Let's go to therapy and totally win it, totally just come in fucking first place
Also: a variety of introspective items
How to go to therapy and be good at it
My guest on the podcast this week is Lori Gottlieb. She’s a therapist and author of the memoir Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. In that book, she also talks about her experience being a therapy client. So I figured she knew therapy from a variety of angles and was the right person to reach out to for the topic that was on my mind: how to get good at therapy.
It’s pretty common to hear the sentiment that one should go to therapy and certainly there are plenty of stories of people going to therapy and making huge helpful breakthroughs. But how do you put yourself in the position to get the most out of therapy and become one of those people telling those stories of awesome self-revelation? So Lori has some ideas.
The notion for this topic is one I allude to in the episode and I’ve written about in my book: I’ve been to see some very nice, earnest therapists in my day where I’ve gotten nowhere. It was only after I decided that I needed to treat therapy as a collaborative project that I started to get somewhere. I had to go into that room without the expectation that therapy would be something done TO me but something that I had to do, with a professional coach helping me along the way. It’s like at the gym; the personal trainer can coach you on the best methods for lifting the weights but you’re the one that’s gotta lift that barbell or run those laps or do those push-ups.
A big part of Lori’s advice has to do with hiring that coach, aka booking the therapist. It has to be someone you can trust but you also need to put in the work trusting them rather than just dismiss them if something goes the slightest bit hinky. We also talk about the misleading, to put it mildly, examples of therapy as depicted on shows like Shrinking, which is a show about therapy that Lori, a therapist, really hates.
Gun violence is causing a lot of trauma
For people directly affected by it, obviously, but for people just living in a society that fetishizes guns as well and won’t do much of anything to keep the most deadly guns out of people’s hands.
“We know that exposure through the media – which can happen across many different outlets, with the swipe of a finger or a ding on your phone – to some type of traumatic event can result in someone experiencing an acute stress reaction and can trigger underlying post-traumatic stress they may have from something else,” said Leah Brogan, a psychologist who works at both the Center for Violence Prevention and the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“So certainly, that constant exposure can be escalating and activating people even when they don’t experience something directly.”
A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that gun violence more broadly has affected most families in the US in one way or another. Nearly 1 in 5 adults has had a family member killed by a gun, including in homicide and suicide, and about 1 in 6 has witnessed an injury from a gun.
Now Washington can’t stop talking about mental health
Which is a big switch from before when no one in the political classes ever discussed it. Politico takes a look at the response to Sen. John Fetterman’s recent hospitalization for major depressive disorder, contrasting it with the bad old days.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) penned a personal essay about Fetterman and how the news of his depression dredged up old feelings about her own fight with the disease in her teens, and again as a young mom. Republican Sen. Katie Britt’s team sent cookies and brownies to Fetterman’s office almost once a week, the senior Fetterman aide told POLITICO. And before President Joe Biden kicked off his budget speech in Philadelphia last month, he spoke directly to the senator: “John, if you can hear this at all, we’re with you, pal. We’re with you,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd.
…
Even as Fetterman’s openness has been met with a positive response, stories like the one of Tom Eagleton, the Democratic running mate for presidential nominee George McGovern who withdrew from the ticket after acknowledging was treated for clinical depression and received electroshock therapy, still haunt politicians.
Then there was former Rep. Patrick Kennedy who left politics to focus on his addiction and bipolar disorder. He entered a rehabilitation center after crashing his car into a barricade on Capitol Hill in 2006. In a 2016 interview, Kennedy noted that there were moments he knew he needed help, well before that breaking point. But back then, politicians didn’t talk about these things.
Things to consider about where you are
Meaning: Substack
I’ve really enjoyed writing this newsletter over the last, geez, two and a half years? I started this when I was between shows and I wanted to keep my writing skills strong and my mental health awareness up to date. I’ve never charged for the newsletter and I don’t expect to be doing so anytime soon because I mostly use it as a path to promote my shows and my book.
But Substack, like all platforms, deserves scrutiny. Annalee Newitz takes on the presence of hate speech and the special treatment that some authors receive. Chris Best says this place is, well, it’s a Nazi bar.
Speaking of mental health
And aren’t we doing that quite often?
My favorite band, The National, has a new song that kind of lays it the f out. Your Mind Is Not Your Friend.