Healing Childhood Trauma, Getting More From Therapy, and Self Sabotage: September Mailbag

@RickHanson and I open up the mailbag and answer questions from listeners focused on getting the most we can out of therapy, processing old painful experiences, and sabotaging ourselves. We explore the self-fulfilling nature of fear, different forms of therapy and who they benefit, and how to approach dealing with your mind in general.
Key Topics:
0:00 Introduction
1:15 My relationship anxiety is sabotaging my relationship!
7:35 Getting more out of therapy
14:00 Should people with CPTSD do cognitive therapy?
19:45 What other kinds of modalities might be beneficial?
23:15 Rick’s “gardening theory of therapy”
28:25 When and how is it appropriate to talk with your adult children about your abusive childhood?
32:50 How can a therapist draw healthy boundaries with their friends?
38:50 How would you advise a person in their mid 20s just diagnosed with ADHD?
46:05 Forrest’s partner’s experience with ADHD medication
48:40 Reframing our understanding of a psychiatric diagnosis
51:45 Recap
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Who Am I: I'm Forrest, the co-author of Resilient (amzn.to/3iXLerD) and host of the Being Well Podcast (apple.co/38ufGG0). I'm making videos focused on simplifying psychology, mental health, and personal growth.
You can follow me here:
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🌍 www.forresthanson.com
📸 / f.hanson

[@reneeacosta4420]

I think this father and son are a good match for each other. ❤

[@MainframeModule]

Yeah, I wish I had a dad or father figure like that in my life.

[@ivywildwss]

I appreciate this Q&A format. There's so much conflicting confusing content out on trauma, it's painful to even delve into - Gabor Mate is everywhere, Dr. van der Kolk, TED talks, Paul Gilbert, Big Think, it's impossible to know where to start. Same for ADHD. It's just all over the place. I appreciate your summary.

[@earthpearl3790]

My ADHD is all over the place too!

[@robertafierro5592]

This is the topic I'm most drawn to. Personal Development is all.im.intetested at this point.

[@mistyelliott6781]

I love that you touched on the patient therapist connection. My therapist is my hero! She just recently told me that I am a psychological hero to her. (Enter all my tears here! 😆) She has helped me to heal my heart and mind and I still can't wait for therapy each week. She's worked with me for nearly a year now and I am so grateful.❤

[@DM-jz6ie]

I share your experiance. It's so healing to have such a therapis in your live❤️

[@dcat1730]

"--And they still leave you, they're a SCHMO." That cracked me up, very true.

[@deathuponusalll]

Alright! New video drop 🔥🙌🏽

[@nathananderson8720]

This is one of the channels that gave me the courage to start my KZbin channel 10 months ago about self development. Now I have 1,964 subs and > 2k hours of watch time. I know it’s not comparable with others but I’m still proud I started because I’ve been learning so many lessons that I could haven’t learned without getting started in the 1st place.

[@a.s.jackson8203]

Another great podcast. Thanks! So much of what was discussed today is really helpful to me as I deal with trying to get unstuck and move forward in life. This morning I had my 4th session with my therapist. (I've had talk therapy in the past but we didn't really talk about my childhood.) Today, I told my therapist that I need to get to the root of my fear, learned helplessness, self-doubt. I know where it comes from but I think I need to go deeper because just knowing the why doesn't seem very helpful. I see I have to take the lead to get the therapy I need. I chose a therapist who has experience dealing with childhood trauma so that's good. Rick oftentimes says how important compassion and gentleness towards oneself is. I'm at the beginning of learning how to be that way towards myself.

[@johnnewell5025]

I love how thoughtful you both are...I'd like to throw out two supplemental thoughts on the question whether/how to talk to your kids about adverse childhood experiences, abuse and trauma. First, I think we should look at our motivation: are we treating this as an excuse for past (and often future!) behavior or are we trying to explain how we've been in the past. I think one self-test can be whether you view these adverse past experiences as something you're growing out of/away from or you view them as a license to keep doing the same things you've been doing and treating people the way you been treating them. Second, although it may be difficult and not really very comfortable, I think we should be a little careful about how we present our parents or other family members. I don't think there are bright-line do/don't rules here, but at some level I think it's probably a good thing to let your kids - at least your adult kids; I'm not talking about six year olds or 12 year olds - decide what sort of relationship they're going to have with those family members. Obviously, if there is potential for the family member to abuse or harm your kids, that all flies out the window - but I think it would still be better to be sensitive to the kid's age and developmental stage if we need to explain why we don't see Grandma and Grandpa (who we know has raped children) as much as other families see their grandparents.

