Your Mental Breakdown

Drew's adulting! He is practicing parenting himself, in preparation for his baby on the way. Drew acknowledges feeling anxious about how his parents will react to the pregnancy news he has yet to share with them. Doug challenges Drew to stay focused on himself and bring his emotions out to alleviate the anticipatory anxiety. Doug and Kenzie look at what it means to "Double down, don't shut down." We can hear Drew name and feel the feelings in the session and release some of the judgement he's been holding inside. As he says, "Being able to say it out loud helps me not avoid it."

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Drew’s adulting! He is practicing parenting himself, in preparation for his baby on the way. Drew acknowledges feeling anxious about how his parents will react to the pregnancy news he has yet to share with them. Doug challenges Drew to stay focused on himself and bring his emotions out to alleviate the anticipatory anxiety. Doug and Kenzie look at what it means to “Double down, don't shut down." We can hear Drew name and feel the feelings in the session and release some of the judgement he’s been holding inside. As he says, “Being able to say it out loud helps me not avoid it.” 

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Sarah follows up on last session's "wow moment" about using the concept of natural consequences rather than being judge and jury when giving a punishment. Sarah is re-parenting herself while effectively parenting her kids. People around Sarah are starting to notice a difference in her as a result of her processing in therapy and making previously unconscious habits and patterns more conscious. Doug helps Sarah uncover a moment in her past when her emotional expression was literally shut down by being told that "No one cares." We'll see if Sarah can give herself permission to go back to a time in her life when it was safe to express herself before she learned to shut it down.

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It's the return of Drew to the podcast! We check in with his health, and the stress he's feeling as a 26 year old adult with a baby on the way. Doug challenges Drew with tough love to see his pattern of trying to avoid present issues. Drew says he keeps everything up in the air where he doesn't have to catch it and face it. He is able to take his head out of the sand and look between the immediate financial pressures and the larger picture of existential anxiety. Drew sees, and feels, what he's really avoiding - his emotional experience in the here and now. He is able to go there in session with Doug, and express feeling like he wants to cry, laugh, and punch a wall.

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Doug introduces the concept of natural consequences to Sarah as opposed to being judge and jury as a parent, even if the punishment fits the crime. Sarah acknowledges that she is not failing as a parent; rather, she is growing as a parent. She points out that her growth is carrying over to other aspects of her life. Sarah calls Doug "the Sarah whisperer," and Doug turns this around and reminds her that she is the one whispering to herself and growing. She is, in effect, actively re-parenting herself – and we hear it happening in this session. In the breakdown, Doug and Kenzie talk about how to know which direction to take a client during a session, especially when there are moments with multiple possibilities to process. Therapy is like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book – if only real life let us peek ahead at the options before choosing!

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We're back! Doug is joined by Kenzie on the breakdown and they pick up right where Sarah left off in her therapy sessions. Sarah has been listening to podcasts featuring other people's experiences in cults, which gets her intellectualizing how growing up in a cult still affects issues of power and control in her life now. Doug helps Sarah get into the emotion by putting the focus on "her" own personal story and subjective relationship with "her" parents in the cult, rather than looking objectively at "one's" experience and "one's" parents. Doug tells Sarah a story about working with a teenager to highlight how someone can access their deeper feelings by allowing anger to come out first rather than suppressing it with restraint or punishment. Sarah is motivated to let anger come up and come out to get to the real feelings that she's compartmentalized.

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We discuss the issue of "control" after it came up in our small talk about parties, drugs, and past behavior. Sarah sees clearly how the abuse she suffered in the cult as a child triggers her so profoundly in her current life. She is starting to make a connection of how setting personal boundaries can keep her safe, especially when anxiety comes. Sarah is now personalizing her experiences, as evidenced by her saying "I" at several points in the session rather than referring to the general "one" or "you." Doug tells a story about camping with his dog that helps Sarah express her own feelings about freedom and safety. It's a great benchmark moment in their therapy for Sarah to have identified a frame of reference for those feelings.

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Meredith Levy

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Sarah was super busy at work, had drama with her ex, and then got Covid! In session, she expresses that it's hard for her to say no to anyone, especially her children. Doug helps her stay with the emotion and process "disappointment." Sarah recognizes that she had been running on adrenaline and that she needs to take care of herself. Doug highlights this as her having a personal boundary even in the face of disappointing her son. Is this the beginning of a new neural pathway in her brain that allows her to take care of herself and not constantly put others' needs ahead of her own?

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Meredith Levy

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Drew is feeling "confident alone" rather than "scared alone." He describes it like being the driver of the car of his own life and holding the steering wheel himself. He is less co-dependent and not feeling so impacted by triggers and the old wound of abandonment by mom. From this place, Drew is living for himself - although he drops big news at the end of the session indicating that he definitely won't be living just for himself anymore in about nine months!

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Meredith Levy

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Sarah has sense memories in the present that trigger some traumatic experiences from her upbringing in a cult. She depersonalized her trauma in the cult as a defense mechanism, but she is now able to go through it in therapy. From this more secure and stable place, Sarah is starting to connect emotionally to her own life with understanding and compassion.

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Meredith Levy

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