Think Act Be Podcast

Stress is unavoidable, but we don’t have to be overwhelmed by it. In this week’s episode I offer three simple techniques for managing stress and finding true rest. These tools come from Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Simple Path to Healing, Hope, and Peace (affiliate link). I hope you find them useful!

My guest once again this week is Dr. Joel Minden. This time we discussed psychotherapy, drawing on the years that each of us has been a therapist. Good therapy has the power to improve thinking patterns, relationships, habits, and even personality, so we explored the unique aspects of the therapy relationship that facilitate these changes. This conversation is the second in a series of several episodes with Joel, with more to come.

Topics we touched on included:

• A Washington Post piece that inspired our discussion, “Why I Fired My Therapists” by Foster Kamer
• Whether it’s productive to “call out” clients in therapy
• The problem of always being told one is right as a therapy client
• Trying to match therapists to clients
• The dialectic of supporting and challenging in therapy
• Possible developmental shifts across one’s career as a therapist
• My experience with a supervisor who berated my client
• Whether there’s a place for telling clients what they need or ought to do
• Addressing unhelpful patterns of reinforcement
• Why telling people what to do generally doesn't work
• Creating different dynamics in therapy from what people tend to experience elsewhere
• The uniqueness of the therapy relationship among all other relationships
• The value in just talking through an issue in order to arrive at a solution
• The actual self vs. idealized self
• The risk in being one’s authentic self

Joel Minden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and related disorders.

He is the author of Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss, founder of the Chico Center for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, diplomate of The Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Chico.

Find Joel online at his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his blog on Psychology Today.

My guest this week is Dr. Joel Minden, a regular on the Think Act Be podcast. This time we switched roles and Joel interviewed me, mostly about my approach to therapy that I describe in my latest book, Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (affiliate link). This conversation is the first in a series of several episodes with Joel, so stay tuned for more to come.

Topics we touched on included:

• The traditional approach in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• The medical model of therapy
• My background in mindfulness
• The book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (affiliate link)
• Parallels between my religious practices as a kid and my early experiences with meditation
• Mindfulness practice as more than another “technique” for feeling better
• Allowing oneself to experience difficult emotions instead of trying to get rid of them
• The challenge in not fighting against our experience
• The manageability of the moment
• How cognitive work can support mindfulness practice
• Contentment that doesn't depend on one’s circumstances
• Letting go of the struggle against the struggle
• Feeling bad about “not being mindful enough”
• My decision to self-disclose about my own struggles
• The necessity of honesty in any healthy relationship
• Humor in the context of mindfulness, and taking things less seriously
• Mindfulness in action, and the value of finding stillness

Joel Minden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and related disorders.

He is the author of Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss (affiliate link), founder of the Chico Center for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, diplomate of The Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Chico.

Find Joel online at his website, follow him on Twitter, and read his blog on Psychology Today.

My guest this week is Dr. Peter Levine, who is well-known for being the developer of Somatic Experiencing. He’s also the author of a new book: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey (affiliate link), which we focused on in this very enjoyable and meaningful discussion.

Peter shared about how his own wounds from early in life were a big part of what led him into the field of trauma therapy. We explored how the healing continues, even now in Peter’s ninth decade.

Topics we discussed included:

• What Peter means when he describes himself as a modern “Chiron”
• Using our own wounds in life as we’re working to help others
• Getting to trauma memories and healing through embodiment in somatic experiencing
• The horrific trauma Peter experienced early in his life
• The dream that led Peter to share this book rather than writing it only for his own healing
• The significance of dreams for waking life
• Learning to attend to the promptings of the unconscious mind
• The relation between somatic experiencing and an approach like cognitive behavioral therapy
• The role of the vagus nerve in the trauma response and in healing
• Using the body to encounter our traumas in a healing way
• Why a union of the body and mind tends to reduce anxiety
• The disconnection we so often experience between our minds and bodies
• Peter’s reaction to a meditation workshop several decades ago
• The idea of “living your dying”
• Connections between death and the divine
• The promises and pitfalls of psychedelics

Peter Levine, PhD, is the renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing.

He holds a doctorate in medical and biological Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate in psychology from International University.

The recipient of four lifetime achievement awards, he is the author of several books, including Waking the Tiger, which has now been printed in 33 countries and has sold over a million copies.

Learn more about:

• Peter Levine
• Somatic Experiencing
• An Autobiography of Trauma

My guest this week is Mark Gregory Karris. We discussed his recent book, Religious Refugees, which describes the process so many of us will go through of losing our faith, and needing to reconstruct it in a new way. Mark is intimately familiar with this process having gone through it himself, and he guides other religious refugees as they wrestle with issues of faith.

Mark and I had a lot of overlap in our backgrounds, having left fundamentalist Christian denominations, and also a shared history of speaking in tongues which we talked about. We also talked a lot about the love of God, which is sadly missing in so many people’s religious experience, and how to shift our unhelpful beliefs.