[@jennyh4802]

In regards to our relationship with our fear, I want to get the psychology world to give more credit to the Inner Critic. Our Inner Critic is the one limiting our experiences, but it's so important to remember why. The Inner Critic is just as for us as we are, they just need to be trained better ways of motivating and protecting us. I loathe the idea of something "bad" inside my body. My Inner Critic isn't bad, she's just wrong. The fear responses she produces are all out of love, and it's really a struggle for me to get this out there. It's all a matter of language, and currently the wrong words are being used to describe a really lovely part of our existence. I won't delete this one today. I really do need help with this, because I'm just not seeing ways to spread this on my own.

[@elvenfox7261]

This is an excellent point! Something that has helped me is naming that inner critic. When it's parroting stuff ppl told me I can say " I appreciate your concern *mom, or whoever it is for you*, but I don't need your input on this right now. " Separating my thoughts from my being has been so so helpful

[@ForrestHanson]

This is well said. As Richard Schwartz likes to say, "no bad parts."

[@jennyh4802]

@elvenfox7261 oooh, that involves next level mental health! You're naming where that feedback came from, as well as calling it out as not helpful. That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing your time!

[@earthpearl3790]

Dig, dig, dig @@ForrestHanson

[@earthpearl3790]

Forrest mentioned IFS and for sure, that's what's up when it comes working with an inner critic or other parts of ourselves. Dr. Tori Olds has a channel with short playlist focused solely on IFS or as it's known in some circles, Parts Work. She breaks it down into easy to digest pcs. I've listened to tons of IFS talks, many with Richard Schwartz, the founder, to me though, Tori Olds' communication style brings the material to life which will help you get a conceptual understanding. Lots of therapy support people have had exposure to IFS too! @@elvenfox7261

[@andys7937]

Self Compassion and Safety are key, plus the resonance between client and therapist and the particular modality that works for you. I can also highly recommend Gabor Mate's Compassionate Inquiry approach and Cranio-sacral Therapy, which you haven’t talked about but which some viewers might want to explore 😊

[@lynnecarruthers3875]

My goodness, this was a helpful episode. Thanks so much. I've been wondering why one therapy style seems to work rather than another for different people just recently 😊 I love your podcasts. Keep up the good work!

[@juliaorpheus]

I want society to get off MY LAWN too!!! 😨lol Love your calm, honest and thought provoking content. The plants behind Forrest have very wavy leaves, must be a fan back there, but it's cute watching your plants boogie down in the background.

[@drdevikakhanna4979]

Thank you Forrest and Rick

[@radudeATL]

I’m not sure how to put this into words, but I am very much in the habit of constantly “rehearsing” conversations either out loud or mentally. I tend to imagine what I would say, and the myriad ways the other person would respond so that I am prepared to answer. I guess I’m wondering what this is called and strategies to combat this kind of thinking/rumination.

[@tod3273]

Is there someplace where the resources you talk about can be found? It’s hard to follow with dane bramage to get spelling of names or books or schools of thought?! Really appreciate the perspective of atypicality rather than diagnoses/disorder…ADHD/Asperger’s/Higher functioning ASD/OCD most of these so-called disorders have obvious functions in the pre- and early agrarian human experience and can in this disordered society…find the right fit and thrive!

[@ForrestHanson]

Are there particular resources you'd like a reference to? On two of the topics we focused on (childhood trauma and ADHD), two books I'd recommend are "the boy who was raised as a dog" and "ADHD 2.0."

[@dakine4238]

Have you done an episode on PNES it's related to trauma?

[@gurjeetbara7192]

This was a great discussion, but I've noticed you guys always skip over psychodynamic therapy. It has been validated as evidence-based now. I'd like to request a podcast episode exploring psychodynamic therapy. I think it would be valuable to demystify it. Perhaps Nancy McWilliams can be a guest, she is a prominent name in that field

[@stephaniewood7611]

But if we’re not licensed therapists then it’s okay to be our friends’ therapist hahaha