a consequence for everything they do. Wouldn’t it be great if our 7 year old would wake up in the morning, open up the door and feel the cool air, and think, “it’s cold outside today; it’s going to uncomfortable waiting for the school bus if I don’t wear a long sleeve shirt and put on a jacket?” Instead, what do many parents do? They say, “Good morning, it’s cold today; make sure you wear dress warm; that long sleeve shirt we bought the other day would be perfect for today!” Why do we think we have to inform them of this? It’s well-intentioned; but it prevents your child from using a skill that they are very capable of using; and in so doing, it gives them a powerful sense of pride; a sense of control of their environment. When they make a good decision, on their own, it instills in them a sense of independence, of confidence, of control; independent problem solving is an essential skill that kids need to successfully launch into adulthood. What I’m not suggesting is that parents give up authority or relinquish their responsibilities as parents—there is a huge difference between being in control and being controlling. But what happens with many parents is that they recognize that if we let our kids make their own, developmentally appropriate decisions, that they will, at first,

Over the

weekend I saw at least two memes on social media talking about spanking. The

one that REALLY got me read, “my parents spanked me as a child. As a result, I now

suffer from a psychological condition known as ‘respect for others.’” This

belief has two really big problems with it. One, it assumes that that spanking kids

is a good thing. It also suggests that children who are spanked develop increased

respect for others. I think these memes should be required to cite their

sources—and no, I don’t mean “as believed by this faithful believer in Facebook

memes!” What was just as interesting is that, when I searched for this meme on

the web, I found the same one with thumbs up and thumbs down voting buttons.

And this was as disturbing to me as the meme itself. For this meme there were

2379 thumbs up and 998 thumbs down. Of the 3,377 people who chose to vote on

the sentiment, over 70%, said to themselves, “yep . . . for sure . . . kids

need to be hit in order to whip ‘em into shape.” You’ve likely seen dozens of memes,

social media posts, and direct statements from devout believers in spanking

that the problem with kids today is that they just aren’t hit enough; they need

to be hit to keep them in line!

I know there

are a lot of people out there who like to dismiss research—rather, it seems

that there are people out there who like to pick and choose the research they believe

in based upon their preferred habits, belief systems, and morals. So, in some

ways I know that despite the huge, vast, amount of incredibly credible research

that denounces any benefits of spanking kids there are going to be those that

stand their ground, saying, “I don’t know . . . I was hit as a kid and I turned

out great.” ---maybe one of the benefits of spanking is that the kids will turn

out being unable to distinguish between and subjective reality.

So I thought

I would talk a bit about the research that strongly points to spanking as

entirely detrimental to kids—with no benefit whatsoever—at least no benefit

that can’t be gained from other parenting approaches that DON’T have all of the

negative consequences. Ok, so this is an important point . . . the reality is

that any credible research out there supports the hypothesis that even if spanking

can get parents the outcome they are looking for, it carries with it many enduring

negative consequences to kids; and that it is very possible to get the same benefits—which

really is compliance—we want our kids to comply with authority. But it is very

possible that we parents can get our children to comply with authority using parenting

approaches that actually add ADDITIONAL benefits with regard to our children’s

emotional, psychological, and behavioral health.

What is Spanking?

Spanking is open handed hitting that doesn’t physically harm the child and is done with the purpose of modifying the child’s behavior—and this has been done for many generations. But in the past 10 years or so, as the evidence has accumulated, you will find no major professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, supporting the practice of hitting our kids in order to change their behavior. In fact, I implore you to send me one convincing article from a peer reviewed academic journal—kind of the gold standard in reporting research results—or one statement from a respected professional organization that supports the practice of spanking or hitting our kids. Guys, it doesn’t work! In fact, in one article from a journal called Child Development Perspectives in 2013, they found that spanking is actually associated with LESS compliance from our children...

There is so much happening in our world: from COVID, to politics, to so many lifestyle changes. To me, these changes are both unnerving and fascinating, especially around American politics. Here is something that is certain: our political beliefs are a reflection of our values and morals; and they are very often a reflection of how we were raised. Our politics are reflected in how we parent and how we care for others. So how we develop our political thinking is fascinating. And in many ways what is happening with politics is storytelling. Our political thinking represents an oral tradition that passes our values, morals, and beliefs to the next generation. And some politicians are simply very good at telling that story. Today’s episode is about storytelling . . . . not political stories; that’s not really a hill I want to professionally die on.

Here in my office I have a small collection of Pueblo storytellers. You may know what I’m referring to—most of them of are pretty small, maybe a few inches, tall; they are handcrafted from clay with bright colors and they portray a figure that is sitting and usually holding kids or even animals on his or her lap; the figure can be pretty much anything, but are often a man or woman or any type of animal even. Pueblo Storytellers have a really distinctive, exaggerated open mouth that makes it really hard to deny that the figure represented in the art is telling a story with purpose; a story that’s important to them. Sometimes the kids even have open mouths, as if they are repeating the story they are being told. You probably know that storytelling is important in the Native American culture. In fact, Native American people see their storytelling tradition as crucial in the preservation of the morals, values, traditions, and experiences of their culture. Storyteller pottery started in the 1960’s by a woman named Helen Cordero, from Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico. And since then well over 200 potters across 13 pueblos have created their versions of the storyteller figures, all with varying shapes and sizes. Some are represented as Santas, or owls, or Koshares, which are pueblo Indian clowns that represent ancestral spirits.

So the reason I have a fascination with Pueblo storytellers is because I have a really great respect for storytelling. Storytelling is something I’m not great at, unfortunately, but I know good storytelling when I hear it! And I think that’s areally hard to find. And it's something I don’t find in most Hollywood movies or even NY Times best sellers. Too many of those stories are formulaic; they’re predictable; and nd most really don’t teach us much. What I love is a story that passes cultural values to future generations; that instills the principles, morals, and belief systems of a society. And storytelling is important in counseling, because the stories we tell become a reality of some ways. So we can begin to re-write the way we have always understood things. And hopefully we can re-write things with honest, accurate appraisals of the world around us.

Storytelling is a true artform, and there really are only a few people in my own life that are good at. My wife is tired of hearing me tell this story, but it’s such a good memory. Several years ago my wife and I went to Chebeague Island in Maine and stayed for the weekend. We stayed at the only Inn on the island. We were hanging out in the great room—kind of a main area of the Inn—and there was a bar there. My wife said she needed to go back to the room for something so I sat down at the bar for a bit (Maine, after all, does have a few great micro breweries that are represented around town!). At the other end of the bar there were two older men talking—probably in the ‘80s. We were the only three sitting there. Eventually, one of the men left, and this older gentleman stayed behind talking with the bartender.