Tell Me About Your Mother

• subtle minimization in childhood
• Using Lysol to kill monsters
• Somatic experience informs
• Physicians are not mental health professionals
• Bypassing intellectual blocking by processing clients’ somatic experiences
• Dangers of pop psychology using incorrect language that impacts clients’ self perceptions
• Stop using manic episode incorrectly 
• Making past-present connections 
• Sometimes effective therapy is just showing up 
• Dragon themed dildos 

Ndrea.org free EMDR resource

If interested in therapy, contact us at our link! https://linktr.ee/tellmeaboutyourmother

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Evan and Eli support Melissa and process her gut reaction to clients’ stories, exploring her own counter-transference. This episode also includes topics of:

• Using cuss words when you pray 
• Affairs don’t happen in a vacuum 
• Counter transference informing therapeutic process 
• Negative core belief of defective shame 
• Blowing away bullshit to find authentic self
• Trauma responses- filing into longterm storage via the Amygdala to hippocampus 
• Victimization soup 
• When women cheat

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• Reenactment affecting client retention
• Yawning in trauma-focused therapy
• Infantilizing do alleviate parents’ anxiety 
• Don’t be a dick
• Viewing identity as a developmental sprectrum
• Extreme political views reenacting childhood trauma 
• What’s going on with trucks with flags?
• Ideology being substituted for identity 
• Emotional portals to visit attachment ruptures
• AIP 
• Emotional touchstone creating memory network 

Resource Recommendations: Robin Shapiro Ego State Training

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Eli, Evan, and Melissa take a forensic look at reaction formation, emblem leakage, and cognitive dissonance within Bill Cosby’s career and criminal case and the cost of “winners and losers” within the legal and two-party payer healthcare systems.  What do we need to be more honest with ourselves and others?  What would it take to be more open to criticism and self-reflection and make peace with perfectionism?

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In this episode, Evan shares his experience with a virtual family client. Evan, Eli, and Melissa reflect upon how the family system creates unwanted feelings and responses from all involved and that common lack of emotional trust in families. Please join us as we navigate interpersonal communication by also contemplating:

• Inviting families to go beyond the "presenting problem"
• Families passing the anxiety “hot potato”
• Parents enabling adult children vs. parenting
• Random tear bombs!
• You don’t have to understand it to treat it
• Scapegoating
• Countertransference can be used tactfully 
• Mother’s anxiety suggesting hidden rage 
• Smother mothers
• Members of family being responsibly irresponsible to maintain relationship cohesion

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• When therapists meet themselves in session
• Counter transference implications 
• Can defiance be a form of play?
• Conceptualizing child behavior as a mode of communication 
• Eli compares school expulsion as a railroad car on prison pipeline
• What is a "Fawning" trauma response? 
• How do secure attachments grieve romantic losses?
• Evan's grippy sock vacation 

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How internal environment "echos" into external relationships.

• Fear of disappointing others or of feeling shame?
• Programmed roles
• Family of origins' systems replicating
• Familiar vs. safe
• Identity work in therapy

In this episode Evan Miller welcomes guests! Daniel Rhodes has a wide range of professional experience ranging from Counselor, Clinical Director, and now a Utilization Review Specialist. Evan and Daniel have been in long-term recovery together for over a decade and in this episode they explore their experiences and relational perspectives. 

• Cocaine vs. Surfing
• The magic bullet of fun in recovery
• Evan's house arrest experience 
• When emphasis on accountability becomes trauma reenactment

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• Intellectual Scaffolding …prepare for processing emotion
• “in-the-now” or “numb”…is client re-experiencing & processing events or casually reciting their story?
• What is client trying to do for me; convince me, win my validation?
• Client story as “photo negative” . . . needs hidden in darkness and highlighting others’ wishes & wants
• Intellectual & emotional hoarding . . . hoarded worthless (possibly harmful) beliefs, ‘values,’ relationships
• “Emotional hostage” . . . people pleasing is attempt to control\
• Growing up in alcoholic homes can produce emotional tofu (absorbing emotions of others)
• Client over-estimates responsibility for feelings of others, inflated self-worth
• Mental masturbation & MUSTurbation (it ‘must’ be)
• Clients can be the most well, most mature, most emotionally intellegent cast member in their story

Book: “Why People Die by Suicide”, By Thomas Joyner
Internet Resource: SuicideForum.com

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Evan, Melissa, and Eli explore how assuming a clients' needs may negatively impact their growth within therapy. Topics also explored regard: 

• Mental health professionals are underpaid 
• How private practice marketing draws clients that a culturally similar 
• Community-based planning compared to counseling agendas 
• Presenting problem, adaptations, and what skill is needed to combat
• Getting caught in trauma dramas 
• When might reflection of sadness be maladaptive 
• Tracking language in session 
• Even Hitler threw great parties 
• Open chair photo and mirror technique how to mitigate client performance energy 
• Shame recycling
• What the hell is sycophantic?
• How the adaptive becomes maladaptive 
• Framing client scripts as code and OS
• Internal vs external locus of control
• Effective strategies to invite client to gain sense of internal locus of control

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Have any questions or insights about this episode? Reach out to us at [email protected]